If it sticks, its done...

Friday, September 29

America Uber Alles



Good afternoon, America, how are you?

There's this little thing in Law called "habeas corpus". Here, for you, is its definition...
1. One of a variety of writs that may be issued to bring a party before a court or judge, having as its function the release of the party from unlawful restraint.
2. The right of a citizen to obtain such a writ.

[Middle English, from Medieval Latin habe?s corpus, produce the body (from the opening words of the writ) : Latin habe?s, second person sing. present subjunctive of hab?re, to have + Latin corpus, body.]

Now, I know what you're thinking, yeah, and so what...

"Technically, it is used in the criminal law context to bring the petitioner before the court to inquire into the legality of his confinement. The writ of federal habeas corpus is used to test the constitutionality of a state criminal conviction."

Basically, my neighbor, it comes down to judging the legality of your arrest, your confinement, your detention by the state. Got it? Good.

'cause you just lost it. Congratulations. Welcome to the wonderful world of Fascism. You have done Thomas Jefferson proud, I'm sure. Your Constitution. The Bill of Rights. Yeah, they are pretty much toilet paper now. Freedom, my friend is not just the ability to decide between Ugly Betty and Survivor on a Thursday evening. It's living in the knowledge that your door can't be kicked in and you can't be dragged out by the police and you can't rot in a cell without charge, without trial, without facing your accuser, and without being allowed to ask why.



From Bruce Ackerman, a professor of law and political science at Yale:

"Buried in the complex Senate compromise on detainee treatment is a real shocker, reaching far beyond the legal struggles about foreign terrorist suspects in the Guantanamo Bay fortress. The compromise legislation, which is racing toward the White House, authorizes the president to seize American citizens as enemy combatants, even if they have never left the United States. And once thrown into military prison, they cannot expect a trial by their peers or any other of the normal protections of the Bill of Rights."

He goes on, "... if the federal courts support the president's initial detention decision, ordinary Americans would be required to defend themselves before a military tribunal without the constitutional guarantees provided in criminal trials."

The American government, the folks you voted for, have passed a bill that allows the President to declare whomever he chooses to be an "enemy combatant". And if you are tagged an enemy of the President, you have no rights. No phone call. Do not pass Go. No criminal trial. Only a Military Tribunal for you, my friend. They are legalizing the very thing that your founding fathers fought against.



From the New York Times:

"Then Vice President Dick Cheney and his willing lawmakers rewrote the rest of the measure so that it would give Mr. Bush the power to jail pretty much anyone he wants for as long as he wants without charging them, to unilaterally reinterpret the Geneva Conventions, to authorize what normal people consider torture, and to deny justice to hundreds of men captured in error."

"Detainees in U.S. military prisons would lose the basic right to challenge their imprisonment. These cases do not clog the courts, nor coddle terrorists. They simply give wrongly imprisoned people a chance to prove their innocence."

"The definition of torture is unacceptably narrow, a virtual reprise of the deeply cynical memos the administration produced after 9/11. Rape and sexual assault are defined in a retrograde way that covers only forced or coerced activity, and not other forms of nonconsensual sex. The bill would effectively eliminate the idea of rape as torture."

Huey Long once said "When fascism comes to this country its going to be wrapped in the American flag."

America, you sexy thing you, don't put up with this. Please fight back. Remember who allowed this to happen and make them answer for it. Don't allow the suits to fill you with paranoia. Look behind the curtain, check out who is pulling the wizards strings. Dissent is not wrong, in fact its a must.

Now, for every one else, my fave-o-rite moments from Bill Clinton vs Fox...



WALLACE: When we announced that you were going to be on Fox News Sunday, I got a lot of e-mail from viewers. And I’ve got to say, I was surprised. Most of them wanted me to ask you this question: Why didn’t you do more to put bin Laden and Al Qaida out of business when you were president?
There’s a new book out, I suspect you’ve already read, called The Looming Tower. And it talks about how the fact that when you pulled troops out of Somalia in 1993, bin Laden said, I have seen the frailty and the weakness and the cowardice of U.S. troops. Then there was the bombing of the embassies in Africa and the attack on the Cole.

CLINTON: OK, let’s just go through that.

WALLACE: Let me — let me — may I just finish the question, sir? And after the attack, the book says that bin Laden separated his leaders, spread them around, because he expected an attack, and there was no response. I understand that hindsight is always 20/20…

CLINTON: No, let’s talk about it.

WALLACE: … but the question is, why didn’t you do more, connect the dots and put them out of business?

