Joe's Dartblog: John Kerry on the Daily Kos
I certainly am disdainful of JK and the Daily Kos Blog, which seems to see it as their duty to censor 9/11 Truth. However, Joe's commentary is completely misplaced.... another dollop of the common punditry through a partisan lens.
Daily Kos is not at all an equivalent left wing Dem blog mirroring Free Republic on the Repub. right wing. I know I should outline my justification for this statement. Perhaps I will when time allows. For now, I'll toss out the idea that those of you paying attention complete understand that Joe's off base, and the rest of you probably wouldn't take the time to understand incorrectness of the Daily Kos / Free Republic comparison if explained.
Saturday, January 21, 2006
Northeast Intelligence Network - News
Northeast Intelligence Network - News
18 January 2006: Farris HASSAN, the 16-year-old Pine Crest student from Fort Lauderdale who left the comforts of his $4 million family home on December 11 for Iraq, claimed that he made the trip to put his lessons of his “immersion journalism” class into practice, and selected Iraq out of humanitarian concerns for the Iraqi people. His story quickly caught the attention of the media, who portrayed this young man as adventurous but naive, and his worried parents clueless to his intentions until they received an e-mail from him when he was in Kuwait. Upon his return home, he would certainly face the consequences from his concerned parents, despite his ostensibly altruistic intentions.
18 January 2006: Farris HASSAN, the 16-year-old Pine Crest student from Fort Lauderdale who left the comforts of his $4 million family home on December 11 for Iraq, claimed that he made the trip to put his lessons of his “immersion journalism” class into practice, and selected Iraq out of humanitarian concerns for the Iraqi people. His story quickly caught the attention of the media, who portrayed this young man as adventurous but naive, and his worried parents clueless to his intentions until they received an e-mail from him when he was in Kuwait. Upon his return home, he would certainly face the consequences from his concerned parents, despite his ostensibly altruistic intentions.
PBS | I, Cringely . January 19, 2006 - Hitler on Line One
PBS I, Cringely . January 19, 2006 - Hitler on Line One
Headline:
There's a Long History of Intercepting Foreign Communications, and Some of It May Have Been Legal
Headline:
There's a Long History of Intercepting Foreign Communications, and Some of It May Have Been Legal
More Attacks and Meetings on a Program Under Fire - New York Times
More Attacks and Meetings on a Program Under Fire - New York Times
Vice President Dick Cheney gave Congressional leaders a closed-door briefing at the White House Friday on the National Security Agency's domestic eavesdropping program, as Democrats escalated their attacks on President Bush over the operation by drawing comparisons to British tyrants and Nazi Germany.
Skip to next paragraph
Text: Documents on N.S.A. Spying Program (findlaw.com)
Forum: National Security
With the White House under increasing attack over the program, the administration also announced that President Bush, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and Lt. Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the former head of the agency, will each give talks next week in support of the program.
The day's events showed the White House's increasingly forceful effort to build public support for the program, as it seeks to demonstrate that Mr. Bush acted within constitutional authority in ordering the agency to monitor international e-mail and phone calls linked to Al Qaeda without seeking warrants.
While the White House usually says it pays no attention to public opinion polls, Scott McClellan, the press secretary, said at a briefing Friday that recent surveys "overwhelmingly show that the American people want us to do everything within our power to protect them."
But several opinion polls this month showed a clear divide over the issue. One poll, conducted two weeks ago by CNN/USA Today, found that 50 percent of those surveyed thought it was right for the president to order wiretaps without warrants and that 46 percent said it was wrong.
With some leading lawmakers voicing increasing unease over the program, Mr. Cheney met at the White House situation room for about an hour Friday morning to discuss it with Congressional leaders.
While officials would not discuss the substance of the briefing, Democratic Congressional leaders were thought to have expressed complaints about the limited nature of the briefings. A nonpartisan Congressional study earlier this week said that the limited briefings might have violated Congressional oversight law, and Democrats are asking that future briefings be opened to all members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees.
While Mr. McClellan would not discuss Mr. Cheney's briefing, he said: "We have briefed Congressional leaders more than a dozen times. We continue to brief members of Congress in an appropriate manner."
Meanwhile, House Democrats, frustrated that Republican leaders had refused to hold hearings on the matter, held an unusual unofficial hearing of their own on Friday.
The eight Democratic lawmakers at the event were unrelenting in their criticism of a program that they said would open the way to unlimited presidential powers. Some questioned whether Mr. Bush's authorization of it was an impeachable offense.
