Letters to the Editor
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They do have some respect for the law
Apparently, Bushco is supporting a law that would make it illegal for "suspected terrorists" to buy guns. Suddenly, right wingers are regaining their respect for constituttional protections.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,270142,00.html
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Noonan, just months apart
On Finding Peace
Ken Lay's death reminds us of what we know.
By Peggy Noonan
Thursday, July 6, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT
All deaths are sad, and some are shocking and sad. Ken Lay's this week was both, though I don't suppose it should have been a shock.
Putting aside all judgments and conclusions, all umbrage, outrage and indignation, and all debates on who was most responsible for the Enron scandal--putting all those weighty and legitimate concerns aside--isn't it obvious that Ken Lay died of a broken heart? We forget that people do, or at least I forget, but they do.
His life was broken and would never be healed. Or if it was to be healed it would happen while he was imprisoned, for the rest of his life, with four walls to look at. All was wreckage around him. He died, of a massive coronary. But that can be another way of saying broken heart.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=110008611
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After the Storm
Hurricane Katrina: The good, the bad, the let's-shoot-them-now.
By Peggy Noonan
Thursday, September 1, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT
As for the tragic piggism that is taking place on the streets of New Orleans, it is not unbelievable but it is unforgivable, and I hope the looters are shot. A hurricane cannot rob a great city of its spirit, but a vicious citizenry can. A bad time with Mother Nature can leave you digging out for a long time, but a bad turn in human behavior frays and tears all the ties that truly bind human beings--trust, confidence, mutual regard, belief in the essential goodness of one's fellow citizens.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=110007187
So then the difference is, organized white collar fraud on a mammoth scale affecting millions of people and destroying the lives of thousands = OK. Petty theft after a hurricane = Capital Offense.
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playgrounds for partisans
David Brooks sums up their worldview best..."Most scandals are pretexts for members of an establishment to destroy people they don’t like. In most scandals, people adjust their standards of rectitude, depending on whether they support or oppose the person at issue. The subject’s enemies whip themselves into a fever of theatrical outrage, and the subject’s defenders summon up fits of indignation at the lies of the accusers. Scandals are playgrounds for partisans, and everybody else gets to play the role of the junior high school bully, ganging up on whoever seems weakest and most alone." (May 3 NYT, my emphasis)
It's all just a game to them. Why worry over underlying crimes and improprieties? The rule of law is trivial- he who manipulates it best, wins.
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Oh, man!!?
Why'd you have to remind me of Ken Lay's tragic passing? Now I'm going to get all weepy and sad again. Sniff....
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re: "The House I Live In"
The poem is by Abel Meeropol (who also wrote "Strange Fruit") under the pen name Lewis Allen. It was set to music by Earl Robinson and sung most famously by Frank Sinatra in an Oscar-winning 1945 short film sponsored by the Anti-Defamation League of the B'Nai Brith.
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@randron--Clarification
Sorry for the confusion. The paragraph you're quoting was originally joined to the one before, so that the continuity was clearer. I am not expressing my thought here, but reflecting on how I and like-minded citizens are thought of. The added text [in brackets] should make my meaning perfectly clear:
I'm not asking for impeachment just on my say-so. Only that obvious leads be followed up on. That alone is enough to make me a pariah by Versailles standards.
"Even at 28% in the latest Newsweek poll, [for Versailles] it is still unthinkable that the American people should want real accountability for how they were deceived into this disasterour war against a sworn enemy of those who attacked us on 9/11."
Hope that clears it up for you.
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"The House I Live In." continued.
The town I live in-- the street, the house, the room,
The pavement of the city, or a garden all in bloom, the church, the school, Sue at the clubhouse,
The million lights I see,
But especially the people,
That's America to me.
The house I live in,
The friends that I have found,
The folks beyong {d}(I added) the railroad and the people all around,
The worker and the farmer, the sailor on the sea,
The men who built the country, that's America to me,
The words of old Abe Lincoln, of Jefferson and Paine,
Of Washington, and others and the task that still remain,
The little bridge at Concord, where Freedom's fight began,
Our Gettysburg and Midway, and the story of Bataan;
The house I live in-- the goodness everwhere,
A land of wealth and beauty and enough for all to share,
A house that we call Freedom,
The home of Liberty,
And a promise for tomorrow,
That's America to me.
Thanks for letting me share that poem.
Art James
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Double Standards?
The double standard extends to things like Israel too, doesn't it? Apartheid and racism are wrong - except when Zionists are behind such problems. How many people really want to look too closely at the legacy of the gulags and the crimes in the former USSR? The neocon media isn't doing specials about the legacy of communism, is it?
Ethnic chauvinism and an ingrained sense of being “above the law” are ugly when they are coming from white bigots in the south or when they are coming from educated folks on the Upper West Side, right?
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@jebldmm
Apparently, Bushco is supporting a law that would make it illegal for "suspected terrorists" to buy guns. Suddenly, right wingers are regaining their respect for constituttional protections.
Gah! All through the 90s, the NRA and other gun-rights groups used the specter of a 'national ID card' to push up recruitment and activism. The story was that as soon as a national ID card was instituted, it would be tied to gun ownership records, next step confiscation.
Not only did Republicans go crazy 5 years ago, they got amnesia about their entire political history up to that point.