And On A Lighter Note

...So I'm out to eat burgers and dogs and cole slaw with pineapple (our contribution), have a good holiday.

Here's a nice sing-along for your barbeques.

Happy Torture Of July

I have pulled back from writing about the torture debate of late because it's just too painful. There can be no question that this country used taxpayer-funded federal agencies like the CIA and the Department of Defense to enact cruel, degrading and illegal techniques on terrorism suspects as young as twelve, pushing them into false confessions and generally making it impossible to separate the guilty from the innocent, in a mad search for evidence, including confessions linking Iraq and Saddam Hussein with Al Qaeda and 9-11. These acts of torture, which we reversed engineered from the Chinese Communists (who also used them to extract false confessions) were far from benign or even ephemeral; indeed, at least 100 prisoners in custody died from torture, both at secret prisons abroad, in Iraq and in Afghanistan, where the very same base of operations for the torture of prisoners, Bagram, continues to house hundreds of suspects without charges. When civil liberties groups and ordinary Americans learned of these acts of torture, authorized and directed at the highest levels right out of the White House, those in power sought to destroy the evidence, and even to this day, the Administration that succeeded them has done everything in its power to cover up much of the worst abuses and ensure no accountability for these actions. To this day, some of the people directly involved in the torture regime continue to work in their positions under the Obama Administration.

Some would consider this a terrible subject to write about on the Fourth of July. I think it's the perfect time. I believe that the founding of the nation rings hollow when we can no longer say without laughing that here, the people rule, that no man is king and nobody is above the law, that we have a government of, by and for the people. The difficulties of passing legislation that moves us forward into the future were in many ways baked into the checks and balances of the system. Those processes can change. But the stain of torture, combined with the complete lack of accountability for it, must not get swept out with the old Administration like a bad policy. Indeed, the spectacle of watching the Democratic President essentially follow the Republican President in enshrining civil liberties abuses into law , gaining support on both sides, is deeply distasteful and distressing to me as an American.

I guess I'm supposed to be cheered by the fact that the President won't sign an executive order bringing the concept of preventive detention, the idea of indefinitely holding prisoners without charges, into this American experiment. And I should take solace that some in the Justice Department believe that detainees in our custody do have protections in the legal system against being charged using evidence gained through torture or coercion. But none of this is really good enough. Torture is a bright line that should separate civilized societies from the uncivilized. It is true that the courts and even some of the internal Justice Department mechanisms at the Office of Legal Counsel have resisted this headlong push into codifying some of the worst abuses of the Bush Administration. And yet those tactics and actions seen as wrong, as illegal, as the cause of hundreds if not thousands of deaths, have no sanction. And we live with this moral rot. And it's a rot which almost necessarily leads to other abuses, as we get swept up in almost a fever dream, where security trumps liberty and fear overpowers reason.

Donald Rumsfeld has finally said he's sorry. Sort of.

In an interview with biographer Bradley Graham, the former secretary of defense says he has regrets about the administration's controversial detainee policy.

The twist is that Rumsfeld doesn't regret the policy itself -- specifically the abandoning of the Geneva Conventions for detainees picked up in Afghanistan. Rather, he regrets how the policy was formulated.

Here's the relevant section from Graham's book:

With the passage of time, Rumsfeld has come to recognize that he made a mistake, although he sees the error as one of process, not basic judgment. He faults himself for taking too legalistic an approach initially, saying it would have been better if senior Pentagon officials responsible for policy and management matters had been brought in earlier to play more of a role and provide a broader perspective. As he explained in an interview in late 2008, policies were developing so fast in the weeks after the September 11 attacks that he did not follow his own normal procedures. "All of a sudden, it was just all happening, and the general counsel's office in the Pentagon had the lead," he said. "It never registered in my mind in this particular instance--it did in almost every other case--that these issues ought to be in a policy development or management posture. Looking back at it now, I have a feeling that was a mistake. In retrospect, it would have been better to take all of those issues and put them in the hands of policy or management."

Further, Rumsfeld conceded, more should have been done to engage Congress in drafting the new policies on detainees--something he said that White House officials had opposed. Although Congress did eventually get involved, he noted that this occurred "in duress" after the Supreme Court ruled in 2006 against the administration's original approach.

"All of a sudden, it was all just happening." Rumsfeld doesn't really take responsibility for the deaths of people in custody, but he recognizes the environment that leads to such mistakes and lapses, a groupthink that eventually consumes the policymakers. It makes a mockery of deliberative democracy to think this could ever happen.

