Ronnie on Politics

The newt is back. Newt Gingrich is not only planning to run for president in 2008 but also wants to limit free speech in the United States. He plans to use fear, the Republican Parties best weapon on America, to try to get his way. And, he had the nerve to bring up this plan at the Loeb First Amendment Award Dinner. This award is given to those who fight to protect the first amendment. How many more rights will Americans give up before they wakeup.

Gingrich wants to restrict freedom of speech?
By Keith Olbermann
Anchor, 'Countdown'
MSNBC

Newt Gingrich called for a reexamination of free speech at the Loeb First Amendment Award Dinner in New Hampshirethis week, saying a “different set of rules to prevent terrorism” are necessary.

Gingrich’s call to restrict free speech is mainly focused on the Internet.

Keith Olbermann discussed the constitutionality of this with GeorgeWashingtonUniversitylaw professor and constitutional law expert Jonathan Turley.

[…]

Here is his [Newt Gingrich] rationalization:

NEWT GINGRICH, FORMER HOUSE SPEAKER: My view is that either before we lose a city, or if we are truly stupid after we lose a city, we will adopt rules of engagement that we use every technology we can find to break up their capacity to use the Internet, to break up their capacity to use free speech, and to go after people who want to kill us, to stop them from recruiting people before they get to reach out and convince young people to destroy their lives while destroying us.

Read the article online at: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15951435/

Or listen to the broadcast here.

Here’s another article about Newt Gingrichs speech:

Gingrich raises alarm at event honoring those who stand up for freedom of speech
By RILEY YATES
The Union Leader

MANCHESTER, N.H. - Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich yesterday said the country will be forced to reexamine freedom of speech to meet the threat of terrorism.

Gingrich, speaking at a Manchester awards banquet, said a "different set of rules" may be needed to reduce terrorists' ability to use the Internet and free speech to recruit and get out their message.

"We need to get ahead of the curve before we actually lose a city, which I think could happen in the next decade," said Gingrich, a Republican who helped engineer the GOP's takeover of Congress in 1994.

Read entire article online at: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15928336/

I received this letter by e-mail today from the American Civil Liberties Union and wanted to share it with everyone because I feel that it's very important. It’s hard to imagine that the government of the United States of America is going around kidnapping innocent people and making them disappear into a system where they have no rights. America you had better wake up and take back your country.

The case of our client Khaled El-Masri is one we should all be watching carefully. Yesterday, he stood up in a courtroom to challenge the Bush administration's use of "extraordinary rendition," abduction, detention and interrogation in secret overseas prisons.

While it is a credit to our system of justice that Mr. El-Masri can now demand accountability from his CIA kidnappers, all of us must ask, how have we let our country stray so far from its ideals?

Mr. El-Masri's story is a frightening catalogue of abuses. A father of six, he was forcibly abducted in Macedonia while on vacation, handed over to the CIA and flown to a secret interrogation center in Afghanistan where he was beaten, drugged and repeatedly denied legal counsel. After two months, CIA operatives informed director George Tenet that they were holding an innocent man. But it still took two more months before he was released -- flown in secret to Albania and left alone on a hillside in the middle of the night.

People need to hear his story, and the agencies and private companies responsible must face real justice for their violations of U.S. laws as well as universal human rights laws.

In a legal maneuver that is now familiar, the government is trying to use the veil of secrecy to avoid accountability for its actions. But yesterday, we argued that the government's official recognition of the program and information already available about this case show that the lawsuit does not jeopardize national security and must be allowed to continue.

Our government would rather you didn’t hear his story. The last time Mr. El-Masri tried to come to the U.S. -- to hear his own court case -- he was denied entry because he did not have a visa, even though German citizens don’t actually need visas to enter the U.S. This week, Mr. El-Masri witnessed his court proceedings and will also be meeting in person with members of Congress to share his story. As he told the Washington Post today, “I never thought badly of the United States. I do think badly of the foreign policy aspects and the sitting government.”

