You know, I’m a pretty soft-hearted tree-hugging kind of liberal. I support hate crime legislation for the most part, though I think some take it a bit far. However, even hearing that putting a Quran in the toilet is grounds for a hate crime charge just drives me crazy. Not new news, but I caught it on both The Situation Room and the promo for Hannity & Colmes, so there you go.

The Islamic holy book was found in a toilet at Pace’s lower Manhattan campus by a teacher on Oct. 13. A student discovered another book in a toilet on Nov. 21, police said.

Muslim activists had called on Pace University to crack down on hate crimes after the incidents. As a result, the university said it would offer sensitivity training to its students.

You know, there’s a fine line between trying to get people to be sensitive and legislating in favor of people to avoid offending them. I could understand if someone beat a Muslim with a Quran. That’s a hate crime. Desecrating it? That’s hateful, but it’s not a crime. We can burn flags, we can piss on a statue of Jesus, we sure as hell can put Qurans in the toilet. I don’t care if it was intended to “intimidate” someone. There was no threat of violence, it was just a Quran in the crapper.

Note to Muslims in the USA: lighten up, quit being a bunch of babies.

Note to US government: by calling this a hate crime you’re putting us along a road that leads to criminalizing public portraits of Mohammad.

You can look out your windows, but Hell hasn’t frozen over. Regardless, Dick Cheney has admitted he was wrong, speaking about his 2005 “last throes” prediction.

In an interview with CNN’s Larry King, Cheney said he thought at the time the capture of Saddam Hussein, elections and other milestones would be enough to undermine the insurgency.

“That clearly didn’t happen,” Cheney admitted. “I think the insurgency turned out to be more robust.”

Really, Dick? Ya think? I wonder how you came upon that brilliant conclusion. Might have had something to do with the thousands of deaths that have happened at the hands of the insurgents since they were supposedly in their last throes, but I can’t be sure. I might accuse Dick of severe understatement that indicates a complete lack of concern for the situation, but that might seem partisan and angry.

“If I were in the business to be popular, I suppose I’d be worried about my poll ratings and so forth. I’m not,” said Cheney, adding he has no plans ever to run for office or seek another government post again. “I came here to do a job. I’m not running for any office, myself.”

It’s always funny that they talk about not caring about poll ratings, but that seems to just be between elections. When it comes time to get someone elected, suddenly they’re quite in the business to be popular. It makes it sound like they just care about pandering to the people long enough to get elected, then they have no problem with thumbing their noses at the populace.

After all, this is a democracy. The will of the people is a big part of the process. Claiming that you don’t care what the people think seems, I don’t know, un-American somehow.

The last I heard about Ted Stevens, it was during his famous “it’s a series of tubes!” speech concerning the internet. That speech, by the way, wasn’t entirely wrong, it just sounded crazy.

Anyway, he’s back in the news again. Not for making another crazy speech, but rather thanks to a corruption investigation that sent the FBI raiding his Alaskan home.

The decision to raid the home suggests that the corruption investigation focused on Mr. Stevens, a long-serving Republican and former chairman, has taken on new urgency.

The businessman, Bill J. Allen, the founder of an oil fields service company that has won tens of millions of dollars in federal contracts with the senator’s help, has pleaded guilty to bribing state legislators.

If one were to make a list of every corruption case that’s gone down in the past few years, I don’t believe a single one would involve a Democrat aside from William Jefferson’s money in the freezer. Sure, the AP attempted to drag down Harry Reid but those all fizzled out pretty quickly.

The take-home message is that the GOP seems to be the true party of corruption. Funny that they continue to claim that they represent the values and whatnot. Heck, look at this post over on Reconstitution talking about Rudy Giuliani and his wife. Whoever thinks that the right stands for traditional family values must be looking at words in lieu of actions.

