"The power of the executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgment of his peers, is in the highest degree odious, and the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist." - Winston Churchill
We must not make the mistake that Jefferson and Hamilton warned us against. Contact your U.S. Senators (the Capitol's phone number is 202 225-3121) and tell them to stop this assault on eight hundred years of legal precedent by leaving our habeas corpus laws intact and quickly moving to ensure that the captives in our Guantanamo Bay Concentration Camps (and other, overseas, secret prisons) have the fundamental human rights of habeas corpus our Supreme Court has already ruled they should be accorded.
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
Losing Habeas Corpus - Thom Hartmann
V-Day, The Worst Speech of Bush's Presidency
A presidential speech writer counts the ways.
For speechwriters drafting a presidential address for a patriotic holiday such as Independence Day, Memorial Day, or Veterans Day, there are three rules: Don't be wordy; don't be wonky; and, most important, don't be partisan. In his Veterans Day remarks today at the Tobyhanna Army Depot near Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, President Bush and his staff broke all three rules, producing a strident speech that went on for almost 50 minutes, included a lengthy comparison of "Islamic radicalism" and "the ideology of communism," and concluded by attacking "some Democrats," while taking an implicit shot at "my opponent during the last election." It may have been the worst speech of his presidency.
At a time when Bush would benefit from sounding cheerful, forward looking, and above partisan politics, just as Ronald Reagan did during his second term even in the midst of the Iran-Contra scandal, Bush instead sounded like Richard Nixon or Lyndon Johnson during the worst days of the Vietnam War, although neither is remembered for flubbing a speech on a national holiday. It's as if Bush was reading from a cue-card that proclaimed, "Message: I'm embattled and embittered."
Decoding Mr. Bush's Denials - New York Times
NYT calls Bush's V-Day speech a pack of lies, just slightly more diplomatically.
ADDED - Alterman points to some NYT columnists who have also been lying on the opposing page.
Senate Pushing for a Plan on Ending the War in Iraq
Senate Republicans Pushing for a Plan on Ending the War in Iraq - New York Times
Democrats need to adopt my plan.
Declare victory when Iraq elects a parliament and bring the troops home in 2006 to ticker tape parades.
Victory Now! We Won!
Our Troops Our Great! USA #1!
America, F**k Yeah! !
We defeated Saddam and installed a democratically elected government. Now let us leave that hellhole and let Iraqis deal with suicide bombers.
TIME. -- Why the Democrats Are Happy Warriors
Democrats move forward with five big ideas
1 Expand support for higher education.
2 Create a National Institute of Science and Engineering, like the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
3 Promote energy independence.
4 "You got a job, you got health care."
5 Organize a bipartisan summit on the budget. Balance it.
"Everything on the table—loopholes, pork, Bush tax cuts. "And then you gotta have a reform piece. Actually, that should come first. Clean up the relationship between lobbyists and legislators, same way we did donors and candidates. This place is a cesspool—gotta address the gifts, free trips, the revolving-door lobbying jobs for staff members."
Breaking News - Did the GOP e-hijack last week's Ohio election?
The Free Press Election Issues:
And thus the possible explanations for the staggering defeats of Issues Two through Five boil down to two: either the Dispatch polling---dead accurate for Issue One---was wildly wrong beyond all possible statistical margin of error for Issues 2-5, or the electronic machines on which Ohio and much of the nation conduct their elections were hacked by someone wanting to change the vote count.
If the latter is true, it can and will be done again, and we can forget forever about the state that has been essential to the election of every Republican presidential candidate since Lincoln.
UK Guardian - US used chemical weapons in Iraq, then lied
>Did US troops use chemical weapons in Falluja? The answer is yes. The proof is not to be found in the documentary broadcast on Italian TV last week, which has generated gigabytes of hype on the internet. It's a turkey, whose evidence that white phosphorus was fired at Iraqi troops is flimsy and circumstantial. But the bloggers debating it found the smoking guns.
Monday, November 14, 2005
The New Monogamy - Marriage With Benefits
Until death do us part—except every other Friday.
For years, we have said—to each other, to our boyfriends, to people writing in to our advice column—that monogamy is a choice, and if you expect it to come naturally, then your relationship (or your shot at one) is doomed. In other words, don’t take monogamy for granted; take the urge to stray for granted. But then again, our underlying assumption was that of course you’d choose monogamy, because what other choice was there? That’s what happily-ever-after requires. Although we may crave a fling on the side, the thought of our partner’s doing the same is heartbreaking, and so we agree to fidelity in order not to drive each other crazy.el - The one thing you are limited in for relationships is time. I learned before my marriage that I didn't believe in jealousy but then I had to learn that I could become upset and jealous over time. My S.O. wasn't spending time with me when I would like to be with her. I wasn't jealous she was with someone else, I became jealous of losing time I enjoyed with her. I like things that make people I love happy which is why I don't feel jealous about other people. I got jealous of lost time. Becoming more mature means that I found many more things to occupy my time instead of needing one particular person with me. Still, if there is something you want to do at a particular time with someone expanding relationships can make life much more complicated. Touch carefully those time, fidelity, and monogomy issues.
But lately, these questions have become more than just theoretical.
Capitol Hill Blue: Burn in hell, Mr. President
Journalist and Publisher cannot take it any more from Bush
I can no longer regard this maniac with journalistic dispassion. I may be a journalist but I’m an American first and, as an American, I cannot stand silent as a truly evil man destroys the country I love.My take - "To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."
Polls show most Americans share my distrust of Bush. We all see him for what he is – a dishonest, opportunistic political beast who lets nothing stand in the way of his unbridled lust for power. He speaks of God at one moment and calls those who dare disagree with him “mother*@#!*@s” the next. He has, without blinking an eye, sent more than 2,000 American military men and women, along with countless thousands of Iraqi civilians, to their deaths in a senseless invasion based on manufactured “evidence” and outright lies.
Then he has the gall to stand up on the day we set aside to honor those who served and continue to promote his lies and call those who see the truth traitors who aid the enemy.
Sorry George. Your lies don’t play here or with the majority of American citizens.
- President Theodore Roosevelt
Reclaim the commons - Henry George Geonomic Economics
In Democratic, Green and Libertarian circles there is increasing interest in Henry George "land taxes" as the least damaging to economic growth.
It creates jobs without inflation or deficits.
It reconciles common land and resource rights with private tenure, enabling society to collect the value accruing from its actions yet preserving the benefits of private ownership.
It enables the reduction or elimination of payroll taxes and taxes on labour and capital, by shifting the burden to land and natural resources.
It is the only tax of any serious revenue potential that does not bear down on and suppress production and exchange. Unlike income and payroll taxes, it does not penalize work and employment. Unlike sales tax and GST it does not penalize production and trade. But it does assign their true value to natural resources and thereby offers a powerful incentive to husband and preserve them.
Geonomics meshes very comfortably with other tax shifting measures being advocated by many progressive economists and environmentalists. The general idea of green and equitable tax shifting is to stop taxing “goods” like employment, initiative, and economic activity and start taxing “bads” like carbon emissions and other pollutants, traffic congestion, speculative holding of vacant urban lots, and reckless use of common goods like fish, old growth forests, and water. An essential corollary is to stop the subsidizing of “bads” which is all too prevalent in modern society.
Jeffery Smith, the Portland-based founder of Geonomics, suggests that land taxes could not only fund necessary public services but also provide a “Geo-dividend,” a basic income for everyone, as the Alaskan state oil royalty does for Alaskans.
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