You can help.

Learn more about El-Masri v. Tenet.

Watch Mr. El-Masri and his attorneys tell the story in their own words.

And tell others about the case, and the unthinkable acts perpetrated in our name - and now being deliberately covered over through an abuse of the "state secrets" privilege.

The ACLU is appalled that our government sanctioned and carried out these atrocious actions -- and that it continues to shirk responsibility by hiding behind state secrets. These are not the actions of a proud nation, instead they diminish us as a people.


We will continue the fight both to seek justice for Khaled El-Masri and to end the practice of extraordinary rendition. Thank you for making those efforts possible.

Another good article about Khaled El-Masri can be found at: 'They beat me from all sides'
What exactly is extradordinary enndition? Find out by visiting Wikipedia.

Here's a story about another innocent man that the United States kidnapped:

Italy Seeks Arrests of 13 in Alleged Rendition

By Craig Whitlock and Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, June 25, 2005; Page A01

MILAN, June 24 -- Italian authorities said Friday they have issued arrest warrants against 13 American intelligence operatives, charging that they kidnapped a radical Islamic cleric as he walked to a mosque here two years ago, held him hostage at two U.S. military bases and then covertly flew him to Cairo. He later said he was tortured by Egyptian security police.

Read entire article at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/24/AR2005062400484.html

Well, guess again. It's not as free as you might think. Here's a sample of what I'm talking about:

[...]

“When I got the Des Moines Register and read the article about Terri Jones and how her son didn’t get the medical attention he needed, I decided I’m going to support her and oppose what the judge had done and fly my flag upside down,” he says.

[...]

“The next thing I knew I’d been charged with disorderly conduct,” he says. “I was surprised. I have the right and the freedom to do that.”

Read entire article at: http://progressive.org/mag_mc071906

Steve Howards says he used to fantasize about what he’d say to President Bush or Vice President Cheney if he ever got the chance.

That opportunity arrived on June 16, the same day he says he read about U.S. fatalities in Iraq reaching 2,500.

[...]

So I approached him, I got about two feet away, and I said in a very calm tone of voice, ‘Your policies in Iraq are reprehensible.’ And then I walked away.”

[...]

But the Secret Service did not take kindly to his comment.“About ten minutes later, I came back through the mall with my eight-year-old son in tow,” Howards recalls, “and this Secret Service man came out of the shadows, and his exact words were, ‘Did you assault the Vice President?’ ”

[...]

“He grabbed me and cuffed my hands behind my back in the presence of my eight-year-old son and told me I was being charged with assault of the Vice President,”Howards recalls.

Read entire article at: http://progressive.org/mag_mc100406

For those of you who think Christians care about poverty and the environment you should take a look at this:

Christian Coalition's New Leader Steps Down
All Things Considered,
November 28, 2006

Rev. Joel Hunter, president-elect of the Christian Coalition of America, is declining the job, saying the organization wouldn't let him expand its agenda beyond opposing abortion and gay marriage. A statement issued by the group said Hunter left because of "differences in philosophy and vision."

Hunter said he was not asked to leave. But, he says, he had wanted to focus on issues such as poverty and the environment.

Read or listen to entire article at: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6550598&ft=1&f=1012

I really doubt that religion is capable of caring about these issues. If they did it would make them look like they support Democrats. And, thay can't have any of that.

I don't know if this will surprise anyone but I do find it interesting:

Violent video game effects linger in brain

By Susan Kelly

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Teens who play violent video games show increased activity in areas of the brain linked to emotional arousal and decreased responses in regions that govern self-control, a study released on Tuesday found.

Read entire article online at: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061128/hl_nm/videogames_brain_dc_3

I sure hope James Lovelock is wrong this time. This is scary stuff.

Gaia scientist Lovelock predicts planetary wipeout

By Jeremy Lovell
Tue Nov 28, 10:13 AM ET

LONDON (Reuters) - The earth has a fever that could boost temperatures by 8 degrees Celsius making large parts of the surface uninhabitable and threatening billions of peoples' lives, a controversial climate scientist said on Tuesday.

