Wacko Gun Nuts

2:12 pm EST December 21st, 2005 | Politics | 15 Comments

Santa Claus points a handgun at a masked terrorist on a Christmas card that John Michael Snyder, public affairs director of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, sends this year to a number of recipients.

Named Dean of gun lobbyists by The Washington Post and The New York Times, Snyder includes the president and members of Congress as addressees.

Here’s the card.

Tony Blair On Elton John’s Marriage

1:12 pm EST December 21st, 2005 | Politics | 10 Comments

Way to make America sound like the dark ages, Mr. Blair…

Even Prime Minister Tony Blair mentioned the couple at a news conference. He wished them well and congratulated them, adding “and to all the other people exercising their rights under the civil partnership law, I think it’s a modern, progressive step for the country and I’m glad we did it.”

How It Works

12:12 pm EST December 21st, 2005 | Democrats | 9 Comments

Peter Daou expertly outlines why the biggest obstacle to Democratic success is the Democratic party. He’s 100% right. I’ve got more thoughts on this later.

Fantasy Time

12:12 am EST December 21st, 2005 | News | 5 Comments

I’d like to see this family moving their furniture into 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. …

Topic: Taxes

Snoopgate: Judge Quits Over President’s Activity

12:12 am EST December 21st, 2005 | Politics | 32 Comments

Business begins to pick up

A federal judge has resigned from the court that oversees government surveillance in intelligence cases in protest of President Bush’s secret authorization of a domestic spying program, according to two sources.

U.S. District Judge James Robertson, one of 11 members of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, sent a letter to Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. late Monday notifying him of his resignation without providing an explanation.

Two associates familiar with his decision said yesterday that Robertson privately expressed deep concern that the warrantless surveillance program authorized by the president in 2001 was legally questionable and may have tainted the FISA court’s work.

This begins to sound like the president’s possibly illegal activity is undermining the work of the FISA court, also known as defending America from terrorists.

It’s a good thing there weren’t any interns around, because then people would start using the “I” word.

ALSO: Clinton/Carter Executive Orders Did Not Authorize Warrantless Searches of Americans (via mr. curmudgeon)

MORE: Duncan says “traitor”. I’m liable to think people who make it easier for enemies of America to do their work are actively working with terrorists by default.

AND: Spying Program Snared U.S. Calls

A surveillance program approved by President Bush to conduct eavesdropping without warrants has captured what are purely domestic communications in some cases, despite a requirement by the White House that one end of the intercepted conversations take place on foreign soil, officials say.

Reagan DOJ official Bruce Fein in the Washington Times:

President Bush presents a clear and present danger to the rule of law. He cannot be trusted to conduct the war against global terrorism with a decent respect for civil liberties and checks against executive abuses. Congress should swiftly enact a code that would require Mr. Bush to obtain legislative consent for every counterterrorism measure that would materially impair individual freedoms.

Mr. Fein, I keep hearing this clicking sound during our phone calls… (Fein was one of the big Clinton haters on the tv during the ’90s)
Colin Powell:

My own judgment is that it didn t seem to me, anyway, that it would have been that hard to go and get the warrants [through FISA]. And even in the case of an emergency, you go and do it [begin surveillance]. The law provides for that. And three days later, you let the court know what you have done, and deal with it that way.

This is what I don’t get. Getting a warrant is easy, they could even get one after the fact. They must have either felt they were so powerful they didn’t have to do it, or they are hiding something (“Yeah, so I got the order to bug Howard Dean’s phone right here…”).

DNC: Did George Bush Break the Law?

Interestingly, this is not a case of “what did the president know”, etc. The president knew, the whole time.

Snoopgate: Democratic Response

12:12 am EST December 21st, 2005 | Politics | 17 Comments

This is yet another of those cases where Democrats have to speak up and be unequivocating about what it means to be an American and what limits there are to the presidency. So far, Sen. Russ Feingold is kicking butt on this, and there’s been good stuff from Sen. Reid, Sen. Levin, Sen. Schumer, Sen. Boxer and the DNC (Howard Dean).

I haven’t heard a damn thing from Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden.

Judge Jones’ Gift

12:12 am EST December 21st, 2005 | Uncategorized | 1 Comment

I may be overstating it, but I think it’s just wonderful that a Republican judge, appointed by George W. Bush, is the judge who has written this amazing defense of science in the Dover “intelligent design” case.

