I raised the wall, and I will be the one to knock it down
Editorial
Another Test for Habeas Corpus
One of the dismal hallmarks of the Bush administration’s conduct of the war on terror has been its obsession with avoiding outside scrutiny of its actions, including by the federal courts. In particular, it has attacked habeas corpus, the guarantee that prisoners can challenge their confinement before a judge. The administration is doing so again in an important Supreme Court case concerning the habeas rights of American citizens held abroad. The justices should rule that the detainees have a right to review by a United States court.
Every few days over the next several months I will be posting installments of a novel about life, death, war and politics in America since 9/11. Through the Darkest of Nights is a story of hope, reflection, determination, and redemption. It is a testament to the progressive values we all believe in, have always defended, and always will defend no matter how long this darkness lasts.
All installments are available for reading here on my page, and also here on Docudharma’s Fiction Page, where refuge from politicians, blogging overload, and one BushCo outrage after another can always be found.
This means that American citizens have lost Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, and Freedom of Religion.
Yesterday I asked “What would Jefferson and Franklin do?” – say? think? regarding these perilous times in a diary called “You Can’t Be Serious”. Some respondents posted pictures of frogs, cake, horse faces and nose picking to demonstrate their cheer and suggested that we all need a good laugh, some entertainment. Some cherry-picked quotes to prove that Franklin, and Jefferson were really jolly sorts.
We are taught to remember these inventors as kite-flyer and gentleman farmer, so some of that is true. But a further look afield yields riches.
Franklin considered the suspension of rights and values very carefully. What he had to say about that is in Franklin’s own essay, below the fold. As you read it, you will see now closely his times were like our own. (Emphasis is added by me re Habeas Corpus, freedom of speech and freedom of religion.)
Eric Larsen tells us of the dangers we face in this magnificent three-part essay – with which, I think, the Framers would agree.
As you may know, the First Amendment of the Constitution has virtually been suspended. Among other things, this means that Americans no longer have Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Religion.
Yesterday I asked “What would Jefferson and Franklin do?” regarding these perilous times in an essay, “You Can’t Be Serious”.
Some respondents presented cherry-picked quotes to demonstrate that Franklin, and Jefferson, were really jolly sorts. But, as is so often the case with quickly provided internet responses, they didn’t do their homework.
Neena has been talking up a storm, going on for a while now about politics, religion, life, death, and the universe, but I can’t really keep up with her, since the alcohol’s sort of slowed every reflex I have. Except, so far, the impulse that keeps me from looking completely stupid, but I’m not so sure how long that one can hold out either, mostly because of her weirdly hypnotic eyes. She has no pupils; her eyes are simply two enormous black orbs in the middle of a dark-chocolate face unframed by the luscious blue-black tresses currently held back in a ponytail. I’m trying to imagine what she’d look like with it all let down when she starts in on the massive curfew we’re all currently violating with extreme prejudice.
Reminder more or less that May 1 is the International Worker’s Day and early American labor rights protesters initiated it. It’s an American tradition – not a Communist tradition. And it’s a pagan tradition from the dawn of time.
I hope you all had a great May Day. As I post this it’s still May 1 from the CDT zone westward. For those who saw the original post, you can just skip it or get refreshed. For those who haven’t seen it, it has some interesting background on the history of the day.
Herewith, a recycled essay:
May 1.
A lot of Americans have apparently been brainwashed during their formative years. Especially the crowd over at the site that shall not be named. The vast majority associate the first day of the month of May as a Soviet Communist celebration day. Then again a sizable number of Uhmericans think Saddam Hussein was complicit in the 9/11 atrocities. Oh, and the wiretapping started after 9/11 and not like late February or early March of 2001.
May first was a holiday before there was a May. It’s a cross-quarter day. That means it falls about halfway between a solstice and an equinox. Back before keyboards, laser mice and high-speed internet connections people used to notice these things. The only thing that emitted light, besides fire, was in the sky. You can check out the sky anytime. Just click here. Cool, huh? And you didn’t have to let go of your mouse to do it.
So back in the days of stone knives and bearskins, and I’m not talking about the Star Trek episode where Spock and McCoy have to build a time-machine thingie with 1930s tech, or even the dark ages of eight bit processors, RAM limits of 65536 bytes and machine code, I’m talking real stone and real bear. Hell, sabre-tooth tiger and wooly mammoth times. Back when chipped flint was high-tech. In the time of neo-pagans (not to be confused with the neopaganists of today).
