The secular God

Even as we throw a wall of barbed wire and tin across our southern border, we’re allowing the only national wall that actually serves a legitimate purpose to fall into serious disrepair, with signs of active government collusion in its collapse.

The wall, of course, is the one that separates church and state — and establishes what may be, arguably, the single most important agreement we have as a nation and free society: the agreement that secularity is sacred.

This agreement has to be more than a genteel abstraction if it’s going to survive Alberto Gonzales’ Justice Department and the Evangelical takeover of the Air Force Academy and the simmering witches’ brew of money and Old Testament intolerance that is George Bush’s political base. For that reason, gloves off, my friends — about faith, values, spirituality and even that loaded term, God.

Khmer Rouge trial

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Defending Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge leaders at an international tribunal may include arguing about genocide and the lack of a "smoking gun," despite the deaths of up to three million Cambodians, according to U.N. Principal Defender Rupert Skilbeck.

"One of the big questions will be whether, what happened in Cambodia, was genocide or not," Mr. Skilbeck said in an interview.

"There is a very strong legal argument to say that genocide is when you kill people because of their ethnicity, whereas the vast majority of the [Khmer Rouge] purges were not for ethnic reasons, but were for political reasons. So genocide may not be possible" as a successful prosecution charge.

Mr. Skilbeck heads the Defense Support Section of the tribunal, which is officially called the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC).

A London-based criminal lawyer, Mr. Skilbeck was previously Defense Advisor for the Special Court for Sierra Leone, and head of the Criminal Defense Section for the War Crimes Chamber in Sarajevo.

Holier than whom, exactly?

Among the most durable myths of American public life is that conservatives are more authentic in their religious faith than liberals and progressives. Certainly this arrogant presumption prevails on the religious right, where commentators and politicians routinely denigrate the sincerity of Christians such as Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, whose irredeemable sin is that they also happen to be Democrats and candidates for president.

            With characteristic condescension, an editor of the right-wing Weekly Standard dismissed public expressions of faith from the left as both pointless and worthless. He declared that the Democrats can only attract Christians who are "religious in the way that Hillary Clinton is religious, which is to say a very liberal Protestant sort of view, in which they believe in everything but God." That quip is quite mild compared with typical fiery denunciations from the religious right, branding the Clintons as instruments of Satan and Obama as an Islamist in disguise.

Action Alert! Here's how you can just say "NO!" to HR 811 and why

The House of Representatives is poised to vote on NJ Rep. Holt's "election reform" bill (HR 811), TODAY ,Thursday. Organizations ordinarily aligned with the common good have pulled out all the stops to ram this legislation through. Unless - and maybe even though - we make a LOT of noise, this bill will become law and our elections will take more irrevocable steps away from democracy. If you doubt this, read Mark Crispin Miller's expose below -complete with quotes from Holt and his legislative aide, Michelle Mulder- as well as an action alert put out by VoteRescue.

Here's everything you need, in a nutshell: information about HR 811 and contact info for your member of Congress:

Here's how you call (no time to write) your Congressional Rep.: Contacting the Congress

Exposé: Holt bill was revised by Microsoft, Diebold and ES&S by Mark Crispin Miller

The facts, ma’am, just the facts

The Republican defense of President Bush’s commutation of Scooter Libby’s prison sentence in the main has been based on “Clinton did it first”, focusing specifically on President Clinton’s pardon of his friend, financier Mark Rich, and secondarily on the 140-odd other individuals pardoned in the last hours of the first Clinton presidency.

All of these strident voices are ignoring the vital difference between the two presidents. Unlike Bush, President Clinton did not pardon anyone who was accused of covering up his own, Clinton’s, crimes in taking this country into an unnecessary and unjust war based upon a great lie. The reason President Clinton did not is because he did not commit such crimes in the first place, and consequently had nothing to hide.

President Bush, who has committed and continues to commit these crimes to this day, is still in need of protection from the consequences of his actions. That is why Scooter Libby is free today, and was in fact never in any real danger of incarceration.

Squire v. Geer and the evils of e-voting

Editor's note:
One of the most detailed looks at the problems of DRE voting machines occurred in the challenge of Franklin County Domestic Relations Judge Carole Squire to the certified election results in her 2006 election. Note the long list of problems documented through legal discovery and through expert witness testimony. This is typical with e-voting problems in Franklin County as well as in Cuyahoga County. By looking at e-voting results on the micro level, we better understand why the results are so unreliable. At the macro level in all elections since 2000, this case is a testament to why we need hand-counted paper ballots.

Bob Fitrakis, Editor

Read the whole document as a PDF.

Secret to their success

http://mattbors.com

The Palestinian left: a lost opportunity for relevance

When Hamas members were elected as the majority bloc of the Palestinian Legislative Council, and as it became apparent that a US-led international embargo would be an adjoining price to that victory, I contacted many intellectuals and writers in Palestine, mostly those who often positioned themselves as part of the Palestinian Left. I asked them to solidify behind the collective choice of the Palestinian people and to shield Palestinian democracy at any cost.

Want to impeach Cheney? Think July 23rd

The impeachment movement is gaining traction, and now - over the next two weeks - is the time to push it all the way to success.  Over the weekend, supporters of impeachment made "Impeach Cheney" the number 1 video on Youtube.  On Friday, for the first time, a polling company asked Americans if they want Cheney impeached. A majority of 54% said Yes, and the poll was reported in the media. Congressman John Conyers even cited it on ABC's "This Week" on Sunday.

On July 4, the day of throwing off King Georges, an Impeach Bush and Cheney petition passed 100,000 signatures! So now we're raising the bar to 1 million: http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/petition  Also on July 4, Los Angeles opened an Impeachment Center, and on July 5 Philadelphia held an impeachment forum (here's the video).

More crony baloney

PARIS -- You do not need to speak good French to understand the meaning of noblesse.

            Just look at how swiftly Scooter Libby avoided prison time. Nothing lost in translation there.

            Same for what the Germans call Schadenfreude. That's when someone takes pleasure in someone else's misfortune, such as the outing of a covert American spy just to watch her tattletale husband squirm.

            It was Machiavellian how the neo-cons let the melodrama unfold in public, starting with letting Patrick Fitzgerald believe justice would prevail, followed by Valerie Plame's testimony, along with some congressional grousing. As though any of it would make a difference to our imperial co-presidency.

            As they say in Mayberry, USA, "Au contraire, Aunt Bea."

            Dubya thought it unfair that the veep's consigliore should do time pending appeal. So on behalf of Cheney Inc.'s fall guy, the Prodigal Compassionate Conservative Son returned.

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