Magpie

Friday, February 2, 2007

What he said.

Democratic senator Russ Feingold on what Congress should be doing about Dubya's 'surge' in Iraq:

Congress is gearing up for a big Iraq debate next week. The Senate will take up the John Warner-Carl Levin resolution, which some are portraying as an important, symbolic rebuke of the president's Iraq policy. Symbols can be powerful, but only if they have substance behind them. Read the fine print of the resolution itself, and you will find that it is not a rebuke at all. In parts, it reads like a reauthorization of the war, rejecting troop redeployment and specifically authorizing "vigorous operations" in part of Iraq. This resolution isn't a symbolic rebuke of the president; instead it symbolizes a Congress that is too timid to challenge the president's failed Iraq policy.

Under the guise of constructive criticism, this resolution signs off on the president's policy of maintaining military operations in Iraq indefinitely. While a resolution like this might have been all you could expect from a Republican Congress, it hardly seems like the product of a Congress under new Democratic leadership.

After voters registered their opposition to the war last November, the new Congress was supposed to offer dramatic change. Instead, less than a month into this Congress, some members in both parties have rallied around a resolution that endorses the catastrophic status quo in Iraq....

Instead of allowing the president's failed policy to continue, Congress can and should use its power of the purse to end our involvement in the Iraq war, safely redeploying the troops while ensuring that important counterterrorism missions are still carried out.

We should be coming up with a strategy for post-occupation Iraq and the region that is squarely within the context of the global fight against al-Qaida. That means replacing a massive, unsustainable and unlimited military mission with a long-term strategy for mitigating the mess left behind by this war. With such a strategy, we can redirect substantially more resources and attention to the fight against al-Qaida and other international terrorist organizations.

While bipartisanship is a worthy goal, and symbols have their value, this resolution sacrifices far too much in the name of symbolism and compromise. As long as this president goes unchecked by Congress, our troops will remain needlessly at risk, and our national security will be compromised. This resolution fails to check the president, or to change his disastrous Iraq policy. It essentially authorizes the failed strategy that the American people rejected in November. For the sake of our troops, and for our national security, Congress should take real, binding steps to challenge the president's policy and bring our troops out of Iraq.

You can read the rest of Feingold's comments here. And if you want to keep the Senate from rubber-stamping Dubya's plan to send yet more troops to Iraq, call or write your senators and tell them to support Feingold's Iraq Redeployment Act of 2007 instead of the Warner-Levin Resolution.

Via Salon. [Paid sub or ad view req'd.]

Labels: Iraq, Iraq Redeployment Act, Russ Feingold, Surge

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:47 PM | Get permalink

Thursday, February 1, 2007

More Molly.

The only good thing about Molly Ivins' death is that everyone who knew her (and Ivins was an acquaintence of just about everyone, it appears) is telling Molly stories. In his appreciation of Ivins over at the Texas Observer, Adam Hochschild closes with part of a column Ivins wrote for Mother Jones:

On the occasion of the bicentennial of the Constitution, the ACLU was fixin' to lay some heavy lifetime freedom-fighter awards on various citizens and one of 'em was Joe Raugh, the lawyer who defended so many folks during the McCarthy Era and the civil rights movement (note that the rightness of those stands is always easier to see in retrospect). Raugh was sick in the hospital at the time and asked a friend of his to go down and collect the award for him. His friend went to see him in the hospital and said, 'Joe, what you want me to tell these folks?'

So there was Raugh lyin' there sick as a dog, thinking back on all those bad, ugly, angry times—the destroyed careers, the wrecked lives—and he said, 'Tell 'em how much fun it was. Tell 'em how much fun it was.'

So keep fightin' for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don't you forget to have fun doin' it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous ... rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin' ass and celebratin' the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.

When the news of Ivins' death reached me yesterday, my first thought was about how much it sucks to live in a world where Molly gets her life cut short and where our Dear Leader gets to continue on with his career of wrecking both Iraq and what's left of democracy in the US. And I thought about Dubya sitting there in the White House, smirking over how he'd outlasted Ivins.

If Ivins could talk to us now, I'm sure she'd tell us to stop our moping and get out there and kick some ass. And I bet she'd wave a hand toward Washington and suggest that there's a guy living in a big white house who could use himself a whuppin'.

I'm with you, Molly.

Labels: Molly Ivins

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:23 AM | Get permalink

Can the US Congress cut funds for Dubya's 'surge'?

According to a new report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, the answer is Yes.

In sum, it seems that under the constitutional allocation of powers Congress has the prerogative of placing a legally binding condition on the use of appropriations to prevent the deployment of additional U.S. armed forces to Iraq. Such a prohibition seems directly related to the allocation of resources at the President's disposal, and would therefore not appear to interfere impermissibly with the President?s ability to exercise command and control over the U.S. armed forces. Although not beyond question, such a prohibition would arguably survive any challenge as an incident both of Congress's war power and of its power over appropriations.

This is just the CRS' opinion, of course, but they've had a pretty good record of figuring out how the courts are likely to rule on federal government actions.

You can read the full CRS report here [PDF file].

Via Secrecy News.

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:08 AM | Get permalink

Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Molly Ivins.

She passed away earlier today at age 62.

The bad news doesn't stop, does it?

More: And why was Ivins so cool? Check out this 1991 piece on Camille Paglia. It's Molly at her most acerbic and side-splittingly funny. (Thanks, M!)

| | Posted by Magpie at 4:03 PM | Get permalink

Tuesday, January 30, 2007

If Dubya's sabre-rattling against Iraq wasn't bad enough.

Try on these two words: Accidental war.

Tensions between the United States and Iran have risen to the point where a war could be kicked off by mistake, an outcome that neither Tehran nor Washington wants, U.S. military officials and private analysts say.

A U.S. military official here likened the current U.S.-Iran standoff to the buildup in hostility in Europe before World War I, when a duke's assassination triggered a tragic war that engulfed a continent.

"A mistake could be made and you could end up in something that neither side ever really wanted, and suddenly it's August 1914 all over again," the U.S. officer said on condition of anonymity, because of the sensitivity of the issue. "I really believe neither side wants a fight."

Via International Herald Tribune.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:01 AM | Get permalink