I had a “Wait . . . you don’t think Jennifer Anniston is pretty EITHER?” moment this week. I was at an egghead/wonk type meeting when one person brought up a political cartoon that they had seen in the newspaper that day. Many heads nodded gravely in assent. Finally, one last person spoke up to say “They still have political cartoons in newspapers?” (at least he didn’t say “They still have newspapers?”) One by one, just like an AA meeting, everyone sheepishly broke down and admitted they hadn’t seen a political cartoon in ____ years!
It is an unsightly ending for what used to be one of the glories of the newspaper. Thomas Nast may not be the father of the political cartoon, but he certainly made them powerful. In addition to his unaccredited role in creating the modern image of Santa Claus, Nast created another institution when his pictures brought down the famously corrupt mayor of 19th century New York, William “Boss” Tweed. Tweed created the perfect raison d’etre for the cartoonists when he said “I don't care so much what the papers say about me -- my constituents can't read, but damn it, they can’t help seeing them pictures.”, or some variation thereof.
For many years even through the heyday of the last of the great ones Herblock, the political cartoons effectively compressed great ideas into small drawings for the masses. Time pushes some things to the side of the road however like caricature, comic impressionists and juggling acts on the Ed Sullivan Show (notwithstanding America’s Got Talent).
Political cartoons remain in the papers, just as Stations of the Cross still appear on the walls of Catholic Churches, for vestigial if for no other reasons. They are however a medium without an audience today in a society more literate and less balkanized than their pre-mass entertainment, pre-internet world.
Gone is their power to move large audiences with powerful emotional responses to a single image like Bill Mauldin’s cartoon of a seated crying Lincoln at the Memorial after the Kennedy assassination. The viral age of Youtube and Twitter have replaced political cartoonists for mass communication purposes, but it is good to remember that at one time fearless knights roamed the land slaying kings with their pens, and the nation was better for them.
Friday, September 24, 2010
YOU SIR ARE NO MIKE MCCURRY!
There are few avenues open to Presidents for dealings with their public critics and opponents. You can attempt to destroy them with the IRS, and covert investigation, (Nixon and Johnson). You can act like a pedagogue in a bunker (Carter). You can ignore them (Ford and both Bushes); or laughingly dismiss them (Kennedy, Reagan, Clinton).
The last seems to work best, but it is clear what doesn’t work. “They talk about me like a dog” creates the perception of a thin-skinned president. Having as the Press Secretary of your administration Robert Gibbs, a screeching, humorless, scold, even more thin-skinned than your are perceived to be, is casting against type.
Mike McCurry, leader in the clubhouse for Press Secretary role models, used to prepare for his daily press conferences by chain smoking cigarettes and going over his notes. One can only guess that Gibbs’ pre-game ritual consists of eating lemons and red pepper. "It's a stunning thing, to see a publication (Forbes) you would see in a dentist's office, so lacking in truth and fact," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs says in an interview. "I think it represents a new low."
My dentist office carries a few sports and home magazines, but nothing entitled “The Guaranteed Factual Guide to Everything”. The piece that aroused Gibbs ire was a psycho-babble exploration of President Obama’s motivation in life as the ghost of his dead father. It was a wildly speculative piece by Dinesh D’Souza, former child prodigy of the radical right. His star has since been eclipsed and the piece, was D’Souza’s attempt to make a comeback by out-radicaling the radicals.
One can imagine that if McCurry was still Press Secretary he would have ignored the article entirely unless asked. If questioned, he would have made some humorous remark as if it were an inside joke between he and the reporters. He would have not raised the matter into a public debate or called for a meeting at the White House with a Forbes editor, as Gibbs has done.
President Obama is professorial and not gifted at banter or self deprecating humor. He needs assistance to handle daily life with the press. Unless Gibbs role as this administration’s sneering “Professor Snape” of Harry Potter fame is recast; the Obama Presidency may end at the same time as that film franchise in 2012.
