Bush: God Told Me To Invade Iraq
Thu Oct 06, 2005 at 01:54:31 PM PDT
For those of you unsure if Bush is a moronic incompetent or a stark raving loony,
chalk one up for stark raving loony:
President George W. Bush told Palestinian ministers that God had told him to invade Afghanistan and Iraq - and create a Palestinian State, a new BBC series reveals. . . .
[Palestinian Prime Minister] Nabil Shaath says: "President Bush said to all of us: 'I'm driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, "George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan." And I did, and then God would tell me, "George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq ..." And I did. And now, again, I feel God's words coming to me, "Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East." And by God I'm gonna do it.'"
When most people say that they hear voices, we put them in padded rooms.
American Airlines Wants Cancer Patients to Drop Dead
Mon Oct 03, 2005 at 09:47:46 AM PDT
I wanted to relate a recent experience I had with American Airlines that illustrates why the industry is in such trouble -- and why things are not likely to get better any time soon. I was scheduled to fly from Raleigh Durham, NC, to New York, and back to Raleigh via Boston the weekend of October 11, via American. All well and good until I learned that I was not going to be able to make the outbound flight.
Why not? Because a few years ago, I joined the National Bone Marrow Registry (www.marrow.org), a nonprofit organization that matches allogenic (nonrelated/nonfamily) donors with cancer patients in need of bone marrow transplants.
The National Guard Restoration Act of 2005
Thu Sep 01, 2005 at 07:38:23 AM PDT
I will personally contribute $100 to the reelection campaign of the first Democratic Congressman or Senator to sponsor the following Bill. It is not much, but it is what I can afford. I encourage other Kossacks to do the same.
The Bill in extended text will require that all troops currently deployed in Iraq who are residents of the areas hit by Katrina will be returned home to provide damage relief.
Biden Gets It on Judges
Fri Jul 29, 2005 at 03:39:09 PM PDT
Speaking at the American Constitution Society's National Convention, Senator Biden
raged against the right-wing's judicial agenda:
"What is really at stake the wholesale liquidation of any constitutional protection of privacy." Biden added that those on the right, the "Constitutional in Exile crowd, believe that there should no protection of privacy in the constitution."
Pope Benedict XVI On The Iraq War
Thu Apr 21, 2005 at 02:50:26 PM PDT
There were not sufficient reasons to unleash a war against Iraq. To say nothing of the fact that, given the new weapons that make possible destructions that go beyond the combatant groups, today we should be asking ourselves if it is still licit to admit the very existence of a 'just war'.
(source here)
Call Rush TODAY, Make Him Prove His Cowardice
Mon Apr 18, 2005 at 08:48:01 AM PDT
As I previously diaried
here a group of Yale students have
called Rush Limbaugh on a major bluff.
A group of liberal lawyers, law students and law professors held a conference at Yale about a week ago, and this bothered Rush immensely. So much so he insisted that the "liberal elistists" at Yale have "banned" him. The leaders of the conference responded with a letter to Rush:
How To Handle Rush Limbaugh
Fri Apr 15, 2005 at 02:27:13 PM PDT
So a group of lawyers, law students and academics got together to discuss the Constitution at Yale last weekend. Something
Rush didn't like very much:
[S]ome people got together to rewrite the Constitution. A bunch of liberal elitists gathered up at Yale to have this little pretend new Constitution. What it should say, what it should be, what the principles and guidelines of the new Constitution ought to be. So while there are those of us who are devoted to defending the current US Constitution, there are a bunch of leftists and liberals out there that are toying around with the idea of rewriting and changing it. (interruption) Well, I don't know if they've banned me, I haven't read everything that everybody there posited or wrote.
But the "liberal elitists" at Yale were not about to be outgunned. So they sent a little letter off to Rush:
Roe, Schavio, and the link no one is drawing
Thu Mar 24, 2005 at 06:43:11 AM PDT
Those crazy lawyers at the American Constitution Society give us
this to chew on:
Everytime [the Republicans] call for appointment of judges to the Supreme Court who will overrule or undermine Roe v. Wade, they assert that the matter should be left to the states. They assert that even if Roe v. Wade is overturned, it won't eliminate abortion in the states in which the duly elected state representatives do not take steps to outlaw the practice. But the Schiavo case reveals the true priorities of the right: they are happy to abandon the principles of federalism if the issue is related to questions of "life." But if they are willing to cast aside federalism in the Schiavo case, won't they be willing to do the same in the context of abortion? And if they are, won't that inevitably lead to attempts to pass federal legislation banning abortion? The actions of conservatives in the context of the Terri Schiavo case should give us pause as Bush nominates new justices to the Supreme Court -- especially, given conservatives' admitted goal of denying women's constitutional right to privacy and reproductive choice.
Another Prominent Conservative Calls For More Torture
Thu Mar 17, 2005 at 11:34:28 AM PDT
Eugene Volokh is a leading conservative constitutional scholar and a darling of the right-wing Federalist Society. I'm going to
let his words speak for themselves:
[T]hough for many instances I would prefer less painful forms of execution, I am especially pleased that the killing -- and, yes, I am happy to call it a killing, a perfectly proper term for a perfectly proper act -- was a slow throttling, and was preceded by a flogging. The one thing that troubles me (besides the fact that the murderer could only be killed once) is that the accomplice was sentenced to only 15 years in prison, but perhaps there's a good explanation.