James Lovelock, who angered climate scientists with his Gaia theory of a living planet and then alienated environmentalists by backing nuclear power, said a traumatized earth might only be able to support less than a tenth of it's 6 billion people.

"We are not all doomed. An awful lot of people will die, but I don't see the species dying out," he told a news conference. "A hot earth couldn't support much over 500 million."

Read entire article online at: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061128/sc_nm/earth_fever_dc_1

There seems to be some disagreement over whether or not Iraq is in the middle of a civil war. I'm not sure I understand why. Perhaps Bush doesn’t have a dictionary. I have one (The Merriam-Webster Dictionary) and here is the definition it gives for civil war:

civil war n : a war between opposing groups of citizens of the same country.

Ok, but what is a war:

war vb : to engage in warfare : be in conflict

Seems like a no-brainer to me but who ever said Bush had a brain. You can read more about this below:

A war of words over Iraq

By Julie Hirschfeld Davis
Sun reporter
Originally published November 28, 2006

WASHINGTON // With sectarian violence raging in Iraq and President Bush grasping for options, the question of whether Iraqis are locked in a civil war has taken on new urgency.

The term is fraught with emotional overtones and policy implications, which is why it sparks lively arguments and strong pushback from the White House. Bush vehemently rejects the idea that Iraq is engaged in a civil war, while a growing chorus of scholars and strategists says that is exactly what the staggering civilian death toll and factional strife amount to.

Read entire article online at: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/iraq/bal-te.civilwar28nov28,0,5836509.story?coll=bal-pe-asection

Iraqin midst of civil war or not?

CNN's Carol Costello examines whether the Iraq war can be classified as a civil war. (November 28)

Watch video here: http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/scp_v3/viewer/index.php?pid=16598&rn=49750&cl=1307036&ch=49799&src=news

Note: Video will show after a brief commerical.

Expert on Iraq: 'We're In a Civil War'

U.S. Officials Deny Violence Has Risen to That Level, but ABC News Analysts See a 'Serious Lack of Realism'
By JAKE TAPPER
ABC World News

BAGHDAD, March 5, 2006 — As Pentagon generals offered optimistic assessments that the sectarian violence in Iraq had dissipated this weekend, other military experts told ABC News that Sunni and Shiite groups in Iraq already are engaged in a civil war, and that the Iraqi government and U.S. military had better accept that fact and adapt accordingly.

"We're in a civil war now; it's just that not everybody's joined in," said retired Army Maj. Gen. William L. Nash, a former military commander in Bosnia-Herzegovina. "The failure to understand that the civil war is already taking place, just not necessarily at the maximum level, means that our counter measures are inadequate and therefore dangerous to our long-term interest.

"It's our failure to understand reality that has caused us to be late throughout this experience of the last three years in Iraq," added Nash, who is an ABC News consultant.

Anthony Cordesman, the Arleigh A. Burke chair in strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told ABC News, "If you talk to U.S. intelligence officers and military people privately, they'd say we've been involved in low level civil war with very slowly increasing intensity since the transfer of power in June 2004."

Read entire article online at: http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/IraqCoverage/story?id=1689688&page=1

Iraqi civil war has already begun, U.S.troops say

By Tom Lasseter
McClatchy Newspapers
Aug. 04, 2006

BAGHDAD, Iraq - While American politicians and generals in Washington debate the possibility of civil war in Iraq, many U.S. officers and enlisted men who patrol Baghdad say it has already begun.

Army troops in and around the capital interviewed in the last week cite a long list of evidence that the center of the nation is coming undone: Villages have been abandoned by Sunni and Shiite Muslims; Sunni insurgents have killed thousands of Shiites in car bombings and assassinations; Shiite militia death squads have tortured and killed hundreds, if not thousands, of Sunnis; and when night falls, neighborhoods become open battlegrounds.

