Entries Tagged 'impolite company' ↓

On Friday, January 20, Katherine Patricia Singleton was killed in Iraq. That’s all the information there is. No rank, no location, no cause, just her name on the list at icasualties.org.

There’s a short article in her local newspaper, The Pensacola (FL) News Journal with a dateline of January 21, but not much in the way of detail there, either:

Army soldier Katherine P. Singleton is the daughter of Doryce Blake and Maryon Singleton, who resides in Myrtle Grove.

Singleton on Friday night confirmed his daughter’s death but declined further comment.

Details surrounding her death were not available late Friday.

According to Pensacola News Journal archives, Katherine Singleton enlisted in the Army’s Delayed Entry Program in 2001.

They followed up with a blurb in the Sunday edition of the paper, but there wasn’t much new information:

The Department of Defense on Sunday has not yet confirmed the death of Army soldier Katherine Patricia Singleton, a former Escambia High student who reportedly died Friday in Iraq.

The Web site, iCasualty.org, listed Singleton and two unidentified service members as casualties Friday in Iraq.

The Defense Department listed the service members as two Marines assigned to Regimental Combat Team 2, 2nd Marine Division, 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force (Forward). They were killed in action by a suicide vehicle-borne improvised explosive device in Haqlaniyah.

The Marines’ names are being withheld until their families are notified.

Singleton’s father, Maryon Singleton, a Myrtle Grove resident, confirmed his daughter’s death Friday. Family members declined comment Sunday.

Singleton is the third local casualty in Iraq since October.

The official Pentagon news release site confirms and now lists the names of the two Marines who died in Haqlaniyah. No mention of Singleton, however.

So what’s going on here? The comments to the post on Atrios Eschaton where I first read about the mystery are full of speculation. There are several links to a story on truthout.org which reports on testimony from Colonel — formerly Brigadier General — Janis Karpinski, who, as the former commandant of the Abu Ghraib prison is the only senior miltary official penalized for the torture which went on in the prison. Karpinski, testifying before the non-official Commission of Inquiry for Crimes against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration claimed that “several women had died of dehydration because they refused to drink liquids late in the day. They were afraid of being assaulted or even raped by male soldiers if they had to use the women’s latrine after dark.” (A whole new level of scandal for our troops, if true. I don’t see any convincing evidence other than the testimony of Karpinski.)

Some commenters suggest that Singleton may be victim of a rape which the military is trying to cover up. Some speculate that she amy have been used as a combat troop against regulations. Others suggest that the whole thing is a hoax, perpetrated for some unknown reason.

I don’t have any answers, although I have emailed the reporter of the original article asking if she has any more info. I’ll update if there’s anything to report. It seems like the story here is the lack of a story, but anyway you look at it, there’s something strange going on.

 
Technorati Tags: iraq, death, army, soldier, mystery

UPDATE 2-3-06 7:05pm EST: I just received a response from Angela Fail, the reporter who wrote the original story:

This has been a challenging story to track down. Katherine’s father confirmed her death but has refused to discuss any of the circumstances surrrounding it since then. We’ve been waiting on information from the Department of Defense, but have yet to receive any.

I’m sorry I couldn’t be more helpful.

(Thanks, Angela, for replying so quickly!)

This:

And to keep America competitive, one commitment is necessary above all: We must continue to lead the world in human talent and creativity. Our greatest advantage in the world has always been our educated, hard-working, ambitious people – and we are going to keep that edge. Tonight I announce the American Competitiveness Initiative, to encourage innovation throughout our economy, and to give our Nation’s children a firm grounding in math and science.

vesus this:

The legislation, which the Senate has passed, would take a $12.7 billion bite out of federal student-loan financing, the biggest cut in the program’s history. The Treasury would recover the money through higher interest rates, cuts in federal subsidies to private lenders and mandatory borrower’s fees.

Technorati Tags: sotu, bush, education, student_loans, program_cuts

She’s joining him on the mountaintop.

