From Pine View Farm

Relevant amendments, and some striking parts that do not need amending, are highlighted:

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, unless we don’t like them. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness, unless the United States Attorneys’ offices can be packed with sycophants on the sly. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good, through his signing statements.

He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers and through secret endeavors to hide his activities from the plain light of day.

He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of new offices, including hitherto unknown branches of government, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.

He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states, not to mention commutations:

For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing taxes on us without our consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:

For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:

For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies:

For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:

For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy of the head of a civilized nation, only now they are called contractors.

He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.

We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levey war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

Faith is the evidence of things unseen.

Not the denial of things seen.

Fake DEA agent takes over town. Uncovered by intrepid newspaper reporter. But that’s not the whole story (emphasis added):

Like so many rural communities in the country’s middle, this tiny town had wrestled for years with the woes of methamphetamine. Then, several months ago, a federal agent showed up.

Busts began. Houses were ransacked. People, in handcuffs on their front lawns, named names. To some, like Mayor Otis Schulte, who considers the county around Gerald, population 1,171, “a meth capital of the United States,” the drug scourge seemed to be fading at last.

Those whose homes were searched, though, grumbled about a peculiar change in what they understood, from television mainly, to be the law.

They said the agent, a man some had come to know as “Sergeant Bill,” boasted that he did not need search warrants to enter their homes because he worked for the federal government.

I actually heard about this on yesterday’s Talk of the Nation, which I listened to today through the wonderful magic of podcasting. From the TOTN website, where you can listen to the interview:

When a federal agent showed up to make the streets safe from drugs in Gerald, Mo. — a town whose mayor has nicknamed “a meth capital of the United States” — the townspeople cheered. Then the complaints started. A reporter at The Gasconade County Republican soon discovered “Sergeant Bill” was a phony.

Linda Trest talks about how she broke the story and outed the unemployed former trucking-company owner/former security guard/former wedding minister/former small-town cop.

But here’s the frightening thing (note the highlighted portion of the New York Toimes story): When the host of TOTN asked Ms. Trest about why not only the citizens, but also the local police, believed that no warrants and no probable cause were required, she replied that many of the citizens honestly believed that, since no warrants were needed for wiretapping and electronic eavesdropping, Federal agents needed no warrants for searches and seizures anything else.

My friends, this is why the Rule of Law is important.

And this is why the Bushie Legacy is so poisonous.

Ignoring the law over there means that folks will start ignoring it over here.

And here.

And here.

And, soon, there is no Rule of Law.

There is just despotism.

This poster’s not:

These days I dread the 4th. It’s not for the jingoism I was too young to understand as a child, which irks me, but I try not to let other’s infantile politics change the spirit of the holiday for me. The real reason is I’m not much for fireworks anymore. I haven’t been since I came back from Iraq.

Here’s your assignment–to read something Bushies don’t like.

Like this, with a concentration on the first ten of these (except, of course, for number two).

Via Andrew Sullivan.

The return of Cointelpro: The FBI wants to investigate American citizens without cause.

And, remember, in Bushie eyes, you are guilty because, well, Tzar Bush says you are.

Read about it in this story from the Associated Press.

No doubt because gasoline costs so much that no one can afford to take out one more loan:

See the AP story.

Oh, this is just too good to pass up:

From ASZ. Follow the link to see how well the evidence stands up:

Some stories are too good to be true. It appears that the tax rebate checks which were part of the Bush administration’s economic stimulus package have been effective…in stimulating the porn industry. An industry research firm reports an increase in revenues closely matches the distribution of the 173 billion dollar handout.

Customer 1 (who had just pulled up to the pumps in a big ole 4X4 pick ‘em up): “85 on one, please.”

Customer 2 to Customer 1: “85 dollars?”

Customer 1: “85 cents. It’s all I can afford.”

And no, he wasn’t joking.

H/T to Linda, who was Customer 2.

Down, down, down, in the murky gloom,
Trolls go marching two by two
–Donovan Leitch

Bears roam free. Bonddad over at Huffington Post:

So, the short version of the FDIC report is clear: the financial industry is still in serious trouble.

I want to caution, we’re nowhere near meltdown mode. There is no panic, not should there be one. The sector is still working. However, instead of being able to get to fifth gear it can only get to second gear.

Simply put, this indicates the financial sector is still in a very bad place.

So, let’s sum up.

1.) Two of the three stock market averages are in poor technical shape. This lone hold-out (the QQQQs) are in a neutral position.

2.) The Federal Reserve has already lowered rates. Inflationary pressures and a dropping dollar will hem in their ability to lower rates further

3.) Inflation is increasing

4.) Housing is nowhere near bottom as indicated buy the bloated inventory and dropping prices

5.) The consumer has no confidence going forward

6.) The financial sector is not in good shape.

