Collingwood's

Kucinich Asks for New Hampshire Recount

2008-01-11T13:03:00.000-08:00

More proof that Kucinich deserves the Presidency, or at least a position in cabinet.

Democratic Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich, the most outspoken advocate in the Presidential field and in Congress for election integrity, paper-ballot elections, and campaign finance reform, has sent a letter to the New Hampshire Secretary of State asking for a recount of Tuesday's election because of "unexplained disparities between hand-counted ballots and machine-counted ballots."
"I am not making this request in the expectation that a recount will significantly affect the number of votes that were cast on my behalf," Kucinich stressed in a letter to Secretary of State William M. Gardner. But, "Serious and credible reports, allegations, and rumors have surfaced in the past few days...It is imperative that these questions be addressed in the interest of public confidence in the integrity of the election process and the election machinery - not just in New Hampshire, but in every other state that conducts a primary election."

There is legitimate concern here, and I applaud Rep. Kucinich for having the balls to at the very least suggest that an investigation take place. These are the sorts of things Gore and Kerry could have done when they were running. No doubt he's going to be chastised as some kind of conspiracy nut or sore loser, but isn't it admirable that he would do what he thinks is right, regardless of how others will view him? Makes me wish front-runners had the same attitude.

I'm not saying that I necessarily believe that there was vote fraud with the optical voting machines, especially considering that I just made a lengthy post about how I think the old-guard feminist vote scored Hillary her win. But the numbers are suspect, and it's not like accusations against privatized voting machines are anything new, and the numbers are indeed a bit suspect, even on the Republican side.

Revenge of the Uterus: How Clinton Took New Hampshire

2008-01-10T00:57:00.000-08:00

If you were one of the political junkies who spent all evening January 8th watching newscasts covering the New Hampshire primary, you're well aware of the unexpected upset that occurred on the Democratic side. The last twenty-four hours have been filled with all kinds of speculations and accusations as to who failed where and why, and the difficult thing is that nearly all explanations have validity. Bottom line: nobody is absolutely certain why projections of an easy Obama win turned sour in the short time before the vote.

But I personally think Jodi Kantor of the New York Times hit it directly on the nose:

Even Democratic women with no intention of voting for Mrs. Clinton found themselves drawn into the debate and shaken by what briefly seemed like a humiliating end to the most promising female candidacy in American history.
The process seems to have changed a few minds, at least for now.
“I was really pained by the thought that her campaign really was over,” said Amy Rees, a stay-at-home mother in San Francisco who will vote in the California Democratic primary on Feb. 5. “I kept thinking that the truth is, a woman — even a woman of her unquestioned intelligence and preparedness — can’t get even a single primary win. It really stung.”
Ms. Rees had favored Senator Barack Obama of Illinois; now she is thinking of voting for Mrs. Clinton.

What we have seen is a blossoming of diversity on the Democratic side. We have a woman, and African American, and a Latino sharing the stage at debates and all vying for the reigns of the nation. Beyond the usual motivations of position, experience, and presentation are issues of race and gender. And while blacks and women have been elected and serving in a myriad of elected positions in America for decades, the glory of the Presidency is a seat that has traditionally been reserved for the white Christian elite.

With this in mind, it is easy to understand where the pundits and the pollsters went astray. Used to dealing with the name Clinton, but not how a female candidate could galvanize female support, the issue of sex was treated as minimal, certainly not something that could sway an entire state primary. So when New Hampshire women perceived that Clinton's campaign was being treated unfairly - even chauvinistically - by the mainstream media and flocked to the polls to support her, they caught everyone else off-guard.

Exit polling confirmed that there was a strong turnout of women voters in the New Hampshire primary, many of whom voted for Clinton over Obama. What we see is that, while Obama remained strong in taking the youth vote, it was the older female Democrats who swooned to Hillary's side. It was the working women - those old-guard feminists who have lived through the struggles of the feminist movement in the last few decades - who saw what they believed was an unfair, misogynistic tone towards someone whom they believed was at least as qualified as any other Presidential candidate.

As Carrie Wooten of the Bilerico Project muses:

A highly qualified, highly intelligent, highly respected woman who is being met with curious opposition from her own side in favor of less qualified male candidates. How interesting. If Hillary was a man, would we be advocating as a party for a Senator from Chicago with only two years experience in Washington with such gusto?

A valid question. Katie Heimer from the National Association of Women echoes those same sentiments, observing, "Clinton's gender does make her standing as Democratic frontrunner groundbreaking. However, journalists seem fixated on this one aspect, as if her gender wholly defined Clinton as a candidate, and not in a good way."

This was an element of the race that, up until now, had been completely discounted. Never before in the history of Presidential races has old-guard feminism played such a blatant role. In may ways, this furthers the notion that 2008 will see a race far removed from those of the past, one that sets a provocative tone for the 21st century.

But as a potential Democratic voter (and I emphasize "potential"), I cannot help but raise an eyebrow when I attempt to discuss Hillary Clinton with some of her supporters. To many I have talked to in the Clinton camp, the thought of a liberal opposing a Clinton is absurd, and therefore must be the result of some kind of latent chauvinism. Tara Bonistall of the Kentucky Kernel wonders, "Could it be that the reason many people don't like Hillary Clinton is because she handles her political power like a man?" Why, oh why, would someone who is against the Iraq war, for universal health care, and for dethroning King George II be against a Clinton?! I can assure you, it has nothing to do with the presence of a uterus.

(Allow me state this right now: this is not an attempted critique of feminism, nor is it an attempt to somehow criticize feminists. This is merely a liberal expressing concern over what he sees all too often in American politics: people flocking to a candidate because of image, not issues.)

For starters, we can look to Clinton's voting record. Right away we see a number of votes that, in all honesty, look more at home on the resume of John McCain or Rudy Giuliani than someone purporting to be a liberal:

YES on the Patriot Act
YES on authorizing pre-emptive war in Afghanistan and Iraq
YES on funding for both wars, up until around the time polls showed it wasn't politically viable anymore
YES on funding for a border fence along Mexico
YES on funding for the REAL ID Act
YES on declaring Iran's Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization
YES on conformation of Tom Ridge
YES on confirmation of Michael Chertoff
YES on confirmation of John Negroponte

If you go back and look at her rhetoric even as the Iraq War was being waged, it is difficult to differentiate between Senator Clinton and the words coming from the Bush Administration. For those of us who have dug through the old speeches and now hear her talk about ending "cowboy diplomacy", it's too easy to see that she has simply maneuvered herself into a position that is most politically favorable to her at the moment. If polling showed that the Iraq War was still popular, I guarantee she would not be singing the tune she is right now.

And not only am I frightened of Hillary as President, but also with Clinton being anywhere near the White House for another term. This is the same Clinton who increased funding for the Drug War, pushed through the Telecommunications Act of 1996 (which has lead to all of the media conglomeration that Democrats complain about), and oversaw the NAFTA treaty which has wrecked Mexico's economy and sacrificed countless American jobs. The Clinton years also saw the emergence of the PMRC and a wave of censorship in the music industry, something Hillary was completely supportive of. Forgive me for not wanting to have to go through that for another four years.

I'm not suggesting that we wait for a candidate who is pure as the virgin Mary, but I am saying that we shouldn't settle for Clinton. And that's not even settling, that's practically handing the reigns to the same people who have them now. Yet there are droves of people who consider themselves "progressive" and "liberal" who get giddy at the idea of putting a Clinton back in the oval office. And for many in New Hampshire, that seems to have more to do with her being a woman than it does with her being a good candidate.

For the same reason I criticize evangelical Christians for supporting evangelical candidates on the merits of their religion alone (a trend that may thankfully be dissipating as Mitt Romney picks up momentum), I criticize voters who would vote for a candidate solely because she is a woman, or solely because they feel like she was getting a sore deal from the press. Why not vote for Ron Paul, someone who is routinely belittled and ostracized by virtually every media outlet for holding legitimate views on how this nation should be run? Just because he's a man it's ok if he's treated that way?

But I don't want people to finish reading this and go away fuming. What we're seeing in terms of candidates from the Democratic side is reassuring in a number of ways. As I said before, we're seeing diversity, we're seeing real grassroots support for serious change in this nation, and there is a lot of momentum building to topple the decades-old Republican dynasty in this nation. But I am concerned that serious issues are being marginalized or completely ignored by some Democrats because people who are critical of their candidate are immediately being labeled as discriminatory against women. Feminism is not something to be shunned, but it is also not something that should be used to shield political candidates from legitimate criticism. Not only does is hamper discussion of serious issues (and with the Clintons there is no shortage of them), but it also breeds resentment and division among people who otherwise would work hand in hand.

I don't want to see a Republican in the White House any more than the rest of you. But I also know that Hillary Clinton, regardless of her party affiliation and regardless of her current rhetoric, will not produce the change that many believe she will. And I'm sorry if such a position makes me a sexist.

Update: This comment on Dibgy's blog echoes my point. I encourage you to read it in its entirety, but here are some of what I believe to be the more interesting observations:

The simple truth is that Clinton has been very willing to kiss up to the people who are most responsible for where we now find ourselves. She's done it early and often, as she "triangulated" for votes that, for her, do not exist. If you want to slide that, you can, but it was an act of monumental political stupidity that is coming back down on her now, and it's the main reason why she gets pounded in the progressive straw polls.

She is not a progressive. Not even close. And for you to defend her is a shock to me.

[...]

Her supporters are, with every passing day, being exposed as "progressives" who don't care how much support she's given to bush and the neo-cons. Just like you, they don't want to hear about her track record.

[...]

They are so caught up in turning her into Saint Clinton, and making her untouchable in the process, that the consequences of it are just not open for discussion. And if someone DOES insist on discussing it, then we're "sexist snakes".

CDP wants Democrat in White House At All Costs

2007-11-20T19:26:00.000-08:00

This is why I refuse to give money to the Democratic Party:

For Bob Mulholland, a campaign adviser to California Democrats who has known Feinstein since her time as San Francisco mayor, the backlash against Feinstein amounts to a betrayal rather than a defence of the party's core principles. Mulholland blasted the bloggers and activists supporting the censure resolution as "fringe" and "pre-nursing home".
"The Democratic party's purpose is to remind armchair activists that the duty is to elect a Democrat to the White House so we can end the Iraq mess", he said. "Nothing should get in the way of that."

When Republicans oppose reason and the majority of their constituents (who pay their fat salaries, no less) by standing behind their party's failed policies and inept policy-makers at all costs, it's called lunacy. When Democrats do it, it's called "duty."

Way to take the high ground, people.

Donald Kerr to Nation: Deal with it.

2007-11-12T16:23:00.000-08:00

What Donald M. Kerr, principal deputy director of National Intelligence, said:

"Privacy no longer can mean anonymity," says Donald Kerr, the principal deputy director of national intelligence.

[...]

"I think all of us have to really take stock of what we already are willing to give up, in terms of anonymity..."

What everyone else heard:

"You shouldn't expect to have privacy anymore. We're watching you now. Deal with it."

Children's healthcare drains conservative wallets*

2007-11-01T12:02:00.000-07:00

From the Daily 49er:

Let me state this at the outset: Government-mandated anything is bad. It's bureaucratic, inefficient and, more importantly, it's socialist. It seems like only yesterday that the very thought of socialized anything made America shudder and demand more military spending. Such was that brilliant, beaming moment in our history when Reagan ruled as our king.

Did I say king? I meant president. A man can dream, though.

Naturally, we have all had some taste of the new slime the liberals have whipped up to paint a pretty face on their socialist schemes. Bethany Wilkerson has become the newest poster child for the expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program. Thanks to the SCHIP, her parents claim, she has received the medical procedures needed to treat her heart condition.

I refuse to target children negatively. Bethany has no control over her situation so there's no need to attack her. That's why God saw fit to provide every poor child with bad parents.

It all boils down to one simple concept - if you want health care, pay for it. We on the conservative side believe in earning our way. If I want a Corvette, I pay for it. If I want a second house, I pay for it. If I want to save my child from a debilitating disease, I open up the checkbook.

But conservatives are also compromisers. Many employers provide health benefits for employees, so get a job that does. And don't give me that socialist propaganda about "being poor," because all of us have had to do our fair share of toiling to get where we are.

Sure, I was born into tremendous wealth because my family has owned the same newspaper conglomerate for several generations and that guarantees me a lifetime in upper-management with a six-figure income, but someone somewhere along the line had to do some serious toiling.

Why do low-income families feel this incessant need to procreate, anyway? When you get to a point in your life where you can barely make ends meet, having 17 children probably isn't the best financial decision. But God forbid you get a third or fourth job.

It's to the point where it should be mandated by law. How about if you live below the poverty line, it becomes illegal to have children?

Why allow a child to be born into destitution? We could practically say that's child abuse. Welfare is essentially theft from the rest of us and should be against the law. Maybe we should mandate vasectomies as a form of punishment for prolific deadbeat fathers. If you can't keep a handle on your own pants, let the government handle them for you.

Simply put, if you can't afford to foot the bill, you can't afford to screw.

Student in Custody for Harassing Muslim Students

2007-10-22T13:39:00.000-07:00

Sounds like someone decided to kick off Islamofascism Awareness Week a few days early over here at CSULB.

Republicans Derail Spy Measure

2007-10-18T09:52:00.000-07:00

I never thought I'd see the day when an issue as monumentally absurd as this one was the subject of very serious, very frustrating deliberation. Before Bush came into office, the very notion of the government wiretapping US citizens without a court order would have made the Republicans' collective heads explode. And rightly so. It is so blatantly un-American and unconstitutional that it wouldn't even warrant (pun intended) discussion. It's. Simply. Wrong.

From the LA Times:

The Democratic eavesdropping bill would have allowed unfettered telephone and e-mail surveillance of foreign intelligence targets but would require special authorization if the foreign targets were likely to be in contact with people inside the United States, a provision designed to safeguard Americans' privacy.

Those so-called "blanket warrants" would let the government obtain a single order authorizing the surveillance of multiple targets.

Now, is this Democratic proposal complete shit? Absolutely. But it smells just a tad bit better than the sloppy stuff the Republicans are offering. Which is, in reality, nothing. Nada. No warrants, no probable cause, just reasonable suspicion. Good work by Republicans in using such arbitrary identifiers. For all intents and purposes, any Republican could consider this post "reasonable suspicion" and have me arrested as an enemy combatant.

I shouldn't even have to be writing this. The fact that these measures - including the Democratic ones - are in direct opposition to everything upon which this country was founded should be a conclusion that every American worth their weight comes to after a few seconds' quiet contemplation.

Don't strain yourself. Eavesdropping without a warrant = bad. Remember civics class.

But what really got me in this article was part of Bush's rationale for vetoing any attempts to whittle away (no matter how insignificant and easily maneuvered-around any attempted whittling may be) at his unfettered, authoritarian powers was that it didn't grant immunity to telecommunications companies who helped him with his illegal spying.

Bush's veto threat came in part because the bill lacks retroactive immunity from lawsuits for telecommunications companies. They have been accused in about 40 civil suits of violating wiretapping and intelligence laws by secretly providing the government access to Americans' e-mails and phone records without court orders.

House Democrats have pledged that no immunity will be granted until the White House tells Congress exactly what the telecommunications companies did that requires legal protection.

The administration contends that without immunity the companies could be bankrupted by legal penalties.

God. I hope so!

UPDATE: In true "Please-Sodomize-Me-Bush!" fashion, Democrats cave and grant immunity to telecom companies. My proposal: go for sloppy seconds.

And to quote the great Jello Biafra, from his song "I Am the Owl":

You know Watergate hurt
But nothing really ever changed
A teeny bit quieter
But we still play our little games

Conservatives have new torture policy precise*

2007-10-17T11:12:00.000-07:00

Daily 49er:

This has been a troubling weekend for me, my friends. A recent Washington Post article has left me grief-stricken for many a day now, my youthful, conservative vigor-drained.

I cannot help but feel that I, as with all conservatives, can in some small way sympathize with Julius Caesar. The proverbial blade has sunk quite deep, leaving me perplexed and weary.

