Reagan Supreme Court appointee Justice Kennedy opines on the rule of law

Interesting remarks last weekend from a Reagan appointee to the Supreme Court. It was a crazy week, so never really focused on what Kennedy was saying, but take a look:

The United States is not making the case for freedom, democracy and Western law to the rest of the world, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy said Saturday.

"Make no mistake, there's a jury that's out. In half the world, the verdict is not yet in. The commitment to accept the Western idea of democracy has not yet been made, and they are waiting for you to make the case," Kennedy said in an address to the American Bar Association.

Kennedy apparently thinks Americans need to be reminded what the "rule of law" actually means:

He said the rule of law has three parts: it must be binding on all government officials, it must respect the dignity, equality and human rights of every person, and it must guarantee people the right to enforce the law without fear of retaliation.

"Americans must understand that if the rules of law have meaning, such as hope and inspiration for the rest of the world, it must be coupled with the opportunity to improve human existence," Kennedy said.

It's hard to spread democracy when the rule of law isn't honored by our own leaders. Read the rest of this post...

With America under "imminent attack," Bush stays on vacation and holds a BBQ at his ranch for rich Republican donors

Nice. Not like there's anything else to worry about, like the first Red Alert we've ever had since September 11. The man will never learn from his mistakes, and the Republican party will never challenege him. Until the Republicans are thrown out of office, we are in serious danger with an incompetent commander in chief at the helm. Read the rest of this post...

Open thread

(click the photo to see it bigger)

Went out for drinks in the Marais tonight. This was the view on the way to the bar. How do people live like this? How do we not? Read the rest of this post...

Bush Cutting Bomb Detection Budget - feel safer yet?

The media really need to start asking Bush's people how anyone can possibly be expected to take anything they say seriously. From AP via Yahoo:

While the British terror suspects were hatching their plot, the Bush administration was quietly seeking permission to divert $6 million that was supposed to be spent this year developing new homeland explosives detection technology.

Congressional leaders rejected the idea, the latest in a series of steps by the Homeland Security Department that has left lawmakers and some of the department's own experts questioning the commitment to create better anti-terror technologies.
...
The department failed to spend $200 million in research and development money from past years, forcing lawmakers to rescind the money this summer.

The administration also was slow to start testing a new liquid explosives detector that the Japanese government provided to the United States earlier this year.

George Bush's "administration" of government in a time of war is negligent. Read the rest of the article to find out how sheer incompetence of bureaucracy puts you at risk when you fly.

Read the rest of this post...

Cliff's Corner

The Week That Was 8/11/06

Another week. More preposterousness to report.

I really resent Republican blowhards. I was all ready to use my exalted space on America’s favorite liberal blog (that’s gotta get me a raise from John) to point out the sheer idiocy of the cocktail-weenie crowd, who apparently spend their nights wishing it was they, and not our president, who got to slurp in just a tad of Lieberman’s jowly soft-tissue after the State of Union speech in 2005.

I mean just during last week alone, Cokie’s hair-helmet, Marty and the Lieber-Loving TNR gang, Lanny “blogs are the most treacherous development since The Bubonic Plague” Davis and much of the rest of the crowd who decry incivility, except when they’re smearing Ned Lamont, his father, ideas offered by people who’ve actually won an election, Daily Kos, those who were right all along about Iraq, Michael Moore, African Americans, George McGovern, George Soros, Moveon.org, Howard Dean, liberals, Connecticut voters, 60% of the country who oppose the war in Iraq and those of us who don’t need to project our middle-aged “issues” into support for firing rock-hard projectiles at people to prove we've still got it, pulled the curtain on what a pitifully insular establishment of elitist jabber-dicks are running things in DC.

But with the recent turn of events in England (and the interesting timing of their release to the public), once again the lilly-livered, War: What Is It Good For-Absolutely Everything! GOP and their mouthpiece, the missing member of the politically-bizarrro Village People, Ken Mehlman, had to go opening their yaps and rejoicing. In fact, some of them began to quite literally get up and dance. Well, like prep-school white guys do.

Because terrorism to the Bush people is that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, the political gift that they can keep exploiting, while quite actively doing things to undermine our safety. Osama who? 9/11-Report whitewash, what? Bernard Kerik, where? Well, not in jail like one might expect for most people who plea guilty to using their offical position as head cop to protect suspected mobsters who gave him $165 K to renovate his home. Which sadly kept him from running our nation’s agency that was presumably set up to be our first line of defense against terrorism—or from which to troll for fresh meat during the midnight hour—which is where Bush wanted him.

