Subject to Change, version 2.0
Mostly found objects; at least until I find something I want to write about.


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Wednesday, May 25, 2005
 

Dobson dissembled, backed away from earlier comparison of Supreme Court to KKK.

Focus on the Family founder James C. Dobson attempted to revise an earlier statement in which he compared the Ku Klux Klan and the present-day Supreme Court.



During the April 11 broadcast of the Focus on the Family radio show, which featured Mark Levin, author of Men in Black: How the Supreme Court is Destroying America (Regnery, February 2005), as his guest, Dobson said:



DOBSON: I heard a minister the other day talking about the great injustice and evil of the men in white robes, the Ku Klux Klan, that roamed the country in the South, and they did great wrong to civil rights and to morality. And now we have black-robed men, and that's what you're talking about.



The operative word in Dobson's statement is "now." His reference to "black-robed men" was clearly to the justices presently serving on the Supreme Court (except the court's two female members, whom he either forgot or deliberately excluded from his Klan comparison). Moreover, during the program, Dobson limited his discussion with Levin almost exclusively to the present-day judiciary.



But on the May 24 edition of Fox News' Hannity & Colmes, Dobson denied attacking the current Supreme Court, claiming instead that he was referring only to the Supreme Court of 1857 that issued the infamous Dred Scott decision, which upheld the institution of slavery. His denial came in response to co-host Alan Colmes, who confronted Dobson about his earlier statement:



COLMES: You said this: "I heard a minister the other day talking about the great injustice and evil of the men in white robes, the Ku Klux Klan, that roamed the country in the South. And they did great wrong to civil rights and to morality. And now we have black-robed men, and that's what you're talking about." Are you comparing men and women -- you didn't mention the women -- in black robes to those who wore white robes in the Klan? Is that an analogy you're making there?



DOBSON: No. No, Alan, I'm on the radio three hours a week. That should have been fleshed out more if I was going to say that. The whole story there is, I heard this minister talk about when he was young, and he grew up in the South. And there was tremendous discrimination there and he saw the Ku Klux Klan and what they did. And he fought against it, at personal sacrifice.



But now that he is older, he sees wrongs being done by the court. And he went back to the 1858 [sic: 1857] decision of Dred Scott, which declared black people not fully human. That was another form of evil. And he was saying evil comes in either black or white, comparing black robes or white robes.



COLMES: But you're comparing those in black robes to those in white robes, and you're comparing the Klan to judges on the court.



DOBSON: I certainly would compare the court that made the decision in Dred Scott to be tantamount to the Ku Klux Klan. They did as much damage.

[Media Matters for America]
5:05:01 PM    

Fox Freudian slip: Asman asked Lott why a compromise was needed when "we" had the votes for the nuclear option.

Responding to Sen. Trent Lott's (R-MS) suggestion that Senate Republicans had the necessary votes to invoke the so-called nuclear option and that such a step was necessary, Fox News anchor David Asman asked Lott why Republican senators compromised on the issue. Asman said why compromise "if we should have done it and if we had the votes to do it in the Senate." Asman quickly corrected himself by stating that "you guys in the Republican party" had the votes to follow through on the nuclear option.



From the May 25 edition of Fox News Live:



ASMAN: You're the chairman of the rules committee. Did Senator [Bill] Frist [R-TN] have the votes to end the filibuster?



LOTT: I believe that he did. It would have been very close. We would have probably gotten a 50-50 tie vote, with the vice president breaking the tie. Perhaps we'd have had 51 before it was over. I do think it's a rule that should be in place because what the Democrats have been doing is not, you know, protecting a rule, they have been causing something different. The filibusters on a serial basis, federal judicial nominees to the appellate courts, was unprecedented for 214 years. So, to put that rule in place to saying that it only takes 51 votes to confirm these judges was something I thought we should do. Remember now --



ASMAN: So, Senator, if we should have done it and if we had the votes to do it in the Senate -- if you guys in the Republican Party did -- then why did you need a compromise?



LOTT: Well, you know, I would argue that we probably should have gone forward with the vote, all things considered.

