Putting a Face to a Number

How many more?

From the South Florida Sun-Sentinal, via Question Girl:

PLANTATION — In one more day, he would have turned 24. In three more months, he would have gone home to witness the birth of his first child.

But a roadside explosive killed Army Sgt. Michael Rowe on Tuesday in Rutbah, Iraq, where he was escorting a supply convoy. According to the Defense Department, Rowe died in a city so dangerous the military all but sealed it off with a 10-mile long, 7-foot high wall of sand.

Rowe's half-sisters in Plantation, Danielle Sumner-Rowe and Megan Rowe, observed their younger brother's six-month sojourn in Iraq from their computers, corresponding by e-mail and reading his thoughts on his Myspace.com Web page. . The Web page served as a hub for relatives and friends and gave him a platform to share his dreams and vent the frustrations of being 7,000 miles away from his parents; his wife, Rebecca, and their unborn daughter, Nevaeh, in New Port Richey.

"I miss my beautiful wife who I have abandoned when she needs me most," Michael Rowe wrote in a Jan. 29 posting. "She is pregnant with our first child and I won't be there for a sec until she has the baby. No singing or reading to her belly, no getting all those crazy things she wants at night."

[snip] 

Rebecca Rowe gathered with relatives at her husband's New Port Richey home Thursday, where they watched old home videos. She married Michael Rowe two years ago and expected him to be sent to Iraq at anytime. But it didn't prepare her for when he left last year.

Despite the mounting losses in Iraq — 2,326 military men and women have been killed there as of Wednesday — he reassured her and remained resolute about his purpose through e-mails and postings.

She recalled talking to him via an Internet Web camera during stays in Kuwait.

"He was just so happy to see me and he asked me to stand up so he could see his baby girl," she said by phone.

[snip] 

Michael Rowe last visited his Myspace.com Web page on Monday. Had he logged in Tuesday, he would have seen messages from friends, loved ones and his wife wishing him a happy 24th birthday.

"Hey sweetheart. I know you will be on the road for your birthday, but I hope it is good anyways. I miss you so much," Rebecca Rowe wrote. "I am already 6 months (pregnant), and that means you will be home in 3!!!!! I can't wait for the three of us to be together."

Friday Anti-War Song

War Child — The Cranberries

Who will save the war child baby?
Who controls the key?
The web we weave is thick and sordid,
Fine by me.

At times of war we're all the losers,
There's no victory.
We shoot to kill and kill your lover,
Fine by me.

War child, victim of political pride.
Plant the seed, territorial greed.
Mind the war child,
We should mind the war child.

I spent last winter in New York,
And came upon a man.
He was sleeping on the streets and homeless,
He said, "I fought in Vietnam."

Beneath his shirt he wore the mark,
He bore the mark with pride.
A two inch deep incision carved,
Into his side.

War child, victim of political pride.
Plant the seed, territorial greed.
Mind the war child,
We should mind the war child.

Who's the loser now? Who's the loser now?
We're all the losers now. We're all the losers now.

War child.

Activists=Terrorists?

Which ones are terrorists?

Which ones are the FBI watching?

 

From the LA Times: (h/t Tennessee Guerilla Women)

The FBI, while waging a highly publicized war against terrorism, has spent resources gathering information on antiwar and environmental protesters and on activists who feed vegetarian meals to the homeless, the agency's internal memos show.

[snip]

The FBI's encounters with activists are described in hundreds of pages of documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union under the Freedom of Information Act after agents visited several activists before the 2004 political conventions. Details have steadily trickled out over the last year, but newly released documents provide a fuller view of some FBI probes.

"Any definition of terrorism that would include someone throwing a bottle or rock through a window during an antiwar demonstration is dangerously overbroad," ACLU staff attorney Ben Wizner said. "The FBI will have its hands full pursuing antiwar groups instead of truly dangerous organizations."

[snip]

"They don't know where Osama bin Laden is, but they're spending money watching people like me," said environmental activist Kirsten Atkins. Her license plate number showed up in an FBI terrorism file after she attended a protest against the lumber industry in Colorado Springs in 2002.

[snip]

An FBI counterterrorism official showed the class, at the University of Texas in Austin, 35 slides listing militia, neo-Nazi and Islamist groups. Senior Special Agent Charles Rasner said one slide, labeled "Anarchism," was a federal analyst's list of groups that people intent on terrorism might associate with.

