Category: Politics

Just when you think things couldn’t get any more absurd… The Memory Hole is reporting a truly Orwellian attempt at censorship by the Justice Department. The ACLU had filed some documents as part of its ongoing case against the Patriot Act, and the Justice Department – as is their right, apparently – chose to black out portions of the material before it was published. The supreme irony is that the text that they blacked out is taken from a Supreme Court decision:
“The danger to political dissent is acute where the Government attempts to act under so vague a concept as the power to protect ‘domestic security.’ Given the difficulty of defining the domestic security interest, the danger of abuse in acting to protect that interest becomes apparent.”
Fortunately, the court rejected this redaction. I would love to read an interview with the Justice Department staffer who tried to censor the words of the Supreme Court. What mental processes were involved, I wonder. Any lawyers out there?

Terry just posted a pointer to a piece by akiru:
Waking up to NPR, as you do, I heard an analyst use a golden phrase to describe half of the Congressional inactivity on fixing Social Security. Free Lunch Republicans. Gosh that’s beautiful. It’s got such wide applicability. Everytime they trot out the old chestnut about “Tax & Spend” Democrats, you can reply that only Free Lunch Republicans would imagine that you can keep spending money without having some first. It’s particularly exquisite because there is that brand of “Libertarian” Republican who is only too fond of reciting TANSTAAFL at the drop of a rhetorical hat.
Please feel free to disseminate widely.
And so I am. And so should you.

We finally saw F9/11 this morning. Brilliant agit-prop. I don’t care about categories: if critics complain that it isn’t a documentary because it doesn’t follow journalistic standards of being “fair and balanced” (oops….), then find another category for it. Emotional? Damn right! How do you talk to a woman who’s lost a son in Iraq without dealing in emotions? And if you can look at the broken bodies of Iraqi children and American soldiers without emotion, I pity you.
A lot of people have latched on to the wrong issues from this film. And many people are criticizing it without even seeing it. (See, for example, Rep. David Dreier on Real Time With Bill Maher.) Please, make up your own mind. If you haven’t seen it, I really think that you should. If you are from the USA, or the UK, or Australia, you need to see what is being done by your government in your name. It isn’t pretty. You’ll see blood, bodies, coffins, amputated limbs: that’s what war is all about. I hope you won’t use Barbara Bush’s beautiful mind excuse. In the words of Lou Reed, “This is no time for my country Right or Wrong/remember what that brought/…/This is no time to turn your back.

As a resident alien in the US, I don’t get to vote, or sit on juries, or various other stuff. And although it wouldn’t be illegal, I refrain from participating directly in US politics – I don’t contribute to or work for political campaigns, PACs, or advocacy groups.
Yesterday I was surprised and amused to receive an unsolicited piece of mail from the Bush campaign. It contained a letter, urging me (not once, but three times) to contribute “$1,000, $500, $250, $100, $50, $35, or even $25 today“. It spent more time blasting the spending of “hundreds of millions of dollars [by] liberal special interests” that it did actually talking about Bush’s policies and values. (And the policies weren’t particularly coherent: more “Cutting taxes”, not a word about the deficit, energy, or health care.) And it encouraged vandalism! The envelope contained a “W’04” bumper sticker which I was encouraged to put on my car “or that of a neighbor or family member who’s backing me.”
Compared with the up-beat Kerry-Edwards mailing that my wife received the same day, this Bush piece felt negative and threatened. Portraying the President as an underdog may be realistic, but (unlike us Brits) America seems to prefer winners. In this mailing, Bush certainly didn’t come across as a winner. And ranting about the “attacks” in Liberal “TV ads” is a bit rich, in view of the fact that media analysts rate the Bush campaign as the most consistently negative in modern history.
However there was one positive item: the letter concludes with the assurance that “This is my final political campaign”. Amen. And so this morning I compromised my principles (just a bit) by putting a Kerry/Edwards bumper sticker on my car. Hey, I can always say that one of my neighbors did it!

