The Reagans

[gldstwmn]

Originally posted by strandinthewind

But, you do agree the Pres. has the right to visit the troops?

He can fly all the way to Iraq, cameras a blazin' but he can't go to one funeral here? No cameras there.

[dissention]

Originally posted by gldstwmn
He can fly all the way to Iraq, cameras a blazin' but he can't go to one funeral here? No cameras there.

Good point.

[strandinthewind]

Originally posted by gldstwmn
He can fly all the way to Iraq, cameras a blazin' but he can't go to one funeral here? No cameras there.

I agree - but Presidents do not if my memory is correct ever go to the funerals of KIA's.

[strandinthewind]

Originally posted by gldstwmn
Maybe. How do we know since they have never been given the opportunity to have a hearing in open court and as it stands now they won't get that opportunity?

Agreed, but they were captured in battle. Also and interestingly, because they are not U.S. citizens, no Const. right to counsel attaches. Rather, that right would have to come from the Geneva convention, which they also do not qualify under.

I say let them have the counsel and see where it goes.

[gldstwmn]

Originally posted by strandinthewind
Agreed, but they were captured in battle.

My understanding was that some, but not all of them were captured in battle.

[strandinthewind]

Originally posted by gldstwmn
My understanding was that some, but not all of them were captured in battle.

On a related topic, I know some of the detainees have been let go, returned, etc. I wonder what will happen with the others. I mean in theory once the Afgan govt. is set (is it set yet?), they should go there to be tried.

[gldstwmn]

http://www.fair.org/activism/hitler-ads.html

When Are Nazi Comparisons Deplorable?
For Fox News, only when Republicans are the target

January 16, 2004

The controversy over comparisons between George W. Bush and Adolf Hitler in two ads submitted to the anti-Bush ad contest run by the online activist group MoveOn.org says less about the state of left discourse than it does about the double standards at Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation.

News Corp's Fox News Channel started the controversy on January 4, airing Republican National Committee chair Ed Gillespie's complaint about the Bush/Hitler comparison. "That's the kind of tactics we're seeing on the left today in support of these Democratic presidential candidates," Gillespie charged, calling such tactics "despicable."

The whole next day (1/5/04), this was a major story on Fox News Channel. John Gibson asked, "What about the hating Bush movement, the MoveOn.org and George Soros sponsoring these ads that compare Bush to Hitler?"--before being corrected that the ads were not sponsored by MoveOn (or Soros, a funder of the group), and were taken down in response to complaints.

Sean Hannity accused a guest: "You guys on the left are going so far over the cliff. You're making comparisons to the president and Adolf Hitler." Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway said on Hannity's show, "This is the hateful, vitriolic rhetoric that has become the Howard Dean Democratic Party." Bill O'Reilly cited the ads as evidence that "right now in America the Democratic party is being held captive by the far, far left."

It should be noted that however hyperbolic, comparisons to Hitler and fascism are not unknown in the American political debate. Rush Limbaugh has routinely called women's rights advocates "femi-Nazis," and references to "Hitlery Clinton" are a staple of right-wing talk radio. Republican power-broker Grover Norquist on NPR (10/2/03) compared inheritance taxes to the Holocaust.

Closer to home for Fox News, on the very same day that Gibson, Hannity and O'Reilly were talking about the Hitler/Bush comparison as evidence of the left's extremism, a column ran in the New York Post that described Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean as a follower of Josef Goebbels, referred to him as "Herr Howie," accused him of "looking for his Leni Riefenstahl," called his supporters "the Internet Gestapo" and compared them to "Hitler's brownshirts."

The New York Post, like Fox News Channel, is part of News Corporation, Rupert Murdoch's conservative media empire. And this piece wasn't just put up on the Post's website as part of a contest--it was written by a right-wing commentator who frequently appears in the Post's pages, Ralph Peters, and selected for the op-ed page by the Post's own editors. So it's more than a little embarrassing that these blatant Nazi comparisons were being made in the Post while the paper's corporate sibling was denouncing such comparisons as a sign of derangement.

