Letters to the Editor
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@Glenn
I missed the attribution regarding your previous rule of law post and went off half-cocked. For the sake of accuracy, please delete my previous post.
Now I have to correct it with my Congressman!
No more early morning writing for me.
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Paulus
Death Penalty?
Excepting of course the Happy Hippy Paradise you call Iran.
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Mukasey
I have not been able to follow the past few days events closely, but the little I saw of the senate hearings for Mukasey replayed last night on CSPAN indicated that he is very clearly informing the judiciary committee that the president's article II powers trump FISA, trump anything the congress might do regarding torture (slight chance of that actually happening, with this congress). While he is willing to admit that the constitution still does somewhat constrain the president, it too can be worked around by playing absurd semantic games with words such as "torture".
It seems to me that Congress is being told, fairly clearly, that the "first branch" is now a second-class arm of government. And, imo, they are buying into this concept.
Mukasey should not be confirmed.
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Nothing to do with "left" or "right"
Being against telecom amnesty has nothing to do with being "left" or "right". That's just how it's politically sold, and in this case, these "labels" really are meaningless.
It has everything to do with realising what's at stake; how many rights this bill violates, and what the dangers are of just following the leader's orders.
Politicians with brains - who use them - on the left or the right spectrum, should realise this. As representatives of the people, it is their job and their duty to stand up against this and protect the people and democracy.
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What happens in 2008?
While I know that we can expect the commitment to the unitary presidency will immediately evaporate if a Democrat is elected president, how are they going to do this? These statements are completely unambiguous--don't leave room for new names in the Oval Office. Will they really just start railing about abuse of power as soon as the letter underneath the president's name changes?
Glenn--sabotage is misspelled in the update.
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The core belief is not the Fuhrerprinzip
GG may put too much stress on admiration for the Leader as the main belief of the Right. Their main belief (which of course GG also emphasizes) that we are At War for the Survival of Western Civilization. Once that latter belief is accepted, all else—obedience to the C-in-C, suspension of habeas corpus, torture, limitless killing of potential enemies—follows. Also, there is no need to suggest that Democrats are caving in because of venality. "They're doing it for the money" is an insulting description of the motives of people who arenot behaving as you think they should. It is enough to say that they are either caught up in war fever, or are flummoxed by the prospect of being labeled traitors, even if the majority of their constituents are also "traitors." The single point of indisputable fact to continue stressing is that we are not at war, there is no war, that there is no threat to the country.
I note that Bush has subtly changed his tune in recent days. He no longer cites Iranian acquisition of an atomic bomb as a causus belli, merely the possibility that they will acquire knowledge of how to build one. He is cunningly preparing to point out, after he attacks and it turns out the Iranians were not working on a bomb, that he never said they were.
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A little overlooked fact:
whether the CIA wants a plane for some extraordinary rendition or help in tracking terrorists via email. . . - Michael Goldfab
How many terrorists have been caught and brought to justice as a result of eavesdropping and other unconstitutional practices? None that I've heard of.
Now that we are unfortunate enough to be debating trashing the constitution in retrospect, let's talk about what we got in return so far.
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The National Association of Manufacturers has a blog
And they were among the early posters of the Dodd story inspiring the following response:
Comments
Paul Dirks — Oct. 18, 07 at 05:02 PM
I know this will come as a shock but it is possible for government officials to violate the law while carrying out what they think are their duties. That doesn't make it suddenly permissable for corporate officials to also violate the law with impunity. Quite the opposite, it makes it even more important that they DO comply with the law.
It's not Rocket Science.
Whatever happened to Republicans joking "We're from the Government and we're here to help"?
My how times change......
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Public financing of campaigns
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, only a Constitutional Amendment to mandate public financing of campaigns will ever begin to fix the sleazy, corrupt status quo as illustrated by GG regarding Rockefeller and the telecom's campaign contributions.
Currently, the raising of cash for the next campaign is our Congress' #1 priority. This forces gross ethical compromises and leaves little time for actual governance.
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Oh well
...while we stumble along blindly diminishing the role of rule of law and all that, I have some questions.
Protecting the Homeland, isn't that the mantra Hitler used to consolidate power? Is this any different than what the Weekly Standard advocates?
Are laws quaint when it comes to protecting National Security?
Is the term National Security been so wildly interpreted and amorphously used to have become devoid of meaning?
What the hell is National Security?
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This Is Why God Invented the Nuremberg Trials
Seriously.
Our country is so far gone, in so many sectors that nothing short of a Nuremberg-style reckoning is going to be sufficient to return us to a state of functioning normally--whatever that means. I am reminded of Nobel Prize-winning economist George Akerloff's interview in Der Spiegel back in 2003,
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0729-06.htm
when he said:
The government is not really telling the truth to the American people. Past administrations from the time of Alexander Hamilton have on the average run responsible budgetary policies. What we have here is a form of looting.
The utter irresponsbility he pointed to was quite clear, given that budgets are all about numbers. And the same irresponsibility runs throughout everything the Bush Administration does. Only now the Democrats have joined together with him in the spirit of bipartisan lawlessness, in an attempt to utterly destroy our republic.
Like I said, this is why God invented the Nuremberg Trials. Because nothing less will do.