13 posts tagged “politics”

Way to go SCOTUS (pdf link). 

And way to go Glenn Greenwald for the fabu write up on it.

Snips: 

The Court's ruling was grounded in its recognition that the guarantee of habeas corpus was so central to the Founding that it was one of the few individual rights included in the Constitution even before the Bill of Rights was enacted. As the Court put it: "the Framers viewed unlawful restraint as a fundamental precept of liberty, and they understood the writ of habeas corpus as a vital instrument to secure that freedom." The Court noted that freedom from arbitrary or baseless imprisonment was one of the core rights established by the 13th Century Magna Carta, and it is the writ of habeas corpus which is the means for enforcing that right. Once habeas corpus is abolished -- as the Military Commissions Act sought to do -- then we return to the pre-Magna Carta days where the Government is free to imprison people with no recourse.

...

The Supreme Court today did what the Founders envisioned it should do: it protected our basic constitutional guarantees from erosion and assault by a corrupt majority within the political class. In so doing, the Court took a mild though important step in reversing some of the worst and most tyrannical excesses of the last seven years.

...

Three of the five Justices in the majority -- John Paul Stevens (age 88), Ruth Bader Ginsburg (age 75) and David Souter (age 68) -- are widely expected by court observers to retire or otherwise leave the Court in the first term of the next President. By contrast, the four judges who dissented -- Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, John Roberts and Sam Alito -- are expected to stay right where they are for many years to come.

John McCain has identified Roberts and Alito as ideal justices of the type he would nominate, while Barack Obama has identified Stephen Breyer, David Souter and Ginsberg (all in the majority today). It's not hyperbole to say that, from Supreme Court appointments alone, our core constitutional protections could easily depend upon the outcome of the 2008 election.

"I have a theory about revolutions. I've always believed that you can't force a country to have a revolution, and then expect democracy to stick. Yes, you can launch a coup, topple a government, and execute a Saddam, but for a revolution to stick -- for democracy to survive -- a country's citizens need to be responsible for, and vested in, the social change happening around them. Otherwise they have no ownership of it, as it wasn't their revolution."
- John Aravosis, Salon.com 10/8/07

Yes, he's talking about LGBT issues and the anti-discrimination bill that is going to die in Congress b/c politicians are too pig-headed to actually practise compromise politics.  But he's also talking about the larger issues, the fact that people need to take an active part in their governments - especially the theoretical democracy we have here in the US (we actually live in a republic but that's another post) - otherwise the democracy doesn't work.  If our elected representatives don't know what we're thinking or how we feel, then we wind up where we are now, with them doing what they want regardless of what the majority of the population wants.  And how is that different from a theocracy or a dictatorship?

Basically, what I'm attempting to wax poetic about with only one cup of coffee in me, is that you have to do more than vote (though for it to work properly, the majority of the population has to vote, something that hasn't happened in a long time).  The US government is based on the idea that we not only elect people who reflect the majority opinions and values (2 different things), but also that we continually tell our representatives what we're thinking and what we feel about the issues.  For the most part, the majority of the population of the US (notice I don't use America -  America is not a country) is tolerant (if not accepting), moderate and willing to compromise.  Why aren't our elected representatives the same?  Mostly because those tolerant, moderate, compromising people either don't vote, or if they do vote, they don't follow-up after the fact by contacting their representatives to let them know what they should do.

Those we elect work for us.  Even if you didn't vote for them, they still work for you.  Think about your boss - if you're not doing what she wants you to do, don't you hear about it?  I know I do.  So why wouldn't you do the same for your staff?  Because that's what all our elected representatives are - our staff.  They're there to ensure that what we want done gets done.  Sadly, I think we've become pretty lousy managers.

China regulates reincarnation
Snip:
In one of history's more absurd acts of totalitarianism, China has banned Buddhist monks in Tibet from reincarnating without government permission. According to a statement issued by the State Administration for Religious Affairs, the law, which goes into effect next month and strictly stipulates the procedures by which one is to reincarnate, is "an important move to institutionalize management of reincarnation."

So sad.  And so funny at the same time.  How, exactly, does a government regulate reincarnation?

goes to Garrison Keillor:

"No wonder they called him Turd Blossom.  Karl Rove could put fecal matter on his lapel and call it a boutonniere."