"There's one street that's the dividing line. They shoot mortars across the line and abduct people back and forth," said 1st Lt. Brian Johnson, a 4th Infantry Division platoon leader from Houston. Johnson, 24, was describing the nightly violence that pits Sunni gunmen from Baghdad's Ghazaliyah neighborhood against Shiite gunmen from the nearby Shula district.

As he spoke, the sights and sounds of battle grew: first, the rat-a-tat-tat of fire from AK-47 assault rifles, then the heavier bursts of PKC machine guns, and finally the booms of mortar rounds crisscrossing the night sky and crashing down onto houses and roads.

The bodies of captured Sunni and Shiite fighters will turn up in the morning, dropped in canals and left on the side of the road.

Read entire article online at: http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/news/special_packages/iraq/15201701.htm

And this just in:

Powell: 'Face the reality' that conflict is civil war

DUBAI - Former Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Wednesday Iraq had descended into civil war and urged world leaders to accept that “reality.”

Powell’s remarks came ahead of a meeting — later postponed — between Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in the Jordanian capital to discuss the security developments in Iraq.

“I would call it a civil war,” Powell told a business forum in the United Arab Emirates. “I have been using it (civil war), because I like to face the reality,” added Powell.

Read entire article online at: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15954706/

There have been two videos showing what looks like police brutality reported this month in LA:

The first showed an officer repeatedly punching a suspect in the face after a foot chase in Hollywood. View video here.

The second showed Police taser an unarmed student at least four times inside the UCLA library. View video here.

And here is where it all seems to get its start:.

Day 1 for deputies: Go to jail

By Robin Fields and Stuart Pfeifer, Times Staff Writers
November 25, 2006

DEPUTY Norma Silva leads a line of inmates down a long corridor.

The air smells stale. Sunlight slants through the window slits above her head, drawing hash marks on the concrete floor in front of her.

Silva has put in almost two years at North County Correctional Facility, a massive 3,400-bed jail in Castaic. She barely needs a backward glance to catch her charges flashing gang hand signals.

"Keep looking forward, gentlemen," she says, not breaking stride. "No talking. Hands in your pockets."

Like almost everyone else who joins the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, Silva aspires to be a cop, not a jailer. But so far, jailer is her role.

All new L.A. County deputies start their careers this way. Plunged into a strange, predatory world, they endure conditions most of them never conceived of before joining the force.

Deputies have been punched, slashed, spit on and "gassed" — doused with urine, feces or blood — by inmates. They are exposed to squalor and disease. In recent years, they have had to work so much overtime that a miniature trailer park has sprung up in the jail's parking lot, where about a dozen officers sleep on any given day.

Sheriff's executives say this harsh initiation gives rookies a graduate education in criminal behavior, molding them into streetwise, poised police.

"It is truly the foundation of being a good cop," Assistant Sheriff Paul Tanaka said. "When you get out on the street, you are far better prepared than if you just graduated from the academy."

Yet agency watchdogs have long feared that the jail environment is so corrosive that it is liable, as county special counsel James G. Kolts wrote in a 1992 report, to "turn any young, inexperienced man or woman into a cynical authoritarian ready to harass, intimidate, bully and physically punish any person who does not immediately follow orders."

Read entire article online at: http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-me-deputies25nov25,1,1384671.story?coll=la-headlines-frontpage

For a more in depth look at police brutality see my essay here.

Another good article from The Christian Science Monitor can be found here.

For those of you that are interested in what makes a Muslim Radical tick you will find this article published in Foreign Policy very interesting. I think this is worth taking a look at.

What Makes a Muslim Radical?
Published in FOREIGN POLICY
By John L. Esposito, Dalia Mogahed

Ask any foreign-policy expert how the West will know it is winning the war on terror, and the likely response will be, “When the Islamic world rejects radicalism.” But just who are Muslim radicals, and what fuels their fury? Every politician has a theory: Radicals are religious fundamentalists. They are poor. They are full of hopelessness and hate. But those theories are wrong.

