Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
Rand Paul, on his filibuster the other day:
“This was a very serious question. It was a question that took a month and a half to get an answer to and so I would argue — and I think a lot of the public would agree with me, both on the right and the left — that what we ask was a very serious question and it’s a question that we finally got an answer to,” Paul said.
Attorney General Eric Holder on Thursday responded to Paul in a letter that said the U.S. does not have the authority to conduct a drone attack against a U.S. citizen on American soil.
“Hooray, for 13 hours yesterday we asked them that question. And so there is a result and a victory,” Paul said after the letter was read to him during the Fox interview. “Under duress and under public humiliation the White House will respond and do the right thing.”
Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham were none too pleased with the whole performance.
McCain said Paul’s argument that the administration might use a drone to kill an outspoken opponent — someone like Jane Fonda during the Vietnam War — was “ridiculous.”
“To infer that the president is going to kill someone like Jane Fonda or someone who disagrees with him is simply ridiculous,” McCain said on the Senate floor. “If someone is an enemy combatant, that enemy combatant has nowhere to hide, not even in a café.”
“To infer that our government would drop a Hellfire missile on Jane Fonda brings the conversation to a ridiculous tone.”
:
“I don’t remember any of you fellow Republicans coming down here and saying President [George W.] Bush was going to kill anyone with a drone,” Graham said. “But we had a drone program back then…so what is it that’s got you so spun up now?”
Great question, Sen. Graham. Oh no wait — no it isn’t…there is a history of prevaricating on this issue, maybe you weren’t aware of it.
There is a problem here that goes beyond drones on home soil, involving the behavior of the Obama White House in response to questions like this; questions which would, by being answered, commit the President to a reduced scope of available options. Obama’s people seem, to me, to be disturbingly sluggish in making these commitments. This goes back quite a way. It didn’t start with the drones.
Always, if someone asks such a question, the answer has less to do with providing information sought by the question, and more to do with embarrassing the person asking. I’ve been looking for exceptions to this and I haven’t found any. Most of the time, the scolding that is heaped upon the person doing the asking, takes the form that the answer is just so self-evident that the asking should have been entirely unnecessary. That certainly happened here — but the other thing that happened here was, at the end of it all, you get that half-page letter from the Attorney General’s office that says “no.” Now, go back and watch the video again…
So, that kind of scolding is not appropriate. And it is most regrettable that some of it is coming from ostensibly “Republican” senators.
Someone is laboring under the mistaken belief that Useful Idiots retain their usefulness for some length of time. Well, I don’t think they do. I think, you could ask a panel of thousand Americans, evenly mixed by geographic location, ethnicity, sex, sex preference, party affiliation and any other way, “If the Republican party is not for shrinking the size of government, then why in the hell is it there?” and you wouldn’t get ANYTHING back. Just an occasional “put black people back in chains” and that’s the only coherent answer you’d get.
A Republican senator providing cover to a democrat president with delusions of dictatorship and grandeur, is about as useful as a bag with no bottom.
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