Searching Congress vs. Searching Citizens.

From the U.S. Constitution, Article II, Section 6:

The Senators and Representatives shall receive a Compensation for their Services, to be ascertained by Law, and paid out of the Treasury of the United States. They shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place.

I don't see anything there that says the offices of Congressional representatives can't be searched. I don't see anything that says they can't be arrested for bribery. I don't see anything that says William Jefferson can't be searched, arrested or indicted or anything else that can happen to an ordinary citizen who breaks the law. It does say he can't be forced to hold a press conference, much less be questioned by the F. B. I., but he's not above the law.

Why are Republicans insisting that Congressional offices can't be searched for evidence of wrong-doing? What have they got to hide? Why doesn't violation of the 4th Amendment to the Constitution bother them?

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Wole Soyinka and Darfur

Wole Soyinka (on Democracy Now) expects the Arab League to clean up Dar Fur:

"The Arab League has a clear responsibility, and I think that if a family member of the Arab world, you know, if a family member errs, then the entire family has a responsibility to say, “You cannot do this in our name. And if you do this, we expel you, we cut you off, we denounce you, and we proscribe you from our community.” I expect that kind of action of deep and profound moral integrity from the Arab world."

Personally I think that expecting the Arab League to stop the genocide in Darfur is like expecting the Ku Klux Klan to take responsibility to stop lynching of African Americans.

The Arab League is an ethnically based organization designed to promote the interests of Arabs as an ethno-linguistic group. Not a race, Arabs are not a race, but they are the largest ethnic group in Africa. The Arab League should be abolished and the African Union should become a federal government designed to defend the rights of all people regardless of their ethnicity or their language.

The problem with Soyinka and his politics is that he can't see things in any political paradigm other than ethnic. That's why he expects the Arab League to take action in Darfur to stop genocide. That's why he doesn't support the African Union. That's why his book about Nigeria blames everything on northerners and why he supports Yoruba, as long as those Yoruba will criticize other ethnic groups in Nigeria and end what he insists is northern domination of Nigeria. He doesn't mention that northerners are the majority of Nigerians, and calling for ending northern domination of Nigeria is about as democratic as calling for ending black domination of South Africa. I won't even go into the fact that northerners are deeply split politically, as are Yoruba, as any ethnic group should be. I don't like ethnic separatism.

Sure, celebrities have as much right to talk about politics as anyone else. However, I have to wonder if it is always a good idea. Soyinka's plays are great, but they don't show much political sophistication.

Read it and weep!

from Wikipedia:

"Voting locations that used electronic or other types of voting machines that did not issue a paper receipt or offer auditability correlate geographically with areas that had discrepancies in Bush's favor between exit poll numbers and actual results."

Why is a paper trail for elections even an issue? OK, so the handicapped people need the electronic voting so they can vote by themselves, but there could still be paper trails. Justice must not only be done, it must be SEEN to be done, and without a paper trail how could anyone be expected to trust the result? This shouldn't be a partisan issue.

Iran to require oil payments in euros

"TEHRAN, May 15 (UPI) -- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced Friday that in July Iran will abandon dollar payments for its oil and natural gas exports in favor of euros.

. . .

"Some observers speculate that the Iranian switch to euros could negatively affect the dollar, as many central banks from oil importing nations could choose to stock up their currency reserves with euros rather than dollars."

Yes, folks, the same thing happened in Iraq just before the US invasion. Well, this time Bush doesn't have the wherewithal to invade. It looks like the dollar really is going to tank this time, and there's nothing we can do about it.

MORE TAX CUTS?!?!?

Let me get this straight:

If the economy is booming, we need tax cuts. Presumably this is to cool off the economy, so it doesn't overheat or something.

BUT, if the economy is tanking, we also need tax cuts. (Look for the section entitled "A Slowing Economy" in the plan.)

So which is it? Have these people ever heard of the business cycle? Or do they really think the proper response to both boom and bust phases of the cycle is cutting taxes? Do they ever stop? Do they think there are any functions of government that ought to be paid for? Whom do they think should pay for them?

Whatever happend to countercyclical spending?

Whatever happened to fiscal conservatism?

Legalize "drugs"?!?!?!

The whole debate about legalizing "drugs", most recently in Mexico, is completely ridiculous. We already have legal drugs, and no, I'm not talking about pharmaceuticals, either "over the counter" or prescription. I'm talking about recreational drugs.

I regularly recreate myself with alcohol. I mostly stay away from the hard (i.d. distilled) stuff, but most nights find me imbibing some beer or wine. Don't laugh, this used to be a crime in the United States, in fact it was against the Constitution.

