Monthly Archives: December 2007

Vamos a jugar por la playa

At the very end of CSN's Suite Judy Blue Eyes, there's a verse in Spanish. It goes like this:

Que linda me la traiga Cuba,
La reina de la Mar Caribe.
Cielo sol no tiene sangre allí,
y que triste que no puedo vaya,
Oh va, oh va, va.

Here's the translation:

Oh, what beauty Cuba brings me,
The queen of the Caribbean Sea,
Sunny sky has no blood over there,
And how sad that I cannot go,
Oh go, oh go, go.

Dirty fucking treasonous hippies!

Why should I care to post this? Well, I woke up this morning, trying to remember the first lines of each of the verses in the "Chestnut-brown canary / Ruby-throated sparrow" section ("Chestnut-brown canary", "Voices of the angels", "Lacy, lilting, leery"). And when I went to verify my knowledge, I discovered the translation at the bottom of the lyrics. And I though it was just sooo fascinating.

Pathetic.

This kind of hot breaking news can be found here Every Day. Update your treasure maps accordingly.

Zing

Josh Marshall slaps Rudy G. around:

Then you have Rudy, of whom I've already said quite a bit. Republican voters are starting to realize that pro-choice wasn't just a policy position for Rudy. He lived a lifestyle as mayor that made it a critical option to have on hand at any given moment. With Huckabee's rise, attention has gone off Rudy's mix of boffo boffing scandals and shady business deals. But there's still so much more to be scrutinized, especially on the latter front, when and if the attention returns.

(my bold)

Ouch.

Punditry

Matthew Yglesias writes:

Via Julian Sanchez a nice rundown of the origins of FISA. It's particularly crazy that we're going down this path because the surveillance restriction were so specifically written in response to a long and well-documented chain of abuses of power. It's not like anyone's going to be able to plead ignorance when it turns out that President Someone Or Other is using these powers to spy on political opponents.

(My bold)

Well, nobody but the 50% of Americans who don't know that the word "civics" can describe something other than those cute little Hondas. Nobody but political junkies and lawyers know what "FISA" is, fewer of them know where it came from, and fewer of them care about this "path" we're going down.

All Hope Is Lost

Now that the Senate is looking like it's going to provide blanket, retroactive immunity to all the telephone companies who broke the law at Bush's request, Senator Feingold looks at the situation in the Senate and despairs:

This morning, the Senate starts debating legislation to expand the government's surveillance powers.
...
We have a big fight on our hands, and unfortunately, the deck is now stacked against us. Instead of being able to defend improvements that were made in the Judiciary Committee, we are going to have to start all over again to try to salvage the good work that was done to improve the bill. This includes adding tougher court oversight and greater protection for the privacy of innocent Americans, and by stripping out the retroactive immunity provision.
...
We will be pointing out that under current law, companies already get immunity for cooperating with government requests for information -- as long as the requests follow requirements that are clearly laid out in the law. If companies didn't follow this law, and cooperated with illegitimate requests for sensitive information, then we should not hand them a "get out of jail free" card after the fact.
...
It's now up to the Senate to stand up for the rule of law and against the misinformation and fear tactics that the administration always rolls out on the surveillance issue. That means Democrats will have to finally stand up to the administration on national security issues.

(my bold)

In the words of the immortal Gandolf the White: There was never much hope, only a fool's hope.