Lying To SCOTUS — Not A Good Idea

Ken AshfordCongress, Courts/Law, Supreme Court, War on Terrorism/TortureLeave a Comment

The full story is here; I’ll just give the funny bits.

Today, the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear the case of Rumsfled v. Hamdan.  At issue in the case is whether a provision in last year’s Detainee Treatment Act ("DTA") effectively strips the Court of jurisdiction to hear Hamdan’s case.  The Government contends that it does.

In support of the government’s position, Republican Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and John Kyl (R-AZ) have filed an amicus brief with the Court.  In their brief, they say that it was Congress’ intent to strip the court of jurisdiction.

Their "evidence"?  An eight-page colloquy between Graham and Kyl discussing this very thing.

Here’s where it gets amusing.  The colloquy reads like a typical exchange on the Senate floor, complete with lines like "Mr. President, I see that we are nearing the end of our allotted time…" and interjections like "If I might interrupt…".   The problem is . . . it never happened.  It was totally scripted and inserted into the Congressional Record.

Now, as C-SPAN viewers know, it is a common and accepted practice for Members of Congress to "revise and extend" their remarks made on the chamber floors.  And that’s fine.  But to make a fictional conversation that never took place?

Kaye Grogan: “Americans Vote Too …Ya Know!”

Ken AshfordRight Wing Punditry/IdiocyLeave a Comment

Grogan0329With immigration being so much in the news lately, and Kaye being a rampant xenophobe, we could have predicted the topic of her column this week — them damn fereners:

Our government has become so transparent even a fake crystal ball gazer can read what their next step is going to be.

"This, this is the same genuine, magic, authentic crystal used by the Priests of Isis and Osiris in the days of the Pharaohs of Egypt— in which Cleopatra first saw the approach of Julius Caesar and Marc Anthony, and—and so on, and so on. Now, you—you’d better close your eyes, my child, for a moment, in order to be better in tune with the infinite. We—we can’t do these things without reaching out into the infinite."

While they sat back (in spa rooms) this country was being bombarded with illegal immigrants — now they don’t know what to do with them.

This is imagery that is going to take some time to digest:  scores of bloated towel-clad sweaty Congressmen kicking back in the sauna, while planes drop Mexicans on an unsuspecting American population.

Is this how Kaye views the world?

Wake up government! While you are catering to foreigners hoping to not alienate them for their votes — you are foolishly forgetting about the American voters.

We weren’t aware that non-American foreigners could vote.  Thanks for that wake-up call, Kaye.

And most Americans are fed up with taking a back seat to lawlessness embraced by those using our borders to traffic illegal drugs and swamp our country with foreigners.

Right.  Why should Americans take a backseat to foreign drug trafficking when we should be doing it ourselves?

Yes, our ancestors came to America, and those who came through Ellis Island had to register so the people already here knew about them.

Maybe we should start using bar codes.  Right, Kaye?

Now we have half of Mexico here illegally.

We hope it’s the warm half.

If we are a land of laws as President Bush insists — who is paying any attention to the laws already on the books?

Olympic sprinter Lauryn Williams.  That’s just a wild guess though.

I would say we are more a land of lawbreakers now.

We are?  Kewl!  What law should we break first?

Everybody in Washington, D.C., is encouraging illegal activity by rewarding it with our American jobs, and straining their necks to look the other way…

"Catering" to illegal aliens while looking the other way?   Neat trick.

…while 11 million people break the law and then have the audacity as one woman said: "it’s not fair to try and send us back to Mexico."  Not fair? . . . don’t they have laws in Mexico too?

Yeah, but they’re in some fucked-up language.

I get sick and tired of hearing how our people won’t take jobs, so we need a foreign country to invade our territory and take the jobs.

Right.  Then you won’t have to hear about it anymore.

Let’s get one thing perfectly straight: people in America can’t afford to take jobs making $2.00 an hour — while employers are bilking the system to their advantage to line their pockets with money. One loaf of bread and a gallon of milk cost more than five bucks! That would add up to over two hours of hard labor for just peanuts!

