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Tuesday, February 11, 2003
Free speech=treason "In an editorial yesterday, the editors of the New York Sun, a conservative newspaper founded last year, call on New York City to obstruct a protest against a potential war in Iraq for as long as possible and to monitor the protestors for 'an eventual treason prosecution.' This breathtaking article is a direct attack on the free speech rights of every American." Brendan Nyhan, of spinsanity.com, takes on the NY Sun's recent editorial, in which it basically equated opposing the war against Iraq with treason. This is just part of a recent trend among many Bush supporters (such as the venomous Ann Coulter), of accusing those who don't support GW of being traitors. These people really don't get this whole freedom of speech thing, do they? Fortunately, even some of the supporters of the war against Iraq have spoken out against the Sun's editorial. Read more of Brendan's piece here, and more on the topic here [requires Salon day pass to view].
Delusions of grandeur "When George W. Bush ran for President in 2000, he said the United States must be 'humble' in the world. Now he has cast humility aside and replaced it with hubris. Supremely confident in his gut instincts, wrapped up in a fundamentalist belief system, endowed with the most powerful military of all time, and unchecked by Congress, Bush feels he can 'rid the world of evil'--at the barrel of a gun. A picture emerges from the President's public statements--and even from such adulatory accounts as Bob Woodward's Bush at War and David Frum's The Right Man--of a President on a divine mission. Call it messianic militarism." So begins a very disturbing piece from The Progressive, which paints Bush as a man not quite in touch with reality. It takes a look at his religious beliefs, which fall well outside the mainstream of what many people in the U.S. believe, and how these beliefs have shaped his actions and led to his constant calls for war. It's a definite must-read. See the whole thing here.
Here we go again "Ashcroft's Justice Department has quietly crafted a whopping 120-page proposal that represents the boldest attack yet on our electronic privacy in the name of thwarting future terrorist attacks. The nonpartisan Center for Public Integrity posted the draft legislation, which reads like J. Edgar Hoover's wish list, on its Web site Friday. Called the Domestic Security Enhancement Act (DSEA), the legislation has not been formally introduced in Congress, and a representative for Ashcroft indicated on Friday that it's a work in progress. But the fact that the legislation is under consideration already, before we know the effects of its USA Patriot Act predecessor, should make us realize that the Bush administration thinks 'homeland security' is the root password to the Constitution." As was the case with the Patriot Act, the Bush administration is poised to continue it's attack on the Constitution, granting even more sweeping powers to the Justice Department and its allies. Will the Congress stand up this time and say enough is enough? Not likely, especially since Bush will likely try to push this through Congress after the war on Iraq has started. Read more of Declan McCullagh's excellent column about the DSEA here, and more on the topic here. There are also PDFs of the whole document mirrored here and here, in case you want to read the entire thing for yourself. I especially like the part about extra jail time for using encryption while committing a felony, similar to the laws already in place for guns.
Monday, February 10, 2003
The same old nothing "Are we really supposed to believe that the U.S. captured, on tape, a conversation between two Iraqi military personnel that not only shows them trying to hide forbidden mobile units, but also describing it in detail? C'mon, guys, you can do better than that! And what about that murky 'Al Ansar' group in 'northern Iraq,' where terrorist cadres are supposedly training to poison New York City's water supply, or something like that? This fairy tale might be convincing if only their alleged location wasn't a region fully under the control of our allies, the Kurds, and easily reachable without invading that portion of Iraq still under Saddam's control." When Secretary of State Colin Powell made his presentation to the U.N. Security Council last week, he was supposed to finally be laying out the evidence for why Iraq needed to be attacked. Instead, it was just a mix of the same old lies and some new half-truths. Justin Raimondo, from antiwar.com, does his usual great job of taking the War Party to task. Read his column here.
Missing in action My apologies for not updating the weblog all of last week. One of these days I'll get things posted on a more regular basis. No, really.
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