"I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. They are so unlike your Christ" --Gandhi
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." -Theodore Roosevelt
"A little revolution, now and then, is a good thing." -Thomas Jefferson-
"In my lifetime, we've gone from Eisenhower to George W. Bush. We've gone from John F. Kennedy to Al Gore. If this is evolution, I believe that in 12 years, we'll be voting for plants." -Lewis Black-
"When you're born in the world you're given a ticket to the freakshow; when you're born in America you're given a front-row seat. And some of us in the front row have notebooks and pencils." -George Carlin
Arar Commission Report
Topic: International Relations
11:25 am EST, Jan 27, 2007
The RCMP and CSIS should review their policies governing the circumstances in which they supply information to foreign governments with questionable human rights records. Information should never be provided to a foreign country where there is a credible risk that it will cause or contribute to the use of torture.
I don't expect anyone to actually read the whole thing, it's a 350+ page document, but it details what the US government did to Maher Arar, kidnapping him at JFK then sending him to Syria to be tortured as a "terrorist." The above is the recommendation of the Commission. It's referring to the United States. We're the foreign country that is torturing people!
US Senate Republicans block minimum wage hike�|�Bonds News�|�Reuters.com
Topic: Politics and Law
2:25 pm EST, Jan 25, 2007
U.S. Senate Republicans on Wednesday blocked a Democratic bill to increase the federal minimum wage for the first time in a decade, demanding it first include small-business tax relief.
They fillibustered poor people??? The fact that this happened and isn't being screamed from the rooftops by the Democrats shows just how screwed up things are on BOTH sides of the fence. The Republicans should be embarassed and appalled that the current joke of minimum wage is what it is (if Jesus has a political issue, it's poverty) and the Democrats should be raking them over the coals for it.
Carl Bernstein: Bush Administraton Has Done 'Far Greater Damage' Than Nixon
Topic: Politics and Law
1:08 pm EST, Jan 25, 2007
"The Bush Administration -- especially its top officials named above and others familiar to most Americans -- was not stopped, and has done far greater damage. As a (Republican) bumper-sticker of the day proclaimed, 'Nobody died at Watergate.' If only we could say that about the era of George W. Bush, and that our elected representatives in Congress and our judiciary had been courageous enough to do their duty and hold the President and his aides accountable."
Senate panel votes against Bush on Iraq - Yahoo! News
Topic: Politics and Law
2:55 pm EST, Jan 24, 2007
At least eight other Republican senators say they now back legislative proposals registering objections to Bush's decision to boost U.S. military strength in Iraq by 21,500 troops.
The growing list — which includes Sens. Gordon Smith (news, bio, voting record), George Voinovich (news, bio, voting record) and Sam Brownback (news, bio, voting record) — has emboldened Democrats, who are pushing for a vote in the full Senate by next week to rebuke the president's Iraq policy.
Oh my god! The President was right all along! Hating the war has emboldened the enemy! The Democrats!
Leahy: "We knew damn well if he went to Canada he wouldn't be tortured. He'd be held and he'd be investigated. We also knew damn well if he went to Syria, he'd be tortured. And it's beneath the dignity of this country, a country that has always been a beacon of human rights, to send somebody to another country to be tortured."
I watched this was was almost surprised Leahy didn't get up, walk over, and beat the smirk off 'berto's face. Leahy is dead right.
Burdened U.S. military cuts role in drug war - Los Angeles Times
Topic: War on Terrorism
9:00 pm EST, Jan 22, 2007
The Department of Defense defended its policy shift in a budget document sent to Congress in October: "The DOD position is that detecting drug trafficking is a lower priority than supporting our service members on ongoing combat missions."
At this point it's not detecting drug trafficking I give a damn about. If someone can move a few tons of coke, smack, pot or people, how hard would it be to move a similar quantity of explosives, or other such item, via the same methods?
I don't care about the war on drugs. I care about the "War on Terror" that is not just being lost, it's being fueled beyond any hope of control by the Bushies.
On a personal level, majorities now say Bush is not a strong leader (once his claim to fame), 56 percent say he can't be trusted in a crisis (another onetime mainstay), most don't see him as honest, two-thirds don't think he understands their problems and nearly as many don't think he listens to others' views. Fifty-five percent say he has not made the country more secure, his focus since 9/11.
I'd like to welcome the majority of the country to what I've been thinking for years. It's really unfortunate that impeaching him would give us Darth Cheney as the new emperor.
In Raw World of Sex Movies, High Definition Could Be a View Too Real - New York Times
Topic: Miscellaneous
3:59 am EST, Jan 22, 2007
The pornographers’ progress with HD may also be somewhat slowed by Sony, one of the main backers of the Blu-ray high-definition disc format. Sony said last week that, in keeping with a longstanding policy, it would not mass-produce pornographic videos on behalf of the movie makers.
And Sony shoots thenselves in the ass again. It may not be everyone, but there is a large segment of the population that buys porn (see the $3.6 BILLION figure noted a few paragraphs later) and those are people who won't get Blu-ray, they'll get HD-DVD. Sont lost the VHS-Beta war by forcing a proprietary format on companies that didn't want one. They're positioned better to try it this time by owning their own movie studio, but I don't think that's enough to cover both people who don't want to adopt Sony's rules for publishing and losing the porn business.
Beta was by far a better technology, the resolution in 1975 was better than DVD is now, but they lost, badly. They made the same mistake with their "memory stick" mess, seemed to get it right with the PS1 and PS2, but they're back to their original screw up again here.
More jurors on standby in CIA leak trial - Yahoo! News
Topic: Politics and Law
5:20 pm EST, Jan 19, 2007
A federal judge is putting more potential jurors on standby in the CIA leak trial because so many people have been dismissed, mostly because of strong feelings against the Bush administration and the Iraq war.
I think this does a good job of answering the question of how much public support these guys still have.
Ex-Ohio Rep. Ney sentenced to 30 months - Yahoo! News
Topic: Politics and Law
1:19 pm EST, Jan 19, 2007
Former Rep. Bob Ney was sentenced Friday to 2 1/2 years in federal prison for trading political favors for gifts and campaign donations from lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
