Carnival of the Liberals 85

Wow! LXXXV is a lot of carnivals. Go and read Carnival of the Liberals LXXXV.  My fave:

Greg Laden presents “The Bible as Ethnography.” This is a poor title for an awesome post, in which Greg deals with the idea “that a good chunk of the old Testament is telling a story about nomadic pastoralists”, linked to Southeast African cultures. In other words, could the old Testament be an “African thing”? It’s a fascinating idea.

Worse or worst

The blinkered, single-issue, “pro-life” commenters with their “Tiller deserved it” hate speech need to look at “A Heartbreaking Choice.” No one is pro-abortion. Late abortions are done for dire medical reasons. Unfortunately, sometimes there’s just the choice between worse and worst.

Protesters chase British Nazi from press conference

It seems that a member of the British Nazi Party has been elected to the European Parliament, essentially because few people bothered to vote. However, protesters threw eggs at the winner until he abandoned an outdoor press conference. I guess the celebrated British reserve doesn’t extend to being represented by fascists. I hope that people turn out for the next election.

Minnesotans call for Senator Franken to be seated.

ASSOCIATED PRESS Nancy Gertner (right) joins other Minnesotans at a … – Washington Times

Senator Nancy Gertner and other Minnesotans rally at St. Paul MN in May. She feels that Minnesota is under-represented on agricultural issues without both its senators.

The people are asking for Norm Coleman to drop his lawsuits and protests and let Senator Franken be seated after seven months of delays. Senator Franken won the election, the recount, and the count of votes that both parties agreed to include. Coleman now wants to count another small batch of votes, although they are unlikely to change the result. Coleman notoriously suggested that Franken concede the election before all the votes were counted. The narrow margin of Franken’s win triggered an automatic recount. Coleman asked Franken to concede instead, to save taxpayers’ money. Now that he’s losing, he wants to spend taxpayers’ money until the cows come home. Can we spell “S-O-R-E    L-O-S-E-R”?

Shared via AddThis

Boneheads and brazen liars

Steve Harper for trying to keep Canadian citizens out of Canada

Abousfian Abdelrazik has been taking shelter in the Canadian embassy in Khartoum for years but Canada won’t let him fly home because there was a security watch on his name. He’s never been in trouble and has since been cleared by security groups, but that’s not good enough for Harper: the man’s an Ay-rab, after all.

Order the government to bring him home now, lawyers for Abousfian Abdelrazik asked a federal court judge yesterday, insisting that years of broken promises and duplicity must finally end.

The repeated, and always-tougher, requirements imposed by the government “can only be considered bad faith and reprehensible conduct in the extreme,” Paul Champ said. He asked Federal Court Justice Russel Zinn to “order the government to repatriate” Mr. Abdelrazik, who remains on the UN blacklist of al-Qaeda suspects despite being cleared by Canada’s antiterrorist agencies.

Mr. Champ said the government should be ordered to get Mr. Abdelrazik home by whatever means it chooses, whether on a commercial flight or a government jet, as long as the order brooks no further delay.

The government’s latest claim, that its hands are tied by the United Nations, amounts to “deliberately twisting what these resolutions mean to try and come up with a means to try and block” Mr. Abdelrazik’s return, Mr. Champ said.

Only a few hundred metres from the court building, opposition MPs railed during a raucous Question Period at Foreign Min[i]ster Lawrence Cannon for his treatment of Mr. Abdelrazik.

“The minister can no longer hide. There are no second-class citizens in this country,” said Liberal Bob Rae, referring to the assurances of a senior UN official who told The Globe and Mail that Canada could bring Mr. Abdelrazik home any time it wanted because the travel ban imposed by the blacklist didn’t bar citizens from returning home.

Mr. Cannon rejected the view of Richard Barrett, the senior UN official responsible for administering the UN’s al-Qaeda and Taliban list.

“This does not change anything,” Mr. Cannon said, adding that the government interpreted the UN resolution differently. “The government of Canada takes its international obligations very seriously.”

….he was imprisoned nearly six years ago in Sudan.

…. When more than 200 Canadians chipped in to buy him a ticket last month and Etihad Airlines offered to fly him to Montreal in defiance of the American “no-fly” list, separate from the UN blacklist, Mr. Cannon announced he was refusing Mr. Abdelrazik what had been previously promised, a one-way-home emergency travel document.

And now, Harper is appealing the court’s decision that Canada must ask for our child soldier, Omar Khadr, back from the U.S. military prison camp at Guantanamo Bay.

Khadr was 15 and unconscious, and had been shot twice in the back, when he was captured by U.S. marines. Despite that, some of them are sure that of the nine people in the house, Omar was the one that threw a grenade at them. The others were all killed. Khadr was kept confined for two years before he got to see a lawyer. So much for habeas corpus and the right to a representative! But in spite of World Court rulings that a child soldier is not fully responsible for his or her actions while under the control of adults, Harper doesn’t want him back: he’s an Ay-rab! I can’t think of any other reason. Besides the small-minded meanness of the typical Conservative politician, that is.

Brian Mulroney for stupid lying

The former Liberal Conservative Prime Minister can’t remember what he did with all the money. First he sued the government for suggesting that he did anything wrong—and collected damages. Then he admitted that, yes, he did take hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash payments from an industry lobbyist.  But he says he didn’t do anything for it. So he’s not even an honest poliitician: he doesn’t stay bought.