Daniel Scarpinato’s “Political Notebook” in this morning’s Star reports that Congresswoman Giffords is co-sponsoring a resolution to support Motorcycle Safety Awareness Month.
He fails to note that in addition to the gaily-painted scooter/sidecar combination that graces a living room she is also a serious BMW rider. My wife and I have taken many a Sunday ride with her. She’s an excellent rider, although I don’t imagine she has much time for it now.
Here’s her wonderful old “toaster bike” a 750 cc BMW R75/5. (Called a toaster because of the chrome side panels on the tank.)
Disappearing Bees
God works in mysterious ways His wonders to perform.
He staged the Rapture, but he took the swarm.
I got home Friday from the round-trip ride to Leonard , Texas. My old BMW K75 was hacked by the good folks at Texas Sidecars and you can see a picture by clicking on the thumbnail or by visiting Data Port Two.
Cruising west on I-20 I was surprised to see that the speed limit had jumped from 70 to 80 miles per hour. Oddly enough…or maybe not oddly at all… this happened somewhere between Midland and Odessa in the heart of the oil patch.
Non-truck traffic immediately pushed to 80+ while I motored on at something between 60 and 65. The new outfit would go a lot faster than that but I wasn’t sure just what gas mileage I’d get with the new sidecar at higher speeds.
I was passed by every vehicle on the road, including lots of enormous SUVs. At one gas station I stopped at the previous driver had put in 55 bucks worth of gas!
It seems to me that a good first step toward conserving energy would be to reinstate the 55 mph limit. Well, make it 60 and exempt trucks.
…………………………………..
On this trip I spent 5 nights in Motels and enjoyed five ‘augmented’ continental breakfasts while large screen TVs in each of the breakfast rooms reported the “news.” Frankly I never watch TV news. I listen to NPR, read newspapers on line and check what’s new in the blogosphere.
I can’t begin to imagine how uninformed people are whose only news source is TV. Pretty appalling.
I meant to comment about this story…or call attention to it…but then I had to leave town for a couple of days and it slipped by.
A newspaper in Boston, BostonNOW, is planning to incorporate reportage by bloggers on a regular basis. This will go a long way to breaking down the Chinese Wall that academically trained journalists think ought to separate the blogosphere from ‘real journalism.’
We could use one or two bloggers on a regular basis in our local press.
Example: Surely one of the best-informed political writers in Arizona is Ted Prezelski. His prose is clean and direct and he knows a world more about where Arizona’s political bodies are buried than the Star’s political reporter, who was just a pup when Ted started working in, and observing, local politics.
The BostonNOW web site is here. You can get to the NPR story here.
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On The Road
I’m riding the K75 to Texas tomorrow. More about that and occasional updates at Data Port Two.
Getting Hacked
By this time next week I will be just outside Leonard Texas, on my way to the home of Texas Sidecars, where I’ll be having a Ranger sidecar wed to my 1990 BMW K75.
This will be a much lighter, trickier, and probably slower outfit than what I have been driving for the past year…the renowned “Yellow Peril.” The YP is being reclaimed by its owner after a year in Tucson. He and I, accompanied by my wife Katherine (also a hacker) will take my K-Hack and the YP to Milwaukee for the BMWMOA national rally.
Close of “Good Woman”
The Rogue Theatre production of “The Good Woman of Setzuan” closed its three week run this past Sunday. Yes, I am a member of the Rogue’s ensemble company…but quite apart from that let me say that even if I weren’t my judgement would be that the Rogue Theatre offers the most challenging theatre-going in Tucson.
Next season’s offerings open with Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard.”
Visit The Rogue Theatre!
The Other Blog
Posting to The Data Port will be thin during the summer as the riding season calls us out on the road and we let the nation’s political life grind on in the background. Oh, I imagine there’ll be something to say here from time to time but the other blog, Data Port Two, will get most of the attention.
