Pinging stuff I care about.
3 GOP senators blast Bush bid to bypass torture ban – The Boston Globe
Three key Republican senators yesterday condemned President Bush’s assertion that his powers as commander in chief give him the authority to bypass a new law restricting the use of torture when interrogating detainees.
Good for them. Shame on Bush.
Glad to see that executive power unchecked even by explicit prohibition of torture is something worth breaking ranks over to some Republicans.
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Bush pulls the plug on Iraq reconstruction
The Bush administration has scaled back its ambitions to rebuild Iraq from the devastation wrought by war and dictatorship and does not intend to seek new funds for reconstruction, it emerged yesterday.
In a decision that will be seen as a retreat from a promise by President George Bush to give Iraq the best infrastructure in the region, administration officials say they will not seek reconstruction funds when the budget request is presented to Congress next month, the Washington Post reported yesterday.
The $18.4bn (£10.6bn) allocation is scheduled to run out in June 2007. The move will be seen by critics as further evidence of the administration’s failure to plan for the aftermath of the war.
A decision not to renew the reconstruction programme would leave Iraq with the burden of tens of billions of dollars in unfinished projects, and an oil industry and electrical grid that have yet to return to pre-war production levels.
The decision is a tacit admission of the failure of the US rebuilding effort in the face of a relentless insurgency.
Maybe wars aren’t really very good for nations. Maybe wars are even worse for nations than vicious dictators are. Maybe there are better ways than shock and awe invasions to topple dictators, or at least ways that have less disastrous consequences. Maybe the U.S. is not militarily omnipotent.
Maybe the best thing we could do for Iraq now is free up a little extra reconstruction budget by getting our troops the hell out of there, and establishing good relations with the resulting Iraqi government or governments, and helping them rebuild.
U.S. Troops Draw Up Own Exit Strategy | The Onion – America’s Finest News Source
In a striking rebuke of the assertions of the Pentagon and the White House that a swift exit is neither practical nor possible, soldiers of varying rank have outlined a straightforward plan of immediate disengagement, dubbed “Operation Screw This.”
World news from The Times and the Sunday Times – Times Online
FIVE centuries of white rule in Bolivia have ended with the election of the country’s first indigenous head of state.
Evo Morales, of the Movement towards Socialism (MAS), won more than 50 per cent of the vote in Sunday’s election, far outstripping all predictions. In his unprecedented first-round victory he left his nearest rival for the presidency, the pro-US Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga, more than 20 percentage points behind. Addressing Bolivia’s main indigenous groups during his acceptance speech, Se�or Morales, who is an Aymaran Indian, said: “I want to say to the Aymaras, Quechuas, Guaran�es and Chiriguanos that for the first time we are going to be President.” Thousands took to the streets to celebrate. Su pporters crammed into trucks and drove around La Paz chanting “Evo to the palace, Tuto to Washington”.
Libertarians may forgive Morales his nationalization of gas reserves when they note that he is going to turn the nation into a grand experiment in drug legalization:
Señor Morales, who used to lead a coca-growers’ union, has promised to legalise the cultivation of coca, the primary ingredient in cocaine — to the horror of the US, which has pursued a big coca eradication effort in Bolivia in recent years. Bolivia is the world’s third largest producer of cocaine.
Oh, man, Washington is going to _*HATE*_ this dude. It makes me happy.
You read “Through His Webcam, Boy Joins a Sordid Online World, and you get really freaking creeped out about what can happen to kids connected to creepy adults through the internet.
Then you can read something like The Big Al Ramos story and realize that you don’t need the internet and webcams for creepy adults to do horrible things to children. The Catholic Church heirarchy is just as effective a tool of molestation, and I’m sure there are many, many others.
There are some really insane child porn laws out there (e.g. if someone sends you child porn in email and you don’t open it, you’re still guilty because it was on your computer), and I’ve generally thought they were stupid, and well, I still do, but I can sure understand the motivation for them with investigators finding this kind of stuff happening.
So how *do* you protect your kids? Best first step I can think of to start off with is do your damndest to make sure your kids aren’t afraid to tell you anything, no matter what. Another is to give your kids the respect that you expect them to demand from other adults. Any other ideas?