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How would you justify to the families of the victims of the next terror attack your preventing of the use of a method of extracting information that would have been uncomfortable for the murdering terrorist, but which would have had a high likelihood of preventing the attack?
Any human being with a functioning conscience or a decent heart loathes torture. Its exercise has been a blight on humanity. With this in mind, those who oppose what the Bush administration did to some terror suspects may be justified. But in order to ascertain whether they are, they need to respond to some questions:
1. Given how much you rightly hate torture, why did you oppose the removal of Saddam Hussein, whose prisons engaged in far more hideous tortures, on thousands of times more people, than America did -- all of whom, moreover, were individuals and families who either did nothing or simply opposed tyranny? One assumes, furthermore, that all those Iraqi innocents Saddam had put into shredding machines or whose tongues were cut out and other hideous tortures would have begged to be waterboarded.
2. Are all forms of painful pressure equally morally objectionable? In other words, are you willing to acknowledge that there are gradations of torture as, for example, there are gradations of burns, with a third-degree burn considerably more injurious and painful than a first-degree burn? Or is all painful treatment to be considered torture? Just as you, correctly, ask proponents of waterboarding where they draw their line, you, too, must explain where you draw your line.
3. Is any maltreatment of anyone at any time -- even a high-level terrorist with knowledge that would likely save innocents’ lives -- wrong? If there is no question about the identity of a terror suspect , and he can provide information on al-Qaida -- for the sake of clarity, let us imagine that Osama Bin Laden himself were captured -- could America do any form of enhanced interrogation involving pain and/or deprivation to him that you would consider moral and therefore support?
4. If lawyers will be prosecuted for giving legal advice to an administration that you consider immoral and illegal, do you concede that this might inhibit lawyers in the future from giving unpopular but sincerely argued advice to the government in any sensitive area? They will, after all, know that if the next administration disapproves of their work, they will be vilified by the media and prosecuted by the government.
5. Presumably you would acknowledge that the release of the classified reports on the handling of high-level, post-Sept. 11 terror suspects would inflame passions in many parts of the Muslim world. If innocents were murdered because nonviolent cartoons of Muhammad were published in a Danish newspaper, presumably far more innocents will be tortured and murdered with the release of these reports and photos. Do you accept any moral responsibility for any ensuing violence against American and other civilians?
6. Many members of the intelligence community now feel betrayed and believe that the intelligence community will be weakened in their ability to fight the most vicious organized groups in the world. As reported in the Washington Post, former intelligence officer “(Mark) Lowenthal said that fear has paralyzed agents on the ground. Apparently, many of those in the know are certain that life-saving information was gleaned from high level terror suspects who were waterboarded. As Mike Scheuer, former head of the CIA unit in charge of tracking Osama bin Laden, said, ”We were very certain that the interrogation procedures procured information that was worth having.” If, then, the intelligence community has been adversely affected, do you believe it can still do the work necessary to protect tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of people from death and maiming?
7. Will you seek to prosecute members of Congress such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who were made aware of the waterboarding of high-level suspects and voiced no objections?
8. Would you agree to releasing the photos of the treatment of Islamic terrorists only if accompanied by photos of what their terror has done to thousands of innocent people around the world? Would you agree to photos -- or at least photo re-enactments -- of, let us say, Iraqi children whose faces were torn off with piano wire by Islamists in Iraq? If not, why not? Isn’t context of some significance here?
9. You say that America’s treatment of terror suspects will cause terrorists to treat their captives, especially Americans, more cruelly. On what grounds do you assert this? Did America’s far more moral treatment of Japanese prisoners than Japan’s treatment of American prisoners in World War II have any impact on how the Japanese treated American and other prisoners of war? Do you think that evil people care how morally pure America is?
If you do not address these questions, it would appear that you care less about morality and torture than about vengeance against the Bush administration.Tunbridge Wells Journal
Holdouts for Humble Bulb Defy a Government Phase-Out TUNBRIDGE WELLS, England — On a quaint lane called Camden Street, the sidewalk easel stands out for its apocalyptic tone: “100-WATT BULBS IN STOCK. (FOR HOW LONG WE DO NOT KNOW)”
“Let some government official come in and tell me I can’t sell these,” Jonathan Wright, who has owned Classic Lighting for 40 years, said defiantly as he surveyed his warren of upscale light fixtures and shelves filled with neatly stacked bulbs. “I’ll find them wherever I can get them and sell them for whatever they cost. People are buying in bulk because they want them.”
