All God's Children

Disgusting People - Part II

Glenn Greenwald indicates that a Dem refusal to pass the war funding bill might have more to do with the fact that that particular bill had the amendment granting Obama the right to suppress war crimes photos from Abu Ghraib. I'm still going with my original reaction to it - I think the story I quoted had it right - they're withholding votes in an effort to get something they want. I long ago gave up the idea that they might do something because it's the right thing to do.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Go Cindy

Cindy Sheehan, who gave the Bush-era's peace movement a proper kick-off by camping out in a ditch down the street from the former president's ranch after her son died in Iraq, is still honing her protest craft.

Because really, to her, the Bush administration will never truly end until its key players are prosecuted.

On Monday, June 8, Cindy and friends will march on former President Bush's new home in the well-to-do Dallas suburb of Preston Hollow.

  Raw Story

And I have the day off. I should probably be there. But, Cindy, I’m more concerned about being sure I make it to meet my son who will be home on leave from Baghdad. Sorry. And good luck with that.

"Go away," resident Kathie Taub said. "Go back! Leave us alone!"

Taub said Sheehan had already protested and should "now leave everybody alone."

That’s the American spirit, Kathie. I defend your right to say something once. You had your say, Cindy. You lost. Go away.

I’m afraid Kathie, in her upper class womb, doesn’t understand the spirit of struggle. She probably never had to.

Of course, Cindy is quite comfortable being ridiculed by practically all sides (including her own). The "Peace Mom," as she became known, was hit by the right for criticising the invasion of Iraq and, eventually, by the left for being a perpetual spotlight-seeker.

Apparently “the left” doesn’t understand it either.

In spite of the sympathy I feel for her cause, I can't help but wonder what this is meant to accomplish ... Aside from, ah, annoying the neighbors. Looks like a lot of Dallasites feel the same.

Apparently neither do Stephen C. Webster and/or David Edwards who put together the Raw Story article.

Happily, there are a lot of comments to their article that set them straight about the right and reason to continue protesting when a war criminal goes unpunished and is allowed to live in luxury amongst us. I feel a bit encouraged.

Disgusting People

US House Democrats said Thursday they would not vote this week on a war supplemental spending bill after Republicans balked at funding for the International Monetary Fund.

  Raw Story

The terror of war, the great loss of life – and worse - that it is causing is nothing more than a bargaining chip to the House Dems.

Update

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Again, I Let Somebody Else Do the Hard Work

Whatever It Is, I'm Against It

“I’ve come here to Cairo to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world, one based on mutual interest and mutual respect, and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition.” [...] I’m not sure if all this talk about the relationship between the US and Islam treats Islam as a nation or the US as a religion.

  WIIIAI

Precisely. The whole approach is offputting and erroneous. And sadly ubiquitous around the globe.

“Palestinians must abandon violence. Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and it does not succeed.” George Washington, War of Independence, ring a bell at all? “For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America’s founding.” Abraham Lincoln, Civil War, ring a bell at all? Really, did he just tell us that slaves shouldn’t have resisted slavery with violence?

That’s what I heard.

Jesus.

Please read the whole post if you didn't hear the speech.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Meanwhile in Pakistan

A suicide bomber killed 30 people attending Friday prayers at a mosque, while a roadside bomb left four soldiers dead in Pakistan's tribal belt — the latest violence to rock the country's northwest as the army says it is beating back the Taliban in the Swat Valley.

The attacks came as U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke met with top Pakistani officials after evaluating the plight of some of the nearly 3 million Pakistanis made refugees by the Swat offensive. Hundreds trying to return home to Swat on Friday were stopped by troops.

  Yahoo

I'd say it's pretty well entrenched.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Yep, That's My Galveston

Galveston's Judge Kent to quit next year

Prison- bound U.S. District Court Judge Samuel Kent told President Barack Obama on Tuesday he fully intends to keep his $174,000-a-year post for another year — a notice that further fueled the angst of members of Congress who vowed a fast-track impeachment.

“I hereby resign from my position as United States District Judge for the Southern District of Texas effective June 1, 2010,” Kent wrote the president, putting the effective date in italics. Until that date — or his impeachment — he will continue to draw a salary from taxpayers.

[...]

The 59-year-old jurist admitted in the plea deal that he had non-consensual sexual contact with two female court employees between 2003 and 2007.

[...]

Kent was sentenced on May 11 after pleading guilty in February to obstruction of justice for lying to a judicial inquiry looking into allegations that he had repeatedly sexually harassed and assaulted a court employee.

[...]

Rep. Gene Green, D-Houston, said Congress will impeach Kent “well before the end of that year because he’s taking up a position on the bench and we need a judge sitting on that bench.”

  Houston Chronicle

Well, I hope.

The date is designed to milk the system of as much benefits as possible — only to resign shortly before any completion of impeachment.

Absent a voluntary resignation or impeachment, Kent can continue to receive his judicial salary. To engage in such open pilfering of the public fisc adds yet another ignoble fact to Kent’s disgraceful end to his judicial career.

[...]

[Kent’s lawyer Dick] DeGuerin insisted that Kent wanted to avoid a “spectacle” and had decided “to try to save the embarrassment that these useless hearings would have. That’s embarrassing for the judicial system as well as everybody involved.” Hmmm, and milking the system to the very last minute is testament to the judicial system? Of course, since Judge Kent is himself the spectacle, the best way to avoid the embarrassment is for him to resign immediately and go off to jail.

