COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Tuesday, February 07, 2012

US Constitution: Ignored, Diluted, Misrepresented and Now Losing Appeal

Does in mean anything anymore?
‘We the People’ Loses Appeal With People Around the World

By ADAM LIPTAK NYT
Published: February 6, 2012

WASHINGTON — The Constitution has seen better days.

Sure, it is the nation’s founding document and sacred text. And it is the oldest written national constitution still in force anywhere in the world. But its influence is waning.

In 1987, on the Constitution’s bicentennial, Time magazine calculated that “of the 170 countries that exist today, more than 160 have written charters modeled directly or indirectly on the U.S. version.”

A quarter-century later, the picture looks very different. “The U.S. Constitution appears to be losing its appeal as a model for constitutional drafters elsewhere,” according to a new study by David S. Law of Washington University in St. Louis and Mila Versteeg of the University of Virginia.

The study, to be published in June in The New York University Law Review, bristles with data. Its authors coded and analyzed the provisions of 729 constitutions adopted by 188 countries from 1946 to 2006, and they considered 237 variables regarding various rights and ways to enforce them.

“Among the world’s democracies,” Professors Law and Versteeg concluded, “constitutional similarity to the United States has clearly gone into free fall. Over the 1960s and 1970s, democratic constitutions as a whole became more similar to the U.S. Constitution, only to reverse course in the 1980s and 1990s.”

“The turn of the twenty-first century, however, saw the beginning of a steep plunge that continues through the most recent years for which we have data, to the point that the constitutions of the world’s democracies are, on average, less similar to the U.S. Constitution now than they were at the end of World War II.”

There are lots of possible reasons. The United States Constitution is terse and old, and it guarantees relatively few rights. The commitment of some members of the Supreme Court to interpreting the Constitution according to its original meaning in the 18th century may send the signal that it is of little current use to, say, a new African nation. And the Constitution’s waning influence may be part of a general decline in American power and prestige.

In an interview, Professor Law identified a central reason for the trend: the availability of newer, sexier and more powerful operating systems in the constitutional marketplace. “Nobody wants to copy Windows 3.1,” he said.

In a television interview during a visit to Egypt last week, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the Supreme Court seemed to agree. “I would not look to the United States Constitution if I were drafting a constitution in the year 2012,” she said. She recommended, instead, the South African Constitution, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms or the European Convention on Human Rights.

The rights guaranteed by the American Constitution are parsimonious by international standards, and they are frozen in amber. As Sanford Levinson wrote in 2006 in “Our Undemocratic Constitution,” “the U.S. Constitution is the most difficult to amend of any constitution currently existing in the world today.” (Yugoslavia used to hold that title, but Yugoslavia did not work out.)

Other nations routinely trade in their constitutions wholesale, replacing them on average every 19 years. By odd coincidence, Thomas Jefferson, in a 1789 letter to James Madison, once said that every constitution “naturally expires at the end of 19 years” because “the earth belongs always to the living generation.” These days, the overlap between the rights guaranteed by the Constitution and those most popular around the world is spotty.

Americans recognize rights not widely protected, including ones to a speedy and public trial, and are outliers in prohibiting government establishment of religion. But the Constitution is out of step with the rest of the world in failing to protect, at least in so many words, a right to travel, the presumption of innocence and entitlement to food, education and health care.

It has its idiosyncrasies. Only 2 percent of the world’s constitutions protect, as the Second Amendment does, a right to bear arms. (Its brothers in arms are Guatemala and Mexico.)

The Constitution’s waning global stature is consistent with the diminished influence of the Supreme Court, which “is losing the central role it once had among courts in modern democracies,” Aharon Barak, then the president of the Supreme Court of Israel, wrote in The Harvard Law Review in 2002.

Many foreign judges say they have become less likely to cite decisions of the United States Supreme Court, in part because of what they consider its parochialism.

“America is in danger, I think, of becoming something of a legal backwater,” Justice Michael Kirby of the High Court of Australia said in a 2001 interview. He said that he looked instead to India, South Africa and New Zealand.

