Obama swung to the right! No, he didn't! Blah blah blah blah blah.
Obama has the same opinion has Feingold! Great!
No. Bad. They're both wrong.
Here's the real point: The passage of the so-called "Partial Birth Abortion Ban" was a loss for women's reproductive rights and a win for the Overtoning strategies of the right-wing, anti-women's rights folks.
The fact that Dems voted against it only because it didn't have a health exception for the woman also represents a victory for anti women's rights activists, because it shows that Ds bought into the basic "logic" of the need for such a ban.
They should have voted against it outright and absolutely, because it is unnecessary legislation and was just another piece of anti-abortion and anti-women's rights propaganda, and part of the multifaceted approach of the rightwing pro-misogyny forces.
The pragmatists, so-called, recognize a strategic need for this move to the middle and, trusting Obama, applaud it; the purists so-called, wonder what we're going to win, if moving to the middle is needed to win.
For my part, I'm a pragmatic purist, an idealistic pragmatist, always concerned about falling into what the great writer Walter Benjamin called "left melancholy"--his take, I suppose, on the ways in which "the perfect is the enemy of the good."
The call for justice should never cease. While we hold slim hope of justice being done and BushCo and all the participants in the torture policy being held accountable, the call for justice should never fall silent.
The Center for Constitutional Rights keeps up the good fight, representing four former Abu Ghraib detainees in their suits against military contractors:
Four former Abu Ghraib detainees who were wrongly imprisoned, tortured and later released without charge are suing two U.S. military contractor corporations and three individual contractors, according to four separate lawsuits being filed today by their U.S. legal team.
A Saturday morning quickie. Just read this article in the International Herald Tribune: U.S. and EU near deal on sharing data and thought in light of the FISA news here, it might be of particular interest.
The United States and the European Union are nearing completion of an agreement that would allow law enforcement and security agencies to obtain private information - including credit card transactions, travel histories and Internet browsing habits - about people on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.
WASHINGTON — In 2002, as evidence of prisoner mistreatment at Guantánamo Bay began to mount, Federal Bureau of Investigation agents at the base created a "war crimes file" to document accusations against American military personnel, but were eventually ordered to close down the file, a Justice Department report revealed Tuesday.
BushCo are masters at trying to legitimize illegality. It is their terrifying, unjust, enraging M.O. We see it at home, and abroad, in the conduct of this so-called GWOT. It is S.O.P.
They create legal limbo for all kinds of our fellow human beings, most innocent of any crime. GITMO is a terrible, shocking example of being in and out of the law.
Earlier today, Brainwrap put up a diary sadly announcing that s/he would be unable to use the registration that had been purchased for Netroots Nation, and wanted to sell it to someone at the discounted, earlybird price of $175. Within minutes, there was a taker and everything worked out very well.
That diary got me thinking about NN and how much I'm looking forward to it. yK last year was one of the best experiences I've had and I look forward to seeing everyone again and meeting new people I didn't meet last year. So here's a Roll Call diary. Are you coming to NN? Do you mean to, but haven't registered yet? Well, register now!
The convention is very expensive this year, however, even more so than last year, and that is very concerning. Currently the registration is $375, but it will go up to the full price of $450. Yowza! I've got a suggestion after the jump. Don't know how feasible it is, but maybe ... ?
KHARTOUM (Reuters) - A Darfur rebel commander said on Saturday his JEM group had entered Khartoum and was aiming to take power in Sudan.
Khartoum was placed under an overnight curfew after fighting in the west of the capital on Saturday. It would be the first time a rebel group has entered Khartoum ...
The Darfur Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) rebels said they had taken control of Omdurman which lies on the opposite bank of the River Nile from Khartoum.
"We are now trying to control Khartoum. God willing we will take power, it's just a matter of time," senior JEM commander Abdel Aziz el-Nur Ashr told Reuters by telephone.
"We have support from inside Khartoum even from within the armed forces."
We all know that Burma is in a terrible crisis because of the devastation of Cyclone Nargis. Tens of thousands are confirmed dead. It may be hundreds of thousands. Millions are displaced and at risk of death due to lack of clean water and food. The first reports of cholera are coming.
Well, our primary campaign season is almost, thankfully, over. There is, of course, an efflorescence of diaries devoted to analyzing the end game. Some very interesting, some very funny, some probably better left as a comment in a diary or just not posted at all. :)
But there is some great and important work being done here that is scrolling south. One of my favorite things about being involved in this delicious, crazy-making, thought-provoking, wonderful, puzzlement-inducing, glorious community, is being a part of Diary Rescue.
Yes, we are thrilled that our long and increasingly ugly primary process is drawing to a close, and that the prospect of a unified and strong Democratic party is increasingly possible and likely. We are thrilled to be on the verge of a major electoral victory in November.
