“In Defense of Voting Rights” – Editorial – November 5, 2007
Not only should Mr. Tanner be fired, and Senator Obama’s excellent legislation be enacted by the Congress immediately, America needs to scrap the Electoral College system and replace it with a one person, one vote system in which every voter casts their ballot in exactly the same manner, and where there is a paper trail in case of the need for a recount.
Had these measures been in place during the last two presidential elections, George W, Bush would not be President. That fact alone speaks volumes for changing the system! Minority voters in Florida in 2000 and in Ohio in 2004 were either denied the right to vote, or made to wait up to ten hours to cast their ballots, while voters in white neighborhoods had little or no wait at the polls. The right to vote is one of the most sacred of all our liberties and we must do everything we can to protect that right for all Americans, not just the rich and powerful.
Henry A. Lowenstein
Monday, November 5, 2007
Sunday, November 4, 2007
Mukasey Is (Much) Worse Than Gonzales
Great article in The Nation about AG (nominee) Mukasey. What a frickin' jerk! How can Sen Schumer actually support him?! What a disgrace that the top law enforcement position in the United States has become so compromised to the rule of law. :-(
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat?pid=248702
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat?pid=248702
Noun + Verb + 9/11 + Iran = Democrats’ Defeat? Frank Rich
Frank Rich tells it straight!
November 4, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
Noun + Verb + 9/11 + Iran = Democrats’ Defeat?
By FRANK RICH
WHEN President Bush started making noises about World War III, he only confirmed what has been a Democratic article of faith all year: Between now and Election Day he and Dick Cheney, cheered on by the mob of neocon dead-enders, are going to bomb Iran.
But what happens if President Bush does not bomb Iran? That is good news for the world, but potentially terrible news for the Democrats. If we do go to war in Iran, the election will indeed be a referendum on the results, which the Republican Party will own no matter whom it nominates for president. But if we don’t, the Democratic standard-bearer will have to take a clear stand on the defining issue of the race. As we saw once again at Tuesday night’s debate, the front-runner, Hillary Clinton, does not have one.
The reason so many Democrats believe war with Iran is inevitable, of course, is that the administration is so flagrantly rerunning the sales campaign that gave us Iraq. The same old scare tactic — a Middle East Hitler plotting a nuclear holocaust — has been recycled with a fresh arsenal of hyped, loosey-goosey intelligence and outright falsehoods that are sometimes regurgitated without corroboration by the press.
Mr. Bush has gone so far as to accuse Iran of shipping arms to its Sunni antagonists in the Taliban, a stretch Newsweek finally slapped down last week. Back in the reality-based community, it is Mr. Bush who has most conspicuously enabled the Taliban’s resurgence by dropping the ball as it regrouped in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Administration policy also opened the door to Iran’s lethal involvement in Iraq. The Iraqi “unity government” that our troops are dying to prop up has more allies in its Shiite counterpart in Tehran than it does in Washington.
Yet 2002 history may not literally repeat itself. Mr. Cheney doesn’t necessarily rule in the post-Rumsfeld second Bush term. There are saner military minds afoot now: the defense secretary Robert Gates, the Joint Chiefs chairman Mike Mullen, the Central Command chief William Fallon. They know that a clean, surgical military strike at Iran could precipitate even more blowback than our “cakewalk” in Iraq. The Economist tallied up the risks of a potential Shock and Awe II this summer: “Iran could fire hundreds of missiles at Israel, attack American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, organize terrorist attacks in the West or choke off tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s oil windpipe.”
Then there’s the really bad news. Much as Iraq distracted America from the war against Al Qaeda, so a strike on Iran could ignite Pakistan, Al Qaeda’s thriving base and the actual central front of the war on terror. As Joe Biden said Tuesday night, if we attack Iran to stop it from obtaining a few kilograms of highly enriched uranium, we risk facilitating the fall of the teetering Musharraf government and the unleashing of Pakistan’s already good-to-go nuclear arsenal on Israel and India.
A full-scale regional war, chaos in the oil market, an overstretched American military pushed past the brink — all to take down a little thug like Ahmadinejad (who isn’t even Iran’s primary leader) and a state, however truculent, whose defense budget is less than 1 percent of America’s? Call me a Pollyanna, but I don’t think even the Bush administration can be this crazy.
Yet there is nonetheless a method to all the mad threats of war coming out of the White House. While the saber- rattling is reckless as foreign policy, it’s a proven winner as election-year Republican campaign strategy. The real point may be less to intimidate Iranians than to frighten Americans. Fear, the only remaining card this administration still knows how to play, may once more give a seemingly spent G.O.P. a crack at the White House in 2008.
