According to Restless Mania, the election of Morales in Bolivia is the beginning of the end.
** Update ***
More here from the Poliblogger.
Archives for 2005
Site Changes
Hold on- changing the layout to add the PJ Media ads. Shouldn’t be too painful for you all.
*** Update ***
Up and running. There might be a few tweaks here and there.
I am now a slave to my corporate masters. Let me know if the load times have changed for you all.
WTF In Re FISA
Surfing around the internetosphere it seems fairly likely that the administration’s warrantless wiretapping broke the law, and was totally unnecessary. If the government has 72 hours to apply retroactively for a warrant, and secret FISA courts had never rejected an application at the time that the ‘special’ surveillance began, why not do the paperwork? Josh Marshall pointed that out two days ago. Kevin Drum asks the same question today. True to form, John Aravosis has some ideas and isn’t shy about sharing them.
If I wanted to fit this into an ongoing pattern, I’d point out that on general principles the Bush administration absolutely detests keeping a paper trail. Part and parcel with managing government as a political operation includes heading off any potential source of embarrassment, and that means shutting down transparency and keeping stuff that you know in advance might look bad off the books whenever possible.
Now one thing we know is that these guys aren’t too sharp about seeing in advance what might come back to embarrass them, as that last link shows. These days it seems like damage control generally gets applied retroactively. So what sort of thing would they recognize in advance as a potential problem? Something to think about.
Also in the WaPo
A prettty depressing op-ed piece by Vladimir Bukovsky, who spent a number of years in Soviet prisons:
One nasty morning Comrade Stalin discovered that his favorite pipe was missing. Naturally, he called in his henchman, Lavrenti Beria, and instructed him to find the pipe. A few hours later, Stalin found it in his desk and called off the search. “But, Comrade Stalin,” stammered Beria, “five suspects have already confessed to stealing it.”
This joke, whispered among those who trusted each other when I was a kid in Moscow in the 1950s, is perhaps the best contribution I can make to the current argument in Washington about legislation banning torture and inhumane treatment of suspected terrorists captured abroad. Now that President Bush has made a public show of endorsing Sen. John McCain’s amendment, it would seem that the debate is ending. But that the debate occurred at all, and that prominent figures are willing to entertain the idea, is perplexing and alarming to me. I have seen what happens to a society that becomes enamored of such methods in its quest for greater security; it takes more than words and political compromise to beat back the impulse.
Doomed Campaigns
Bill Moyers of PBS for President.
On the upside, if you donate to his campaign, you will get a festive tote bag.
RINO Sightings
RINO sightings is being hosted by Judith Weiss of Kesher Talk.
Once again, I forgot to submit something.
Exporting Democracy, Part 2
The WaPo picks up where they left off yesterday with their ‘Exporting Democracy’ series with a fine piece by David Finkel. While the whole thing is worth a read, this stuck out:
Just as there are no police here, or courts or government or law, there are also no roads, only smoothed tracks in the dirt and sand, which Rabea and his armed guards drove along until they arrived at a village called Aal Shinnon. It has no electricity, no functioning school, no functioning anything, only an angry man who, when the subject of the United States came up, said, “We’re ready for the Americans. If they come, we will kill them.”
Next stop: a village called Al Muhtoon, where a man said of the United States, “It’s the biggest country in the world, and it doesn’t do much good for the world.” Why, he asked bitterly, doesn’t American money come here? He was standing outside the health clinic, which had bullet holes in the front gate, trash in the courtyard, a padlock on the door and nothing visible inside except a broken scale, a rusted bed frame and a dust-coated sink. A year ago, there was a doctor here, the man said. He stayed for two months, waiting for the government to send equipment and medicine, and when nothing showed up he went away.
How much of the hatred, as witnessed in the Aal Shinnon, is caused by the perception of indifference as witnessed in Al Muhtoon?
Again, the entire series is worth a read (yesterday’s installment is here). Jane at Armies of Liberation, who has some experience with Yemen, comments.