Say Anything Blog

One of my favorite war historians, John Keegan has an interesting analysis published in the Torygraph. He is responding to press reports of the President admitting a comparison between ‘nam and Iraq.

It’s a great read, but this is my favorite part:

Vietnam was one of the largest and costliest wars in history. The insurgency in Iraq resembles one of the colonial disturbances of imperial history.

There is a good reason for the difference. The Vietnamese communists had organised and operated a countryside politico-military organisation with branches in almost every village. The North Vietnamese People’s Army resembled that of an organised Western state. It conscripted recruits throughout the country, trained, organised and equipped them.

The Iraqi insurgency, by contrast, is an informal undertaking by a coalition of religious and ex-Ba’athist groups. It has no high command or bureaucracy resembling the disciplined Marxist structures of North Vietnam. It has some support from like-minded groups in neighbouring countries, but nothing to compare with the North Vietnamese international network, which was supported by China and the Soviet Union and imported arms and munitions from both those countries on a large scale.

North Vietnam was, moreover, a sovereign state, supported explicitly by all other communist countries and by many sympathetic regimes in the Third World. The Iraqi insurgency has sympathisers, but they enjoy no organised system of support and are actively opposed by many of their neighbours and Muslim co-religionists.

The recent upsurge of violence in Iraq in no way resembles the Tet offensive. At Tet, the Vietnamese new year, the North Vietnamese People’s Army simultaneously attacked 40 cities and towns in South Vietnam, using 84,000 troops. Of those, the communists lost 45,000 killed. No such losses have been recorded in Iraq at any place or any time. The Tet offensive proved to be a military disaster for the Vietnamese communists. It left them scarcely able to keep up their long-running, low-level war against the South Vietnamese government and the American army.

New York Times

Some conservative leaders have often been quicker in the past to turn on Republican officials and one another than their rank-and-file supporters. But this year polls show broad disaffection at the grass roots, prompting some Republicans — including former Speaker Newt Gingrich — to worry that the public sparring could dampen turnout.

This year’s antagonists also include some new critics, including Mr. Gingrich’s one-time lieutenant, Dick Armey, the former House Republican majority leader.

In recent weeks, Mr. Armey has stepped up a public campaign against the influence of Dr. James C. Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family and an influential voice among evangelical protestants. In an interview published last month in “The Elephant in the Room,” a book by Ryan Sager about splits among conservatives, Mr. Armey accused Congressional Republicans of “blatant pandering to James Dobson” and “his gang of thugs,” whom Mr. Armey called “real nasty bullies” — arguments he reprised on the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal and in an open letter on the Web site organization FreedomWorks.

In an interview this week, Mr. Armey said catering to Dr. Dobson and his allies had led the party to abandon budget-cutting. And he said Christian conservatives could cost Republicans seats around the country, especially in Ohio.

“The Republicans are talking about things like gay marriage and so forth, and the Democrats are talking about the things people care about, like how do I pay my bills?” he said.

Mr. Armey also pinned some of the blame on Tom DeLay, the former Republican House majority leader, who “was always more comfortable with the social conservatives, the evangelical wing of the party, than he was with the business wing.”

Mr. Armey, who identifies himself as an evangelical, said he was tired of Christian conservative leaders threatening that their supporters would stay away from the ballot box unless they got what they wanted.

“Economic conservatives,” he argued, were emerging as the swing voters in need of attention, in part because they had become more likely to vote Democratic in the years since President Bill Clinton was in office. “A lot of people believe he brought us from deficits to surpluses, and there is a certain empirical evidence there,” Mr. Armey acknowledged.

In a statement on Thursday, Dr. Dobson said Mr. Armey was “still ticked” over a long-ago House leadership race in which Dr. Dobson endorsed someone else, and he restated his warnings to Republicans that social conservative voters “would abandon them if they forgot the promises they had made.”

Ouch.

This is a sneak preview.

As we prepare ourselves to make political endorsements in subsequent issues, I can tell you unequivocally that this newspaper has never endorsed so many Democrats. Not even close.

