Rosa Parks, the woman who is credited for starting of the modern civil rights movement (in 1955) died yesterday (Monday 10/25/2005).  Her arrest for refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white man sparked a 381-day boycott of the bus system by Martin Luther King, Jr.  She has since worked for U.S. Representative John Conyers (who I think is one of the few Democrats that are actually active in the House).  She was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1996, and the Congressional Gold Medal in 1999.

I overheard this question on the radio, and I thought I'd pass it on to my readers and see if you have any good responses.  50 years after her peaceful demonstration, it is almost unbelievable that we treated humans living in our own country so badly.  What do you think people 50 years from now, looking back on our time, will wonder about our behavior?  Will they be ashamed of anything that we do today?  Will they be proud of our efforts?

Electronic voting systems "aren't likely to be sufficiently secure by the 2006 elections," CNET reports. A new GAO report says current xisting systems are "rife with problems" and include vulnerabilities "from easily-guessed administrator passwords to incorrect software installation."

(From Taegan Goddard's Political Wire)

Note to self: Don't use electronic voting when I vote next.  No telling how many votes were swapped, changed, or thrown out in Ohio last election...

As was pointed out, I haven't said much about me recently... That's because nothing much has happened.  I'm just spending my time working, and reading the news (you don't get much news from watching it).  The only thing going on at my house is that my tree that I planted earlier this summer has lost all its leaves from too much hot weather and isn't doing so well.

It's getting entertaining watching the Republican spin machine self destruct.  I've enjoyed them attacking their own over the nomination of Bush's personal (corporate) lawyer to the Supreme Court.  I'm a little surprised the Democrats haven't spoken up much more about it, but I guess they're just waiting until the Republicans finish attacking themselves.  It's also funny watching the religious right complain about how they don't know her stance on abortion.  First of all, it's pretty clear that she's extremely "pro-life" as the religious right define it.  But does that really matter?  She (like Roberts before her) is a corporate lawyer, she protects the rights of corporations over those of actual citizens.  How about putting in someone who will protect the rights of people first, no mater what his/her position on abortion is?  Oh, well, like Bush said, she was the most qualified person for the job...(within 30 feet of his office?)

UPDATE: Will wonders never cease...

A former CIA Officer and security consultant discusses the corruption that grew in part from the "misguided neoconservative agenda for Iraq", including Halliburton's overcharging our government an estimated $200 million. 

Granted, this magazine is a true conservative magazine, which has little to do with the 'Don't tax and spend anyway' corporate 'Republicans' of today.

What I saw was a cabal between the vice-president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made. Now it is paying the consequences of making those decisions in secret, but far more telling to me is America is paying the consequences.
-- Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, quoted by the Financial Times. A complete transcript is available.

Wow...this is kinda scary...even though many of us suspected as much for quite a while. 

UPDATE:

I've recently been given reference to this quote by Rush Limbaugh, the full context of it can be found in Media Matter's post here.

He said, "Since I get so few qualified Liberals calling this program, I explain to my audience what Liberals mean when they say things.  I do more than add context. I know you Liberals like every square centimeter of my naked body, and I'm able to explain what Liberals mean when they say things as well as they are."

I've listened to some of what he attributes to 'liberals' and he either has no idea what 'liberals' believe or he is just misrepresenting it on purpose.  Either way, and I'm sorry that I'm being rude, but his statement is probably true anyway - he'd be hard pressed to identify his own feet, let alone every square centimeter of his body.

UPDATE2: 

Well, Tom Delay has been indited and booked.  Unfortunately for us, this picture of his mug shot won't do very well for political ads, so I guess we'll just have to describe all of his unethical deeds.  Of course, I don't know of any other criminal that has a full-color mug-shot without the booking number on it.

UPDATE again:

I knew it wouldn't be long before fake mugshots came out...

I don't know why the media spent most of the day covering the fact that the "talk" between Bush and some troops last Thursday was rehearsed.

After all, if you just listened to it, you could tell that there was only one person who didn't rehearse for this conference...Bush.  He was more stumbly with his words then he's ever been.  The only difference is that this time we have proof.  The Daily Show tied this to many of the other fake photo-ops in its episode on Monday (partial transcript).

On another political note, I've just heard that estimates from the Iraq vote is that 99% of registered voters actually went and voted, and 90% of them voted for the constitution.  I'll wait until I make my judgements, but this seems suspiciously high numbers...expecially knowing that almost all of the Suni's were planning to vote against it.  Though I really don't think it matters if the vote was fixed (like Ohio) because if the constitution passes, we get an Iran-like theocricy in Iraq - great.  And if the vote was fixed, we get an official civil-war in Iraq, instead of the unofficial civil-war that has ben going on for years there.

On yet another political note, it seems like the inditments from the ratting out of the CIA covert agent may be coming really soon, and may go as high as Vice President Darth Dick Cheney.  And that Ambassador Joe Wilson and his wife (the CIA agent) are considering bring up a civil charge against Bush and Cheney using the Supreme Court ruling that let the Paula Jones case go through (during Clinton's sexual harrassment scandal that was summarily dismissed as groundless). 

UPDATE: I got a good reminder from Frank_The_Fish (a very humorous writer)

He reminded me that Bush's approval ratings are at 2% among black people polled in a NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.  I think they must have polled Rice for that 2% though.  And furthermore, that poll had a 3.4% margin of error, so theoretically it is possible that a negative 1.4% of blacks approve of Bush's job as president.  That would mean that more blacks disapprove of Bush then there are blacks in the country.  Before you say that this is impossible, if we are actually nearing the end times, blacks can be coming back from the dead to disapprove of Bush... Or with the pervailence of pro-lifers around, maybe they've determined that pre-born black zygotes could be disapproving of Bush.  (Tips to Stephanie Miller for the last two remarks)

More lies from our good old Texas congressman DeLay...

In a Wednesday night appearance on MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews, he said Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle never talked to him or asked him to testify.

"Never asking me to testify, never doing anything for two years," DeLay said in the interview. "And then, on the last day of his fourth or sixth grand jury, he indicts me. Why? Because his goal was to make me step down as majority leader."

.....

Dick DeGuerin, the attorney representing DeLay, said Thursday that DeLay actually was invited to appear before the grand jury, where he would have been under oath. The Houston attorney was not yet on the legal team when DeLay was asked to appear, but he said other attorneys advised him not to testify — a decision DeGuerin supports.

This is in addition to DeLay accusing Earl (the prosecutor) of being "an unabashed partisan zealot" engaging in "personal revenge" even though prosecutors can't indict, only grand juries.

Hello?  Pot?  It's Kettle for you on line 1....Says your black...

Of course Earl has presecuted 11 Democrats in his many years as a prosecutor, and only 4 Republicans.  Here's the list of the 'big' names that he's prosecuted.

Think progress has a video and summary of his own "defence" on FOX NEWS of all places.