Well, no, Kaye.  It would add up to two hours of hard labor for bread and milk.  Peanuts would be extra.

If you’re fed up with the whole system — then clap your hands! Boy that was resounding!

Tinkerbell lives!!!

While some of the churches are also encouraging more illegals to come on over — they need to keep them up, instead of our tax dollars, since churches are tax exempt.

And that bitch in the New York harbor says the same thing!

Most foreigners hate America, but they don’t have a problem lapping up our milk and honey, taking it right out of the mouths of Americans.

Lapping up the milk right out of our mouths?  Ewwwww!  I think I saw something like that on David Letterman’s "Stupid Pet Tricks".

Actually, I think those foreigners are French, Kaye, and what you’re talking about is called french kissing.

Now, having said all that: it is the fault of our leaders for letting everything get totally out-of-hand (not the foreigners). And as I said before: "they don’t know what to do about the overflow of immigrants here." Well, it’s high time they found a workable solution.

Don’t you mean, a final solution, Kaye?

The way things are going in Washington or not going I should say — they are causing a lot of hostility.

Well, in the Grogan household at least.

Many illegals crossing the borders — especially in Arizona are also involved with criminal activity there. Do you think for one minute that Americans crossing over into Mexico could get by with the same kind of intimidation? Hardly!

That’s right.  "Illegals" are crossing the border and committing crimes in order to intimidate us.  And we just let them get away with it!

Many may think that this situation is just going to go away quietly, and fade into the sunset, but as the song goes: "this time you gave me a mountain, Lord . . . a mountain that I may never climb" applies to this mess we are in.

Frankielaine_1These and other Frankie Laine hits are available at Amazon.com.

Naturally, if people openly refuse to obey the laws by coming to America illegally — then their motives have to be suspect. There is a right and wrong way to do things (no in-betweens), and coming into a country illegally is certainly not the way to gain favor with the country’s natural born citizens.

Kaye, we have a funny feeling that you will always disfavor foreign-born people, even those who immigrate here legally.

The majority of Americans are opposed to illegal immigrants taking American jobs — leaving many of them unemployed.

Well, obviously not the Americans who hire illegal immigrants, right?

To say that the "guest worker" program is successful is like claiming someone saw a UFO landing in Wrigley Field.

Or a huge green monster at Fenway Park.

The pro-guest workers’ groups are conveniently ignoring the enormous strain illegal immigrants are having on the economy through the welfare and medical programs.

Now we’re confused.  If the government has passed a guest-worker program, then how is it "illegal"?

Something is definitely wrong when 92 hospitals in one state, had to close their doors permanently due to the influx of immigrants needing medical attention.

Yes, the thing that is wrong is your use of unsupportable "facts".

Don’t you think it’s time for you (as leaders and lawmakers) to get inside the real world and quit pandering to a large group who has made a mockery out of the laws of this county?

Who does Kaye think she is talking to?  And what’s this about "the laws of this county"?

As long as you reward people for bad conduct . . . you will never be taken seriously as a person who abides by or respects the law.

We won’t?  Aw shucks.

Grape News From Iraq

Ken AshfordIraqLeave a Comment

Yup.  I’ve been too negative about the way things are going in Iraq.  Sure, I could write about the events of the past few days — like the 69 Iraqis killed in military blunders over the weekend, the U.S trained police acting as death squads, the string of kidnappings, or the fact that Iraq’s ruling parties are so pissed at us that they want us to stop handling security.

But why focus on that when I can read this:

Iraqgrapes_1

Why doesn’t this get more coverage?

White House Infighting

Ken AshfordBush & Co., PlamegateLeave a Comment

The rumors are apparently true.   Rove is cooperating with the Fitzgerald investigation, and pointing investigators to the Cheney office.  It was Rove, reports say, who informed Fitzgerald about the "missing" emails from the VP’s office.  From The Washington Note:

According to several Pentagon sources close to Rove and others familiar with the inquiry, Bush’s senior adviser tipped off Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to information that led to the recent "discovery" of 250 pages of missing email from the office of Vice President Dick Cheney.

