Humor

Meet the Truth-Challenged GOP Vice Presidential Candidate: Sure A. Pallin'

dlindorff — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 13:20:27 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

Now that we’ve had a chance to see Sarah Palin and to hear her speak—or at least read the big rolling white block letters on the teleprompter in front of her—we can see that she’s prone to telling whoppers.

Now we know politicians as a group have a propensity to embellish the truth—particularly when describing their opponents or themselves—and even to lie outright, but Palin does it so well, she’s like a George Bush with reading and pronunciation skills.

In her acceptance speech last night, Palin told a whole string of lies. My favorite was talking about little Trig, her latest offspring, who was born with Down syndrome. Looking right out into the camera, she told the parents of America with special needs children that if she and John McCain win in November, “You’ll have an advocate in Washington.”

Hard to square that with the truth, though, which is that as governor, Palin as proposed a reduction in funds for special needs grants to schools in both her budgets—this at a time that the state of Alaska has been benefiting from record oil tax revenues, which Palin is pushing to return to citizens as cash rebates.

Left unsaid by Palin was the fact that McCain himself, in Congress, has voted against funding for the Head Start program, an early childhood program particularly important to children of teen mothers, and that he has opposed bills to increase funding for special education. So in fact, parents of children with special needs like Trig not only won’t have an advocate in the vice president’s office; they won’t have an advocate in the White House either.

Palin has also tried to turn a family tragedy—her 17-year old daughter Bristol’s getting pregnant by a local self-described 18-year-old “redneck” athlete from the same high school—into a virtue by saying that she and her husband will be helping their daughter “keep the child” and raise it. To keep things cool in the eyes of god, she also announced that the two teen parents would be getting married. Both kids were prominently on display at the Republican National Convention during her speech.

What Palin didn’t tell convention-goers or the national viewing audience was that as governor she cut the funds for a program in the state to support single teen mothers and that as a PTA member, mayor and finally as governor of Alaska, she has opposed sex education in the schools—something that her daughter and future son-in-law clearly could have used. Less advantaged single mothers in Alaska and, should she be elected, in the rest of America, will not have a friend in Blair House. She also failed to mention that McCain has voted against funding of teen pregnancy prevention programs in Congress.

Palin continued, in her acceptance speech, to spout another lie which she had already been making in her first days on the stump since being picked by McCain as his choice for running mate: that she had said “No thank you” to the $439-million “Bridge to Nowhere” which, as perhaps the biggest single earmark in a year of record earmarks last year had become a national joke line. The truth: Palin backed that bridge, and was even ready to add state funding to get it built, until it became a national joke. Then she thought better, and killed the bridge, while still taking the money, which the state’s senior senator, Ted Stevens (now under indictment for taking bribes from contractors), had earmarked.

Palin went on to lie about her opponent, Barack Obama’s, tax plan, saying it would raise taxes on businesses and on all Americans. In fact, Obama’s plan calls for lowering the corporate profits tax, while increasing the tax on dividends and capital gains, both of which fall not on businesses but on investors, and for lowering taxes on most Americans, while raising them for people earning over $250,000.

John McCain likes to ride around in a bus he dubs the “Straight-Talk Express.”

Sarah Palin, in her debut on the national stage since being named as McCain’s Number Two, has lied enough times to deserve the sobriquet “Sure A. Pallin’.
___________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and now available in paperback). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

What Can Virgil Goode Do For You?

KFP — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 12:33:42 -0400

Virgil and Tom faced off for the first time on August 13th in a forum
that demonstrated the wide gap between the two of them - especially
when it comes to immigration policy. Virgil has repeatedly touted his
fence: "There's no way a 12 foot ladder will cross this fence."

A little help of some visual aids would be useful in understanding
Virgil's complex "3 tier" fence policy that was outlined in 5 parts?

