Tag: Open Thread

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

How ironic that on this very day, Congress and President Barack Obama are about to approve a bill that will essentially violate at least 5 of these amendments and more.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

December 15 is the 349th day of the year (350th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 16 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day 1791, Virginia becomes the last state to ratify the Bill of Rights, making the first ten amendments to the Constitution law and completing the revolutionary reforms begun by the Declaration of Independence. Before the Massachusetts ratifying convention would accept the Constitution, which they finally did in February 1788, the document’s Federalist supporters had to promise to create a Bill of Rights to be amended to the Constitution immediately upon the creation of a new government under the document.

After the Constitution was ratified in 1789, the 1st United States Congress met in Federal Hall in New York City. Most of the delegates agreed that a “bill of rights” was needed and most of them agreed on the rights they believed should be enumerated.

Madison, at the head of the Virginia delegation of the 1st Congress, had originally opposed a Bill of Rights but hoped to pre-empt a second Constitutional Convention that might have undone the difficult compromises of 1787: a second convention would open the entire Constitution to reconsideration and could undermine the work he and so many others had done in establishing the structure of the United States Government. Writing to Jefferson, he stated, “The friends of the Constitution…wish the revisal to be carried no farther than to supply additional guards for liberty…and are fixed in opposition to the risk of another Convention….It is equally certain that there are others who urge a second Convention with the insidious hope of throwing all things into Confusion, and of subverting the fabric just established, if not the Union itself.”

Madison based much of the Bill of Rights on George Mason’s Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776), which itself had been written with Madison’s input. He carefully considered the state amendment recommendations as well. He looked for recommendations shared by many states to avoid controversy and reduce opposition to the ratification of the future amendments. Additionally, Madison’s work on the Bill of Rights reflected centuries of English law and philosophy, further modified by the principles of the American Revolution.

“The moral universe is not zero sum.” Chris Hayes, host of MSNBC’s All In, gets it.

   “Now the appropriate response to this new what-aboutism is twofold. First, as a basic matter of both moral law and principle, killing enemies in combat is sometimes permissible. Torturing them, however, never is. The prohibition on torture is categorical.

   In the American justice system, for example, you can sentence someone to death — though obviously I oppose that. You cannot sentence them to be tortured because torture occupies a special category of moral taboo.

   The second response to these latter-day what-aboutists is more or less the same one I would suggest we give the Soviets. It’s true. Many aspects of this government’s targeted killing program — maybe the entire thing — are morally odious and constitutionally suspect. They deserve criticism — heck, they even deserve outrage, though I would note the people who devote outrage to them tend to be the people who devote outrage toward torture, like ACLU and Amnesty International, and not Fox News.

   But that has no bearing whatsoever on whether it’s okay to pour water down someone’s nose until they foam at the mouth, to threaten to sexually abuse someone’s mother, or to anally rape someone with a feeding tube.

   And only a moral idiot would fail to see that.

(emhasis mine)

h/t karoli at Crooks and Liars for the partial transcript and this thought about what Chris’s “wisdom”:

Well, maybe he did include Scarborough in that rant through the back door. Because it’s obvious to anyone watching that Joe is indeed a moral idiot.

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

December 14 is the 348th day of the year (349th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 17 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1995, the Dayton Agreement is signed in Paris.

The General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina, also known as the Dayton Agreement, Dayton Accords, Paris Protocol or Dayton-Paris Agreement, is the peace agreement reached at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio in November 1995, and formally signed in Paris on December 14, 1995. These accords put an end to the three and a half year long war in Bosnia, one of the armed conflicts in the former Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia. Some articles erroneously refer to the agreement as the Treaty of Dayton.

Background

Though the basic concepts of the Dayton Agreement began to appear in international talks since 1992, the negotiations were initiated following the unsuccessful previous peace efforts and arrangements, the August 1995 Croatian military Operation Storm and its aftermath, the government military offensive against the Republika Srpska, in concert with NATO’s Operation Deliberate Force. During September and October 1995, many of the world powers (especially the USA and Russia), gathered in the Contact Group, applied intense pressure to the leaders of the three sides to attend the negotiations in Dayton, Ohio.

