Pythonesque!

That is the term that comes to mind when thinking of the current US Attorney Firing scandal. Gonzalez, Rove, the White House et al consistently denying one allegation after another only to release documents that prove the contrary. Then they quickly invent some new spin explaining how they weren't directly involved until another email or memo or the like surfaces that is contrary to what they just said . Over and over this cycle repeats. It reminds me of any of anumber of Monty Python sketches where one character stubbornly insists on recognizing reality where the other steadfastly denies reality in the hope that the first will come round to his way of thinking just to make things easier. The pet shop sketch leaps to mind. For those of you not familiar with this sketch a piece of it (rather inaccurately transcribed) follows:

John Cleese: (speaking to a pet shop clerk holding a cage containing a rather dead parrot) This parrot that I purchased not half an hour ago is dead.

Michael Palin: No it tisn't

JC: Look at it it is bereft of life.

MP: no it isn't it's pining for the Fjords.

JC:Pining for the Fjords?

MP: Yep, 'e's a Norwegian Blue. Beautiful Birds they are.

JC: He's not pinin for anything he is an EX PARROT. I took the liberty of examining him and the only reason he was on the perch was because you nailed him there.

MP: I had to or else he'd fly away.

You get the picture... (and before any Python fans start , I know that's not exactly how it goes I was going for the spirit of the bit.)


Picture it like this.

Public: You fired those attorneys for political reasons after you promised you'd never do that.

Alberto Gonzales: No I didn't

Public: But the New Mexico Senators admitted to calling USA Iglesias and asking about the Indictment and also about calling the White House to get him fired.

AG: But I didn't Know about any of that.

P: But here's this document that says your deputy did it aand you were briefed.

AG: Ummm, OK. But Ummm... That was after it was already decided on.

P: But here's this other document that says you were breifed before you were even sworn in.

AG...Ummm. But Apart from that, I wasn't involved.

P: But there's this email....

Again you get the picture. If this weren't for real it would be hilarious. But it is real so instead it's creepy and tragic.

So Long Constitution It Was Nice While It Lasted

Over at the Undernews there is an article on the 'torture bill' that recently passed congress. Torture isn't the biggest deal here. Don't get me wrong it is a big deal just not the biggest.

Personally I am appalled that we, as a country, were even considering legalizing torture, let alone actually passing it. That our politicians are discussing whether or not or how much we can torture or which 'techniques' we can use is a new low for this country. We have with this bill undone decades of international agreement and essentially given the rest of the world the right and reason to torture Americans. Positively shameful.

Even so, the torture issue is not the biggest turd in the toilet where this bill came from. This bill gave the president the right to declare ANYONE an unlawful enemy combatant. Once again, this bill gave the president the right to declare ANYONE an unlawful enemy combatant. Not just Iraqis, ANYONE. Not just Arabs, ANYONE. Not just foreigners, ANYONE. Not just immigrants, ANYONE. Get the picture? The President of the United States of America can, when this bill becomes law, declare John Jones, American Born and lived here all his life, church goer, mechanic, hard working father, an enemy combatant. At that point he can be arrested and held for the rest of his life without bail, without a trial, without any chance to contest his imprisonment. He can be tortured and if he ever is brought to trial he cannot see the evidence against him, and he cannot have his own attorney. This sounds like a third world dictatorship to me, not unlike Argentina and Chile not so long ago.

But, you say, surely there must be some standards for what constitutes an enemy combatant. Well there will be, but that will be the sole discretion of the President. Oh, and they will be secret. The President never has to reveal what those standards are, according to this bill. And there is one more bit to make things more distasteful. If the President should be uncomfortable with making people 'disappear' and deciding who should be tortured, he can confer this ability to anyone he wishes. Put another way if the President has too many scruples he can simply hand this off to some without any and get himself some plausible deniability.

So folks please place your rights and freedom in the receptacles located by the exits You may keep your hope for what good it will do you.

By the way that large sucking sound was Democracy going down the tubes.

Mark Foley Resigns

I have some mixed emotions about the Mark Foley(R-FL) resignation. Foley is the representative for my part of Florida and while I had hoped he would lose his re-election bid I never thought he would go down in flames like this.

His voting record is about as close to diametrically opposed to my views as possible and his responses to emails were always form letters. I always read them and they were all identical. That told me he didn't give a damn what his constituents thought. I am gald he is gone but I still really wish it hadn't ended this way. He apparently has done some VERY bad things as reported by ABC News ( I found this courtesy of Talking Points Memo they reported on it here and here ).

When I first read the emails yesterday I thought they aren't that bad. As I thought about it more though I pondered what if my fifteen yr old son ( and yes I have one) was getting emails like this from a 54 yr old stranger? I would certainly be concerned. Then today the rest of the story breaks and after reading the transcript at ABC I was sickened.

He never really represented me anyway, now he doesn't legally represent me either. I suppose I should feel glad we got this pedophile and another Rubber Stamp Republicn out of office in one fell swoop. After the damage he's has done to this minor and his own family with these actions it just isn't that easy.

It's been a While

Wow, those last two posts have been sitting as drafts for about ten months! It doesn't seem like that long although I knew it had been a while.

UNDERNEWS

UNDERNEWS: "FCC SAYS INTERNET USE MUST MEET NEEDS OF FBI, NOT FIRST AMENDMENT

DECLAN MCCULLAGH, CNET - The Federal Communications Commission thinks you have the right to use software on your computer only if the FBI approves. In an obscure 'policy' document released around 9 p.m. ET last Friday, the FCC announced this remarkable decision. According to the three-page document, to preserve the openness that characterizes today's Internet, 'consumers are entitled to run applications and use services of their choice, subject to the needs of law enforcement.' Read the last seven words again.

The FCC didn't offer much in the way of clarification. But the clearest reading of the pronouncement is that some unelected bureaucrats at the commission have decreed that Americans don't have the right to use software such as Skype or PGPfone if it doesn't support mandatory backdoors for wiretapping. (That interpretation was confirmed by an FCC spokesman on Monday, who asked not to be identified by name. Also, the announcement came at the same time as the FCC posted its wiretapping rules for Internet telephony.)

Nowhere does the commission say how it jibes this official pronouncement with, say, the First Amendment's right to speak freely, not to mention the limited powers granted the federal government by the U.S. Constitution."