> what is it a diversion "from" anyhow?
I just finished reading John Lewis Gaddis' "The Cold War - A New History" and it mentioned the Jackson-Vanik amendment. I didn't know much about it at the time, but here's a decent summary:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson-Vanik_amendment
Gaddis says that at the time, Kissinger felt that this was a bad idea:
"Kissinger protested that the provisions of the Trade
Reform Act had been among the carefully balanced sticks
and carrots that had persueded the Soviet Union at last
to agree on the limitation of strategic arms."
The amendment passed, and the Soviets pulled out of the deal, perhaps un-doing a bit of Cold War Thaw that was occuring at the time. Gaddis continues:
"But these events had advanced a different cause. Through
a circuitous process involving its own constitutional
checks and balances, the presidential ambitions of an
ambitious senator, and the diminishing power of an ethically
challenged president, the United States had wound up taking
a position consistent with the 1948 United Nations Universal
Declaration on Human Rights: that neither national sovereignty
nor the demands of diplomacy should allow states to treat their
own citizens in any way they pleased. There was after all, if
not a universal standard of justice, then at least a basic
standard of human decency that ought to take precedence, even
over efforts to stabilize the Cold War."
Where is the Jackson-Vanik amendment of our time? Where are the legislators who will stand up to the shortcuts that the executive are taking each day that will, if left unchecked, extract a toll far beyond the 'blood and treasure' we're experiencing with the adventure in Iraq?
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It's probably not here:
http://feingold.senate.gov/~feingold/pdf/ltr_031507_Gonzales.pdf
I think it's weird that only 4 hits come from Google News on this issue.
http://news.google.com/news?q=kennedy+durbin+feingold+gonzales
Here's one:
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/03/democratic_sena.html
Maybe, as Doug says, the war is a <<bloody, expensive "diversion.">> ... but what about the other war, the one being waged on US soil? The one that the majority of people on this list are personally having waged against them?
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William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!
Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the
law to get after the Devil?
William Roper: Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!
Sir Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil
turned 'round on you - where would you hide, Roper, the laws all
being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to
coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're
just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright
in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit
of law, for my own safety's sake!
-- from "A Man For All Seasons"
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/jordan