But isn't part of what defines us as Democrats and progressives, lefties of various stripes, that we exit a narrow American exceptionalist view of world, that we understand all of our strengths and weaknesses in a global context?
The Committee to Protect Journalists is an independent non-profit organization devoted to protecting freedom of the press worldwide. Without freedom of the press, there can be no freedom for citizens, no true democracy.
We decry the erosion of our free press here, an erosion unfortunately perpetrated by the willing complicity of the media with the government. Here, the press has moved further and further away from its true task and responsibility--to animate our democracy with truthful reporting and penetrating analyses. Now the press for the most part seems to just be another corporation with something to sell.
In many parts of the world, however, journalists struggle to fulfill the true responsibilities of the free press--they struggle to exercise freedom in situations of true governmental repression, open and covert, and they even lose their lives for it.
From the NY Times: Letters Give C.I.A. Tactics a Legal Rationale: In response to a congressional request, the Department of Justice has written a letter claiming that it is sometimes legal to torture. Well, the NY Times hesitates to use the actual word T.O.R.T.U.R.E. Here's how they say it, you know, in language that befits the grey lady. Ahem.
The Justice Department has told Congress that American intelligence operatives attempting to thwart terrorist attacks can legally use interrogation methods that might otherwise be prohibited under international law.
"Otherwise be prohibited under international law." Translation: Illegal.
A wise young woman whom I've never met, spoken with, or corresponded with, but whom I feel like I know, once said: "All you have to do to qualify for human rights is be human." In those 13 words, she elegantly summed up both the ultimate meaning of the claim for human rights and the origin of their breach. The very articulation of human rights traces their prior transgression. Without humans wronged, there is no need for a claim of human rights
The claim for human rights is a simple proposition: "I am human." But this claim depends upon recognition and accord. The one who violates the rights of the other does so precisely because this claim of humanity is not recognized or falls on deaf ears.
Thus the paradox of human rights: There where they need to be asserted, they are precisely denied. When I most need to say "I am human," I cannot. I need you to say my I, the I that is being violated, negated, erased.
"For the first time, the CIA has acknowledged that extensive records exist relating to its use of enforced disappearances and secret prisons," said Curt Goering, AIUSA senior deputy executive director. "Given what we already know about documents written by Bush administration officials trying to justify torture and other human rights crimes, one does not need a fertile imagination to conclude that the real reason for refusing to disclose these documents has more to do with avoiding disclosure of criminal activity than national security."
Celebrate it. I know, I know, everyday is 420, but today it is, uh, like, really 4/20, man. And it's a full moon too. So light 'em up, listen to this tune and join me after the jump.
Embedding--great for videoclips, not so much for journalists or critical thinkers.
Unembed yourself.
Don't completely identify with the representations that you most prefer.
Keep one foot out.
One of the difficulties with this critical distancing, or ironic stance, necessary, imho, for critical thinking, is that it is in tension with the activist need to present unalloyed support for whatever candidate or cause.
Master Thomas at length said he would stand it no longer. I had lived with him nine months, during which time he had given me a number of severe whippings, all to no good purpose. He resolved to put me out, as he said, to be broken; and, for this purpose, he let me for one year to a man named Edward Covey. Mr. Covey was a poor man, a farm-renter. He rented the place upon which he lived, as also the hands with which he tilled it. Mr. Covey had acquired a very high reputation for breaking young slaves, and this reputation was of immense value to him ... Added to the natural good qualities of Mr. Covey, he was a professor of religion--a pious soul--a member and a class-leader in the Methodist church. All of this added weight to his reputation as a "nigger-breaker." I was aware of all the facts, having been made acquainted with them by a young man who had lived there. I nevertheless made the change gladly; for I was sure of getting enough to eat, which is not the smallest consideration to a hungry man.
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
We all know that Burma is in a terrible crisis because of the 
Master Thomas at length said he would stand it no longer. I had lived with him nine months, during which time he had given me a number of severe whippings, all to no good purpose. He resolved to put me out, as he said, to be broken; and, for this purpose, he let me for one year to a man named Edward Covey. Mr. Covey was a poor man, a farm-renter. He rented the place upon which he lived, as also the hands with which he tilled it. Mr. Covey had acquired a very high reputation for breaking young slaves, and this reputation was of immense value to him ... Added to the natural good qualities of Mr. Covey, he was a professor of religion--a pious soul--a member and a class-leader in the Methodist church. All of this added weight to his reputation as a "nigger-breaker." I was aware of all the facts, having been made acquainted with them by a young man who had lived there. I nevertheless made the change gladly; for I was sure of getting enough to eat, which is not the smallest consideration to a hungry man.
