Nice. From CREW's site:

This is an outrage.

CREW and VoteVets.org released an e-mail (May 1, 2008) obtained from a Veterans Affairs (VA) employee directing VA staff to refrain from diagnosing soldiers and veterans with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers sent a letter to President Bushlast week warning that the possibility of an impending pre-emptive strike against Iran, without Congressional approval, will result in impeachment proceedings.

Here's the super creepy part of Conyers' letter:

"Our concerns in this area have been heightened by more recent events. The resignation in mid-March of Admiral William J. "Fox" Fallon from the head of U.S. Central Command, which was reportedly linked to a magazine article that portrayed him as the only person who might stop your Administration from waging preemptive war against Iran, has renewed widespread concerns that your Administration is unilaterally planning for military action against that country. This is despite the fact that the December 2007 National Intelligence Estimate concluded that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program in the fall of 2003, a stark reversal of previous Administration assessments."

Get Uppity!

Contact your Wisconsin Congressional reps and ask them to co-sign Conyers' letter.

Update: On a related note, see the NYT's Herbert's column on the new proposed GI Bill: "Politicians tend to talk very, very big about supporting our men and women in uniform. But time and again — whether it’s about providing armor for their safety or an education for their future — we find that talk to be very, very cheap."

via mal contends

The U.S. Dept of Veterans of Affairs (VA) has gone down the toilet.

This is what happens when the VA adopts the American Enterprise Institute's (AEI) Dr. Sally Satel ethos that veterans need to just get over it, and not be enabled in a 'culture of trauma'.

From South Carolina, Paul Alongi reports:

A memo that was released yesterday demonstrates that John Yoo had another of his "opinions" after 9/11 that various unpleasant things done to prisoners by the military are just hunky-dory. You know, "assault, maiming, and other crimes." This in itself isn't a huge surprise since we've heard that before, but a note in the memo (and where else but Washington is an 81 page document a "memo"?) alludes to another memo in the following disturbing way

... our Office recently concluded that the Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations.
See Memorandum for Alberto R. Gonzales, Counsel to the President, and
William J. Haynes, II, General Counsel, Department of Defense, from
John C. Yoo, Deputy Assistant Attorney General and Robert J. Delahunty,
Special Counsel, Re: Authority for Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activities Within the United States at 25 (Oct 23, 2001). (emphasis added)

With Gen Fallon's retirement there is a greater fear of war with Iran in many peoples minds.  We are already deeply mired in Iraq and a war with Iran would be cataclysmically stupid.  British M.P. George Galloway debates with a caller regarding the matter. (7 min)

Thanks to the BBC and Google Video for this - A chance to see the Academy Award Winning film from the comfort of your own computer.

This is hardly the same as seeing it in a theatre, but since I don't think it's likely to be showing near Downsville any time soon -

This is the best argument I've seen for how the War on Terror is destroying democracy here and everywhere else. 

Just a simple explanation for those of you who don't understand the wiretapping and communications company amnesty.

Sometimes as we struggle for justice and fairness we forget how truly unjust the unending suffering those of our nation's leadership have unleashed upon a mostly unsuspecting world (although not anymore).  If we are to consider that ALL people are just that, people...... only then will we conceive the horrors of the reality that is the American Empire.  The thirteen year sanctions upon the country of Iraq have caused suffering almost incomprehensible to most of us.  Felicity Arbuthnot in an open letter to Britian's Minister of State for International Development at Global Research writes:

"To illustrate the the iniquity, an acquaintance, in desperation, sent a supply if insulin, in a jiffy bag, to his diabetic brother in Baghdad, as none was available. It was returned by the Post Office as needing an export licence.His brother died before the license arrived. I myself was threatened by DFID with prosecution, for taking a year's supply of cancer treatment to a surgeon with cancer, who had worked here at the Hammersmith Hospital, a specialist in pediatric orthopedics, who had enabled numerous British children walk again, able to use their arms, straightened small bodies. Cancer treatments too, were vetoed by the United Nations Sanctions Committee.

A short 6 min. video of American foreign policy in Iran.  JustForeignPolicy is a non profit organization working to effect a grassroots change in America's foreign policy.

JustForeignPolicy: "Stephen Kinzer, the award winning author and former foreign correspondent for the New York Times rejects this argument. He, along with a diverse group of other experts on Iran, Congressional leaders and military experts are traveling across the country to counter the message from Washington and to present options for a more rational foreign policy towards Iran."

February 19: Chicago, IL
6:30 pm at the Northwestern University Chicago Campus in Thorne Auditorium, Arthur Rubloff Building, 375 E. Chicago Avenue
Sponsored by The Pluralism Fund, the North Suburban Peace Initiative, Physicians for Social Responsibility, and the No War on Iran Coalition. 

It's not just the title of one of my favorite Richard Thompson songs - it's also the theme of my thoughts today.

Since coming into office, Il Duce Bush has continually insisted that we have the best health care system in the world. All this time, I thought he was saying this because he was bragging about it, and arguing for leaving it alone, rather than moving to one of those nasty government-run socialistic pinko health care systems that all Republicans loathe (you know, the kind of pinko health care system that they actually benefit from themselves).

I read through the new budget numbers, and I now realize that I completely misunderstood.  He wasn't bragging, he was complaining.  And by God, the decider is gonna do something about it, by making sure that we can't possibly have the best health care system in the world.