Based on a new Gallup World Poll of more than 9,000 interviews in nine Muslim countries, we find that Muslim radicals have more in common with their moderate brethren than is often assumed. If the West wants to reach the extremists, and empower the moderate Muslim majority, it must first recognize who it’s up against.

Read entire article online at: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3637

I'm glad to see that military officers are finally speaking up. We need to investigate all of the key players in the Bush administration for war crimes. It's gotten real bad now. When human rights groups approach other countries about the use of torture those countries are starting to point to the United States as the example with comments like, "if the United States does something, it must be all right."

Well, it's not all right. It's against international law and we must put an end to it and bring those who have committed these crimes to justice.

Rumsfeld okayed abuses says former U.S. general

MADRID (Reuters) - Outgoing Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld authorized the mistreatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq the prison's former U.S. commander said in an interview on Saturday.

Former U.S. Army Brigadier General Janis Karpinski told Spain's El Pais newspaper she had seen a letter apparently signed by Rumsfeld which allowed civilian contractors to use techniques such as sleep deprivation during interrogation.

Karpinski, who ran the prison until early 2004, said she saw a memorandum signed by Rumsfeld detailing the use of harsh interrogation methods.

"The handwritten signature was above his printed name and in the same handwriting in the margin was written: "Make sure this is accomplished,"" she told Saturday's El Pais.

"The methods consisted of making prisoners stand for long periods, sleep deprivation ... playing music at full volume, having to sit in uncomfortably ... Rumsfeld authorized these specific techniques."

The Geneva Convention says prisoners of war should suffer "no physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion" to secure information.

"Prisoners of war who refuse to answer may not be threatened, insulted, or exposed to any unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind," the document states.

Read entire article online at: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061125/pl_nm/iraq_rumsfeld_dc_1

I just learned about this article. What a sad story.

Dog saves owner, dies saving cat

October 18, 2006 - 10:26AM

After a disabled woman's cat started a house fire, her specially trained dog came to the rescue, then died trying to help the cat still in the house.

Jamie Hanson said the 13-year-old dog named Jesse, a Labrador retriever and German shepherd mix, brought the phone so she could call 911 and also brought her artificial leg.

"She got me outside and then she heard the cat upstairs and she went up there to get the cat and she wouldn't come back to me," Hanson, 49, said at a news conference Monday at Aurora Sheboygan Memorial Medical Center where she was being treated for her injuries.

Read entire article online at: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2006/10/18/1160850962780.html

Why am I not surprised by this article? Big industry seems to be the one running this government. Read about it yourself here:

Pressure at OSHA to alter warning

Author of advisory on asbestos in brakes faces suspension for refusing to revise it

WASHINGTON // It took six years to get federal worker safety officials to issue warnings to auto mechanics that the brakes they're working on could contain lethal asbestos fibers. But it took only three weeks after the warnings were posted before a former top federal official with ties to the auto industry reportedly pushed to have them removed.

Read entire article online at: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/bal-te.osha20nov20,0,5836362.story

This article might sound a little off-the-wall but it sure sounds interesting. Give it a read and see what you think.

The cure for traffic chaos? Remove the signs, lines, lights.

By Mark Rice-Oxley Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

LONDON – It's the London you've always imagined. Black taxis and red double-decker buses jostle in thick traffic. Luxury cars purr at the lights. Motorbikes dart through the gaps while coaches and minibuses scramble for scarce parking slots.

All in all, it's hostile terrain for the lowly pedestrian, who is encouraged to avoid the street-level chaos on Exhibition Road by using a dingy underground walkway instead.

But all this could change under plans to bring a Dutch-inspired traffic revolution to London's Museumland neighborhood.

