Just why is this allowed?
But today was my first experience with the special “premier” security screening. While other travelers waited in long lines, first to have their bags checked and then to pass through the metal detectors, I was whisked through.This apparent perk makes me more then uncomfortable. It makes me a bit angry and my answer to a question that Kleiman asks later in his post iis that, no, it is not a good idea to let folks buy their way out the regular security line!!
There might be a lesson or two hidden here:
ENGLAND fans will be allowed to smoke dope before Sunday�s crunch clash with France � to keep them calm.
Cops in Lisbon plan to crack down on drunk supporters while turning a blind eye to those spotted puffing on a spliff.
Via Medical Rants.
Jim Henley has it right:
HOWEVER. President Bush is no one’s idea of a legal mind. He may have initiated the project that became the memo, but he didn’t draft the thing. High-level government lawyers, most of them undoubtedly political appointees, did that. What that means is that there is systemic corruption in the Republican Party as an institution – “Bush’s Willing Torturers” we might call them. These are people that came up with the idea that the Constitutional phrase “he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed” meant
authority to set aside the laws is “inherent in the president.”
They represent a deadly danger to the American system and they are multiple. It’s not one guy somewhere, it’s a movement. Until the Republican Party roots them out, that Party is the enemy, not just of libertarians, but of anyone who values individual freedom and republican government. From the standpoint of liberty, there can no longer be any justification for preferring the Republicans to the Democrats.
Folks, we should not have to wait until November to get rid of these folks. If congress does not act, if the Republicans don’t come to their senses and choose someone else then the rest of us should just say no. A few million in the steets every day should do the trick.
Mark Danner writes in the New York Review of Books:
What is clear is that the Abu Ghraib photographs and the terrible story they tell have done great damage to what was left of America’s moral power in the world, and thus its power to inspire hope rather than hatred among Muslims. The photographs “do not represent America,” or so the President asserts, and we nod our heads and agree. But what exactly does this mean?I agree that the photographs do not represent America but what has become abundantly clear is that the photographs do represent the bush administration (article is from the Wall Street Journal ($)):
Bush administration lawyers contended last year that the president wasn’t bound by laws prohibiting torture and that government agents who might torture prisoners at his direction couldn’t be prosecuted by the Justice Department.For more details see Bilmon, Phillip Carter, and Kevin Drum who states the issue clearly:
The United States has fought many wars over the past half century, and in each of them our causes were just as important as today’s, information from prisoners would have been just as helpful, and we were every bit as determined to win as we are now. But we still didn’t authorize torture of prisoners. FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, LBJ, Reagan � all of them knew it wasn’t right, and the rest of us knew it as well.Do we really have to wait for an election to toss these people out of office?
So what’s different this time? Only one thing: the name of the man in the White House. Under this administration, we seem to have lost the simple level of moral clarity that allowed our predecessors to tell right from wrong.
Ever wondered what was going on inside Enron during the California blackouts? Here is part of the answer:
“He just f—s California,” says one Enron employee. “He steals money from California to the tune of about a million.”
“Will you rephrase that?” asks a second employee.
“OK, he, um, he arbitrages the California market to the tune of a million bucks or two a day,” replies the first.
There is a lot more so go read the rest.
Now that you have read the rest do you really think that the Justice Department and Enron lawyers didn’t want the tapes released because of the foul language?
Via Making Light.