But here is the thing: Waxman does not even mention biochems; he is simply focused on the nuclear point with citation after citation that clearly implies that Bush knew well before his State of the Union address that the characterization of Iraq as a soon-to-be nuclear power was an outright falsehood, and that the document used by Powell indicating otherwise to the UN was known as such as early as a year beforehand.
But as much as Waxman clearly follows the chain of evidence in this, what gets me most is that he must now be characterized as "brave" for even asking questions that his evidence requires an answer to. We are indeed in a sorry state when a member of our own Congress is called "brave" for merely doing his job.
Look! Is anyone else getting sick of this asshole (Richard Perle), or am I the only one? This guy's only strategy for insuring that his next ten generations have more than they can ever spend is to make people (not him) kill other people (not him).
So now he wants to tell us that we cannot rule out a war with North Korea. [Translation: Stuff some more money into my pockets.] A "surgical" strike at their Yongbyon reactor perhaps.
Let me tell you something. North Korea is no Iraq. Instead of easy deserts, there are mountains. Instead of a bombed out and sanctioned country, we'll face an intact (though hardly successful) economy. Instead of a population split by religious differences, we will face a population dulled but quite programmed against a single threat: us.
In fact, unlike Saddam who had many rivals surrounding him and had to prepare for each, the North Korean military since the end (50 years ago) of the Korean War has prepared itself for one and only one attacker: the United States. While our weaponry is clearly superior to theirs, they have designed their weaponry specifically to compat ours. This will be no Iraqi joy ride if we attack them. Seoul, the capitol of South Korea, will be instantly deluged with a storm of artilery from "Guns of Navarone" types of implacements. Thousands there will die. And this is only the start. We need not go to war with these people, because if we do, the 200 "coalition of the willing" dead in Iraq will look like chump change.
Richard Perle is a war profiteer. He is a transactor in only hate. Let him go away and count his already millions. We have no need for his kind here.
Of course, in the aftermath with no WMDs found, both Miller and the New York Times have been swept into the frenzy. Was she and the Times simply dupped into using planted "sources" to merely advance administration rhetoric? You can bet that this is a story that the New York Times will not break.
From the Liberal Slant: Conservatism: Here Today, Gone Tomorrow
I wasn't even going to run this article. It seemed at first to be just another rant. But then, just about half way down, something the author said struck me. Let me put it into my own words.
The Bush administration has advocated its tax cuts, focused on the rich, saying that they will invest it and spur the economy. But as anyone who follows this closely knows, it is not a lack of production capability that the economy is suffering from; it is a lack of buyers. Which gets to my point on this article. Perhaps, if we consumers don't have sufficient buying power left to spur the economy, it is because too many of us aren't making enough money to buy the available products.
Think of it for a second, because this is the inevitable trap of overvaluing capital and undervaluing labor. With an undervalued labor force, you can produce products to the ying-yangs. But there will simply be no one left who can afford to buy those products. It all works out quite well in the accountings of corporate boardrooms; it simply doesn't fly in the real world.
From the Boston Phoenix: Progressive Democrats want to take back America.
This article totally disturbs me. What it is is a review of the three-day "Take Back America" conference held last week in Washington, DC. It starts out all well and good enough. Quite positive, in fact. Notes from attendees regarding their own impressions of the (7 of 9) Democratic hopefulls. Not all too bad. Some were even impressed by candidates that they did not even expect to by impressed by. So much for Page One of the article.
It's Page Two that got to me. All of a sudden, the article started going sour. Only a little to start, but by the end of that page, the author was calling for the Progressives to extend their arms in compromise to the more conservative elements [read: DLC] of the Democratic Party.
Now, wait a minute. It was less than a month ago (May 15th, to be exact) that the DLC took broadside on everything progressive. And now we are supposed to go to them? And do what? Appologize for what we believe? Offer hugs for being called irrelevent? I think the appology has to come from the other direction first. Just my opinion.