In a stunning display, the veterans of Fort Hunt, Va., felt it necessary to break their 60-year silence and described their experiences interrogating Nazi prisoners during World War II. These men, members of the greatest generation America has even known, sat face-to-face with some of the most despicable human beings in history.

Surely, if there is any group of people who can bring some good common sense discussion to the issue of interrogation techniques, these are the people to do it.

I read with great anticipation, waiting for the moment when they would declare their support of the president's enhanced interrogation techniques, stating that it was necessary because of the people we were up against and because of what was at stake.

But what did I read of, games of chess with Rudolf Hess? Henry Kolm, in no uncertain terms, claimed that they could "get more information with a game of chess or pingpong than they do today, with their torture." Even more exasperating was the comments of George Frenkel, who said, "During my interrogations, I never laid hands on anyone. We extracted information in a battle of wits. I'm proud to say I never compromised my humanity."

What, I wondered, compelled these honest men to betray their country?

Certainly, it cannot be liberalism. No, it must be simply a matter of misinformation.

It is a common refrain in today's liberal media that we conservatives compare terrorists to Nazis, or men such as Saddam Hussein and/or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Adolf Hitler.

Nonsense. They are apples and oranges, as the Nazis were uninterested in the wanton slaughter of civilians and the bombing of targets within the United States.

More lies and slander from the left-wing lunatics over at MoveOn.org. And you can bet your second home that these left-wing loons will pick up these anti-American war veterans to bolster their agenda, while tossing General Petraeus under the bus when his statements don't fit their preconceived notions.

Gladly - and I can feel my spirits lifting even as I type this - we conservatives do not reduce ourselves to such blatantly hypocritical actions.

Government-sponsored torture is sacred gift - from God*

2007-10-11T15:34:00.000-07:00

From the Daily 49er:

There has been commotion about a recently released classified decision by the Department of Justice in which they explicitly condone more aggressive methods of interrogation. Why, for God's sake? This simply baffles me, and even as I pen this editorial I feel myself overcome with indescribable amounts of disgust and rage toward my liberal counterparts.

Will the Islamofascist consider the moral ramifications of his actions as he detonates another bomb within a shopping center, perhaps on U.S. soil?

Though some have said - and I feel it necessary to preemptively strike at this - that we must exercise more "Christian" discretion. "Turn the other cheek," the atheist says to me, with what is no doubt a well-subdued sense of smug satisfaction at having seemingly turned my religion against me.

Thank the good Lord, I often reply, that this is not a Christian nation based on Christian principles. If recent history has taught us anything, it is that the conservative movement, especially its religious population, values the separation of church and state. It is dishonest for anyone to suggest otherwise.

But as a God-fearing evangelical, I feel that we have not considered the issue of torture seriously. Abortion and the homosexual agenda are important issues, but our leadership has avoided any comment on the use of torture not only as a means of interrogation, but also as a means of conversion.

It is our responsibility as the moral compass of this nation to shepherd our flock into the arms of God. Have we forgotten the Sermon on the Mount? Every lost convert in this life is our failure as Christians. We must take our responsibilities as Christ's messengers of love and peace seriously.

We all agree that there are many instances where torture is not only acceptable, but necessary. It is often regarded as the "ticking time-bomb" scenario.

But what of the spiritual ticking time bomb? What of the atheist who does not even see that his soul will be damned to Hell if he does not accept the Lord as his personal savior?

Would we be good stewards of this Earth if we did not employ every means at our disposal - including torture - in order to save him?

I think the answer is obvious.

As good Protestants, and good, God-fearing men of America, it is our spiritual obligation to employ any conversion methods necessary in order to ensure the proper salvation of every soul in these United States, for what is a short period of relative pain and anguish on Earth when weighed against an eternity of pain and suffering in Hell?

They should thank us for looking after their spiritual well-being with that kind of zeal, and were I not already a Christian, and therefore exempt from such innovative techniques, I would feel honored to be awarded an opportunity to suffer, in some small way, as Christ suffered for me.

Tasering unruly, belligerent students a shockingly good idea*

2007-10-07T22:19:00.000-07:00

For those of you who have wondered at my recent absence (that's, what, four of you now?), I've started writing op-ed pieces for one of the university newspapers, the Daily 49er, going undercover posing as a conservative :P Any titles that bear an asterisk at the end are ones which have been printed. I'm going to start concentrating more on these now, with an occasional blog post here and there. All my articles will be posted in their entirety.

From the Daily 49er:

The recent Taser incident at the University of Florida has created a large amount of controversy - too much controversy in the opinion of this conservative.

Certainly, the outcome of the event was not without design. It can be clearly seen that Andrew Meyer's purpose with his outrageous display was to create a distraction from the more pertinent issues of the day.

Such actions should not be tolerated by the general public.

We must all recognize one profound truth about politics - liberals are provocateurs of the most heinous kind, disregarding all concepts of decency so long as it means that their message is carried across public airwaves.

A civil discourse, such as the one being conducted with Sen. John Kerry at UF, requires only a few minor things - tact, courteousness and the understanding that controversial questions must be avoided at all costs.

Surely this liberal student violated all three of these in his rash discussion of such trivial issues as voter disenfranchisement in national elections and, Lord help us, Skull and Bones. How can we expect our government officials to conduct themselves in a proper manner when people are constantly probing into their personal lives?

People who are concerned about these sort of things should not be taken seriously, and therefore not given the opportunity to have their questions asked, let alone addressed publicity. Tasering was the least law enforcement could do.

What was Meyer implying, in any case? That Kerry, a senator for more than 20 years and a Vietnam War vetran, is somehow dishonest or hypocritical? What nonsense and what disrespect. I simply cannot recall such an instance where people were reduced to attacking a senator's sincerity in public.

What would have been alleged next, had his psychotic, atheistic diatribe been allowed to continue? That Sen. Kerry's military service was questionable? That his awards were perhaps ill-gotten? Preposterous! Outrageous, even!

We conservatives would never allow this kind of rhetoric from within our ranks, unlike our counterparts. Of that you can be sure.

Such baseless insinuations, as those demonstrated by Meyers, have no place in our political discourse. It is the opinion of this writer that those who engage in such useless diatribes should not only be Tasered, but promptly imprisioned so as to save us all from this distaste of dealing with them any longer.

Society, and indeed the whole world, would be better off for it.

Police Brutality

2007-09-19T08:59:00.000-07:00

(Updates: 20 Sep 07)

For you and me.

U.S. Sen. John Kerry's speech at the University of Florida came to a dramatic close Monday, shortly after a vocal audience member was hauled off by police and shot with a Taser gun.

The audience member was preliminarily identified by UF officials as Andrew Meyer, a UF student in the College of Journalism and Communications.
Toward the conclusion of Kerry's UF forum, Meyer approached an open microphone at the University Auditorium and demanded Kerry answer his questions. The student claimed that University Police Department officers had already threatened to arrest him, and then proceeded to question Kerry about why he didn't contest the 2004 presidential election and why there had been no moves to impeach President Bush.

A minute or so into what became a combative diatribe, Meyer's microphone was turned off and officers began trying to physically remove him from the auditorium. Meyer flailed his arms, yelling as police tried to restrain him.

He was then pushed to the ground by six officers, at which point Meyer yelled, "What have I done? What I have I done? Get away from me. Get off of me! What did I do? ... Help me! Help."

You can watch the video for yourself and come to your own conclusions, but to me, this is bullshit of the highest order. Had they simply allowed Sen. Kerry to answer his questions right then and there like the Senator wanted to, none of this would have been necessary. But, if we all recall, university police just can't wait for a chance to taser a college student whenever possible.

An incident late Tuesday night in which a UCLA student was stunned at least four times with a Taser has left the UCLA community questioning whether the university police officers’ use of force was an appropriate response to the situation.

Mostafa Tabatabainejad, a UCLA student, was repeatedly stunned with a Taser and then taken into custody when he did not exit the CLICC Lab in Powell Library in a timely manner. Community Service Officers had asked Tabatabainejad to leave after he failed to produce his BruinCard during a random check at around 11:30 p.m. Tuesday.
[...]

Tabatabainejad was also stunned with the Taser when he was already handcuffed, said Carlos Zaragoza, a third-year English and history student who witnessed the incident.

“(He was) no possible danger to any of the police,” Zaragoza said. “(He was) getting shocked and Tasered as he was handcuffed.”
As Tabatabainejad was being dragged through the room by two officers, he repeated in a strained scream, “I’m not fighting you” and “I said I would leave.”

That video can also be viewed here. All of this, coupled with the May Day police riots we already had this year, just has to make you wonder who the hell we're giving badges to these days. I'm really at a loss for words now. All I can say is know your rights.

“Citizens may resist unlawful arrest to the point of taking an arresting officer's life if necessary.” Plummer v. State, 136 Ind. 306.

“An illegal arrest is an assault and battery. The person so attempted to be restrained of his liberty has the same right to use force in defending himself as he would in repelling any other assault and battery.” (State v. Robinson, 145 ME. 77, 72 ATL. 260).

“When a person, being without fault, is in a place where he has a right to be, is violently assaulted, he may, without retreating, repel by force, and if, in the reasonable exercise of his right of self defense, his assailant is killed, he is justified.” Runyan v. State, 57 Ind. 80;
Miller v. State, 74 Ind. 1.

“These principles apply as well to an officer attempting to make an arrest, who abuses his authority and transcends the bounds thereof by the use of unnecessary force and violence, as they do to a private individual who unlawfully uses such force and violence.” Jones v. State, 26 Tex. App. I; Beaverts v. State, 4 Tex. App. 1 75; Skidmore v. State, 43 Tex. 93, 903.

Cue up your copy of Police Truck by Dead Kennedys and enjoy a little justified anger.

UPDATE: Woman in a wheelchair dies after being tased ten times in a period of 2 minutes by police. There used to be something called "assessing the threat", but I guess they just don't teach that at the academy anymore, or at least don't bother emphasizing its importance.

UPDATE II: Senator John Kerry condemns the arrest. "In 37 years of public appearances, through wars, protests and highly emotional events, I have never had a dialogue end this way," he said. "I believe I could have handled the situation without interruption, but I do not know what warnings or other exchanges transpired between the young man and the police prior to his barging to the front of the line and their intervention. I asked the police to allow me to answer the question and was in the process of responding when he was taken into custody."

Michael Mukasey

2007-09-17T13:12:00.000-07:00

In light of all the activity that's sure to follow over the next few days because of Michael Mukasey's nomination to the position of Attorney General, I feel obligated to let people in on a little secret. This guy is friends with people.

Now, maybe I'm just being paranoid, or maybe this is the sort of phenomena that happens all the time, but I can't help but feel that this will somehow end badly. Maybe it's the fact that he's on the advisory committee of an unapologetic fascist, I don't know. But I can say that I'm highly suspicious of this nomination.

That's not to say that the guy doesn't have any strong points. When he was working on the Padilla case he repeatedly went against the wishes of the DOJ and the White House (aren't they one and the same at this point?). Maybe I'm hoping for too much from a Bush nominee, but a part of me has this nagging suspicion that this will bite us in the ass some day soon.

The Iraq Hostage Crisis

2007-09-14T10:09:00.000-07:00

Last night, in keen coordination with the words of White House megaphone General Petraeus, President Bush made a prime-time television address to the nation, hoping to benefit from the testimony which he, along with many of the staunchest chickenhawks in his party, has frequently urged his constituents to wait for before passing judgment on his surge policy. And now, with the word finally in, Bush has shown that not only is he willing to listen to his generals over the people he governs (that is, of course, when they tell him what he wants to hear), but he is also willing to move the goal posts as often as required in order to keep American soldiers inside of Iraq so long as he has the power to do so.

As the LA Times reported this morning, the oft-cited goal of "victory" in Iraq has changed to the more ambiguous and non-benchmark-assessable measurement of "success." "The principle guiding my decision on troop levels in Iraq is 'return on success,'" he said. "The more successful we are, the more American troops can return home." Then, in a veiled attempt to appear reasonable, announced that he would endorse Petraeus' plan for "a total force reduction of 5,700 troops by Christmas," along with 5 combat brigades by next spring. A total, the Press Telegram reports, "That would effectively roll back the troop 'surge' Bush ordered in January." That leaves 130,000 troops in theater, an area where Bush has made perfectly clear that they will remain so long as he has the capability to ensure it.

At this point, I make no qualms about stating what I believe to be the now obvious truth: the Iraq war is not a war so much as it is a hostage crisis. President Bush, despite the overall dissatisfaction that the vast majority of the American people express over his war and their repeated demands to have their sons and daughters returned to them - that sentiment expressed most clearly and forcefully in November of 2006 - adamantly refuses to budge. All of his actions for the last few years have been nothing more than an attempt to buy himself more and more time at the cost of soldiers' lives.

Even now, as he plans to release some of his hostages as a show of good faith, Bush makes a repeated claim to the negotiators outside the oval office: "Give me more." More patience. More persistence. More time. "Give me more, and maybe I will let you see your son again. Give me more of your blind obedience, like you have me as the war was starting, and maybe I'll let your daughter go free." Can any plea from the White House for more time, more money, or more manpower be seen as anything more than the desperation?

Truly, this last address was the rantings of a man on the edge. Holed up with his hostages, Bush sees the flashing lights and hears the sirens outside his window, the rescue teams closing in on the front door. He has promised to free some of his captives, but the negotiator on the other end of the line says that isn't enough. They want them all. They're threatening to kick the door down and take them back with whatever means are necessary. Bush tells them that the consequences of such a move would be disastrous, "grievous and far reaching." The line goes silent, only the paced breaths of the hostage-taker coming in steady tones over the wire. The teams are waiting for their signal to move in.

"Bring it on," he tells the police, and soon the line goes dead.

What About the Boss?

2007-09-12T20:40:00.000-07:00

We all know Gen. Petraeus by now, but how many people know about his boss? Yes, he has a boss. Didn't even know that? I don't blame you. Admiral William Fallon, Chief of CENTCOM which oversees Iraq, apparently isn't as big of a fan of Petraeus as the entire Republican party is. In fact, the admiral had some choice words to describe his subordinate at one of their first meetings in Iraq.

Fallon told Petraeus that he considered him to be "an ass-kissing little chickenshit" and added, "I hate people like that", the sources say. That remark reportedly came after Petraeus began the meeting by making remarks that Fallon interpreted as trying to ingratiate himself with a superior.

That extraordinarily contentious start of Fallon's mission to Baghdad led to more meetings marked by acute tension between the two commanders. Fallon went on develop his own alternative to Petraeus's recommendation for continued high levels of U.S. troops in Iraq during the summer.

The enmity between the two commanders became public knowledge when the Washington Post reported Sep. 9 on intense conflict within the administration over Iraq. The story quoted a senior official as saying that referring to "bad relations" between them is "the understatement of the century".

Don't count on the White House asking him for an assessment any time soon, folks.

Sub-Prime Folly

2007-09-10T11:40:00.000-07:00

This article was emailed to me this morning. Colson makes some interesting points about the whole sub-prime market's collapse, but in my email response I had to express my disagreement with this statement:

Once again we see worldviews really do matter. The worldview that says live for the moment, get whatever you can, always leads to disaster. The Christian worldview, on the other hand, teaches behaving responsibly, living within your means, and deferring gratification—all of which are requirements for sustaining personal prosperity and the free-market system.

How anyone manages to pull Christan worldview into a discussion on economics is tough to grasp. It can be done, but I Colson doesn't offer much of a tie-in other than what is essentially a "Christians good, atheists bad" quip with no backing whatsoever. Maybe he didn't have room, or maybe he felt that further elaboration wasn't necessary given the prospective audience (I can't imagine that there are many dissenting readers of Breakpoint, a self-described "worldview ministry" which seeks "the transformation of believers as they apply biblical thinking to all of life." That may in fact be the case.

But I have to express my dissent here. Not because I believe that the Christian faith requires the traits of responsibility and thrift, but I think Colson is aiming his sights at the wrong target.

