Author: Eternal Hope

George Galloway has been touring the Middle East and continuing to blast the US/UK War in Iraq. Recently, he said that “martyrs were writing their names among the stars” in Iraq even though we don’t know who they are.

Abraham Lincoln once said that we, as a country, need to ask ourselves whether we are on God’s side; we cannot assume that God is on our side. I think the reason people, even on the left, are so uncomfortable with Galloway is because he raises the possibility that we are not on God’s side, but that the resistance fighters in Iraq are. That is a thought extremely frightening for even us leftists to contemplate. But we must discuss this possibility regardless of anybody’s personal feelings about George Galloway.
Another question we need to ask ourselves is would we rather have Galloway or Rove? Karl Rove is a ruthless individual who will say or do almost anything to create a permanent Republican majority here. He will commit treason, if necessary, to achieve that end. And the GOP Governors, Senators, and Congressmen continue to march in lockstep behind him, prostituting their principles in the name of winning at all costs. Personally, I would much rather have Galloway than Rove.

Before you respond by bringing up Galloway’s past behavior, I want you to compare and contrast the following two things: The evil actions of Rove and the suffering and the quiet dignity of the Iraqi people.

First of all, think about the ruthlessness that Rove has done, such as his smearing of well-respected judges, his bugging of his own office, his racist smears of John McCain, his SBVT attacks on John Kerry, his planting of evidence in TANG, his outing of Valerie Plame, and anything else you can think of. These actions are too well-known to contemplate here.

Then, think about the consequences of his actions, especially of Plamegate. Think about the suffering of the Iraqis and their quiet dignity as they try to live normal lives despite the rampant chaos in Iraq. For example, from Faiza:

I remembered the story of that lady while my son was in custody… I shed no tears, but my whole being was in a state of freezing, shrinking…. How many cases like her are there in Iraq?

Why did some of the Iraqis approve of the war, and supported it?

Didn’t they do this to lift the injustice from the people, stopping the process of breaking the hearts of mothers and fathers on their children?

Didn’t they do this to build a new country basking in security and peace, where we can go out with our children without fearing they would disappear because someone would arrest them and throw them in dark cells… or that they would be tortured; have their nails pulled out, their teeth and bones broken, to force them to confess to crimes they never committed?

But after my son was arrested, I discovered that they re-employed the same former criminals from the days of Saddam Hussein, to interrogate people…

They beat, humiliate, and torture every suspect.

Then, according to luck, they might release him with the payment of a ransom, or he might disappear, and go down the drain…

Then his mother would carry his picture, and move around to look for him in all Iraqi lockups and prisons, old and new…

His family has no right to know where he is…

They have no right to engage a lawyer to defend him…

What was changed, in the new Iraq, from the old one?

And think about the 500,000 Iraqi refugees who have fled for Jordan:

Rather than focusing on a grand political narrative, Jamil, like virtually all Iraqis who spoke to The NewStandard, stressed the lack of electricity, sanitation, potable water and absense of security that plagues daily life in Iraq. Because of this, he said, “life is impossible on the most basic level.”

Carol, a middle-aged beautician and salon owner in Baghdad’s Adhamiyah district, left Iraq in June. She is equally blunt in explaining why she left.

“We are full of frustration and angst,” she said over dinner with several Iraqi friends. “No one in the world would leave their home willingly, unless it was under such circumstances.”

The violence is, of course, not a mysterious phenomenon to Iraqis. They see it as a direct result of the ongoing occupation.

“At first we believed that America has come to save us from a cursed situation under Saddam Hussein,” said Carol. “But in fact they have given us an even greater curse. We have no dignity; we are humiliated. We have no water, no electricity, and no security. We don’t understand. We know the Americans can make the situation better, but they are not.”

Popular accounts on the streets of Amman place the number of Iraqis in Jordan seeking refuge from the war at 500,000 and higher, though only a tiny fraction of these people are officially categorized as refugees.

And while you’re at it, think about innocent victims like Jean Charles de Menezes, the man shot and killed by British police because they thought he looked like a terrorist.

This is what is at stake: The evil mind of Rove and the suffering that happens as the result of his actions. Can we honestly say that we are in the right when we compare and contrast these two?

Here is another thing to compare and contrast: World War II and the current War in Iraq.

Our entry into World War II was the result of an act of unprovoked aggression by the Japanese against the US. Germany and Italy joined the Japanese aggression, and we were in a fight for our survival. Under the leadership of FDR, we responded magnificently and defeated the Axis.