Mr. Barak, for his part, identified a new constitutional superpower: “Canadian law,” he wrote, “serves as a source of inspiration for many countries around the world.” The new study also suggests that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, adopted in 1982, may now be more influential than its American counterpart.

The Canadian Charter is both more expansive and less absolute. It guarantees equal rights for women and disabled people, allows affirmative action and requires that those arrested be informed of their rights. On the other hand, it balances those rights against “such reasonable limits” as “can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.”

There are, of course, limits to empirical research based on coding and counting, and there is more to a constitution than its words, as Justice Antonin Scalia told the Senate Judiciary Committee in October. “Every banana republic in the world has a bill of rights,” he said.

“The bill of rights of the former evil empire, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, was much better than ours,” he said, adding: “We guarantee freedom of speech and of the press. Big deal. They guaranteed freedom of speech, of the press, of street demonstrations and protests, and anyone who is caught trying to suppress criticism of the government will be called to account. Whoa, that is wonderful stuff!”

“Of course,” Justice Scalia continued, “it’s just words on paper, what our framers would have called a ‘parchment guarantee.’ ”

91 comments:

  1. If the Supreme Court rules you have to buy health insurance, they could rule you have to buy a Chevy Volt.

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  2. Ginsberg told some Egyptian reporter they could do better than look to our Constitution when creating a new one of their own. Ah, shit, and in a moslem country.

    You elect Obama and he gets to replace a couple of the better Justices, this thing is finished. Last time around you kept your shotgun by one vote.

    Rufus might not be able to shoot his snakes.

    Don't forget Kelo.

    And, eh, O, Natural Born Citizen, meaning of.

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  3. Don't forget Affirmative Action as far as your eye can see, favoritism built into law brought to you by a wayward court.


    Appointing Supreme Court Justices is probably one of the best reasons to vote against Obama, though there are many others.

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  4. .

    Appointing Supreme Court Justices is probably one of the best reasons to vote against Obama, though there are many others.



    Bullshit, Bob.

    It's all a crapshoot.

    The Liberals gave us 'Roe v. Wade', the Conservatives have given us 'Citizens United'. They have expanded federalism and the 'Commerce Clause' beyond recognition.

    Half of the important issues never reach them. People's privacy can be abused under 'War on
    Terror' laws and they have no recourse. If put on a 'terror list' they don't have to be told why. If their private files or phone calls are checked they aren't told. The FEDS tell the people they use (cable, phone companies, etc.) it's against the law for them to notify the person. Therefore, the victim has no recorse to the courts because he has no standing because he has no way of proving he was fucked over.

    Watch this from Jon Stewart,

    SCOTUS

    Watch it until it gets to the part about the banana.

    .

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  5. The US rejected the US Constitution as a model in Iraq and Afghanistan.

    That says it all.

    As for the selection of Supreme Court Justices ...

    Justice Souter and Kennedy set the standard of the past GOP selections still serving on the Court.

    While Chief Justice Earl Warren sets the historical standard.

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  6. .

    From Wiki,

    The Economist: Democracy Index

    This sheet only provides the combined scores for the countries. I went back to the 2006 report which privides a breakdown of the top six categories countries were rated. In the category "Civil Liberties" for those rated as Full Democracy only one country, Slovenia, had a rating as low as the U.S. and it was tied.

    When you drop to the category Flawed Democracy, even a good chunk of them were rated higher than the U.S. in Civil Liberties.

    .

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  7. Heck, don't stop at the banana part but watch what follows - freedom of religion: fun stuff!!

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  8. .

    The Court can do its own damage but politicians also play the court like an instrument.

    The latest is Obama's political ploy with religious institutions under Obamacare. Pure political and ideological calculation.

    He lied to the Church while trying to push through Obamacare and stuck them in the back when he saw it was to his advantage. I don't doubt part of this was ideological. He would like to see the mediating role of religious institutions done away with since it dilutes the direct influence of the state.

