Update: Did you really think Obamatron would stiff the Pentagon? He signed indefinite detention into law, as expected. Regarding Ron Paul's rise in the Iowa polls: Fox Spews is so blatantly partisan that the moderator of the next "debate", Chris Wallace suggested "Iowa won't count" if Ron Paul should win the state caucuses in January because "most of the Republican establishment thinks he's not going to end up as the nominee". Perhaps we should simply forego the preliminaries and proceed by anointing?
{14.12.11}The Obamatron has threatened to veto the defense appropriation bill that contains the most significant abridgement of civil rights since Lincoln suspended habeus corpus during the Civil War. Whether he has the courage to actually strike at the sacred bull looming across the river in its five-sided temple of doom remains to be seen because Congress passed the appropriations bill without deleting the provision that makes indefinite detention in military custody of merely suspected terrorists legal. Congressman Ron Paul, running 1 point behind Newt Gringrich in Iowa, said on the Alex Jones show that the defense bill literally "legalizes martial law" in America and is an example of the administration's "arrogance". Paul said at one point the administration tried to push through a provision that even if a detainee were found innocent, the government could still detain the captive indefinitely. Fortunately that provision was voted down on a voice vote. Commentators have said that the opposition of the adminsitration to indefinite military detention is not grounded on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, but is based on practical considerations and protecting presidential authority in the 'war on terror'. This latest example of the erosion of civil rights begun under the last regime is perhaps the worst. As Ron Paul said in his interview, "This is big."
The President marked the formal end of American military operations in Iraq with a visit from the Iraqi Prime Minister this week. He had the good taste not to claim victory in his remarks or mention the phantom WMDs foisted on the American people so they would accept an unnecessary war of executive choice. Only history will judge the correctness of the original decision to invade Iraq, intoned the President. But most Americans do not need to await the judgement of history. The toppling of a distant dictator was not the worth the dead and maimed or the money wasted. The war is over, but the assault on our civil liberties in the name of national security goes on.