There comes a time when people are supposed to get angry. The rights and interests of black people in the U.S. have been under assault for the longest time, and in the absence of an effective counterforce, that assault has only grown more brutal.

Have you looked at the public schools lately? Have you looked at the prisons? Have you looked at the legions of unemployed blacks roaming the neighborhoods of big cities across the country? These jobless African-Americans, so many of them men, are so marginal in the view of the wider society, so insignificant, so invisible, they aren’t even counted in the government’s official jobless statistics.

And now this new majority on the Supreme Court seems committed to a legal trajectory that would hurl blacks back to the bad old days of the Jim Crow era.
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If black people could find a way to come together in sky-high turnouts on Election Day, if they showed up at polling booths in numbers close to the maximum possible turnout, if they could set the example for all other Americans about the importance of exercising the franchise, the politicians would not dare to ignore their concerns.

For black people, especially, the current composition of the Supreme Court should be the ultimate lesson in the importance of voting in a presidential election. No branch of the government has been more crucial than the judiciary in securing the rights and improving the lives of blacks over the past five or six decades.

When Is Enough Enough? - New York Times

The Supreme Court ruled 53 years ago in Brown v. Board of Education that segregated education is inherently unequal, and it ordered the nation’s schools to integrate. Yesterday, the court switched sides and told two cities that they cannot take modest steps to bring public school students of different races together. It was a sad day for the court and for the ideal of racial equality.

Resegregation Now - New York Times

possibly noteworthy wrote:

Gradually, a compelling idea emerges: Now that the Communist Party has embraced crony capitalism, Gifford explains, it has become just the latest dynastic iteration in the great cycle of Chinese history, every bit as autocratic, venal and corrupt as the Qing, Tang and Qin emperors and empresses. And when do Chinese dynasties fall? Not when the urban intelligentsia is restless, as was the case in the 1980s before the massacre at Tiananmen Square, but when the rural peasant class finally rises up, he concludes.

the communist regime has long been argued to be just another dynasty: foreign and short lived like the Mongols probably and certainly Mao was in the mold of Hongwu the first Ming Emperor.
I forget the history of China I read which argued the case - it was written a few decades ago but it was a lovely book with some lovely prints of the process of growing rice
certainly lots of dynasties - certainly the Ming were interested in reorganing society and particularly the peasantry
the communists were different especially under the Cultural Revolution by wanting to destroy history and the past and by destroying Confusionism
the communists were the first dynasty to introduce a new driving philosophy behind the Imperial civil service
communism is the first set of memes to make a major impact on China since Buddhism which had a major political impact during the Tang dynasty(618AD-907AD)

RE: 'China Road' by Rob Gifford

At every stage since his capture, in a taxi bound for the Afghan-Pakistan border, Hicks had crossed a legal landscape that Cheney did more than anyone to reshape. He was Detainee 002 at Guantanamo Bay, arriving on opening day at an asserted no man's land beyond the reach of sovereign law. Interrogators questioned him under guidelines that gave legal cover to the infliction of pain and fear -- and, according to an affidavit filed by British lawyer Steven Grosz, Hicks was subjected to beatings, sodomy with a foreign object, sensory deprivation, disorienting drugs and prolonged shackling in painful positions.

The U.S. government denied those claims, and before accepting Hicks's guilty plea it required him to affirm that he had "never been illegally treated."

Part 2 of the Washington Post's piece on Cheney and where we are now. Required reading.

Pushing the Envelope on Presidential Power | Cheney | washingtonpost.com

Just past the Oval Office, in the private dining room overlooking the South Lawn, Vice President Cheney joined President Bush at a round parquet table they shared once a week. Cheney brought a four-page text, written in strict secrecy by his lawyer. He carried it back out with him after lunch.

portrait of a master of the dark arts

'A Different Understanding With the President' | Cheney | washingtonpost.com

We've all been whining about the "corruption" of government forever. We all should be whining about the corruption of professions too. But rather than whining, I want to work on this problem that I've come to believe is the most important problem in making government work.

How does Finland do it?

It is interesting that the name of the Berlin agency that ranks perceived corruption of countries is called "Transparency International".

I also think it is interesting that the trend of transparency in professional organizations seems to be leading to a decrease in perceived corruption.

From Wired 15.04 cover story:

Smart companies are sharing secrets with rivals, blogging about products in their pipeline, even admitting to their failures. The name of this new game is RADICAL TRANSPARENCY, and it's sweeping boardrooms across the nation.

See... even Michael Scott gets it.

Is the key to eliminating corruption being transparent?

