Posts by David Slack
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- Secondly, second-term presidents have very little accountability and can do anything they like as they will never need to be reelected.
Yes, but they typically have a party machine that wants to win the midterms and the next Presidential. Those guys are not without influence.
I think Simon Grigg is right about Dick, though, and he probably trumps the rest. Apart from anything else I imagine he didn't relish the prospect of Libby coming out of the pen and writing tell-alls in the Liddy/Dean fashion.
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From "Devil May Care" by Tucker Carlson, Talk Magazine, September 1999, p. 106
While driving back from the speech later that day, Bush mentions Karla Faye Tucker, a double murderer who was executed in Texas last year. In the weeks before the execution, Bush says, Bianca Jagger and a number of other protesters came to Austin to demand clemency for Tucker. 'Did you meet with any of them?' I ask.
Bush whips around and stares at me. 'No, I didn't meet with any of them,' he snaps, as though I've just asked the dumbest, most offensive question ever posed. 'I didn't meet with Larry King either when he came down for it. I watched his interview with [Tucker], though. He asked her real difficult questions, like 'What would you say to Governor Bush?'
'What was her answer?' I wonder.
'Please,' Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, 'don't kill me.'
I must look shocked -- ridiculing the pleas of a condemned prisoner who has since been executed seems odd and cruel, even for someone as militantly anticrime as Bush -- because he immediately stops smirking.
'It's tough stuff,' Bush says, suddenly somber, 'but my job is to enforce the law.' As it turns out, the Larry King-Karla Faye Tucker exchange Bush recounted never took place, at least not on television. During her interview with King, however, Tucker did imply that Bush was succumbing to election-year pressure from pro-death penalty voters. Apparently Bush never forgot it. He has a long memory for slights.
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You're quite right, he does have the power, but a better President (and this could equally apply to Clinton) might also consider the effect his action will have on the citizens' attitude to the rule of law and the probity of their government. 'One law for all' resonated pretty strongly here in recent times, and it has no less significance elsewhere in the democratic world.
As for it not really being a clincher, you're quite right: it's not. It's just one more dismal validation of the misgivings so many of us have had for so long. Hence the ironic 'this just in'
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It happened yesterday morning. Young, fit-looking guy. When they took him away he was unconscious. I asked after him at the gym this morning and the latest they'd heard was that he was in a coma. That's all I know.
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Che, have you been able to check your ECG since Sir Humphreys went off the air?
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What, not vote:parliamentary services?
Who do you think will fight harder to keep their bone: teachers or pollies?
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Universal sufferage at 16 - is that the ultimate for Sue?
You've reminded me of this amusing exercise, which I've added to the post.
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Why don’t they just call it quits, and spare us the sight and sound of Joe Karam every day for the next 2 years?
The pragmatist in me agrees, but it seems more important to me that we don't undermine the rule of law by taking shortcuts that might undermine the system. Justice, seen to be done, and done by following well-developed principles is the best assurance we all have that order is maintained, and that innocent people have every opportunity to defend themselves. (Recognising, of course that it can be done imperfectly, for which there are remedies, and why we are now at the point we are.)
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But to suggest that simply because they have a large readership then what they publish is NEWS - is bollocks.
Equally, to argue that because lots of folks read the story about Ms Elder's drugs charges then it is NEWS - is also Bollocks.
Would that make it a pair of bollocks, Bart?
I'm just saying that the stats on the Herald page show you what was most clicked. That echoes what Damian described a while ago about TV ratings - what people profess to want and what the ratings seem to suggest they want can be at odds, making due allowance for the limitations of the methodology, of course. This isn't to say that people want exclusively one or the other, though, and perhaps that's what's going on here. With obvious exceptions.
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deep-friend till crunch and eaten whole
I presume this is the work of misplaced thumbs, but I hope you will let this stand in its present form as a fantasy of Asian culinary exotica.