Jones gives a clear definition of science, and recounts how this vaunted mode of inquiry has evolved over the centuries. He describes how scientists go about the task of supporting or challenging ideas about the world of the senses — all that can be observed and measured. And he reaches the unwavering conclusion that intelligent design is a religious idea, not a scientific one.

This is one area where the standard conservative technique of saying there are “two sides” just doesn’t stand up. Intelligent design is just not science, of any sort.

I also think it marks an interesting line in our nation’s collective thought process. As much as people may worship and believe in their church, they understand that there’s also a world of science – and that while one may be a belief system and at the end of the day be true (even I believe a form of this), there are clear reasons for why you can’t let the sort of “balance” that defines Fox News (for instance) be involved in the world of science.

I would go to the point of saying that for most of the religious right, if they went into the doctor for heart surgery, and the doctor said he was going to let “intelligent design” guide his scalpel — they’d ask for a real doctor.

>> Check out the wingnutty response from the Discovery Institute “think tank” to the Dover decision. They call Judge Jones a “darwinist”… like that’s a bad thing?
>> Reality based commentary at Evolutionblog, eSkeptic and The Panda’s Thumb

Topic: Religious Right

The Right Goes Pro-Bin Laden

9:12 pm EST December 20th, 2005 | Politics | 43 Comments

On September 11, 2001 Osama Bin Laden launched the first major strike of his war on America. The purpose of this attack was twofold: 1) Mass murder 2) Destruction of the American idea of invincibility and safety. He was able to achieve goal #1, but #2 has been a little harder to come by. Thanks to the Republican party, that may no longer be true.

Only the modern Republican party could make the seemingly inane argument that being against spying on citizens without a warrant is the position of the less patriotic. Its just dumb, period. There are reasons why we divide power between the three branches, why we are a nation of laws – we aren’t animals, but a mature nation 229 years in the making.

Here’s the main problem: we all want terrorists dead but not at the expense of American democracy. It would have been easy for the Bush administration to get a warrant before, during, and after their surveillance. There doesn’t seem to have been any reason for them not doing this than to make clear to the congress and the citizenship that the president is above the rules and if he says so it must be true.

Nice idea, but that isn’t America.

One argument is that “we’re at war” and we suspend certain niceties in war. Well the problem is, the President seems to have forgotten to declare war. And it isn’t that he can’t. Many folks (including myself) have argued that we should declare war on Al Qaeda, using a similar standard that the congress used in the First Barbary War. They never did and still haven’t, so the freaking president doesn’t get to suspend America. And anyone who disagrees, quite simply, is in the same camp as Bin Laden.

Not the sort of company I wish to keep.

Bottom Line On Bush’s Spying

6:12 pm EST December 20th, 2005 | Politics | 30 Comments

There are always going to be some people who, short of murdering an old woman on live tv, are going to defend George W. Bush no matter what he does. But on the issue of this spying, I don’t care what the polls are. If only 1% of Americans understand that the president isn’t above the law, so be it. It is wrong. Too many Americans – from the original revolutionaries and down to the soldiers in Iraq – have died to protect the idea that we don’t have a king, not someone who decides on his own whims what is and isn’t legal.

If the case against these people was such a threat to national security – why didn’t they get a warrant. It isn’t hard to get a warrant, and you can even get a warrant after you’ve done the surveillance. If the president didn’t like the law, you get the congress to do it. This is how we operate in America.

The very concept that the terrorists seek to eliminate is the system the president and his supporters are undermining in the rush to short term political strength. It’s the very idea of a system of laws at the heart of America.

A Judge For Reality

3:12 pm EST December 20th, 2005 | Uncategorized | 3 Comments

The words of the judge in the Dover intelligent design case should be printed in every science and history textbook in America.

The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for the ID Policy. It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy.

With that said, we do not question that many of the leading advocates of ID
have bona fide and deeply held beliefs which drive their scholarly endeavors. Nor do we controvert that ID should continue to be studied, debated, and discussed. As stated, our conclusion today is that it is unconstitutional to teach ID as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom.

Those who disagree with our holding will likely mark it as the product of an
activist judge. If so, they will have erred as this is manifestly not an activist Court. Rather, this case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on ID, who in combination drove the Board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy.

The breathtaking inanity of the Board s decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources.

Topic: Religious Right