So what did the Murdoch organization do? Fox appears to have completely ignored the Post's own Nazi analogies--there's no reference to the column whatsoever in the cable channel's transcripts. And the New York Post seems to have sent the column down the memory hole--clicking on a link that used to go to Peters' story gives you a "page not found" message, and the text isn't found in the Nexis media database. (Ironically, in light of this Orwellian disappearing act, the column also compared Dean to Big Brother.)

In the interview that started the brouhaha, the RNC's Gillespie was asked if he would oppose similar attacks on Democrats. He replied: "If they stoop to the kind of despicable tactic like morphing a candidate into Adolf Hitler, yes, absolutely, I will tell you right here on the air. Have me back if any organization does that, I would repudiate it."

The same organization that interviewed him did that, through another of its branches, the very next day. So far, Fox News hasn't had him back on to condemn the New York Post.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

ACTION: Please ask the New York Post whether it stands by the column it published describing Howard Dean as a Nazi, or if it owes Dean an apology. And ask Fox News Channel why they didn't criticize that column, even though its hosts repeatedly condemned such analogies that same day--when they involved George W. Bush.

CONTACT:
Fox News Channel
1211 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10036
Phone: 1-888-369-4762
[email protected]


New York Post
1211 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 100036
Phone: 1-212-930-8000
[email protected]

[dissention]

I'm writing a letter right now. That should be all of the confirmation y'all need that I'm an extreme left-loony.

It's is hypocritical for the right to chastize us for making the comparison, when they did the same with Clinton. Of course, it's carried over to the Democratic candidates, but when it's said of Bush, we're supposedly pigs and loonies.

PS: What do you think of Pickering's appointment? He's a pig if I've ever seen one and Bush should be ashamed.

[gldstwmn]

Originally posted by dissention
I'm writing a letter right now. That should be all of the confirmation y'all need that I'm an extreme left-loony.

It's is hypocritical for the right to chastize us for making the comparison, when they did the same with Clinton. Of course, it's carried over to the Democratic candidates, but when it's said of Bush, we're supposedly pigs and loonies.

PS: What do you think of Pickering's appointment? He's a pig if I've ever seen one and Bush should be ashamed.

Segragationist. Don't even get me started on the MLK thing. He should have just laid a plastic turkey down. What's it gonna take for people to wake up and realize how dangerous Bush is?

[strandinthewind]

Originally posted by gldstwmn
Segragationist. Don't even get me started on the MLK thing. He should have just laid a plastic turkey down. What's it gonna take for people to wake up and realize how dangerous Bush is?

I think unless they are killing millions in a concentration camp and seeking to establish one race as the dominant race, it is wrong and factually incorrect to make the comparison even in hyperbole to Hitler no matter who makes it or about whom it is made

Pickering is interesting to me. Yes, he has a history of racial badness. However, all indicators reflect that the really bad stuff was awhile ago, which most Southern politicians of that age also can claim. Can people change? Who knows? Many people around him indicate he is not a racist. But, I still stretch for the definition of that word as so many have a different one, e.g., as I have mentioned, I think Affirmative Action is racist Also, I think many people call him anti-pro choice, but that also is a subjective term. I mean I think if we want parents to be accountable for their kids, then an underage girl in almost all instances should be required to get parental consent before having an abortion - or at least her parents should be told about the abortion and take consent out of the picture. That in many peoples' opinions is the very definition of anti pro choice and I am the anti-Christ for saying it

Personally, from what I have read Pickering is not that bad considering the other extremist ones out there they could have picked. But, the Fith Cir. historically is a very, very significant court for new civil rights and Con. Law cases.

So, I guess we have a year to see if the leopard has changed his spots. As for W's appointment of him - it was perfectly legal from what I understand and I am pretty sure other Presidents have done it (although I am too lazy to look it up ).

[strandinthewind]

Here is an IMO fair and balanced article from Fox news on the Pickering recess appointment.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,108734,00.html

[dissention]

Originally posted by gldstwmn
Segragationist. Don't even get me started on the MLK thing. He should have just laid a plastic turkey down. What's it gonna take for people to wake up and realize how dangerous Bush is?