Hey, Grand Prix sidecar racing is underway in Europe and North America!
Forgive this shameless plug for a current job of work I’m doing, but I thought there might be some lefty bloggers in and around Tucson who’d like it.This is the last week of The Rogue Theatre’s production of Bertolt Brecht’s “The Good Woman of Setzuan.” Tomorrow, Thursday April 12, Is ‘Pay What You Will’ night. Not a bad deal for revolutionaries on a budget. Details on where and when at the link above.Working on this show is one of the reasons I’ve let blogging slide. Once it closes, and I’ve taken a short ride, I’ll be back on a more regular basis.
The following is excerpted from a Blomberg.com story
By Mark Clothier
March 28 (Bloomberg) -- Circuit City Stores Inc., the second-largest U.S. electronics retailer after Best Buy Co., fired 3,400 of its highest-paid hourly workers and will hire replacements willing to work for less.
The company said its eliminating jobs that paid ``well above'' market rates. Those who were fired can apply for the lower pay, company spokesman Bill Cimino said today. He declined to give the wages of the fired workers or the new hires.
The job cuts are ``one of the most brazen examples of corporate America run amuck,'' said Greg Tarpinian, executive director of Change to Win, which represents seven unions and about 6 million workers. ``It's workers as disposable commodities, put in and put out based on whatever happens to the stock price.''
Chief Executive Officer Philip Schoonover was paid $8.52 million in fiscal 2006, including a salary of $975,000.
He has not offered to work for less even though stock price has plumeted during his watch.
It’s cheering to know that capitalism is alive and well!
The fact that the Bush administration has fostered the development of a private army, Blackwater USA, is probably not news to any readers of Lefty Blogs. What might be news is its size, and the extent to which this mercenary army functions beyond the normal control of Congress or the US Code of Military Justice.There is a long article in today’s Alternet.Org adapted from Jeremy Scahill's new book, Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army (Nation Books). It’s a long piece, but well worth a reader’s time. Alternet’s lede is: “The Bush Administration is increasingly dependent on private security forces to do its dirty work.” (link)Blackwater USA has a website you can visit here.I believe that the sheer size of Blackwater, and the potential for its misuse for uncontrolled foreign and domestic political purposes is something we should at least be willing to consider. Years ago and in a universe far removed from most current bloggers there was another great private army: The Sturm Abteilung of the German National Socialist Party. You may read about it here.
I’ve done no blogging, political or otherwise, for nearly three weeks. I’ve been preoccupied with rehearsals for the next Rogue Theatre production, Bertolt Brecht’s “The Good Woman of Setzuan.” Over and beyond that I’ve really been at a loss to find something new and original to say about what has seemed to me to be the death spiral of Democratic action against the war and against what is surely the worst administration in my memory.I received an e-mail this morning that has had an absolutely Kantian effect on my dogmatic slumber and despair: It has awakened me.I was pointed to the following article in the LA Times, reporting in detail the most important effect of the Democrats’ control of Congress, the renewed and aggressive exercise of the congressional oversight function.The thrust of the article is that although the Democratic margins in the House and Senate may be too slender to guarantee much effective legislation, the legislative oversight function is busily hammering the nails in the administration coffin.The article is here. I don’t believe any registration is needed to read it.
