Beautiful Speech

David Englin: “Marriage Amendment”=”Gays Not Welcome in Virginia”

Listen to our veterans

Col Wilkerson, Rep. John Murtha, Gen. Wes Clark, Gen. Anthony Zinni, Brent Scowcroft, Richard Clarke.

Breaking Ranks
The real face of the Iraq War opposition: veterans

Global Warming? Or Angry Jellyfish? Or both?

Japan Grapples with Invasion of Giant Jellyfish

Vast numbers of Echizen kurage, or Nomura's jellyfish, have appeared around Japan's coast since July, clogging and ripping fishing nets and forcing fishermen to spend hours hacking them apart before bringing home their reduced catches.

Thought Police

Students Being Paid by Rightwing Group to Report on UCLA Faculty

Not only is UCLAProfs.com trying to intimidate profs at UCLA, it's asking students to violate the Student Conduct Rules of the school.

To those who claim Gore Hypocrisy, Among Other Things

Tu Quoque "He did it, too." (So it's OK that I do.)

No. It's not.

And, he didn't.

More eloquently than I put it

From Gore's speech of yesterday (also here):

… As President Eisenhower said, “Any who act as if freedom’s defenses are to be found in suppression and suspicion and fear confess a doctrine that is alien to America.”

Fear drives out reason. Fear suppresses the politics of discourse and opens the door to the politics of destruction. Justice Brandeis once wrote: “Men feared witches and burnt women.”

The founders of our country faced dire threats. If they failed in their endeavors, they would have been hung as traitors. The very existence of our country was at risk.

Yet, in the teeth of those dangers, they insisted on establishing the Bill of Rights.

Is our Congress today in more danger than were their predecessors when the British army was marching on the Capitol? Is the world more dangerous than when we faced an ideological enemy with tens of thousands of missiles poised to be launched against us and annihilate our country at a moment’s notice? Is America in more danger now than when we faced worldwide fascism on the march-when our fathers fought and won two World Wars simultaneously?

It is simply an insult to those who came before us and sacrificed so much on our behalf to imply that we have more to be fearful of than they. Yet they faithfully protected our freedoms and now it is up to us to do the same.

We have a duty as Americans to defend our citizens’ right not only to life but also to liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is therefore vital in our current circumstances that immediate steps be taken to safeguard our Constitution against the present danger posed by the intrusive overreaching on the part of the Executive Branch and the President’s apparent belief that he need not live under the rule of law.

I endorse the words of Bob Barr, when he said, “The President has dared the American people to do something about it. For the sake of the Constitution, I hope they will.”

Emphasis most enthusiastically added.

So, the next time someone says "please! suspend my rights!", you shoot right back: patriots died for those rights, how dare you cheapen their sacrifice?

Gore Speech on Rebuilding America

and truly restoring the Constitution.

"America's Constitution is in grave danger"

In Martin Luther King Day address, Gore compares wiretapping of Americans to surveillance of King.

downloads:

MP3 (audio) of the speech
alternative MP3 (audio) of the speech
bittorrent of mp3 audio
Video stream link
alternative video stream link
CSPAN has a Real video stream of the entire speech.

[dld links pulled from a post on the guerillanews Livejournal community.]

Taking on the Republican Mob

If we can beat mob, we can fight DeLay-style politics

In 1977, I was appointed chairman of the Nevada Gaming Commission. It was a difficult time for the gaming industry and Las Vegas, which were being overrun by organized crime. To that point in my life, I had served in the Nevada Assembly and even as lieutenant governor, but nothing prepared me for my fight with the mob.

Over the next few years, there would be threats on my life, bribes, FBI stings and even a car bomb placed in my family's station wagon. It was a terrifying experience, but at the end of the day, we cleaned up Las Vegas and ushered in a new era of responsibility.

Reid goes on to say "[o]ur nation's capital has been overrun by organized crime — Tom DeLay-style."

In our country today, we are seeing what happens when lawmakers and lobbyists conspire to put the needs of special interests before the needs of the American people. We have a country that grows more dependent on foreign oil each day. We have cronyism like that exposed by Hurricane Katrina, and we have a national security policy that does a good job of protecting Halliburton's bottom-line but not a good enough job protecting the American people.

