I don’t know precisely what to call this. A sad irony? A mindless contradiction? Sickening? Here we have a guy with a “Commies aren’t cool” T-Shirt on, and yet he is engaging in the most brazen form of state-worship I could imagine - short of blowing the president, perhaps. This is why I can’t stand conservatism - “neo” or “paleo”, it doesn’t matter. ...
When I read this article today, I couldn’t help thinking to myself that this tune sounds a little bit familiar. Then I remembered President Bush saying this just slightly more than 3 years ago: Today Saddam Hussein has the scientists and infrastructure for a nuclear weapons program, and has illicitly sought to purchase the equipment needed to enrich uranium for a nuclear weapon. Should his regime acquire fissile material, it would be able to build a nuclear weapon within a year."Dee doo doo doo, dee da da da" is all I want to say to you. ...
City Councilman Mike Johnson was re-elected in my district (District 8) with more than 70 percent of the vote, defeating Al Sharpton protege, teenage Reverend Jarrett Maupin. Maupin, who was featured in a recent New Times article which leveled charges of institutional racism against my alma mater, Brophy College Prep, was apparently a Republican when he was at Brophy. Today he heads Sharpton’s National Action Network in Arizona and has a show on Air America in Phoenix. UPDATE (December 22, 2006): A lot of the links above have gone bad. Confirmation that Maupin was in the Young Republicans at Brophy can be found on this Brophy graduate’s blog.
The Supreme Court left the door open for Michael Newdow to bring his case again, since they threw out his case on the basis of his lack of standing (he is not the legal guardian of his daughter) and refused to address the specifics of his case. The District Court rightly relied on the precedent of the 9th Circuit’s previous ruling in his case, and entered an injunction against Elk Grove schools to prohibit the use of the “under God” language. Newdow refiled the case including two additional families as plaintiffs, where there’s no issue of standing to allow the case to be thrown out on a similar technicality this time. This will go back to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which will most likely rule the same way (thus making “under God” unconstitutional throughout the 9th Circuit), then get appealed again to the U.S. Supreme Court, where we will find out what John G. Roberts really meant when he said (near the end of Day 2 of his confirmation hearings) that he believes that the First Amendment protects the rights of nonbelievers as well as one religious sect against another (unlike Scalia, who said in his dissent in McCreary that government can endorse belief over nonbelief): DURBIN: Let me just wrap this up by asking – I think you’ve alluded to this – is it your belief that what we are trying to establish in the constitutional protection on the exercise of religion is not only to protect minorities, religious minorities, but also nonbelievers? ROBERTS: Yes. The court’s decisions in that area are quite clear. And I think the framers’ intent was as well; that it was not their intent just to have a protection for denominational discrimination. It was their intent to leave this as an area of privacy apart – a conscience from which the government would not intrude. ...
Today’s Washington Post reports that The Pentagon has drafted a revised doctrine for the use of nuclear weapons that envisions commanders requesting presidential approval to use them to preempt an attack by a nation or a terrorist group using weapons of mass destruction. The draft also includes the option of using nuclear arms to destroy known enemy stockpiles of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons. The new doctrine has not yet been approved by Rumsfeld. Designed for Iran and North Korea? ...
Clint Bolick and Alan Dershowitz have written two very different–yet only occasionally directly contradictory–rememberances of Chief Justice William Rehnquist. Bolick, in a piece distributed by the Goldwater Institute and published in the Arizona Republic, describes Rehnquist as a conservative, moderating influence on a liberal court, advocating state’s rights, school choice, and presiding over a court that has been “usually (though less frequently lately) siding with individual liberty over state power.” Dershowitz, on the other hand, in a piece published on the Huffington Post, describes Rehnquist as a bigot who enjoyed racist and anti-Semitic jokes, who defended the “separate but equal” doctrine in Plessy v. Ferguson as a law clerk for Justice Jackson, and who began his legal career as a Republican thug who obstructed African-American and Hispanic voters at Phoenix polling places. Bolick gives a more nuanced view that actually addresses more of Rehnquist’s work on the court (though less than I would have expected), while Dershowitz emphasizes evidence of Rehnquist’s personal character which mostly derives from before he was on the Supreme Court. I was surprised that Bolick didn’t mention some of the recent cases (such as Raich v. Ashcroft and Kelo v. New London) where Rehnquist voted for liberty (and was unfortunately in the minority). Yet I have no doubt that there is accuracy in both descriptions. Bolick has in the past seen people as defenders of liberty who have done much to destroy it, such as former Attorney General John Ashcroft. Dershowitz alternatively takes courageous stands in defense of liberty and crazy stands which oppose it. One area where I was less than impressed with Rehnquist was on religious liberty, specifically for nonbelievers. He (like the majority) went the wrong way on Elk Grove v. Newdow (the Pledge of Allegiance “under God” case) and (unlike the majority) the wrong way on the McCreary County v. ACLU case (Ten Commandments display in a Kentucky courtroom which included a written statement that the display was “in remembrance and honor of Jesus Christ, the Prince of Ethics”).
I’ve become somewhat of a fetishist regarding President Bush’s speeches, starting from around January, 2002, up to the present day. They’re all available at the White House web site in transcript form, with many also in video. For some reason I find it fascinating to watch his mind-numbingly repetitive talking points evolve over time. It’s also fascinating to read his stammering–faithfully transcribed, mind you–when he gets asked that oh-so-rare “tough” question by one of the press corp. Reading his words like that, you wonder (or I do, anyway) why his lies weren’t immediately clear to everyone. So I found this little Daily Show video essay particularly enjoyable. It’s hard to imagine a more brilliantly funny parsing of presidental spin. I keep half-seriously wondering when that show is going to get yanked off the air and Jon Stewart sent to Guantanamo Bay. ...
Ever been walking along somewhere, when suddenly you wonder, “If the bomb went off now, would I be vaporized instantly, or would I be one of the unlucky ones? Could I ‘duck and cover’ and be okay?" Well, wonder no more! This site has come to your rescue! Now you can know your minimum safe distance from, e.g., a 50 Megaton thermonuclear detonation. In my case, if we assume the Capitol building as Ground Zero, then out here in Reston, VA, I’m just outside the “widespread destruction” radius, but well within the “3rd degree burns” radius. Uh oh. Or, just for fun, plug in the historical values for the Hiroshima and Nagasaki fission blasts (a quaint 0.15 and 0.22 Mtons, respectively). You’ll gain a new appreciation of Seizo Yamada’s picture of the Hiroshima mushroom cloud, taken at about 7 km. Or, perhaps even better, this shot of the “Buster Dog” troop test in Nevada, 1951. These guys are roughly 13 km away. ...