Together with the solstices and equinoxes (Yule, Ostara, Midsummer, and Mabon), these form the eight solar holidays in the neopagan wheel of the year. They are often celebrated on the evening before the listed date, since traditionally the new day was considered to begin at sunset rather than at midnight.
Festival name Date Sun’s Position
Samhain 1 Nov (alt. 5-10 Nov) ? 15° ?
Imbolc 2 Feb (alt. 2-7 Feb) ? 15° ?
Beltane 1 May (alt. 4-10 May) ? 15° ?
Lughnasadh 1 Aug (alt. 3-10 Aug) ? 15° ?
There are Christian and secular holidays that correspond roughly with each of these four, and some argue that historically they originated as adaptations of the pagan holidays, although the matter is not agreed upon. The corresponding holidays are:
* St.Brigids Day (1 Feb), Groundhog Day (2 Feb), and Candlemas (2 or 15 Feb)
* Walpurgis Night (30 Apr) and May Day (1 May)
* Lammas (1 Aug)
* Halloween (31 Oct), All Saints (1 Nov), and All Souls’ Day (2 Nov)
Groundhog Day is celebrated in North America. It is said that if a groundhog comes out of his hole on 2 February and sees his shadow (that is, if the weather is good), there will be six more weeks of winter. February 2nd marks the end of the short days of winter. Because average temperatures lag behind day length by several weeks, it is (hopefully) the beginning of the end of winter cold.
It’s been Groundhog Day in Iraq for five years now. But who’s counting?
ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE – White House officials waged an extraordinary campaign during an 11-hour Air Force One flight to put a positive spin on the outcome of Sunday’s summit talks between President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Four times on the long flight back to Washington from Sochi, Russia, Bush aides trooped back to the press cabin to make the case that the summit had turned out well, particularly on missile defenses.
It was the heaviest lobbying campaign veteran reporters could recall ever occurring on the president’s plane. Press accounts of the summit had been sent to Bush’s plane and administration officials thought they were too negative. Clearly, Bush’s aides were disappointed.
Because of course, it’s only the lipstick that matters.
We’re going to hear a lot of crap in the next week out of the Administration and their spinners, and robots like Cokie are going to lap it up because, you know, “Americans would prefer to win.” That’s just an ignorant and dismissive remark, and it sadly represents the depth of understanding of the tragedy in Iraq inside The Village. Of course, Cokie’s just repeating what “real Americans” think; that it happens to line up with establishment opinion and helps provide cover for their epic mistake of going along with the initial invasion is just a nice perk.
On the best of days, John McCain’s fanboys rival 12 year old girls screaming themselves faint in the front row of a Jonas Brothers concert, but this rush to ensure that that mean Barack Obama didn’t “get away” with using McCain’s own words against him on the stump was a profile in Xtreme Flyboy-love. Once again, McCain is excused for saying something completely shocking because his scribbling sycophants are sure he “didn’t really mean it.” One can only imagine what it would be like if all candidates were given the benefit of the doubt on such matters.(I’m sorry Jay, but this proves once again that they have not learned any lessons from their irresponsible behavior of the past few years.)
Needless to say, these serious and accomplished political journalists are only focusing on these stupid and trivial matters because this is what the Regular Folk care about. They speak for the Regular People, and what the Regular People care about is not Iraq or the looming recession or health care or lobbyist control of our government or anything that would strain the brain of these reporters. What those nice little Regular Folk care about is whether Obama is Regular Folk just like them, whether he can bowl and wants to gorge himself with junk food.
Our nation’s coddled, insulated journalist class reaches these conclusions about what Regular Folk think using the most self-referential, self-absorbed thought process imaginable. The proof that the Regular People are interested in these things is that… the journalists themselves chatter about it endlessly.
According to the latest wire reports, the verdict is in: even (and perhaps especially) he who would be the next Bush doesn’t know crap about Iran. This is unfortunate; one would think the disastrous invasion of Mesopotamia would’ve reminded us that we’re talking about a region of the world that breaks empires as a matter of course.
Tonight’s historiorant seeks to address just one of the lessons that needn’t have cost us 4000+ of our own soldiers’ lives to learn: that failing to accurately assess an enemy’s capabilities frequently plays a major role in victories and defeats in Southwest Asia. Marcus Licinius Crassus didn’t appreciate that fact, nor did Hulagu Khan centuries later. Join in the Cave of the Moonbat, and we’ll see if we can’t help to educate our misguided Republican brethren before they foist yet another hotheaded dumbass upon the American citizenry – and hopefully forestall our getting enmeshed in yet another Carrhae, Ain Jalut, or Chaldiran.
