Letters to the Editor
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Oh, Elephant...
Fuck you and Godwin. This guy was an ex-nazi and a pedophile. Worked with our CIA.
Schäfer was born in Troisdorf, Weimar Germany, and joined the Hitler Youth movement at a young age. He served as a medic in the German Army during World War II, where he reached the rank of corporal. As an ex-Nazi, he lived in Germany until 1961.
Child molestation
Paul Schäfer, a former Luftwaffe paramedic, was the founder and first leader ("Permanent Uncle") of Colonia Dignidad. He left Germany in 1961 after being accused of sexually abusing two boys. On May 20, 1997, he fled Chile, pursued by authorities investigating charges that he had molested 26 children of the colony. In March 2005, he was arrested in Argentina and extradited to Chile. He is also wanted for questioning about the disappearance of Boris Weisfeiler in 1985, an American Jewish mathematics professor of Russian origin.[citation needed]
Twenty-two other members of Colonia Dignidad were found guilty of aiding the molestation, including Dr. Hartmut Hopp, the second-in-command.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Sch%C3%A4fer
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Yoo and I
Anywhere from 80 to 95 percent of the detainees are innocent of terrorist affiliation. Not only is the notion that combatants who don't belong to a regular army not entitled to protection under the Geneva Convention bogus, it's a claim the Nazis and the worst juntas have used with regularity. Even the Israelis, who have dealt with serious terror for over 40 years apply the Geneva Convention to terrorists they capture. Further, John Yoo is an anti-American extremist who, before he faces war crime charges, should not allowed to teach law anywhere. He bases his legal opinions on the insane notion that the US Constitution is irrelevant vis-a-vis the Commander-In-Chief. According to Yoo, the checks and balances system doesn't apply to Bush now, since Bush decided we were at war. According to Yoo, only Bush can determine the limits of his power and authority and that he's entitled, as CIC to determine, should he wish to, that there are no limits to his authority. Basically, Yoo has given Bush the legal framework to become a dictator. This is as contradictory as it gets from what the Framers had in mind, totally un-American and unconstitutional, and this man teaches law at Berkeley?!!
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@ 3::19 Retired Military Patriot
Thanks. I did miss ondelette. I noticed You and Jim White contribute. It's bookmarked.
The Sufi is not a aging balding hippie ~ wearing an elastic pink hair scrunchie to make a pony tail for a "lefty"... (No been here all day)
I no a moron blogger on a pretty day.
The Sufi did not wear tie-dyed T-shirts.
I did like the Persian thought recognition.
It is old Persia neighborhoods we act so tuff in... foolish.
`
Some of you historians sure know some history. some snort goo gee. a mule, donkey, and long nose monkey can only type, hip hop, and hop scotch so quickly if souse-faced on a Saturday.
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A Ray of Hope?
NYT is reporting today that former AG Alberto Gonzales is having a hard time finding a job at any law firm.
May I be the first to wish the same fate on John Yoo.
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I don't know and I don't care
omooex: If you're saying that its understandable to be cowed by jingoism and to trust the government implicitly, then I don't know where you're coming from.
I'm coming from a perspective of about 5000 years of history.
The stakes are too high to expect so little from our people. And I would just add, that by any measure, the arguments put forth by our government and their journalist enablers have been absurd from the start.
Quite true. But that didn't stop 70% of "our people" from wholeheartedly backing the invasion of Iraq. After all, Saddam was going to attack us with remote-controlled model planes and he might have given weapons he didn't have to people that he didn't trust and who thoroughly despised him. Not to mention the fact that the government and their journalist enablers constantly pushed the connection between Saddam and the 9/11 attacks. You severely underestimate the extent to which people in a combination of a patriotic fervor and paralytic fear are willing to act against their own stated beliefs and their own best interests. And to a certain extent, yes, I don't think the majority of Americans expected their president to lie to them quite so blatantly about something quite so important.
One could almost say that they require a "willing" suspension of disbelief. To call their rhetoric transparent and baseless would be a compliment. My original point: historians looking back will have no choice but to assume that we chose to do nothing. Nothing being, our (as a nation) insisting on ignorance.
Or indifference. I'd be willing to wager that if you asked 100 people whether America's greatest problem was ignorance or apathy the most common answer would be "I don't know and I don't care." The thing about history is that every generation rewrites history to fulfill or justify its own needs. About the only thing about history that most agree on, apart from it's being an agreed-upon fiction, is that it is written by the winners. Your view of future history seems to imply that it will be written by the Chinese.
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Denning (i've not looked @ Jezebel.com) This was too silly...
The reason those layers have a hard time finding a job is because they wear spats?
Gonzolez wears a black top hat. Mukasey wears 'The Devil Wears Sandals'....?.... grunt.
Thursday's Wa/Po Style section had a Devil Sandal that cost $759 bucks. Yoo can buy a $759 Prada leather flower-heel Mary Jane sandal at Neiman Marcus (Tysons Galleria)
The former White House DoJ's slip a pair of these 3 and one-half inch heels on?
The sandals are ugly seductive. It's insane!
Antoni Gaudi elicited a "love um or hate"
Jezebel.com
Gads. No wonder!
Who hires GOPS?
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@F,MD
Quite true. But that didn't stop 70% of "our people" from wholeheartedly backing the invasion of Iraq.
That might be a little misleading. Close, but misleading,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_popular_opinion_on_invasion_of_Iraq
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More good news
Freedom’s Watch ‘paralyzed’ by ‘gridlock’ and ‘infighting.’
Last summer, the right-wing group Freedom’s Watch spent $15 million “in a nationwide advertising blitz supporting President Bush’s troop escalation in Iraq.” In September, The New York Times heralded it as “a conservative answer to the nine-year-old liberal MoveOn.org.” But a new article in the Times today admits that Freedom’s Watch “has been mostly quiet, beset by internal problems that have paralyzed it”:
Backers of Freedom’s Watch once talked about spending some $200 million, a figure that officials now say was exaggerated. Lending to the aura of ambition, the organization moved into a state-of-the-art 10,000-square-foot office in Washington and hired a staff of about 20, with talk of bringing in scores more for a vigorous campaign to promote conservative issues.
Behind the scenes, however, Freedom’s Watch has been plagued by gridlock and infighting, leaving it struggling for direction, according to several Republican operatives familiar with the organization who were granted anonymity so they could be candid about the group’s problems.
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/04/12/freedoms-watch-paralyzed-by-gridlock-and-infighting/