Sid's Fishbowl

A freed Italian hostage was injured and an Italian intelligence officer killed Friday after a U.S. armored vehicle fired on their car in Iraq.
The U.S. military in Baghdad confirmed that coalition forces at a checkpoint fired on the car carrying the freed hostage, journalist Giuliana Sgrena, and that she was being treated by ''coalition force medical personnel."
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, a U.S. ally who has kept troops in Iraq despite public opposition at home, said he has asked the U.S. ambassador for an explanation. "Given that the fire came from an American source, I called in the American ambassador," Mr. Berlusconi told reporters. "I believe we must have an explanation for such a serious incident, for which someone must take the responsibility."

[…]
The editor of Il Manifesto, Gabriele Polo, said the secret service agent was killed when he threw himself over the freed hostage to protect her from fire, according to the Apcom news agency. NBC News reported that the Italian killed was the chief intelligence agent for Italy in Iraq.

The Italian people have vocally opposed the war, although Berlusconi has not listened to them. This incident could force him to end his support.

posted at 2:06 PM by Sid the Fish
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Thursday, March 03, 2005

Republican rhetoric

The next time someone suggests that we all just sit down and reason together, remind them of these gems, all from the past few days:

Daniels says Democrats 'car-bombed' reforms

Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels blasted House Democrats on Wednesday for a daylong boycott that killed more than 130 bills, including key elements of his legislative package.
"Indiana's drive for growth and reform was car-bombed yesterday by the Indiana House minority," Daniels said during a Statehouse news conference. "Many of these measures probably will not be back this year."

For the record, the Democrats voted against a taxpayer-funded football stadium and a bill to create a special prosecutor who would work in secret and report to Gov. Daniels.

Rep Sam Johnson (R-Texas), the other day:

Speaking at a veterans’ celebration at Suncreek United Methodist Church in Allen, Texas….Johnson said he told the president that night, “Syria is the problem. Syria is where those weapons of mass destruction are, in my view. You know, I can fly an F-15, put two nukes on ‘em and I’ll make one pass. We won’t have to worry about Syria anymore.”

This sitting member of Congress says he was staning on the porch of the White House when volunteered to drop nuclear weapons on a sovereign nation. That is a slightly more aggressive vision of “spreading freedom” than the White House has heretofore proposed.

I eagerly await Glenn Reynolds’ denunciation of these abhorrent statements.

posted at 10:56 AM by Sid the Fish
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Tuesday, March 01, 2005

The kids are not alright...

~~Hitler~~ Putin Youth:

With President Putin's popularity in sharp decline, the Kremlin has set up a new Russian youth movement to ensure its control of the streets in the event of mass anti-government protests.
Hundreds of youths, many belonging to the president's cultural society "Walking Together", held a meeting in a house owned by the Kremlin Property Department to launch the group at the weekend. The organisation, which leaders hope will attract 300,000 members, was christened "Nashi" [Ours], a word which in Russian has chilling nationalist overtones.
When two outsiders – one from an opposition party, the other a journalist – sneaked into its founding conference, they were humiliated and one was beaten.

Warms your heart, doesn’t it? It couldn’t happen here, of course.

Pooty

posted at 5:21 PM by Sid the Fish
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News flash: Judiciary branch not yet extinct

Judge Says Terror Suspect Can't Be Held as an Enemy Combatant

A federal district judge in South Carolina ruled Monday that President Bush had greatly overstepped his authority by detaining an American citizen as an enemy combatant for nearly three years without filing criminal charges.
The judge, Henry F. Floyd, ruled that the government must release the American, Jose Padilla, within 45 days from the military brig in Charleston, S.C., where he has been held since June 2002. That left the Bush administration time to appeal, and a Justice Department spokesman, John Nowacki, said officials immediately decided to do so.
In his opinion, Judge Floyd sharply criticized the administration's use of the enemy combatant designation in Mr. Padilla's case.
"The court finds that the president has no power, neither express nor implied, neither constitutional nor statutory, to hold petitioner as an enemy combatant," Judge Floyd wrote.
The judge said he had no choice but to reject the president's claim that he had the power to detain Mr. Padilla, who was arrested in May 2002 at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago and was later accused of having planned to detonate a radiation-spewing "dirty bomb" in the United States as part of a plot by Al Qaeda.
"To do otherwise would not only offend the rule of law and violate this country's constitutional tradition," Judge Floyd wrote, "but it would also be a betrayal of this nation's commitment to the separation of powers that safeguards our democratic values and individual liberties."

Professor Froomkin says, “I could do without the suggestion that the Court ‘might wish’ to see the President enjoy the arbitrary power of detention against any citizen, but however you slice it this is a stinging rebuke of the Administration’s awful arguments.”

Correct me if I’m wrong, Professor, but didn’t the Administration choose South Carolina specifically because they felt the courts in this circuit would be most sympathetic to their case?

posted at 3:58 PM by Sid the Fish
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