Whatever happens in or to Iran, the American public will be carpet-bombed by apocalyptic propaganda for the 12 months to come. Mr. Bush has nothing to lose by once again using the specter of war to pillory the Democrats as soft on national security. The question for the Democrats is whether they’ll walk once more into this trap.
You’d think the same tired tactics wouldn’t work again after Iraq, a debacle now soundly rejected by a lopsided majority of voters. But even a lame-duck president can effectively wield the power of the bully pulpit. From Mr. Bush’s surge speech in January to Gen. David Petraeus’s Congressional testimony in September, the pivot toward Iran has been relentless.
Reinforcements are arriving daily. Dan Senor, the former flack for L. Paul Bremer in Baghdad, fronted a recent Fox News special, “Iran: The Ticking Bomb,” a perfect accompaniment to the Rudy Giuliani campaign that is ubiquitous on that Murdoch channel. The former Bush flack Ari Fleischer is a founder of Freedom’s Watch, a neocon fat-cat fund that has been spending $15 million for ads supporting the surge and is poised to up the ante for Iran war fever.
There are signs that the steady invocation of new mushroom clouds is already having an impact as it did in 2002 and 2003. A Zogby poll last month found that a majority of Americans (52 percent) now supports a pre-emptive strike on Iran to prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons.
In 2002 Senators Clinton, Biden, John Kerry, John Edwards and Chris Dodd all looked over their shoulders at such polls. They and the party’s Congressional leaders, Tom Daschle and Dick Gephardt, voted for the Iraq war resolution out of the cynical calculation that it would inoculate them against charges of wussiness. Sure, they had their caveats at the time. They talked about wanting “to give diplomacy the best possible opportunity” (as Mr. Gephardt put it then). In her Oct. 10, 2002, speech of support for the Iraq resolution on the Senate floor, Mrs. Clinton hedged by saying, “A vote for it is not a vote to rush to war.”
We know how smart this strategic positioning turned out to be. Weeks later the Democrats lost the Senate.
This time around, with the exception of Mrs. Clinton, the Democratic candidates seem to be saying what they really believe rather than trying to play both sides against the middle. Only Mrs. Clinton voted for this fall’s nonbinding Kyl-Lieberman Senate resolution, designed by its hawk authors to validate Mr. Bush’s Iran policy. The House isn’t even going to bring up this malevolent bill because, as Nancy Pelosi has said, there has “never been a declaration by a Congress before in our history” that “declared a piece of a country’s army to be a terrorist organization.”
In 2002, the Iraq war resolution passed by 77 to 23. In 2007, Kyl-Lieberman passed by 76 to 22. No sooner did Mrs. Clinton cast her vote than she started taking heat in Iowa. Her response was to blur her stand. She abruptly signed on as the sole co- sponsor of a six-month-old (and languishing) bill introduced by the Virginia Democrat Jim Webb forbidding money for military operations in Iran without Congressional approval.
In Tuesday’s debate Mrs. Clinton tried to play down her vote for Kyl-Lieberman again by incessantly repeating her belief in “vigorous diplomacy” as well as the same sound bite she used after her Iraq vote five years ago. “I am not in favor of this rush for war,” she said, “but I’m also not in favor of doing nothing.”
Much like her now notorious effort to fudge her stand on Eliot Spitzer’s driver’s license program for illegal immigrants, this is a profile in vacillation. And this time Mrs. Clinton’s straddling stood out as it didn’t in 2002. That’s not because she was the only woman on stage but because she is the only Democratic candidate who has not said a firm no to Bush policy.
That leaves her in a no man’s — or woman’s — land. If Mr. Bush actually does make a strike against Iran, Mrs. Clinton will be the only leading Democrat to have played a cameo role in enabling it. If he doesn’t, she can no longer be arguing in the campaign crunch of fall 2008 that she is against rushing to war, because it would no longer be a rush. Her hand would be forced.
Mr. Biden got a well-deserved laugh Tuesday night when he said there are only three things in a Giuliani sentence: “a noun and a verb and 9/11.” But a year from now, after the public has been worn down by so many months more of effective White House propaganda, “America’s mayor” (or any of his similarly bellicose Republican rivals) will be offering voters the clearest possible choice, however perilous, about America’s future in the world.