The DLC's corporate dollars of destruction
From the Black CoMMentator:
This is serious shit. While I've made no bones before about loving these guys (I'm white, if anyone needs to ask), if you want to know about who the DLC really is, consider just this one fact:
The DLC doesn't represent any Democratic Party voters. Its masters include American and United Airlines, Aetna and New York Life Insurance, Microsoft, DuPont, the agribusiness and pharmaceutical industries, Citigroup and, until recently, Enron, among many others. The DLC is an organization conceived in the boardroom and dedicated to the proposition that moneyed interests trump all others. About two hundred corporations comprise its Board of Advisors (fee: $5,000), and nearly 100 pay the cost to be the boss on the DLC's Policy Roundtable ($10,000 each). For $25,000, around 30 corporate executives pretend to be Democrats as members of the DLC Executive Council. Enron sat there, along with Philip Morris, Texaco, Chevron, and Dupont.This is the DLC. And if you think it gets better from there, grab on to your panties and hold on.
The Black CoMMentator, of course, is concerned with Black issues, and the marginalization of Black issues is front and center on the menu of the DLC. But as we are now aware, so is the marginalization of Progressive issues. As the Black CoMMentator concludes here:
And on that, friends, they are right. If they succeed inturning the Democratic Party into Bush-Lite, it is time to head for the Greens.The right-wing nominee's name is Joe Lieberman. If he wins the nomination, it will be time to head for the exits of the national Democratic Party.
From last week's Black CoMMentator article on the DLC comes some further commentary in this week's edition: "Laying down with dogs". (It's about half way down the page, but the whole page is worthwhile.) On the disappearance of Barack Obama's firey anti-war speach that had disappeared from his web-site once the DLC got to him, no, no, no. It's been there all along. Except, as the Black CoMMentator points out, that's bullshit.
| New York Times Editorials: |
From William Safire: Fight It, Martha
It's got to mean something when even William Safire, certainly a conservative's conservative, goes on record in support of Martha Stewart. While he debunks the notion that this is some sort of penis-envy (my words), he feels that if the DOJ cannot make the insider trading charge stick, then they had no business making up the one's they did.
My point exactly.
From Tom Friedman: Read My Lips
Here's an interesting idea: If you name something, you own it.
This, suggests Tom Friedman, is one of the Democrats biggest problems; they keep letting the Republicans name everything. His case in point? "Tax cuts". Why not, he says, call them "service cuts" instead? I know, it sounds trivial, but think of the Republican mantra: Read my lips, no new taxes. Now try it again: Read my lips, no new services. Sort of changes the tenor of debate, doesn't it? Tom may be onto something here.
So there you have it: Congressional Republicans have said no to Democratic calls for a formal investigation into intelligence on Iraq weapons programs. Their stated reasoning? That such a probe could harm intelligence agencies' work.
Let me get this straight. Harm their work? But wasn't the point of an investigation to determine if their work had already been harmed? I don't get their logic. If their work has already been harmed, it is better not to fix it than to harm it more? It doesn't make sense. If we already can't rely on their work, then what is it that we are harming; a broken system?
Of course, as I've mentioned before, this is just a shill game. Time to start writing letters, folks. If we cannot investigate a government agancy or agencies, then they stand as unaccountable to the American people and are free to set agendas quite apart from our desires. And that, kids, is not Democracy.
If you name it, you own it
Just what are "weapons of mass destruction" anyways. Simply a phrase that the Bush administration has coined to scare people into allowing them to go anywhere at anytime and do whatever they desire.
But aren't they really dangerous? Well, depends which ones, as the Black CoMMentator and Dwight Welch point out in "The Weapons of Mass Destruction Hoax". Nuclear weapons certainly are, and we have Hiroshina and Nagasaki to point that out. But biological and chemical? Very inconvenient and very dangerous for those who even handle them. And not terribly effective but for the fear factor they produce.
