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Random commentary and senseless acts of blogging.
The first Republican president once said, "While the people retain their virtue and their vigilance, no administration by any extreme of wickedness or folly can seriously injure the government in the short space of four years." If Mr. Lincoln could see what's happened in these last three-and-a-half years, he might hedge a little on that statement. Blog critics Gryffindor House Slytherin House Ravenclaw House House Elves Beth Jacob Prisoners of Azkaban Muggles
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Tuesday, June 08, 2004
Kevin Drum gives us another striking look at the lunatic Republican platform in Texas. If anything, he has been rather kind to the extremism implicit in this document. That's especially true of the anti-abortion plank,"The Party affirms its support for a human life amendment to the Constitution and we endorse making clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protection applies to unborn children." Kevin glosses this as, "All abortion of all kinds should be permanently outlawed by constitutional amendment." That's true, but it's really much stronger than that. By stating that a fetus is a human life entitled to equal protection, this proposal not only labels abortion as a crime, but specifies what type of crime it is: first degree murder. What this proposal really amounts to is: "Women who obtain abortions should be executed." Friday, June 04, 2004
The 'resignation' for 'family reasons' of George Tenet sounds more than suspicious. If only because resigning at this moment looks so much like getting fired, I have to think Tenet would have stayed on for the rest of the year unless he either was fired or perhaps wanted to be out of office with a freer hand to respond to the upcoming reports on WMD intelligence and 9/11. Even if Tenet does have personal reasons for wanting to quit, which is probably true, he knows that there will be a housecleaning in December/January regardless of what happens in November. To quit alone and ahead of that looks very much like being the fall guy for all the screwups on Iraq and maybe 9/11 too. On the plus side, the Onion reports that at least one failed appointee from this administration is finally going to be held accountable. The O'Franken Factor blog (no permalinks, see 06.02) now links to Franken's demolition of Neal Boortz in a recent interview. Check out also Boortz's clever desciption of the incident - it's an instructive case of how to completely misrepresent everything without actually telling any lies. Actually, Boortz did slip in one lie at the beginning, an odd one since it doesn't seem to have a point. Franken did greet him at the beginning of the interview, then launched directly into catching him in his lie about inviting Franken to guest host. Of the AAR shows I've heard so far, Franken's is the best, Rhodes a close second. Majority Report I usually miss to see TV, but what's not to like in a show that has Atrios and several other bloggers as regular guests? Morning Sedition really isn't working out. |
