Thursday, March 23, 2006

Interesting, and great, coincidence: today last year I went to Spain, a beautiful country I wish to see again, worrying about ETA. Yesterday, the terror group quits, hoodedly vowing "to shift from violence to 'a democratic process'" toward having the Spanish government recognizing their Basque homeland (Pamela Rolfe & Molly Moore, "Basque Separatists Declare A 'Permanent Cease-Fire'", Washington Post, A16).

Hopefully, these ETA fuckers are sincere in their avowed intent to stop the bloodshed. But the question out there, and in the press, is how can there be any trust after all these years?

Friday, March 17, 2006

Spring break means a political break. No more politics, politricks, politicking or electioneering. Nothing. The truth is, I despise politics. So do a lot of Americans. (You have been vindicated, Mr. Dionne.)

What? Nevermind. Anyway, I for one have had enough with this political business. The system is obviously broken, there's no 'efficacy', we're wasting time. On with it.

I regret giving any the impression that this was yet another political blog. It is not. My random rants just happened to be "political" in nature. But I'm tired of it. And so are you.

Sunday, March 12, 2006

UPDATE: The Nation's John Nichols reports that Sen. Feingold "will ask the Senate today to officially censure President Bush for breaking the law by authorizing an illegal wiretapping program, and for misleading Congress and the American people about the existence and legality of that program."

Yet as long as we accept the mask of labeling it "terrorist surveillance," who can oppose it?
The national demand for “impeachment” — the forbidden word — is growing. The March issue of Harper’s features an article by its editor Lewis Lapham, of which an excerpt has been posted. He cites a massive report commissioned by the staff of House Judiciary Committee member Rep. John Conyers, who proposed “a select committee to … make recommendations regarding grounds for possible impeachment” (House Res. 635).

As of ‘press’ time, 665,851 Americans have already voted to impeach. In addition, 28 congressional representatives have signed on, as have the city council of Arcata, Calif. and the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

Friday’s New York Times reported a “compromise” plan, drafted by GOP free-agents with the White House, to allow such ‘warrantless eavesdropping’ for 45 days pending “a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court,” as the law requires. You know, the Law of the Land.

And a Washington Post story read that a “too sensitive to talk about” (Sen. Rockefeller) subcommittee will be getting word on the illegal doings of the Chief Executive: namely, internal espionage, first without court approval and, now, with partisan abdication (Walter Pincus, “Panel on Eavesdropping Is Briefed by White House,” 10 March 2006, A4).

The very fact that the President had to have his arm twisted in order to give legislative “sanction” to violating our Constitution, and debates over the “necessity” (Rockefeller again) or efficacy of perpetuating the violations, sidesteps the larger point: the Constitution has been made irrelevant.

“The country is threatened by free-booting terrorists unaligned with a foreign government or an enemy army; the secrets are those of the Bush Administration, chief among them its determination to replace a democratic republic with something more safely totalitarian,” Lapham writes. “The fiction of permanent war allows it to seize, in the name of the national security, the instruments of tyranny.”

You don’t have to be religious to want to pray every now and again.