the war
 

anyone else watch this? I can't imagine anyone who saw it questioning dropping the atomic bomb. agree?

I can't imagine anyone who saw it saying the Iraq war is a mess*?




* I distinguish from people saying it was unnecessary, but that is a different question, and not where most of the public unhappiness lies.

NYT = just a little to the right of Pravda
 

My favorite news today was that the Shiites who condemned the Senate resolution on partition also don't want us to keep working with the Sunnis - http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...sn=001&sc=1000 .They are intractable, and no amount of years and men will change it.

NYT = just a little to the right of Pravda
 

Pinned on, by blindfolded children.

NYT = just a little to the right of Pravda
 

Don't you mean Chafee and Lenin? And Chafee's not a Republican anymore, IIRC.

NYT = just a little to the right of Pravda
 

You mean "of special interests." The will of the people is more easy credit, cheaper luxury cars and a closer Sam's Club. Jesus Fucking Christ, if either party actually starts moving toward affecting the will of the people, I have this advice - move abroad.

NYT = just a little to the right of Pravda
 

QED

NYT = just a little to the right of Pravda
 

Aw, c'mon, Slave. Let's add Sessions to the list. Sure, he's a Republican, and a staunch Bush supporter at that, but I think we can all mainly agree that Sessions' particular brand of idiocy shines brightly enough to be recognized on both sides of the aisle.

NYT = just a little to the right of Pravda
 

As I have said in the past and will continue to say in the future the "mainstream" media has a strong liberal bias. It doesn't bother me when it comes to social issues but it really bothers me when it comes to military and ecnomic issues. I also think the main stream media favors the Dems. They usually spin things in the Dems favor (probably because most of them are Dems).

However, you are spot on with this observation. I noticed it to and I find it baffling. Normally the press spins things towards the Dems but in this case all of a sudden a filibuster is a tactical procedure. You never hear the word filibuster anymore. Did some memo go around threatening reporters and editors families or something?

NYT = just a little to the right of Pravda
 

It's interesting that you start with your conclusion, and then are surprised when the evidence doesn't fit it, and assume something is amiss.

Is there a name for this kind of logic?

NYT = just a little to the right of Pravda
 

Box logic. That's called box logic.

Best ad of the season
 

Romney "Attack" Ad from the Log Cabin Republicans

This is great - an ad that praises Romney, using his own words, for his liberalism. And Romney's folks call it an attack ad. Because it praises him for things he's actually said.

Is there a name for this logic, too?

Best ad of the season
 

Ty would say it's Orwellian.

Surprise
 

Not Really - Craig cannot withdraw plea - http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/10/...est/index.html

NYT = just a little to the right of Pravda
 

Are you saying the exception proves the rule?

Best ad of the season
 

Bush is no Reagan (and neither was Clinton).
 

Apropos of the front-page story in the NYT today about, inter alia, how Bush has trashed OLC by turning it into an advocate for the his (or the vice president's) policies:

• In his Con Law classes Kmiec (who also mentions the story in his excellent if expensive "The Attorney General's Lawyer") liked to relay this story: Ronald Regan dearly wanted a line-item veto. It was a huge priority for him, so he tasked OLC with determining whether a line-item veto was constitutional. After thorough research, OLC concluded that it was not. Thus, Kmiec had the ill fortune of going to the Oval Office to report the news.
  
  Ronald Regan (Kmiec does a great impersonation) disappointedly replied: "Well, you did the best you could."
  
  Could you imagine today's OLC telling Bush no? Could you imagine Bush, like Regan, saying, "Well, if that's what the Constitution requires, then so be it."
  
  As a post script: Clinton got his line-item veto; and the Court struck it down. Whether OLC, ala Yoo/Bybee, gave Clinton the advice he wanted, or whether he ignored OLC is something I can't answer - though I do think Marty Lederman was in OLC during those years. Maybe he knows?

link

Surprise
 

And in another shocker, he will now stay in office, but the Republicans won't sing with him any more, and not just because Satan called Ashcroft home.

Surprise
 

Craig / Vitter in '08!

I hear Tom DeLay and Mark Foley are already on board.

On the serious side, though, do all you Rs really think this one is that serious? I mean, he's just a guy who walks tall and sits with a wide stance - kind of like the Marlboro Man.

Surprise
 

prediction: Craig will not get the party's support for his next primary run! unless, wild card: what if the R's try to get the leather boy vote by focusing on the support of torture?

Surprise
 

Will he getting a standing ovation, like the page-pederast Gerry Studds?

Comprehensive review, if often disjointed, of the, like-whatever-we-like-regardless-of-whether-it-has-coherent-reason or dislike it, approach of the Bush administration to the rule of law, Constitutionalism, Federalism, separation of powers, and a changing world. It is also a pretty good contrast of our own internal and external debates of security versus liberty, and the Bush Administration's (and its defender's) lip-service to historical (Hi Nino!) Constitutional distinctions and protections and the desire/need in our current world to deal with perceived threats - real (terrorists) or contrived (drugs).

