Ida became a Category 1 hurricane overnight, moved a little closer to the Yucatan peninsula, and is expected to strengthen to a Cat 2 before entering the Gulf of Mexico. She is expected to make landfall somewhere along the "East-Central Gulf Coast in 48 to 72 hours." At 7:50 am this morning, Weather Channel hurricane guru Steve Lyons was predicting a "Pensacola-Mobile" landfall Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning.
Believe it. A named tropical storm -- Ida -- has been born off the Yucatan Peninsula and current forecasts have it becoming a hurricane later tonight, then entering the Gulf of Mexico and heading north. It is expected to make landfall somewhere along the central Gulf Coast on Tuesday.As a Republican student activist, Tancredo spoke out in favor of the Vietnam War but did not serve. After graduating from college in June 1969, he became eligible to serve in Vietnam. Tancredo said he went for his physical, telling doctors he'd been treated for depression, and eventually got a deferment.
Wikipedia edit - Friday Nov. 6, 10:21 pm CDT:
On November 6, 2009 , Tancredo walked out in the middle of an interview on [[The Ed Show]] because he was called out by Daily Kos founder and US Army veteran Markos Moulitsas for avoiding service in Vietnam by obtaining a diagnosis of depression. Tancredo said he did not have to be insulted in that way but made no denial of Moulitsas' charge.
"Let's face it. This is sort of how we went about the rescue -- we rescued at the top and we left the bottom to kind of fend for itself -- and that's showing up in the unemployment numbers."
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As we have said before, "FDR's New Deal program was designed mainly to help the little guy get on his feet. George Bush's program, which Obama has left essentially in place, was aimed at helping the rich get richer." That's why we now have nearly eleven percent unemployment.
"Anyone who believes in the fantasy of nation building in Afghanistan should, at the very least, read about the failure of Reconstruction in the South, where the local insurgency, led by the Ku Klux Klan, prevailed over the Union forces led by now-President Ulysses Grant."Here in Northwest Florida, we know something about that. There are days when it seems Civil War never ended.
PENSACOLA BEACH, FL - A ruling on whether Pensacola Beach residents will have to pay property taxes is now imminent.
That's according to the Assistant to First Circuit Court Judge Michael Jones, who began working on his ruling this week.
The lawsuit was filed by Pensacola Beach residents in 2004 to challenge Escambia Property Appraiser Chris Jones' decision to put beach properties on the county tax rolls.
Beach residents argued that when they bought property, they were told they would only have to pay lease fees and not taxes.
But [Chris] Jones argued that guarantee was never in any of type of legal contract.
A similar lawsuit filed by owners at Portofino Condominiums was rejected by the First Circuit Court Of Appeals last August.
There's another oddity, with dark portents for beach leaseholders. The station's web site links to its news video with this headline: "Pensacola Beach Residents Will Pay Property Tax." Here's the screenshot (click to enlarge):
Arar vs. Ashcroft"This is precisely how the character of a country becomes fundamentally degraded when it becomes a state in permanent war."
Arar’s life-altering odyssey is one of the best known and best investigated of those victimized by U.S. extraordinary rendition. After vacationing with his family in Tunisia, Arar attempted to fly home to Canada. On Sept. 26, 2002, while changing planes at JFK Airport, Arar was pulled aside for questioning. He was fingerprinted and searched by the FBI and the New York Police Department. He asked for a lawyer and was told he had no rights. He was then taken to another location and subjected to two days of aggressive interrogations, with no access to phone, food or a lawyer. He was asked about his membership with various terrorist groups, about Osama bin Laden, Iraq, Palestine and more. Shackled, he was then moved to a maximum-security federal detention center in Brooklyn, strip-searched and threatened with deportation to Syria.Procedure (HT Scott Horton):
* * *
For nearly two weeks, the U.S. authorities held the Syria threat over his head. Still, he denied any involvement with terrorism. So in the middle of the night, over a weekend, without normal immigration proceedings—without telling his lawyer or the Canadian Consulate—he was dragged in chains to a private jet contracted by the CIA and flown to Jordan, where he was then handed over to the Syrians.For 10 months and 10 days, Maher was held in a dark, damp, cold cell, measuring 6 feet by 3 feet by 7 feet high, the size of a grave. He was beaten repeatedly with a thick electrical cable all over his body, punched, made to listen to the torture of others, denied food and threatened with electrical shock and an array of more horrors. To stop the torture, he falsely confessed to attending terrorist training in Afghanistan. Then, after nearly a year, he was abruptly released to Canada, 40 pounds lighter and emotionally destroyed.