But no matter that these people have been as judicious on the world stage as Dick Cheney with a shotgun, a bottle of Jack, a large donor lurking nearby and the smell of fresh quail in his nostrils, they’re still gonna tell you that Iraq is Eden, they’re winning the war on terror and Ken just hasn’t found that special someone yet. And if you say differently, you’re aiding the terrorists.

Which is why Rudy Giuliani, when not committing adultery within rolling-distance of his young kids, is now quite willing to send out emails exploiting this most recent incident WITHIN HOURS OF THE ARRESTS. And then blame it on “low-level staffers.” Just like the young soldiers who apparently thought up all those methods of torture to employ at Abu Ghraib, without the help of say, anyone higher up in the chain of command. Yup, somehow those who snake toilets and jockey coffee at NRCC headquarters also run their online fundraising operation and faked Rudy’s involvement.

It is nothing short of remarkable. It would be like if a plan to fund the Contras in Nicaragua and arm Iran were run out of the White House and the former Director of the CIA and sitting vice-president didn’t understand exactly what was going on.

In a hypothetical world of course. Where it would even matter, because Iran would be considered dangerous enough to disembowel with a preemptive nuclear assault by many of the very same people.

Those “low-level” sons of bitches! Besmirching the good name of the GOP! What will they do next without their superiors knowing? Put together a PowerPoint presentation on how to use the War on Terror for political advantage or out a CIA agent trying to expose their mendacity regarding an unnecessary and America-weakening war?

Oh, right.

Please go to mms://youngturks.wmod.llnwd.net/a591/o1/8-10Cliff.wmv for my weekly appearance on The Young Turks as we examine Republican Sexcapades Read the rest of this post...

Bush at 33, again

Lots of good news in the latest AP-Ipsos poll:

An Associated Press-Ipsos poll conducted this week found the president's approval rating has dropped to 33 percent, matching his low in May. His handling of nearly every issue, from the Iraq war to foreign policy, contributed to the president's decline around the nation, even in the Republican-friendly South.

More sobering for the GOP are the number of voters who backed Bush in 2004 who are ready to vote Democratic in the fall's congressional elections - 19 percent. These one-time Bush voters are more likely to be female, self-described moderates, low- to middle-income and from the Northeast and Midwest.

Read the rest of this post...

Cheney from the White House, but just a "low-level staffer" at the RNC politicize terrorism

So, on Wednesday, Dick Cheney launched his rant about "Al Qaeda" types knowing that the terror plot was going to be announced the next day. Yet, on Thursday, over at the RNC, it was just a "low-level staffer" who launched the same kind of rant in a fundraising email:

The RNC blamed a low-level staffer for distributing the fundraising appeal, which the party said had been scheduled for release before news of the plot broke.

"Once the RNC learned of this error we ceased distribution of the e-mail," said Tracey Schmitt, a party spokeswoman.

Sure, "low-level." Just like Cheney's low-level at the White House.

Again, we ask: did someone at the White House tell the RNC about the terror plot in advance? Looks like they did. That says a lot about the Bush White House. They think of terrorism in political terms instead of putting national security first. Read the rest of this post...

New GOP candidate might jump in CT Senate race

Per TPM Cafe. Read the rest of this post...

Open thread

Such a fun news day. Read the rest of this post...

Philly Daily News editorial blasts Cheney for taking advantage of foreknowledge of Red Alert to bash Dems

Wow.

For Cheney - and other Republicans like GOP National Chairman Ken Mehlman - to suggest that those Americans are encouraging terrorism is reprehensible.

Cheney's comments came out a day before British intelligence officials announced they had thwarted a major terrorist attack. Surely Cheney was aware of the plot and the work to thwart it, and was no doubt aware of the timing of yesterday's announcement.

To exploit a very real terror threat that could have led to major casualties, and to even indirectly implicate Americans who were exercising their democratic right by going to the polls and making a choice borders on the criminal, to say nothing of the insane.

Has Cheney completely lost it?

....The immoral and ridiculous claims coming out of the Bush administration's reign of error could ultimately be responsible for the kind of casualties that al Qaeda can only dream of.

Read the rest of this post...

