May 2005 Archives

A month ago the British press broke the story of what's come to be called the Downing Street Memo, the confidential minute which confirmed that the British and American administrations had decided to invade Iraq as early as the spring of 2002. Want more evidence?

RAF bombing raids tried to goad Saddam into war

THE RAF and US aircraft doubled the rate at which they were dropping bombs on Iraq in 2002 in an attempt to provoke Saddam Hussein into giving the allies an excuse for war, new evidence has shown.

The attacks were intensified from May, six months before the United Nations resolution that Tony Blair and Lord Goldsmith, the attorney-general, argued gave the coalition the legal basis for war. By the end of August the raids had become a full air offensive.
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The new information, obtained by the Liberal Democrats, shows that the allies dropped twice as many bombs on Iraq in the second half of 2002 as they did during the whole of 2001, and that the RAF increased their attacks even more quickly than the Americans did.
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Tommy Franks, the allied commander, has since admitted this operation was designed to ?degrade? Iraqi air defences in the same way as the air attacks that began the 1991 Gulf war.

Not only was the invasion preordained, the war actually began in the spring of 2002 - long before the UN resolution that was supposed to give it some kind of legal cover.

No word yet on when impeachment proceedings begin.

Via Suburban Guerrilla.

How could I have been so suspicious of our government in my last post? They would never hide behind the bureaucracy to prevent an opposing viewpoint from being heard.

GM foods expert gets visa ? late

A last-minute decision to grant a visa to a prominent African scientist has some accusing Canada of abusing its position as host nation for the UN's Convention on Biological Diversity.

Ethiopia's Tewolde Berhan Gebre Egziabher is the African Union's chief negotiator on biosafety and biodiversity. He is an outspoken critic of genetically modified foods.
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This week, Tewolde missed the opening of talks on the biotechnology industry, in Montreal, because Canadian officials did not give him a visa.

He finally received his visa Tuesday morning. He says Canada appears to have abused its role as host nation, to try to exclude opposing views. He now says he hopes to arrive in Montreal for the last day of talks.

See? We didn't prevent him from being heard. It was just a bureaucratic snafu and a complete coincidence that Tewolde's views won't be heard until the action's all but over.

Can you say plausible deniability?

Canadian officials declined to discuss the case, citing privacy laws. But a government official says her information differs from Tewolde's.

They won't discuss it, but they made sure they got the last word. This still doesn't pass the smell test. Even if Tewolde's application was late (and he still insists it wasn't), you'd think that for an international conference on an important issue they would have been able to fast-track a visa for an acknowledged expert instead of coming up with reasons to delay it that have never applied before.

Update moments later:

I should read all the links that Google gives me before posting. Like this one:

At least four other would-be participants in the meeting are known to have been refused visas and there are likely others, said Eric Darier, a Greenpeace activist in Montreal.

He said all the delegates who have encountered visa problems are from poor countries and all are critics of Canada's policies promoting the trade in genetically modified foods and crops.

Tewolde has written to the executive director of the UN Environment Program asking that the Secretariat for the UN Convention on Biological Diversity be moved from Montreal to another country. So much for the world needing more Canada.

Back in February I blogged about Canada's attempt to lift the international moratorium on "terminator crops" - crops which have been genetically modified to produce only infertile seeds. It was Canada that led the charge in favour of lifting a ban on commercialisation of a technology which can only benefit corporations like Monsanto and might do untold damage to developing countries that are already struggling to feed their populations.

Canada lost that fight but it seems the powers that be have found a new way to push their agenda: hold the meetings in Montreal and refuse to let the opposition into the country.

Africa's leading expert on genetically modified foods has been refused a visa to attend a meeting next week in Montreal at the Secretariat for the UN Convention on Biological Diversity.

Ethiopia's chief scientist, Dr. Tewolde Berhan Gebre Egziabher, is critical of genetically modified foods, and his opinions often run counter to those of the Canadian government. He has been to Canada many times to attend meetings on biodiversity.

He is Africa's chief negotiator for the Cartagena Protocol and he was scheduled to attend meetings about the protocol, the United Nations treaty that governs the international movement of genetically modified organisms.

According to an NGO that has been in contact with Tewolde, the Canadian Embassy refused his entry visa and asked him Thursday to answer questions about his political involvement over the past 35 years.