The State of the Union address. All the standing up and sitting down is so the clap-happy audience gets a chance to give their brains some air.

And cribbing directly from Americablog:

Tonight I ask you to pass legislation to prohibit the most egregious abuses of medical research – human cloning in all its forms … creating or implanting embryos for experiments … creating human-animal hybrids … and buying, selling, or patenting human embryos.

Seems that he wants to make sure we don’t mate any more humans with chimpanzees.

C-span is keeping a running tally of Senators’ declared intentions on the Alito nomination. Looks like Chafee and Snowe — the Republican wing of the Republican party — haven’t yet made up their minds. I’m sure with a little arm-twisting from the minions of the ghost of Tom DeLay and Jack Abramoof, they’ll fall into line.

Meanwhile on the jellyfish Democratic side of the aisle, Byrd (discussed earlier), Johnson of South Dakota, and Nelson of Nebraska have left their slime trail on Alito’s “yes” card. Bayh, Cantwell and Murray of Washington, Conrad and Dorgan of North Dakota, Landrieu, Lautenberg and Menendez of New Jersey, Pryor and Rockefeller are playing their cards close to the vest.

As far as the filibuster goes, there’s rumors that golden boy Barack Obama is opposing the filibuster along with my supposedly-liberal Senator Barbara Mikulski. And why would they oppose a filibuster against a man that virtually all reasonable Democrats (Byrd excepted) agree stands against everything the party — and the Constitution — stand for? Well, according to the AP, Minority Leader Reid and DSCC coordinator Schumer believe a filibuster would leave an “impression of political weakness” and have a negative “potential” impact on candidates on the 2006 ballot in Republican-leaning states. And demonstrating typical Democratic hand-wringing and paralysis will convey strength? On what planet?

Meanwhile, the Republicans are laughing and rejoicing in their imminent complete takeover of the US government, and the trashing of the Constitution. Nice work, Dems.

Technorati Tags: alito, supreme_court, nomination, democrats, filibuster

I received a snail-mail solicitation yesterday from Senator Robert Byrd’s re-election committee, Friends of Robert C. Byrd. As an elder statesman and one of those Democrats from a state which you’d expect to be red, I’d normally send him a couple of bucks. After all, he’s the guy who carries his copy of the Constitution in his pocket and can cite from it like some lawmakers [think they] can cite the Bible. His solicitation sounds good, and there’s this quote underneath a picture of him holding up his pocket Constitution:

I make only one promise – the same one I swore before my God and my country nearly half a century ago: To preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

Of course, Senator Byrd can be excused a slight lapse in memory due to his advanced age, but, if he is re-elected, he’ll be reminded that the oath he quotes here is actually from the oath of office taken by the President and mandated in Article II of the Constitution. The oath taken by Senators is:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.

Nonetheless, he is sworn to defend the Constitution. And as he says in his solicitation letter: “Nowhere in that oath did it say that I had to give my automatic or obedient approval to any nominee whom the President of the United States nominated for a place on the federal bench.” Strong words and absolutely true. That’s what Senator Byrd is known for. He continues on in his letter:

More recently, the Senate has been all but paralyzed by the belief that it should rubber stamp Presidential nominations, even lifetime appointments to the judiciary.

“Advice and consent” are the Constitution’s words. The White House seems to think that means “roll over and obey.” At the mere suggestion of resistance, the Republican Party has tried to shred the traditions of the Senate and suppress free debate.

He’s dead on. Except, that it is deeds, not words that show a man’s true character. For all his strong talk of resistance, of defending the Constitution, of being “the conscience of the Senate“, Senator Byrd is about to betray everything he is asking me for money to defend.

See, barring an ever more unlikely filibuster by the Senate Democrats, on Tuesday, January 31, 2006–just in time for the President’s State of the Union address that evening–the Senate will vote on the confirmation of Samuel J. Alito to the United States Supreme Court. Samuel Alito, with his radical right, out-of-the-mainstream views on everything from church/state separation, privacy rights, and reproductive rights, to environmental protections, gay rights and civil rights, will work hard to enact the complete radical conservative makeover of the United States into a nation our founding fathers would not recognize.

