Lord High Everything Else

Hopefully Commandant Tomasky has good things ahead of him. I've met Mike a few times - even once when my identity was super double secret - and he's always come across as one of the good ones.

Stupids

Jeebus. If the Dow reaches a new record that'll mean it'll reach the level it reached in... early 2000, before Bush's tax cuts. And, of course, there's been inflation since then, so...

Evening Thread

I hear Obama gave a good speech, though I was out. Will pass along when I get.

Simple Answers to Simple Questions

Drum asks:

I expect this kind of stuff from Charles Krauthammer, not sane people. Is there something in the water?

Yes.


This has been another another edition of simple answers to simple questions.

Keep Calling

Info:

The debate is on C-Span 2 here. The Levin substitution failed 43-54, and Lindsay Graham is speaking. Here are more specific instructions on what to say to the Maine Senators.

Call Senator Collins/Snowe and urge her to vote against S. 3930 . This unAmerican bill betrays our constitutional tradition and costs us what little moral authority we retain, not to secure the country -- torture doesn't produce useful intelligence -- but because desperate politicians want something to brag about on the campaign trail. Tell Senator Collins/Snowe that no cheap partisan stunt is worth exposing our troops to torture, alienating our allies, and abandoning the Constitution.

Susan Collins
461 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Phone: (202) 224-2523
Fax: (202) 224-2693

Olympia Snowe
154 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Phone: (202) 224-5344
Toll Free: (800) 432-1599
Fax: (202) 224-1946

The Gift That Keeps on Giving

Bernie Kerik.

Serious

No Show Joe thinks the American people and Congress should be kept in the dark about what's going on with Iraq.

Fresh Thread

enjoy

Jeebus

Fake anthrax mailings are now a joke?

Does Violence to the Constitution

Indeed it does, but the Republicans have no respect for that document.

The Constitution

The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.

Call Olympia Snowe

Mailing Address:
154 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510

Phone: (202) 224-5344

Call Susan Collins

DC Office Information
461 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Phone: (202) 224-2523




Ask them if they think it's a good thing for people to be held indefinitely without charges without being able to even challenge the basis of that detention. At all.

Macaca

Time to go George:

WASHINGTON, Sept. 26 — Another acquaintance of Senator George Allen said Tuesday that she heard him use a racial slur in 1976, contradicting a statement he made Monday in an effort to tamp down similar accusations.

Mr. Allen’s campaign manager, Dick Wadhams, called the account by the woman, Ellen G. Hawkins, “another false accusation.”

Mr. Allen, a Virginia Republican whose re-election campaign has been knocked off balance by the accusations, said Monday that he did not remember ever using the term and that “it is absolutely false that that was ever part of my vocabulary.”

Mrs. Hawkins, who described herself as a rural Virginia housewife and an active Democrat, said in an interview Tuesday that she heard Mr. Allen use the slur repeatedly at a party on election night in 1976. She said Mr. Allen used the term while deprecating the intelligence of the black players on the Washington Redskins football team, which Mr. Allen’s father coached. Recalling remarks about its star running back, Larry Brown, Mrs. Hawkins said that Mr. Allen “started in effect bad-mouthing him, saying what a shiftless you-know-what” he was.

She said she remembered the conversation because she was a big fan of the team and was shocked. She said Mr. Allen’s statement on Monday was “just plain a lie.”

Silly Iraqis

George Bush, Joe Lieberman, and Glenn Reynolds know what's best for you. Just lie back and enjoy it.

Wanker of the Day

Little Ricky Sasntorum.

Truly Foolish People

Even at a distance, the stupidity burns.

Durbin is a Patriot

He's stepping up, on CSPAN2.

I'm trying to get a copy of his remarks.

Leadership

This is obvious to everyone who does not live in Washington. Balkin:

I am puzzled by and ashamed of the Democrats' moral cowardice on this bill. The latest version of the bill blesses detainee abuse and looks the other way on forms of detainee torture; it immunizes terrible acts; it abridges the writ of habeas corpus-- in the last, most egregious draft, it strips the writ for alleged enemy combatants whether proved to be so or not, whether citizens or not, and whether found in the U.S. or overseas.

This bill is simply outrageous. I doubt whether many Democratic Senators or staffs have read the bill or understand what is in it. Instead, they seem to be scrambling over themselves to vote for it out of a fear that the American public will think them weak and soft on terror.

The reason why the Democrats have not been doing very well on these issues, however, is that the public does not believe that they stand for anything other than echoing what the Republicans have been doing with a bit less conviction. If the Republicans are now the Party of Torture, the Democrats are now the Party of "Torture? Yeah, I guess so." Not exactly the moral high ground from which to seek office.

The Democrats may think that if they let this pass, they are guaranteed to pick up more seats in the House and Senate. But they will actually win less seats this way. For they will have proved to the American people that they are spineless and opportunistic-- that, when faced with a genuine choice and a genuine challenge, they can keep neither our country nor our values safe.

It is the very definition of weakness to cowardly enshrine tyranny in statute. It the very definition of cowardice to be unable to stand up for what is so obviously right.

Louise Slaughter is a patriot.. Do we have any more in Congress?

Dahlia Speak

Everyone should listen.

Serious

This is the guy the Bullshit Moose, David Broder, and Fred Hiatt think is a serious person on foreign policy.

Joe Lieberman is a buffoon and a coward, a weak and foolish man who surrounds himself with liars and puts himself above the country.

Leadership

We have some. Louise Slaughter:

It is a reality made all the more egregious by the historic importance of this moment.

We are at a crossroads today, and I fear that we will not by judged kindly by future Americans for what my Republican friends want us to do today.

This bill sends a clear message to both our friends and our enemies about what kind of people we are.

It shows them whether or not we are really willing to practice what we preach about freedom, democracy, and human dignity.

It is moments like this one when we reveal our true colors, and our real values.

Sadly, M. Speaker, those watching today will conclude that when the going gets tough, America's leaders are willing abandon our values...

...abandon them in favor of thuggish tactics they hope might make them safer for a little while.

In his second Inaugural Address, President Bush used noble words to describe America's role in the world and its duty as a beacon of hope for all nations.

From the day of our Founding, we have proclaimed that every man and woman on this earth has rights, and dignity, and matchless value."

Those were inspirational words. But here is the reality:

For years, this Administration has circumvented our Constitution in the name of security.

Its officials have dismissed even the most important of our legal documents - such as the Geneva Convention - as being nothing more than "quaint."

This Administration and this Republican Congress have allowed detainees to sit in prison for years without charging them with any crime.

They are willing to deprive people of even the most basic due process rights our country has always afforded those held by the government.

They are willing to convict people of crimes without giving them any opportunity to review the evidence the government is using against them.

They are willing to try and convict people based on unreliable evidence acquired through cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment that the rest of the world recognizes as torture.

They are willing to allow government officials to degrade and torment other human beings in ways that the civilized nations agreed to outlaw sixty years ago.

They are even willing to make any new legislation we pass today retroactive, so that past abuses may be forgotten instead of being sincerely addressed.

What this Congress is showing the world today is that we are willing to trade our national birthright for a false and temporary sense of security.

Let me emphasize that: because it is indeed a false sense of security.