So, Getting Back To The Conversation
That History Degree Isn’t Doing Him a Lot of Good.
From the Associated Press
The chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee urged the Bush administration on Sunday to seek criminal charges against newspapers that reported on a secret financial-monitoring program used to trace terrorists.
Rep. Peter King cited The New York Times in particular for publishing a story last week that the Treasury Department was working with the CIA to examine messages within a massive international database of money-transfer records.
King, R-N.Y., said he would write Attorney General Alberto Gonzales urging that the nation's chief law enforcer "begin an investigation and prosecution of The New York Times — the reporters, the editors and the publisher."
We’ve been through this before with “The Pentagon Papers”. During Vietnam the Nixon Administration took the NYT and the Washington Post to court to “protect military secrets” of their own incompetence and deception. The Supreme Court voted them down 6 to 3.
First of all: Trying to block the press from revealing the Constitutional abuses of the Bush administration of American citizens rights on American soil does nothing to endanger the troops.
Secondly, a country is only as free as it’s Press. Freedom of information IS freedom itself. When Southern slave owners in the 19th century wanted to control the slave population, the first thing they did was attack their literacy. People were punished severely, some even hanged, for trying to teach black people to read. The first thing a tyranny attacks is it’s populaces ability to exchange information. If the press is not allowed to share information with the rest of the country, we are no longer as “free” as we claim to be.
"No government ought to be without censors, and where the press is free, no one ever will. If virtuous, it need not fear the fair operation of attack and defence. Nature has given to man no other means of sifting out the truth whether in religion, law or politics. I think it as honorable to the government neither to know nor notice its sycophants or censors, as it would be undignified and criminal to pamper the former and persecute the latter." --Thomas Jefferson to George Washington, 1792. ME 8:406
On a Better Note:
From Reuters –
The White House appears to be leaning toward allowing a secret federal court to look at its controversial warrantless wiretaps, a reversal of previous policy, a top Republican senator said on Sunday.
Sen. Arlen Specter, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, had been pressing the Bush administration to seek clearance from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, court.
The act requires warrants from the court for intelligence-related eavesdropping inside the United States.
Yeah! I so hope this comes through.
As upset as I get with the Bush administration, the public's open reactions to and debates about his policies, most of them carried out via the Internet, have been very encouraging. The conversations that were held in local taverns and town meetings have become nationwide debates. Information flashes around the country in a matter of hours. While the Bush administration has been able to manipulate people's fears and strong arm legislation in the past, their every move was observed and commented on by a majority of the population. It's almost impossible for a president to try to sneak something by the American public anymore and the outrage raised over the warrant-less wiretaps and the ensuing demands they pass by review shows how powerful Freedom of Speech is in maintaining freedom.
From the Associated Press
The chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee urged the Bush administration on Sunday to seek criminal charges against newspapers that reported on a secret financial-monitoring program used to trace terrorists.
Rep. Peter King cited The New York Times in particular for publishing a story last week that the Treasury Department was working with the CIA to examine messages within a massive international database of money-transfer records.
King, R-N.Y., said he would write Attorney General Alberto Gonzales urging that the nation's chief law enforcer "begin an investigation and prosecution of The New York Times — the reporters, the editors and the publisher."
We’ve been through this before with “The Pentagon Papers”. During Vietnam the Nixon Administration took the NYT and the Washington Post to court to “protect military secrets” of their own incompetence and deception. The Supreme Court voted them down 6 to 3.
First of all: Trying to block the press from revealing the Constitutional abuses of the Bush administration of American citizens rights on American soil does nothing to endanger the troops.
Secondly, a country is only as free as it’s Press. Freedom of information IS freedom itself. When Southern slave owners in the 19th century wanted to control the slave population, the first thing they did was attack their literacy. People were punished severely, some even hanged, for trying to teach black people to read. The first thing a tyranny attacks is it’s populaces ability to exchange information. If the press is not allowed to share information with the rest of the country, we are no longer as “free” as we claim to be.
"No government ought to be without censors, and where the press is free, no one ever will. If virtuous, it need not fear the fair operation of attack and defence. Nature has given to man no other means of sifting out the truth whether in religion, law or politics. I think it as honorable to the government neither to know nor notice its sycophants or censors, as it would be undignified and criminal to pamper the former and persecute the latter." --Thomas Jefferson to George Washington, 1792. ME 8:406
On a Better Note:
From Reuters –
The White House appears to be leaning toward allowing a secret federal court to look at its controversial warrantless wiretaps, a reversal of previous policy, a top Republican senator said on Sunday.
Sen. Arlen Specter, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, had been pressing the Bush administration to seek clearance from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, court.
The act requires warrants from the court for intelligence-related eavesdropping inside the United States.
Yeah! I so hope this comes through.
As upset as I get with the Bush administration, the public's open reactions to and debates about his policies, most of them carried out via the Internet, have been very encouraging. The conversations that were held in local taverns and town meetings have become nationwide debates. Information flashes around the country in a matter of hours. While the Bush administration has been able to manipulate people's fears and strong arm legislation in the past, their every move was observed and commented on by a majority of the population. It's almost impossible for a president to try to sneak something by the American public anymore and the outrage raised over the warrant-less wiretaps and the ensuing demands they pass by review shows how powerful Freedom of Speech is in maintaining freedom.
posted by KiplingKat | 9:58 AM
3 Comments:
beautiful, but sad:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/062806H.shtml
it breaks my heart when he says "it achieves its goal"...
beyond horrible, i'm hoping it's not true:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/070206Y.shtml
beacuase we can't be 'the bringers of democracy" if we'e also the bringers of vigilante slayings, torture, murder...and as for the rape part, has our collective memory gotten so short we don't remember milosevich? what about darfur? that's still going on!
interesting:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/070206X.shtml
what it means to be from jersey:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/02/nyregion/02corzine.html?th&emc=th
politics: the other contact sport.
The first article: Isn’t it sad the Olympics used to have this role? I mean. The way he is talking the Olympics don’t even exist. :( And people do discuss these things he is talking about in point 2, it’s just the governments don’t care.
“It achieves it’s goal”. That is a huge problem with the UN right now, as I have observed. It is quickly slipping into the ineffectuality of it’s predecessor. Warm fuzzy wishes for cooperation are fine, but the international community has got to be willing to actually stand up to nations like Germany and now us, to stop them from overstepping their bounds. To make a stand or lose all credibility in the eyes of it’s members and the world.
Second article: Oh. My. Gawd. That is appalling. I hope to the Gods it isn’t true either, but unfortunately given the things that have come out of Iraq it wouldn’t be surprising. Abu Ghraib showed how morally bankrupt the occupation was, is it no surprise that soliders two years and millions of miles from anything that would ground them and keep them sane (like their families) would take their cues the people who ordered torture and were not only never punished for it, are still in charge? That our glorious liberation is being ground down into a blood feud?
One of the reasons my Dad left the military was he saw how it was changing from the Military of the second world war. They were no longer training soldiers to be soldiers and potential leaders, they were training them to be drones. “Don’t think, do what you are told.” I saw my brother go through basic in the Corp, the deconstruction of personality they go through is very frightening to watch and can take years to rebuild. Throw those kids into morally ambiguous situation with incompetent leadership and you have a huge problem waiting to explode.
Collective memory? What? Who? What collective memory? If we had any collective memory Bush couldn’t have convinced people that a secular dictator was in cahoots with a religious extremist terrorist. The American public doesn’t remember anything past last week.
I’m sorry, I have just finished reading the bio of Theodore Roosevelt and it’s just so frustrating to see what America was and what is has become, what our leaders used to be and what they are now. Before he even went to college, Roosvelet was considered one of the United States foremost authority on Birds. He graduated Phi Beta Cappa from Harvard, read 1 to 3 books (plus periodicals) at day, wrote several histories one of which is considered standard reading at Annapolis, and I think is one of president (of not *the* president) to request the most books from the Library of Congress for purposes of research. We used to value intelligence. I don't agree with all of his policies but I can at least respect the man. It’s so horribly frustrating to look on him as an example of what American was and look on Bush as what it is now.
The Third article was excellently written and makes some very good points! I’ll link it in my blog. Where do I sign?
RE: JN, I was wondering how that all was working out… So, it’s just the legislature, right?
We are shut down!
I'm sorry, American public, but the state of new jersey is closed today. Ha ha!
basically, you know how the creepublicans under gingrich threw a hissy fit and closed the nation? well, now a democrat is doing it.
it says something how no one really seems to care here.
it says more about the type of people currently sucking the treasury dry that we've had reports of them taking the social security checks of the elderly to "get thru" the weekend without their $.
the hell?
my grandmother is freaking out. i don't know if it's true, or how the fuck it's possible, but oh well. panic in the streets, mayhem and destruction, blabbity blah.
so big jonny corzine wants the books to balance, and he's mad as hell, etc... so he says he'll sleep in his office until the budget is passed, or close down all state offices. the ledge freaks out, the papers freak out, my station ignores it, and the public says..."wanna hot dog?" cause they stopped paying attention during florio anyway. whitman who? cody? isn't that kathie lee's kid? can we smoke in here?
but,,,apparently the casinos must close. dum de dum Dum! how is anyone supposed to make an honest dollar now?
it's amazing how little i'd care if they closed the casinos down forever, but i know i'm just being selfish. then all those lovely mcmansions they just got finished building would be foreclosed on, leaving actual white people to live under the boardwalk, and maybe we wouldn't get a spiffy new starbucks. dammit! damn you corzine!
but, you know, it could be worse. for instance, the guv could be that bat-shit crazy, bible-thumping, anti-choice, falwell-wanna-be that lost to corzine. we'd probably have mandatory prayer and (more realistically) 5 chemical plants in what used to be wetlands by now. hey, is that a park? maybe there's oil in it! (maybe, but not enough to warrant the reckless destruction of everything nice...)
the future is coming, and it looks like jersey city!
we're waiting for the wrong end of this country to fall into the ocean, i'm telling you.
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