Mr. Wright says that in the last two months he has sold 3,000 of the 100-watt bulbs — the traditional mainstay of British light fixtures — more than 30 times the usual. People are buying 10 at a time, the limit per customer, even though their price is nearly 50 percent higher than it was a year ago.
Mr. Wright’s store is on the front lines of resistance to controversial global efforts to end the era of energy-gobbling incandescent light bulbs by phasing out their sale to encourage (or in Mr. Wright’s view, force) people to turn to more efficient compact fluorescents.
In Tunbridge Wells, the phase-out has brought howls of protest from people not normally prone to rebellion. This is, after all, the quintessential well-heeled English middle-class city — a place where Marks and Spencer is the epicenter of a high street dotted with bookstores and cafes, where people still wear Wellington boots and Conservatives win nearly every election.
Jenny Gale, 60, who said she had tried compact fluorescents while living in India, dislikes the new bulbs. “You can still find the old ones in stores that have some left, and for after that I’ll be stockpiling,” she said. “I’m not going to buy the new ones; I refuse. I hate the light.” [So do I!]
Countries like Australia, Canada, the United States and the European Union nations have drafted varying plans to ban or restrict the sale of incandescent bulbs in the next few years. In the United States, the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. effectively bans the sale of almost all incandescent bulbs by 2014, although last year Representative Michele Bachman, a Minnesota Republican, introduced the Light Bulb Freedom of Choice Act, a bill that would overturn it.
You know government has gotten out of control when we're at the point where we have to issue a "Lightbulb Freedom of Choice Act". God bless Michele Bachman... she's pretty hot too. (lol)
Associated Press - April 22, 2009 2:45 PM ET
ELK GROVE, Calif. (AP) - Some parents in a Sacramento suburb are upset after school officials segregated students by race in a move designed to boost test scores.
Students at Laguna Creek High School in Elk Grove were divided by race this week for what the school called "heritage assemblies." The gatherings were designed to motivate students to do better on standardized achievement tests.
That upset Tracy and Herbert Houston, a mixed-race couple who say their son was confused about which rally to attend.
Principal Doug Craig said dividing students by race allowed teachers to talk about test scores without singling out one group in a negative way.
Such race-based assemblies have been practiced in other California schools that are struggling to close student achievement gaps.
President Barack Obama has asked to make a prime-time appearance during May sweeps.
White House officials have requested up to an hour of airtime for Wednesday, April 29, according to TV Week. The press conference, which falls on the 100th day of Obama's presidency, will probably air in the 8 o'clock hour and address questions of the president's performance.
Broadcast networks have not yet announced their response, but a source said that they will most likely agree to the administration's request.
Will you tune in to President Obama's "100 Days" press conference? Or have there been too many already?
First they ignore you,
then they ridicule you,
then they fight you,
then you win.Mahatma Gandhi
Apparently there is an ingredient in tea that causes hysteria when given to cable news anchors. How else to explain the coverage of the tax day tea parties on Wednesday, which was the day when we procrastinators finally mailed the check to the feds?
The movement — if that’s what it is — was spawned by a rant on Feb. 19 from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange during a live report by the CNBC reporter — if that’s what he is — Rick Santelli, suggesting that it was time to organize a “tea party” to protest government spending on failed mortgages.
The cable news networks took it from there. Fox News, after running more than 100 promos about its coverage of the event, which did a pretty effective job of marketing them at the same time, had wall-to-wall coverage on the anointed day and dispatched four of its leading hosts around the country to perform a kind of hybrid task, covering events that they also seemed to be leading.
And in the increasingly politicized environment between the covered and coverers, Susan Roesgen of CNN, covering a tax protest in Chicago, could not have been more contemptuous of the people she was interviewing, shaking her finger at them and shouting them down. In a move that I’m sure freaked out her bosses, she suggested that the protests were “antigovernment, anti-CNN.”
Rachel Maddow of MSNBC frantically belittled the rhetoric and motives of those involved in the tea party events, even as she spent oodles of air time on the rallies.
Cable news stations have been criticized for “event-izing” all manner of minor news occurrences — President Obama’s first news conference comes to mind. But the Tax Day Tea Party was all but conceived, executed and deconstructed in the hothouse of cable news wars.
It used to be that cable networks would dispatch reporters to the same event and then head back to the studio where shouters from various sides would have it out. Now, in a kind of Hearstian twist, the news media are supplying both the pictures and the war.
