Sunday, October 29, 2006
When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro
In my neighborhood, there is a large, dark blue truck parked on the street. It sports a heavy-duty bracket/wench thing on the back and a vaguely federal looking logo on both sides. Above the logo is written ‘Battle Across Time’, and below is written ‘Recovery Unit’. What in hell could this possibly be? Battle Across Time? Could this truck be from the future? Is it like the Doc Brown’s Delorean? Or is the driver just a total weirdo who got a tad overzealous with custom decals?
A web search of ‘battle across time’ yields hits for a Terminator 2-themed ride at Universal Studios. Searching “battle across time” and “recovery unit” gets zero responses. I am thoroughly perplexed, and kind of scared.
My goal for the week is to take a picture of the logo and post it here. If it doesn’t happen, it’s because a Predator drone hit me with a laser-guided missile as soon as I approached the truck/time machine.
A web search of ‘battle across time’ yields hits for a Terminator 2-themed ride at Universal Studios. Searching “battle across time” and “recovery unit” gets zero responses. I am thoroughly perplexed, and kind of scared.
My goal for the week is to take a picture of the logo and post it here. If it doesn’t happen, it’s because a Predator drone hit me with a laser-guided missile as soon as I approached the truck/time machine.
Sunday, October 01, 2006
A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall
Should America find that, in ten or twelve years, it has become a truly undemocratic, authoritarian state, the past week will be looked back upon as a pivotal moment in that process.
Firstly, the Congressional kowtow to the White House, also known as the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (S. 3930), effectively suspends habeas corpus and legalizes the President’s dirty little system of holding ‘enemy combatants’ in the legal limbo of indefinite detentions in secret prisons and military tribunals without due process. What’s more, American citizens can now be considered enemy combatants by providing terrorists with any form of aid. Neither ‘terrorist’ nor ‘aid’ is strictly defined. Americans regarded as enemy combatants, however, are still entitled to speedy trials in civilian courts. Foreigners aren’t quite so lucky.
Here’s what our guy Barack, who obviously voted against the bill, had to say on the matter:
"...But politics won today. Politics won. The Administration got its vote, and now it will have its victory lap, and now they will be able to go out on the campaign trail and tell the American people that they were the ones who were tough on the terrorists.
And yet, we have a bill that gives the terrorist mastermind of 9/11 his day in court, but not the innocent people we may have accidentally rounded up and mistaken for terrorists - people who may stay in prison for the rest of their lives.
And yet, we have a report authored by sixteen of our own government's intelligence agencies, a previous draft of which described, and I quote, "...actions by the United States government that were determined to have stoked the jihad movement, like the indefinite detention of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay..."
And yet, we have Al Qaeda and the Taliban regrouping in Afghanistan while we look the other way. We have a war in Iraq that our own government's intelligence says is serving as Al Qaeda's best recruitment tool. And we have recommendations from the bipartisan 9/11 commission that we still refuse to implement five years after the fact."
Secondly, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich said that the Executive and Legislative branches should override Supreme Court decisions that are “so clearly at variance with the national will”.
He went on to say, "What I reject, out of hand, is the idea that by five to four, judges can rewrite the Constitution, but it takes two-thirds of the House, two-thirds of the Senate and three-fourths of the states to equal five judges.
“It would be a violation of the social compact of this country for the Supreme Court to decide otherwise and would lead, I hope, the two other branches to correct the court."
It’s easy to imagine that Newt’s definition of ‘national will’ actually means whatever the Ultra-Conservative-controlled Congress and White House deem necessary, much like the classic Republican use of ‘special interests’ to mean such powerful political blocs as minorities and the poor.
The good news is that the Supreme Court is likely to overturn the Military Commissions Act, which flies in the face of the document that the Bush cabal so despises: the Constitution of the United States. Sen. Arlen Spector (R-PA), who voted for the bill but authored an amendment that would have sustained habeas corpus writes for aliens had it been adopted, said that, “The Constitution is explicit in the statement that habeas corpus may be suspended only with rebellion or invasion. We do not have a rebellion or an invasion,” and that, “Surely as we are standing here, if this bill is passed and habeas corpus is stricken, we'll be back on this floor again” (following a judicial reversal of the bill).
How have things deteriorated to the point that the Supreme Court, a group of nine, wealthy elites, the very body that put Bush in the White House, is now the last bastion and safeguard of the principles on which this country was founded? Complacency stalks the land…
Click here to read Obama's entire statement.