    Just the Catholic organizations provide 1/6 of all the healthcare in the country. Add to that all the other counseling services, foodbanks, soup kitchens, universities, etc. and it becomes a big deal. Multiply that by all the other services provided by the many other religions in this country.

    However, the timing of the Obama announcement is purely political. Leading up to the election he wants to solidify his liberal base, certain MSM, NOW, Planned Parenthood, etc.

    The cynical part regarding SCOTUS comes from the part where he has delayed implementation of the decision until 2013 so that no one will have standing to file a law suit until after the elction. Remind anyone of the timing on Keystone?

    Obama is confident he is a winner on this issue at least up to the election. It remains to be seen if he is being too clever.

    Will the Church be able to whip up enough outrage among its 70 million voters to bloody the Big O? Perhaps, more importantly, what will be the reaction of more fundamentalist groups such as evangelicals, Muslims, etc.? Or even mainstream churches that support abortion but will view this as a major first step against all religions, the camel's nose under the tent.

    Could be interesting.

    This will obviously be challenged in Court at sometime. I suspect it will be shot down.

    .

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  9. Without the 2nd Amendment, the rest IS just scribbling on parchment.

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  10. ya want government money ya live by government rules...

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  11. no rufus - the citizens power does not flow from the barrel of a gun.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Oh yes it does, Ash.

    We didn't get rid of the stinking British with appeals to their good nature, and writs of relief.

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  13. And, the ink wasn't dry on the Constitution when George Washington, and the Easterners passed a law that taxes small distillers, but not large distillers. It was only after the Pennsylvania Farmers picked up their guns, and revolted, that the Government backed down.

    Don't ever doubt that your government is a thousand times more dangerous than the worst criminal.

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  14. Your examples are from a few years ago and I don't see your small arms doing you much these days against the ever encroaching big goverment with even bigger guns.

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  15. The power of the Army, against its own citizens, is illusory, Ash. TPTB know this. That's why they'll never quit trying to disarm you.

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  16. I think we are a long ways from shooting at each other in the streets.

    However, one hole card the general public has in the US, that no other country on earth has, is private gun ownership. I will let someone else look up the numbers, but there are millions of firearms with lots of ammo for each one in private ownership.

    It is the elephant in the room none of the Alinskyites want to discuss.

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  17. And, it's not just "numbers." It's, also, quality. The number of High Quality, Scoped Deer Rifles (with accompanying marksman) in the U.S. would have to be staggering.

    This is Not the populace that you'd want to go to war with. :)

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  18. I don't think it would ever come to that either, Gag. But, it's nice to know that the Ginsbergs, and Soros of the world know that the guns are there.

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  19. An armed society is a polite society, my daddy always said.

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  20. pffft, riiight, the US all armed up acting politely, heh heh, take a walk through gangland Gag. You know, East L.A. and the like.

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  21. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  22. There are bad elements to every society, Ash. You should know that, you're the expert.

    Part of our freedom here in the States, Ash, is to not have to walk thru East L.A. or gangland as you call it, if we don't want to.

    And we don't want to.

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  23. I’m afraid that I agree with Ash. The ability of the government to intimidate is complete. The influence of the media is almost complete.

    Let me cite one simple example. A US Senator was harassed by the TSA, objecting to his individual rights, never asserting he was a US Senator but objecting to having to undergo a body pat down. The press played him for the fool. Most people bought it.

    On this very blog the most ardent defender of the 2nd declared that if a constitutionally protected US citizen objected to an arbitrary pat down by a federal officer, he had no right to fly.

    Forget the Minuteman shit. That myth has come and gone. It has not been around since the greatest president ever got 600,000 killed, most of the minuteman, because they resisted federal tyranny.

    Get a backup passport.

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  24. Use a gun to protect yourself from a criminal and you are in trouble. Don’t even day dream about what would happen if the federals came down on you.

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  25. That is all find and dandy Gag but it puts the lie to "An armed society is a polite society" elsewise gangland would be a very polite place.

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  26. I must say, though, that the gangbangers get their knickers in a twist over gettin' disrespected!!