I believe that together, America can do better. We can have a government that puts the American people — not special interests — first, and it all starts with cleaning up Washington.

If we could kick the mob out of Las Vegas in the 1970s, we can change the culture of Washington and give America a government as good and honest as the people it serves.

Make me proud, boys. Come back with your shield, or on it.

How I feel About Republican Leadership

A bunch of gits who are sure never willing to die for this great country.

The Top 10 Conservative Idiots (No. 228)

Conventional wisdom would have you believe that Republicans are real tough guys; great hulking giants of men who laugh in the face of danger and fart in the living room of Death as they boldly swing their nuts across the land. Conventional wisdom is, sadly, wrong. The truth is that if you show a Republican a picture of an Arab he'll cling to the pantlegs of Big Daddy Bush wailing, "Please! Tap my phone lines! Take away my rights! Rip up the Constitution! Anything to protect me from the infinitesimally small chance of being killed by that scary bearded man! Oh no, I think I did a dirty bomb in my pants."

You know, it's not like we're getting bombed every day, or having buildings flown into every day, or anything that might actually look like a clear and present or imminent danger that might justify invading another country and making war against them. I just don't see it. And, it's not that I want buildings to be flown into on a daily basis, or bombers flying overhead, or people with explosives strapped to themselves on major thoroughfares -- but where are the news reports that the police caught someone with explosives strapped to himself before he could get on a bus? If the Patriot Act is so great and the terrorists so dangerous to our safety here in the U.S. that we must start a war elsewhere to distract them, where are the news reports of all the bad guys caught on American soil? And of the guys who have been detained on (or transported to) American soil, where's the proof that they're bad guys?

Are we engaging the enemy in this war on terror, at all? Or just killing a lot of people?

I just don't get these hysterical Republicans.

Maybe it's because I grew up on Ground Zero, a rat's whisker-width away from the Soviet Union and their Evil Empire with all its ICBMs -- all pointed at me, my family, my country -- as two nations stood poised on the brink of nuclear annihilation. "Mutually Assured Destruction". That was dirty-bomb-in-your-pants scary. But, we didn't need the Patriot Act then. FISA worked then, and works now. We didn't need "National Security Zones" where people weren't allowed their First Amendment rights of holding up a sign telling the President they think he's being a wanker.

Hysterical. They're freaking overwrought, is what. Buncha nancies, if you ask me.

Ethics! What a Great Idea

Getting A Clue: Dems Ready Proposal on Code of Conduct

The Democratic proposals would end practices that Abramoff used frequently to court members of Congress.

Well. Finally. And a "hell, yeah", while you're at it.

Americans say "Impeach"

New Zogby Poll Shows Majority of Americans Support Impeaching Bush for Wiretapping

By a margin of 52% to 43%, Americans want Congress to consider impeaching President Bush if he wiretapped American citizens without a judge's approval, according to a new poll commissioned by AfterDowningStreet.org, a grassroots coalition that supports a Congressional investigation of President Bush's decision to invade Iraq in 2003.

The poll was conducted by Zogby International, the highly-regarded non-partisan polling company. The poll interviewed 1,216 U.S. adults from January 9-12.

The poll found that 52% agreed with the statement:

"If President Bush wiretapped American citizens without the approval of a judge, do you agree or disagree that Congress should consider holding him accountable through impeachment."

43% disagreed, and 6% said they didn't know or declined to answer. The poll has a +/- 2.9% margin of error.

Proven Liar

Bill O'Reilly showed up on Letterman recently to discuss the ludicrus "War on Christmas." Transcript, Letterman tells O'Reilly '60% of what you say is crap'

My guess is, the percentage is higher. War on Christmas Fraud Exposed: The Silent Night 'Rewrite' That Wasn’t "Ridgewood Elementary didn’t change the lyrics to 'Silent Night.' What they did was perform a 1988 copyrighted play called 'The Little Tree’s Christmas Gift.'"

Saginaw Township On The O'Reilly Factor Radio Program "A Mid-Michigan Township makes national news but there's a problem, local officials say the whole thing was made up."