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Dave Lindorff
The BuzzFlash Blog
Thu, 12 Nov 2009 17:47 EST

I never thought I'd find myself thanking the women-loathing, Christian fundamentalist-pandering Democrats in Congress for anything, but here it is: Thank you, Congressman Bart Stupak (D-MI), for your outrageous amendment to the House version of the health insurance reform legislation in Congress, which bars any insurance company in the proposed health insurance exchange from offering a health insurance plan that includes abortion coverage.

This amendment, which would actually bar women or families from buying even with their own money and no government subsidy health insurance that includes funding for a medically recommended abortion, was supported by 64 Democrats along with all but one Republican in Congress.

Because it passed and was attached to the House health reform bill, it gives hope to the notion that the disastrous so-called health reform legislation in Congress will die.

And so it should.

William Hughes
Los Angeles IndyMedia
Sun, 15 Nov 2009 13:40 EST

The state of Virginia executed John Allen Muhammad, the Washington area sniper, who killed ten innocent people on a murder spree. Muhammad, like Timothy J. McVeigh, was a Gulf War Vet, who was exposed to deadly toxic chemicals. His lawyers pleaded with Governor Tim Kaine to spare his life, arguing that he was suffering from the "Gulf War Syndrome." Albert Camus, the author, said the death penalty was really about--"vengeance!"

the_three_soldiers

"Let's call it [the death penalty] by its real name...and recognize it for what it is--vengeance!" - Albert Camus

The state of Virginia, on Nov. 10, 2009, at 9:11 P.M., executed by lethal injection the Washington area sniper, John Allen Muhammad, aka John Allen Williams. The deed was carried out at the death chamber, at the Greensville Correctional Center, in Jarratt, just south of Richmond. Muhammad was convicted of killing Dean Howell Meyers, who was refueling his car in Manassas, VA, on Oct. 7, 2002. The Governor of Virginia, Tim Kaine, rejected Muhammad's lawyers' plea to commute the sentence to life imprisonment. On his killing spree, which inspired widespread fear and panic, Muhammad left nine other innocent dead victims in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C. His motive for his shooting rampage, committed at random, went to the grave with him.

There wasn't anything the Commonwealth of Virginia could do to bring back the victims of Muhammad's murderous onslaught. As far as his execution being a deterrent to other would-be killers, the record shows that such an argument doesn't hold any water. And, if the state truly believed in its deterrent argument, then why didn't it put Muhammad's execution on television?

Jeff Gates
Veterans Today
Fri, 13 Nov 2009 11:01 EST

Was Fort Hood really the target of a terrorist attack? The first clue to the real culprit emerged when Senator Joe Lieberman sought to blame this mass murder on the U.S. military. As chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security, he promised hearings on how the Pentagon protects its personnel from domestic terrorists.

Will Lieberman, an avowed Zionist, use this incident to insist that the U.S. do more to protect Jewish nationalists? More importantly, what do his concerns mean for homeland security?

Joe Lieberman has an ally in Janet Napolitano, Secretary of Homeland Security. In April, this former Arizona governor warned about potential terrorism from U.S. troops returning from deployment in the Middle East. Though roundly attacked, she defended her position, calling it an "assessment not an accusation."

When Army Major Nidal Hasan killed U.S. troops on the nation's largest military base, was this evidence of "militant Islam"? Or did this military psychiatrist snap under pressure while treating returning vets on a base averaging ten suicides a month? Is there an undisclosed agenda behind those seeking to portray this act as the work of "Islamo fascists"?

Peter Singer
New York Daily News
Sun, 25 Oct 2009 10:50 EDT

Watts for News

Taxes can do a lot of good. They pay for schools, parks, police and the military. But that's not all they can do. High taxes on cigarettes have saved many lives - not only the lives of people who are discouraged from smoking as much as they would if cigarettes were cheap, but also the lives of others who spend less time passively inhaling smoke.

No reasonable person would want to abolish the tax on cigarettes. Unless, perhaps, they were proposing banning cigarettes altogether - as New York City is doing with transfats served by restaurants.

A tax on sodas containing sugar has also been under consideration, by Governor Paterson among others. In view of our obesity epidemic, and the extra burden it places on our health care system - not to mention the problems it causes on a crowded New York subway when your neighbor can't fit into a single seat - it's a reasonable proposal.

Moises Mendoza, Mary Flood & Lindsay Wise
Houston Chronicle
Fri, 13 Nov 2009 09:11 EST

© Billy Smith II Chronicle
Faheem Kazimi, chairman of the board of directors of the Islamic Education Center in Houston, defended the mosque the feds are trying to seize.

Houston spiritual center among U.S. buildings federal prosecutors link to Iran

The U.S. government on Thursday moved to seize more than $500 million in assets from a New York-based foundation accused of being a front for the Iranian government, including a building that houses the Islamic Education Center of Houston.

The news provoked confusion and anger among Houston's Shia Muslims, many of whom worship at the center's mosque or send their children to an Islamic school that occupies the same large white building at 2313 S. Voss.

