Friday, April 07, 2006

Not that links are necessary on this one, but ...

Via TPM, this Post account of the leaky Bubble Boy:
A senior administration official, speaking on background because White House policy prohibits comment on an active investigation, said Bush sees a distinction between leaks and what he is alleged to have done. The official said Bush authorized the release of the classified information to assure the public of his rationale for war as it was coming under increasing scrutiny.


So,

in order for Bush to make his public case for war,

he authorized one of his aides

to reveal, on a not for attribution basis, to a reporter

selected details from a previously classified document

while at the same time insisting that a summary of that classified document remain classified.

And I seem to vaguely recall some issues that the aide and the reporter had in regards to keeping their conversations private.

This is how Bush makes his public case for war.

Thursday, April 06, 2006

Unsolicited copy editing

Senate Vote on Immigration Close, Frist Says
Senators warned that if the negotiations collapsed, Congress might fail to take action this year on an issue that has riveted the nation and pushed tens of thousands of immigrants and their supporters into the streets for rallies across the country.

Senators warned that if the negotiations collapsed, Congress might fail to take action this year on an issue that has riveted the nation media and pushed tens hundreds of thousands of immigrants and their supporters into the streets for rallies across the country.

You're welcome.
Kangaroo courts. Bush style.

Boycott Threat Roils Guantánamo Hearing
The Bush administration established the commissions in the hope that a new, military-run judicial system, for which it could devise its own rules, could prosecute terrorists more effectively than existing courts.

But the tribunals have been beset from the start by procedural confusion and disorganization, and the hearing on Wednesday brought more of the same.

Wednesday, April 05, 2006

Massachusetts Sets Health Plan for Nearly All
The Massachusetts bill was hammered out with proposals and input from state Democratic legislators; Mr. Romney, a Republican; Senator Edward M. Kennedy, a Democrat; insurers; academics; businesses; hospitals; and advocates for the poor, including religious leaders.

You mean, bipartisanship isn't really like date rape?

You mean, competing interests and philosophies can come together to craft a solution to an obvious problem?

You mean, the trench warfare that is so much of our current political climate is preventing us from addressing actual problems in this country?

I just don't know what to think any more. I thought that one side is right, and the other side is crazy, that one side is just, and the other side are traitors.

There must be something missing from this story. There does not seem to be an inch of scorched earth anywhere.

Update: It's fitting that the Mass. health insurance plan is reported the day after DeLay announces he's leaving.

But he was also a man who, perhaps more than any other, embodied the fierce partisanship of his era — a prime mover behind the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, a practitioner of take-no-prisoners electoral politics and a legislative strategist who many Democrats asserted saw no real role for the minority in the legislative process.

It's enough to make a crotchety bastard like myself have some hope for the future.
The White House:
The Advance Of Freedom Is The Story Of Our Time

Yemenis Freed After Transfer From Secret Prisons, Report Says
Three Yemeni men who were held for well over a year in secret American prisons overseas were quietly released last month after being transferred to their home country, where a court concluded they had no terrorist ties, according to a report released Tuesday by Amnesty International.

Freedoms, baby. Freedoms.

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

DeLay

DeLay Is Quitting Race and House, Officials Report

Today's spin and wankery, um ... today.

DeLay resigned. That's old news. Why do you Dems / liberals / progressives live in the past? The investigation into DeLay / Rudy / Buckham / Abramoff / Scanlon isn't relevant anymore.

This is just another example of how the Dems / libs / progs can only hate and have no ideas.

Monday, April 03, 2006

Republican Declaration of Independence - draft! - not for distribution!

Republican Declaration of Independence


When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another rational, feeling other people, and to assume among the powers of the earth over all you sons of bitches, the separate and equal superior station to which the laws of nature and of nature's the white, Christian, male God entitle them, a decent feigned respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all white, Republican men are created equal superior, that they are endowed by their Creator white, Christian, male God with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness property, dominion over women, brown people, and animals, and the ethics-free pursuit of money and power. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among white,
Republican men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed because we fucking say so. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people white, Republican men to alter crush, demean or to abolish it the traitors, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness indefinitely imprison and torture the insurrectionists. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes unless it would generate more wealth and power for white, Republican men; [ed. - blah blah blah, stop reading, hippies.] and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism [despotism? don't mind if we do!] , it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. — such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states [absolute tyranny - just popped a woody!]. To prove this, let facts these neat sounding ideas be submitted to a candid undeserving world.

  • He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. [Cool. We'll take that, too.]

  • He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them. [Sounds good, with the stipulation that the "governors" are other white, Republican men of our choosing.]

  • He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only. [Needs work - the appearance of representation in the legislature should be maintained - voters should be convinced that their reps dislike government too, and should therefore should be elected to office.]

  • He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures. [Spiteful - love it!]

  • He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people. [Mmmm ... manly firmness. Uh, what? What were we talking about? Rights of the people? Fuck that, strike this one.]

  • He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

  • He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration either, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands. [Here's our immigration reform package here - "obstructing ... naturalization" - another woody!]

  • He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers. [Great! Could use a reference to activist judges here.]

  • He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries. [Super. Another activist judge reference here, to keep them in line?]

  • He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance. [Eat out? Kinky!]

  • He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature. [I love this King George guy!]

  • He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power. [This one could be tricky - got to stay in charge of the guys with the guns. And if we can get them to support us while we send them to fight and cut their benefits - all the better!]

  • He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation [let's see, replace "he" with "we" - replace "us" with "the non-white, non-men" - constitution? scrrrrratch - replace "his" with "our" - I think we can work with these]:

    For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

    For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:

    For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:

    For imposing taxes on us without our consent:

    For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:

    For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:

    For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies:

    For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:

    For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

  • He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us. [Re-work this one - the appearance of government is very important to the masses.]

  • He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people. [Another woody!]

  • He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy of the head of a civilized nation. [No foreigners! Keep: desolation, tyranny, cruelty, perfidy, and unworthy.]

  • He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands. [Oooh, never would have thought of this one.]

  • He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions. [Can we arm the reservations? Just a thought.]


In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends. [Work something up around this.]

We, therefore, the representatives the white, Republican men of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world white, Republican male God for the rectitude [rectiwho? replace with "unassailable correctness"] of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people white, Republican men of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them
and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levey war, conclude peace, contract alliances,
establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of
Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor. [Needs work. Less touchy-feely. More about the superiority of white, Republican men. A bit more about the inferiority of non-white, non-men. Should look into this constitution thing - the Soviets are done with theirs, right?]