Potentially facing that Republican may be a Democrat who is not in favor of rushing to war in Iran but, now as in 2002, may well be in favor of walking to war. In any event, she will not have been a leader in making the strenuous case for an alternative policy that defuses rather than escalates tensions with Tehran.
Noun + verb + 9/11 — also Mr. Bush’s strategy in 2004, lest we forget — would once again square off against a Democratic opponent who was for a pre-emptive war before being against it.
November 4, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
Noun + Verb + 9/11 + Iran = Democrats’ Defeat?
By FRANK RICH
WHEN President Bush started making noises about World War III, he only confirmed what has been a Democratic article of faith all year: Between now and Election Day he and Dick Cheney, cheered on by the mob of neocon dead-enders, are going to bomb Iran.
But what happens if President Bush does not bomb Iran? That is good news for the world, but potentially terrible news for the Democrats. If we do go to war in Iran, the election will indeed be a referendum on the results, which the Republican Party will own no matter whom it nominates for president. But if we don’t, the Democratic standard-bearer will have to take a clear stand on the defining issue of the race. As we saw once again at Tuesday night’s debate, the front-runner, Hillary Clinton, does not have one.
The reason so many Democrats believe war with Iran is inevitable, of course, is that the administration is so flagrantly rerunning the sales campaign that gave us Iraq. The same old scare tactic — a Middle East Hitler plotting a nuclear holocaust — has been recycled with a fresh arsenal of hyped, loosey-goosey intelligence and outright falsehoods that are sometimes regurgitated without corroboration by the press.
Mr. Bush has gone so far as to accuse Iran of shipping arms to its Sunni antagonists in the Taliban, a stretch Newsweek finally slapped down last week. Back in the reality-based community, it is Mr. Bush who has most conspicuously enabled the Taliban’s resurgence by dropping the ball as it regrouped in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Administration policy also opened the door to Iran’s lethal involvement in Iraq. The Iraqi “unity government” that our troops are dying to prop up has more allies in its Shiite counterpart in Tehran than it does in Washington.
Yet 2002 history may not literally repeat itself. Mr. Cheney doesn’t necessarily rule in the post-Rumsfeld second Bush term. There are saner military minds afoot now: the defense secretary Robert Gates, the Joint Chiefs chairman Mike Mullen, the Central Command chief William Fallon. They know that a clean, surgical military strike at Iran could precipitate even more blowback than our “cakewalk” in Iraq. The Economist tallied up the risks of a potential Shock and Awe II this summer: “Iran could fire hundreds of missiles at Israel, attack American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, organize terrorist attacks in the West or choke off tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s oil windpipe.”
Then there’s the really bad news. Much as Iraq distracted America from the war against Al Qaeda, so a strike on Iran could ignite Pakistan, Al Qaeda’s thriving base and the actual central front of the war on terror. As Joe Biden said Tuesday night, if we attack Iran to stop it from obtaining a few kilograms of highly enriched uranium, we risk facilitating the fall of the teetering Musharraf government and the unleashing of Pakistan’s already good-to-go nuclear arsenal on Israel and India.
A full-scale regional war, chaos in the oil market, an overstretched American military pushed past the brink — all to take down a little thug like Ahmadinejad (who isn’t even Iran’s primary leader) and a state, however truculent, whose defense budget is less than 1 percent of America’s? Call me a Pollyanna, but I don’t think even the Bush administration can be this crazy.
Yet there is nonetheless a method to all the mad threats of war coming out of the White House. While the saber- rattling is reckless as foreign policy, it’s a proven winner as election-year Republican campaign strategy. The real point may be less to intimidate Iranians than to frighten Americans. Fear, the only remaining card this administration still knows how to play, may once more give a seemingly spent G.O.P. a crack at the White House in 2008.
Whatever happens in or to Iran, the American public will be carpet-bombed by apocalyptic propaganda for the 12 months to come. Mr. Bush has nothing to lose by once again using the specter of war to pillory the Democrats as soft on national security. The question for the Democrats is whether they’ll walk once more into this trap.
You’d think the same tired tactics wouldn’t work again after Iraq, a debacle now soundly rejected by a lopsided majority of voters. But even a lame-duck president can effectively wield the power of the bully pulpit. From Mr. Bush’s surge speech in January to Gen. David Petraeus’s Congressional testimony in September, the pivot toward Iran has been relentless.
Reinforcements are arriving daily. Dan Senor, the former flack for L. Paul Bremer in Baghdad, fronted a recent Fox News special, “Iran: The Ticking Bomb,” a perfect accompaniment to the Rudy Giuliani campaign that is ubiquitous on that Murdoch channel. The former Bush flack Ari Fleischer is a founder of Freedom’s Watch, a neocon fat-cat fund that has been spending $15 million for ads supporting the surge and is poised to up the ante for Iran war fever.
