Sign me up, I'm a "Liberal" If your elected Democrat doesn't talk and think like this, you have a problem and perhaps you should encourage that "Centrist" to switch parties. I certainly wouldn't contribute my money or time to a person just because they use a "D" by their name. People who pretend to be liberal can get elected in Colorado, e.g. Ken Salazar, a liberal Hispanic, Bill Ritter, a liberal, law and order, Catholic kind of guy ("Law and Order" types scare me, they usually consider "prison building" a solution). Ben NightHorse Campbell, a liberal Native American. Liberals can get elected in Colorado, even if they are DINOs. MC

"What do our opponents mean when they apply to us the label 'Liberal'? If by 'Liberal' they mean, as they want people to believe, someone who is soft in his policies abroad, who is against local government, and who is unconcerned with the taxpayer’s dollar, then the record of this party and its members demonstrate that we are not that kind of 'Liberal'. But if by a 'Liberal' they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people — their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties — someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a 'Liberal', then I’m proud to say I’m a 'Liberal'." John F. Kennedy

Wikipedia

Ben Nelson, Max Baucus, et al., all DINOs. Anti-tax, anti-prosperity and anti-justice for all is anti-American. Look no further than the peamble of the US Constitution or the beauty of the concept, "E pluribus unum"

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. "

NY Times
September 9, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
Our One-Party Democracy
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Watching both the health care and climate/energy debates in Congress, it is hard not to draw the following conclusion: There is only one thing worse than one-party autocracy, and that is one-party democracy, which is what we have in America today.......................................
...........................The G.O.P. used to be the party of business. Well, to compete and win in a globalized world, no one needs the burden of health insurance shifted from business to government more than American business. No one needs immigration reform — so the world’s best brainpower can come here without restrictions — more than American business. No one needs a push for clean-tech — the world’s next great global manufacturing industry — more than American business. Yet the G.O.P. today resists national health care, immigration reform and wants to just drill, baby, drill.

“Globalization has neutered the Republican Party, leaving it to represent not the have-nots of the recession but the have-nots of globalized America, the people who have been left behind either in reality or in their fears,” said Edward Goldberg, a global trade consultant who teaches at Baruch College. “The need to compete in a globalized world has forced the meritocracy, the multinational corporate manager, the eastern financier and the technology entrepreneur to reconsider what the Republican Party has to offer. In principle, they have left the party, leaving behind not a pragmatic coalition but a group of ideological naysayers.......................”

Continued at the NY Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/09/opinion/09friedman.html

It seems the Supreme Court is poised to rule that corporations are truly “people” under the law and as such, are protected by the First Amendment’s right to free speech. This will overturn over one hundred years of legal precedent and create a political imbalance of seismic proportions. The current ability of large corporate interests to influence legislators through their lobbyists will pale in comparison to the ability to directly participate in partisan politics that a Supreme Court ruling would allow. Literally billions of dollars could flow into efforts to defeat legislators who do not toe their line, thus drastically changing our nation’s political landscape. The voices of average citizens, non-profits and even labor unions would be buried under an avalanche of corporate cash.

If the Supreme Court decides that a corporation has First Amendment rights, protected by the Constitution the same as a natural born person, then it follows that a corporation should be extended all other rights a person has under the Constitution. This should include the right to vote in local, state and federal elections, in addition to the individual voting rights of the officers and stockholders of the corporation. If and when the Supreme Court issues the expected ruling, a sympathetic corporation should attempt to register as a voter and when registration is denied, file a federal lawsuit. A creative mind could imagine many more rights that personhood would bestow upon corporations. Such actions would be viewed as frivolous by Federal Courts but would be newsworthy and serve to draw attention to the issue and hopefully spur an expanded debate.

The time has come for a Constitutional Amendment that would redefine the status of corporations. A campaign to advance such an amendment would have the advantage of the simple sound bites and simple mantras that every voter could understand. After our near financial collapse caused partly by corporate greed, now may be the perfect time to introduce such a measure. Support may never be this high again.

Something must be done quickly. Such a ruling would effectively usurp the current moderate, liberal, progressive voting majority in this country and replace it with a permanent right wing majority in Congress and a permanent “lock” on the White House…beginning as soon as 2010 and 2012... all bought and paid for by major corporate interests. The establishment of a corporate state was a central tenant of our enemies in WWII. The threat to our Representative Democracy should be apparent to all.

