With this parody of The Sopranos finale, the effort to humanize Hillary Clinton takes a weird turn:
2008: The L.A. Times launches political blog
The Times' bloggers are Don Frederick and Andrew Malcolm. So, one professional journalist and one ideological conservative, about the best we can expect from the corporate media. Weirdly, there are links to the campaign sites of Tom Tancredo, Bill Richardson, Mike Gravel, Duncan Hunter, James Gilmore, Joseph Biden, Chris Dodd, Dennis Kucinich, Sam Brownback and Rudy Giuliani, but not to Mitt Romney, John McCain, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton or John Edwards. <http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/>
This Can't Be Good News Department: Lawrence Livermore seeks permit to release uranium dust into the air
A permit application has been filed with the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District (valleyair.org - 559-230-6000) by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to release as much as 450 pounds of radioactive uranium dust into the air every year.
See Tastes like burning by Mark Drolette in the Sacramento News and Review for 2007-06-14 and Uranium Dust by John Upton in the 2007-04-11 edition of Tracy Press.
"Depleted" uranium weapons are radioactive, and as such are considered to be weapons of mass destruction, illegal under international law. For more info: Axis of Logic.
Four hundred and fifty pounds doesn't sound like a lot. Maybe it could just be buried in Laboratory director George H. Miller's back yard.
We've stopped these irresponsible morons before. Let's do it again.
See Tastes like burning by Mark Drolette in the Sacramento News and Review for 2007-06-14 and Uranium Dust by John Upton in the 2007-04-11 edition of Tracy Press.
"Depleted" uranium weapons are radioactive, and as such are considered to be weapons of mass destruction, illegal under international law. For more info: Axis of Logic.
Four hundred and fifty pounds doesn't sound like a lot. Maybe it could just be buried in Laboratory director George H. Miller's back yard.
We've stopped these irresponsible morons before. Let's do it again.
2008: A big man for a big job
Anybody who still doubts Fred Thompson will be the next president should consider this: he's 6'7", and the tallest candidate almost always wins.
This held true even in 2000, when 6'1" Al Gore ran against 5'11" George W. Bush. If you think back, you'll recall that Gore won.
Harder to explain is the outcome in 2004, when 6'4" John Kerry ran against Bush, but it has to be said in his defense that Kerry managed to overcome many advantages that year on the road to defeat (also, let's not forget that there were disputes about the vote in 2004, too [2004 United States presidential election controversy and irregularities], with the states of Florida and Ohio certifying returns that varied nearly 20% from exit polling [2004 United States presidential election controversy, exit polls]).
Parenthetically, at his August 2001 physical, Bush was supposedly 6' tall (Health and Medical History of George W. Bush), but the doctors probably just rounded up to make him seem more presidential. Medical spin. USA Today says that Bush is 5'11 3/4" (Time-tested formulas suggest both Bush and Kerry will win on Nov. 2) and Bush's much-discussed National Guard records listed him at 5'11" in his mid-20s. He doesn't appear to have grown any since then.
This held true even in 2000, when 6'1" Al Gore ran against 5'11" George W. Bush. If you think back, you'll recall that Gore won.
Harder to explain is the outcome in 2004, when 6'4" John Kerry ran against Bush, but it has to be said in his defense that Kerry managed to overcome many advantages that year on the road to defeat (also, let's not forget that there were disputes about the vote in 2004, too [2004 United States presidential election controversy and irregularities], with the states of Florida and Ohio certifying returns that varied nearly 20% from exit polling [2004 United States presidential election controversy, exit polls]).
Parenthetically, at his August 2001 physical, Bush was supposedly 6' tall (Health and Medical History of George W. Bush), but the doctors probably just rounded up to make him seem more presidential. Medical spin. USA Today says that Bush is 5'11 3/4" (Time-tested formulas suggest both Bush and Kerry will win on Nov. 2) and Bush's much-discussed National Guard records listed him at 5'11" in his mid-20s. He doesn't appear to have grown any since then.
The fight against terrorism is not a war
Lee Casey, a veteran of the Reagan and first Bush Justice departments, is quoted in the WSJ (Terror War Legal Edifice Weakens) as saying the next president, whether a Republican or a Democrat, will be hard-pressed to relinquish the executive powers Mr. Bush has fought so hard to assert. "I don't think the next president will have much of a choice, whatever his or her instincts may be," Mr. Casey told the Journal. "You are either engaged in an armed conflict," where a country can use military force against its enemies, "or the laws of war don't apply."
