Bachmann greets Ron Paul at a ralley for Home Schooling, which in the future we will have to have as the GOP will fire all the children after they finish firing the teachers.
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Wisco: Stealing America right from under our noses.
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Many citizens are breathing a sense of relief today. When we saw the Obama Administration bomb the capital of a sovereign nation and openly support rebel forces in the field, many jumped to conclusions and asked how Obama could start a war without congressional approval under Article I. White House Spokesman Jay Carney has finally set the record straight. This may look like war but it is really "a time-limited, scope-limited military action."
What idiots the Framers were not to see the difference. They drafted Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 without expressly distinguishing time-limited, scope-limited military actions in bombing other nations. Instead, when Pierce Butler of South Carolina argued that the president could commit the United States to war, people like Elbridge Gerry responded that he "never expected to hear in a republic a motion to empower the Executive alone to declare war." Others like George Mason also expressed total opposition to such a notion. It turns out that a president only has to call a war "a time-limited, scope-limited military action" and can bomb capitals and spend hundreds of millions of dollars to support one side in a civil war.
Of course, someone may want to inform those people being bombed that this should not be taken as an act of war . . . more like a violent gesture of peace.
Jonathan Turley
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4,441 soldiers killed in Iraq; 1,513 in Afghanistan.
No news on how many have been killed in Libya, the place where "time-limited, scope-limited military action" is going on.
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President Obama has continued his attack on basic constitutional and legal principles with an astonishing new order that allows investigators to not only hold domestic terror suspects for longer periods but to deny them Miranda rights under a strained interpretation of the public safety exception. Obama had attempted to get this change from Congress but was rebuffed. He has now again adopted a tactic of his predecessor and acted unilaterally to trump recognized constitutional rights. Continue reading 'Obama Orders Limits on Miranda Rights For Domestic Suspects'
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Environmentalists are again calling foul after the announcement of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar that the Obama Administration has approved the expansion in coal mining and four new permits for deepwater offshore oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. The increased coal production could cause U.S. climate pollution to rise by more than 50 percent, Glenn Hurowitz, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, has claimed that the expansion of the coal production could increase pollution by more than 50 percent.
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Tony Perkins Rides The Waambulance
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Sweet Jeebus, but I hate the HuffPo
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E.D. Kain: No country for old dictators
As far as I'm concerned there are no good arguments for intervention in Libya. Reports that we've saved 100,000 lives there strike me as no better than propaganda. After all, 100,000 was the number of those killed in the firebombing of Tokyo during World War II – the deadliest day of that war. I have a hard time believing that Qaddafi would even be capable of that sort of devastation. Reports of only a thousand rebel troops also strike me as little more than bragging on the part of rebels. We should be skeptical of these things.
That the Libyans are hugging downed American airmen and showering them with thanks is eerily reminiscent of all those Iraqis greeted us as liberators not quite a decade ago, throwing their shoes first at the toppling statues of Saddam Hussein and then later at their liberator, George W. Bush.
Liberal and neoconservative hawks, and diehard supporters of Obama, can tick off a whole host of reasons to support this intervention. The first among these is that it is merely humanitarian, a mission to save the lives of Libyan civilians. Similar arguments were made about Iraq. Often Rwanda is invoked, or Bosnia. Over one hundred thousand civilians have been killed in Iraq since operations began in 2003. (That number again! Perhaps we have atoned for the hundred thousand killed in Iraq by the hundred thousand saved in Libya…) Nobody can say for sure what would have happened in Rwanda, though it is almost certain that any intervention would have been too little, too late.
I am deeply troubled by the enthusiasm for this latest American invasion of Arab lands – whether from Juan Cole or Bill Kristol – no matter its humanitarian trappings, no matter the D next to the current president's name, no matter the lives saved with our oh-so-smart smart bombs, no matter the much more impressive coalition of the willing we have gathered around us this time. None of this matters. We are bombing another country, one that has not invaded its neighbors, one that has not in any material way threatened American security or interests.
P.S. – I should add that our involvement in Libya may very well threaten our interests, as Paul Pillar explains (via Larison).
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Someone explain to me how he is wrong:
A serious leak of classified information has just taken place—which, as we all know, is a dastardly crime for which the harshest punishment is merited. To make matters even more grave, this time the unauthorized disclosure has taken place during A Time of War, resulting in the illegal publication of sensitive information about the nation's enemy. The leak was transmitted to Associated Press, which then published it to the world:
Libyan state television showed blackened and mangled bodies that it said were victims of airstrikes in Tripoli. . . . A U.S. intelligence report on Monday, the day after coalition missiles attacked Gadhafi's Bab al-Aziziya compound in the capitol, said that a senior Gadhafi aide was told to take bodies from a morgue and place them at the scene of the bomb damage, to be displayed for visiting journalists. A senior U.S. defense official revealed the contents of the intelligence report on condition of anonymity because it was classified secret.
