I don't give a bleep who you are, or where you come from, you have that right before this country jails you and takes away your freedom. To do otherwise recruits militancy and undermines the freedom and liberty that too many take for granted and a loud-but-ignorant minority misunderstand. (With rights come responsibilities, just for starters.)
Today, another nail was driven in the coffin of the republic, but this time, the Obama administration was swinging the hammer.
The war criminals in the Bush administration are responsible for this, and somebody's ass needs to be in the dock airing this countries dirty laundry and letting juries set some fates. If we can't try the accused terrorists, we have to try those responsible for their precarious legal status.
If not, the republic is well and truly fucked, deformed not merely beyond recognition, but beyond repair.
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"We've invaded Haiti. We dropped troops on the presidential palace yesterday. The difference between Bush invading Iraq, and Obama invading Haiti, is that Bush had Congressional authorization."- Conservative pundit Hugh Hewitt, Link
Too stupid to reply to.
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On the psychology of the two parties
Watching the Democrats completely lose their shit over one special election loss is fascinating if one can get past the that horrible feeling of bile rising in one's throat. Oh, and the despair -- that's a bit of a bummer too.
Anyway, this made me contemplate how the Republicans would react to a similar setback. And the answer is that they would not have backed off an inch. They would ratchet up whatever their issue de jour was and push it twice as hard.
http://www.cogitamusblog.com/2010/01/on-the-psychology-of-the-two-parties.html
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Mystery visitor to Poe's grave a no-show
It is what Edgar Allan Poe might have called "a mystery all insoluble": Every year for the past six decades, a shadowy visitor would leave roses and a half-empty bottle of cognac on Poe's grave on the anniversary of the writer's birth. This year, no one showed.
Did the mysterious "Poe toaster" meet his own mortal end? Did some kind of ghastly misfortune befall him? Will he be heard from nevermore?
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I swear to some amorphous sky deity, the next politician or pundit, male or female, who tries to extol the virtues of "bipartisanship" is getting a swift kick in the groinal area. From the New York Times:
WASHINGTON — President Obama signaled on Wednesday that he might be willing to scale back his proposed health care overhaul to a version that could attract bipartisan support, as the White House and Congressional Democrats grappled with a political landscape transformed by the Republican victory in the Massachusetts Senate race.
Mister President, stop it. I beg of you — just . . . stop it. Remove yourself from the confines of your ideological ivory tower and get a grip on the realities on the ground. This is Washington, D.C. we're talking about here. These people are not your friends. They do not want to reach across the aisle and work with you for some greater good. They never have and they never will:
http://firedoglake.com/2010/01/21/late-night-two-wrongs-sometimes-make-a-left/
President Hopey McChangie has got our backs!!
"Let me tell you, so long as I have the privilege of serving as your president, I'll never stop fighting for you," Obama said at the beginning of a town hall meeting with voters Friday.Ground Control to Captain Corporate: You might want to start fighting for us first.
In wake of Supreme Court ruling, Obama vows to fight 'special interests' http://www.americablog.com/2010/01/in-wake-of-supreme-court-ruling-obama.html
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"Everybody's got something to hide except for me and Would doing something for desperate people in need in a devastated nation lessen the evil corruption of the collective souls of Fox News' people to a level that would be unacceptable to its satanic overlord?
It's heartening to know that some corporate leaders don't like this system any more than we do:
WASHINGTON (AP) — About 40 current and former corporate executives have a message for Congress: Quit hitting us up for campaign cash.
In a letter to Congressional leaders on Friday, the executives urged Congress to approve public financing for House and Senate campaigns. They sent the letter a day after the Supreme Court struck down limits on corporate spending in elections.
"Members of Congress already spend too much time raising money from large contributors," the letter said. "And often, many of us individually are on the receiving end of solicitation phone calls from members of Congress. With additional money flowing into the system due to the court's decision, the fund-raising pressure on members of Congress will only increase."
This week, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal al-Saud of Saudi Arabia — the largest shareholder of News Corp outside the Murdoch family (and the country that supplied 15 of the 19 hijackers)— endorsed Rupert Murdoch's son James to succeed the elder Murdoch when he retires. Alwaleed, King Abdullah's nephew, is Saudi Arabia's richest person and the world's 22nd wealthiest (Murdoch is number 132). He holds large stakes in many American companies, including Citi. The prince met with Murdoch last week to discuss a "future potential alliance with News Corp," and he told Charlie Rose Wednesday about his respect for the Murdoch dynasty:
Headline from the Onion........ NOT!:
Scott Brown Wins Mass. Race, Giving GOP 41-59 Majority in the Senate
It's not as if they didn't try to warn us about Roberts. Posted here September 2005:
The New York Review of Books on John Roberts (and why oh why do we have to depend on literary journals instead of newspapers to explain our national political scene?):
Roberts was first employed in 1981 and 1982 as a special assistant to the attorney general, William French Smith. He went from there to the Reagan White House in November 1982, where he served as associate counsel to the President for three and a half years. During this period, Roberts played an important part in the administration's efforts to curtail the rights of African-Americans, to deny assistance to children with disabilities, and to prevent redress for women and girls who had suffered sex discrimination. He also justified attempts by the state of Texas to cut off opportunities for the children of poor Latino aliens to obtain an education. Roberts was in favor of limiting the progress of African-Americans in participating in the political process and of making far-reaching changes in the constitutional role of the courts in protecting rights.
In all of these efforts, which halted temporarily when Roberts left government for private practice in 1986, he was no mere functionary. Indeed, he often was prepared to go beyond his conservative superiors in the Reagan administration in mounting a counter-revolution in civil rights, expressing frustration with his conservative superior at the Justice Department, Theodore Olson, differing on a key constitutional issue with Robert Bork, and disagreeing on voting rights with Senator Strom Thurmond.
The lengthy and detailed piece ends thusly:
David Broder noted of Judge Roberts, "You can search his record in vain for examples of his sensitivity to the impact of the law on people's lives." There can be no doubt that in the hearings Roberts will be a good advocate for himself as he has been for others. But in the end it is the record that counts, and the record is damning.
Since the Roberts Court has now ruled that corporations have the same rights as people and overturned decades of laws regulating their speech, I'm wondering: Do they now have the right to arm themselves by employing Blackwater-type mercenaries and post them all over their office buildings?
Will Wal-Mart post armed guards in their parking lots?
Seems like a natural consequence. If corporations can enjoy full First Amendment protections, wouldn't they likewise get Second Amendment rights?
