Brassica blog

God help us.

noreply@blogger.com (LZ) — Fri, 01 May 2009 01:55:00 +0000

Back after a long delay...

This drives me crazy.... Really really crazy, crazy as in " I can't even process this"- head exploding. I think they do not understand what it means to be a Christian. I can't understand it, sometimes I feel like I have more world-view in common with atheists.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/04/30/religion.torture/index.html

" WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The more often Americans go to church, the more likely they are to support the torture of suspected terrorists, according to a new survey.
More than half of people who attend services at least once a week -- 54 percent -- said the use of torture against suspected terrorists is "often" or "sometimes" justified. Only 42 percent of people who "seldom or never" go to services agreed, according to the analysis released Wednesday by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.
White evangelical Protestants were the religious group most likely to say torture is often or sometimes justified -- more than six in 10 supported it. People unaffiliated with any religious organization were least likely to back it. Only four in 10 of them did.
The analysis is based on a Pew Research Center survey of 742 American adults conducted April 14-21. It did not include analysis of groups other than white evangelicals, white non-Hispanic Catholics, white mainline Protestants and the religiously unaffiliated, because the sample size was too small. See results of the survey »
The president of the National Association of Evangelicals, Leith Anderson, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The survey asked: "Do you think the use of torture against suspected terrorists in order to gain important information can often be justified, sometimes be justified, rarely be justified, or never be justified?"
Roughly half of all respondents -- 49 percent -- said it is often or sometimes justified. A quarter said it never is.
The religious group most likely to say torture is never justified was Protestant denominations -- such as Episcopalians, Lutherans and Presbyterians -- categorized as "mainline" Protestants, in contrast to evangelicals. Just over three in 10 of them said torture is never justified. A quarter of the religiously unaffiliated said the same, compared with two in 10 white non-Hispanic Catholics and one in eight evangelicals. "

So I'm supposed to feel better that 30% of "mainline" Lutherans think that torture is NEVER justified, as opposed to "Evangelicals"....

Almost Ditto Solar Energy email to Roskam

noreply@blogger.com (LZ) — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 15:45:00 +0000

Dear Congressman Roskam:

As a follow up to my email sent earlier regarding Energy Independence I thought I would forward this to you...
FYI... we should JUMP on THIS... NOW... can you pass this along to someone you know on the Energy Committee... Let's do it in 5 years, not 10. What can you do personally to accelerate development and deployment of 'home-grown' green technological solutions for the Energy crisis?
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/oxygen-0731.html" In a revolutionary leap that could transform solar power from a marginal, boutique alternative into a mainstream energy source, MIT researchers have overcome a major barrier to large-scale solar power: storing energy for use when the sun doesn't shine.
Until now, solar power has been a daytime-only energy source, because storing extra solar energy for later use is prohibitively expensive and grossly inefficient. With today's announcement, MIT researchers have hit upon a simple, inexpensive, highly efficient process for storing solar energy.
Requiring nothing but abundant, non-toxic natural materials, this discovery could unlock the most potent, carbon-free energy source of all: the sun. "This is the nirvana of what we've been talking about for years," said MIT's Daniel Nocera, the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy at MIT and senior author of a paper describing the work in the July 31 issue of Science. "Solar power has always been a limited, far-off solution. Now we can seriously think about solar power as unlimited and soon."

I agree we should be pursuing almost every option but if we could develop this in 10 years INSTEAD OF drilling offshore for carbon/oil energy we might not even need by then, wouldn't solutions like this be a better option? The energy companies need to diversify and get behind new technologies faster. We can make this work together.

Solar energy discovery

noreply@blogger.com (LZ) — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 15:30:00 +0000

My letter today to Obama, Durbin :

Dear ________:

FYI... we should JUMP on THIS... NOW... can you pass this along to someone you know on the Energy Committee... Let's do it in 5 years, not 10. What can you do personally to accelerate development and deployment of 'home-grown' technological solutions for the Energy crisis?

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/oxygen-0731.html" In a revolutionary leap that could transform solar power from a marginal, boutique alternative into a mainstream energy source, MIT researchers have overcome a major barrier to large-scale solar power: storing energy for use when the sun doesn't shine.
Until now, solar power has been a daytime-only energy source, because storing extra solar energy for later use is prohibitively expensive and grossly inefficient. With today's announcement, MIT researchers have hit upon a simple, inexpensive, highly efficient process for storing solar energy.

