Please join us tonight for an evening of electoral politics under the influence at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. We meet at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. Starting time is 8:00 pm, but feel free to join some of us for an earlier dinner.
Not in Seattle? There is a good chance you live near one of the 223 other chapters of Drinking Liberally.
If you tune in a rightwing radio show, you may hear the talk-host ranting about how wrong it is for municipalities to ban “dangerous breeds” of dogs because such bans interfere with the “rights” of dog owners.
Today, a 48-year-old New Mexico woman was mauled to death by a marauding pack of four pit bulls. They weren’t wild dogs; someone let them run loose.
When wingers complain about restrictions on their “freedom” what they really want is a license to do whatever they please — even if innocent people get hurt.
Hahaha… What a bunch of asshats.
Obama Remark May Prejudice Manning Trial
President Obama may have inadvertently compromised the military’s ability to prosecute WikiLeaker Pfc. Bradley Manning, who recently was moved to an Army detention facility after public complaints that he was being tortured by Marine guards at a USMC brig.
Obama responded to a persistent questioner by saying Manning was being prosecuted “because he broke the law.”
That’s a no-no.
Under the U.S. Constitution, the president is the commander-in-chief of the armed forces; and U.S. military law prohibits “command influence” over military trials. A public statement by a high-ranking commander that a defendant is guilty can make a fair trial impossible — and result in dismissal of charges.
Whether the charges against Pfc. Manning can go forward will now depend on whether the Army can find jurors who haven’t heard about the president’s remark.
@2 Yeah, Graham, Lieberman, and McCain — what a trio. What were the voters in their states thinking?*
* They probably weren’t.
Roger Rabbit at 3,
I don’t think anybody out there thinks this Bradley kid is going to get a fair trial. He’s probably going to do some time because the government hates being embarassed, even when the embarassment is truly deserved, as it is here.
Remember “The Falcon and the Snowman?” Those guys, to the best of my knowledge, are still in the slammer, and the stuff they sold to the Russians wasn’t all that earth shattering, in retrospect.
Like I said before, there’s nothing like sunshine as a disinfectant for government corruption.
Bradley will get treated more harshly because he embarassed the government. Too bad for Bradley, but I’m glad the government gets a little kick in the pants, too.
# 3, 5: Maybe that’s an “out” for Obama. Rather than trying to spend the next three or four years engaged in a courts-martial, appeals, remand for re-trial, another set of appeals, etc., they can use this as a basis for a plea-bargain which simply gets him dishonerably discharged with loss of back pay.
I happen to believe that you do need some discipline in the military, and it’s not up to some individual within it to decide what should be secret, and what should not. But where the consequences are mostly just embarrasment, because people in the State Dept. were saying things about other diplomats that they shouldn’t have, then embarrasement isn’t reason enough to proceed with a prosecution that might result in even more embarrasement.
Looks like Vegas might be toast.
5 – Shows how much a glibertarian knows, knows how to use the internet anyway.
Andrew Dalton Lee was paroled in 1998.
Christopher Boyce in 2002.
If not for hypocrisy, there would be no Republican Party.
@9 If not for the Republican Party there would be much less hypocrisy. (See next post.)
GOP Encounters Medicare Blowback
Two years ago Republicans stirred up senior citizens by darkly warning them that “Obamacare” would cut their Medicare benefits. This tactic drove many angry senior citizens to shout and stamp their feet at townhall meetings.
Then, after taking over the House in last fall’s elections, Republicans unveiled their budget plan — and guess what, it not only cuts Medicare, it eliminates it!
Now that Congress is in recess and GOP congressmen have gone home to hold meetings in their districts, guess who’s showing up at their townhalls, and shouting and stamping their feet? Wanna guess? Angry senior citizens!
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42.....itol_hill/
Roger Rabbit Commentary: When I first saw Rep. Paul Ryan’s scheme to abolish Medicare I asked myself, “The Republicans can’t really be this stupid, can they?” Well yes, they can, and the results are utterly predictable. IMO they’ll be lucky to have 50 seats after the 2012 election.
Hope this is an open thread …
Here’s the birth certificate!
http://www.whitehouse.gov/site.....g-form.pdf
@ 12
The freepers are going nutz over that. Its fake, its the same COLB, etc etc etc etc etc ad infinitus nauseum.
What it is, is the same old racism where back in the 50’s, anyone with less than lily white skin sitting in the front of the bus was assaulted and required to prove their “whiteness”.
The Klan will never change. 77 million people in this country are now unquestioningly and overtly racists. And their opposition to the current President is founded solely in that and little else. they just aren’t intelligent enough to understand what this nation stood for in the 1930’s and 40’s. And what we stood against.
Fascism is so easy. All you need is the same people who believe the Earth is flat, that professional wrestling is real, that god is sitting right there next to them in their Kenworth or Peterbuilt protecting them from all those hippies in their Subarus. God speaks to them through their AM radio with the voices of Rush and Glen and Micheal. He’ll cure their hemorrhoids, he’s gonna take back America from all those leftists and negrowz that are fixin to turn it into a Islamic communist paradise where all the women have armpit hair.
Fell out of bed feielng down. This has brightened my day!