Thursday, June 29, 2006
Pissed Off
God, I can't take it anymore. These whiny little right wing nuts. Should the New York Times be leaking classified information in a time of war?
Nope.
Should the Bush administration be repeatedly breaking the law with their policies to defend this country?
Nope.
Who's going to tell us if not the media?
No one.
Therefore....tell us fucking everything.
I'm sick of these hacks asserting over and over again that because we're at "war" the administration is off limits....it's not. It's debatable whether we're in a real war situation to begin with. The activity in Iraq is a police action, no longer a war and the so-called war on terror is ethereal.
Not only that. The things the New York Times has revealed weren't surprising. You mean the feds are following the finances to try to track terrorists? Shocking. As if they wouldn't have guessed that. Like they don't suppose that their phone calls are already being tapped. These are not morons we're dealing with here. This, of course, is all beside the point.
These programs are all illegal. If they weren't, every time the administration gets caught they wouldn't be negotiating with members of congress to get legislation passed to make what they were doing legal. Wouldn't have to do that if it was already the case.
What really pushed me over the edge today was the decision handed down by the Supreme Court saying that the Guantanamo plan to hold military tribunals was illegal and violated the Geneva Conventions.
Now, the Bush Administration has been saying they don't need to follow the conventions because we're either not at war or we're in a different kind of war, but that's a dangerous and erroneous assertion.
You are either at war or you are not. If someone is captured, determined to be an enemy and held, he's a POW. Enemy Combatant is a nuanced way that the administration asserts allows them to skirt international agreements. It shouldn't. At the very least it puts our own soldiers at risk in future engagements.
That said, the thing that really pissed me off wasn't the court's decision, which I clearly agree with, but rather the minority opinion written by Clarence Thomas. Thomas said in his dissent that the majority ruling meant that terrorists needed to be caught "red handed" before they could be tried under the laws of war. "It would sorely hamper the President's ability to confront and defeat a deadly enemy."
You know what, that's too bad. It's illegal. Republican have for years now applied the term "activist judges" to left leaning members of the bench who interpreted the law differently than they liked. They claim that the job of a judge is the take the law as it's written and not impress his own personal perspectives on any decision. Maybe the law as it exists would hinder the President, but that's not the point.
That's not the job of the judiciary to worry about how the President's getting by in the daily execution of his job. Their job is to look at the law and make sure it's not being misused or misinterpreted as it's clearly been in this case and in the case of the NSA phone debacle.
Nope.
Should the Bush administration be repeatedly breaking the law with their policies to defend this country?
Nope.
Who's going to tell us if not the media?
No one.
Therefore....tell us fucking everything.
I'm sick of these hacks asserting over and over again that because we're at "war" the administration is off limits....it's not. It's debatable whether we're in a real war situation to begin with. The activity in Iraq is a police action, no longer a war and the so-called war on terror is ethereal.
Not only that. The things the New York Times has revealed weren't surprising. You mean the feds are following the finances to try to track terrorists? Shocking. As if they wouldn't have guessed that. Like they don't suppose that their phone calls are already being tapped. These are not morons we're dealing with here. This, of course, is all beside the point.
These programs are all illegal. If they weren't, every time the administration gets caught they wouldn't be negotiating with members of congress to get legislation passed to make what they were doing legal. Wouldn't have to do that if it was already the case.
What really pushed me over the edge today was the decision handed down by the Supreme Court saying that the Guantanamo plan to hold military tribunals was illegal and violated the Geneva Conventions.
Now, the Bush Administration has been saying they don't need to follow the conventions because we're either not at war or we're in a different kind of war, but that's a dangerous and erroneous assertion.
You are either at war or you are not. If someone is captured, determined to be an enemy and held, he's a POW. Enemy Combatant is a nuanced way that the administration asserts allows them to skirt international agreements. It shouldn't. At the very least it puts our own soldiers at risk in future engagements.
That said, the thing that really pissed me off wasn't the court's decision, which I clearly agree with, but rather the minority opinion written by Clarence Thomas. Thomas said in his dissent that the majority ruling meant that terrorists needed to be caught "red handed" before they could be tried under the laws of war. "It would sorely hamper the President's ability to confront and defeat a deadly enemy."
You know what, that's too bad. It's illegal. Republican have for years now applied the term "activist judges" to left leaning members of the bench who interpreted the law differently than they liked. They claim that the job of a judge is the take the law as it's written and not impress his own personal perspectives on any decision. Maybe the law as it exists would hinder the President, but that's not the point.
That's not the job of the judiciary to worry about how the President's getting by in the daily execution of his job. Their job is to look at the law and make sure it's not being misused or misinterpreted as it's clearly been in this case and in the case of the NSA phone debacle.