Just so we are all aware of what's at stake. MC

"Where the law is subject to some other authority and has none of its own, the collapse of the state, in my view, is not far off; but if law is the master of the government and the government is its slave, then the situation is full of promise and men enjoy all the blessings that the gods shower on a state." Plato

NY Times
September 3, 2009
Editorial
Dick Cheney’s Version
After the C.I.A. inspector general’s report on prisoner interrogation was released last week, former Vice President Dick Cheney settled into his usual seat on Fox News to express his outrage — not at the illegal and immoral behavior laid out in the report, of course, but at the idea that anyone would object to torturing prisoners. He was especially vexed that the Obama administration was beginning an investigation.

In Mr. Cheney’s view, it is not just those who followed orders and stuck to the interrogation rules set down by President George Bush’s Justice Department who should be sheltered from accountability. He said he also had no problem with those who disobeyed their orders and exceeded the guidelines.

It’s easy to understand Mr. Cheney’s aversion to the investigation that Attorney General Eric Holder ordered last week. On Fox, Mr. Cheney said it was hard to imagine it stopping with the interrogators. He’s right.

The government owes Americans a full investigation into the orders to approve torture, abuse and illegal, secret detention, as well as the twisted legal briefs that justified those policies. Congress and the White House also need to look into illegal wiretapping and the practice of sending prisoners to other countries to be tortured.

Mr. Cheney was at the center of each of these insults to this country’s Constitution, its judicial system and its bedrock democratic values. To defend himself, he offers a twisted version of history:   Read More »

The thing I like least about "sports" ,other than the parents, are the glorification and incitement of violence and humiliation. After all, competition is another name for war; to win, to kill, to defeat is glorious. To lose is death, humiliation, shame and dishonor. Call hunting what you want, I call it the root evil of our civilization, an act that is extended to our militaristic impulses. Come on, an AK-47 vs. a smart 2000 pound bomb? Where's the sport in that? A high powered rifle against a wolf? How do you cook that "game"? Only a true coward kills with utter impunity. Kill or be killed, the ultimate irony, the mandate of the ignorant to the ignorant. MC


NY Times Outposts
September 1, 2009, 10:13 pm
Hunting Wolves, and Men
Timothy Egan

They started hunting gray wolves in the high reaches of the Rocky Mountains on Tuesday, the first time in years that people have been allowed to shoot for sport this genetic cousin of man’s best friend.

For those who hate wolves and long for the era when they were wiped off the map, and for those who welcomed back this call of the wild, the last few days have revealed some dark feelings in the changing West — and some strength of character as well.

A Republican candidate for governor of Idaho, Rex Rammell, was at a political barbecue last week when somebody brought up the tags used by wolf hunters, and then made a reference to killing the president of the United States.

“Obama tags?” Rammell replied, to laughter, according to an account in The Times-News of Twin Falls. “We’d buy some of those.”

In the Idaho of the past, jokes about shooting a president could sometimes be dismissed without consequence. Indeed, the comment was buried in an initial news story about the gathering, and Rammell sloughed it off later, saying on his Web site that “Obama hunting tags was just a joke! Everyone knows Idaho has no jurisdiction to issue tags in Washington, D.C.”

Continued:

http://egan.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/01/hunting-wolves-and-men/

For once, Mr. Cheney is absolutely and indisputably correct. He is obviously inviting prosecution. MC

Political:
Synonyms: governmental, administrative, civil, diplomatic, constitutional, electoral, doctrinal, ethical, civic

NY Times
August 31, 2009
Cheney Calls Interrogation Inquiry ‘Political’
By BRIAN KNOWLTON
WASHINGTON — Former Vice President Dick Cheney asserted on Sunday that the Justice Department’s decision to review detainee interrogation practices by Central Intelligence Agency workers and contractors was “a political move” and that President Obama was trying to “duck the responsibility” by saying the choice was the attorney general’s.

But the comments from Mr. Cheney, a constant, sharp critic of the Obama administration, drew an impassioned if partial dissent from a prominent fellow Republican, Senator John McCain, their party’s presidential candidate in 2008.

Speaking on the television program “Fox News Sunday,” Mr. Cheney called Attorney General Eric H. Holder’s decision to name a federal prosecutor to examine abuse of prisoners held by the C.I.A. “clearly a political move — I mean, there’s no other rationale for why they’re doing this.”