It's not the most festive message on this day, but if we celebrate these United States on the day of its founding, then we must also strive for that union to live up to the founding principles. All men are created equal reads like a punchline in light of the past eight years and even these last several months. And there is no better time to ruminate on how we can be worthy of the sacrifices of those who started a revolution to bring self-government to this colonized collection of states.

Happy 2nd of July

We're all celebrating the wrong day. You know that, right? Maybe it's because I'm from Philadelphia, where this whole independence movement came from. Maybe it's because I've spent hours in Independence Hall, and at the City Tavern where the Founding Fathers set off to drink and celebrate after signage, and at the very house where Thomas Jefferson stayed that summer of 1776 and penned arguably the first blog post, with its confrontational and unseemly rhetoric that caused David Broder's ancestors to drop their teacups and retire to the fainting couch.

But I thought everybody knew that independence of this nation was agreed to by all parties on July 2nd.

Congress was called to order on July 1st at 9am and serious debate consumed most of that hot and humid Monday. Late in the day it was apparent that the delegates from Pennsylvania and South Carolina were not ready to pass the Lee resolution for Independence. Additionally the two delegates from Delaware were split so debate was postponed until the following day. On July 2, 1776 both Robert Morris and John Dickinson deliberately abstained by not attending the session and the remaining Pennsylvania delegation voted for independence. South Carolina leader's son, Arthur Middleton, chose to ignore his absent and ailing father's Tory wishes changing the colony's position to aye. Finally the great patriot Caesar Rodney with his face riddled with cancer rode all night through the rain and a lightening storm arriving in time to break the Delaware 1 to 1 deadlock by casting the third vote for independence. Thus all 12 colonies voted on July 2nd and adopted the resolution, introduced by Richard Henry Lee and John Adams, declaring independence from Great Britain:

"Resolved, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.''

On July 2, 1776 the United Colonies of America officially became the United States of America.

John Adams, in one of his series of letters to his wife Abigail, wrote that July 2nd would be the founding date for posterity. He got the type of celebration right, but not the assumption that Americans would remember history:

"The Second Day of July 1776 will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America. . . . It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires, and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more."

Congress then made some minor edits to the document over the next couple of days, edits that angered Jefferson (one of them removing any reference to enslaving Africans, and another "conveying censures upon the people of England" for allowing this colonialism to continue), and the final changes were approved, and the declaration adopted, on July 4th. But the United States of America, this nation, was avowed and ordained on July 2nd, 1776.

And when you think about the two events that George W. Bush has managed to hold on those anniversaries, you get all the more disgusted with how far we have traveled from a collection of patriots who refused to be shackled by the tyranny of a king, to a President who accepts that regal mantle and governs not for a nation but for himself and his coterie.

Because on July 2, 2003, 227 years after the adoption of the Lee resolution for independence, the President of the United States committed the nation to an unrelenting parade of death that lasts to this day by stupidly issuing a dare and speaking for our troops in Iraq:

"There are some who feel like that the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is bring them on," Bush said. "We've got the force necessary to deal with the security situation."

How cowardly and odious a statement. At least the men asserting independence on July 2nd were prepared to fight for it. This draft-dodger who never saw combat saw fit to make boasts from the comfort of the White House, while 19 and 20 year-olds, who weren't given the proper life-saving equipment, who weren't given sufficient body armor, who didn't have enough of their compatriots watching their back, were tasked with carrying out such a threat. They didn't have any mission except trying to save their own life, they were turned into targets by a foolish President who should have never sent them to the deserts of Mesopotamia in the first place. George Bush incited a riot that led to the needless deaths of over 4,000 Americans (counting contractors, who are in Iraq in greater numbers that troops, so they deserve to be counted).

And then four years later, on the 231st anniversary of the founding of this nation, the President of the United States, in what Keith Olbermann rightly called a crystallizing moment, obtrsucted justice into an investigation of the compromising of an intelligence asset by commuting the sentence of a political crony to ensure his silence. He did so while ignoring all of his own laws for executive clemency, as he has ignored Congressional statutes and executive orders in the past. He made the decision that one set of laws exists for the overwhelming majority of our citizens, and quite another for those who have information on his consistent lawbreaking, or just happen to be a friend of the family.

These two actions are among the many delineated in the Declaration of Independence as root causes for revolution, certainly in the case of obstructing justice and refusing to assent to laws. These were exactly the type of depredations that caused, even demanded, a group of colonists to take on the strongest Army the world had ever seen to that point, and cast aside the bonds of tyranny to establish their own entity, in the name of the basic human rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And they said:

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

The commemoration of this audacious event, twice in the past four years, has been to act in the very opposite manner, to mirror not so much the likes of Thomas Paine and Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson but King George hiimself. And the question is whether or not we will live up to our ideals and choose the proper role models in reaction to these events.