Requiring nothing but abundant, non-toxic natural materials, this discovery could unlock the most potent, carbon-free energy source of all: the sun. "This is the nirvana of what we've been talking about for years," said MIT's Daniel Nocera, the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy at MIT and senior author of a paper describing the work in the July 31 issue of Science. "Solar power has always been a limited, far-off solution. Now we can seriously think about solar power as unlimited and soon."

Political conflict of interest

noreply@blogger.com (LZ) — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 17:27:00 +0000

This smells really fishy... not so much "straight-talk" here:
Sen. John McCain's top foreign policy adviser prepped his boss for an April 17 phone call with the president of Georgia and then helped the presumptive Republican presidential nominee prepare a strong statement of support for the fledgling republic.

The day of the call, a lobbying firm partly owned by the adviser, Randy Scheunemann, signed a $200,000 contract to continue providing strategic advice to the Georgian government in Washington.

....

"It's these sorts of appearances of a conflict of interest that are a natural consequence of having a campaign run by lobbyists, staffed by lobbyists and being ensconced in a lobbyist culture for over a quarter of a century,"

Not that I'm not getting completely jaded, but sometimes I'm still surprised. Is EVERYONE in DC corrupt and completely without a moral compass?? Especially when they are running for President.

Obamacons -save these arguments

noreply@blogger.com (LZ) — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 18:20:00 +0000

I've decided to start keeping track here of the Obamacon phenomenon and track links/ posts that I think will be helpful in future talking points with my Republican neighbors ( and sister/ brother-in-law) who are probably sitting on the fence right up until Nov 4th.

Andrew links to Warren Coates:

" As public sentiment swings back to the left what the public wants (domestically), I think, are largely free but better regulated markets and a better social safety net (health care and pensions). Those like me who think that too much regulation stifles beneficial market innovation and worry about the work incentive stiffing effects of excessive or poorly designed safety nets need to take note of these sentiments. The freedom for me to lead my life largely as I choose and to enjoy the fruits of my labor depends heavily on the willingness of my neighbors (fellow citizens and residents) to accept those rules of the game. Our society functions as it does because of a broad social consensus on the rules of public behavior. This consensus rests in part on each player’s confidence that if he fails there is a safety net that makes it worth his taking the risk of playing. We need to compromise what we consider first best for society (and Republicans and Democrats tend to differ on what this is) to the extent needed to preserve that broad consensus.
Republicans tend to emphasize opportunity and self reliance and keeping government small (it is hardly that), short shifting attention to effective safety nets and efficient government. This is coming back to bite us.

President George W Bush seems to have forgotten that once elected he governs for the whole country, not just those who voted for him. Presidents are elected, presumably, because the majority of voters supported the policies they advocated during the campaign. But once elected it is incumbent on the President to make those compromises with his preferred policies needed to gain broad public support. Instead Karl Rove and company set about turning the government into an adjunct of the Republican Party. Bush’s shoddy governance put inexperienced political hacks in positions needing professionals. The illegal hiring practices of Monica Goodling under Attorney General Gonzales, himself a disgrace to the office, “by letting politics influence the hiring of career prosecutors and immigration judges at the Justice Department,...”[7] is but one of many examples of the over politicization of the executive branch of government that is polarizing our country.

In addition, small government Republicans like me often fail to give enough attention to the public’s interest in good government. Small government still needs to be efficient and responsive to the public’s needs in the areas we have assigned to it. President Bush’s impulse to reorganize (e.g., the intelligence agencies, and what is now known by the un-American name of “Homeland Security) rather than improve accountability and transparency have made the government less efficient and no smaller. "

Obama reply

noreply@blogger.com (LZ) — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 18:06:00 +0000

Senator Obama's reply to an email I sent regarding news last week about keeping the Guantanamo prisoners in small boxes/cells for extended lengths of time.

Dear L__:

Thank you for contacting me regarding this Administration's use of inhumane interrogation practices. I appreciate knowing of your concerns.

