Letters to the Editor
prunes
Published Letters: 784
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objectivity
[Read the article: National journalists believe you should trust them]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Go read some right-wing blogs that talk about the media. I don't think they believe in objective truth.
At some level they recognize this about themselves, since one of the favorite hobby-horses of librul-haters is the moral and epistemological relativism they impute to libruls.
Everything neocons say makes sense if you interpret it as projection: the things people claim to hate most about others are most likely to be the things they hate about themselves.
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No News
[Read the article: Do national journalists agree with Gary Kamiya?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]After all Glenn seems to think media should have known exactly what the situation in Iraq was.
They should have known better than to slobberingly holler "aluminuminuminum toooobes!" with no regard to consequences. Those consequences being >3000 Americans dead and 100x that many Iraqis.
What's the real story in Russia, Norh Korea, or Saudi Arabia, that we aren't hearing from the administration?
Check out, for instance, the BBC, Asia Times, al Jazeera, and other non-American news organisations. They have biases of their own, sometimes strong ones, but they don't a have direct interest in pushing some short term BS for whoever happens to be in USA office at the moment. Only in America did most people really believe Bush's lies. I did, I couldn't imagine the president would lie in such a big way.
BTW, the BBC is a far better source for the big American news stories than any of our own decadent and senescent news institutions.
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Unbelievable
[Read the article: The Bush administration's terrible luck with finding documents]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...in the literal sense. I used to work on corporate Outlook email auditing software, losing anything at all like this many internal emails would be a DISASTER by corporate standards, those things are supposed to be retained for potential auditing, as evidence in case of potential crimes committed by employees, and as a matter of internal record for decision reviews, conflict resolutions, business process analysis, etc, etc.
I don't believe for a second they "lost" anything. If the emails were removed from the mailservers, emails would almost certainly be retained on the end-users computers unless there was a concerted effort among the staff to systematically remove them.
Even then, a substantial proportion likely could be recovered though disk forensics or even simple "undelete" software like what is available in the TRK bootable linux package (trinityhome.org).
If, by some amazing chance, cosmic rays wiped out all the relevant records, this is a screwup so bad that people should be fired for not retaining adequate backups.
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I've always been amazed
[Read the article: Weekly Standard: Bush has "near dictatorial power"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]that the Interstate Commerce clause apparently applies to intrastate non-commerce.
Conservatives used to gripe about post-modernism and relativism and so forth, and now they've completely incorporated those views into their own rhetoric. It doesn't matter what words say, you can always creatively interpret them to your own personal benefit. The pseudologic supporting the "unitary executive" is on a Derrida-like level of perverted semantics.
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AUMF
[Read the article: Weekly Standard: Bush has "near dictatorial power"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]In no way does the AUMF constitute a declaration of war, they are fundamentally legally distinct and it is completely dishonest to pretend otherwise.
If Congress wants to declare war, they will. They have not.
And the war powers delegated to the president by the Constitution do not amount to martial law powers. Only in Yoo/Addington land, where the law is something to be subverted for political power would anyone even pretend otherwise.
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My Pleasure
[Read the article: The Bush administration's terrible luck with finding documents]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]We need to call this president and all his men and simply say - you're fired.
No kidding. After all... the president serves at the pleasure of the people.