The last seems to work best, but it is clear what doesn’t work. “They talk about me like a dog” creates the perception of a thin-skinned president. Having as the Press Secretary of your administration Robert Gibbs, a screeching, humorless, scold, even more thin-skinned than your are perceived to be, is casting against type.
Mike McCurry, leader in the clubhouse for Press Secretary role models, used to prepare for his daily press conferences by chain smoking cigarettes and going over his notes. One can only guess that Gibbs’ pre-game ritual consists of eating lemons and red pepper. "It's a stunning thing, to see a publication (Forbes) you would see in a dentist's office, so lacking in truth and fact," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs says in an interview. "I think it represents a new low."
My dentist office carries a few sports and home magazines, but nothing entitled “The Guaranteed Factual Guide to Everything”. The piece that aroused Gibbs ire was a psycho-babble exploration of President Obama’s motivation in life as the ghost of his dead father. It was a wildly speculative piece by Dinesh D’Souza, former child prodigy of the radical right. His star has since been eclipsed and the piece, was D’Souza’s attempt to make a comeback by out-radicaling the radicals.
One can imagine that if McCurry was still Press Secretary he would have ignored the article entirely unless asked. If questioned, he would have made some humorous remark as if it were an inside joke between he and the reporters. He would have not raised the matter into a public debate or called for a meeting at the White House with a Forbes editor, as Gibbs has done.
President Obama is professorial and not gifted at banter or self deprecating humor. He needs assistance to handle daily life with the press. Unless Gibbs role as this administration’s sneering “Professor Snape” of Harry Potter fame is recast; the Obama Presidency may end at the same time as that film franchise in 2012.
Saturday, September 18, 2010
IVY LEAGUE BRAND COMMUNISM
The latest rage these days is to characterize the President as an “ist“. You may have heard that he’s an Islamist, anti-colonialist, Marxist, socialist, black liberationist and my all-time favorite a communist. The number of communists left in the world is so small that the meeting could be held as a dinner party. Apparently though that dinner is being held at the White House, where everyone has gathered for one last karaoke party to sing “The Internationale”. (and you have heard about those “lavish Obama parties“!).
All these same people speak of Obama as if he was different, some sort of an aberration, anti-American, and best of all a business hater. Trust me, folks it doesn’t work that way.
Everybody talks about the billions in debt that we've piled up. Where did it go? Did it go to Communist/Marxist causes? Did we found a new Marx-Lenin University? Is Saul Alinsky now a billionaire? Are there federally funded “Hate the United States” teams forming in high schools all across the country?
Folks, the money went to the people who are the biggest capitalists in the country, the bankers, and financiers, the big pharmaceutical companies, the big construction companies, etc. You and I didn't see a dollar in TARP money or stimulus money, but all the people who already had money did. That’s because President Obama is a member of the club and you and I aren't!
For those that think the President has a Marxist or communist ideology remember that the President went to two Ivy League schools. The Ivy League doesn't produce leftists, its produces CAPITALISTS!
Those opposed to the President are all being led around by the nose and can't see it; this preposterous idea that Obama is against business. His recent financial regulation package was the most innocuous legislation imaginable in the face of the economic disaster we have gone through. He just got admitted to the club. The last thing in the world he wants to do is tear it down!
Haven't all the Glenn Beck watchers and Sean Hannity acolytes ever had one moment when the light bulb went on and asked yourself why is Warren Buffet, the richest man in the world a friend of this communist Marxist president?
Steve Forbes who published the article against Obama in his magazine, went to an Ivy League school as did the two greatest capitalists of the post war years, Buffet and Bill Gates. You can add in Bill and Hillary Clinton, both Presidents Bush, Hank Paulson, Tim Geithner, Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke.
Are you starting to sense that it doesn't even matter which party you belong to? You're either in the club or you're outside with your nose pressed against the glass.