Continued NY Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/31/us/politics/31cheney.html?hp

From the movie, "Devil's Advocate"

John Milton is the Devil, Kevin Lomax is a hot shot lawyer employed by Milton's firm. He has just found out he is Milton's son. If you haven't seen the movie, by all means, do so. MC

Kevin Lomax: "Why the law? Cut the shit, Dad! Why the lawyers? Why the law?"

John Milton: "Because the law, my boy, puts us into everything. It's the ultimate backstage pass. It's the new priesthood, baby. Did you know there are more students in law school than lawyers walking the Earth?"

Another quote from the movie, Milton telling Lomax about God:

"Let me give you a little inside information about God. God likes to watch. He's a prankster. Think about it. He gives man instincts. He gives you this extraordinary gift, and then what does He do, I swear for His own amusement, his own private, cosmic gag reel, He sets the rules in opposition. It's the goof of all time. Look but don't touch. Touch, but don't taste. Taste, don't swallow. Ahaha. And while you're jumpin' from one foot to the next, what is He doing? He's laughin' His sick, fuckin' ass off. He's a tight-ass. He's a sadist. He's an absentee landlord. Worship that? Never."

August 30, 2009
Supreme Court to Revisit ‘Hillary’ Documentary
By ADAM LIPTAK
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court will cut short its summer break in early September to hear a new argument in a momentous case that could transform the way political campaigns are conducted.

The case, which arises from a minor political documentary called “Hillary: The Movie,” seemed an oddity when it was first argued in March. Just six months later, it has turned into a juggernaut with the potential to shatter a century-long understanding about the government’s ability to bar corporations from spending money to support political candidates.

Continued at the NY Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/30/us/30scotus.html?hp

Who doesn't have flaws? Eugene Robinson sums up the triumph and tragedy of THE champion of the less fortunate. MC

A Prince's Fate
Ted Kennedy Played a Role to Near-Perfection
By Eugene Robinson
Friday, August 28, 2009

That the nation is so moved by the passing of Edward Moore Kennedy testifies to his skill, grace and determination at playing a role that must have been infinitely more difficult than it sounds: a prince fated never to be king.

Ted Kennedy was the youngest of nine children in a family whose ruthless patriarch was intent on building an American dynasty. The old man, business titan Joseph Kennedy, was a king. Ted's older brother Jack, the handsome young president, was a king. The other two brothers, Joe and Robert, were slated for the throne but died too soon. Ted made a run for president, but with the air of someone who didn't really believe he was meant to win. He was the baby brother, the eternal prince.

Princes often have lives that are difficult, even within a context of wealth and privilege. They have to find ways to keep from being eaten alive by ambition that can never be requited. Some become sage counselors in the affairs of state; some become wastrels who lose themselves in women and booze; some fade away and become hobbyists who go off and pilot sailboats or collect butterflies or something. It's fair to say that at various points in his life, Ted Kennedy tried all of these identities.

The hardest task for an eternal prince is to construct an original identity of which he can be proud -- an identity that allows him to live a life of purpose, meaning and impact. Ted Kennedy accomplished this feat by becoming the greatest senator of our age and serving as the liberal conscience of the nation.

Every once in a while, the conventional wisdom is basically right. The generally agreed-upon story line is that Kennedy found himself through the experience of defeat. The consensus view is that he ran for president in 1980 largely out of a sense of obligation, that he ran such a disorganized and almost desultory campaign that it almost looked like self-sabotage, and that when he lost the Democratic nomination to incumbent Jimmy Carter he became a free man, able for the first time to find his own voice and chart his own path.   Read More »

"I say again, as I have before, if health insurance is good enough for the President, the Vice President and the Congress of the United States, then it is good enough for you and every family in America."

Senator Edward Kennedy-Democrat National Convention August 12, 1980

Well, things worked out a little different from the way I thought, but let me tell you, I still love New York.

My fellow Democrats and my fellow Americans, I have come here tonight not to argue as a candidate but to affirm a cause. I'm asking you--I am asking you to renew the commitment of the Democratic Party to economic justice.

I am asking you to renew our commitment to a fair and lasting prosperity that can put America back to work.

This is the cause that brought me into the campaign and that sustained me for nine months across 100,000 miles in 40 different states. We had our losses, but the pain of our defeats is far, far less than the pain of the people that I have met.