Perhaps most dangerously, Alito is a supporter of the “unitary” executive theory of government, which claims (here, greatly simplified) that the President is the Executive Branch of government, and therefore, as a co-equal branch, neither Congress nor the Judiciary can dictate how the Executive operates. This is not at all what the Founders had in mind. As James Madison writes in The Federalist Papers, No. 47:

No political truth is certainly of greater intrinsic value, or is stamped with the authority of more enlightened patrons of liberty, than that on which the objection is founded. The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, selfappointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.

In light of that theory, Alito’s record and the potential danger to the future of our consitutional government at stake, you would be certain that such a lion of democracy, such a true believer in the truth of the US Consitution as Sen. Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, senior member of the US Senate, would be adamantly opposed to the nomination of Samuel Alito. You’d be wrong.

Sen. Robert Byrd broke with a majority of his fellow Democrats Thursday to say he will vote for Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito.

Byrd said he believed Alito is an honorable man with a sharp legal mind who will follow the U.S. Constitution and keep presidential power in check. Other Democrats have said they don’t think Alito is independent enough to rule against the Bush administration.

At 88 years old, Byrd may not live long enough to see the consequences of his support of Alito and the subsequent dismantling of the Constitution he claims to love, but those of us with a lot more life ahead of us will be living in that world. Senator Byrd’s career started off ignominiously, but with his principled stand against all aspects of the Iraq war, he seemed to redeem himself in many eyes. With his decision to “roll over and obey”, he has re-acquired all his shame. If he is defeated in the fall elections, it probably won’t make any difference anyway, since his beloved Senate will soon be rendered superfluous in the newly made dictatorship he will have helped cement in place. Nice legacy, Bob. And, when it comes to soliciting me: save your stamps.

Technorati Tags: byrd, senate, alito, supreme_court, unitary_executive

An FDA panel voted 11-3 to approve the sale of orlistat—sold under the prescription name Xenical since 1999—for over-the-counter purchase. The panelists had some reservations about whether GlaxoSmithKline had studied the long-term use of the drug, but approved it anyway. There were also concerns that normal-weight or underweight teenagers might abuse the drug, and that the drug, which will be marketed under the name “Alli” (pronounced “ally”) doesn’t really have any effect on behavior, so most users have gained back the 4-5 pounds they lose within 2 years after they stop taking the drug. The FDA generally follows the recommendations of its expert panels, so it is likely the drug will be on sale soon.

Of course, when the drug in question is a “morning after” pill which can safely prevent a woman from becoming pregnant after unprotected sex, then the FDA rejects its experts’ decisions and requires more study on the premise that minors can’t be prevented from using the drug.

It’s so nice to see consistency and well-reasoned standards in scientific debates.

Technorati Tags: fda, orlistat, xenical, gsk, plan_b, hypocrisy

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
– US Constitution, Amendment 4

QUESTION: [Jonathan Landay with Knight Ridder] And so what many people believe — and I’d like you to respond to this — is that what you’ve actually done is crafted a detour around the FISA court by creating a new standard of “reasonably believe” in place of probable cause because the FISA court will not give you a warrant based on reasonable belief, you have to show probable cause. Could you respond to that, please?

GEN. HAYDEN: [Former national director of the National Security Agency] Sure. I didn’t craft the authorization. I am responding to a lawful order. All right? The attorney general has averred to the lawfulness of the order.