It is an occasional intellectual game to compare the American Empire to the Roman Empire and to ask if, like that first world power, we might not be in a period of accelerated decline. Our prestige and efficient use of power outside our borders seems in decline while inside a subtle corruption of our core political values appears to be underway. An exact description and analysis of the latter event is still to be done, but it is in part characterized by a loss of interest and participation in the political life of the nation (how many vote anymore?) and a willingness to give up personal freedoms in return for “security.”It’s ironic that we are willing to give up some considerable measure of those freedoms and liberties to a political system and government in which a majority of us no longer has sufficient trust or belief to participate.This Rome/America comparison came to mind as I chewed on the consequences of the 100 Million dollar price tag to run for President.In the year 193 AD the Roman Empire, in the person of the position of emperor, was put up for auction by the Praetorian Guard. It had long been the practice of newly established emperors to offer the guard a “donative” to assure their allegiance, but this was a flat out auction…who wants to be an emperor? Marcus Didius Julianus did. The Praetorians effectively held the key to the empire. Who in the American empire might our praetorians be? It is tempting to point out the leaders of corporate America, but I’d suggest that our praetorians are the media---television, print, radio, and the political mercenaries who feed them. These are the primary recipients of most (if not damn near all) of the one hundred million dollars the candidate pays for his key to the empire. You can’t get elected without them.The Left is nearly always fascinated by the prospect of publicly financed federal elections, but such elections still pay the praetorians and the Supreme Court has decided that money equals free speech which effectively allows end runs around campaign finance limits.What, then, is to be done? Considering the political passivity of most Americans I don’t look for massive street actions. There is a seductive fascination in the net but except for fundraising I’m not sure there is evidence of its real effectiveness except in raising money for the praetorians.
What is the Left to do?
The Data Port surfaces after a short vacation from jiggery-bloggery. I have noticed with pleasure that my fellow lefty bloggers have been doing an excellent job of commentary and reportage--- such a good job that nothing I might have posted would have added anything new. R-Cubed continues to be sprightly in reporting all the news the local dailies don’t recognize as news.
I did notice that two leading Democratic presidential candidates have already signed up for the traditional circular firing squad and that Tom Vilsack has popped for the old inventory strategy of first in, first out. It seems the financial air was being sucked out of all his fundraisers. The “leaders” are vulturing around trying to pick up his Iowa experts. Who knows? He might have had something interesting to say.
If you have the patience for an extended analysis of the 2006 election and the coming presidential conflict of 2008 I’d recommend a piece by Steve Fraser at AterNet.Org, “On The Road to 2008.” Let me know what you think.
Vilsack had a very nice website that’s now nothing more than an historical artfact.
I got a nice e-mail from Bill Richardson the other day. He’s running for President, he’s “in it to win,” he’s eager to serve his country in its time of need… or some such thing.
In this earnest appeal for my support (and my money) there isn’t a nickel’s worth of difference between him and:
Joe Biden
Hillary Clinton
Chris Dodd
John Edwards
Mike Gravel
Denis Kucinich
Tom Vilsack
Barak Obama.
And those are just the Democrats. Over in the Republican camp we have:
Sam Brownback
John Cox
Duncan Hunter
Michael Smith
Jim Gilmore
Rudy Giuliani
Mike Huckabee
John McCain
Ron Paul
Mitt Romney
Tom Tancredo
Tommy Thompson.
At the bottom of Bill Richardson’s e-mail was a button I could click to unsubscribe. When I did this a little box popped up asking why I had done that. My reply: “Too early in the election cycle. Come back just before the first primary.”
The truth of the matter is that none of the pre-primary political rhetoric is going to make one iota’s difference in national policy or the fate of the nation. Each candidate will struggle to raise the required war chest of a rumored one hundred million dollars.
That money will not be spent on the poor, on providing health care, on educating the young or preserving the environment. It will largely enrich television production units, TV stations, assorted political mercenaries, and consultants.
Will I vote in the primary? Sure. Will I vote in the general election? Well, I always have. But until September, 2008, my dears, I plan not to give a damn.
There’s been considerable speculation about who will throw a hat in the ring to become Tucson’s next mayor. What’s been missing to date is any speculation about what the key issues will be…or what they ought to be.
Tucson Symphony Conductor George Hanson (in a Star guest editorial) has suggested a topic:
“The vision: a performing arts, education and technology center, celebrating our Native American, Hispanic and European heritages — the centerpiece that is missing from the Rio Nuevo table. An 1,800 seat concert hall, easily converted into a ball- or showroom; a renovated Tucson Music Hall, perfect for opera and Broadway shows; a shared plaza with restaurants, coffee shops, a taqueria and open gallery space; a jazz club nearby; education and technology facilities to bring the enormous benefits of the performing arts to young people, and to those who can't afford it.