The list included Food Not Bombs, which mainly serves vegetarian food to homeless people, and — with a question mark next to it — Indymedia, a collective that publishes what it calls radical journalism online. Both groups are among the numerous organizations affiliated with anarchists and anti-globalization protests, where there has been some violence.

Elizabeth Wagoner said she was one of the few students who objected to the groups' inclusion on the list. "My friends do Indymedia," she said. "My friends aren't terrorists."

John Dean to Testify at Censure Hearing

John Dean, Richard Nixon's White House Counsel, is expected to testify at the censure hearings today. Dean spent four months in prison for his part in the Watergate scandal.

Watergate, for those who've lived under rocks for the past 30-odd years, refers to the break-in of the Watergate Hotel, which exposed secret, illegal wiretapping authorized by a Republican President.

Nixon was accused of using the wiretaps to spy on enemies of his administration, under the guise of 'protecting national security'. Nixon also claimed inherent wartime powers under Article II of the Constitution.

From the AP:

The title of Dean’s 2004 book, “Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush,” made his view of the administration clear even before the wiretapping program became public.

After The New York Times revealed the program in December, Dean wrote that “Bush may have outdone Nixon” and be worthy not just of censure but impeachment.

“Nixon’s illegal surveillance was limited; Bush’s, it is developing, may be extraordinarily broad in scope,” Dean wrote in a column for FindLaw.com in December.

[snip] 

Dean was summoned to the hearing by Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., the author of a resolution to censure, or officially scold, Bush. The measure would condemn Bush’s “unlawful authorization of wiretaps of Americans within the United States without obtaining the court orders required” by the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Republicans planned ways to mock the censure effort as a partisan stunt.

“This resolution puts Senate Democrats in the unfortunate position of looking like they are not serious about the war on terror, while the president is doing everything possible within the law to protect the American people,” said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas.

Sen. Cornyn, I don't expect you to actually understand this, but the President has broken the law. He has violated the Constitution. He has said as much, and said he will continue breaking the law and ignoring the Constitution of the United States. 

What good does it do to continue to fight the terrorists who 'hate our freedoms,' if the President and his party plan on circumventing the very document that gives us our freedoms?

Privately, Democrats in the House and Senate have said that embracing a censure resolution before the facts are known would damage their credibility this election year.

For his part, Feingold has accused those Democrats who have not embraced his proposal of cowering.

Feingold isn't the only one accusing Democrats of being spineless, cowering jellyfish. The American people are also.  Feingold has created a perfect Catch-22 for Democratic senators, telling them, "Put up, or shut up."

Do they take a stand and say the President broke the law? Or do they continue playing footsie with a scandal-ridden, Republican-dominated Congress? 

Obscene Gesture or Not?

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's gesture has been closely scrutinized by many. Was it obscene or not? (The Boston Herald has a photo taken at the time.)

Scalia, naturally, says no. (But would he admit it, if it were?) Others of Italian ancestry say it is, without a doubt, especially when taken in conjuction with the word he used to accompany it.

I didn't really know, so I called on a local expert – my step-dad, Glenn. Actually, he's the only real Italian I know.

Glenn spent his early years in New York City, before moving to Weehauken NJ. He was an Italian-Catholic who walked to elementary school with a bicycle chain and a knife for protection. Apparently, Catholic school kids in their uniforms were (perhaps still are) targets for the local toughs, especially in a heavily-Italian neighborhood in New York.

Glenn once commented that many of the kids he went to school with had "Family" connections – and are in the "Family" now….and he's not talking relatives. So, I decided I wasn't likely to find a better expert on short notice.

Not wanting to be offensive, especially to someone I like, but who also knows people in the Mafia, I made my sister call. (Yeah, bravery…not my strong suit. 🙂 ) She, also not exactly sure how to approach this, took the easy way out and made our mom ask.

His take: You betcha! While the word used has a variety of spellings, the word combined with the gesture is equal to flipping someone the bird while saying, "F**k you!"

So – we have a supposedly-devout Supreme Court Justice who took Communion and then used an obscene gesture accompanied by a dirty word, while standing in the Cathedral of the Holy Cross.

Somehow, this doesn't surprise me, coming from a man who is an avowed friend of the same Vice-President who stood in the Capitol and told a senator to 'f**k himself".

Republicans and thugs….it's getting hard to tell the difference these days.