But the laws of war don't apply to the effort to counter the scourge of terrorism. Many of us who have opposed as mistaken the "war on terror" in general -- in some cases since 9/12 -- and the invasion of Iraq in particular argue that "war" was never a useful organizing metaphor for combating terrorism. In the wake of 9/11, it would have been far more effective to treat Al-Qaeda and their ilk as international criminals instead of buying into their self-glorification as warriors. Had we spent our $billions arming and training the world's police departments instead of destabilizing great swatches of the Middle East and Southeast Asia, we'd not only be more secure, but we would have a lot more friends in the international community.
And we would not have unloosed the pernicious notion of preemptive war (if ever there was a policy guaranteed to come back to haunt us, that's it).
Undoing the mistakes of the Bush administration is obviously a herculean undertaking. But if s/he does nothing else, the next president must begin by ratcheting down the war rhetoric as a first step toward implementing a more effective policy against terrorism. If we are ever going to hunt down, disarm, prosecute, punish and neutralize the criminals who engage in terrorist activities, we need to be able to think more clearly about who they are -- murderers, extortionists, gangsters, lunatics -- and what tools -- intelligence, deterrence, incarceration -- will be most effective against them.
The Founders anticipated that there would be presidents who would overreach, who would attempt to wrest the powers of government away from legislators, but they never dreamed there would be legislatures as docious as the last several congresses. We still lack congressional leaders, especially in the Senate, with the spine to defend legislative prerogatives, but at least there is a growing perception, especially in the House, about the need to restore historical Constitutional restraints on the executive and to redress the balance of power between the branches.
The reason I worry about Hillary Clinton's candidacy is that she accepts the primacy of the executive as a given. Obviously, in a race between Sen. Clinton and Gingrich or some Thompson or other, there will be no alternative but to go all out for the Democrat. But we need to recognize that, should she win, she may be a disappointment to progressives because of her reluctance "to relinquish the executive powers Mr. Bush has fought so hard to assert."
But the laws of war don't apply to the effort to counter the scourge of terrorism. Many of us who have opposed as mistaken the "war on terror" in general -- in some cases since 9/12 -- and the invasion of Iraq in particular argue that "war" was never a useful organizing metaphor for combating terrorism. In the wake of 9/11, it would have been far more effective to treat Al-Qaeda and their ilk as international criminals instead of buying into their self-glorification as warriors. Had we spent our $billions arming and training the world's police departments instead of destabilizing great swatches of the Middle East and Southeast Asia, we'd not only be more secure, but we would have a lot more friends in the international community.
And we would not have unloosed the pernicious notion of preemptive war (if ever there was a policy guaranteed to come back to haunt us, that's it).
Undoing the mistakes of the Bush administration is obviously a herculean undertaking. But if s/he does nothing else, the next president must begin by ratcheting down the war rhetoric as a first step toward implementing a more effective policy against terrorism. If we are ever going to hunt down, disarm, prosecute, punish and neutralize the criminals who engage in terrorist activities, we need to be able to think more clearly about who they are -- murderers, extortionists, gangsters, lunatics -- and what tools -- intelligence, deterrence, incarceration -- will be most effective against them.
The Founders anticipated that there would be presidents who would overreach, who would attempt to wrest the powers of government away from legislators, but they never dreamed there would be legislatures as docious as the last several congresses. We still lack congressional leaders, especially in the Senate, with the spine to defend legislative prerogatives, but at least there is a growing perception, especially in the House, about the need to restore historical Constitutional restraints on the executive and to redress the balance of power between the branches.
The reason I worry about Hillary Clinton's candidacy is that she accepts the primacy of the executive as a given. Obviously, in a race between Sen. Clinton and Gingrich or some Thompson or other, there will be no alternative but to go all out for the Democrat. But we need to recognize that, should she win, she may be a disappointment to progressives because of her reluctance "to relinquish the executive powers Mr. Bush has fought so hard to assert."
Rust never sleeps
In case you're under the misapprehension that the neocons learned anything from their Iraq imbroglio, think again: "The Case for Bombing Iran: I hope and pray that President Bush will do it" by Norman Podhoretz on the WSJ's website.
American Civ: Political Assassination --
The Violent Side of American Political Life
"No other country with a population of over 50 million has had as high a number of political assassinations or attempted assassinations....Why has the United States, with its commitment to rule of law and due process, been so susceptible to assassination?...The most troubling issue raised by political assassinations is whether they alter the course of history." -- from the website. <http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/>
The Press: Can the L.A. Times be saved? (Central Library 2007-06-05)
The Los Angeles Times has struggled to fight declining circulation and to make up for it by capturing readers on line. Times publisher David Hiller, editor Jim O'Shea, innovation editor (egad!) Russ Stanton, and LATimes.com executive editor Meredith Artley mull over the decline of an essential civic institution Tuesday at the L.A. Public Library. Free; 7 p.m.; 630 W. 5th St., L.A.; 213-228-7000. <http://www.lapl.org>
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