Now, compare that to our act of unprovoked aggression against Iraq. Saddam was not a threat to us; he did not have any capability to use WMD’s or strike at our soil within 45 minutes. Yet, since the War in Iraq started, we have killed over 125,000 innocent civilians. Think about the barbaric acts of torture that we committed in Guantanamo and Abu Girhab and our practice of extraordinary rendition.

My response to that comparison is not that we are the moral equivalent of the Nazis, but that we are not different enough. The Bush administration, guided by the ruthless mind of Rove, has prostituted our Constitution and our ideals in the name of ensuring American dominance in the Middle East.

Finally, think about the Revolutionary War fighters and the Iraqi resistance fighters. Our Revolutionary War fighters, under the leadership of George Washington, were willing to die so that their names would live on and their children would reap the benefits of a free society. The Iraqi insurgents are just as willing to die for their beliefs; they believe that they must fight for their future so their children can grow up free of American colonialist oppression.

And in case you are wondering if I have gone over to the Iraqi resistance, I have not. I am not pro-American or pro-Iraqi resistance; I am pro-peace. This is still my country; we must work to regain it from the control of the right-wing extremists who infect the halls of power. My thoughts and prayers go out to people on both sides of the conflict who get needlessly killed, imprisoned, and wounded.

Ted Baiamonte, a right-wing Rove apologist, calls us "Dumb Democrats" and calls the coverage on Rove nothing but a bunch of partisan political attacks. Yes, he’s right. I am dumb.

I’m too dumb to understand why it is OK for Rove to out the name of a CIA agent, even one who has been behind a desk job for 6 years. I guess I’m too caught up in figuring out how I would go about arresting and torturing people she was in contact with if I were a counterintel operative for a foreign dictator and she were in my country or figure out if she had contact with someone who was.

I’m too dumb to keep up on things. I didn’t know there was a law passed against women continuing their careers after they gave birth to twins. Last time I checked, women could still go to work even after they decided to have children. But I need to check with a lawyer, now.

I’m too dumb to come up with any alternative theories. I’m too dumb to consider alternatives to the theory that Rove deliberately phrased his revelation in a way in which he would not mention Plame’s name, but Bob Novak and Matthew Cooper would know right away who he was talking about. I didn’t realize there were any alternative theories that fit all the evidence. Someone clue me in!!

I’m too dumb as to why the press would know about Plame’s name, and they would leak the name to Rove rather than the other way around. I mean, last time I checked, administration officials knew about her weeks in advance according to the August 8th Time.  I’m also too dumb to know why Rove didn’t alert the CIA if that was the case. I mean, last time I checked, the responsible thing to do when you know an agent’s cover has been blown is to alert the CIA asap. I didn’t know they’d changed the rules around Washington. And I’m too dumb to know who leaking Plame’s name to the reporters if that was the case. I mean, I thought the simplest explaination made the most sense. Occam’s Razor.

I’m too dumb to realize that the Tom DeLay junket was dead. After all, this sweetheart deal involving a $1.5 billion giveaway to Halliburton was in the news recently. What has happened in the meantime? Someone fill me in!!

I’m too dumb to realize the Democrats are opportunists when it comes to defending the CIA. I thought it was because we had a sense of decency despite all our past differences with the CIA and we believe in treating everyone with a sense of decency. I thought even Rove was entitled to a fair trial despite the fact that the administration is not giving the Gitmo detainees that right. But then, I’m too dumb.

I’m too dumb because I don’t know my American history. I thought Bush was in power in the months leading up to 9/11 and that there were clear and imminent warnings on his administration’s watch. I didn’t know that Bush didn’t take office until after 9/11. I thought Gore vs. Bush had been settled well before then.

I’m too dumb, because I don’t know what links or evidence there are to support the administration’s claim that uranium was being sold from Niger to Iraq. I thought extraordinary claims required extraordinary evidence, not just the word of one person.

I’m too dumb to realize that Wilson was a long-time Democratic operative. I thought he was a long-time Republican widely respected by Bush I and Brent Snowcroft even during the leadup to the second Gulf War, and that they thought very highly of his writings. I thought he was Bush I’s ambassador to Iraq during the first Gulf War and saved hundreds of lives in that position. I thought he only became a Democrat when he saw through the Niger forgeries and that it is OK for a CIA person to work for a political campaign. But there are a million Joe Wilsons; that must have been a different Joe Wilson. My bad.