It is nearly July 4th, Mr. Bush, the commemoration of the moment we Americans decided that rather than live under a King who made up the laws, or erased them, or ignored them—or commuted the sentences of those rightly convicted under them—we would force our independence, and regain our sacred freedoms.

We of this time—and our leaders in Congress, of both parties—must now live up to those standards which echo through our history: Pressure, negotiate, impeach—get you, Mr. Bush, and Mr. Cheney, two men who are now perilous to our Democracy, away from its helm.

For you, Mr. Bush, and for Mr. Cheney, there is a lesser task. You need merely achieve a very low threshold indeed. Display just that iota of patriotism which Richard Nixon showed, on August 9th, 1974.

Resign.

And give us someone—anyone—about whom all of us might yet be able to quote John Wayne, and say, “I didn’t vote for him, but he’s my president, and I hope he does a good job.”

Happy 2nd of July.

We're Cancelling the Needless Destruction of the Town's Houses

So it's the Fourth of July, a time of hot dogs, parades, waving flags, and ohmigodputoutthatsparkleryou'llkillusall!

A laser light show will replace traditional July Fourth fireworks in Burbank, Calif. Woodstock, Ga., canceled its fireworks and plans to shoot them off on Halloween.

Dozens of communities in drought-stricken areas are scrapping public fireworks displays and cracking down on backyard pyrotechnics to reduce the risk of fires.

"From a fire standpoint and a safety standpoint, it was an easy call," Burbank Fire Chief Tracy Pansini says. He recommended calling off fireworks at the Starlight Bowl because they're launched from a mountainside covered with vegetation that's "all dead." [...]

There have been a record number of fire danger warnings this year, Fire Marshal Dave Soumas says. The official fireworks always cause "little spot fires" that people don't see, he says. "Imagine how dry it is, and maybe we can't keep those contained."

His advice to anyone planning fireworks: "Have adult supervision and a hose or fire extinguisher in the area."

I never understood the appeal of fireworks, but the idea that many communities can't do them this year because half the country is in a state of drought is, well... I mean it's stupid to look out your window and be convinced of the impact of global warming, but here in Los Angeles we've had 3 inches of rain in the last 12 months.

Damn you Al Gore, why are you so fat!?!? Wait, what's that you say?

Our home — Earth — is in danger. What is at risk of being destroyed is not the planet itself, but the conditions that have made it hospitable for human beings.

Without realizing the consequences of our actions, we have begun to put so much carbon dioxide into the thin shell of air surrounding our world that we have literally changed the heat balance between Earth and the Sun. If we don’t stop doing this pretty quickly, the average temperature will increase to levels humans have never known and put an end to the favorable climate balance on which our civilization depends.

How do YOU know that humans won't learn to love 150-degree winters? Have you ever sweated through a Christmas? Didn't think so. How ignorant.

This is not a political issue. This is a moral issue, one that affects the survival of human civilization. It is not a question of left versus right; it is a question of right versus wrong. Put simply, it is wrong to destroy the habitability of our planet and ruin the prospects of every generation that follows ours.

Well, if you put it that way...

Next Saturday, on all seven continents, the Live Earth concert will ask for the attention of humankind to begin a three-year campaign to make everyone on our planet aware of how we can solve the climate crisis in time to avoid catastrophe. Individuals must be a part of the solution. In the words of Buckminster Fuller, “If the success or failure of this planet, and of human beings, depended on how I am and what I do, how would I be? What would I do?”

Live Earth will offer an answer to this question by asking everyone who attends or listens to the concerts to sign a personal pledge to take specific steps to combat climate change.

Pledge... you mean like the pledge of allegiance? Hmmm...

1.To demand that my country join an international treaty within the next 2 years that cuts global warming pollution by 90% in developed countries and by more than half worldwide in time for the next generation to inherit a healthy earth;

2.To take personal action to help solve the climate crisis by reducing my own CO2 pollution as much as I can and offsetting the rest to become "carbon neutral;"

3.To fight for a moratorium on the construction of any new generating facility that burns coal without the capacity to safely trap and store the CO2;

4.To work for a dramatic increase in the energy efficiency of my home, workplace, school, place of worship, and means of transportation;

5.To fight for laws and policies that expand the use of renewable energy sources and reduce dependence on oil and coal;

6.To plant new trees and to join with others in preserving and protecting forests; and,

7.To buy from businesses and support leaders who share my commitment to solving the climate crisis and building a sustainable, just, and prosperous world for the 21st century.

OK, fine. As long as I get to see Kanye West.

(end humorless Al Gore-hating persona.)

Go sign the pledge so your kids can see fireworks on the Fourth of July.