Yesterday's QUOTES ...

Unless the last eight years were a horrible dream, George W. Bush weakened restrictions on air pollution under the Clear Skies Act, turned forests over to loggers under the Healthy Forests Initiative, detained prisoners indefinitely in the name of the law, tortured people in the name of civilization, censored scientists in the name of objectivity, alienated allies in the name of security, and is occupying another country in the name of freedom.

... Just like the pardon of Nixon, the protection of Iran-contra criminals, and the commutation of Lewis Libby's sentence, this bill is yet another step in cementing a two-tiered system of justice in America where our highest political officials and connected elite can break our laws with impunity.

[...]Our Congress, with the political and media elite cheering, is about to violate every one of these principles. They are taking away from the judiciary the power to adjudicate allegations of lawbreaking. They are creating a two-tiered system of justice in which our most powerful corporations can break the law with impunity and government officials remain immune from consequences. And they are, in unity, spewing rank propaganda to the commoners -- who continue to be subjected to the harsh punishment for violations of the law -- in order to convince them that granting license to our political and corporate elites to break the law is necessary for their own Good and for their Safety.
... and just think: "Protecting government and corporate elite from flagrant lawbreaking is what our own political establishment always claimed was the hallmark of third-world, under-developed tyrannies."
... Of course, America has the meanest drug laws in the world and yet still has the highest consumption of drugs. I wonder what causes that, she said archly.

There's something horrible about all this being discussed all over the world, actually. We should be discussing the uncle's alleged behavior and he's the one who should be in the court of world opinion, not this little girl.

If Club Obama plans to let Israel keep leading us around by the foreign policy tool, we might just as well hand the keys to McCain. With Gramps behind the wheel, there's at least a chance he'll doze off before he backs out of the driveway.

... Over the last century climate warming has resulted in an average upslope movement of plant species' optimum elevation of 29 meters per decade.