Random thoughts

Writing is a strange and agonizing process, and when it works, it's very gratifying. In writing this blog I usually have an idea festering, and if I wait too long the fester is gone, and I end up writing something labored and clumsy.

Some of my favorite writings are spur-of-the-moment, spontaneous responses to something I read on the Web, usually in Salon and Smirking Chimp. The gap between fester and writing is almost instantaneous, and the topics covered are often surprising and diverse. Below are some of my recent offerings.
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http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/5084

Strategies for stopping Cheney

There is little doubt that a major purpose of the Bush crime family's various wars is to help them elude previous crimes. The invasion of Afghanistan diverted attention from their criminal negligence (or worse) before the September 11, 2001 attacks. The invasion of Iraq covered a multitude of sins, including the relationship of the Bush family with the Bin Laden family, the Energy Task Force, Enron, Cheney's relationship with Halliburton, the theft of the 2000 election, the emerging Abramoff scandal, and the excesses of the Ashcroft/Gonzales Justice Department.

What we should be talking about are strategies for stopping Cheney. He should be kept busy. He can be called to testify before Congress for any number of crimes. He can be sued. Criminal charges can be filed against him for criminal activity, as happened to Spiro Agnew. News organizations can do more investigating, revealing his criminal activities.

Beyond that, pressure can be brought to bear that wasn't before the invasion of Iraq. Someone, or a group of someones can meet with the Pope and implore him to condemn any planned attack on Iran. The Pope needs to improve his standing in the world, especially among Muslims, and this would be a perfect harmony of interests. The previous Pope failed to stop the invasion of Iraq, so this one might want to make a stronger stand.

Groups of people can appeal to the U.N. to condemn the planned attack.

Like what is being done by the operator of the "Spocko's Brain" blog, corporations can be approached and informed of the foolish plan to invade Iran, and what a danger it poses for the entire planet.

It should be kept in mind that Dick Cheney is but one man. He is not a tough guy. He's just a crook, and he is getting old and weak. If the human species can't stop this one pathetic man, then we don't deserve to be at the top of the food chain, and won't be for long.
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http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/5047

Top priority: Save the country from complete destruction

It is good news that Bush's presidency is, in effect, over. The focus from here on out should be to put him behind bars, and for the rest of his life. And the rest of his gang should suffer the same fate.

Likely because of the "Scooter" Libby trial, Dick Cheney won't be around much longer. What the Democrats should do is vote down any replacement Bush offers, effectively making Nancy Pelosi next in line.

Then, let the games begin. Impeachment. Bush is a weakling. If he is indicted in the House, he will quit. When he sees he is alone, he will likely lose what little mind he has. He will not be able to withstand a trial in the Senate. The scrutiny will be more than he can bear. The Republicans will abandon him.

The ruling elite in this country will soon see that the "U.S." will have to deal harshly with the Bush Crime Family in order to restore our international standing.

If you are too young to have any memories of Watergate, in Nixon's waning days the Secretary of Defense, James Schlesinger, put the military on notice that they were not to obey any orders from the CINC (Commander in Chief). It was feared that Nixon would pull some kind of international stunt like throwing the "red switch" or "pushing the red button," depending on which type of doomesday device was used.

A similar thing is likely to happen with Bush. Our military may be subservient, but they know what they are dealing with. It is highly likely that the senior staff of the four branches - Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force - despise Bush, and would like nothing better than to see him doing hard time. They all no doubt have suffered personal losses in this debacle.

So it should be clear at this point that the number one priority is to save the country from destruction. Bush is no rhetorical disaster. He is a real disaster, and he will be a much worse one if he isn't stopped.
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http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/4958

The battle for momentum

As the momentum builds for stopping the Bush crime family, the long arm of the law is likely to reach for the Moon empire. If there is indeed a long arm of the law, it will also reach for Fox News.

One sign of the desperation of the Bush crime family is the replacement of U.S. Attorneys around the country with political operatives. The defeatist view is that this is a show of power, when it is actually a show of weakness. It causes increased scrutiny of the Bush crime family at the local level, which is exactly where increased scrutiny is needed.

