Iraqi lawmakers said their intepretation of the law was based on U.S. Supreme Court’s opinion in the case of Bush v. Gore, and includes a clause stipulating that the new rules cannot be used to challenge future Iraqi election results, unless it would benefit a candidate supported by Justice Antonin Scalia.
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October 4, 2005
WB: Unequal Protection Clause
Comments
I can take the gambling accusation and raise it one total health:
http://greyhairsblog.blogspot.com/2005/10/secular-health.html
Yes, the Iraqis have thrown out the original US model and went with the Texas model. The vote is how the Texans interpret a voter, and how best you can steal an election. They must have James Baker for a consultant.
All corruption leads through Texas. We have the best Gerry mandered government corporate money can buy (see Tom Delay for your dollars). The Iraqi model should import some jack rabbits, rattle snakes, long horns and armadillos and eureka we have texas in the Middle East.
Over at Wingnut Daily there is an interesting article by a fellow named Corsi about Miers time as lottery commissioner in Texas. Its a winger site, but the article has some interesting insight.
Posted by: jdp | Oct 4 2005 20:39 utc | 3
“All corruption leads through Texas. ”
In the interests of national security Texas and Florida (the Bushistans) should be politically quarantined.
Posted by: eftsoons | Oct 4 2005 20:59 utc | 4
Iranians/Persians invented chess. Texans invented GWB.
Posted by: Friendly Fire | Oct 4 2005 21:17 utc | 5
FLASHBACK: Redaction Alert!
White House edits Aug. 6 presidential briefing, then claims it’s been ‘declassified.’
…
The text of the PDB released by the White House is one and a half pages long. But, according to an article by intelligence expert Oliver Schröm, the original document was much longer:
“Crawford, August 6, 2001. George W. Bush is on vacation. He wanted to spend the whole month at his ranch in Texas. ‘The Presidential Daily Brief’ was part of his morning routine. In the PDB, as it’s called in CIA jargon, a senior CIA official presents the President with a summary of the security situation. On this morning the CIA Director personally briefs the President. Instead of the usual two or three pages, today’s briefing paper consists of eleven and a half printed pages and carries the title ‘Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.'”
Who handed that PDB to the President? Harriet Miers.
Who therefore knows the real length of that PDB and what it contained? Harriet Miers.
Who is therefore in a position to blackmail the entire US Government (and Israel) with 9-11 to get what she wants? Harriet Miers.
This is why a woman who has never been a judge in her life gets a seat on the US Supreme Court.
Also, see:
Miers Briefed Bush on Famous Bin Laden Memo, But Newspapers Handle the AP Photo Quite Differently
… That was the date, a little over a month before 9/11, that President Bush was briefed on the now-famous “PDB” that declared that Osama Bin Laden was “determined” to attack the U.S. homeland, perhaps with hijacked planes. But does that mean that Miers had anything to do with that briefing?
As it turns out, yes, according to Tuesday’s Los Angeles Times. An article by Richard A. Serrano and Scott Gold observes that early in the Bush presidency “Miers assumed such an insider role that in 2001 it was she who handed Bush the crucial ‘presidential daily briefing’ hinting at terrorist plots against America just a month before the Sept. 11 attacks.”
So, Miers is in a position to blackmail the entire US Government (and Israel) with 9-11. THAT is how a woman with zero experience as a judge (and a lot of ethical clouds) gets a seat on the US Supreme Court!
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Oct 4 2005 22:23 utc | 6
You got there just before I did Uncle… George is just trying to get a finger into every dike…
Posted by: PeeDee | Oct 5 2005 0:45 utc | 7
In the interests of national security Texas and Florida (the Bushistans) should be politically quarantined.
Since ’04 Coup best add Ohio to the list!
(and a lot of ethical clouds)
Ethical clouds you say?? Huh? She’s into Corporate Corruption. That’s what qualifies her. Though in fairness she is less qualified than johnny rotten roberts. He’s more qualified ‘cuz his actions should send him to jail for life – for a) co-ordinating Fla. state legal strategy for ’00 Coup d’etat b) voting the correct way in arguably the most important legal case in the Republic in exchange for a Court Seat. Comparing this nominee to the last is like comparing eau de cologne to skunk scent.
The tone & content of the criticism of her is so sexist. He’s a fascist & theocrat who should be sent to jail for life & according to male bloggers, he was just fine…absolutely qualified…It’s the usual double standard of gotta be perfect if you’re female. Not to mention the class issues – he went to Harvard & was integrated w/DC elite; she went to SMU & wasn’t…If she were a He & headed a large Texas law firm, commentators would have mused reflectively over how heading a law firm could be an interesting new path to the court in the Age of the Pirates…
Which is not to say I support anyone for the Court who is not on Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s list period end of discussion. No Bush Cronies…no one who doesn’t solidly support Roe – like 2/3 Am. people – however anti-abortion they may be personally.
Interesting how boy-Emperor chooses scotus jerks who are in his self-image… closeted homosexual woman haters? (be sure to scroll down that link to see 2nd photo.
Posted by: jj | Oct 5 2005 1:36 utc | 8
I believe recent polling in Iraq has shown the Iraqi people were against many of the changes that US ambassador Khalilzad pressed into the constitution (which preserve US interests). In spite of Shiite & Kurdish confidence in getting their people to the polls, there clearly was not the confidence they would vote in favor of the constitution, seeing that it endorsed the US interests and continued occupation. So they changed the rules to eliminate the possibility of having to dissolve the government — and re-introduce the points of constitution that (before all the changes) had popular support. So the Sunni population sees the Shia/Kurd(political class) allied with US interests, and is left with little alternative but armed resistance. Which most in the US will see as inevitable sectarian conflict — “they just hate each other” — leaving the US meddling completely out of the equation.
