The Supreme Court issues a stinging blow to Bush. Score one for the little guy.
With its ruling that the Bush administration lacks the authority to put Guantanamo detainees on trial before military tribunals, the U.S. Supreme Court has dealt the Busheviks a huge blow in its unprecedented, ongoing quest to expand the president's powers. King George has finally been told he cannot do whatever he wants, to whomever he wants, whenever he wants. Like it or not, he's finally being reminded that America governs under the rule of law and holds sacred the separation of powers and our system of checks and balances. Finally, someone has said, "We will not allow you to defile the U.S. Constitution, circumvent Congress and violate international law."
Summertime and the reading is sleazy: stolen elections and failed utopian dreams
Summer’s political blockbuster is Robert Kennedy’s Jr.’s 12-page “Did Bush Steal the 2004 Election?” article in the June 15 issue of Rolling Stone. We all know the legendary impact of being on the “cover of the Rolling Stone.” RFK Jr.’s heavily fact-checked article – there are 208 footnotes online at rolling stone.com – has re-ignited the debate over Ohio’s 2004 election. While the Free Press has never stopped digging, the last major national magazine article on the issue, “None Dare Call it Stolen,” appeared in Harper’s Magazine on September 7, 2005, a precursor to Mark Crispin Miller’s essential book Fooled Again: How the Right Stole the 2004 Election and Why They’ll Steal the Next One Too (Unless We Stop Them). If you haven’t read Fooled Again yet, I recommend it.
Spreading cancer
The unending game of "pretend" that the U.S. media allow George Bush
to play on the global stage, so often letting his lying utterances
hang suspended, unchallenged, in the middle of the story, as though
they were plausible - as though a class of third-graders couldn't
demolish them with a few innocent questions - feels like the
journalistic equivalent of waterboarding. Gasp! Some truth, please!
I suggest the prez has forfeited the right to command a headline, or half a story, or an uninterrupted quote: ". . . we'll defend ourselves, but at the same time we're actively working with our partners to spread peace and democracy," he said last week in Austria.
Surely "spreading democracy" should no longer be allowed to appear in print, between now and 2008, unless accompanied by a parenthetical clarification ("not true," stated as profanely as local standards allow). And that, of course, would only be the media's first step back into integrity with the public.
I suggest the prez has forfeited the right to command a headline, or half a story, or an uninterrupted quote: ". . . we'll defend ourselves, but at the same time we're actively working with our partners to spread peace and democracy," he said last week in Austria.
Surely "spreading democracy" should no longer be allowed to appear in print, between now and 2008, unless accompanied by a parenthetical clarification ("not true," stated as profanely as local standards allow). And that, of course, would only be the media's first step back into integrity with the public.
Buffett's gift
When Frank Gehry gets around to designing America's answer to the Sistine Chapel, I trust this postmodern Temple of Mammon on Las Vegas Blvd. will have a ceiling fresco depicting Warren Buffett's consignment of $31 billion to Bill and Melinda Gates. As the older billionaire sits on his pillow of cloud, his outthrust hand with its bag of securities is grasped by Gates -- the Adam of Software Commerce -- while seraphs and cherubs muse delightedly over the IRS regulations governing the sheltering of Buffett's swag in tax-exempt non-profit foundations.
Maybe if we tried a slingshot
AUSTIN -- -- Y'all, this isn't gonna work.
North Korea is threatening to launch a long-range missile against us, and we're threatening to reply with an anti-missile missile.
Sorry to remind you, but our "missile defense system" does not work. Good old Star Wars flopped again when tested in 2004 -- in fact, it failed to launch. Since then, several tests have been delayed or cancelled due to technical problems. Just because we spend $130 billion on a bad idea doesn't mean we can ever get it to work. The latest Bush budget has $10.7 billion for Star Wars, almost twice as much as Homeland Security is spending on customs and border patrol.
The good news is that the North Korean rocket doesn't work, either. The last time they fired a long-range missile, it went 1,300 kilometers (807 miles) and could not put a payload into orbit.
The Korean missile was supposedly tanked up and ready to go more than a week ago, but, oops, experts now say if that were true it would have been fired by now, since the fuel is highly unstable.
North Korea is threatening to launch a long-range missile against us, and we're threatening to reply with an anti-missile missile.
Sorry to remind you, but our "missile defense system" does not work. Good old Star Wars flopped again when tested in 2004 -- in fact, it failed to launch. Since then, several tests have been delayed or cancelled due to technical problems. Just because we spend $130 billion on a bad idea doesn't mean we can ever get it to work. The latest Bush budget has $10.7 billion for Star Wars, almost twice as much as Homeland Security is spending on customs and border patrol.
The good news is that the North Korean rocket doesn't work, either. The last time they fired a long-range missile, it went 1,300 kilometers (807 miles) and could not put a payload into orbit.
The Korean missile was supposedly tanked up and ready to go more than a week ago, but, oops, experts now say if that were true it would have been fired by now, since the fuel is highly unstable.
A line in the sand: why the Busby/Bilbray election and their voting machine "sleepovers" matter (or should) to the entire nation
(HINT: It's not about Busby or Bilbray
or San Diego or even California!)
My reporting and the concerns expressed about the Busby/Bilbray election results as announced, have little or nothing to do with Francine Busby or Brian Bilbray or even, in particular, the June 6th U.S. House special run-off election in California's 50th congressional district.
It has only a tiny bit more to do with San Diego. And only slightly more than that to do with California.
It has everything, however, to do with democracy. Across the entire country. As opposed to any one race in any one area.
If I've not been clear on that until now, please allow me to set the record straight.
My reporting and the concerns expressed about the Busby/Bilbray election results as announced, have little or nothing to do with Francine Busby or Brian Bilbray or even, in particular, the June 6th U.S. House special run-off election in California's 50th congressional district.
It has only a tiny bit more to do with San Diego. And only slightly more than that to do with California.
It has everything, however, to do with democracy. Across the entire country. As opposed to any one race in any one area.
If I've not been clear on that until now, please allow me to set the record straight.
Protest Big Oil in Columbus
Republicans are using the national frustration with gas prices as an excuse to push through even more giveaways to Big Oil instead of getting serious about clean energy alternatives that can move us away from oil.
Why? Because the oil industry has bought the majority stake in the Republican party. Big Oil has given hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign contributions to Republicans and in return, Big Oil has received billions in subsidies from Congress.
We can't afford Congress' addiction to oil money anymore. It keeps gas prices high, keeps us dependent on the Middle East and is blocking progress on a clean energy future,
Congress needs to know that we're paying attention. We need them to start working for us, not Big Oil. Tomorrow we're going to make it clear that we want an oil-free, clean energy future and we want it now.
National Day of Action for an "Oil-Free" Congress
Where: Speedway Main Street & Scioto-Darby
Main Street & Scioto Darby Road, Hilliard, OH
When: Wednesday, 28 Jun 2006, 5:30 PM
Why? Because the oil industry has bought the majority stake in the Republican party. Big Oil has given hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign contributions to Republicans and in return, Big Oil has received billions in subsidies from Congress.
We can't afford Congress' addiction to oil money anymore. It keeps gas prices high, keeps us dependent on the Middle East and is blocking progress on a clean energy future,
Congress needs to know that we're paying attention. We need them to start working for us, not Big Oil. Tomorrow we're going to make it clear that we want an oil-free, clean energy future and we want it now.
National Day of Action for an "Oil-Free" Congress
Where: Speedway Main Street & Scioto-Darby
Main Street & Scioto Darby Road, Hilliard, OH
When: Wednesday, 28 Jun 2006, 5:30 PM
Shushing the big money
In the old monarchies of Europe, the resident populace were known as
subjects. Here in the New World, where mankind started over, we're
citizens, a word that pulses with self-governing power.
This is pretty scary, and there's plenty of pressure on us not to take this role literally. Democracy is dangerous, after all. It's always a threat to those in power. This is why its expansion over the last 230 years - through abolitionism, trade unionism, women's suffrage, the civil rights movement - has never come without struggle and controversy. But where democracy is healthy, this is what citizens do: expand the terrain.
Welcome to Humboldt County, Calif., a largely rural county 250 miles north of San Francisco where democracy is healthy indeed, and where, thanks to a citizens' initiative called Measure T, which passed at the beginning of the month with 55 percent of the vote, local governance has asserted itself in the face of the threat of Big Money disguised as just another neighbor exercising his right to free speech.
This is pretty scary, and there's plenty of pressure on us not to take this role literally. Democracy is dangerous, after all. It's always a threat to those in power. This is why its expansion over the last 230 years - through abolitionism, trade unionism, women's suffrage, the civil rights movement - has never come without struggle and controversy. But where democracy is healthy, this is what citizens do: expand the terrain.
Welcome to Humboldt County, Calif., a largely rural county 250 miles north of San Francisco where democracy is healthy indeed, and where, thanks to a citizens' initiative called Measure T, which passed at the beginning of the month with 55 percent of the vote, local governance has asserted itself in the face of the threat of Big Money disguised as just another neighbor exercising his right to free speech.
Bush at the tipping point: a lawless and incompetent leadership
George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, two top outlaws smashing our
country's rule of law and democratic liberties, are testing
the American people's resistance. Every day they are testing.
Every day they think by flaunting the words, "war on terror",
they can get Americans to concede more and more of what makes
the United States a constitutionally-abiding government under
the rule of law.
You know what? With not enough exceptions, they are right. Day by day, we're giving up what our forefathers fought to bequeath us since that famous Declaration of Independence of 1776. They were determined that people in this country would not be arrested without charges and jailed indefinitely, that they would not be tortured, or sent to be tortured in dictatorial regimes, or deprived of habeas corpus to take their incarceration to our courts of law, or be snooped on at the whim of the President and his deputies or that people in faraway lands would be destroyed in the tens of thousands due to a fabricated war-invasion-quagmire.
You know what? With not enough exceptions, they are right. Day by day, we're giving up what our forefathers fought to bequeath us since that famous Declaration of Independence of 1776. They were determined that people in this country would not be arrested without charges and jailed indefinitely, that they would not be tortured, or sent to be tortured in dictatorial regimes, or deprived of habeas corpus to take their incarceration to our courts of law, or be snooped on at the whim of the President and his deputies or that people in faraway lands would be destroyed in the tens of thousands due to a fabricated war-invasion-quagmire.
Despite it being the worst military blunder in U.S history, the GOP sees Iraq war as campaign opportunity. Am I missing something?
Sixteen U.S. soldiers were killed last week in Iraq, bringing the June total to 46. Sunday alone 29 Iraqis were killed in the escalating violence. On Saturday the NY Times reported that the tony Mansour district of Baghdad--like many of the city's western areas--has basically fallen to insurgents, seeming more like "wartime Beirut" than the peaceful affluent area it once was. On Sunday, Iraq's Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki unveiled a plan to offer limited amnesty to insurgents. That same day Japan began pulling out its 550 troops. The killing of al-Zarqawi, like the many failed milestones before it, clearly has done nothing to lessen the violence and weaken the insurgency, and the war continues to spiral out of control, with no end in sight, and with the country teetering on the brink of large-scale civil war. According to a new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, when asked whether they'd be more or less likely to vote for a 2006 presidential candidate who favors a complete pullout within 12 months, 54% of respondents said "more likely" while just 32% said "less likely." Add all this up and it spells political disaster.