|
19 May 2008
The Conservative Movement: From Failure to Threat
|
By Paul Craig Roberts
U.C. Berkeley tenured law professor John Yoo epitomizes the failure of the conservative movement in America. Known as "the torture professor," Yoo penned the Department of Justice (sic) memos that gave a blank check to sadistic Americans to torture detainees at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. The human rights violations that John Yoo sanctioned destroyed America's reputation and exposed the Bush regime as more inhumane than the Muslim terrorists. The acts that Yoo justified are felonies under U.S. law and war crimes under the Nuremberg standard.
Yoo's torture memos are so devoid of legal basis that his close friend and fellow conservative member of the Federalist Society, Jack Goldsmith, rescinded the memos when he was appointed head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel.
Yoo's extremely shoddy legal work and the fervor with which he served the evil intentions of the Bush regime have led to calls from distinguished legal scholars for Yoo's dismissal from Berkeley's Boalt Hall.
I sympathize with the calls for Yoo's dismissal. In the new edition of The Tyranny of Good Intentions, my coauthor and I write: "Liberty has no future in America if law schools provide legitimacy to those who would subvert the U.S. Constitution."
However, John Yoo is but the tip of the iceberg. Scapegoating Yoo diverts attention from a neoconservative movement that has become the greatest enemy of the U.S. Constitution.
|
|
Read more...
|
|
|
16 May 2008
Bill O the Remix
|
|
13 May 2008
Why Vote Republican?
|
|
Why Vote Republican? Because: Several billion mexicans stream across the border every night and take our street corner orange salesman and leaf blowing jobs. Every single person in Iraq owns a weapon of mass destruction and will come to America to harm us. Hollywood types want to turn our children into openly gay people instead of staying in the closet like we secretly shamefully are. Babies are the most precious people, and must be protected so they can grow up and pay our foreign creditors back. Black people have dark skin, and know where we live. Habeus Corpus is a latin word spoken by Catholics, freedom must be bad then like they are. Our nation's schools and infrastructure are crumbling, but there is no way we are going to pay more taxes. Vote Republican!
|
|
13 May 2008
The Myth of Voter Fraud
|
|
Missouri and at least 19 other states are considering passing laws that would force people to prove their citizenship before they can vote. These bills are not a sincere effort to prevent noncitizens from voting; that is a made-up problem. The real aim is to reduce turnout by eligible voters. Republicans seem to think that laws of this kind will help them win elections, but burdensome rules like these — and others cropping up around the country — pose a serious threat to democracy and should be stopped. The Missouri legislature is, as Ian Urbina reported in The Times on Monday, on the verge of passing an amendment to the State Constitution that would require proof of citizenship from anyone registering to vote. In addition to the Missouri amendment, which would require voter approval, Florida, Kansas, South Carolina and other states are considering similar rules. There is no evidence that voting by noncitizens is a significant problem. Illegal immigrants do their best to remain in the shadows, to avoid attracting government attention and risking deportation. It is hard to imagine that many would walk into a polling place, in the presence of challengers and police, and try to cast a ballot. There is, however, ample evidence that a requirement of proof of citizenship will keep many eligible voters from voting. Many people do not have birth certificates or other acceptable proof of citizenship, and for some people, that proof is not available. One Missouri voter, Lillie Lewis, said at a news conference last week that officials in Mississippi, where she was born, told her they had no record of her birth.
|
|
02 May 2008
Get Off Your Ass
|
|
23 April 2008
What the Iraq War is All About
|
by Paul Craig Roberts
The Bush regime has quagmired America into a sixth year of war in Afghanistan and Iraq with no end in sight. The cost of these wars of aggression is horrendous. Official U.S. combat casualties stand at 4,538 dead. Officially, 29,780 U.S. troops have been wounded in Iraq. Experts have argued that these numbers are understatements. Regardless, these numbers are only the tip of the iceberg.
On April 17, 2008, The Associated Press reported that a new study released by the RAND Corp. concludes that "some 300,000 U.S. troops are suffering from major depression or post-traumatic stress from serving in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and 320,000 received brain injuries."
On April 21, 2008, OpEdNews reported that an internal email from Gen. Michael J. Kussman, undersecretary for health at the Veterans Administration, to Ira Katz, head of mental health at the VA, confirms a McClatchy Newspaper report that 126 veterans per week commit suicide. To the extent that the suicides are attributable to the war, more than 500 deaths should be added to the reported combat fatalities each month.
Turning to Iraqi deaths, expert studies support as many as 1.2 million dead Iraqis, almost entirely civilians. Another 2 million Iraqis have fled their country, and there are 2 million displaced Iraqis within Iraq.
|
|
12 April 2008
It's Occupation, Not War
|
|
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan ended some years ago. In Iraq, the war ended with the fall of Saddam Hussein's government; in Afghanistan, with the fall of the Taliban government. What's been happening since is occupation and resistance to occupation. It's always helpful to call things by the right name. One of the ways using the wrong word can trip us is illustrated by John McCain's campaign theme. We have to win the war in Iraq, he keeps saying. Ending a war implies either winning or losing. No such baggage is attached to an occupation. You can end an occupation without either winning or losing. You just withdraw your troops. The fact that what is going on in Iraq is an occupation is proven by the nature of the conflicts. They are between factions of Iraqis. Our guys are caught in the crossfire or killed by Iraqis who oppose our presence. There are no large-scale attacks directed against us.
|
|
Read more...
|
|
07 April 2008
Test Article
|
|
Here is a sentence where there has been no <p> in front of it. The font comes out the wrong size, and the indentation is missing, the words go all the way to each side left and right, with no margin. Now here is a second sentence where I did hit the return bar. Here is the third test sentence in the thing, where I did hit the return bar. Now I will indent using blockquote on this next sentence: Here is the blockquote part of it, and this is just another test sentence. I will make the sentence a little longer so that we can see the wrapping of text and the size of the text. The next sentence, which is also indented using blockquote, will continue on the next page and not be here.
Hello from the nonblockquote
|
|
07 April 2008
Why We Have to Bomb Iran
|
|
Want to know the REAL REASON BushCo wants to bomb Iran? Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is urging OPEC members to form a joint bank and stop pricing oil trades in U.S. dollars.
According to the Iranian government's Web site, Ahmadinejad told OPEC Secretary General Abdalla Salem el-Badri the cartel "should establish a joint bank as well as having joint currency."
Oil is priced in U.S. dollars on the world market, and the currency's depreciation has concerned producers because it has contributed to rising crude prices and eroded the value of their dollar reserves.
Iran has repeatedly urged OPEC members to shift sales away from dollar. But Iran's proposal to trade oil in a basket of currencies is not supported by enough OPEC members, which include staunch U.S. allies such as leading producer Saudi Arabia.
|
|
|
