Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.


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Thursday, May 29, 2008

No Ostrich Here

By Cernig



Long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away - at least in blogging terms - I posed the question. The one question every congresscritter and presidential hopeful should have been asked time and again until they had to answer. Will you, if elected, pledge to roll back the Bush vision of total Presidential executive power?



Oh Happy Day:

Maybe it�s his background teaching constitutional law.



If elected president, Democratic White House hopeful Barack Obama said one of the first things he wants to do is ensure the constitutionality of all the laws and executive orders passed while Republican President George W. Bush has been in office.



Those that don�t pass muster will be overturned, he said.



During a fund-raiser in Denver, Obama � a former constitutional law professor at the University of Chicago Law School � was asked what he hoped to accomplish during his first 100 days in office.



�I would call my attorney general in and review every single executive order issued by George Bush and overturn those laws or executive decisions that I feel violate the constitution,� said Obama.

That wins it right there, for me.



As Spencer writes: "One hopes that the review process is a matter of taking out everything signed by David Addington or John Yoo or Donald Rumsfeld and writing in red pen across the top EPIC FAIL or ROFLCOPTER."



Followed by Obama signing the treaty on the International Court and then stepping aside to let The Hague do America's laundry cleaning.



4 comments:

  1. He's going to overturn laws passed? I thought he was running for President not dictator. Someone should explain basic civics to him but he's probably too stupid to understand that as well.

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  2. I have observed that almost no politician of either party has addressed this central problem. I assumed that extraconstitutional/unitary executive power was now the modus operandi from here on out, with all the cronyism, corruption, authoritarianism as well as the figurative and literal backstabbling that goes with it. The media NOT talking about it tells the story, after all. However, Obama seems to be listening and responding to those who believe in the Constitution...holy cow.
    We can live in hope that he intends to deliver and that the system in which he MAY be Preznit will allow him to follow through on this pledge.
    I now await a chorus of Dems and Repubs to make similar pledges. It will take a lot of energy to counter the movement towards central power authority, because it is not the movement of Bush, but the movement of the system as a whole that must be countered. I am not holding my breath. But still, a little hope is nice...I may even vote, after all.

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  3. Jack --- please read the quote ---"EXECUTIVE ORDER" which is a directive from the chief executive officer to the executive branch on how to do or interpret XYZ. Those are not laws but guidance from the president. Different presidents can offer different guidance. Within this quote there is nothing indicating changing laws as passed by Congress.

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  4. "and overturn those laws"
    You're dumber than O

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