Tag: d.c.

I had a conversation with an older friend this week about some of the unbelievable things taking place at the government level. Visibly enraged, he suggested that a social revolution is in the offing. I shot back with the assumption that he had probably had that feeling most of his life. He shook his head, and as a million thoughts flashed before me, said, “its never been like this.” While youthful anger and rebellious thoughts are one thing, I thought aloud, how can the young generations of today comprehend a social revolution?

The difference, he pointed out, is that — older generations knew things would get better, their parents had made it through the depression, etc, and inevitably they would become the how-u-say generation most great, and shared with their offspring, the most money ever. Now, I take my friend’s opinions and statements seriously, dramatic as they may occasionally be, and always with some sort of Jon Stewart-ism thrown in, but this is a man who reported on both the Vietnam and Korean wars.

The youth today are faced with the reality that we will not be as well-off as our parents, generally speaking, and that aside — inefficient, overpriced health care, poor schools, etc — it may become obvious that we’re on our own. We can’t change foreign policy or prevent future nihilatory preemtion abroad, but we can muster it within us to rebel and come together to improve our own tangible independent worlds.

Things may happen fast, but in regards to freedom, liberty and independence, things seem to be falling apart quickly, or at least getting ugly. Old glory can’t be old forever, at least not while maintaining its glory.

American sentiment and esteem appears to be so low at this point, it’s laughable. Here are some links to recent snippets from home and abroad:

Christopher Hitchens: Ignore Polls on the U.S. Image
David Rieff: America the Untethered
Poll: Britons Tire of Cruel, Vulgar Americans
Oxford Analytica: Negative Image of U.S. Grows Overseas
Mort Zuckerman: What Sets Us Apart
Study: ‘NATIONAL PRIDE’ HIGHLIGHTS DIFFERENCES AMONG AMERICANS, CANADIANS, EUROPEANS

I mentioned Sen. Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter’s (R-Pa.) disgust with the president’s signing statements in my post yesterday and today have found the links detailing Specter’s suggestion that Congress consider suing Bush for Constitutional breaches.

The Globe’s Charlie Savage has the straight-up scoop on Specter’s apparent threat to sue here.

Specter: “[T]here’s a real issue here as to whether the president may, in effect, cherry-pick the provisions he likes, excluding the provisions he doesn’t like. . . . The president has the option under the Constitution to veto or not.”

The Times’ Kate Zernike casts the line here explaining the signing statement as a: “device that gave him the authority to revise or ignore more than 750 laws enacted since he became president.”

Dan Froomkin broke out his bullhorn and asked the media to follow up on this issue, providing an extensive list of questions to ask lawmakers and executives.

TMV sums up Specter’s unsatisfactory meeting with asst. deputy AG Michelle Boardman. “If the Constitution and the law conflict, the president must choose,” Boardman retorted, which seriously makes me wonder whether or not I really read what I read or if it was a flashback to Orwell.

Can anyone tell me what Howard Kurtz is doing — still hung up on the NYT Swift story? Can we not file that away with the blown-way-out-of-proportion indictment of seven unfortunate Miami youth last week as, perhaps something in another time and place (as Time magazine puts it) we might laugh at?

Perhaps Specter’s threats are just threats, but dissent just doesn’t cut it when dealing with an administration buried under poor approval ratings. Syndicated columnist Marianne Means has high praise for Specter… Could it be time for action?

The U.S. Surgeon General warned today that smoking may be is harmful to everybody’s health — even the passive second-hand smoker.

Yes, I also forgot that we actually have a Surgeon General, and no it’s not Michael Chertoff, but, per Reuters, Surgeon-General Richard Carmona has been hard at work and has this conclusion: “Second-hand smoke clearly kills people and the only way to control it is to ban all smoking in workplaces.” There’s even this video, for yr health.

Granted, I was born in 1975 and have recently been corrupted by the relatively tobacco-free California public environment, but I can’t recall EVER witnessing smoking IN workplaces. Either Carmona is “involuntary smoking” something else, or Karl Rove has him up to something involving uber-sketchy subliminal (and carcinogenic) smokescreens.

Either the SG is dreaming up something for the useless FEMA to tackle, i.e. taking cigarettes out of ever-breaking workers as they stand by the dumpster with their stinky treats, or banning cigarettes is the administration’s first step to combat global warming. As far as I can remember, it would at least be this administration’s first recognition of anything in the air being bad for the innocent human breather.

At the very least, this should bring heated debate to Congress, not on the ills of smoking, but why ever anyone would dare suggest that our elected representatives forgo between-votes smokey treats, right John Boehner? (The halls of Congress are in fact exempt from the D.C. citywide smoking ban that went in effect in March 2006).

Be assured we are on our way to a world in which nobody can freely smoke cigarettes and, more importantly, nobody will be forced to die a slow death in the tar-laced puff-clouds of their colleagues. Indeed, only three months ago Congress saw this tobacco-related bill to pass:

H.R. 3199: “To extend and modify authorities needed to combat terrorism, and for other purposes.”

Dr. Surgeon General, care to tell us anything we don’t already know?

Indeed, the Patriot Act Reauthorization Bill gets back at the tobacco lobbies in the most world-saving of ways:

“….Requires any contraband cigarettes or smokeless tobacco seized and forfeited to be either destroyed or used for undercover investigative operations”