Besides, as this article points out, why buy them (and tranport them) from Iraq, when you can get just as potent stuff from your average well-stocked farm supply store here in the U.S.? And with 27 years at the Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Pesticide Programs, Mr. Welch probably knows what he is talking about.
From the mouth of Ahmed Chalabi: Saddam Said to Pay Bounty for Killings
Wait a minute. Isn't this the same jerk who who provided Wolfie with his bogus intelligence that he so genuinely desired? And now this clap-trap asshole is making a news feature on the Associated Press? Have these folks no shame? This man who is Rummy's favorite for leading the "new Iraq" who also left this country when he was 11 years old (about 50 years ago). If he ever goes to Jordan again, he will spend 22 years of his life there for embezelment. Tried and convicted in absentia because he wouldn't return to defend himself.
And now we are supposed to take the word of this international criminal as Gospel just because our own man who oversaw the cooking of our intelligence likes to suck this asshole's balls?
The Associated Press should be ashamed for even considering this news. Donald Rumsfeld should be indicted, tried, convicted, and spend the rest of his natural life in jail. And Chalabi should be promptly returned to Jordan to serve his just time for the billions he stole from them. And if that too is the rest of his natural life, so be it.
From Thom Hartmann: Midnight Ride of the Rabble
If you liked the Bill Moyers speech (linked just below), then you must grab on to Thom's latest from Scoop. Like Bill, Thom takes a broad swipe at the conservative agenda, but of course focuses in on his own specialty: corporate monopoly:
Their rallying cry is that government is the enemy, and thus must be "drowned in a bathtub." In that, they've mistaken our government for the former Soviet Union, or confused Ayn Rand's fictional and disintegrating America with the real thing.And with that he's off and running. No one knows this subject matter better that Thom, and no one is a better spokesperson against it. Make sure that this is on your reading list, and watch out for whatever he writes. It's always top shelf.The government of the United States is us. It was designed to be a government of, by, and for We, the People. It's not an enemy to be destroyed; it's a means by which we administer and preserve the commons that we collectively own.
Nonetheless, the new conservatives see our democratic government as the enemy. And if they plan to destroy democracy, they must have something in mind to replace it with. ...
| The Search for Accountability |
This seems to be the theme being taken on by those pushing for a investigation into the missing WMDs, and, quite frankly, I like it. No confusion about what is being asked for; nothing that anyone does not believe should be standard fare: If mistakes are made, own up to them and move on. Senator Byrd first brought up this theme last week, but outside of the progressive community, he was largely ignored. Then John Dean of Watergate fame published his Is Lying About The Reason For War An Impeachable Offense?, which got some legs outside of the Progressive community when it was picked up by CNN.
This week, things are looking a bit brighter as Paul Krugman leads off the east coast effort with Who's Accountable? and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer follows through with the west coast effort with Accountability missing in Bushland. Almost simultaneously, the Sydney Morning Herald started banging the drum with The credibility search in Iraq, and of course the Brits are already having a fine time squewering Tony Blair. Credibility, accountability; easy stuff for the American public to understand.
All of this is beginning to take effect. Lots of "Where are the WMDs" stories have Bush himself suddenly trying another "bait and switch", now claiming that it wasn't the weapons themselves but rather a weapons program that we went to war against. Of course, as I pointed out in my recent editorial, it really was never possible to plant WMDs thenselves in Iraq (ours are too good) without them being detected as such, but it certainly is a lot easier to plant "evidence" of a program. A couple of papers here and there, and the sales job is on the road. Unfortunately, this one isn't flying too well, with the Baltimore Sun already calling it a "revisionist sales job" and the Los Angeles Times making careful note of the rewording attempt. Still, this is only a start. Karl Rove is a master at this sort of thing, and certainly is devoting considerable amounts of his talent at taking the legs off of this story.
