John Roberts: Takin' A Ride In The General Lee

Uh oh... over at the Daily Kos I read this disturbing little tidbit about the mild mannered John Roberts:

A fastidious editor of other people's copy as well as his own, Roberts began with the words "Until about the time of the Civil War." Then, the Indiana native scratched out the words "Civil War" and replaced them with "War Between the States."

[snip]

While it is true that the Civil War is also known as the War Between the States, the Encyclopedia Americana notes that the term is used mainly by southerners. Sam McSeveney, a history professor emeritus at Vanderbilt University who specialized in the Civil War, said that Roberts's choice of words was significant.

"Many people who are sympathetic to the Confederate position are more comfortable with the idea of a 'War Between the States,' " McSeveney explained. "People opposed to the civil rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s would undoubtedly be more comfortable with the words he chose."

[snip]

"You can't always draw the inference that someone who uses the term does so with an ideological intent, but at the same time you can't be blind to the fact that some people do," Coski said.

Nice. I love that folks who supposedly 'love' America so often come down on the wrong side of treason & sedition.

Why is Jon Stewart the Most Articulate One Out There?

Earlier this week I posted a link to video of Jon Stewart taking on Chickenhawk Christopher Hitchens, but Salon.com's war room has exactly why I'm a little gay for Jon Stewart after that:

Hitchens defended the war by citing Saddam Hussein's violations of U.N. rules, the danger posed by his unstable regime and his ties to al-Qaida. But Stewart was having none of it. He responded nimbly, asking why the U.S. invaded Iraq when numerous other countries in the Middle East had closer ties to terrorism and more highly developed weapons of mass destruction.

Stewart defended liberals who oppose the war -- "They believe that this war is being conducted without transparency, without credibility and without competence" -- and slammed Bush for stoking liberal distrust: "He refuses to answer questions from adults as though we were adults, and falls back on platitudes and phrases and talking points, [which] does a disservice to the goals that he himself shares with the very people he needs to convince."

Exactly. So sad that Democratic 'leaders' can't (or, probably, won't) say exactly this...

Nice & Distracted? Bush Co. Going After National Parks

It just never ends with these bastards does it? They just have to f@#k everything up so bad we'll never be able to put the pieces back together again...

A series of proposed revisions of National Park policy has created a furor among present and former park officials who believe the changes would weaken protections of natural resources and wildlife while allowing an increase in commercial activity, snowmobiles and off-road vehicles.

National Park Service employees warn that the changes, which were proposed by the Department of the Interior and are undergoing a Park Service review, would fundamentally alter the agency's primary mission.

"They are changing the whole nature of who we are and what we have been," said J.T. Reynolds, superintendent of Death Valley National Park. "I hope the public understands that this is a threat to their heritage. It threatens the past, the present and the future. It's painful to see this."

Trust me: they don't, 'cus they don't know what's happening...

The potential changes would allow cellphone towers and low-flying tour planes and would liberalize rules that prohibited mining, according to Bill Wade, former superintendent at Shenandoah National Park in Virginia.

>sigh<... what total wankers.

Juan Cole the 10 Point Man

Now, I didn't have a problem with the U.S. marching into Afghanistan, but rather than going after the folks that really had it in for us, they f@#ked that up because they were too close to the NeoCon fetish object that is/was Iraq. Since then, the Bush Administration has been, at the very least, criminally incompetent in prosecuting both wars.

And now they're stuck. And if they're stuck, we're stuck and we're gonna be the ones paying for it while all the lead Bush incompetents seem to have gotten promotions and raises. Those Bushies: always falling up.

Well the ever-reliable Juan Cole has a 10 point plan for what the us should do in Iraq and it seems like a good place to start...

Why Do Corporations Hate Free Speech?

Oh Molly Ivins, could I love you more? It would be hard to imagine... here Molly gets into "strategic lawsuits against public participation" (known as SLAPP suits... hilarious). What's really insidious about these is not that they stop folks from speaking, but that they COST folks so much if they do speak up. One example:

The latest example is a real prize: The Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports, has already spent $10 million defending itself against a lawsuit filed by Isuzu Motors Ltd. because, eight years earlier, Consumer Reports rated the Isuzu Trooper "not acceptable" for safety reasons. And the case has not yet reached trial.

Sometimes you just wonder what the hell is wrong with folks...