But Pat Mooney of Etcetera Group, a non-profit organization that's trying to help Tewolde get into Canada, said Thursday it's probably Tewolde's views on genetically modified foods that has the government concerned.

Mooney said Tewolde is an outspoken critic of the "terminator seeds" that are engineered to be sterile, requiring farmers to buy new seeds each growing season. Mooney also said Tewolde was planning to call for the labelling of all genetically modified foods.

As this and other sources note, Tewolde has been in Canada many times before. Why are his politics suddenly an issue now? There's a Maclean's article that describes the runaround Tewolde and his supporters have been getting. Queries to Citizenship and Immigration are referred to Foreign Affairs who refer them right back to Citizenship and Immigration.

So how did our government end up in Monsanto's pocket?

In light of developments since my last post I'm going to refine the new rule I proposed. Politics Watch has an article that discusses the Grewal tape. (Hat-tip to Section 15.) It suggests that someone has heard more than the excerpt that was made available at CTV so you might want to wander over there and give it a read. It still doesn't amount to conclusive evidence of anything more than politics as usual when you consider what we already know.

The article closes with this sentence:

The Tories plan to release tapes of discussions between Dosanjh and Grewal tomorrow.

So here's the new rule with a refinement: If you have evidence to support an accusation of serious wrong-doing, don't dole it out a bit at a time as if creating some phony sense of melodrama will make a weak case look stronger. It doesn't. It makes you look desperate. Put all your evidence on the table and let us judge for ourselves. Otherwise your own credibility suffers as much as those against whom you're making the accusations.

The fact that some in the Liberal party are inching as close as possible to the line without actually crossing it in an effort to prop up their minority government isn't exactly a major revelation to most of us. I agree with James Bow when he writes that the Liberals look like a bunch of idiots here. But the vision of Conservative MPs roaming the hallowed halls of power wearing wires and playing at Spy vs. Spy and then playing coy with evidence that so far has turned out to be inconclusive is, at best, laughable.

Is anyone in either of these two parties actually interested in governing the damn country? When Ed Broadbent leaves, will there be any adults left in parliament?

Updated. Twice, even. Please see below.

B.C. MP says Liberals offered Senate or diplomatic post to change vote

Conservative MP Gurmant Grewal says the Liberals offered him a diplomatic post or a Senate seat for his wife in return for scratching his crucial budget vote.

The MP from Surrey, B.C., whose wife Nina is also a Tory MP, alleges he made an audio recording of the offer from Liberal cabinet minister Ujjal Dosanjh and Tim Murphy, Prime Minister Paul Martin's chief of staff.

Emphasis added. The new rule is this: if you have an audio recording that proves an accusation like this, then produce it. That way it's not an "alleged" audio recording. In the absence of said recording, your accusation carries about as much weight as this:

The Liberals immediately denied the allegation.

"This not what happened," said Scott Reid, Martin's director of communications.

"(Grewal) asked for a post and was told no."

And since I'm no fan of Scott "The Human Wire Brush" Reid, it really pains me to say that.

This is just getting silly now.

By the way, would it be illegal to tape that conversation without informing the other party?

Update:

Thanks to Mark in comments for reminding me why the name Gurmant Grewal seemed familiar. This is the guy who got himself in hot water after shooting his mouth off in a committee meeting about handling immigration matters in his constituency office in a manner that was, to say the least, unconventional. If you were a Liberal looking to cut a deal where discretion is of the utmost, is this the guy you would approach?

Yet another update:

OK, there's a tape. Thanks to Rhetoric in comments, you can hit this page at CTV for the story and look to the right for a video snippet with Mike Duffy in which the audio tape, such as it is, is played. It proves that a conversation took place. The voice that isn't Grewal "sounds like" Tim Murphy and he discusses a proposal which, if Grewal accepts it, would include Murphy then talking to Volpe. We're left to assume, I guess, that the last is in relation to the investigation into Grewal's immigration-related activities. We have to do a lot of assuming and guessing because the conversation starts in the middle and that, in itself, raises questions. Right now the story's pretty murky and doesn't seem to match anyone's account in particular so I'm not prepared to conclude anything much. But I suspect we'll be hearing more.

We live in interesting times.

So Stephen Harper has changed his tune. Now he's indicating that the Conservatives will support Bill C-43, which implements the original budget that the Liberals brought down, and only oppose Bill C-48, an amendment which represents the deal that Martin made with Jack Layton and the NDP.