I think the reason that this whole problem exists is not mainly because people "desire to live for the moment" and "get whatever they can." While that may be part of the problem, it is not the core mindset driving people to spend beyond their means. I think what we've seen is that our system and our culture fosters the idea of the "American Dream" as being obscenely wealthy, and constnantly working towards achieving more and more for ourselves. Keeping up with the Jones's, as the old saying goes.

So for the same reason people will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on designer clothes to maintain the mere appearance of wealth - all while their debt goes through the roof - is why home-owners are seeking to purchase property beyond their ability to maintain. It makes them feel successful.

Part of it is also because, only a few years back, the housing market was booming, and people fueled that bubble by purchasing low-interest junk loans because they could easily sell that house to someone else with a huge markup before the higher interest rate kicked in. And when there was nobody left to sell to, people got stuck with shitty mortgages that they knew they couldn't afford, but signed up for anyway. High risk means high reward, but it also means a high rate of failure. Most see the positive without considering the negative.

Some people are incapable of living on their current wages. sStill others are capable, yet they feel this insatiable desire to constantly strive for acquiring more and more wealth simply because that is the road upon which this capitalist system lies. Why does a billionaire still work towards making billions more in acquisitions and international trade? Because he can, and because that is the only thing he knows how to do well.

Capitalism is a system which thrives off of greed. Like it or not, that is the one fundamental truth about it. It's gilded nicely with phrases like "free market", but at the core it's who can get the most for themselves regardless of the outcome. And for every Rockefeller multi-billionaire, there are thousands who are round into the dust. Such is our system, and I cannot honestly see the Christian principles in that.

Our Media

2007-09-07T10:38:00.000-07:00

Anyone who doesn't frequent Glenn Greenwald's blog at Salon is doing themselves a great disservice. Especially if they have not read this morning's post, which demonstrates (at least to me) the true modus operandi of our mainstream media outlets. First, a BBC interview from a few months back with former UN Ambassador John Bolton. Watch this video and be filled with bewilderment and disbelief as you wonder exactly why our own media doesn't perform such probing and confrontational interviews with our political leaders:

That this kind of journalism surprises us American viewers is quite telling of the nature of our current media landscape in the United States. The Beltway, instead of taking a more adversarial stance towards those in power (doing investigative work, as is their actual purpose), fawn over Our Glorious and Brilliant Leaders like some sophomore sorority girl. Greenwald points with great clarity to the unlikely pages of the NYT and Washington Post to make this point all too clear:

It's as though we are now ruled by the Supreme Commander, General David G. Petraeus. And the task is to convince him to "accept," to "agree" to, to be "willing to consider" a symbolic reduction in the number of troops at some point in the far off future provided a whole series of subjective conditions are met (to be determined at his sole discretion). And if our Leader, Gen. Petraeus, agrees to allow this, we can be grateful for his magnanimity and flexibility and thankful to our Congress for having stood so tall in such a bipartisan way.

At some point in our history, the idea that our political leaders were somehow subservient to the mandate of the population flipped over onto its head. Now, it would seem, we should be grateful if our leaders even bother to listen to us at all, much less agree to our humble, non-binding requests.

The GAO and White House Propaganda

2007-09-05T11:40:00.000-07:00

An article today in the LA Times about the bleak GOA assessment of Iraq spells out quite plainly just how ass-backwards the word coming from the White House has become. On July 12 the White House issued a "report card" on progress in Iraq, citing supposed progress in eight of eighteen congressional benchmarks. Recently, however, the GOA painted a much different picture:

The GAO report found that of 18 designated benchmarks set out for Iraqi leaders last year, the country has met three, partially met four and failed to meet 11. The agency's findings that benchmarks had not been met were widely reported last week.

This unnerves me for a number of obvious reasons. First, President Bush has stressed that security is required before the political system of Iraq can be expected to function properly. "Our strategy is built on a premise that progress on security will pave the way for political progress," he said in a White House press conference, "so it's not surprising that political progress is lagging behind the security gains we are seeing." Yet GAO chief David M. Walker disputed that claim when presenting his report. When asked by Senator Russel Feingold (D-Wis.) "Is there any reason to think that any of the gains that have been made during the recent surge will actually hold in the long run," he replied, "I think there is serious question as to whether or not they on their own will be able to hold these neighborhoods for an extended period of time." When we note that the GOA found no progress in eliminating militia control of security or preventing political meddling in Iraqi security operations, it's not hard to see why Mr. Walker feels that way.

What the Bush administration and the surge supporters fail to realize is that it is not the civil unrest which is causing the political system to collapse. It is the ineffectual political leaders being propped up by the US government which is causing Iraqis to take matters into their own hands on the local level. Insurgencies and local militias do not spring up on street corners when people are satisfied with their political system and the people who control it.

But this isn't the lesson that the White House will abide by any time soon. Indeed, they stand to gain even more from a poor security situation, which gives them that much more of a reason to argue for a longer stay in Iraq. The Bush administration has ensnared the Congress and a portion of the American people into a Catch-22 of foreign policy. If the situation gets better, than we need to stay longer to ensure that those gains are maintained, because the Iraqi military is incapable of doing anything on their own. If the situation gets worse, than we need to stay longer because that would be the path of the coward, the America-hater, and thus, logically, the terrorist-supporter. Whatever that means.

And yet the White House demands that everyone wait until General Petraeus rides in on a white horse to give us his unfiltered advice about how to proceed. Never mind the fact that the White House themselves are going to be writing his report for him. An LA Times article on August 15, 2007, noted that "Despite Bush's repeated statements that the report will reflect evaluations by Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, administration officials said it would actually be written by the White House, with inputs from officials throughout the government."

So what can we expect from this upcoming report? The same thing that we received in July: exaggerated gains, marginalized losses, and an emphasis on blind national unity over reasoned policy debate.

Disney/ABC Bury Kucinich in Democratic Debate

2007-08-29T17:14:00.000-07:00

From MediaBloodhound:

Following last Sunday's Democratic presidential debate on ABC News' This Week with George Stephanopoulos, Dennis Kucinich's campaign asked ABC News to address issues it had with treatment Rep. Kucinich (D-Ohio) received both during the debate and afterward in ABC's online coverage. In an email sent out to supporters on Wednesday, the campaign said it "submitted objections and inquiries to ABC News representatives on Monday and Tuesday. ABC News representatives have failed to respond - or even acknowledge - those objections and inquiries." I confirmed with the Kucinich campaign yesterday that it has subsequently been forwarded the same response ABC News Executive Director Andrea Jones sent to The Washington Post and Time magazine.

[...]

* Congressman Kucinich was apparently deliberately cropped out of a "Politics Page" photo of the candidates.

* Sometime Monday afternoon, after Congressman Kucinich took a commanding lead in ABC's own on-line "Who won the Democratic debate" survey, the survey was dropped from prominence on the website.

* ABC News has not officially reported the results of its online survey.

* After the results of that survey showed Congressman Kucinich winning handily, ABC News, sometime Monday afternoon, replaced the original survey with a second survey asking "Who is winning the Democratic debate?"

* During the early voting Monday afternoon and evening, U.S. Senator Barack Obama was in the lead. By sometime late Monday or early Tuesday morning, Congressman Kucinich regained the lead by a wide margin in this second survey.

* Sometime Tuesday morning, ABC News apparently dropped the second survey from prominence or killed it entirely.

* AND, as every viewer of the nationally televised Sunday Presidential forum is aware, Congressman Kucinich was not given an opportunity to answer a question from moderator George Stephanopoulos until 28 minutes into the program.

There's also a video vai The Largest Minority below with some very insightful commentary.

US Officer Found Guilty in Abu Ghraib Case

2007-08-28T20:25:00.000-07:00

Lt. Colonel Steven Jordan is the only US officer being tried for the prisoner abuses at Abo Ghraib. Ultimately, he was acquitted of three of the four charges brought against him, guilty of disobeying a lawful order "not to discuss the scandal with other people."

On the surface, it's easy to say that this is a joke sentence. Memories of the reprimands rewarded officers in charge of such instances as My Lai come to mind, with only one of the 26 officers charged serving a mere four and a half months in prison for the massacre. But what is important to remember about the chain of command is that it is indeed possible for things to happen under a field grade officer's command without his knowledge, no matter how well he does his job. It is also important to note that eleven enlisted soldiers involved in the scandal have been convicted, serving anywhere from a few months to ten years in prison.

Lenient? Hell yes. But what I've found interesting from what I've read is that the arguments made by the prosecution against the Lt. Col. weren't so much about his involvement - he was not physically present nor involved in the actual abuse - but about the environment created in which such abuses can take place.

The prosecution had sought to argue that Jordan, who was in charge of the interrogation unit, had fostered the atmosphere allowing such abuses to happen.
"This case is not about what Lieutenant Colonel Jordan did in Abu Ghraib. It's about what he divorced himself from doing," said prosecutor Colonel John Tracy during the hearing.

Certainly this is something that falls under the responsibility of an officer, but compare that statement to one made by Larry Wilkerson in 2006. (Wilkerson was the Chief of Staff to Colin Powell, when Powell was Secretary of State)

"Documents and memos that have already made their way into the public domain make it clear that the Office of the Vice President bears responsibility for creating an environment conducive to the acts of torture and murder committed by U.S. forces in the war on terror.

Seymour M. Hersh, in a stunning article in The New Yorker, paints the picture of a bewildered Rumsfeld who seems to be completely out of the loop - "just a Secretary of Defense," in his own words - with regards to the abuses. But according to General Taguba, the Army general in charge of the initial investigation of Abu Ghraib, at best Mr. Rumsfeld was "in denial."

Taguba had submitted more than a dozen copies of his report through several channels at the Pentagon and to the Central Command headquarters, in Tampa, Florida, which ran the war in Iraq. By the time he walked into Rumsfeld’s conference room, he had spent weeks briefing senior military leaders on the report, but he received no indication that any of them, with the exception of General Schoomaker, had actually read it. (Schoomaker later sent Taguba a note praising his honesty and leadership.) When Taguba urged one lieutenant general to look at the photographs, he rebuffed him, saying, “I don’t want to get involved by looking, because what do you do with that information, once you know what they show?”

Stunning, but not surprising. Hersh went on CNN to talk with Wolf Blitzer in June and noted that the White House, despite knowing about the abuses before they were made public, did "Nada." So why the complacency? Hersh had his suspicions:

Despite the subsequent public furor over Abu Ghraib, neither the House nor the Senate Armed Services Committee hearings led to a serious effort to determine whether the scandal was a result of a high-level interrogation policy that encouraged abuse . . . An aggressive congressional inquiry into Abu Ghraib could have provoked unwanted questions about what the Pentagon was doing, in Iraq and elsewhere, and under what authority.

We have only seen more and more instances of this administration creating their own bodies of law to abide by. The redefinition of torture, rendition, and the outright stonewalling of investigations leads many, including myself, to the conclusion that this administration is aware that what they are doing is not only illegal, but that the American people will not be able to stomach it, much less approve of it via the voting booth. There is certainly no doubt in the mind of Larry Wilkerson as to who is ultimately responsible for the abuses at Abu Ghraib:

"There is, in my view, insufficient evidence to walk into an American courtroom and win a legal case (though an international courtroom for war crimes might feel differently). But there is enough evidence for a soldier of long service -- someone like me with 31 years in the Army -- to know that what started with John Yoo, David Addington, Alberto Gonzales, William Haynes at the Pentagon, and several others, all under the watchful and willing eye of the Vice President, went down through the Secretary of Defense to the commanders in the field, and created two separate pressures that resulted in the violation of longstanding practice and law."

Schwarzenegger Terminates Health Funds, Keeps Yacht -Owner Tax Breaks In Budget

2007-08-26T09:49:00.000-07:00

Compassionate conservatism rears its ugly head once more.

Making good on a promise to trim the state budget, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger eliminated a $55-million program Friday that advocates say has helped thousands of mentally ill homeless people break the costly cycle of hospitalization, jails and street life.

[...]

He noted that despite the allegedly strapped conditions of the state, legislators managed to preserve a tax break for some purchasers of yachts, planes and recreational vehicles -- a measure that could cost the state as much as $45 million.

"A $45-million tax break for yacht owners stays in the budget," Steinberg said. "And a nationally recognized, incredibly effective program to end homelessness for those living with mental illness gets thrown under the bus."

Good thing stuff like this isn't happening in the federal level! Oh, wait...shit.

California Considers Hemp Pilot Program

2007-08-24T21:36:00.000-07:00

Some legislation that I can finally get behind.

A newly proposed law in California would establish a five-year pilot program for farmers to grow industrial hemp in four counties. The law would also define “industrial hemp” as separate from marijuana under the state’s health and safety code.
Hemp is a sustainable and environmentally friendly crop which contains less than 1 percent of THC. It is used in skin products, as fertilizer, medicine, building material, fabric, paper, fuel, and can be converted into fully biodegradable plastics. The United States is the only industrialized nation where hemp is not an established crop, much to the delight of oil, coal, and chemical industries which benefit from the ban.

Cultivation of hemp is currently illegal under US federal law thanks to the lobbying of the aforementioned groups. The California Narcotic Officers’ Association has testified that the passage of such a bill would only make law enforcement more difficult because farmers might hide illegal marijuana in their legal hemp fields. I could be wrong, but it seems like this association is either admitting that they’re too incompetent to do their jobs correctly, or they’re making the case for the legalization of marijuana so that they’re not forced to make the distinction. Either way, I say let the layoffs begin.

Rieckhoff and the NYT

2007-08-21T20:14:00.000-07:00

Paul Rieckhoff has some choice words for the Beltway experts and their treatment (see: avoidance) of a recently-published NYT op-ed written by seven active duty members of to 82nd Airborne. While long-time war/surge supporters O'Hanlon and Pollack of the Brookings Institute are touted as Serious Experts on wartime matters, actual reports from soldiers experiencing the situation first hand are regarded as either uninteresting or even untrustworthy.

Bottom line: No scholarly articles can replace real boots-on-the-ground knowledge. Participating in a heavily secured, carefully orchestrated sight-seeing visit to Iraq does not make you a military expert any more than a trip to Yankee stadium qualifies one to be a baseball broadcaster for ESPN. That should be obvious by now.

But the media continually treats troops as wallpaper footage to run in the background while the latest talking-head pseudo-expert pontificates. And the White House hasn’t learned the lesson, either, judging by the so-called “Petraeus report” coming out in September. The White House announced last week that this report won’t actually be written by Gen. Petraeus. Once again experienced military leaders will be overruled by air-conditioned bureaucrats and Beltway experts.

One need only watch this video to see just what he's talking about.

Don't Try This at Home

2007-08-20T13:56:00.000-07:00

You will be promptly arrested.

Today in a press briefing, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) revealed that the White House had missed its 2:30 PM deadline to turn over documents to the Senate Judiciary Committee regarding legal justifications for the National Security Agency’s eavesdropping program. The Committee had already pushed back the original July 18 deadline twice after the White House requested more time.
Leahy said that the administration’s stonewalling amounted to “contempt of the valid order of the Congress,” and pointed out that these subpoenas were passed by broad bipartisan votes.

If you or I were to try that, we'd need new door hinges. Those police battering rams aren't very forgiving.

Sometimes I feel a pang of guilt for constantly chiding Democrats over there incessant boot-licking, but there are times where they simply aren't capable of doing anything productive because someone isn't playing ball. The President has made himself quite clear on the issue of accountability, openness, and respect for the checks-and-balances system which has sustained our nation's integrity (albeit weakly) for the last two centuries. He'll have absolutely none of it.

"We will not go along with a partisan fishing expedition aimed at honorable public servants," Bush said in a statement from the White House. "I proposed a reasonable way to avoid an impasse."

He added: "There's no indication ... that anybody did anything improper."

I guess we'll just have to take his word for it, which is, you know, rather despotic on his part. And you know it's getting nasty when even FOX News isn't safe from the frothing jowls of Karl Rove.

Fox News host Chris Wallace encountered unswerving resistance from Karl Rove when he attempted to ask him on Fox News Sunday about his refusal to respond to the subpoena issued by the Senate Judiciary Committee as part of its investigation into the fired US Attorneys.

"Why not appear under oath or at least allow a transcript?" asked Wallace.