***

According to one source close to the case, Rove is providing information on deleted emails, erased hard drives and other types of obstruction by staff and other officials in the Vice President’s office. Pentagon sources close to Rove confirmed this account.

None would name the staffers and/or officials whom Rove is providing information about. They did, however, explain that the White House computer system has "real time backup" servers and that while emails were deleted from computers, they were still retrievable from the backup system. By providing the dates and recipient information of the deleted emails, sources say, Rove was able to chart a path for Fitzgerald directly into the office of the Vice President.

Georgia Woman Gets Fined For “Bushit” Bumper Sticker

Ken AshfordCrime2 Comments

As reported here, a woman in Dekalb County was pulled over and given a $100 fine for having a bumper sticker that read "I’m Tired Of All The Bushit".

Okay, it’s not a very funny bumper sticker, but it’s not obscene either.

Rumor is that the police officer then went into the woods, where he started nailing citations to shittemwood trees. 

Then he went to a local Little League game, where he ticketed a young kid for mishitting the baseball.   

Then he went to a church and fined a pastor for reading from Isaiah 41:19:

"I will plant in the wilderness the cedar, the shittah tree, and the myrtle, and the oil tree; I will set in the desert the fir tree, and the pine, and the box tree together…"

Oh, I got a million of ’em.

Rearranging Deck Chairs On The Titanic

Ken AshfordBush & Co.Leave a Comment

The news that Andrew Card is resigning as Chief of Staff is not entirely unexpected, but it hardly represents a sea change in the way the White House will operate.  His replacement is budget director and former deputy chief of staff Josh Bolton.  It does  not, as The New York Times notes, "represent an infusion of new blood."

This is part of a broader move by the White House to push up the sinking poll numbers.  Another tactic is to have private informal meetings with members of the press

I think all these moves are wasteful.  The White House problems don’t stem from bad PR, but bad policies.  If they want to turn things around, they simply have to change their policies, not their public face.

Huge Iraq Screwup

Ken AshfordIraqLeave a Comment

The Left Coaster:

A day after Iraqi Special Forces under the supervision of American advisors apparently shot up a Shia religious center in Moqtada al-Sadr’s stronghold, the Iraqi government itself is blaming us for the killings of possibly 40 worshippers, possibly execution-style. Government ministers are condemning the Americans for the killings, and Saddam’s former Number Two, a Sunni who has somehow escaped our capture for three years, has called upon neighboring Arab states to support the Sunni insurgency.

Worse yet, after initially denying that an attack took place on a “mosque”, the American commanders on the ground are now distancing themselves from the Iraqi Special Forces they were supervising as advisors yesterday, and are now waiting for new talking points from Washington.

Against this backdrop, it was revealed this afternoon that our ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad signaled to the Shiites Saturday that the United States wanted Prime Minister al-Jaafari, who is supported by al-Sadr, moved aside for a new prime minister, which is being interpreted by some in the ruling Shiite alliance as an attempt by the Americans to control the government, with Kurdish support.

Iraqi Special Forces are run out the Defense Ministry, which is headed by a Sunni Arab. Iraqi police operate out of the Shia-run Interior Ministry, and several of them were killed yesterday. It appears that Sunnis conducted yesterday’s attack in an area run by al-Sadr, a Shiite stronghold. Can someone tell me why our commanders on the ground, with three years of intelligence about this insurgency, would allow themselves to supervise Sunni Special Forces on an operation in a Shiite stronghold, unless Donald Rumsfeld wanted to provoke a civil war?

Update 3:39 PM Pacific Time: Nevermind, we now have seen the new talking points: our commander on the ground is accusing the Shiites late today of making it all up, and of moving bodies from the firefight into the religious center to paint a picture of an American-led massacre. I kid you not. That’s our story from the Pentagon. (Then why did our commanders distance themselves from the Iraqi Special Forces today?) All I can say is this: with the ruling Shiite political party now firmly behind this story of an American-led assault yesterday, the Pentagon better be right, because if this newest defense from Rummy falls apart, it will be game, set, and match for our credibility over there.

About Those Iraqi Schools

Ken AshfordIraqLeave a Comment

Bush supporters complain that the "good news" in Iraq isn’t being reported.  They condemn the media for not talking about the number of schools open, and so on.

