I find the moral indignation and hand-wringing like that over at RedState.org a bit tiresome. Did Amnesty International use intemperate language terming Guantanamo as a gulag? Perhaps. But, the United States of America, forbidden to deprive people of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, is depriving people of life and liberty without due process of law. We have engaged in torture. We are doing those things that used to make the other guys the bad guys; the not doing of which used to make us the good guys. So, I can’t fault Amnesty International for a bit of intemperate language.

I am reminded of William Lloyd Garrison’s editorial in the inaugural edition of “The Liberator” in which he held forth against the peculiar determination of certain Southerners to own people. He said:

I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or to speak, or write, with moderation. No! no! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; — but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD. The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal, and to hasten the resurrection of the dead.

President Bush has pointed to the possibility of embryonic adoption as a reason for opposing embryonic stem cell research. However Majikthise has a modest proposal: The womb draft.

I think the fundamentalists are being too soft on this issue. They make
it sound like this is a morally optional procedure. . . . The believers should divide up all outstanding embryos and assign them to wombs immediately. A reproductive draft is the only fair way to settle this.

toledoblade.com

To recap, the Ohio Worker’s Compensation fund invested $50 million through Tom Noe, a well-connected Republican operative, and his coin funds. It has recently been discovered that $10-$12 million is missing. Indictments are being handed down. the Worker’s Comp chief has been fired. 5 of the 7 Ohio Supreme Court Justices have recused themselves from any proceedings dealing with Mr. Noe because of his substantial campaign contributions (he was the campaign manager for at least one of the justices). With respect to the coin fund, The Toledo Blade explains Mr. Noe’s angle this way:

Rare coins are graded on a 1-70 scale – a subjective score based on the amount of their wear and tear and quality. A grade 60 and above is considered top notch. Dealers “arbitrage” by trying to find coins they believe have been undergraded and then resubmit them to different grading firms in hopes of winning a higher grade and higher profits.

But Mr. Noe may have had a leg up on other coin dealers.

The Blade has learned that he owns a stake in Numismatic Guaranty Corp., one of the three major coin-grading firms in the United States that most coin dealers use. Records show that numerous coins owned by the state were sent to be graded by that firm.”

And he still managed to lose a ton of money. Charming.

In Flanders Field, Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae

By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918):

IN FLANDERS FIELDS the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

And

Charge of the Light Brigade
by Alfred, Lord Tennyson:

1.

Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
“Forward, the Light Brigade!
“Charge for the guns!” he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

2.

“Forward, the Light Brigade!”
Was there a man dismay’d?
Not tho’ the soldier knew
Someone had blunder’d:
Their’s not to make reply,
Their’s not to reason why,
Their’s but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

3.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley’d and thunder’d;
Storm’d at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.

4.

Flash’d all their sabres bare,
Flash’d as they turn’d in air,
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
All the world wonder’d:
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro’ the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reel’d from the sabre stroke
Shatter’d and sunder’d.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.

5.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley’d and thunder’d;
Storm’d at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro’ the jaws of Death
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.

6.

When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered.
Honor the charge they made,
Honor the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred.

Balloon Juice, a blog which is new to me but which looks like a keeper, has an entry entitled This Will Cause A Stir. Mostly I agree. The author riffs off of an article talking about former Iraqi diplomat Tariq Aziz and his letters from prison. Apparently Aziz is being held largely incommunicado and there is no apparent effort to afford him any kind of due process.

The author notes that it is exceedingly difficult to find any sympathy for Aziz and that nobody should lose any sleep if he were taken out in a public square and shot by the new Iraqi government. The problem is that the muddled world of ‘enemy combatants’ hurts our credibility and makes it harder for us to be effective in fighting against terrorists.

However, I have to pick at a nit with respect to this passage:

at some point, serious people inside our government are going to have to recognize what a muddled mess our indefinite detainment of ‘enemy combatants’ has become. Put aside the fact that it flies in the face of the fundamental sense of decency that most Americans have regarding the rights of accused as embodied in the US Constitution. I recognize that the determination has been made that they do not deserve those same Constitutional rights.

As I see it, the U.S. Government is fundamentally incapable of acting beyond the Constitution. The government simply has no life, no authority beyond the Constitution. At the point individuals employed by the Government act beyond its authority, they are simply acting as individuals and not as the U.S. Government. And in my opinion, such people should be held accountable as individuals. The fundamental question is whether holding people indefinitely as enemy combatants exceeds the authority granted to the U.S. Government by the Constitution. I believe that it does. And, whether that authority exceeds the Constitution is answere affirmatively or negatively regardless of how reprehensible the particular detainee may be.

But, as to the larger point of the blog entry, I agree.

Days between Dec. 7, 1941 and August 14, 1945: 1,346.
Days between Apr. 12, 1861 and April 9, 1865: 1,458.
Days between Sept. 11, 2001 and May 29, 2005: 1,356.

So, George W.’s War on Terror(ism) has now been going on longer than World War II and is about 100 days shy of the Civil War. So, in the time it took FDR to conquer the treacherous Japanese and Lincoln to conquer the treasonous South, Bush has gotten us mired in Afghanistan and Iraq with no end remotely in sight.