Do you seriously believe that the rich and powerful of this nation would send their money and their children to places that would turn them into Marxists? How can anybody be so pathetically uninformed? If you were to go down a list of American billionaires you would find that almost every one has a personal connection to the Ivy League or Stanford, the West Coast Ivy League school.
Before you call the President a communist just realize that Obama, Buffet the richest man in the world, Greenspan former head of the Federal Reserve, Robson Walton chairman of Walmart, Randolph Lerner billionaire owner of the Cleveland Browns, Vikram Pandit CEO of Citigroup, and Henry Kravis corporate raider and chairman of KKR can sing the Columbia University fight song from memory, while laughing at the rest of us.
Do you know why Dick Morris (Columbia '67) is so mad at the President on Fox News? It’s because he got kicked out of the club, while an advisor to President Clinton, for using prostitutes. Apparently that sort of thing just isn't done by Ivy Leaguers in the national spotlight! Who knew? He's been gunning for revenge ever since.
Not enough proof? How about the fact that six of the current Supreme Court Justices including it's most conservative AND liberal members all went to Harvard Law School as did both the President and Michelle Obama. How can this be? Isn’t there supposed to be some sort of life or death ideological war going on?
Other distinguished "psuedo communist" alumini of Harvard include: Ratan Tata chairman of the Tata Group India's largest company, Marcus Agius, chairman of Barclays, Steve Ballmer CEO of Microsoft, Lloyd Blankfein CEO of Goldman Sachs, Michael Cohrs of Deutsche Bank, Jeff Kindler CEO of Pfizer, James McNerney CEO of Boeing. I could go and on, but maybe the picture is starting to form?
Oh and just to anticipate the argument, that everything became more radical in the 1960’s, all of the above millionaire and billionaire Harvard alumni graduated after 1970.
Don't worry folks. God is still in the heavens and the rich people still come from and send their kids to the Ivy League schools, so they can become "communist" billionaires and world leaders no doubt!
All these same people speak of Obama as if he was different, some sort of an aberration, anti-American, and best of all a business hater. Trust me, folks it doesn’t work that way.
Everybody talks about the billions in debt that we've piled up. Where did it go? Did it go to Communist/Marxist causes? Did we found a new Marx-Lenin University? Is Saul Alinsky now a billionaire? Are there federally funded “Hate the United States” teams forming in high schools all across the country?
Folks, the money went to the people who are the biggest capitalists in the country, the bankers, and financiers, the big pharmaceutical companies, the big construction companies, etc. You and I didn't see a dollar in TARP money or stimulus money, but all the people who already had money did. That’s because President Obama is a member of the club and you and I aren't!
For those that think the President has a Marxist or communist ideology remember that the President went to two Ivy League schools. The Ivy League doesn't produce leftists, its produces CAPITALISTS!
Those opposed to the President are all being led around by the nose and can't see it; this preposterous idea that Obama is against business. His recent financial regulation package was the most innocuous legislation imaginable in the face of the economic disaster we have gone through. He just got admitted to the club. The last thing in the world he wants to do is tear it down!
Haven't all the Glenn Beck watchers and Sean Hannity acolytes ever had one moment when the light bulb went on and asked yourself why is Warren Buffet, the richest man in the world a friend of this communist Marxist president?
Steve Forbes who published the article against Obama in his magazine, went to an Ivy League school as did the two greatest capitalists of the post war years, Buffet and Bill Gates. You can add in Bill and Hillary Clinton, both Presidents Bush, Hank Paulson, Tim Geithner, Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke.
Are you starting to sense that it doesn't even matter which party you belong to? You're either in the club or you're outside with your nose pressed against the glass.
Do you seriously believe that the rich and powerful of this nation would send their money and their children to places that would turn them into Marxists? How can anybody be so pathetically uninformed? If you were to go down a list of American billionaires you would find that almost every one has a personal connection to the Ivy League or Stanford, the West Coast Ivy League school.