The march toward a one party government that scoffs at the ideals of democracy and federalism goes on, with Republicans apparently willing to give the President a king’s powers without second thought. Conservative disdain for the separation of powers, judicial review and the courts in general is disturbing, to say the least, but Americans’ willingness to continue to turn a blind eye to the steady erosion of Constitutional rights is something far worse. How far will we let them go?
A Democrat-controlled Congress would still be far from the ideal cure for America’s ills. And it’s not as if a President Hilary Clinton or Joseph Biden would be content to undo the absurd power their office has been granted in the past five years. However, a legislature that serves as more than the President’s rubber stamp and a President whose main priorities aren’t the consolidation of power and the increase of corporate wealth would go a long way to breath some much needed life into our fading republic. The next five weeks are going to be interesting and anxious times. What happens on November 7 may well determine whether America can remain the place we need it to be.
Firstly, the Congressional kowtow to the White House, also known as the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (S. 3930), effectively suspends habeas corpus and legalizes the President’s dirty little system of holding ‘enemy combatants’ in the legal limbo of indefinite detentions in secret prisons and military tribunals without due process. What’s more, American citizens can now be considered enemy combatants by providing terrorists with any form of aid. Neither ‘terrorist’ nor ‘aid’ is strictly defined. Americans regarded as enemy combatants, however, are still entitled to speedy trials in civilian courts. Foreigners aren’t quite so lucky.
Here’s what our guy Barack, who obviously voted against the bill, had to say on the matter:
"...But politics won today. Politics won. The Administration got its vote, and now it will have its victory lap, and now they will be able to go out on the campaign trail and tell the American people that they were the ones who were tough on the terrorists.
And yet, we have a bill that gives the terrorist mastermind of 9/11 his day in court, but not the innocent people we may have accidentally rounded up and mistaken for terrorists - people who may stay in prison for the rest of their lives.
And yet, we have a report authored by sixteen of our own government's intelligence agencies, a previous draft of which described, and I quote, "...actions by the United States government that were determined to have stoked the jihad movement, like the indefinite detention of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay..."
And yet, we have Al Qaeda and the Taliban regrouping in Afghanistan while we look the other way. We have a war in Iraq that our own government's intelligence says is serving as Al Qaeda's best recruitment tool. And we have recommendations from the bipartisan 9/11 commission that we still refuse to implement five years after the fact."
Secondly, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich said that the Executive and Legislative branches should override Supreme Court decisions that are “so clearly at variance with the national will”.
He went on to say, "What I reject, out of hand, is the idea that by five to four, judges can rewrite the Constitution, but it takes two-thirds of the House, two-thirds of the Senate and three-fourths of the states to equal five judges.
“It would be a violation of the social compact of this country for the Supreme Court to decide otherwise and would lead, I hope, the two other branches to correct the court."
It’s easy to imagine that Newt’s definition of ‘national will’ actually means whatever the Ultra-Conservative-controlled Congress and White House deem necessary, much like the classic Republican use of ‘special interests’ to mean such powerful political blocs as minorities and the poor.
The good news is that the Supreme Court is likely to overturn the Military Commissions Act, which flies in the face of the document that the Bush cabal so despises: the Constitution of the United States. Sen. Arlen Spector (R-PA), who voted for the bill but authored an amendment that would have sustained habeas corpus writes for aliens had it been adopted, said that, “The Constitution is explicit in the statement that habeas corpus may be suspended only with rebellion or invasion. We do not have a rebellion or an invasion,” and that, “Surely as we are standing here, if this bill is passed and habeas corpus is stricken, we'll be back on this floor again” (following a judicial reversal of the bill).
How have things deteriorated to the point that the Supreme Court, a group of nine, wealthy elites, the very body that put Bush in the White House, is now the last bastion and safeguard of the principles on which this country was founded? Complacency stalks the land…
Click here to read Obama's entire statement.
The march toward a one party government that scoffs at the ideals of democracy and federalism goes on, with Republicans apparently willing to give the President a king’s powers without second thought. Conservative disdain for the separation of powers, judicial review and the courts in general is disturbing, to say the least, but Americans’ willingness to continue to turn a blind eye to the steady erosion of Constitutional rights is something far worse. How far will we let them go?
A Democrat-controlled Congress would still be far from the ideal cure for America’s ills. And it’s not as if a President Hilary Clinton or Joseph Biden would be content to undo the absurd power their office has been granted in the past five years. However, a legislature that serves as more than the President’s rubber stamp and a President whose main priorities aren’t the consolidation of power and the increase of corporate wealth would go a long way to breath some much needed life into our fading republic. The next five weeks are going to be interesting and anxious times. What happens on November 7 may well determine whether America can remain the place we need it to be.
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