2007 archive

Jon Swift tells it like it was.

Daniel DiRito has a very thoughtful post over at ASZ about the rule of law and the damage that the Bush gang has done to it.

I commend it to your attention.

I was working at home today, and, I usually do when I work at home, I had the radio on.

I must have heard six stories about the IPhone. Now, I have a confirmed dislike of fruits, but this feature almost convinced me to consider it (except that it comes with Southwestern Bell Cingular AT&T:

via Phillybits.

Brendan recounts his recent encounter with the local gendarmarie.

It will help you think twice about that “your home is your castle” junk.

From Newt Gingrich.

And this surprise us how?

From FactCheck dot org (which, by the way is a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania; it doesn’t have a political ax to grind and debunks liars across the political spectrum). Follow the link to see the lies dissected:

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich made false claims about the Senate immigration bill in a TV ad for a conservative group. He said it “will put…potential terrorists and gang members on a path to U.S. citizenship,” which is contrary to the language of the legislation.

Actually, the bill grants authority to deport any alien who “at any time has participated in a criminal gang.” And as for terrorists, the measure also gives the government authority to deny temporary visa status to an illegal alien if “there are reasonable grounds for regarding the alien as a danger to the security of the United States.”

Republican efforts to squelch free speech come back to haunt . . . Delaware?

A group of women who where preemptively tossed out of a Delaware book signing involving former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum have settled their civil rights lawsuit against the Delaware State Police.

The four were forced from the Barnes & Noble on Concord Pike in August 2005 by an off-duty trooper working security after a member of Santorum’s group overheard the women discussing their opposition to some of the Senator’s policies and asked they be removed.

The women filed suit, with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, last year alleging their free speech rights were violated.

As part of the settlement announced by the ACLU today, the state police will pay $15,000 for the legal fees and costs of the plaintiffs and adopt new policies and training programs for officers on the free speech rights of protesters.

(snip)

As part of the settlement, the two staffers who requested the women be ejected — Ellen Melrose and Becky Barrett-Toomey — will also send the plaintiffs a letter of regret and pay them $2,500 in damages, the amount they were paid by the Santorum campaign, through a PR firm, to assist at the event.

And where’s Little Ricky through all of this?

One of the tenets of modern American conservative thought is distrust of Big Government.

But in that terminology, Big Government translates into those aspects of government that are designed to help the helpless, the lost, the wounded, such as Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, and (gasp!) Welfare in all it’s forms (except, of course, for welfare for the rich).

At the same time, many of these same folks who call themselves “conservative” put great trust in other Federal agencies, such as the Federal Bureau of Investitagation, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Military (note that 50% of the current Federal budget goes to the armed services).

Let us look at the record:

When was the last time, for example, that the Department of Health and Human Services or the Department of Education was found guilty of overstepping its bounds?

Yeah, right, Google all you want, it ain’t there.

When was the last time the Federal Bureau of Investigation was found to be overstepping its bounds? That’s right. Every time you turn around.

And the CIA? A history of abuse.

And how about the Department of Torture Vice President’s Office. Oh, yeah, I forgot. There is no Vice President’s Office.

I suggest to you, Gentle Readers, that the conservatives’ distrust of government is well-placed. Sadly, though, they are distrusting the wrong part of the government.

They should be distrusting the parts they like–the military and militaristic parts, because those are the parts that have historically demonstrated that they are, indeed, untrustworthy.

Sadly, though (and I know this, for I am a good shot), you get more rocks off shooting guns and fantasizing about torture than you do helping people.

Yeah, big government can’t be trusted.

Well, part of it can’t be trusted. My mother’s Medicaid works just fine, thank you. The part that can’t be trusted is the part that claims it’s purpose is to protect.

It didn’t protect those poor souls in New York City. But it quite happily denies American citizens their rights.

They’ve had enough of the lies.

But, remember, these are the same rats who followed the Pie-Eyed Piper into the abyss.

President George W. Bush’s Iraq war policy suffered a second blow in as many days on Tuesday when another senior senator from his Republican party publicly called for U.S. troop withdrawals.

A day after Indiana Republican Sen. Richard Lugar declared that Bush’s “surge” policy of adding troops was not working, Sen. George Voinovich of Ohio sent Bush a letter “expressing his belief that our nation must begin to develop a comprehensive plan for our gradual military disengagement from Iraq,” Voinovich’s office announced.

They have to stand for election again. They have realized that a platform of lies ultimately becomes a shakey pizza–whatever happened to Shakey’s Pizza platform indeed.

Ya know, the truth will catch up with malefactors eventually. It’s just that, sometimes, eventually can be a long, long time.

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Well, maybe I could have, but I was doing the cooling tower thing all day and I don’t have the energy.

This is worth seeing, as it captures the full hypocrisy of the Current Federal Administrator and his minions: Phillybits.

I was listening to Le Show yesterday (an activity I recommend highly).

The host pointed out that the Vice President (President of Vice?) had dedicated himself to increasing the power of the executive branch.

A branch which, the host pointed out, of which the Vice President denies being part.

How altruistic of him.

Not.

Still nothing from Waste of Newsprint on how Senator Thompson should spend his remaining years in the bosom of his family.

. . . should, of course, be filed against the entire Current Federal Administration for violating their oaths of office.

But the best I can do it charge my battery. I dragged the boat battery out of the crawl space and put it to charge today. Those things usually last, maybe, three years, because of the hard usage. This would be year four.

We’ll find out tomorrow if it holds a charge or if I need a new battery.

Shake down cruise this coming weekend.

This is me. I’ve been published.

Oh, my.

A NZ couple are fighting the powers that be for the right to name their son “4Real”, the New Zealand Herald reports.

Pat and Sheena Wheaton claim the Department of Internal Affairs has deployed the Births, Deaths, and Marriages Registration Act 1995 in refusing to register the name. The law forbids “names that resemble an official title or rank, names that are unreasonably long, and names that may cause offence to a reasonable person”. It also advises that parents “avoid names which would cause their child to be teased or made fun of”.

And this surprises us how?

A military officer and former member of a Pentagon unit that decided to indefinitely imprison some detainees from Afghanistan and Iraq has said in a sworn affidavit that the process of reviewing their cases was “fundamentally flawed” and that the results were influenced by pressure from superiors rather than based on concrete evidence.

(snip)

In his affidavit, Abraham said there was considerable pressure from commanders for officers serving on the tribunals to determine that detainees were enemy fighters. He also said that it was “well known” that those officers who concluded otherwise would have to explain their findings to McGarrah and his top aides.

He said he and two fellow panel members were closely questioned by McGarrah and his deputy after they decided that there was not enough evidence to conclude that a prisoner was an enemy fighter, and were then ordered to hold an expanded hearing to reconsider their conclusion.

Pretty consistent with the Current Federal Administration’s track record on truthiness.

. . . thy name is Cheney.

I’m not going to bother writing anything about this when Phillybits has already dealt with it.

No, I haven’t found the time or the energy to explore this topic, except to say that the bigotry of some of the anti-immigration persons disgusts me, but I did hear a reasoned and civil discussion of the issue earlier this week.

You can listen to it here (Real) or go to the website and look for hour 2 of the June 19, 2007, show. The show’s description from the website:

Does the U.S. need immigrants? Do immigrants contribute to economic growth in certain business sectors? How do immigrants impact the wages and job opportunities for the unskilled workforce? We talk with Wharton professors BERNARD ANDERSON and PETER CAPPELLI.