Month: September 2006

The Military Commissions Act passed through our American Congress this week, like bacon through a goose.  There are numerous lessons to draw from the way Congress lubricated this excrement out the poop chute, but dwelling on them distracts from the core lesson.

Which is that our Congress actually did it. That this bi-cameral legislative body did indeed pass the Torture R Us Bill, and within a comfortable margin.  They brought down the US Constitution with one shot.

Gentle Reader, if there is a singularity at the core of this great American experiment, and at the core of all Western jurisprudence, if there is a soul at the heart of all Western civilization since the Dark Ages, it is the concept of habeas corpus — that no human being can be deprived of their liberty without soon facing their accusers, soon seeing the evidence against them, and soon standing trial before a jury of their peers.  That is our true Rock of Ages, and our Congress just threw it out.
The legal phrasing of the Military Commissions Act is so vague, so lacking in definitions and specifics and safeguards, that it applies to literally everyone — everywhere.  No person, and no class of persons, is ruled out.  Anyone, including every single American citizen, may be deemed a supporter of terrorists or terrorist sympathizers on the word of another person — and be arrested, imprisoned and tortured on that basis alone, with absolutely no recourse to law, to the courts, or to the norms of the Geneva Convention.

This law applies directly to you.  You can be denounced, and disappear.  Without the guarantee of habeas corpus, you go away without any remedy, without any rights.

All American and Western jurisprudence rests on habeas corpus.  It is the very definition of a free person, upon which all laws regarding free persons then stand.  Without it, all our laws ring hollow.

The difference that losing habeas corpus makes to our Republic is the same as the difference between a man before he is shot, and after he is shot.  The man is still there, afterwards.  But he is no longer there.  The vitality and life is absent; only the shape remains.

Our elected Congress easily and cheerfully threw habeas corpus right out the window this week, which also means they made their own powers and procedures completely irrelevant hereafter.  It means that recovering and reforming from this obscenity upon our legal rights and traditions will not come from within this legislative body.  They think they are incumbent royalty, free to rule and to hand pick their successors — they have made themselves mere court jesters now, and nothing more.

They are fools who literally know not what they have done.  They may as well have voted out the law of gravity, and yet called themselves wise.  They have destroyed all credibility in their powers to perceive or administer justice especially, and they can never regain their standing.

If this Congress were to come to its senses, and vote habeas corpus back into full effect tomorrow morning, it would have no more meaning than if they also elected habeas corpus Prom Queen, awarded it the Medal of Honor, took it to out to a power lunch, sent its children to college, hung it from a steeple, or put it on parade.  These fools have already demonstrated on national television that they have no grasp of what it is, what it means to our Republic, or what they have done to our Republic by chucking it.  These idiots who did this ridiculous, ridiculous thing clearly haven’t the souls or intellects to repair matters, or to know what they’ve repaired if they should chance to repair it, or be forced to repair it.  These people are beyond irrelevant now — they are dangerous morons.

There are only two ways to climb out of the latrine Congress has dropped America into:

1) Reform Congress — change out the persons in this legislative body via elections, or change their behavior via overwhelming public pressure.  We’ll call this approach Working Within the System.

2) Remove Congress — by impeachment, by arrest, by revolution.  By means other than the occasional rigged election.  We’ll call this Working Within the Larger System, that system being the inalienable rights of man, the system upon which our original Revolution was founded. That tradition dates as far back as the Magna Carta, back many more centuries than our brief experiment in government sans a King does.

For example, can the Governor of New Jersey have that State’s two senators arrested on their return home for the campaign season?  Can they be impeached and then tried in the State legislature for violating the Constitution and their sworn oaths of office?  Can the State legislature strip them of their office, and appoint new representatives who know the American Constitution from a campaign contribution?

If this hasn’t been done before, well, it is high time to begin a fine American tradition.  Americans don’t live under Kings.

Can your State do the same for their Senators and wayward Congresscritters?  Why in the world not?  There is no question that whichever morons voted this thing through committed treason to their office, to the nation, and to the Constitution.  Those are simple and stark legal facts.  These morons have placed themselves subject to arrest for their crimes overseas and domestically, from now on.  Condoning torture is an international war crime, and crime against humanity, and there is no statute of limitations upon it.

This Republican regime is behaving in ways that clearly reveal that they do not see themselves being the minority party at any future point. This does not mean they are purblind idiots – no, it is much worse than that — it means that they do not intend to permit the Democratic Party to win at elections, ever again.