I’m too dumb, because I thought that the documents that the British and Italians relied on to assert the Iraq-Niger connection were forged, possibly by Manucher Gorbanifar, a known liar and cheat from the Iran-contra scandal and who is actively working to overthrow Iran by fair means or foul.

I’m sorry, folks. I let you down. I have been dumb all these months and drank the kool-aid. Please forgive me and show me the links and evidence to put me on the road to enlightenment. Once I get there, I will never be so dumb again.

One of the right’s biggest weaknesses is the fear of sex. If you have the stomach to read right-wing literature, there are countless prohibitions against  sex before marriage and sex outside the marriage bed. A lot of these scruples are based on fear; many right-wing fundamentalists are even more afraid of sex than they are of an axe-murderer breaking into their house at night and killing them.

The right’s fear of sex and the fear of being vulnerable go hand in hand. And they are both part of the fear of the unknown. Conservatism is inherently an ideology of fear of the unknown, while Liberalism embraces the unknown as an adventure.
Why else do you see so many right-wingers screaming bloody murder when a questionable book is being sold in their community? Because they think the reader might get corrupted and learn about how to make sex pleasurable.

Why else do you see so many right-wingers complaining about abortion? Because they want to make it as hard as possible to escape the consequences of sex. Same with the denial of birth control.

Why else do you see so many right-wingers complaining about <gulp> “the gay agenda?” Because they don’t want to deal with the possibility that they might be gay themselves.

Some right-wing fundamentalists even go so far as to prohibit the practice of masturbation, even though it is a biological reaction which you can’t avoid; you will do it on your own sooner or later if you don’t do it voluntarilly. Are the right-wing fundamentalists therefore revolting against God, who made us that way?

When you engage in the act of sex with your partner, you become extremely vulnerable to them. They know stuff that can hurt you for the rest of your life. Even the ancient Biblical writers knew that; when talking about the act of sex, they state that a man “knew” his wife and had children.

This fear of becoming vulnerable, of changing as a result, is the inherent flaw of Conservatism itself. It is also at the heart of the Bush administration’s committment to secrecy and demands that everybody else just trust them and get back to their lives.

After the 9/11 attacks, Bush, almost hysterically, pleaded with people to get back to shopping. The implication was that people should just trust the President and let him do the work. Bush declared that either you were with him or against him. This implied that people who questioned the President were somehow being unpatriotic.

When Joe Wilson debunked the Niger-to-Iraq Uranium connection, that triggered panic within the Bush administration because they had been exposed and made vulnerable. That is why Karl Rove was willing to committ treason to restore the cloak of secrecy around the Bush administration.

You can see this fear of vulnerability in Bush’s Iraq War speech of a month ago. He declared that he talked with the military commanders on the ground every day and that based on those reports, we were doing fine in Iraq. But given the Joe Wilson scandal, I suggest that the commanders are simply telling the President what he wants to hear; if they don’t, their careers could be ruined.

You can also see this fear of vulnerability in the President’s refusal to hand over the documents on the Bolton nomination that the Democrats want. After all, what kind of scandals that we haven’t heard of are hidden in the pages of those documents?

This fear of vulnerability and the fear of sex that I described in the beginning go hand in hand. A person who hides stuff from you is likely to be afraid of sex and vice versa. And both fears are part of a larger fear of the unknown that is at the heart of Conservative thought. It is a fact of human nature that many people are more comfortable  with what they are familiar with, even if they don’t like it, than they are with something they don’t know anything about.

The fear of the unknown is what prompted the scuttling of the Equal Rights Amendment. Opponents freaked out at the thought that women could register for the draft and be drafted into the military.

This fear of the unknown is what causes people to oppose a national health care system. Everyone and their dog knows the system is broke; however, many people are even more afraid of the unknown ramifications of a national health care system than they are of the current one, even though it is broken.

And this fear of the unknown was what led Edgar Ray Killen to organize a conspiracy to murder the three civil rights activists. Southern politicians were moaning and complaining throughout the 1960’s about how well things were in the South until all these civil rights agitatiors came and screwed things up. People were afraid of what it was like to live next to a Black family, so they kept them at a safe distance.

So, throughout its history, Conservatism has been a gospel of fear. On the other hand, Liberalism has been a gospel of change and adventure. It embraces the unknown as a fact of life.