A win for Perriello in my book. I can't wait for the next showdown between these two.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMIeE7ZxDXE

Mukasey's Excellent Idea: War All the Time, Enemy Combatants Everywhere

dlindorff — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 13:55:16 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

Attorney General Michael Mukasey has caught some flak for
proposing, in an address to the American Enterprise Institute, that
Congress should declare war on Al Qaeda.

Instead, he should be applauded for his brilliant idea.

First of all, Mukasey is admitting, whether he wants to admit it or
not, that the Bush/Cheney program of capturing alleged terrorists and
holding them for years as enemy combatants without charge in detention
centers in Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and various
undisclosed locations around the globe, and of torturing many of them,
are illegal actions that violate US law and International Law. So let’s
give him credit for that.

Second, he wants to make these criminal acts retroactively legal
and future such acts legal, by declaring Al Qaeda to be some kind of an
entity and to declare America to be at war with that entity. Of course,
doing this wouldn’t exactly solve the torture problem, since the Geneva
Conventions are fairly clear about the fact that you just cannot
torture. You can’t even treat captives in a war in a degrading manner,
which pretty much rules out things like stress positions and
waterboarding, unless perhaps conducted by polite men in butler
uniforms who address the victims as “sir” and deliver hors derves and
wine spritzers during the process.

But what’s brilliant about Mukasey’s idea is that it could be so easily expanded beyond just terrorism.

Once you accept the idea that a gang of armed men can be declared
war on like a country, it opens up a whole universe of enemies against
which the US could declare war.

Start with the war on drugs. Remember that one? It was never a war,
and no one ever really thought of it as one, but we could now make it a
real one, and have Congress declare war on drugs. Then, using Mukasey’s
war on terror model, we could just have cops grab drug dealers and
suspected drug dealers, and maybe even users, and just lock them up
without charge to be held for the duration of the war, like he wants to
do with terrorists.

But why stop there?

Congress could declare war on drunk drivers. Now there’s a scourge
that is killing Americans at a frightening rate. With a war on drunks
behind the wheel, we would no longer see people hiring lawyers and
getting their charges reduced to some trivial moving violation that
allows them to get back behind the wheel. We’d just lock ‘em up and
hold ‘em until the war was over.

Next we could have a war on littering. I, for one, am sick of
seeing our streets lined with soggy used soda cubs, balled up used
diapers and shriveled wet condoms, and all those plastic shopping bags,
If we could just start locking up enemy combatant litterers, the whole
country would look a whole lot better in no time.

Finally, Congress could declare a real war on poverty. We had one
of those back in the mid-‘60s, but we lost. Not for lack of trying, but
poor people kept getting poor again and dragging the rest of us down.
If Congress would declare war, the government could start rounding up
the enemy combatant poor, and locating them away for the duration. I
understand Halliburton is already building camps around the country
which could be used for this purpose.

Now I admit Mukasey and the Bush/Cheney administration are a bunch
of heartless bastards, and I wouldn’t want to see them treating the
enemy combatant poor the way they treat drug dealers or hardened
litterers, but with the poor, it could be a humanitarian kind of thing.
I mean, the enemy combatant poor would certainly get treated better in
those camps, with three squares a day and schools for the kids, than
they are doing on their own right now.

So I say let’s move forward with this idea. The Founding Fathers
couldn’t have been so blind that they were only referring to nation
states when they talked about Congress having the power to declare war.
They were a bunch of creative, forward-thinking men, and I’m sure they
would have liked the idea of broadening the meaning of war a bit to
include things like international criminal gangs, domestic criminals,
litterbugs and the poor.