There's an interesting opening here for Paul Martin if he wants to take advantage of it.

With Conservative support for the original budget, Dithers doesn't need the NDP. If he reneges on his deal with Layton and withdraws the amendment he can sail through Thursday with his minority government intact for another week. And as an added bonus, Tom d'Aquino might start taking his calls again.

Of course it would likely be the end of any further cooperation between the NDP and the Liberals. It might well be short term gain for long term pain. But how would that be different from the way Dithers has been operating lately?

I think I'll stock up on popcorn. I already seem to have more than enough cynicism.

Cross-posted at the E-Group.

The last time British MP George Galloway was accused of bad behaviour with regard to Saddam Hussein, he sued. And he won because the accusations were based on forged documents.

More recently it was Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman and the committee he chairs who accused Galloway of being involved in the oil-for-food scandal. Not only did Galloway deny the accusation, he insisted on going to Washington to deny it in person.

If you follow this link it will take you to a page at Information Clearing House where there's a video snippet of Galloway's testimony ready to play and a link to the full 47 minutes. I haven't watched the full version yet but the excerpt, running just under 4 minutes, is worth a look. Galloway kicks Coleman's ass.

If you'd prefer a more removed look at Galloway's testimony, you can visit the Financial Times which says that Galloway "stole the show."

Alternating between detailed rebuttal and sweeping denunciation, the MP derided the quality of the committee's evidence, his accusers' motives, and US policy in Iraq as a whole.

He did not deny that Fawaz Zureikat, his colleague and the man alleged to be the go-between for his oil allocations, could have been involved in the oil trade, saying instead that he had always known he was involved in Iraqi business.

Neither did he have a ready explanation for Iraqi letters, provided by the committee, that referred to oil deals with Middle East ASI, Mr Zureikat's company, next to Mr Galloway's name in brackets. He merely said he had not seen the documents before, and raised the possibility they might be forgeries.

Mr Galloway was adamant he had not met Mr Hussein many times, as claimed, but ?twice?: the same number of times as Donald Rumsfeld, US defence secretary. He had long opposed Mr Hussein's dictatorship, even when ?British and American governments and businessmen were selling him guns and gas?.

He owned no company that could have made profits from trading Iraqi oil, and he cast doubt on the reliability of evidence given by Iraqi officials now held prisoner by the US. He derided the committee's references to a libel case with The Daily Telegraph, a UK newspaper, as a ?schoolboy howler?.

Mr Galloway also dismissed allegations that he was involved in paying bribes totalling hundreds of thousands of dollars to Mr Hussein as ?utterly preposterous?.

And on the central contention that Iraq had allocated him oil through two front companies Aredio Petroleum or Middle East ASI Mr Galloway had a simple question: ?Where's the money?? To that the committee had no answer.

But the video is more fun, especially when Galloway reviews all the ways he was right and Coleman and company were wrong.

Conservative Stronach joins Liberals

Belinda Stronach, the millionaire businesswoman who ran for the leadership of the Conservative party in early 2004, has crossed the floor to the Liberal party and will sit in Paul Martin's cabinet as minister of human resources and skills development.

This catches me by surprise. Apparently there are some at the E-Group who feel the same way.

There will be time enough to ponder whether Stronach's motives are as idealistic as she presents them to be or whether she did a realistic assessment of the Conservatives' chances and decided that the grass looked greener elsewhere. She is, after all, one of those hard-headed business people who are used to making those tough decisions.

And I'm sure this will prompt another round of speculation about Thursday's budget vote. Cue another series of media articles on independent MPs Kilgour and Cadman.

But my first reaction is to remind everyone that not only did Stronach run for the leadership of the Conservatives just a year ago, she was instrumental in the merger that created the new party in the first place. Her rationale for getting involved was that "corporate Canada wants to see a united right." Suddenly corporate Canada is quite comfortable with the Liberals.

It reminds me why I haven't been voting either Liberal or Conservative of late.

In the short time since public hearings in the Arar inquiry have resumed, the government doesn't seem to be having its way with Justice O'Connor. And I can't say I'm upset about it.

Arar's lawyers had balked at allowing him to testify because so much of the preceding testimony has been held in camera and neither Arar nor his representatives were privy to it. As one of his lawyers, Marlys Edwardh, argued:

... Mr. Arar has, in effect, been prevented from testifying publicly because he does not know what has been said about him in secret hearings, and cannot fairly respond.