In other words, the technical picture is poor and the fundamental picture is poor.

With proper regulation, any a sensible energy policy, and a little foresight, much of this was avoidable.

Oh, yeah, privatizing social security doesn’t look that good now, does it? It would have just handed the banks more money to invest in their mortgage scams.

It was the technique used during the Korean War to get prisoners of war held by the North Korean and Red Chinese forces to confess to just about anything. (Though the U. S. Army, at its official site, does deny that there was any such thing brainwashing, while stating that abuse of prisoners was rampant.)

Now, the Korean War was over and the long stalemate between the two Koreas had already begun when I started to have memories, but I can remember commentators, politicians, and military types decrying well into my teen-aged years the inhuman cruelty of “brainwashing.” The concept even gave rise to a well-known movie.

So there’s a certain amount of irony disgust and contempt to learn the the Current Federal Administration believed the treatment of prisoners by the North Korean and Chinese Communists forces was something to be emulated.

I must say, sadly, that given the track record of the Current Republican Administration, there is no shock or surprise; they have proven themselves capable of any evil:

The military trainers who came to Guantánamo Bay in December 2002 based an entire interrogation class on a chart showing the effects of “coercive management techniques” for possible use on prisoners, including “sleep deprivation,” “prolonged constraint,” and “exposure.”
What the trainers did not say, and may not have known, was that their chart had been copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners.

The recycled chart is the latest and most vivid evidence of the way Communist interrogation methods that the United States long described as torture became the basis for interrogations both by the military at the base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and by the Central Intelligence Agency.

In a related vein, I commend to your attention this post from John Cole.

H/T Karen for the link.

Brad Reed’s compilation of the The 10 Most Awesomely Bad Moments of the Bush Presidency.

Now, travel back in time and relive the past. Feel again what it was like then.

Just click here to enter the time machine.

Via Balloon Juice.

$4.00 a gallon trumps $5.00 a cup:

Starbucks Corp. said yesterday that it would close 600 company-operated stores in the next year, up dramatically from its previous plan for 100 closures, a sign that the operators of coffee shops continue to struggle with the faltering U.S. economy and its own rapid expansion.

About 12,000 workers, or 7 percent of Starbucks’ global workforce, will be affected by the closings, which are expected between late July and the middle of 2009, spokeswoman Valerie O’Neil said.

Later on in the story, the company blames market saturation; a new Starbucks stole business from existing ones.

Nowhere does the story mention that Starbucks coffee tastes really really bad.

On my way to DL, there in the left turn lane, a hand-made sign in right rear window of the car turning left:

Old White Broads for Obama

Many years ago, I signed up with a cell phone social networking site called UPOC.

Now, I’ve never networked there, socially or otherwise–it just was just too damned much trouble to type out messages on a 12-key keypad. About the extent of my participation has been to respond to little nonsense polls they send out once or twice a week. Because I do very little text messaging, it doesn’t affect my cell phone bill, so I haven’t been motivated to resign.

Today’s nonsense poll (it just arrived) was this (emphasis added):

Was it wrong for Gen. Clark to question Sen. McCain’s level of military service? A) No B)Yes C)Not Voting D) Obama didn’t serve. REPLY A, B, C or D.

I do not think UPOC has any political ax to grind. Rather, this exemplifies how wingnuts twist facts and pollute the political landscape. UPOC has just fallen for the wingnut lies.

General Clark did not question Candidate McCain’s military service. He questioned whether Candidate McCain’s military service could in any way be cited as, in and of itself, qualifying Candidate McCain to be President of the United States of America (short answer: No).

This is not a subtle difference. This is a bleedin’ Grand Canyon of a difference.

Don’t believe me?

See what General Clark said.

And note how Bob Schieffer, who is interviewing the General, seems to be functionally illiterate: he either didn’t listen to or failed from the gitgo to correctly translate the General’s remarks from English to whatever it is that the Washington press corps speaks:

And this is the Republican way: “If the truth hurts, lie.”

And reporters let themselves get sucked into the lies and pass them on like little lap dogs fetching slippers.

And the lies drowns out the truth.

Addendum, Later That Same Day:

Analysis from Media Matters here.

So said Sy Hersh in an interview on Fresh Air yesterday.

I must be developing ESP or something.

I woke up at 2 a. m. this morning from a nightmare that the Current Federal Administration had mongered

one

war.

And I hadn’t even read Mr. Hersh’s article or heard the Fresh Air interview then.

From the Fresh Air website:

Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh believes that the United States may be closer to armed conflict with Iran than previously imagined. He writes about Congress’ funding of covert military operations in the upcoming issue of The New Yorker.

Follow the link above to listen to the interview.