That simply can’t happen.  Not after the crimes that have been committed and swept under the veil of secrecy.  That can never happen.  Even if it happens, it cannot be permitted.

You may rest assured that this November’s election will be another case of widespread electoral theft, just like the previous three.  The Democratic Party will go along with it after some obligatory grumbling, just like after the previous three.  Do you know why?  It is because the Democratic Party is ten times more committed to being seen as playing by the rules, as persons working within the system, than they are to doing what is right, moral, principled, American or even effective.  They are devoted to keeping up appearances and roles and positions, not to democracy.

This was the very cause of death to the Weimar Republic of Germany, whose liberals and democrats held good order, and gave exemplary speeches from their shrinking island of propriety and perspective as gangs of lawless criminals foisted a fascist regime upon them. They did no more than rhetoric and writing, and that is never enough.  To merely speak, to merely write, is to concede to propaganda, to political theater, to bullying and to bluster.  Those are all potent political weapons – speaking and writing of sound reason and grand hope are meandering surrenders compared to them.

Do not look to the Supreme Court to heal this mess.  It will take years to get a challenging case heard at that high level, and even when it is heard and this bill is promptly deemed utterly unconstitutional, the GOP will simply push another version of this bill through, and start the court cycle all over again.  Or, stack the court anew in their favor.

Whatever it takes, because the GOP will be in power for many years to come — if they are not stopped.  Until they are stopped.  Until they are stopped, they will not cede control of the nation they now rule, not for anything, not for anyone.  Certainly not for the sake of the law.  They are operating well beyond the law already.  They are the law, until they are stopped, and disabused of that notion.

This torture bill is a raw power grab. This bill is a coup.  This bill is treason.  This bill is a revolution because it has overthrown the very cornerstone of all our laws, of our entire Constitution, and of all our international treaties and conventions.  No laws mean anything after their founding principle has been removed.  Congress and the President swore an oath to protect and preserve our Constitution in exchange for our trusting them to handle the day-to-day affairs of our nation.

Yet this coup went out over the airwaves; it was beamed into our living rooms.  It went down with all eyes upon it.  The revolution WAS televised, Mr. Trippi.

It follows that this raw power grab, this legislative coup, is only going to be countered by a raw power grab on the part of the public or by our military refusing to continue violating their own oaths to the Constitution by the following of orders from a treasonous regime.

We are operating beyond the system from here on out, like it or not.  There is no further result or recovery to be obtained by working within the confines of the present corrupted system.  It needs to be stopped, and started again, with new personnel.  In 39 days another national election will be stolen, leaving the GOP in full control, at which point even the most naïve rubes among us will be hard pressed to believe the system still works.  The dimmest bulbs among us will perceive that the spark has gone out of our lives.

For America is not merely a place, or a melting pot, or some ethnic strains, or some culture or language or other discernible feature of this geography or its people. Those are details, not the soul.  The soul of America is an idea.  The bright idea that all human beings are free, equal and subject to whatever laws they choose for themselves.  Take that idea away, and you take away America.

We did not think up this idea.  We got it direct from our European fathers, who had just been through five centuries of unremitting religious wars and still not managed to extricate themselves from bloody-minded theocracy and monarchy.  If America stands for anything, it is the direct and outright rejection of Kings and Priests ruling over the common man.  In passing this torture bill, Congress has stepped way beyond anything we ever authorized them to do.  They had no right, and have no right, to edit our Constitution at their whimsy, or the whimsy of King George.

Harder choices have faced ordinary Americans than we ordinary Americans face today.  We are not lesser people than our ancestors – they, too, had to be roused to righteous anger by the ongoing crimes of despots.  So it will be for us.

The monarchists and theocrats who staged this coup have crossed a bright line in the sand for the vast majority of Americans.  Now we will see whether the Republicans or the free range Americans will win this struggle.

Because it’s definitely on, brother.  One species or the other is about to become extinct.

Some things in life we choose.  Sometimes there simply is no choice, no second option provided.  A car wreck, a house burned down, a terminal illness, a King at play with our lives and fortunes — those kinds of choices, when you find yourself in brand new territory in a heartbeat.  When you say, “No more, by God! No more!”  When you are suddenly thrust into those “times that try men’s souls.”

