I made 4 small changes...

I made four small changes to this text below. Read it, then click the link at the bottom to see the original.

"What no one seemed to notice," said a colleague of mine, a philologist, "was the ever widening gap, after September 11, between the government and the people....

"What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with President Bush, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it.

"This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter....

"To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it -- please try to believe me -- unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, regretted, that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these little measures that no patriotic American could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.

Here's the orginal. (Hat tip to Voxd, in our comments.) Read More......

Atlanta Braves kick anti-gay hate group off the "Faith Day" roster

Gee, linking gays and pedophilia. How original. Time to check what other ball parks have included the virulently anti-gay liars at Focus on the Famiily in their Faith Day. With this kind of quack science, it should be cake to get the teams to boot them. Or else tell them they're going to see the biggest civil rights protests they've ever seen. Read More......

Open Thread

Weather.com tells me it's still 93 (feels like 102) in DC.

What's on your mind? Read More......

This just in... GOP donors funded ENTIRE Pennsylvania Green Party Senate run

Basically, to steal the election for Santorum by splitting the liberal vote. I want to see Rick Santorum speak out against this immediately, and then I want to see the Green Party candidate return the money and pull out of the race. Thanks to the Green Party and Ralph Nader we've had two Bush presidencies. Enough already. But this one really takes the cake - 100% of the campaign funded by Republicans? Is that what the Green really stand for? I somehow doubt it. Read More......

Marine who led squad accused of killing two dozen civilians in Haditha sues Murtha for "defamation"

First, a defamation suit would require proving that Murtha's comments about Haditha were false, and the latest reports don't look good for our side:

Evidence collected on the deaths of 24 Iraqis in Haditha supports accusations that U.S. Marines deliberately shot the civilians, including unarmed women and children, a Pentagon official said Wednesday.

Also troublesome for this suit is the claim by the Marine's lawyers that Murtha made his comments about Haditha outside the scope of his role as a congressman. (This claim is likely being made because Murtha, like any congressman, has immunity for comments made pursuant to his role as a member of Congress.) The law on this seems a bit sketchy, you can read way more about that here.

I'd like to know more about who this lawyer is and who's paying for this lawsuit. Read More......

What's Rummy afraid of? And what is he hiding?

The Bush team shows nothing but contempt for Congress. The latest example is the refusal of Rumsfeld to testify before the Senate Armed Services Committee -- apparently, he backed out of his commitment to be there. He's either afraid -- or he's hiding something really big -- or both. Whatever it is, Hillary's calling him on it:

On the eve of a potentially contentious Senate hearing about the Iraq war, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton urged Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to testify before Congress, saying it's been too long without such an appearance.

Hey, with Iraq and Afghanistan, it's not like there's anything going on under Rummy's jurisdiction that the American people should know about.

But, he's a Bush guy. He can just say no to Congress. But, for someone who acts like such a tough guy, it does say a lot that he won't take questions from Hillary Clinton. Read More......

College Repubs. campaigning for Lieberman

Lieberman's campaign is picking up the costs, of course. Read More......

I seriously doubt George Bush approved of this

Uber-conservative online "news" service, NewsMax, has a nasty habit of emailing its readers all sorts of very odd snake-oil sounding email "offers." And I mean very odd. But the latest takes the cake. Just read it.



And here's the Web site it takes you to. VALUE! VALUE! VALUE!

This goes a long way towards explaining why conservatives fall for any BS this administration gives them. They're apparently quite the gullible bunch. Read More......

9/11: The NORAD Tapes

From Vanity Fair. Read More......

Murtha was right

AP:

Evidence collected on the deaths of 24 Iraqis in Haditha supports accusations that U.S. Marines deliberately shot the civilians, including unarmed women and children, a Pentagon official said Wednesday.

Read More......

2/3 of National Guard not combat ready because Bush short-changed them

Bush controls the White House, Republicans control the Congress. No one to blame but the Republicans. We are at war, and the Republicans have so destroyed the National Guard that 2/3 of it is not combat ready. If Bill Clinton had done this, there'd be hell to pay.

Speaking of Bill Clinton, guess who gutted the US military in the 1990s to a shell of what it was before? Yes, you guessed it:

Dick Cheney.

Don't believe me? The source is the Department of Defense's own Web site. Read More......

Genocide: a new Republican value?

I've never really understood why Democrats are supposed to have a singular plan to Completely Fix Iraq. The president has virtually uninhibited power to make foreign policy, including armed conflict, and "what would you do about Iraq" is a pretty silly question for a Congressional candidate, much less an entire party delegation. The most reasonable answer from a Democrat would be the goal of providing oversight and checks and balances to a dissembling and opaque administration, yet criticism of Bush's policy is constantly met with cries of, "Well what's the Democratic alternative?!?" Until '08, our elected officials are stuck with writing strongly-worded letters (and perhaps, after November, holding some meaningful hearings). In the meantime, can we talk about the fact that the Republicans, who, y'know, control every branch of the federal government, don't have a plan? And since they're actually running things, that seems to me slightly more problematic.

Or maybe they do have a plan. Neocon John Podhoretz recently penned a stunning and despicable op-ed in the New York Post that cowardly hid his position, basically that we should kill all Sunnis between the ages of 15 and 35, behind endless "rhetorical" questions (not a single declarative statement!). Rachel Kleinfeld absolutely shreds it in a great post at TPMCafe. The point that killing innocent civilians is both immoral and unbelievably bad strategy should be obvious, but for some reason it needs to be repeated. Read the whole thing. Money quote:

The only way guerrilla wars have ever been won is by gaining the support of civilians so that they turn over the killers hiding among them--and that has never been done by killing the innocent indiscriminately. Karl Rove and his cronies pride themselves on divisive wedge strategies domestically--why can't they understand the need for one in the war against terror?

