I don’t know how many straws the Bush camel can hold, but I wonder if Google might have been one of the last ones. People might be fool enough to believe they’re only listening to phone calls with al-Qaeda. More likely they just never call outside the country so figure it’s somebody else’s problem. But does the equation change when Billy Joe Bob finds out the Department of Justice knows he was looking for “naked 12 hairless oral”? Or the county Right to Life chapter President googled “abortion discrete”? Yeah, maybe.
In other news, filibuster or not? Was Orwell just 20 years too early? And how big a threat is al-Qaeda after all?
P.S. I’m still looking for contributors, so if you’re interested drop me a line. Go to the bottom for more.
Gainesville (Florida) Sun
While it is true we lost on Alito in ’04, I don’t agree we should not filibuster. I disagree for a strategic reason- I think this country, focused as it is on abortion, is NOT for the radical imperial presidency, pro-business, anti-worker, anti-liberty stance the new Court will stand for, and unless we can say ‘we did EVERYTHING in our power to stop it,’ we have nothing to gripe about. And yes, Republicans are cynical enough, when the time comes, to say ‘they could have filibustered.’
We would rather not see Samuel A. Alito Jr. become a member of the U.S. Supreme Court. …
We hope the U.S. Senate will refuse to consent to his nomination. But that’s not going to happen. The confirmation vote in the Senate will likely fall out along party lines. Republicans have the votes to confirm, and the only way Democrats might prevent that from happening is by mounting a messy filibuster battle.
But that would be a mistake. It would further divide the country and set a dangerous precedent that Democrats may later come to regret. …
In stark contrast to President Bush’s previous nominee, the spectacularly unqualified Harriet Miers, Alito’s credentials are impeccable. …
We would not insult the voters by suggesting they did not understand that, in choosing between George W. Bush and John Kerry, they were also choosing between a court that was going to lean more to the right or more to the left. Neither did candidate-President Bush mince words when he indicated his intention to appoint conservative justices. …
A rightward shift on the court seems unavoidable at this point. If opponents of his nomination have a legitimate recourse, it is to try to influence voters in 2008 in the hope that the next president will be inclined to fill future Supreme Court vacancies with more moderate nominees. …
Democrats lost the fight over the Alito nomination in 2004. Resorting to procedural obstructionism and delay tactics would be ineffective and counterproductive.
And now, my very own editorial cartoon (how can I post an entire copyrighted cartoon and still stay in “fair use,” the way I try to do with editorial columns? Easy. Post my own). The rest can be seen at HYPNOCRITES, my cartoon blog.
CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE
The (Longbeach, California) Press Telegram
Hooray for Google. And Hissssss for everybody else. Perhaps this will get people’s attention. Sure, Bush can mouth lies about ‘if you’re talking to al-Qaeda,’ and the morons believe him. But in this case his DoJ is trying to look at what EVERYBODY is doing. And if you don’t like it, look at the piece above, and remember why we should filibuster.
Yahoo is yellow. Microsoft is meek. American Online is out-of-line. Each gave the U.S. Justice Department a peek at millions of search-engine queries. Only Google rebuffed Big Brother by reminding the Feds that Justice wears a blindfold (a Google search of that word will quickly take you into the world of porn).
Google is fighting a subpoena to turn over a week’s worth of searches. The government should fight spyware, not install it, and the billionaires from Mountain View are courageous enough to resist what we see as an illegal search. …
The Feds are trying to data mine the minds of millions of Americans something that, last time we checked was as private as the phone lines they’ve been tapping. …
Now you may not be a fan of porn, and much of it is gross, but going after those who like it is like going after anyone who is marginalized. They’re easy targets, albeit a large one….
There’s plenty of indecency on the Net, but spying on online users is what’s truly obscene. It’s time to turn over the Internet spying to those who can really protect children: parents.
The Times (Frankfurt, Indiana)
Get on Barnes & Noble, or Amazon, or go to the used book store, and by every copy of 1984 you can find. Give it to friends, acquaintances, work-mates, etc., for birthdays, anniversaries, anything. Don’t speechify, or sell it as anything but something worth reading. Talk to them afterward. We CAN open eyes.
