Our Flag and Our Freedom

This is about the most obnoxious thing I have ever heard.

It just so happens that a flag that has touched dirt or in some other become soiled and unseemly is supposed to be burned, in order to decommission it, so to speak.

Our flag, as of late, been soiled with the blood of innocents. It should be burned.

At least, it should be flown upside down as a sign of distress, as the Democracy for which it stands is on life-support, barely.

Our Flag and Our Freedom:

"With campaigns at full tilt and the Fourth of July just around the corner, the Senate's new priority is to debate and vote on yet another resolution to amend our remarkable Constitution. This time it's an amendment that would allow Congress to prohibit a form of protest that a large majority of Americans do not like: the burning or desecration of the American flag. Since 1989, when the Supreme Court decided unanimously and correctly that these rare, unpleasant demonstrations are expressions of speech and therefore protected by the First Amendment, there have been many such attempts. Fortunately, all have failed.

Unfortunately, enthusiasm for this amendment appears to have grown even as flag-burning incidents have vanished as a means of political protest. The last time I saw an image of the U.S. flag being desecrated in this way was nearly 20 years ago, when the court issued its decision. Thus this amendment -- never appropriate in the oldest democracy on earth -- has become even less necessary. But necessity is not always the mother of legislation."

Al-Qaeda in Iraq sought war between United States, Iran

I smell psyops.

USATODAY.com - Al-Qaeda in Iraq sought war between United States, Iran:

"BAGHDAD (AP): A blueprint for trying to start a war between the United States and Iran was among a 'huge treasure' of documents found in the hideout of terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Iraqi officials said Thursday.
The document, purporting to reflect al-Qaeda policy and its cooperation with groups loyal to ousted President Saddam Hussein, also appear to show that the insurgency in Iraq was weakening. "

Gallup: Americans Feel We Are 'Worse Off' Because of Iraq War

Bad News For the Bushites:

To Rethugs in Congress: Debate this, you assholes.

Gallup: Americans Feel We Are 'Worse Off' Because of Iraq War:

"NEW YORK While most public opinion polls this week show a slight bounce in President Bush's approval ratings, the most recent Gallup Poll, taken June 9 to 11, reveals that Americans continue to have a negative view of what the war has really accomplished for Americans.

Gallup asked Americans if the war in Iraq had made things better off, the same, or worse off for six entities: the American people, the Iraqi people, the strength and preparedness of the U.S. military, the war on terrorism, the prospects for democracy in the Middle East, and the image of the United States around the world.

The result for that final category was the most clearcut: 6 in 10 Americans said the image of the U.S. was 'worse off,' with only 11% saying 'better off.' "

Voters, Be Worried. Be Very Worried. (3 Letters) - New York Times

How about a modern day Boston Tea Party, except worse?

Voters, Be Worried. Be Very Worried. (3 Letters) - New York Times:

"Bob Herbert is correct in saying that although it can't be proved that the 2004 presidential election in Ohio was rigged, in light of the irregularities observed in the process itself, it is overwhelmingly probable that it was.

When one considers what occurred first in Florida in 2000 and then in Ohio in 2004, one has good reason to be concerned.

The irresponsible and dishonest leadership of our current administration has already done our country and the world incalculable harm.

If free and fair elections do not exist here in America, democracy in our country, already under siege, is further jeopardized.

For our system of governance to work, we need appropriate checks and balances and Congressional oversight, both of which are directly dependent on an electoral process that is not fraudulent."

Is Brownback Bringing Opus Dei Into The Senate? | Democrats.com

OK! That's it! The final g--damned straw!

Opus Dei?

Why don't we just elect Tom Cruise and be done with it?

Is Brownback Bringing Opus Dei Into The Senate? Democrats.com:

"The United States Senate is often called 'the greatest deliberative body in the world' which usually raises the bar on the tenor and intellectual content of speeches given on the floor and for the official record.

Not so for Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS) who took to the Senate floor last week to deliver a strident push for the bigoted Marriage Protection Amendment, with massive distortions of the issue and an argument that was based almost solely on the opinion of a little-known, conservative think tank affiliated with the Roman Catholic organization, Opus Dei .
'
The problem we have in front of us is the institution of marriage has been weakened, and the effort to redefine it on this vast social experiment that we have going on, redefining marriage differently than it has ever been defined before,' the Kansas Senator grimly intoned last week. 'This effort of this vast social experiment, the early data that we see from other places, harms the institution of the family, the raising of the next generation. And it is harmful to the future of the Republic.'