I say, declare war and bring ‘em on!
____________________

DAVE LINDORFF is a journalist and columnist based in Philadelphia. His
latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and
now available in paperback edition). His work is available at
www.thiscantbehappening.net

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digg_title = "Mukasey\'s Excellent Idea: War All the Time, Enemy Combatants Everywhere";
digg_bodytext = "By Dave Lindorff\r\n\r\n Attorney General Michael Mukasey has caught some flak for proposing, in an address to the American Enterprise Institute, that Congress should declare war on Al Qaeda.\r\n\r\n Instead, he should be applauded for his brilliant idea.\r\n\r\n First of all, Mukasey is admitting, whether he wants to admit it or not, that the Bush/Cheney program of capturing alleged terrorists and holding them for years as enemy combatants without charge in detention centers in Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and various undisclosed locations around the globe, and of torturing many of them, are illegal actions that violate US law and International Law. So let’s give him credit for that.\r\n\r";
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I Was a Victim of the Government’s Absurd and Over-Hyped War on Terror

dlindorff — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 11:37:21 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

I was injured thanks to the government’s ridiculous airport
security program last week on a US Air flight from Chicago to
Philadelphia. I also saw how pointless the whole thing is, if the
supposed goal is really to prevent airline hijackings.

First, my injury. Because of a silly fear that I might blow up a
plane with explosives tucked into my running shoes, I, along with
everyone else in the security checkpoint line at O’Hare, including
two-month-old babies wearing little booties, had to doff my footwear.
Clad in just socks, I tried to maneuver my way around a metal counter
that held those plastic trays carrying my laptop, my shoes, my belt and
change and keys, and my carry-on bag, and in the process my unprotected
big toe hit a sharp piece of metal protruding from the table.

The metal sliced right under my toenail, making a painful and
bloody cut into the soft tissue under the nail. Cursing and bleeding, I
made my way through the metal detector, and collected my goods.

Now, inside my bag, unbeknownst to the Transportation Security
Administration inspectors, was a bottle of mouthwash. It was larger
than the approved 2-oz size, and it was not in an approved sealed
plastic bag. But TSA inspectors looking into their video screens at the
X-Ray machine didn’t see it, because I made sure that it was vertical
as it passed through. All they saw was a little circle of plastic.
Likewise, on an earlier flight, I had made my way aboard with a Swiss
Army knife. By standing it in my carry-on bag so that it would be
vertical for the X-Ray, I was able to slip it through and onto the
plane.

Now clearly I’m not a terrorist (though for a time, thanks to my
anti-Bush, anti-war journalism, and an expose about the TSA’s “no-fly”
list abuses, I was on the watch list, and would get a circled “S”
written on my boarding passes that ensured that I would be pulled aside
to have my carry-on luggage hand searched). But if I were a terrorist,
I sure wouldn’t try to commandeer a plane with a jackknife. I’d want
something bigger. But that would be simple. One could easily carry on a
10-inch blade the same way. If one were nervous about doing that, it
could be a ceramic or better, a Plexiglas blade—plenty dangerous, but
invisible to X-rays and metal detectors.

For that matter, if I were into suicide bombing and wanted to
manufacture a liquid explosive, why on earth would I try to do it by
smuggling on two large jars of ingredients, when I could just put them
in plastic baggies and carry them aboard in my pockets? Unless you
happen to be singled out for special handling, nobody at the security
checkpoints pats you down. They just have you walk through the metal
detectors while TSA inspectors are busy patting down randomly selected
elderly nuns and racially profiled people, like unfortunate Sikh men
wearing turbans.

Any dedicated terrorist hijacker could figure out numerous ways to
get explosives and weapons onto a plane past these security
arrangements.

And that’s not even counting having the weapons smuggled into an
airport gate area along with all the goods that are offered for sale
there, where they could be picked up after a hijacker had already
cleared security. There is no way that all the newspapers, magazines,
clothing, trinkets, bottles of booze and personal hygiene products,
etc., are screened adequately as they are brought in each day to fill
the concession stands for the day’s business. First of all, one would
have to open and check every bottle and box offered for sale.

If you were genuinely worried about protecting against hijackers,
you would have those inspections at the entrance to each plane, not at
the entrance to the terminal, and you wouldn’t have all that commerce
inside the security zone. Ah! But what a roar of outrage we’d hear from
the business community if that lucrative business venue were eliminated!

Which brings me to the real question: Why do we have all this
pointless and easily breached security, not to mention a list that
contains an astonishing one million names of suspected “terrorists”?