There are signs that the steady invocation of new mushroom clouds is already having an impact as it did in 2002 and 2003. A Zogby poll last month found that a majority of Americans (52 percent) now supports a pre-emptive strike on Iran to prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons.
In 2002 Senators Clinton, Biden, John Kerry, John Edwards and Chris Dodd all looked over their shoulders at such polls. They and the party’s Congressional leaders, Tom Daschle and Dick Gephardt, voted for the Iraq war resolution out of the cynical calculation that it would inoculate them against charges of wussiness. Sure, they had their caveats at the time. They talked about wanting “to give diplomacy the best possible opportunity” (as Mr. Gephardt put it then). In her Oct. 10, 2002, speech of support for the Iraq resolution on the Senate floor, Mrs. Clinton hedged by saying, “A vote for it is not a vote to rush to war.”
We know how smart this strategic positioning turned out to be. Weeks later the Democrats lost the Senate.
This time around, with the exception of Mrs. Clinton, the Democratic candidates seem to be saying what they really believe rather than trying to play both sides against the middle. Only Mrs. Clinton voted for this fall’s nonbinding Kyl-Lieberman Senate resolution, designed by its hawk authors to validate Mr. Bush’s Iran policy. The House isn’t even going to bring up this malevolent bill because, as Nancy Pelosi has said, there has “never been a declaration by a Congress before in our history” that “declared a piece of a country’s army to be a terrorist organization.”
In 2002, the Iraq war resolution passed by 77 to 23. In 2007, Kyl-Lieberman passed by 76 to 22. No sooner did Mrs. Clinton cast her vote than she started taking heat in Iowa. Her response was to blur her stand. She abruptly signed on as the sole co- sponsor of a six-month-old (and languishing) bill introduced by the Virginia Democrat Jim Webb forbidding money for military operations in Iran without Congressional approval.
In Tuesday’s debate Mrs. Clinton tried to play down her vote for Kyl-Lieberman again by incessantly repeating her belief in “vigorous diplomacy” as well as the same sound bite she used after her Iraq vote five years ago. “I am not in favor of this rush for war,” she said, “but I’m also not in favor of doing nothing.”
Much like her now notorious effort to fudge her stand on Eliot Spitzer’s driver’s license program for illegal immigrants, this is a profile in vacillation. And this time Mrs. Clinton’s straddling stood out as it didn’t in 2002. That’s not because she was the only woman on stage but because she is the only Democratic candidate who has not said a firm no to Bush policy.
That leaves her in a no man’s — or woman’s — land. If Mr. Bush actually does make a strike against Iran, Mrs. Clinton will be the only leading Democrat to have played a cameo role in enabling it. If he doesn’t, she can no longer be arguing in the campaign crunch of fall 2008 that she is against rushing to war, because it would no longer be a rush. Her hand would be forced.
Mr. Biden got a well-deserved laugh Tuesday night when he said there are only three things in a Giuliani sentence: “a noun and a verb and 9/11.” But a year from now, after the public has been worn down by so many months more of effective White House propaganda, “America’s mayor” (or any of his similarly bellicose Republican rivals) will be offering voters the clearest possible choice, however perilous, about America’s future in the world.
Potentially facing that Republican may be a Democrat who is not in favor of rushing to war in Iran but, now as in 2002, may well be in favor of walking to war. In any event, she will not have been a leader in making the strenuous case for an alternative policy that defuses rather than escalates tensions with Tehran.
Noun + verb + 9/11 — also Mr. Bush’s strategy in 2004, lest we forget — would once again square off against a Democratic opponent who was for a pre-emptive war before being against it.
Saturday, November 3, 2007
The fat lady hasn't sung
On Michael Mukasey, I thought this was of interest, from a news story in the Washington Post--
"Norman Ornstein, a scholar on Congress at the American Enterprise Institute, agreed that Republicans would "much rather be dealing with who's tougher on terrorists." But he also noted that Mukasey, who has no political ties to Bush, could turn into an independent force within the administration. Bush has won, Ornstein said, without being able to know precisely what he will get."
Remember that Mukasey was a consensus candidate agreed to by a weakened President and among the names Chuck Schumer introduced right after Gonzales was exposed 9 months ago.
