I've had a lot less time to write these days; thus my amped up news blogging sans commentary. I now have a backlog of items that under other circumstances I would have written about. For now, I'll have to content myself with another digest of recent items of interest. A separate post will follow with election-related items.
•Creeping extremism David Neiwert (American Street)
Racist extremism legitimized by mainstream media and Mississippi state legislators. Two stories for the price of one. The latter story came my way first via the editor at Mississippi Political News Watch, but I didn't get around to blogging it while the news was fresh.
•What I have learned from blogging so far Kim Pearson (Professor Kim's News Notes)
Observations about blogging as a medium. I like analyses like this one, where the writer writes as an insider (one who blogs) but has a view of the inside that is informed by other, contrasting perspectives: Kim is also journalist and a professor of journalism.
•What the rest of the world watched on Inauguration Day Joan Chittister, OSB (National Catholic Reporter, via Corrente)
Here was the other side of the inauguration story. No military bands played for this one. No bulletproof viewing stands could stop the impact of this insight into the glory of force. Here was an America they could no longer understand. The contrast rang cruelly everywhere.
I sat back and looked out the train window myself. Would anybody in the United States be seeing this picture today? Would the United States ever see it, in fact? And if it is printed in the United States, will it also cross the country like wildfire and would people hear the unwritten story under it?
There are 54 million people in Iraq. Over half of them are under the age of 15. Of the over 100,000 civilians dead in this war, then, over half of them are children. We are killing children. The children are our enemy. And we are defeating them.
•Squelching Oversight jesselee (The Stakeholder)
Today, in the House Judiciary Committee and the House Armed Services Committee, John Conyers and Ike Skelton offered amendments allowing the minority party to initiate full hearings, including subpoena power - which is the crucial element lacking in "rump hearings" the likes of which Democrats have held by themselves on issues such as Halliburton and which Senate Leader Reid has promised during this cycle. The refusal of the committees to investigate issues such as Administration legal and ethical lapses in cases like the improper payments from the Department of Education to conservative commentator Armstrong Williams has left a vacuum of accountability that Democrats cannot address without the ability to hold full hearings. This is needed because the Administration has show a complete inability and unwillingness to look into their own legal failings - such as Cheney's involvement with Halliburton no-bid contracts - and the Republican House and Senate have been totally AWOL when it comes to wrongdoing by their own. If we are to have any chance of getting to the bottom of scandal like that involving Armstrong Williams, the under the table payments revealed today to columnist Maggie Gallagher to push Bush's pro-family initiatives, or the fact that more than $88 million of taxpayer funds were expended on Republican propaganda last year, the Democrats must have subpoena power!
So not surprisingly, when Ranking Democrat John Conyers offered this modest proposal in the Judiciary Committee, the Republicans rejected it based on a red herring. Chairman Sensenbrenner claimed it wasn't necessary because Democrats could bring resolutions of inquiry requesting information from the Administration. Yet, when Democrats and Conyers did introduce these resolutions - for example in the wake of the Abu Ghraib torture scandal - the Republicans rejected them as unnecessary. Then, when a motion was presented to the House to initiate an independent inquiry, not a single Republican voted for it, and the search for accountability was squelched - even today, we have not had anything close to a full accounting of that scandal. The Republicans on the Armed Services Committee also rejected a similar amendment offered today by Ranking Democrat Ike Skelton.
•Nice thought Earl Dunovant (Promethus 6)
Yesterday I posted a story about how Black church leaders have united to oppose Bush policies. Earl takes this quote from Rev. Major Lewis Jemison in 2005:
The history of the civil rights movement shows how potent the black church is . . . If we take the time to do what our mothers and fathers have done, we can get things done.
and sets it against this one from Dr. King in 1967:
When a people are mired in oppression, they realize deliverance only when they have accumulated the power to enforce change...
The nettlesome task of Negroes today is to discover how to organize our strength into compelling power so that the government cannot elude our demands. We must develop, from strength, a situation in which the government finds it wise and prudent to collaborate with us. It would be the height of naïveté to wait passively until the administration had somehow been infused with such blessings of good will that it implored us for our programs.
We must frankly acknowledge that in past years our creativity and imagination were not employed in learning how to develop power. We found a method in nonviolent protest that worked, and we employed it enthusiastically. We did not have leisure to probe for a deeper understanding of its laws and lines of development. Although our actions were bold and crowned with successes, they were substantially improvised and spontaneous. They attained the goals set for them but carried the blemishes of inexperience.
You may be surprised by Earl's conclusion.
•Alberto Gonzales and Nazi war criminal Wilhem Keitel agree: Geneva Convention is 'obsolete' Ted Kahl (democrats.com)
The title says it all, but read the whole thing. It will make you squirm.
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