I have maintained for quite some time now that the vast majority of people in the “pro-life” crowd are complete dunces who have given zero actual thought to the issue. As if by divine providence (gasp), someone decided to prove it by asking them what should happen to women who have abortions after they’re made illegal.

A new public-policy group called the National Institute for Reproductive Health wants to take this contradiction and make it the centerpiece of a national conversation, along with a slogan that stops people in their tracks: how much time should she do? If the Supreme Court decides abortion is not protected by a constitutional guarantee of privacy, the issue will revert to the states. If it goes to the states, some, perhaps many, will ban abortion. If abortion is made a crime, then surely the woman who has one is a criminal. But, boy, do the doctrinaire suddenly turn squirrelly at the prospect of throwing women in jail.

It’s a question that, somehow, people who have been protesting abortion for the better part of a decade have never even considered. When asked, these people get blank looks on their faces as though it was a foreign concept, like the fact that someone other than the doctor is involved with the procedure was a revelation to them. Watch it actually happen on video.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T95avZoqlhE]

There is such vitriol being thrown at the abortion doctors, these peddlers of death, but it’s like they think these women are sitting at home and the doctors show up at their front doors like vacuum salesmen. From the way these people talk, the women who get abortions are innocent victims who have abortions foisted upon them. All you have to do is lock up the doctors, because the women would never go and seek out abortions on their own volition, right?

Also notice how often God shows up. That “God will punish them” seems plenty for the women, though I’ve no doubts they’d lock away the doctors forever.

All this just reinforces is the Christian Conservative idiotic belief that criminalizing things makes them go away. That’s why they never considered what to do with women who defy the law and have abortions anyway. As far as they had reasoned, once the law is passed there will be no more abortion. That’s why these morons think abstinence-only education is a good idea, they actually believe that telling people to stop doing things will make them stop and have absolutely no Plan B for when they do it anyway.

UPDATE: I had thought that it would make sense to charge the women who get abortions with murder just like the doctors, since after all it’s a joint decision. But then, as someone on DailyKos noted some time ago, many of these anti-abortion women have had abortions themselves. Naturally it’s different when they do it, or they feel somehow victimized by the doctors.

It might explain why they’re so hesitant to name a penalty. They know they may never become abortion doctors, but they don’t want anything to happen to them if they ever decide that somehow their circumstances necessitate the procedure.

I think what worries me most about the situation in Iraq is that we have a strange combination of a country that is unwilling or unable to take control of itself and a domestic government that is unwilling to take a firm hand in forcing that. On the first matter, we have the fact that the Iraqi government is doing absolutely terribly in using American funds to work on reconstruction.

“My auditors found that the asset-transfer process is broken: since June 2006, the GOI (government of Iraq) has not formally accepted a single IRRF (Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Fund) project,” Stuart Bowen, the inspector general, said in a message released with the report.

…

“The failure of the asset-transfer program raises concerns about the continuing operation and maintenance of U.S.-constructed projects,” the report said. “In some cases, the United States has continued to pay for maintaining complete projects that have not been accepted” by Iraq.

I’m not sure exactly what “accepted” means, but from the sounds of things the United States government is attempting to pass projects to the Iraqi government but they just aren’t taking the helm. The thing is, many on the right constantly take the attitude of wanting to stay around in Iraq until they don’t need us there any more. But anyone with children will tell you that as long as you constantly tell them that you’ll be there until they don’t need you, they’ll always need you. You have to be proactive in forcing them to take responsibility for themselves. I hate to sound like I’m calling them children, but it’s the best I could do this late at night.

Then we have the attitude of many on the right, illustrated by what is considered the “fashionable” stance for the GOP on Iraq.

Republicans increasingly are backing a new approach in the Iraq war that could become the party’s mantra come September. It would mean narrowly limited missions for U.S. troops in Iraq but let President Bush decide when troops should leave.

…

But the GOP approach quickly is becoming the attractive alternative for Republican lawmakers who want to challenge Bush on the unpopular war without backtracking from their past assertions that it would be disastrous to set deadlines for troop withdrawals.

