Letters to the Editor
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loss of
faith, hope, and what america stands (stood)for. Amen.
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Long Story Short
Glenn,
How come your posts are always really long and Tim's are refreshingly brief? As I note my 1000 word limit...
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Quote from Chacer
"If gold rusts, what then will iron do?"
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King George III Would Be Proud of these Republicans
And true patriots would respond to such grotesque ideas as torture, detention without charges and warentless spying on Americans with words such as these:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
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I meant "Chaucer" earlier.
It was the keyboard, I swear!
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thanks
thank you for your reporting on this subject. i was also someone who believed this myth. i should have known better but i must have been softened with age.
;)
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Said One Patriot to Another ...
"And why should Cæsar be a tyrant then?
Poor man! I know he would not be a wolf
But that he sees the Romans are but sheep;
He were no lion were not Romans hinds."
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jeff akbar
you're annoying. some of us, many of us, actually, delight in greenwald's posts - please don't ask him to change his style because you can't be bothered to read more than a few words at a time. you've already got tim (and hey, i really like his posts too)- don't make everyone else as well conform to suit your own standards.
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Freedom Isn't Free
I see this phrase on cars next to "W" stickers, & I think, what the hell do they mean by that?
I always interpereted the phrase "Freedom isn't free" to mean "liberty and justice for ALL." No matter how much we may fear or hate someone else, their freedom should be protected as much as my own. I may hate what the KKK preaches, but I will defend to the death their right to preach it. Hence, Even though it's hard, difficult, inconvenient, "freedom isn't free."
Republicans, on the other hand, seem to believe that the phrase means you have to take away freedom to preserve freedom. In other words, INequality, and justice for all, EXCEPT in certain circumstances. Or as George Orwell put it, "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."
Note to Republicans, freedom is non-negotiable. You don't really want it, nor do you really believe in it. This is why you are all so delusional when it comes to simple bits of truth (like Iraq not connected to 9/11, and no WMD's). You lie to yourselves that your the "good guys" but you are nothing more than sheep to the slaughter. Until you are willing to think for yourselves and question authority, you will never understand what freedom is.
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environmental terrorists
The American people's lack of concern over the dentention and torture of terrorists is rooted in the fact that (1) people are afriad of terrorism and want our government to be agressive about protecting us from terrorists, and (2) they feel safely excluded from the margin of error because they are not Arabs. Sure somebody could make a mistake and detain and torture an innocent person, but that person won't be me - it will be some Arab.
Or will it?
Perhaps Democrats could remind voters about the next big domestic terrorism threat - "environmental terrorism".
Maybe no one in your white-bread family will ever be mistaken for an "islamofacist". But what if your daughter the college student follows her latest love interest to an environmental protest?
These laws are not framed around "islamofacists". These powers legislated to the executive branch simply trust the president to decide who is a threat and who isn't. So
Another idea - the GOP has been using the "threat" of a "President Hilary Clinton" to motivate fundraising. Let's turn the table. When republican voters feel comfortable trusting President Bush with expanded powers, let's remind them that these powers will be passed to the next president, who might very well be a liberal democrat.
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Let me tell you how the system works Glenn
Hi,
I'm a United States Senator. My party affiliation doesn't matter. I see you spent considerable numbers of electrons lamenting that there are no such things as independent Republican senators.
When I finally stopped laughing, I decided to write you here at Salon and give you the short version of how Congress works. I truly hope that you will not be so disillusioned as to go out and hang yourself.
You see Glenn, in my district, the Department of Defense has put two of my best pork assets on the chopping block. I have an Air Force base and a private shipyard that has had huge contracts with the U.S. Navy. I've been fighting like hell to keep those assets from closing.
I've tried everything from doing a favorable cost/benefit study and presenting it to the Pentagon, to almost literally getting down on my knees and begging them not to cut my facilities. All to no avail.
So me and two other senators who are in a similar fight for budget resources saw the perfect opportunity recently when this torture thing came up.
We decided to dig in and refuse to support the President on "Principle." Ha! Oh we had a great time. We gave press conferences in the halls outside the chamber, we went on the Sunday gab shows. We made a big deal out of how we are morally opposed to torture.
Soon we got a lot of phone calls from the White House asking what it is that we wanted in exchange for backing off.
I told them that my state needs that Air Force base and that shipyard. Well, what do you know! Within a week, the Secretary of Defense just happened to take my facilities off the chopping block.
So I decided maybe Bush's torture thing wasn't so bad after all. We reached a "compromise" that gives the President everything he wanted, only phrased differently.
It's a win,win and win. I win because I've got my facilities budget back, I win again because I can say with a straight face "I voted AGAINST torture" (before I voted FOR it! Ha ha ha). And the President wins because he gets to pose for the pictures and act like he strong-armed us in to submission.
About the only guy who didn't win is some poor bastard down at Gitmo who's going to have the crap beat out of him tonight. Quite frankly, I don't care about him.
So there you are Glenn, a short lesson in how Congress works.
Yours Sincerely,
Senator ********