This issue has been the subject of heated legal debate for quite some time now. The United States is a nation born out of a struggle against tyranny, and our Constitution asserts that the rule of law applies to all men and women, and all branches and agencies of government. Time and again, America has triumphed because of the sharp contrast we draw to tyranny. In those battles, our allegiance to our values and the rule of law has been our greatest weapon.

Today, we are engaged in a new kind of battle. And the debate in which we have been engaged since September 11, 2001, is how we are going to respond to the shadowy, stateless, terrorist enemies of the 21st century. Tragically, the Bush Administration has too often chosen to respond to this enemy by abandoning our greatest weapon, by ignoring the values and laws that it deems inconvenient. Violating international treaties we ratified and U.S. laws that protect us, the Bush Administration has used excessive secrecy, indefinite detention, warrantless wiretapping, and "enhanced interrogation techniques" like simulated drowning that qualify as torture under any reasonable reading of the law. For a nation with a history marked by the torture of hundreds of American soldiers in Vietnamese prisons, it is troubling to think that any lawmaker views the practice of torture as effective or justified.

When the Senate conducted debate on the Department of Defense Appropriations Act for FY 2006, Senator John McCain (R-AZ), who endured years of torture as a POW during the Vietnam War, offered an amendment to the bill that requires all military interrogations to abide by the U.S. Army Field Manual’s standards for humane treatment and prohibits “cruel, inhuman or degrading" treatment of any prisoner detained by the U.S. You may be interested to know that the Army Field Manual 34-52, Chapter 1, explicitly states:

The use of force, mental torture, threats, insults, or exposure to unpleasant and inhumane treatment of any kind is prohibited by law and is neither authorized nor condoned by the U.S. Government. Experience indicates that the use of force is not necessary to gain the cooperation of sources for interrogation . . . as it yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, and can induce the source to say whatever he thinks the interrogator wants to hear. . . . it also may place U.S. and allied personnel in enemy hands at greater risk.

We know that torture does not work. We know that torture violates our laws. And we know that when we detain suspects without trial or ship them off in the dead of night to countries where we know they’ll be tortured, we compromise our own security and weaken our ability to press for human rights and the rule of law in despotic regimes. On this issue, former Secretary of State Colin Powell concluded: “Torture is torture is torture. It is unacceptable. It is not the way you treat human beings.”

I was proud to vote for Senator McCain’s amendment, which passed by a vote of 90-9 with clear support from both political parties. I am also a proud co-sponsor of a bipartisan bill to restore habeas corpus rights, the Habeas Corpus Restoration Act of 2007 (S. 185). In light of the CIA’s confirmation that videotapes depicting brutal interrogation techniques were destroyed, I was heartened that the House and Senate passed the FY 2008 Intelligence Authorization bill and included a requirement that subjects CIA interrogators to the same guidelines included in the Army Field Manual. However, the President vetoed this legislation on March 8, and unfortunately the House failed to gather enough votes for a two-thirds majority to override the veto.

As you may know, on June 12, 2008, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the habeas rights of the remaining detainees at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. This recent decision is an important step toward reestablishing our credibility as a nation committed to the rule of law, and rejecting a false choice between fighting terrorism and respecting habeas corpus. I commend the Court's decision, and will continue to advocate for oversight and inquiry into the Administration's detainee policy to ensure that the very values we are fighting to defend are protected and upheld.

L__, thank you again for writing. I hope you will stay in touch.

Sincerely,

Barack Obama

United States Senator

Anthrax & rush to war

noreply@blogger.com (LZ) — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 15:59:00 +0000

2 posts to remember this week how messed up the 2 investigations into the Anthrax killer and "Rush to War". I want to save these links to look back on, hopefully one day when we have the full story. It all seems so 'keystone kops' to me. Why does it seem like they want to frame people instead of just finding the truth about what really happened. Aargh.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/08/05/anthrax/index.html
Glenn Greenwald
" One glaring and important exception to the dynamic of uncritical media recitation is this morning's New York Times article by Scott Shane and Nicholas Wade, which evinces very strong skepticism over the FBI's case thus far and discloses facts that create more grounds for skepticism. Given everything that has happened over the last seven years -- not just with the anthrax attacks but with countless episodes of Government deceit and corruption -- it's astonishing (and more than a little disturbing) how many people are willing, even eager, to assume that the Government's accusations against Ivins are accurate even without seeing a shred of evidence to support those claims. "

http://www.salon.com/books/review/2008/08/06/suskind/
"Forging the missing case for war
In further chronicles of Bush government deceit, author Ron Suskind drops a bombshell: The White House ordered the CIA to fake a letter linking Saddam Hussein to al-Qaida."