The United States tenaciously refused to acknowledge ever having made any mistakes—even after its own sources did so. It stonewalled Congressional probes and issued a travel ban to stop Arar from testifying before Congress. The Bush Justice Department made aggressive representations to the courts in response to Arar’s suit that strained credulity at almost every step. As in other cases, their trump card was simple: when caught with pants down, shout “state secrets!”Decision (HT Glenn Greenwald):When the two inspectors general, Richard L. Skinner and Clark Kent Ervin, appeared before the House Judiciary Committee to testify on the matter * * * [b]oth inspectors general concurred that a criminal investigation was now warranted. Their own report produced ample evidence of gross departures from established procedures, as well as evidence that the entire case was being politically micromanaged by political figures in the attorney general’s office and in the White House, who repeatedly overrode the decisions of the professional staff. Attorney General Mukasey, however, subsequently declined to direct the investigation. It’s noteworthy that the investigation would have focused on the attorney general’s own office, which raises fair questions about why the attorney general would be the person making this decision.
Yesterday, the Second Circuit -- by a vote of 7-4 -- agreed with the government and dismissed Arar's case in its entirety. It held that even if the government violated Arar's Constitutional rights as well as statutes banning participation in torture, he still has no right to sue for what was done to him. Why? Because "providing a damages remedy against senior officials who implement an extraordinary rendition policy would enmesh the courts ineluctably in an assessment of the validity of the rationale of that policy and its implementation in this particular case, matters that directly affect significant diplomatic and national security concerns" (p. 39). In other words, government officials are free to do anything they want in the national security context -- even violate the law and purposely cause someone to be tortured -- and courts should honor and defer to their actions by refusing to scrutinize them.Dissent (HT Scott Horton):
[S]tate secrecy claims are preposterous because the diplomatic and intelligence relationship that would supposedly have been compromised was that with Canada, and the Canadians had already come clean about what had happened and confessed to their own part in it, publishing a report as thick as two Manhattan telephone books. In this process, the Canadians behaved just like a modern democracy should. So it is not damage to relations with our neighbor to the North that is a concern. Rather, it is embarrassment of political figures in Washington.The author of the majority opinion is Dennis Jacobs, who spent a lifetime as a complete nonentity before being appointed chief justice of the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals by George W. Bush in 2006. He now joins Roger Taney (1777-1864) as one of the absolute worst judges in United States history.Calabresi generously accepts the suggestion that the Second Circuit acted out of concern for national security. Still, he delivers an appropriate lashing. The majority, Calabresi charges, “engaged in extraordinary judicial activism.” Its activism was aimed at extricating political actors from a precarious predicament and keeping the door firmly shut on what may well be the darkest chapter in the entire history of the Justice Department. In so doing, the court’s majority delivered an example of timidity in the face of government misconduct the likes of which have not been seen since the darkest days of the Cold War.
When the history of the Second Circuit is written, the Arar decision will have a prominent place. It offers all the historical foresight of Dred Scott, in which the Court rallied to the cause of slavery, and all the commitment to constitutional principle of the Slaughter-House Cases, in which the Fourteenth Amendment was eviscerated. The Court that once affirmed that those who torture are the “enemies of all mankind” now tells us that U.S. government officials can torture without worry, because the security of our state might some day depend upon it. [emphasis added]
This is precisely how the character of a country becomes fundamentally degraded when it becomes a state in permanent war. So continuous are the inhumane and brutal acts of government leaders that the citizens completely lose the capacity for moral outrage and horror.
Yes, yes, we know. Don't judge a book by its cover... it's not the beauty outside, but the beauty inside... there's no such thing as an ugly male... all of that. 
It's a profoundly pessimistic view that essentially argues that Pensacola dare not dream bigger, because the city and its people are not capable of it. * * * What we like most about the new charter is that creates a true leadership position accountable to voters."Not to be pessimistic or anything, but who was it who elected the council they have now? And, what kind of 'accountability to voters' is it when you embed term limits for city officials in a proposed organic city charter?
The law suit involving most of the residential leases on the Pensacola Beach (approximately 2400 parcels) was argued by Danny Kepner on May 2, 2008 before Judge Michael Jones. It has been nearly 18 months and the judge has not yet issued a ruling on this case.Attorney Kepner is very much alive. As for Judge Jones, who knows? Has anyone checked his pulse?