In the 56 years we have been publishing in Johnson County, this basically has been a Republican newspaper. In the old days, before the Republican civil war that fractured the party, we were traditional Republicans. That is, we happily endorsed Jan Meyers for Congress, Bob Dole for U.S. Senate, Nancy Kassebaum for U.S. Senate; virtually every Republican state legislator from here, with a few rare exceptions; and most governors, although we did endorse the conservative Democrats George and Bob Docking and John Carlin.

The point is, I can name on two hands over a half century the number of Democrats we have endorsed for public office.

This year, we will do something different. You will read why we are endorsing Kathleen Sebelius for governor and Mark Parkinson for lieutenant governor; Dennis Moore to be re-elected to the U.S. Congress; Paul Morrison for Kansas attorney general; and a slew of local Democratic state legislative candidates. These are not liberal Democrats. They are what fairly can be described as conservative Democrats, and we can prove that in our forthcoming endorsements.

But I could not help but put in perspective a more global phenomenon that has led us to re-evaluate our traditional support for Republicans.

This change may come as no surprise to our most cynical conservative readers who would dismiss me (and others on the editorial board) as being a moderate Republican and, therefore, the same as a Democrat. To them, there is no difference.

But the shift, frankly, shocks me, because I have pulled the lever over and over since my first vote in 1968 for Republicans. If I was a closet Democrat, I must have hidden it well, especially from myself, since I always beat up on Democrats in my columns. I have called them leftists, socialists, and every other name in the book, because I thought they were flat-out wrong.

And, for the most part, I still do. I am opposed to big government. I have little use for unions. I never liked the welfare plans. I am opposed to weak-kneed defense policies. I have always been for fiscal prudence. I think back to the policies of most Democrats, and I cringe.

So, what in the world has happened?

The Republican Party has changed, and it has changed monumentally.

You almost cannot be a victorious traditional Republican candidate with mainstream values in Johnson County or in Kansas anymore, because these candidates never get on the ballot in the general election. They lose in low turnout primaries, where the far right shows up to vote in disproportionate numbers.

To win a Republican primary, the candidate must move to the right.

What does to-the-right mean?

It means anti-public education, though claiming to support it.

It means weak support of our universities, while praising them.

It means anti-stem cell research.

It means ridiculing global warming.

It means gay bashing. Not so much gay marriage, but just bashing gays.

It means immigrant bashing. I’m talking about the viciousness.

It means putting religion in public schools. Not just prayer.

It means mocking evolution and claiming it is not science.

It means denigrating even abstinence-based sex education.

Note, I did not say it means “anti-abortion,” because I do not find that position repugnant, at all. I respect that position.

But everything else adds up to priorities that have nothing to do with the Republican Party I once knew.

That’s why, in the absence of so-called traditional Republican candidates, the choice comes down to right-wing Republicans or conservative Democrats.

And now you know why we have been forced to move left.

At the 2006 CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) in Washington DC this last February, Congressman Mike Pence of Indiana spoke of the state of our party.

“Two years ago, when I presented the keynote address here at CPAC 2004, I likened the state of the Republican movement to a tall ship at sea – a ship that had drifted off-course from essential conservative principles.

I said we had lost our way. But I believed we could get back on course — would get back on course. We could make the corrections. We needed only to keep our eye on True North — our core principles of limited government and traditional moral values.

I believed that we were off course not because we’d abandoned these principles, or forgotten the shining city on the hill. We’d simply made honest, but flawed calculations on how to get there.
I no longer believe that. It’s one thing to drift off course…It’s quite another thing to continue that course when half the crew and passengers are pointing out that nothing looks familiar … not to mention the tens of millions of Americans lining the shoreline screaming, “You’re going the wrong way!”

In short, we’re no longer adrift. We might’ve been when we started but now “off course” is the accepted course. 

The evidence for this is overwhelming … while President Bush has called for increases in non-defense spending of 4 percent for the last five years, Congress has delivered budgets spending more than twice that each year … Congress has spent $380 billion more than the President requested under Republican control.

Whether it’s called “compassionate conservatism” or “big government republicanism,” after years of record increases in federal spending, more government is now the accepted Republican philosophy in Washington.

