Nice collection of quotes at Glenn Greenwald’s blog Unclaimed Territory from Republican senators back in October 1993 as they forced Clinton to withdraw U.S. troops from Somalia.

Of course, that was back when the Constitution gave Congress the authority to mandate a withdrawal; nowadays, as some of those same Republican senators are currently arguing, our Constitution gives that authority only to the president.

For example, Sen. John McCain said back then:

What is the criteria and what should be the criteria is our immediate, orderly withdrawal from Somalia. And if we do not do that … then I would say that the responsibilities for that lie with the Congress of the United States who did not exercise their authority under the Constitution of the United States and mandate that they be brought home quickly and safely as possible ….

Here’s an online petition in support of Lieutenant Ehren Watada, who has refused to deploy to Iraq on the grounds that the war is illegal.

From yesterday’s CBS News website:

In an interview, [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi also said she was puzzled by what she considered the president’s minimalist explanation for his confidence in the new surge of 21,500 U.S. troops that he has presented as the crux of a new “way forward” for U.S. forces in Iraq.

“He’s tried this two times — it’s failed twice,” the California Democrat said. “I asked him at the White House, ‘Mr. President, why do you think this time it’s going to work?’ And he said, ‘Because I told them it had to.'”

A remarkably narcissistic essay this morning on Salon.com about Barack Obama. Well, ostensibly about Barack Obama, though the real subject seems to be the author’s fascination with her own feelings about the media coverage of Obama. It begins:

I am confident that I have held out longer than any other pundit to weigh in on both the phenomenon that is Barack Obama and the question of whether race will trump gender as America looks toward election 2008.

I had irritably avoided columnizing on these crucial topics (though I have been quoted by others) for several, somewhat unorthodox, reasons.

What a maverick this woman is! Waiting until now to write a story about Obama, even though hordes of readers were urging her to weigh in, even though her silence had become conspicuous, even though every thinking person in the nation was saying, “But what of Debra J. Dickerson? Why has she not columnized on this crucial topic?”

Why, indeed. The reason is that, until recently, the media coverage of Obama had been on too low a level for someone like Debra J. Dickerson to join in:

I was waiting for the discussion to get serious and, at last, it has.

The writer is too much of an iconoclast, you see, too independent a thinker, to write anything serious on a matter until others go first. The discussion, you see, had focused entirely too much on Obama’s charisma and good looks for Ms. Dickerson’s liking, and if she refers to Obama’s youthful sex appeal over and over again in her essay, it’s important that we understand that she’s only trying to make it clear to us how unimportant it all is to her:

Horrors, Obama smokes! But isn’t he hot in his swim trunks?

All much more important than why he doesn’t wear a tie.

… sexy Obama might be, but ….

… superstar Obama ….

… the handsome Obama ….

In her ninth paragraph, two thirds of the way through the essay, Ms. Dickerson finally breaks her silence and reveals to an anxiously expectant nation what her thoughts on the matter are, and a devastating bombshell it is, too. For months now, America has blundered around like a toddler exploring the garden, and though Ms. Dickerson saw that we were getting too close to the rosebush, like a loving mother she had bitten her tongue for our own good, knowing that it was best for everyone if we figured things out for ourselves. Now, though, with only 22 months before the election, time is running short, too short for her to stand by and say nothing, and, again for our own good, she lets us have it:

Which brings me to the main reason I delayed writing about Obama. For me, it was a trick question in a game I refused to play. Since the issue was always framed as a battle between gender and race …, I didn’t have the heart (or the stomach) to point out the obvious: Obama isn’t black.

Ah, so that’s why I’ve been hearing the sound of eyes snapping open and palms slapping foreheads all over the country this morning! But of course! Black, Ms. Dickerson is here to inform us,

… means those descended from West African slaves. Voluntary immigrants of African descent (even those descended from West Indian slaves) are just that, voluntary immigrants of African descent with markedly different outlooks on the role of race in their lives and in politics. At a minimum, it can’t be assumed that a Nigerian cabdriver and a third-generation Harlemite have more in common than the fact a cop won’t bother to make the distinction. They’re both “black” as a matter of skin color and DNA, but only the Harlemite, for better or worse, is politically and culturally black, as we use the term.