We have learned that it is important to take issues seriously, but never to take ourselves too seriously.

The serious issue before us tonight is the cause for which the Democratic Party has stood in its finest hours, the cause that keeps our Party young and makes it, in the second century of its age, the largest political party in this republic and the longest lasting political party on this planet.   Read More »

"Liberals are not so quick to invoke morality..........On cable television and in town halls, conservatives rail against health care reform as an unconscionable infringement on liberty--an effort, literally, to snuff out the sick, the elderly, and the veterans of foreign wars

Liberals have countered with numbers, legislative histories--in short, we've made appeals to logic. But appeals to morality? They've been few and far between. We've approached health care reform as a problem to solve--which, surely, it is. We've not approached it as an obligation to fulfill--which, surely, it is as well.
Kennedy rarely made that mistake. When he looked at America, he saw a country full of people made vulnerable--by circumstance of birth, economic misfortune, illness, or injury. Some were middle-class; some were poor.............Like FDR, Kennedy was not afraid to talk about values, to talk about right and wrong."

Liberalism’s Torch Bearer
--Jonathan Cohn

The New Republic


The elder statesman. The dynastic icon. The man of personal excess. The man of a thousand legislative accomplishments. As the tributes and obituaries attest, Ted Kennedy was all of these things, at one time or another--for better and, yes, sometimes for worse. Like he famously said of his slain brother, Robert, Ted Kennedy "need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life."

But Ted Kennedy was something else, too. He was a crusader. He was--again, to quote his fraternal eulogy--somebody "who saw wrong and tried to right it." He possessed not just a clarity of purpose, but a certainty that his purpose had moral grounding. And that made Kennedy somewhat unusual, or at least quaint, in the part of the ideological universe he inhabited.   Read More »

Even though I mourn the passing of Senator Kennedy, if he could speak, he would be the last to say that his death should detract from one of the most serious CRIMES in American history. Justice MUST be served. MC

NY Times
August 26, 2009
Editorial
The Torture Papers
The Obama administration has taken important steps toward repairing the grievous harm that President George W. Bush did to this nation with his lawless and morally repugnant detention policies. President Obama is committed to closing the Guantánamo Bay camp and creating legitimate courts to try detainees. He has rescinded the executive orders and the legal rulings that Mr. Bush used to excuse the abuse of prisoners.

The Defense Department has taken the important step of reversing policy and notifying the International Committee of the Red Cross of the identities of militants who were being held in secret at camps in Iraq and Afghanistan. And Attorney General Eric Holder has appointed a prosecutor to investigate the interrogation of prisoners of the Central Intelligence Agency, whose inhuman treatment was detailed in a long-secret report written by the agency’s inspector general in 2004 and released on Monday.

Yet despite these commendable individual steps, Mr. Obama and his political advisers continue to shrink from the broad investigation of the full range of his predecessor’s trampling on human rights, civil liberties and judicial safeguards that would allow this country to make sure this sordid history is behind it for good.

Indeed, the administration seemed reluctant to make public the C.I.A. report, which was released under a court order and was heavily censored, with whole pages blacked out — including the four pages of recommendations. Before Mr. Holder announced his investigation, the White House made it clear that it was unhappy with his decision — repeating its sadly familiar line about “looking forward, not backward.”

Mr. Holder displayed real courage and integrity in ordering the investigation. But he stressed that it was limited to the specific interrogations outlined in the C.I.A. report, and did not amount to a full-blown criminal investigation of the Bush-era detention policies.

The interrogations are certainly worthy of criminal investigation. The report describes objectionable and cruel practices well beyond waterboarding. They included threatening a detainee’s family members with sexual assault and threatening to kill another’s children; the staging of mock executions; and repeatedly blocking a prisoner’s carotid artery until he began to faint.

The report said the interrogations generally followed guidelines approved by Mr. Bush’s Justice Department, which dedicated itself to finding ways to authorize abuse and evade legal accountability. But it offered a scathing condemnation of those guidelines, which it said diverged “sharply” from the practices of military and police interrogators, and the positions of pretty much everyone else, including the State Department, Congress, other Western governments and human rights groups.

The inspector general said that, in some cases, interrogations exceeded even the Bush Justice Department’s shockingly lax standards.

The report offers one more compelling reason for a far broader inquiry into Mr. Bush’s lawless behavior. It is possible to sympathize with Mr. Obama’s desire to avoid a politically fraught investigation. But the need to set this nation back under the rule of law is no less urgent than it was when he promised to do so in his campaign.

