JosephH

Those documents are expressions to the world of what we hold it means to live life as human beings. This isn't about where these documents are binding, it's about what they mean relative to our beliefs about how people should be respected and governed regardless of where they live. The following are but a few phrases from the Declaration of Independence and the words of the first two were chosen with exceptional care not to refer to England, but to apply to all people and all governments of the world (the third is from the indictments section of the DoI). "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." "Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed." "He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

Well, not sure of that linky. I think Nixon should have done prison time, but he was a f#cking god among Presidents compared to W.

I think that throughout history, men in war have embraced and santioned torture in its many forms. That is what war is in essence--torture. So to act all shocked like we are so above it all (professional was your word I think) is bemusing to me. Arch, again, shit happens in war, but that is vastly different than adopting torture as an official policy of our nation. We are a signatory to an international convention specifically outlawing its use. That we as nation have formally established policy, infrastructure, and resources explicitly for the purpose of torture has bankrupted whatever integrity we had in the eyes of most the world. Except for scale, after our performance of the past four years we are now indistinquishable from Stalin's Russia relative to the use of gulags, torture, and murder. It is a bold stain on the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights - and our nation. OBL succeeded beyond his wildest dreams in this respect; he simply got us to tear at the very foundation of this country for him.

Look, leaders in our modern world are subjected to enormous stress on a daily basis while their finger is on the nuclear trigger - around our house we don't give a rat's ass who's giving the Executive blowjobs so long as someone is. We'd be all for an intern or seasoned professional being hired exclusively for this position. It could be a revered position on the Whitehouse staff; sort of how some great chef's stay on from president to president.

It happening is one thing, and largley unavoidable given all stripes of men are sent to war - but that's not the same as our government officially embracing, sanctioning, and encouraging it's use. It's only a matter of time before someone nabs one of our troops and youtubes a video of them being subjected to exactly these techniques just to rub our faces in our own dirt, shit, and holes...

The real problem is they recently reauthorized rendition and foreign CIA prisons which, in theory, had been previously just been shutdown. The only real reason for this is to go back to 'outsourcing' torture to foreign governments because of all the renewed scrutiny at home. It's just farcical to say "the United States doesn't torture" when we pay others to do it for us. For god's sake, aren't these the same folks who got their panties in a bind over "I didn't have sex with that woman." How is one statement any different from the other beyond the fine line between pleasure and pain? One of the more conspicuously overlooked parts of this whole fiasco has been the CIA contracts with Syria - that's right, SYRIA - relative to rendition and torture. Just how is it that we hire a country we officially designate as 'supporting terrorism' and publically call 'evil' to torture our prisoners? I mean, how does that get rationalized in the minds of this administration given it's been at their direction. It's a glaring sign of the systemic hypocrisy of the administration's private actions in the face of their public positions and statements. And doesn't contracting with Evil make you just as evil? These folks are a mystery to me, but fonts of real conservative values they are not...

Do give a shout if you're down sometime. Maybe even get out and climb...

I agree, but the BushCo steamroller still has some steam in it before the elections - dem Democrats are still embarassingly timid because of it. Pelosi and Reid's strategy clearly remains to basically give the President whatever he wants - within reason - and let him hang himself and the Republicans along with him. It is not an unwise gambit given how much can still go vastly wrong for the administration between now and the '08 elections.

Nobels and nasty letters from Congress are irrelevant to this conversation. Torture on the otherhand is quite on topic. The issue is, however, do you believe the Constitution of the United States grants the President the right to "supersede the laws written by Congress"? If so, exactly what limits exist on Executive power once you breach that constitutional bulwark? I can find none and as a result believe the threat and spector of an imperial Executive is no fantasy, but rather an all-to-real constitutional malignancy just waiting for an opportunity. In fact, the operating styles of both this administration and Putin's seem to be converging. Scary business as far as I'm concerned.

Come on down...! Give a shout if it looks like you'll make it past the sandtraps on route 14 and all the way to the stone...

I'm game - and possibly late Monday and all day Wednesday...

if statements like this don't frighten you then you have long since decided the Constitution of the United States is simply a document of desirable guidelines for governance: AG nominee Mr. Mukasey said "...the president’s authority as commander in chief might allow him to supersede laws written by Congress."

The totally predictable outcome for our trillion dollar 'investment' in Iraq: Iraqi electricity deals with Iran, China irk US I'm guessing it was a very democratic RFP process...

Gyms and Community Acquired Staphylococcus aureus (CA-MRSA)

Thanks, I have published quite a bit, but mostly technical, though I did have an article in Climbing back in '78. Funny, especially given the current conversations, my writing was completely bullsh#t until '86 when I ended up charged with producing a course and book for a company as part of a small but excellent team. Over the course of that year I was mercilessly whipped senseless by the editor assigned to me. She was an Iranian refugee and a stunningly beautiful woman with an aristocratic manner and bearing. Her husband and many of his family were murdered during the overthrow of the Shah. She felt her life had only been spared on a whim by the 18 year old Mullah she was brought before. She was told to leave the country immediately and that her children would be taken care of. She left with essentially the clothes on her back and made it to the U.S. over the course of two years via Italy. Seven years after the revolution she still had no idea what happened to her children. I think the best compliment I got from her was - "nothing escapes you after the fourth time you've heard it..."