Faheem Kazimi, chairman of the board of directors, said IEC leases its building from the Alavi Foundation but no other connection exists.

"The Islamic Education Center is a nonprofit, independent organization, not affiliated with any other organization," Kazimi said.

Obama's Swelling Ego

Jeff Jacoby
The Boston Globe
Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:00 EST

President Obama was too busy to attend the celebrations in Germany this week marking the fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago. But he did appear by video, delivering a few brief and bloodless remarks about how the wall was "a painful barrier between family and friends'' that symbolized "a system that denied people the freedoms that should be the right of every human being.'' He referred to "tyranny,'' but never identified the tyrants - he never uttered the words "Soviet Union'' or "communism,'' for example. He said nothing about the men and women who died trying to cross the wall. Nor did he mention Harry Truman or Ronald Reagan - or even Mikhail Gorbachev.

He did, however, talk about Barack Obama.

"Few would have foreseen,'' declared the president, "that a united Germany would be led by a woman from [the former East German state of] Brandenburg or that their American ally would be led by a man of African descent. But human destiny is what human beings make of it.''

Nate Anderson
ARS
Wed, 09 Sep 2009 20:59 EDT

When someone registers a domain like glenbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin
1990.com they probably expect to hear from Glenn Beck's lawyers. In this case, it took two days. The site's anonymous operator tells Ars that the whole thing is satire - but that may not be enough to avoid charges of defamation.

Fox News Channel

Gilbert Gottfried, what have you started?

The controversy started a week ago in the Fark forums, where someone picked up on an old Gilbert Gottfried roast of the "comedian" (scare quotes fully intended) Bob Saget. During the roast, Gottfried repeatedly said (watch the video) that Saget had "not raped and killed a girl in 1990." The Fark forums took the joke about the power of insinuation and applied it to right-wing talk show host Glenn "Obama is a racist" Beck.

One of the Fark readers then took the forum meme to the next level, registering a domain name and launching a web site in order to make a point about talking head TV demagoguery. "Why won't Glenn Beck deny these allegations?" asks the site. "We're not accusing Glenn Beck of raping and murdering a young girl in 1990 - in fact, we think he didn't! But we can't help but wonder, since he has failed to deny these horrible allegations. Why won't he deny that he raped and killed a young girl in 1990?" At the very bottom of the page was a small text disclaimer saying that the site was satirical.

Hugely popular conservative talker Glenn Beck has sicced his lawyers on a satirical website that's been up for a week, but the attorneys may have a point on this one. The site, called glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com, toes the line on defamation - and may have stepped across it.

Dahr Jamail
Inter Press Service
Fri, 13 Nov 2009 19:58 EST

Ventura, California - U.S. Army Specialist Alexis Hutchinson, a single mother, is being threatened with a military court-martial if she does not agree to deploy to Afghanistan, despite having been told she would be granted extra time to find someone to care for her 11-month-old son while she is overseas.

Hutchinson, of Oakland, California, is currently being confined at Hunter Army Airfield near Savannah, Georgia, after being arrested. Her son was placed into a county foster care system.

Best of the Web: Morality vs. Material Interests

Paul Craig Roberts
Information Clearing House
Sat, 14 Nov 2009 19:52 EST

Myths of Our Time

It is conventional wisdom that it was the draft that ended the Vietnam war. According to this explanation, cowardly college students subject to the draft and their unpatriotic families, forced an end to the war. This is Karl Marx's explanation. Material interests, not empty morality, are said to have brought the war to an end.

That fact that in those days the US still had an independent media of sorts that sometimes framed the war in moral terms is ignored. Are we sure, for example, that the film of the naked little girl running in terror down the road burning with napalm was ineffectual in arousing moral opposition to the war? Are we certain that it wasn't an aroused moral conscience that brought about the end of the war but was college students' fears for their lives and limbs?

If we ascribe ending the war to material interests, it makes ending the war look as unworthy as the war itself.

Daniel Tencer
Raw Story
Fri, 13 Nov 2009 19:25 EST

Liberal bloggers are accusing Fox News of launching an Internet war against them in a campaign to selectively remove Fox clips from YouTube.

On Wednesday, YouTube shut down the popular News1News channel, which featured news clips that many progressive bloggers and news sites would add to their stories. On the rare occasion, Raw Story also embedded News1News clips in stories having to do with media coverage. The channel provided clips from all news networks, but often focused on Fox's controversial commentators.

The decision to shut down News1News came after Fox News issued 150 take-down notices to the channel, which they are entitled to do under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, reports Adrian Chen at Gawker. YouTube's policy is to shut down any accounts that receive three or more take-down notices, so News1News was immediately pulled offline.

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"The free press is the mother of all our liberties and of our progress under liberty" Adlai E. Stevenson

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"This is, in theory, still a free country, but our politically correct, censorious times are such that many of us tremble to give vent to perfectly acceptable views for fear of condemnation. Freedom of speech is thereby imperiled, big questions go undebated, and great lies become accepted, unequivocally as great truths." Simon Heffer in The Daily Mail, 7 June 2000

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