Well, here’s some Iraqi school news:

On Wednesday, armed insurgents burst into the classroom of Khidhir al-Mihallawi, an English teacher at Sajariyah High School, accused him of being an agent for the CIA and Israeli intelligence and beheaded him in front of his students, according to students, fellow instructors and a physician at a local hospital.

One teacher, who spoke on the condition that he not be named because he feared retaliation from insurgents, said that most students ran from the classroom but that some stayed to watch. Many stopped coming to school after the incident, he said. Another teacher, who said he moved his mathematics class to his home to accommodate frightened students, said Mihallawi had earlier been threatened because he worked as a translator for U.S. forces in Ramadi, a hotbed of the Sunni Arab insurgency.

Mihallawi "looked at us just like he was telling us that we do not have to be scared. Even as we were running out of the door, his looks were still telling us that nothing will happen and we do not have to be scared," said a student, whose father asked that his name not be used. "I heard him screaming for a few seconds, then stop screaming."

On the plus side, the school is set to get a new coat of paint next month.

Provoking A Confrontation

Ken AshfordIraqLeave a Comment

THE PRESIDENT: I think your premise — in all due respect to your question and to you as a lifelong journalist — is that — I didn’t want war. To assume I wanted war is just flat wrong, Helen, in all due respect —

Q Everything —

THE PRESIDENT: Hold on for a second, please.

Q — everything I’ve heard —

THE PRESIDENT: Excuse me, excuse me. No President wants war. Everything you may have heard is that, but it’s just simply not true. […]

Part of that meant to make sure that we didn’t allow people to provide safe haven to an enemy. And that’s why I went into Iraq — hold on for a second —

Q They didn’t do anything to you, or to our country.

THE PRESIDENT: Look — excuse me for a second, please. Excuse me for a second. They did. The Taliban provided safe haven for al Qaeda. That’s where al Qaeda trained —

Q I’m talking about Iraq —

THE PRESIDENT: Helen, excuse me. […] I also saw a threat in Iraq. I was hoping to solve this problem diplomatically. That’s why I went to the Security Council; that’s why it was important to pass 1441, which was unanimously passed. And the world said, disarm, disclose, or face serious consequences —

The New York Times today takes a closer look at the Manning Memo, the memo dated January 23, 2003 detailing a meeting between George Bush and Tony Blair, written by David Manning (Blair’s chief foreign policy advisor).

The memo cites Bush as acknowledging that he was going to invade Iraq . . . regardless.  In fact, since the inspectors were unable to find WMD, Bush was talking about provoking Saddam into a war:

During a private two-hour meeting in the Oval Office on Jan. 31, 2003, he made clear to Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain that he was determined to invade Iraq without the second resolution, or even if international arms inspectors failed to find unconventional weapons.

….The memo also shows that the president and the prime minister acknowledged that no unconventional weapons had been found inside Iraq. Faced with the possibility of not finding any before the planned invasion, Mr. Bush talked about several ways to provoke a confrontation

…."The U.S. was thinking of flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in U.N. colours," the memo says, attributing the idea to Mr. Bush. "If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach."

Att01694It also described the president as saying, "The U.S. might be able to bring out a defector who could give a public presentation about Saddam’s W.M.D," referring to weapons of mass destruction.

A brief clause in the memo refers to a third possibility, mentioned by Mr. Bush, a proposal to assassinate Saddam Hussein.

People who have Bush scandal fatigue (that would include me) might pass this item by with a ho-hum, but history will not be so forgiving.

UPDATE:  Think Progress has a nice side-by-side comparison of Bush’s public/private statements regarding the Iraq War.

Scalia Recusal

Ken AshfordSupreme Court, War on Terrorism/TortureLeave a Comment

According to Think Progress:

Newsweek reports that in a controversial unpublicized March 8 speech, Scalia “dismissed the idea that the detainees have rights under the U.S. Constitution or international conventions.”