He's just trying to get the black vote. The whole MLK visit was a joke and an excuse for a photo-op, IMO. I think it's a salp in the face to African Americans to visit MLK grave and a day later, appoint a segregationist to a high power job. Jess Jackson was livid on TV last night about it.

[gldstwmn]

Originally posted by dissention
He's just trying to get the black vote. The whole MLK visit was a joke and an excuse for a photo-op, IMO. I think it's a salp in the face to African Americans to visit MLK grave and a day later, appoint a segregationist to a high power job. Jess Jackson was livid on TV last night about it.

He just happened to pick up a few mil in campaign contributions later in the day at a fundraiser, all at the taxpayers expense of course. What a guy.

[gldstwmn]

Originally posted by strandinthewind
As for W's appointment of him - it was perfectly legal from what I understand and I am pretty sure other Presidents have done it (although I am too lazy to look it up ).

Yes it is legal but when you put it with all of Bush's other sneaky moves, it smells. What about when he appointed 12 people while Congress was out during Christmas and when he snuck through Patriot II while no one was looking on the same day Saddam wasn't captured and...and... Where are the checks and balances? He's misusuing the power of the presidency.

http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20040116.html

The U.S. Supreme Court and The Imperial Presidency
How President Bush Is Testing the Limits of His Presidential Powers
By JOHN W. DEAN

[gldstwmn]

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17540

Green Party "Terrorist" Not Allowed to Fly

By Frederick Sweet, Intervention Magazine
January 12, 2004

Art dealer Doug Stuber, who ran Ralph Nader's Green Party presidential campaign in North Carolina in 2000, was pulled out of an airline boarding line and grounded this past holiday season. He was about to make an important trip to Prague to gather artists for Henry James Art in Raleigh, N.C., when he was told (with ticket in hand) that he was not allowed to fly out that day.


When he asked why not, he was told at Raleigh-Durham airport that because of the sniper attacks, no Greens were allowed to fly overseas on that day. The next morning he returned, and instead of paying $670 round trip, was forced into a $2,600 "same day" air fare. But it's what happened to Stuber during the next 24 hours that is even more disturbing.


Stuber arrived at the airport at 6 a.m. and his first flight wasn't due out until nearly six hours later. He had plenty of time. At exactly 10:52 in the morning, just before boarding was to begin, he was approached by police officer Stanley (the same policeman who ushered him out of the airport the day before), who said that he "wanted to talk" to him. Stuber went with the police officer, but reminded him that no one had said he couldn't fly, and that his flight was about to leave.


Officer Stanley took Stuber into a room and questioned him for an hour. Around noon, Stanley had introduced him to two Secret Service agents. The agents took full eye-open pictures of Stuber with a digital camera. Then they asked him details about his family, where he lived, who he ever knew, what the Greens are up to, and other questions.


At one point during his interrogation, Stuber asked if they really believed the Greens were equal to al Qaeda. Then they showed him a Justice Department document that actually shows the Greens as likely terrorists – just as likely as al Qaeda members. Stuber was released just before 1 PM, so he still had time to catch the later flight.


The agents walked Stuber to the Delta counter and asked that he be given tickets for the flight so that he could make his connections. The airline official promptly printed tickets, which relieved Stuber, who assumed that the Secret Service hadn't stopped him from flying. Wrong! By the time Stuber was about to board, officer Stanley once again ushered him out the door and told him: "Just go to Greensboro, where they don't know you, and be totally quiet about politics, and you can make it to Europe that way."


In Greensboro, after Stuber showed his passport he was told that he could not fly overseas or domestically. Undeterred, he next traveled an hour-and-a-half to Charlotte. In Charlotte, the same thing happened. Then Stuber drove three hours to his home after 43 hours of trying to catch a flight.


Stuber said he could only conclude that the Greens, whose values include nonviolence, social justice, etc., are now labeled terrorists by the Ashcroft-led Justice Department.


Questions about how one gets on a no-fly list creates questions about how to get off it. This is a classic Catch-22 situation. The Transportation Security Agency says it compiles the list from names provided by other agencies, but it has no procedure for correcting a problem. Aggrieved parties would have to go to the agency that first reported their names. But for security reasons, the TSA won't disclose which agency put someone on the no-fly list.