Several lawmakers and witnesses compared the administration to a British monarchy, casting Mr. Bush as George III. Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York, even compared the president's powers to those the Nazis used early to cement their power.
Mr. Nadler said that as he read the broad presidential power claimed by Mr. Bush, "if he were in Germany in 1933, he would not have required the Enabling Act to pass the Reichstag to claim the power," a reference to the law that gave Hitler broad power to run the country.
When asked about the remark, Mr. Nadler's spokesman, Reid Cherlin, said: "He's not comparing Bush to Hitler. He's saying that Nazi Germany is our most extreme example of the rapid expansion of executive power and even there, there was legislative approval of an emergency package."
In a later statement, Mr. Cherlin said Mr. Nadler had "picked an example that he shouldn't have" in illustrating his point.
The White House declined to send anyone to testify at the Democratic event. Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., the Wisconsin Republican who leads the House Judiciary Committee and who has declined to schedule hearings on the eavesdropping program, said the event did not meet Congressional standards because of a "completely one-sided list of witnesses."
While several witnesses brought reputations as liberal critics of the administration, one witness, Bruce Fein, had been a senior Justice Department official under President Ronald Reagan and was critical of the program's legal underpinnings.
Mr. Fein suggested that he would have resigned rather than acquiesce in such a program
Vice President Dick Cheney gave Congressional leaders a closed-door briefing at the White House Friday on the National Security Agency's domestic eavesdropping program, as Democrats escalated their attacks on President Bush over the operation by drawing comparisons to British tyrants and Nazi Germany.
Skip to next paragraph
Text: Documents on N.S.A. Spying Program (findlaw.com)
Forum: National Security
With the White House under increasing attack over the program, the administration also announced that President Bush, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and Lt. Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the former head of the agency, will each give talks next week in support of the program.
The day's events showed the White House's increasingly forceful effort to build public support for the program, as it seeks to demonstrate that Mr. Bush acted within constitutional authority in ordering the agency to monitor international e-mail and phone calls linked to Al Qaeda without seeking warrants.
While the White House usually says it pays no attention to public opinion polls, Scott McClellan, the press secretary, said at a briefing Friday that recent surveys "overwhelmingly show that the American people want us to do everything within our power to protect them."
But several opinion polls this month showed a clear divide over the issue. One poll, conducted two weeks ago by CNN/USA Today, found that 50 percent of those surveyed thought it was right for the president to order wiretaps without warrants and that 46 percent said it was wrong.
With some leading lawmakers voicing increasing unease over the program, Mr. Cheney met at the White House situation room for about an hour Friday morning to discuss it with Congressional leaders.
While officials would not discuss the substance of the briefing, Democratic Congressional leaders were thought to have expressed complaints about the limited nature of the briefings. A nonpartisan Congressional study earlier this week said that the limited briefings might have violated Congressional oversight law, and Democrats are asking that future briefings be opened to all members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees.
While Mr. McClellan would not discuss Mr. Cheney's briefing, he said: "We have briefed Congressional leaders more than a dozen times. We continue to brief members of Congress in an appropriate manner."
Meanwhile, House Democrats, frustrated that Republican leaders had refused to hold hearings on the matter, held an unusual unofficial hearing of their own on Friday.
The eight Democratic lawmakers at the event were unrelenting in their criticism of a program that they said would open the way to unlimited presidential powers. Some questioned whether Mr. Bush's authorization of it was an impeachable offense.
Several lawmakers and witnesses compared the administration to a British monarchy, casting Mr. Bush as George III. Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York, even compared the president's powers to those the Nazis used early to cement their power.
Mr. Nadler said that as he read the broad presidential power claimed by Mr. Bush, "if he were in Germany in 1933, he would not have required the Enabling Act to pass the Reichstag to claim the power," a reference to the law that gave Hitler broad power to run the country.
When asked about the remark, Mr. Nadler's spokesman, Reid Cherlin, said: "He's not comparing Bush to Hitler. He's saying that Nazi Germany is our most extreme example of the rapid expansion of executive power and even there, there was legislative approval of an emergency package."
In a later statement, Mr. Cherlin said Mr. Nadler had "picked an example that he shouldn't have" in illustrating his point.
The White House declined to send anyone to testify at the Democratic event. Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., the Wisconsin Republican who leads the House Judiciary Committee and who has declined to schedule hearings on the eavesdropping program, said the event did not meet Congressional standards because of a "completely one-sided list of witnesses."