I don't smoke tobacco anymore, and that's still legal, even in California, for the time being. I try not to be one of those ex-smokers who can't be around the stuff. I understand, because I remember, how nicotine after a meal can be very satisfying. Just don't smoke it while I'm still eating. It interferes with the flavors of my food. You shouldn't smoke while you're eating either. Wait until you've finished eating, then savor a fine cigar (or at least a nicotine fix) and a snifter of brandy. That's it!

OK, what about those illegal drugs? I'm in favor of legalizing marijuana. Period. End of story. I've known too many people who take too many drugs. Heroin is vicious. People lose all control, then they lose their friends when the friends wake up to how they've been used. Cocaine? Yeah, in the '70s people said it was harmless. Friends of mine really got messed up. One lost his job because he was always away from work trying to score. He's still in the service as an enlisted man because he couldn't get away from coke any other way. Legalize it and he wouldn't have spent so much time scoring? Get real. Even tobacco doesn't get people craving the way cocaine does. This guy used marijuana and other drugs but none messed him up like cocaine. He could always wait until after work before he went around scoring pot.

Speed? I knew meth monsters back in the 60s. They called it "the drug even hippies were afraid of" and Allen Ginsberg singled it out as an inherently bad drug, something he did for no other psychoactive substance. I remember him saying that most of the souvenirs he brought back from India were ripped off by meth monsters. I really have no problem with government's cracking down on amphetamines.

Marijuana has been used for thousands of years. It's less addictive than the recreational drugs that are already legal. You can't overdose on it. Gateway drug? Don't make me laugh. That's a common post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy, but even if it weren't, the percentage of hard drug users who first used alcohol or tobacco is even higher than the percentage who used marijuana. Shouldn't we go back to prohibiting alcohol? Really? Why not? Oh, right. It turned out that the negative consequences of alcohol prohibition were worse than the negative consequences of alcohol itself. And alcohol is the United States's number one drug problem.

No, I don't use marijuana myself. I used to be addicted to nicotine, I still use alcohol, and I'm still addicted to caffeine. But it doesn't bother me if people use other drugs. I'm not out to impose my values on other people. Stoners get high, giggle a lot, eat snacks and go to sleep. If you think they should be thrown in jail for that I really have to wonder about you, not them.

And if you're worried about underage smoking, the best thing to do about it is to legalize marijuana. No one ever got thrown out of a pot party for being underage. Legalizing it and regulating it would go a long way to minimizing the harm that is done by it. You would take organized crime out of the equation, make a serious dent in underage smoking, and be able to start teaching peole responsible use. Not to mention end one cause of disrespect for the law. After all, if the law comes down so hard on marijuana, then the law is an ass. Read the facts.

Need proof that Americans are becoming xenophobic?

Men detained 3 hours for school materials

"NEWARK, New Jersey (AP) -- Five airline passengers speaking in foreign languages and carrying "aircraft flight materials" were briefly detained Saturday until authorities determined they were simply returning to their home countries after attending a U.S. helicopter training school.

"Fellow passengers on American Airlines Flight 1874, which had departed from Dallas Fort Worth International Airport, became suspicious of the men, said Steven Siegel, a spokesman for the FBI's Newark office.

"A federal marshal on the plane notified authorities at Newark Liberty International Airport about the men's behavior. (Watch as a passenger describes what happened during the flight -- 1:44)

"The men -- identified only as four Angolan military personnel and an Israeli -- had attended helicopter training school in Texas, Siegel said."

9.11 video

Just found an interesting video on the Internet about the 9/11 attacks. Their website is here.

They make a lot of questionable assumptions, especially at the beginning, and raise a lot of things that are not necessarily problems for people who know anything about statistics, probability, unexpected consequences of experiments and problems with the perceptions of eyewitnesses. It reminded me a lot of the "Bill Clinton killed Vince Foster" school of investigation that we saw so much of during the Clinton impeachment. But the Vince Foster murder freaks were able to raise a number of troubling questions about the investigation of that murder, though they came nowhere near making a case that Clinton was bumping off his supporters right and left (as the list of Clinton related "disappearances" claimed) much less giving Clinton a motive for all these supposedly suspicious deaths, even much, much less that he was bumping off nobodies while leaving his worst enemies untouched.

I'm not endorsing this video for many reasons, including the classic argument agaisnt conspiracy theories (i.e. the bigger they get the harder they are to keep secret), but I think it raises a number of questions that should be considered. I would also appreciate comments from anyone who has seen the video and can comment intelligently on it.

Congressional Black Caucus Calls for Fair Agreement to End Genocide in Darfur

"After more than three years of suffering at the hands of the Government of Sudan and the Janjaweed, the people of Darfur are faced with a proposed peace agreement which falls short of the aim to end the violence and create a just and lasting peace in the region.

