Wednesday, July 4, 2007

The judge in the trial of Jose Padilla admonishes the prosecution's "star witness" for speaking to CNN about the bomb investigation in Britain, on a day when the jurors showed up dressed in red, white and blue. [Cursor.org] 7:54:20 AM    comment []

"We have lately been getting so many history lessons from the White House that I have come to think of Bush, Cheney, Rice, and the late, unlamented Rumsfeld as the History Boys," wrote the late David Halberstam, in his last article for Vanity Fair. [Cursor.org] 7:51:08 AM    comment []

Digby casts about for an alternative to impeachment, Keith Olbermann j'accuses his way to one, calling on President Bush and Vice President Cheney to "Display just that iota of patriotism which Richard Nixon showed on August 9th, 1974," and Robert Stein finds the "resurrection" of Olbermann-regular John Dean "a little hard to take." [Cursor.org] 7:50:20 AM    comment []

'Is the U.S. mirroring Rome's fall?' asks a Toronto Star columnist, imploring readers to "Run, don't walk, to get a copy of 'Are We Rome?'" by Cullen Murphy, who recently discussed his book and the perils of privatization on "Ring of Fire." [Cursor.org] 7:42:12 AM    comment []

The Los Angeles Times reports that 'Private contractors outnumber U.S. troops in Iraq' by some 20,000, and "even those mounting numbers may not capture the full picture," while the death toll for private contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan has topped 1,000 with 13,000 wounded, according to a Reuters' tally. [Cursor.org] 7:41:41 AM    comment []

Daniel Brook: The Pursuit of Happiness. Many Americans, particularly progressives, often complain that we live in an anti-intellectual country. And in a nation where many citizens couldn't tell you what the Fourth of July signifies beyond a day off from work and an excuse for a barbeque, it's hard to argue with them. Then again, what other nation would have a holiday to mark one of the Great Moments in Editing History? In a sense, that's exactly what Independence Day marks. The eighteenth-century British political philosopher John Locke wrote that governments are instituted to secure people's rights to "life, liberty, and property." And in 1776, Thomas Jefferson begged to differ. When he penned the Declaration of Independence, ratified on the Fourth of July, he edited out Locke's right to "property" and substituted his own more broad-minded, distinctly American concept: the right to "the pursuit of happiness." What did Jefferson mean by this phrase? Jefferson's own life provides a guide. Rather than live a life solely dedicated to the pursuit of property -- something befitting the English, a nation of shopkeepers so hostile to human happiness that they conquered the world yet never bothered to learn how to make a decent lunch -- Jefferson devoted himself not to becoming rich but to living a rich life. He made contributions to numerous fields whose chief rewards are non-monetary: architecture, science, education and politics. In his leisure time, he enjoyed good books -- and he drank good wine. The policies Jefferson advocated showed that he took seriously his own rhetoric that people have a self-evident, unalienable, God-given right to the pursuit of happiness and it is government's responsibility to guarantee this right. Without an activist government creating and funding institutions that offer this opportunity to all, he understood, the pursuit of happiness would remain an aristocratic privilege for the wealthy. To this end, Jefferson pioneered free public education, founding a public school system and the University of Virginia. From the start, Jefferson sparred with a conservative state legislature intent on under-funding his institutions. Though this fight in early nineteenth-century Virginia may sound like ancient history, conservatives' hostility to funding our public equalizing institutions should be familiar. In recent decades, a resurgent right has again fought to defund public higher education (not to mention public libraries, public hospitals, public broadcasting -- public everything). Today, Jefferson's own University of Virginia receives only 8 percent of its budget from the state. Not surprisingly, only 8 percent of its students now come from the bottom half of the income distribution, a shocking -- and intentional -- resurgence of aristocratic privilege. In their modern-day war on publicly-funded education, conservative politicians often dredge up pseudo-populist anti-intellectual rhetoric. Why subsidize affluent liberals who hate America, they ask? But who really hates America? Who fears an activist government that secures the rights of all? Who still sees government's role as protecting the property of those that have it rather than securing everyone's equal right to the pursuit of happiness? Over two hundred years after that Great Moment in Editing History, Jefferson's words remain revolutionary. So on July 4th, enjoy your barbeque. But on July 5th, keep fighting the revolution. [The Huffington Post Full Blog Feed] 7:39:36 AM    comment []

Bob Geiger: No Joy This Fourth Of July. "A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people." ~ Declaration of Independence I've always enjoyed the Fourth of July. It's summer, it's a festive holiday about celebration -- not mourning or remembrance -- and, as a military Veteran, it has been a time to feel good about whatever miniscule role I've played in maintaining our country's strength and freedom. But I'm going to skip the barbeques and just go to work today. I do this because the state of my country under the reign of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and their entire cabal of crooks and non-patriots, leaves me with a feeling so hollow and barren that I simply cannot use drinking a beer, eating a hot dog or watching fireworks as a soothing balm. With Bush's effective pardon of Scooter Libby on Monday, he has once again acted on behalf of the American people with no regard for what the people actually want. Poll after poll has shown that Americans still cling to a belief in equal justice under the law and that letting Libby off the hook on perjury and obstruction of justice charges in the outing of a covert CIA agent is horribly wrong. But that doesn't stop Bush from doing whatever he damn well pleases to help his cronies and appease his political benefactors. The overwhelming majority of the country now also knows the truth of the Iraq occupation and made clear in the last election what is expected of our leaders in ending that disaster. The American people know that the White House cooked the intelligence books to make a bogus case for war against a country that posed no threat whatsoever to the United States and by far most Americans want us out of Iraq as soon as possible. It was the same thing with the way most of us feel about the promise held in the science of stem cell research and the huge nationwide support for raising the federal minimum wage, which have both been fought tooth and nail by Bush and the Republican party. No matter how we the people want to be governed or how we decide we want our country to look, Bush sticks stubbornly to what he wants, to what he mandates and what he decides in his delusional world of absolute power and authority over all he surveys. It's a bitter irony that what we celebrate today is deliverance from just such an absolute power and authority in the form of King George III, about whom the Founding Fathers railed in the majority of the Declaration of Independence and from whom they declared our freedom. We broke away from the colonial rule of a tyrant and, in the preamble to this sacred document, we stated that our leaders are ultimately governed by those for which government is created and that those elected president get "their just powers from the consent of the governed." That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. We declared our break from a monarch, an absolute ruler, in 1776 when the 13 colonies risked it all to repudiate that form of government and to say that the leader of what would become the new United States of America should listen to the will of the people and not the other way around. One has to wonder what Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, Hancock and the other Founding Fathers would think of where we're at, 231 years later, if they could see the vision of Democracy they cherished so soiled and the 43rd president known not at all for his wisdom and entirely for his outrageous abuse of power. George W. Bush has taken our country and made us despised throughout the world, ruined our global reputation in a way that may take a generation to salvage and made us far less safe in a dangerous world. Indeed, he has used our nation's wealth and power to make the world a more dangerous place. His administration has also found a way to diminish a great holiday like our Independence Day, to make us feel less like proudly waving our flag and to even cause many like me, who have worn our country's uniform, to wonder what the hell it was for. And, for that, every American who voted for Bush, should take time this July Fourth to perform a truly patriotic act and be profoundly ashamed. You can read more from Bob at BobGeiger.com. [The Huffington Post Full Blog Feed] 6:51:20 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2007 Patricia Thurston.