Home / Other Politics
Subsections:
South Knox Bubba says you ought to be mad as hell and he's right:
People like Tom "I AM the Federal Government" DeLay (not to mention John Ashcroft) are exactly why Thomas Jefferson and James Madison demanded a Bill of Rights be made part of the Constitution. They experienced first-hand, and could foresee, abuse of the awesome powers of the government for political or ideological purposes, or simply criminal activity by powerful elected officials such as theft, retribution, or revenge.
Nobody cared when Ashcroft ignored the Constitution, which he was sworn to uphold and protect, and started arresting and detaining people without warrants, probable cause, or due process. Nobody cared about Ashcroft's blatant violations of detainee's Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights when he held them without charges and denied their right to legal representation and their right to confront their accusers. Nobody cared because the detainees were suspected terrorists, you know, Muslims, and people of Middle Eastern descent.
Now it appears that Tom DeLay and others have similarly abused the powers of the Federal government to threaten the rights and liberties of Texas legislators, ordinary Americans, for political purposes.
SK recaps the whole shameful incident.
Update: The Washington Post reports Sunday that Joe Lieberman is asking for records of calls between Bush, Karl Rove and Tom DeLay on the issue.
The issue is politically sensitive because the Department of Homeland Security has acknowledged assisting law enforcement officers who were asked by Republicans to round up Democrats who had fled the state to avoid voting on a redistricting plan championed by DeLay. The plan died when a deadline passed without a quorum.
An FBI agent also helped in the search, but the bureau said it did not act at the behest of politicians. The Federal Aviation Administration gave aircraft-tracking information to DeLay's staff, and his staff sought advice from the Justice Department.
Bush and Rove apparently spoke to DeLay before the legislators departed.
Daily Kos and Nathan Newman debunk the GOP on 'states' rights'.
We agree. As the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers ( NACDL) points out in its Legislative Priorities:
In recent years, crime bills have granted federal prosecutors greater and greater authority by creating more federal crimes out of historically state and local crimes. For example, domestic violence, carjacking and failure to pay child support are traditionally the prerogative of state and local governments; federal jurisdiction is unwarranted, unwise and contrary to the Constitution. Regarding these and other federalized crimes, Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist observed that "one senses from the context in which they were enacted that the question of whether the states were doing an adequate job in this particular area was never seriously asked."
Before enacting federal criminal legislation, Congress should consider whether a federal interest is implicated and whether the state or local remedy is inadequate to address that interest. The impact on federal law enforcement and court resources should also be assessed.
For anyone not familiar with the term, "states' rights" refers to:
...a doctrine based on the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution, which states, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” The term embraces both the doctrine of absolute state sovereignty that was espoused by John C. Calhoun and that of the so-called strict constructionist interpretation of the U.S. Constitution, which reserves to the state governments all powers not specifically granted by that document to the federal government.
(337 words in story) There's More :: Permalink :: Comments
A new poll shows Bill Clinton is the third most popular president in history.
Only Abraham Lincoln (chosen by 15%) and John F. Kennedy (13%) finished ahead of Clinton (11%) in the April poll, which asked Americans who was "the greatest" president. George W. Bush managed to tie Clinton for third place.
Ronald Reagan, a conservative icon, garnered 10% of the vote, followed by Franklin Roosevelt, George Washington, Harry Truman and Jimmy Carter. Bush's father, the 41st president, was chosen by just 2% of the respondents, tying with Theodore Roosevelt and Thomas Jefferson.
Clinton was considered the best president by 29% of 18- to 29-year-olds. Only 10% of that group picked Bush.
Link via Oliver Willis, who says, "Silly Clinton. All you did was provide peace and prosperity - why would we ever want that again?
In other Clinton news, rumors are flying that Clinton may challenge Michael Bloomberg to be Mayor of New York
"It took a House Armed Services subcommittee a shade under 11 minutes on May 7 to approve $1.7 billion more than the Pentagon had requested in its 2004 budget for bombers, missiles, transport planes and a variety of Navy and Marine Corps programs."
When do we get universal health care and improve our public schools and universities? When do we adequately fund research for diseases and conditions like Alzheimers, Parkinson's and Autism? When do we start providing every child with an equal chance to succeed? Enough with the military spending, let's fund those in need here at home.
Steve Gilliard, filling in for Kos today at Daily Kos, has a delightfully wicked wrap-up on the Guliani-Nathan nupitals.
No one would mistake this blog for a wedding annoucements page, but it's rare to have such an act of evil described in such a banal way. It would be as if Bill Clinton gave away Monica Lewinsky at her wedding and the press reported that the former president gave away a White House intern he became friendly with.
There's lots, lots more. We're glad somebody said it. Herr Guliani just gives us the creeps.