[Media Matters for America]
5:04:26 PM    

Robert Schlesinger: How I Love "Customer Service"

Here's what we need: A "technical support union."

Is there any major company left in the world that is even remotely concerned with individual customer service? The answer is probably not. Why? Because as individual consumers, we're irrelevent to them. If companies screw me and I vow to never use their services again it makes absolutely no difference to them.

That's why companies can pay pennies to folks in India to read through talking points -- and call it "customer service": Because there's no profit in customer service. If an individual doesn't like it, what are they going to do? Go to another company? Individuals are irrelevant at that level.

That's also why when you call "customer service" the first thing the automated voice asks is whether you're calling from a business or as an individual -- they want to cut out the individuals who can be ignored from the mass-consumers who can't be. Piss off the wrong person at a business and you might lose a serious chunk of change.

Which is why we need a "technical support union." If you were calling technical support not as Joe Shmoe but as Joe Shmoe from TS Local 513, it might, ahem, encourage major companies to give competent support.

- Robert Schlesinger (rschles@hotmail.com)

[The Huffington Post | Full Blog Feed]
5:03:12 PM    

Bush Administration Has Known About Koran Desecration Stories Since Early 2002.

Gee, now that nobody is paying attention anymore, it turns out that there have been repeated allegations as far back as April 2002 from Gitmo detainees about interrogators desecrating the Koran. And these weren't just the ramblings of one or... [

The Left Coaster]Bush Administration Has Known About Koran Desecration Stories Since Early 2002.

Gee, now that nobody is paying attention anymore, it turns out that there have been repeated allegations as far back as April 2002 from Gitmo detainees about interrogators desecrating the Koran. And these weren't just the ramblings of one or...

 [The Left Coaster]
5:02:23 PM    

Bush Administration Has Known About Koran Desecration Stories Since Early 2002.

Gee, now that nobody is paying attention anymore, it turns out that there have been repeated allegations as far back as April 2002 from Gitmo detainees about interrogators desecrating the Koran. And these weren't just the ramblings of one or... [

The Left Coaster]
5:02:11 PM    

Senators' Optimal Experiences.

 I notice a fair amount of alarm on the left about Senator Lindsay Graham's claim that the 14 Senators who reached a deal on the Nuclear Option will now move on to negotiate a deal on Social Security. I suppose...

[The Decembrist]
5:01:15 PM    

FBI: Newsweek was right.

Turns out Newsweek was wrong about its source, right about the story.
The American Civil Liberties Union released the memo and a series of other FBI documents it obtained from the government under court order through the Freedom of Information Act.

"Personally, he has nothing against the United States. The guards in the detention facility do not treat him well. Their behavior is bad. About five months ago, the guards beat the detainees. They flushed a Koran in the toilet," the FBI agent wrote.

"The guards dance around when the detainees are trying to pray. The guards still do these things," the FBI agent wrote.

Darn it. Now who can the wingers blame for setbacks in Afghanistan and Iraq?

[Daily Kos]
5:00:23 PM    

Amnesty attacks US over 'torture'.

Amnesty accuses governments, most notably that of the US, of betraying commitments to human rights in 2004.

 [BBC News | News Front Page | UK Edition]
7:20:40 AM    

The Fourth Republic Again.

In 2001 I drafted, The Fourth Republic. In it I predicted that we had entered into a period of constitutional crisis, which would come to a head with a crisis of the monetary system. That until that monetary crisis occured, we would have an escalating series of reactionary erosions of the compromises on which the Liberal Democracy (1933- ) was based upon. That just as with previous moments of constitutional crisis, the Reactionary side would be the first to act, since reactionaries are the beneficiaries of the corrupt bargains of the old order, and they, consequently know who they are.

In 2001, this was unpublishable, the world was not ready to hear it. The filibuster deal must be seen in the context of an escalating series of capitulations by the "whig" faction, intended to preserve the old order at whatever cost since, and I quote them all "the alternative is so much worse".

[BOPnews]
6:05:40 AM    


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