Supreme Court Wakes Up

Can the Congress be far behind? Well, that might be a little too much to ask, I suppose, but perhaps they have just been given the wiggle room to do their jobs...in other words, actually figuring out just how fucked up the Chimp's legal team really is. Who sez we don't have to follow the Geneva Conventions, eh?

Here's the report from Dan Froomkin at the Washington Post today:

"Yesterday's Supreme Court ruling, definitively curbing the Bush White House's assertion of nearly unlimited executive power in a time of war, puts the other two branches of government back in business.

The Republican-controlled Congress, which has remained resolutely blind, deaf and dumb as President Bush took national security matters entirely into his own hands, now has little choice but to rouse itself to some sort of action.

And in reasserting the rule of law, the high court has opened the way to what could be major legal action over other executive branch violations of established statutes -- about domestic spying, for instance. The ruling even raises the possibility that U.S. forces and Bush administration officials could be tried for war crimes."

War crimes are probably too much to ask...I'll settle for Americans simply waking up and realizing that it's important to vote to ensure we keep some semblance of reality in the Courts. Today we had a modium of success. We'll keep our fingers crossed for more.

In My America...

This is what a president says:

"How we work to improve our country and lift people up is also critical to restoring American leadership in the world. For decades, many drew inspiration from us, admiring how we worked everyday to make our country a better place. And the whole world is watching. Just as we fight poverty here at home, we must show more leadership in ending extreme poverty around the globe. It is wrong that close to half the world’s population – more than 3 billion people – live on less than 2 dollars a day. And it is a disgrace that millions of people suffer and die from diseases that are preventable – for example, a $5 dollar mosquito net could save a family from malaria; a few cents could vaccinate a child; and a $4 dose of medicine can help prevent a mother from transmitting AIDS to her newborn at childbirth. If we are to rebuild America’s moral leadership, we must do better at home – and abroad.

On the America we want to achieve in the next twenty years, I don’t think the picture is hard to draw. It is an America where we are well on our way to ending poverty. It is an America where every American has health care coverage – not access to health insurance or other wiggle-word ways we try to describe something less than health coverage for every American. It is time. It is an America where businesses and working people thrive in a competitive and fair international marketplace. It is an America where everyone can join the middle class and everyone can build a better future than their parents had."

Go here and learn more.

Boondocks Deserves a Pulitzer

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Reason Number 2,500+ for Blogging

Came across this story in the New York Times today. It's called "Iraq War Ends Silently for One American Soldier" about the death of just one young man, and it is sad -- and maddening -- beyond belief. Here's the ending:

"The six soldiers walked out to the chopper and lifted Sergeant Lisk's body into it. The door went back up. The helicopter flew away.

The soldiers saluted a final time.

In the darkness, as the sound of the helicopter faded, Colonel MacFarland addressed his soldiers.

"I don't know if this war is worth the life of Terry Lisk, or 10 soldiers, or 2,500 soldiers like him," Colonel MacFarland told his forces. "What I do know is that he did not die alone. He was surrounded by friends.

"A Greek philosopher said that only the dead have seen the end of war," the colonel said. "Only Terry Lisk has seen the end of this war."

The soldiers turned and walked back to their barracks in the darkness. No one said a word."

It's Been Awhile, I Know

Where have I been? Why no posting? Well, I needed to take a break from this because I feared this little place o'mine was becoming a bit redundant. What did I really have to say, what was my point of view, what did I really want the blog to be? All of these questions have been rolling around my head...in that tiny voice that weal have that says, who the hell cares what you write, anyway? So I thought I'd let that inner conversation go on a while to see whether I really felt like starting up again.

Well, turns out I do want to continue. (And, oddly, it's been exactly one month since the last post.)

And who the hell cares?

I do.