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  27. Some Georgia town - Kennesaw? - passed a law that every household had to possess a firearm; the crime rate plummeted, IIRC.

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  28. Gangbangers have more to do with another failed Government attempt at Prohibition of a generation's drug of choice.


    How did the man put it? The one thing that we can learn from History is that, "Men don't learn from History."

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  29. It's just a saying, Ash. Kind of like, "high fences make good neighbors." Are you going to call my daddy a liar on that one, too?

    Deuce, like I said, we are a long way from total anarchy, but I think it would be naive on the FEDs part to think it could never happen. It would be ugly and the anarchists would get buried, but not before a lot of bloodshed.

    Think "occupy" with guns. The states are getting more and more concerned with the "sovereign citizen" movement, to the point of asking the Feds for help. And there are not just stupid kids with nothing else to do.

    Remember, half of those 600,000 you referenced were Union.

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  30. And there are not just stupid kids with nothing else to do.

    They are. Damned spell check.

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  31. .

    ya want government money ya live by government rules...


    Don't be obtuse Ash.

    .

    ReplyDelete
  32. .

    Get a backup passport.


    How does one do that?


    .

    ReplyDelete
  33. Deuce: It has not been around since the greatest president ever got 600,000 killed, most of the minuteman, because they resisted federal tyranny.

    Federal tyranny. That's what you call the attack on Fort Sumter, Harper's Ferry, 1861 invasion of Kentucky, 1862 invasion of Maryland, 1863 invasion of Pennsylvania, Andersonville, and the CSS Alabama on a global rampage.

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  34. South Sudan officials familiar with the talks said that part of the hostage deal may entail China trying to broker a peace agreement between the Sudanese government and the rebel group, known as Sudan People's Liberation Movement- North or SPLM-N. Rebels held direct talks with Chinese officials in Beijing, Ethiopia and through their contacts, according to SPLM-N officials.

    The fighting, which erupted seven months ago, is endangering civilians who have been cut off from relief aid. Sudan has insisted on continuing with the strikes, despite rebel demands for a cease-fire.

    China's embassies in Khartoum and Nairobi declined to comment.


    Chinese Workers

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  35. President Obama revealed Sunday evening that Iran has a secret nuclear weapons program.

    “Iran has to stand down on its nuclear weapons program,” Obama told Matt Lauer in an interview broadcast immediately before the Super Bowl.

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  36. Stratfor has long followed and chronicled Russia's resurgence, which has included bolder foreign policy moves and resuming the role of regional power. In particular, Moscow has focused its energy in its former Soviet periphery: the Eastern European states of Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova; the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania; the Caucasus states of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan; and the Central Asian states of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

    ...

    In many ways, Russia's geopolitical strength is derived from its inherent geographic weaknesses. There are few natural barriers protecting Russia's core, and this has required Russia to expand into and consolidate territories around its core to acquire buffers from external powers.

    ...

    In the context of its resurgence, Russia's broad imperative has been to prevent foreign influence while building and ingraining its own. Of course, Russia's plans for carrying out this imperative differ in each sub-region of the former Soviet Union -- Eastern Europe, the Baltics, the Caucasus and Central Asia -- and in each state.


    Russia's Resurgence

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  37. On this day in 1962, President John F. Kennedy banned all U.S. imports and exports with Cuba, embarking on a full-trade embargo with the country.

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  38. Bullshit, Bob.

    It's all a crapshoot.


    Bullshit, Quirk. Agreeing with a lot you say, and understanding they sometimes develope a new personality, it still matters who does the appointing and confirming.

    One little vote was the gun rights case.

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  39. The first question is obvious, and yet remains unasked by the media and unanswered by the Obama administration and Department of Justice:

    Who conceived this radical departure from normal law enforcement practices? Who conceived an operation that depended upon the deaths of hundreds or thousands of Mexican nationals for its success?


    ...