That will not be accomplished by investigating individual interrogators. It will require a fearless airing of how the orders were issued to those men, and who gave them. Only by making public officials accountable under the law can Americans be confident that future presidents will not feel free to break it the way Mr. Bush did.

NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/26/opinion/26wed1.html

Do you think the Afghans, Iraqis and the entire Middle East don't know of these events? Just imagine what atrocities were committed by private contractors in secret rendition sites. Now imagine the atrocities committed against the French, English, German and Italian resistance by the Nazis, can you honestly say because we are Americans, we can do such things with impunity? MC

"The precise reasons for the inspector general's review remained censored in the version released Monday, but officials have said privately it was provoked in part by alarms sounded within the CIA after the freezing death in November 2002 of a young Afghan at an agency-funded prison outside Kabul. A CIA case officer had ordered the detainee stripped and shackled to a concrete floor without blankets."

"After the CIA report was provided to the White House in 2004, then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and her deputy, Stephen J. Hadley, suggested that the CIA directorate of operations organize a fresh review of the program. But neither interfered with the program when then-CIA Director Porter J. Goss reported back to them in mid-2004 that it was working as it should, according to former White House officials and documents provided to Congress."

Two Administrations Drew Different Lessons From 2004 CIA Report

By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 25, 2009

When an internal CIA report concluded in May 2004 that "unauthorized, improvised, inhumane, and undocumented" interrogation methods had been used on suspected al-Qaeda members, the predominant reaction within the Bush administration was not revulsion but frustration that the agency's efforts inside a network of secret prisons had not been more effective, former senior intelligence and White House officials recall.

Continued
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/24/AR2009082403294.html?hpid=topnews

Quote of the Day, what does this mean? Change a term in government speak and it makes it all better. Besides I thought "Human Resource Exploitation" was something to do with American labor. Don't bother reading the WP Editorial, it's an apology for the behavior of the Bush Administration. The Post has gone all the way to the dark side. MC

"For another, the report underscores what little appetite the CIA had for getting back into the business of ugly interrogation (it had been so burned that it changed the term, at one point, to "human resource exploitation"); the agency was clamoring constantly for guidance about what it should and should not do."

Source The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/24/AR2009082402629.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

What's at stake here and who matters most? The answers to those questions are the rule of law, the moral high ground, international credibility, accountability of those in a position of trust and authority, etc.. The question regarding who matters most? We the people of the United States and their respect for the law vs. a handful of fascists and those willing to fail in their duty to uphold and defend the Constitution, the lynchpin of American law. MC

"The Founding Fathers wished to establish a strong central government, yet limit the capacity for the abuse of power. Their goal was to separate power among the branches of government and avoid partisanship in critical issues, particularly in matters such as impeachment. Borrowed from their English forebears, the impeachment process is a tool for the removal of public officials from power as a part of the “checks and balances” system of federalist government. It ensures both continuity and accountability of office holders as a check against those attempting to sway the balance in their favor."

Source: http://americanhistory.suite101.com/article.cfm/violating_the_constitution

History That Obama Can't Ignore

By Eugene Robinson
Tuesday, August 25, 2009

History's demands can seem inconvenient, unfair or unreasonable. But they can't be ignored. The Obama administration has a legal and moral duty to determine whether crimes were committed in the Bush-era detention and interrogation of "war on terror" prisoners -- and, if so, to prosecute those responsible.

More at The Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/24/AR2009082402470.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

Once again, guns at a protest are not protected by the 1st Amendment "the right of the people peaceably to assemble" MC "I shouted out, who killed the Kennedys? When after all, it was you and me....Just as every cop is a criminal, And all the sinners saints, As heads is tails, Just call me Lucifer, cause I'm in need of restraint....." Sympathy for the Devil-The Rolling Stones

NY Times
August 23, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist

The Guns of August

By FRANK RICH
“IT is time to water the tree of liberty” said the sign carried by a gun-toting protester milling outside President Obama’s town-hall meeting in New Hampshire two weeks ago. The Thomas Jefferson quote that inspired this message, of course, said nothing about water: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” That’s the beauty of a gun — you don’t have to spell out the “blood.”