The article that prompted the interview can be found here.

Noz has some thoughts on it here. Frankly, I think he credits the Current Federal Administration with a higher level of rationality than it has shown to date.

Plus, Noz has ants in his computer.

Yesterday, NPR’s Morning Edition ran a story on the price of gas.

Well, like everyone else, they run lots of stories on the price of gas and oil.

This one though, did not focus on markets or trends or exploration or policy or any of the other stuff.

It focused on what’s happening to real people. Key quote: “We’re going to lose our home. Over this.”

You can listen to it over at the NPR website; it’s seven minutes that are worth your while. From the website:

How much you’re feeling the sting of high gas prices depends in large part on where you live. The people taking the biggest hit live in rural areas where driving long distances is usually unavoidable.

Chris Satullo shares some Independence Day thoughts in today’s local rag:

Cancel the parade.

Tuck the soaring speeches in a drawer for another time.

This year, America doesn’t deserve to celebrate its birthday. This Fourth of July should be a day of quiet and atonement.

For we have sinned.

We have failed to pay attention. We’ve settled for lame excuses. We’ve spit on the memory of those who did that brave, brave thing in Philadelphia 232 years ago.

(snip)

The world sees this, even if we are too dim to grasp it. We’ve lost respect. We’ve shamed the memory of Jefferson, Adams and Franklin.

And all for a scam. The waterboarding, the snarling dogs, the theft of sleep - all the diabolical tricks haven’t made us safer. They may have averted this plot or that. But they’ve spawned new enemies by the thousands, made the jihadist rants ring true to so many ears.

So put out no flags.

Sing no patriotic hymns.

We deserve no Fourth this year.

Let us atone, in quiet and humility. Let us spend the day truly studying the example of our Founders. May we earn a new birth of courage before our nation’s birthday next rolls around.

Steve over at ASZ wonders about the war drums.

This illustrates why I don’t listen to or watch talk shows.

They’re crap useless.

Nothing new ever comes out on them, and they lead just to lies and spin. Here’s Josh Marshall on the daily kerfuffle (today about Gen. Wesley Clark, USA ret.), undoing the spin:

The McCain campaign is now launching an attack with its ‘truth squad’ about the Clark ‘controversy’ and pushing Obama to “denounce” Clark, etc. It’ll be interesting to watch what happens here. The McCain campaign’s angle here is to not to prevent attacks on the integrity of McCain’s war record (which Clark explicitly did not do) but to make it off limits for anyone to question that his war-time experience means he has the temperament and experience which make him the better qualified candidate to be president.

The McCain campaign’s claim that there’s any attack here on McCain’s war record is simply a lie — a simple attempt to fool people. This is an essential point to this entire campaign — does McCain’s military record mean that even the Democrats have to concede the point that he’s more qualified to be commander-in-chief of the US armed forces, that his foreign and national security policy judgment is superior to Obama’s? It’s simply a fact that McCain has a record of really poor judgment on a whole list of key foreign policy and national security questions.

This is one of those moments in the campaign where the nonsense from the chief DC press sachems is so palpable and overwhelming that everyone who cares about this contest needs to jump into the breach and demand that they answer why no one can question whether McCain’s war record makes him more qualified to be president and whether he has good foreign policy and national security judgment.

Here’s Digby predicting what would happen.

And here’s DDay summing it up.

And here’s Duncan with the recap. (If you follow no other link, follow this one and its associated links.)

Ya know, I’m old. I can remember when TV news was almost reliable and sometimes worth listening to.

And loses in a smackdown.

It is worth reading Dr. Lenski’s letter to Andrew (aka “Little Phyllis”) Schlafly to see what happens when someone who is literate and who knows what he or she is talking about deals with a fruit fly.

Via Phillybits.

Tomorrow, Tangier Restaurant, 18th and Lombard, Philadelphia, 6 p. m.

If you’re coming from my part of the world, there’s an easier way than the South Street Exit off the Surekill Depressway Schuylkill Expressway:

After crossing the Platt and turning left at the first light to get on the Surekill, once you’re on the Surekill, move to the right and take the Vare Ave. exit. Follow Vare as it turns into 34th Street. Turn right on Gray’s Ferry Ave., then right on Carpenter, left on 22nd, and right on South. Avoids the Vine Street Expressway and keeps you off South Street Bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down . . . .

How to get in even more trouble in one easy lesson:

(Police spokesperson–ed.) Whitmarsh said Cline also spit on a trooper and broke a light in a holding cell, and he was then also charged with offensive touching of an officer and criminal mischief.

Two bumper stickers on the same car:

Silence is golden.
Duct tape is silver.

Your kid my be an honor student.
Your driving still sucks.

(Actually, I can sorta sympathize with that one.)

