Sunday, September 16, 2007

They Hate Us For Our Freedoms

Freedoms like the Pentagon censoring material they've already released:
The Pentagon has released a censored audiotape of suspected Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed — deleting a part officials said could be used to recruit future terrorists.
[...]
The public may read that statement in a 26-page transcript previously released by the Defense Department
Apparently they are counting on a lot of 'childern' being left behind since they don't mind you reading it but it's classified if you hear it.

Freedoms like the Dean of a California law school being fired a couple of days after he'd been hired. Rethuglican politicians and the California Supreme Court Chief Justice Ronald M. George got him fired.
A conservative Los Angeles County politician asked about two dozen people in an e-mail last month how to prevent the University of California, Irvine from hiring renowned liberal scholar Erwin Chemerinsky as its founding law school dean, a spokesman for the politician said Friday.

Making Chemerinsky the head of the law school "would be like appointing al-Qaida in charge of homeland security," Michael Antonovich, a longtime Republican member of the county Board of Supervisors, said in a voicemail left with The Associated Press.
WTF is wrong with rethuglicans!? [/rhetorical question] They screech about a MoveOn.org ad telling the truth about Petraeus' "cooking the books," but they see nothing wrong with comparing one of the most respected constitutional scholars in the country to al-Qaida.

And it wasn't just a rethuglican politician that complained, California Chief Justice Ronald M. George also whined about Chermerinsky's appointment in an L.A. Times op-ed. One would think that Chief Justices would be above this type of swiftboating. One would be wrong.

And Chancellor's Drake defense?
Chemerinsky didn't lose the dean's position because of his politics, saying that it was only because he expressed himself in a polarizing way.

Any deal would therefore require Chemerinsky to "successfully transition from being a very outspoken advocate on many causes to being a dean of the stature that we expect in a start-up law school," said Malcom, a prominent Orange County Republican who was going to be a member of Chemerinsky's advisory board.
Get that? He can get his job back as long as he gives up his freedom of speech. Sounds a bit much to expect from a lawyer, constitutional scholar and American citizen. Any American citizen.

Freedoms like the Reverend Lennox Yearwood being assaulted by Capitol police for the crime of, gasp!, trying to attend Petraeus' lying testifying before Congress.

Here's an interview about the incident with the good Reverend
I will be on crutches on Saturday. I’ll be on crutches for quite some time, unfortunately, for what was done to me. I might have been beaten in the halls of Congress, but my spirit wasn't beaten.


Cross posted at VidiotSpeak

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