CLINTON: OK, let’s talk about it. Now, I will answer all those things on the merits, but first I want to talk about the context in which this arises.
I’m being asked this on the Fox network. ABC just had a right-wing conservative run in their little Pathway to 9/11, falsely claiming it was based on the 9/11 Commission report, with three things asserted against me directly contradicted by the 9/11 Commission report.
And I think it’s very interesting that all the conservative Republicans, who now say I didn’t do enough, claimed that I was too obsessed with bin Laden. All of President Bush’s neo-cons thought I was too obsessed with bin Laden. They had no meetings on bin Laden for nine months after I left office. All the right-wingers who now say I didn’t do enough said I did too much — same people.
They were all trying to get me to withdraw from Somalia in 1993 the next day after we were involved in Black Hawk down, and I refused to do it and stayed six months and had an orderly transfer to the United Nations.
OK, now let’s look at all the criticisms: Black Hawk down, Somalia. There is not a living soul in the world who thought that Osama bin Laden had anything to do with Black Hawk down or was paying any attention to it or even knew Al Qaida was a growing concern in October of ‘93.

WALLACE: I understand, and I…

CLINTON: No, wait. No, wait. Don’t tell me this — you asked me why didn’t I do more to bin Laden. There was not a living soul. All the people who now criticize me wanted to leave the next day. You brought this up, so you’ll get an answer, but you can’t…

WALLACE: I’m perfectly happy to.

CLINTON: All right, secondly…

WALLACE: Bin Laden says…

CLINTON: Bin Laden may have said…

WALLACE: … bin Laden says that it showed the weakness of the United States.

CLINTON: But it would’ve shown the weakness if we’d left right away, but he wasn’t involved in that. That’s just a bunch of bull. That was about Mohammed Adid, a Muslim warlord, murdering 22 Pakistani Muslim troops. We were all there on a humanitarian mission. We had no mission, none, to establish a certain kind of Somali government or to keep anybody out. He was not a religious fanatic…

WALLACE: But, Mr. President…

CLINTON: … there was no Al Qaida…

WALLACE: … with respect, if I may, instead of going through ‘93 and…

CLINTON: No, no. You asked it. You brought it up. You brought it up.



...but, wait. There's more...


WALLACE: I want to ask a question. You don’t think that’s a legitimate question?

CLINTON: It was a perfectly legitimate question, but I want to know how many people in the Bush administration you asked this question of. I want to know how many people in the Bush administration you asked, Why didn’t you do anything about the Cole?
I want to know how many you asked, Why did you fire Dick Clarke? I want to know how many people you asked…

WALLACE: We asked — we asked…

CLINTON: I don’t…

WALLACE: Do you ever watch Fox News Sunday, sir?

CLINTON: I don’t believe you asked them that.

WALLACE: We ask plenty of questions of…

CLINTON: You didn’t ask that, did you? Tell the truth, Chris.

WALLACE: About the USS Cole?

CLINTON: Tell the truth, Chris.

WALLACE: With Iraq and Afghanistan, there’s plenty of stuff to ask.

CLINTON: Did you ever ask that? You set this meeting up because you were going to get a lot of criticism from your viewers because Rupert Murdoch’s supporting my work on climate change.
And you came here under false pretenses and said that you’d spend half the time talking about — you said you’d spend half the time talking about what we did out there to raise $7-billion-plus in three days from 215 different commitments. And you don’t care.

WALLACE: But, President Clinton, if you look at the questions here, you’ll see half the questions are about that. I didn’t think this was going to set you off on such a tear.

CLINTON: You launched it — it set me off on a tear because you didn’t formulate it in an honest way and because you people ask me questions you don’t ask the other side.

Go get 'em, Bill...

And a bit of coolness I found while staggering around the Information Superhighway with a cup of high-octane in my grip...

Cick here, dammit.

Ciao.

Thursday, September 7

Sometimes Things Can't Wait...

I was going to hang onto this until Monday, Sept. 11th... But I can't wait. Must share.

America, my friend, why are you letting this happen?

Click here now.

Goodbye.

Sunday, September 3

Back Home



And then I went down East for a bit. My Grandma passed away. She was 89. She was much admired and loved and respected. She will be missed.
And there you are.

My family is from down East. The Brockville area.



A happening and growing and thriving little burg on the shores of the St. Lawrence River. Near the Thousand Islands.



A small city where, it seems, I just might be related to everyone who has ever lived in or near the area.



Yipes.

This is the Masonic Lodge in Lyn. Its just outside of Brockville. Its so small, its not on Mapquest. Plenty of my more direct relatives have lived or still live in Lyn. It is on Google Maps. Just not on Mapquest.



These folks are not my family, though they are Slacks. It just turns out that Google Images cannot find any images of people I am related to. So just pretend that these are Slacks I am descended from. Its more fun this way, really.



And so I have given this link out to my cousins. I haven't seen any of them in a long, long, long time. So I will now attempt to give them a quick update of my life and what is happening. For everyone who already knows all this, here is a link to some Amazon reviews by someone who has never read any of the books he reviews. Did you follow that? Good. Now get.

Where was I...? Oh, yeah.

This is my wife. She's a hottie. And the smart one in this partnership.



This is our dog Channing. She hates getting her picture taken.



This is our other dog, Milhouse. He's five 150-pound dogs trapped in the body of one wee Jack Russell.



We own a house. We both work for the devil, just in different forms. She takes photographs, helps organize Buskerfest and watches me play video games. Me, I play video games.

And so, there we are. All caught up.

And I'm back home from going back home.