So instead Arar's team proposed the appointment of an independent fact-finder to examine and present both his story and that of Abdullah Almalki and Muayyed Nurredin, two other Canadians who were detained in Syria at about the same time as Arar's imprisonment.

The government didn't favour the idea. While acknowledging that Arar was victimized, they seem to see no problem with continuing to victimize him by keeping him in the dark and by refusing to acknowledge his innocence or allowing him to prove it.

However, Barbara McIsaac, lawyer for the federal attorney general, reminded O'Connor that he is not running a criminal trial and Arar does not need to defend himself. An independent fact-finder is not necessary, she said.

"You are an independent fact-finder," McIsaac told O'Connor.

But Arar does need to defend himself precisely because he was arrested and imprisoned without charge while nameless "officials" in the Canadian law enforcement community smeared him in the media. Until we get to the bottom of this, there will always be that lingering doubt about him in the minds of some and he has every right to expect a public inquiry to either present some evidence of his guilt or clear his name once and for all. That's the point, isn't it?

I wonder if Justice O'Connor ever has to stifle the urge to tell Ms. McIsaac to put a sock in it and sit down. I'd like to see that.

But more importantly, O'Connor has agreed to Arar's request and the fact-finder will be appointed.

And then there was the issue of allowing the RCMP to testify in public. Since the Mounties' involvement in this case is one of the central issues, it would seem to me to be a no-brainer that there isn't much point in having a public inquiry in which we don't hear from them. And despite the government's objections, Justice O'Connor has come through again.

The RCMP must publicly testify about its anti-terrorism investigation of Ottawa engineer Maher Arar, says the judge leading an inquiry into his case.

In a ruling Thursday, Justice Dennis O'Connor ordered two senior Mounties to answer questions at an open hearing about Project AO Canada, the RCMP's probe of Ottawa-area terrorism suspects, including Arar, following the 9/11 attacks on the United States.
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O'Connor rejected arguments by counsel for some AO Canada members that no RCMP witnesses should be forced to testify in public because national security concerns will prevent them from telling the full story.

"The government chose to call a public inquiry, not a private investigation," O'Connor said in the ruling.

Suddenly I'm feeling a little more optimistic.

It was just a week ago that Ron Atkey warned of the possible suppression of the commission's interim report.

A government-sponsored "culture of secrecy" surrounding the Arar inquiry has become so pervasive that it may block the truth about Maher Arar's yearlong detention in Syria from ever becoming public, independent observer Ron Atkey charged yesterday.

"I fear that the public disclosure, your interim public report, to be submitted next fall, may never see the light of day, because of continued national security claims," Mr. Atkey said in a formal submission at the commission's first public hearing in nine months.

"This is fair neither to Mr. Arar, nor the Canadian public."
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"My submissions to you today are simply to underscore the apparent unfairness to Mr. Arar, given the way this has played out."

Atkey is himself a former head of SIRC, the civilian body charged with oversight of CSIS, and was appointed as a friend of the court to deal specifically with the conflict between the government's demands for secrecy and the public's right to know. I took his pessimism seriously.

But O'Connor seems determined to shine as much light on what happened to Arar as possible. His appointment may be the only thing the government did right in this case. They certainly seem to be stonewalling in every other way possible.

Cross-posted at the E-Group.

Matthew at Living in a Society reminds us that Queen Elizabeth will be in Canada on the very day that Dithers puts his budget bill in front of the House of Commons for a vote. Matthew wonders if, under the circumstances, Her Royal Highness would actually take over her representative's responsibilities in the event the government falls.

However, does anyone know what the constitutional responsibilities of the Governor General are while the Queen is in the country? Do they remain the same, or does the Queen take over? If Martin loses another confidence vote on the 19th is he required to go out to Alberta, meet the Queen and ask that she dissolve Parliament?

And if that's the case, will Stephen Harper stomp his little feet and wail "I wanna go toooooo!"?

(In case it's not obvious, I have no use for either Dithers or Harper these days.)

Yesterday Arianna Huffington's new news and blog site - The Huffington Post - went live. In the early hours of this morning sportscaster Jim Lampley put up a post called The Biggest Story of Our Lives.

