Over at Harper’s, Scott Horton lays out the case for prosecuting the Bush adminstration (subscription required, but having someone lay out the case clearly does my heart good, so it’s worth it).
Tag: justice
Nov 13 2008
The Alternatives to Impeachment
A comment by Shahryar
my fantasy remains this….
“I, Barack Obama…..blah blah blah….so help me God”
pause….Obama turns and points to Bush and Cheney and says “Arrest these men!”
This ‘fantasy’ is, By the Blessed Blinded Eyes of Justice, what SHOULD happen.
The President of The United States has broken the Law, and we are (in theory) a Nation of Laws, not a Nation of Men. Justice should know no boundaries of rank or privilege. True justice does not.
Be we do not live in a world of true justice. We live in a world of conditional justice, where there is one form of ‘justice’ for the poor and disadvantaged and differently colored, and another justice for the rich and privileged and connected.
I shall not address here, the ridiculous claim that one commenter med that there have been no crimes committed or no evidence fit to present for prosecution. Our President is guilty. Guilty of domestic spying by his own admission, and guilty of torture by his signed authorizations. Retroactive immunity passed by a cowardly and complicit Congress does not alleviate that guilt, it merely adds accessories. Corrupting the Department of Justice to the point of your henchmen, minions and co-conspirators there to the point that they will not allow even an investigation by serving subpoenas does not obliterate his guilt, it merely obscures it.
Or…perhaps…he is not. Perhaps the aggressive invasion of a sovereign nation in direst contravention of the Nuremberg accords was…an accident. Perhaps they really believed that attaching electrodes to a prisoners genitals or beating them to death while they were chained and helpless was just…a misunderstanding. perhaps the treasonous exposure of an entire CIA counter-terrorism unit for spite and politics was ….hmmmmm, even my imagination can’t come up with anything for that.
But….This is why we have TRIALS.
Nov 12 2008
Environmental Injustice: Those who would Pollute Poor People because their Lives are Worth Less.
This column by Michael Kinsley in the Washington Post today is immoral crap. In an effort to defend the indefensible, Larry Summers 1991 writings suggesting we off-source pollution to poor countries, this jerk fully endorses polluting the poor overseas, and implictly, at home. It is the antithesis of environmental justice.
If an industrial plant that causes pollution is going to be built somewhere, it ought to be built where life is worth less.
Revisiting One Lawrence Summers Controversy
This diary is not about Larry Summers and whether he should be Treasury Secretary. It is about this asshat, Michael Kinsley. The smarmy obscenity of his writings reveals a person without conscience. Karma will get his ass one day.
More, after the fold.
(also on Dkos: http://www.dailykos.com/story/… )
Oct 19 2008
The Case of Little Dutch Big Dutch (My Story – Part III)
Note: I got a little out of sequence with this series and published Part IV – Love and Death in Colombia before this Part III. This one gets me back on track sequence-wise and sets the stage for Part V.
Links to the other parts of this series:
This is my story – I hope that it finds you (Part I)
Wear Your Love Like Heaven (My Story – Part II)
Love and Death in Colombia (My Story – Part IV)
First, so as to set the mood, I present to you a tender love ballad by John Prine and sung here with Iris DeMent called In Spite of Ourselves.
Oct 02 2008
Justice for Vietnamese Agent Orange Victims: 2008
Again this year Vietnamesse Agent Orange victims are touring the United States seeking justice, Our Responsibility, for the long term damage done to their countries citizens from our occupation of their country not so long ago.
Sep 20 2008
Urgent Message for America from Woody Guthrie
America has been stolen from us by our own filthy rich. My grasp of the dismal science of economics is simple and unsophisticated but I’ve spent far too much time among thieves not to know theft when I see it. In what is by far the biggest robbery in history, the ‘haves and have mores’ have taken not only all that we have, but all that we’ll ever have. They have stolen the very future from our children and grandchildren. If we continue to take it lying down, we deserve what we get.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way in America.