Clearly, the security program is not about protecting the flying
public, or the nation’s tall buildings. That could be done much more
cheaply by putting air marshals on all flights, the way they do at El
Al, the Israeli airline that has never had a successful hijacking.

No, this is all about heightening the fear level of the American people, to routinize us to living in a police state.

The truth is, nobody is really interested in trying to hijack
planes anymore. First of all, the “crash into buildings” tactic is
dead. Pilots are now flying armed in armored cockpits that cannot be
easily entered, and would not accede to a terrorist’s demands any
longer, knowing what happened last time. And passengers would not sit
passively in a cabin takeover attempt, either. As a result, we don’t
have to worry about such things any longer.

The ease with which security could be breached, and the fact that
it hasn’t happened now for seven years, is evidence enough that nobody
is even trying to do it.

So let’s do away with all this time-consuming, costly, and politically motivated nonsense before I injure my other big toe.
_______________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based investigative journalist and
columnist. His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s
Press, 2006 and now available in paperback). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

Invasion of the Pumpheads!

dlindorff — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 11:08:54 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

Is America at the mercy of an invasion of the pumpheads?

The bizarre behavior of Bill Clinton during this campaign season, which has seen this once smooth-talking and politically uber-sophisticated campaigner repeatedly stick a foot in his mouth and undermine his wife’s struggling campaign, raises the issue of whether he is suffering from postperfusion syndrome—a now recognized cognitive impairment common in patients who have undergone heart bypass surgery.

Referred to in hospital jargon as “pumphead syndrome,” the condition, thought to be caused by debris and bubbles that are created and released into the bloodstream by artificial pumps used to circulate blood while hearts are being operated on—material that can block blood flow in smaller vessels in the brain, causing neurological damage--this recognized condition has been demonstrated in some studies to lead to significant cognitive impairment that can show up in as many as 42 percent of heart surgery patients even as long as five years after surgery.

Clinton underwent quadruple bypass surgery on Sept. 6, 2006, and accordiing to his doctors, instead of keeping his heart going during the procedure, they chose the method that involved shutting down his heart temporarily, and putting him temporarily on a heart pump--the method that can cause posperfusion syndrome.

At least in Clinton’s case, if he is a “pumphead,” the only damage he can do is to his wife’s campaign. He is no longer president or commander in chief. (Well, let me take that back. If she were elected, he could create havoc as First Spouse and chief pillow talker, but let’s not even go there!)

But what about Cheney, a man who has had five, count ‘em, five heart surgeries, each of which offered a 42% chance of causing permanent cognitive impairment? No wonder there are reports that this bizarre, eternally snarling, heavy drinking friend shooter is said to hum to himself loudly and tunelessly in the stall of the White House men’s room!

If we consider the likelihood that the man widely seen as the power in this administration is a pumphead, and that Bush himself, who spent a long time as a drunk and a cokehead (talk about the potential for, not to mention the clear evidence of mental impairment!), we are left with the almost inevitable conclusion that we have been led for the past two terms by a pair brain-damaged men—and that’s not even counting the members of the cabinet and National Security Council, the medical histories of whom we know nothing. Given the advanced age of most of the team, it’s a fair bet that a number of them have had heart surgery too.

Call it “Invasion of the Pumpheads!”

Certainly not everyone who undergoes heart surgery and gets put temporarily on a pump ends up mentally deficient, but the prevalence of the problem sounds to me like a pretty good reason to demand full medical disclosure from all candidates for higher office, and not just for president and vice president, but for cabinet posts too—and judgeships.

For starters, Republican presidential presumptive nominee John McCain, 71 and a known cancer survivor, has not released his medical records. That suspicious failure of candor in a man who has already run for president once, should tell us something right away. His behavior places him squarely in the pumphead suspicion category, especially given that the guy repeatedly fails to recognize the difference between Sunnis and Shias in Iraq, and thinks that the Iranians—nearly all Shia—are backing Al Qaeda in Iraq, a Sunni group that is so anti-Iran that they are publicly calling on the US to attack that country! Even if he hasn’t had heart surgery, if he were elected and took office at age 72, he’d be the oldest president in history, and his prognosis for making it through one, much less two terms in one of the world’s most stressful jobs without having a heart attack seem slim.