I’ve been asking this for a while and still haven’t gotten an answer: how can we get our troops out, ever, if we don’t set a deadline? From the way the right talks, we’re going to wait until it’s an absolute paradise and then send the word over that the boys are coming home that afternoon. Unless someone thinks it’s possible to have the troops On Notice to pull out whenever the whistle blows, a deadline and a timeline are going to have to be drawn at some point.

Pulling troops out is a slow process. Particularly in a situation like this. You can’t just snap your fingers and have all 150,000 on a plane coming home. That said, even if you could, why would a deadline make any difference? If you were an insurgent waiting for American troops to leave, why wouldn’t you sit around if there was no deadline? It’s like they think that this oh-so patient enemy will ONLY wait for us to leave if there’s a definite deadline.

But that’s an article for another time. One where I can really elaborate. For now, let it just be known that these people are idiots and unless they’re willing to start using a firm hand we’ll be in Iraq forever.

One of the soldiers present when Pat Tillman was killed has finally come forward. I see no need to add a zippy comment or anything, so I’ll let you read the guy’s words for yourself.

“He said, ‘I’ve got an idea to help get us out of this,”‘ said O’Neal, who was an 18-year-old Army Ranger in Tillman’s unit when the former NFL player was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan in April 2004.

O’Neal said Tillman, a corporal, threw a smoke grenade to identify themselves to fellow soldiers who were firing at them. Tillman was waving his arms shouting “Cease fire, friendlies, I am Pat [expletive] Tillman, damn it!” again and again when he was killed, O’Neal said.

…

In the same testimony, medical examiners said the bullet holes in Tillman’s head were so close together that it appeared the Army Ranger was cut down by an M-16 fired from a mere 10 yards or so away.

O’Neal said the shooters were “close, close enough for me to recognize them, but they sure weren’t 10 yards away. They were further than that. I’ve thought about this plenty of times. They wouldn’t have been more than 50 yards away.”

A few discrepancies, but a scene is starting to come together. I don’t want to get into anything crazy, but now that I’m hearing that he was supposed to have a meeting with Noam Chomsky, it’s hard to wonder if his death really was deliberate.

For the record, I’m not claiming anyone was wired an order by Don Rumsfeld to shoot Tillman to keep him quiet, but given the horrors we’ve heard some of the soldiers in Iraq perpetrate, it’s certainly within the realm of possibility that some Americans resented the superstar Tillman who was vocally against the Iraq war and wanted to meet with the very-lefty author. Hopefully the truth will out itself soon.

All righty, here’s a nice little Saturday evening news story for anyone who is feeling a little too cheery about things. It seems the United States government has struck a deal to give $20billion in arms to Saudi Arabia over the next ten years. That Billion with a B, folks.

The proposed sale, first reported in The New York Times, is intended to upgrade the Saudi military’s ability to counter possible Iranian aggression in the Persian Gulf region, the official said.

“This is all about Iran,” said the official, who spoke to CNN on condition of anonymity because discussions with the Saudis are still going on and the arms sale deal has not been completed.

The deal includes, amazingly, satellite-guided missile attachments which the US will helpfully place as far from Israel as possible, just in case. Now let’s think for a moment, a little refresher course on Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is:

a) The home base for most of the 9/11 hijackers
b) The source of funds for Al Qaeda
c) The most repressive Islamic fundamentalist regime in the region
d) All of the above, but they have oil!

I’ll let you answer that one for yourself.

There are certain things that make the hair on the back of my neck stand up. Things like watching someone wipe their teeth with their t-shirt or fingernails squealing on anything. In the political realm, it’s any time President Bush tells us that the law is inadequate, and when it’s when talking about FISA, all the alarms start flashing red.

