Wilmette Wadical

A rational Iran would understand that a failure in negotiations over the next six months would mean increased sanctions.  Congress would see to that with Senators Shumer, McCain, and Cornyn leading the charge.  Let Israel and aforementioned Senators play Bad Cop to Obama Good Cop.  In the meantime, Israel is held in check.

The Persians have felt dissed since the overthrow of Mosaddegh in 1953, with the help of the CIA.  Bush labeling Iran as part of the "axis of evil" didn't help.   Removing Iranian fears of their own existential threat from the West opens the possibility of reducing conflict throughout the Levant, particularly in Palestine.  Culturally, Iran is closer aligned with the West than with Arabia. 

I generally think the work the ACLU does is a good thing, but I am put off by a recent letter I received.  It was titled an ACLU 50-State Survey, but when the same physical sheet of paper contains both a survey and a solicitation for money, the thin veil of academic impartiality is shredded.  It is primarily a fund raiser posing as a survey, and as such is intellectually dishonest.  I know it's tough out there, and you have to do what you think you have to do to raise money, but this kind of fund raising is disappointing.  They didn't even have the integrity to at least print the fund raiser on a separate sheet of paper.  Tsk, tsk.

Supreme Court Justice Alito can be seen on a YouTube video, shaking his head and mouthing what appears to be "Not true" after Obama dresses down the Supreme Court for its ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. One would have to ask Justice Alito to what he was referring, but the reasonable inference would be to President Obama's assertion that the ruling opens the door for foreign corporations to enjoy protected money speech in support of candidates for elected federal office.

Well it is true. Simply put, corporate stock can be owned by people, but often is owned by other corporations, by hedge funds, by god only knows whom else. Unless one knows the citizenship of all owners of stock in a corporation, and the owners of owners, ad infinitum, one does not know for whom the corporation speaks, or from what country they are citizens.

The Supreme Court has just ruled that campaign finance reform, as codified in McCain-Feingold, is unconstitutional. The fundamental result of this is that the "person" with the biggest wallet has the opportunity for his, or its, free speech to be heard more widely, more frequently, and hence with greater influence than those with smaller wallets.

In doing so, the Supreme Court has failed to recognize that the first three words of the U.S. Constitution do not read "We the Persons." Abraham Lincoln did not conclude his Gettysburg Address that the "government of the persons, by the persons, and for the persons shall not perish from this earth." The Supreme Court Justices need to be reminded of this by We the People.

W--
he Wimped out on his National Guard Service,
he Wimped out on finding Osama, and
he Wimped out on securing the peace in Iraq.