America threatened by imminent attack of Chanel lip gloss

The horror the horror.

Just got the following email from my friend Cate:

"Yesterday, the TSA was confiscating MAKE UP at America's airports. Yes, MAKE UP. What kind of make up, you ask? LIP GLOSS. Yesterday, a friend of mine informed me that a girlfriend of hers waited in line for FIVE HOURS yesterday at National Airport.. and if you got out of line, to um, I don't know, TAKE A PISS, you had to go to the back of the line. Then the TSA made her hand over her Chanel lip gloss. Apparently Chanel Lip Gloss is a massive threat to national security. Let me show you this dire threat to our nation:

"And as women began to talk with each other about yesterday's debacle, we discover other things: women all over America were forced to take their lip gloss, foundation, and liquid eyeliner out of their purses and hand them over to the TSA. I'm sorry, but I find this ridiculous and grossly unfair. Let's be honest -- this is unfair to women, as men really don't go about their day to day lives with lip gloss in their pocket (unless they're a drag queen).

"I wonder if the NSA is going to start spying on Clinique, Chanel and Bobbi Brown. Apparently, the threat is massive."

Read the rest of this post...

While America prepares for an "imminent" terror attack, this is what George Bush did yesterday

He put on funny glasses and played in Wisconsin. How cute.

Read the rest of this post...

3 in 5 Americans want to see a timetable to bring the troops home

Gosh, that's what the Democrats want. It's what the blogs want. And it's what 60% of the American people want.

Are we all "fringe far-left liberals who love Osama and don't remember September 11"? It seems the Republican party just smeared 61% of the American people.

From National Journal:

Though Lieberman and the Bush administration maintain that the U.S. can help Iraq become a peaceful democracy, most Americans would beg to differ, a new CNN poll finds.

Sixty percent of respondents said they now oppose the war, a jump from the 54 percent who were against the war in June. The poll was conducted the day before and the day of a Senate hearing in which the two top generals overseeing the war said sectarian violence in Iraq could transition to full-blown civil war.

More Americans are also unwilling to keep American soldiers on the front lines there. Just 34 percent said troop levels should stay the remainder of the year, compared with 47 percent in January who told CNN/Gallup/USA Today pollsters that troops should remain in Iraq until the job was done. Sixty-one percent said they wanted some kind of drawdown this year, including 26 percent who wanted all troops home by 2007.

The Pentagon's decision to send homebound troops back to Iraq after President Bush promised more of them could start coming home also doesn't likely sit well with most Americans. Nearly three in five want to see a timetable for bringing the troops home.

Read the rest of this post...

Knowing that "attacks are imminent" Bush has "no plans" to cut short his vacation

NYT

He later flew back to his ranch here, and aides said there were no plans for him to cut short his stay....

Several senior Republican strategists were also uneasy with the possibility that images of President Bush’s activities in the past week, including bicycle rides in the 100-degree Texas heat, could be used to accuse him of being too casual about the potential terrorist threat....

“A policy of casual nonchalance is not a winning strategy,” said one Republican close to the White House, who suggested that the president should, at the least, deliver a primetime television address from the Crawford ranch.

Instead, Mr. Bush stuck to his schedule; after Thursday’s metal plant tour, he attended a fund-raiser for John Gard, a candidate for an eastern Wisconsin Congressional seat; the event raised $500,000. On Friday, he will travel down the road from his ranch, Prairie Chapel, to the Broken Spoke, a neighboring ranch, for another fund-raiser.

A day after Bush was briefed on the "imminent attacks," last Friday, he stayed on vacation and went bike riding. Our first ever Code Red, and it's a week later, people are busy pouring out possible explosives in airports, and Bush is STILL on vacation and not coming back.

He didn't cut his vacation short when Katrina wiped out New Orleans. He didn't cut it short when the tsunami wiped out Asia. And God help him, he's not going to cut his vacation short for an imminent threat of a massive terrorist attack on thousands of Americans. Read the rest of this post...

More evidence that this Red Alert is a wee bit suspect

Check out the photo below. Yes, Ma'am, we think you might have highly explosive liquids in your possession that could kill thousands of Americans and blow up an entire airplane. So please pour the liquid out in front of these hundreds of passengers, including that small baby just three feet behind you, and into this large bucket mixed with all sorts of other unknown and possibly explosive (and reactive) liquids, including alcohol, peroxide, acids, and more. Yeah, that would be the smart way to dispose of suspected terrorist explosives.