Me, I have no problem whatsoever say it was an inevitable consequence of U.S. meddling in Iranian affairs. I was around countless brown-bag, anti-Shah demonstrations and knew more than a few highly disaffected Iranians in the movement to overthrow the Shah. And most all of these folks had no shortage of personal stories to recount relative to the savage level of violence employed by the Shah's security forces. The bottom line in Iran was we attempted to play them, and the entire region, like they were just another country in Latin America where the real roots of U.S. foreign policy lie. In fact, the last hundred years of Mid-East policy has basically been a continous disaster because we keep trying to manage and manipulate cultures and tribes in the Mid-East like they are in Central America. The essential problem however, is there are no Latin suicide bombers - Latin cultures are nothing like Mid-Eastern cultures and you simply can't operate with the same mindset in Sana'a as you do in Santiago and expect the same results. And that's basically what we've been doing again and again in the Mid-East. The Iran-Contra Affair was the recent pinnacle of this disfunctional thinking. You'd think we'd learn eventually - U.S. Mid-East policy and 'diplomacy' has been like the longest running sitcom ever for the amusement of generations of British diplomats. Hell, even our Latin neighbors are finally "getting" it, even if it took them a 100 years. Chavez, Saddam, the Shah, and Ahmadinejad were/are very much creations of a U.S. foreign policy that has been stuck in a revolving, time-warped turnstile still steam-driven by Rockefeller-era corporate sensibilities. Each decade we reap a hard bite on the ass from seeds sewn in many previous decades and yet each time we cry anew, "It's a outrage! How could this evil be happening to us!" Even more miraculously, a mirror is never at hand when we we attempt to clearly point out where the true evil lies, which is generally at our feet - we need merely look where we're aiming our gun. So, clueless as ever, the beat goes on - and everywhere in Africa and South America, that beat is backing lyrics sung in the language everyone on those two continents is suddenly clamouring to learn - Mandarin. Is it vanity or pride that keeps the American Right steadfastly blind and unable to entertain even the remote possibility that many of the affronts to the United States aren't a reaction to our successes, but rather to our excesses?. And is it stupidity or self-loathing that keeps the American Left from realizing that reactionary cultural responses to U.S. hedgemony are only rarely cuddly and good tourist destinations? And how hard is it to realize some of the basic, common sense approaches so useful for getting along in third grade would go a long way in today's world. But, I'm sorry to learn that self-interest, power-hunger, and greed are endemic only to those of Euro heritage. I didn't say that, I said for the most part we've continuously shot ourselves in the foot with our attempts at 'diplomacy' in the Mid-East. Criticism of the long-term failure of some U.S. regional foreign policies has nothing to do with 'self-loathing' anymore than saying that end-to-end 'planning' for the war in Iraq was a vast exercise in misdirected incompetence guided by equally faulty perceptions of how the folks in Iraq and across the Mid-East would perceive and respond to our invasion. It's amazing to me how many guises, rationales, and counter-accusations exist to compensate for what comes down to brazen incompetence. Saying our Mid-East policies have been a great success is like a Brit in 1755 saying what a success their Americas policies had been.

This winter, I'm hoping folks heading out for an significant alpine ventures will really be looking hard at the incoming weather. To that end, here are some excellent resources which, taken as a whole, make for a pretty good picture of what's headed towards the NW at any given point in time. Take note the 'Stormsurfing' site is for surfers, so you have to read through the surfing/wave aspects of what they put out - BUT - these folks carefully watch weather events over the NW Pacific as far out as Siberia and it is well worth paying close attention to what they are saying about incoming storms. - Intellicast Pacific Infrared Sat Loop - Stormsurfing - Pacific Storm Forecast - Stormsurfing - North Pacific Surface Pressure and Wind - Stormsurfing - North Pacific Jet Stream Wind and 250 mb Pressure - Intellicast - US Jetstream - National Center for Atmospheric Research - Forecasts