Bush noted that terrorists now use disposable cell phones and the Internet to communicate, recruit operatives and plan attacks; such tools were not available when FISA passed nearly 30 years ago. He also cited a recently released intelligence estimate that concluded al-Qaida is using its growing strength in the Middle East to plot attacks on U.S. soil.

“Our intelligence community warns that under the current statute, we are missing a significant amount of foreign intelligence that we should be collecting to protect our country,” Bush said. “Congress needs to act immediately to pass this bill, so that our national security professionals can close intelligence gaps and provide critical warning time for our country.”

Here’s the thing, and I’m not the only one who’s made note of this. The last few terrorist “threats”, if you could call them that, which were stopped before they came to fruition were all stopped by regular old police work. Not one of the foiled plots needed surveillance not covered by the FISA law. Looking into the massive line of failures from 9/11, at no point along that chain would extra spying have helped. All the evidence was there, it just wasn’t acted upon.

I’m going with Russ on this one, it seems like Bush is, as he has done for the past six years, using terrorism as a political tool. Exploiting the nation’s fears to advance his own agenda.

I have to be honest, if I was Michael Moore I would be just basking in this one. After all the hullabaloo of the scene in SiCKO in which Moore takes a few 9/11 rescue workers to Guantanamo Bay, the guv’mint decided to take action and issue him a subpoena. Just before he stepped onto the set of The Tonight Show.

“I haven’t even told my own family yet,” Moore remarked. “I was just informed when I was back there with Jay that the Bush administration has now issued a subpoena for me.”

Moore declared that the subpoena was unwarranted, saying, “this was a work of journalism.”

“I was there to help them and now I’m going to face this further harassment from the Bush people,” Moore said, according to a transcript. “Aren’t they busy with something else?”

That’s a good question. Aren’t they busy with something else? I suppose they are, since they’re handing subpoenas out with one hand while the other is blocking Congress’s. I’m wondering what actual grounds this is on, since I can’t imagine if Sean Hannity traveled to Gitmo without telling anyone it would pose a problem, so long as he did it to rip on liberals somehow. For example, if he decided to prove that the detainees get great treatment.

For all the squawking Tony Snow does about how Congress is out of control and doing things just for political grandstanding, I can’t imagine if there’s anything more obviously political than the Bush team subpoenaing Michael Moore over a film he made. Sad.

In many ways, I feel worse for the Tillman family than I do for the families of most of the casualties in the Faux War on Terror. Obviously all deaths are tragic, but here we have a football star who gave it all up purely in the interest of serving his nation, and now the government is lying about what happened to him.

First it was a heroic death, charging up a hill to attack the enemy. Then it was “friendly fire” while in that same battle. That’s not terrible, in my eyes, it’s still a death during a fight against the enemy, crossfire happens. But now, as it turns out, Tillman’s death may not have been an accident at all.

“The medical evidence did not match up with the, with the scenario as described,” a doctor who examined Tillman’s body after he was killed on the battlefield in Afghanistan in 2004 told investigators.

The doctors - whose names were blacked out - said that the bullet holes were so close together that it appeared the Army Ranger was cut down by an M-16 fired from a mere 10 yards or so away.

There were three holes in Tillman’s forehead from what was, likely, a very close distance. Friendly fire would have been random shots, not a cluster all together. In the 2,300 pages of documents released from the investigation there were a number of damning conclusions made, but the one that seals the deal for me is this:

- No evidence at all of enemy fire was found at the scene - no one was hit by enemy fire, nor was any government equipment struck.

No evidence of enemy fire. If that doesn’t nigh-conclusively determine that Tillman’s death was both deliberate and at the hands of his fellow soldiers I’m not sure what more evidence you need outside of surveillance footage. The Pentagon tried to claim that Pat Tillman died while fighting the enemy, but there is no evidence of any enemy on the scene.

You know what hurts our troops’ morale? Knowing that other people on the ground with them may turn their guns onto their allies and that the government will suppress the information and take no action against the perpetrators.