Posting the inansity as it is...

Dispatches from the Culture Wars: Suing Judges:

Suing Judges

Posted on: October 18, 2006 9:42 PM, by Ed Brayton

While conservatives are busy saying, "Attacks on judicial independence? What attacks on judicial independence?", South Dakota has an amendment on the ballot this year allowing people to sue judges for making decisions they don't like. And that's not the half of it. The LA Times reports:

South Dakota's Amendment E would have the most sweeping effect; it has drawn opposition from conservatives and liberals -- including, in a rare show of unanimity, every member of the state Legislature.

Under the amendment judges in the state could lose their jobs or assets if citizens disliked how they sentenced a criminal, resolved a business dispute or settled a divorce. "We want to give power back to the people," said Jake Hanes, a spokesman for the measure.

A special grand jury would evaluate citizen complaints against judges -- and judges would not be presumed innocent. Amendment E explicitly instructs jurors to "liberally" tilt in favor of any citizen with a grievance, and "not to be swayed by artful presentation by the judge."

Gee, what attacks on judicial independence.

My second Godfried "What the FUCK????" of the week and it's not even half over...

Yorktown Victory now 225 Years Old today!

Yorktown Battlefield - Yorktown Battlefield (U.S. National Park Service):

On October 19, 1781, a British army under General Charles Lord Cornwallis was forced to surrender to General Washington’s combined American and French army. Upon hearing of their defeat, British Prime Minister Frederick Lord North is reputed to have said, "Oh God, it's all over." And it was. The victory secured independence for the United States and significantly changed the course of world history.

lower down:

Did You Know?
The 9,000 American forces were in the minority during the Yorktown Campaign. The French army and navy combined for over 25,000 men, while the British army and navy participants numbered over 21,000.

Keith Olbermann tell is like it is and like it was

Quoting intact, as-is, with no apologies.

Crooks and Liars » Countdown Special Comment: Death of Habeas Corpus: “Your words are lies, Sir.”:

And lastly, as promised, a Special Comment tonight on the signing of the Military Commissions Act and the loss of Habeas Corpus.

We have lived as if in a trance.

We have lived… as people in fear.

And now — our rights and our freedoms in peril — we slowly awake to learn that we have been afraid… of the wrong thing.

Therefore, tonight, have we truly become, the inheritors of our American legacy.

For, on this first full day that the Military Commissions Act is in force, we now face what our ancestors faced, at other times of exaggerated crisis and melodramatic fear-mongering:

A government more dangerous to our liberty, than is the enemy it claims to protect us from.

We have been here before — and we have been here before led here — by men better and wiser and nobler than George W. Bush.

We have been here when President John Adams insisted that the Alien and Sedition Acts were necessary to save American lives — only to watch him use those Acts to jail newspaper editors.

American newspaper editors, in American jails, for things they wrote, about America.

We have been here, when President Woodrow Wilson insisted that the Espionage Act was necessary to save American lives — only to watch him use that Act to prosecute 2,000 Americans, especially those he disparaged as "Hyphenated Americans," most of whom were guilty only of advocating peace in a time of war.

American public speakers, in American jails, for things they said, about America.

And we have been here when President Franklin D. Roosevelt insisted that Executive Order 9-0-6-6 was necessary to save American lives — only to watch him use that Order to imprison and pauperize 110-thousand American.

While his man-in-charge, General DeWitt, told Congress: "It makes no difference whether he is an American citizen — he is still a Japanese."

American citizens, in American camps, for something they neither wrote nor said nor did — but for the choices they or their ancestors had made, about coming to America.

Each of these actions was undertaken for the most vital, the most urgent, the most inescapable of reasons.

And each, was a betrayal of that for which the President who advocated them, claimed to be fighting.

Adams and his party were swept from office, and the Alien and Sedition Acts erased.

Many of the very people Wilson silenced, survived him, and…

…one of them even ran to succeed him, and got 900-thousand votes… though his Presidential campaign was conducted entirely… from his jail cell.