The conference took place from November 1 to November 21, 1995. The main participants from the region were Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic (representing the Bosnian Serb interests due to absence of Karadzic), Croatian President Franjo Tudman, and Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic with Bosnian Foreign Minister Muhamed Sacirbey.

The peace conference was led by U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher, and negotiator Richard Holbrooke with two Co-Chairmen in the form of EU Special Representative Carl Bildt and the First Deputy Foreign Minister of Russia Igor Ivanov. A key participant in the US delegation was General Wesley Clark (later to become NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) in 1997). The UK military representative was Col Arundell David Leakey (later to become Commander of EUFOR in 2005). The Public International Law & Policy Group (PILPG) served as legal counsel to the Bosnian Government delegation during the negotiations.

The secure site was chosen in a bid to curb the participants’ ability to negotiate in the media rather than at the bargaining table.

After having been initiated in Dayton, Ohio on November 21, 1995 the full and formal agreement was signed in Paris, France, on December 14, 1995 also by French President Jacques Chirac, U.S. President Bill Clinton, UK Prime Minister John Major, German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin.

The present political divisions of Bosnia and Herzegovina and its structure of government were agreed upon as part the constitution that makes up Annex 4 of the General Framework Agreement concluded at Dayton. A key component of this was the delineation of the Inter-Entity Boundary Line, to which many of the tasks listed in the Annexes referred.

The agreement mandated a wide range of international organizations to monitor, oversee, and implement components of the agreement. The NATO-led IFOR (Implementation Force) was responsible for implementing military aspects of the agreement and deployed on the 20th December 1995, taking over the forces of the UNPROFOR.

Ironically, the chief architect of the Dayton Accord, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, died yesterday, December 13, in Washington, DC. May he rest in peace.

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Since the release of the summary of the Senate’s Torture Report, the torture apologists have been out in force calling the report inaccurate and misleading, and repeating long debunked lies about the accuracy of the intelligence. Chief among them this week will be former Vice President Richard Bruce Cheney who will be Chuck Todd’s guest on this morning’s “Meet the Press“. The Intercept‘s Dan Froomkin has some suggestions for [questions Chuck might want to ask Dick instead of the usual “MTP” treatment of rolling over and playing dead at the feet of the contentious war criminal.

Of all the questions proposed, my favorites are the one Chuck asked Glenn Greenwald:

“Why shouldn’t you be charged with a crime?“

and this one that Dan had proposed Cheney be asked in 2011:

“Just how much had you had to drink before you shot your friend in the face?

Dick Cheney Will Eat Chuck Todd For Breakfast Unless Todd Does Exactly What I Say

When Cheney was vice president, his chief M.O. was to spread false information and savage his critics, while avoiding any sustained inquisition. He often did that through intermediaries.

But when he needed to take things into his own hands, “Meet the Press” was “best” because, while there might be a tough prepared question or two, then-host Tim Russert could be counted on to follow up obsequiously or not at all, without in any way knocking the veep off his talking points. [..]

But I have some ideas about what Todd could do differently. (And so did several of my Twitter followers.)

The key is quite simple: Instead of asking Cheney for his reaction to the report, Todd should use the opportunity to ask Cheney factual questions, to fill in gaps in the record. [..]

Q. Why did people within the CIA start talking about torture, when historically their view was, as Senator Feinstein mentioned in her speech on Tuesday, that “inhumane physical or psychological techniques are counterproductive because they do not produce intelligence and will probably result in false answers”?

Q. Do you know who first came up with the idea of using torture as part of the interrogation of detainees?

Q. What was the first time you heard anything about making interrogation tactics more brutal?

Q. When was the first time you heard about waterboarding? What was your reaction?

Q. How often were you or your office in touch with the CIA in late 2002 and early 2003 about interrogation matters?

Q. Describe your chief counsel David Addington’s involvement in developing interrogation policy.

Q. What was the first report you heard that made you think torture was “working”?

Q. What do you consider torture? [..]

Q. Do you have any reason to dispute the report’s description of “rectal feeding” and “rectal hydration”? Had you heard anything about this before? Does that sound OK to you?