(link goes to Salon.com.  View the ad or pay for a year.  It's SOOOOOO worth it.)

I'll post a lyric of the day when I get to work, but this was in the news this morning and just says it all about how our administration thinks they can do what they want:

"Even Paris Hilton had to go to jail.  No one in this administration should be above the law." - Senator Dick Durbin

From this week's Rolling Stone

The gap between the nation's CEOs and average workers is now ten times greater than it was a generation ago.  And while Bush's tax cuts shaved only a few hundred dollars off the tax bills of most Americans, they saved the richest one percent more than $44,000 on average.  In fact, once all of Bush's tax cuts take effect, it is estimated that those with incomes of more than $200,000 a year - the richest five percent of the population - will pocket almost half of the money.  Those who make less than $75,000 a year - eighty percent of America - will receive barely a quarter of the cuts.
...
According to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, the hourly wage of the average American non-supervisory worker is actually lower, adjusted for inflation, than it was in 1970.  Meanwhile, CEO pay has soared - from less than thirty times the average wage to almost 300 times the typical worker's pay.
...
Although corporate executives have always had the power to pay themselves lavishly, their self-enrichment was limited by what Lucian Bebchuk, Jessie Fried and David Walker - the leading experts on exploding executive paychecks - call the "outrage constraint."  What they mean is that a conspicuously self-dealing CEO would be forced to moderate his greed by unions, the press and politicians:  The social climate itself condemned executive salaries that seem immodest.
Lately, however, we have experienced a death of outrage.  Thanks to the right's well-funded and organized effort, corporate executives now feel no shame in lining their pockets with huge bonuses and gigantic stock options.
...
Under Bush, the economy has been growing at a reasonable pace for the past three years.  But most Americans have failed to benefit from that growth.  All indicators of the economic status of ordinary Americans - poverty rates, family incomes, the number of people without health insurance - show that most of us were worse off in 2005 than we were in 2000, and there's little reason to think that 2006 was much better.
...
Finally, there's the government's most direct method of affecting incomes: taxes.  In this arena, Bush has made sure that the rich pay lower taxes than they have in decades.  According to the latest estimates, once the Bush tax cuts have taken full effect, more than a third of the cash will go to people making more than $500,000 a year - a mere 0.8 percent of the population.
...
Furthermore, the administration has engaged in a systematic campaign of disinformation about whose taxes have been cut.  Indeed, one of Bush's first actions after taking office was to tell the Treasury Department to stop producing estimates of how tax cuts are distributed by income class - that is, information on who gained how much.  Instead, official reports on taxes under Bush are textbook examples of how to mislead with statistics, presenting a welter of confusing numbers that convey the false impression that the tax cuts favor middle-class families, not the wealthy.

Basically, what it means that if this hadn't been allowed to go on, I might be able to sell my house and move on with my life.  If he hadn't been so concerned with the richest of the rich instead of those that actually make this country work, the misperception of a bad economy (or maybe it's an accurate perception) and the general malaise felt by people in my income bracket would be less and people would be more willing to buy. 

Read the whole article.  Be outraged.  Write your elected officials.  Maybe we can actually get the momentum to switch back to us working stiffs...

Mostly because the political ads are gone.  And Foxtrot today hits it exactly on the head.

Maureen Dowd interviewed Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert for Rolling Stone.  I love both of them; ok I love all 3 of them.  Read part of the interview here. 

I think this is the scariest thing I've seen in awhile:

An appellate court said Maryland's rape law is clear -- no doesn't mean no when it follows a yes and intercourse has begun.

Hooooollllllyyyy crap.  Seriously?  If a woman says yes, then it gets ugly and she changes her mind it's not rape?  What the fuck?  Of course, I was having a conversation with a friend yesterday who said that it really still is a man's world.  I disagreed then.  Now?  I'm not so sure.
Here's the actual decision  (pdf)

It's a scary scary time to be alive.  Keith Olbermann explains why:

For, on this first full day that the Military Commissions Act is in force, we now face what our ancestors faced, at other times of exaggerated crisis and melodramatic fear-mongering:

A government more dangerous to our liberty, than is the enemy it claims to protect us from.

Please, on November 7, vote.  It won't take the chief criminal out of office, but we can shift the balance of Congress back to a place that may be able to help curb his penchant for crime.