News and Politics

Nobody Died When Clinton Lied

The Justice Department is using the authority granted by the USA Patriot Act to crack down on currency smugglers, meth cookers and other run-of-the-mill lawbreakers. Civil liberty groups say the government must be watched. [Wired News]

Methamphetamine is now a WMD. Well, I guess we should’ve seen it coming. According to this Salon article, prosecutors across the country are now using the Patriot act to prosecute drug crimes, fraud, and anything involving a bomb. This means any of these people may be detained indefinitely without an attorney. I don’t like trailing questions, but I would like to see some constructive and creative posts about what can be done to protest this. It’s so blatantly unconstitutional, it’s not funny anymore, and I for one am not willing to welcome our new overlords. [metafilter.com]

Great video

Comedian Tommy Chong has been sentenced to nine months in federal prison and fined $20,000 for selling bongs and other drug paraphernalia over the Internet. [Adam Curry: Adam Curry’s Weblog]

<sarcasm>I feel SO much safer with this dangerous criminal off the street.</sarcasm> No wonder our prisons are so overcrowded.

Frank and sobering interview with Paul Krugman. Krugman: If you ask Norquist or the Heritage Foundation about where the economic and social policy intelligentsia really stands, their aim is to roll us back to Herbert Hoover or before. Norquist actually thinks that we’ve got to get back to before the progressive movement –- before the McKinley era, which actually is one of Karl Rove’s guiding lights as well. So there’s definitely an important faction in the Bush administration and in the Republican Party that really wants to unravel all of this stuff and basically wants us to go back to a situation where, if you are unlucky, and you don’t have enough to eat, or you can’t afford medical care, well, that’s just showing that you weren’t sufficiently provident. And then, for these people, there would be no social safety net whatsoever.

Other people in the party, and other people in the coalition, have deluded themselves into thinking that somehow this is all going to be painless, and we’re going to grow our way out of the deficit. Other people really don’t care about any of that and are viewing their alliance with these people as a way to achieve their social goals -– basically roll back the revolution in social mores over the past few decades. [metafilter.com]

All US Air Passengers to be Profiled, and 1% Will be Banned from Boarding. In the most aggressive — and, some say, invasive — step yet, the federal government and the airlines will phase in a computer system next year to measure the risk posed by every passenger on every flight in the United States. Up to 8 percent of passengers who board flights will be coded “yellow” and pulled for additional screening. An estimated 1 to 2 percent will be labeled “red” and will be prohibited from boarding. These passengers also will face police questioning and may be arrested. [More Inside….] [metafilter.com]

I think if I ever have to go to Canada to visit the main office, I’ll apply for political asylum since the US is obviously becoming a fascist dictatorship.

A little history on some of the members of Bush’s Administration. [Morons Dot Org]

A Californian police chief tells everyone why this country is based on Christianity. [Morons Dot Org]

From Scripting News:

Editorial: Bush is a lying liar. Even worse, everyone knows he’s lying. Doing what’s right for the Iraqi people? No one in the US cares about Iraq. $87 billion. Say that out loud. $87,000,000,000. We’re stuck in Iraq, it’s a quagmire. There’s no way out. We’re fucked. End of editorial.

Dave is right.