Posted by: anna missed | Oct 5 2005 3:07 utc | 9
Since ’04 Coup best add Ohio to the list!
it was, it is called New Bushistan.
Posted by: eftsoons | Oct 5 2005 3:52 utc | 10
UN Condemns New Iraq Constitution Rule
Yesterday, the United Nations came out against the recent changes to the Iraq Constitution and the votes required to ratify it. The UN commented that the new rules may violate international election standards.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Oct 5 2005 5:16 utc | 11
A journalists day in Baghdad:
The sights, sounds and threat of violence are a constant in Baghdad
…
12:10 p.m. – Get inside National Assembly building. Someone steals my watch at the final security check.
12:30 p.m. – Talking to Saddam Hussein’s old translator. He explains that democracy in the new Iraq is a fiasco. Bush’s fault, and Bush will have to face the judgment of history for his mistakes. (All times from here are approximate; see above.)
12:50 p.m. – The major is late so I decide to head down to the checkpoint and wait for him. Mohammed says, “No, you’re not. You’re waiting for his call.”
1 p.m. – On phone with the major, who’s apologizing for being late when a car bomb explodes at Checkpoint 3 entrance. Gunfire ensues.
1-3 p.m. – Locked down in National Assembly building with legislators while bomb debris and bodies are cleared from the street.
3:15 p.m. – The major calls back. Come on out, he says. I join him walking to Checkpoint 3.
3:25 p.m. – We step around football-sized chunks of bomber hanging like gruesome Christmas ornaments from the razor wire. I point out the journalists’ security fears, being forced to walk through a dangerous area to get to Iraqi government and U.S. Embassy briefings. He is concerned. “Wow, that’s dangerous,” he says, pushing aside a smoking piece of car interior with a booted toe. “I think the problem is, the guys here are nervous whenever cars come near, especially if they stop, like yours do, to drop you off.”
“No kidding,” I say, just avoiding treading on an eyeball.
Letters Home from Iraq: ‘I’ve Had Enough”
“There is no complete set of words that describes the feelings of trying to fly, after someone has bled all over a cockpit. When you’re trying to inspect the aircraft for damage and you’re having to touch, smell and see blood all over the floor, the seats, the instruments. The smell and sight are something you will never forget.
“When you have to strap into the aircraft and you are sitting on a wet seat from blood and water in an attempt to clean some of it off, it’s indescribable. When you strap on shoulder harnesses that are blood soaked, and your feet are sticking to the blood on the floor, it’s unforgettable. When the power is turned on in the aircraft and the instruments light up, but are hard to read due to the blood spatters, it’s a sight that is burned into your mind. These things are smells, sights, and feelings I pray my children never have to experience.”
The pilot who died in that seat, Chief Warrant Officer Dennis Hay, left behind a wife, a 5-year-old son and a 1-year-old daughter.
Convicted US soldier speaks of worse abuse at Abu Ghraib
But England, appearing on NBC’s “Dateline” program, said the pictures did not convey the full extent of the abuse that took place in the cell block.
“I know worse things were happening over there,” admitted the 22-year-old convict.
She said one night she heard blood-curdling screams coming from the block’s shower room, where non-military interrogators had taken an Arab detainee.
“They had the shower on to muffle it, but it wasn’t helping,” she recalled. “They never screamed like that when we were humiliating. But this guy was like screaming bloody murder. I mean it still haunts me I can still hear it just like it happened yesterday.”
Returning back to my house, I was thinking of our mysterious future. Are we going to be another Lebanon? Or have we already started to be like them during the civil war? I have friends from Mosul, Falluja, Samarra, Najaf and Kirkuk and even I have Christian friends. We’ve been friends for years and I don’t remember one day we quarreled or fought each other because one of us is a Shiite and the other is a Sunni.
“Tears of the Sun” is the name of one of the most powerful movies I have ever watched. It is about the war in Nigeria and how the life of the people was changed when the new regime came to power. People were kidnapped and killed, women were raped, and children were slaughtered and so on. The same thing is happening now in Iraq. Maybe not exactly the same but it is happening and we don’t know whether this will continue for along time or not.
Iraqi Lawmakers Reverse Move to Lower Bar for Charter Approval
Following sharp criticism from the international community and Sunni leaders, Iraqi lawmakers voted today to reverse changes they made to rules governing next week’s referendum on a new constitution.
The National Assembly overwhelmingly voted to clarify that the passage of the Oct. 15 referendum would depend on actual ballots cast rather than on the total number of registered voters.
And violence, which has been on the rise as the vote approaches, continued as a large bomb exploded outside a mosque in Hilla, killing at least 10 people and wounding at least 41.
…
“The U.N. said it was not just,” said Mahmoud Othman, an independent Kurdish member of the National Assembly. “Today they reversed it.”
A spokesman for the United Nations Secretary General’s office in New York, Farhan Haq, said today: “We are pleased that they so swiftly took this decision. We had informed them of our concerns about the previous change made on Sunday. It seems that the Iraqi National Assembly was willing to hear our arguments and that they were willing to make the changes necessary to bring the election law back into line with international standards.”