We are in danger of becoming the party of Big Government. And for the sake of our party and for the sake of the nation we must say, here and now, to all who would lead us in this new century, “the era of big Republican government is over!"”

We can’t allow this national phenomenon to expand to state and local politics.

(more...)

Fun stuff (if you have a sense of humor)

The following is a transcript of the new answering machine to be installed soon at your local department (because we care):

Hello, you’ve reached the Police Department voice mail. Please pay close attention as we update choices as new and unusual circumstances arrive. Please select from the following options:

To whine about us not doing anyhting to solve a problem you created: Press 1

To inquire as to whether someone has to die before we do something to fix a problem: Press 2

To report an officer for your perception of bad manners when in reality the officer is trying to keep your neighborhood safe: Press 3

If you’d like us to raise your children: Press 4

If you’d like us to take control of your life due to your chemical dependancy: Press 5

If you’d like us to instantly restore order to a situation that took years to deteriorate: Press 6

To provide a list of officers that you personally know so that we won’t take enforcement action against you: Press 7

To sue us, or tell us that you pay our salary and will have our badges or to proclaim our career is over: Press 8

To whine about a ticket and/or to complain about the many other uses for police other than keeping your dumb ass in line: Press 9

Please note that your call may be monitored to assure proper customer support, and remember, we are here to save your ass, not kiss it. Have a nice day.

Michael Shutze at Save the GOP

As we slowly approach election day there is a heated debate going on within the conservative camp regarding “what is to be done”. Do we stay home? Do we cross the aisle and vote for a fairly conservative guy like Harold Ford Jr.? Do we hold our nose and vote Republican anyway?

I hear the party guys whispering in my ear. “Nancy Pelosi will impeach Bush.” “The Democrats will grind the war effort to a halt with hearings and redtape.” “They will raise taxes, increase anti-growth legislation and cripple the economy.” “Do you really want to be responsible for the collapse of Western Civilization itself!”

Maybe that last one is rhetoric, but that seems to be closest to the tenor of the warnings I am being given daily from the blogosphere and talk radio. You know what? They are right. All of the awful things they are warning us about could very well happen. The war effort could be hampered or even worse, ended. Taxes will certainly go up if the Democrats take the House since all that is required for them to do so would be inaction. Sunset clauses in the current taxcuts, included to get the Senate on board, will ensure that pre-2003 tax levels will return. If Bush is impeached, what does that mean for the national political dialogue? He would be the second president in a row to be impeached, unheard of in our nation’s history. What little confidence is left in the Republic would collapse and who knows where we go from there.

So yeah, things could ugly; with the war ended or drastically curtailed in Iraq and possibly even Afghanistan Al-Qaeda could get its feet under itself again and attack. Is a nuke attack on New York City out of the realm of possibility? With Speak Pelosi calling the shots would China feel emboldened and make a play for Taiwan as the Olympics approach knowing that the Bush administration would never get the go ahead from the House to honor our treaty obligations?

Serious stuff to think about huh? Now shift gears and think about this little tale. There is a guy, a good guy and he is dating a pretty good girl, in fact she is fantastic. She is gorgeous, smart, funny and really likes this guy. Sounds perfect, but there is one little problem, every few months she gets drunk at a party and cheats on him with some random guy.

If you can’t guess by now, conservatives are the guy and the GOP is that hot girl who seems so perfect for him but for this one minor flaw. Dump her you say? Could this guy even get a girlfriend like this ever again if he dumped her? She is so right, maybe he can fix this one little problem and make everything alright. So he forgives her and she professes her love for him and promises never to make a mistake like that ever again. Of course she doesn’t keep her promise and cheats on him again and it hurts all the worse this time, but he has never needed her more. Guys are so envious of him when they see him with her, she claims she doesn’t want any other guy for a boyfriend and their sex life is freaking awesome. Is this really all that bad? The guy looks around at all his single friends and they would kill to have a girl like he has. So what would you do?