“Bring your kids and experience history,” Glenn Beck advised on Fox News as he invited people to join him at the Alamo for a tax day protest, because, he said, “our kids are being sold into slavery.”
It was a kind of al fresco Howard Beale moment, an opportunity to gather in a group and shout about very real rage — these are scary times for all working people — that is nonetheless inchoate and unnameable. The burden being placed on the American economy and future generations is a significant issue — according to fivethirtyeight.com, more than 300,000 people attended rallies in 346 cities — but the event that gave voice to those concerns was far from spontaneous.
The numbers that drove the fervor are not the kind that appear on a 1040 form. Last Wednesday night from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m., Fox News had an average of almost 3.4 million viewers, up more than a million compared with its average in March. MSNBC got a bump as well, with 250,000 more viewers, while CNN was only slightly up.
In a sense, we seem to be returning to the days of the party press, where news outlets reflected viewpoints of specific wings of political thought. So perhaps the invocation of an event that took place in 1773 is not that far off the mark.
Even if the historic message of no taxation absent representation doesn’t really scan because the current president won election decisively in a free and open election, the Tea Act that drew the scorn of colonials was, at bottom, a bailout of the East India Company, which was close to bankruptcy after huge misadventures in India. With bankers thumbing rolls of federal billions, the homage to the original Boston Tea Party was not quite a non sequitur.
“The original tea party was something of a media event,” said Robert J. Allison, professor and chair of the history department at Suffolk University and author of “The Boston Tea Party.” “The papers at the time were very politicized and did a lot of campaigning during the run-up to the event.”
He added: “When you think about it, they could have done worse than a bag of tea in terms of symbols. As a historian, I am charmed and fascinated that something that provoked the original revolution still has such resonance.”
The tea references are not the problem. When a media company sets itself as the party of opposition, it can have unforeseen consequences. The theatrics make it hard to tell where talk of secession — the governor of Texas made a veiled threat — states’ rights and stringing up public officials transforms from hyperbole to reality.
The president was likened to Hitler on various posters at rallies, and a sign in Lafayette Park read, “Stand Idle While Some Kenyan Destroys America? I Don’t Think So.”
The Fox Business reporter Cody Willard got in the spirit of things covering a Boston rally by suggesting that conservatives and liberals were “both fascists who are taking my money and building up corporate America with my welfare.”
You have to worry whether something that was intended to goose ratings and kick up debate could metastasize when it meets some of the baser urges of the fringe, among people who don’t come out to rallies but are sitting in a basement steeped in their own misanthropy.
“Together, they will draw a line in the sand, here, where it was originally drawn, live, at the Alamo,” Mr. Beck said as Ted Nugent served up tasty guitar fills. Then Mr. Beck inveighed against Washington, the media, Democrats, Republicans, politicians — you know, everyone who was not standing there at the Alamo.
It had all the earmarks of a stump speech, replete with soaring applause lines and calls to action. But let’s remember: the only thing Mr. Beck and the rest are running for is first place in the demo.
By STEVEN R. HURSTWASHINGTON (AP) - A senior administration officials says President Barack Obama is ready to ask federal department and agency chiefs to find $100 million to cut from the budget when he holds his first formal Cabinet meeting.
The official previewed Topic A for Monday's Cabinet meeting on grounds of anonymity because it will be a private session. He said Obama will be reminding Cabinet members that financially-pressed families are looking to the government to spend their money wisely.
The president's first formal Cabinet meeting is being held just days after a series of "Tea Party" demonstrations across the country in which protesters challenged the administration over it's massive spending. A cut of $100 million in a multitrillion-dollar federal budget likely will be criticized by Obama's opponents as inadequate.
Yes, just his opponents will find it inadequate. Everyone else - his proponents, I presume - will be thrilled with the toughness of an infinitesimal request for a trim.
From Morissey at HotAir:
* $100 million from a $3.5 trillion budget for FY2010: 0.0029% * $100 million from the $1.2 trillion White House deficit projection for their FY2010 budget: 0.008%
* $100 million from the $700 billion Porkulus stimulus bill Obama demanded: 0.013%
* $100 million from the $634 billion “down payment” on nationalized health care: 0.016%
* $100 million from the $555 billion omnibus spending plan completing the 2009 budget: 0.018%
* $100 million from the $13 billion in pork from the omnibus spending plan: 0.77%
Thomas Sowell : Random Thoughts - Townhall.com
We seem to be moving steadily in the direction of a society where no one is responsible for what he himself did but we are all responsible for what somebody else did, either in the present or in the past.
