" Any government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.” - Gerald R. Ford, in his first address to Congress, five days after Nixon's resignation.

Since this sentiment is floating around right-wing fandom, even among people who attribute it correctly (the less literate ascribe this ( Read more... )

"Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number -
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you -
Ye are many - they are few."

( Full text )

Arizona governor vetoes bill allowing all citizens to carry guns in University rights of way.

In other news, she also vetoed the bill requiring all Presidential candidates to submit their birth certificates (or records of circumcision; we wouldn't want to be prejudiced now) to the Arizona secretary of state to be listed on the ballot in her state ( Read more... )

The House funding bill is likely to mean severe cuts for the Plasma Physics Laboratory across town from me. They also want to hamper the enforcement of the Clean Air Act. In order to do this, they are willing to interfere with paying the militaryGates thinks he's joking when he suggests "paying the guys with guns first". But the Long Parliament was ( Read more... )

We have learned the hard way that trying terrorists in federal court comes at a high price, from losing out on potentially lifesaving intelligence to compromising our sources and methods,We must treat these terrorists as what they are - not common criminals, but enemy combatants in a war. - Kit Bond, ranking Republican member of the Senate ( Read more... )

Nine Republican senators have joined to protest the idea of investigating deaths, waterboarding, and the rest of Darkness at Noon as reported by a CIA inspector general. After all, because Mukasey ignored torture, Holder must.

Among those signing this are

• John Kyl, minority whip
• Kit Bond, ranking member of the Intelligence Committee
• Jeff Sessions, ( Read more... )

Only 24% of North Carolina Republicans think Obama was born in the United States; then again, only 89% think Hawaii counts as in the United States.  And yes, that last piece of ignorance correlates with party and with distance up into the hills (nobody in the northeast of the State said it wasn't; 10% of the Appalachian end did.)

My classmate, the Confederate Libertarian, sends me:

...this is PRECISELY why the birthers are so "into" the ACTUAL BIRTH CERTIFICATE.  As you've probably verified by now, you were wrong about believing (as I used to do) that Obama was a citizen anyway due to his mom.  Nope, and this is why Rachel Maddow et alius look like morons saying that "well, ( Read more... )

Hilsoy, at Obsidian Wings, has more:

I'm focused on looking forward too. And as I gaze into my crystal ball, I see a world in which members of the executive branch take it for granted that they can do whatever they want with impunity. Why not break the law? Why not eavesdrop on Americans? Why not torture people? Why not detain citizens ( Read more... )

From the LATimes:

You would think that the political outfall of Hurricane Katrina, a natural disaster that contributed richly to handing the Republican Party its head in 2006 and 2008, would have tempered some of Jindal's remarks.

I speak of the rhetorical flourish that we are wasting $140 million a year on "something called volcano monitoring. ... ( Read more... )