Sherry Chandler » 2006 » February » 15
Do we still have sedition laws??? I thought those went out with John Adams (just like Alexander Hamilton). I’ve been seeing this around but just today got round to following a link (from TPM Café) to Editor & Publisher:
NEW YORK Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) has asked Veterans Affairs Secretary James Nicholson for a thorough inquiry of his agency’s investigation into whether a V.A. nurse’s letter to the editor criticizing the Bush administration amounted to “sedition.”
Merely opposing government policies and expressing a desire to change course “does not provide reason to believe that a person is involved in illegal subversive activity,” he said. Bingaman said such investigations raise “a very real possibility of chilling legitimate political speech.”
Laura Berg, a clinical nurse specialist for 15 years, wrote a letter in September to a weekly Albuquerque newspaper criticizing how the administration handled Hurricane Katrina and the Iraq Wwr. She urged people to “act forcefully” by bringing criminal charges against top administration officials, including the president, to remove them from power because they played games of “vicious deceit.” She added: “This country needs to get out of Iraq now and return to our original vision and priorities of caring for land and people and resources rather than killing for oil….Otherwise, many more of us will be facing living hell in these times.”
The agency seized her office computer and launched an investigation. Berg is not talking to the press, but reportedly fears losing her job.
…
V.A. human resources chief Mel Hooker had said in a Nov. 9 letter that his agency was obligated to investigate “any act which potentially represents sedition,” the ACLU said.
Peter Simonson, executive director of the ACLU of New Mexico, told The Progressive magazine: “We were shocked to see the word ’sedition’ used. Sedition? That’s like something out of the history books.”
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Your results:
You are Superman
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You are mild-mannered, good, strong and you love to help others.  |
This post was written by sherry
Paris, Kentucky, looking west, on February 15, 2006.
Today we will have 10 h 57 min of daylight, which is a gain of 1 h 9 min since the solstice.
Although I’m not sure about the quality of some of that daylight, because this snap was taken about 6 minutes after official sunrise, according to our handy-dandy Kentucky Farm Bureau gimme calendar. The east was just pinking.
[Update: Ah — according to the Lexington Herald-Leader, sunrise here today wasn’t until 7:27. Poppysmatus tells me that the Farm Bureau calendar refers to some set point to which we lie westward.)
(I do not agree with official Kentucky Farm Bureau policies. As a small town insurance bureau, however, they are fine.)
This post was written by sherry
