I am off to a Christmas party, so entertain yourselves.
Max dorkage below the fold.
This post is in: Previous Site Maintenance
I am off to a Christmas party, so entertain yourselves.
Max dorkage below the fold.
by Tim F| 17 Comments
This post is in: Republican Crime Syndicate - aka the Bush Admin.
What finally drove “cookie” Krongard to quit? Under normal circumstances being credibly accused of actively covering up departmental abuses that range from ordinary contracting fraud to slavery would do it. If that didn’t work his, how should we say, innovative personnel policies would finish the job.
Bot no, that didn’t do it. Even being caught lying to Congress didn’t have the impact that it usually would, although the certainty that his own brother planned to sell Cookie down the river no doubt made a dignified exit look more appealing.
Anyhow, almost every time a DC figure resigns in disgrace some spokesman insists that he/she plans to spend more time with the family. In Cookie’s case that seems unlikely.
State Inspector General Howard Krongard ResignsPost + Comments (17)
by Tim F| 86 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
It seems like forever since we had one of these. Did anybody see the Golden Compass? Picket it?
One more question for discussion. Let’s say that you have a wee heavy fermenting for eight days (OG ~1.080) and the outgas smells a bit like hard cider. Is that a bad sign?
Chat about whatever.
by Tim F| 74 Comments
This post is in: Republican Stupidity
Matt Yglesias musing on Mitt Romney:
Meanwhile, from the point of view of a basically secular person who nonetheless holds to certain retrograde notions about human dignity, there continues to be something staggering about the extent to which the politicized “faith” crowd believes that it is a right and just thing to do to, say, keep a man shackled naked in a standing posture in a freezing room and then, later, strap him to a board and force water down his throat so as to induce a sensation of drowning before using evidence obtained by such methods as perhaps a basis for detaining further individuals and treating them likewise.
Not to be a contrarian, but I think that Romney was perfectly right to point out the commonality between faith communities. After all, many muslim fundamentalists think that it is ok to torture prisoners. Our religious leaders think that it is ok to torture prisoners. Counting all religious communities who wield their faith as a self-righteous club to beat outsiders with and an exclusionary tool for political advancement, Torquemada would fit right in.
So Mitt has it right. Birds of a feather shouldn’t be afraid to stress their common points. It can’t be easy dealing with us soulless secularists who won’t get on board with casual warfare and inflicting physical and psychological suffering on helpless captives.
by John Cole| 40 Comments
This post is in: Republican Crime Syndicate - aka the Bush Admin.
After months of playing the coy game of “if torture is so bad, why don’t you specifically outlaw it,” Bush and the dead-enders are going to get what they want:
In a sharp rebuke to White House counterterrorism policy, a Congressional conference committee has voted to outlaw the harsh interrogation techniques used by the Central Intelligence Agency against suspected high-level terrorists.
The vote to require all American interrogators to abide by the Army Field Manual, which prohibits coercive methods, came during negotiations of the Senate and House intelligence committees over the annual intelligence authorization bill. It will not be the last word on the subject; the full House and Senate must still pass the bill, and it would likely face a veto by President Bush.
But passage of the interrogation restriction — by one vote in a tense, three-hour meeting on Wednesday behind closed doors — reflected Congress’s growing disenchantment with the harsh tactics authorized by the White House after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. It was the latest setback for the administration’s insistence that what it calls “enhanced” interrogation techniques are a critical part of gathering intelligence to thwart future terrorist attacks.
Bush can then veto it, and the NRO can cheer him for protecting us all.
by John Cole| 20 Comments
This post is in: I Read These Morons So You Don't Have To
Bryan P. over at Michelle’s digs has found the real culprit in the destruction of the CIA Interrogation tapes- John McCain. I’ll let Bryan explain:
This is what we get when we have leaders who abdicate leadership and don’t protect their subordinates for the consequences of the choices that the leaders make. This, essentially, is the result of Sen. John McCain’s announced policy of keeping interrogation techniques like waterboarding illegal, but knowing full well that it will be used in extreme circumstances, and that when it is used the agents who used it will find themselves in legal jeopardy no matter what the outcome of the interrogation was. It’s the politics of passing the buck.
Because he refused to legalize torture, John McCain forced these guys to break the law. Bryan’s take is as entertaining as Michelle’s.
This post is in: General Stupidity, I Read These Morons So You Don't Have To
I was wondering who would be the first to suggest that the solution to the Omaha mall shooting was more guns, and our winner is Neil Boortz with an assist from the Instapundit:
I HEARD NEAL BOORTZ holding forth on the Omaha mall shooting this morning on the way to work, and I realized I haven’t posted on it. I don’t really have anything to say that I haven’t said before. But it’s worth noting — since apparently most of the media reports haven’t — that this was another mass shooting in a “gun-free” zone. It seems to me that we’ve reached the point at which a facility that bans firearms, making its patrons unable to defend themselves, should be subject to lawsuit for its failure to protect them. The pattern of mass shootings in “gun free” zones is well-established at this point, and I don’t see why places that take the affirmative step of forcing their law-abiding patrons to go unarmed should get off scot-free.
Yeehaw.
More guns makes everything better.