"Because of the Constitution of the United States," replied Rove, citing the separation of powers and suggesting there would be a public outcry if either Congressional aides or Supreme Court clerks were called to testify by one of the other branches.

Never mind the fact that those events are impossible. But the madness escalates:

"The Constitution does not prevent you from speaking to me, so in fact I'll ask you some questions," responded Wallace. "Why did you push to fire some US Attorneys in the president's second term?"

"Nice try," Rove came back. "The president has prerogatives that stand up not only to Congress but also to you. ... What I advised the president is protected by that prerogative. Nice try, Chris." Rove then spelled out the doctrine of executive privilege, saying, "You don't understand you're being an agent of Congress when you ask me that question, but you are."

"So you say that the Constitution protects -- in fact, prevents you from talking to the press, talking to the public?" said Wallace, adding "I think I'm an agent of the public, not of the Congress."

"In this instance, you're an agent of Senator Leahy and Congressman Waxman," Rove concluded.

Perhaps to Republicans this is the most damning of insults, but in any case it's obvious by Rove's remarks that this administration has absolutely no respect for the system over which it presides. Contempt for it, even. Gosh, if only there was some vote Congress could take when they find someone to be in contempt of them...

One interesting thing I have heard, however, is that the Sergeant-in-Arms of the Congress can arrest and detain the individual who is in contempt of Congress in the Capitol Jail. You read that right. And no amount of whining about executive privilege will get you out of it, even if you're the President. It's a rarely-used "self-defense mechanism" for the House that has been upheld in a number of Supreme Court rulings:

See Jurney v. MacCracken, 294 U.S. 125 (1935); Anderson v. Dunn, 19 U.S. (6 Wheat.) 204 (1821); see also Groppi v. Leslie, 404 U.S. 496, 499 (1972). As Justice Scalia explained in Young v. U.S. ex rel. Vuitton et Fils, S.A., 481 U.S. at 820, this legislative prosecution authority is a constitutional anomaly of sorts -- a "limited power of self-defense" for Congress, permissible because "any other course 'leads to the total annihilation of the power of the House of Representatives to guard itself from contempts, and leaves it exposed to every indignity and interruption that rudeness, caprice, or even conspiracy, may meditate against it'" (quoting Anderson).

The word "conspiracy" stood out to me. I don't know why. Maybe because we can see that votes on Constitutional issues which shouldn't even warrant discussion are constantly split along partisan lines, the Republican members of the House and Senate aligning themselves with President Bush over all else. Even Bush's political director Sara Taylor all but admitted it under oath:

"I took an oath the president, and I take that oath very seriously," Sara Taylor said in answer to a question early in the hearing.

"I know that the president refers to the government being his government -- it's not," Leahy reminded her.

And that's just it. I mean, call me crazy or anything you want, but I can't look at this chain of events and dismiss the idea that Bush sees himself as some kind of king. That the entire administration sees themselves as above the law, above the Constitution, and especially above oversight. We've spent years fighting tooth and nail to get the administration to fess up to its own programs, and they've done nothing but stonewall, dodge, or blatantly ignore any attempts to take this government's dealings out from behind closed doors.

There's a term for governments that don't give a shit about their own constituents. They're called tyrannies, and if I recall my United States history correctly, we fought a war to get out from under one. Or maybe we've just been fooling ourselves, and we simply traded one tyrant for another.

King...President...same shit, different asshole these days, I suppose.

Oh Yea, and The Draft

2007-08-19T14:52:00.000-07:00

From the LA Times via the Associated Press:

Sapped by nearly six years of war, the Army has nearly exhausted its fighting force and its options if the Bush administration decides to extend the Iraq buildup beyond next spring.

That presents the Pentagon with several painful choices if the U.S. wants to maintain higher troop levels beyond the spring of 2008:

* Using National Guard units on an accelerated schedule.

* Breaking the military's pledge to keep soldiers in Iraq for no longer than 15 months.

* Breaching a commitment to give soldiers a full year at home before sending them back to war.

For a war-fatigued nation and a Congress bent on bringing troops home, none of those is desirable.

A dismal list, to be sure. But is it missing anything? Are there any options that the military is considering which were conveniently absent from this list? Perhaps the nation's war czar, Army Lieutenant General David Lute, can tell us more:

"I think it makes sense to certainly consider [the draft]," Army Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute said in an interview with National Public Radio's "All Things Considered."
"And I can tell you, this has always been an option on the table. But ultimately, this is a policy matter between meeting the demands for the nation's security by one means or another."

Giuliani - "Freedom is about authority."

2007-08-17T10:46:00.000-07:00

An excellent NYT piece I picked up off of Digby's blog. He's got a lot more to say on the matter, but I just wanted to toss this little excerpt up. It's from a speech on crime that Giuliani gave back in 1994.

"We look upon authority too often and focus over and over again, for 30 or 40 or 50 years, as if there is something wrong with authority. We see only the oppressive side of authority. Maybe it comes out of our history and our background. What we don't see is that freedom is not a concept in which people can do anything they want, be anything they can be. Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do."

That's one of the GOP front-runners right there: a total, unapologetic fascist.

Fuck. That.

Today in the LA Times

2007-08-15T17:54:00.000-07:00

In lieu of making a longer, more concise post about one specific issue, I'm going to take a few of the stories from this morning's newspaper and comment on them individually. Usually I'm not presented with this many topics from one read of one day's paper, but I guess I happened on the motherload. In an ideal situation I'd have time to make a full post on each one of these items, but sadly I don't feel like I'm enough of an expert to really analyze the issues thoroughly enough. Instead, we can take each item like a puzzle piece and try to fit them all into a larger picture.

Secrecy and the DOJ

One of the front page articles in the California section today is about attorney Jon Eisenberg, who is working on the case involving the NSA's wiretapping program, and regards it as one of the most "unusual" cases he has ever worked on. Even the author, Henry Weinstein, refers to the events as "Kafkaesque", where Eisenberg and his co-counsel were required to write up a sealed response to a Justice Department brief that they were unable to read, inside of a sealed, windowless, 8' x 10' room "lined with wood and metal bookcases which had been completely emptied," along with a phone, desk, chairs, computer, and printer. Once they were finished with a final draft, all of their previous drafts were shredded, including the peel of a banana which was given to Eisenberg when he requested a meal.

I wish that was all that was striking about this situation. Sadly, the real meat and potatoes, if you will, is the fact that our judicial system relies on the transparency of both the prosecution and the defense with regards to allegations and evidence. Despite this, the Justice Department has the distinct advantage of claiming state secrets and thereby denying access to information by anyone who does not possess the proper clearance. And while there may be a legal precedent for this kind of behavior, it is easy to see how such a position could easily be manipulated to a more sinister end. Eisenberg feels that "the soul of America's government is transparency." He couldn't be more correct, and if I would suspect any organization of the government to understand that, it would be the Justice Department, who, when asked "if there was any way, under the government's interpretation of the law, that someone could contest the surveillance program," replied flatly, "In the current context, no."

Shouldn't this be obvious? Shouldn't this strike at the greater conscience of the American people? Or have we really decided to just lay down and buy into this idea of the parent state, where we must defer to their authority as our guardians and protectors no matter what the cost to our liberties. I believe we are much smarter than that, and I sincerely hope that people will wake up to this situation before it's too late.

U.S. To Apply Terrorist Label to Military (Note: The NY Times also reported on this)

No, not OUR military.

"The United States has decided to designate Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, the country's military, as a 'specially designated global terrorist,' US officials said, a move that allows Washington to target the group's business operations and finances.

"The Revolutionary Guard would be the first national military branch included on the terrorist list under Executive Order 13224, US officials said, a highly unusual move because it is part of a government.

"The order allows the US to block terrorists' assets and disrupt operations by foreign firms that "provide support, services or assistance to, or otherwise associate with terrorists."

That's the entirety of the article, conveniently nestled in the "World in Brief" section in the bottom corner of Page A10. The implications are concisely displayed here, but I can't help but see this as some kind of bizarre circular reasoning, where we put Iran on the terrorist list because, for lack of a more focused justification, we just plain don't like them, and then proceed to justify that hatred by saying, "Look! They're even designated as a terrorist organization!" Perhaps I'm wrong about that; we'll have to see how it plays out. But it's not as if that tactic hasn't been used before by this administration, where a reporter is either fed talking points or taken on the "dog and pony show" in Iraq, they dutifully publish their scripted findings, and then the White House turns around and cites that very article as proof that their Orwellian policies are reasonable. See: the most recent O'Hanlon and Pollack op-ed.

And how is this affecting our relations with Iran? Even the Iraqis want them to participate in restructuring, and recent CIA war games demonstrated that Iran has nothing to gain and a whole lot to lose from letting Iraq slip into chaos. If we're really serious about getting things stabilized in the region, getting the region involved is probably a good first step. Instead, all we hear from the Beltway media is how Iran is in our sights, and we're just waiting for another Gulf of Tonkin to let us finally squeeze the trigger.

Measure to control Disney zoning is nearer to ballot

I don't cover enough local news in my posts. That's a personal fault of mine, I'm afraid, because I don't pay as much attention to local issues as I should. If there's one place where small communities can push for real change, it's on the local level. That's where the tax money gets spent, after all.

The debacle is coming because of a move by SunCal Cos. to develop low-cost condos and apartments in the resort district of Anaheim, California. The reason Disney is pissed off is because they have plans for the adjacent area. Mainly, a third theme park. Because, you know, the second one has been such a huge success and everything. Naturally, a block of low-income homes right next to the massive Disney resort hotels and amusement parks doesn't look too pretty. It's tough to hold onto an image of being a community partner when your massive multi-million dollar hotels tower like colossi over the poor communities of your own impoverished workforce. So in true form, they're fighting tooth and nail to block that development.

The ballot initiative that the article focuses on is a good one, and halts any development in the area by Disney until the voters approve of it. That means Disney can't start raping strawberry farms until they can convince everyone that it's worth it to do so. So far, two Anaheim city council members, Bob Hernandez and Lorri Calloway, support the measure, and a third is needed to bring the it to the ballot. Lucille Kring is still on the fence, but hopefully she'll come around.

This could be a great opportunity for people to show that they're going to put human interests over corporate interests, but Disney has their own initiatives on the ballot already. One stops development of all housing in the district "unless voters approve of it." The catch: "The measure wouldn't require voter approval for Disney's commercial ventures." How nice of them.

The second moves to repeal the council decision that started the low-cost housing project in the first place. This one has had enough voter signatures to get it on the ballot for a while now, but the council has postponed it a few times to give the two parties ample time to iron out their differences. Disney has said that they will not reach an agreement. Again, how nice of them.

Kucinich States the Obvious - Democrats Are NOT Your Friends

2007-08-14T15:43:00.000-07:00

From Raw Story:

Stephanopoulos quoted Ford as saying, "'George W. Bush is handing us Democrats our Hoover moment'" and told Kucinich, "They believe that if the party follows your path, they're going to blow this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity."

"You have to keep in mind that the center has shifted in our politics," Kucinich responded, smiling. "I'm really at the center, and all the other candidates are to the right of me. And they're to the right of the American people."

"The Democratic Leadership Council's agenda is indistinguishable from the Republican Neoconservative agenda," he went on. "They want to continue to stay in Iraq. They reject the idea of a not-for-profit health care system. ... These analysts are ... trying to keep a politics that really helps support a privileged few at the expense of the many. So I'm the candidate of the people."

It doesn't really take a brain surgeon to figure out that the mainstream Democratic candidates are in the same boat as the mainstream Republicans. But as with both parties, there are a select few who put forth a truly conservative or liberal position. Kucinich is one of those people, and it's disheartening that latest polls show that only 35% of people who intend to vote for Democrats know his name. Disheartening, but not surprising, considering that the MSM does a stellar job of keeping people blissfully ignorant of critical issues. One only needs to see that 41% of Americans still believe that Iraq was a key player in the September 11th attacks to realize that.

But what frustrates me most about this whole situation isn't that conservatives have quietly been pulled further and further towards their extremes over the last six years, but that many of my would-be liberal brothers and sisters remain staunch supporters of mainstream Democratic candidates whose policies differ only marginally from their neocon counterparts. I examined health care policies in a previous post and found that despite the candidates' vocal support for a national health care system, only Kucinich is fighting to do away with the for-profit system that has caused all of the corruption and unnecessary suffering in the first place.

But the right-leaning nature of most Democratic candidates came forth once again when all of the candidates appeared on the LOGO channel to discuss GLBT issues. Again, only Kucinich along with Mike Gravel voiced a stable and clear support for gay marriage, while front-runners Edwards, Obama, and Clinton all opposed such a move entirely.

It still baffles me when people chastise my vote for third-party candidates (especially Green Party candidates) as a waste. Of all things, I most often hear that I'm causing the Democrats to lose by splitting the "liberal" vote. But I don't subscribe to the idea that I should vote the odds as opposed to the issues. Yes, I don't want a Republican in office, but that doesn't mean that I'm going to willfully sacrifice my common sense to make sure that the loyal opposition takes their place.

Their remains only two methods of wasting a vote in this society: to not vote your conscience, or to not vote at all. I, for one, will do neither.

Terror Rhetoric in High Gear

2007-08-13T09:23:00.000-07:00

On August 9, 2007, an op-ed was published in the Philadelphia Daily News. What made this op-ed piece particularly intriguing was the oddly disturbing title emblazoned atop of the first few sentences. The author was Stu Bykofsky, and the title was: To Save America, We Need Another 9/11.

Mr. Bykofsky, like most Americans, is sick and tired of the political division in this country. Despite one's opinions of foreign and domestic affairs, one must concede that this nation has indeed become more and more polarized over the course of the last six or seven years. Does that mean more American dead are needed to make us remember why we're supposed to be shitting our pants at the mere mention of "Islamic extremists"? Bykofsky thinks so, providing a quaint list of possible targets just to make the next bomber's job that much easier.

"The Golden Gate Bridge. Mount Rushmore. Chicago's Wrigley Field. The Philadelphia subway system. The U.S. is a target-rich environment for al Qaeda.
"Is there any doubt they are planning to hit us again?
"If it is to be, then let it be. It will take another attack on the homeland to quell the chattering of chipmunks and to restore America's righteous rage and singular purpose to prevail."

Apparently it was our blind obedience to a power-drunk, war-wishing and fact-fabricating administration which gave us our "singular purpose to prevail". To some, it would seem, our fearful submission to the state must be held as the pinnacle of American achievement, a level of perfection that we must consistently try to reach once again. The rhetoric is already in full swing; if you think it's uncommon to hope for terrorist attacks and scores American dead to justify Bush's Orwellian policies, you are sadly, sadly mistaken.

Let's wind the clock back just a bit. America has a nasty habit of forgetting the recent past, so allow me one moment to refresh our collective memory. On July 8, 2007, Lt. Colonel Doug Delaney, chair of the war studies program at the Royal Military College in Kingston, remarked upon the unique nature of the Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts, concluding that "It may well be that the key to bolstering Western resolve is another terrorist attack like 9/11 or the London transit bombings of two years ago. If nothing happens, it will be harder still to say this is necessary."

Harder indeed. And the Republicans picked up on this idea a while ago. On June 3, 2007, Dennis Miller, chairman of the Arkansas Republican Party, had this to say when discussing new GOP strategies:

"At the end of the day, I believe fully the president is doing the right thing, and I think all we need is some attacks on American soil like we had on [Sept. 11, 2001 ], and the naysayers will come around very quickly to appreciate not only the commitment for President Bush, but the sacrifice that has been made by men and women to protect this country."

There are also the eerily ominous words of Republican Senator Rick Santorum, who stated on the conservative Hugh Hewitt talk radio show that "Between now and November, a lot of things are going to happen, and I believe that by this time next year, the American public’s going to have a very different view of this war, and it will be because, I think, of some unfortunate events, that like we’re seeing unfold in the UK. But I think the American public’s going to have a very different view." One's initial reaction to this statement, of course, is "What does he know that I don't?"

And even further back, in 2005 a GOP memo was also leaked which stated that "the President’s popularity was at an all-time high following the 9/11 attacks," and that another terror attack on American soil was likely to "restore his image as a leader of the American people."

