I've never like the whole idea about Guantánamo Bay and other such prisons and how the Patriot Act denies the people their civil liberties. If a person is suspected of breaking the law in the US they are given a fair trial with a lawyer and a jury of their peers. Now this is not always fair, but it's much more so than what is happening in Guantánamo Bay. My friend's way of explaining the whole situation is that you can get on a pay phone and call the government, give them one of your friends names and say they are a terrorist, and then they will be picked up and sent to Guantánamo Bay. Simply vanish for years at a time. I found this op-ed article in the NY Times and thought it was interesting. I don't agree with it, but still thought it brought up some good points.

"Critics argue that if the United States cannot prove before a court of law that detainees at Guantánamo Bay have committed a crime, then they should be released. This argument rests on the principle that people should be punished only for committing a crime." gee, what a good idea. Punish the guilty people and let the innocent ones go unpunished...who ever thought of that?

"A person who is merely dangerous cannot be criminally punished for being dangerous; however, he can be detained, and he is not always entitled to the expansive procedural protections granted to the accused criminal." what happened to innocent until proven guilty? Just because they're supposedly terrorists they have no rights? and anyways who says that they are terrorists? If they are then I am all in favor of detaining them. However if they are innocent people, it is wrong to detain them.

"Although in 1969 the Supreme Court held that under the First Amendment governments can ban only speech that would cause "imminent" harm — like incitement to riot — it remains an open question whether this standard is workable in an age of global terrorism exemplified by the Sept. 11 attacks."

The fact that we were most brutally attacked on September 11th doesn't give the government free reign and allow them to deny us our civil liberties. Civil liberties are what allow us to be free and what make our country different from others. Yet these people are trying to take that away from us and using the same old excuse, 9/11.

More Democratic Inactivity

I followed a link from human's site and found this link titled Clinton Scandals. Since Clinton is one of my favorite presidents I was interested and clicked it. i found this. (Make sure you go on to page 2, that page details what they Repubs did to Clinton and Gore and how the Democrats did nothing in response to Bush.)

The inactivity of the Democrats has been a much talked about topic. I think this is an especially glaring example of how much the Democrats let the Republicans run the show. The Democrats let the Republicans get away with the Iran-Contra scandals and with what's going on with the current Bush administration. Yet, whenever Clinton did anything, the Republicans were screaming scandal. Why is this? Why can't the democrats fight back and scream scandal every time the Bushies do something wrong? After all, what Bush has done has been much more serious than Monica or realeasing prisoners. Or just in general, why can't the Democrats fight back and stop their image of being the weaker party?

Today I got some time off from my busy schedule and finally got a chance to see Al Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth. I thought it was wonderfully done and am now totally convinced that he intends to run for president. Throughout the movie he detailed his political life, included Katrina and hinted at how the current administration was responsible for most of the aftermath, and he included how the current administration has done virtually nothing toward fixing the problem of global warming. The movie seemed to send the message that the situation is bad and getting worse, but something can be done about it...Al Gore can do something about it. My friend came to the movie with me and before it we were discussing who we would endorse for the democratic nomination for president in '08. I said Gore of course and she believed Hillary would be a better choice. The movie was so powerful that afterwards she was astounded at what a good man Gore was and said that she would definately endorse him over Hillary. I think that movie may have won Gore not only the nomination for president in 2008, but the election as well. That is, if enough people see it. At one point towards the end he said something to the effect that this was a greater threat than terrorists and I think that will hit home with people. Gore had scientific facts backing up everything he said, and it was a very impressive presentation. Based on that movie, I think he's going to run for president, and has already started a heck of a campaign for it.

My question: why doesn't someone hunt down George W. Bush and kill him for his crimes against humanity?? I'm too lazy to look up the numbers right now but I'm sure Bush is responsible for more deaths than al-Zarqawi is. With is sneaking off to Iraq to meet with the prime minister, maybe he is starting to get scared...

Bush Sees Oil as Key to Restoring Stability in Iraq. Big surprise.

"President Bush proposed today that Iraq create a national fund to use its oil revenues for national projects, as part of a strategy to build loyalty to the new government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki.

"This is not the first time that Mr. Bush and his aides have suggested that oil could be a solution to many of Iraq's problems: Before the war, Paul D. Wolfowitz, then the deputy secretary of defense, suggested that oil revenues could pay for Iraqi reconstruction. So far, that has not happened.

"Mr. Bush's aides said the president was trying to capitalize on both the death last week of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, and the formation of a new cabinet that includes ministers responsible for security."

He definately is. As for the death of al-Zarqawi, he has been replaced by someone else, who will probably be even worse.

"'The shura council and al Qaeda in the Land of Two Rivers have both agreed to appoint Abu Hamza al-Muhajir to succeed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in the leadership of the organization,' the statement said, according to an Agence France-Presse report from Paris. The council cited in the statement is a body known as the Mujahideen Shura Council, which was said to be a coordinating body for the insurgency when its existence was announced on an Islamic Web site in January."

Okay, so Bush is still trying to exploit Iraq for oil and Zarqawi has been replaced by someone else. So, Bush has done nothing but gained a lot of news coverage. Everyone thinks al-Zarqawi's dead, that's the end of our problems. Then Bush proposes oil as a means to help out Iraq economically and people think hm...that might work. Rather than, hey stop trying to take their oil! The movie Munich was really great in that it showed that even if you kill the most deadly leaders, other will come in their place and will be worse and even more deadly.