While the Hoover administration was fearful that drastic changes would only make things worse, Liberalism, under FDR, brought us the New Deal, Social Security, and many other programs which made life better for us all.

While the Old South was afraid that the Civil Rights Movement would destroy their cherished way of life, the Left embraced the notion that Blacks were citizens just like Whites were.

While the Johnson administration sold out to the right and went to war in Vietnam, the Left and the Hippie movement showed us that there were other ways besides wars to solve problems.

While the Nixon administration was willing to smear, lie, and destroy the careers of people to protect its power, the Left brought down the Nixon administration in the Watergate scandal.

While the Reagan administration was illegally selling arms to Iran and diverting the proceeds to the contras, with a little help from John Roberts, the Left aggressively held hearings to get to the bottom of the matter, resulting in the defeat of the Bush I administration in 1992.

Against the advice of all his fellow Democrats, John Kerry investigated and brought down the Bank of Commerce and Credit, International. This act of heroism by Kerry delayed the rise of Bin Laden by several years by drying up one of his main funding sources.

And today, the Left is exposing the massive corruption that the Bush administration is engaged in, including the 2000 and 2004 elections, the lead-up to the Iraq War, the Tom DeLay scandal, and the torture scandals.

We are now at a crossroads of our journey. We can either embrace change and rise to new heights, or refuse to change and diminish. We can embrace alternative fuels and the Kyoto Accords and reduce the threat of global warming, or continue making more and more gas-guzzling cars and go back to the days of the horse and buggy in 10-30 years.

We can embrace change and define health care as a basic human right, or we can continue the way we are as even simple visits to the doctor become too expensive.

We can embrace change and work to create a society in which all people, including GLBT’s, Blacks, Hispanics, Women, and Immigrants are truly equal, or continue to polarize relations between the races.

We can embrace change and quit using wars as a way to solve problems, or continue the way we are and risk a nuclear holocaust.

We can embrace change, tie our support for Israel to its human rights performance, and treat the Palestinians as equals, or go the way we are and continue to inflame the opinions of Muslims everywhere.

Liberalism is the philosophy of adventure and change, where we seek to create a society where if everyone works hard and plays by the rules, they will be financially secure. Conservatism is the philosophy of fear. In the next two elections, our country will hit a crossroads in which they will choose their future. We must work to ensure that the people choose wisely.

CNN Columnist Anthony Sebok writes that Valerie Plame has possible grounds to sue Karl Rove. Courts have generally given the government sovereign immunity from lawsuits. However, Sebok writes that there is an exception to that under the Federal Tort Claim Act. Plame could not sue Rove for implementing a policy. But she could sue Rove for the way in which he put the policy into action:

The FTCA authorizes a broad waiver of the government’s sovereign immunity for claims in tort. But the statute exempts "any claim . . . based upon the exercise or performance or the failure to exercise or perform a discretionary function or duty on the part of a federal agency or employee of the Government, whether or not the discretion involved be abused."

The federal courts have held that decisions that implicate policy judgments are discretionary and exempt from the FTCA. In contrast, decisions which put a policy into action are rote and fall within the FTCA.

In its 1987 decision in Bowman v. United States, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit held that the decision of whether to install a guardrail on a stretch of the Blue Ridge Parkway is a discretionary act because the National Park Service has to weigh various factors (cost, safety, etc). On the other hand, had the Park Service erected a guardrail and its foreman, in constructing the guardrail, decided to use cheap materials that failed to work properly and this caused an injury, the person injured by the foreman’s negligent decision could sue the government.

In other words, she cannot sue over the general strategies of the White House’s plan to fix the facts around the evidence. However, she could sue for the specific tactic of outing her name to the media:

Instead, Plame’s complaint would be that, in specific conversations, to further the goal of promoting their agenda, Rove or others may have revealed her identity. She objects, that is, to the specific tactic – not the general strategy.

The specific content of any single conversation seems more like implementing, than creating, a policy of media relations; thus, it is less likely to fall within the discretionary function exception. Just as the National Park Service has to have someone put up guardrails once it has decided to have them, so must the White House have someone make phone calls once they have decided to talk to the press. If someone is injured as a result of the phone call, it would seem that the FTCA should allow the injured party to sue the government for compensation.