Correctly, it alludes to John Yoo being a toady and intellectual midget, and Boalt should should be ashamed for him being on their faculty - not because I disagree with him, but because his scholarship < his partisan bias (cubed). But, to be fair, Cal has 20 equally ridiculous faculty on the other side who should be relegated to their proper role as baristas.

The tough answer remains, security versus liberty in the modern world, and how do we fit Constitutionalism within it? I generally tend to agree with the author's implicit premise that we achieve more by maintaining our moral high ground in the treatment of prisoners than is gained by other techniques. I recognize the appeal and neccessity of a "24" argument, but, until shown otherwise, I think we lose any moral righeousness in 99% of situations in favor of a government offering 1% hypotheticals. And they sectrete that 1% occasion, and offer to the world the 99% of mistreatment for no proven value.

If it is true that (despite arguments that the methods are counterproductive) these harsher, unconstitutional, violative of international agreements on treament of prisoners, and otherwise offensive behavior is effectively preventing attacks and saving thousands, I say prove it. I have argued that it is a different world - the ability of whackjobs to export mass-death and terror has become easier, and we all know (even you, Ty) who they are - and that maybe a different approach to historic rights might be necessary. But, all I hear are "trust me" recitations from an administration whose credibility lies somewhere between the Boy Who Cried Wolf and Richard Nixon.

In the end, those of you (Hank, Slave?) who argue in support of the most atrocious elements of the Patriot Act (even Bush appointees are striking this fucker down), should recognize that granting unfettered discretion in the only branch of government resting in one person is beyond scary. The only difference betwenn Bush's view of power and any other wannabe dictator is his lack of vision.

Please turn in your Fascist Card this weekend, LessinMengele.

If we can't have my (solely) correct opinion, all others' suck.

My problem with this is that nowhere is it shown what we have done in the past when we were subject to real threats. when you say "maintain the moral highground" you mean don't do things we haven't done in the past. I'm not so sure we haven't done them in the past* and just didn't publicize them in the newspaper.

*excluding the halycon days for al queda of 1992-2000.

One hint might be the degree to which the CIA calls on the batphone from the black sites and asks Washington what they can do and what they can't during their verschärfte vernehmung. If they've done this before, you'd think they'd know what they can do and what they can't.

Do you think the USA is better than other countries? If so, is it because we torture less than they do? More? Torture only swarthy people who might want to blow us up? Or something else?

You could just wear a flag pin

And talk about ceding moral high ground -- the President keeps trying to have it both ways, saying publicly that we don't torture while presiding over legal efforts to make sure that we can. President Chinaski presumably would say, it's a brave new world, fellas, and if we have to string a few folks up and apply electrical currents to their genitals to make sure they're not going to bomb our shopping malls, that's what we're going to do, and if you don't like that you should move to Canada.

Surprise
 

Maybe all the Dems across the table from him can sit in a wide stance during the conference committees.

S_A_M

Surprise
 

BTW, say they hold ethics hearings. Isn't a vote of the entire senate needed to expel a member? Will any D's vote for expulsion?

Surprise
 

Will they tap their feet during the hearings?

S_A_M

what if the last tim e we were in a live war where we were really threatened was 1945? Or what if, in the past, they didn't need to call because they weren't worried about newspaper coverage?

I think we have tortured in the past. I think it is a very ugly world.

Every argument you make is exactly like arguments that were made to stop the CIA from working with "criminals." We should be better than that!

Surprise
 

There's always a few that will vote for anything.

I'd just as soon see all the dems just abstain, and let the Rs decide how much they care about this. I'm not sure this bullshit is really worth the Senate's time, even if it might make for good Oprah ratings.

Maybe they should just pair votes, so the Dems split down the middle leaving the decision to the Rs.

Surprise
 

I assume most if not all R's would vote to expel, but there's at most 49 votes there. So the D's could keep him in office if they wanted. Question is whether some of the D's would lose votes back home for voting to keep a miscreant in office.

You lean quite heavily on the prospect that bad shit's been done in the past in the name of advancing American interests. Neither you nor I really know how much this has occurred in the past, but I'm sure that it has in times of crisis.

To my mind, though, these incidents either occur outside of the government's official policy apparatus, or if they occur within it, history usually concludes that it was an unfortunate and ultimately unneccesary retreat in the battle for liberty.

I find your enthusiastic embrace of not only the choice to embrace the bad shit that you deem necessary, but also to enshrine it as part of governmental policy, baffling.

One angry, drunken, or perhaps insane elephant.
 

The logo for RNC, 2008!

http://www.gopconvention2008.com/med...tionlogo_2.gif

If this doesn't foretell a Giuliani nomination, I'm not sure what will.

Comparisons with more sedate elephants here.

Gattigap

One angry, drunken, or perhaps insane elephant.
 

I think it's a wide-stance elephant.