"Dear friends, I hope you'll take the opportunity of the March 6th Green-Rainbow primary to cast a vote for resurgent democracy. A democracy that thrives outside of the Democratic and Republican Parties that are sponsored by and subservient to corporate America. And I hope you will consider joining me in supporting Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein - both with your vote and with a contribution to her campaign for people, peace and the planet.As you know, popular anger at the political and economic institutions, and the subordination of the former to the latter, has reached historic heights. And for sound reasons. There could hardly be a better time to open up the political debate to the just anger and frustrations of citizens who are watching the country move towards what might be irreversible decline while a tiny sector of concentrated wealth and power implements policies of benefit to them and opposed by the general population, whom they are casting adrift.

"I don't even consider myself wealthy, which is an interesting thing. It can be here today gone tomorrow."

This is from a press release for a All Call to Action for people of the  Lakota Nation to come to Wanblee, SD, on the border of the Pine Tree Reservation "to join the Lakota Oyate, OST Police and State  Troopers in an effort to block [the pipeline trucks] from entering our .  Even the state troopers told them the trucks they have to turn around and cannot bring their ...pipeline or other materials on to our reservation. The XL pipeline trucks are refusing to turn around claiming they have corporate rights that supercedes any other laws. Olowan Sara Martinez, Debra White Plume, Grandmother Marie Randall and others are holding their ground."

So that is the "process" which Eric Holder yesterday argued constitutes "due process" as required by the Fifth Amendment before the government can deprive of someone of their life: the President and his underlings are your accuser, your judge, your jury and your executioner all wrapped up in one, acting in total secrecy and without your even knowing that he's accused you and sentenced you to death, and you have no opportunity even to know about, let alone confront and address, his accusations; is that not enough due process for you? At Esquire, Charles Pierce, writing about Holder's speech, described this best: "a monumental pile of crap that should embarrass every Democrat who ever said an unkind word about John Yoo."

[snip]

In sum, Holder's attempt to make this all seem normal and common should insult anyone with the most basic understanding of American law. As The New York Times put it when first confirming the assassination program in April, 2010: " The Obama administration has taken the extraordinary step of authorizing the targeted killing of an American citizen. . . . It is extremely rare, if not unprecedented, for an American to be approved for targeted killing, officials said. A former senior legal official in the administration of George W. Bush said he did not know of any American who was approved for targeted killing under the former president." To date, not a single such citizen has been identified.

As always, the most important point to note for this entire debate is how perverse and warped it is that we're even having this "debate" at all. It should be self-negating -- self-marginalizing -- to assert that the President, acting with no checks or transparency, can order American citizens executed far from any battlefield and without any opportunity even to know about, let alone rebut, the accusations. That this policy is being implemented and defended by the very same political party that spent the last decade so vocally and opportunistically objecting to far less extreme powers makes it all the more repellent. That fact also makes it all the more dangerous, because -- as one can see -- the fact that it is a Democratic President doing it, and Democratic Party officials justifying it, means that it's much easier to normalize: very few of the Party's followers, especially in an election year, are willing to make much of a fuss about it at all.

I don't know about anyone else, but the one network news show I watched last night did not, that I recall, even cover the speech; it was mostly tornado damage, the Super Tuesday primaries, Let's Go To War With Iran.  It may have been mentioned when I was out of the room for a minute or two, but I don't think it was.  Interesting, isn't it, that we now live in a country where a speech justifying the killing of Americans - justification that distorts the law and is circular in logic - doesn't even merit 30 seconds on the news?

My tooth had fractured, that was why it hurt.  I visited a different dentist this morning that only does endodontics and within an hour he removed the nerve and pasted it back together.

I felt so good afterwards I went shopping.

The hacktivist group 'Anonymous' has released emails from the private security firm Startfor, which speculate that the body of Osama Bin Laden was not buried at sea, as the Obama administration told the world.

In one email, Stratfor's V.P. for intelligence, Fred Burton, claims that the body was "bound for Dover, [Delaware] on [a] CIA plane" and then "onward to the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Bethesda [Maryland]."

Read more here:

Still, a little football news adds balance to the sports talk. So, I took notice when I read that Jim Irsay and the Colts will announce tomorrow that the team is releasing Peyton Manning, thus saving themselves $28 million that Manning would be owed otherwise.