“War is war, and it has never been the case that when you captured a combatant you have to give them a jury trial in your civil courts,” he says on a tape of the talk reviewed by NEWSWEEK. “Give me a break.” Challenged by one audience member about whether the Gitmo detainees don’t have protections under the Geneva or human-rights conventions, Scalia shot back: “If he was captured by my army on a battlefield, that is where he belongs. I had a son on that battlefield and they were shooting at my son and I’m not about to give this man who was captured in a war a full jury trial. I mean it’s crazy.” Scalia was apparently referring to his son Matthew, who served with the U.S. Army in Iraq.

It seems clear to me that Scalia should recuse himself from Hamden v. Rumsfeld, set to be heard this coming week.

Ben Resigns

Ken AshfordRight Wing and Inept MediaLeave a Comment

The controversy is over.  From Ben Domenech’s blog at Washington Post:

Ben Domenech Resigns

In the past 24 hours, we learned of allegations that Ben Domenech plagiarized material that appeared under his byline in various publications prior to washingtonpost.com contracting with him to write a blog that launched Tuesday.

An investigation into these allegations was ongoing, and in the interim, Domenech has resigned, effective immediately.

When we hired Domenech, we were not aware of any allegations that he had plagiarized any of his past writings. In any cases where allegations such as these are made, we will continue to investigate those charges thoroughly in order to maintain our journalistic integrity.

Plagiarism is perhaps the most serious offense that a writer can commit or be accused of. Washingtonpost.com will do everything in its power to verify that its news and opinion content is sourced completely and accurately at all times.

We appreciate the speed and thoroughness with which our readers and media outlets surfaced these allegations. Despite the turn this has taken, we believe this event, among other things, testifies to the positive and powerful role that the Internet can play in the the practice of journalism.

We also remain committed to representing a broad spectrum of ideas and ideologies in our Opinions area.

Jim Brady
Executive Editor, washingtonpost.com

I feel like singing the send-off song to "American Idol".  "You had a bad day…."

UPDATE:  Ben’s explanation is here back at the group blog he founded, Redstate.

Basically, he offers three explanations for three specific claims:

(1)  In one case, the plagiarism allegation is wrong, because he was the author of both pieces. [Frankly, I think Ben’s excuse here bears out.  So, he’s off the hook for ONE of the accusations].

(2)  In another case, P.J. O’Rourke gave Ben (then a 17 year old college student) "permission" to copy from his piece.

(3)  In another case, he was writing about an event where other reporters were present.  So, to Ben, "it is no surprise that we had similar quotes or similar descriptions of the same event."

Heh.  It wasn’t "similar decriptions", Ben.  Your descriptions were the same — almost verbatim.

Here’s what Ben wrote for the New York Press:

In his shirtsleeves, Frist got out of the car and sprinted onto the Capitol grounds, past police and camera crews, tourists and reporters, and into a ground-floor door. A security guard put his hand up to stop him, then realized who he was.

Here’s what the Washington Post wrote:

In his shirtsleeves, Frist gets out of the car and sprints onto the Capitol grounds, past police and camera crews, tourists and reporters, and into a ground-floor door.

A security guard puts his hand up to stop Frist, then realizes who he is.

I know plagiarism when I see it.

The Washington Post provides another example, which Domenech explains away with a lie:

Daily Kos, a Web site edited by liberal activist Markos Moulitsas, posted a comparison of Domenech’s National Review piece on the film "Final Fantasy" and a review by Steve Murray of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Domenech wrote:

"Translucent and glowing, they ooze up from the ground and float through solid walls, splaying their tentacles and snapping their jaws, dripping a discomfiting acidic ooze. They’re known as the Phantoms, otherworldly beings who, for three decades, have been literally sucking the life out of the earthlings of the human."

Murray had written:

"Translucent and glowing, they ooze up from the ground and float through solid walls, wriggling countless tentacles and snapping their jaws. They’re known as the Phantoms, alien thingies that, for three decades, have been sucking the life out of the earthlings of ‘Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within.’ "

Domenech said he thought his piece appeared first, but a database review found that Murray’s review was published three days earlier.