There are two ways to put hyperlinks in your articles or comments.
These examples will display your link as blue colored clickable hyperlink text.
1) Bracket method. SoapBlox sites like this one (& Scoop sites like DailyKos) provide an easy shorthand method.
To embed a hyperlink, type both the URL and the text you want to display as a link, enclosed in square brackets, and separate them with at least one space.
2) HTML method. Other sites require HTML tags to display a hyperlink. This method will also work here. The HTML code begins with the <A HREF=> tag and ends with the </A> tag as shown below. The URL of the page you are linking to should be included in quotes immediately after <A HREF=>. The text that you want to appear in the link should be between the <A HREF=> and </A> tags.
To italicize, surround the text you want to italicize with <i> on the left and </i> on the right.
To bold, surround the text you want in bold with <b> on the left and </b> on the right.
To underline, surround the text you want underlined with <u> on the left and </u> on the right.
To blockquote, surround the text you want to blockquote with <blockquote> on the left and </blockquote> on the right.
To strike out text with a line through it, surround the text you want to strike out with <strike> on the left and </strike> on the right.
To center text on a page, surround the text you want to center with <center> on the left and </center> on the right.
To create a gray divider line in your article, like the gray lines between the sections of this Formatting Tips page, place an <hr> tag where you want the gray line to appear. The <hr> tag can be used by itself and is one of the few HTML tags that does not require a closing </hr> tag.
To create a line feed use a <br> tag. You can use two <br> tags in succession (<br><br>) to create a blank line, or multiple <br> tags in succession to create multiple blank lines. Like <hr> tags, <br> tags do not require closing </br> tags.
— POSTING PICTURES —
To post a picture in your article, you’ll need the URL (web address) of the picture.
It’s best practice to upload pictures to Flickr or Photobucket or other image hosts rather than linking directly to a picture on someone else’s site (aka Hot Linking). The image hosts make it easy to copy & paste the URLs of the pictures into your comment or essay. Below each picture you will find the HTML code to include with your post. There will be a box that says “copy/paste this code to your website” or something to that effect.
Also be aware of copyright issues. If you use someone else’s picture, provide a link to the page you found it on, if possible.
The following line of code will display a picture in your article. Replace the URL in this example with the URL of the picture you want to display, and adjust the width to your preference (use “preview” to make adjustments). The height will be auto-calculated proportionally – you do not need to specify it.
You can set the “align” parameter to “left” or “right”, to display your picture on either side of the article page.
NOTE: Please don’t post pictures wider than 500px. Images larger than 500px wide may be removed by Site Admins as they may adversely affect some browser displays.
— WRAPPING TEXT AROUND PICTURES —
TO MAKE YOUR ARTICLE TEXT “WRAP”, (display BESIDE and BELOW your picture), begin typing the text of your article immediately following the image code:
<img src="http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u65/Hillobama.jpg” width="200" align=”left”>START TYPING YOUR ARTICLE TEXT HERE…..
TO CENTER YOUR PICTURE and display your article text BELOW it, REMOVE the “align” parameter from the image code line, and enclose the entire image code line in center tags:
YouTube videos are the most popular video format but there are others that will allow you to embed as well. When you find a YouTube video that you’d like to post, obtain the “embed” code for that video by clicking on the YouTube logo at the bottom right corner of the video which will take you to the YouTube page for that video. Or click on “Menu” in the lower right corner of the video and it will display the embed code for you in the video image.
To the right of the video on the YouTube page you’ll see a box with the title “embed” beside it. Copy the code from that box and paste it into your essay or comment.
For example, most if not all of Keith Olbermann’s “Special Comments” on the MSNBC Countdown program are available at YouTube normally within a day or so of broadcast.
There is a search box at YouTube to help you find videos by searching by name or subject or keyword.
Here is Olbermann’s Special Comment on July 03, 2007 calling on George W. Bush to resign:
The “embed” code for that video (available by clicking the YouTube logo) looks like this, and if pasted into your article will display the video aligned against the left margin, as above:
To post a video in your article centered on the page, simply enclose the “embed” code in center tags (the same as centering pictures, as described above):
Posting that code in your article will display the video centered on the page:
You can also shrink videos by removing the height parameter in both places where it appears in the code and setting the width to a smaller amount of pixels.