But it is important to remember that the real victims in the case are not Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame. The real victims are the American people, as pointed out by the Wilsons, and the countless Iraqi civilians who have been killed, maimed, and forced to live in putrifying stench as there is no water or electricity in Baghdad anymore. And the GOP Governors, Senators, and Congressmen who circle the wagons around Rove bear responsibility as well as the Bush administration. They did not lift a finger to question the Bush administration’s decision to fix facts around the evidence and start a war based on lies. And they will not take a moral stand on the issues and state that what Rove did was wrong.

As pointed out here:

In one perceptive commentary, New York Times columnist Frank Rich wrote July 17 that the public should not “get hung up” on Rove “or on most of the other supposed leading figures in this scandal thus far.” He continued: “Not Matt Cooper or Judy Miller or the Wilsons or the bad guy everyone loves to hate, the former CNN star Robert Novak. This scandal is not about them in the end, any more than Watergate was about Dwight Chapin and Donald Segretti or Woodward and Bernstein. It is about the president of the United States. It is about a plot that was hatched at the top of the administration and in which everyone else, Mr. Rove included, are at most secondary players. That the investigation has dragged on so long anyway is another indication of the expanded reach of the prosecutorial web.”

Rich’s column was entitled, “Follow the Uranium,” and the comparison to Watergate is more than apt, as is his political conclusion: “This case is about Iraq, not Niger. The real victims are the American people, not the Wilsons. The real culprit–the big enchilada, to borrow a 1973 John Ehrlichman phrase from the Nixon tapes–is not Mr. Rove but the gang that sent American sons and daughters to war on trumped-up grounds… this scandal is about the unmasking of an ill-conceived war, not the unmasking of a CIA operative…”

The leaders are responsible for the actions of their followers. This is true even if Bush ultimately did not commit a crime in the Plame affair. The next question to discuss is how the Bush policies led to Karl Rove’s decision to commit treason and out the name of Valerie Plame to the media.

Judge Roberts is not qualified as a Supreme Court judge because he does not even have the most basic understanding of what the Constitution is all about or the context behind the writing of the Constitution.

In the Colonial period, the Colonists revolted against British taxation without representation. The problem with the British was that one person, King George III, determined what the laws and taxes were for the colonies; the local assemblies had no say.

In response, the Founding Fathers designed a system of checks and balances so that power would not be concentrated in the hands of one person. However, Roberts opposes this system of checks and balances and would transfer all the real power into the hands of the President while leaving the SCOTUS and Congress to act as rubber stamps for the Bush administration.
Hamden vs. Rumsfeld was a classic example of this. Stare Decisis, or the rule that judges are bound by legal precedent, works 99% of the time. However, every once in a while, or about 1% of the time, there comes a time when the rights of people are so threatened by the abuse of power by the government that a sua sponte decision which does not rely on legal precedent is justified.

The Warren Court’s decision overruling “Separate but Equal” was one such example. Hamden vs. Rumsfeld should have been another. It does no good to argue that lower courts are even more bound by legal precedent than the SCOTUS. An act of judicial courage by a lower court would have forced the SCOTUS to hear the case and to actively review whether the President’s policies were justified by the Constitution. A judge at any level must serve as the conscience of the rest of the government and aggressively put the brakes on excessive governmental infringement on human liberty.

But that is not the view that Judge Roberts takes. Instead, he favors what Arthur Sibler calls “the imperial presidency.”

Sibler writes as follows:

Moreover, the executive’s wartime power is not to be questioned or restrained by anyone or anything: not by the courts, and not even by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. From the commentary I’ve seen, it appears that many people still do not understand why that opinion is so crucial, or what its implications are.

In other words, Roberts advocates a return to the days when the Colonies were subject to the whims of King George III and Congress and the courts only served as a rubber stamp. Another model for Robert’s views is the Russian government, which has concentrated power in the hands of Putin, while leaving Parliament and the courts as mere rubber stamps.

Sibler gives the following example of how Roberts would concentrate power in the hands of the President similar to King George III. Quoting Bruce Shapiro on Democracy Now:

Well, one day after being interviewed by President Bush, a Federal Appeals panel, three judges of which Judge Roberts was a member, handed down a unanimous decision–all three judges, by the way, Reagan-Bush appointees–permitting the tribunals to go forward, reinstating them, and in particular, invalidating those Geneva Convention protections, and saying, in fact, that the courts had no business reviewing this question of Geneva Convention status, that it was purely a matter for the Executive Branch.

