Legal Strategy 101 for War Criminals

With the Senate report on CIA torture during the Bush/Cheney years being released today, it's important once again to remember that Administration's intense opposition to United States participation in the International Criminal Court as soon as they came into power in 2001 (long before September 11th of that year). It's almost as if they knew that there might be Americans committing war crimes in the near future.

I couldn't find any lengthy statements from George Bush or Dick Cheney about their principled opposition to a permanent Nuremberg-inspired war crimes court, but I did find an interesting video explanation from the Captain Kangaroo they placed as their recess-appointment ambassador to the United Nations. John Bolton puts the reason the Iraq Warriors objected to the ICC clearly in the following lines delivered about three minutes into this video:

"And yet, the threat of prosecution -- the threat of being accused of being a war criminal -- can have an inhibiting effect. And since there's no accountability for these institutions, it could pose a threat to the United States -- or to the will of American friends and allies -- to take actions that they should undertake for their own self defense." --John Bolton [Emphasis Added]

Isn't that the point of all police and prosecutors and courts? To have an inhibiting effect on potential criminals?



And without American participation in an International Criminal Court, shouldn't even Bolton agree that it's therefore incumbent on American judicial institutions to look into and possibly prosecute the people behind the numerous war crimes listed in the report released today?

Ken Weatherwax 1955-2014

I just heard the news that the actor known to us all as Pugsley in The Addams Family (the 1964-1966 small screen original, not any of its lesser, colorized, widescreen imitators) died today.

What better way to remember him than watching the first episode of one of the favorite shows from my childhood? I'm exactly Pugsley's age, and I was so jealous of his home in 1964.




"Why else would a grown man play with trains?" -- Gomez Addams

What the Fuck is Hillary Clinton Doing in a Commercial for Ford Pickups?

I may have to kill my television again before 2016 gets here. I actually couldn't watch this folksy g-dropping piece of dreck until the end, so don't feel that you need to either.

So, I did this map thing.

I have two areas I need to address. I need to visit the heart of Dixie and the home of the Mountain West football division, oh, and also Alaska, so I can get a good look at Russia.

Create Your Own Visited States Map

The map is actually more full than I thought it would be when I started this exercise, but some of these blocks were filled in during childhood drives.

Watch This If You Need Five Minutes of Joy.

"We thank you for your patience and apologize for any inconvenience this may cause."

Is this the single most common sentence in office emails (and, possibly, in the English language) now that the computer age is well into middle age?

(We actually know of one person who worked in an office where there was a broadcast email that ended with this variation: "Thank you for your patients and apologize for any incontinence this may cause." We would like to believe that it may have been evidence of a sense of humor rather than another IT professional leaning too heavily on his or her email program's spell-checking capabilities.)

"sail on, sail on, o mighty ship of state"

You can watch cable news tonight and obsess over all the minutiae of yesterday's midterm election and its predictable Republican gains, or you can keep these swings in perspective by listening to the song from Montreal's favorite anglophone son up above, or reading this poem from 1850 down below, which probably had at least a little bit of influence on the chorus in Leonard Cohen's "Democracy."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“The Republic” from “The Building of the Ship”
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1850)


Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State!
Sail on, O UNION, strong and great!
Humanity with all its fears,
With all the hopes of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate!
We know what Master laid thy keel,
What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel,
Who made each mast, and sail, and rope,
What anvils rang, what hammers beat,
In what a forge and what a heat
Were shaped the anchors of thy hope!
Fear not each sudden sound and shock,
’T is of the wave and not the rock;
’T is but the flapping of the sail,
And not a rent made by the gale!
In spite of rock and tempest’s roar,
In spite of false lights on the shore,
Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea!
Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee,
Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears,
Our faith triumphant o’er our fears,
Are all with thee,—are all with thee!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Mark Your Calendars for September 16, 2015!

The participants in the 2016 GOP Clown Circus are being officially invited to set up their travelling circus tents and adorable little clown-car rodeos in the parking lot of Simi Valley, California's Ronald Reagan Library [sic, don't expect to see any books there] on that date.

Get you drinking games ready!

Today in American Exceptionalism: "We're Number 65! We're Number 65!"

From CNNMoney: "The U.S. is 65th in world on gender pay gap":

In the "news"...

I have been avoiding news channels lately, but I just surfed past Erin Burnett's show on CNN with my remote control and watched them deviate from the EBOLA HYSTERIA MONTH script for ten minutes (at about 7:50pm on 10/27/14) to warn us that ISIS might be preparing to use captured American shoulder-fired missiles to shoot down aircraft (followed immediately by a commercial for Northrop Grumman weaponry).