These guys are either lying to us, or criminally negligent morons. But this is coming off as bad as the duct tape fiasco.



More here.

Another point about this "liquid explosive." It was liquid explosives that were suspected in the plot back in 1995 that Clinton foiled, the one to blow up numerous US airlines over the Pacific. Why is it that since that time it's been okay to bring liquids on board planes, but now suddenly it's not? Why was it safe on Monday, but not safe on Friday? Bush knew at the start of his administration that terrorists had tried to use explosive liquids to blow up American planes, so did he or didn't he prepare for that possibility, and if he did, then why are they now banning all liquids (since, in principle, they should have already had a way to monitor the liquids they've been letting us bring on over the past ten years)? Something isn't quite right. Read the rest of this post...

Morning open thread

I'm just bubbling with news to report, but will hold off since we haven't had an open thread yet this morning. Here you go. Read the rest of this post...

Religious right trying to censor West Point classes

It's rather disgusting, and typical, that far right extremists are now beating up on a heterosexual West Point cadet for simply writing a thesis in which he argues that the military's ban on gays is bad policy. Now, as someone who someday may very well be involved in making such policy decisions, why would we not want our cadets to exercise their minds and write essays pro and con various policies in order to better be able to evaluate policy in the future?

The religious right would prefer that our cadets write glowing essays about how every single policy our military has ever adopted, and every single military maneuver we've ever engaged in, have been perfection itself. Bay of Pigs? Brilliant! Vietnam? We won! See how easy it is?

The real reason here: The religious right wants to purge anyone from government who doesn't toe their far-right bigoted line. They don't seem to care a lick about national security, nor about winning wars and defeating terrorists and keeping us all safe. What they care about is pleasing their warped view of a vengeful God who apparently has so much time on His hands that he cares about some essay a kid wrote in school.

Terri Schiavo Republicans strike again. Read the rest of this post...

China has made a big business out of selling dead bodies to museums for display

I'm familar with the German's work, and I think it's pretty cool. But leave it to China to figure out the most horrific capitalist angle to make money off the phenomenon. For communists, they're bigger capitalist swine than we'll ever be. That country is out of control. Read the rest of this post...

Terrorist plot: hype and reality

The initial stories about foiled terrorist plots are always heavy on sensationalism and light on details. It's frustrating that the story is usually fading from public consciousness by the time reality overtakes hype, but here's my understanding of what the deal is thus far.

What's always true: There are people plotting against the U.S. and its citizens. Not a big surprise. Although I greatly disagree with how the Bush administration chooses to combat terrorism and its practitioners, obviously terrorist attacks continue to threaten the U.S. This week's revelations don't make that any more or less true; it's constantly the case.

What's true today: Some people in the U.K., somewhere between 21 (the number of arrests thus far) and 50ish (the number cited as potential conspirators), were making specific plans to target international flights between London and major U.S. cities. Reports describe the plan as in "final stages," though nobody has any idea when they planned to act, and anybody who currently claims otherwise is lying (the suspects reportedly didn't have tickets or anything with dates). The plot was reportedly foiled by British HUMINT (human intelligence), and it intended to detonate mid-air, much like a similar plot foiled in the mid-90s.

The important remaining questions: Who are these guys? Speculation of al-Qaida involvement is widespread, but that's just a name everybody recognizes. Where were they from, who were their trainers and financial benefactors, and what's their history, if anything, of militant action? The "how" and "why," please, for chrissakes, not just the "what."

Another big question is how long it's been known, and what were the reasons for revealing the information to the public. Intelligence successes are generally more effective when they remain private, but of course if a threat still exists, and can be minimized through public disclosure, that's a legitimate reason for exposure. Still, considering the past (and present) political use of terror threats, I think skepticism about timing and motives is understandable. They boy who cried wolf writ large.

Of course, the greater story is that we continue to create more terrorists than we're defeating. Every day, our stupid foreign policies, flawed intelligence system, and massive, massive debacle in Iraq mean the likelihood of more terrorist plots and actions is increasing, not decreasing. The British were apparently able to catch these guys through cooperation with Pakistan, which almost makes it seem like good relations with other countries might be a good idea. Who woulda thunk? This administration is not making us safer, a fact that Americans are increasingly realizing. Read the rest of this post...