Q. Did you watch any of the videos of detainees being interrogated at the black sites ? What was that like for you?

Q. Did you ever speak directly to someone involved in administering those interrogation tactics? What was that like? [..]

Q. A 2008 Senate Armed Services Committee report concluded that you bore direct responsibility for what happened at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere. Didn’t you notice that the interrogation tactics you architected for CIA use had migrated into the military?

Q. Did you ever suggest to anyone that any specific interrogation practice be stopped?

Q. Do you think it’s likely that some of these tactics will be returned to use in the future?

Q. How would you feel if an American were subject to this kind of interrogation? How would you want the country to respond?

Q. Do you plan to travel to Europe?

The Sunday Talking Heads:

This Week with George Stephanopolis: This Sunday’s guests are former CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden; Army veteran Eric Fair; and New York Times columnist Tom Friedman.

The roundtable guests are:  Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MM); former House Speaker Newt Gingrich; syndicated radio host Laura Ingraham: and CNN & SiriusXM host Michael Smerconish.

Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: Mr. Schhieffer’s guests are: Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA); Sen. Angus King (I-MA);  Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI); and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ).

His panel guests are Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal; Michael Gerson, Washington Post; Charles Ellison, The Root; and Mark Mazzetti, The New York Times.

Meet the Press with Chuck Todd: This Sunday’s “MTP” guests are: Vice President Dick Cheney and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR).

Hopefully by now Dick will have read the report. The panel guests are a mystery. I love a mystery.

State of the Union with Candy Crowley:

Nest week will be Ms. Crowley’s final appearance as host. She announced her resignation from CNN last week.

Ms. Crowley’s guests are:  Rep. Peter King (R-NY); and Gov. Deval Patrick (D-MA).

Plus, part two of Candy Crowley’s exclusive interview with President George W. Bush.

Welcome to the Stars Hollow Gazette‘s Health and Fitness News weekly diary. It will publish on Saturday afternoon and be open for discussion about health related issues including diet, exercise, health and health care issues, as well as, tips on what you can do when there is a medical emergency. Also an opportunity to share and exchange your favorite healthy recipes.

Questions are encouraged and I will answer to the best of my ability. If I can’t, I will try to steer you in the right direction. Naturally, I cannot give individual medical advice for personal health issues. I can give you information about medical conditions and the current treatments available.

You can now find past Health and Fitness News diaries here and on the right hand side of the Front Page.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

When I lived in France I used to love watching people discover rillettes, a rustic pâté that is traditionally made by cooking pork belly or shoulder slowly in abundant fat, allowing it to cool in the fat, then raking the mixture into a spreadable paste. [..]

Rillettes are also made with other meats – most often game birds or rabbit, and also with fish, particularly fatty fish like salmon, mackerel, sardines, anchovies and tuna, which are high in omega-3s. The fish isn’t slow-cooked in fat the way meat is, but it is mixed with fat – in France that would be softened butter – and shredded in the same way. The key is a smooth, rich-tasting, spreadable mixture, which is easy to achieve with a number of types of seafood. On my last trip to Paris I saw fish rillettes on menus all over town. They were usually served from crocks or wide canning jars, the way meat rillettes are traditionally stored, to be eaten with bread. But at Buvette, a little restaurant in the 9th Arrondissment (also in New York’s Greenwich Village), a rich mound of smoked trout rillettes topped a warm plate of lentils, to great effect.

~Martha Rose Shulman~

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Howie KleinL Time For The Democrats To Bid Adieu To The Blue Dogs?

The DCC carefully neglected to mention that the most vile provisions were pushed by, among others, the Finance Chair of the DCCC, Wall Street shill Jim Himes (New Dem-CT).