Americans overwhelmingly approve of legislation to prevent hate violence. In fact, three in four (or 68%) support expanding hate crimes laws to include sexual orientation and gender identity and giving local law enforcement the tools and resources they need to investigate and prosecute these tragic acts of bigotry.

I am confident that you will champion the will of voters in your community and the majority of Americans, and bring our federal hate crime laws into the 21st Century, by ensuring that all of our citizens are protected against senseless hate violence.

While a random act of violence against any individual is always a tragic event, we know that violent crimes based on prejudice are meant to terrorize an entire community.

As Americans, we must defend our neighbors from becoming victims of bias-motivated violence.

So get out there and send a message.
I am not gay or part of any alternative lifestyle but there is no place for violence in our country even if you think what someone else is doing is wrong. There are other ways to express your views and violence is not the way.

More info here... http://www.hrc.org/

Pass the Matthew Shepard Act...

The Iraqi conflict is going to be with us for years if not decades. The country has become the focus of a crisis of Islamic civilization that is closer to its onset than its conclusion. Violent conflict between the now dominant Shiite community and Sunnis nostalgic for power is but one aspect of this epochal upheaval.
...
Against this reality, exacerbated in Iraq by the whirlwind fragmentation that often occurs in multi-ethnic societies when the lid of despotism is lifted, America's September deadline for measuring the progress achieved by the addition of 30,000 troops looks almost comical.

Let's face it folks, things are not going to be measurably better in Iraq by September. They may be about the same; they could be worse. The destructive energy disaggregating the country is still building. Wars tend to end when their participants are exhausted. We are not there yet, not even close.
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To ensure this, the United States must keep a military presence in Iraq for the foreseeable future. The size of this deterrent force is up for debate, but 50,000 soldiers, or 105,000 less than today, is one talked-about figure. The timing of the drawdown will have to be discussed with Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, but it should begin soon after September.

errr wrong the US is not a stabilizing force in Iraq
handing over to a regional force of combined Arab League and Iranian forces, if they could gel, would help
but hey reality check the US presence makes things worse, they're not seen as a neutral policeman, the US presence draws in outside forces and domestically a 50 year commitment like Korea is a non-starter
that's my opinion
I think the questions that need addressing are:
is the US a stabilizing force?
can the US both be a player in the conflict and a policeman? ( I think you're attending what my housemate, who's a cop, would call a DT [domestic trouble] and in a DT both parties are listed in the report as the aggrieved party even through one might be the instigator yet in Iraq the US is an aggrieved party)

Roger Cohen: The long view in Iraq - International Herald Tribune

On the military plane that crossed the ocean at night, the wounded lay in stretchers stacked three high. The drone of engines was broken by the occasional sound of moaning. Sedated and sleeping, Pfc. Joshua Calloway was at the top of one stack last September. Unlike the others around him, Calloway was handcuffed to his stretcher.

a must read

Little Relief on Ward 53 - washingtonpost.com

Army Spec. Jeans Cruz helped capture Saddam Hussein. When he came home to the Bronx, important people called him a war hero and promised to help him start a new life. The mayor of New York, officials of his parents' home town in Puerto Rico, the borough president and other local dignitaries honored him with plaques and silk parade sashes. They handed him their business cards and urged him to phone.

But a "black shadow" had followed Cruz home from Iraq, he confided to an Army counselor. He was hounded by recurring images of how war really was for him: not the triumphant scene of Hussein in handcuffs, but visions of dead Iraqi children.

Jeans Cruz lives with his family in a Bronx housing project, where a shooting left a door perforated with bullet holes, above. Among the family photographs on their living-room wall, below, hang plaques honoring Cruz for his service and his role in helping capture Saddam Hussein. What the former soldier remembers most about the war, however, is death; he recalls moving the bodies of Iraqi children.
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As many as one-quarter of all soldiers and Marines returning from Iraq are psychologically wounded, according to a recent American Psychological Association report. Twenty percent of the soldiers in Iraq screened positive for anxiety, depression and acute stress, an Army study found.
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Lt. Gen. John Vines, who led the 18th Airborne Corps in Iraq and Afghanistan, said countless officers keep quiet out of fear of being mislabeled. "All of us who were in command of soldiers killed or wounded in combat have emotional scars from it," said Vines, who recently retired. "No one I know has sought out care from mental-health specialists, and part of that is a lack of confidence that the system would recognize it as 'normal' in a time of war. This is a systemic problem."

bare in mind Joseph Heller's Catch 22 (one of the best books of the 20th Century) -- sometimes insanity is the sane reaction to insane situations

The War Inside - washingtonpost.com