Before you call the President a communist just realize that Obama, Buffet the richest man in the world, Greenspan former head of the Federal Reserve, Robson Walton chairman of Walmart, Randolph Lerner billionaire owner of the Cleveland Browns, Vikram Pandit CEO of Citigroup, and Henry Kravis corporate raider and chairman of KKR can sing the Columbia University fight song from memory, while laughing at the rest of us.
Do you know why Dick Morris (Columbia '67) is so mad at the President on Fox News? It’s because he got kicked out of the club, while an advisor to President Clinton, for using prostitutes. Apparently that sort of thing just isn't done by Ivy Leaguers in the national spotlight! Who knew? He's been gunning for revenge ever since.
Not enough proof? How about the fact that six of the current Supreme Court Justices including it's most conservative AND liberal members all went to Harvard Law School as did both the President and Michelle Obama. How can this be? Isn’t there supposed to be some sort of life or death ideological war going on?
Other distinguished "psuedo communist" alumini of Harvard include: Ratan Tata chairman of the Tata Group India's largest company, Marcus Agius, chairman of Barclays, Steve Ballmer CEO of Microsoft, Lloyd Blankfein CEO of Goldman Sachs, Michael Cohrs of Deutsche Bank, Jeff Kindler CEO of Pfizer, James McNerney CEO of Boeing. I could go and on, but maybe the picture is starting to form?
Oh and just to anticipate the argument, that everything became more radical in the 1960’s, all of the above millionaire and billionaire Harvard alumni graduated after 1970.
Don't worry folks. God is still in the heavens and the rich people still come from and send their kids to the Ivy League schools, so they can become "communist" billionaires and world leaders no doubt!
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
JOHN GRISHAM'S UNHAPPY ENDING
John Grisham, famous novelist, and death penalty opponent wrote a piece in the Op-Ed Section of the Washington Post Sunday September 12, 2010 about an impending execution in Virginia. Teresa Lewis is not the easiest case for death penalty opponents, but Mr. Grisham gives it a shot. Ms Lewis was living with her recently married second husband, and having an affair with man named Matthew Shallenberger whom she worked with. He was a thug who wanted to become a contract killer (notwithstanding the small market for that trade in semi-rural Virginia). She was a woman who wanted out of her marriage and some money to boot. Who manipulated whom is open to question, but suffice to say that they had a common goal involving cash. Shallenberger and another man named Lewis Fuller, who Lewis was also having sex with, got the job done. As Grisham writes:
"Shallenberger, Fuller and Lewis -- participated in a scheme to kill Lewis's husband for his money. At some point, the plans broadened to include the murder of her 25-year-old stepson, a National Guard member with a life insurance policy.
On the night of Oct. 30, 2002, Lewis left a door unlocked, got into bed with her husband and waited. Shallenberger and Fuller entered through the unlocked door, as planned. Shallenberger blasted the husband with a shotgun while, at the other end of the trailer, Fuller shot the stepson."
Mr. Grisham is too kind. The appellate opinion in the case, is available at :
http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=759844078413784182,
"At some point the plans broadened . . . ", should really read when she found at the she was the contingent beneficiary on her stepson's life insurance policy, she suggested him as a target too. She also figured out which night would be best to kill both of them at the same time.
Grisham in her defence states that the actual trigger men got life imprisonment. A true statement which was an unfortunate ruling by the sentencing judge. Grisham also states that:
"(1) She has an IQ of just above 70 -- borderline retarded -- and as such lacks the basic skills necessary to organize and lead a conspiracy to commit murder for hire;
(2) She has dependent personality disorder and therefore complied with the demands of those upon whom she relied, especially men;
(3) Because of a long list of physical ailments she had developed an addiction to pain medications, and this adversely affected her judgment; and
(4) She had not a single episode of violent behavior in the past."
As to "lacking the basic skills necessary skill to organize and lead a conspiracy", apparently not! She lacked the skills to get AWAY WITH murder, an entirely different concept.