Not that seemingly intelligent presidents haven’t been disastrous or haven’t made terrible decisions (think Nixon, Kennedy, Hoover and Wilson). But we’ve just endured two terms of a president with some kind of mental impairment with catastrophic results, and we had one in the 1980s with Alzheimer-afflicted Ronald Reagan, which set the nation on its course to bankruptcy. We certainly don’t need yet a third president of limited mental ability. It’s almost like we’re institutionalizing the concept.
_____________
DAVE LINDORFF is an investigative journalist and columnist. His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and now available in paperback edition. His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

A Manchurian Candidate in the White House?

dlindorff — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 08:34:28 -0500

By Dave Lindorff

With a viral campaign underway via email, right-wing radio, and on the street suggesting that Barack Obama is a black “Manchurian Candidate,” secretly trained as a Muslim fanatic who will insinuate himself into the White House, thence to undermine all that we hold dear, perhaps it is time to look at the Manchurian Candidate we already have in the White House, who, together with his handler over in Blair House, has pretty much done all the damage already.

George Bush came to office in 2001 promising a new era of integrity, civility and “compassionate conservatism,” an era of humble American foreign policy, and a bi-partisan approach to government.

What did we actually get?

Once in office, this chameleon president almost immediately set out to embroil the country in a major war in the Middle East against the nation of Iraq. The game plan was laid out at the president’s first National Security Council meeting, attended by Vice President Dick Cheney (the man holding Bush’s controller), Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, and Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neal (who later spilled the beans about the session).

Bush also famously ignored all warnings about the imminent attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. How much he and the rest of the administration knew about that attack in advance, or whether elements within the administration may have even helped it along, remains the subject of considerable interest and investigation and may never be answered, but it is clear that there were ample warnings about it, and he did nothing—even rudely blowing off a briefer who tried to alert him to the danger. Moreover, it is known that Israeli Mossad agents (who we know have close ties to both the US intelligence apparatus and to the Neocons who infest the Bush White House) did indeed have advance knowledge, and were set up across New York Harbor with a video camera to tape the attack on the Twin Towers (they were subsequently arrested by New Jersey police, only to be later released and sent back to Israel, through intercession by the US government). As well, we know that unidentified people made a killing by placing negative bets, called “puts,” on the stocks, several days before 9-11, of the two airlines that were hijacked, American and United, and of two investment banks that would be seriously hurt by the building collapses, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley. (The puts were placed through an investment bank, Alex Brown, which until a year earlier had been headed by a man who moved over to become the number three person in the CIA.) It’s hard to escape the conclusion that the Bush/Cheney administration, at a minimum, wanted an attack on American soil, and a national disaster that would put the country on a war footing.

Certainly instead of rallying the public and defending the nation’s democratic traditions and its Constitution, Bush and his handlers after 9-11 immediately set in motion a concerted scare campaign to undermine both. While urging the public to buy sheets of plastic and duct tape to construct “safe rooms” in their homes, they rammed through Congress a deceitfully named measure, the so-called Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act (USA PATRIOT Act), which effectively undermined most of the articles of the Bill of Rights (and which appeared, suspiciously, fully drawn up in bill form, only days after the attacks).

At the same time, the president, only one week after the attacks, obtained an Authorization for Use of Military Force for a military attack on the Taliban government in Afghanistan and on Al Qaeda forces in that country, which he subsequently interpreted broadly as an authorization for a global “war” on terror which he then claimed made him effectively a dictator with absolute power both at home and abroad (the so-called “unitary executive” theory). Under this claim of absolute power as commander in chief in time of war, Bush went on to order the use of torture against captives, foreign and domestic, including US citizens, to strip even US citizens of the right of habeas corpus—that is, the right to have their arrest and detention brought before a federal court—and to establish secret torture centers around the globe and on military installations in Iraq, Afghanistan and at Guantanamo Bay on the island of Cuba.

As well, even before the 9-11 attacks, the president began a sweeping program of electronic spying, run through the super-secret National Security Agency, on Americans’ telephone and internet activities. It was and remains a program that deliberately avoids seeking warrants and court approval even by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court—a body that has only rejected some five requests for warrants out of hundreds of thousands sought since its establishment in 1978.

Finally, in a perhaps fatal undermining of the Constitution, the president after 9-11 began a practice of simply refusing to enact or obey laws passed by the Congress, effectively rendering the legislative branch an impotent debating club.

Not content to simply explode or dismantle the legal foundations of the American government and rule of law, Bush and his handlers also went about systematically destroying the country’s basic institutions and even its economy.

The education system was fatally ensnared in a test-driven system called “No Child Left Behind,” which has in short order dumbed down public education to an extent shocking even to this already anti-intellectual society, with many schools simply giving up the teaching of art, literature or history, in order to focus desperately on math and reading in order that their students would do well enough on standardized tests to keep the schools from losing their funding.

The dollar has been cast adrift to become the new Lira as the government has gone on an unprecedented borrowing spree to fund endless war and ever-larger military budgets, while erasing the taxes on the wealthy, the super-rich, and corporations. Banks were given free rein to enter into all manner of risky ventures, leading to the current collapse in credit. Corporations were encouraged to ship their production and jobs overseas. Homeowners were encouraged to spend, spend, spend and to mortgage their homes to the hilt and then some. Towns, cities and pension funds were encouraged to invest in fantastic “structured” products that were actually towering card houses. Domestic car manufacturers were encouraged to build every larger, ever more voraciously gas-guzzling vehicles, pumping out ever larger quantities of carbon into the already overstressed atmosphere.

The nation’s infrastructure—its roads, dams, bridges, levies, airports, veterans hospitals etc.--were left to decay, with predictable results, the most dramatic of which was the loss of an entire city, New Orleans, to a routine Category 3 hurricane (after which, the president did nothing to rescue the survivors or fund a recovery).

Surveying at the appalling wreckage left after eight years of the Bush administration, it is hard to recognize the country that he started out with in 2001. A once proud nation—one that only a few years ago was admired around the world and that now is viewed as a pariah and a rogue state—today trembles before a handful of turbaned fanatics holed up in caves in the Hindu Kush, its trillion-dollar high-tech military colossus fought to a standstill in Iraq and Afghanistan by a few thousand brave men and women armed with RPGs, antique AK-47s and home-made roadside bombs. A nation that once was the envy of the world for its free society now has scientists afraid to report their findings, university professors afraid to support outspoken colleagues, members of Congress afraid to defend their Constitution, citizens afraid of their neighbors, journalists afraid of government criticism, lawyers afraid to defend clients...

Hey, this place starts to look and feel an awful lot like the China I lived in back in 1991!

Forget all the nonsense about Barack Obama being a closet Muslim. We already have our Manchurian Candidate in the White House, and he has largely accomplished what he was programmed to do: destroy the country.

The truth is this: If at the end of their second term, Bush and Cheney were to hop on a plane and fly off to a hideout in the mountains on the Afghan-Pakistan border, leaving a "Nya-nya!" note on the White House dining room table, few people would really be very surprised.
_____________________

DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based investigative journalist and columnist. His most recent book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006, and now available in paperback edition). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

And They Said It Couldn't Be Done

mj9999 — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 16:01:21 -0400

I'm going to affect change the fastest and easiest way I know how. I am simply going to beam satellite broadcasts straight to the collective conscience of Congress. These broadcasts will contain suggestions based on the scientific data I have accumulated about what that other 99 percent really wants. The transcripts of all broadcasts will be posted on my website along with what I perceive as the results of those broadcasts.

I will also include a progress list of various Congress members who seem to be listening or, by some coincedence, already were somehow tuned into the wishes of the other 99 percent.

I've prepared and already transmitted my first real broadcast.

Read the Transcript and please feel free to retransmit.

The True THREAT Of Ann Coulter And Her Ilk

thepen — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 05:54:29 -0400

Call Good Morning America at 212-456-5900 and complain.
Call Hardball w Chris Matthews at 202-783-2615
EMAIL ACTION PAGE: http://www.peaceteam.net/ban_coulter.php

This last week Ann Coulter said the following on Good Morning America, and for the sake of fairness and completeness we quote its full original context:

"Bill Maher was not joking and saying he wished Dick Cheney had been killed in a terrorist attack. So I've learned my lesson. If I'm gonna say anything about John Edwards in the future, I'll just wish he had been killed in a terrorist assassination plot."

In the first place, Bill Maher did NOT say that he "wished" any such thing, a typical Coulter distortion. But leaving that aside for a moment (and we will return to it in just a moment), is there any doubt that if you had made such a statement, substituting the name of ANY Republican, is there any doubt in your mind that you would be in handcuffs right now. Is there any doubt if you had made such a statement about a Republican running for office higher than county dog catcher, that they would be convening a grand jury to indict you for the crime of threatening violence in the media.

Farfetched you say? On June 29th, 2007, just a couple days ago, and after the Coulter incident, an Indian national by the name of Vikram Buddhi was CONVICTED in federal court of a violation of 41 USC 871, et. seq., for posting on a Yahoo blog statements like (his words) "Call for the assassination of GW Bush." The U.S. attorney in the case argued that Buddhi must be held accountable for the words he chose to write on his computer and publicly post for anyone in the world to read.

We AGREE.

There is no defense for Buddhi's remarks, the only question is are they criminally actionable. But if a man is to be indicted and convicted for making such a statement in an obscure blog post certainly seen by few, why should not Coulter be prosecuted in just the same way, for saying what she did to a mainstream live national audience of millions?

41 USC 875(c) provides that:

"Whoever transmits in interstate or foreign commerce any communication containing any threat to kidnap any person or any threat to injure the person of another, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both."

Courts reviewing the application of this statute have established a standard that such a threat must be a "true" threat to be actionable. Factors in consideration of that test would be 1) the intent of the speaker, and 2) whether the statement was in fact threatening. Coulter would argue that she was just making a funny joke. There is NOTHING funny about joking about taking the life of a presidential candidate. Indeed, Barack Obama was given secret service two months ago, because of unspecified threats against him, the earliest in a campaign cycle for president this has ever happened.

Judging intent in a criminal case often turns on a pattern of behavior. And here the record is not friendly to Ms. Coulter's stance. She has a HISTORY of such statements, having previously cracked these other "jokes", targeted at those she disagrees with politically:

"We need somebody to put rat poisoning in Justice Stevens' creme brulee."

"My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building."

"We need to execute people like (John Walker Lindh) in order to physically intimidate liberals."

The last quote is especially significant in the climate of fear which has deliberately been inflamed by the Cheney administration and the vast right wing echo chamber that the corporate media has become. We are constantly bullied with name-calling of the most offensive sort, for the sin of having a differing political opinions. And people like Coulter well know that their physical threats are a form of intimidation.

But of course there is another name for this political tactic . . . terrorism. Would it be unfair to say then when it comes to her political opponents, Ann Coulter is WITH the terrorists? There is NO place for threats of violence in our political discourse. THAT is what the terrorists do. That is NOT what upstanding participants in our representative democracy do.

We would respectfully submit that we have arrived at crisis situation in political discourse in America. Also last week, a man in New Jersey with a self-broadcast internet radio show put on his web site the home addresses of all U.S. senators supporting the immigration bill, coupled with graphically sick exhortations to commit violence against them so thinly veiled that they amount to little more than legal saran wrap. Before he "called off" his jihad his postings were reposted and disseminated by others, who should be profoundly ASHAMED of themselves. So will the man in New Jersey be prosecuted by the U.S. attorney for acts so very much more a direct and immediate threat than anything Mr. Buddhi did?

