Entries Tagged as ''
A Glimmer of Hope
Senator Russ Feingold to introduce legislation to end the war in Iraq. Yesterday he said:
The Constitution gives Congress the explicit power “[to] declare War,” “[t]o raise and support Armies,” “[t]o provide and maintain a Navy,” and “[t]o make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces.” In addition, under Article I, “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.” These are direct quotes from the Constitution of the United States. Yet to hear some in the Administration talk, it is as if these provisions were written in invisible ink. They were not. These powers are a clear and direct statement from the founders of our republic that Congress has authority to declare, to define, and ultimately, to end a war.
Our founders wisely kept the power to fund a war separate from the power to conduct a war. In their brilliant design of our system of government, Congress got the power of the purse, and the President got the power of the sword. As James Madison wrote, “Those who are to conduct a war cannot in the nature of things, be proper or safe judges, whether a war ought to be commenced, continued or concluded.”
The President has made the wrong judgment about Iraq time and again, first by taking us into war on a fraudulent basis, then by keeping our brave troops in Iraq for nearly four years, and now by proceeding despite the opposition of the Congress and the American people to put 21,500 more American troops into harm’s way.
If and when Congress acts on the will of the American people by ending our involvement in the Iraq war, Congress will be performing the role assigned it by the founding fathers – defining the nature of our military commitments and acting as a check on a President whose policies are weakening our nation.
Bush Commits Additional Troop to Afghanistan
The Onion brings the funny:
WASHINGTON, DC—In an effort to display his administration’s willingness to fight on all fronts in the War on Terror, President Bush said at a press conference Monday that American ground forces in Afghanistan will be aided by the immediate deployment of Marine Pfc. Tim Ekenberg of Camp Lejeune, NC.
“I want the American people to know that I have not forgotten that our battle for freedom began in Afghanistan, rooting out the extremists of al-Qaeda and the Taliban,” Bush said. “Today, I am ordering the deployment of the 325th Marine Expeditionary Brigade, Private Tim Ekenberg, to the embattled Kandahar region.”
The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, 2nd Lt. Jon Pinard, said that Ekenberg will be a valuable addition to his existing military assets.
“Our Marines are the best-equipped and best-trained in the world, and I have it on good authority that Tim is an especially well-trained Marine,” Pinard said. “We have requested that he receive full logistical support while deployed in this theater. We’ve been told that his body armor will be arriving within six months of his reporting for duty, budget permitting.”
Sad and funny.
Shakespearean Daily Diss
“Manhood is melted into curtsies, valour into compliment,
and men are only turned into tongue, and trim ones too.”
–Much Ado About Nothing, 4.1.318-20
Gratuitous Video Feed
From the marvelous Riverdance, here are Maria Pages and Michael Flatley in the lovely “Fire Dance.” It’s, well, fiery.
Yes, Comrade Political Officer
The president having lost the tame poodle that was the 109th congress, and facing opposition from the Democratic-led 110th, he has used an Executive Order to create a barrier between legislators and the agencies they regulate (and between policy and the career civil servants who execute it):
….Mr. Bush said that each agency must have a regulatory policy office run by a political appointee, to supervise the development of rules and documents providing guidance to regulated industries. The White House will thus have a gatekeeper in each agency to analyze the costs and the benefits of new rules and to make sure the agencies carry out the president’s priorities.
This strengthens the hand of the White House in shaping rules that have, in the past, often been generated by civil servants and scientific experts. It suggests that the administration still has ways to exert its power after the takeover of Congress by the Democrats.
The White House said the executive order was not meant to rein in any one agency. But business executives and consumer advocates said the administration was particularly concerned about rules and guidance issued by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
If the Bush Administration has stood for anything, it has been the consolidation of power in the hands of the few, and the rejection of any oversight by elected representatives. All you need to know is that, in an incredible coincidence, “Business groups hailed the initiative.”
New Branch on the Family Tree
The discovery on Flores Island of prehistoric human skeletons—the so-called hobbits—ignited the usual raging anthropological debates. Here’s more support for the notion that the remains represented a new hominid species, and not stunted specimens of modern Homo sapiens, with whom they were contemporaneous:
In the latest salvo in a heated scientific shootout, an international team led by Florida State University anthropologist Dean Falk compared the Hobbit’s skull to those of nine people with microcephaly, a rare condition in which the head is abnormally small due to improper brain development.
They concluded the 3-foot-tall (1-meter) adult woman had a highly evolved brain, unlike that of a microcephalic person, confirming she belongs to the proposed extinct species Homo floresiensis, closely related to modern Homo sapiens.
“Lo and behold, it doesn’t look anything like a microcephalic. In fact, it’s antithetical,” Falk said in an interview, rebutting scientists like primatologist Robert Martin of the Field Museum in Chicago who suggest the skull came from a person with microcephaly.
A previous study by Falk had been criticized because it compared the Hobbit, with a brain a third the size of modern people, to just a single microcephalic skull.
H. floresiensis seems to have become extinct about twelve thousand years ago.
Gratuitous Video Feed
Outkast’s “Hey Ya” set to A Charlie Brown Christmas footage. Or vice-versa. Shake it, shake it like Lucy Van Pelt. A joyous mashup!
Shakespearean Daily Diss
“I grant him bloody,
Luxurious, avaricious, false, deceitful,
Sudden, malicious, smacking of every sin
That has a name.” –Macbeth, 4.3.57-60
Gratuitous Video Feed
Funny cats: the other reason teh Intarwebs were invented.