The protester was a nut. America has never had a shortage of them. But what’s Tom Coburn’s excuse? Coburn is a Republican senator from Oklahoma, where 168 people were murdered by right-wing psychopaths who bombed a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995. Their leader, Timothy McVeigh, had the Jefferson quote on his T-shirt when he committed this act of mass murder. Yet last Sunday, when asked by David Gregory on “Meet the Press” if he was troubled by current threats of “violence against the government,” Coburn blamed not the nuts but the government.

“Well, I’m troubled any time when we stop having confidence in our government,” the senator said, “but we’ve earned it.”

Coburn is nothing if not consistent. In the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing, he was part of a House contingent that helped delay and soften an antiterrorism bill. This cohort even tried to strip out a provision blocking domestic fund-raising by foreign terrorist organizations like Hamas. Why? The far right, in league with the National Rifle Association, was angry at the federal government for aggressively policing America’s self-appointed militias. In a 1996 floor speech, Coburn conceded that “terrorism obviously poses a serious threat,” but then went on to explain that the nation had worse threats to worry about: “There is a far greater fear that is present in this country, and that is fear of our own government.” As his remarks on “Meet the Press” last week demonstrated, the subsequent intervention of 9/11 has not changed his worldview.

I have been writing about the simmering undertone of violence in our politics since October, when Sarah Palin, the vice-presidential candidate of a major political party, said nothing to condemn Obama haters shrieking “Treason!,” “Terrorist!” and “Off with his head!” at her rallies. As vacation beckons, I’d like to drop the subject, but the atmosphere keeps getting darker.

Continued at NY Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/opinion/23rich.html?_r=1

We all know the Republican Motto:

"If at first you don't deceive, lie, lie again."

Bearing "false witness" is one of the ten commandments, but obviously doesn't apply to New Testament Christians. However, getting around the pride thing might be a bit trickier. MC

From Wikipedia regarding the seven deadly sins:

Pride

In almost every list Pride (Latin, superbia), or hubris, is considered the original and most serious of the seven deadly sins, and indeed the ultimate source from which the others arise. It is identified as a desire to be more important or attractive than others, failing to acknowledge the good work of others, and excessive love of self (especially holding self out of proper position toward God). Dante's definition was "love of self perverted to hatred and contempt for one's neighbor." In Jacob Bidermann's medieval miracle play, Cenodoxus, pride is the deadliest of all the sins and leads directly to the damnation of the titulary famed Parisian doctor. In perhaps the best-known example, the story of Lucifer, pride (his desire to compete with God) was what caused his fall from Heaven, and his resultant transformation into Satan. In Dante's Divine Comedy, the penitents were forced to walk with stone slabs bearing down on their backs in order to induce feelings of humility.

Synonyms for Pride:

Arrogance, conceit, smugness, self-importance, egotism, vanity, immodesty, superiority

"The chief prosecutor at Nuremberg, Robert H. Jackson, said: “We must never forget that the record on which we judge these defendants is the record on which history will judge us tomorrow. To pass these defendants a poisoned chalice is to put it to our lips as well.” Let us hope that the wisdom of his prophecy has not been lost to those who will decide the fate of the Guantánamo detainees."

NY Times
August 20, 2009
Op-Ed Contributor
A Nuremberg for Guantánamo
By GUÉNAËL METTRAUX
The Hague

AT the end of World War II, the Allied powers found themselves in charge of thousands of captured enemies, many of whom had committed unspeakable crimes. Some among the victors thought that the prisoners should simply be shot. Others, including many in the American government, steadfastly insisted that these men should be subjected to criminal proceedings. Thus the Nuremberg trials were born, tribunals that meted out justice for some of the 20th century’s worst atrocities while demonstrating the return of the rule of law on the European continent and the superiority of democratic values over Fascist lunacies.

The Guantánamo detainees pose a similar conundrum today. Trying these men stateside would necessarily require the compromise of long-cherished principles of American law. Yet continuing to hold them without the prospect of a fair trial or delivering them to undemocratic governments are alternatives not worthy of the Obama administration or of the United States.

America’s own endeavors at Nuremberg offer a way out of this impasse: an international tribunal for detainees. Such a tribunal would allow the Obama administration to finally try these individuals and close down Guantánamo — and it would bring the nation back within the tradition of law and justice that it so forcefully defended six decades ago.