At 5:00 p.m. Eastern time on Election Day, I checked the sportsbook odds in Las Vegas and via the offshore bookmakers to see the odds as of that moment on the Presidential election. John Kerry was a two-to-one favorite. You can look it up.
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Oddsmakers consulted exit polling and knew what it meant and acknowledged in their oddsmaking at that moment that John Kerry was winning the election.

And he most certainly was, at least if the votes had been fairly and legally counted. What happened instead was the biggest crime in the history of the nation, and the collective media silence which has followed is the greatest fourth-estate failure ever on our soil.

Many of the participants in this blog have graduate school educations. It is damned near impossible to go to graduate school in any but the most artistic disciplines without having to learn about the basics of social research and its uncanny accuracy and validity. We know that professionally conceived samples simply do not yield results which vary six, eight, ten points from eventual data returns, thaty's why there are identifiable margins for error. We know that margins for error are valid, and that results have fallen within the error range for every Presidential election for the past fifty years prior to last fall. NEVER have exit polls varied by beyond-error margins in a single state, not since 1948 when this kind of polling began. In this past election it happened in ten states, all of them swing states, all of them in Bush's favor. Coincidence? Of course not.

That ought to stir things up.

And so it should. It doesn't matter if you think Bush won legitimately and this is just sour grapes from Democrats. As long as there is serious doubt about the functioning of the electoral system - even in a single state never mind ten - it deserves investigation. The point isn't even necessarily to go back and correct the 2004 election (though that would be nice). The point is to assure voters that in the next election all votes will be properly counted. It's not about John Kerry. It's about democracy.

And Lampley is right: outside of a few individuals like Keith Olbermann who tried to work this story, the American media should be ashamed of themselves.

Hat tip to Just a Bump in the Beltway.

It's been a week since the British press broke the story of a confidential minute that reveals high level planning in both the US and the UK governments for an invasion of Iraq had begun in July, 2002. The North American media have been a little slow to report on this with the exception of Knight-Ridder, which continues to demonstrate more dedication to actual journalism than its larger competitors.

But the story may be gaining a little more traction. Via Cathie from Canada, it seems 88 members of congress have asked George Bush for answers. Given the more combative mood on the part of the Dems, one can hope they won't let this drop.

And while the 101st Fighting Keyboarders have been mostly silent on the matter - and why not when the major media outlets have left if alone? - I take this post from Power Line as an indication that they, too, think the story just might grow legs.

The argument from Power Line amounts to this: you can't accuse the Bush administration of fixing the intelligence and the facts around the policy when they were so obviously successful at fixing the intelligence and the facts around the policy. Interesting logic, eh?

If nothing else, though, Power Line isn't talking about liberating Iraqis or bringing democracy to the Middle East. They're back to discussing what was actually on offer as the justification for the war before the evidence of the "gathering threat" turned out to be so slim that Bush had to cast around for some other basis on which to sell it.

Seeing impeachment proceedings against Bush begin is probably too much to hope for but at least we have documented evidence that this was never about bringing democracy to Iraq. It'll be great if that actually happens (and it's still by no means an accomplished fact) but if it does, let's not pretend that it will be anything but a happy and accidental by-product of a war that was based on lies. And let's not forget that the credit for the fact that something approaching real elections took place in Iraq actually goes to an elderly Iranian cleric.

Power Line reproduces the entire minute in question but if you'd rather give your traffic to someone else, Mark at Section 15 has it too.

Don Drummond, the Toronto-Dominion Bank's chief economist, is worried about us.

A senior Canadian economist warns the $4.6-billion in new spending the minority Liberal government announced last week to buy NDP support in Parliament will make it harder for Ottawa to offer major personal income tax cuts over the next five years.
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"I find it very hard to believe that all these initiatives will stop 24 months from now," he says. "And so I think it's diminished the chances of getting a personal income tax cut in years three, four and five," Mr. Drummond says.

The TD Bank economist made a forceful case last fall for lightening the federal personal income tax burden when he released a report detailing the near-stagnant growth in the economic well-being of Canadian households over the past 15 years. "I think we should have significant personal income tax relief to address our really high marginal tax rate problem," Mr. Drummond says.

You see? He's worried about the "near-stagnant growth" in our economic well-being.