    This demands answers to a second question:

    Which Department of Justice officials saw that Operation Fast and Furious was dependent on hundreds or thousands of firearms being given to the cartels and recovered at the scenes of crimes, knew that the crimes in question were likely to be murders of Mexican nationals or U.S. citizens along the Mexican border where the cartels operate, and approved the operation anyway?

    ...

    This leads us to a third question:

    Knowing that Operation Fast and Furious could be the political and criminal albatross that drives away moderates and Latino voters and destroys his chances of winning a second term, why does President Obama refuse to appoint a special prosecutor or, at the very least, call for Eric Holder and his direct reports to resign?


    Questions Not Asked

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  40. constitutionally protected US citizen objected to an arbitrary pat down by a federal officer, he had no right to fly

    Right to fly?

    It must be over there in the penumbra of the Constitution.

    For God's sake it's a simple matter of the safety of the crew, passengers, and people on the ground too.

    Take the Greyhound Bus if you don't like it.

    ReplyDelete
  41. We got to clean our voting procedures up.

    ReplyDelete
  42. This should be reinterated:

    sam said...

    President Obama revealed Sunday evening that Iran has a secret nuclear weapons program.

    “Iran has to stand down on its nuclear weapons program,” Obama told Matt Lauer in an interview broadcast immediately before the Super Bowl.
    Tue Feb 07, 05:56:00 PM EST

    ReplyDelete
  43. We don't need Ruf's ethanol, we just need to rip the living guts out of Mississippi.

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  44. A whole 784 barrels/day, huh? And, next year, if it's a typical shale play, will be about 125 barrels/day.

    And, we use about 18 Million Barrels/day.

    Yeah, boy, you got you a plan, there.

    ReplyDelete
  45. Please do a post on the "sovereign citizen" movement. Check out the shoot out in East Arkansas with a couple of those idiots. A father and his son murdered to officers after a routine traffic stop because the SCs claimed they didn't need to register their vehicle or have drivers licenses. I am sure Ruf remembers as it was all over the Memphis news. They were later killed in a Walmart parking lot.

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  46. Gag, I guess I must have slept since then, cause I don't remember it.

    There are some crazy assholes out there.

    ReplyDelete
  47. But they have a right to their guns!!


    Speaking of the constitution - gay marriage appears to be in there as well:

    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/08/us/marriage-ban-violates-constitution-court-rules.html?_r=1&hp

    ReplyDelete
  48. Yep, they do - until they do something stupid (and, really criminal.)

    ReplyDelete
  49. Do you support same sex marriage, Ash?

    ReplyDelete
  50. At the time of the Civil War there were about 4,000,000 slaves. As a commodity , as awful as that sounds but true, they had a market value of $4 billion. A final official US estimate in 1879 claimed the war cost the North $6,190,000,000.
    It cost the South $2,000,000,000.

    That was 2x the market value of each and every slave. The you have been bought, freed and given every slave a $1,000 each. The economic damage beyond the $8 billion was far worse and with 600,000 dead, that meant that 6,000,000 Americans do not live today.

    Slavery was ended in every country in the Americas by the 1880s, none but the US by civil war. Slavery was on its way out. While slavery was declining , the power of federal government was increasing at the expense of states rights.

    A wiser and more honest man than "Honest Abe” would have prevented the civil war. Lincoln was no friend of the negro and Americans were not singularly more stupid than the citizens of every other country in the Americas. The Civil War was a political fuck-up, a disaster and a failure.

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  51. Why do we assume that dead politicians are any better than our live lot?

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  52. Sure do gag - no skin off my ass

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  53. Bahrain's opposition February 14 Movement has issued a letter threatening the country's large foreign community, which often is used to augment the regime's security forces. Tensions between foreigners and Bahraini citizens have existed for some time, but the 2011 anti-regime protests heightened those tensions because many Bahrainis associated the violent crackdowns with foreign security personnel.

    ...

    A letter released Jan. 27 by Bahrain's anti-regime February 14 Movement has been circulating among the country's sizable community of foreigners. The letter accused foreigners of working as mercenaries for the ruling al-Khalifa regime, threatening their lives if they do not leave the country.

    ...

