Gitmo Before We Have To Close The Place

I can't say I'm totally unsympathetic with Bush's try to treat terrorists in a way different from a common lawbreaker or a prisoner of war. But the Gitmo ruling is a reflection of how radically he has tried to arrogate power to the executive branch based on a self-proclaimed "War on Terror".

He's tried to have it both ways since we invaded Afghanistan. He's wanted the enhanced powers of a war-time president without any formal declaration of war by Congress.

Like LBJ did in Vietnam, he's tried to use a general congressional resolution on Iraq to allow him to do anything he wants without regard for the other two branches of government. How absurd. Talk about making it up as he goes along.

Bush says we are engaged in a 'war' of infinite length, and, therefore he has wartime powers for an infinite time. The Supreme Court reminded him today that no one branch of government can run the country as it arbitrarily wishes just because it calls whatever it is doing a 'war.'

Nixon declared a 'war on drugs'. That didn't give him the right to hold military tribunals for drug dealers.

The Court finally stopped the biggest grab for power by one branch of government ever seen.

National Security Issue

It's late here, but I am posting this since it involves a national security issue. It is closely related to the controversy over roving wiretaps and other invasions of privacy without obtaining a search warrant. It is a cautionary tale, indeed. This evening I received the following e-mail message:

Dear Sir:

I wanted to alert you to a serious security matter that goes to the heart of this
administration's need to use any means to root out terrorists and other subversives.
Please pass this on to others in the 'blogosphere,' is it?

I have personally found that if you play "Louie, Louie" on 33 1/3 on an old style 45 rpm
record that you will hear profanities. In addition, you will also hear strange phrases such as
"got her way down low." I'm not sure what that means, but the FBI is pretty sure it is an al-
Qaeda code signal of some sort.

It all goes to prove that not only should all phone calls be taped, and bank records examined
without anyone knowing, but also that the terrorists attempts to infiltrate our culture must
also be investigated. The worst part is that we haven't even started to check CD's or DVD's
yet.

Scooter, as you probably know, was not able to be here to help with this message. However,
I hope that since this message is coming from me that it will lend my weight to the discovery.

Thank you.
Richard Cheney
Vice President-USA

Gerrymandering and Rotten Boroughs

I'm afraid it's time to get rid of the hoary tradition of political gerrymandering. The politicians have gotten too good at it since the dawn of the computer age. They can now divide districts right down to a street address. What used to be a crude political art, has now become sophisticated science.

The result is the re-creation of the old English rotten borough system where incumbents were guaranteed election to Parliament. A 98% incumbency rate for the House of Representatives proves that we now have rotten boroughs everywhere.

Your vote has no chance of deciding an election in your congressional district when you have been gerrymandered into a 60-40% minority, Republican or Democrat. If you want higher turnout we'll have to make political contests more competitive.

Episcopal Church Schisms Coming

The Episcopal Church will soon experience something that I don't believe has ever before happened to any religious sect; two schisms at one time.

It is going to lose its conservative, mainly southern, churches in the United States, such as the one in Plano, Texas. At the same time it is going to have a schism with the Anglican Communion.

A small majority that forces its will on a large minority, whether right or wrong, will only create disharmony. The consequence of acting without a true consensus within a church creates the kind of schisms Episcopalians will soon experience.

Rush Limbaugh

Rush caught with a hidden bottle of Viagra under his doctors' names. Now we know why he's been such a crank all these years.

I'm sure Rush will react with 'outrage' at this invasion of his privacy, though he fully endorses the NSA's invasion of ours. As the right-wingers like to say, "Why should you worry if you have nothing to hide?" Whoops, he did have something to hide.

By the way, for a guy who along with his dittoheads hates lawyers, he sure hires the best, Roy Black, when he gets in trouble. Let's hope Rush doesn't get off on a 'technicality' as an evil trial lawyer like Black will try.

Ann Coulter

It just shows you that some people will say or write anything to get in the news. They have such low self-esteem that they only believe they are important if someone is reading or watching them.

Her comments about the 9/11 widows show that if she has to stand on her head to get attention she will. I'll leave it to your imagination what else she might do.

Her comments always say more about her than they do about the people she's attacking. She's obviously never been close to anyone, like a spouse, in her own life. The grievous and unexpected loss of a loving relationship is hard to get over. She must never have had that experience.

Miami "Terrorists"

See my previous post on Zarqawi dated 6-8-06. Another set of psychopaths looking for a rationale to commit serial thrill killings. Do you think they might have had previous criminal records before they tried to be 'martyrs'?

They probably can't spell 'Koran'.

The English Language "Goes Missing"

Have you noticed that nothing and no one ever 'disappears' anymore? It 'goes missing'. In its continuing effort to keep dumbing down America, the news media now use an ungrammatical southern colloquialism for a real word.

Like the faddists they are, the news media must think 'He went missing' sounds cooler than 'He disappeared.' I heard the term 'went missing' in the south for years. If the media wants to get it completely right it should drop the 'g' from 'missing'. If they need to learn how to drop their 'g's' the media just needs to listen to our president talk.

The semi-literates in the media might also want to adopt another southern colloquialism for the word 'maybe.' Southerners say 'might could.' Then when someone asks you whether the English language 'went missing' you can answer 'might could.'

This way you can get rid of another concise, succinct word from the English Language and replace it with another more ungrammatical, illiterate two word combination.

Global Warming

Some things never change. As Mark Twain said, "Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it."

Zarqawi-Just another Psychopath

Musab al-Zarqawi bites the dust. Whether you kill people indiscriminately in the name of religion, politics, or because you don't like their looks, you are merely a psychopath. A thrill killer may attach himself to a cause but that doesn't change his nature. Anyone who kills that much and that indiscriminately is getting off on the killing, not the religion or any other cause.

Zarqawi would still have killed people for the thrill of it even if he hadn't attached himself to al-Qaeda. If he was a dentist in Jordan, he would have killed. If he was shoeshine boy at LAX he would have killed. That's what psychopaths do.

Now the thrill is gone Moose, baby. You won't get a footnote in the history books.

6-6-6

Damn-Did I miss the Rapture again? Or is it later today? Or has it already happened in the Far East where it's 6-7-6 already? As I remember there's only room for 144,000 of us. I hope all those Far Eastern Christians didn't get all the seats on the bus.