Annoyed at how their upscale neighborhood has been ruined by incessant traffic, local authorities are planning to unveil a radical solution Monday: remove the conventional insignia of the road - traffic lights, white lines, guardrails, sidewalks - and create a single "shared space" for everyone, motorized or not.

At first glance, the idea seems a little reckless. After all, it is only the presence of the crossing signals on Exhibition Road that seems to keep the bewildered, stray tourists from a nasty accident. And governments the world over have long since concluded that the safest way to avoid catastrophe on the roads is to segregate vehicles from pedestrians.

But the experience from Europe would suggest otherwise. The Netherlands in particular, has pioneered a completely new approach to traffic and public space.

And it's a method that is slowly starting to catch on elsewhere, in Denmark, Scandinavia, and now in Britain, which has already experimented over the past two years with various ways to come to grips with traffic jams. London, for instance, began in 2003 to charge motorists to enter the city center. And last year a new toll road was opened near Manchester.

Read intire article online at: http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0127/p01s03-woeu.html

I think this broadcast by National Public Radio is well worth listening to. Is history repeating itself? Have a listen at the link below.

Drawing Parallels Between Ancient Rome and the U.S. Today

Morning Edition, November 22, 2006 · In the second part of our series examining our perceptions of history, novelist Robert Harris speaks with Steve Inskeep about how the history of Rome is reflected in our modern-day world. Harris sees parallels between the time of Rome's transition from republican to imperial rule and the challenges the U.S. faces now.

Online at: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6523758&ft=1&f=1012

Now that everyone has finally realized that the war in Iraq is a disaster they are all jumping ship and blaming George Bush for the mess. I think there is enough blame for all of them to share. I also think it's time that the "Axis of Evil" (bush, chaney, rumsfeld) go on trial for war crimes.

War advocates, other conservatives say president mismanaged their vision

The Washington Post- The weekend after the statue of Saddam Hussein fell, Kenneth Adelman and a couple of other promoters of the Iraq war gathered at Vice President Cheney's residence to celebrate. The invasion had been the "cakewalk" Adelman predicted. Cheney and his guests raised their glasses, toasting President Bush and victory. "It was a euphoric moment," Adelman recalled.

Forty-three months later, the cakewalk looks more like a death march, and Adelman has broken with the Bush team. He had an angry falling-out with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld this fall. He and Cheney are no longer on speaking terms. And he believes that "the president is ultimately responsible" for what Adelman now calls "the debacle that was Iraq."

Read entire article at: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15773983/

Hamburgers to die for at US restaurant

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A restaurant in the southwestern US state of Arizona that proudly admits to trying to finish off its customers has introduced a new item on its menu -- the "quadruple bypass burger".

The burger at the "Heart Attack Grill" restaurant is stacked with four beef patties, cheese, onions, tomatoes and fried bacon, and weighs in at only 8,000 calories, more than three times what the human body needs in one day.

Read the entire article at: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20061117/od_afp/afplifestyleusfood_061117233519

Here's an image from their website:

I hate to say it but I feel that our own government has become the biggest enemy to democracy there is in this world.  America should be ashamed of its self for allowing things to get to this point.  Where is the justice?  This could happen to you or me and we could do nothing.  They can just take you away in the middle of the night and make you disaper to some secret prison with no defense or other recourse.  It just keeps getting worse.  Check this out:

Report: Gitmo detainees denied witnesses

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - The U.S. military called no witnesses, withheld evidence from detainees and usually reached a decision within a day as it determined that hundreds of men detained at Guantanamo Bay were "enemy combatants," according to a new report.

Read entire article online at:  http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061117/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/guantanamo_combatant_hearings_3

And then there's this:

US: Immigrants may be held indefinitely

WASHINGTNO, (AP)  - Immigrants arrested in the United States may be held indefinitely on suspicion of terrorism and may not challenge their imprisonment in civilian courts, the Bush administration said Monday, opening a new legal front in the fight over the rights of detainees.

