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Thread: Political news, yo.

  1. #1
    Big Swami's Avatar
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    Political news, yo.

    Gonzales resigns.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/27/wa...in&oref=slogin

    Likely next step: Because Congress is not in session, Bush can make a "recess appointment" that allows him to put whoever he wants in the job without being confirmed by the Senate. Funny how so many resignations in the Bush admin have happened while the Senate is on vacation.

    Likely person to be the next Attorney General: Michael Chertoff - also the current Secretary of Homeland Security, the person mainly responsible for the federal government's Katrina response, and the former supervisor of Michael "Heckuva Job" Brown.

    Awesome.

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    A person who tells lies. Tahoe's Avatar
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    I doubt many here read O'Reillys talking points but its a pretty good read on the subject.

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    NOT TO BE FUCKED WITH Uncle Mxy's Avatar
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    I think of this as a SSDD kind of move... another one leaving now so they can get a Presidential pardon before Bush leaves office. Someone can spend a lot of money prosecuting so it can all be pardoned off at the end. Joy.

    Go post a pointer to them, Tahoe. I assume you're talking O'Reilly Factor, but I don't find a transcript at:

    http://www.foxnews.com/column_archive/0,2976,19,00.html

    His last few have been about illegal immigration and unwillingness of local law enforcement to enforce federal laws regarding it.

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    A person who tells lies. Tahoe's Avatar
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    I read it and when i went back I got the error thing. I should have said that, but it listed all these peeps who got positions...cronyism was the title,iirc. I couldn't believe how many unqualifie, ill-equipped peeps he appointed. Bush calls it loyalty. Its pretty fucking stupid, it was it is. Some of these peeps had ZERO experience in positions they rec'd.

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    Big Swami's Avatar
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    There is kind of a racket going on right now with law schools who are either non-accredited or barely accredited, and their entire purpose is to train new activist litigators in conservative political causes. For instance, Ann Arbor has the Ave Maria school of law, which is funded by former Domino's Pizza head honcho Tom Monaghan, and that trains lawyers to take up abortion cases. And pretty surprisingly, a lot of the people in the Justice Department came out of schools like those.

    EDIT: and the really remarkable part about that is the turnover rate in the DoJ. Usually in the Justice Department, a lot of political appointees from previous administrations get to stick around, even if they were appointed by a President of the opposing party. There are people still in there who were brought in during the Gerald Ford years. It's just too costly to get rid of those people, even if they tend to work against you, because their expertise is way too valuable. But a ton of old appointees from previous administrations either quit or were fired during the "Bush 43" years, so it's going to be a long time before the Justice Department regains some of the credibility they've lost.
    Last edited by Big Swami; 08-28-2007 at 01:14 PM.

  6. #6
    you should read into ave maria. bizarre stuff. its not in ann arbor anymore. monaghan established a town in florida, also called ave maria, i believe. pretty strange. im not sure its "barely accredited", though. its staffed mostly by Uof D's old administration from the 90's, and i think it would have been considered michigan's second or third best law school if it were in the state. not sure on that though.

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    NOT TO BE FUCKED WITH Uncle Mxy's Avatar
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    Regent University is the biggie, and here's why it's not surprising:

    http://www.boston.com/news/education...an_law_school/

    Ave Maria is still in the bottom 25% of law schools nationwide, at least if you go by the U.S. News & World Report view of the universe:

    http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsa...ier4_brief.php

    Of course, the U.S. News & World Report view of the universe has many critics, so many schools don't participate. Cooley Law School, right around the corner for manyof us, now has its own ranking system. Wayne State got screwed by these folks recently, so they show up as Tier 3/4, when most of the alternative law school rankings place them in the upper half.

    Check out http://www.avewatch.org for sad amusement about their latest issues. They're going to be shitcanned in most rankings as long as Monaghan still runs it.
    Last edited by Uncle Mxy; 08-29-2007 at 05:18 AM.

  8. #8

    Law Schools

    Quote Originally Posted by Big Swami
    There is kind of a racket going on right now with law schools who are either non-accredited or barely accredited, and their entire purpose is to train new activist litigators in conservative political causes. For instance, Ann Arbor has the Ave Maria school of law, which is funded by former Domino's Pizza head honcho Tom Monaghan, and that trains lawyers to take up abortion cases. And pretty surprisingly, a lot of the people in the Justice Department came out of schools like those.

    EDIT: and the really remarkable part about that is the turnover rate in the DoJ. Usually in the Justice Department, a lot of political appointees from previous administrations get to stick around, even if they were appointed by a President of the opposing party. There are people still in there who were brought in during the Gerald Ford years. It's just too costly to get rid of those people, even if they tend to work against you, because their expertise is way too valuable. But a ton of old appointees from previous administrations either quit or were fired during the "Bush 43" years, so it's going to be a long time before the Justice Department regains some of the credibility they've lost.

    There are more than 300 Pat Robertson (it might be Jerry Falwell) School of Law graduates in the Bush Administration. Gee, couldn't tell could ya'? The pitiful thing is that as the "Bewildered Herd" contiunues watching "American Idol", "NASCAR" and "Desperate Housewives" they'd probably vote that corn-pone, hang dog, Alfred E. Newman look-a-like schlub to a 3rd term. The wheels are coming off the bus boys. Hang on.

  9. #9
    I try not to simply compare governments of different countries as better or worse (well not including dictatorships or the like) and even though I live in Spain I don't consider myself at ALL a europhile (it was just where life took me and a personal decision on my part having nothing to do with countries or governments). However I do find it ironic that I live in a country whose government now is doing everything possible to get the last traces of control and/or funding away from the Catholic Church (not that there were many left anymore), a decision here that's supported by the majority of the population, while back at home there are so many groups of people trying to blur the line between church and state.

