Month: September 2006

The Party Of Moral Values Strikes Again

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by hilzoy Presumably, everyone who reads this has already heard that Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL), author of the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006, has resigned after he was revealed to have sent revolting sexual emails and IMs to several pages. (The one whose age has been reported was 16.) If you … Read more

Worth Bearing In Mind

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by hilzoy Glenn Greenwald wrote a very good post today. It’s worth reading in its entorety, but there’s one point I wanted to highlight: “There is one other consideration which, by itself, ought to be determinative. The only branch of government that has shown any residual willingness to defend the Constitution and the rule of … Read more

Hiatus

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by Charles For family, work and personal reasons, I going to have to end blogging.  My thanks to all of the editors for putting up with me and giving me this forum, and my thanks to all of the readers as well.  I wish you all well.

Juxtaposition

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by Katherine "Again, these are people, these are enemy combatants, people that have been picked up on the battlefield with ill will or creating acts against the American people."–Senator Bill Frist *** "They took our land. They killed my mother. You can ask. This is true information. They killed my family. My wife said they … Read more

….?????

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by hilzoy Honestly: I can’t even begin to imagine what to say about the vote on the torture bill. I just can’t. I think I used all my words up beforehand. And how could I even start to describe the unbelievable, unAmerican, utterly corrupt cynicism of doing something like this as an election ploy?? As … Read more

Ikuko Toguri, RIP

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by Andrew I find it at once sad and ironic that Tuesday, as the House prepared to pass HR 6166, Iva Toguri breathed her last. Ms. Toguri is better known as ‘Tokyo Rose,’ the sobriquet given to various English-speaking Japanese women who broadcast popular music laced with appeals for Allied personnel to surrender to the … Read more

“The Year of the Police”

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by Charles Every day, the stream of anti-Bush administration sentiments flows incessantly, with commentary ranging from mild rebuke to paranoid unmedicated DU-sized hyperbole. The hard part sometimes is separating the wheat (legitimate concerns about how things are going) from the chaff (politicized grandstanding and raging cases of BDS). But in this article, it looks like … Read more

The NYT Opens Whole New Dimensions Of Shrillness

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by hilzoy Check it out: “Here’s what happens when this irresponsible Congress railroads a profoundly important bill to serve the mindless politics of a midterm election: The Bush administration uses Republicans’ fear of losing their majority to push through ghastly ideas about antiterrorism that will make American troops less safe and do lasting damage to … Read more

Don’t Get Mad; Get Even.

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by hilzoy

Having wallowed in despair over the detainee bill, I have decided to do something constructive, namely: inflict more misery on you, my gentle readers. — I was looking at the Cook Political Report’s new rankings of the most competitive Senate races, and to my horror and amazement, my own race, which I don’t think of as all that competitive, was ranked ahead of the Virginia Senate race, which pits James Webb against the awful George Allen.

This cannot be allowed to continue.

If Webb wins, several wonderful things happen. First, there’s one more Democrat in the Senate. Second, there’s one more Democrat who is capable and confident about national security. Third, George Allen loses, and macaques everywhere breathe a sigh of relief. But here’s the most important thing: George Allen’s chances of ever successfully running for President become really, really remote.

This matters. We’ve already had an incompetent faux Cowboy with a streak of cruelty as President for eight years. I’m not sure we can withstand another. Allen’s chances of becoming President have already been damaged, but losing his Senate race would drive a well-deserved hemlock stake through their heart.

However, there’s a problem. To illustrate, I made a little graph in Excel:
Fundraising

See what I mean about misery?That’s an eleven million dollar fundraising advantage. And we can’t have that, can we? Of course not. So here’s the link: donate.

If you require actual reasons, read on.

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“President … Denies War Has Worsened Terrorism”

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by hilzoy That’s part of headline from MSNBC. I might try explaining why he’s wrong, but a simple graph is more eloquent on this score than I could ever be: (Graph from Larry Johnson, who notes: “A “Significant” terrorist incident is one in which a person was killed, wounded or kidnapped (or there was property … Read more