The Bear on Dec 31 2005 | Filed under: Need to Know
As legend has it, the Grim Reaper moves among us, unseen and unstoppable. His ugly, skeletal face is obscured by a black hood and no one knows he is near until his touch claims your life. Only in death is his face revealed. It is troubling that after America was attacked on her own soil [...]
The Bear on Dec 31 2005 | Filed under: Need to Know
Jimmy Carter makes the list of the “Ten Worst Americans”
The Bear on Dec 31 2005 | Filed under: Need to Know
It has always been Bush vs. the Fourth Estate of Government
The Bear on Dec 31 2005 | Filed under: Need to Know
In applied mathematics, there is a technique of proving a theorem called “taking the contrapositive.” When you take the contrapositive, you don’t prove that the theorem is true, you demonstrate that the consequences of its being untrue are impossible. Perhaps surprisingly, this technique makes many proofs much simpler then they otherwise would be. We can [...]
The Bear on Dec 31 2005 | Filed under: Need to Know
The paradox of ever-increasing expectations. After September 11 national-security-minded Democratic politicians fell over each other, voting for all sorts of tough measures. They passed the Patriot Act, approved the war in Afghanistan, voted to authorize the removal of Saddam Hussein, and nodded when they were briefed about Guantanamo or wiretap intercepts of suspect phone calls [...]
The Bear on Dec 31 2005 | Filed under: Need to Know
WASHINGTON — ‘Tis the end of 2005 and time to look back. In politics what do I see? Well, I see the Republican Party struggling against high seas. In the media the party is depicted as being in danger of losing to the Democrats in the off-year elections next fall. That probably will be the [...]
The Bear on Dec 31 2005 | Filed under: Need to Know
The Justice Department has opened an investigation into leaks to the media about the classified domestic National Security Agency surveillance program. The New York Times was the first to report the story on December 16th and then officials confirmed the existence of it to CNN and other organizations. “The Justice Department has opened an investigation [...]
The Bear on Dec 30 2005 | Filed under: Quote of the Day
Bush talks about Iraq, his numbers go up. Democrats talk trash on national security, their numbers go down. Simple. We’re at war in Iraq and we’re fighting a war on terror. Bush acted like he forgot about Iraq at the beginning of the year and the Dems are acting like they’ve forgotten about the war [...]
The Bear on Dec 30 2005 | Filed under: Need to Know
Why Congress is held in such low esteem
The Bear on Dec 30 2005 | Filed under: Need to Know
Moral and legal aspects aside, conventional wisdom is that torture simply isn’t practical: that someone who is being tortured will say anything to make the torture stop, and that information gleaned through torture is therefore not reliable. Some former military and intelligence officers say, however, that physically aggressive interrogation techniques that some human rights groups [...]
Webloggin Feeds