Her need to comply with the demands of the men she relied upon, apparently did not include her husband who might not have demanded to live strongly enough! I say that because she was not a mere contractor. She was in the home when the murder was committed. She remained there with her dead stepson and dying but not yet dead husband AFTER the killers left. She waited about 45 minutes until he finally expired before dialing 911.
Finally, as to the episodes of violent behavior, she pimped her 16 year-old daughter out to Fuller, the man she was also having sex with, but it's probably bad form of me to point that out, since Grisham doesn't.
You really must read the facts portion of the appellate case to get a sense of how horrifying her behavior was. Far from being a case for clemency, Teresa Lewis is a poster child for the death penalty, which is really the purpose of this blog.
I can appreciate those who simply believe that all killing is wrong on a theological or moral basis. There is no argument for that, as long as it is consistently applied. I am not that good of a person, so I have an appreciation for those who are.
My argument is with those who try to make the case for ending the death penalty on grounds of logic or humanity. Those arguments usually follow the line that sentencing to life imprisonment ends their danger to society and is more humane to the prisoner. Those who feel that way must be selective in that part of society they feel responsibility toward. Prison sentences don't stop killers they just take the faces of their victims out of the newspapers and into the anonymity of prison rolls.
It is difficult to get nationwide statistics after 2002, because reporting requirements were changed to obfuscate the numbers. In 2002, according to the Department of Justice 68 prisoners were murdered nationwide. There were also 478 "suicides". About 120 more deaths fell into the category of
"accident" or indeterminate. Most followers of these statistics believe that many of the suicides and accidental deaths were really murders. It doesn't do a prison administration any good to have too many murders in it's prison.
It is safe to say that well over 100 prisoners a year, minimum, are murdered nationwide. Most of these murders do not result in a conviction due to obvious difficulties with finding witnesses who will testify.
Needless to say the prisoners committing these murders are not car thieves and bad check artists. They are often gang members, but almost always prisoners serving a sentence for murder or attempted murder. Those statistics don't even scratch the surface of the number of vicious assaults and rapes committed by those who are locked up forever with nothing left to lose. So if you say that life in prison is a "better" sentence, please acknowledge that you are also saying "I just don't care about the class of persons who will be his next victim".
I also consider it dubious that a life sentence is "humane". Most of us if told by our veterinarian that our family pet would spend the last year of their life in constant pain would have the animal put down as being the humane and civilized thing to do. Yet, we apply a much lower standard of humanity to these prisoners. The fact that they might spend the rest of their life as either the perpetrator or victim of vicious crimes in prison seems to faze us not at all. This does not even account for the psychological damage to the prisoner of knowing that the BEST life they can make for themselves is to merely stay alive.
The Andrea Yates case is another example of misplaced compassion. She is the Houston woman who drowned all 5 of her children in the bathtub. She was originally sentenced to life in prison, which was overturned on appeal to not guilty by reason of insanity. She will probably spend the rest of her life in a mental hospital. Her lawyers were congratulated and went back to their careers and their vacations. The judge will no doubt spend time with his or her children or grandchildren, giving little more thought to Yates. Meanwhile she exists in a nether world. If her mental illness is successfully treated then she has to live every single day with the thoughts of killing her children with her own hands. Society will probably never allow her to be released no matter the testimony of her doctors. What kind of humane treatment is this? Wouldn't a death sentence from the mental prison where she must spend the next 30 to 40 years be arguably at least as humane?
The death penalty is a badly functioning system. That cannot be argued. If we as a society want to outlaw it entirely, rather than attempt make it more responsible, that is understandable. Just realize that when the last death sentence is commuted, and the last John Grisham, or Norman Mailer, or Sean Penn, goes off to a round of self-congratulatory interviews, the killings, the horror show, the nightmare will continue. It will just be in a place that your mind will not allow you to go.
