Here is the reason it is absolutely essential that Mr. Bush’s extremist judicial nominees not pass:
A federal district judge in South Carolina ruled Monday that President Bush had greatly overstepped his authority by detaining an American citizen as an enemy combatant for nearly three years without filing criminal charges.
If Bush picks his judges like he picks his Attorneys General, we have quite a bit to fear from the seven he has renominated. The future of the Bill of Rights is at stake.
To date, the courts have shown that they are willing to do what Congress has not - stand up to the anti-democratic policies of the Bush administration. I worry that won’t always be the case if the Republicans have their way.
In case you were wondering if there was a housing bubble, here is overwhelming evidence that there is:
“In several metropolitan areas, from Miami to Riverside, Calif., where the real estate market is white hot, rapidly rising prices are luring a growing number of ordinary people into buying and selling residences they do not intend to occupy, despite warnings from some economists that prices cannot continue to rise as steeply as they have in the last few years.”
It’s amazing how quickly people forget.
Scapegoat a group of people to advance your political agenda? Check.
Accuse your political opponents of not being patriotic? Check.
Lie, lie, and lie some more? Check.
Remember a few months back, Dick Cheney had this to say about the outcome of the 2004 election:
“It’s absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on Nov. 2, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we’ll get hit again and we’ll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States.”
So, one wonders, how exactly did that turn out? Recent testimony by Porter Goss shed some more light on Cheney’s comments:
“It may be only a matter of time before al Qaeda or other groups attempt to use chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear weapons. We must focus on that,”
As I suspected at the time, apparently Cheney was right after all. By electing George W. Bush, we have made ourselves more likely to be hit, not less.
In an attempt to rebut Sen. Hillary Clinton’s bestselling book, It Takes a Village, Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) will offer It Takes A Family: Conservatism And The Common Good this summer.
I have read neither of these two books, but to be perfectly honest, based on title alone, Sen. Clinton’s book is more biblical than Sen. Santorum’s. Jesus did not call his followers to live isolated from the community in which they lived. Rather, he called them to live a radically inclusive lifestyle where the community played a primary role in spiritual growth and learning.
Why should it be any different for our children? While certainly the family, due to its proximity to children, plays a primary role in raising them (especially when they are young), the larger community also must play an important role (especially when they are older).
And certainly, if the family is isolated from the larger community, or if the larger community influences both family and child in a negative manner, or even if the larger community does not create an environment which allows the family to provide the necessities of life, then this child’s upbringing will be insufficient.
The Republican party’s over-emphasis on the “personal” rather than the “corporate” is completely non-Biblical, and as such, isn’t a family value I wish to teach my children.
Are you kidding me? Bush is nominating the death squad guy to be the Director of National Intelligence?
Frank Rich has an excellent overview of the White House’s fake news propaganda machine:
By my count, “Jeff Gannon” is now at least the sixth “journalist” (four of whom have been unmasked so far this year) to have been a propagandist on the payroll of either the Bush administration or a barely arms-length ally like Talon News while simultaneously appearing in print or broadcast forums that purport to be real news.
Now, I may just be naive here, but wouldn’t paying someone to give a false impression of journalistic support for your administration constitute, I don’t know, LYING?
And this may be even more naive, but doesn’t the Bible - you know, the book the President likes to talk about a whole lot - say something like “thou shalt not bear false witness?”
I’m just asking…
Michael Bowen: “Steve’s A Deanie! :)“.
One quick point of clarification - it’s “Deaniac,” not “Deanie.” ;)
With Howard Dean’s election as chairman of the Democratic party yesterday, I have decided to get off the fence and for the first time in my life register as a Democrat.
Howard Dean was the first political candidate in my lifetime who I actually trusted. I believe that he honestly desires reform both for the Democratic party and our country as a whole. And most importantly for a politician, with Dean, what you see is what you get.
I believe that the Democratic party under Howard Dean is going to be a party of reform. It will be a party which pursues what is right, rather than what is merely right for its political ambitions. And it will be a party which represents all Americans, rather than just those who grease its palms.
And that is why I am now a Democrat.
Here is still more evidence that Abu Ghraib was just an “isolated incident:”
Mamdouh Habib still has a bruise on his lower back. He says it is a sign of the beatings he endured in a prison in Egypt. Interrogators there put out cigarettes on his chest, he says, and he lifts his shirt to show the marks. He says he got the dark spot on his forehead when Americans hit his head against the floor at the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
I guess, of course, that characterization depends on what the definition of “isolated” is. I’m not sure that Cuba, Afghanistan, Iraq, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and many other parts of the world quite qualify as “isolated,” however.