    Targeted violence may create fear within the foreign community, which could call for tempered responses such as strikes or protests. The al-Khalifa regime is well versed in dealing with Bahrain's foreign community and could again enact small concessions to placate this large demographic.


    Threats To Foreigners

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  54. Wait. Don't tell me. You drive a Subaru outback, right? Or is it one of those new VW bugs with flower on the steering wheel.....

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  55. Deuce: A wiser and more honest man than "Honest Abe” would have prevented the civil war. Lincoln was no friend of the negro...

    For Lincoln, the whole thing turned on preserving the Union, which is what he believed he was sworn to do as President of the UNITED States.

    The Emancipation Proclamation didn't free a single slave. He issued that as war propaganda after the bloodiest day of the war to keep Queen Victoria from coming in for the South.

    Lincoln: ". If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union."

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  56. Riiiight, and you've got a copy of the Bible in the glove compartment of your F150.

    ReplyDelete
  57. Ash: Speaking of the constitution - gay marriage appears to be in there as well

    Probably #14:

    "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

    ReplyDelete
  58. What do you have against the Bible and an F150, Ash, or are you intolerant and narrow minded about those too?

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  59. hey dude it was you playing to stereotypes. I've only responded in kind. What gems lie in your trucks gun rack?

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  60. Demi, Kaballah is only for those of Moses' bloodline, not for brainless shiksas who smoke bath salts.

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  61. See Gag, I, unlike you it seems, am a conservative. I don't believe the government has a role to play in the bedrooms of the nation. I believe an individual has a right to choose what course of action they should pursue without the government peering over their shoulder telling them what is the right thing to do. Abortion, for example, is an individuals' choice, not the governments.

    ReplyDelete
  62. Fighting to save the union was like burning the village to save the village.

    The purpose of the union was to preserve individual liberty from the tyranny of a strong and ruthless central government. It wasn’t a Tony Soprano deal when, "once you join this family…”

    or the logic of your Uncle Festus

    "I think I will save my marriage by beating the living shit out of my wife, killing her youngest brother, shooting her uncle’s mule, burning down her second cousin’s corn crib and knee capping her mother.”

    "Wasn’t Uncle Festus great for saving his marriage and keeping the family together?"

    ReplyDelete
  63. I will concede, Gag, that you are conservative - like a fundamental Muslim, or an orthodox Jew, is a conservative.

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  64. Deuce, if the central gov. doesn't exist how can it protect an individuals liberty?

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  65. We have two Carolinas, two Dakotas, and two Virginias. There is no demonstrable evidence that preserving the union of those three states would have made them safer, happier or richer.

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  66. With that thought in mind maybe it is time for the good ole USofA to extend its dominion to the rest of the world?....

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  67. That is your thought Ash, not mine.

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  68. heh heh, yeah, at what point does the Governments obligation to protect an individuals liberty end?

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  69. We did think it was a great idea to bomb Serbia because the believed that Kosovo had no right to secede from their union. We believe that China has no right to use force against the secession of Taiwan.

    We are morally indignant that Syria is murdering their citizens because they object to their secession.

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  70. Remind me why Lincoln was great.

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  71. Remind me why Lincoln was great.

    Well, he was certainly greater than Polk, who tore off a big piece of Mexico as though it were a pizza.

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  72. Russia reportedly has drafted an agreement that would extend a current deal on the Russian 201st Motorized Rifle Division military base in Tajikistan, keeping the base open for 49 years beyond October 2014, when the current agreement expires. Although there is an issue with whether Russia will begin paying rent for the base, Moscow will make sure the agreement is finalized, as maintaining the base in Tajikistan serves its geopolitical and security interests.

    ...

    Central Asia has always been susceptible to instability, as borders with traditionally restive areas in the region are porous and easy for militants to cross. Economics and culture are also factors; in Tajikistan, high poverty levels and geographic proximity to militant Islamist hotspots make it easier for militancy to take root.

    ...

