Bitchin' News (01/20)
- Taking aim at a rising chorus of critics, the Bush administration issued its most thorough defense Thursday of President Bush’s domestic spying program as a valid exercise of his wartime powers the past four years in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. -How can they let this prick get away with stuff like this? What’s next? Is he going to bend us over, sodomize us while eating a plate of fried chicken and then tell us it’s his right to do so? You know what, George, I don’t fucking think so!
- A man who spent nearly 21 years in prison for a toddler’s death, now believed to have been an accident, was awarded $756,900 by a state compensation board—$100 for every day he spent in prison. -Yikes, that’s one job I wouldn’t want... Though it seems like a great way to save money!
- A difference between men and women. Germans have a word for it—schadenfreude—and when it comes to getting pleasure from someone else’s misfortune, men seem to enjoy it more than women. -Wonder if the results would have been the same had they done this study with The Book Bitches as the female guinea pigs LOL.
- Google Inc. is rebuffing the Bush administration’s demand for a peek at what millions of people have been looking up on the Internet’s leading search engine—a request that underscores the potential for online databases to become tools for government surveillance. -I am starting to think these government people have way too much free time in their hands. This is ridiculous and embarrassing, and it’s pissing me off. Way to go Google!!!
- Louis-Dreyfus says there’s no Seinfeld curse. Actress will return with New Adventures of Old Christine.
- Classic Woody—and that’s a good thing. The wait for a good Woody Allen movie is finally over. Match Point, Allen’s 36th film as a director, reprises many of his usual themes—infidelity, marriage, ambition, social status—but there’s none of the draggy, warmed-over feel that hung over his last few pictures (Melinda and Melinda, Anything Else, Hollywood Ending), which felt like they had been made primarily out of obligation.
Labels: bitchin’ news
Can someone please explain to me how this entire country is not completely fed up with our govt and the fact that they think nothing of trampling over the Constitution and the Bill of Rights whenever they feel like it???
They are oh-so quick to cover themselves in patriotism when anyone has a dissenting opinion, yet don't seem to understand in the slightest what being a patriot should really mean.
It makes me absolutely crazy!
1/20/2006 09:25:00 PM
Bush is the down fall of this
country. Thank God he can't run again.
1/22/2006 12:09:00 AM
pa·tri·ot (pā'trē-ət, -ŏt') pronunciation
n.
One who loves, supports, and defends one's country.
I'd cautiously posit (though I know you may not like what I have to say) that it's not about what patriotism means, but what it actually does.
They (that being the American people) are letting the Bush Administration use wiretaps of overseas phonecalls because we are are still quite afraid of another Ground Zero in another American city.
In a state of war, such abridgements to constitutional freedoms tend to be much more palatable, although in this case Bush's warrantless tapping is still legally debatable. Compared with Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus, for instance, this is pretty minor. The threat of domestic terrorism is much more existential than the division of the Union (though perhaps Manhattanites might disagree) but for all of its ephemerality, it is quite real. When considering any of Bush's action, think of those who, indisputably, do with you and yours harm, and think about whether the NSA listening to overseas phone calls is something you can live with in that context.
1/22/2006 09:13:00 PM
I do agree with you that you have the correct reason a lot of people are not screaming about this. However, I still respectively disagree.
I work in Manhatten, so I know what it is to live with the fear of another attack. Yet, if we give up our freedoms and our constitutionally guaranteed rights, than we have given the terrorists exactly what they want.
As Ben Franklin said "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
1/22/2006 11:35:00 PM
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