“What's wrong with this vision? No one else sees it.
“Perhaps it's tunnel vision: bridge, arena, science center. But none of those projects can compete with the economic impact, dollar for dollar, of the performing arts.”
I think this is worth making a key issue of the election. It bears not just on the economic viability of Rio Nuevo and downtown re-development, but on what kind of city Tucson wants to become.
Do we want to be simply a great place for conventions (the Walkup vision, apparently) or do we want to grow as a great cultural center--- the Athens, if you will, of the Southwest. Do we want businesses to come here because the land and labor are cheap, or do we want businesses to move here because the cultural dynamic attracts the leadership of those businesses?
However it plays out this idea should be a major issue in the coming election.
Since her swearing-in Congresswoman Giffords has been a co-sponsor of 14 House Resolutions and has addressed the House five times.
The first six House Resolutions were part of the Democrats’ “1st Hundred Hours” push. She co-sponsored resolutions to implement the 911 Report, raise the minimum wage, permit human embryonic stem cell research, require government negotiation of drug prices for Medicare recipients, reduce interest rates on student loans, and to develop alternative energy resources and emerging energy technologies.
The details on these votes and the eight other resolutions she co-sponsored are available here.
The Arizona Capitol Times has a long interview with Congresswoman Giffords. Here are two excerpts:
What are the main issues affecting your constituents in southern Arizona?
Being one of 10 U.S. Mexico border districts, certainly the impacts of immigration are greatly important to the 8th Congressional District. We're basically carrying the burden. We know it because of our first responders - issues in terms of law enforcement, also our hospitals and our schools. The federal government needs to step up and take responsibility. Immigration is a top priority for the district.
The district also has two very important military installations. Fort Huachuca, which houses the Army Intelligence Center, which is becoming increasingly important as we fight issues pertaining to international terrorism. We also have Davis-Monthan, a very large and important Air Force base. Southern Arizona is home to one of the largest veteran populations. We need to make sure that the men and women who sacrificed to serve our nation are taken care of. So that's a big area of concern.
Also, I have to mention the University of Arizona - our economic driver, in terms of keeping global competitiveness at the forefront - making sure that we graduate engineers, scientists, mathematicians, and technical people that continue to help lead the United States into this 21st century and our global economy.
You were recently appointed, as you mentioned, to the House Armed Services Committee. What would you like to see happen with the U.S. military in Iraq?
I support a strategic redeployment plan. The president convened the Baker Hamilton bipartisan working group that set forth recommendations of how we should be dealing with the situation in Iraq. I believe that we should be following those recommendations.
I hope to travel to Iraq in the near future to have a chance to spend time with constituents, with not only folks from my district but the leadership to get a better understanding about the challenges we face. I also believe that we need to focus on Afghanistan. We are losing ground. The al Qaeda terrorists that attacked the United States were trained and had real ties to Afghanistan.
And, last, a short housekeeping note. I’ve re-established a second version of The Data Port, cleverly named Data Port Two. That’s where I’ll post all the non-political stuff so it doesn’t clutter up righteous lefty haranguing.The first post is up here
I’m off tomorrow for what I try to make an annual ride…the 12th Annual Death Valley Daze. The Daze is a motorcycle rally that attracts riders who are, for the most part, from the Southwest, although one year a hardy rider rode out from Florida. Some will stay at the Furnace Creek Lodge, but the real rally goers (the purists) will camp---on the grounds that if you ain’t camping you ain’t at the rally.
A week or so ago the night-time temperatures dropped into the low twenties, which was pretty appalling, but it looks now that days will be close to 70 and the nights in the low 30s. The advantage of taking the hack is that I can haul enough gear to camp like King Farouk: Extra sleeping bag, folding chair, plenty of cooking gear, and extra down to wear around the camp site in the morning.
Death Valley is my favorite scenic spot in the Southwest…even in mid summer, when the bike can get so hot that you can't touch the brake and clutch levers with your bare hands. I’m looking forward to sitting around the campfire with old (and I do mean old) friends, kicking lies and telling tires. 
An article over at AterNet.Org once again reminds us of the dangers of ignoring history. Perhaps the biggest “surge” in military history took place A little over ninety years ago---July1st 1916---when the British launched “the big push” that was to break through the German trench system and open the way for a victorious cavalry charge that would end the war.
The meat-grinding battle (The Battle of the Somme) ended on November 18th, 1916.
According to the British Imperial War Museum site:“Over a million men became casualties in the long and bitter struggle on the Somme. The offensive cost Britain and the Empire 419,654 casualties, 125,000 of them dead. In Britain the impact of the losses was severe, particularly in the north of England where many of the Pals battalions had been recruited.
“French casualties numbered 204,253. Estimates of German casualties vary widely between 437,000 and 680,000. A German staff officer described the Somme as ‘the muddy grave of the German field army.’ "
Adam Hochschild, the author of the AlterNet article is well aware of the obvious differences between the Somme and Iraq, but his attention to the situational similarities is fascinating.
Hochschild comments: “There are huge differences, of course, between the First World War and the current fighting in Iraq. But, even beyond the optimistic talk of the Big Push, there is another eerie resemblance between the two conflicts.In both cases, a great power was itching to launch an invasion, and seized on a handy excuse to do so.”
The whole article may be read here.
The Imperial War Museum site is fascinating. Take a look.
Incidentally, as we approach the hundredth anniversary of The Great War I expect we’ll see historians revisiting the event the transformed the politics of our world. 
I don’t know about the rest of you, but I don’t think ‘non-binding resolutions’ or ‘sense of the Congress’ expressions are going to get us out of Iraq; neither does Salon commentator Gary Kamiya, who asks “Where is The Outrage?”
Kamiya is profoundly skeptical about the Democrats ever cutting off funds for the war--- still spooked by the Conservatives’ strategy of tying the ‘soft on security’ can to their tails. A real anti-war movement, a thunderous presence in the streets, would support the radical move of cutting funds, but no such anti-war movement exists.
Although disapproval of Bush’s mismanagement of the war is huge there is really no outrage at the suffering that war has caused. After all, there have ‘only’ been 3000 deaths and for no one is the suffering of the thousands of wounded a reality. When even the dead are just numbers, the wounded become only medical statistics.
Kamiya writes: “The fact is, except for that comparatively small number of Americans who have fought there, Iraq is just a name on a map. The deaths there, too, are unreal. And if by chance their reality becomes undeniable, they happen to other people.”
” American casualties have remained discreetly hidden from view. (To say nothing of the horrendous numbers of Iraqis who have been killed as the result of the war, which the U.S. government has callously avoided tallying.) The Bush administration has tried to keep the dead and wounded out of sight, and the media, cowed by "taste" rules and patriotism, has mostly played along. The result is an abstract war, a play war, a dream war.”
During World War One it was the war poets such as Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, and (after the war) novelist Erich Maria Remarque, who raised our consciousness of the horror, making it explicit and terrible.
Iraq has produced a soldier poet of extraordinary talent, Brian Turner. Kamiya quotes him in the Salon article. It will break your heart.
In a poem titled "2000 lbs," Turner opens with a description of a suicide bomber in Mosul's Ashur Square, who is watching in his rearview mirror for a convoy. He writes of two men, an Iraqi taxi driver named Sefwan and an American Guardsman named Sgt. Ledouix, who are also in Ashur Square.
A flight of gold, that's what Sefwan thinks
as he lights a Miami, draws in the smoke
and waits in his taxi at the traffic circle.
