Common Sense Democracy

There’s a lot, make that a TON, of news circulating around about the Karl Rove scandal. So much that it’s almost information overload. You don’t know what to believe anymore there are so many sides to this controversy. The blog world has beaten this issue around and around so I find it repetitive to write about it. One post, however, off AmericaBlog caught my eye and it really takes the issue down to a simple fundamental question: Why doesn’t the President of the United States just ask Karl Rove if he outed a CIA agent?. Bush says that we must not jump to conclusions and that we need to wait for the special prosecutor to make a determination. Why does the President need to have an investigation to find out the truth in his own administration, about his own number 2 guy?

It really just doesn’t add up. Read the full post at AmericaBlog.com.

Technorati Tags: Karl+Rove,, President+Bush,, CIA,, CIA+agent,, special+prosecutor,, Republicans,, Democrats,, Americablog,, The+White+House

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Moments ago, President Bush nominated conservative Judge John G. Roberts, Jr. to fill the Supreme Court vacancy left by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.

Technorati Tags: President+Bush,, Supreme+Court+Nomination

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A friend of mine posted a comment in one of my previous posts (We Have Failed Our Veterans) with a link to an interesting article on the troop strength and composition of our Army. It breaks down the percentages of combat troops versus support troops and the split between the active duty force and the reserves.

Can we sustain our force committments around the world with an all-volunteer military or is a draft inevitable? About a decade ago Congress moved certain logistical components from the active duty side of the Army to the Reserve side. The possible reasoning behind it was that if the President was to take the country to war he wouldn’t be able to do it without those logistics units and so he would have to activate the Reserves. Activating the reserve components also means messing with the civilian and corporate sectors by pulling out all of the weekend-warriors. When you do that you automatically create oversight by the American people and you had better have a good reason for going to war. That’s how it works in theory anyway, although these days it seems the President can pretty much deploy whatever forces he feels like whether that pulls on the Reserves or not.

So it works the same way with a draft. If you begin to drag all of the sons and daughters into the fight, the American people are going to have something to say about it. With an all-volunteer military, it’s mostly out-of-site out-of-mind for most busy American families.

Read the full article at The Slate – Who’s in the Army Now? – Why we can’t send more troops to Iraq. By Fred Kaplan

Technorati Tags: President+Bush, military+draft, draft, active+duty, Army, reserves, Army+Reserves, National+Guard, combat

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Via MSNBC.com.

Judith Miller, a reporter with the New York Times, has been ordered to jail by a judge for refusing to name her confidential source in the investigation of the leak of an undercover CIA officer’s name.

“Judy Miller has not been accused of a crime or convicted of a crime,” Abrams said. “She has been held in civil contempt of court.”

I’m not sure where this fits into the realm of common sense democracy. Reporters are usually protected from this sort of thing while performing their job but regardless of the whether her source should or should not be named, when a judge or court orders a specific action, then that’s the law. The question is, is the naming of this source a critical component of the investigation into serious wrong-doing and in the best interest of society at large? The reporter’s commitment to her source aside, crimes cannot go unpunished in lieu of getting a news story. Is it the principle of confidentiality at stake here or the supreme rule of law?

Read the full story at MSNBC.com.

Technorati Tags: Judith+Miller, New+York+Times, CIA, Federal+Court, Journalism

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Via MSNBC.com.

Bush has selected actor and former Sen. Fred Thompson to help guide his Supreme Court nominee through the Senate confirmation process.

Thompson, an actor on the NBC television series “Law & Order,” agreed to accept the post in a telephone conversation with the president on Monday, McClellan said.

He said Thompson, a Republican, would serve as an informal adviser to shepherd the nomination through the Senate.

…
Thompson, 62, retired from the Senate to resume his acting career. He has appeared in the movies “The Hunt for Red October,” “Cape Fear,” and “In the Line of Fire.”

Read the full article at Via MSNBC.com.
Technorati Tags: President+Bush, Supreme+Court, Fred+Thompson, Senator+Thompson, Law+and+Order, Republican, Supreme+Court+nominee, White+House

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