Valley Forge.  It was a real place, and a real low point.  Do you know why all those miserable, starving, would be Americans, those shoeless soldiers stayed all winter in their soggy tents and log shelters, back in the first days of our nation?  Do you know why they stayed, suffered, and then re-enlisted almost to a man in the pale light of early spring?

Rather than go home to their wives and children and their own affairs?

Why on earth would they do such a thing?  Why stick?  Why ask for more?

It was because every man there faced a personal choice of going home to live out his days under British tyranny — under the whims of King George — or of cleaning that long rifle and going after the Hessians and Redcoats.  Those first citizens of our newly declared Republic could not bear returning home to live under tyranny, and bow down before King George.  They could not go home to their wives and children because they knew their wives and children were not free, but subject to that King and his royal appetites.

When you cannot bear one way of living, you will put up with anything — including death — to get something else.  Anything else.  When you cannot bear to see your children living under King George, you stay at Valley Forge, and you sign up for a losing fight even with no pay, and no shoes on your feet.  That’s still better than tyranny.

That’s exactly where this country came from.

Not from the Bible, and not from quitters.  It came from the hearts of brave, grown up people who would not bow before any King, anywhere, even at pain of death.  The men of Valley Forge considered and made that choice while huddled around their paltry fires and stewpots during that long and bitter winter.  Freedom from a King meant more to them than anything else.

That is the same personal choice facing every American in this ripened Republic of ours, this Republic that is rotting from the top, this Republic that we will not be able to keep, if our GOP despot has his way.  Either we refuse to live under the current and growing tyranny of King George, this treasonous Congress, and this stacked court – or we make ourselves comfortable, teach our kids how to bow before their human lords, and get them ready for endless war, constant surveillance, and Christian theocracy.

If they ask about freedom, shut them up. Tell them it’s a fairy tale.

On September 28th, the majority of the members of our Congress broke their individual oaths of office in a wholesale manner, violated our Constitution, transgressed dozens of American and international laws and norms and treaties — and yet they assume you will get over it, that you’ll keep working within the system through election after faked election, that you’ll keep hoping to come to some arrangement with King George.

If you do, you are not the stuff this nation was made of.

Even though Bob Woodward has some pretty severe credibiity problems, it is never good when he writes a book unfavorable to you.

After the New York Times managed to buy an early copy of “State of Denial” and reported on it on yesterday’s front page, Bush aides frantically called Woodward and asked for copies, which he sent over. A squadron of White House aides then spent hours tearing through the book and doing quick research to try to undercut its more damaging elements. They settled on a strategy of disputing certain conclusions while broadly dismissing it as old news.

“In a lot of ways, the book is sort of like cotton candy — it kind of melts on contact,” White House spokesman Tony Snow said at a briefing dominated by the topic. “We’ve read this book before. This tends to repeat what we’ve seen in a number of other books that have been out this year where people are ventilating old disputes over troop levels.” Snow said it was well known that events in Iraq have been difficult and that officials have debated the right approach. “Rather than a state of denial,” he said, “it’s a state of the obvious.”

It’s so obvious that Donald Rumsfeld should be fired that even Laura Bush is confused.

Even first lady Laura Bush reportedly told Card that she agreed Rumsfeld had become a liability for her husband, although she noted that the president did not agree. “I don’t know why he’s not upset with this,” she told Card, according to the book. But Vice President Cheney and senior Bush adviser Karl Rove argued against dumping Rumsfeld, and Bush agreed.

It’s obvious that the keys to the ship of state should be taken away from a totally delusional Dick Cheney. He can’t get anything right. It’s also obvious that Condi Rice is a Liar.

The book also reports that then-CIA Director George J. Tenet and his counterterrorism chief, J. Cofer Black, grew so concerned in the summer of 2001 about a possible al-Qaeda attack that they drove straight to the White House to get high-level attention.

Tenet called Rice, then the national security adviser, from his car to ask to see her, in hopes that the surprise appearance would make an impression. But the meeting on July 10, 2001, left Tenet and Black frustrated and feeling brushed off, Woodward reported. Rice, they thought, did not seem to feel the same sense of urgency about the threat and was content to wait for an ongoing policy review.

I’ll have more on the significance of this July 10 date later. Suffice to say, I agree with Tony Snow. Woodward’s book is old news and merely rehashes the obvious…the obvious incompetence of the Bush administration.

Welcome back.

This week I’ll be continuing with our painting of the 1950 Hudson Hornet seen in the photo directly below.

