News Items

Powell Playing Quiet Role in Bolton Battle

Bolton's Biggest Problem
David Ignatius

Bush Backs His U.N. Nominee, but Powell Warns of Volatility
Douglas Jehl

2 Evangelicals Want to Strip Courts' Funds
"Very few people know this, that the Congress can simply disenfranchise a court," Dobson said. "They don't have to fire anybody or impeach them or go through that battle. All they have to do is say the 9th Circuit doesn't exist anymore, and it's gone."

GOP Sets Up Filibuster Showdown
"Republicans carefully chose their nominees for a Senate confrontation that could occur sometime in the next month, assuming that they can put Democrats, who pride themselves on appealing to female and black voters, on the defensive if they attempt again to deny two women, one of them an African American, an up-or-down vote.
But Democrats long have argued that race and sex aside, Owen and Brown are conservative ideologues whose views and writings make them unfit to serve in such sensitive, lifetime positions. Brown has said active governments lead to "a debased, debauched culture." Owen signed an opinion on abortion that drew a sharp rebuke from the man who now is Bush's attorney general, Alberto R. Gonzales."

Judicial Insanity
Charles Krauthammer
"Let us have a bit of sanity here. One of the glories of American democracy is the independence of the judiciary. The deference and reverence it enjoys are priceless assets. The Supreme Court is the only institution that could have ended the Bush-Gore fiasco of 2000 with the immediacy, finality and, yes, legitimacy that it did. (True, liberals, who for half a century employed judicial fiat to enact their political agenda, have been whining for five years about this particular judicial exercise. But the critical point is that, whine or not, the ruling was accepted as law.) Moreover, and more generally, judicial independence and supremacy are necessary checks on the tyranny of popular majorities."

Private Accounts, Public Accountability
Martin Mayer
"Most people concerned about the security of their pensions in a world of personal accounts worry that the money would be invested in an Enron. As advertised, diversification would take care of most of that problem. But you can't diversify time. If President Bush's proposal had been in effect for the last 30 years, an American retiring in the spring of 2000 - having earned an average income and built an average personal account in index funds - would retain a personal account at least a third larger than the personal account of his younger brother, who had the same income and the same investments but retired in the spring of 2003."

Passing the Buck
Paul Krugman

So There Really Was a Vast Right Wing Conspiracy

Hilary has been vindicated!

In an interview with an ABC-Chicago reporter, republican Congressman Henry Hyde admitted that the republican party went after Clinton to get even with Democrats for the impeachment of Nixon over Watergate.

"The veteran DuPage County congressman acknowledged that Republicans went after Clinton in part to enact revenge against the Democrats for President Richard Nixon 25 years earlier."

Yeah, that's the kind of mature, stable leader we want, petulant and petty, more interested in revenge and punishment rather than what's in the best interest of our country. And to think, these petty, small-minded men now run everything.

An Exercise in Ineffectual Insincerity

In a laughable attempt to have their "lack of ethics" rules rammed down our throats, House republicans agreed to investigate Tom Delay's ethics violations of the House Dems agreed to accept rule changes that would allow the republicans to dismiss ethics charges if a vote in the Ethics Committee was evenly split along party lines. Considering there are 5 Democrats and 5 republicans on the House Ethics Committee, the Democrats in an uncharacteristically wise move declined obviously insincere offer.

Miscelleaneous and Sundry news items

Here are some of the news articles that I'm reading today:

American Values

Unequal Payday

Faith Based Pandering
Some interesting quotes from this article:

"I am pausing now to wonder if the phrase "people of faith" is meant to include Muslims with several wives, Hindus with several deities or even the odd person here and there who believes, as I am sometimes tempted to, that God can be found in a pint of Ben & Jerry's Coffee Heath Bar Crunch. But I think somehow that "people of faith" is meant to embrace only conservative Christians and maybe Orthodox Jews, who are sometimes lumped together as Judeo-Christians. People of faith, you may rest assured, are people of their faith. All others need not apply."

...

"The invocation of the phrase "people of" is no different when preceding "faith" than it is when preceding "color." It's a bold signal of mushy thinking, a corralling of people who have nothing in common other than a perceived -- and often fictionalized -- enemy. "People of faith" mischaracterizes what the political debate is all about."

Delay's Dodge

The Silencer

What I Didn't see in Iraq
"Everything we have been told about Iraq by the Bush administration has either been an outright lie or overwhelmingly false."

Smoke Gets in Our News

Save Phil!!

You absolutely MUST check out this site!

Missed chances

Well, it seems as though I have missed a lot of chances to voice my opinion over the past few weeks. A lot has happened---the death of Terry Schiavo, the death of Pope John Paul II, the election of Pope Benedict XVI, Tom Delay's continued scandal with his distinct lack of ethics, the passage of the Bankruptcy Bill that disproportionately marginalizes average Americans and keeps them beholden to their debts indefinitely while giving greater opportunity for irresponsibility to the wealthiest people in the country---the list goes on and on.

How could I have failed to comment on all of this? Well, all I can say is my full-time job, (the one that pays my bills and keeps me from starving) has kept me on my toes recently. But rest assured that I have no intention of giving up this blog or my right to broadcast my opinion across the blogosphere. Like it or not, I am here to stay, so stay tuned for more indepth coverage of future events. Until then, here are some random thoughts on recent events.

Terry Schiavo---May she find the peace in death she did not have in her last days. And shame, shame, shame on the rebuplicans, the President, Congress and the religious right for using her to forward a political agenda.

Tom pay-no-attention-to-the-crook-behind-the-curtain Delay---Does he really think people will believe that his lack of ethics, morals and character is really the fault of the Democrats? Hint to Delay: The Devil made me do it didn't work too well for Charles Manson. He's still in prison as I recall. You may want to re-think your "the Democrats are to blame" defense and start taking some responsibility for your actions.

Pope John Paul II---May he rest in peace. He did a lot of good for the Catholic Church, despite the fact that I disagreed with JPII on several issues.

Pope Benedict the XVI---Not my first choice for Pope, but I am withholding judgement on him, for now. I had hoped that the Church would show an unprecedented display of openess by choosing a Pope from North Africa or Latin America, someplace that does not have a lot of political clout but where the Church has a very strong presence. I thought that it would be an opportunity for the Church to really lead the world towards a more just society by truly bringing these areas under their sphere of influence and bringing attention to areas that have been unduly affected by the spread of AIDS, poverty and globalization. But I guess that was too much to hope for.

Bankruptcy Bill---see paragraph 1 above...also, I am very disappointed in the 73 House Democrats who voted for this bill. If the Democrats would trutly stick together, they would find that more of the bills the republicans are trying to ramrod through Congress would fail. Hello, guys and gals, the only way we can show the American people that we are on their side is to vote on their side.

I know that there are other issues that I am leaving out, but not to worry. I will get to them soon.

CH-CH-CH-CHANGES

As you can see, my blog has recently received a facelift. I became bored with the old format and decided that it needed a refresher.

Ok, everybody all at once:

"ooooooh! ahhhhh!"

Please stay tuned for more political and opinion updates...

Bagdad Burning

Check out BuzzFlash.com for information on this book, "Bagdad Burning:Girl Blog from Iraq" written by an anonymous 20 something Iraqi woman known as Riverbend.

I haven't read it, but I think it would be facinating to hear an Iraqi point of view of our war in their country.

DeLay-ed Connections

The DCCC has an interesting site that makes interesting connections about Tom Delay's ethics violations. It is extremely informative and slightly entertaining. I encourage you to check it out!