She's baaaaack!

This is the antiaircraft gun photo for which Jane Fonda later apologized.

Jane Fonda plans anti-war bus tour. "Actress and activist Jane Fonda says she intends to take a cross-country bus tour to call for an end to U.S. military operations in Iraq . . . Fonda said war veterans that she has met on a nationwide book tour have encouraged her to break her silence on the Iraq war. “I’ve decided I’m coming out,” she said. Hundreds of people in the audience cheered loudly when Fonda announced her intentions to join the anti-Iraq war movement."
I love it. And I only hope that Michael Moore can join her -- wouldn't the wingnuts just piss and moan about that!
Actually, I do think it is important for more people to step up to the plate and take on the American wingnuts. The Democratic party and MoveOn and Kos can't do it all alone.
Now, time for a few rousing choruses of "We shall overcome" and "Joe Hill" and "When Johnny came marching home" and "Hell, no, we won't go" . . .

Scorpions

In The Beirut Express Billmon writes: "Iraq is no longer a country (if it ever was) but a collection of scorpions in a bottle, each maneuvering for position to strike. "
Once again this Sunday, the New York Times had an article pointing toward the US surrender in Iraq.
Reporter John Burns has tried for two years or more to accentuate the positive and pretend the US occupation is making progress. But there's a limit. Even Burns has flipped now.

. . . opponents of the American-led invasion had warned [that] American troops could get caught in the crossfire between Sunnis and Shiites, Kurds and Turkmen, secularists and believers - reduced, in the grimmest circumstances, to the common target of a host of contending militias . . . [now] the nightmare could come true. Recent weeks have seen the insurgency reach new heights of sustained brutality . . . with Sunni insurgents targeting hundreds of Shiite and Kurdish civilians in suicide bombings. There are reports of Shiite death squads, some with links to the interior ministry, retaliating by abducting and killing Sunni clerics and community leaders. The past 10 days have seen such a quickening of these killings, particularly by the insurgents, that many Iraqis are saying that the civil war has already begun . . . One measure of the doubts afflicting American officials here has been a hedging in the upbeat military assessments that generals usually offer, coupled with a resort to statistics carefully groomed to show progress in curbing the insurgents that seems divorced from realities on the ground.

Over the last six months, I think the American military has already been withdrawing from vast areas of the country, turning policing over to the Kurd and Shiite militias. The American military is preparing to hunker down in its bases and abandon the rest of Iraq to its fate. Bush was promoting the idea that American troops would withdraw as Iraqi troops stood up. But now we are hearing increasingly that Iraq will not learn to defend itself until the Americans leave. I call this the 'tough love" excuse, and, as Billmon notes, it is a disgusting abandonment.

Some senior officers have said privately that there is a chance that the pullback will be ordered regardless of what is happening in the war, and that the rationale will be that Iraq - its politicians and its warriors - will ultimately have to find ways of overcoming their divides on their own. America, these officers seem to be saying, can do only so much, and if Iraqis are hellbent on settling matters violently - at the worst, by civil war - that, in the end, would be their sovereign choice.

.
Oh, yessiree bob -- I'm sure we all remember seeing those Iraqi people in January making a sovereign choice to vote for a violent civil war.

The Bette Midler response

This is priceless.
A gay blogger called Manhattan Offender makes up a funny post about how Supreme Court nominee John Roberts must be gay (catholic boys school, wrestling team, drama club, took French -- you know, all the usual "gay" stuff!) -- How gay is this guy?
Well, it got picked up by Wonkette, the must-read Washington 'sex in the city' blog, who added the tidbit that, according to the NYT's fawning Roberts profile, it was also terribly suspicious that he had played Peppermint Patty in a school play.
Well, that got it going. But its mainly being talked about by right-wing bloggers who were shocked -- SHOCKED! -- that left wingers could come up sith such a horrible, disgusting smear campaign.
Powerline pontificates "Throughout American history, until now, there have been limits. There have been depths beneath which Americans would not sink for the sake of partisan advantage. Even during the Civil War, when the Democrats were fighting to preserve slavery, limits were observed [ED: oh yeah? check out Andersonville, and Sherman's march, and . . .] Now, all civility is gone. There is no depth to which some Democrats will not sink. Hold your nose. Things are only going to get worse. With MoveOn and the Daily Dose dominating Democratic politics, all constraints are gone."
And Reasoned Audacity writes "Of course it is the height of hypocrisy for the (allegedly) pro-tolerance crowd to start questioning someone's sexual preference. It's a strange and twisted tactic for those who are allied with the gay rights movement to try to make an issue out of someone supposedly being gay. Who cares? Well, that's just the point: they think we do. They think that they can undermine support for someone among conservatives if they can dredge up some sort of homosexual connection -- or, in this case, just the manufactured whiff of a question. If it weren't so cruel and small, it would be funny."
But. . . but . . . but. . . it IS funny.
It was supposed to be a joke - that is quite clear from Manhattan Offender's original post.
I guess being gay is such an terrible, horrible, no good, very bad prospect for right wingers that they simply cannot comprehend a gay person making a joke about a straight person being gay.
I can only conclude with what Bette Midler used to say "Fuck them if they can't take a joke."