While several witnesses brought reputations as liberal critics of the administration, one witness, Bruce Fein, had been a senior Justice Department official under President Ronald Reagan and was critical of the program's legal underpinnings.
Mr. Fein suggested that he would have resigned rather than acquiesce in such a program
xymphora: Gunships up the Fjords
xymphora: Gunships up the Fjords
Norman Finklestein writes about the economic boycott of Israel (found via jews sans frontieres, which has links to some boycott sites):
"Apart from the sheer magnitude of its human rights violations, the uniqueness of Israeli policies merits notice. 'Israel has created in the Occupied Territories a regime of separation based on discrimination, applying two separate systems of law in the same area and basing the rights of individuals on their nationality,' B'Tselem has concluded. 'This regime is the only one of its kind in the world, and is reminiscent of distasteful regimes from the past, such as the apartheid regime in South Africa.' If singling out South Africa for an international economic boycott was defensible, it would seem equally defensible to single out Israel's occupation, which uniquely resembles the apartheid regime."and:
"The moral burden to avert the impending catastrophe must now be borne by individual states that are prepared to respect their obligations under international law and by individual men and women of conscience. In a courageous initiative American-based Human Rights Watch recently called on the U.S. government to reduce significantly its financial aid to Israel until Israel terminates its illegal policies in the West Bank. An economic boycott would seem to be an equally judicious undertaking. A nonviolent tactic the purpose of which is to achieve a just and lasting settlement of the Israel-Palestine conflict cannot legitimately be called anti-Semitic. Indeed, the real enemies of Jews are those who cheapen the memory of Jewish suffering by equating principled opposition to Israel's illegal and immoral policies with anti-Semitism."The strange relationship between the United States and Israel probably reached its strangest point when Condi Rice threatened American ally - NATO member and a country that, although not formally part of the American attack, put troops at harm's way in Iraq, leading to threats from al Qaeda - Norway with unspecified mayhem for the musings from one Norwegian politician about supporting international law by boycotting Israel. This led to an unfortunate (and rather craven) retreat for a nation that probably used to think it was a sovereign country that could make its own decisions. This is getting embarrassing for the Americans as well. If one of Israel and the United States is the tail and one is the dog, who is wagging whom? You can get an inkling of how important a boycott would be by the fact that Israel ordered Rice to make a fool of herself and bully an American ally - shades of gunships up the fjords - for even thinking about the idea.
Norman Finklestein writes about the economic boycott of Israel (found via jews sans frontieres, which has links to some boycott sites):
"Apart from the sheer magnitude of its human rights violations, the uniqueness of Israeli policies merits notice. 'Israel has created in the Occupied Territories a regime of separation based on discrimination, applying two separate systems of law in the same area and basing the rights of individuals on their nationality,' B'Tselem has concluded. 'This regime is the only one of its kind in the world, and is reminiscent of distasteful regimes from the past, such as the apartheid regime in South Africa.' If singling out South Africa for an international economic boycott was defensible, it would seem equally defensible to single out Israel's occupation, which uniquely resembles the apartheid regime."and:
"The moral burden to avert the impending catastrophe must now be borne by individual states that are prepared to respect their obligations under international law and by individual men and women of conscience. In a courageous initiative American-based Human Rights Watch recently called on the U.S. government to reduce significantly its financial aid to Israel until Israel terminates its illegal policies in the West Bank. An economic boycott would seem to be an equally judicious undertaking. A nonviolent tactic the purpose of which is to achieve a just and lasting settlement of the Israel-Palestine conflict cannot legitimately be called anti-Semitic. Indeed, the real enemies of Jews are those who cheapen the memory of Jewish suffering by equating principled opposition to Israel's illegal and immoral policies with anti-Semitism."The strange relationship between the United States and Israel probably reached its strangest point when Condi Rice threatened American ally - NATO member and a country that, although not formally part of the American attack, put troops at harm's way in Iraq, leading to threats from al Qaeda - Norway with unspecified mayhem for the musings from one Norwegian politician about supporting international law by boycotting Israel. This led to an unfortunate (and rather craven) retreat for a nation that probably used to think it was a sovereign country that could make its own decisions. This is getting embarrassing for the Americans as well. If one of Israel and the United States is the tail and one is the dog, who is wagging whom? You can get an inkling of how important a boycott would be by the fact that Israel ordered Rice to make a fool of herself and bully an American ally - shades of gunships up the fjords - for even thinking about the idea.
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