Courts have routinely reviewed international treaties we have signed on to and how other countries applied them in order to determine how properly to apply them ourselves. That is a long-held precedent of the courts. Yet Roberts would take that power away from the courts and give it to the President to pee on any way he darn pleases.

Predicts Shapiro:

There are a huge number of cases coming through the pipeline, cases from Guantanamo, cases involving the PATRIOT Act, cases involving prisoners in other U.S. facilities, cases involving rendition. All of these are going to come forward and having that kind of an ally who genuinely follows in the tradition of Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who kind of cut his eye teeth as Deputy Solicitor General defending the Nixon administration’s invasion of Cambodia without Congressional approval, that is more than anything else, I think, what the Bush Administration wanted in this nomination.

I suggest that the reason Rehnquist is staying on is to groom Roberts as his successor. People may argue that Roberts, as a lawyer, was simply doing his job as a lawyer. But given the fact that Roberts is so closely associated with Rehnquist, there is every indication that Roberts will rule that it is OK for the President to do stuff without Congressional approval, given the fact that Rehnquist did so himself.

And furthermore, Roberts chose to join the Federalist Society, a right-wing think tank dedicated to getting right-wing judges appointed. If Roberts was simply doing his job as a lawyer for the Reagan and Bush administrations and not developing his reactionary views, he would not have joined the Federalist Society. The fact that he chose to join the Federalist Society shows that he went way above and beyond lawyers who simply represent their clients for a living and do not necessarily hold their clients’ views on things.

Along with his reactionary views of the Presidency, Roberts advocates a curtailment of civil liberties. For instance, he opposes affirmative action, claiming that it simply gives special rights to minorities when in fact they are designed to redress years of discrimination.

Roberts also supports the overthrow of Roe vs. Wade; he argued before the SCOTUS that Roe should be overturned as an attorney for the Reagan and Bush administrations. And Attorney General Alberto Gonzales stated publically that if Roberts thinks that Roe should be overturned, he would be justified in doing it.

This is all a matter of trust. George Bush has lied countless times, from the fixing of the facts in Iraq around the policy as documented by the DSM, to his broken promise to restore bipartisanship to Washington and any number of other things. So, given the fact that Bush has lied so many times, why should we trust him when he says Judge Roberts is the most qualified man to run the SCOTUS?

Before we go to battle against Judge Roberts, we need to decide an important question: What do we want out of a Supreme Court justice?

A few days ago, I argued that Roberts was wrong to uphold the President’s right to detain “enemy combatants” on July 15th in Hamden vs. Rumsfeld. One poster argued that Robert’s position was legally correct and that he was simply applying the law as it was written.
Here is his argument:

They looked at the jurisdictional issues and at the acts of Congress supporting the Executive branches actions and held that the arguments brought by the claimant were unsupported. Roberts was on the panel that was unanimous in its decision.

Simply put the President has a right to declare individuals enemy combatants as long as he follows the authority granted him by Congress and doesn’t violate any international treaty approved by Congress.

If Congress wants to stops this they can, simply and easily. Rescind the proclamation and  authority granted in the last 4 years and/or seek to modify the Geneva Convention so that the detainees meet the clear definition of a prisoner of war. They have done neither.

Hamden argued that he should be entitled to seek individual enforcement of rights under the Geneva Convention. The Court disagreed for various reasons base upon decades of Supreme Court precedence. The Concurring opinion added the fact that the Treaty is bilateral and in this case there is no corresponding signatory so Hamden cannot rely on it at all.

Finally you add that the Tribunals violate due process. That was not before this Court and a Cir Ct is not going to sua sponte address a due process argument without any basis. These tribunals have been the subject of other decisions where due process has been addressed and the groundwork laid for subsequent challenges by the detainees. However, Military Tribunals with different rules of evidence, burdens of proof and the like (as compared to the Federal Court system) have survived due process challenges in the past.

Yell at Bush all you want but sticking it to Roberts is silly. I note that the district court didn’t toss this on due process grounds sua sponte either.

The Court can only rule on the questions before it.

Under your process the Court can just intercede willy-nilly and decide any issue at any time. That would be anarchy.

I believe that the courts should abide by Stare Decisis and avoid Sua Sponte 99% of the time. Stare Decisis is the accepted practice where a judge decides cases strictly on legal precedent and the intent of the legislature in passing laws. Sua Sponte is where a judge addresses points not raised by the parties.