When last we were together I had completed much of the car, some of the roadway and had started the background.  The photo directly below shows the painting as it appeared at the end of last week’s post.

Since that time I’ve continued with the background and have done some work on the foreground.

I’ve decided not to be a slave to the original photo.  I’ve begun to paint a large shrub (okay, they’re junipers) on either side of the car.  There will be a bit more detail when they’re done.  A building will be in the center, just as there is in the photo.  I want to keep the ochre color as it contrasts so nicely with the car.

The foreground has changed with some faintly painted ochre and blue.  I will attempt to add lit areas somewhat similar to those of the photo in the coming weeks.

The current state of the painting is seen in the photo directly below.

That’s about all for now.  See you next week.  

Promoted by Steven D (with some small edits).

Not a Principle of this Nation!

Though practiced, over the years, clandestinely, when found out about there once were Very Loud Condemnations arising from the Citizens of the United States Forcing Laws to be pass to Stop these Extremely Dangerous Practices, which can lead to Hatreds and Retaliation by others, as to our own Security of Nation and Citizens.

This Country also was one of the Principle Participants in Writing the Laws as to Conduct of the Rules of War and Human Rights, Worldwide, as well as to our own domestic laws.

And we kept Lists, updated yearly, of Countries who we Condemned for ‘Human Rights’ Violations.

‘We’ now have Changed the Principles of what this Nation is in this 21st Century!

‘We’ have become what was once Condemned!

‘We’ are now the Largest ‘Terrorist’ State on the Planet, with Preemptive Attacks on Innocent Countries.

‘WE’ label others as Terrorists under any and all excuses we can think of.

‘WE’ Continue the Support of Countries whose Leaders Suppress their own, a long time practice of our Foreign Policy.

‘WE’ start extremely negative propaganda campaigns against smaller nation states forcing them to look for whatever they feel they may need to protect themselves from the Giant ‘Terrorist’ State and refuse to use the Diplomacy of Intelligent Moderates who know Destruction only brings on More of Same.

These practices are All done ‘In Our Names’!

And now the Stamp of Approval will be placed on a New Law Of This Land that we Accept the Torture of Others, and possibly our own!

This ‘New Law’, will be the stage for a long battle against the Dangerous Direction the few have chosen for this Nation, and It Will Be Overturned. But from the Stamp of Approval to the Overturning as Unlawful, how many will ‘We’ Torture, some dying, as Hatreds grow against us by all who know them, to add to the already spinning out of control Hatreds growing out of our present out of control Foreign Policies, made by a few who talk tough but hide behind others to protect themselves!

How many more of our ‘Freedoms’ and ‘Democracy’ will we lose as we Destroy little countries and their people in the name of bringing them ‘Freedom’ and ‘Democracy’!

Why the Torture Bill Matters

By Molly Ivins, AlterNet

The detainee bill now in the Senate throws out legal and moral restraints as the president deems necessary; basic principles of decency and law.

This Is What Waterboarding Looks Like

By David Corn, DavidCorn.com

You can see what waterboarding is all about.

The Fine Print in the Military Tribunals Bill

By Daniel Schulman

Defines the meaning of “illegal enemy combatant” and it does so in a very broad way.

This is what should be grabbing headlines: not a single senator voted against $70 billion more for war, in either party. I think the World Socialist Web Site sums it up quite well:

Not a single senator of either party missed the opportunity to demonstrate his or her support for the bloody interventions in the Middle East and Central Asia. This vote rips asunder the miserable attempts of a section of the Democratic Party to posture as “critics” of the Iraq war. It demonstrates that behind the quibbling over tactics and complaints about the incompetence of the Bush administration’s conduct of the war, the Democrats remain committed to violently suppressing the resistance of the Iraqi people to the US occupation and Washington’s drive to seize the country’s oil resources.

The vote shows that a Democratic victory in the November mid-term elections will in no way alter the basic course of US foreign policy–whether in Iraq or Afghanistan, or other countries targeted for future aggression such as Iran and Syria.

In its report on the Senate vote, the Associated Press noted that the war funding measure was passed “after minimal debate.” Such is the contempt of the two corporate-controlled parties for the sentiments of the American people, who oppose the war by a wide margin.

Nothing could more clearly express the unbridgeable chasm that separates the entire political establishment from the broad mass of working people. These two parties are accountable not to the American people, but rather to a financial oligarchy. What has emerged in America, behind the increasingly threadbare trappings of democracy, is a plutocracy.