Brownback then went on to give figures for how various states have shown their hatred of gay people with their own prohibitions on same-sex marriage and used that as his rationale for a similar amendment to the U.S. Constitution."

Sun Myug Fool and the Bush Family

This has to be the most bizzare alliance yet, but I have read and seen too much to not believe it.

Consortiumnews.com:

"Over the past quarter century, South Korean theocrat Sun Myung Moon has been one of the Bush family's major benefactors, both politically and financially, while enjoying what appears to be protection against federal investigations into evidence that his cult-like organization has functioned as a criminal enterprise."

War on terror called failure

Hey Dems! Here are some talkng points for you, in the House debate.

TheStar.com - War on terror called failure:

"Washington is failing to make progress in the global war on terror and the next 9/11-style attack is not a question of if, but when. That is the scathing conclusion of a survey of 100 leading American foreign-policy analysts.

In its first 'Terrorism Index,' released yesterday, the influential journal Foreign Affairs found surprising consensus among the bipartisan experts.

Some 86 per cent of them said the world has grown more, not less, dangerous, despite President George W. Bush's claims that the U.S. is winning the war on terror.

The main reasons for the decline in security, they said, were the war in Iraq, the detention of terror suspects in Guantanamo Bay, U.S. policy towards Iran and U.S. energy policy."

Now, What About Cheney?

Yep, that is the question of the day....

AlterNet: Now, What About Cheney?:

"It's disappointing that Karl Rove won't be indicted for his role in the CIA leak case -- but now we must push to learn what the Vice-President knew."

Secret Memo: Rethug Despicable Strategy

So, they want to exploit 9/11 again, eh?

Ooo.k! Let's talk about 9/11 and while we are at it, let's talk about the anthrax attacks!

Think Progress � EXCLUSIVE: Majority Leader Boehner�s Confidential Strategy Memo For Thursday�s Iraq Debate:

"On Thursday, the House of Representatives will hold a debate on the Iraq war. Media reports say Majority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) 'hopes to match the serious, dignified tone of deliberation that preceded the Gulf war, in 1991.'
ThinkProgress has obtained a 'Confidential Messaging Memo' from Boehner instructing his caucus to conduct a very different kind of deliberation. Here's a quick summary:

1. Exploit 9/11. The two page memo mentions 9/11 seven times. It describes debating Iraq in the context of 9/11 as 'imperative.'

2. Attack opponents ad hominem. The memo describes those who opposes President Bush's policies in Iraq as 'sheepish,' 'weak,' and 'prone to waver endlessly.'

3. Create a false choice. The memo says the decision is between supporting President Bush's policies and hoping terrorist threats will 'fade away on their own.' "

Time for a new New Deal?

WorkingForChange-Time for a new New Deal?:

"WASHINGTON -- There is no sturdier liberal or Democratic slogan than 'Jobs, jobs, jobs.' But liberals have a problem: The old capitalist job-production machine is not working the way it used to. The venerable promise that new (progressive) leadership will create masses of well-paying jobs is harder to make, and even harder to keep.
I
n principle, this is a larger problem for conservatives, whose main economic program involves reinforcing the status quo by giving tax cuts to rich people so they have more money to invest. Conservatives simply ignore the fact that fewer jobs are being created, particularly at home, for each dollar invested.

But conservatives are expected to stand up for the rich. Liberals are supposed to expand the standard of living for everybody else. That is harder than it used to be. "

GOP Measure Forces House Debate on War

In the first place, Iraq has nothing to do with the "War on Tur." It is nothing but a distraction.

The Democrats need to ask one question, over and over again: Where is bin Laden and his crew?

Zarqawi was a nobody until the Bushites made him somebody.

The Democrats might also bring up the fact that the administration had numerous chances to hit Zarqawi, the Muslim Lazrus, before the war in Iraq began.

The Rethugs in Congress want to debate the Iraq war? Fine. The Democrats had better be prepared to blast them into next years on the subject.

The 'War on Tur' is being lost, forty ways from Sunday. Anyone who can't see thhat is a fool.