Teach your children well

AltHippo at the TPM Cafe directs us to photos on Rush Limbaugh's site showing dozens of people wearing his "Club G'itmo" t-shirts. The idea seems to be, while actually wearing the shirt, to go openly and courageously to some Libbrul place and have your photo taken. No chickenhawks here, these Limbaugh crusaders are carrying the fight to the enemy, taking the supreme risk of getting yelled at by actual libbruls at places like the Carter Centre, the Clinton Library, the FDR memorial, the Supreme Court building, a Birkenstock store, the University of Colorado, LL Bean, Starbucks, a Muslim-owned store in Dearborn, Michigan, and various Democratic Party offices. Why, one t-shirted man even had the guts to go to an actual anti-Bush demonstration for a photo, though he stayed across the street of course. Libbruls bite, you know.
Interestingly, the town of New London, CT, where the "eminent domain" court decision originated, was featured prominently in several photos -- anything that pisses these people off seems to be, by definition, 'libbrul'.
And the shirts have SUCH cute sayings on them, like 'Club G'itmo, Your Tropical Retreat from the Stress of Jihad' (also available as a car flag), 'I Got My Free Koran and Prayer Rug at G'itmo', 'What Happens in G'itmo Stays in G'itmo', and, for the kiddies, 'My Mullah went to Club G'itmo and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt'.
But it was the photos of the children that really got to me. I guess its just loads of fun for the whole family now to teach their kids to cheer for indefinite imprisonment, torture, and denial of the Geneva Convention.
Here's (left) Conner, 13, from Texas and (right) Dan, 14 and Mike, 10 (who also have a bunch of Limbaugh's other products, which he labels EIB for (gag!) Excellence in Broadcasting):



Here's (left) Victoria from Florida, and (right) Dan, 12 and Matt, 13, with Club Gitmo mugs

Here's Seth and Nate with their own Gitmo lego model

And finally, here's a couple of cute baby photos:

Oops, I'm so sorry, this last one isn't on Limbaugh's site after all. But it looked so much like the others, I guess I got confused.
Teach your children well -- their father's hell did slowly go by --
And feed them on your dreams; the one they pick's the one you'll know by.
Don't you ever ask them why. If they told you, you would cry.
So just look at them and sigh, and know they love you.

Running from police into a subway station can be a capital offense

The BBC is reporting 'Shot man not connected to bombing' The former police commander told the Beeb that "he expected officers to face criminal charges, and other officers could even refuse to carry weapons. "
I hope that criminal charges are not laid -- sounds like it was an honest, though horrendous, mistake.
He exited a house connected to the subway attacks, he looked like he was wearing explosives, he ran when police tried to stop him. then apparently he vaulted over the subway turnstiles and ran to the train. Perhaps he didn't speak English; perhaps he thought he was some hitman's target, not realizing that the people chasing him were police, or perhaps he did know they were police but he had committed some other crime and that's why he ran. But its understandable why police would think he was a suicide bomber determined to complete a mission, so they had no choice but to shoot him before he could trigger his explosives. In fact, police threw themselves on the man even though they believed they were risking their own lives, trying to protect the public.
Its very sad, but I think we all have to realize that in large cities or in sensitive locations like airports and subway stations, there is a very limited tolerance now for strange behaviour.
Just as people had to learn not to joke about hijacking at the airport, and teenagers had to learn not to joke about shooting their classmates, so people now need to recognize that running from police toward a subway station can be a capital offense.
When we visit a foreign country, we need to find out whether everyone will be on edge due to a recent terrorist activity, and we need to learn what "This is the police. Put your hands up" sounds like in their language. And the people for whom this new caution is most important -- the people who are most at risk in any of these security situations -- are men aged 15 to 40.

Good, better, best

Good

Patrick Corrigan, The Toronto Star

Better

Jeff Stahler, The Columbus Dispatch, Ohio

Best

Bill Day, The Commercial Appeal, Memphis, Tennessee

Hooray for Canada -- that'll show ya!

Canada wins dumbest gov't at World Stupidity Awards: "Canadians often feel we're in the shadow of the U.S., especially when it comes to stupidity, but now we're proving we're world class."
Oh, Canada!

"Severed from its moral foundation"

It's not just me.
Here's how Guantanamo is described by Washington State writer Mike Whitney in this Smirking Chimp article 'Guantanamo: The calculus of human misery':

Guantanamo was intentionally shoved in the world's face to announce the arrival of the New World Order; the neocon phantasm of autocratic rule and perpetual war. It has become the foremost icon of the Bush regime; an ominous stone monument to human cruelty. It is cleverly disguised as a prison facility but, in fact, Guantanamo is a state of the art laboratory where the parameters of human suffering are explored by a highly-trained staff of professionals. To be precise, it is a "Torture-lab" replete with all of the modern gadgetry required for enhancing pain . . . psychiatrists, psychologists and other medical professionals worked intimately with the military at Guantanamo "advising officials on how to conduct harsh interrogations of detainees". Their experimentation focuses on establishing the limits of human endurance; trying to gauge, through original and highly-controversial techniques, the maximum agony their subjects can withstand before they die or become unresponsive. This is not merely torture, but the science of sadism; a finely-tuned regimen of systematic abuse, the calculus of human misery. It has become a vital adjunct to the new American foreign policy . . . Guantanamo is the truest expression of Bush's America; a looming block monolith where the crimes of empire can be carried out with impunity. It has become the primary symbol of the global onslaught on international law, personal liberty and human decency. Languishing beneath the blood-striped standard, the gun-towers and concertina wire depict an America that has changed at its very core; a rogue nation severed from its moral foundation; executing the coercive policies of the state.

And today it was announced that the Pentagon is not going to follow a judicial order to release more Abu Ghraib photos and videos. In June they asked the judge for more time so they could redact the faces in the photos; now they are asking for an exemption not to release anything -- "to withhold law enforcement-related information in order to protect the physical safety of individuals."
This is a laugh -- NOW they're worried about people's physical safety?
These new photos and videos apparently show, in Rumsfeld's own testimony to congress as quoted in a 2004 news story "acts that can only be described as blatantly sadistic, cruel and inhuman". The news story quotes NBC news as saying that the unreleased images show American soldiers beating one prisoner almost to death, apparently raping a female prisoner, acting inappropriately with a dead body, and taping Iraqi guards raping young boys. It also quotes Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham "We're not just talking about giving people a humiliating experience; we're talking about rape and murder and some very serious charges.'' Seymour Hersch said last year that the videos cover "women who were arrested with young boys/children . . . The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. The worst about all of them is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking."
Its probably their own safety that Rumsfeld and the Pentagon staff are worried about.

Pandering to our Inner Joe

' Ontarians to have say in whether province changes daylight saving time'. This stikes me as meaningless pandering to Canadian ego, our Inner Joe -- 'I don't change my watch when Americans do! I am Canadian.'
The Ontario attorney general Michael Bryant is quoted in this story as saying "Our government's going to do what's in Ontarians' interests, which does not necessarily mean automatically following in lockstep with the United States government's change to daylight saving time."
So I guess it is in Ontario's interest to dither, causing disruption and anxiety to businesses across the province before making the obvious decision, eh?
Can anyone give me any reason for Ontario, or any other Canadian province which is already on DST, to not just follow the American hours for Daylight Savings Time? Most provinces have significant US border trade plus Ontario has industrial involvement in US industries like the auto industry, so why on earth would Ontario NOT want to be on the same time as Detroit and Buffalo and New York?
Being in Saskatchewan myself, where we don't bother to switch times anymore, we feel that time is just an arbitrary constructed concept anyway.
We don't change our clocks because of the very early evening or very late morning which DST would cause to half of the province. Being on Manitoba time in the winter means Yorkton isn't dark by the time school lets out, while being on Alberta time in the summer means Lloydminster gets longer summer evenings. It works out for everything except the TV schedules.

Stand and deliver

The Senate is trying to hijack the defense spending bill to do somthing about torture, so naturally the White House is threatening to veto the bill.
Let Bush bluster and threaten -- what odds would anyone give me that Bush would actually issue his first veto in five years over the 'principle' that the president should be able to imprison and torture people at whim?
And its about time the Senate stepped up. The issue is this: the US Senate is reviewing a $442 billion expenditure for US defense programs. Republicans John McCain and Lindsay Graham are working with Armed Services Committee chair John Warner to add amendments to the bill to standardize treatment of prisoners, to define the legal status of the Guantanamo prisoners, to barr the holding of "ghost" detainees, to codify a ban against cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment, and to use the Army manual as a basis for all interrogations. Democratic senator Carl Levin also wants to add an amendment to establish a commission on abuses, which the Pentagon says would be just "political theatre".
So now the White House has announced that such amendments would "interfere with the protection of Americans from terrorism by diverting resources from the war." and has threatened veto "if legislation is presented that would restrict the president's authority to protect Americans effectively from terrorist attack and bring terrorists to justice."
I think the Pentagon and the White House will find that their 'political capital' on the torture issue is long since spent. McCain, Graham and Levin aren't going to let their own presidential campaigns be hijacked over torture and Guantanamo.
Not to mention, of course, that stopping all this stuff is the right thing to do. In the past, Congress and the American people could expect that their executive branch would defend the American constitution -- in his oath of office, the president swears to protect and defend the American constitution. But the Bush gang demonstrated their basic contempt for the constitution when they responded to 911 by so quickly and eagerly embracing the characteristics of dictatorship -- torture, imprisonment without trial, and abandonment of habeas corpus. More than any other issue, this revolting stampede to abandon constitutional principles has caused a substantial loss of US respect and prestige around the world, and rightfully so.

Dueling leaks

If the Supreme Court nominee announcement was intended to distract everyone from Plamegate, it worked.
For about 24 hours.
Here's Thursday's front page story in the Washington Post -- 'Plame's Identity Marked As Secret' which describes the State Department memo that Powell was supposedly carrying around Air Force One on the trip to Africa and which said that "The paragraph identifying [Valerie Wilson] as the wife of former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV was clearly marked to show that it contained classified material at the 'secret' level, two sources said. The CIA classifies as 'secret' the names of officers whose identities are covert . . . Anyone reading that paragraph should have been aware that it contained secret information . . . It is a federal crime, punishable by up to 10 years in prison, for a federal official to knowingly disclose the identity of a covert CIA official if the person knows the government is trying to keep it secret."
I also have the impression from this story that the Fitzgerald investigation staff (and maybe Powell, too) are countering with their own leaks the heavy spinning of leaks from the GOP usual suspects about Rove's Sargeant Schultz imitation -- he knew nu-thing, NU-THING!

"Delayed indefinitely" or "still on the docket"?

The Globe and Mail: Mad-cow case delayed indefinitely
Well, I'm not sure I would use the term "indefinitely" for this delay -- when the written reasons why the appeal court overturned Judge Cebull's injunction are received, then the Judge will decide whether to schedule another hearing.
The Billings Gazette reported the story this way last Friday: "A hearing on a request for permanent injunction against Canadian live cattle entering the United States is still on the docket of U.S. District Judge Richard Cebull in Billings. The judge will make no decision on the July 27 trial until he has reviewed the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals' reasons for dissolving his preliminary injunction, issued March 2, his law clerk said Friday afternoon. "
Cebull's injunction in March was pretty supportive of R-CALF's case in just about every respect.

The USDA has evidenced a preconceived intention, based upon inappropriate considerations, to rush to reopen the border regardless of uncertainties in the agency's knowledge of the possible impacts on human and animal health. Deference cannot be given to an agency that has made the decision to open the border before completing the necessary scientific analysis or risks to human health. The USDA cannot favor trade with Canada over human and animal health within the U.S. . . Plantiff has demonstrated the numerous procedural and substantive shortcomings of the USDA's decision to allow importation of Canadian cattle and beef. The serious irreparable harm that will occur when Canadian cattle and meat enter the U.S. and co-mingle with the U.S. meat supply justifies issuance of a preliminary injunction preventing the expansion of imports allowed under the Final Rule pending a review on the merits. As the States of Connecticut, New Mexico, North Dakota, Montana, Nevada, South Dakota and West Virginia have stated in the Amicus Curiae Brief: "The threats are great. Delay is prudent and largely harmless."

As well as the brief from seven states, the U.S. congress also passed in March a joint motion of disapproval of the border reopening.
So I don't think we can assume we are out of the woods quite yet.

"It coulda been worse" -- what a resounding endorsement!

