No President should retain for him/her self the right to detain people indefinitely - not if your last name is Lincoln, Bush, or Obama.  At some point, due process must come into play.  Otherwise, we are all at risk of becoming the one who is so detained.

Tom Daschle - helps Bush get the bill through the Senate in October 2002 that is used in March 2003 to authorize our ill-advised invasion of Iraq.

Tom Daschle - June 2009 stabs the public in the back by saying the public option for health care should be taken off the table.

Tom Daschle - can't figure out what income to pay taxes on.

Tom Daschle - Go home and be quiet!

Today's shooting at the Holocaust Museum and the murder of Dr. Tiller should re-emphasize in everyone's mind the point that Keith Olberman has been making recently:  We need to treat the threat from these domestic terrorists just as seriously as we treat the threat from Al Qaeda.

So now we find out from GQ that Bush told Chirac that the Iraq war was foretold by the Old Testament story of the apocalyptic creatures Gog and Magog.  Pappy Bush's Skull and Bones handle was also Magog.

Could we please never have anyone this moronic be President of the USA ever again?

Brian Beutler, in a May 25th post points out that Senator Feingold has written to President  Obama saying that he feels preventive detention is unconstitutional.  Beutler comments:

"Obama now seeks, as Feingold describes it, a statutory basis for indefinite preventive detention, but as Glenn Greenwald reminds us, his own counsel, Greg Craig, said 'It's possible but hard to imagine Barack Obama as the first President of the United States to introduce a preventive-detention law,' just three months ago."

Isn't this dangerously close to what Bush/Cheney did when they had the lawyers draw up the torture memos so it could later be claimed that "enhanced interrogation techniques" were legal.  This is a bit different in that the object is a new law not a convoluted memo that tries to justify the unjustifiable.  However, it seems like a slide down the same slippery slope to me.

Ok, Josh asks the question:

"It comes back to the same question: how critical is it whether terrorist capos can hide out, with the passive approval of the government, in caves in Afghanistan? And should this be the center-piece of our counter-terrorism effort or even our whole foreign policy?"


So let's have a go at it, especially since Obama is making it, perhaps, the center-piece of our foreign policy. Were we correct to say attacking Iraq made no sense, but attacking Afghanistan did?  In my opinion, we were.  Is it still correct given what has happened in Afghanistan, given the corruption in the Afghan government, given the number of civilians being killed, given the Vietnam-like quagmire we could be headed for, given the state of our economy, etc.

Is there a smarter way of dealing with the situation in Afghanistan?

Well, now we know that the credit card companies will be tightly regulated because the new credit card bill the President is about to sign permits - - concealed weapons in national parks? 

What a fiasco? Can't the President veto this because of that provision? At least, he would make the Congress override his veto?

Why must Congress worship at the altar of the NRA (money, obviously)? What can we do about this?

Wasn't it nice of Condi to be rude to a Stanford student who has a firmer moral compass about torture than she does?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijEED_iviTA&feature=channel_page

This was my comment on Paul Krugman's blog entry today defining moment.  I'll provide the link momentarily.

Tom

My defining moment came during the Vietnam War when I realized the government's explanation of what was happening in Vietnam was not accurate. It was compounded when I found out that Lyndon Johnson had snookered the American people and the Congress with his Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.  It's a shame that during the run-up to the Iraq so many people ignored, ridiculed, and berated those of us who were ware we were being conned.  It's a sad commentary on the level of education in the United States that so many people fell for the Bush/Cheney propaganda line.  However, I'm proud to say that many of my 9th and 10th grade students in 2002-3 were able to correctly analyze Colin Powell's speech to the UN as being inaccurate.  They did this by reading the foreign press online.  Also, let's honor the millions of people around the world who took to the streets on February 15, 2003 to try to prevent Bush's "March to Folly" in Iraq.

Dear Mr. Obama,

I am glad you were elected President.  I worked very hard for you.  However, it is not alright for you to let the people who authorized torture off the hook, because you want to look forward, not backward.  We already know that those who refuse to look backward, don't learn from the past.  George W. Bush was too busy partying in the 1960's to learn the lessons of the Vietnam War. Thus, we got the Iraq invasion There will be a future President who will decide it is OK to break our laws because Bush/Cheney did it with impunity.  Somebody needs to do something to address this situation quickly.  I'm afraid you will dishearten many of your supporters if you don't respond aggressively.

Maybe Laura Ingraham should go take a course where she could learn some critical thinking skills.  Then she would have something to do instead of worrying about John McCain's daughter's dress size!

Does anyone else think that Dick Cheney may be  hoping for another 9/11 so he can say "I told you so"?
This man needs to change his meds, in my opinion.

Here's my caption for the Timothy Geithner photo that Josh has posted:

"Look, how many times do I have to tell you this?

I AM NOT a socialist!"

Ok, here we go again. My caption for the ex-Senator (thank goodness!) Rick Santorum (I hope that's Rick Santorum) photo that Josh has posted at TPM:

"Senator Santorum, what exactly is your IQ, sir?"

The caption I would use for the two-fingers-held-up John Boehner photo that Josh has posted at TPM:

"John, how many times have you been to the tanning salon this morning?"

(photo: wdcpix.com/lauren v. burke)