Category: Politics

… is that we’re trying to preserve what the British put together in the 1920s with little thought to the actual people who lived there and their pre-existing tribal loyalties. That problem today is nicely encapsulated by Dexter Filkins:

When the Americans smashed Saddam Hussein’s regime two and half years ago, what lay revealed was a country with no agreement on the most basic questions of national identity. The Sunnis, a minority in charge here for five centuries, have not, for the most part, accepted that they will no longer control the country. The Shiites, the long-suppressed majority, want to set up a theocracy. The Kurds don’t want to be part of Iraq at all. There is only so much that language can do to paper over such differences.

Hat tip to Kevin (who appears to have either turned off or broken his trackbacks) for the link.

dKos member AndyT came up with a good one today:

Hugo Black, the guy who used to run around in white robes and scare black people. Then he was appointed to the [Supreme] court and went around in black robes scaring white people.

I’m trying to be openminded here and assume that for some people, this might actually be a way of taking the hell of 9/11 and trying to make a positive out of it. However, it makes me feel sick to my stomach.

The whole concept of 9/11 being “honored” by an overproduced parade and some cheesy country music is just so, so wrong. And of course since BushCo is involved, it’s not even that. It’s simply yet another pathetic attempt to milk 9/11 and boost support for their war machine. Just look at the title of the event: the “America Supports You Freedom Walk”. Ugh. And it gets better:

The goal for next year’s walk is to get each state to host its own Freedom Walk to provide an opportunity for as many citizens as possible to reflect on the importance of freedom.

Give me a freaking break! I can ‘reflect on freedom’ any time I want. I don’t need to be reminded by the Pentagon to do it. And certainly not by some faux event like this.

I’d almost think this was a joke if the lawsuit weren’t real, and if there weren’t a more sinister prospect on the horizon. These guys may be anti-choice wingnuts but they are not stupid.

National anti-choice organizations have been filing lawsuits against California’s stem cell institute to prevent them from doing anything with donated blastocysts. The lawsuits are being consolidated to be heard by one judge in one county in order to expedite the process. The latest legal salvo is a federal lawsuit filed by the “National Association for the Advancement of Preborn Children” claiming the civil rights of blastocysts are violated by stem cell research.

Side note — Emphasis added for the NAAPC. *shakes head in disbelief*. Nice F-U to the civil rights movement there.

Back on topic — As much as this whole thing sounds absurd, I suspect that the ultimate goal here is not just to delay the CA stem cell institute, but also to keep on filing suits and appeals until they get to the Supreme Court. It’s not at all unrealistic to expect that in a year or two SCOTUS will have two new conservative Justices in place and presumably ready to cast a more favorable eye on suits like this.

The lawsuit claims the embryo is a person who should be given equal protection under the Constitution, and her destruction violates her right to freedom from slavery.

In decisions that have upheld the right of women to receive abortions, the Supreme Court has ruled that a woman’s right to control her body outweighs the early-stage fetus’s rights.

In his appeal of the initial federal case, lawyer R. Martin Palmer argues that Roe v. Wade does not apply in this case because the embryo is in deep freeze and not a mother’s womb.

Note the avoidance of Roe as precedent. These guys are clearly angling for an approach that will get around the issue of stare decisis with regard to Roe.

As the Bard said, “Though this be madness, yet there is method in it.” (Hamlet)

Why can’t Democrats get “flip flopper” to stick against Republicans?

I was reading a transcript of the Santorum / Stephanopolis interview today and started to wonder. After all, here’s a classic example of inconsistancy in a position. On the one hand, Senator Santorum says:

I believe my view is the view that

Washington Note guestblogger Leon Hadar called my attention to an interesting article in the NY Sun today. It’s about some language in an upcoming congressional bill called the ADVANCE Democracy Act that would, among other things, require the US diplomatic corps abroad to

draw up democracy transition plans for unfree regimes, with input from nonviolent opposition movements in the various countries.

It would also

allow the State Department to “use all instruments of United States influence to support, promote, and strengthen democratic principles, practices, and values in foreign countries.” It charges the CIA and Treasury Department with tracking the personal assets of dictators and their associates.

ADVANCE would require the secretary of state to approve an annual report designating nations as either democratic, undemocratic, or in transition.

This is one of those ideas that, if it were implemented by a competent government, is not objectionable. Promoting democracy and working with local organizations to help peacefully implement democracy in less-than-fully-democratic countries is a laudable goal. But a mandate like that in the hands of a self-serving bunch of incompetents who care more about the preservation of their own power and the interests of their buddies than about anything else — in other words, BushCo — it instead engenders feelings of concern and cynicism.

Do you really expect that if this becomes law, that the Bush administration would countenance a report officially designating their buddies in Saudi Arabia as undemocratic? If you do, I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn I’d like to sell you. But without impartiality, this act becomes just another way to politicize things like civil service promotions and foreign aid allocations. In other words, a big old mess.

I wasn’t always this cynical. It would be really nice if there were some flickers of hope on the horizon, but it’s a long time until the 2008 elections.