No more blogging today. No more news, no more TV, no more Republicans telling me that the only way for my country to prosper is to give ever more to the rich and ever less to the poor, to starve any government program that dares to help education, healthcare, the needy, or the elderly, and to base our role in the world solely on a mirage of military dominance so breathtakingly misguided that it would make Julius Caesar himself choke on his porridge. What is it that drives otherwise sane people to believe that these are the things that will make America great in the 21st century? Maybe I'll be back tomorrow. Maybe not. In either case, have a nice Memorial Day.John Cole and Matt Yglesias respond. We provide this response under our hat of criminal defense lawyer:
Newt Gingrich and his "Contract on America" were only one step behind George Bush and Attorney General John Ashcroft. The right wing now dominates this country. Liberal/progressive thought takes the back seat.
As criminal defense lawyers, we toil every day in the trenches known as courtrooms. We can't give up. We remember to stand erect (male lawyers would say "we puff up our chests,") and we repeat to ourselves, "I am proud to be a criminal defense lawyer," and we go in there and fight the good fight. We lose more than we win, but we know the scales of justice function like a pendulum, and someday, the scales again will tilt in our favor. Until then, staying silent is not an option.
Every person we fight for, no matter how heinous their alleged crime, is a human being. A human being with the right to dignity and with a past and a present, a person who can claim at least one person who loves him or her unconditionally, even if it's only their mother. We stay in the trenches and we fight for that client's ounce of dignity and spark of humanity.
The message here: Get out of bed. We don't have the luxury of being depressed. There is too much work to do. We have battles to fight and wars to win. We need you, Kevin, and those feeling the same way, to recognize there is power in numbers, and if you all go to sleep instead of hanging in here to fight the good fight with us, then all of us have lost.
Kevin, take Memorial Day off from blogging as you planned. But come back Tuesday will a renewed sense of purpose and spirt: We will win. We are fighting for good and what's right. We may not win today, or even tomorrow. But when that pendulum swings the other way, we will be victorious. Never give up. Each of us has a role to play and all of our voices are needed.
John Ashcroft is a non-elected official with pious, radical-right views who is now in the position to impose his wackiness on the rest of us. We can take him out--through the electoral process. We just have to get out the vote and defeat Bush. Please, do anything except stand mute.
"The California Assembly on Monday called for Rep. Howard Coble to resign as chair of a key House subcommittee because of his comments about the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II."
Law Professor Eric Muller of Is That Legal? has been all over the story. Go read. "Even the 32 Republicans in the Assembly voted for the measure."
The White House uses television and technology to promote Bush's presidential image --we can't help but wonder who pays for it all, and we have a sinking feeling that we, the people do. One example:
The White House efforts have been ambitious — and costly. For the prime-time television address that Mr. Bush delivered to the nation on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, the White House rented three barges of giant Musco lights, the kind used to illuminate sports stadiums and rock concerts, sent them across New York Harbor, tethered them in the water around the base of the Statue of Liberty and then blasted them upward to illuminate all 305 feet of America's symbol of freedom. It was the ultimate patriotic backdrop for Mr. Bush, who spoke from Ellis Island.
The Senate released transcripts today from closed-door meetings between Senator Joseph R. McCarthy and nearly 500 witnesses occurring fifty years ago.
"No one McCarthy summoned ever went to jail -- even the few who were convicted of contempt later won on appeal. But his probes ruined lives and destroyed careers and livelihoods, with his unproven hints of communist taint."
Excerpts from the transcripts are available here.
The number of black youths living in extreme poverty is at its highest level in the 23 years that such statistics have been kept, according to a report released Wednesday. More than 932,000 blacks under age 18 are in that category, a 50 percent increase from the 622,000 classified that way in 1999, according to a Children's Defense Fund analysis of Census Bureau data.[link via Atrios] We agree with Children's Defense Fund President Marian Wright Edelman, who had this to say about the report's findking:
These numbers are clear indicators that, as a country, we must invest in children now instead of passing irresponsible tax breaks for the rich. “It is shameful that one million Black children are left behind in extreme poverty,” said Edelman. “It is hard to be poor. It is harder to be an extremely poor Black child in America when our President who says we should Leave No Child Behind® is proposing massive new tax breaks for the richest Americans.”Our view has always been that we must give every child in America an equal chance to succeed. Bush hasn't done that. In fact, he's making this goal more difficult to achieve daily. Out, Out, damn spot. See spot run. See spot hide. See spot fade into oblivion. That's our goal for the spottily accomplished Bush.
Some more commentary on Rick Santorum and his comments on homosexuality:
Hendrik Hertzberg in the New Yorker, Dog Bites Man.
Cathy Young in the Boston Globe, Santorum's Odious Comparisons. [Links via SCOTUSblog]
Mark Mumford in the San Francisco Chronicle: Sex Tips From Rick Santorum in which the noxiously homophobic Republican senator answers your naughty e-mail
Atrios reports that President Bush has used his recess appointment power to name his former girlfriend from his Harvard Business School days, now a homemaker, to the board of directors of the Export-Import Bank.
| << Previous 12 | Next 12 >> |