How could I have not realized this before now! As everyone I know uses these terms, Obama is not black! He’s just “black”! What fools we have all been not to have seen this!

Whites, on the other hand, are engaged in a paroxysm of self-congratulation; he’s the equivalent of Stephen Colbert’s “black friend.” Swooning over nice, safe Obama means you aren’t a racist. I honestly can’t look without feeling pity, and indeed mercy, at whites’ need for absolution. For all our sakes, it seemed (again) best not to point out the obvious: You’re not embracing a black man, a descendant of slaves. You’re replacing the black man with an immigrant of recent African descent of whom you can approve without feeling either guilty or frightened.

And how fortunate we have been to have Debra J. Dickerson, in her infinite grace and benevolence, looking out for us all, showing us the depths of her mercy by withholding her devastating reality check from those who needed so very desperately, for the sake of their own absolutions, not to hear it!

Of course, this morning she went ahead and dropped the nuclear bomb on us anyway and charred our pitiful souls all to cinders with her searing words of truth, but that’s only because, you see, things had changed. The discussion had turned serious, and when that happened it became the path of greater mercy to put us out of our paroxysms.

The only thing is, I live in the San Francisco Bay Area and I hang out on the WELL, both notorious hotbeds of progressivism, and I don’t actually know a single person, white or otherwise, who appears to be paroxysming over Obama, or Clinton either for that matter. Yes, I can see that the news media seem to have decided, 22 months before the election, that the Democratic race is already down to Hillary vs. Barack — but I don’t actually know anyone, anyone, who is in fact wholeheartedly enthusiastic about either of them.

Sure, I hear a lot of “I give Clinton points for all the work she did on health care, but …” and “Damn, that was a great speech Obama gave the other day, though still …”. I do think most of the people I know would find either of them a huge improvement over our current president, to put it mildly. But I can’t think of anyone who puts either of them at the top of his or her list.

There are two politicians I hear that kind of enthusiasm for among some of my friends. Not paroxysms, exactly, because nobody seems to think either of them has a hope of winning the nomination; but whenever I hear someone say, “You know who I’d love to see as the Democratic candidate in ’08?”, the answer to “No, who?” is neither Obama nor Clinton. It’s usually “I know it’ll never happen, but …” and then either Al Gore or Howard Dean.

So where are these reported paroxysms actually taking place? Is it happening all around me and I just haven’t noticed? Or — and I know this is a terrible thing to suggest — but could it possibly be that — that the media is — dare I say it out loud? — could the media possibly be blowing a story up out of all proportion?

But no, what an absurd thought! Unimaginable! How could such a thing possibly be true? The media are the lapdogs of the left wing, the sworn enemies of the corporatization of America — everyone knows that! And given that every single president this country has elected in over 200 years has been a while male, what possible reason could our intensely liberal media have for promoting the idea that, with the election nearly two years away, the Democratic candidate is already guaranteed to be either black or female?

Spotted in the LA Daily News and reported on the WELL:

Decapitation Mars Hanging in Baghdad

Later: That headline of course refers to the execution of Saddam Hussein’s half brother. Now I have learned on the WELL that this was a matter of using too long a rope. Apparently the length of rope needed to break the neck cleanly is related to the condemned person’s weight. If the rope is too long, the weight of the person falling will cause decapitation; if too short, the neck may not be broken and the person will die slowly and unpleasantly from strangulation.

Here is a link to the Official Table of Drops created by Britain’s Royal Navy. And here is another to more information than I really needed to know about the physics of execution by hanging.

According to the New York Times,

Circumcision appears to reduce a man’s risk of contracting AIDS from heterosexual sex by half, United States government health officials said yesterday ….

The National Institutes of Health has its theories about why this is:

Uncircumcised men are thought to be more susceptible because the underside of the foreskin is rich in Langerhans cells, sentinel cells of the immune system, which attach easily to the human immunodeficiency virus, which causes AIDS. The foreskin also often suffers small tears during intercourse.

Oh, this is too funny. Tom Delay has a blog now, only it was quickly overrun by hostile comments. So they took down the site, erased the offending comments, and started screening.

So now there are only, um, supportive comments allowed on Mr. Delay’s blog. Here are a few that are up there right now, as of this posting:

You’re absolutely right.
Our children are way too precious to sacrifice for
unproven bogus scientific cures. From conception, babies have a
right to live a long, happy life.