I wonder if Eric Holder will shortly announce an investigation to find out who is responsible for this leak? Will the guilty party be charged with a capital crime and be held in solitary confinement near a cell occupied by Bradley Manning? Only time will tell.
And, since he is in the Defense Department, we can keep him in solitary for 24 hours a day, declare him mentally unstable, take away his reading glasses, parade him around nude, and all the internet tough guys can say "That's what you get for fucking around while in the military" and then make Jane Hamsher jokes.
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Why are anti-government forces in Iraq and Afghanistan called 'insurgents', while those in Libya are called 'rebels'?
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That John Stossel didn't drop dead or burst into flames for saying this out loud and with a straight face is all the proof we need that there is no God. "Quick, which group has the U.S. government helped out the most? Wall Street, maybe? Or the unemployed? Oh, how about all those defense contractors? Wrong, says Fox News contributor John Stossel. As far as Stossel is concerned, it's Native Americans. ... Stossel was on Fox & Friends this morning to discuss some high-paying government jobs recently reported in The Daily Caller. The report found that the "Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs needs someone to run the Facebook page for the Dept. of the Interior and they'll pay up to $115,000 a year." Stossel took that as an opportunity to wonder about the entire concept of a Bureau of Indian Affairs. ... "Why is there a Bureau of Indian Affairs?" he said. "There is no Bureau of Puerto Rican Affairs or Black Affairs or Irish Affairs. And no group in America has been more helped by the government than the American Indians, because we have the treaties, we stole their land. But 200 years later, no group does worse.""
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Despite reporting over $5 billion in profits from its domestic operations, the American multinational conglomerate General Electric – headquartered in Fairfield, CT – paid nothing in income taxes. "In fact, G.E. claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion."
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True Art: Rusted camper van reminds world Obama is Muslim Satan, UFOs are angels
"MONKEY MIND OBAMA THE GREAT SATAN, AND THE CHANGE HE PROMISED YOU." A sentence for the ages. While it stays true to the viewer's spelling and grammar expectations, this vehicle switches up the art form by being a camper rather than a pickup truck, and we can safely say it has some refreshing new ideas in the small print we've never seen plastered on one of these before. "OBAMA HAS BOOSE PARTY'S EVERY OTHER DAY AT THE WHITE HOUSE, GIVEING EVERY-ONE $150 STEAKS (IMPORTED) TO EAT," America's most trusted journalist, the old rusted-out camper, reports. READ MORE »
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XXXL Crucifixes
Fundamentalist Christians Are All Obese, According To Science
Well, here's a shocker: America's most deluded religious group, the fundamentalist Christians, "are 50 percent more likely to turn into obese middle-agers as those with no religious involvement." Being dumb and poor and racist and homophobic apparently wasn't enough for Jeebus' true children here in America — now they're doomed to fatness, too. Again, this is according to Scientists who studied people who go to church all the time. There are many theories, including one by Purdue University sociologist Ken Ferraro that "churches are a feeding ground for gluttony and obesity." But what about religions and philosophies that demand moderation in eating, like Buddhism? Not so many Buddhists in America, we guess! What about Catholics? They are mostly alcoholics, plus they rarely go to church except for the big holidays because they're scared the priest is going to rape their kids again. What about Anglicans or whatever, maybe Episcopalians or Unitarians? Ha ha, there are only about 2,000 of them, and they're old preppies who go on walks every day and go canoeing at their summer houses.
Maybe it's getting married to some fat person from your church?
"We know that weight gain is common after marriage and that marriage is highly valued in most religious groups," he said. "Thus, one wonders if the results could be partially due to religious people being more likely to get married earlier and then gaining weight."
Yvonne Bennett, a Chicago-area fitness instructor, said the study is right on track. Her own church's "food and fellowship" practice, inspired her to start the program "Spirit Fit Ministry" at Trinity Baptist Community Church International in Crystal Lake.
Also, Baptist women and fundamentalists in general are most at risk of becoming obese, because of their terrible church habit:
Baptist women are at highest risk of obesity, followed by Fundamental Protestants, according to Ferraro's work. Though the South, home to many Baptists, is known for its less healthy eating patterns, Baptist women were still more likely to be obese when the researchers controlled for residency.
And that is how we got to "Pole Dancing For Jesus," the end. [Chicago Tribune]