There is NO political issue that calls for such tactics under any circumstances. The immigration bill was defeated because so many people simply called their members of Congress to express opposition. If we could get that many people to actually speak out on ANY issue we could have any other policy change we might want and immediately.

Now, getting back to the Maher incident, the topic of discussion that night was postings on the Huffington Post hostile to the Vice President, with reference to a relatively minor terrorist attack of a base he was visiting in Afghanistan at that moment. To the credit of the Huffington Post, when those remarks were brought to their attention they were purged from the site, as they properly should have been. And while Maher may have been ill advised to himself joke about the incident, he did not CALL for such an attack by any stretch of the imagination in that instance. Read his words, watch the clip yourself and decide.

Moreover, Maher has already been once severely punished careerwise by the loss of his ABC Real Time show in 2002, and the comments in that situation did not rise to any possible federal crime, unlike the comments of Ms. Coulter, if we are to use the Buddhi standard currently applied by the U.S. attorney's office.

So the question remains of what should be done with Ms. Coulter. Should her career suffer as did Maher's? At a minimum she should apologize. And not just her, but the Good Morning America show who gave her a platform for such vile expressions, knowing up front that she brings nothing to political debate BUT her usual repertoire of offensive personal attacks. And this extends to the Chris Matthews show which further enabled her to amplify on her smears. He should apologize for her behavior as well.

But she's not going to apologize. She is not going to repent. She is just going to keep ABUSING free speech in an even more offensive way every chance she gets. Should she be prosecuted for calling for a Supreme Court judge to be poisoned, or wishing out loud for the assassination of a presidential candidate? That is not our call. But is not free speech, and it is not political speech. What it can be fairly be characterized as is suspected CRIMINAL speech, the political equivalent of obscenity. There is no safe harbor for obscenity in free speech, at least not on national broadcast television, and neither should there be one for an act of Coulter's caliber.

Time and again Ann Coulter has demonstrated that she is an offensive speech scofflaw, and on that basis we call for a BAN on her appearance on national television. To the networks we say, "You know she is going to say something grossly offensive when you book her." And she rightly deserves to be shunned for that reason, or the next time she will lurch even further over the line and you may YOURSELVES be legal jeopardy, as for example you were over the celebrated Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction. You are on fair notice.

But even beyond that, those responsible for posting the deleted Huffington Post blog entries and others like them really need to check themselves. The only way the terrorists win, including those of the verbal variety like Coulter, is when they can drag us down to their level. All those who make references to things like "man Coulter" and such tit for tat insults really need to check themselves. Let us raise the level of political discourse on the issues, not stoop down to the lowest common denominator. It is only by responding to people like Coulter in mean-spirited kind that they can prevail in their purpose, to demean all political speech by turning it into an insult orgy.

The rest we leave up to the good independent judgement of the U.S. attorney, assuming such a thing is anymore tolerated under the supervision of Alberto Gonzales.

Please Impeach Me

CactusPat — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 22:40:37 -0400

(bonus video)

(CONTAINS SOME GRAPHIC IMAGES) President Bush pleads for a chance to atone on the 4th anniversary of the Iraq "cakewalk," in a rendition of "Please Release Me" by Jim Terr. For MP3 audio and for other satires please visit www.BlueCanyonSatire.com, and please search "Jim Terr" to see our other YouTube videos. Thanks! (more)

Bonus Impeachment vid, that's seven little letters I-M-P-E-A-C-H...

"Time To Clean The White House Out". "Impeach" is from my new CD "Brick" (order at www.tomsongs.org)

The Saturday Cartoons

Bob Geiger — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 10:40:40 -0400

Please go to BobGeiger.com to see many more great cartoons from this week in politics.