Me, I have no problem whatsoever say it was an inevitable consequence of U.S. meddling in Iranian affairs. I was around countless brown-bag, anti-Shah demonstrations and knew more than a few highly disaffected Iranians in the movement to overthrow the Shah. And most all of these folks had no shortage of personal stories to recount relative to the savage level of violence employed by the Shah's security forces. The bottom line in Iran was we attempted to play them, and the entire region, like they were just another country in Latin America where the real roots of U.S. foreign policy lie. In fact, the last hundred years of Mid-East policy has basically been a continous disaster because we keep trying to manage and manipulate cultures and tribes in the Mid-East like they are in Central America. The essential problem however, is there are no Latin suicide bombers - Latin cultures are nothing like Mid-Eastern cultures and you simply can't operate with the same mindset in Sana'a as you do in Santiago and expect the same results. And that's basically what we've been doing again and again in the Mid-East. The Iran-Contra Affair was the recent pinnacle of this disfunctional thinking. You'd think we'd learn eventually - U.S. Mid-East policy and 'diplomacy' has been like the longest running sitcom ever for the amusement of generations of British diplomats. Hell, even our Latin neighbors are finally "getting" it, even if it took them a 100 years. Chavez, Saddam, the Shah, and Ahmadinejad were/are very much creations of a U.S. foreign policy that has been stuck in a revolving, time-warped turnstile still steam-driven by Rockefeller-era corporate sensibilities. Each decade we reap a hard bite on the ass from seeds sewn in many previous decades and yet each time we cry anew, "It's a outrage! How could this evil be happening to us!" Even more miraculously, a mirror is never at hand when we we attempt to clearly point out where the true evil lies, which is generally at our feet - we need merely look where we're aiming our gun. So, clueless as ever, the beat goes on - and everywhere in Africa and South America, that beat is backing lyrics sung in the language everyone on those two continents is suddenly clamouring to learn - Mandarin. Is it vanity or pride that keeps the American Right steadfastly blind and unable to entertain even the remote possibility that many of the affronts to the United States aren't a reaction to our successes, but rather to our excesses?. And is it stupidity or self-loathing that keeps the American Left from realizing that reactionary cultural responses to U.S. hedgemony are only rarely cuddly and good tourist destinations? And how hard is it to realize some of the basic, common sense approaches so useful for getting along in third grade would go a long way in today's world.

Not at all, simply a reading of the facts as stated by the majority opinion. Again, any conservative who bothered to read that opinion would have to be struck by the gross hypocrisy of the scale of the premption of state's rights. It is so flagrant a departure from SCOTUS precedent (horizontal stare decisis) and core conservative values that is it now having a corrupting effect on lower federal courts as they fight over how to apply the precedent set by Bush v Gore (vertical stare decisis). And the fact the majority went out of it's way to attempt to undercut precedential value of their opinion, and has since assidiously avoided citing it, are both telling as to exactly how politically-driven the decision was. Agreed, and both were stunningly hypocritical appointments given they are possibly the two of the most activist influences the court has ever seen. Their principal credentials? They are both well-schooled supporters of Executive power. Expect democrats to spend eight years either taking taking gross advantage of that fact or forcing Roberts and Alito, however exemplary their veneer, to expose themselves as the less-than-impartial hypocrits they have already revealed themselves to be. The only positive statement I can make about them is at least they are competent legal scholars, which is more than you can say for Thomas, and not whack jobs like Scalia.

I suspect the EU, if pressed by the Russians via natural gas supply issues looming over this winter, would allow the Turks to squeeze the US operations in Iraq just because at this point we've created such a mess for everyone and everyone is a bit pissed at the prospect of cleaning up our mess over the long haul (except of course the Chinese who are relishing the prospect of bankrolling all the infrastructure repairs...).

All the Russians need to do is to prod the Turks to respond to our latest affront to them a bit harsher than the EU is currently giving them lattitude to do. Something like 75% of the material support for our operations in Iraq go through Turkey - if the Turks tighten or simply slow their sphincter down to say 50%, we will end up in a mild chaos in Iraq and far too distracted to take on anything else.

True, he did it largely by having Karl Rove lying his ass off to fiscal and religious conservatives, while simultaneously fear and race mongering. And of course, he was also ushered in by one of the most activist, anti-states rights opinion the SCOTUS has ever produced, but hey, he was elected - you just couldn't say fair and square. And you've actually read the Bush v Gore SCOTUS opinion and dissents, right? They aren't long. The SCOTUS decision was to Conservatives' beliefs on States Rights pretty much what Iraq is to their beliefs on 'no nation building' - extreme and explicit hipocrisy. Bush v Gore Majority Opinion, Stevens Dissent, Souter Dissent, Ginsberg Dissent, Breyer Dissent,

...you mean elected...not to mention re-elected with 49 of 50 states. Exactly, pretty much like the current band of treasonous felons esconced in the Whitehouse and pretty much the same "gang-who-couldn't-shoot-straight" incompetency across the board.

That's exactly the common fairy tale from the Right I was speaking of. Hey, they were history regardless of our spending. The 'accelerant' effect was trivial compared to natural forces already hard at work before Reagan and his merry band of felons descended upon us. Reagan was simply smart enough to not overly f#ck up our response as it folded. Funny how all those claiming this great legacy of the defeat of the mighty Soviet Union are pretty much the same band of treasonous clowns who somehow couldn't manage poor little Iraq. Maybe it's because they used the same strategy - give a lot of money to our friends and hope for the best. It panned out for Reagan, who really didn't have to do much besides wait; it has been a disaster for the United States in Iraq which actually required an plan to have had any chance at all.

Gorbachev ended the Soviet Union, Reagan's main contribution was being open to the possibility there could be a different relationship between the two states. Beyond that his contribution is wildly overstated by many on the Right.