Political Winds

…maybe some of the senators who voted for NAFTA would acknowledge that they themselves are partly responsible for the “need” to build a wall on the southern US border.

Read the full post on Huffington Post 

My first blog for the Huffington Post is up.  I’ll be contributing regularly to HuffPo, writing primarily but not exclusively about new media.

George W. Bush spoke again today about sacrifice. Once again, his grandiloquent words referred to the only group of Americans who have been asked to make sacrifices in the “war on terror.” Memorial Day, of course, is a day for presidential rhetoric. It should be. Words about war, even conflicts that are just and fought of necessity, leave a bitter aftertaste. George Bush’s words today leave something more poisonous:

They know that one day this war will end — as all wars do. Our duty is to ensure that its outcome justifies the sacrifices made by those who fought and died in it. From their deaths must come a world where the cruel dreams of tyrants and terrorists are frustrated and foiled.

The outcome so far, Mr. Bush, has fulfilled those cruel dreams of terrorists. You’ve given them what they wanted. And while you were spinning about soldiers dying for reasons other than recklessness, arrogance and deceit, your vice president didn’t even try to sound statesmanlike as he talked to live soldiers who might be sent to die. In a single sentence, Mr. Cheney cynically and obscenely degraded the principles for which countless American soldiers have died in so many wars, principles that separated them - and us - from our enemies. Giving the commencement address at West Point on Saturday, Cheney ridiculed the idea of upholding our own values as we fight.

Capture one of these killers, and he’ll be quick to demand the protections of the Geneva Convention and the Constitution of the United States. Yet when they wage attacks or take captives, their delicate sensibilities seem to fall away.

Your sensibilities, Mr. Vice President, and those of the president, fell away a long time ago, and our country - not the enemy - is paying the price.

There were the usual tired talking points from Republican blusterers after they heard Monica Goodling testify on Wednesday.  Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL) added his own clever take on the testimony, saying, “You’ve been a huge disappointment to a lot of people that were expecting to find some grand conspiracy of the Justice Department to deny justice to the American people.”

Well, guess what Tom, there is ample evidence of the grand conspiracy, and Monica Goodling provided more of it with  you, the Democrats and the media barely noticing.  Yes, the latter reported on Goodling’s acknowledgment that she “… may have gone too far in asking political questions of applicants for career positions…”  But, as Greg Palast and the BBC have reported, Goodling disclosed something much bigger.  It bears directly on what this scandal is really about:  the use of the Justice Department in a Rove-inspired illegal campaign to suppress minority voters.  Here’s a link to Palast’s story on the BradBlog.

AFP:

One person was killed and two others wounded after a California college student opened fire following a row over a PlayStation 2 video game, police said Tuesday.

The shooting took place late Monday near the campus of California State University in Fresno, 219 miles (352 kilometers) northeast of Los Angeles, police said.

Read the full story

I rest my case.  Allowing college students to pack deadly weapons on campuses unquestionably will increase rather than diminish gun deaths on campuses.  That should be overwhelmingly obvious to anyone with a smidgen of common sense, of which there is a huge deficit on the side of extremist gun advocates.