Cali leads the way

Leave it to legislators in California to suggest legislation which would strip torture doctors of their licenses.

Cali is always ahead of the wave. Let's hope this legislation spreads.

H/T to Susan Forbes Hansen.

Tennessee plates

Maybe even more interesting are the registration plates, and the bullet hole.

John Yoo's Constitution

Wesleyan professor John Finn call's Yoo's version of our founding document a fraud.

I think he's right.

Now this is an honor well deserved

How many JFK Middle Schools are there in this country? Thousands, undoubtably.

Now they're beginning to rethink Presidential naming rights in San Francisco.

Other suggestions?

The Dick Cheney National Cemetary.
The John Yoo Secret Incarceration Center.
The General Petraeus Dead End.
The Donald Rumsfeld Overpass (under which homeless veterans live)

Petraeus prepares to beat the war drum

The Bush administration claims that things are going swimmingly in Iraq, but the administration refuses to release the most recent complete NIE before the testimony of General Petraeus in front of Congress next week.

The Brits are worried that Petraeus will be the advance PR man for a new war in Iran.

When he leaves, Bush will have left this country in a terrible state, even if he were to do nothing between no and January, but an excursion into Iran will ensure a legacy as the least competent leader of this country, ever.

Building a ruthless mercenary force

Yesterday the Pentagon renewed it's contract with Blackwater security forces in Iraq even though an investigation into the killing of citizens by Blackwater guards is incomplete.

In the meantime, new allegations about a gang-rape by KBR employees and American military personnel in Iraq are being swept behind the legal contracts the US has signed with these mercenary forces.

One for the chief to look into

Here's a report from a few Wesleyan students. There are, of course, two sides to every story, but this one has a sad ring of credibility.

Time for Chief Baldoni to investigate the alllegations and have a chat with the officer and the students, and if the accusations are substantiated, to meet with Wes President Roth to discuss the department's interaction with students.

McCain's mea culpa

In some ways, John McCain's admission that he voted against the Martin Luther King holiday is more explosive than the Reverend Jeremiah Wright confessing his mistrust of white leadership in America.

But John McCain's admission, in Memphis, at the hotel where MLK was shot, and in front of a highly partisan audience that he had made the vote, and that he was wrong, was nothing, if not courageous.

I don't like McCain. I think he's ill-suited for the job of running this country. I hate his politics.

But we've got to admit that there are few politicians who would have stood where he stood, and said what he said.

What he is saying about race is important. He is saying that we can discover that we are very wrong on an issue, but the first step in correcting it is to admit how wrong we were. Then, it's incumbent of those on the other side of the issue to accept the admission graciously and move the discussion forward from there.

This was not a politically expedient action. There's no way he's going to get large numbers of black voters to cast ballots for him. Try to imagine George Bush doing the same thing, or Hillary Clinton. Impossible to imagine, right.

So, I hope the old man loses desperately in a presidential race against Barack Obama, but I'm willing to pat him on the back for this.

Farmer U

There's a pretty ambitious farmers market in Middletown today at Beckham Hall from 11 a.m.-3 p.m. on the Wesleyan campus. Some of the best organic, locally-grown and locally made foods will be represented. Included are lunches prepared by some great area eateries.

UPDATE: I stopped in at the farmers market, which BTW was organized totally by Wesleyan students, and the place was jammed with students and faculty sampling, buying and learning about local and organic foods. The Wesleyan string band, sometimes known as the Wellbeings, was playing mountain music and it sounded sooooo good.

We're torturing people, people

Regrettably, as I predicted a few days ago, the press of the United States has ignored an amazingly important set of memos authored by John Yoo about the president's right to torture alleged terrorists.

It's disheartening that this issue, as complex and riven with shame as it is, has not been an important headline. This goes to the core of the notion of an imperial presidency which has stripped our government of the checks and balances guaranteed by our constitution.

And the press is preoccupied with a presidential campaign that hasn't said anything new in three months, the final four and American Idol.

Of course there were exceptions, but Keith Olbermann is not considered part of the main street media.

UPDATE: There's also an important editorial in the New York Times.