Justice at Stake: Ensuring That Prisoners in the U.S. Are Never ‘Disappeared’- by Shahid Buttar, posted at The Peace Tree
Hadrian’s Forum: “The American founding fathers were well versed in Roman history. People such as Washington, Madison and Jefferson, were all very aware of the evils done by Sulla. When they designed the constitution, and ensured a separation of powers, they were specifically thinking about how they would prevent the rise of an American Sulla.”
Paul Krugman: All the President’s Enablers – by Paul Krugman, posted at Welcome to Pottersville
“I don’t know why the op-ed article that General Petraeus published in The Washington Post on Sept. 26, 2004, hasn’t gotten more attention. After all, it puts to rest any notion that the general stands above politics: I don’t think it’s standard practice for serving military officers to publish opinion pieces that are strikingly helpful to an incumbent, six weeks before a national election. In the article, General Petraeus told us that “Iraqi leaders are stepping forward, leading their country and their security forces courageously.” And those security forces were doing just fine: their leaders “are displaying courage and resilience” and “momentum has gathered in recent months.”In other words, General Petraeus, without saying anything falsifiable, conveyed the totally misleading impression, highly convenient for his political masters, that victory was just around the corner. And the best guess has to be that he’ll do the same thing three years later.”
Exec pleads guilty in Iraq contractor bribery scheme – As the New York Times reports in its Saturday edition, at least eight people connected to former Halliburton subsidiary KBR (formerly Kellogg, Brown and Root), so far receiving $20 billion for war-related services, have been implicated in an investigation into kickbacks and bribes stemming from a scheme to overcharge for freight services to Iraq. Kevin Andre Smoot, managing director for KBR subcontractor Eagle Global Logistics Incorporated, pleaded guilty to dispensing the bribes along with lying to investigators.
Personally, I think government functions best when it’s in deadlock and accomplishes virtually nothing. In hindsight, I’m glad that Bill Frist and the Republicans failed to destroy the filibuster, as you probably were at the time.
napoleon, the 60 vote threshold used to be 66, and Democrats used the filibuster sparingly during that time. If the filibuster threshold was reduced to 55, I’d be against it.
The judges that were being nominated at that time were unacceptable. Not from a right/left perspective, but a competency perspective…I wrote about it back then a few different times. I’ll dig those up and post links.
I disagree with your accertion that deadlock equals a government the people benefit from. Your disillusionment with democratic government is a trademark of your political views, and I respect that.
Cindy Sheehan speaks…
SFGate