Food & Politics

noreply@blogger.com (LZ) — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 19:54:00 +0000

Sorry I've been away from you too long dear Blog. I read this today and want to read it again and savor the meaning(s). I agree food is political. I eat that way and feel guilty when I don't. But it shouldn't have to be so complicated. Great topic to explore.

Daniel Larison:

To say that eating is a political act worries conservatives because many seem to cling, oddly enough, to an old liberal conception of private, personal life that they wish to preserve free from outside interference, including ultimately the "interference" of neighbors, relatives and local community. Where social conservatives are often keenly aware of the effects that individual choices concerning marriage, child-bearing and child-rearing have on society as a whole, there often seems to be a strange disconnect when it comes to eating, as if an act that ties us into an elaborate web of economic relationships has no greater significance and no other implications other than providing nourishment. It is one kind of activity, perhaps the only kind, where many conservatives act as if the consequences of personal choices do not extend beyond the front door.

At the same time, eating as a political act is nonetheless also a question of how we are governed, whom we choose to empower and how we choose to govern ourselves.

Also this in the Trib today, about methane from beef production. I'm getting there, I may not be a veggie, but I'm definitely cutting back! AND I have my own garden now. Baby steps....

Defense Contractors Theft & Extortion

noreply@blogger.com (LZ) — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 13:17:00 +0000

My email to Roskam:

I would like to note that as a taxpayer I am fed up with US government contractors getting away with:

HIGHWAY ROBBERY ( http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/17/washington/17contractor.html?_r=1&th=&adxnnl=1&emc=th&adxnnlx=1213707612-4zVo371AEaukpimfCOaPHA&pagewanted=all)

, .... not to mention RAPE
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080421/houppert ( Dawn Leamon was raped by a KBR employee -btw, she is from Illinois)

, pillage and MURDER in Iraq. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/08/world/middleeast/08blackwater.html

Please, please support our troops by ensuring that they are given the resources to do the job _AND_Bring them home. KBR is extorting them/us for money and their safety, all the while being paid so much more than our own troops to do their job. The armed forces have lost all control to the military-industrial complex. This is sickening - it has to end. THis is payola for VP Cheney and his pals. No wonder they want to stay for 100 years -they have no accountability!! At least hold them accountable to earn our untold billions. STOP this crazyness.

With all sincerety,

L_Z_

unlawful imprisonment

noreply@blogger.com (LZ) — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 19:13:00 +0000

An eight-month McClatchy investigation in 11 countries on three continents has found that ....dozens of men — and, according to several officials, perhaps hundreds — whom the U.S. has wrongfully imprisoned in Afghanistan, Cuba and elsewhere on the basis of flimsy or fabricated evidence, old personal scores or bounty payments.

Amen & Hallelujah

noreply@blogger.com (LZ) — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 17:41:00 +0000

Habeus survives :

"To hold that the political branches may switch the Constitution on and off at will would lead to a regime in which they, not this Court, say "what the law is... Security subsists, too, in fidelity to freedom's first principles. Chief among these are freedom from arbitrary and unlawful restraint and the personal liberty that is secured by adherence to the separation of powers ... Within the Constitution's separation-of-powers structure, few exercises of judicial power are as legitimate or as necessary as the responsibility to hear challenges to the authority of the Executive to imprison a person."

NY TIMES link

5 words

noreply@blogger.com (LZ) — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 17:32:00 +0000

" Outrage fatigue musn't cause complacency " (HuffPo)

ditto.

Yesterday

noreply@blogger.com (LZ) — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 13:29:00 +0000

Yesterday was the lowest of lows ( ok not THE lowest but you know what I mean) and a pretty good gratifying " high" .

(1) I got laid off yesterday from my job. Aargh and angst, more on that later....

(2) Obama cinched the dem nomination last night. That makes me very happy. Its something I've been waiting for for a long time.

Media Pentagon WH relationship

noreply@blogger.com (LZ) — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 17:34:00 +0000

I guess I should have been reading the McClatchy paper all along .... ht Glenn Greenwald at Salon

So the Pentagon tells the media what kind of reporting is in- and out-of-bounds?
Hogwash. Hogwash! HOGWASH.

We confess that here at McClatchy, which purchased Knight Ridder two years ago, we do have a dog in this fight. Our team - Joe Galloway, Clark Hoyt, Jon Landay, Renee Schoof, Warren Strobel, John Walcott, Tish Wells and many others - was, with a few exceptions, the only major news media organization that before the war consistently and aggressively challenged the White House's case for war, and its lack of planning for post-war Iraq.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/ save this link

BEST. TV. SHOW. EV. ER.

noreply@blogger.com (LZ) — Fri, 30 May 2008 19:47:00 +0000

Very great show last night - the end of season 4. I started crying when Sawyer jumped out of the helicopter. I can't wait to find out what happens next....

Ackerman woods in Glen Ellyn

noreply@blogger.com (LZ) — Wed, 21 May 2008 17:20:00 +0000

Glen Ellyn in the news (local Fox station video here)

Daily Herald: Despite the roughly 100 Glen Ellyn residents that expressed their discontent with the village and park district's plan to cut down 340 trees for a flood control project, the plan is expected to go forward.

Glen Ellyn leaders will move forward with a flood control project at Ackerman Park that entails cutting down 340 trees, despite much outcry from residents opposed to the project.

Bad bad bad decision. I sent an email yesterday to the Park District & local paper's letter to the editors. I'm already drafting another one email to the GE Park District... I think they are really going to come to regret this.

Background here

Why not an airlift for Burma?

noreply@blogger.com (LZ) — Thu, 15 May 2008 16:46:00 +0000

This article was interesting and helped answer a question I had about it myself... why not just drop food in an airlift?

" Oxfam and other agencies have well-trained disaster specialists ready and waiting to go. The Burmese authorities must allow them in to do their job. However until that happens, calls for air drops must be resisted. They will make good television and fulfil the need to do something - anything - to help relieve the suffering in Burma.
But air drops are expensive, inefficient and not the best way to help desperate people on the ground. "

But the comments at the bottom of the link offer a lot of good contrarian reasons to do SOMETHING.

Myanmar / Burma: disaster x disaster

noreply@blogger.com (LZ) — Fri, 09 May 2008 22:43:00 +0000

Help is needed! and it appears its not getting through. Just sent this Amnesty form email and also printed out a letter to mail there... but by the time they get it -it will probably be TOO late.
This "junta" government or whatever you want to call it is EVIL.

While Snr-Gen Than Shwe and the top generals selectively pick and choose what aid to accept from foreign nations, they are stalling on issuing visas to the UN and other international aid workers.

The UN said the junta’s refusal to allow foreign aid workers into the country was "unprecedented" in the history of humanitarian work, even as survivors of a devastating cyclone waited for food, shelter and medicine. Observers said Than Shwe is making all the major decisions about foreign aid workers. Eric John, the US ambassador to Thailand, said that if the junta delays visa application to aid workers one more day, more people will die.

I sent an email also earlier today to my former colleague Allan M. who is Burmese. He lives in San Francisco. I hope his family is OK. What a tragedy!

neocons and Iran

noreply@blogger.com (LZ) — Fri, 09 May 2008 22:17:00 +0000

Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com
scary,... note to self:" pay attention this time "

"The neoconservative war-lovers behind this effort have not changed, nor have their tactics. They realize, as many of them acknowledge, that they will have four more years in power if John McCain is elected. But they also realize that he may not be, and that their last hope for their long-desired attack on Iran lies in convincing the current administration to provoke one before its tenure ends. As much as one wishes it weren't true, as much as the fixation on petty election issues might obscure it, the truly depraved extremist group that brought us the invasion of Iraq still exerts substantial influence and is quite busy trying to exert it."
.....
"And now, magically up pops these new reports from Israel warning that the deadline to stop Iran's nuclear bomb is the end of the year -- right before George Bush leaves office. Bush has less than eight months left to fulfill his history-mandated mission "to prevent another holocaust" by attacking Iran, or else "be in the historical dock if he allows Iran to get the bomb." They're as transparent as they are dishonest and bloodthirsty."

Medical Review for Organ Transplant

noreply@blogger.com (LZ) — Fri, 02 May 2008 17:30:00 +0000

so sad... this shouldn't have happened....

"SEATTLE -- A musician who was denied a liver transplant because he used marijuana with medical approval under Washington state law to ease the symptoms of advanced hepatitis C died Thursday."

First, there should be more donors so people on the waiting list don't die unnecessarily, 2nd, the medical review team nixed his transplant even when using the pain-killing drug (in WA state) is legal! That just doesn't make sense.

Network news doesn't respond to charges of cooption by Pentagon

noreply@blogger.com (LZ) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 21:34:00 +0000

Re previous post about network military analysts....

Glenn Greenwalk is on a tear... go get 'em! I've been pretty skeptical and hardly ever watch network news unless something major happens, but this blatant disregard for journalistic ethics and integrity just means I will be watching TV news even less than I do now.

" Just consider what is going on here. The core credibility of war reporting by Brian Williams and NBC News has been severely undermined by a major NYT expose. That story involves likely illegal behavior by the Pentagon, in which NBC News appears to have been complicit, resulting in the deceitful presentation of highly biased and conflicted individuals as "independent" news analysts. Yet they refuse to tell their viewers about any of this, and refuse to address any of the questions that have been raised.

More amazingly still, when Brian Williams is forced by a virtual mob on his blog yesterday finally to address this issue -- something he really couldn't avoid doing given that, the day before, he found time to analyze seven other NYT articles -- Williams cited McCaffrey and Downing as proof that they did nothing wrong, and insists that his and their credibility simply ought to be beyond reproach because they are good, patriotic men. But those two individuals in particular had all kinds of ties to the Government, the defense industry, and ideological groups which gave them vested interests in vigorous pro-war advocacy -- ties which NBC News knew about and failed to disclose, all while presenting these individuals to their millions of viewers as "independent." Is there anyone who thinks that behavior is anything other than deeply corrupt? "

DNA surveillance

noreply@blogger.com (LZ) — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 18:41:00 +0000

I thought this was really interesting in the Trib today (by Maura Dolan and Jason Felch ) :

" California will adopt the most aggressive approach in the nation to a crime-fighting technique that uses DNA to try to identify elusive criminals through their relatives.Using what is known as familial or "partial match" searching, the policy seeks to find an unidentified suspect through DNA found at a crime scene by looking for potential relatives in the state's genetic database of about a million felons.Once a relative is identified, police can use that person as a lead to trace the suspect."

So this is how I was reading the whole thing, thinking along the line, wow this is really pushing the envelope to try and track down criminals through their relatives DNA, and then ask or 'interrogate' or coerce the relative to spill the beans, IF they know anything at all, about the suspect. I was thinking, not good, there must be a better way....

Then in typical Trib fashion they throw in a zinger to make you think twice about it...

"Police in the U.S. have used genetic relationships to help catch criminals on a much smaller scale. After Kansas police zeroed in on a serial killer who dubbed himself BTK—initials for bind, torture, kill—they obtained a court order for the Pap smear of the suspect's daughter. Without her knowledge, police did a DNA analysis of the specimen, obtained from a medical laboratory.The genetic similarities indicated that they had the right man, Dennis Radar.

So in summary, I almost changed my mind about the utility of this type of DNA "crime fighting". I wonder what the daughter of The BTK killer thought about this? How soon after his arrest did she find out? (sorry for the morbid thought, I can't help wondering if she still gets regular Pap smears or goes to the same Dr. ?) Ugh. We can all be glad this monster is behind bars. But if they already suspected him anyway, couldn't they have just gone through his garbage or papers in his office to get HIS DNA, not his daughter's?

Everybody should go out and rent the movie GATTACA. This is our future it seems....

Geneva Conventions

noreply@blogger.com (LZ) — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 18:19:00 +0000

Andrew Sullivan has a great post on the continuing Torture Watch

" Moreover, even after attempts by the Court and the Congress to rein in these methods - which were once prosecuted by the US as war-crimes - the president continued to defend, use and advance violations of Common Article Three in violation of the law and the Constitution. In the last week, we have also learned the following: that some Gitmo inmates have testified to being injected with some kind of substance
....
We have also discovered that the president is still insisting that he has the power to violate Geneva at will on a case-by-case basis, rendering the rule of law moot and the Constitution toothless.
....
We also know that the torture and interrogation camp at Guantanamo Bay has become for many of its inmates the functional equivalent of a lunatic asylum"

RTWT for links and examples.

voters choices: Generational, vocational, or racial?

noreply@blogger.com (LZ) — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 18:14:00 +0000

Andrew Sullivan,
But doesn't that "white anger" feel very 1980s to you? Are white voters still motivated in large part by grievances about affirmative action (which, for the record, I strongly oppose)? You'd think that
our cultural politics had remained untouched and unmoved since the Reagan era. You'd think that political demography was frozen at exactly the moment boomers came of age. The truth is: the boomer media class is fighting the last war and misreading the current one.
As Ambinder reminds us:
It doesn't really matter if Barack Obama isn't doing as well among white working class Dems as Hillary Clinton is. He doesn't need their votes to win.
This election will be decided by white independents, African-Americans, new Hispanic voters, and a vast influx of younger Americans. Those are the people Obama has brought into the process; and they are the people who will change the face of American politics.

I agree completely (well maybe not totally on the affirmative action part). After the PA primary, on Wednesday I was just talking to my neighbor B and his colleague about this topic. They are both Labor professors at Univ of IL. They both hail from Youngstown OH, and study the true working class/ union voters extensively. They were talking about a theory (both of them hailing from Youngstown OH, and studying the true working class extensively) they had that really the white working class agree that they ARE bitter and more of them actually voted the way they did ( for Hillary) because they do want to have a fight (with the Republicans) over all the crap they have been through economically. The theory is that she's a "scrapper" and can dish it out back to the Republicans as well as she can take it (VRWC). I replied that I think the results are mostly generational, and that PA has a very high proportion of over 60 voters relative to other states ( 2nd only to FL). I seriously doubt that the vast majority of Democrats and Independents who oppose the war, are going to let themselves vote for McCain in the fall general election, no matter what doubts they have about Obama.

I'm kinda nervous now that Andrew thinks this will go all the way to the convention. I have too
much hope that the PTB (powersthatBE) will not let that happen.

update on military contractor abuses

noreply@blogger.com (LZ) — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 17:55:00 +0000

Update on Previous Post:

I received this reply today from Senator Durbin:

April 25, 2008

Ms. L___Z____
_____

Dear Ms. Z___:

Thank you for contacting me regarding alleged sexual assaults by military contractors working in Iraq. I appreciate hearing from you and share your concerns.

Private military contractors, including roughly 180,000 in Iraq, are involved in U.S. military operations ranging from security and logistics to transportation and the feeding of our troops. As you know, there have been reports of sexual violence by some employees of these contractors. Other reckless behavior also has been reported, including military contractor involvement in a large number of civilian deaths and injuries.

In the course of the war in Iraq, it has been difficult to bring
contractors who may have committed crimes to trial. The laws that govern contractors are not clear, and they are not bound by the United States Military's Code of Conduct. If our military is to rely so heavily on private companies, a much more credible system of oversight must be put in place. The U.S. government must be able to hold accountable any military contractor who commits a sexual assault or any other brutal crime, no matter where it occurs.

I am a cosponsor of S. 674, the Transparency and Accountability in
Military and Security Contracting Act of 2007, which was introduced by Senator Barack Obama. This measure would make it easier to bring contractor employees to justice if they are involved in wrongdoing. It also would direct the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to issue rules of engagement regarding the use of force by contractor personnel and require the FBI to establish Theater Investigative Units to investigate allegations of misconduct by contractor personnel. In addition, the bill would require much stricter reporting about federal military and security contracts being performed in Iraq and Afghanistan,
and it would set standards for the hiring, training and equipping of
contractors.

The Transparency and Accountability in Military and Security Contracting Act has been referred to the Senate Armed Services
Committee. Although I am not a member of this committee, I will keep your thoughts in minds as steps are taken to bring this legislation to the floor of the Senate for a vote.

Thank you for taking the time to contact me. Please feel free to stay in touch.
Sincerely,

Richard J. Durbin
United States Senator

RJD/ds