Thing is, the same bank just issued a report telling us that Canadian corporations are "riding a wave of record profits and sitting on an unprecedented pile of cash" (hat-tip to James Burns). And Declan has the goods on recent developments in senior executive compensation. Let's just say that their economic well-being doesn't seem to be in any danger of stagnating.

But as far as Drummond is concerned, that recent commitment to increased spending on social programs at the expense of corporate tax cuts is a bad move. We should forget that and give the corporations what they want so they can make even more profits and sit on even bigger piles of cash. Oh, and so they can shower their CEO's with even more stock options.

But if the average employee of one of those corporations is just treading water while the business itself is rolling in dough, wouldn't part of the solution be for that corporation to spread the wealth around a little and give its employees a raise? Not according to Drummond. It's up to the government to take care of that with tax "relief."

I'm still having a little trouble figuring out how this free market stuff is supposed to work.

The Globe and Mail is reporting this morning that even some Conservative MPs are now backing away from the idea of a snap election. But that hasn't stopped the Liberals from bringing Veteran Affairs Minister Albina Guarnieri back from Holland in a hurry just in case they need her vote.

As far as I can tell there's no sign that Harper himself has backed off his tough talk of last Friday that he intends to bring Dithers and co. down at the earliest opportunity, though the Toronto Star seems to think it won't happen this week.

The Liberal minority government appears to have won a reprieve from a forced election for a couple of weeks, Conservatives admit.

That's because a non-confidence motion the Tories were hoping to pass in a committee today ? for a possible vote in the Commons on Wednesday or Thursday ? appears doomed to defeat.

"It looks like it will fail now that the NDP has changed position and will vote with the government," Conservative House leader Jay Hill said in an interview.

The next key date, Hill said, is May 18, when the Commons must deal with a motion by Tory Leader Stephen Harper that calls on the government to resign.

Over at Section 15, Mark reminds us that by tradition in our parliamentary democracy, if an election doesn't result in a clear winner the incumbent gets the first right of refusal on forming a new government. So the Conservatives could force an election, win more seats than the Liberals and still end up in opposition to another Dithers government.

Mark seems to think Harper will still pull the plug and that it could backfire on him. I'm not so sure. The Conservative leader hasn't been shy lately about flip flopping reassessing his position in the face of what he himself has referred to as "political realism."

So the question of the moment remains: will he or won't he?

And I'll have to leave it hanging there for now. I'm off on a road trip and likely won't have anything more to add until later on tomorrow at the earliest. Conduct yourselves accordingly. Note the new lock on the liquor cabinet. And the double padlock on the linen closet. (And if you don't understand that last one, you probably don't want to know. I didn't.)

I'm reminded of one of my favorite Groucho Marx quotes:

I don't care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members.

If you look over on the sidebar and scroll down some, you'll see I've joined a blogging group: progressive bloggers.

There have been several new groups spring up recently but until now I've resisted the temptation to join. Even James Bow's Blogging Alliance of Non-Partisan Canadians didn't feel quite right. And I definitely don't want to fly the colours of any particular political party right now. While I've been voting NDP recently, and may well do so again, I don't want even the Dippers to take my support for granted.

These days I take things one election at a time. I look at the parties, the platforms and the candidates and make my mind up when I need to. Once that election's over, it's a brand new start and even a party that I've previously supported had better get busy and earn my trust and support all over again. In that sense I guess I'm non-partisan but I think it's more accurate to say I'm an independent. And besides, this is primarily a political blog, I certainly have a point of view and it's certainly more at odds with the Conservatives than with anyone else. So progressive seems like a better fit than non-partisan. And the logo adds a little colour to all that green over on the sidebar.

I've noted Greg's discomfort with the idea.

...there is something about it I find disturbing. I think there are some fundamental differences between the parties. Liberals do not share the same point of view as New Democrats, who also have differences with the Greens. Otherwise, we would be one big party.

As far as I can tell my politics align fairly closely with Greg's. But I think it's a mistake for any party to feel that it has a monopoly on being "progressive" or "liberal" or whatever you want to call it. I would argue that the current incarnation of the Liberals isn't all that liberal and if Dithers gets dumped shortly and someone like John Manley takes over, it'll be even less so. (I suspect some of my fellow progressive bloggers might disagree but it would be boring if we all agreed on everything.)

This way I get to identify with the principles without letting anyone take anything for granted. And I'm free to spank whichever politician happens to make me cranky on any given day. I like it that way.