Wednesday, August 09, 2006

purple-fingerists

* i almost feel like 'democracy' isnt a dirty word today. but i feel dirty that the purple-fingerists will somehow spoil it.

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

let them try--fuck them.

i'm so waiting for the other side to cry 'foul' only to be shown up w/things like facts and numbers and reality.

bring 'em onnnnnn!

on a more personal note, it's extremely difficult for me to adjust to being happy reading news (like i mostly was for my entire life, sitting w/coffee and the NYT in the morning). i blame bu$hCo, actually.

ps, i so would wanna be a fly on the wall of the oval office this morning, just to revel in their tension and depression. nb: i was never like this before, never got off on others' misfortune, never felt any Schadenfreude, really.

i blame bu$hCo, actually. oopsy, said that already. fuck 'em. :-)

Anonymous said...

with all the sneering venom i can muster:

a-heh, heh, heh --- feels good!

lukery said...

urghhhhh

you know how i react to 'feels good'

i always 'prayed' that there was a ctrl-z thing in the consitution.

shame about all the dead people in the interim

Anonymous said...

hey, if i can't use their own words against them, then teh terrorists have won.

lukery said...

the stupid terrorists always win - what's with that?

Anonymous said...

How's this for ruining your breakfast then: Insightmag writes about clashes between Condi and Bush RE: Middle-East.

The U.S. response to the Israeli-Hezbollah war was said to have divided both the administration as well as the family of President George W. Bush. At the same time, it marked the first time since Ms. Rice became secretary of state that the president has overruled her.

"For the last 18 months, Condi was given nearly carte blanche in setting foreign policy guidelines," a senior government source familiar with the issue said. "All of a sudden, the president has a different opinion and he wants the last word."


Look who's driving!

Anonymous said...

The U.S. response to the Israeli-Hezbollah war was said to have divided both the administration as well as the family of President George W. Bush...

to snag and paraphrase a quote from 'reservoir dogs': 'this is the world's tiniest violin, playing just for them'

Don said...

At the risk of raining on the parade a little, a reminder of why this fight is so damned important: Bush drafting legislation to immunize him and his buddies and sycophants from War Crimes prosecution (WaPo)

Nixon: If the president does it, it's not illegal.
Bush: You say this shit's illegal, I'll make it legal.

Ned's not the start, but it's a big win, 'cause NeoCon Joepublicanhad to go down. I gotta admit, with the numbers hanging around consistently 50% last night, like so many other big votes, I was getting the chills. And I'm still half waiting for a legal challenge or some dumb shit. But FUUUUUUUU-UUUCK!!!!! YEAH!!!

Tester in MT, Lamont (with the big one) in CT. The 'cold revolution' goes on, and now we know the people can really win.

Don said...

Hmmmm... let me rephrase that last line:

"The Cool Revolution goes on, and The Man can't keep us down anymore."

Anonymous said...

Don, that War Crimes "fix it" is why so many are fried at the That Goddamned Gang of 14 and the completely stacked SCOTUS now. Who will stop them now? We have a rubber stamp Congress and a rubber stamp SCOTUS.

Any Consitutional scholars out there know if one can impeach a SCJ and how?

Teemu,

Thanx for the new grist for our mill.

Anonymous said...

Kathleen, on the War Crimes fixit, I can't imagine constitutional scholars having any difficulty with this. Let's see: the Bushies legislate to produce legal immunity by ex post facto legislation. With that principle of jurisprudence being accepted then there should be no objections to overturning the very same immunity by ex post facto legislation.

But ex post facto(retroctive/retrospective)legislation is, I believe, outlawed by the US Constitution.[..lost the ref. for now]. But here is an interesting quote from James Madison:

"No State shall enter into any treaty, alliance, or confederation; grant letters of marque and reprisal; coin money; emit bills of credit; make any thing but gold and silver a legal tender in payment of debts; pass any bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law impairing the obligation of contracts; or grant any title of nobility." Federalist Papers

(It's a curious historical feature of the UK parliament (and in Australia) that it can operate as the nation's highest court, should it so choose. It can change the verdicts of courts, produce retrospective legislation etc. All because Parliament reigns supreme. Only public approbation can stand in the way. This, afaiks, is specifically NOT the US constitutional situation.)

The problem isn't so much legal as social. Should the immunity legislation be passed then, on any later attempt to overturn that legislation, the spin will be "it's wrong to legislate retrospectively...the Congress has decided this already...blah, blah blah". That the Bushies legislated retrospectively to obtain their immunity will likely be overlooked. Also the public may not have the heart to revisit its moral failure in supporting the current regime. All in all, not good.

But it would seem to me there are no legal impediments at all to overturning ex post facto legislation, particularly in the egregious case of war crimes. This from Len Hart at ExistentialistCowboy:

"That Bush began the war against Iraq upon a criminal fraud, the war itself is a violation of the Nuremberg Principles which the U.S. literally insisted upon at the end of WWII. Moreover, because Bush violated Nuremberg, he is therefore in violation of U.S. Criminal Codes; Section 2441 which makes deaths resulting from war crimes (violations of Nuremberg specifically) CAPITAL CRIMES!"

There's a good account of the laws of war as applied to Iraq here

Anonymous said...

Sorry, Kathleen. I misread your question:"Any Consitutional scholars out there know if one can impeach a SCJ and how?" [still asleep].

The answer would seem to be yes: Congress almost certainly would be able to impeach if any SCJ affirmed the validity of legislation specifically outlawed by the Constitution. Although I've lost the ref. I believe ex post facto (retrospective) legislation is unconstitutional in the US.

lukery said...

teemu - thnx for that. fp'd.

don - that shit is just outrageuous. it has been getting a bit of attention these last couple weeks (eg froomkin) - let's hope it stays in the spotlight - b/c a) it'll remind everyone that there are warcriminals occupying the WH and b) people will be outraged.

Damien - thnx. fp'd.

Anonymous said...

Don,

Thank you for that, both answers. I feel better already.