What on earth are the Republican values for foreign policy? How can a party call itself pro-life domestically and be for "constructive chaos" abroad? Democratic foreign policy values are clear, and they're smartly elucidated by the Truman National Security Project, which I'm (full disclosure) involved with and of which Rachel is the Director. Republicans have tried to co-opt democracy promotion, classically a lefty position, but their method of implementation is more like anarchy promotion, and the very concept of human rights seems to be beyond them. For a handy comparison, here's a cheat sheet: Democrats, Kosovo; Republicans, Iraq. Democrats who believe in strong security and defense aren't Republican-lite (as I think I've demonstrated on this site), we just recognize that there's a bad way and a good way to practice internationalism. Change . . . the . . . course. Read More......

Would new Bush military tribunals cover American reporters?

Sounds like it from the incredibly broad legislation they're proposing.

1. According to the Washington Post, "the plan, which would replace a military trial system ruled illegal by the Supreme Court in June, would also allow the secretary of defense to add crimes at will to those under the military court's jurisdiction."

If that is correct, then the federal government could add ANY crime to the list, ANY crime. So any American suspected of ANYTHING could be picked up and sent to a military court and never heard from again because, oh yeah guess what, the new legislation says you basically get a Soviet gulag trial:

Under the proposed procedures, defendants would lack rights to confront accusers, exclude hearsay accusations, or bar evidence obtained through rough or coercive interrogations. They would not be guaranteed a public or speedy trial and would lack the right to choose their military counsel, who in turn would not be guaranteed equal access to evidence held by prosecutors.

Detainees would also not be guaranteed the right to be present at their own trials, if their absence is deemed necessary to protect national security or individuals.

2. The part that could easily cover reporters, and political dissidents:

The military lawyers nonetheless supported extending the jurisdiction of the commissions to cover those accused of joining or associating with terrorist groups engaged in anti-U.S. hostilities, and of committing or aiding hostile acts by such groups, whether or not they are part of al-Qaeda, two U.S. officials said.

Aiding hostile acts? Who would that be? Well, according to the White House's own words over the past 5 years, every one of us who speaks out against the war, every newspaper who publishes articles about Bush's violating the law in his over-execution of the war on terror, is "aiding" the enemy. Remember, these are the White House's own words, folks. And now they want legislation that says that those of who "aid" the enemy can be basically tried in abstentia and never heard from again.

What the hell is happening to our country? Oh that's right, we have a Republican White House, a Republican House and Senate, and a Republican Supreme Court. So, nobody is going to stand up against this increasingly incompetent and dangerous president. Read More......

Pentagon may have criminally misled 9/11 Commission about what really happened on 9/11

Okay, I'm a bit creeped out. The purpose of this commission was to find out what went wrong so that next time we don't lose another 3,000 Americans. And the Pentagon and the FAA may have lied to the commission, in violation of the law, and in violation of the entire intent of establishing the commission, to help ensure we never have another 9/11.

Jesus. What country do we live in anymore? And for those who say this is politics as usual, then maybe it's time to change politics as usual. Time to stop defending and supporting and tolerating politicians who lie and even break the law, while jeopardizing national security. Maybe if we finally stand up to these politicians things will change.

Some staff members and commissioners of the Sept. 11 panel concluded that the Pentagon's initial story of how it reacted to the 2001 terrorist attacks may have been part of a deliberate effort to mislead the commission and the public rather than a reflection of the fog of events on that day, according to sources involved in the debate.

Suspicion of wrongdoing ran so deep that the 10-member commission, in a secret meeting at the end of its tenure in summer 2004, debated referring the matter to the Justice Department for criminal investigation, according to several commission sources. Staff members and some commissioners thought that e-mails and other evidence provided enough probable cause to believe that military and aviation officials violated the law by making false statements to Congress and to the commission, hoping to hide the bungled response to the hijackings, these sources said.

Then there's this from the Republican co-head of the panel:

"We to this day don't know why NORAD [the North American Aerospace Command] told us what they told us," said Thomas H. Kean, the former New Jersey Republican governor who led the commission. "It was just so far from the truth. . . . It's one of those loose ends that never got tied."

Here's a thought. Let's find out why they lied? Oh that's right, the Republicans control the US House and the US Senate, so we can't have real hearings on what went wrong. But don't worry, the Pentagon that lied about what happened on September 11 is doing its own investigation of whether and why they lied, so I'm sure we'll find out the truth from the very people who lied to us in the first place.

Do you get how corrupt things can get when one party is permitted to rule the entire federal government for this long? We need to know now whether the entire September 11 commission report is now called into question. If they didn't get the true facts about what happened on that day, then they couldn't give us the best recommendations for how we can fight the war on terror in the future. This is criminal, and, not to overuse the word, but intentionally jeopardizing the national security of the United States is treasonous as well. Read More......

When Republicans lie, there's...

The Fudge Report. Read More......

Flat-earth society loses in Kansas elections

Seriously, 80 years after the Scopes monkey trial we're still debating this stuff? I say we let the fundies teach their children whatever the hell they want, then let them compete against our children in the job market and see if God helps them pass their typing test, or the SATs. Read More......

Tubes, The Internet is a Series of...

This is new, watch it.

Read More......

Open thread

Good morning.



A panoramic shot of the garden where I'm staying (click the image to see it larger). There is an equally large space behind the garden, full of trees. Read More......