    The resolution of the pricing issue will be an important indicator of the current state of relations between Russia and Tajikistan. However, the issue will not prevent the agreement extending the current deal between Moscow and Dushanbe.


    Base In Tajikistan

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    ReplyDelete
  74. That is the fortunate part of Mexico, the piece that got torn off.

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  75. Santorum is clearly ahead in Minnesota and Missouri.

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  76. U.S. Ambassador to Iraq James F. Jeffrey and other senior U.S. State Department officials have been considering ways to reduce the size and scope of the United States' diplomatic presence in Iraq, officials in Baghdad and Washington said, The New York Times reported Feb. 7. The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad may decrease the number of contractors needed to support its operations and adjust the number of diplomats as is appropriate, an embassy spokesman said.

    ReplyDelete
  77. Ron Paul looks better and better.

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  78. The Iranian leader also has asked Hezbollah to join forces with the Quds forces to help the Assad regime. As reported back in July, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei delivered a threatening letter to President Obama ordering the U.S. to cease and desist pressuring the Syrian regime leadership, cautioning that Iran will retaliate against American forces in the region.

    At the same time, the Revolutionary Guards, through its publication, Sobh’eh Sadegh, in an article titled, “Iran’s Serious Stance in the Face of Syrian Events,” warned that “Should Turkish officials insist on their contradictory behavior and if they continue on their present path, serious issues are sure to follow. We will be put in the position of having to choose between Turkey and Syria.

    Syria’s justification in defending herself along with mirroring ideological perceptions would sway Iran toward choosing Syria.”

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  79. Also today it was reported by Fars News Agency (which is close to the Revolutionary Guards), the representative of the terrorist group Hezbollah stationed in Tehran, warned the West that the result of the assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists will be very bad for the West. He added that “Soon under the guidance of the leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, we will witness the destruction of the West.”

    Ayatollah Khamenei called the recent assassination of the Iranian nuclear scientist, Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan, deputy director of the first uranium enrichment facility at Natanz, a deed that crossed the red line, and openly announced that Iran will respond in kind.

    Since then several members of the Iranian Quds forces and terrorist group Hezbollah, have been arrested in Argentina, Azerbaijan and Thailand.

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  80. Sanctorum wins big in Missouri, and Minnesota, and it looks, with 1/4 counted, he may win in Colorado too.

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  81. National party rules dictate that only Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada can hold presidential nominating contests before March 6th.

    ...

    Missouri law mandates that a presidential primary be held, but governor Jay Nixon vetoed a bill to move the primary's to March.

    So the Republican party will hold a caucus on March 17 that will determine which candidate will win the state's delegates.

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  82. They got weird rules.

    ....

    Iran Projecting Force Beyond Its Own Borders


    I was told this was impossible but there it is.

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  83. As former Democratic congressman Bart Stupak said when the Senate passed Obamacare in December of 2009, "A review of the Senate language indicates a dramatic shift in federal policy that would allow the federal government to subsidize insurance policies with abortion coverage. Further, the segregation of funds to pay for abortion is another departure from current policy prohibiting federal subsidy of abortion coverage."

    Stupak, Dahlkemper, and a handful of other Democrats who held back on voting for final passage of Obamacare eventually voted for the exact same language in the Senate bill because the president signed an executive order saying the law wouldn't fund abortions.

    But the executive order signed by President Obama did nothing to prevent the subsidized health care exchanges from covering elective abortions.

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  84. With 300,000 Catholics serving in the Armed Forces not hearing the letter in services, retired Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer of the Center for Advanced Defense Studies said he hopes the White House "backs down."

    "Clearly, the Army's job is to be a military organization, not be in the middle of a social values conflict," he told Fox News. "This is something we've got to resolve quickly.

    Otherwise it will diminish our ability to fight as a military.

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  85. Bond's loyalty to M is tested as her past comes back to haunt her. As MI6 comes under attack, 007 must track down and destroy the threat, no matter how personal the cost.

    Skyfall

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  86. These Republican primaries are at least interesting. Santorum doesn't have any money either, does he?

    He looks to win Colorado. A sweep!

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