INDC, an apparently Republican blog (I’ve just discovered), seems a little tepid about its support for President Bush in light of his position on stem cell research. The blog entry, entitled Will Move Forward” href=”http://www.indcjournal.com/archives/001778.php”>INDC Journal: Stem Cell Research Will Move Forward, points out that the question is not whether stem cell research will move forward, but where. I don’t have any particular problem with abortion being legal, so I haven’t given the similarities or differences between abortion and stem cell issues much thought. INDC gives it some consideration and concludes that there are significant differences. That this would be Pres. Bush’s first veto causes some consternation. INDC points out that secular Republicans haven’t gotten much love under this administration. In another entry, the author points out that Bush’s stance on stem cells is not just bad for science and progress, it’s bad for Republican political fortunes.

Over at RedState.org there is a post up that criticizes John McCain for saying that he thinks a good compromise on the Bolton nomination would be for the Bush administration to turn the requested information over to the Senate. In exchange, the Dems would lift the filibuster. Redstate correctly points out that this isn’t really a compromise. This is the Democratic position. No argument here. That is exactly the case.

However, they regurgitate a talking point I’ve heard before. “Biden has already decided not to vote for Bolton, therefore his request for information should be ignored. It’s not going to change his mind anyway.” This is nonsense. The Senate is a deliberative body. Biden may be able to persuade other Senators to his point of view if the White House comes clean about its nominee.

The White House has said:

“The Democrats who are clamoring for this have already voted against John Bolton,” said Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman. “This is about partisan politics, not documents. They have the information they need.”

Oh, so now the White House gets to tell the Senate what information it needs and what information it doesn’t need when the Senate is advising and deciding whether to consent on an executive branch nominee?

A New York Times article provides some details about the requested information:

The information sought by the Democrats has also been requested by Mr. Lugar, and Mr. Biden and Mr. Dodd said that the Senate’s Republican leader, Bill Frist of Tennessee, would renew the plea to the White House. The requests are for information related to Mr. Bolton’s handling of information requested from the National Security Agency and to his role in a 2003 dispute over intelligence assessments on Syria, in which American intelligence officials rejected as overstated testimony that Mr. Bolton sought to deliver to Congress about that country’s nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs.

. . .

In their letters today, Mr. Roberts and Mr. Rockefeller provided the first concrete information about Mr. Bolton’s handling of highly classified information provided to him by the National Security Agency in response to his requests. Both said there was evidence that Mr. Bolton had shared information with a subordinate at the State Department information about a highly classified February 2003 N.S.A. report in which the subordinate was named.

As I recall hearing on C-Span, Biden isn’t even asking to have access to the information directly. He specified that the people reviewing the information would be a Senator from each party (can’t remember the names at the moment) who had the proper security clearances. So, it looks like the White House is withholding from the Senate information that was made available not only to Mr. Bolton, but to his subordinate as well.

In any event, beware this talking point about “they’ve already made up their minds.” They are entitled to the information so they can’t build their case against Mr. Bolton in an effort to persuade their colleagues to share their point of view.

The State Department has refused to share the information on Syria, saying that to disclose documents showing the internal debate could have a chilling effect on future discussions. The only information that has been provided to Congress about Mr. Bolton’s handling of the N.S.A. intelligence came in a briefing for Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas, the Republican chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, and Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, the top Democrat on the panel, that was presented two weeks ago by General Michael V. Hayden of the Air Force, the principal deputy director of national intelligence.

John Cole’s site has an entry entitled Coming to a Doctor Near You. In it, he references a New York Times article that says many groups, including the Chamber of Commerce, have come together to explore solutions to our national health care problem. Cole suspects and seems dismayed by the prospect of some form of national healthcare within the next 10-15 years. The discussion at that forum in favor of or at least resigned to national healtcare is focused on two points: 1. Business wants healthcare off its collective back (employers seem to be the preferred providers of insurance under our system); and 2. Our current system is unsustainable.

Hunter over at is my hero. His latest offering: Daily Kos :: Columnist Stumbles On Guantanamo; Several Blindingly Obvious Conclusions Found Dead. In it, he skewers a column by Thomas Friedman of the New York Times. Friedman comes from the, “if-my-mom-had-wheels,-she’d-be-a-bike” school of endorsing the Bush foreign policy. Before I stopped reading his columns, Friedman would endorse Bush’s foreign policy suggesting that if Bush suddenly became a great diplomat, it could really work out well.

Anyway, one inspired passage:

Yes indeed, maybe running a prison camp explicitly exempted from all inconvenient aspects of both U.S. and international law, then kidnapping “suspects” from around the globe to be either shipped there or dumped into prisons under the flags of the worst torturers and despots in the world, then subjecting them to conditions in which they die by the dozens, then maybe dumping a few of the ones who turn out to be innocent off at the borders of their own country with nothing more than the clothes they’re wearing and whatever permanent or nonpermanent physical damage was done to them during their stay at Camp President Bush Is A Big Man — just maybe that might have negative consequences for the United States among the people we are trying to convince of our Godly compassion and world-inspiring democracy.

Congratu-freakin-lations. You now know what anyone with an I.Q. above week-old pizza was raising their voice about from the moment the camp opened.