I am fully aware of the dangers of departing from such practices. However, there comes a point in time where a judge must go beyond established precendent and become the conscience of the nation. This happens when the practice in question is so antithetical to the universal values of our country and our Constitution that upholding previous precedent is wrong.

This is what the Warren Court did when they took a moral stand on the issues and declared that “separate but equal” was morally wrong and indefensible. They overruled their own ruling and declared that “separate but equal” was a myth designed to promote White Supremacy.

Roberts may have properly applied the law when declaring that the administration was legally justified in their extraordinary rendition policy. And yet, he misses the mark badly. Torture is so antithetical to our universal values and our Constitution that going beyond the normal realms of legal precedent was justified in this case.

I recognize the dangers of this. The right may argue that abortion is a matter of life and death and that the Supreme Court would be morally justified in overturning Roe vs. Wade. However, that is a gross oversimplification of the question.

In fact, universally, we as a society value a woman’s life over a fetus. Ask any right-winger if they support the death penalty for a woman who has an abortion, and they will almost always get cold feet. Yet, they will support the death penalty for someone who commits murder.

In addition, the definition of when life begins is not scientifically established beyond the obvious point of birth. When a person defines life as beginning depends on their values. A pro-choicer may argue that life does not begin until the cerebral cortex is formed at 20-24 weeks. A pro-lifer may argue that life begins at conception.

The question of when life begins is not a settled question other than the fact that we as a society universally value someone who is born over a fetus. In my judgment, there will always be a perpetual tension between the opposing sides other than what I just stated and the growing belief among some pro-choice advocates that abortion should become safe, legal, and rare.

In this kind of a situation, a judge should not impose one’s personal values on other people. To do so is an act of religious faith and would violate the wall of separation of church and state, a long-established Constitutional principle. That is a big difference between Brown and the abortion issue.

A good judge must do more than just be a legal computer. A judge must serve as the conscience of the executive and judicial branches. One of the main complaints that Jesus had about the Pharisees was exactly that — they failed to serve as the conscience of the Jewish nation, instead getting bogged down in meaningless legalisms. In the same way, Judge Roberts fails to act as the conscience of the executive and legislative branches.

Judge Roberts may very well have a brilliant legal mind and have an outstanding command of the law. But he fails to recognize that one must go beyond that if he is to effectively fulfill his duty as a SCOTUS judge. Therefore, he is not qualified to serve as a Supreme Court justice.

Some shocking new findings have been exposed showing that the mainstream media is showing a misleading portrait of civilian casualties in Iraq. According to a study done by Iraq Body Count, 37% of civilians killed were by Americans, 36% were by criminal elements, and only 9% were by the insurgents.

Yet the only people we hear about doing the killing are the insurgents, or "terrorists." Yes, what the foreign suicide bombers are doing is wrong. But in fact, the only groups we are hearing about are the insurgents and foreign fighters.

And many of the crimes committed against civilians have been committed against women by government-backed thugs trying to impose their own version of Islamic Law. Their version of justice involves harassing, stalking, raping, and murdering women who will not wear the veil in accordance with their version of Islamic Law.

I thought one of the prime reasons we went to Afghanistan was because of the Taliban’s rampant control of women there. That is typical doublethink from the administration — they complain about human rights abuses when it suits them and discard their complaints when it suits them.

So, the next time the Bush administration tries to promote the meme that Iraq is a democracy, the question to ask is, why should we trust what they say? Bush said he would uphold the honor and dignity of the White House; he refuses to fire Karl Rove for his treason against the country. He said Iraq was trying to buy Uranium from Niger; debunked by Joe Wilson. He actively conspired with Tony Blair to fix the facts around the case for war in Iraq.

And when people like Khalid speak out against the outrages backed by the Bush administration, the Iraqi government carts them off and throws them in jail. Freedom is slavery and slavery is freedom in George Bush’s universe.

You may still sign the petition to free Khalid here.

The Roberts nomination is all about a trust issue for the President — why should we trust George Bush when he says that John Roberts is the most qualified man to become the next Supreme Court justice? Bush has lied over and over again. Now, he expects us to trust him blindly to know what’s good for our country.

Bush lied about the Niger-Iraq Uranium connection and looked the other way as Karl Rove committed treason by outing Valerie Plame, wife of the US diplomat and American hero Joe Wilson. Bush actively conspired with others to fix the facts around the case for War in Iraq. Therefore, the burden of proof should be on Judge Roberts to show us he is the best man for the job.