"Shallenberger, Fuller and Lewis -- participated in a scheme to kill Lewis's husband for his money. At some point, the plans broadened to include the murder of her 25-year-old stepson, a National Guard member with a life insurance policy.
On the night of Oct. 30, 2002, Lewis left a door unlocked, got into bed with her husband and waited. Shallenberger and Fuller entered through the unlocked door, as planned. Shallenberger blasted the husband with a shotgun while, at the other end of the trailer, Fuller shot the stepson."
Mr. Grisham is too kind. The appellate opinion in the case, is available at :
http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=759844078413784182,
"At some point the plans broadened . . . ", should really read when she found at the she was the contingent beneficiary on her stepson's life insurance policy, she suggested him as a target too. She also figured out which night would be best to kill both of them at the same time.
Grisham in her defence states that the actual trigger men got life imprisonment. A true statement which was an unfortunate ruling by the sentencing judge. Grisham also states that:
"(1) She has an IQ of just above 70 -- borderline retarded -- and as such lacks the basic skills necessary to organize and lead a conspiracy to commit murder for hire;
(2) She has dependent personality disorder and therefore complied with the demands of those upon whom she relied, especially men;
(3) Because of a long list of physical ailments she had developed an addiction to pain medications, and this adversely affected her judgment; and
(4) She had not a single episode of violent behavior in the past."
As to "lacking the basic skills necessary skill to organize and lead a conspiracy", apparently not! She lacked the skills to get AWAY WITH murder, an entirely different concept.
Her need to comply with the demands of the men she relied upon, apparently did not include her husband who might not have demanded to live strongly enough! I say that because she was not a mere contractor. She was in the home when the murder was committed. She remained there with her dead stepson and dying but not yet dead husband AFTER the killers left. She waited about 45 minutes until he finally expired before dialing 911.
Finally, as to the episodes of violent behavior, she pimped her 16 year-old daughter out to Fuller, the man she was also having sex with, but it's probably bad form of me to point that out, since Grisham doesn't.
You really must read the facts portion of the appellate case to get a sense of how horrifying her behavior was. Far from being a case for clemency, Teresa Lewis is a poster child for the death penalty, which is really the purpose of this blog.
I can appreciate those who simply believe that all killing is wrong on a theological or moral basis. There is no argument for that, as long as it is consistently applied. I am not that good of a person, so I have an appreciation for those who are.
My argument is with those who try to make the case for ending the death penalty on grounds of logic or humanity. Those arguments usually follow the line that sentencing to life imprisonment ends their danger to society and is more humane to the prisoner. Those who feel that way must be selective in that part of society they feel responsibility toward. Prison sentences don't stop killers they just take the faces of their victims out of the newspapers and into the anonymity of prison rolls.
It is difficult to get nationwide statistics after 2002, because reporting requirements were changed to obfuscate the numbers. In 2002, according to the Department of Justice 68 prisoners were murdered nationwide. There were also 478 "suicides". About 120 more deaths fell into the category of
"accident" or indeterminate. Most followers of these statistics believe that many of the suicides and accidental deaths were really murders. It doesn't do a prison administration any good to have too many murders in it's prison.
It is safe to say that well over 100 prisoners a year, minimum, are murdered nationwide. Most of these murders do not result in a conviction due to obvious difficulties with finding witnesses who will testify.
Needless to say the prisoners committing these murders are not car thieves and bad check artists. They are often gang members, but almost always prisoners serving a sentence for murder or attempted murder. Those statistics don't even scratch the surface of the number of vicious assaults and rapes committed by those who are locked up forever with nothing left to lose. So if you say that life in prison is a "better" sentence, please acknowledge that you are also saying "I just don't care about the class of persons who will be his next victim".
