a few years ago i did sound effects for a show called “Rock Opera,” which was a musical play (unfortunately it didn’t quite meet the definition of an “opera“) about a geology student who saves the world from republicans, by a friend of mine (the guy with the license plate that said “BE WEIRD”) and featured the vocal talents of the famous person commonly known as david ossman… the only reason that i mention this is because i just found out that david ossman is actually a resident of these parts, whidbey island to be specific. more evidence that only the really cool actually live around here.
a gay marriage in oregon that involves a person moe knew.
we’re going to see The Bobs at the Triple Door tomorrow night.
eat human flesh… now these people say two very different things on their web site which makes me very suspicious of either their motives or their… food. they say “If you’ve never had human flesh before, think of the taste and texture of beef, except a little sweeter in taste and a little softer in texture. Contrary to popular belief, people do not taste like pork or chicken.” and then they say “Hufu™ contains no human or animal products”… which makes me wonder how they know it tastes like human flesh… but not very much. maybe i would try hufu, and it would certainly be a candidate for my “odd food” collection, but i don’t think i want to know about how they know so much about the taste of human flesh.
here is a site that i could post from, but so much of what they have to say is postable that i’ll just link to them instead: Censure Bush
Power corrupts…
Power We Didn’t Grant
As Senate majority leader at the time, I helped negotiate that law with the White House counsel’s office over two harried days. I can state categorically that the subject of warrantless wiretaps of American citizens never came up. I did not and never would have supported giving authority to the president for such wiretaps. I am also confident that the 98 senators who voted in favor of authorization of force against al Qaeda did not believe that they were also voting for warrantless domestic surveillance.
- Tom Daschle
Policy made in the heat of anger and rage is rarely in anyone’s long-term interest. When this policy involves an Administration asking for carte blanche and using 9.11 to justify creating the beginnings of a police state…well, that borders on criminal. Of course, the Bush Adminstration has long since demonstrated that criminality in the pursuit of power is nothing to lose sleep over. After all, when absolute power is the absolute goal, anything that contributes to achieving that goal is acceptable.
Congratulations, y’all. 51% of you gave the green light to the creation of a thugocracy that makes the Nixon Adminstration look like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
In the wake of 9.11, no one wanted to be accused of coddling those responsible for killing 3,000 innocent Americans. We all wanted those responsible to pay for their crime. Few of us realized at the time what the government was proposing to do in the name of waging war on terrorists, and few were inclined toward sober and rational long-term thinking. In retrospect, what the Bush Administration was asking for was the ability to wage war on Americans- citizens who may or (most likely) may not be engaging in in terrorist activities. In effect, what Our Glorious Leader and his cabal were asking for was permission to create a system that could, and ultimately would, be used to spy and eavesdrop on their political enemies.
Too many within the Administration felt it perfectly justifiable to ask Congress to aquiesce in the erosion of American civil liberties in order to protect them. Yet, in the rush to look as if they were responding decisively and effectively, no one in the Administration stopped to ask the simple questions. Must we kill the patient in order to save it? What will the long-term effect be of allowing government to spy on American citizens? Is reacting in the heat of the moment, fueled by rage and a desire for retribution, really a recipe for sound policy?
In the face of mounting questions about news stories saying that President Bush approved a program to wiretap American citizens without getting warrants, the White House argues that Congress granted it authority for such surveillance in the 2001 legislation authorizing the use of force against al Qaeda. On Tuesday, Vice President Cheney said the president “was granted authority by the Congress to use all means necessary to take on the terrorists, and that’s what we’ve done.”….
On the evening of Sept. 12, 2001, the White House proposed that Congress authorize the use of military force to “deter and pre-empt any future acts of terrorism or aggression against the United States.” Believing the scope of this language was too broad and ill defined, Congress chose instead, on Sept. 14, to authorize “all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations or persons [the president] determines planned, authorized, committed or aided” the attacks of Sept. 11. With this language, Congress denied the president the more expansive authority he sought and insisted that his authority be used specifically against Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda.
Just before the Senate acted on this compromise resolution, the White House sought one last change. Literally minutes before the Senate cast its vote, the administration sought to add the words “in the United States and” after “appropriate force” in the agreed-upon text. This last-minute change would have given the president broad authority to exercise expansive powers not just overseas — where we all understood he wanted authority to act — but right here in the United States, potentially against American citizens. I could see no justification for Congress to accede to this extraordinary request for additional authority. I refused.
In the end, Daschle’s refusal hardly mattered, because this Administration has proven adept at using whatever suits their purpose to argue that they were given Congressional approval to spy on American citizens. Ultimately, Our Glorious Leader and his cabal will use (or create) whatever justification they can latch onto in order to support whatever their position of the moment happens to be. This behavior is something that should offend reasonable and decent people. The idea that in order to protect the law, government must be allowed carte blanche to break the law is a patently absurd and unsupportable position. Creating the trappings of a police state to “protect freedom” and “prevent terrorism” should not be part and parcel of the world’s most successful and powerful democracy.
