Cutting Obama no slack on this one

Readers know that I think the Republicans are borderline crazy on Benghazi.  I believe the  “scandal” at the I.R.S. is that the agency did not blow the whistle on blatantly partisan groups that receive tax exempt status, not that it examined obviously political Tea Party groups.  I believe that the President did not personally know that his minions were threatening the Fox News reporter and monitoring other reporters who were just doing their jobs.

However, and this is a very big however, the President did know that the F.B.I. and the National Security Agency compelled Verizon to turn over all calls that went through its system.  He knew that N.S.A. has also been monitoring internet communications.  We are told the agencies don’t listen in to the calls, but they know to whom the calls are made and how long they last.  Since they have not been truthful in the past, why should we believe they don’t listen in?

All of this in the name of “national security,” the same excuse the Nixon Administration used during the Watergate impeachment proceedings.  And I don’t care if this activity was a result of the Patriot Act and was started by the Bush administration.  Bush has not been president for the last four and a half years.  The President now in office said in 2007 that the Bush administration “puts forward a false choice between the liberties we cherish and the security we provide.”  That is still a false choice.  

Incidentally, I am assuming that the F.B.I. and the N.S.A. are recording this post as well.  And if you guys are recording it, f***  you. 

Fundraising

We have this office in downtown Lehighton known as the Democratic Information Center.  Rent is $400 a month plus utilities, which can vary from $300 in the winter to $50 in the summer.  We also pay $35 a month for the front window.  The office is used by Democratic Party volunteers, the Carbon County Labor Chapter, and any Democratic Party club that needs a meeting space.

The D.I.C., as it is informally known, receives no funds from the County party.  It’s run on contributions from supporters who by this point are pretty much tapped out. We have enough funds to last us through September. We are faced with the problem confronting almost all community, volunteer, and local political groups--where do we get more funds?  

We’ve discussed selling candy, holding an art show, throwing a jewelry party, and organizing a yard sale.  We looked at the Hometown Farmers’ Market, which provides booths for flea market-type sales, but it is too huge, you have to be there at 6 a.m., and we really didn’t think we’d make much money. 

We will be looking at the Mahoning Farmers’ Market and the one in downtown Lehighton, and we also discussed just holding a yard sale.  They seem rather popular in this area.  

If you have any ideas, we are open to suggestions.  (I’m one of the members of the D.I.C. steering committee.)

Bobolinks

On Sunday I spoke with two birders who had stopped at the trailhead near our house.  They told me they had seen bobolinks in the hay field at the top of the hill.  Last night Linda and I walked up the road and into the field.  Sure enough, there they were; a male and a female.  I haven’t seen a bobolink since I was a kid on the farm.  

This morning I saw a feral cat right in front of our house.  Is there a connection?  Of course.  Millions of song birds are killed every year by cats.  They are killed not only by feral cats, but by house cats that are allowed to roam.  If your pet cat killed just one bird last year, multiply that by the millions of cats in the U.S.  You can see the problem.  

I like cats, but I like birds more.  I don’t understand why people value certain species like cats and dogs over other species like birds and small mammals.  All of them are important to our ecosystem.    

Scalia is correct

There’s a headline you won’t see on many posts on this particular blog.  

Scalia wrote the dissenting opinion on a case involving DNA collection from people who have been charged but not convicted of a crime.  

In the past the Court has allowed “suspicionless searches” only where the justification is strong--for example, drug testing of airline pilots.  

Here’s what Scalia wrote.  “Solving unsolved crimes is a noble objective, but it occupies a lower place in the American pantheon of noble objectives than the protection of our people from suspicionless law enforcement searches.”

Scalia warned that the ruling would lead to a national DNA data bank for everyone arrested for whatever reason. 

Scalia was joined in his dissent by Justices Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan.  

Force-feeding

First you are shackled to a chair.  If you move your head, it is shackled also.  A tube is forced through your nose down your throat. A liquid supplement is pushed down the tube.  If you vomit after the “treatment,” the process is repeated and you are strapped into the chair until the food is digested.  This is torture, and we are doing it daily to about 35 inmates at Guantanamo.

In an op-ed column on June 1, Joe Nocera quoted Dr. Stephen Miles, professor of medicine and bioethics at the University of Michigan.  “The persistence of the military’s force-feeding policy in the face of international law, and the manner in which it is done, constitutes torture.”

I hope you noticed the “we” in the first paragraph.  We live under a democratically-elected government.  It is “our” government and “our” military doing this in “our” prison, and I don’t have any idea how to stop it.  

Bradley Manning

The reason the U.S. government went after Daniel Ellsberg, the New York Times, and the Washington Post had nothing to do with national security.  It had everything to do with being embarrassed, with being caught in bold-faced lies.

Now the U.S. government--let’s say it, the Obama administration--is going after Bradley Manning.  This has nothing to do with “aiding the enemy.”  The diplomatic cables he leaked embarrassed our allies.  The videos he released showed civilians being killed in airstrikes.  The very fact that he released the material is embarrassing to the government.  Why was he put in solitary confinement for months?  Because they hate this guy.

And Dick Cheney, who lied about the reasons to go to war in Iraq, who is largely responsible for the deaths and maiming of thousands of Americans troops and probably hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, is a respected member of society, appearing on talk shows, not indicted.  

Worth protesting

At a time when riots are breaking out in Sweden, when Buddhists are killing Muslims in Burma, and when the French stage large anti-gay marriage protests, it is refreshing to read that Istanbul was the site of a huge demonstration protesting development in the city’s only downtown park.  

The Times reported that one banner read:  “Don’t touch our neighborhoods, our squares, our trees, our water, our soil, our homes, our villages, our cities and our parks.” 

We could use that one for our anti-fracking demonstrations.