  Jonathan Turley

Kent and his lawyer are both Dicks.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

There Goes the Neighborhood

New Hampshire's governor has signed legislation making the state the sixth to allow gay marriage.

[...]

The revised bill added a sentence specifying that all religious organizations, associations or societies have exclusive control over their religious doctrines, policies, teachings and beliefs on marriage.

  Yahoo

They were afraid the gays would try to make laws that forced them to give up their prejudice and dogma? I guess "God-fearing" people just naturally live in fear.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

P.S. It's nice to see that human rights are alive and well somewhere.

Well That's Just Great!

The federal government mistakenly made public a 266-page report, its pages marked “highly confidential,” that gives detailed information about hundreds of the nation’s civilian nuclear sites and programs, including maps showing the precise locations of stockpiles of fuel for nuclear weapons.

[...]

President Obama sent the document to Congress on May 5 for Congressional review and possible revision, and the Government Printing Office subsequently posted the draft declaration on its Web site.

[...]

[The document] presents what appears to be an exhaustive listing of the sites that make up the nation’s civilian nuclear complex, which stretches coast to coast and includes nuclear reactors and highly confidential sites at weapon laboratories.

[...]

Each page is marked across the top “Highly Confidential Safeguards Sensitive” in capital letters, with the exception of pages that detailed additional information like site maps.

  NYT

So how did they accidentally – or “mistakenly” – publish that on a website? They didn’t notice the page headings?

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Shut It Down

A Guantanamo detainee has died in what the military are calling an "apparent suicide" -- and civil liberties groups are calling for action.

[...]

Al-Hanashi, a Yemeni, had been held without charge at Gitmo since February 2002. Medical records released previously indicate that at one stage he joined a long-running hunger strike to protest his confinement. In December 2005, he weighed about 86 pounds.

  TPM

Prophets

"Our rulers will become corrupt, our people careless. … [We] shall be going down hill. It will not then be necessary to resort every moment to the people for support. They will be forgotten, therefore, and their rights disregarded. They will forget themselves but in the sole faculty of making money and will never think of uniting to effect a due respect for their rights. The shackles, therefore, ... will remain on us long, will be made heavier and heavier, till our rights shall revive or expire in a convulsion." -- Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia – 1784

"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. … corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed." -- Abraham Lincoln 1864

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Why Does Obama Hate Democracy?

Obama wants Congress to change FOIA by retroactively narrowing its disclosure requirements, prevent a legal ruling by the courts, and vest himself with brand new secrecy powers under the law which, just as a factual matter, not even George Bush sought for himself.

The White House is actively supporting a new bill jointly sponsored by Sens. Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman -- called The Detainee Photographic Records Protection Act of 2009 -- that literally has no purpose other than to allow the government to suppress any "photograph taken between September 11, 2001 and January 22, 2009 relating to the treatment of individuals engaged, captured, or detained after September 11, 2001, by the Armed Forces of the United States in operations outside of the United States." As long as the Defense Secretary certifies -- with no review possible -- that disclosure would "endanger" American citizens or our troops, then the photographs can be suppressed even if FOIA requires disclosure.[...] The Senate passed the bill as an amendment last week.

[...]

[The] President who is demanding these new suppression powers is the same one who repeatedly vowed "to make his administration the most open and transparent in history."

[...]

Imagine if a foreign government were accused of systematically torturing and otherwise brutally abusing detainees in its custody for years, and there was ample photographic evidence proving the extent and brutality of the abuse. Further imagine that the country's judiciary -- applying decades-old transparency laws -- ruled that the government was legally required to make that evidence public. But in response, that country's President demanded that those transparency laws be retroactively changed for no reason other than to explicitly empower him to keep the photographic evidence suppressed, and a compliant Congress then immediately passed a new law empowering the President to suppress that evidence.

  Glenn Greenwald

No problem. If another country did it, it would be bad. It can’t be wrong, however, by definition, if we do it.

For decades, we had laws in place authorizing citizens to sue their telecommunication carriers if the telecoms allowed government spying on their communications in violation of the law, but when it was revealed that the telecoms did exactly this, the Congress simply changed the law retroactively so that it no longer applied. For decades, we had laws imposing civil and criminal liability on government officials who engaged in or authorized torture, but when it was revealed that our government did that, the Congress just retroactively changed the law to protect the torturers. And now that courts have ruled that our decades-old transparency law compels disclosure of this torture evidence, the Congress is just going to retroactively change the law -- again -- this time to empower the President to suppress that evidence anyway.

[...]

[W]hat's the point of having laws that purport to restrict what the Government can do if political officials just retroactively waive those laws whenever they want? What's the point of having a FOIA law if the Government will simply pass a new law exempting itself from FOIA's mandates any time it loses in court and wants to conceal evidence anyway?

What’s the point of having a Congress if it can’t retrofit laws?

Is there really anyone who wants to argue that defiance of a federal court's order and enacting a new law authorizing suppression of torture evidence -- the disclosure of which is compelled both by courts and FOIA -- are remotely consistent with anything Obama said he would do, or remotely consistent with what a healthy democratic government would do?

I think that’s what Eric Holder’s for.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.