Wednesday afternoon, the DCCC was asking people to sign petitions against “Boehner’s” Wall Street giveaway in the omnibus appropriations bill. They carefully neglected to mention that the most vile provisions are being pushed by, among others, the Finance Chair of the DCCC, Wall Street shill Jim Himes (New Dem-CT) and by most of the Blue Dogs and New Dems left in Congress– including the ones who were defeated and are just hanging around the lame duck looking for K Street jobs. We’ve written about how Himes and his fellow Wall Street shills have been working on this since last year. The House passed it October 30, 2013 292-122, 70 slime bags from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party joining the GOP to vote for it back then, including not just the Blue Dogs and New Dems who always support the Republicans over working families, but House party leaders like Steny Hoyer (D-MD), Jim Clyburn (D-SC), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), Joe Crowley (D-NY) and purported “progressives” like Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), Nita Lowey (D-NY), Grace Meng (D-NY), Gwen Moore (D-WI) and Charlie Rangel (D-NY). [..]

This is the Republican wing of the Democratic Party, the ruin of the great traditions and values of the party and all that ails the party. We write about it often here at DWT. In fact, last Monday we looked at Michael Tomasky’s proposition that the Democratic Party should just forget about The South entirely. Tempting… but… uh, no.

The DCCC thought you wouldn’t notice that Jim Himes, their own Finance Chair, is behind this plan to gut Wall Street reform.

Glen Ford: It’s Not the Law, But Prosecutors, That Give Immunity to Killer Cops

Black Americans know all about “law and order”: the term, itself, is code for the state-wielded hammer that is relentlessly deployed against us. No people on earth are more conditioned to concentrated bludgeoning under “color of law” than African Americans, who account for one out of out eight of the world’s prison inmates. Black males are 21 times more likely than their white peers to be killed by U.S. lawmen, and make up a clear majority of young police shooting victims under the most draconian law and order regime on the planet. Of all the world’s peoples, none have been so unremittingly inculcated with the lessons of crime and punishment – especially punishment, whether merited or not.

For a people so acculturated, justice demands retribution – even for Pharaoh and his army. Thus, the simple and near-universal Black American demand that President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder prosecute killer cops.

But, this they will not do.

The Obama administration has no intention of pursuing prosecution of Darren Wilson, or Trayvon Martin’s vigilante killer George Zimmerman, or the whole crew of New York City homicidal and/or depravedly indifferent first-responders in the Eric Garner case. Obama and Holder have nothing worthwhile to say to the nine grieving Black mothers now visiting Washington demanding justice for their murdered loved ones, other than empty assurances that they feel the families’ pain.

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.a

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

December 13 is the 347th day of the year (348th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 18 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1642, Abel Tasman discovers New Zealand.

New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses (the North Island and the South Island), and numerous smaller islands, most notably Stewart Island/Rakiura and the Chatham Islands. The indigenous Maori language name for New Zealand is Aotearoa, commonly translated as land of the long white cloud. The Realm of New Zealand also includes the Cook Islands and Niue (self-governing but in free association); Tokelau; and the Ross Dependency (New Zealand’s territorial claim in Antarctica).

The majority of Zealand’s population is of European descent; the indigenous Maori are the largest minority. Asians and non-Maori Polynesians are also significant minority groups, especially in urban areas. The most commonly spoken language is English.

New Zealand is a developed country that ranks highly in international comparisons on many topics, including lack of corruption, high educational attainment and economic freedom. Its cities also consistently rank among the world’s most liveable.

Elizabeth II, as the Queen of New Zealand, is the country’s head of state and is represented by a Governor-General, and executive political power is exercised by the Cabinet of New Zealand.

Polynesian settlers

New Zealand is one of the most recently settled major landmasses. The first known settlers were Eastern Polynesians who, according to most researchers, arrived by canoe in about AD 1250-1300. Some researchers have suggested an earlier wave of arrivals dating to as early as AD 50-150; these people then either died out or left the islands. Over the following centuries these settlers developed into a distinct culture now known as Maori. The population was divided into iwi (tribes) and hapu (subtribes) which would cooperate, compete and sometimes fight with each other. At some point a group of Maori migrated to the Chatham Islands where they developed their distinct Moriori culture.