Yale law professor Robert W. Gordon provides some initial reactions to Bush's supreme court nominee John Roberts:

Roberts is a very conservative nominee. Both business and social conservatives will support him strongly . . . his career locates him solidly on the far right of today's Court, the Rehnquist-Scalia-Thomas wing . . . All the indications are that he will become another vote to expand presidential power in national-security affairs, to limit the federal government's authority to regulate business and the environment and protect civil rights, to make it harder for women, minorities, labor and the disabled to pursue practical remedies in the courts, and to favor a larger role for religion in public life and as object of public subsidy. He is most likely to do this incrementally, case-by-case, rather than by sweeping new doctrines. My guess is that he would not vote to overrule Roe v. Wade but would sustain state efforts to chip away at abortion rights. On economic liberties, however, he might well be a more adventurous innovator. He wrote articles as a law student suggesting that courts use novel theories of the Takings and Contracts clauses of the Constitution to strike down state action affecting business (such as legislation creating new rights for workers). He has done advisory work for right-wing public-interest firms like the Washington Legal Foundation. He may well be a quiet but effective influence for the piecemeal demolition of the regulatory welfare state. Because his style is quiet and low-key, he is more likely to attract votes of fellow Justices than the inflammatory Scalia and the mediocre Thomas. Roberts will be very hard to challenge, because all Bush's choices were bound to be bad and this one could have been much worse.

Actually, maybe not. Sure, Bush could have pandered to the Christian Right by nominating Judge Roy Moore, but he, like Bolton, is such a controversial figure that he would never have been confirmed. A stealth conservative like Roberts will attract just enough Democratic support to be confirmed -- just in time to rule on these cases, and perhaps also on Rove's conviction.

It's all going according to plan -- but it's Iran's plan

Robert Scheer writes about Iraq's dangerous new friend, Iran.
So the United States has destroyed their army as an effective fighting machine and strangled their economy and destroyed their reputation for abiding by the rule of law and killed or injured tens of thousands of people -- all for the sake of establishing in Iraq a religious fundamentalist regime which prefers to ally with Iran.

Forced democratization of Iraq, according to its neocon architects, was supposed to secure oil for the U.S., protect Israel, open markets to Western corporations and, oh yeah, maybe even decrease terrorism. After the invasion, however, the U.S. . . . was loath to allow elections, because their outcome would probably not produce a pliant government. Then Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the Shiite religious leader, threatened to take his followers into the streets against the foreign occupation if one-person-one-vote elections were not allowed. And when it became clear the "wrong" guys might win the elections the U.S. was forced to hold, the Bush White House, according to an investigative article by Seymour Hersh in the current New Yorker, tried to buy the vote for former CIA asset Iyad Allawi. When Allawi's slate was soundly defeated, what was Bush to do? With absolutely nothing having gone right in Iraq between the successful military invasion and the inspiring election nearly two years later, he had no choice but to embrace the winners — mostly Shiite, mostly fundamentalists — as the saviors of a free and democratic Iraq. Sadly, they are nothing of the sort. In Basra, where they have been in power since the U.S. invasion, religious thugs are in de facto control, applying more oppressive theocratic rules over women's behavior and other basic human rights than neighboring Iran. Even worse, their victory has fueled fierce Sunni resentment, and the accompanying insurgency has begun targeting Shiite civilians with the clear goal of fomenting ethnic war. Over the weekend, more than 100 people were killed by suicide bombers. Sistani himself denounced what he ominously said was now a "genocidal war." Facing that hideous possibility, is it surprising to find the Iraqi government looking for help from powerful Iran? No, but it certainly poses a problem for the White House, which now finds itself putting American soldiers' lives on the line every day to prop up an active ally of the country that we claim, with some plausibility, funds anti-Israeli and other terror groups and is bent on making its own nuclear bomb. Somewhere a guy named Osama bin Laden must be laughing.

And Iraqi prime minister Jafari paid tribute to the shrine of Ayatollah Khomeini.

'The difference is to the human spirit'

Canada adopts gay marriage law
Next step is royal assent.

The Senate erupted in a loud cheer as it adopted the Liberal government's Bill C-38, which will give gay and lesbian couples the right to marry in courthouses and city halls across the country. The 47-21 vote came after years of court battles and debate that divided families, religious groups and even political allies. Three senators abstained. There are currently 95 sitting senators and 10 vacancies. The final word in the debate came from a Liberal senator who read to the hushed chamber an e-mail from a Yukon constituent. 'You have no idea what a difference it makes to the human spirit to know that you are treated equally under the law,' said Ione Christensen, the 71-year-old senator from Whitehorse.

But even now, some just do not get it.

"Let the country speak at the next federal election," Tory Senator Gerry St. Germain said hours before the bill passed. "Let's not pass this legislation now. Let's wait. Let's make (the election) a referendum on this bill."

Equal rights are NOT a voting issue. Rights are an expression of law, not of opinion.
We can have elections about government policies and government actions, like war or peace, trade, protectionism, immigration, interest rates, wage controls, federalism, etc etc -- these are things over which government has a choice, so it is quite right that Canadians should decide on what policy they want government to follow. But once the courts have declared that the charter mandates equal rights, it is no longer a matter of government choice whether to follow the court decision or not -- the court decision is the law of the land unless the notwithstanding clause is enacted.