Citizens of this nation owe U.S. Representative John Murtha (D-PA) our deepest gratitude. One need not agree with his proposal that we withdraw our troops from Iraq at once to salute this decorated Marine. Merely recognizing that he acted with honor by creating much needed debate on the war, is enough. Which makes it all the more difficult to digest Rep. Jean Schmidt’s (R-OH) inane rhetoric.
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Nebraskans are notorious for being straight shooters. Chuck Hagel, Republican Senator from the Cornhusker State is no exception. Earlier this week Hagel took President Bush to task for his comments criticizing Americans who would dare question his decision making in regards to the war in Iraq. Given that Hagel is a decorated Vietnam War vet, he has strong legs to stand on.
According to U.S. Newswire, Hagel said, “the Bush administration must understand that each American has a right to question our policies in Iraq and should not be demonized for disagreeing with them.”
Hagel also said the Vietnam War “was a national tragedy partly because members of Congress failed their country, remained silent and lacked the courage to challenge the administrations in power until it was too late. To question your government is not unpatriotic — to not question your government is unpatriotic,” Hagel said, arguing that 58,000 troops died in Vietnam because of silence by political leaders. “America owes its men and women in uniform a policy worthy of their sacrifices.”
Peggy Noonan, author and contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal, is troubled that our nation may be damaged beyond repair.
I think there is an unspoken subtext in our national political culture right now. In fact I think it’s a subtext to our society. I think that a lot of people are carrying around in their heads, unarticulated and even in some cases unnoticed, a sense that the wheels are coming off the trolley and the trolley off the tracks. That in some deep and fundamental way things have broken down and can’t be fixed, or won’t be fixed any time soon.
Cloning, nuts with nukes, epidemics; the growing knowledge that there’s no such thing as homeland security; the fact that we’re leaving our kids with a bill no one can pay. A sense of unreality in our courts so deep that they think they can seize grandma’s house to build a strip mall; our media institutions imploding–the spectacle of a great American newspaper, the New York Times, hurtling off its own tracks, as did CBS. The fear of parents that their children will wind up disturbed, and their souls actually imperiled, by the popular culture in which we are raising them. Senators who seem owned by someone, actually owned, by an interest group or a financial entity. Great churches that have lost all sense of mission, and all authority. Do you have confidence in the CIA? The FBI? I didn’t think so.
Our elites, our educated and successful professionals, are the ones who are supposed to dig us out and lead us. I refer specifically to the elites of journalism and politics, the elites of the Hill and at Foggy Bottom and the agencies, the elites of our state capitals, the rich and accomplished and successful of Washington, and elsewhere. I have a nagging sense, and think I have accurately observed, that many of these people have made a separate peace. That they’re living their lives and taking their pleasures and pursuing their agendas; that they’re going forward each day with the knowledge, which they hold more securely and with greater reason than nonelites, that the wheels are off the trolley and the trolley’s off the tracks, and with a conviction, a certainty, that there is nothing they can do about it.
You’re a lobbyist or a senator or a cabinet chief, you’re an editor at a paper or a green-room schmoozer, you’re a doctor or lawyer or Indian chief, and you’re making your life a little fortress. That’s what I think a lot of the elites are up to.
Not all of course. There are a lot of people–I know them and so do you–trying to do work that helps, that will turn it around, that can make it better, that can save lives.
Maybe these thoughts go mostly unspoken in Noonan’s circle, but not in mine.
A friend told me the other day that he wants to get into yacht sales. My response was he’d be better off moving to Baja and learning how to fish for his dinner.
Can you say “not qualified”? The White House can’t.
A selection from the letter Harriet Miers sent to President Bush, withdrawing her name from consideration as a justice of the United States Supreme Court:
Repeatedly in the course of the process of confirmation for nominees for other positions, I have steadfastly maintained that the independence of the Executive Branch be preserved and its confidential documents and information not be released to further a confirmation process. I feel compelled to adhere to this position, especially related to my own nomination.
The Bushies have things to hide? This really is news.
Defedning the bar tabs he picked up for visiting dignitaries, Salt Lake City Mayor, Rocky Anderson, said, “I truly feel like we’re in the middle of a Kafka novel sometimes. With a little bit of Taliban thrown in.”
Jon Armstrong of Salt Lake-based Blurbomat said, “I can’t decide whether this is the most outrageously true thing ever said by a politician, or the most insane career killing brain fart ever said by a politician.”
Washington Post: The Bush administration is proposing far-reaching changes to conservation policies that would allow hunters, circuses and the pet industry to kill, capture and import animals on the brink of extinction in other countries.