It's all too obvious that the current administration uses terrorism and fear as a means to manipulate both domestic and foreign policy. The CIA will utilize Al Qaeda terrorist groups to perform black flag operations inside of Iran, while raising the terror alert at home, often with manufactured threats, whenever Bush and his cronies feel they need the people to be distracted for a while.

On this alone, I would be inclined to simply dismiss these statements and claims as baseless fear mongering. It fits with the pattern that we've seen for the last few years, to be sure, and with Bush's numbers as low as they are it makes sense that they would ratchet up the terror talk to try and keep people scared and meekly submissive, all while they grab more and more power for the executive.

But I don't think that way. And that is only because of a 2000 study entitled "Rebuilding America's Defenses" authored by PNAC, the Project for a New American Century, which states that the process of making drastic changes to the way America functions will be long and arduous, save a "catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor." It is important to note just what kinds of people have been members of PNAC. See if you can't recognize some of these names:

Dick Cheney
Donald Rumsfeld
Paul Wolfowitz
Richard Perle
John Bolton
Richard Armitage
Elliot Abrams
Zalmay Kahlilzad
Lewis Libby
Douglas Feith
James Woolsey

How odd that the very people who chaired a think-tank calling for a massive attack on Americans were all in charge when September 11 occurred. How convenient that the very prosletyzing event they craved came to fruition when they had the power to steer America whichever way they wanted afterwards. It almost leads one to wonder whether there's more than just coincidence at play.

Democratic-Controlled Congress Passes FISA Bill

2007-08-05T14:36:00.000-07:00

Gives Bush legal authority to wiretap Americans without a warrant. For those who still believe that the Democrats are your friends, I direct you to the Washington Post:

Senate votes to expand warrantless wiretapping 60 to 28 (that's 16 Democrats voting "Yea". Lieberman and Feinstein are basically a Republicans and everyone who hasn't had their common sense hijacked for the last decade knows it).

House votes to expand warrantless wiretapping 277 to 183 (that's 41 Democrats voting "Yea").

The Democrats will, time and time again, disappoint you all when it comes to reversing anything that the Bush administration has done. If the last decade of Presidents has taught us anything, it's that Republicans and Democrats alike are merely interested in centralizing power and control, the Constitution and Bill of Rights be damned. In Bush's own words, "It's just a goddamned piece of paper."

I'd rather burn my ballot than hand it over to some corporate shill who's trying to shake my hand so they can stab me in my back.

Update: Added a link to the dKos, listing the dissenting 16 Democrats in the Senate. And guess who's included in the list? Your friend and mine: Dianne "Banker-butt-licker Margaret Thatcher" Feinstein, the dragon lady with no fucking heart (to quote Biafra).

Ohio Women Should Need A Man's Permission for Abortions

2007-08-02T12:42:00.000-07:00

Feministing has a great post about a recent bill proposed in the Ohio legislature:

Oh this is rich. A group of legislators in Ohio are pushing a bill that would give men a say in whether or not a woman can have an abortion.
"This is important because there are always two parents and fathers should have a say in the birth or the destruction of that child," said [Rep. John] Adams, a Republican from Sidney. "I didn't bring it up to draw attention to myself or to be controversial. In most cases, when a child is born the father has financial responsibility for that child, so he should have a say."
As written, the bill would ban women from seeking an abortion without written consent from the father of the fetus. In cases where the identity of the father is unknown, women would be required to submit a list of possible fathers. The physician would be forced to conduct a paternity test from the provided list and then seek paternal permission to abort.
Written notes? Submitting a list of potential fathers? Sometimes I think that anti-choice folks forget that women are, you know, adults.

But seriously here's the best part of the bill:
Claiming to not know the father's identity is not a viable excuse, according to the proposed legislation. Simply put: no father means no abortion.
Fuck. You.

But wait, it gets even better. Women would be required to present a police report if they want to "prove" that the pregnancy was a result of rape of incest. Because women can't be trusted, obviously.

Q&A Session

2007-07-28T22:42:00.000-07:00

Question: What happens when, as the leader of a wealthy, oil-producing nation, the local power that has kept your rival in check collapses, droves of your own citizens rush into the war-torn nation as anti-American insurgents and suicide bombers, throw the country into complete disarray, and you willingly turn a blind eye, claiming that there's nothing more you can do about it?

Answer: You get a stake in a $20,000,000,000 American arms deal. (Note: Bonus deals awarded to Israel simply for being Israel.)

Who Needs Facts?

2007-07-28T14:48:00.000-07:00

It used to be that the energy situation in Iraq was a point that war supporters touted as that ever-elusive good news that doesn't show up on the radar. President Bush, in a press conference on July 7, 2006, said, "We occasionally are able to pop in with great success, like Zarqawi or 12 million people voting. But increasing electricity in Baghdad is not the kind of thing that tends to get on the news."

Nowadays, the White House is changing it's tune. Just today, the BBC Worldservice released another analysis of the "troop surge" in Iraq. For the last few weeks, they have been monitoring three houses in three different neighborhoods of Baghdad and how long they receive power during the day. The results, you can plainly see, are staggering:

July 4, 2007:

July 11, 2007:

July 18, 2007:

July 27, 2007:

I can see why the White House would be so eager to flaunt these numbers in front of Congress! Oh, wait, that's right, they've stopped reporting on it to Congress altogether:

As the Bush administration struggles to convince lawmakers that its Iraq war strategy is working, it has stopped reporting to Congress a key quality-of-life indicator in Baghdad: how long the power stays on.

Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week that Baghdad residents could count on only "an hour or two a day" of electricity. That's down from an average of five to six hours a day earlier this year.

But that piece of data has not been sent to lawmakers for months because the State Department, which prepares a weekly "status report" for Congress on conditions in Iraq, stopped estimating in May how many hours of electricity Baghdad residents typically receive each day.

Instead, the department now reports on the electricity generated nationwide, a measurement that does not indicate how much power Iraqis in Baghdad or elsewhere actually receive.

Apparently this information is just too damning for even Faux News to try and spin.

Contact Your Representatives

2007-07-26T17:18:00.001-07:00

In the wake of Michael Morre's popular documentary SiCKO, the issue of health care in the United States has been catapulted into the forefront of the political discussion (on top of the seemingly endless amount of corruption and deceit pouring from every orifice of Capitol Hill). Just recently I took the time to read through some of the major presidential candidates' positions on the issue, and found that while all Democrats say they are in support of universal healthcare, all but one would do nothing to do away with the for-profit system that's causing the problem in the first place (what Jello Biafra has referred to as a "disease industry"). Here are some of the highlights:

John Edwards, in a self-described "bold plan" to "transform" the health care system, would require all businesses to either cover or help cover (I wonder which one they'll choose) their employees, "creating new tax credits", expanding existing systems, and creating a "Health Care Market" which I suppose is some kind of a medical job fair. At least that's what I can gather from what little he has on his website on the issue. And then this is the kicker: "Once these steps have been taken, requiring all American residents to get insurance." Well, shit, I wonder what industry came up with that one?

The fact that 45 million Americans are already uninsured says something about the health care industry. But now they get to all be customers! Because we're not patients to them, we're consumers.

Hillary Clinton has "the vision and the experience to make [universal healthcare] a reality." Which is odd, because the section on healthcare has absolutely no mention of any proactive attempts on the part of Mrs. Clinton to give us anything but the same old same old. Sure, it's great to know that she failed while First Lady to get anything useful done, but she has "the scars to prove it", which I can only assume is referring to the $781,112 she has received from the health care industry during the current election cycle. That must have really hurt. She also touts numerous legislative struggles for vaccine funding, modernizing the system, but nothing in the way of a real policy that we can analyze.

But she says she has "has the experience to take on the insurance companies, work with members of Congress from both parties, and ensure that all Americans have the health care they need." We'll just have to take her word for it at this point, so long as we ignore reality.

Barack Obama easily has the highest word count of all the candidates. I suppose I should give him a pat on the back for at least being specific about what he wants to do. But much like his counterparts, Obama's plan allows the current failed system to stand, instead opting to tape the broken parts together with tax credits, mandatory business and ensuring that everyone will be able to funnel their money into the pockets of the health care moguls. While he does offer a new national alternative for those who cannot afford to play ball in the big leagues, there is only the vague guarantee that such a plan will be "affordable". Can anyone say "back of the bus"?

Chris Dodd seeks to create a Health Care General Fund (HCGF) which businesses who will not cover their employees must pay into. Those who are uninsured are required to purchase theirs from this system, the price dependent on their income as it relates to the poverty line. While respectable, we see again that Dodd steers safely away from the kind of health care we see work abroad in other western countries. As one commenter notes: "we don't need more interference from insurance companies we need universal, single-payer health care for everyone."

Joe Biden, Bill Richardson, and Mike Gravel approach the issue in generally the same way. Tax credits, vouchers, and the ever-prevalent "modernizing the system".

Okay, am I done? Good. Now I can move on to the only presidential candidate the Democrats have who pushes for a serious national health care plan. Dennis Kucinich is the co-sponsor of H.R. 676, also known as the United States National Health Service Act, along with Representatives John Conyers, Jim McDermott, and Donna Christensen. Under this act, the Medicare program would be expanded and improved to provide "publicly financed, privately delivered healthcare" to every citizen of the United States.

"This program will cover all medically necessary services, including primary care, in patient care, outpatient care, emergency care, prescription drugs, durable medical equipment, long term care, mental health services, dentistry, eye care, chiropractic, and substance abuse treatment. Patients have their choice of physicians, providers, hospitals, clinics and practices. No co-pays or deductibles are permitted under this act.

"Private health insurers shall be prohibited under this act from selling coverage that duplicates the benefits of the USNHI program."

Now that's a kick to the eggs that I can get behind. We don't need to worry about those employed by the insurance industry, though, as "those who are displaced as the result of the transition to a non- profit health care system are the first to be hired and retrained under this act." And where will we get the funding for such a program? Unlike the other candidates, the word "tax" appears with no reservations:

"A modest payroll tax on all employers of 3.3%. A 5% health tax on the top 5% of income earners. A small tax on stock and bond transfers. Closing corporate tax loop-holes, repealing the Bush tax cut."

This is a proposal currently being put before the House of Representatives. I urge everyone to contact their representative and voice your support for this very important measure. And, as always, don't take the words of top candidates and politicians at face value. While people like Clinton and Edwards say they're for universal care, their interests lie not in the welfare of their constituents, but the welfare of the cold-hearted industrial juggernauts that support them.

Stay informed. Get your voice heard. And stay involved.

CIA to air decades of its dirty laundry

2007-06-22T11:40:00.000-07:00

No major post for this week. However, this ran across my screen today, and I can't help but share it with you:

The CIA will declassify hundreds of pages of long-secret records detailing some of the intelligence agency's worst illegal abuses -- the so-called "family jewels" documenting a quarter-century of overseas assassination attempts, domestic spying, kidnapping and infiltration of leftist groups from the 1950s to the 1970s, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden said yesterday.
The documents, to be publicly released next week, also include accounts of break-ins and theft, the agency's opening of private mail to and from China and the Soviet Union, wiretaps and surveillance of journalists, and a series of "unwitting" tests on U.S. civilians, including the use of drugs.

Alex Jones is going to have a field day with this stuff, the obvious implications being that the CIA is more than willing to do whatever it wants to get the results it desires.

Who will to babysit the babysitters?

The Pat Calling the Kettle Black

2007-06-15T11:22:00.000-07:00

From Media Matters:

On the June 12 edition of the Christian Broadcasting Network's The 700 Club, following a report on Muslims in Minneapolis seeking religious accommodations at school and work, host Pat Robertson stated, "Ladies and gentlemen, we have to recognize that Islam is not a religion. It is a worldwide political movement meant on domination of the world. And it is meant to subjugate all people under Islamic law." He characterized the American Muslim community as "Islam light" and went on to say Muslims "want to take over and we want to impose Sharia on you. And before long, ladies are going to be dressed in burqas and whatever garments they would put on them, and next thing you know, men are going to be allowed to have wife-beating and you'll be beheading adulterers and so on and so forth."

This isn't an unprecedented accusation from Robertson, as Media Matters documents. He remains one of the most hypocritical televangelists I've seen, especially when it comes to his blanket criticisms of religious beliefs that don't completely coincide with his own (including Christian denominations, some of which he has referred to as "the spirit of the Antichrist"). The above statement about Islam as a some kind of sinister "political movement" is especially ironic considering that Robertson's own organization, The Christian Coalition of America, is exactly that, exhibiting a number of dominionist tendencies.

Dominionism is much like Reconstructionism, calling on Christians to take over civil governments through political action, with the intent of having a Christian government under Christian laws. Robertson has expressed this same sentiment towards American politics in his book, The New World Order, in which he states that "there is no way that government can operate successfully unless led by godly men and women operating under the laws of the God of Jacob."

The great irony, of course, being that Old Testament Law expressly calls for execution for adultery. On top of that, it also deems a great number of behaviors as worthy of death, including (but not limited to):

I don't know about you, but I find that kind of a government much more imminent, and much more dangerous.

When Nuremburg Says, "No!"

2007-06-13T17:07:00.000-07:00

There's a law about arguments that was developed in 1990 by a man named Mike Godwin. He said, "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." Godwin's Law has a lot of empirical evidence on its side (see: any discussion of current issues on any internet forum), and the general consensus holds that once this eventuality comes to fruition, somebody has run out of talking points and the conversation is over. Bush is Hitler. Kerry is Hitler. Satan is Hitler (???). The list goes on, and the poor soul who decided that holding someone or something as comparable to the Third Reich was justified just found himself stripped of nearly all his credibility.

So why am I boring you with this diatribe?

Enter: Harry King, Jr., now 88 years of age. You may not know him, but he served under Supreme Court justice Robert Jackson, who was Chief United States Prosecutor at the International War Crimes Tribunal in Nuremberg, Germany. This puts King in a prime position to invoke the likes of the Nazis with great impunity. If anyone knows the legality of Nazi behavior, it's going to be this guy.

I'm making this introduction because King was recently contacted by by Reuters
for an interview. Specifically, about the military tribunals currently being carried out for declared "enemy combatants" at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. These differ greatly from the kinds of courts that American citizens are used to: there are no juries, no appeals to a higher court, no attorney-client privilege, and hearsay evidence is allowed (that is, statements not made under oath), among other things.

As someone with intimate knowledge of human rights violations, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, King can be seen as a voice of reason when confronting potentially divisive policy issues such as Guantanamo Bay. He is in a unique position to weigh the current situation against what is often held as the prime instance in which man's inhumanity to man did not go unpunished. Supporters of Guantanamo Bay should expect to hear cries for dispassionate analysis, and sober reflections upon what is truly at stake. And those expectations shall be thoroughly dashed to pieces in the next few sentences (emphasis mine):

"I think Robert Jackson, who's the architect of Nuremberg, would turn over in his grave if he knew what was going on at Guantanamo," Nuremberg prosecutor Henry King Jr. told Reuters in a telephone interview.

"It violates the Nuremberg principles, what they're doing, as well as the spirit of the Geneva Conventions of 1949."

King goes on to say that a fair trial is "part of our tradition, our heritage," and emphasizes the need for "fairness, a presumption of innocence, adequate defense counsel," and the ability for the defense to see all of the evidence being presented against them. He was especially livid about the admissibility of hearsay evidence, stating that this was the kind of justice "that Jackson didn't dream of."

Many human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch and the ACLU have also expressed their objection to these tribunals, but King's assessment strikes at the core of the issue in a way that the rest of us can't even come close to matching. When a prosecutor who successfully convicted Nazi officers for orchestrating death camps tells you that your concept of justice is horribly warped, maybe it's time to reevaluate your methods.

But this is a post-9/11 world we live in, one where not condemning these actions, but declaring that we should double the size of them gets a roaring ovation. And in light of King's statements, that causes me to wonder just how far we've lost our way since September 11th, and what the next generations of Americans will think of the way we sold our sense of justice for some false sense of security.