I can tell you what I would do. If I truly loved her I would forgive her . . . the first time. The second time I would dump her ass and never speak to her again. As conservatives we exist in a sort of abusive relationship with the GOP. They promise to love us and be faithful, but they cheat on us with abandon because they know we could never get a deal as sweet as we have now. And besides would the guy rather be single and alone? Yes. At least he would have his dignity and you tell me what matters more in this life than that.

So don’t tell me about all of the horrible shit that will go down if the GOP loses. You are probably right. Don’t I even care about my country though? Of course I care, that is why I write on this blog! That is why I give my hard earned money to candidates, that is why I spend so much time trying to understand the myriad of issues that confront us as a Republic!

The question isn’t do I care, it’s do the Republicans care? If all of this is so damned important why did this congress increase non-discretionary spending by 9%, the highest increase since 1992? If it was so damned vital that the wheeling dealing Democrats didn’t get their hands on the public treasury then why the hell didn’t the Republicans pass major legislation ending earmarks? If national security is such a chief concern of theirs then why is the border so damned open Raj can march two elephants and a mariachi band across the Rio Grande for an hour and half and no boarder patrol shows up?

The answer is simply that they don’t care and that earmarks, pork and power are more important to them than reform and good governance. So what the hell does it matter if the Democrats get into power, how much worse can it really get? My message to my fellow conservatives is just this: be a man. Stand up and stop letting your girlfriend cheat on you. She is either with you or not. I have no problems dumping the hottest girl in the world. (I know, I have dumped a few hotties in my time for a lot less than cheating on me.)

You want real change? You want to believe in your government again? You don’t want to be lied to anymore? It’s simple, stop letting the GOP walk all over you. Let them go. Dump them, they will never respect you until you do. After you dump them they will beg to get back with you just like the girl in the story. Without a respectable boyfriend she is just another slut without anybody who truly cares for her. The truth is, without her boyfriend her life looks pretty grim, who else but someone equally twisted and cruel would put up with her behavior? She needs a nice guy. The nice guy may think he needs her, but that is because he isn’t ready to stand up for himself. When he is, the relationship is over. The GOP and conservatives are over as well; they just don’t know it yet. The only way this relationship can be saved is if the GOP is rebuilt and purged from top to bottom but keeps the same name.

You wouldn’t let a girl treat you like a fool. Why do you let a bunch of worthless politicians play you for a fool? In the first case all that is at stake is your personal honor, in the second case what is at stake is your country that is sinking down the tubes because you don’t have the stones to do the hard thing and stand up to the abuse.

It is not the Democrats fault that we are in this position, they may be despicable traitors but they always were and are simply being true to their nature. It is not the RINOs fault, they are hypocritical deceivers but again, they are being true to their nature. Mike DeWine has never been a conservative after all. It is not even the GOP party tools’ fault, they are greedy cowards without an ideological bone in their body but we knew that at the beginning of the deal, especially those of us who have met any of them in person. Is it the system, is it our political system that is at fault for this sad state of affairs? The system needs reform, no doubt about it, but look at a man like Senator Coburn. He seems to defy the system what stops others from doing the same? The fault seems to be then with society, why can’t our society produce more leaders like Tom Coburn? Sure our educational system is broken and maybe our amoral society doesn’t bring out the best qualities in a man these days but that doesn’t mean we are bereft of leadership. Herman Cain wanted to represent the state of Georgia in the United States Senate but was denied that chance. It would seem then that something else is keeping leaders like Cain from the roles in our society they have earned by the merit of their numerous qualities.

What’s the problem then? Who is at fault? Look in the mirror, it’s you. You and me. We may have every card in the deck stacked against us but that doesn’t relieve us of our ultimate responsibility as citizens. The buck doesn’t stop at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, it stops with us. We get the government we elect. We elected every single problem in this country today. We put up with taxes today that our Founding Fathers would have started a bloody revolution over. We put up with abuses of Constitutional liberty that our Founders rebelled against even though they didn’t have a powerful, respected document to legally justify it.

If we were half the men our Founding Fathers were we would cast our fortune to the wind and live our lives the way our God-given liberty allowed us to. Instead we are debating about whether or not to vote for Bob Corker to the Senate.

Yes that is his gun in his ear.  Doesn’t look like he’s following rules two or three either.