Just to be very clear — and believe me, if there’s any amendment to the Constitution that employees of the National Security Agency are familiar with, it’s the Fourth. And it is a reasonableness standard in the Fourth Amendment. And so what you’ve raised to me — and I’m not a lawyer, and don’t want to become one — what you’ve raised to me is, in terms of quoting the Fourth Amendment, is an issue of the Constitution. The constitutional standard is “reasonable.” And we believe — I am convinced that we are lawful because what it is we’re doing is reasonable.
– Editor & Publisher January 23, 2006, “Defending Spy Program, General Reveals Shaky Grip on 4th Amendment”

I can’t wait until the Alito/Roberts court tells us that this interpretation is the “originalist” reading of the Constitution, thereby rendering over 200 years of jurisprudence inoperative.

Defective Yeti has a hilarious history of the Bush Administration as a transcript of a text-based adventure game:

> EAT PRETZEL.I don't think the pretzel would agree with you.

> INVADE IRAQYou are not able to do that, yet.

> INVADE IRAQYou are not able to do that, yet.

> GO RIGHTFar-RightYou are on the far right of the political spectrum.Jesse Helms is here.John Ashcroft is here.

> GO RIGHTRadical RightYou are on the extreme right of the political spectrum.Dick Cheney is here.Pat Robertson is here.

> INVADE IRAQYou are not able to do that, yet.

> TAKE VACATIONTaken.

> INVADE IRAQYou are not able to do that, yet.

This is a perfect post: just the right amounts of humor, biting political commentary and a wistful nod to simpler times. Thanks for a really good laugh!

Technorati Tags: politics, humor, blogs, bush, zork

Don’t get me wrong: I don’t think that business and the Democratic party are necessarily on opposite sides of the fence, but… don’t basic Democratic party ideals value the interests of working folk above the interests of business owners? Isn’t that the reason the Democratic party has historically been the party of organized labor? Isn’t that the reason the Democrats have been (not always to their benefit) traditionally protectionist? Weren’t the Democrats the ones who were responsible for the Civil Rights reformsand Voting Rights legislation? I mean: there have to be some basic values which define the party, don’t there?

Well, then why did Harris Miller step down from his role as president of the Information Technology Association of America in order to run for the US Senate from Virginia as a Democrat? Does this sound like a guy who is on the side of the working stiff:

As recently as October, Miller chastised the feds for making it too cumbersome for ITAA members to hire foreigners. “The current H-1B visa cap makes it increasingly difficult for U.S. companies to compete in global markets,” he said. As for outsourcing, another bogeyman that trade unions, some legislators, and Lou Dobbs say will have all of us flipping burgers at McDonald’s, Miller thinks it’s a good thing. “Global sourcing continues to be a net positive for American workers and the U.S. economy,” he said in an October release.

Now that we’ve already shipped all our high-paying manufacturing jobs off shore, he believes we should follow by sending our high-tech jobs in the same direction. Who does this benefit other than the same people who’ve benefited from Bush’s tax cuts for the top income brackets? Doesn’t sound like a Dem to me. Neither does this:

“We oppose the idea of a voter-verified paper trail,” says Harris Miller, president of the trade group Information Technology Association of America. Introducing paper into the mix, he says, defeats the improved efficiency and reliability e-voting promises. “There was never a golden age when paper ballots were accurately counted,” Miller says.

Makes sense when you realize that Miller has been a paid lobbyist for Diebold. But it doesn’t make sense for a Democrat. And these aren’t the only troubling positions: there’s his attitude toward data mining (gung-ho!) and personal privacy (overrated). Greg Priddy has a much deeper discussion of his positions over at TPM Cafe.

And then, there’s the problem of ethics. As Howard Dean showed Wolf Blitzer on Saturday, the recent lobbying scandals are not a Democratic party problem. And, we’ve gotta stay above reproach on this. Going from government to being a lobbyist has some serious potential for ethical violations, but nothing compared to the dirtiness involved in going from being a paid shill for an industry to being an actual legislator.

If this guy wants to run for Senate, let him. It’s still (sort of) a free country where any kid (with the surname ‘Bush’) can grow up to be a Governor or a Senator or a President. But he shouldn’t be doing under the banner of a party whose basic tenets he opposes. Otherwise, we’ve put the final nail into the coffin of the two-party system.