But we can rest easy, my friends, for at least they will no longer have to worry about losing face when invoking Godwin's Law in discussions of Guantanamo Bay. It will be a commonly accepted analogy.

The Iraq Delusion

2007-06-07T14:21:00.000-07:00

There have been a lot of topics that I've wanted to cover over the last few days. My last two posts were intentionally weak because I was being bombarded with post-semester preparations, getting prepped for Summer school and figuring out the logistics of how I was going to get to and from school (thank you, OCTA). I've always wanted to have a post dedicated to more religious matters, but every time I attempt to start one, it becomes difficult to finish. Because, as I've stated before, that's the kind of topic that requires a dialogue, not a diatribe.

So, instead, I will turn my focus again towards the issue of Iraq. And I do so with a heavy heart. Mainly because the topic has nearly been talked to death, and according to recent polls I'm in good company on the issue. However, there are still those who stand by the current direction this administration is taking, and as fate would have it I end up discussing it with them on a regular basis. This is not meant to demonize anyone who holds these views, or to cast them as "willfully ignorant" or "callous", but rather to address a number of criticisms against the troop withdrawal policy that I hear repeated often enough:

"I think an immediate withdrawal would throw the place into chaos and Iraq would be worse than before we went in there."

This argument holds a kernel of truth, because a vacuum of power that appears within a divided community has a distinct tendency to cause chaos. A prime example of this phenomenon is Iraq. Nobody [reasonable] who argues for immediate troop withdrawal from Iraq is attempting to paint a rosy picture of Saddam in the same manner that our own government has in the past. He was a murderer and a despot. But the simple fact that we were able to remove him does not make us immune to criticism for our lack of performance in handling the ensuing tragedy.

The fact of the matter is that very little, if anything, can be said to be better. A report by the UN conducted in 2004 showed a number of troubling facts:

23% of children (6 months to five years old)suffer from chronic malnutrition, 12% from general malnutrition, and 8% experience acute malnutrition.
"Current major problems" for Iraqi hospitals include: "lack of health personnel, lack of medicines, non-functioning medical equipment and destroyed hospitals and health centers."
51% of surveyed urban houses in Iraq are near areas "where sewage could be seen in the streets." A mere 54% urban homes have access to clean water, that percentage skyrocketing to 80% in rural areas.
The literacy rate for those age 15 to 24 is only 74% (compared with 98.6% in the US according to EarthTrends.

The BBC also noted that "60% of people in Anbar and Baghdad suburbs use river water."

But the disappointment doesn't stop there. Often accompanied with this statement is the notion this:

"when [the Iraqi government/military] steps up, we will step down."

As before, the statement itself is certainly a logical progression. And I would be inclined to hold that position if it weren't for the fact that they simply aren't stepping up. In a NYT article, Gen. Vincent K. Brooks, deputy commander of the First Cavalry division, says that the current strategies in Iraq are not succeeding because "Iraqi police and army units, which were expected to handle basic security tasks, like manning checkpoints and conducting patrols, have not provided all the forces promised, and in some cases have performed poorly." Of 457 Baghdad neighborhoods, the US military and ISF have physical control over only 146.

Iraqi Pesident Maliki predicted on April 11, 2005 that he expected the ISF to take over security operations in two years. And, in true form, Maliki has made good on his promise. No, wait, this month on ABC's This Week he said that they would be ready "next year". I guess there was a confusion that first time. One has to wonder how much confidence such a man has in his own military, when on May 30, 2007, he admits on the CBS Evening News that he's concerned about a military coup in Iraq.

One final myth that needs debunking is this notion:

"They want us to be there."

Nothing can be further from the truth at this point. The Iraqi parliament recently passed a resolution (with little more than a twitter from the American media) that would "guarantee lawmakers an opportunity to block the extension of the U.N. mandate under which coalition troops now remain in Iraq." And, if that alone isn't enough, here are some statements by Iraqis themselves:

TIMZ - "I believe that the country – the state that it is in now – it’s actually more dangerous than when Saddam Hussein was in power. At least people could walk down the street without being afraid of their neighbor killing them. I understand that there was a fear of Saddam Hussein and his reign of terror. Yes, I don’t promote Saddam Hussein and the things that he has done in the past. However, I do believe that it was safer as a region for a regular person like myself to walk down the street and not be afraid of the next person coming up to me and kidnapping me or killing me for no apparent reason."

Eman Ahmad Khamas - "A portion of the U.S. public might still think the U.S. is bringing democracy to Iraq. If they only saw the bodies of dead children, if they only heard the wailing of mothers, if they only saw the anger in the eyes of the survivors, they would call an end to this horror.”

It's difficult for us to really grasp the true nature of this war. As I've noted in previous articles, the MSM does more marketing for the war than it does analysis. In a book by Jim Wallis entitled The Irresistible Revolution, he talks about the time he spent in Iraq while the invasion was just beginning. He recalls going through a battered Iraqi hospital and seeing the children in hospital beds marred by shrapnel. One was writhing and muttering, again and again, "What did I do to America?" "What did I do to America?"

Perhaps it is a lack of connection with the Iraq war that has caused us to be blind to the disaster for as long as we have. Or perhaps it was the events of September 11th that hardened our hearts and caused us to seek short-term vengeance over long-term solutions. But whatever the reasons, it is plain to see that the justifications for furthering the already flawed policy run contrary to the facts and the attitudes of the Iraqi people.

June, 2007 - Where's My Withdrawal?

2007-06-01T08:31:00.000-07:00

From MSNBC (November 30, 2006):

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said Thursday that his country's forces would be able to assume security command by June 2007 — which could allow the United States to start withdrawing its troops.
"I cannot answer on behalf of the U.S. administration but I can tell you that from our side our forces will be ready by June 2007," Maliki told ABC television after meeting President Bush on Thursday in Jordan.
Maliki was replying to a question about whether U.S. troops could start withdrawing at that time.

*checks watch, calendar* And this is what we have to show since then in terms of progress:

Iraqi PM al-Maliki told Lara Logan of CBS Evening News in an exclusive interview on Wednesday that he has a real fear of a coup by the Iraqi army.

If people in the real world don't meet deadlines, or end up completely decimating everything that's under their control, they get shafted, possibly charged with crimes. If people in Bush's world don't meet deadlines, or end up completely decimating everything that's under their control, they get billions of dollars and a "Keep up the good work" from the boss.

Still Just Slightly Swamped

2007-05-31T14:38:00.000-07:00

I apologize to those who visit frequently: I don't have an issue prepped for this week. Much of my time has been taken up by a final term paper about child sexuality and Victorian cultural ideals in Henry James's novella The Turn of the Screw, and participating in an ROTC Commissioning ceremony on the CSULB campus. There's plenty I'd love to talk about: fundamentalist Christian perspectives on dating/courtship (guess which one is the work of Satan?), spineless Democrats in Congress, sexual undertones in the old Nintendo Power Star Fox comic books.

But really the only thing I want to touch on right now is an interesting point brought up at today's commissioning ceremony by Brigadier General John Harrel, who was our guest speaker. Speaking directly to the newly-commissioned officers, he said quite bluntly that "allies are won on the soldier level. They're reinforced on the ambassador level, but it's on the soldier level that we make all of our allies." (paraphrased) He called up the still very real and very horrifying incidents at Abu Ghraib and explained that such incidents were the result of a failure of command on all levels, and told the new Lieutenants that "we must treat everyone we meet with the utmost respect. Even the enemy must be treated with respect. Even non-combatants must be treated with respect. That's how you bring the local people to your side, and soon they're throwing information about the enemy at you." (again, paraphrased)

All of this isn't new talk for people who have been listening to top military personnel for some time. The White House and the complicit press don't like to give them a megaphone like they do their favorite generals, but the word filters through despite all of that. But what struck me most was his final comment about how to make that judgment call - how should we be treating the local population of a foreign country?

He said: "They way I see it: if a police officer here in the US can't treat people this way, than neither should your soldiers." And, yes, our police are certainly not the best staff to measure moral character by, but the judgment was made more on the ideal police-civilian encounter, I believe. And that does strike at the heart of the issue in Iraq. Of winning hearts and minds, and realizing that the war is already lost (and has been for some time) because that hasn't been the mainstay of our policy in that region.

But it also says a lot about our condition at home. In the same vein, when police don't treat people with basic dignity and respect, it's no wonder that very few people trust the police anymore.

Perhaps I'll expand on this in further posts. But for now, I'll leave it at that.

Pollapalooza

2007-05-24T11:59:00.000-07:00

College finals have been all my mind can focus on this last week, so I don't have much prepared for a lengthly post. If I was going to do a large article on something, though, it would probably be the spineless wimps in Congress. And, no, I'm not talking about the Republicans.

Democratic presidential contenders on Capitol Hill will cast critical votes on the Iraq war this week, when lawmakers decide on a $120 billion bill to keep military operations afloat through September.

The legislation does not set the deadline for U.S. troop withdrawals many Democrats wanted. Unable to achieve the two-thirds majority needed to override one presidential veto because of such a deadline — or the threat of another — Democratic leaders announced Tuesday they would proceed to provide money for the war anyway because they wanted to support the troops.

"I believe as long as we have troops in the front line, we're going to have to protect them," said Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del. "We're going to have to fund them."

Good to know the Democrats decided to latch on to some White House talking points, no matter how nonsensical they are. At least my conscience is clean - I didn't vote for any of them.

I guess they just didn't get the message last November. I would've assumed the ass-whooping the GOP got would have jostled them enough to see that the American people mean business. Perhaps this is when third-party candidates who actually want to get things done will finally take center stage?

To further my point about Capitol Hill suits being completely out of touch with their constituents, here's a series of interesting polls:

76% of Americans think the war in Iraq is going badly according to a CBS poll, up from 66% in April of this year.

88% of respondents to an MSNBC poll feel that President Bush's actions justify impeachment. Which is an unusually high number, but if you consider the poll conducted by HumanEvents.org, which showed 39% favor impeachment (or 42% of independent voters), and the implications even that number has overall, the overall attitude towards this administration is past dismal: it's apocalyptic.

An NCB News/WSJ poll found that 56% of Americans support troop withdrawal, and 55% believe that the Iraq war is unwinnable (anyone who has studied at all into the victory conditions of guerilla warfare will have known that for some time).

Even a FOX News poll showed that 61% of respondents disagreed with the White House's asinine assertion that setting a date for troop withdrawal is the same as setting a date for surrender.

And certainly that spells trouble for the GOP in general. If attitudes trend the same way they are now, I don't think it takes a specialist to figure out that they won't be winning any major elections any time soon. Tom Tancredo wanted to enlist the aid of Jack Bauer in the GOP primary debates. I think he's about the only guy who can rescue this party from the well they've tossed themselves into.

But from this point on we cannot lay blame solely on the White House any longer. The Democrats were elected with a clear goal in mind: leaving Iraq. It seemed like they were on the right track, but it's all too clear now that the American peoples' hopes were sorely misplaced. The real litmus test for Democratic presidential hopefuls will be how they case their vote, and any candidate who declines to vote for fear of screwing up their presidential run should be tossed out with the rest of the spineless asses up in Washington.

Peoples' lives are at stake; I have personal friends in Afghanistan and Iraq. If the Democrats don't have the spines to get some serious work done on Capitol Hill, I'm more than ready to send someone else who's up to the challenge.

UPDATE: As Crooks and Liars has noted, Senators Russ Feingold, Barbara Boxer, and Patrick Leahy have issued statements voicing their opposition to this bill. Barbara Boxer:

Let me be clear, there are many things in this bill that I strongly support—many provisions that I actually fought for, for our troops, for our veterans, for our farmers, and for the victims of Hurricane Katrina—but I must take a stand against this Iraq war, and therefore I will vote no on this emergency spending bill.

UPDATE II: Just though I'd toss this old Dead Kennedys live video out here, in light of the fact that a certain California senator voted 'Yea' on the Iraq spending bill without time lines. As always, Jello puts it best by cutting out the bullshit.

Sunday Music Sampler - QOTSA

2007-05-20T15:44:00.000-07:00

Ode to Clarissa by Queens of the Stone Age

The End of Falwell; The Beginning of a War Machine

2007-05-16T12:53:00.000-07:00

Jerry Falwell, an American Christian fundamentalist pastor and televangelist, passed away yesterday in his office at Liberty University. With the utmost sincerity I extend my sympathies towards the friends and family of Mr. Falwell. A death is a death, and as a Christian I attempt to respect each one as equal regardless of whether or not I agree with the actions a person took during their lifetime.

Mr. Falwell was always on my list of "Top 10 People to Vigorously Oppose", mostly for his remarks on homosexuality (and how it caused 9/11, along with the ACLU and abortion). There's quite a list of things he's said that, to me, really speak to the id that drives the fundamentalist Christian movement in the United States. But I don't want to focus on the backwards ideology driving him and his followers, because to do so would require a great deal of space and effort, and those sorts of discussions are better had when each side is actively present to debate the issue.

No, what I instead want to focus on is the impact that people like Falwell and others have on the United States. Aside from having a great deal of influence over a large number of voters in this nation (the "religious right" as it is most commonly referred to), religious leaders such as Falwell, Robertson, and even Dobson hold a great deal of sway in the current administration, as well. Don't believe me? What would you say if I told you that President Bush met with Pat Robertson personally before the invasion of Iraq, ensuring Robertson that "we're not going to have any casualties"? And, if we consider how horribly miscalculated that assessment was in hindsight, it should seriously concern us that President Bush just met with twelve evangelical leaders, including Focus on the Family founder Dr. James Dobson, to discuss foreign policy issues regarding Iran.

“I heard about this danger [from Iran] not only at the White House but from other pro-family leaders that I met during that week in Washington," he said. "Many people in a position to know are talking about the possibility of losing a city to nuclear or biological or chemical attack. And if we can lose one we can lose ten."

Later in his broadcast...Dobson drew a parallel between current Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad and Adolf Hitler.
“The world looked at Hitler and just didn't believe him and tried to appease him the way we're hearing in Washington today,” Dobson remarked. “You know, the President seems to me does understand this, as I told you from that meeting I had with him the other day, but even there it feels like somebody ought to be standing up and saying, ‘We are being threatened and we are going to meet this with force -- whatever's necessary.’”

Light bulbs illuminate above craniums. Starting to see a pattern here? History repeats itself? It's no secret that President Bush is a man of faith, and that men like Dr. Dobson and others take him very seriously. That doesn't bother me. What bothers me is how many people take Dobson and them seriously, especially on issues of politics and foreign affairs - issues which Dobson and others have no expertise in. I grew up in a Focus on the Family home; these people have sway. And when they start telling their followers that Iran is Hitler and the Iraq War is a God-ordained masterpiece, people listen.

Not just us, mind you. They listen, too.

The book Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror was written by a former CIA agent, the Counterterrorist Center's Osama Bin Laden station chief no less. In his book, he details how our perception of OBL and why people like him do what they do is totally misguided. Much of this information is hardly new to me, but I was shocked when he had this to say about Jerry Falwell:

"When evangelicals likeand Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson hold forth on foreign policy—usually with encomiums to Israel and denunciations of Islam—Muslim thinkers tend to conflate their words with the official positions of the U.S. government. There's no separation of church and state in Islam, and Muslims assume the same applies to America. So every time Falwell inveighs against the "terrorist" Prophet, the hate might as well be coming directly from George W. Bush."

Whether or not the current administration is aware of this insight is irrelevant. Either way they don't seem to care, and neither do their would-be predecessors (when Rep. Ron Paul explained that it was American interventionist policies which spurred the attacks of 9/11 in the GOP primary debates, Rudy Guilianni called it "an absurd explanation"). They hate us for our freedom and that's that no matter how truly absurd that position may be.

Rather than take heed to the real grievances that men like OBL express, our leaders feel that it is more prudent to sell this war as an "us versus them scenario", where any reasoned investigation into the motives of terrorists coming from the Middle East is considered "absurd" and completely out of touch with reality. They then meet with the evangelical leaders of the day to get their talking points straight, go out to their congregations and sell the war! When polls return that only 30% of the American people still support our occupation of Iraq, ask yourself, "How many of these people are influenced by the likes of Dobson, Falwell, and Robertson?"