And Roosevelt's internment of the Japanese was not merely the worst blight on his record, but it would necessitate a formal apology from the government of the United States, to the citizens of the United States, whose lives it ruined.

The most vital… the most urgent… the most inescapable of reasons.
( Read more... )

[Bush: ] "With the distance of history, the questions will be narrowed and few: Did this generation of Americans take the threat seriously, and did we do what it takes to defeat that threat?"

Wise words.

And ironic ones, Mr. Bush.

Your own, of course, yesterday, in signing the Military Commissions Act.

You spoke so much more than you know, Sir.

Sadly — of course — the distance of history will recognize that the threat this generation of Americans needed to take seriously… was you.
( Read more... )

And if you think this, hyperbole or hysteria… ask the newspaper editors when John Adams was President, or the pacifists when Woodrow Wilson was President, or the Japanese at Manzanar when Franklin Roosevelt was President.

And if you somehow think Habeas Corpus has not been suspended for American citizens but only for everybody else, ask yourself this: If you are pulled off the street tomorrow, and they call you an alien or an undocumented immigrant or an "unlawful enemy combatant" — exactly how are you going to convince them to give you a court hearing to prove you are not? Do you think this Attorney General is going to help you?

This President now has his blank check.

He lied to get it.

He lied as he received it.

Is there any reason to even hope, he has not lied about how he intends to use it, nor who he intends to use it against?

"These military commissions will provide a fair trial," you told us yesterday, Mr. Bush. "In which the accused are presumed innocent, have access to an attorney, and can hear all the evidence against them."

'Presumed innocent,' Mr. Bush?

The very piece of paper you signed as you said that, allows for the detainees to be abused up to the point just before they sustain "serious mental and physical trauma" in the hope of getting them to incriminate themselves, and may no longer even invoke The Geneva Conventions in their own defense.

'Access to an attorney,' Mr. Bush?

Lieutenant Commander Charles Swift said on this program, Sir, and to the Supreme Court, that he was only granted access to his detainee defendant, on the promise that the detainee would plead guilty.

'Hearing all the evidence,' Mr. Bush?

The Military Commissions act specifically permits the introduction of classified evidence not made available to the defense.

Your words are lies, Sir.

They are lies, that imperil us all.
( Read more... )

some newer icons...

clueless and bible blind

Update: I've gotten confirmation that javasaurus was right. D.C. is his title, not his location. It turns out he is a chiropractic doctor (a D.C.) in Leesburg.

Granted, with the caveat that Chiropractic "Doctors" are not always the same thing as medical doctors, and Chiropract as practiced today is still treated as a psuedo-science by many in the medical profession.

Oh, and I forgot to ask, how is it that homosexual behavior is an "expensive "lifestyle""?  How are gays being themselves expensive to me, either as an individual, a straight & married person, or a taxpayer?

---

Of course, my first question is why is someone claiming a DC address 1) writing to the Loudoun Independent (one of those free local papers) and 2) why Loudoun Independent actually chose to publish this tripe.
Loudoun Independent Letters to the Editor:

Political correctness

To the Editor:

Preserve, Protect and Enhance Marriage/Family Values against those who seek to popularize a risky and expensive "lifestyle" for us all. Look only to the latest scandal in Washington or the tragedy in the Amish country to wake up and realize that the family conceived by one man and one woman is the rock bed of stability in our country and community. Shame on those legislators who say that they are "too busy" to debate this vital issue - especially the ones who voted against it. Where is the open mind and dialogue? Worse yet, where are the naysayers who duck for political cover by dreaming up scare tactics?

Is the proposed marriage amendment perfect? No, but more danger lies in the status quo given the trend of liberal judges who "legislate from the bench". We should not let special interest groups dictate to "we, the people", their selfish agenda, especially when our children are being harmed. How many times must we traumatize ourselves? Would our founding fathers really subsidize these so called "alternative lifestyles"? I'm sure that our Creator is looking down at our pride and sinfulness by our fixation with political correctness in looking to creation for excitement rather than the Creator.