Sep 19 2008
Let’s Help Don Siegelman!
For the past two days, Don Siegelman been working in DC and meeting with Members of Congress, trying to build support to get the Karl Rove contempt citation up for a vote and trying to count votes for final passage.
Sep 18 2008
POWs’ Plea
Last night the Rachel Maddow MSNBC show had a couple of clips about a very important legislative bill that passed in the House of Representatives on monday Sept 15 ’08.
The bill is H. R. 5167 which had 38 co-sponsors with only 3 being Republican.
The bill’s name is: Justice for Victims of Torture and Terrorism Act
But watch a video, of which I combined two of her reports together, that will explain further.
Aug 29 2008
The Counter Narrative of Barack Obama: “The Promise of America”
As someone who at times was critical of Barack Obama during the primaries, I was very impressed with Barack Obama’s speech last night, with his thinking as much as his delivery.
Obama provided a counter narrative of America, a narrative that stands in contradistinction to that of Reagan selfishness. It’s a truly progressive narrative of America in which the history of America is seen as increasing expansions of democracy. He drew perhaps on his understanding expressed in his Philadelphia “race” speech of “a more perfect union” in articulating this Promise.
It was summed up in this line:
That promise is our greatest inheritance. It’s a promise I make to my daughters when I tuck them in at night, and a promise that you make to yours – a promise that has led immigrants to cross oceans and pioneers to travel west; a promise that led workers to picket lines, and women to reach for the ballot.
It’s an America that is a community and which includes, rather than excludes. Workers, women, men, blacks, whites, hispanics, asians. It is a promise based on an expansion of democracy and fairness.
More, after the fold.
Aug 15 2008
Fighting Back on Heat Deaths: Farm Workers going to Sacramento
I have been writing about the heat deaths of the farm workers in California since May. (After the fold are links for diaries for background.)
Six have died since May. The latest one was Maria de Jesus Alvarez, 63, mother of nine, who died early this month. The first one to die was 17-year-old Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez, who died in May. Marie was about one month pregnant when she died, and likely did not ever know she was pregnant. The state fined the labor contractor $262,700 for failing to follow heat illness prevention regulations at the time she was stricken, but that won’t bring her back. And the deaths have continued at an accelarated pace since then.
You can help to end this tragedy!
This Monday, August 18, more than 800 farm workers from throughout California want to go to Sacramento.
They want the chance to tell the governor and their elected officials to support AB 2386, “Secret Ballot Elections for Farmworkers,” which has moved out of the assembly and which will be voted on that afternoon in the state senate.
After the fold, I’ll tell you how you can help the farmworkers help themselves.
Aug 13 2008
Sixth Farm Worker Dies from the Heat this Summer in California. A Call for Action.
I have been writing about this story since May. (after the fold are links for diaries for background). Yet another farmworker has died from the heat. This is the sixth this summer.
Maria de Jesus Alvarez, 63, mother of nine, died from heat exposure in the fields on August 2. Her death makes six farm workers who died of heat exposure since May and the 15th farm worker heat death since California Governor Schwarzenegger took office. Even one is too many. Six this year is a tragedy. These deaths show that the state of California is unable to protect farm workers.
We must act. We must force action by the state to allow farm workers to protect themselves. For there are no others to do so.
If you care, join me after the fold.
(also On Daily Kos)
Aug 05 2008
DE-AL: Standing Up for America (with possum)
Like many of you, I came to blogging as a way of fighting back. Before I found this avenue through which I could channel my dissent, I felt powerless to do anything about the outrages being visited upon our nation and virtually all the rest of the world by our own intractable and illegitimate government.
People often question what good it does to rant into the ether. We hear it all the time right here. ‘Preaching to the choir dude.’ But time has proven that we in the blogosphere are a force to be reckoned with. The pols and the pundits would be ignoring us otherwise…just like they used to.
“First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.”
Mahatma Gandhi