Make no mistake. There is a very real effort to sell this war. To make it marketable. And that effort does not just involve GOP hopefuls (save Ron Paul) and the Bush administration. The newly-created position of "war czar" was recently filled by Lieutenant General Douglas Lute, who has expressed concern about the last great terrorist safe haven: The Internet.

“They have a safe haven on the Internet,“ he said. “No one in the U.S. military has been tasked with the mission of attacking these intangibles. Until we do they will operate with impunity.”

And as long as that situation prevails, Lute warned, the United States and its coalition allies will not be able to vanquish the terrorist enemy.

“The enemy is targeting the political will of this country,“ Lute argued. “He knows he can’t beat us on the battlefield and he is OK with that.“

Winning what Lute termed “the long war,” therefore, is about sustaining “U.S. and coalition political will for the long haul.”

"The Long Haul" being ten to fifteen years, apparently. And that's the task ahead for us, the war czar has declared. The work has already begun within the military structure, as efforts to silence warbloggers and block servicemembers from MySpace and YouTube are currently underway. Keep this in mind when you watch the MSM for war coverage and receive pre-packaged images eerily devoid of the true carnage of this war.

Make no mistake. There is a very real effort to sell this war. To make it marketable. From the White House, to the complicit press corps, to the pulpit, efforts are underway to keep us rooting for Old Glory and singing Stars and Stripes Forever without ever seeking to tackle the real issues, the things that matter, the kinds of things that actually caused 9/11. And there's really only one question we need to ask ourselves: Cui Bono? Who Benefits?

Sunday Music Sampler - Stiff Little Fingers

2007-05-14T07:41:00.000-07:00

Suspect Device by Stiff Little Fingers

Farfur Has Been Around Since the 1940's

2007-05-10T09:37:00.000-07:00

There's been a bit of media buzz lately about a Palestinian children's program that was brought to light by an organization called Palestinian Media Watch. It's called 'Tomorrow's Pioneers', and what makes this show so newsworthy, apparently, is that the character Farfur is doing a little propagandizing:

On the weekly program "Tomorrow's Pioneers," Farfur and a young girl name Saraa' tell children to pray five times each day and drink their milk, while urging the children to "resist" the "oppressive invading Zionist occupation."

“Instead of being entertained, they’re being indoctrinated,” Itamar Marcus, the director of Palestinian Media Watch, told FOX News.

In a very awkward, high-pitched drone of a voice, Farfur tells the viewers that they "will liberate the Muslim countries, invaded by murderers." To anyone with even a remote sense of humor, the show is amusing mainly for its production quality.

Maybe all the time I've spent on the internet has rid me of any shred of decency, but I find that picture hilarious. But even beyond the beady eyes, obscenely large cranium, and small hands, there is an added irony to this whole scenario when you consider that Disney was in this same business about sixty years back. Only they didn't bother to remind us to drink our milk unless it lead to a dead Hun or Jap. As techy.Bytes notes, Farfur is a "throwback to classic propaganda for kids," and though the example he provides is a particularly funny Looney Tunes WW2 piece, Disney's cracks at the propaganda game proved to be much more serious, much more vengeful, and just a tad bit racist to top it all off.

There's a great article by Gustavo Arellano entitled "The Bombingest Place on Earth," in which he describes the kind of chaos he went through when first trying to dig up these war shorts that the Disney company produced and subsequently stashed away from the prying eyes of the public.

Phone calls to various Disney historians went unanswered, Valley recounted; written requests never reached their destination; visits by Valley to Disney’s Burbank archives resulted in trips from one office to another, all to no avail. After months of fruitless inquiry, Disney brass finally relented. They shoved Valley into an unlit basement room, carted in a TV/VCR set, popped in a videocassette containing the desired cartoons, and left him for about three hours. No notes were allowed. No recorders. No questions. Upon the tape’s completion, security guards escorted Valley out and told him never to ask for a second screening since it wouldn’t happen.

Since that time these cartoons have been released on DVD, and retain an almost cult status among cartoon buffs and anyone who loves cheesy propaganda from either side of the fence. The thing to take away from this is that Disney wasn't interested in having any of these tapes released ever again. And it's not difficult to imagine why, as the article further explains:

Like all Hollywood studios during World War II, Disney turned over its facilities to the Pentagon and produced pro-war films preaching sacrifice and Jap-bashing. But Walt Disney devoted his company to the cause with an intensity unmatched by any other mogul. Unlike the animation departments at Warner Bros. and MGM, Disney’s cartoons openly called for annihilation rather than mere light-hearted mayhem, placed its characters on the front lines instead of metaphorical battlegrounds, and accomplished it in a way so beloved by the Armed Forces that, according to Thomas Doherty’s 1993 book, Projections of War: Hollywood, American Culture, and World War II, "Sandbags and anti-aircraft guns surrounded the only Hollywood studio designated as a ‘key war-production plant’ and ‘essential industry.’"

Whether or not Disney will try at a lawsuit for a blatant defamation of their beloved anthropomorphic mouse is difficult to say, although if anyone has a snowball's chance in Hell of winning a war in that region, it's definitely the Disney Army of Lawyers. But all jokes aside, this story underscores a more pressing problem with the media, and the American public in particular. Ask anyone to describe what propaganda is, and you'll be regaled with stories of outlandish, often hilarious caricatures of world leaders, grossly overblown rumors and more stereotypes than you could shake the capitalistic fist at. Ultimately, you'll get a depiction that's not all too far from Disney's anti-Nazi cartoons or Farfur.

What's rather unsettling about that is that propaganda doesn't look like that. Ever. The reason Disney's forays into the war-frenzy business are so intriguing (and why Farfur seems to be creating so much fuss) is because they take well-known characters, along with all the ideals that they carry with them, and twist them to make a political/economic/religious point. Never mind the fact that both are geared heavily towards children, and thus overly simplified. Hindsight also grants us the opportunity to see just how outrageous these kinds of products can be, starkly contrasted against current social and political forces which don't regard the Germans or the Japanese as mortal enemies anymore.

Propaganda like this still exists today. The only reason it's more difficult for the average American to spot is because it's entangled in the current cultural and political standards by which our conversations are merited, and through which we view world politics. Viewers of Disney and Looney Tunes propaganda in the 1940s may have found the cartoons silly, but ultimately would have had difficulty seeing anything particularly extreme or offensive. Such works are intended to only work towards a short-term political or military goal, not some universal ideal.

Take the popularity of the show '24', for example, which makes its money sowing catastrophe after catastrophe on American soil, with the heroic Jack Bauer of CTU breaking all the rules and doing whatever it takes to get the job done and destroy America's enemies. A real rough-and-tough John Wayne epic with nuclear bombs and torture to boot. Normally I avoid citing stuff from Prison Planet or Infowars, but they've put it rather well in this one:

Everyone knows 24 is over hyped and overblown but that's not the point.... The more telling aspect of this visit was when Chertoff embraced and praised the actions of the characters fictionalized in the show as an example of the kind of dedication Homeland Security should be showing towards fighting terrorism (including presumably season one's patriotic scene where our hero Bauer cuts off a villain's head with a hacksaw).

Had you asked anyone pre-9/11 and pre-24 if they accepted torture under any circumstances, you'd probably have an overwhelming majority of responses claiming an emphatic 'No'. Now, however, the line seems eerily blurred, the constant threat of impending annihilation cleverly kept looming over the American public by a fearmongering White House and a complicit press corps. So it's no wonder that shows such as '24' gain so much popularity, especially at a time when incidents like Abu Ghraib and Haditha are becoming more and more common (See also: My Lai). Ethics Scoreboard weighs in:

Sometimes he shoots them in their kneecaps, and sometimes he shocks them. A favorite is breaking fingers, one by one. A couple of seasons ago, Bauer had a subject of interrogation watch on a live television feed as another US agent threatened to shoot the subject's child in the head (and did, although it turned out to be faked.) There's always a compelling reason for Bauer's brutality, of course: a nuclear bomb ticking away, ready to kill millions; a deadly canister of an unstoppable virus about to be opened; the President on the verge of assassination; World War Three just seconds from starting. And that's good enough for America. "24" has increased its ratings every season, and is now consistently ranked in the top ten most viewed programs.

Television shows like Farfur should certainly be decried as blatant manipulation. But at the same time, it should also serve as a catalyst to provoke a much closer inspection of American entertainment, to see just how many Donald Ducks and Jack Bauers are really Farfurs in disguise. The reality is that they're much more common than you think.

Iraqi Lawmakers Reject Occupation

2007-05-09T17:16:00.000-07:00

AlterNet:

On Tuesday, without note in the U.S. media, more than half of the members of Iraq's parliament rejected the continuing occupation of their country. 144 lawmakers signed onto a legislative petition calling on the United States to set a timetable for withdrawal, according to Nassar Al-Rubaie, a spokesman for the Al Sadr movement, the nationalist Shia group that sponsored the petition.
It's a hugely significant development. Lawmakers demanding an end to the occupation now have the upper hand in the Iraqi legislature for the first time; previous attempts at a similar resolution fell just short of the 138 votes needed to pass (there are 275 members of the Iraqi parliament, but many have fled the country's civil conflict, and at times it's been difficult to arrive at a quorum).

Good Lord, it's almost as if...as if the media didn't want us to know about this.

Sunday Music Sampler - Pansy Division

2007-05-07T08:41:00.000-07:00

Manada by Pansy Division

McCain: Gay soldiers an "intolerable risk"

2007-05-04T18:00:00.000-07:00

From Crooks and Liars:

I suspect it’s difficult for supporters of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” to come up with a rationale for their position. Take John McCain, for example.
In an April 16 letter to Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN), McCain says the law, passed in 1993, “unambiguously maintains that open homosexuality within the military services presents an intolerable risk to morale, cohesion and discipline.” Senator McCain goes on to incorrectly assert that the U.S. Supreme Court “has ruled that the military may constitutionally discharge a service member for overt homosexual behavior.” […]

“Most importantly, the national security of the United States, not to mention the lives of our men and women in uniform, are put at grave risk by policies detrimental to the good order and discipline which so distinguish America’s Armed Services.”

This is breathtakingly dumb and is the latest evidence of just how far McCain has slipped into “crazy base world.”

First, McCain cites a Supreme Court ruling that doesn’t exist. Strike one. Second, McCain calls gays an “intolerable risk” to military morale, cohesion, and discipline. Really? According to a recent Zogby poll of active personnel, 73% of military members say they are comfortable around lesbians and gays. For that matter, more than one in five U.S. troops already knows a gay person in their unit, including combat units. So where’s the “intolerable risk”? Strike two.

Third, McCain emphasizes “national security” as a rationalization for discrimination. In what way, exactly, does it improve our national security for, say, Bleu Copas, a decorated sergeant and Arabic language specialist who joined the Army after the 9/11 attacks, to be thrown out of the military for being gay, despite his role in helping translate intercepted messages from possible terrorists? Are we more or less safe with Copas as a civilian? Strike three.

I don't think any further commentary is necessary here.

Kill the Poor

2007-05-03T11:19:00.000-07:00

From the LA Times:

Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton on Wednesday expressed "grave concern" about his officers' tactics in dispersing a crowd at an immigration rights rally, where police wielded batons and fired 240 "less-than-lethal" rounds at demonstrators and reporters.

Questions also were raised about the large number of projectiles fired by officers attempting to control the crowd. At least 240 rounds made of foam, sponge or fiber were fired as police swept through the park about 6:15 p.m. The move came after police clashed with a small group of protesters near the intersection of 7th and Alvarado streets.

"Two hundred and forty rounds with no arrests is of grave concern to me," Bratton said, acknowledging that none of the rounds fired were directly related to the arrests of eight adults and one juvenile during the rally on charges that included assault with a deadly weapon in a rock-throwing incident and public drunkenness. The chief labeled some of the officers' actions "inappropriate."

Watch this news broadcast from the local FOX network and tell me that the word "inappropriate" isn't an understatement. The LAPD manual states that such weapons are to be used only against "violent or potentially violent suspects", and neither descriptor identifies the members of this rally.

And this is hardly a rare occurrence when it comes to our boys in blue here in Los Angeles. Here's a tape from a Minuteman counter-protest in which the police assault civilians with batons unprovoked. As The Largest Minority notes:

Something must be done to stop this kind of violence from occurring again. Los Angeles Mayor Villaraigosa has said that order has been restored to LA, suggesting that it was the protesters which caused the disorder. This couldn’t be further from the truth as the protest was peaceful until an excessive use of force was displayed by police against the working class. Order will not be restored until the very real threat posed by the LAPD and city officials to our first amendment rights is addressed.

ANSWER LA also has a differing account of the events:

Next, cops on bicycles rushed through the crowd demanding people evacuate the area. They were followed closely by LAPD “shock troops” on foot, who forced people from the area by hitting onlookers with batons.

The crowd was obviously upset and highly concerned by the unprovoked and violent police attack. In an attempt to defend themselves, people responded by hurling empty water bottles and fruit at the police.

Contrary to LAPD Chief Bratton’s statement that their violence was in response to “certain elements of the crowd … [who] began to create a series of disturbances," it was really the other way around.

As this was happening at the east corner of the park, several hundred yards away on the other end of the park, dozens of cops in full riot gear cleared the street by pushing people onto the sidewalks.

The coordinated, military-style actions show a deliberate calculus used by the LAPD. This was a premeditated attack—a police riot. It is standard practice to repress mass movements and working people.

There is also a link on the ANSWER LA page through which you can send Los Angeles Mayor Villaraigosa an email expressing your outrage over the mayhem caused by our supposed "keepers of the peace". This is the best way we can let the people up top know that we won't sit idly by and watch as men and women with badges get to riot scot-free. Internal investigations won't turn up shit. As the old song Police Truck by the Dead Kennedys goes:

The left newspapers might while a bit / But the guys at the station they don't give a shit / Dispatch calls: "Are you doin' somethin' wicked?" / "No siree, chaps, we're just giving tickets!" / Let's ride, ride, how we ride / Let's ride, lowride

Sunday Music Sampler - Cortège

2007-04-29T16:34:00.001-07:00

Paris Brûle! by Cortège

Politicized Anger?

2007-04-26T17:35:00.000-07:00

A few days ago I decided to head over to the home page of Focus on the Family (a move I've managed to avoid with great success for most of my life). I got the idea while listening to some spoken word albums by Jello Biafra, the late singer of the San Francisco based punk band Dead Kennedys. If you haven't noticed this by now, you will the more you watch this blog: I take notes when that guy speaks.

I wanted to see if I could get the scoop on some of the stuff being tossed around in the conservative evangelical Christian arena. Most of my day is spent debating people of this particular religious viewpoint over a number of mediums, so I figured it might be of good use for me to take some information straight from one of the sources to try and get into their heads. So I signed up for a few of their e-newsletters: Boundless (for Christian singles), Christian Worldview Updates (also called The Truth Project, which appears from its summary to be some sort of propaganda machine), Pastor's Weekly Briefing (current events and commentary for pastors), and Drug Proof Your Kids (which may be comedy; I'm not sure yet).

Bear in mind, I'm not doing this to try and slam every article that comes my way. There will be a few, however, that I will take up and refute. Like the one I got from Boundless today, entitled: When Anger Rules by Matt Kaufman.

The article starts off well enough. There's a link to an article by The Scotsman that discusses a British study finding women to be the angrier sex. An interesting find (though not surprising to some, as Matt Kaufman observes), but Kaufman doesn't really want to go into a serious discussion about the causes of such anger. Indeed, the study is merely a launching point for him to begin railing against what he terms "politicized anger". His specific qualm is with U of London psychologist Windy Dryden, who speculates that this disparity between the sexes may be a result of inequality in society, particularly in the workplace. Kaufman quotes the article in such a way that Dr. Dryden's suggestion seems to be somewhat at odds with the results of the study. On the contrary, however:

"While the study does not offer explanations for the differences, the authors speculated that women are frustrated by social inequality, particularly in the workplace.

"'One can only speculate at this point, but it certainly should be looked into. My guess is further research will relate higher levels of anger to larger inequality issues facing women today,' Joshi said.