If the Dems fail to retake one or both sides of Congress next month, the New York Times has the early meme locked and loaded.

Via Drudge

With an unusually large number of tight races and dozens of states shifting to new electronic voting systems, election officials across the country are bracing for long lines and heightened confusion at the polls on Election Day, Nov. 7, the NEW YORK TIMES will front on Thursday.

Got it? If the Dems fail in their quest to retake Congress, it’s the fault of electronic voting machines, long lines and confusion.

A.K.A. - Karl Rove!

Update: The NYT article here. (more...)

Denis Keohane, in The American Thinker:

Democrats named their party after democracy. They used to think it was a good way to run things.

There has been debate on the right for years about whether President Bush’s promotion of democracy in the Middle East as an integral part of the GWOT is perhaps too naively Wilsonian. Democrats are largely silent or dismissive on the issue. Woodrow Wilson was, of course, a Democrat.

The once fervent support for democracy among Democrats from Wilson through Truman has been ebbing over decades. The one time elections in much of the old colonial world in the sixties most often led to disaster and a letdown of enthusiasm for democracy. Domestically, Democrats began to seek alternatives to appeal to elected representation. In the seventies, unpopular policies like school busing, affirmative action and (initially at least) abortion found Democrats seeking cover behind the non-elected federal courts. ‘The Courts have spoken’ was a common Democrat response to being asked to take a stand on the unpopular issues. By the nineties it was commonplace for Democrats and the left to seek policy victory by court ruling when there was no chance of prevailing in the democratically elected branches.

In recent years Democrats have moved beyond seeking a judicial workaround to a democratic system that just won’t give them what they desire. The Democrats first took the 2000 Presidential election to court, filing the butterfly ballot case in Palm Beach County . Having gone to the courts, the Democrats were furious when the Supreme Court decided against their interests, and began calling 2000 a stolen election, decided by a right wing court .

[...]

What they don’t either understand or do understand and don’t care about, is that they are undermining the very concept of democratic elections, and may well do so again in the next few weeks. There is growing evidence of a combination of frustration with democratic processes with the belief that elections are won by dirty tricks, pure and simple, among Democrat rank and file. The son of a Democrat Congressman and three other young apparently non-idealistic Democrats were convicted of slashing the tires of 100 Republican GOTV vehicles on election day, 2004 . Senator Schumer is a strong advocate for privacy rights yet aides in the DSCC that he ran committed fraud to obtain the credit report of a Republican candidate .

The “purple finger” images from the Iraqi elections touched the hearts of many Americans, even notably some of the Democrat left, as symbolic of something cherished, profound and inspiring to Americans. Yet most of the Democrat reaction to democratic elections in Afghanistan and Iraq has been lukewarm to outright dismissive. Even the idea that women in Islamic majority countries were enfranchised didn’t get the feminist allies of the Democrats fired up.

Armando, a regular at Daily Kos, posted a commentary entitled “Myth of the Purple Fingers” quoting the New York Times about Iraqis seeming to be unenthusiastic about the vote for their Constitution He wrote,

“Yes the Constitution will win the vote. And then what? Will our troops come home now? Will the Iraqi government be able to govern? What is different now than yesterday?”

Oddly enough (or not) the New York Times characterized turnout in Iraq of 63% as “unenthusiastic” ) But the Washington Post gushed about the US’s enthusiastic turnout in the 2004 election of under 61%!

For years Democrats have been fostering the notion, for short term political advantage, that democratic processes don’t work, elections are stolen, and that Republican elected officials obtain position by fraud and Rovian plots, appealing to their party’s long-used tactic of encouraging a sense of victimhood. Democratic processes make victims.

At some point, the chickens will come home to roost. If Democrats continue to push this theme, as they may well do next month, what alternative to democratic processes do they propose?

It is grossly ironic that the party that is undermining the very concept of the democratic process, calls itself the Democratic Party.

Read the whole thing.

A great piece; well worth the read.

Habeas Corpus (United States of America)—1789-2006

I was unable to comment yesterday about the death of Habeas Corpus for a couple of reasons… 1) I was trying to meet a deadline with the paper.  2) Tuesday’s are busy for me regardless.  3) It got late and I got tired.  4) I WAS MOURNING A DEATH.

Yesterday was truly a sad day.  I woke up full of piss and vinegar (as the old folks say) ready to take on my day’s busy schedule.  As I was getting dressed I turned on the television and saw that President Bush was preparing to sign the Military Commissions Act.  I understood what the signing of this law meant, hence the reason for such saddness—If you have been living under a rock or you are just one of the majority of apathetic Americans who are willing to let Congress (and especially the President) shred the Constitution, then you need to watch this.  With that signing, the United States no longer recognizes habeas corpus and we reserve the right to torture.

Article I.  Section 9.—U.S. Constitution
The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.

It is Section 7 of the Military Commissions Act, titled appropriately—Habeas Corpus Matters, that explicitly counters the right of habeas corpus in the Constitution:

`(e)(1) No court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider an application for a writ of habeas corpus filed by or on behalf of an alien detained by the United States who has been determined by the United States to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant or is awaiting such determination.

Please note the item in bold… awaiting such dertermination—meaning, you can be held indefinately without just cause, simply because the King President says so.

Don’t be duped to think the Military Commissions Act is only a measure that will affect “terrorists”.  The bill clearly says that you or I could be detained and left to rot in prison without trial if we are determined to be an “enemy combatant”.  The new law defines an enemy combatant as such:

(1) UNLAWFUL ENEMY COMBATANT- (A) The term `unlawful enemy combatant’ means--

`(i) a person who has engaged in hostilities or who has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States or its co-belligerents who is not a lawful enemy combatant (including a person who is part of the Taliban, al Qaeda, or associated forces); or

`(ii) a person who, before, on, or after the date of the enactment of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, has been determined to be an unlawful enemy combatant by a Combatant Status Review Tribunal or another competent tribunal established under the authority of the President or the Secretary of Defense.

Let me put the highlighted section into terms you can understand.  The Constitution says that you and I have the right to “petition the government for a redress of grievances”.  Meaning, if the government is not working within the boundries set forth in the Constitution, we as citizens have the power to cease continuation of that ”tryannical” government and may start over.  The founding fathers recognized that governments are instituted by man and therefore this new government was going to need safeguards against those men who chose to manipulate the powers granted them by the people and by the Constitution (read Madison Federalist No. 10)

Essentially what the President (and Congress) has done has put within the powers of the Executive Branch, the power to determine, by a small faction of men (Combatant Status Review Tribunal), who among ligitimate terrorists and American citizens alike may be deemed an “enemy combatant”.  An enemy combatant, under the Military Commissions Act, could be an American citizen who may be exercising his/her right to “petition the government for a redress of grievances” or more simply may disagree with the current administration. 

Where will the oversight come from?  Obviously not the Congress if they are so easily willing to usurp the authorties of the Constitution.

I am very disturbed by what I saw in Congress over the last few weeks concerning this matter.  There were a few—only a few—prominent Senators to speak out on the floor of the Senate against the Military Commissions Act and it’s usurpation of the Constitution in regards to habeas corpus.  Those Senators, all democrats, were John Kerry (MA), Patrick Leahy (VT), and Harry Reid (NV) and they all voted against the bill. 

There was a republican Senator, Arlen Specter (PA), who spoke out against the bill… BUT HE VOTED FOR PASSAGE OF THE BILL!!! 

How can he say the following and then vote for such horrible legislation, that, as he points out correctly, should not be legislation—but should be an amendment to the Constitution.

There are four fundamental, undeniable principles and facts involved in the issue we are debating today. The first undeniable principle is that a statute cannot overrule a Supreme Court decision on constitutional grounds, and a statute cannot contradict an explicit constitutional provision. That is point No. 1.

Point No. 2, the Constitution is explicit in the statement that habeas corpus may be suspended only with rebellion or invasion.

Fact No. 3, uncontested. We do not have a rebellion or an invasion.

Fact and principle No. 4, the Supreme Court says that aliens are covered by habeas corpus.

