I'M BACK

I'm back. I'll make a short post in a few days relating some of my trip's highlights. For now, I have a couple of links courtesy of J. Orlin Grabbe:

Broward students ousted in drama
competition for flag-cutting scene

From south Florida's Sun-Sentinel:

The play praises patriotism, but the judges only saw teens cutting up an American flag.

It was enough to disqualify Archbishop McCarthy High students from a competition early this week for their performance of The Children's Story. In the play, first published in 1963 by Shogun author James Clavell, third-graders in a classroom in a United States that has been defeated by a powerful enemy, presumably Communist, cut the flag into pieces. Their new teacher tells them if the flag is so good, everyone should get a piece and tells them to hand out the shreds. It's a message about the dangers of mindless political indoctrination.

This story gets even more outrageous because one of the judges cited a Florida anti-flag desecration law as a reason for the disqualification: as I hope you know, the US Supreme Court ruled a decade ago that flag desecration is considered to be Constitutionally protected speech. Only in America.

Click here.

When Neocons Investigate Themselves

From AlterNet:

President George W. Bush's choice to co-chair his commission to investigate intelligence failures prior to the Iraq war is a long-time, rightwing political activist closely tied to the neoconservative network that led the pro-war propaganda campaign.

Federal appeals court judge Laurence Silberman, who will chair the panel with former Virginia Democratic Senator Charles Robb, also has some history in covert operations. In 1980, when he served as part of former Republican president Ronald Reagan's senior campaign staff, he played a key role in setting up secret contacts between the Reagan-Bush campaign and the Islamic government in Tehran, as part of what became known as the "October Surprise" controversy. Rewarded with his appeals court judgeship several years later, Silberman helped advise rightwing activists during the '90s on strategies to pursue allegations of sexual misconduct by then-Democratic president Bill Clinton.

I'm sure that Silberman's history means that this investigation will be conducted with the highest level of integrity.

Wait, I don't mean that at all--what I meant to say was that this is the same old, slimy bullshit that Bush has been handing us for years. Figures.

Click here.

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