GOP Measure Forces House Debate on War:

"Nearly four years after it authorized the use of force in Iraq, the House today will embark on its first extended debate on the war, with Republican leaders daring Democrats to vote against a nonbinding resolution to hold firm on Iraq and the war on terrorism.

In the wake of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's death and President Bush's surprise trip to Baghdad, Republican leaders are moving quickly to capitalize on good news and trying to force Democrats on the defensive. Bush continued his own campaign with a morning news conference and a White House meeting with congressional leaders from both parties, while House leaders strategized on today's 10-hour debate."

Phone Jamming Update - Senate Majority Project

If the penalties for this kind of Bullshit were more severe, maybe these knotheads would think twice before pulling these electioneering stunts.

Phone Jamming Update - Senate Majority Project:

"Yesterday was a mixed bag for Karl Rove. He got the news that he won't be charged in the CIA leak case, but got a not so warm welcome in New Hampshire last night, where a swarm of New Hampshire residents were less than pleased with his visit and the circumstances surrounding it.

Last night, Rove was the guest of honor at the New Hampshire Republican party's annual dinner/fundraiser. The special guest was invited in an effort to boost fundraising efforts to pay the party's phone jamming legal bills.
"

A shameful silence on Coulter's spewing

McCain and Lieberman can rot in hell, for all I care!

WorkingForChange-A shameful silence on Coulter's spewing:

"With the predictable regularity of a locust plague, Ann Coulter and her enablers at the once-reputable firm of Random House have issued yet another volume of fascistic entertainment. Now the hard-drinking, trash-talking, fortysomething bachelorette bills herself as a Christian moralist, in holy battle against the liberal heathens.

That whiff of brimstone in the air may only be the match she is striking for her next cigarette.

But her version of 'Christianity' turns out to be a strangely modern and convenient faith, which encourages heaping scorn on bereaved widows, bearing false witness against them on television and publicly gloating over the ill-gotten profits thus attained. Leaving behind the golden rule of the Gospels to 'do unto others as you would have them do to you,' she embodies a new rule of gold: You can never be too rich, too thin or too vicious. "

Revealed: the lax laws that could allow assembly of deadly virus DNA

How f'ing stupid can ya get?

This is un-freakin'-believable!

Guardian Unlimited Special reports Revealed: the lax laws that could allow assembly of deadly virus DNA:

"DNA sequences from some of the most deadly pathogens known to man can be bought over the internet, the Guardian has discovered.

In an investigation which shows the ease with which terrorist organisations could obtain the basic ingredients of biological weapons, this newspaper obtained a short sequence of smallpox DNA. The deadly virus has existed only in laboratories since being eradicated from the world's population 30 years ago.

The DNA sequence of smallpox, as well as other potentially dangerous pathogens such as poliovirus and 1918 flu are freely available in online public databases. So to build a virus from scratch, a terrorist would simply order consecutive lengths of DNA along the sequence and glue them together in the correct order. This is beyond the skills and equipment of the kitchen chemist, but could be achieved by a well-funded terrorist with access to a basic lab and PhD-level personnel."

Behind the Spin, the Oil Giants are More Dangerous Than Ever

These Oil company assholes need to have a few scares thrown into them. They feel way to safe.

Behind the Spin, the Oil Giants are More Dangerous Than Ever:

"For a company that claims to have moved 'beyond petroleum', BP has managed to spill an awful lot of it on to the tundra in Alaska. Last week, after the news was leaked to journalists, it admitted to investors that it is facing criminal charges for allowing 270,000 gallons of crude oil to seep across one of the world's most sensitive habitats. The incident was so serious that some of its staff could be sent to prison.
Had this been Exxon, the epitome of sneering corporate brutality, the news would have surprised no one. But BP's rebranding, like Shell's, has been so effective that you could be forgiven for believing that it had become an environmental pressure group. These companies have used the vast profits from their petroleum business to create the impression that they are abandoning it.

Shell's adverts feature photos of its technologists in open-necked shirts and showing perfect teeth (which proves they can't be real greens). They tell stories of their brave experiments with wind power, hydrogen, biofuels and natural gas. The chairman of Shell UK was one of the 14 signatories to a letter sent by businesses to Tony Blair a week ago, calling for the government to exercise 'bold leadership on domestic climate change policy' in order to speed 'the transition to a low-carbon economy'.

