Where's the Outrage?

Monday morning news Roundup

• Department of Homeland Security Director Janet Napolitano defended the somewhat “controversial” report which really found what we already knew: that right-wing extremists are targeting veterans just returning from Iraq or Afghanistan.  This is a no-brainer, but somehow the folks at Fox News tried to turn this into a “war on veterans.”  If you were a right-wing extremist, whom would you target?  You would want to look for someone who was ultra-nationalistic.  Who would that be?
• Jay Bybee needs to be impeached.  He’s one of the authors of the four torture memos and now sits on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.
• Melissa, from Shakesville, correctly calls out Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.  Governor Palin recently spoke at a anti-abortion group and stated that “there, just for a fleeting moment, I thought, I knew, nobody knows me here.  No one would ever know.  I thought, wow, it is easy.  It could be easy to think maybe of trying to change the circumstances.  No one would know.”  She’s talking about possibly aborting her youngest child.  Governor Palin, as usual, is full of horse hockey.  Palin is trying to say that she identifies with women who go through these emotions but 73% of women who have abortions state they did it for financial reasons.  Governor Palin isn’t rich but she’s not poor either.
• It has been 15 years since Nelson Mandela was elected president of South Africa.  South Africa now enters a critical period in their development.  Is South Africa really going to be different than the rest of Africa?  Is their prosperity going to be widely shared or is it going to be concentrated among a selected few hands?  Here’s a great article on where South Africa is now.
• President Barack Obama is keeping his word. He is doing a lot of listening at this Western hemispheric summit.  There’s a lot of discussion about Cuba and the ineffective 47-year-old embargo.  Venezuela’s “president” Hugo Chavez is playing the class clown as expected.  Yet, I think that President Obama is convincing leaders that the United States wants to be an equal partner as we go forward.

• Representative Jane Harmon (D) seems to be in a world of trouble.  It appears that one of those NSA wiretaps has caught her making some kind of deal. TPM has more.
• BTW, what happened to the guys of the Jena 6?

Tags: Domestic Spying, Foreign Affairs, Obama administration, Torture // 3 Comments »