Buried on a late Friday or not, my first reaction is that this is good news even if it is not widely carried by the media. Too often news buried on a Friday is to "hide" actions by the administration that will have negative effects on things that many progressives favor. In this case, the Friday burial seems to be designed to save the administration embarassment about a change that we progressive will applaud. While I would like to see the administration have to bear the brunt of its actions more openly, I'm nonetheless happy to see it happen even when it is out of the limelight if it leads to better policies and decision making.

My, but this subject (and religion in general) seems to bring out the best and the worst in people. I'll not judge Neal, but in reading his dilemma, I had more than a few moments of personal recognition, even if the outcome in my case was ironically different.

Like Neal, I was raised in a nominally Jewish household, but I was not Bar Mitzvahed and always was very independent minded, which led to numerous confrontations between my parents and me. I married a woman who is not Jewish, and neither of us is particularly religious in any formal sense. When our son was born, we went through the whole routine of deciding whether to have him circumcised, and after considering the medical and cultural issues decided against it. My parents weren't happy about the decision, but having many years of my stubbornness behind them, they didn't put up much of a fight about it.

Fast forward about three years and we find that our son has a condition known as phimosis, where the foreskin is constricted at the tip, making it too tight to pull back over the head of the penis. This is a medical condition that requires surgery so the boy can perform proper hygiene and prevent a very painful condition when the foreskin is accidentally retracted. So in spite of our careful planning and willingness to break with Jewish tradition, our son ended up needing surgery on his foreskin anyway--not circumcision actually, but a less drastic procedure called a dorsal slit.

By the way, for all of those non-Jews who find the procedure of circumcision barbaric, I understand your point of view, but tradition is a hard thing to break. There are emotional bonds to things that we learn in our childhood that, irrational though they may be, can exert a strong influence on our decision making. I suspect that nearly all of us have had that experience relating to something that we've changed in our lives. That's not an excuse for failing to act for change, but it ought to make us more sympathetic to those that find change difficult than I've seen in a number of posts here.

While I will be the first to admit that the strong words expressed today in the committee are a welcome change from when the Republicans were in power in Congress, talk is cheap. What we heard today will be nothing more than political grandstanding, if the Congress does not take action to use the power of the purse to defund the escalation and, as Feingold said, defund the war in a way that forces Bush to either bring the troops home or shut down the government.

At this point, I have confidence that Feingold is willing to defund the war, but not much that anyone else will follow his lead.

--

--

On another front, there is something we can all do today. MoveOn.org and America Says No are holding literally hundreds of rallies tonight to protest Bush's escalation plan. The rallies represent one of our last chances to convince our representatives that we mean busniness about ending the war. If our reps are wavering, we can help give them a spine by turning out in droves today.

Normally, I'm all for rational discourse and refutation of misinformed, often idiotic, right-wing spin, but Gonzales's statement is so stupid on the face of it, that I don't see the point of bothering. (Actually, an awful lot of the drivel spewed by the right of late has been of this form. I assume even moderately well-informed persons break out in hails of derisive laughter when they hear it.)

To even suggest by a logical slight of hand that the lack of an explicit right to habeas corpus might suggest that there is no right even though there is a clause that says it cannot, except under extraordinary circumstances, be taken away, is mind numbing.

Fuck rational discourse. Gonzales and the rest of the bastards that spin these idiotic legal justifications, don't deserve it. What they deserve is being stripped of their positions and having to spend the rest of their mortal lives having their wages garnished and doing community service to pay for the damage they have done to the principles upon which our nation is founded.

Anybody know where there is a video of this interview? I went to CNN's website, but only found a brief snippet of it.

I'm not a TV viewer, but I'm sure some enterprising individual will post it soon after it airs.

The concerns/fears about having a dual command structure are already being confirmed. See the article in the New York Times today (1/29)by Damien Cave. It is a heartbreaking description of what can and, undoubtedly will continue to happen when American troops are lead and/or are constrained by unreliable Iraqi units. This is insane.