Wednesday, February 01, 2006
What we've lost
Cindy Sheehan recounts being arrested for wearing a t-shirt that might have reminded someone.
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Who we are
And why we blog.
Tristero over at Digby's place nails it:
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Tristero over at Digby's place nails it:
We are not the radicals. To force women who wish to terminate their pregnancies - for whatever reason - to use coathangers - that's radical. And unspeakably cruel. To refuse to recognize, both legally and publicly, a couple in love - that's radical. And narrow-mindedly cruel. To base foreign policy on the president's "gut" and an obviously untenable unilateralism - that's radical. And stupid. To get a team of unscrupulous lawyers trained in the black arts of sophistry (ahem!) but ignorant of American history to gut the Constitution and argue that a president is just an ominipotent monarch under a different name - that's radical. And utterly un-American.Yo tambien. Go read it all.
That's why I'm blogging.
That old slippery slope
My basic problem with the "9-11 changed everything" mentality is that when we mix it with the "we're a nation at war" mentality, we end up with the rationale to change fundamental American legal structures forever.
Consider the "war on terror." Terrorists have been around for a long time (read Mark Kleiman on Sampson as the first suicide bomber, for instance). They are going to be around for a long time. Doesn't really matter if we're talking about Timothy McVeigh or Osama bin forgotten. As long as there are pissed off people who have the means and the will to kill innocent civilians, there will be terrorism somewhere in the world.
Letting the president (any president) assume some sort of super war time powers based on the notion that things are different now means that we are going to be stuck with presidents having those powers until the people rise up and take them away.
Letting the president ignore the law is a terribly slippery slope.
Bill in Portland Maine, writing at Daily Kos, gives us a pretty good picture of where we end up and how we get there.
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Consider the "war on terror." Terrorists have been around for a long time (read Mark Kleiman on Sampson as the first suicide bomber, for instance). They are going to be around for a long time. Doesn't really matter if we're talking about Timothy McVeigh or Osama bin forgotten. As long as there are pissed off people who have the means and the will to kill innocent civilians, there will be terrorism somewhere in the world.
Letting the president (any president) assume some sort of super war time powers based on the notion that things are different now means that we are going to be stuck with presidents having those powers until the people rise up and take them away.
Letting the president ignore the law is a terribly slippery slope.
Bill in Portland Maine, writing at Daily Kos, gives us a pretty good picture of where we end up and how we get there.
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
Wal-Mart Nazi News Awards
Following up on a story Rain Storm was following last spring, it looks like those full page ads that Wal-Mart ran equating the Flagstaff big box ordinance with Nazi book burning got them high marks in the CNNMoney 101 Dumbest Moments in Business.
With that in mind, remember to Buy Blue.
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With that in mind, remember to Buy Blue.