Mohers shouldn’t have the right to kill a baby for her
own personal greedy desires. Those are the actions of an evil
monster, not a mother.

I think that there needs to be more in the way of scientific
studies to show how conscious an unborn baby is.

A lot of liberals could change their mind on the matter

What else can we do to stop abortions, stem cell research and
harvesting of babies for science? Well, here is a great
one: Write letters to your senators, congressmen, and other
representives to the government. We can get the ball rolling if
everyone pitches in.

And:

Bring back NEWT! He was
Unfairly forced out!
Liberals will be the death of this country.
Liars they are.
Some day Delay will be hailed as a hero.
He is being smeared by a liberal.
I believe in you Delay.
The country needs you!

And:

Inredible! There are
Many bloggs out there, but i
Prefer those that consider
Each side of every
Argument. We need more
Champions like yourself
Here on the internet.
Be assured I will
Use this blog as my homepage!
Sure, some may object, but to
Hell with them!

According to an article on CNET News.com:

Millions of commercial Web sites and personal blogs would be required to report illegal images or videos posted by their users or pay fines of up to $300,000, if a new proposal in the U.S. Senate came into law.

The legislation, drafted by Sen. John McCain and obtained by CNET News.com, would also require Web sites that offer user profiles to delete pages posted by sex offenders. …

Internet service providers already must follow those reporting requirements. But McCain’s proposal is liable to be controversial because it levies the same regulatory scheme — and even stiffer penalties — on even individual bloggers who offer discussion areas on their Web sites.

The problem is that there is no clear definition of what material you could be fined for. According to the article,

… the reporting rules could prove problematic for individuals and smaller Web sites because the definitions of child pornography have become relatively broad.

The U.S. Justice Department, for instance, indicted an Alabama man named Jeff Pierson last week on child pornography charges because he took modeling photographs of clothed minors with their parents’ consent. The images were overly “provocative,” a prosecutor claimed.

It also seems that any website that allows users to create profiles would be required to delete even completely innocuous profiles of users who are listed as sex offenders, or face staggering penalties.

So if a registered sex offender manages to put up even an empty profile page on some website, even if it contains nothing more than his user ID, it’s the website that can be slammed with a six-figure fine. Seem a bit overboard, maybe? I mean, we already have laws against child pornography and solicitation of children on the Internet; the only power these new laws seem to be giving the government is the power to punish websites brutally over innocuous webpages, or over pretty much any photo of a child.

Giving the government that additional power is not going to help protect any children against anyone. The only ability the government would gain that it doesn’t already have is the power to harass pretty much any website it chooses to. Whether it has a good reason or not.

And this administration would love to shut down the Internet. But they can’t because they’d alienate big business.

Next best thing, though, is to go after anyone using the Internet to spread ideas. The spread of ideas is hurting this administration real bad.

And ideas are a perfectly safe target to go after because doing so doesn’t affect big business in the slightest.

It seems to me that I’m hearing and reading a fair amount of grumbling now that the Democratic leadership has announced that they aren’t going to impeach Bush and Cheney. Some are saying they figure or hope that this is a ploy on the part of the Democrats, that they’re hoping that investigations will bring to light enough evidence of corruption and illegal activity that the public mood will change and they can go after impeachment then.

But I actually agree that impeachment shouldn’t be on the Dems’ to-do list now. If investigations bring out clear evidence of impeachable offenses, that’s when to put it on the list. Our first job in this area, though, ought to be just finding out what’s been going on, not deciding beforehand who we’re going to pin it on.

I say that even though I think there’s every reason to figure that investigations will turn up impeachable offenses. We still shouldn’t go in with the mindset that what we are doing are looking for something to nail Bush and Cheney with. We should go in with the attitude that we are looking to find out what’s been going on, and only then will we decide what to do.

I want to know what the administration has been up to whether it leads to impeachment or not. There has beyond any reasonable doubt been lots of illegal activity and we need to bring it to light and see its true extent, where it isn’t as well as where it is, or we can’t correct it.

But if we going in with the attitude that our highest objective is to find something impeachable, we’re just proving that we never really thought Ken Starr was doing anything wrong, we just hated that it was their side doing it to us instead of vice versa.