"University of London psychologist Windy Dryden said the study confirms previous research in which diary entries of American men and women found substantially more references to anger in the women's journals."

Never mind the fact that both the authors of the report and Dr. Dryden speculate that social inequality may be one of the causes of such anger, Kaufman suggests, because it's painfully obvious that this is "just another reflection of something we see a lot: What might be called politicized anger." But just what does the term mean? Kaufman explains:

"That's when you see self-proclaimed representatives of some group — whether the group's defined by race or gender or sexual practice or what have you — become consumed with accusing others of a venomous bias against them."

I know what you're thinking: "I swear I've seen this somewhere before." And the more you read Kaufman's article, the more you sit and wonder just how entrenched in doublethink some people are. Just read this final excerpt and wonder if James Dobson, Matt Kaufman, or anyone from Focus on the Family know the meaning of the word "irony":

"It's always purportedly about some noble cause — some vital matter of Social Justice. And its pose is always unselfish. If I'm mad, I'm not mad chiefly on my own behalf. I'm mad on behalf of all the other people who've been mistreated....After all, if I'm outraged by injustices I've never personally felt, that can be seen as a testimony to my how caring and sensitive I am.

"The more you think about it, the more you can see what a dangerous combination it is. Even if it starts with indignation over genuine injustices, it can all too easily turn into a self-sustaining rage. And when that happens, all the normal rules of charity and civility that we've been taught can be swept away by the intoxicating sense of righteous anger."

God Bless.

Problems All Around - Part II

2007-04-19T14:27:00.000-07:00

In the last few days a lot of information about the Virginia Tech shooter has come to light, and as we can expect from the talking heads of the MSM, just about everyone who ever came in contact with the man has been blamed for some thing or another. The prevailing discussions thus far have been over the issue of gun control, as if further restricting handgun purchases would lower violent crime rates, or allowing everyone to carry a concealed weapon wouldn't lead to more disputes ending in homicide. Like I said in my previous post, this isn't even striking at the heart of the issue. What we have is a college student who, for a number of different reasons, felt disillusioned and repressed by the society he was engaged in.

I'm not trying to come off as some kind of a professional psychoanalyst. But I urge you to really take a look at my previous post relating to this incident and what I think we should all take away from it. And after that, I also encourage you to take a look at both his manifesto which was sent to NBC, and two screenplays written by Cho, which were posted online by a fellow student.

These three items: the video manifesto and the two plays, are the innermost thoughts of this individual. He knew he was going to die, either by his own hand or the hands of police, and so these are the words he wants to be remembered by. His screenplays, too, speak volumes about his beliefs and what lead him to do what he did. Anyone who has seriously taken up a creative writing course knows that their work tends to speak more about them than they intend it to, and Cho's work is no exception to this phenomena. Most describe it as "twisted, macabre violence", note that he was unstable, and then leave it at that. There's a lot more to these pieces of fiction than simple violence and aggression, I believe, especially when compared to his video manifesto mailed just prior to the shootings.

In the manifesto, Cho expressed anger towards unnamed figures of wealth:

"You had everything you wanted. Your Mercedes wasn't enough, you brats? Your golden necklaces weren't enough, you slobs?...All your debaucheries weren't enough? Those weren't enough to fulfill your hedonistic needs?"

He also compares himself to Jesus Christ, seeing himself as a savior who is simply doing what he has to in order to save the people he loves:

"I didn't have to do this. I could have left. I could have fled....It's not for me. It's for my children, it's for my brothers and sister that you f****d. I did it for them."

And these same ideas lie between every line of Cho's screenplays. In each we have one or more teenagers lashing out against a repressive male figure of authority who embodies the characteristics Cho describes in his video. He is (or is perceived as) selfish, and his only concern is collecting wealth and trampling whoever gets in his way. In Richard McBeef that object is sexual desire, embodied in the character of Sue. This particular screenplay also touches on the issue of corruption, specifically with the government, as John reveals that his stepfather used to work for them. John accuses Richard of murdering his biological father and staging a cover-up, in order to "get into [Sue's] pants". Mr. Brownstone also touches on the idea that all authority figures are oppressive and greedy, willing to use their clout in order to benefit from the work of others (John plays the slots, wins the money, and Mr. Brownstone claims it for himself).

Beneath the twisted violence and dialogue are legitimate views, but what we have seen is that something caused the rage in Cho's mind to transcend the page and translate into action, resulting in the tragic deaths of dozens of innocent people. And as I have said previously, there were certainly more than just one or two forces at work in Cho's mind, yet I feel that the MSM and politicians on both sides will shape the discussion over this tragedy in order to further their own agendas (much as Bill O'Reilly has done). Gun control is an important issue, as is the treatment of individuals who may pose a threat to the well-being of others. But the discussion should not end there.

Maybe they're right, though. Maybe we're all a little guilty in this incident. We've seen how younger generations are affected by our society's emphasis on personal wealth creation over the needs of others. Perhaps if we changed that, the Virginia Tech's and Columbine's of our country would cease to exist.

Problems All Around

2007-04-18T17:04:00.000-07:00

The incident at Virginia Tech has gotten everyone in an uproar about a number of different issues, such as university security and gun control (from both angles). It's terrible, but this is usually the only way we Americans seem to get cooked up about serious issues. We hope that, in the aftermath of such a tragedy, we will find some kind of fix-all solution that will eradicate the problem once and for all. The sad thing is, however, that these good intentions are often misdirected for one reason or another. Knee-jerk reactions tend to be one of our trademarks, don't you think? Certainly dialogue should be open on a number of topics related to the shootings at Virginia Tech, but the discussion must be kept calm, level-headed, and devoid of finger-pointing.

Over the last few days I've had plenty of time to discuss this topic with friends and university faculty. This whole thing strikes pretty close to home for me on a number of levels, especially when the shooter shares the same major as me (and it certainly doesn't help matters when my writing is often described as "twisted", "depressing", and "gritty"). Writers are often a bit unhinged; that's why we write in the first place. But instead of using this opportunity to discuss things like the merits of morbid, violent, and sadistic literature (which will always hold a fond place in my heart), or the merits of the Second Amendment, I want to try and discuss what I think is the real problem. The one that isn't being discussed on the MSM or really anywhere else so far as I have seen. I've always held that this is a country that centers its values around greed. Our entire education system is absorbed by it, and often it creeps into our moral values and sense of justice when left unchecked.

I'm reminded of a discussion I had during my weekend drill with the National Guard, when a fellow cadet who was going for his MBA couldn't help but line up the plan he had set out for the next thirty-odd years of his life. He was going to graduate, serve part-time in the Guard as an officer, and score a management position in a large corporation (not hard with "US Army Officer" on the resume). And then everything would just fall into place after that: the house, the wife, the 2.3 kids, and the retirement. And he had every contingency planned out in advance; the whole strategy didn't have many flaws in it, as far as anyone could see. And then I chimed in:

"That sounds pretty sweet. So you'll essentially be set for life by the time you're thirty, right?"

"Hah, just about, yea."

"So...what about the thirty-odd years between then and retirement?"

"Work."

"So you basically plateau by the time you're thirty. Your whole life is set out for you in minute detail. Nowhere else to go."

I stumbled on a report by the National Center for Education Statistics which emphasizes the point I'm trying to make. In a survey of high school sophomores done in 2002, "70 percent or more of high school sophomores rated being successful at work, holding a steady job, having close friends, being happily married, and providing better opportunities for their children as very important to them in their life." Alone, this certainly is nothing to really be afraid of. Even I want to be successful in my writing, and friends and providing for a potential family rank very high on my personal list of achievements. But if we also take into account the other statistics - specifically that only 36% ranked "Helping other people in the community" as very important, or that only 19% felt fixing economic disparities was important - the results are much more disturbing.

Now, certainly there are a myriad of factors that can and do play in to someone making the kind of horrific decision that lead to the massacre in Virginia. But trying to pin this tragedy on, say, the video game industry, music, or gun advocates, is like saying that plugging one's nose will cure a head cold. You can mask the symptoms all day long, but the fact remains that the sickness is still wreaking havoc on the system.

We are a people brought up on the Post-WW2 American Dream: a marriage, a house, a car, and kids - the oddly-toned tract house with the smiling, beautiful people and their smiling, beautiful kids. From the moment we're born, it seems, we are educated with one goal in mind: personal wealth creation. Emphasis is placed on succeeding in competitions rather than learning about the overall human experience (is it no wonder why 50% of sophomores said they engaged in sports, while only 21.5% said they engaged in music?). Living becomes a mission to pursue individual achievement rather than collective prosperity. And when people don't succeed (which, statistically, many are doomed to), or find the demands of school or work to be too much to bear, they get frustrated, feel worthless, feel like failures. And some - a very slim few - get uniquely desperate with no outlets for their emotions.

In an early interview, Jello Biafra - the lead vocalist of the west-coast punk band Dead Kennedys - just about hit the nail on the head when discussing his satirical song I Kill Children:

"America produces a great many people who have no outlet for their emotions until they commit some really creative, well-planned crime...what causes people to behave like this?...What makes these peoples' brains tick? And whose fault is it? Is it theirs or is it society's?"

When the Shit Hits The Fan...

2007-04-12T12:49:00.000-07:00

...Lose Everything.

Countless e-mails to and from many key White House staffers have been deleted -- lost to history and placed out of reach of congressional subpoenas -- due to a brazen violation of internal White House policy that was allowed to continue for more than six years, the White House acknowledged yesterday.

We shouldn't be surprised. This isn't the first time this administration has lost information of relative importance. Glenn Greenwald has an excellent account of this administration's history of "losing" or "misplacing" information. I guess that's one of the advantages of working in a bureaucracy.The odd thing, though, is that all the information that gets misplaced just happens to be potentially damning to this administration. Funny how that always works out.

According to the Washington Post:

Administration officials said they could offer no estimate of how many e-mails were lost but indicated that some may involve messages from White House senior adviser Karl Rove, whose role in the firings has been under scrutiny by congressional Democrats.

Others are more quick to make such estimates. Modest ones of around five million or so. Pat Leahy also weighed in on the floor of the Senate:

Leahy: …And they say they have not been preserved. I don't believe that. I don't believe that. You can't erase emails; not today…Those emails are there. They don't want to produce them. It's like the famous 18 minute gap in the Nixon WH tapes. They say they've been erased or misplaced. They're there. They know they're there. And we'll subpoena them if necessary and we'll have them.

The whole time I researched this, the same image kept running through my head. I can just imagine a young Karl Rove trotting home on his way back from elementary school, a report card lined with failing grades crumpled up in the inside of his sweater vest. And just as he sprints through the door and narrowly avoids having to confront his father, he's called into the living room and asked, "So, where's that report card?" Calm and collected, the young Rove makes his way towards his father's lounge chair, eyes the glistening glass of scotch and water on the end table next to him, and right as his father is just about to take the report card - OOPS! - Rove bumps the table and the drink spills all over the report card, running the ink right off the page!

"Accidents happen," says Rove with a shrug of his shoulders.

This is another one of those times where you just have to sit down, shake your head and wonder just what else this administration has been up to. It seems like every day we end up unearthing yet another scandal worthy of investigation. And we've seen all too often that they are unwilling to give us, the American people, a straight answer on any of it.

But in the end, I guess we can all agree that at least one Republican has gotten a pretty sweet deal out of this...

Being outdone has never felt so good.

Ignoring Problems, Masking Side Effects

2007-04-11T08:35:00.000-07:00

This morning, I read an article in the LA Times that really got me thinking while sipping my morning coffee:

The Los Angeles Police Department's landmark Special Order 40, which prohibits officers from inquiring about the immigration status of suspects, has come under an aggressive assault by anti-illegal immigrant activists who argue that it ties the hands of police.

The nearly 30-year-old policy has long been controversial, but the current national debate about illegal immigration has prompted lawsuits that are aimed at overturning Special Order 40 and similar rules across the country.

Los Angeles was the first major city to enact the "don't ask, don't tell" policy on illegal immigration, though most other police agencies have followed suit. So the outcome of the legal challenges could have a widespread effect.

The latest challenge would come this week, with a lawsuit that would ask a judge to require that the LAPD inform federal immigration officials when illegal immigrants are arrested on drug charges.

The arguments against having police officers play "Immigrant Hunt" between patrols seem to just jump out at you without being provoked, even to someone who may take a more sympathetic stance towards law enforcement than I do. Los Angeles mayor Villaraigosa states the obvious: "I agree with Chief Bratton and every police chief before him that requiring our police officers to double as immigration agents will result in fewer arrests, prosecutions and convictions." I'm eager to see if Glenn Beck will share the same opinion. I won't dare hold my breath.

And why is that, do you think? Many of the arguments I'm presented with by friends and family regarding this issue have to do with maintaining law and order on the streets. It's unusual that some would examine this order - one that effectively frees up the police rather than restraining them - and still argue that it "ties the[ir] hands." But the answer is clear:

The lawsuit cites a study by the U.S. Government Accountability Office in 2005. The GAO study, which involved 55,322 illegal immigrants incarcerated in federal, state and local facilities during 2003, found that they had been arrested an average of eight times each, and that 49% previously had been convicted of a felony, while 20% had been arrested for a drug offense. Many also had been convicted of violent crimes.

Illegal immigrants commit crimes. Period. End of story. If you still weren't certain that there was a string of racism weaved into these arguments, this should clear it all up. This is about as misleading as government reports can get. And it isn't like this sort of thing is unusual or unprecedented in the greater American conscience. Despite the fact that all but a small fraction of American citizens are, in fact, immigrants (only Native Americans remain exempt), we're all prone to suspect the declared "outsider" over everyone else. Certainly it's a problem with all of us; I'm not going to sit here and go on a "holier-than-thou" tirade. But it's important to separate the fact from the rhetoric.

The Center for Immigration Studies, an independent research organization that follows immigration impact on the United States, issued a report in April 2001 in which they examined the historical misconception that immigrant crime rates are proportionally higher than those of native-born citizens. The truth is generally the exact opposite, as the study reports:

Kristin Butcher of Boston College and Anne Morrison Piehl of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, using 1980 and 1990 Census Public Use Microdata Samples, found that among men aged 18-40 immigrants were less likely to be in correctional institutions than the native-born. If native-born men had the institutionalization rates of immigrants with the same demographic traits, the former's institutionalized population would be only two-thirds the current size.

They even address the issue of misleading statistics as cited in the LA Times article:

Examining criminal justice data in two U.S. border cities, El Paso and San Diego, Hagan and Palloni argued immigrants are disproportionately represented among prison inmates because of biases in processes that lead from pre-trial detention to sentencing. The criminal justice system views immigrants as potential "flight risks," they noted, and thus detains many suspects who otherwise (as citizens) would not be detained. The authors concluded that incarceration rates, depending on the national origin of the criminal, exaggerate by anywhere from three to seven times the crime rates of immigrants relative to citizens.

There's a prevailing stench of anti-immigrant rhetoric in the air. We hear it every day from the talking heads of the MSM, we read it in the morning paper. It's almost as much a part of the American culture as mom's apple pie. And I think this is one of those issues which truly demonstrates the underlying evil that dwells within all of us, ready to slither out when prodded just the right way at just the right time.

Another study I came across at CIS examined the effects of NAFTA on Mexican immigration. The findings:

Unlike the economic crisis of the early 1980s, which drove hundreds of thousands of
unemployed Mexicans to search for work in the United States, the NAFTA era features relatively sustained rates of growth (except for 1995) and a dynamic manufacturing sector. Nevertheless, this period is characterized by higher rather than lower levels of Mexican emigration, due to rising consumer expectations and falling industrial wages.

This is not just an economics issue, it's a humanitarian issue, and one that corporate America isn't likely to address at all. Instead of demonizing illegal immigrants as chronic felons and job stealers, we should be attacking the problem at it's source: a crippled Mexican economy coupled with general American greed and consumerism. Instead of concentrating on masking the side effects we need to be looking for a real cure, one that will aid those seeking to escape poverty, even if it means taking a little bit off of the bottom line to do so.