Interesting, isn’t it? A Democratic President has an affair with an intern and finds himself impeached. A Republican President lies his way into a war that has so far killed more than 2,000 Americans and seems to think it perfectly acceptable to break the law in order to “protect” it…yet his party and a majority of Americans see nothing wrong with this? If you can be impeached for getting a blow job in the Oval Office, should you not also be impeached for lying, breaking the law, fudging intelligence, and being responsible for the deaths of more than 2,000 Americans?
It’s true, isn’t it? Being a Republican means never having to say you’re sorry…or be held accountable for your actions. I hope the 51% of you who voted to “re-elect” the Prevaricator in Chief are proud of yourselves…because ultimately, you are responsible for allowing this criminal and immoral behavior to continue unchecked.
the thing that worries me is the comment directly after the article, which says “I could care less if they have cameras all over my house, office, and wiretaps on my phones. I’m not doing anything wrong, so I’m not really worried about it.” it makes me think of that old song…
When they took the fourth amendment,
I was quiet because I didn’t deal drugs.
When they took the sixth amendment,
I was quiet because I was innocent.
When they took the second amendment,
I was quiet because I didn’t own a gun.
Now they’ve taken the first amendment,
and I can say nothing about it.
Monday, December 26, 2005
By Martin Frost
Recently I have been trying to figure out who President Bush reminded me of.
Was it Richard Nixon with his willingness to break the law to hold onto the presidency? Was it FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover who bugged Martin Luther King Jr. and anyone he considered to be a political enemy?
And then it struck me. President Bush most closely resembles King George III of England. You remember him — he’s the guy whose high-handed rule led to the American Revolution.
I went back and re-read our Declaration of Independence. Our founding fathers cited King George’s various acts of tyranny– including housing foreign troops in the homes of colonials against their will.
The American Revolutionary War followed, which eventually led to the adoption of the U.S. Constitution and the Bill or Rights (the first 10 amendments).
And there it is in black and white: the fourth amendment. Let’s take a moment to look at the exact words of the fourth amendment to the Constitution adopted more than 200 years ago:
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrant shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized.”
Not bad for a group of farmers who were creating a new country — one that has survived for 216 years and is the oldest continuous democracy in the world.
Now the “new King George” would have us believe one of three things: (1) the president’s powers as commander-in-chief supersede the fourth amendment during the war on terror (2) the resolution adopted by Congress shortly after the 9/11 attack can be read to give the president the authority to conduct domestic wiretaps against American citizens without going to court to seek a warrant and (3) modern technology is such that the founding fathers could never have anticipated the need to conduct wiretaps without a warrant.
Let’s look at each of these arguments.
First, it takes a very broad reading of the commander-in-chief clause to justify any conduct as superseding the constitution. President Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus during the U.S. Civil War, an action that was very controversial at the time; it is hard to equate the ongoing war on terror with the American Civil War, which threatened the very existence of the Republic.
Second, I was a member of Congress when we passed the resolution giving the president the authority to use all force necessary against the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11. Congress clearly meant this as authorization to go into Afghanistan and find Usama bin Laden. No one ever thought this authorized our government to wiretap American citizens in our own country without court approval.
Former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle wrote an op-ed piece in the Dec. 23rd Washington Post detailing how the Bush administration proposed last minute language to the 9/11 resolution which would have given the president the power to engage in domestic spying without a search warrant, and that this language was specifically rejected by the bills’ authors.
And third, the modern technology argument is an interesting one but is not very persuasive. Congress in 1978 passed legislation permitting spying inside the United States under certain circumstances. That law created a special court that can respond within hours to a request for search warrants. And the law also contained an exception, permitting the Attorney General to authorize wiretaps in an emergency situation and then seek a warrant within 72 hours.
And so the question remains, why did the president set up a system of wiretapping of American citizens by the National Security Agency (NSA) without a warrant?
Does he simply want dictatorial powers? Does he so mistrust the court system (even a secret one specifically set up to make it easier to wiretap people inside the United States) that he doesn’t want any of the traditional checks on the power of the executive to violate basic civil liberties? Does he just want a political issue that makes him look tough and opponents (Democrats and some Republicans) look weak?
I used to think that extreme right wingers out West who wanted to arm themselves and undergo paramilitary training to be ready to resist tyranny in their own country were crazy. An argument now can be made that they were quite sane.
Let’s hope that a bipartisan political coalition is able to restrain this administration from actions that are inconsistent with the framework of liberty established by our founding fathers. Let’s don’t leave the defense of our freedoms to self-declared militias. We are a better country than that.
and other cartoons from The Pain — When Will It End?…