As for the other accounts, Ben writes that "virtually every other alleged instance of plagiarism" came from his college writing day.  And finally, he claims that editors (specifically of the New Yorker) were inserting plagiarized material into his writing.  [UPDATE: His college editors also scoff at the accusation, as do the editors of National Review Online]

Aside from the laughability of the final excuse, please note the phrase "virtually every other alleged instance…".  For example, Ben does not explain the document examples of plagiarism here and here — both occurring when he was into his career as a writer.

So who does Domenech blame?  The left.  This is as close as he gets to an admission:

A less sloppy writer would have made sure that material copied from other places never made it into a published piece, and never necessitated apologies or explanations that will do nothing to stop the critics.

That’s it.  He was being "sloppy".  But it’s everybody else’s fault.

UPDATE:  Okay, finally he is contrite:

I want to apologize to National Review Online, my friends and colleagues here at RedState, and to any others that have been affected over the past few days. I also want to apologize to my previous editors and writers whose work I used inappropriately and without attribution. There is no excuse for this – nor is there an excuse for any obfuscation in my earlier statement.

Another Holiday, Another War

Ken AshfordGodstuffLeave a Comment

I swear.  Conservative Chistians just can’t stop acting like they’re being persecuted.  Here’s the latest from World Nut Daily:

FAITH UNDER FIRE
Is Easter latest holiday hijack?
Bunny gets booted from city council as some fear offending non-Christians

In the wake of the national uproar over the celebration of Christmas in America, some are now focusing their attention on Easter, wondering if political correctness will have an impact on what many Christians consider to be the holiest time of the year.

This week in Minnesota’s capital, a toy rabbit, pastel-colored eggs and a sign with the words "Happy Easter" adorning the entrance to the St. Paul City Council offices were ordered to hit the bunny trail by the city’s human-rights director who claimed the items might offend non-Christians.

"I sent an e-mail that Easter is viewed as a Christian holiday and advised that it be taken down," Tyrone Terrill told the Pioneer Press. "It wasn’t a big deal."

But City Council Member Dave Thune had no problem with the seasonal display.

"I absolutely wonder how colored eggs and bunnies and chickens are Christian," Thune told the paper. "I’m a little puzzled how people can be offended."

In response to the bunny ban, the New York-based Catholic League is sending Terrill a full-size bunny suit.

"It is our hope that once Tyrone dons the costume, he will realize that even non-Christians are not offended," said the league’s president, Bill Donohue. "And we urge him to read and digest a copy of the First Amendment, preferably while munching on some rancid carrots."

New York, London, Miami, NOLA Under Water By 2100

Ken AshfordEnvironment & Global Warming & Energy1 Comment

GloblwrmingUh-oh:

Would towering sea waves lap over economic hubs of London, New York and Hong Kong, where the world’s business transactions take place, by 2100?

Experts have warned that without efforts to curb the rise of greenhouse gases, the polar ice caps may melt far faster under the pressure of global warming than it was previously thought, threatening island states and coastal cities.

The world’s ice sheets could retreat farther by the year 2100 than they have in the past 130,000 years, leading to a huge rise in sea level, experts say adding, low-lying islands such as Tuvalu and the Maldives look set to disappear.

Coastal cities will be forced to beef up their defences or else think about relocating.

The financial districts of London, New York and Hong Kong to name but three, lie barely above sea level, a report in the Nature magazine claims.

"I think sea-level rise is a huge threat," says Colin Prentice, who studies ecosystem responses to climate change at the University of Bristol, UK.

"As humans, everything we’ve done is set up for a stable climate. We’ve built huge cities within a metre of sea level and never thought they would be swamped," Prentice says.

Researchers led by Jonathan Overpeck of the University of Arizona in Tucson and Bette Otto-Bliesner of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, have looked at a period known as the Last Interglaciation.

At this time, 130,000 years ago, shifts in Earth’s orbit caused the Arctic to warm by 3-5 degrees Celsius and the sea level to rise by some 5 mt, the magazine says.

The team, the report adds, has worked out how Earth responded to that temperature rise in the past and asked when a similar shift might happen in the future.

The answer, it seems, is surprisingly soon.

More here.

060324_glacier_300