The Right’s Moment, Years in the Making

Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform and an adviser to Karl Rove, Bush’s chief political strategist, said that starting with the election of 1968, “the left discovered it could no longer hold the presidency, so it turned to Congress for protection.” After Democrats lost control of Congress in 1994, “the left turned to the courts. This is all they have left.”

Possible Nominees to the Supreme Court
The Washington Post
Friday, July 1, 2005; 11:12 AM

Here is a list of potential nominees for the Supreme Court.

More Files Being Classified; Fewer Pages Being Declassified
From Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Mostly because of military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the federal government reports, the number of documents being classified in the U.S. jumped 10% last year, to 15.6 million.

The Information Security Oversight Office included the numbers in its latest annual report to the president.

Meanwhile, the number of pages that the government declassified continued to drop. Last year, 28.4 million pages were declassified.

That was a drop of 34% from the previous year.

The increase in the number of documents being classified has raised concerns that the government is being too secretive.

The report notes that over-classification of documents has been an issue for decades.

“It cannot be said conclusively from this report’s data that recent increases in the number of classification decisions were due substantially to the phenomenon of over-classification,” the Information Security Oversight Office report says.

Before anyone says something about the world changing on 9-11, please note that one of the first executive orders Bush made sealed presidential papers for years longer than before. One of the first meetings held in the White House was on energy policy. The White House went to court to keep the list of attendees secret. These guys are not secretive for patriotic reasons. They learned a lot from Dick Nixon and Ronnie Raygun. mjh

Tortured democracy by Sharon Kayne

Torturing terror suspects has even been justified by pointing out that these are people who would do the same to us. Therein lies the greatest tragedy. When we treat terrorists as they treat us, we become terrorists ourselves.

We claim to be fighting a war on terror, but what we’re really fighting is a war of fear. We have allowed the Sept. 11 hijackers to pull us down to their level. We’ve allowed ourselves to be led astray, to cast off our humanity, our lofty ideals — our very souls — by the fear that such men could attack us again. This fear allows us to rationalize treating others in ways we cannot imagine being treated ourselves. It allows us to rationalize turning our backs on the very doctrines that make this country great.

Our government has not only committed war crimes in our name and with our money, but with our tacit consent as well. Where is our outrage? Our moral indignation? Perhaps, as a country, we lost it just as Sen. Durbin did — when we lost our nerve. When we forfeit our duty to stand up and speak out, we forfeit our right to live free ourselves. This is what we should truly fear.

ZNet |Iraq | Covering up Napalm in Iraq by Mike Whitney

Two weeks ago the UK Independent ran an article which confirmed that the US had “lied to Britain over the use of napalm in Iraq”. (6-17-05) Since then, not one American newspaper or TV station has picked up the story even though the Pentagon has verified the claims. This is the extent to which the American “free press” is yoked to the center of power in Washington. …

“Despite persistent rumors of injuries among Iraqis consistent with the use of incendiary weapons such as napalm” the Pentagon insisted that “US forces had not used a new generation of incendiary weapons, codenamed MK77, in Iraq.” (UK Independent)

The Pentagon lied.

Defense Minister, Adam Ingram, admitted that the US had misled the British high-command about the use of napalm, but he would not comment on the extent of the cover up. The use of firebombs puts the US in breach of the 1980 Convention on Certain Chemical Weapons (CCW) and is a violation the Geneva Protocol against the use of white phosphorous, “since its use causes indiscriminate and extreme injuries especially when deployed in an urban area.”
=====

The New Napalm in Iraq (News) Barb Jacobs

On its website, the US State Department denies reports that napalm-like weapons were used in Fallujah, but confirms that “Mark-77 firebombs … were used against enemy positions in 2003,” and maintains that it has not used any illegal weapons in Iraq.

The Independent says the US has sidestepped the UN Convention on Certain Chemical Weapons, which banned the use of incendiary weapons against civilians, by claiming the firebombs were used only against military targets. Then again, the US didn’t really have to get around it, as it’s not a party to the convention anyway.
=====

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | US misled UK over Iraq fire bombs

US Marines dropped 30 Mark 77 fire bombs between March 31 and April 2 2003 “against military targets away from civilian areas”. In a letter to Michael Ancram, shadow defence secretary, Mr Reid also says: “The MK77 does not have the same composition as napalm, although it has similar destructive characteristics.”