Giving Americans access to endangered animals, officials said, would feed the gigantic U.S. demand for live animals, skins, parts and trophies, and generate profits that would allow poor nations to pay for conservation of the remaining animals and their habitat.
This and other proposals that pursue conservation through trade would, for example, open the door for American trophy hunters to kill the endangered straight-horned markhor in Pakistan; license the pet industry to import the blue fronted Amazon parrot from Argentina; permit the capture of endangered Asian elephants for U.S. circuses and zoos; and partially resume the trade in African ivory. No U.S. endangered species would be affected.
The proposal involves an interpretation of the Endangered Species Act that deviates radically from the course followed by Republican and Democratic administrations since President Richard M. Nixon signed the act in 1973. The law established broad protection for endangered species, most of which are not native to America, and effectively prohibited trade in them.
The Endangered Species Act prohibits removing domestic endangered species from the wild. Until now, that protection was extended to foreign species.
Thanks to Smudge Report for the pointer.
A group of right wing Christian soldiers wants to take South Carolina. And these Cailfornia-based idealogues are already talking about secession from the union as a legitimate goal, a road the Palmetto State has already been down.
Fox News: Nearly 140 years after the Civil War, another group of Americans wants to secede from the union.
Christian Exodus, a California-based group, wants God to be its commander in chief. Decrying what it perceives as the unjust secularization of the United States, it wants a sovereign state of its own.
But rather than eye the Golden State — a “lost cause,” says the group’s founder — it’ll settle for South Carolina.
Cory Burnell, Christian Exodus’ founder and president, told FOX News that the group narrowed its focus to the Bible Belt state based on an electorate that is already “Christian-leaning,” has its own ports and — unlike its neighbor North Carolina — is no hub of liberalism.
Christian Exodus’ mission, according to its Web site, is to scrap the “tyrannical authority” of federal government in favor of a constitutional republic, with the Ten Commandments rather than the U.S. Constitution as government’s guide.
Phase One of the group’s “plan of action” in breaking down the wall between church and state is to enlist groups of 1,000 members to move into 12 designated House districts in South Carolina, with the goal of voting 12 “Christian sovereigntists” into the state government by 2008.
If by 2016 group leaders have not achieved the kind of government they want, Christian Exodus will throw down the gauntlet and seek independence.
Direct from the horse’s mouth:
ChristianExodus.org is coordinating the move of thousands of Christians to South Carolina for the express purpose of re-establishing Godly, constitutional government. It is evident that the U.S. Constitution has been abandoned under our current federal system, and the efforts of Christian activism to restore our Godly republic have proven futile over the past three decades. The time has come for Christians to withdraw our consent from the current federal government and re-introduce the Christian principles once so predominant in America to a sovereign State like South Carolina.
ChristianExodus.org offers the opportunity to try a strategy not yet employed by Bible-believing Christians. Rather than spend resources in continued efforts to redirect the entire nation, we will redeem States one at a time. Millions of Christian conservatives are geographically spread out and diluted at the national level. Therefore, we must concentrate our numbers in a geographical region with a sovereign government we can control through the electoral process.
ChristianExodus.org is orchestrating the move of thousands of Christians to reacquire our Constitutional rights and, if necessary to attain these rights, dissolve our State’s bond with the union.
The hippies tried to do a similar thing (minus the secession scheme) with Wyoming–the nation’s least populous state–thirty five years ago. It didn’t work.
Bill Moyer, 73, wears a “B.S. Protector” flap while President Bush addresses the Veterans of Foreign Wars at their 106th convention Monday in Salt Lake City. Moyer served in WWII, Korea and Vietnam.
“Why of course the people don’t want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.” – Hermann Goering, April 18, 1946
Metafilter points to this story about the American Legion’s efforts to quell dissent.
The American Legion will stand against anyone and any group that would demoralize our troops, or worse, endanger their lives by encouraging terrorists to continue their cowardly attacks against freedom-loving peoples,” Thomas Cadmus, national commander, told delegates at the group’s national convention in Honolulu.
The delegates voted to use whatever means necessary to “ensure the united backing of the American people to support our troops and the global war on terrorism.”
Cadmus recalled: “For many of us, the visions of Jane Fonda glibly spouting anti-American messages with the North Vietnamese and protestors denouncing our own forces four decades ago is forever etched in our memories. We must never let that happen again.”
“We had hoped that the lessons learned from the Vietnam War would be clear to our fellow citizens. Public protests against the war here at home while our young men and women are in harm’s way on the other side of the globe only provide aid and comfort to our enemies.”
This Cadmus is a smart one. He understands that every war protestor’s ultimate aim is to encourage terrorists to “continue their cowardly attacks” against us. With geniuses like this defending the cause, there’s really very little to worry about.