He thinks of summer 1974, lifting
pitchforks of grain high in the air,
the slow drift of it like the fall of Shatha's hair,
and although it was decades ago, he still loves her,
remembers her standing at the canebrake
where the buffalo cooled shoulder-deep in the water,
pleased with the orange cups of flowers he brought her,
and he regrets how much can go wrong in a life,
how easily the years slip by, light as grain, bright
as the street's concussion of metal, shrapnel
traveling at the speed of sound to open him up
in blood and shock, a man whose last thoughts
are of love and wreckage, with no one there
to whisper him gone.
Sgt. Ledouix of the National Guard
speaks but cannot hear the words coming out,
and it's just as well his eardrums ruptured
because it lends the world a certain calm,
though the traffic circle is filled with people
running in panic, their legs a blur
like horses in a carousel, turning
and turning the way the tires spin
on the Humvee flipped to its side,
the gunner's hatch he was thrown from
a mystery to him now, a dark hole
in metal the color of sand, and if he could,
he would crawl back inside of it,
and though his fingertips scratch at the asphalt
he hasn't the strength to move:
shrapnel has torn into his ribcage
and he will bleed to death in minutes,
but he finds himself surrounded by a strange
beauty, the shine of light on the broken,
a woman's hand touching his face, tenderly
the way his wife might, amazed to find
a wedding ring on his crushed hand,
the bright gold sinking in flesh
going to bone.
The poem appears in a collection of Turner's poetry titled, 'Here, Bullet'
Read more about Turner here.
If Bush and his neo-con conspirators had even the most rudimentary knowledge of the history of the region would they have led us all into the Iraq disaster? One hopes not.
Sadly, they were either ignorant of the history of the area, or they knew it and were too dumb to think for a moment about the lesson of an earlier empire’s Iraq adventure.
Consider this quotation from an article at AterNet.Org by Barry Lando.
“The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia [Iraq] into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honour. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information…..We are today not far from disaster.”
So wrote Colonel T.E. Lawrence (of Arabia) in the London Sunday Times, August 1920.
Lando’s outline of the stages of the British invasion, and its ultimate failure, reads like a shockingly contemporary account of our own bloody disaster.
When the British forces marched into Baghdad in 1917 they did so announcing that they were liberators, not conquerors.
In fact, they were no more interested in liberating the local inhabitants and their lands than were any of the conquerors who had preceded them, nor the one who followed. Their major concern was bases to support their sprawling empire and oil to fuel their economy and war-making machine.
The British attempt to pacify the region was carried out by aircraft, armored cars, machine guns, firing squads and 130,000 British soldiers, more than 1600 of whom were killed. The British established the Sunnis as rulers in Baghdad and the Shiites of course considered them occupiers.
The British attempted to maintain control of the region by establishing the Hashemite prince Faisal (who had never been to Iraq) as the King of the new nation, in the process betraying the Kurds who had been promised an independent homeland at the end of World War I.
Winston Churchill, who was then Home Secretary, argued that Britain should give up its attempts to control Kurdish Mosul and Sunni-dominated Baghdad and retain only the Shiite province of Basra in the south, which was a strategic link to British possessions in Persia. If the British Cabinet had followed his advice, each of the principle peoples of Iraq—Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds—would have had its own government; the groups who were bound together as Iraqis might have had a much less tragic history.
Churchill was right. It's my judgment that in addition to simply advocating a withdrawl from Iraq Progressives should consider support of the 'three state solution.' However, the devil is in the details and this might mean we have to stay in Iraq longer than a simple 'withdraw now' policy implies.
Quotations from Barry Lando’s article are in Italics. Read the complete article here.
The following note was distributed on each chair at last Saturday’s organizational meeting of the Pima County Democratic Party.
TODAY’S SCRIPT
First we take impeachment off the table
Then we take war funding off the table
Then when George Bush sends in more troops
We throw up our hands and explain
There is nothing we can do to stop him.
