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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Monday, July 13, 2009

The Franco of our times

Commentary By Ron Beasley


 Chris Mathews, David Corn and Ron Suskind:



I have been around for 63 years and I have disagreed with most public officials at one time or the other.  But with Dick Cheney it was the first time that I thought one of them was evil.  Thom Hartmann described Cheney as a Francisco Franco style fascist on his show this morning and I think that's pretty accurate.  You will notice that both Suskind and Corn agree that what Cheney did was illegal.  Corn also said another thing that was significant - Cheney didn't trust the congress, that is he didn't trust our system of government. 

 

Now I think that Obama is correct if he thinks that investigations and prosecutions of members of the Bush/Cheney administration will tear the country apart.  In the short term that will threaten his agenda.  But in the long term it is necessary.  Hartmann said that we were one more terrorist attack away from a fascist police state.  From his early days with Nixon Cheney has loathed our system of government and the really frightening thing is that there are four justices on the Supreme Court who agree with him. Sheldon Whitehouse:

 


I particularly reject the analogy of a judge to an "umpire" who merely calls "balls and strikes." If judging were that mechanical, we would not need nine Supreme Court Justices. The task of an appellate judge, particularly on a court of final appeal, is often to define the strike zone, within a matrix of Constitutional principle, legislative intent, and statutory construction.

The "umpire" analogy is belied by Chief Justice Roberts, though he cast himself as an "umpire" during his confirmation hearings. Jeffrey Toobin, a well-respected legal commentator, has recently reported that "[i]n every major case since he became the nation's seventeenth Chief Justice, Roberts has sided with the prosecution over the defendant, the state over the condemned, the executive branch over the legislative, and the corporate defendant over the individual plaintiff." Some umpire. And is it a coincidence that this pattern, to continue Toobin's quote, "has served the interests, and reflected the values of the contemporary Republican party"? Some coincidence. 



 As a country we just dodged a bullet.  If Cheney is not held accountable now there will more Cheney's and bullets in the future. 



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1 comment:

  1. RedhandJuly 14, 2009 at 12:56 AM

    It was interesting to see Chris Matthews "lose his sh*t" in the video clip.
    I'm 59 and am still very conscious of Nixon's abuses of power in early 70s. In many ways I think Cheney's even-worse abuses in the Bush '43 presidency are a form of sick payback for the fact that Nixon was forced from Office.
    I consider Cheney an arch criminal, and a truly evil man. I have no doubt that he has nothing but contempt for the American Constitution, and the separation of powers. I would love to see him prosecuted, especially for his violations of our anti-torture laws.

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