"The seventh round of the African-Union brokered peace talks in Abuja, Nigeria are coming to a close and the April 30 deadline for a signed peace agreement was extended to midnight tonight. The draft peace agreement is skewed to benefit the Government of Sudan and penalize the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLA) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) -- the only voices for the people of Darfur."

Read more at the Congressional Black Caucus Press Release

More China in Africa (spotlight on Nigeria)

Nigeria: China Rationalises $15bn Investment

Nigeria: China to Acquire Mines

Issues in Nigeria-China Relations

Direct air flights between Nigeria, China proposed

China, Nigeria sign big deals as Beijing pledges higher profile in Africa

China, Nigeria sign joint communique

China gains oil drilling rights in Nigeria

China, Nigeria to ink oil deal

(comments later?)

As usual, things get complicated

Darfur rebels frustrate mediator

"The two rebel groups are still seeking a number of changes, particularly over the post-conflict security arrangements such as the number of their forces to be integrated into the Sudanese army."

China's Africa policy backfiring?

I'm not sure why Niger Delta secessionists should target China over any other country exporting oil, and of course they have targetted other countries' oil workers, but China better learn to deal with this before it blows up in their face. They can't just pretend they are not involved, because they are going to be involved on one side or the other of every dispute in Africa, whether they like it or not.

Need more proof that the Iraq war is counterproductive?

The CIA says so, officially. This is what you can read when the administration doesn't order them to cook the books on intelligence.

"US admits Iraq is terror 'cause'"
By Tom Baldwin
"Report says that 11,000 attacks worldwide shows the war has become driving factor for extremists"

"THREE years after its invasion of Iraq the US Administration acknowledged yesterday that the war has become “a cause” for Islamic extremists worldwide and there is a risk of the country becoming a safe haven for terrorists hoping to launch fresh attacks on America.

"According to CIA data released yesterday, there were 11,111 terrorist incidents last year, killing more than 14,600 non-combatants, including 8,300 in Iraq. Of the 56 American civilians killed by terrorists in 2005, some 47 of them were in Iraq."

Read the rest of the story.

Yes, it's true

They're trying to take the Internet away, and give it to the highest bidder. Say goodbye to the open-access Information superhighway, say goodbye to the democratizing of news and bebate, say goodbye to the new world of information equality. It was nice while it lasted.

Not a Republican war?

Tyrrell: Not just a Republican war

This is wrong and outrageous on so many levels. Let me count some of them:

1) American soil was attacked in the US embassy bombings in east Africa. Most Republicans insisted the real threat to the United States was Monica Lewinsky, and that Clinton and the Democrats were involved in a "wag the dog" strategy to distract America with a phony Islamic threat.

2) It is not "a" war. Iraq has absolutely NOTHING to do with September 11. For the first time in American history we are at two wars at once. The first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, famously said "one war at a time" when one of his cabinet officers suggested starting a second war to convince the seceding southern states to come back in the Civil War. We have to explain to people that Iraq was the "wag the dog" distraction from our real national security business.

3) Who made it a Republican war? Who politicized it by refusing to cooperate with Democrats? Who used national security for partisan political gain at the expense of the national interest? Who outed a CIA agent to take petty revenge on her husband? Who ignored the professional advice of non-political generals? Who invaded Iraq for no real reason and then tried to use the Iraq invasion for partisan political ends?

If the Iraq war, or even the war against Al-Qa'ida, is a Republican war (and don't forget that the latter started under Clinton and most Republicans refused to get on board) Republicans have no one to blame but themselves for their mismanagement. Democrats were not the ones who let bin Ladin get away, not the ones who lied America into an unrelated war that prevents us from dealing with our real enemies, not the ones alienating moderate Muslims, and not the ones who have been mismanaging the wars America finds itself fighting, one thrust upon us and one Bush chose.

We have to get the word out. Real information about these two wars has to reach the American people, so that articles like this one will no longer be taken seriously, and Tyrrell will be scoffed off of CNN. I have only dealt with the obvious errors here, but Americans in general need a crash course on the Islamic world and how the Bush regime is playing into the hands of our enemies. We don't need more lies about how Democrats are umpatriotic. Republicans have been losing the war. If Lincoln's administration had done this badly we would be reading about President McClellan in our American history books.

Clark, Firing Rumsfeld and politics

It was great to start downloading and listening to Wes Clark's "clarkcast" podcasts. I was especially pleased to hear the first one say that they would take a non-partisan tone, but that the policies of the Republican administration and Congress had to be gotten rid of. Listening to Clarkcasts is going to be a priority for me from now on.

I was also glad to hear that Clark had joined the increasing calls of other retired generals for replacement of Donald Rumsfeld. I'd like to add an additional reason for getting rid of Rumsfeld that I haven't seen offered by others yet. Rumsfeld is a Republican.