We need not look as far back as Nuremberg. Recent international tribunals for Sierra Leone, Cambodia and Yugoslavia have provided fair trials in challenging political environments to men and women accused of the gravest of crimes. In The Hague right now, an international criminal tribunal is looking into the terrorist attacks that shook Lebanon in 2004 and 2005. This tribunal — created by the United Nations Security Council at the initiative of the United States, among others — provides a ready model of a court capable of dealing with the detainees.

Those now held in Guantánamo would be placed under international control and their trials held on neutral ground. American and foreign judges and prosecutors with experience in international criminal cases would then be enlisted to provide the expertise required to hear these types of criminal cases. As with the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, it would be paid for by a combination of American contributions and voluntary donations from other nations.

The support of the international community — particularly from Middle Eastern countries and those European nations that played a part in the detention or transfer of these men — would be imperative to providing legitimacy to the process and the guarantees of independence and impartiality necessary to its success. Moreover, any convictions would need to bear the stigma of the entire world, not just that of a single nation.

An international criminal tribunal would not answer all the legal questions surrounding the war on terrorism. But by putting its faith in the law, the Obama administration would send a potent message to both its supporters and its enemies. By giving a fair trial to the Guantánamo detainees, the United States would reassert its core values and demonstrate the supremacy of those values over the evil that has been challenging them.

The chief prosecutor at Nuremberg, Robert H. Jackson, said: “We must never forget that the record on which we judge these defendants is the record on which history will judge us tomorrow. To pass these defendants a poisoned chalice is to put it to our lips as well.” Let us hope that the wisdom of his prophecy has not been lost to those who will decide the fate of the Guantánamo detainees.

Guénaël Mettraux, the author of “The Law of Command Responsibility,” represents defendants before international criminal tribunals.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/20/opinion/20mettraux.html?_r=1

Jim Hudson and I were the lone protestors at a Dick Cheney event in 2004. We were carrying "Veterans for Kerry" signs. The Secret Service all but spit in our faces, declared that we were not Vietnam veterans and after one of the agents identified himself as a Seal, I matter of factly told him I was a Ranger and outranked him. They finally regained control of themselves after we refused to take the bait of their in our face intrusion. MC

"Gibbs made you think of the old line about the liberal who is so open-minded he can't even take his own side in an argument."

Leave The Guns At Home

By E.J. Dionne Jr.
Thursday, August 20, 2009

Try a thought experiment: What would conservatives have said if a group of loud, scruffy leftists had brought guns to the public events of Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush?

How would our friends on the right have reacted to someone at a Reagan or a Bush speech carrying a sign that read: "It is time to water the tree of liberty"? That would be a reference to Thomas Jefferson's declaration that the tree "must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

Pardon me, but I don't think conservatives would have spoken out in defense of the right of every American Marxist to bear arms or to shed the blood of tyrants.

In fact, the Bush folks didn't like any dissent at all. Recall the 2004 incident in which a distraught mother whose son was killed in Iraq was arrested for protesting at a rally in New Jersey for first lady Laura Bush. The detained woman wasn't even armed. Maybe if she had been carrying, the gun lobby would have defended her.

The Obama White House purports to be open to the idea of guns outside the president's appearances. "There are laws that govern firearms that are done state or locally," Robert Gibbs, the White House spokesman, said on Tuesday. "Those laws don't change when the president comes to your state or locality."

Gibbs made you think of the old line about the liberal who is so open-minded he can't even take his own side in an argument.

What needs to be addressed is not the legal question but the message that the gun-toters are sending.

Continued:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/19/AR2009081902961.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

August 20, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
Priority Test: Health Care or Prisons?
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
At a time when we Americans may abandon health care reform because it supposedly is “too expensive,” how is it that we can afford to imprison people like Curtis Wilkerson?

Mr. Wilkerson is serving a life sentence in California — for stealing a $2.50 pair of socks. As The Economist noted recently, he already had two offenses on his record (both for abetting robbery at age 19), and so the “three strikes” law resulted in a life sentence.

This is unjust, of course. But considering that California spends almost $49,000 annually per prison inmate, it’s also an extraordinary waste of money.

Astonishingly, many politicians seem to think that we should lead the world in prisons, not in health care or education. The United States is anomalous among industrialized countries in the high proportion of people we incarcerate; likewise, we stand out in the high proportion of people who have no medical care — and partly as a result, our health care outcomes such as life expectancy and infant mortality are unusually poor.

Continued:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/20/opinion/20kristof.html