You Have The Right To Remain…Imprisoned November 30, 2011
Posted by Benjamin Wendell in Politics.Tags: constitution, KGB, lubyanka, rights, senate, stassi
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The Constitution ain’t what it used to be. That whole business about warrants, due process, just cause, the right to an attorney and a speedy trial before a jury of your peers…that’s just a quaint remnant of the innocent days before 9/11…the days before we declared a war without end against an enemy with no borders. The argument goes that because we’re “at war”, constitutional protections have to be suspended in the abiding interest of national security. Yesterday the Senate voted 61-37 to retain a law that lets the military “detain” anyone accused of being a “terrorist”, even American citizens, indefinitely, without trial, without counsel, without recourse. Strangely, it wasn’t strictly a right vs. left or liberal vs. conservative vote. Plenty of supposedly progressive Democrats voted for the measure. Republican Rand Paul, who is a Tea Party conservative, voted against it. This speaks to some kind of Orwellian perversion of cherished American values, where suddenly right is wrong, freedom is imprisonment, and torture is “enhanced interrogation”. Remember the good old days of the Cold War, when we were appalled that that KGB in the Soviet Union or the Stassi in East Germany could just “disappear” someone? When they could be declared an “enemy of the state” and summarily shipped to a mental institution, a salt mine in Siberia, or be dispatched with a quick shot to the back of the head after two weeks of being sucked dry of information in the basement of Lubyanka? That sort of abuse of power could never occur in the US, right? We’re only suspending the rights of terrorists…which is fine unless someone high enough up the ladder decides that you or someone you love would be better off out of the way and accuses you of being a terrorist. Then it might not look like such a good idea.
BW
In Case You Didn’t Have Enough On Your Mind November 30, 2011
Posted by Benjamin Wendell in World Events.Tags: bird flu, black plague, H5N1, Netherlands
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Sometimes I wonder how the world manages to make it from each sunrise to the following sunset without bursting into flames or crumbling into dust. It’s not enough that roughly half the planet’s population thinks the other half would be better off dead, with Americans high on the list of potentially endangered species, or that the European economy is on the brink of collapse to the point where they make our own sputtering finances look healthy by comparison. It’s not sufficient that a huge number of the world’s children don’t have enough food or clean water, or that scores die in the whole of Africa every day from diseases we haven’t thought about in North America for a century. It’s not worrisome enough that countries like India and Pakistan stare angrily at one another across the Kashmir border on a daily basis with something like four or five hundred nuclear bombs ready to settle an argument that dates back to tribes fighting over camels and mountaing goats or that North Korea has a couple nukes of their own and a president who could easily stand in for the deranged villain in any James Bond film. We don’t have enough worries with global warming, AIDS, and the very real prospect of oil running out. Nah, none of that is sufficient.
We’ve got to have guys who come up with super-viruses that have a greater than 50% mortality and then use some nifty genetic engineering to make them more easily transmitted from one mammal to another. That’s right…a couple of scientists in the Netherlands have modified H5N1 Bird Flu in such a way that it’s more contagious, and now are about to publish their results…because apparently it’s been way too long since we had a decent Black Plague.
Sort of puts a whole new perspective on your broken furnace or your son’s D+ in algebra…as concerns go. But hey…it’s probably nothing to worry about.
BW
Al Davis, Dennis Ritchie, Diane Cilento, Roger Williams November 30, 2011
Posted by Cory Franklin in Uncategorized.add a comment
All I Can Say Is Barney Frank Does A Pretty Bad Job November 29, 2011
Posted by Cory Franklin in Uncategorized.add a comment
of pretending
The Cain Train Is In A World Of Pain November 29, 2011
Posted by Benjamin Wendell in Politics.Tags: affair, divorce, Ginger White, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich
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Herman Cain ought to hire Jimmie Kimmel’s band and make “Lyin’ Ass Bitch” his campaign theme, since that’s what he’s calling a FIFTH woman who’s accused him of some kind of extramarital sexual adventure. Apparently Ginger White, just like all the others, has created another delusional tale of Herm playing hide the salami at various offices, hotels, and motels over the course of thirteen years, and even went to the extreme of forging dozens of text messages and emails to back up her fictional story. Look, at this point Cain is subject to Ben’s Divorce Rule: If you’ve been divorced five times, maybe it’s you.
The question now is not whether Cain’s reputation is irreparably tarnished, but what sort of reputation he had in the first place. In what kind of Alice-down-the-rabbit-hole hallucinogenic universe would any rational citizen want Herman Cain to be President of the United States? This guy is so inarticulate he makes George Bush look like the debate team coach at Oxford and so ignorant on foreign policy that he makes Michele Bachmann look like Madeline Albright. Does anyone without a severe closed head injury genuinely want Herman Cain to be the one looking across a conference table from Vladimir Putin or Benjamin Netanyahu? Face it…with this guy still in the race, Newt Gingrich is basically Winston Churchill without the cigar.
BW
This Is Why Athletes Get Paid So Much November 29, 2011
Posted by Cory Franklin in Uncategorized.add a comment
Pepper Spray And UC Davis November 29, 2011
Posted by Cory Franklin in Uncategorized.add a comment
From James Taranto:
Cop turned novelist Joseph Wambaugh had a hilarious op-ed piece in yesterday’s Los Angeles Times on the recent pepper-spray incident at the University of California, Davis:
Here’s what I’m betting happened on the Day of the Gas: A campus cop–one of the 99% that the Occupy protesters are championing–looked at a bunch of envious kids who’d missed the great era of protests and Woodstock that their forebears experienced. All they’ve got at UC Davis is a pitiful little sit-in, but they’re arm-locked and caterwauling and making the most of it.
After watching the scene for several hours, something like this goes through the campus cop’s head: “I’m not busting my hump trying to untangle these entitled little twits and hauling their butts away for a few hours, which will only make their day and bring them back feistier tomorrow. My sciatica is killing me and I can already feel the arthritis in my hip and I don’t get paid enough for this kind of truss-busting crap, so I’m gonna give them a taste of Come-to-Jesus juice. And if that doesn’t make them go home, screw it.” Then he casually strolled along the seated row and let them have it.
To be sure, Wambaugh doesn’t side with the police; he mockingly contemns both sides in the face-off. But do you remember when this was supposed to be Tiananmen Square or Kent State? If not, you may have a serious disorder of short term memory. It was just a week ago. That the liberal L.A. Times would publish a piece like this so soon shows just how overwrought were the cries of injustice from silly men like James Fallows.
Barney Frank Is Retiring November 29, 2011
Posted by Cory Franklin in Uncategorized.add a comment
No, not in a social sense, in a literal one.
Maybe he can get a job consulting for Fannie Mae/ Freddie Mac
(that is the only cheap shot I will take at him)
Prediction: ESPN And Syracuse November 29, 2011
Posted by Cory Franklin in Uncategorized.add a comment
are both in a heap of trouble -Penn State sized trouble