As for the Iraqi people, the Associated Press reported one day before the Senate vote the results of two polls that show overwhelming opposition to the US military occupation. A poll conducted by the University of Maryland’s Program on International Policy Attitudes reported that 60 percent of Iraqis approve the attacks on US-led forces and almost 80 percent say the US military provokes more violence in Iraq than it prevents.

The US State Department’s own poll, according to the AP, found that two thirds of Iraqis in Baghdad favor an immediate withdrawal of US forces.

Stuck in traffic, I was. And what did I miss? Another example of a do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do Republican getting busted playing at pederasty. It’s really quite remarkable how often this happens in and around GOP circles and the evangelical community.

Florida Rep. Mark Foley’s resignation came just hours after ABC News questioned the congressman about a series of sexually explicit instant messages involving congressional pages, high school students who are under 18 years of age.

In Congress, Rep. Foley (R-FL) was part of the Republican leadership and the chairman of the House caucus on missing and exploited children.

He crusaded for tough laws against those who used the Internet for sexual exploitation of children.

Here’s an interesting bit of history from Foley’s wiki.

In 2003, Foley was widely considered the Republican frontrunner for Bob Graham’s Senate seat, especially after Graham had announced his retirement. However, longstanding rumors surfaced that Foley was either gay or bisexual and was in a longterm relationship with another man. The story was initially published only in the gay press;[2] [3] then the New Times broke the story in the mainstream press. Other papers, including the New York Press,[4] then addressed the topic. Foley held a press conference to denounce the “revolting” rumors and stated that his sexual orientation was unimportant. A few weeks later, he withdrew his candidacy, saying his father’s battle with cancer had caused him to reassess his perspective on life (the seat was later won by Republican Mel Martinez). Foley had raised $3 million in campaign contributions before withdrawing.[5]

I first became aware of this puke during the 2000 recount when he was especially dishonest and annoying. I’m glad he will no longer be in the House of Representatives.

Liberal Street Fighter

The long journey of Anglo-American civilization, the drift of the emergent idea that INDIVIDUALS are the fundamental unit of civilization, grew at least partly from the Writ of Habeas Corpus:

It is a writ which requires a person detained by the authorities be brought before a court of law so that the legality of the detention may be examined.

The name is taken from the opening words of the writ in medieval times.

The Writ has been the lodestar which guided the intricate, often perilous trip toward western democracy. Yesterday, the United States Congress destroyed the sextants, shredded the maps, burned up the sounding lines that enabled us to follow that guide on our journey.

It does not determine guilt or innocence, merely whether the person is legally imprisoned. It may also be writ against a private individual detaining another.

If the charge is considered to be valid, the person must submit to trial but if not, the person goes free.

The Habeas Corpus Act passed by Parliament in 1679 guaranteed this right in law, although its origins go back much further, probably to Anglo-Saxon times.

Sir William Blackstone, who wrote his famous Commentaries on the Laws of England in the 18th Century, recorded the first use of habeas corpus in 1305. But other writs with the same effect were used in the 12th Century, so it appears to have preceded Magna Carta in 1215.

Its original use was more straightforward – a writ to bring a prisoner into court to testify in a pending trial. But what began as a weapon for the king and the courts became – as the political climate changed – protection for the individual against arbitrary detention by the state.

It is thought to have been common law by the time of Magna Carta, which says in Article 39: “No freeman shall be taken or imprisoned or disseised or exiled or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him nor will we send upon him except upon the lawful judgement of his peers or the law of the land.”

Over the next few hundred years, concern grew that kings would whimsically intervene on matters of detention, so it was enshrined in law in 1679.

We’ve never applied it completely, of course. Tom Shipp and Abe Smith, dragged out to the hanging tree, weren’t people who could apply the writ to the mob reducing them to strange fruit hanging from the bent bough. Big Foot’s cries for the charges against him would not have been recognized by any court. The internees at Manzanar weren’t considered worth the paper to bring the matter before the magistrate. However, to recognize more and more human beings as legal persons, with this most fundamental of rights, is the light with which enlightened Democracies illuminated their way. It has been there for centuries, flickering off above the far horizon, a guide to making a more just and fair society possible.

We have no need for it anymore, apparently. Captain Quieg knows best, and sadly on the ship of our state all of the officers called Republicans and the cabin boys called Democrats have no interest in mutiny. Instead, they cheer. They feast on their ill-gained booty, whip the unfortunates in the galley, and the cabin boys happily submit to the whims of their betters.

