Archive for March 6th, 2007
Lew Rockwell writes:
I know that Scooter Libby, like any high-ranking apparatchik, has blood on his hands. Still, I find it hard to celebrate his conviction. First, punishing anyone for the crime of naming a CIA spy violates the first amendment. Second, he was not accused of this offense, but of lying to the FBI, etc. about it. […]
If the Bush administration had wanted to repeal the Intelligence Identities Protection Act at any time before the Plame incident, thereby making us all a little bit freer in a way we’d probably never notice (and themselves much freer to lie us into war), they could have. Hell, the GOP controlled Congress at the time! It would’ve been a breeze. But they did not wish to decriminalize that behavior, or any other. Moreover, they would have thrown me or Lew under the goddamn prison had one of us done the revealing.
Second, the fact that Libby was convicted of perjury and such instead of mass murder, which he is certainly an accomplice to, should be filed under “Some Guys Have All the Luck.” It’s as if Charles Manson had simply been convicted of hate speech for carving that wacky swastika on his forehead: I’d be against the law, but I wouldn’t be out holding a candlelight vigil for the defendant. And since Scooter has the best lawyers money can buy and a sure pardon coming his way, now ain’t the time for anyone’s tears (except maybe Cheney’s).
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There are two major values of public schooling, from the perspective of government officials. One, this institution provides the means by which government officials can slowly but surely, over a period of 12 years, mold the mindsets of children into one of conformity and obedience to authority. Second, public schooling enables government officials to fill children’s minds with officially approved political, historical, and economic doctrine.
Continue reading: The “Value” of Public Schooling
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Raving neocon warmonger David Horowitz gives the best endorsement of Ron Paul to date: “Ron Paul – the only Libertarian in Congress – is a disgrace. He has waged a war against America’s war on terror, in lockstep with the left, and against the state of Israel, the frontline democracy in this war.”
This is a fascinating legal case with all kinds of twists and turns by the Courts and the Government. It also illustrates the lengths the Bush administration has gone to while flouting the Rule of Law. Here’s the concluding paragraph, follow the link for the whole article.
I predict that some day the Supreme Court will hear the merits of Jose Padilla’s case. It will not be able to stand on technicalities forever. Whatever it does decide about the constitutionality of the way Padilla has been treated by his own government for years, the decision will have profound importance to every American who presumes, perhaps wrongly, that rights of due process, the rule of law, and fair play–long held to be hallmarks of our justice system–still mean something today.
Link to FindLaw’s Writ — Cassel: The Ruling on Jose Padilla’s Competence to Stand Trial