European explorers

The first Europeans known to have reached New Zealand were Dutch explorer Abel Janszoon Tasman and his crew in 1642. Maori killed four of the crew and no Europeans returned to New Zealand until British explorer James Cook’s voyage of 1768-71. Cook reached New Zealand in 1769 and mapped almost the entire coastline. Following Cook, New Zealand was visited by numerous European and North American whaling, sealing and trading ships. They traded European food and goods, especially metal tools and weapons, for Maori timber, food, artefacts and water. On occasion, Europeans traded goods for sex.

The potato and the musket transformed Maori agriculture and warfare, beginning in the frequently visited north then spreading southwards. The resulting Musket Wars encompassed over 600 battles between 1801 and 1840, killing 30,000-40,000 Maori, although introduced diseases would play an even greater role in the Maori population’s decline to around 40% of its pre-contact level during the 19th century. From the early 19th century, Christian missionaries began to settle New Zealand, eventually converting most of the Maori population, although their initial inroads were mainly among the more disaffected elements of society.

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Isaiah J. Poole: The Ominous ‘Cromnibus,’ A Budget Bill That Should Have Died

With all of the justifiable anger directed at what’s in the 2015 spending bill – the omnibus continuing resolution or “cromnibus” – that the House struggled to pass late Thursday, there is also a major story to be told about what’s not in the bill. It’s a story of missed opportunities that is as significant as the Wall Street giveaways, the kowtowing to fossil fuel interests and gratuitous swipes at conservative boogeymen that were written into this monstrosity.

Most conspicuous is the absence of any real effort to address the plight of millions of people who remain untouched by the so-called economic “recovery” of the past few years. They are represented by the 51 percent of respondents in a New York Times poll this week who rated the condition of the national economy as either “fairly bad” or “very bad.” In that same poll, only 30 percent saw the economy as getting better. [..]

In an ideal world, this budget would be voted down so that Congress could go back to the drawing board and get its priorities straight. It goes without saying we’re not in that world, and in fact we’ll be a bit further from it when Republicans take control of the Senate in January. What we can do in the meantime is call this budget what it is – a document that shirks the basics of making the economy work for working people while paying fealty to Wall Street and right-wing fetishes – and use it as a rallying cry for the progressive populist takeover of Congress that we must start working toward today.

New York Times Editorial Board: Dark Again After Report on C.I.A. Torture

We have not always agreed with Senator Dianne Feinstein on national security issues like wiretapping, but the California Democrat who heads the Senate Intelligence Committee has displayed commitment and courage in the investigation of the illegal detention, abuse and torture of prisoners by the Central Intelligence Agency.

Realizing she had one last chance to get this report to the public before Republicans take over the Senate, Ms. Feinstein released a summary of the findings despite heavy pressure from Republicans and the White House to withhold it. She and her aides deserve enormous credit for their five-and-a-half-year struggle.

Sadly, that is pretty much it on the disclosure front. In post-9/11 America, when it comes to momentous matters of national security, democratic tradition and the rule of law, there is precious little disclosure and no justice and accountability. It’s a bipartisan affliction.

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover  we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

This Day in History

A divided U.S. Supreme Court halts the presidential recount in Florida, effectively making Republican George W. Bush the winner.

Breakfast Tunes

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

December 12 is the 346th day of the year (347th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 19 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1787, Pennsylvania becomes the second state to ratify the Constitution, by a vote of 46 to 23. Pennsylvania was the first large state to ratify, as well as the first state to endure a serious Anti-Federalist challenge to ratification.

Pennsylvania drafted the most radical of the state constitutions during the War for Independence. By excluding Quakers and all other pacifists unwilling to take oaths of allegiance to the Revolutionary cause, a fervently anti-British and anti-Indian Scots-Irish faction had seized power for the first time in the remarkably diverse state. Only when pacifists were again able to exercise the franchise in peacetime was it conceivable that the more conservative U.S. Constitution might pass in Pennsylvania. Large states had the most to lose by joining a strengthened union. James Wilson’s genius in describing the nature of layered sovereignty in a federal republic, using the solar system as an analogy, was invaluable in convincing Pennsylvanians to ratify. Anti-Federalists found themselves in the hypocritical position of criticizing the federal Constitution for failing to codify the freedom of religious practice they had actively denied their fellow citizens during the War for Independence.