Slate, bringing light to something...

Every now and then when I have a chance, I take a gander over at Slate.com's articles to try and get something a little more structured then the typical chaos at Drudgereport.com, but I keep forgetting just how much I like one of their writers Dahlia Lithwick.

She is probably the only writer on that site that actually keeps up with issues concerning poor foreign policy decisions effects on us (ie, "Their side"), as well as my personal axe to grind, civil liberties.

I would highly recommend everyone take a chance to get familiar with her writings, but today's offering I found especially fascinating mostly because its about an issue that nobody is talking about, despite its very ominous name...

I bring to you the "Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007," (from Congresswoman Jane Harman of D-CA) which seeks to define "Homegrown Terrorism" as (pulling right from the article):

"the use, planned use, or threatened use, of force or violence by a group or
individual born, raised, or based and operating primarily within the United
States or any possession of the United States to intimidate or coerce the United
States government, the civilian population of the United States, or any segment
thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives. "

Now, I'm no lawyer (we have DC&H for that), but the language I see there could pretty broadly be applied to any "perceived" group of people that the government labels as maybe possibly kinda sorta wanting to think about maybe harming the government...

Ms. Lithwick points out that this may be one of those horribly political named bills designed just to get some publicity (or your name out there) and it is quite possible that this is just another harmless Homeland Security "Drum-Beating" to bring up come election time, but I gotta say that this language scares the crap out of me.

Granted I hold people like Senator Feingold in the highest possible regard merely for his vote against the "Patriot Act" of 01 (final tally, 98-1), but doesn't this bother anyone else out there even a little?

Am I over reacting here?

Weds Wrap Around

We begin this morning with the current state of education in our nation.

Courtesy of Kevin Drum, the White House is going to ask for $50 Billion for a prolonged surge in Iraq, since they know what Pratreus is writing since...they themselves are writing it.

Senator I'M NOT GAY Craig blames the media for his latest round of troubles. Senator, it's only a witch hunt if the allegations are false, you yourself plead guilty to them sparky.

We are now a nation who not only jumps at the shadows but also at a line of flour being put down for a race. Dear god I hope these people don't ever go to baseball games or track meets, lord knows how they would react to THOSE white lines.

Nothing says we have control over our emotions then to threaten nuclear holocaust to Iran. I don't know what Dubya is thinking, Iran doesn't believe in the holocaust.

You know the recent NIE that we thought was gloomy? Well, apparently it was quite tame to the original NIE they wanted to release. I remember the quote of history being wrote by the winners...

In something that is of no surprise to me, the only officer to go to trial over Abu Ghraib has been left off the hook. Well, I wouldn't want the Army to start changing the way they do things now would I?

I'm sorry, and this just may be me, but this is not a sign of progress in Iraq. Just because our numbers may be different doesn't mean other killings have stopped.

Miss Chatter will be shadowing the Nationals' media crew this Saturday. Go on over and give her a question to ask. No worries, I already asked that they change commentators. I'd take the job but I'm moving to Houston.

I'm not very good at Golf, but Sir Charles' swing is so bad it made Tiger Woods notice and mock him.

The GOP is afraid of a great many things in this world (gays, gay marriage, muslims, civil rights, non-white races, etc, etc) but all of a sudden the thing they're afraid of most is their own party members. We should start a pool to see who the next Republican is to fall to scandal.

People don't think there is a steroid problem in America, but when you're injecting your 13 year old with steroids to compete internationally at ROLLER-SKATING, there is a SERIOUS problem.

For all my single male sports fans, here is a top twenty hottest female athletes in the world. I personally would move number 20 to number 1.

Finally, I shall leave you all today with some of Fredo's greatest hits. I would say I'm gonna miss him, but I don't have any recollection at this time of that feeling.

Pile-On for "Needs of the Many"

I just had to follow-up on this last post if only to use this pic... (Anybody that got the Bene Gesseret reference, will find this funny).

Also had to, because I'm a huge ACLU freak that is constantly frustrated by people not learning from our mistakes. What we are dealing with in today's "struggle against terrorism" is nothing more then business as usual in this country.

As was even the case in early 1900's America, the foreign policy of this country (as well as domestic control) is dominated by Corporate interests. Thankfully people with some balls (Upton Sinclair, Roger Baldwin, Samuel Gompers, etc etc) stood up for individual's civil liberties and the actual concept of free and open ideas traversing without limit (actually, that was a founding principal, though people forget these things in times of stress).

Today instead of being able to blame the Vanderbilts, or Rockefellers of the world, we instead have multi-national corporations capable of writing our laws for us and then paying off the appropriate lawmakers to make it happen (its called Lobbying). The differences you might think are in how these situations are portrayed in the media, but in reality things have not changed all that much. Newspapers in the day had their agenda set for them by wealthy magnates spending heavily on preventing unionized (ie, more expensive) labor, and successfully labeling any that did set out to change the status quo "Communists" or "German Sympathizers".

Blah....

I could go on and on about this, but the central issue here is that if we all agree that there needs to be limitations to freedom of speech, or what you can or cannot do without a picture ID as well as another document to secure your identification (ie, Nazi Germany "Ver are your Paper???"), we are admitting that this whole experiment we call "Democracy" (even though we live in a Representative Republic), has failed.

The idea that we are all free to do whatever and say whatever, provided it does not restrict another person's rights or civil liberties is long dead. And with it, the idea of Democracy in its most basic form.

Are we more free then China? Well sure. Is that a valid argument? Hell mother f'n no!

That is all...