On the car of someone claiming to be a Marine. Both bumper stickers had the Marine emblem on them:

Guns don’t kill people.
I kill people.

When in doubt,
empty your magazine.

’nuff said.

The Atrium Building, King of Prussia Mall:

The news did not arrive today. That is, all the Sunday sections of the local rag arrived, but the news–front page, local, editorial, business, and sports sections–did not arrive. (I called and requested them.)

Now, I’m not too worked up. If I got up at 4 a. m. to assemble newspapers, I’d probably make the occasional mistake myself. Plus it probably did me good not to start my day without more death from Iraq and Afghanistan, more middle Americans sinking below the middle, and more wingnut idiots braying their lies on the OpEd page.

As a result, I read the Sunday sections a little more closely than usual, leading me to stumble over this gem in a review of Rick Perlstein’s book, Nixonland:

(The book–ed.) betrays a disdain for realpolitik that is shared by many liberals - which accounts for their propensity to nominate losing candidates and their scorn for politicians, like LBJ or Bill Clinton, not above arm-twisting, triangulating, spinning and compromising. In the course of blaming gays and women for floor fights at the 1972 Democratic convention that helped seal George McGovern’s unelectability, Perlstein edges closer to the truth.

“The New Politics reformers had fantasized a pure politics, a politics of unyielding principle - an antipolitics,” Perlstein writes. “But in the real world politics without equivocation or compromise is impossible.”

I’m seeing this brought to life in the current kerfuffle over Senator Obama and the F. I. S. A. bill amongst some of my compatriots in Left Blogistan.

(Now, make no mistake: I disapprove of Senator Obama’s failure to condemn Stinky Hoyer’s sell-out compromise, but I’m not upset.)

Several of us were discussing this at Drinking Liberally last Tuesday (and will probably be discussing it again next Tuesday). A couple of DL colleagues believed that Senator Obama had no need or responsibility to get involved in a House of Representatives vote.

I stated that, as the presumptive leader of the party, he had a responsibility to get involved as party leader.

Some persons that I know have decided that Senator Obama’s failure to try to block the House bill is a make or break issue and are ready to support Bob Barr.

Frankly (I do everything frankly–it sort of goes with the territory), I find this reaction somewhat unsettling.

For one thing, we have seen in the recent ascendancy of the Republican Party the harm that single issue voters do. Note that the Republican electoral strategy was to assemble groups of single-issue voters–anti-abortion, anti-education Creationists, anti-paying-their fair share anti-tax, homophobes anti-gay, racists anti-minority, anti-this, anti-that–each of which voted Republican based on its own single issue, thereby unleashing a rule whose illegality, immorality, incompetence, and venality surpassed that of other great Republican icons, such as Grant, Harding, Hoover, Nixon, and Reagan.

I think that, for a single issue to become a make-or-break issue, it must meet several criteria. It must satisfy at least one of these:

• The candidate’s (we’ll call him or her “Candidate A”) position must be so morally repugnant that a reasonable person cannot, to use the quaint old phrase, go to meet his or her maker having embraced it OR
• The candidate’s position must pose a danger to the Republic beyond contemplation.

And it must also satisfy this one:

• The other candidate (we’ll call him or her “Candidate B”), the one who will benefit because you have abandoned Candidate A, must have a better position than Candidate A.

Senator Obama’s failure to act might satisfy one of the first two elements; we can argue that and come away unsatisfied.

Nevertheless, comparing Senator Obama’s overall positions with Candidate McCain’s overall positions, I cannot concede that any action that gives Candidate McHack any benefit bodes well for the future of the Republic.

In considering candidates, we must look at the whole person. None of us will ever–ever–have the the opportunity to vote for someone who we predict (and that’s what a vote is: a prediction) will be perfect as we would be perfect if only it was we in office.

We will always be choosing who we think will be the better of two choices (don’t quibble with me–it is a two-party system); sometimes we will find ourselves choosing the lesser of two evils.

Part of the responsibility of a citizen is to vote. It’s not a right; it’s a duty.

Another part of that responsibility is to make that vote meaningful. That is also a duty.

Throwing a vote away on a minor party candidate who doesn’t have a prayer of a showing, unless the election does not matter at all, not only wastes that vote, but can also lead the rest of us to have to live, not with the lesser of two evils, but with the evil of two lessers.

Just ask all those folks who thought that there was no difference between Democrats and Republicans as they cast their votes for Nader in 2000.

To cruise or not to cruise, that is the question.

Duncan points out that cruisin’ is runnin’ outta gas.

(Actually, this may be the one positive side effect of the Current Federal Administration’s complete and total incompetence as regards energy policy let’s just make that complete and total incompetence, okay?.)

St. Stephen:

Airplane: