A South Dakota Moderate

In several posts in the past, I have mentioned President Bush’s belief that he has the authority to usurp the Constitution, Congress and the courts in the name of national security. What hadn’t been mentioned is whom actually came up with that position for the White House. Apparently his name is David Addington and he [...]

The Washington Post has a piece regarding the effect that the Hamdan decision will have on the philosophy of the Bush Administration of “waging war as he saw fit”.
For five years, President Bush waged war as he saw fit. If intelligence officers needed to eavesdrop on overseas telephone calls without warrants, he authorized it. If [...]

Now that the Republican and Democratic conventions have come and gone here in South Dakota a couple of thoughts have been rolling around in my head and they all have to do with the term “big tent party” that seems to be the rage in both parties.
To be honest I had never really heard that [...]

Tribal council members from the Oglala Sioux have finally gotten their wish. Yesterday in their 3rd attempt to impeach tribal president Cecelia Fire Thunder, they received enough votes to remove her from office when the council voted 9-5 to impeach.
Fire Thunder’s one women attempt to set up a Planned Parenthood clinic on the [...]

Sounds like a court case, and I guess in a way it sort of has to do with the court but in actuality it has to do with Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas sticking his foot in his mouth when calling out Justice John Stevens in his dissenting opinion on yesterday’s Hamdan v. Rumsfeld case that [...]

As I mentioned in my post about Bill O’Reilly totally ignoring the fact that his and the rest of Fox News ratings are falling noticeably, the same can also be said with the other right-wing talking heads both on the air and in the blogosphere.
US Newswire is reporting that many of the more popular right-wing [...]

Bill O’Reilly might want to fire those on his staff that are checking the facts for his show on the “fair and balanced” network. On his June 27th broadcast BillO quoted ratings numbers that he said showed that MSNBC’s ratings were lower than they were 6 years ago and that departed MSNBC president Rick Kaplan had [...]

The laptop stolen from a VA employee’s home that contained personal information of over 26 million veterans has been found according to Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson. The FBI is saying that at this point there is no evidence that the database has been accessed since the theft and so far none of the veterans [...]

The Supreme Court has just ruled 5-3 (Justice Roberts abstained) that President Bush overstepped his authority by ordering military war crimes trials for the Guantanamo Bay detainees. Even the predominantly conservative court thinks the administration’s propensity for making up their own rules is illegal.
UPDATE: Some more information and possible repercussions from this decision are now [...]

The Supreme Court’s decision yesterday that basically held up Texas’ redrawing of 23 congressional districts which resulted in Republicans picking up 6 more seats could open the flood gates in other states for similar mapping according to the Wall Street Journal.
Districts that are normally revised once every 10 years after the census can now be [...]

The City Council in the predominately Democratic city of Berkeley, California has decided to let it’s residents vote on a call to impeach President Bush and Vice President Cheney.
Of course the vote means absolutely nothing but they will shell out $10,000 in taxpayer funds to have this advisory measure on the ballot. Political pandering and [...]

The latest flap coming from the White House regarding the New York Times publishing information on the “secret” program setup to track financial records seems to be just another in the ever increasing number of hypocritical statements coming from the Administration and the conservative blogosphere. In an earlier post I documented some of the conservative [...]