Read entire article online at: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061114/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/detainees_lawsuits_16

This next one is unconstitutional.   But I guess the constitution hasn’t stopped Bush yet so why should it now.

Administration: Detainees Have No Rights

The Bush administration said Monday that Guantanamo Bay prisoners have no right to challenge their detentions in civilian courts and that lawsuits by hundreds of detainees should be dismissed.

Read entire article online at: http://asia.news.yahoo.com/061113/ap/d8lcd5a00.html

At least most Americans don't seem to support Bushes policies at Guantanamo.

Poll: Most U.S. Voters Say Guantanamo Bay Prisoners Deserve Legal Rights

WASHINGTON, Nov. 13 /PRNewswire/ -- Nearly 60% of voters in the recent U.S. national elections believe the prisoners being held in Guantanamo Bay should either be granted a hearing before an independent judge or be released to their home countries, and fewer than 20% of those polled believe that the detainees should be held indefinitely. These results reflect the post-election views of 800 actual voters surveyed immediately following the election by the polling company, a Washington, DC-based opinion-research firm.

Read entire article online at: http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/061113/dcm056.html?.v=56

If these prisoners are terrorist they should be tried and punished.  But, they must have the same rights as you and I or the whole process is a sham.

Why am I not surprised that Bush would assign the fox to guard the hen house.  Contraception and abortion are important tools in family-planning.  It's time to get religion out of government.

Contraception, abortion foe to head family-planning office

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration, to the consternation of its critics, has picked the medical director of an organization that opposes premarital sex, contraception and abortion to lead the office that oversees federally funded teen pregnancy, family planning and abstinence programs.

Read the entire article online at:  http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/11/17/family.planning.ap/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

As if that wasn't enough we have this:

Abstinence education assessment lacking

WASHINGTON (AP)- Most no-sex-before-marriage programs escape the type of scientific scrutiny required to show if they work, a government watchdog said Thursday in a report on the federally funded abstinence education efforts.

Read the entire article online at:  http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061116/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/abstinence_education_1

Well, it looks like the fight in Congress has started.  I hope the Democrats stand their ground and block every rightwing judge bush tries to force on the American people.  It's time to take off the gloves and do what ever it takes to get our country back on track.

Democrats warned not to block judges

WASHINGTON, (AP) - The Senate's next Republican leader issued a veiled threat to block action on legislation if Democrats refuse to allow confirmation votes on President Bush's  troubled judicial nominations.

Read entire article online at:  http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061118/ap_on_go_co/judges_filibusters_2

I just saw this in the news on USA Today:

U.S. military plans new compound at Guantanamo to hold war-crimes trials

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — The U.S. military on Friday said it plans to build a $125 million compound at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base where it hopes to hold war-crimes trials for terror suspects by the middle of next year.

See the article online at: http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-11-17-guantanamo_x.htm?csp=34

I think the first war-crimes trials to be held at this new facility should be for George Bush, Dick Chaney, and Donald Rumsfeld. They should be tried for falsely leading the United States into an unjust war in Iraq and the killing of hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women, and children as a result of this war. We have been feed nothing but lies about Iraq to get us into this war and it's time to do something about it.

What is this world comming to. Check out this news story from Reuters on November 17, 2006:

Dutch to ban wearing of Muslim burqa in public

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - The Dutch government agreed on Friday a total ban on the wearing of burqas and other Muslim face veils in public, justifying the move on security grounds.

Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk will now draw up legislation which will result in the Netherlands, once one of Europe's most easy-going nations, imposing some of the continent's toughest laws against concealing the face.

"The cabinet finds it undesirable that garments covering the face -- including the burqa -- should be worn in public in view of public order, (and) the security and protection of fellow citizens," the Dutch Justice Ministry said in a statement.

See the entire article online at: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061117/ts_nm/dutch_burqa_ban_dc_2

Let's see...... How many terror attacks have been committed by burqa wearing Muslim women in the Netherlands? None! I think this is just another religiously motivated attack against Muslims.