I also consider it dubious that a life sentence is "humane". Most of us if told by our veterinarian that our family pet would spend the last year of their life in constant pain would have the animal put down as being the humane and civilized thing to do. Yet, we apply a much lower standard of humanity to these prisoners. The fact that they might spend the rest of their life as either the perpetrator or victim of vicious crimes in prison seems to faze us not at all. This does not even account for the psychological damage to the prisoner of knowing that the BEST life they can make for themselves is to merely stay alive.
The Andrea Yates case is another example of misplaced compassion. She is the Houston woman who drowned all 5 of her children in the bathtub. She was originally sentenced to life in prison, which was overturned on appeal to not guilty by reason of insanity. She will probably spend the rest of her life in a mental hospital. Her lawyers were congratulated and went back to their careers and their vacations. The judge will no doubt spend time with his or her children or grandchildren, giving little more thought to Yates. Meanwhile she exists in a nether world. If her mental illness is successfully treated then she has to live every single day with the thoughts of killing her children with her own hands. Society will probably never allow her to be released no matter the testimony of her doctors. What kind of humane treatment is this? Wouldn't a death sentence from the mental prison where she must spend the next 30 to 40 years be arguably at least as humane?
The death penalty is a badly functioning system. That cannot be argued. If we as a society want to outlaw it entirely, rather than attempt make it more responsible, that is understandable. Just realize that when the last death sentence is commuted, and the last John Grisham, or Norman Mailer, or Sean Penn, goes off to a round of self-congratulatory interviews, the killings, the horror show, the nightmare will continue. It will just be in a place that your mind will not allow you to go.
Saturday, September 11, 2010
Terry Jones Is You
It would make a high school history teacher weep to see all those who called for tax-dodge church pastor Terry Jones to be "stopped" from his demonstration.
For those who believe that Jones should have been stopped, what will you say the next time an American gets killed by terrorism somewhere in the world? Will it be Jones fault because he WANTED to burn a Koran? Should we outlaw TALKING about the Koran at all because that will no doubt cause an American to die somewhere?
Some people have gone out a limb and called what Jones wanted to do treason. As far as giving aid and comfort to the enemy, what could give greater aid and comfort to the enemy than to see that all they have to do is make threats to have us overturn our most precious legal rights?
This is indeed a great recruiting tool for Al Queda. It shows the world that this group of perhaps a few thousand people has brought this country to her knees in fear. It shows that we are so afraid that a single American will die anywhere that we will violate our own laws. It shows that they don't even have to FIGHT us anywhere, just organize a demo and burn a few of our flags, and the whole government wants pay obeisance to their demands.
Even Jefferson, by nature our least martial President, refused to pay tribute to the Barbary States of the Meditterranean, choosing to send the navy instead. Before that, it had been the practice of the govenment to pay tribute to them. We are now offering up our Bill of Rights to Al Queda. Why not just pay them cash as well for not demonstrating and threatening American lives. That might work!
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Ben Franklin
For those who believe that Jones should have been stopped, what will you say the next time an American gets killed by terrorism somewhere in the world? Will it be Jones fault because he WANTED to burn a Koran? Should we outlaw TALKING about the Koran at all because that will no doubt cause an American to die somewhere?
Some people have gone out a limb and called what Jones wanted to do treason. As far as giving aid and comfort to the enemy, what could give greater aid and comfort to the enemy than to see that all they have to do is make threats to have us overturn our most precious legal rights?
This is indeed a great recruiting tool for Al Queda. It shows the world that this group of perhaps a few thousand people has brought this country to her knees in fear. It shows that we are so afraid that a single American will die anywhere that we will violate our own laws. It shows that they don't even have to FIGHT us anywhere, just organize a demo and burn a few of our flags, and the whole government wants pay obeisance to their demands.
Even Jefferson, by nature our least martial President, refused to pay tribute to the Barbary States of the Meditterranean, choosing to send the navy instead. Before that, it had been the practice of the govenment to pay tribute to them. We are now offering up our Bill of Rights to Al Queda. Why not just pay them cash as well for not demonstrating and threatening American lives. That might work!
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Ben Franklin
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