After all, beyond the horizon lie monsters. Terrible, ravenous beasts who will kill us all, if we don’t submit to the better sense represented by our good Captain. If he needs to randomly pick one or more of us to keel haul to make the rest of us safe, who are we to complain?

As we drift further off course, headed toward the rocks, remember this week. This is the week we abandoned the North Star of freedom. The only questions left are, how many of us will sink beneath the hungry waves or be split upon the jagged rocks?

It’s a (not so) dirty little (not so) secret fact that when the Brittish army killed Irish protestors, and went on to use torture in North Ireland, American citizens donated millions over several decades to the IRA. The IRA even had official offices in Boston for years. This wasn’t a secret to anyone. And Bill O’Reily knows this first hand.
 Yet dispite living for years in a place where real understanding about the source of terrorism was commonly known and widespread, he ignores his heritage. He’s nothing but a little sellout bitch. Not just to the Irish, but to all Americans.
I’m a bit young to have first hand knowledge, but IRA support was near unanimous in Boston for decades. Back then, nice Catholic girls would go from bar to bar collecting for ‘the cause’. It was almost a social obligation to donate to ‘the cause’ at that point in time. It was so popular, even our Italian buddies would kick down and allow collecting in the North End, from what I’ve heard.
 I’m not endorsing terrorism, but to say terrorists exist because they are ‘evildoers’ that ‘hate freedom’ is compleatly absurd. Terrorism is not a philosophy, it’s a tactic people resort to when they lack an ‘official’ military to fight on their behalf. And miltary responses to terrorism with popular support NEVER works. Torture NEVER works. Dealing with terrorists requires diplomacy, in the long term. In the short term, this is more the job for the CIA or FBI to handle. Every time you kill a terrorist, you spawn a new one. Every time you torture one, you spawn two more. If you do either to a civilian, you spawn something like ten more. The military is trained to fight other armies. As they should be, I’ve got zero complaints there. But soldiers aren’t trained or qualified to do a job best suited for law enforcement or the espionage/intelligence branches of defense to do. Using the military against terrorists is akin to sending the Marines after the mafia or street gangs. That would not be a wise move. Gangs in San Francisco and Oakland both have killed more people this year than Hamas and Hezbolah have killed in Israel, combined. But cruise missles fired into Hunters Point or Fruitvale are not tactics used by the police. That would not fly. And the use of torture will NEVER win the hearts and minds of the civilian population. This directly increases support for terrorism infinetly more than the terrorists could ever get by their own means. Not to mention the danger it puts the footsoldiers on our side of the conflict into.  
 To be objective on the IRA thing, the Brittish were smart enough to not cower in the face of terrorism and degenerate into full on suspension of civil liberties in England. They learned from their mistakes, abandoned failed policies, and eventully came to the table and negotiated in good faith. That did more to end the conflict than anything Bush’s policies will ever do.
 I missed out on all this pro-IRA sentiment firsthand, (not neccisarily a bad thing) so mabey I’m not the best person to talk about this. The days of open IRA support were over by the time I was old enough to get into bars, where all the talking/fundraising took place. But Bill O’Reiley was a local TV anchor on channel 7 back in the heyday of IRA support. I don’t have any firsthand knowledge on his opinions, but he certainly would have been looked down upon in Boston if he didn’t ‘support the cause’ back then. Regardless of what he thought, he knows the real deal. All Irish Catholics that retain their ethnic identity know the real deal. Bush/Cheney’s tactics will NEVER win. Pat Buchanan has opposed the war on terror from day one, exactly for this reason. Say what you want about Pat, (And he deserves it, more often than not) but his foreign policy positions are in compleat accord with us progressives. That’s because, dispite being a conservative, he understands history. He knows the pitfalls that go along with imperialism.
 We (Irish Catholics) all know firsthand that the current US stratergy is a loosing one, yet O’Reily has sold his soul to the Bush agenda. He could legitimatly point out the flaws in the neocon philosophy, but lacks the stones to do so. It’s bad enought that he sells out and endorses this shit, but on a personal level, it’s fucking humiliating to see any Irish cowering and endorsing fascism like Billy does due to terrorism. The English never did this. Have some fucking self respect, you pansy! And how dare you condone torture? Bobby Sands is rolling over in his grave, dickhead. You’re not Irish, Billy. You’re white.