It's not complicated

Three members of Congress: Robert Wexler, Democrat of Florida, Luis Gutierres, Democrat of Illinois, and Tammy Baldwin, Democrat of Wisconsin, are calling for the impeachment of Dick Cheney NOW. They want to move ahead with Dennis Kucinich's bill to impeach the Vice-President as they say it is required by the Constitution. They authored an opinion piece of this that was rejected by a number of papers, including the Miami Herald, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and others. This is a virtually unprecedented act of censorship for a paper dealing with such an important topic and authored by members of Congress. They have a piece on Smirking Chimp today asking for signatures to support their effort. I am told that they got 30,000 signatures in the first 24 hours. If you wish to add your name to this list go to www.SmirkingChimp.com where you will find it. I believe this is terribly important and I urge you to make the effort if you so desire.

This morning I heard the ubiquitous Pat Buchanan interviewed on some program or other. The young thing interviewing him was asking him about waterboarding and torture and what did he think about it. He kept insisting it was complicated. His argument seemed to boil down to the fact that although 70 percent of Americans say it is torture and shouldn't be allowed, they also say that anything ought to be used to obtain information in an emergency situation. Buchanan said that although he didn't condone torture he would, in fact, use it if it was necessary to avoid some imminent act of terrorism. IT'S NOT COMPLICATED! Waterboarding is torture and has been so defined since the Inquisition. It is against both International and United States law. It has also been widely agreed by experts that it does not provide reliable information as the person being subjected to it is apt to say anything in order to get it to stop. Buchanan's insistence that he would use it if necessary clearly falls under the category of repeating the same thing over and over and expecting to get a different result, an indication of insanity.

My son has developed a sort of obsession with politics this season. As a result I have seen far more television than I normally would. What I believe I have learned has nothing to do with politics. As near as I can tell every major television station has a veritable stable of young, attractive women who read the news off the teleprompter. They are all very accomplished at this. I wonder where they all come from. Is there a factory that produces them? What training do they have? What happens to them as they seem to disappear from television rather quickly. I notice that although they are not exclusively white, they are overwhelmingly so. While I am not certain I think there is probably a preponderance of blondes. You never see a young man in one of these positions except, sometimes, as a weatherperson. This would seem to me a form of discrimination. I remember when airline stewardess's were all young and pretty and white. Eventually they were forced to change so now we have older ones, Black ones, Asian ones, and so on. Will this occur on television eventually? I hope so. Let's have some handsome, young man read us the news (I am not gay if that is what you are thinking). I strive for fairness in all things. It is true there are a few older newswomen like Candy Crowley, Andrea Mitchell, Barbara Walters, and such, but this is an entirely different category. These women are real newspersons who have been in the business for a long time. You notice that except for the recent promotion of Katie Couric all the major anchors are male.

LKBIQ:
The following is the complete text of a poem composed this very morning by my good friend Barbara H. It is reproduced here with permission of the author.

"snow snow
oh oh oh"