But poor Tony Blair. The hot spark under his seat has already turned into a fire, so much so that both he and his communications secretary has now said that they will refuse the House of Commons request to answer questions regarding the "sexing up" of intelligence to justify the war. Yet, Simon Tisdall of the Guardian says that an inquiry by the MPs is not enough; he is calling for a royal commission to investigate. Citing Blair's own earlier reference to the Iraq War as "one of the defining moments of our century", Tisdall suggests, "Yes, Iraq was a defining moment - so let's define it". Not fun being Tony Blair these days.
Of course, it takes more than just some representatives and newspapers to force something like this to a head; it takes someone on the inside who's willing to talk, and fortunately, we have ours in the form of the CIA and DIA and Great Britain has theirs in the form of MI6. These folks are all career G-men who know how things go: Given the chance, both Bush and Blair will point a finger at them to save their own hides, and they're not having it. As Eric Margolis points out in "Bush and Blair have some 'splainin' to do", U.S. intelligence pros are already out contacting "friendly" reporters such as himself. (Note that Margolis writes from the "safety" of Canada, which my be more than a coincidence.) And once again, Blair seems to be in worse shape on this, with MI6 leaking that once they started seeing a lemon, they started "making juice" in the form of keeping secret records of the attempts to "push" the intelligence.
Still, we do have a right to expect that the best of our intelligence not be swapped with someone's or some group's own personal agenda. We have the right to know whether the nearly 200 dead American servicepeople died for a noble and necessary cause, or whether they died for the personal ambitions of people who never even wore a uniform. These are things we have a right to know.
But these are the very thing that we will not know unless we force them to tell us. We cannot count on the few lonely voices out there to speak for us. Those opposed to these investigations are powerful enough to silence them. We need to add our own voices to their chorus and now is the time to do that. Please write both of your Senators and your Representative and tell them that you want to know what happened to the WMDs. Here's how:
- Write Your Representative: When you get to this page, simply select your state and enter your 9-digit zip code. The next page you will see is the write-in form for your representative.
- Write Your Senators: When you get to this page, you will see a "Select your state" box at the top. Make the selection, and the next page will provide links to the write-in boxes of each of your Senators.
By Bill Moyers: The Progressive Story of America. Pass It On.
Speech to the Take Back America conference, Campaign for America’s Future
A quite lengthy speech, but well worth reading. A look at the back at the history of the Progressive Movement in the United States, a look at some of those who are fighting it today, and advice for moving forward:
As a citizen I don't like the consequences of this (Conservative) crusade, but you have to respect the conservatives for their successful strategy in gaining control of the national agenda. Their stated and open aim is to change how America is governed - to strip from government all its functions except those that reward their rich and privileged benefactors. They are quite candid about it, even acknowledging their mean spirit in accomplishing it. Their leading strategist in Washington - the same Grover Norquist – has famously said he wants to shrink the government down to the size that it could be drowned in a bathtub. More recently, in commenting on the fiscal crisis in the states and its affect on schools and poor people, Norquist said, "I hope one of them" – one of the states – "goes bankrupt." So much for compassionate conservatism. But at least Norquist says what he means and means what he says. The White House pursues the same homicidal dream without saying so. Instead of shrinking down the government, they're filling the bathtub with so much debt that it floods the house, water-logs the economy, and washes away services for decades that have lifted millions of Americans out of destitution and into the middle-class. And what happens once the public's property has been flooded? Privatize it. Sell it at a discounted rate to the corporations.Powerful stuff. You migh also want to read John Nichols' review of this at The Nation.
| Restoring Integrity, Republican-Style: |
More on Westar Enery
From the Washing Post: Delving Into Those Donations
A bit more on Tom DeLay's little quid pro quo with Westar, and this time, much of the e-mail text is included. DeLay & Company clain that they don't link promises to donations, but these guys at Westar certailly were petty specific about what they were getting and who was going to give it to them. Meanwhile, Ashcroft is still silent as to whether there will be an investigation.
Whipping Up a Payoff
From the Washington Poat: GOP Whip Quietly Tried to Aid Big Donor
Seems GOP Whip Roy Blunt had barely been appointed to his new post as third-highest Republican in the House when he was caught trying to slip some last second payola into the Homeland Security bill for Phillip Morris. Not only has Philip Morris contributed more than $150,000 to political committees affiliated with Blunt since 2001, not only does his son work for them, but he's also keeping extremely close ties with a certain female lobbyist for the company. Republican leadership squashed the provision when they found out, but also succeeded in squashing the story until now.
| Starting Light: |
Boycott the French
From Style Weekly: An Open Letter to Rush Limbaugh
Here's a novel idea: As long as we're boycotting the French, why don't we ask the 200 American companies exhibiting at the Paris Air Show this year to stay home? And what's with the FAA sending 150 employees there anyways? Can I get that job?
Return of the Pod People
From the Guardian: All hail to the pods
Remember those films in which alien pods would appear for no good reason in cellars and massage parlours and the like and one unsuspecting night almost everyone goes to sleep and disappears, because the pod people have killed them, reproduced their bodies and then woken up bright and early the following morning and taken control of the world? They're back!
| A Benedict@Large Editorial |
Yes, like an onion, layer after layer slowly seems to be coming undone. For those who wish to gloat, check out Tony Blair: His intelligence folks just told him that they kept records of all of the times they were pressured into fabricating the "intelligence" he needed. The press there, always up for a scandal, is playing this one up for all it is worth.
Back in the states however, the usual spin machine is in high gear, and though they have been successful so far in isolating Bush from all of this, there are still too many people asking too many questions. The spin machine is of course hoping that this will die out, and they indeed have a good track record at making issues die. Their problem this time however is that the issue will not die here until it dies in Great Britain, and that is something they have never dealt with before. And so on it goes. Who knows where?
But back to my "writer's block". My real problem is really that nothing has come out of late that anti-war activists of six and nine monthes ago hadn't already found and documented back then. How am I to post as "new", stories that are so many months old? More than five thousand civilians are dead, and our national news services are printing six month old stories and saying, "Hey! Look what I found!" Really? Want copy for your next 14 editions? Do a Google search of anti-war blogs, and you will have your copy for free. No, it is not "writer's block"; it is simply my sense of disgust.
Below (in my "Short Takes") I feature a story about Dennis Kucinich, and about how he has maintained his liberal grounding even when there was no hope for it. He says that it is simply important to keep issues alive, even when there is no hope. We wanted to stop this war, but we didn't. But we kept an issue alive that the public was not ready for. We kept it alive, and maybe this time, it will bear fruit.
But let me tell you what I think about this mess.
As I've said, administration strategists are hoping this will simply go away. This is a no-brainer. As I mentioned earlier however, until it goes away for Tony Blair, it isn't going away here. The "cross pollenization" of Blair and Bush is too firm in the public's mind for that. Massive efforts will be made to "committee" this by the bought and sold Republican House, and this is our "Action Alert". We need to prevent this.
The second issue is why WMDs have simply not been planted in Iraq (and it is important for you to understand this). With U.S. control over the country, certainly this would be an easy task.
Except that it isn't. Remember all of the issues about "shelf life" of Iraqi WMDs? The U.S. simply doesn't have expired bio-chems lying around. In fact, ours don't really expire. So what are we to plant there? The latest and greatest? These would instantly be detected as a fraud. And then comes the shells that these must be loaded into. We precision-manufacture every weapon. How do we suddenly make crap weaponry that will stand as something the Iraqis might have done? The point is that we can't. And that is why nothing has been planted. Because we have nothing to plant.
I'm actually amazed at the fact that this crew did not anticipate this problem and make themselves ready for it. But I guess when everything comes down to egos, mistakes can be made.
All of which makes forcing this issue at this time all the more imperative. Given sufficient time and the knowledge they certainly possess, they have the capability to manufacture the frauds they need. If we allow them the time to do so, our time will have passed and we will have to start again on some new issue.
| Short Takes: |
The daughter of Leo Strauss demands equal time. In "The Real Leo Strauss", she claims that her father's reputation is being maligned by suggestions that he was the founder of the current neo-con movement. Having read perhaps a dozen articles on him since this issue surfaced, I think that perception of him has been well-corrected already. Still, if you are following this, the human face she puts on her father is a welcome addition.
The unlikely campaign of Dennis Kucinich is featured in "Kucinich Reloaded", in which author Melinda Welsh recalls two personal meetings with him that were separated by 25 years. A personal look into what motivates the man.
Sewer-mouthed, right-wing hate jock Michael Savage is feeling blue these days. Seems his sponsors are dumping him when the find out about the trash coming out of his mouth. So is he cleaning up his act? Nope. He's suing the little people who complained to his sponsors. Hey, Mike! I though you wingnuts hated lawyers?
Sociologist Steven Sherman offers an interesting rebuttal to Tom Friedman's "Theory of Everything" in "A Different Theory of Everything". Rather than seeing the growing international distain of U.S. policies as a reaction against the "New American Century" policies of the administration, he instead sees them as a clear sign that these policies are simply a last desparate and futile attempt at an unachievable U.S. hegemony.
[Note: If you are interested in greater depth on Steve's rationale for this, download his "The Attacks of September 11 in Three Temporalities" [30 pages, 346K PDF]. Definitely college-level reading, but he expands not only on this idea, but also presents several more that may well interest you.]
A bit more on the Westar Energy scandal: "Behind the Lobbying Curtain" from the Washington Post. (This is the one where House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) pocketed for himself a cool $25K for allowing a regulated utility a chance to lobby for some "screw the customer" legislation.) It's amazing how they try to rewrite history on this crap:
Really? Then why do internal company documents leave no doubt of a quid pro quo? Your much-admired capitalists just made all of this up?We have no control over any fantasies they might have
about what they might get for a campaign contribution.
More on the Democratic Leadership Council: "Past Tense: While the DLC fights yesterday's battles, liberals are focusing on what's next".
What the DLC duo misses above all is the degree to which the radicalism of the current administration has concentrated the liberal mind on the need to unseating Bush in next year's election. Greens are even talking about lining up behind the Democrat. If From and Reed weren't so bent on fighting yesterday's wars, they would understand that the party's Democratic wing and its electable wing are really one and the same.
Evangelicals in the US believe there is a biblical basis for opposing the Middle East road map. From The Guardian: "Apocalypse soon":
Just as new life is being breathed into the peace process, religious groups throughout the US are whipping up hostility to the road map. The aim of the Christian-Jewish "interfaith Zionist leadership summit" held in Washington last month was "to oppose rewarding murderous Palestinian terrorism with statehood". Attending the conference were some of the most influential figures of the Christian right; behind them a whole infrastructure of churches, radio stations and bible college courses teaching "middle-east history".Heck! Thank God for small favors. The Guardian only credits these folks with 45 million members, 25 million less than our own 60 Minutes. But as I pointed out yesterday, the real number is somewhat less than 10 million. At least I'm making progress!
Three very startling statistics:
- Counting only conflicts involving more than 1,000 deaths from violence, one in eight countries worldwide has a civil war.
- On average, these conflicts last eight years, twice the length of wars before 1980.
- 50% of all countries that achieve peace fall back into civil war within a decade.
Tell it to the troops on the ground, not to mention the indigenous population. They know that war can go on even after it has "ended."
* 60 Minutes: Their lead article tonight addressed the current Fundamentalist love of all things Israel. All in all, a reasonable article, but with one exception. They began it with this quote: "... Fundamentalist Christian Evangelicals who make up the largest religious congregation in the United States." They quote 70 million members as their "proof: of this claim. This is bullshit.
First of all, this is a full one-quarter of our population. To that I would ask you: Do one out of four people you run into on a daily basis ever get around to selling you on Jesus and a literal interpretation of the Bible? Because this is what Fundamentalist Christian Evangelicals are sworn to do by their beliefs. Unless you are perhaps one of them, the one of four number clearly is not even close to your actual experience.
Now, I have heard such claims before, so I went out and did some research on this. I consulted the esteamed Pew studies as well as many others. Under the broadest of measures of "Fundamentalist" and "Evangelical" (they are two separate, though sometimes overlapping, things) that I could possibly concoct, the number was less than half of that amount. The broadest, mine you.
But by simply adding the Fundamentalist and Evangelical catagories together (ignoring the overlap), I came up with a mere 10 million, and likely (due to the overlap) less than is your actual experience.
The bottom line? Evangelical Fundamentalism is a radical fringe group in this country, and not at all of the size that 60 Minutes suggested. They always have been and continue to be so. They are little more than the Osama bin Ladens of America.
* Take One: Test cars crashing into walls. Test dummies bouncing into windshields. [Producer's Note: Use stock footage.] Queue voice:
That is it. Welcome to a FOX commercial. The suggestion is quite clear: That the study was of people who were involved in accidents. That suggestion is also bullshit. Never mind that they provided zero as to which study or of the conditions of that study:In a roadside study, more than one in three drivers
tested positive for marajuana.It's more harmful than you thought.
- Read your local newspapers. Do they tell you that one of three "intoxicated" arrests were for drugs? No. Almost every report says "alcohol".
- Access your local sheriff's "bookings" webpage. Does that tell you that one of three "intoxicated" arrests were for drug intoxication? No.
And, no, I do not smoke marajuana. I simply object to this campaign to get us all afraid of whatever is supposed to be the new "Bogey Man".
From the National Press Club: Statement of Senator Jeffords,
Second Anniversary of Decision to Leave the GOP
On the second anniversary of Jim Jeffords' defection from the Republican Party, he finds himself even further convinced that he made the right decision. A stinging rebuck of the growing divide between what Bush promises and what he actually delivers. If only a few more of Bush's "loyal opposition" would find the courage to "call a spade a spade".
From Newsday.com: Too Much Faith in Faith
While all the Fundies screem about their "constitutional right" to have the word "God" in the Pledge of Allegience, none of them seem to have noticed that the word "God" never appeared in the Constitution itself. Bush, never to diligent student himself, seems to have missed this fact also.
Susan Jacoby takes a look at public opinion and Bush's "faith based" initiatives. While "we the people" don't seem to mind a bit of blur between Church and State, few have any comfort with the President's ideas on the subject.
Throwing the baby out with the bathwater
From the Toronto Star: Washington is breaching what it's preaching
As John Ashcroft runs to Congress begging for more power, he's busy using the one's he just got to detain and deport immigrants just because they are. A look at some of his finer moments.
Debunking Conspiracy Theorists:
From the UN Observer and Gerard Holmgren:
Paranoid Fantasies About 9/11 Detract From Real Issues
As the Bush administrations continues to say that we can know everything about 9/11 except what it knew ("national security", you know) and the 9/11 Commission has disappeared front the front pages as surely as the Twin Towers have disappeared from the New York skyline, it might be a good time to take another stab at debunking one of the most popular conspiracy theories surrounding the events of that day.
Charlie Reese
What Is Patriotism?
Charley is a self-described Libertarian, and so I find many disagreements with things he says. Still, Charley's the type of person that sometimes makes me wonder whether Libertarianism is to the left or right of me.
Take for example when he suggests that patriotism is about a lot more than just supporting the troops. Sometimes, he says, it is as simple as simply supporting you fellow citizens:
Love and concern for our land and our people is the patriotic duty of every American. How about supporting all of the American people for a change instead of just those in uniform? Let us not throw away the very things so many Americans died to protect for some cockamamie scheme to run the whole world.