Tuesday, January 10, 2006

from Cheers & Jeers blogpost

George W. Bush--April 20, 2004: "Any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires---a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so."
-
George W. Bush, July 14, 2004: "A couple of things that are very important for you to understand about the Patriot Act. First of all, any action that takes place by law enforcement requires a court order. In other words, the government can't move on wiretaps or roving wiretaps without getting a court order."


by columnist Bob Herbert from yesterday's The New York Times:
For a president---any president---to O.K. eavesdropping on U.S. citizens on American soil without a warrant is an abomination. First, it's illegal---and for very good reasons. Spying on the populace is a giant step toward totalitarianism. In the worst case scenario, it's the nightmare of Soviet-style surveillance.
Related to that is the all-important matter of the separation of powers, which is the absolutely crucial cornerstone of our form of government---our bulwark against tyranny. ... Get rid of the checks and balances and you've gotten rid of the United States as we've known it.

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PURLS OF WISDOM

"Color is the real substance for me, the real underlying thing which drawing and line are not."
--Sam Francis

"The great man is one who never loses his child's heart."
-- Philosopher Mencius

"We wear our attitudes in our bodies."
-- Patti Davis

Colour embodies an enormous though unexplored power which can effect the entire human body as physical organism.

Colour is a means of exercising direct influence upon the soul.
--V. Kandinsky
I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way.. things I had no words for.
--
Georgia O'Keeffe

Nothing is really work unless you'd rather be doing something else.
--
J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan

Faith is like driving a car at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.
--
E. L. Doctorow

Somebody once said that people become artists
because they have a certain kind of energy to release, and that rings true to me.
--Dale Chihuly