Heya kids-
Not much time today, so I'm just posting up a few interesting tidbits from the Times:
A Florida appeals court panel ruled on Friday that the state could not appoint a guardian for the fetus of a retarded rape victim, dismissing what civil-liberties groups complained was an attack by Gov. Jeb Bush against abortion rights.
...Mr. Bush, a Republican, opposes abortion, and he drew national attention by intervening last spring in the case of the woman, who is identified in court papers as J. D. S. A circuit court judge had denied requests to appoint a guardian for the fetus, made by people who feared the woman's own court-appointed guardian would arrange for an abortion.
...When you set up a guardian for a fetus, you're creating a situation with the mother and the fetus having competing legal rights," said Howard Simon, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, which argued the case before the appeals panel. "There was no masking that this was a crusade to change the law, to limit the rights of women and bring to the Supreme Court something that would overturn or alter Roe v. Wade."
This one's important, really, 'cause the Bushes are pushing to place their version of "morality" on the nation with these kinda bullshit backdoor deals. And the fucked-up part is that while you and I and most of the people we know will have to adhere to such "morals", the wealthy and powerful (who already get to ignore a great deal of the law) will be even more insulated from the judicial branch (remember {although you probably never heard of it; thanks "liberal" media} that the woman who accused Jr. of rape, who could have sullied the oval office even worse than Clinton, turned up dead over the summer. No muss, no fuss, no dirty words, no indicted president, no black eye for the "moral" folk). As I just said to Buttons, in response to her query "Where do they get off?", they get off by fucking the American electorate up the ass.
There seems little doubt that the Bush administration's prime justification for invading Iraq — the fear that Saddam Hussein harbored weapons of mass destruction — was way off base. Nine months of fruitless searching have made that increasingly clear.
But last week three new reports cast further doubt on the administration's reckless rush to invade Iraq. Taken together, they paint a picture far different from the one presented to Americans early last year. They depict a world in which Saddam Hussein, though undeniably eager to make Iraq a threatening world power, was far from any serious steps to do that. The reports strengthen our conviction that whatever threat Iraq posed did not require an immediate invasion without international support. And they underline the importance of finding out how far the Bush administration's obsession with the Iraqi dictator warped the American intelligence reports that did so much to convince Congress and the public that the attack was justified.
The likelihood that significant weapons of mass destruction will be found seemed to grow even more remote last week with publication of an investigative report by Barton Gellman in The Washington Post. Mr. Gellman, who perused Iraqi documents and interviewed key Iraqis and members of the American search team, found that Iraq's effort to produce terror weapons had been so thoroughly beaten down by conflict, sanctions and arms embargoes that its forbidden weapons program amounted mainly to wishful thinking.
This is not so much to prove anything, really, but just to point out that while it seemed that EVERYONE has, at this point, accepted that there isn't WMD one in Iraq, nobody is nailing Jr. to the wall for launching an invasion of a nation too beaten down and fucked-up to launch much more than token resistance.
Why?
Are we as beaten down and scared as the Iraqi people?
Dunno. Gotta run. Think about it & lemme know.
Not much time today, so I'm just posting up a few interesting tidbits from the Times:
A Florida appeals court panel ruled on Friday that the state could not appoint a guardian for the fetus of a retarded rape victim, dismissing what civil-liberties groups complained was an attack by Gov. Jeb Bush against abortion rights.
...Mr. Bush, a Republican, opposes abortion, and he drew national attention by intervening last spring in the case of the woman, who is identified in court papers as J. D. S. A circuit court judge had denied requests to appoint a guardian for the fetus, made by people who feared the woman's own court-appointed guardian would arrange for an abortion.
...When you set up a guardian for a fetus, you're creating a situation with the mother and the fetus having competing legal rights," said Howard Simon, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, which argued the case before the appeals panel. "There was no masking that this was a crusade to change the law, to limit the rights of women and bring to the Supreme Court something that would overturn or alter Roe v. Wade."
This one's important, really, 'cause the Bushes are pushing to place their version of "morality" on the nation with these kinda bullshit backdoor deals. And the fucked-up part is that while you and I and most of the people we know will have to adhere to such "morals", the wealthy and powerful (who already get to ignore a great deal of the law) will be even more insulated from the judicial branch (remember {although you probably never heard of it; thanks "liberal" media} that the woman who accused Jr. of rape, who could have sullied the oval office even worse than Clinton, turned up dead over the summer. No muss, no fuss, no dirty words, no indicted president, no black eye for the "moral" folk). As I just said to Buttons, in response to her query "Where do they get off?", they get off by fucking the American electorate up the ass.
There seems little doubt that the Bush administration's prime justification for invading Iraq — the fear that Saddam Hussein harbored weapons of mass destruction — was way off base. Nine months of fruitless searching have made that increasingly clear.
But last week three new reports cast further doubt on the administration's reckless rush to invade Iraq. Taken together, they paint a picture far different from the one presented to Americans early last year. They depict a world in which Saddam Hussein, though undeniably eager to make Iraq a threatening world power, was far from any serious steps to do that. The reports strengthen our conviction that whatever threat Iraq posed did not require an immediate invasion without international support. And they underline the importance of finding out how far the Bush administration's obsession with the Iraqi dictator warped the American intelligence reports that did so much to convince Congress and the public that the attack was justified.
The likelihood that significant weapons of mass destruction will be found seemed to grow even more remote last week with publication of an investigative report by Barton Gellman in The Washington Post. Mr. Gellman, who perused Iraqi documents and interviewed key Iraqis and members of the American search team, found that Iraq's effort to produce terror weapons had been so thoroughly beaten down by conflict, sanctions and arms embargoes that its forbidden weapons program amounted mainly to wishful thinking.
This is not so much to prove anything, really, but just to point out that while it seemed that EVERYONE has, at this point, accepted that there isn't WMD one in Iraq, nobody is nailing Jr. to the wall for launching an invasion of a nation too beaten down and fucked-up to launch much more than token resistance.
Why?
Are we as beaten down and scared as the Iraqi people?
Dunno. Gotta run. Think about it & lemme know.
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