We have already had considerable exposition of the opinion by Justice O’Connor that the constitutional right of habeas corpus applies to individuals, which means citizens and aliens. The case of Rasul v. Bush, which explicitly involved an alien, says this in the opinion of Justice Stevens speaking for the Court:

Habeas corpus received explicit recognition in the Constitution, which forbids the suspension of--

Then Justice Stevens cites the constitutional provision.

The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus cannot be suspended unless in the cases of rebellion or invasion, and neither is present here. So you have the express holding of the Supreme Court in Rasul v. Bush that habeas corpus applies to aliens.

[...]

What this bill would do in striking habeas corpus would take our civilized society back some 900 years to King John at Runnymede which led to the adoption of the Magna Charta in 1215, which is the antecedent for habeas corpus and was the basis for including in the Constitution of the United States the principle that habeas corpus may not be suspended.

I believe it is unthinkable, out of the question, to enact Federal legislation today which denies the habeas corpus right which would take us back some 900 years and deny the fundamental principle of the Magna Charta imposed on King John at Runnymede.

[...]

The distinguished chairman of the Armed Services Committee has said that he does not want to have this matter come back to Congress. But surely as we are standing here, if this bill is passed and habeas corpus is stricken, we will be on this floor again rewriting the law.

That has to be one of the most brilliant arguments against passage of the Military Commissions Act, BUT HE WENT AHEAD AND VOTED FOR THE BILL ANYWAY; even after uttering that last line.  What a joke!  And he has 4 more years before Pennsylvania voters will have a chance to oust him from his seat, but do you think those voters will remember his words and his despicable vote in Sept/Oct of 2006?

[OLBERMANN ALERT—DAVE MILLER WILL NOW MENTION KEITH OLBERMANN AND HIS JOKE OF A SHOW SHOW ON MSNBC]

Last night on Countdown with Keith Olberman, he (of couse) discussed the signing of the Military Commissions Act by President Bush (SPECIAL COMMENT TONIGHT—8/7 CT).  One of his guests was Jonathan Turley, a constitutional law professor at The George Washington University Law School.  Turley’s words could easily be described as concerning.

People have no idea how significant this is. Really a time of shame this is for the American system.—The strange thing is that we have become sort of constitutional couch potatoes. The Congress just gave the President despotic powers and you could hear the yawn across the country as people turned to Dancing With the Stars. It’s otherworldly..People clearly don’t realize what a fundamental change it is about who we are as a country. What happened today changed us. And I’m not too sure we’re gonna change back anytime soon.

Almost every day I talk to students for the stories that I work on and when I’ve mentioned habeas corpus, they look at me and their eyes roll back into their head.  One freshman woman, and I use the term woman loosely, said to me, “Like, what is habus corps?” (yes, I spelled it like she said it). 

My response to this, seemingly nice but obviously brain dead freshman was, “Like, nevermind.  It’s a group of like, dead old men.” Where’s the AFLAC duck in the Yogi Berra commercial when you need him?

I am not naive, contrary to popular belief.  Students don’t give a damn about this issue, or many others for that matter.  Hell, most you reading this are only still reading to see what I might write next; will it be funny or just down right ridiculous (at the same time quite funny)?  I talk about the Constitution and I hold the document in very high regard.  Often times while doing so it becomes laughable to many.  I can’t tell you how many emails I receive from people who tell me that the Constitution is nothing more than an old piece of paper that merely set a framework for “how” to organize a government and therefore does not deserve to be praised as if sacred.  My only response to those people is that they obviously did not pay attention in their junior high civics class—we are talking about American Government 101.

What will it take for people to notice the blatant Congressional/Presidental shredding of the Constitution? 

It was only on September 6 of this year when President Bush stood before the press, and the American people, in the East Room of the White House and “uged”, almost demanded, that Congress pass his military tribunal—slash—torture allowing—slash—constitution shredding legislation.  In less than a month Congress passed the legislation (sound familiar—patriot act?) and only two weeks later did the President sign the bill. 