From what we can tell, Judge Roberts has been a partisan hack all his life. He has said in the past that Roe was a bad decision for the country and that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to Al-Qaeda suspects.

His defenders may argue that what he said as a lawyer and how he would rule as a judge are two different things, and that he had pledged to uphold the rule of law as a judge. Fine, then. Let him give a detailed accounting of his views on Brown, Roe, Griswold, Title IX, gay rights, school prayer, and other controversial legal issues so we can determine for ourselves how well qualified he is to serve on the Supreme Court.

The most troubling thing about Judge Roberts is that Emperor Dobson and his ilk are already singing the praises of Roberts and demanding that Bill Frist invoke the nuclear option if the Democrats filibuster him. If that happens, all government business will shut down, and there will be a massive public outcry against the GOP’s abuse of power.

Judge Roberts has had hardly any experience on the judicial bench. Therefore, we have no way of knowing how he will rule on critical situations. George Bush expects us to just trust him to pick the right man and go back to watching to see who the next blonde is that gets kidnapped.

But George Bush has forfeited that trust a long time ago. As long as he continues to employ Karl Rove, there is no way he can earn it back.

Posted by Raed, the brother of Khalid:

On another note, it seems that the new Iraqi courts don’t guarantee the right to lawyers: prisoners are neither offered the help of a public defender nor can they bring their own lawyers. News about my sibling is so confusing, but we’re expecting to know more tomorrow. There are more than ten thousand people in the US prisons in Iraq, and other thousands in Iraq’s governmental and paramilitary jails. Everyone deserves to have the right of a phone call to inform his family about his location and status after being arrested, everyone deserves the right of having a trial and knowing what he or she is charged with, and everyone deserves to have a lawyer for his trial.

This was posted Sunday; since then, there has been no new news. I wonder if the Iraqi government is toying with them, trying to get their hopes up and then dashing them down. And still Bush refuses to demand that the Iraqi government respect basic human rights standards.

But if any harm comes to Khalid for speaking his conscience, the wrath of the whole world will be visited on the Bush administration and the Iraqi government.

You may still sign the Free Khalid petition; the number of people signing has more than doubled since Sunday.

NY Times columnist Paul Krugman actually gets it — the War in Iraq only strengthens the hand of those who would do us harm. His solution is to set a withdrawal deadline, so that the Iraqis can take responsibility for their own protection instead of depending on us.

He also says that America is being held hostage to the whims of Bush:

Bolstered by the Downing Street Memo, people are finally starting to realize that Bush had made up his mind to go to war all along, despite the denials of sidekick Tony Blair at Prime Minister’s Questions Wednesday. And Bush’s approval ratings have taken a hit; a Survey USA poll of all 50 states shows that Bush’s approval rating is at 43%, with 52% disapproving. Even in Texas, people are skeptical of the President; his approval rating there is only 50% to 47%.

Krugman goes on to explain that Iraqi has become a training ground for terrorists:

America has engaged in regime change before within the last 20 years. We have toppled governments in Grenada, Panama, Haiti, and Yugoslavia. But there was a big difference between these countries and Iraq. In Iraq, crippling sanctions which killed hundreds of thousands of children through malnutrition and preventable diseases made our government very unpopular. Therefore, the administration should have foreseen that an attempt to change regimes in Iraq would allow Bin Laden and Zaraqwi to exploit the plight of the Iraqi people for their own evil purposes.

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In other news:

Is Syria next? US freezing assets of Syrian officials.

The Post’s E.J. Dionne: Poll numbers after speech show little enthusiasm for war among Americans.

Bush: Of course we’re winning; just look at this summary of body counts!

Brookings Institution op-ed: Bush ignored security and economic policies in Tuesday speech.

Former Bush I physician speaks out against torture; compares current US policy to "Heart of Darkness."

Sistani aide, 17 others killed by attacks.

Extraordinarily high pollution levels in Iraq.

Early US attitudes towards Iraqi strife: "Oh, it’s just them killing each other!"

Iraqi war vet’s idea for Iraq: Combine American and Iraqi units together, so Iraqi troops can see how it’s done.

Iraqi resistance adapting to each new US tactic; US could withdraw to fortresses and force Iraqi government to defend itself.

An Iraqi journalist’s struggle to survive in Iraq.

Italian prosecutors seek extradition of 13 CIA agents; Italian government denies advance knowledge of kidnapping of cleric.

How the right fails to protect us against health and terrorist threats.