If you see the confirmation struggle as a proxy battle between Senate Democrats and the White House over waterboarding and interrogation techniques, I'm hoping that the strong stands and passionate statements of the senators will strengthen the determination of the Senate to outlaw torture techniques across the board, not just for the military--something they have yet to do.
And finally, FYI, yesterday's Washington Post editorial--
Mr. Mukasey and Torture
The Senate should confirm the former and ban the latter.
"Norman Ornstein, a scholar on Congress at the American Enterprise Institute, agreed that Republicans would "much rather be dealing with who's tougher on terrorists." But he also noted that Mukasey, who has no political ties to Bush, could turn into an independent force within the administration. Bush has won, Ornstein said, without being able to know precisely what he will get."
Remember that Mukasey was a consensus candidate agreed to by a weakened President and among the names Chuck Schumer introduced right after Gonzales was exposed 9 months ago.
If you see the confirmation struggle as a proxy battle between Senate Democrats and the White House over waterboarding and interrogation techniques, I'm hoping that the strong stands and passionate statements of the senators will strengthen the determination of the Senate to outlaw torture techniques across the board, not just for the military--something they have yet to do.
And finally, FYI, yesterday's Washington Post editorial--
Mr. Mukasey and Torture
The Senate should confirm the former and ban the latter.
Friday, November 2, 2007; A20
IT IS EXTRAORDINARY that a man who rightly would have been confirmed with overwhelming support had he been President Bush's first nominee for attorney general may now be denied that post in the waning months of the administration. Just as extraordinary is Mr. Bush's campaign to salvage the nomination of Michael B. Mukasey. Yesterday, in a rare Oval Office meeting with reporters and later in a speech before the Heritage Foundation, Mr. Bush bemoaned the imperiled state of Mr. Mukasey's nomination without one iota of self-awareness that the nomination is in trouble because of the president's own warped policies on torture.
Mr. Mukasey is being judged not on his merits but as a proxy for Mr. Bush. Yet critics of the nomination, while understandably disturbed by Mr. Mukasey's unwillingness to label waterboarding illegal, may be working against the last, best hope to see the rule of law reemerge in this administration.
Mr. Mukasey's 172 pages of written responses to senators' questions leave no doubt that he is a staunchly conservative lawyer. He believes the Second Amendment bestows an individual right to bear arms. He recoils at the idea of appointing a special prosecutor when, in his words, the "members of the Department have the integrity and ability to discharge whatever responsibilities they may have." He embraces an expansive vision of presidential power that allows the president to ignore an "unconstitutional law" if it infringes on the powers of the executive.
This last view, when put into action by unqualified sycophants such as former attorney general Alberto R. Gonzales, leads to extreme and dangerous power grabs, not to mention grotesque distortions of the law that produce such results as the notorious 2002 "torture memo."
But there are key differences between Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Mukasey. Mr. Gonzales, whose confirmation we opposed, had a hand in crafting the policy that encouraged Mr. Bush to ignore U.S. law and treaty obligations on torture prohibitions. Mr. Mukasey did not. Mr. Gonzales endorsed the go-it-alone approach that cut Congress out of a significant role in warrantless surveillance and the creation of military tribunals. While jealously guarding the president's prerogatives, Mr. Mukasey seems to understand that the president's power is strengthened -- not diminished -- when he acts in concert with Congress, and he has vowed to advocate such an approach. Mr. Gonzales lacked the moral compass to challenge Mr. Bush and some of his stronger-willed advisers. Mr. Mukasey has demonstrated the ethical fortitude required of an independent attorney general.
As we said this week, it is a shame for America to be led by a president who has countenanced waterboarding and other interrogation methods that most Americans would understand as torture. Mr. Mukasey got it right when he called waterboarding "repugnant"; like many senators, we wish he had also clearly stated that it is illegal. But to do so would have been likely to bring him into conflict with existing Justice Department memorandums that have been used by CIA interrogators and others to legitimize their actions. Mr. Mukasey has promised a careful review of each of those memorandums; if he is rejected, no nominee is likely to promise more in advance of confirmation.
