It’s been a busy couple of weeks around here and my blogging has dropped off by quite a bit – not that there’s anyone making note of that or anything, but some spammers may be slightly disappointed. Nyah, etc. I’ve read 3 books in the last week or so, and hope to get around to reviewing them. I’ve been busy being team leader of something called “Inviting Team” at Holy Moly. More on that later. I’ve been keeping an eye on the news, but not blogging about it. There’s a lot going on at worked – swamped, job task list about…
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Salt Lake Tribune – Rosa Brooks: Did Bush fool us or did we fool ourselves? So why did it take us so long to notice? Someday, historians will ponder our strange collective passivity in the face of Bush-Cheney madness. Why did the editorial boards of our major newspapers either parrot the administration line or raise only muted criticism on so many issues, and for so long? Where were the tough journalistic questions? Why didn’t more members of Congress protest the administration’s blatantly unjustified policies and transparent constitutional outrages? For that matter, when Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, John Ashcroft and countless…
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Bush urges resolve on Iraq war – Los Angeles Times West Virginia is a once-reliably Democratic state that for the last two presidential elections has been central to Bush’s victories, and Wednesday marked the fourth Independence Day he has visited the state since taking office. But even here, where he won repeated rounds of applause in a gigantic hangar just completed for a new detachment of C-5 Galaxy cargo planes, there were hundreds of empty seats behind a towering American flag. Offering a history lesson on the 231st anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence from Britain, Bush…
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Progressive Political News and Information: Nevada Thunder Frank Rich of the New York Times (paywall) “When The Vice President Does It, That Means It’s Not Illegal” Even now, few have made the connection between this month’s Cheney flap and the larger scandal. That larger scandal is to be found in what the vice president did legally under the executive order early on rather than in his more recent rejection of its oversight rules. Timing really is everything. By March 2003, this White House knew its hype of Saddam’s nonexistent nuclear arsenal was in grave danger of being exposed. The order…
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A Decision Made Largely Alone President Bush limited his deliberations over commuting the jail term of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby to a few close aides, opting not to consult with the Justice Department and rebuffing efforts by close friends to lobby on Libby’s behalf, administration officials and people close to Bush said yesterday. Let’s see… on that short list would be Cheney, Rove, and maybe Barney. Possibly Laura, if she can take time off from her “No Regrets Tour.” Bush listens to no one else except that voice in his head that keeps telling him he’s doing God’s work. January…
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McClatchy: Bush Wrong to Blame Iraq Woes Mainly on Al-Qaeda NEW YORK For the past week, E&P has noted the Bush administration’s rising use of blaming much of the insurgency in Iraq on al-Qaeda operatives. Some news outlets have gone all along with this, others not. We pointed out that McClatchy Newspapers seemed to be questioning this trend.”We cannot attribute all the violence in Iraq to al Qaida,” retired Army Maj. Gen. John Batiste, who commanded the 1st Infantry Division in Iraq before becoming an opponent of Bush’s strategy there, told the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday. “Al Qaida…
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Emanuel seeks to cut funding for Cheney’s office, home | Chicago Tribune WASHINGTON—Responding to claims by Vice President Dick Cheney that his office is exempt from disclosing information about what it has classified as secret, Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) said Tuesday he will try to cut off the $4.8 million needed annually to run Cheney’s office and home.Last week, Cheney claimed he is not bound to disclose some national security requirements because, as president of the Senate, he is not part of the executive branch. On Tuesday, a Cheney spokesman accused House Democrats of playing politics.The controversy stems from an…
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Salt Lake Tribune – Conservative, good; Liberal, bad — or is it? According to several studies, including one at Media Matters, this country is leaning more and more to the “liberal” side of the spectrum, in spite of “the L word” being synonymous with “bad” and “weak.”
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JURIST – Paper Chase: House votes to reverse ban on overseas contraceptive aid The amendment would allow contraceptive aid to be given to nongovernmental agencies overseas, regardless of whether they promote or provide abortions.The aid ban, originally called the Mexico City Policy [Wikipedia backgrounder], was initially introduced under President Ronald Reagan in 1984 and required nongovernmental organizations to agree as a condition of their receipt of US funds that they would neither perform nor actively promote abortion as a method of family planning in other nations. This policy was in effect until it was rescinded on January 22, 1993. President…
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I’ve wondered about this before, but OneUtah.org’s post pointed out some recent studies that were collected about the huge disparity in health care, income, education, and plain old quality of life between “Blue” states and “Red” states, and offers an interesting analysis. First, some examples, none of which are going to be all that surprising, really. PERRspectives Blog: Health Care the Latest Red State Failure The same dismal pattern applies to a wide array of measures of social dysfunction and pathology. 8 of the top 10 states with the highest murder rates are squarely in Red America. 7 of the…