The death of habeas corpus was a quick one and nearly no one noticed.  So, watch what you say.  If you plan to protest, be carefull.  You could find yourself locked away and not knowing why.  Forget about due process.  Forget about the right to an attorney.  Forget about your “one phone call”.  You won’t be getting any of those things.  You won’t be told why you were arrested and you won’t be allowed to ask a judge to force your captors to disclose why they are holding you.  President Bush (and Congress) killed an explicit Constitutional right in just over a month… WOW!!!

Related Items:

House vote
Senate vote
Thorough coverage by Glenn Greenwald
United States Constitution
Federalist Papers
Military Commissions Act

After a disabled woman’s cat started a house fire, her specially trained dog came to the rescue, then died trying unsuccessfully to rescue the cat.

Stupid cat.

“And he jumped onto a table that had a candle on it and tipped it over and lighted the artificial plants on fire,” she said.

Dog +s: selfless, loyal and brave - man’s best friend
Dog -s: must poop outside

Cat +s: can poop in a box
Cat -s: start house fires, cause deaths of hero dogs, consume 74% of the subject matter discussed on blogs

Hmmmmm.

In Assad’s Syria membership in the Mulsim brotherhood is punishable by death. And why are we letting Iran have large portions of Iraq?

Very interesting original article c/o Conservative Voice here.

...if you want to learn how to stop Osama and Iran in Iraq, look up the interview with Syria’s President Bashar al Assad in the current issue of Der Spiegel (“America Must Listen”). Assad is attentive to threats from Iraq because Osama and Ahmadinejad intend to finish off his secular socialist regime once they consolidate in Iraq, with at least passive US support. Assad presents a detailed rationale for shoring up Iraq’s central government to limit inroads by Osama in Anbar province and Iranian access to Shiastan.

That’s right. Syria’s President Assad is more attentive to US security requirements in Iraq than Secretary Rice, who mentions Iraq only in passing, and who fails to mention Osama and Iran as threats in Iraq.

So, on the heels of Mark Foley’s latest attempt at justifying his sleazy behavior, I have a message for him.

Stop it. Just...stop it. You got caught. You knew it was wrong. You knew your little act was, at best, unacceptable and nasty. At the worst, it was all that and illegal, too. You used your position of power as a bully pulpit to sexually pursue young men and whether or not you actually had physical contact with any of them is way beside the point. If it was just voyuerism and wishful thinking it was still way outside the bounds of propriety and decency and quite possibly outside the boundaries of the law.

And now he’s trying to cloak himself in the armor of victimhood. Obviously, fading into obscurity and hoping for the best isn't something he's given serious thought to. Instead, he keeps putting the spotlight on himself when he should be going quietly into the night and hoping no one decides to prosecute him.

The very first thing he did was put himself into an alcohol rehab program. Nice. It was the booze, right? His pursuit of those young men was the result of, what? Binge drinking? I don’t know about everyone else out there but when someone tries to sell me a bill of goods like that I feel downright insulted.

And now he’s taken step number two in the justification game. He says, through his lawyer, that he was molested when he was a kid. By a member of the clergy, no less.

It’s a very convenient accusation, don’t you think?

I’m not saying it didn’t happen. It well could have. But isn’t it a tad funny that a man in his fifties is just now getting around to realizing that he has been psychologically damaged at some point by a predatory member of the clergy? 

This sudden supposed epiphany is ridiculously transparent and should be cringingly embarrassing to Foley. A sense of timing is evidently not a strong suit of Foley’s. Nor is a sense of decency.

Playing the victim game just doesn’t cut it. He can’t justify what he did. I don’t care if he does have a drinking problem. I don’t care if he had his leg humped by his priest. Hustling up boys on the net is wrong, and he knew it from the beginning.

So, Mr. Foley..... you can’t justify your actions. It was wrong. You got caught. You have no high ground to retreat to. You’re not the victim here, so stop trying to convince us you are.

We don’t believe it.

Oh boy.

Jeffrey Pelley, 34, was sentenced to 160 years in prison, for the killing of his minister-father, and 3 others with a shotgun. Police said that back in April 1989, he was mad at his father for grounding him the day before the LayVille High School Prom.

Alright, that’s a little sickening. Why must it take this long to sentence the guy? It’s just ridiculous, can’t we put him to death and get it over with?