First, River has resumed her blog Baghdad Burning after a six week hiatus. As always, it’s both moving and informative, particularly her observations on the Christian churches in Baghdad. And then there’s the chilling note that:
Word on the street has it that email, internet access, and telephone calls are being monitored closely. We actually heard a couple of reports of people being detained due to the contents of their email. It’s a daunting thought and speaks volumes about our current ‘liberated’ status- and please don’t bother sending me a copy of the “Patriot Act”… this last year it has felt like everyone is under suspicion for something.
Second, Juan Cole wrote an excellent op-ed piece in the Washington Post about Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani and Muqtada al-Sadr. Essential reading.
Third, Terry Karney proposes a practical way of dealing with the al-Sadr situation. Of course the chances of it being followed are slim to none….
Fourth, while everyone’s attention is on Baghdad and Najaf, it appears that the British forces have abandoned Basra. With separatist elements emerging in the south as well as the Kurdish north, the whole thing could be about to break apart.

And finally, as I was checking out various US media websites to see if and how they were reporting all of this, I came across an MSNBC page with a small sidebar entitled “IRAQ: the human cost”. Naively, I thought that this might actually address the real human costs: all the casualties (coalition and Iraqi, military and civilian), the effect on health, education, and humanitarian services in Iraq, and so forth. Not a chance: it was simply about coalition casualties. Now I’m all in favour of recognizing the sacrifices of those who have died, but why limit it to Americans? I guess that, for MSNBC, Iraqis simply aren’t human.

From Terry comes word of a statement issued by the American Library Association.
Last week, the American Library Association learned that the Department of Justice asked the Government Printing Office Superintendent of Documents to instruct depository libraries to destroy five publications the Department has deemed not “appropriate for external use.” The Department of Justice has called for these five public documents, two of which are texts of federal statutes, to be removed from depository libraries and destroyed, making their content available only to those with access to a law office or law library.
The topics addressed in the named documents include information on how citizens can retrieve items that may have been confiscated by the government during an investigation. The documents to be removed and destroyed include: Civil and Criminal Forfeiture Procedure; Select Criminal Forfeiture Forms; Select Federal Asset Forfeiture Statutes; Asset forfeiture and money laundering resource directory; and Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act of 2000 (CAFRA).
I have two immediate reactions. First, what are the constitutional implications of the government attempting to restrict access to the text of Federal statutes? Secondly, this seems to reflect obsolete (20th century) thinking. Presumably all of these texts are on line somewhere. If not, I’m sure that there are plenty of law students and librarians ready to crank up the scanners. So what’s the point? (Maybe that’s the answer – it’s simply intended as a distraction.)
UPDATE: The ALA reports that the Justice Department has rescinded its request. See also this Boston Globe story. From reading the latter, this whole affair looks like a simple case of bureaucratic myopia, but the fact that no-one questioned it at the time says a lot about the prevailing climate.
Thanks to Steve E. for the pointer.

[REVISED] This got almost no coverage. In Lancaster Online (the web edition of the Lancaster, PA Intelligencer Journal; minimal registration required), there’s an account of President Bush meeting with a group of Old Order Amish. At the end of the meeting, Bush said, I trust God speaks through me. Without that, I couldn’t do my job.
“God speaks through me”?! Good grief. What un-Christian hubris. Even though I’m an atheist, I prefer what John Kerry said to the DNC: I don’t want to claim that God is on our side. As Abraham Lincoln told us, I want to pray humbly that we are on God’s side.

Just watched the final evening of the Democratic Convention (on C-SPAN, of course). I thought Kerry’s speech was excellent, capping a week of wonderful speeches from Clinton, Gore, Carter, Edwards, Cleland, and Obama. And Kerry’s daughters were fantastic, more than making up for Lieberman’s embarrassing performance.
Naturally enough, I want to share some of these moments with folks that I know missed the Convention. So why isn’t the DNC selling DVDs of the Convention Highlights on their website? Doesn’t this seem like an obvious fundraising opportunity?
And yes, I have emailed the DNC to suggest this.

The Current Electoral Vote Predictor integrates recent polling data to create a map of Electoral College votes. As with most successful sites, it concentrates on doing just one thing, and doing it extremely well. (Only omission is that there’s no RSS feed to alert me on updates.) Thanks to Tim for the link.

Per Terry, it seems that while the U.S.Army is so shortstaffed that they are recalling a 67 year old retired Colonel,
the Air Force and the Navy are doing fine. They are offering early outs (as much as 12 months) with no penalties to first term enlistees because they have (sit down, it’s a deusy†) 50,000 too many people.
(Of course it might help if those being reactivated could actually count on getting paid for their services.)
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† Transcribed from the (correct) original: no sic is required.