No, I'm not suggesting that Bush's cabinet should be replaced with Democrats. I'm still in favor of replacing Bush with a Democrat. When that Democrat (and I hope it's Wes Clark) takes office, I hope he replaces the Secretary of Defense with a Republican. We're at war.

It makes good political sense for the President and the Secretary of Defense to be from opposite parties, but no one figured that out before Honest Abe Lincoln appointed Democratic politician Edwin M. Stanton his Secretary of War. Secretary Stanton not only helped rally Democrats to the war effort but he eventually became a Republican himself.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt imitated Lincoln by appointing William Howard Taft's old Secretary of War, Henry L. Stimson, as his own Secretary of War as the United States prepared for World War II. Again this paid off by helping assure Republican support for the war.

Jack Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson appointed a non-political technocrat, Robert McNamara, as Secretary of Defense. He may not have been the best Secretary, but he did help to keep the Republicans on board during the Vietnam War. Nixon had Republican Secretaries of Defense, Melvin Laird, Elliot Richardson, James Schlesinger, and (gasp) Donald Rumsfeld, but that only left Democrats more free to oppose the War.

Woodrow Wilson also had a Secretary of War from his own party, Newton D. Baker, during World War I. Of course the Republicans weren't about to oppose World War I. They'd been screaming for it when Wilson was campaigning as the guy who kept us out of it. But they sure weren't going to cut him any slack about his "League of Nations" idea when he came home from France with the Treaty of Versailles. He may have sold it to the Europeans but he couldn't sell it to the Republicans, not after he left them out of both the war cabinet and the peace negotiations. Reductionists might blame World War II on Wilson's decision (and it should bear part of the blame - it did doom US participation in the League of Nations, which might have helped stop the war before it got out of hand) but that would be going too far. Hoover's Secretary of State Henry Stimson (yes, the same Stimson) offered to help the League stop Japanese aggression in Manchuria if they would grow a backbone, but they turned him down. Still, it's easy to find fault with Wilson's "my way or the highway" attitude and most historians today would.

The lesson of history in this case? Yes, we need a Democrat president to replace Bush, but we also need a non-partisan administration that can unite the country afterwards. That means whichever of the Democrats who wins in 2008 should appoint a sane, honest, qualified Republican (assuming one can be found at this late date) as Secretary of Defense for the duration of the War against Al-Qa'ida and possibly beyond.

Need more proof that "Ann" Coulter is a man?

Try her "blame the victim" attitude to rape:

"Also, you can severely reduce your chances of being raped if you do not go to strange men's houses and take your clothes off for money."

Personally I don't mind seeing beautiful women take off their clothes. I've seen it before and I hope to see it again. I do mind that some people think that's an excuse to rape the women who do it. That would severely discourage women, especially beautiful women, from taking off their clothes.

More double standard?

"WASHINGTON, April 21 (UPI) -- The CIA has fired an employee for leaking classified information to the news media, the agency announced in Washington Friday."

So . . . when does the leaker in chief get fired? Don't tell me it's legal when he does it. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. That shouldn't be the issue. The issue should be that he is not interested in the national interest, or even national security. He is interested in his own short-term political future, in taking revenge on people who cross him, and his own crackhead delusions.

Darfur and the Chad insurgency

Chad has been providing refuge to refugees and rebels from Darfur in Sudan, probably less from sympathy than from inability to do anything about it. Wadai in Chad is right over the border from Darfur. Wadai and Darfur used to be neighboring kingdoms. The capital of Chad is all the way across the country, near Cameroon. Chad itself has never had a democratic government and is one of the most artificial, unviable and ungovernable states in Africa.

The government in Chad has accused the government in Sudan of supporting the rebels in Chad, as Sudan has accused Chad of supporting the rebels in Sudan. Maybe they have, maybe they don't have enough control of, or enough concern with, the area to do anything about it. Modern states in Africa are often more a way to get money from the International Community (OECD? G8+? what does that term mean?) in foreign aid, especially in French Africa where La France pays for the government expenses in order to maintain French as the official language.

The Chad rebels are promising a national conference, which has worked in many other Francophone countries, but as long as French is the official language, and as long as literacy rates (measured in French of course) are miniscule, there is not much hope for democracy.

Is the tide turning?

I decided to take a listen to wingnut talk radio yesterday, just to see what the other side was saying. I went to Shoutcast, got the list of talk streams, and clicked the most popular one that looked most clearly right wing. Sure enough there were ads for right wing bumper stickers, and ads telling me how to put my money into gold because the Federal Reserve Board was a bunch of conspirators trying to make away with my hard earned money. But what were they talking about?

IMPEACHMENT!

Yes, I couldn't believe it. They had a some guy from Vermont on the air talking about how to impeach Bush, and people were calling in wanting to know more. The news that President Bush himself had been behind the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame all along had finally gotten people to realize that this administration was not about national security at all.