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« Liberal Outrage: March 2007 | Main | Liberal Outrage: May 2007 » Liberal OutrageDue Process Too Bothersome It's amazing that what with Gonzales getting his feet put to the coals over the firing of the U.S. Attorneys, the Justice Department has the balls to demand anything at all. I shouldn't be surprised at this point, but i can't help being amazed at the amount of shamelessness these people have. Under the proposals, filed earlier this month in Washington DC, lawyers would be restricted to just 3 visits with an existing client, correspondence they send to their clients would be vetted by military intelligence officers and government officials would be empowered to prevent lawyers from having access to secret evidence used by military tribunals to decide whether the prisoners were "enemy combatants". Meanwhile, a long running hunger strike protesting conditions in the prison is still going on at Gitmo. The inmates have been force-fed thru their noses with tubes, which i've read is quite painful and really just another form of torture. Let's re-state that these are people who have been locked up in Guantanamo, or some other military prison, for years, with no charges brought against them and no trial. Yet the military insists they're so dangerous and conspired agaist the U.S. Well, if they did, let's hear the evidence and get them tried and convicted. Unless, you're not done torturing them for a forced confession. The Spanish Inquisition wasn't really that long ago, was it? By min | April 27, 2007, 3:29 PM | Liberal Outrage | Link Whatever you do, don't tell him about this. It's all he's got left. By fnord12 | April 18, 2007, 1:20 PM | Liberal Outrage | Comments (2)| Link I just want you to know, i checked all the blogs and nothing happened today that you need to be outraged about. So feel free to just relax and play a video game or something. By fnord12 | April 12, 2007, 5:06 PM | Liberal Outrage | Link I presented my credentials from the Marine Corps to a very polite clerk for American Airlines. One of the two people to whom I talked asked a question and offered a frightening comment: "Have you been in any peace marches? We ban a lot of people from flying because of that." I explained that I had not so marched but had, in September, 2006, given a lecture at Princeton, televised and put on the Web, highly critical of George Bush for his many violations of the Constitution. "That'll do it," the man said. By fnord12 | April 9, 2007, 2:30 PM | Liberal Outrage | Comments (1)| Link The research suggests that the transformation may already be underway. Much of the region has been in a severe drought since 2000, which the study's analysis of computer climate models shows as the beginning of a long dry period. The study, published online in the journal Science, predicted a permanent drought by 2050 throughout the Southwest - one of the fastest-growing regions in the nation. The data tell "a story which is pretty darn scary and very strong," said Jonathan Overpeck, a climate researcher at the University of Arizona who was not involved in the study. Richard Seager, a research scientist at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University and the lead author of the study, said the changes would force an adjustment to the social and economic order from Colorado to California. "There are going to be some tough decisions on how to allocate water," he said. "Is it going to be the cities, or is it going to be agriculture?" Seager said the projections, based on 19 computer models, showed a surprising level of agreement. "There is only one model that does not have a drying trend," he said. Philip Mote, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Washington who was not involved in the study, added, "There is a convergence of the models that is very strong and very worrisome." For the U.S., the biggest problem would be water shortages. The seven Colorado River Basin states - Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona and California - would battle each other for diminished river flows. Mexico, which has a share of the Colorado River under a 1944 treaty and has complained of U.S. diversions in the past, would join the struggle. Inevitably, water would be reallocated from agriculture, which uses most of the West's supply, to urban users, drying up farms. California would come under pressure to build desalination plants on the coast, despite environmental concerns. "This is a situation that is going to cause water wars," said Kevin Trenberth, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. "If there's not enough water to meet everybody's allocation, how do you divide it up?" Officials from seven states recently forged an agreement on the current drought, which has left the Colorado River's big reservoirs - Lake Powell and Lake Mead - about half-empty. Without some very wet years, federal water managers say, Lake Mead may never refill. By fnord12 | April 9, 2007, 1:15 PM | Liberal Outrage & Science | Comments (8)| Link This is worth sitting through the "free pass" ad to read. Key excerpt: This is the same shit that got us into the Iraq invasion. By fnord12 | April 9, 2007, 12:59 PM | Liberal Outrage | Link A