    Again, not comparing neither the cultures, countries or the governments themselves; this is just a personal observation (and therefore subject also being totally wrong or completely asinine).
    Last edited by DE; 08-29-2007 at 10:03 AM.

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    Big Swami's Avatar
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    Speaking of religious influence in the government, here's an article by Slate writer Christopher Hitchens that does a good job of explaining the intricacies of the Iraq war. I figure Zip Goshboots would want to read this, he's a Hitchens fan.

    http://slate.com/id/2172904/

    Which Iraq War Do You Want To End?
    We're fighting at least three of them.
    By Christopher Hitchens


    Posted Monday, Aug. 27, 2007, at 4:56 PM ET

    When people say that they want to end the war in Iraq, I always want to ask them which war they mean. There are currently at least three wars, along with several subconflicts, being fought on Iraqi soil. The first, tragically, is the battle for mastery between Sunni and Shiite. The second is the campaign to isolate and defeat al-Qaida in Mesopotamia. The third is the struggle of Iraq's Kurdish minority to defend and consolidate its regional government in the north.

    Taking these in reverse order, we can point to Kurdistan as the most outstanding success of the past four years, with its economically flourishing provinces run along broadly secular lines, and with the old Kurd-on-Kurd civil war now in real abeyance for almost a decade (which shows that people can and do come to their senses). The Kurds are also active in the center of the country; their ministers of foreign affairs and water are universally regarded as the most capable and intelligent, and they have also been secure enough to lend units of their own peshmerga forces to the coalition's efforts in Baghdad, Fallujah, and elsewhere. The forces of AQM do not care to tackle this real people's army, preferring to concentrate their attacks on the defenseless, and although there have been truck-bomb attacks in the Kurdish capital of Erbil and in the still-disputed city of Kirkuk, these are so far pinprick events. (Appalling to record, though, a recent and much-disputed incident near Erbil airport has led to a temporary suspension of some international flights to Kurdistan.)

    On the second front, everything I hear by e-mail from soldiers in Anbar province and some well-attested other reports suggest (see my Slate column of Aug. 13) that the venomous rabble of foreign murderers and local psychopaths that goes to make up AQM has insanely overplayed its hand, lost all hope of local support, and is becoming even more vicious as its cadres are defeated. This means that there is also political separation and polarization within the Sunni Arab community. A recent wire-service report even suggested that the underground remnant of the Baath Party has broken off relations with AQM. It must say something when even Saddam's old goons find themselves repelled by anybody's tactics. One must not declare victory too soon, but if the United States has in fact succeeded in not only smashing but discrediting al-Qaida in a major Arab and Muslim country, that must count as a historic achievement.

    The third area of combat is the most depressing. The Maliki government, in my opinion, showed its irredeemably sectarian character a long time ago by the dirty manner in which it carried out the execution of Saddam Hussein. Maliki himself has recently attacked the coalition forces for carrying out raids in Shiite districts of Baghdad. Perhaps he ought to be told that he is not being lent our armed forces for the purpose of installing Shiite power. The secular parties have walked out of his shaky Cabinet, and it is on these forces that our moral support should be concentrated. Let's put it like this: An American family that lost a son or a daughter in the defense of free Kurdistan or in the struggle against AQM could console itself that the death was in a worthwhile cause. The same could not be said for a soldier who fell in some murky street engagement, shot in the back by a uniformed policeman who was doing double duty as a member of a theocratic Shiite militia.

    In Basra and elsewhere, these Shiite militias replicate the division among the Sunnis by fighting among themselves and by the degree to which they do or do not reflect the interference of Iran in Iraqi affairs. This subconflict—or these subconflicts—makes it hard to accept the proposal made by some U.S. politicians and pundits to the effect that the country should be partitioned along ethnic and religious lines. In that event, we would quite probably not end up with three neatly demarcated mini-states, one each in a three-way split among Sunni Arab, Shiite, and Kurd. Instead, there could be partitions within the partition, with Iran and Saudi Arabia becoming patrons of their favorite proxies and, in the meantime, a huge impetus given to the "cleansing" of hitherto-mixed cities and provinces. (This, by the way, as I never tire of saying, is what would have happened to Iraq when Saddam's regime collapsed and the country became prey to neighboring states and to the consequences of 30 years of "divide and rule" politics.)

    The ability to distinguish among these different definitions of the "war" is what ought to define the difference between a serious politician and a political opportunist, both in Iraq and in America. The obliteration of political life and civil society by Saddam Hussein's fascism has meant that most of the successor political figures are paltry (and the Kurdish exception to this exactly proves the point: Kurdistan escaped from Baathist control a full decade before the rest of Iraq did). It will take a good while before any plausible nonsectarian figures can emerge from the wasteland and also brave the climate of murder and intimidation that the forces of the last dictatorship, and the would-be enforcers of an even worse future one, have created. Meanwhile, it is all very well for Sens. Clinton and Levin to denounce the Maliki government and to say that he and his Dawa Party colleagues are not worth fighting for. But what do they say about the other two wars? Sen. Clinton in particular has said several times in the past that we cannot, for example, abandon the Kurds as we once did before. Should she not be asked if this is still her view? And did I miss what Sen. Levin had to say about the battle against AQM? The next election is rightly going to be fought, to a considerable extent, over the question of Iraq. Answers to these questions about that question are a test of seriousness that all voters should be keeping in mind.
    The only real complaint I have with this article is that it paints the Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki as a secret Shiite supremacist, when in reality Nouri al-Maliki is actually Kurdish. There is definitely a whammy being perpetrated by people saying that the current Iraqi government is ineffective because the Prime Minister is a Shiite partisan. The truth is that while al-Maliki, like all politicians, is a tool of powerful interests, he's actually a secular Kurd with no personal stake in handing the country over to the Shiites.

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