We have now reached the truly dangerous point where we cannot even be warned about the lethal, fanatical and suicidal hatred of our society by Islamic extremists, because to do so would be politically incorrect and, in some European countries, would be a violation of the law against inciting hostility to groups.How a man who holds the entire population of a country as his prisoners, and punishes the families of those who escape, can be admired by people who call themselves liberals is one of the many wonders of the human mind's ability to rationalize. Yet such is the case with Fidel Castro.
What does "economic justice" mean, except that you want something that someone else produced, without having to produce anything yourself in return?
Liberals seem to think that they are doing lagging groups a favor by making excuses for counterproductive and self-destructive behavior. The poor do not need press agents. They need the truth. No one ever said, "Press agents will make you free."
Socialists believe in government ownership of the means of production. Fascists believed in government control of privately owned businesses, which is much more the style of this government. That way, politicians can intervene whenever they feel like it and then, when their interventions turn out badly, summon executives from the private sector before Congress and denounce them on nationwide television.
Partied-Out CNN Reporter Takes a Break
Two days after Susan Roesgen's much talked-about Chicago Tea Party live shots, we are learning more about what happened off-camera.
Sources close to the situation tell TVNewser as Roesgen was reporting her 2pmET live shot for CNN, she heard shouts from the crowd including "Damn CNN" and "Shut up, bitch."As we now know, Roesgen wrapped up the live shot, saying "I think you get the general tenor of this," that it was "not really family viewing" from an "Anti-CNN" crowd.
Our source says Roesgen received an avalanche of email messages, some supportive, and some "vitriolic with crude insults."
CNN denies reports that Roesgen's email was shut down. A spokesperson tells TVNewser many people were emailing what they believed to be Roesgen's CNN account, but it was actually a non-existent inbox. Her email account was and continues to be active.
So far Roesgen is not talking publicly about the situation. CNN tells us she's now on a previously-planned vacation.
Click continued to see a longer version of Wednesday's 2pmET live shot...
• Related: Gawker reports Roesgen twice applied for a job at "the right-wing conservative network Fox."
Islam In Action: Coming Soon:Fitna Part IIComing Soon:Fitna Part II
Tireless Dutch politician Geert Wilders who is by far the bravest politician in Europe is getting ready for his "next phase" in his war on Islam. He has announced that he will start working on Fitna Part II, which will focus on Muslim immigration in Europe and the USA. As I have stated in the past, Muslim immigration is the Trojan Horse to the West and it must be ended.
Fitna Part I can be viewed here.
Texas could bid for independence, says Governor as fury over Obama's spending rises
By Sarah Titterton
Last updated at 4:29 PM on 16th April 2009The governor of Texas has suggested that his state could secede from the Union after accusing the federal government of strangling Americans with taxation and debt.
Governor Rick Perry whipped his 'patriotic' supporters into a frenzy during tax protests yesterday, with many waving flags and shouting 'Secede!'
He later backtracked, telling reporters later that there was 'absolutely no reason to dissolve [the Union]'.
Enlarge
'How do you like Change so far?': Texan governor Rick Perry, foreground, threatens Texan independence at the 'Don't Mess with Texas' tea party protest yesterday
Texas Governor Rick Perry fired up the noontime crowd at the Tea Party rally in Austin today, suggesting at one point Texans might support seceding from the union.
Perry was one of many speakers at what was billed as the 'don't mess with Texas tea party.'
“When we joined the union in 1845, one of the issues was that we would be able to leave if we decided to do that,” Perry told reporters following the event. “My hope is that America and Washington in particular pays attention.
We got a great union. There is absolutely no reason to dissolve it, but if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, who knows what may come of that. Texas is a very unique place. We are a pretty independent lot to boot.”
Perry also blasted a Department of Homeland Security report warning of the danger of ‘right wing extremism.’
“I have no idea who that numbskull was who wrote that, but you probably can’t find him at the Department of Homeland Security today. He’s probably in deep hiding.”
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On the Tea Party Movement, Senator Hutchison, and Debra Medina ::
:: Breitbart's Challenge to New Media:
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Time To Start Returning The Punches of the Bully Media ::
:: Rick Perry / Austin Tea Party
On Secession and "Right Wing Extremism" ::
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