Court Tells John Ashcroft Where To Shove His Moral Values
Sun Jan 23, 2005 at 11:18:12 AM PDT
A federal Court has
struck down the anti-porn law. In
U.S. v. Extreme Associates, the government charged an internet porn company with ten felony counts of obscenity. The government's argument was that "entertaining lewd and lustful thoughts stimulated by viewing material that appeals to one's purient interests . . . . is immoral conduct even when done by consenting adults in private," and therefore Congress could make laws to prevent such conduct.
The court wanted no part of this tripe. In a decision relying heavily on Lawrence v. Texas, Judge Lancaster of the Western District of Pennsylvania held that "upholding the public sense of morality is not even a legitimate state interest," and therefore the federal anti-obscenity law could not be turned against the defendant.
Pentagon Considered Developing Weapons of Mass Santorum
Mon Jan 17, 2005 at 10:38:13 AM PDT
The Pentagon considered developing a chemical weapon which would
make enemy soldiers sexually attracted to each other, thus undermining their morale. Needless to say, this hasn't gone over well with watchdog groups:
"Humiliating your enemy with gay sex sounds a lot like what happened at Abu Ghraib," observed Edward Hammond of the Sunshine Project, a watchdog group that monitors research into biological and chemical weapons and that was responsible for the proposal's disclosure.
Steve Ralls, a spokesman for the Washington, D.C.-based Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN), said, "It is a homophobic and delusional proposition for the Pentagon to assume a gay opponent is any less formidable than a straight one."
But of course, a war with Iraq was necessary to destroy their stockpiles of chemical weapons.
The Vast, Right-Wing Resume Bank
Fri Jan 14, 2005 at 08:08:31 AM PDT
We like to talk about the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy as if it is some kind of shadow government lorded over by Realm Leader Norquist, but as Joel over at the American Constitution Society points out, some times,
it's just about having a clean hiring process:
Imagine you're a young, idealistic supply-sider just dying to graduate and escape from your small time college newspaper. You can't bear the thought of writing another column exposing the leftward leanings of State U's sociology department. No, what you really want is a shot at the big time, that's right, Washington D.C.
You dream of getting up every morning, brushing the lint off your navy blazer, and strutting to your job at a prominent thinktank. You imagine yourself as the king of K Street, fighting nobly for corporate tax relief and creationism, and spending your weekends duck hunting with the Vice President.
The problem though, is how to get a docksider in the door? Well fear not young tort reformer, all you need is a little help from the Heritage Foundation Job Bank, publisher of the spiffy Young Conservative Job Seeker's Guide to Washington.
Bush Nominates Second Torture Buff To Cabinet
Tue Jan 11, 2005 at 08:09:15 AM PDT
President Bush has nominated Judge Michael Chertoff to be the next Secretary of Homeland Security. So
who is Michael Chertoff?
Chertoff is the second major Bush cabinet nominee to be involved in the scandal over abusive treatment of detainees. In an August 18, 2004 op-ed published in Newsday, Schwartz writes that "[h]arsh 'stress and duress' tactics used by the CIA in early 2002 - such as simulated drowning - were reviewed and apparently cleared by the Justice Department Criminal Division, then headed by Michael Chertoff."
Podesta suggests Congressional Dems have right to information
Tue Dec 28, 2004 at 08:28:57 PM PDT
Former Clinton Chief of Staff John Podesta blogs on
open government and the Constitution, and suggests a possible strategy for breaking up the GOP's stranglehold on information:
The Constitution does not explicitly speak of a "right to information" or "open government." The legal authority we have to demand information from government is rooted in statute (e.g., FOIA, FACA). While these laws play a valuable role in peeling back the curtain on government secrecy, the public's right to know would be considerably strengthened if such a right could be constitutionalized.
more below the fold
Bush Administration Says Gun Control Is Unconstitutional
Mon Dec 20, 2004 at 12:30:43 PM PDT
The Office of Legal Counsel, or Bush's Constitutional Lawyers, have issued an opinion arguing that
the 2nd Amendment creates an individual right to bear arms. Individual rights provisions of the Constitution, as opposed to structural or federal provisions, are significant in that they allow individuals to chalenge and defeat laws which conflict with their mandate. If the OLC position is accepted by the Supreme Court, it will mean that any law (or at the very least, any federal law) banning any gun will be declared unconstitutional unless the law can survive the most difficult constitutional scrutiny.
The OLC previously authored memos setting the legal grounds for Bush's torture policy in Iraq. Their opinions have an obnoxious tendancy to become policy.
Maureen Dowd, Wrong On Foie Gras, Wrong For America
Sat Oct 23, 2004 at 08:08:07 PM PDT
There are many reasons to hate MoDo, her
latest column is only one of them. I won't go to the trouble of ranting about it, but this line is worth noting:
Four dead geese are not too high a price to pay for a few rural, blue-collar votes in a swing state. As long as Mr. Kerry doesn't slip and ask Teresa to purée the carcasses into foie gras.
Foie gras is the enlarged liver of a goose, and generally can only be produced by force feeding in captivity. It can never be produced by puréing the animals.
The least she could do is get her snooty food right when she whores for Dubya.