Scott B. Cypher, D.C.

So lets see the rundown here:

• we're trying to "popularize" our "lifestyle" and make everybody else be part of it?
• news to me.  I thought we were fighting for equal rights under the law as the constitution demands
  
• the "lifestyle" is responsible for Foley who actually is
• a former closetted, now open homosexual
• a boss guilty of what would be easily called sexual harrassment in the real world
  
• a persuer of boys 1/3rd his age
  
• an alcoholic
• still insisting he's Republican and therefore still of the party that claims to "Preserve, Protect and Enhance Marriage/Family Values"
• the "lifestyle" is responsible for the Amish tragedy in spite of the facts that
• the perpetrator, Charles Roberts, was
• straight
• married
• home-schooled (therefore couldn't have been corrupted by the public schools)
  
• conservative
• christian
• the child of still-married christian parents
  
• in no way at all affected by the "lifestyle" - "His suicide notes stated that he was still angry at God for the death of a premature infant daughter nine years prior."
• and one could hardly say that the Amish are part of the "lifestyle"
• of course, their own lifestyle is certainly alternative...
  
• one man and one woman is hardly the "rockbed of stability" given the staggering 50% divorce rate in this country
• study after study has shown that adopted children of gay parents do just as well in society as those of married parents
• the issue of gay marriage (i note he refused to actually SAY it in that first paragraph) is hardly a "vital issue" given the traffic problems, the sprawl, the failing jobs in the valley and the south, the drop in tourism because of 9/11 and other airline fears, the ever-increasing cost of education, the increasing lack of affordable child-care...
• WHAT "scare tactics?"
• nice support for these blanket assertions
• oh goodie, he used the "legislate from the bench" to describe judges who actually enforce the legislature to stick to what they are permitted to do under the constitution of the state of virginia and the united states.
• he also called them "liberal judges" when the majority of judges in federal positions covering DC and the state of Virginia have been appointed by republicans, and I believe the majority of judges on the appeals circuits in VA are as well but I can't cite anything for that
• would he have called Judge Jones a "liberal" or "activist" judge?
  
• "the agenda" is a "selfish" agenda - it's selfish of one to demand and expect equal rights under the law?
• therefore "we the people" have no interest in equal rights under the law.
• dude, who's this "we" anyways?
• The Constitution exists to protect ALL people from the abuses of "we, the people".  It puts limits on the law to protect our freedoms.
  
• we're "traumatizing ourselves"?  Reasonable people are not the ones going around saying that we need to fear terrorists and fear homosexuals and fear the media and fear those with "alternate lifestyles"
• we ARE the ones saying that we should FEAR the day people who think like you actually get more power than you already have
• aside from the NEA (which has been so gutted it's pretty much useless), how are we "subsidizing" this "alternate lifestyle" anyways?
• the day the NEA gives a grant to the makers of "Queer Eye" is the day you can actually say we're "subsidizing".
  
• the one thing the founding fathers would NOT want to do is to let a religious minority (yes, a MINORITY - you don't speak for a majority of americans or even a majority of christians) like you dictate the laws and morality of the entire nation.
• gee, the "Creator" is looking down at us.  boy that's realy going to scare us, isn't it?
• of course, I personally believe that Jesus is looking down on you and wondering how you could have possibly gotten it all so wrong...
• no intelligent design?  no blaiming evolution?  I'm somewhat disappointed.
• Equal rights for equal roles is not "political correctness".  Acting against institutionalized bigotry is not "political correctness".  Making sure that the laws of this nation are not directly the result of evangelical religious action is not "political correctness".
• It's justice as defined and protected by the constitution of the united states.  read it some time.  there's a lot more in there besides "we the people".

sheesh...

I *really* wonder why this unsupported rant of emotional right-wing rhetoric from someone NOT EVEN FROM THE COUNTY was published in the first place...