BP's adverts tell the same story, illustrated with its logo - a kind of green and yellow sunflower which looks rather like the Green party's. So what on earth was it doing in Alaska, messing around with crude oil? Don't its filling stations now dispense pure carrot juice? "

A Leap of Faith, Off a Cliff (which is not faith, but insanity)

Do we hear the death knell for Democracy in America?

A Leap of Faith, Off a Cliff - New York Times:

"On Monday, the Bush administration told a judge in Detroit that the president's warrantless domestic spying is legal and constitutional, but refused to say why. The judge should just take his word for it, the lawyer said, because merely talking about it would endanger America. Today, Senator Arlen Specter wants his Judiciary Committee to take an even more outlandish leap of faith for an administration that has shown it does not deserve it.

Mr. Specter wants the committee to approve a bill he drafted that tinkers dangerously with the rules on wiretapping, even though the president has said the law doesn't apply to him anyway, and even though Mr. Specter and most of the panel are just as much in the dark as that judge in Detroit. The bill could well diminish the power of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as FISA, which was passed in 1978 to prevent just the sort of abuse that Mr. Bush's program represents.

The committee is considering four bills. Only one even remotely makes sense now: it would give legal standing to groups that want to challenge the spying in court. The rest vary from highly premature (Senator Dianne Feinstein's proposed changes to FISA) to the stamp of approval for Mr. Bush's claims of unlimited power that Senator Mike DeWine drafted.

Mr. Specter's bill is not that bad, but it is fatally flawed and should not go to the Senate floor. He is trying to change the system for judicial approval of government wiretaps in a way that suggests Congress is facing a technical problem with a legislative solution, when in fact it is a constitutional showdown. "

Judge Rules That U.S. Has Broad Powers to Detain Noncitizens Indefinitely - New York Times

Holy Crap!

Judge Rules That U.S. Has Broad Powers to Detain Noncitizens Indefinitely - New York Times:

"A federal judge in Brooklyn ruled yesterday that the government has wide latitude under immigration law to detain noncitizens on the basis of religion, race or national origin, and to hold them indefinitely without explanation."

End of Privacy = Death of Democracy

Huntington News:


"Removing the protection of individual's private data is another step, a big one, to moving the nation closer to a dictatorship. Today, anyone can troll the Internet and within a blink of the eyes track down various aspects of an individual's life from birth, schools attended to marriages, devoices, children, address, and numerous other personal data. All this plus our telephone records are now easily accessible to various government and non-government agencies. It is quite unnerving to think that we have no idea to what extent the government is exercising, or prepared to exercise surveillance of the citizens of this once real democracy.

The latest bad news came as the government started seeking to require Internet service providers keep data of all Internet usage for up to two years. For those of us who have been around for a while, we may remember with nostalgia the good old days prior to the presence of high-speed data search engines like Google and all kinds of data mining software when such accumulation of data would have been pointless. Today the records can be cut and diced in so many different ways that the government can easily know more about us than we do ourselves. Already, this exponential growth of the power of the 'Big Brother' is surreptitiously changing our day-to-day life to the point that we now have to question what is still left with a true democracy that we once thought we knew and had. On the other hand, perhaps this question is already getting to be irrelevant.

Indeed, through technologies like the radio frequency identification (RFID) devices, which are now widely adopted in all major toll systems in this and other nations, it is possible that data can become available to governments for tracking of vehicle movements.

Karl Rove: Dreyfus or Valachi? The Press Needs to Find Out | The Huffington Post

Good analysis of current "Rover, the Frogman," situation.....

The Blog RJ Eskow: Karl Rove: Dreyfus or Valachi? The Press Needs to Find Out The Huffington Post:

"In the same breath he used to announce that Karl Rove won't be indicted, his attorney indicated he won't make 'any further public statements' about the situation. Many questions remain, however, and the public has a right to know.

Who knows? Maybe those other witnesses were lying, and Karl's completely innocent. If so, why would his attorney zip his lip like that?"

Committee on Government Reform Minority Office

Inquiring minds want to know...

Committee on Government Reform Minority Office:

"Tuesday, June 13, 2006 -- In light of reports that Special Counsel Fitzgerald will not pursue criminal charges against Karl Rove -- and does not appear likely to file a report or make other public statements about findings -- Rep. Waxman renews his request to Chairman Davis for a congressional investigation that would provide public accountability and address unanswered questions. "