‘1984’ More Pertinent and Real in 2006
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about George Orwell’s “1984.” So I visited my pal the Internet this week for a short refresher. …
It’s a story of government run amok. It’s one of Thought Police, of a Ministry of Truth, of controlling human behavior. …
The main theme is that Big Brother is always watching. …
Today, Orwell’s “1984” seems more fact than fiction. He was just 20 years early. …
President Bush has acknowledged that his administration has eavesdropped numerous times on U.S. citizens at home and abroad to root out would-be terrorists. It has done so without obtaining warrants through the justice system. Those warrants, by most accounts, would have been easy to get.
We can all agree that using any number of methods to keep this country safe is fair game. But there’s a right way and a wrong way. This is the wrong way. …
The fact is, the door is now open to abuses, or the appearance of. The bigger thing is that our system of government was created to shun absolutism.
In “1984” Orwell writes of a society in which the right to privacy doesn’t exist. …
We’re not there, obviously. But is that the direction we want to go? …
You might say that anything is fine, as long as it keeps the country safe. Or that electronic chips are OK to keep tabs on people with a criminal history.
But will it stop there? I want to keep civil liberties and still go after the bad guys.
It’s up to common folk to demand it. If we don’t start at some point, Big Brother’s only going to cast a larger shadow.
And now, a short trip across the border.
Calgary (Canada) Herald
I don’t agree with everything here, but I do agree with the (unintentional) underlying premise- Islamicist terrorism just isn’t that big a deal. Do you really think they pose as big a threat as secession, Naziism, or Communism? Or even the coming threat of China’s economic rise? Then why in the world, facing the most minor threat of modern times, are we willing to give up rights clung to through the hardest of times?
Al-Qaeda’s Offer Doesn’t Add Up
It’s hard to imagine the terrorist al-Qaeda organization offering terms, if it thought it was winning its war with the U.S. Last week, a taped message from Osama bin Laden offered a “long-time truce,” with “security and stability” for both parties. …
Yet, for all its apocalyptic rhetoric, it suggests bin Laden’s organization would actually like time out to regroup. History shows few examples of military operations which, having momentum, offer relief to the object of their attack. …
U.S. President George W. Bush was therefore right to dismiss such a crude attempt to drive a wedge between his administration and those Americans who, while supporting his war effort, would also like an end to anxiety. (Bush stated the U.S. did not negotiate with terrorists, and would end the war on terror at a time and place of its own choosing.)
Could bin Laden still organize a strike on the North American mainland? Perhaps. …
However, it is doubtful bin Laden could cause greater confusion than the recent summer’s hurricanes. If the U.S. can handle the displacement of nearly one million people, and damage to Louisiana’s concentration of oil refineries, it should be able to withstand the worst bin Laden’s much-reduced organization can perform. …
The proper western response, then, is business as usual. …
The West owes it to every Iraqi who voted for the country’s new government, and every Afghan who voted for that country’s new constitution, to stay the course.
Request for contributors:
I’m ramping The Daily Pulse back up, and viewership has increased significantly. It took 4 months to get the first 3000, and about two weeks for the next thousand. If you’re interested in being a front-page contributor, let me know. Ideally, we’re looking for the following, all to be surveys of different editorial sites like the above:
- Letters to the Editor. I’ve been doing it once a week, but think a daily column gives the best picture of all what people outside the beltway or the political junkie blogs are thinking. Daily is ideal
- Foreign editorials. The best would be to have several different people, each posting once a week. I’d love to have a European Pulse, an Asian Pulse, a Middle Eastern, etc. Now, I try to include one foreign per main entry, but think the blog would be more valuable with a wider voice.
- Alternative editorials. I include GLBT, African American, Jewish, etc., newspapers in my database, from which randomly select editorial pages. But they are such a minority, they rarely pop up. If somebody dedicated themselves to an alternative column, that would be incredibly cool. It could also be broken up- weekly or semi-weekly GLBT, ditto African American, etc.
- Local columnists. Local columnists tend to have their fingers on the pulse of their communities, even better sometimes than the editorials. The editor gets to write whatever s/he wants. Columns sell, and they don’t sell if they’re too far from the community. Daily is best, but a couple of times per week would be cool.
- Other content, esp. local radio and television.
*Whatever else might fit in the format.