He adds the Pentagon had also told the government that “owing to the limited accuracy of the MK77, it is not generally used in urban terrain or in areas where civilians are congregated”. Mr Reid points out Britain is bound by convention not to use incendiary weapons against military targets located within concentrations of civilians.

He continues: “US policy in relation to international conventions is a matter for the US government, but all of our allies are aware of their obligations under international humanitarian law.”

Mr Ancram said the issue raised questions “about the quality of our communications with our US allies”, and has asked Mr Reid to explain. …

When reports surfaced, the Pentagon separated “napalm” from “firebombs”. According to GlobalSecurity.org, MK77s “function identical to earlier MK77 napalm weapons” using kerosene rather than benzene.

Counterbias: More Democratic Treason by Ted Baiamonte, R E P U B L I C A N V I E W

So why do liberals hate America? The answer is simple: America, since the Revolution, has been mostly about freedom from government and therefore about freedom from Democrats. Throughout American History the Democrats have always been for less and less freedom from government despite the hundred million or so dead bodies government has caused during that period. One has to consider that their philosophical illegitimacy is what makes their loyalty so questionable and their style so nasty and seemingly treasonous. They want to belong here but the facts always paint them as anti-American. In a way you have to feel sorry for the painful position in which they find themselves, but you also have to wonder why it is that they seem to have an absolute inability to learn to think?

Let’s think about Baiamonte’s observations. Democrats/liberals love government and yet are at the same time disloyal and treasonous (treason is a betrayal of government). Mr Baiamonte loves freedom from government, and is a Republican, the party that gave us the USA Patriot Act.

Above all, ask yourself this Fourth of July what makes liberals anti-American? That we speak freely. Welcome to 1984. mjh

PS: I look forward to responses from red-blooded Republicans denouncing the evil lies of Baiamonte — lies designed to vilify and quash any dissent. I won’t be holding my breath.

Google Search: Ted Baiamonte

Time to disclose sources in U.S. press freedom case By Claudia Parsons

Plame’s husband, Joseph Wilson, a career diplomat engaged by the Bush administration to investigate whether Iraq had sought nuclear weapons, accused the White House of being responsible for the leak. He said officials did so because Wilson had publicly disputed a claim by President Bush about Iraq’s attempts to secure such weapons.

Interviewed by CNN this week, Novak declined to say whether he had cooperated with investigators in the case.

William Safire wrote in The New York Times this week that Novak, known for writing opinion columns favorable to the Bush administration, owed fellow journalists an explanation for how his sources “managed to get the prosecutor off his back.”

The key issue is that toady Novak helped someone in the Bush administration commit a federal crime. And, yet, other reporters are being prosecuted, not him. Why not? Has he spilled the beans in secret (cowardly for a journalist) or has he been given special treatment for his loyalty to Duhbya? mjh

Bush Says War Is Worth Sacrifice

Address Urges Public to Back His Iraq Policy

By Peter Baker and Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, June 29, 2005; Page A01

FORT BRAGG, N.C., June 28 — President Bush appealed to the American public Tuesday night to remember “the lessons of September 11th” ….

Surrounding himself with uniformed soldiers and standing before a backdrop emblazoned with American flags, Bush portrayed the two-year-old war in Iraq as the logical extension of a larger struggle that began when hijackers slammed passenger jets into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001. …

Bush invoked Sept. 11 five times in his speech and referred to it by implication several more times. Although he has previously agreed with investigators that there is “no evidence” of a link between Saddam Hussein’s government and the attacks masterminded by Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda, he used much of his speech to depict the militants in Iraq as the same breed of Islamic terrorist who struck the United States. The White House titled his remarks a discussion on the “War on Terror,” not Iraq.

“This war reached our shores on September 11th, 2001,” Bush said. …

“The only way our enemies can succeed is if we forget the lessons of September 11th …”

[T]errorists “are trying to shake our will in Iraq, just as they tried to shake our will on September 11th, 2001.” …

Bush’s insistence that waging the fight in Iraq is containing terrorists who might otherwise strike in America is also fueling argument. As critics see it, the Iraq war is creating a breeding ground for terrorists.