Those senators who truly want to bring the nation back from the disgrace of Mr. Bush's interrogation policies should do two things. They should confirm Mr. Mukasey, who is far more independent and qualified than either of Mr. Bush's previous two nominees. And they should do something which, for all the rhetoric, they have so far declined to do: ban torture, by passing the National Security with Justice Act sponsored by Sen. Joseph R. Biden (D-Del.). The act would limit all United States personnel -- military and civilian -- to using only interrogation techniques authorized by the U.S. Army Field Manual on Intelligence Interrogation, which expressly prohibits waterboarding and which military leaders have said gives them the tools they need to get reliable information from difficult subjects. ##
From Hank posted by Sunny:
Sent: Saturday, November 03, 2007 9:53 AM
To: 'oped@washpost.com'
Subject: To The Editor
“Schumer, Feinstein & Justice Mukasey”
As a current resident of New York, and a former resident of California, I have worked hard for and supported Charles Schumer and Diane Feinstein throughout their political careers. That support ends today! I learned last night that these two leading senior Senators will support President Bush’s nomination of Michael Mukasey for Attorney General. It is incredible that every single time this President does not get what he wants he plays the terror card! What is truly terrifying is that, up to now it has worked like a charm for Mr. Bush. The Democrats, with Schumer and Feinstein now leading the way, cower in fear that they will be seen as weak on terror, and have allowed Mr. Bush to run roughshod over them in every case.
I have no quarrel with Michael Mukasey. He is probably the most qualified candidate for Attorney General the Bush administration has yet come up with. The problem is that because Mr. Bush broke the law by allowing prisoners and detainees to be tortured, Mr. Mukasey can not come out and say that he believes water-boarding and other obvious methods of torture are against the law because it would put the President in an untenable situation. Mr. Bush is between a rock and a hard place. He must defend his nominee, but by keeping him quiet on the issue of torture I thought the President might have given the Senate Judiciary Committee the backbone they need to deny Mr. Mukasey’s confirmation. Not anymore. Schumer and Feinstein came out with a mealy-mouthed statement that they feel it is more important to start “fixing” the Justice Department than to make a “political statement”. This is not a matter of a “political statement.” This is a matter of whether or not our elected officials stand for the rule of law. It has become painfully obvious that Senator’s Schumer and Feinstein do not.
Let us all send a clear message to these cowardly Democrat’s. They have declined to do what they were elected to do, and they should know that there are many loyal Democrat’s in New York and California who, starting today, are working really hard to find candidates to replace them when their terms are up.
To: 'oped@washpost.com'
Subject: To The Editor
“Schumer, Feinstein & Justice Mukasey”
As a current resident of New York, and a former resident of California, I have worked hard for and supported Charles Schumer and Diane Feinstein throughout their political careers. That support ends today! I learned last night that these two leading senior Senators will support President Bush’s nomination of Michael Mukasey for Attorney General. It is incredible that every single time this President does not get what he wants he plays the terror card! What is truly terrifying is that, up to now it has worked like a charm for Mr. Bush. The Democrats, with Schumer and Feinstein now leading the way, cower in fear that they will be seen as weak on terror, and have allowed Mr. Bush to run roughshod over them in every case.
I have no quarrel with Michael Mukasey. He is probably the most qualified candidate for Attorney General the Bush administration has yet come up with. The problem is that because Mr. Bush broke the law by allowing prisoners and detainees to be tortured, Mr. Mukasey can not come out and say that he believes water-boarding and other obvious methods of torture are against the law because it would put the President in an untenable situation. Mr. Bush is between a rock and a hard place. He must defend his nominee, but by keeping him quiet on the issue of torture I thought the President might have given the Senate Judiciary Committee the backbone they need to deny Mr. Mukasey’s confirmation. Not anymore. Schumer and Feinstein came out with a mealy-mouthed statement that they feel it is more important to start “fixing” the Justice Department than to make a “political statement”. This is not a matter of a “political statement.” This is a matter of whether or not our elected officials stand for the rule of law. It has become painfully obvious that Senator’s Schumer and Feinstein do not.
Let us all send a clear message to these cowardly Democrat’s. They have declined to do what they were elected to do, and they should know that there are many loyal Democrat’s in New York and California who, starting today, are working really hard to find candidates to replace them when their terms are up.
Friday, November 2, 2007
Hilary's comments from the NY times article today...WHAT?
I cannot believe Hilary is trying to convince to feel sorry for her because of her gender! Does she realize that there are more important things a PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE should be thinking about? How about the fact that if she does get elected, the men will not magically go away- her gender will always be an issue and she should not be using it to make her case. Barack seems to actually focus on things that are important, and has never once complained about how hard it is for him to be black and running, because he knows that it doesn't make a difference. Shouldn't we be concentrating on finding a leader who will run the country effectively? Not one who just feels sorry for herself....
--Maddie
--Maddie
From Justy to me, depressing as hell site!
Look at the website jellycrats.com - about all the votes. Yuck!
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