How Close are we to a Majority in '06?

Recently I've been focusing on who's going to run in '08. However, the '06 midterm elections are coming up much quicker and deserve some attention. I have heard constantly about gaining a Democratic majority, but I wasn't quite sure how close we were, so I did some homework.

SENATE:
(from Wikipedia: 2006 midterm elections) The Senate is currently composed of 55 Republicans, who have been in the majority since 2003, 44 Democrats, and 1 liberal Independent (former Republican Jim Jeffords of Vermont). Jeffords is retiring and his seat is one of the 33 seats being contested, while another 17 are held by Democrats and 15 are held by Republicans.

To control 51 seats, a majority in the Senate, Democrats would need either a net gain of 6 seats (if independent candidate Bernie Sanders wins Jim Jeffords' seat in Vermont and continues to caucus with the Democrats as he does in the House), or a net gain of 7 seats (if Sanders loses to a Republican). Republicans need to hold only 50 seats after the election to have a majority because the Vice President (currently Republican Dick Cheney) breaks all tie votes in his role as President of the Senate.


Senate Seats up for election:
red - Republican incumbent
pink - Retiring Republican
blue - Democratic incumbent
light blue - Retiring Democrat
yellow - Retiring Independent
grey - States without a seat up for reelection

HOUSE:
from Wikipedia: 2006 midterm elections
All of the 435 seats in the House up are up for election.
The House is currently composed of 231 Republicans, 201 Democrats and 1 Independent (who caucuses with the Democrats).

Republicans hold a 30 seat advantage, so Democrats would need to pick up 16 seats to take control of the House, which has had a Republican majority since 1995. (This is a complete list of everyone running for election in the House.)

There are currently 30 open seats—28 incumbents who will not be seeking re-election plus 2 vacancies, both of which will be filled before the general election. Of the 28 open seats, 19 are held by Republicans, 8 are held by Democrats and 1 is held by an independent. One of the vacant seats which will be filled before the general election was held by a Republican and the other was held by a Democrat.

Here are some stats from the Washington Post on the House and Senate elections. The graphic won't post here, but it is very good, I'd definately recommend taking a look.

So, we're pretty close in the senate. The house, we still have a ways to go. Hopefully we can win both houses and start calling for reforms. However, Howard Dean has insisted, "I don't think that the first thing on our agenda is gonna be to get in a big partisan fight about whether the President should be impeached or not." Democratic House Leader Nancy Pelosi's spokesperson put it more bluntly, "Impeachment is off the table; she is not interested in pursuing it."

Hopefully they were just saying this. I would love to see a Democratic majority regardless, just to get the Republicans out of power. And I would love it even more if they impeached Bush.

A Third Party in 2008?

The other day my friend was telling me about a third party that was trying to get on the ballot in 2008 as an alternative to the Democratic and Republican Parties. I have pretty much always been against the Republicans. Recently I've become increasingly disgusted with the Democrats for not taking action against Bush. As truth-pain (awesome blog btw) said, "you guys spend 90% of your bull-horn minutes bashing Bush and 10% giving semi-salient alternatives to his policies. " Although this is a slight exaggeration, there really is too much Bush-bashing going on among the Democrats. Although I'm still leaning Democratic, this third party idea seems like a good idea and seems like it would be successful in 2008 because the American people are getting pretty fed up with the Republicans and the Democrats.

So, what's this party all about? This is their home website. The party is called Unity08. It is "a movement to take our country back from polarizing politics. In 2008, we’ll select and elect a Unity Ticket to the White House— one Democrat, one Republican, in whatever order, or independents committed to a Unity team."

They believe that "neither of today’s major parties reflects the aspirations, fears or will of the majority of Americans. Both have polarized and alienated the people. Both are unduly influenced by single-issue groups. Both are excessively dominated by money." I think the Republicans are more dominated by money, but nonetheless both parties are getting to be more focused on hating each other than on what's good for the country.

"We [Unity08] will not waste time pointing fingers. Instead, we will focus on how America can find common ground on critical issues – to give the overlooked moderate majority a voice and a choice in 2008." - What a good idea! Actually focus on what's good for the American people.

They believe they can succeed because
1. The American people know that the current political system is broken and that the time is short to fix it.
2. A solidly-funded movement of up to 20,000,000 Americans can be built online in order to nominate a Unity Ticket of their choice for 2008.
3. Seeing the numbers, leaders in both parties will see that a Unity Ticket in 2008 represents the jolt the political system needs to get back on track.
4. The tens of millions of Americans who have not been voting out of cynicism toward the current system are likely to rally to new leadership with a new approach.

Also, poll numbers back them up. Here's an article I found on them from Google News.

I don't know if this will ever take off. From the sounds of it, it might. Third party candidates have never gotten much support, or ever won a presidential election. However this is different. I don't think the Republicans and the Democrats have ever had such polarizing views. True, they stood for different things, but they could see the good in each other. And also their views weren't based on, okay you think that, well I'm going to think the opposite now. They actually stood up for what they believed in. I miss this, and hope that maybe if anything this third party can awaken the Democrats and the Republicans to the fact that Americans are upset with them, and maybe they will get their priorities in order.