Category Archives: government, law, and politics

The Emperor Has No Clothes

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Now that the alleged grounds for locking people up in Guantanamo are finally seeing, if not the light of day, at least the light of federal judges’ chambers, it looks as though the government has been bluffing all along:

With some derision for the Bush administration’s arguments, a three-judge panel said the government contended that its accusations against the detainee should be accepted as true because they had been repeated in at least three secret documents.

The court compared that to the absurd declaration of a character in the Lewis Carroll poem “The Hunting of the Snark”: “I have said it thrice: What I tell you three times is true.”

“This comes perilously close to suggesting that whatever the government says must be treated as true,” said the panel of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Okay, who is surprised? Show of hands?

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“Personal Faith and Moral Clarity”

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It’s worrisome that conservative presidential candidates still think they need a seal of approval from Billy Graham—and now his son Franklin:

Franklin Graham issued a statement after the meeting praising the Arizona senator’s “personal faith and his moral clarity.”

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Don’t Be a Sucker

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John McCain says: “Senator Obama’s word cannot be trusted. . . . But the fact is that I’ll keep my word to the American people and you can trust me.”

Okay, now that you’re done chuckling at how childish and transparently “political“ that sounds, read ”McCain’s Flourishing Flip-Flop List.”

And watch this video: “John McCain vs. John McCain.”

This is how politicians waste time, insult the American public, and perpetuate stupidity and ignorance. We all know that politicians change their minds about things. We should expect them to change their minds. Like the rest of us, they constantly encounter new information that may lead to a change in their views. Even if they’re acting from wholly pure motives, why should we expect them never to change their minds?

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Vote for the Future, Not for Fear

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I’m not a conspiracy theorist or anything, but it sure seems pretty weird that John McCain has an advisor who thinks (probably correctly) that a terrorist attack would drive paranoid voters to take shelter under his hawkish, Republican wings in November and now he is claiming that he’ll not leap ahead of Barack Obama until 48 hours before election day. Recall that John Kerry thought Osama bin Laden’s video release days before the 2004 election cost him the presidency. He was probably right. This is all just a specific application of the old “October surprise” concept, but far more insidious. What exactly does John McCain know?

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Maybe Next Time

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This is disappointing, if you are hoping the United States will not slip into fascism:

Three years ago, Congress gave Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff an unusual power to “waive all legal requirements” that could stand in the way of building the fence. These requirements included the nation’s environmental protection laws. The same congressional action took away the authority of judges to review Chertoff’s decisions.

Last year, after Chertoff waived at least 20 laws and regulations to complete a section of the fence in Arizona, two environmental groups sued. They said it was unconstitutional to give a Cabinet secretary such sweeping power.

But a federal judge rejected that claim. And on Monday the Supreme Court without comment declined to hear a petition submitted by Defenders of Wildlife and the Sierra Club.

(Yes, I mentioned this once before.) When the Supreme Court denies certiorari, it doesn’t usually say why. At least a denial carries no precedential power, so if a more attractive version of the issue came before the Court, they might be interested in addressing it and telling Americans whether Congress has the power to give people like Michael Chertoff the power to break any laws he feels like.

Who would have thought that Americans would use the specter of “terrorism” to keep Mexicans out?