Fox news affiliate's poll on April Fools' Day. The question was who is the most foolish American. Looking at the data, the host declared... Britney Spears the winner. By fnord12 | April 6, 2007, 1:11 PM | Liberal Outrage | Comments (1)| Link From Rolling Stone. Excerpt: Yes. On the other hand, I would argue that some key operators, the Cheney types, they learned a great deal about how to run things and how to hide stuff over those years. From the press? What can be done to fix the situation? What's the main lesson you take, looking back at America's history the last forty years? Depressing, as usual. By fnord12 | April 6, 2007, 1:06 PM | Liberal Outrage | Link Cheney's still pushing the Al-Qaida/Saddam meme. What the hell is in this guy's Kool-Aid? However, a declassified Pentagon report released Thursday said that interrogations of the deposed Iraqi leader and two of his former aides as well as seized Iraqi documents confirmed that the terrorist organization and the Saddam government were not working together before the invasion. The Sept. 11 Commission's 2004 report also found no evidence of a collaborative relationship between Saddam and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network during that period. If he doesn't believe it and is just trying to perpetuate the lie, it seems like a weak strategy. I doubt they'd win over any new people. And i don't think it will bring back the people who initially supported the invasion but have since gotten sick of it. I just think there are newer, shinier things to use to stimulate the mouth foamers. And really, the Democrats voting thru that bill to bring the military home is enough to do it by itself. They don't need to know about al-Qaida or Saddam or any of that. As it's been demonstrated, nobody remembers who al-Qaida's supposed to be anyway. He just needs to stand there and say it's a bad bill. He doesn't really need to try to come up with reasons. I mean, they never have before. Why start now? And if he does believe what he's saying, he's a nutjob. I mean, he is a nutjob. No doubt about it. This just adds another dimension to his psychopathology. By min | April 6, 2007, 9:02 AM | Liberal Outrage | Link Go see here for video. It would almost be comical if these people weren't deranged psychopaths who've taken over our government. By fnord12 | April 4, 2007, 3:57 PM | Liberal Outrage | Link Blair: "Throughout, we have taken a measured approach, firm but calm, not negotiating but not confronting, either."" By fnord12 | April 4, 2007, 3:20 PM | Liberal Outrage | Link One more state has signed on to the agreement to bypass the Electoral College and go with the popular vote. Unfortunately, NJ is not that state. Gee, imagine that. Revising the system so that your vote actually counts for something. Crazy. By min | April 4, 2007, 2:45 PM | Liberal Outrage | Comments (4)| Link This one's pretty close to home. Some good excerpts: Although the public may not have caught on, ask any urban library administrator in the nation where the chronically homeless go during the day and he or she will tell you about the struggles of America's public librarians to cope with their unwanted and unappreciated role as the daytime guardians of the down and out. In our public libraries, the outcasts are inside. Public librarians are out of the loop altogether; our role in providing daytime shelter for the homeless is ignored. When, in an attempt to build my own useful network, I attended conferences on homeless issues, I was always met with puzzlement and the question: "What are you doing here?" The cost of this mad system is staggering. Cities that have tracked chronically homeless people for the police, jail, clinic, paramedic, emergency room, and other hospital services they require, estimate that a typical transient can cost taxpayers between $20,000 and $150,000 a year. You could not design a more expensive, wasteful, or ineffective way to provide healthcare to individuals who live on the street than by having librarians like me dispense it through paramedics and emergency rooms. For one thing, fragmented, episodic care consistently fails, no matter how many times delivered. It is not only immoral to ignore people who are suffering illness in our midst, it's downright stupid public policy. We do not spend too little on the problems of the mentally disabled homeless, as is often assumed, instead we spend extravagantly but foolishly. As a library administrator, I hear the public express annoyance more often than not: "What are they doing in here?" "Can't you control them?" Annoyance is the cousin of arrogance, not shame. By fnord12 | April 2, 2007, 6:45 PM | Liberal Outrage | Comments (4)| Link That's right. If your employer, co-worker, landlord, neighbor or father-in-law is raking in fistfuls of cash and bypassing Uncle Sam, you can anonymously report the abuse to the IRS and snag a windfall from their dishonesty. As long as the total amount of tax fraud comes out to at least $2 million -- including penalties, interest and whatever else the government ultimately collects based on your report -- you can get a 15%-to-30% cut. By min | April 2, 2007, 8:49 AM | Liberal Outrage | Link « Liberal Outrage: March 2007 | Main | Liberal Outrage: May 2007 » |