The circulator of that also asked a couple of questions: Why have so many left the Democratic Party to register as independents? How come they call us “spineless” and “brain-dead”?
It begins to look like “Today’s Script” is tomorrow’s action plan and that we’ll be in Iraq through 2008.
I think it’s clear that the vast majority of Americans want us out of Iraq. I think it’s safe to say that the sooner and more completely out of Iraq you want us to be, the more likely it is that you count yourself a Progressive.
If so, that makes me a Progressive.
But while Progressives mount campaigns to put pressure on Congress to get out, it seems appropriate that we discuss exactly how we propose that be done and what our post-exit relationship to Iraq ought to be.
More important, and so far as I can see not considered at all, is the question of what our moral obligation to the people of Irag is and how we should respond to that obligation.
Perhaps one of our most active Progressives, Rev. Gerry Straatemeier, MSW could lead us in such a discussion.
Representative Gabrielle Giffords took her first action in Congress today, voting on a package of ethics reform measures.
A Ban on Gifts from Lobbyists: Members of Congress and their staff are not allowed to accept gifts or expensive meals that could sway legislators' opinions, create unethical relationships between lobbyists and legislators, or give the appearance of impropriety. This is also a ban on gifts and meals from lobbyists and the organizations that employ them, and requires that tickets to sporting and other events given to Members and staff are valued at market prices.
A Ban on Lobbyist Travel: Lobbyists and the organizations that employ them cannot plan, organize, request, finance, arrange, or participate in travel for Members of Congress or their staff.
Shut Down Pay-to-Play Schemes: This measure ends the revolving door between Congress and lobbying firms, in which jobs were exchanged for political access.
A Ban on Arm Twisting for Votes: The measure prohibits the practice of holding votes open for undue amounts of time for the sole purpose of twisting arms and affecting the outcome of a vote.
A Requirement on fiscal and budgetary responsibility: Congress must use "pay-as-you-go" budget rules to stop any new deficit spending as the first step toward reversing record deficits mortgaging our children's future.
Earmark Reform: There will be no secret deals between legislators and special interests -- there will be full disclosure of all earmarks, requiring Members to certify that earmarks provided would be for the public good -- not financially benefiting themselves or their spouses.
In case you missed it, here’s an interesting story from the New York Daily News.
“WASHINGTON - President Bush has quietly claimed sweeping new powers to open Americans' mail without a judge's warrant, the Daily News has learned.
The President asserted his new authority when he signed a postal reform bill into law on Dec. 20. Bush then issued a "signing statement" that declared his right to open people's mail under emergency conditions.
That claim is contrary to existing law and contradicted the bill he had just signed, say experts who have reviewed it.”
The great decider strikes again.
Forgive this shameless plug for a current job of work I’m doing, but I thought there might be some lefty bloggers in and around Tucson who’d like it.
The fact that the Bush administration has fostered the development of a private army, Blackwater USA, is probably not news to any readers of Lefty Blogs. What might be news is its size, and the extent to which this mercenary army functions beyond the normal control of Congress or the US Code of Military Justice.
I got a nice e-mail from Bill Richardson the other day. He’s running for President, he’s “in it to win,” he’s eager to serve his country in its time of need… or some such thing.
There’s been considerable speculation about who will throw a hat in the ring to become Tucson’s next mayor. What’s been missing to date is any speculation about what the key issues will be…or what they ought to be.
I’m off tomorrow for what I try to make an annual ride…the 12th Annual Death Valley Daze. The Daze is a motorcycle rally that attracts riders who are, for the most part, from the Southwest, although one year a hardy rider rode out from Florida. Some will stay at the Furnace Creek Lodge, but the real rally goers (the purists) will camp---on the grounds that if you ain’t camping you ain’t at the rally.
In case you missed it, here’s an interesting story from the New York Daily News.