Tonight the "leader" of the Bush crime family is giving a speech that he hopes will change the momentum building against him and his cronies. It will take a bravura performance, but I think Bush may crack. He is facing a different audience than he has in previous speeches. The Congress and the people are wise to him, and he will have to perform under extreme pressure. Bush is not a formidable person, and may be cracking anyway. Even Saddam Hussein depended on compliance and force. Without these supports, he wouldn't have been able to project strength, and Bush is less able to project strength than Saddam Hussein was.

The real question here is what the ordinary person can do. If it isn't obvious, here it is: Spread the word.
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http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/4954

Spread the word

I agree with everything in this post except the final sentence. Being terrified is about as useful as being outraged - a wast of energy, and an empowerment of the Bush crime family. They survive on the empowerment that people give them.

Cuba is doing a very wise thing by keeping this issue alive. It is one of the straws that will break the camel's back. That the Bush crime family is a terrorist organization is pretty well known around the world. The more that people in the "U.S." know this, the greater the pressure against the Bush crime family.

Spread the word.
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http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/3690

The long arm of the law

I never saw the great danger of Jose Padilla. There are many thousands of gang members in the "United States," but we have not seen fit to treat them the way we have treated Padilla.

I think the real reason that Padilla is being treated this way is to "prove" that he is guilty - by going to exteme lengths to abuse and isolate him, we must conclude that he "deserved" it.

A second reason for the treatment is to establish a skill capacity and infrastructure of torture for future use. On other "Americans."

The "American" people are very easy to fool and manipulate. It is beyond the ability of most people to conceive that they might also be the subject of such treatment some day. Of course, once it happens, they will believe it, but then it will be too late.

In spite of all this, I'm optimistic. The Bush regime is a criminal operation, and the downfall of all criminal operations is that they become narrowly contrary to the common good. The Bush crime family made a bold attempt to have all the power in the world, but they overplayed their hand. You can't leave 99.99999999% of the human species out of the benefits of your criminal activities and expect to succeed.

The long arm of the law, whether of Karma or of man, will be reaching for the Bush crime family relatively soon.
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http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/3690

Mea maxima culpa

I agree Bill O'Reilly stays in character, but he's not a comedian. He's a grotesque, a hyperbole, an exaggeration of virtually everyone else in show business: an attention seeker. He does what it takes to draw attention to himself, and makes a pile of money doing it. It's a Faustian bargain, and he's more than willing to make the trade of soul for fame and fortune.

The "conservatism" is all fakery, as is all "conservatism" if you scratch the surface. It's all about attracting attention, followers, devotion, money, and power. O'Reilly's imitators and one-uppers - Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage (nee Weiner), and Glen Beck are all attention-mongerers, otherwise nondescript people who will say anything to make people pay attention to them.

All other things held equal, when the "right wing" finally goes into complete disfavor, we will see all these people on TV, doing interview after interview, doing mea-culpas, apologies, protestations that they didn't mean it, that they just did it to please their employers and audiences, that they now see the light, and that you can now tune in to see them on their new "liberal" shows. All that matters is the attention.

And, as before, the rubes will fall for it. P.T. Barnum had no idea how right he was.
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My Salon comments can be found here. If you can't reach them, I'll post a few in the coming days.
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For good measure:

To the Washington Post, January 15, 2001:

Its kind of comical, the backtracking that is going on. At this point, it is not only too late to do what should have been done in 2003, it was too late on March 20, 2003. The war, based on lies and delusion, was a criminal operation from its inception to its fruition. As such, it was guaranteed to fail. As will the planned invasion of Iran. This scheme is also criminal in nature, and thus guaranteed to fail. The Bush gang will go ahead with it anyway if they can because it’s their best bet for staying out of jail. It’s a Ponzi scheme: each new war covers the sins of the previous ones. As in the criminal invasion and occupation of Iraq, the planned criminal invasion of Iran depends on the propaganda cover given by the established news media. Will they go along this time? Probably, and led by the newspaper of record for the U.S. and its imitator in the nation’s capital.
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And more good measure:

To: viewpoint@media.ucla.edu
Subject: Perspective on the taser incident
Date: January 7, 2007

To the editor:

I just heard about the taser incident on News Hour, and immediately did a Google search, finding the video on YouTube. I think I can shed a little light on what happened and why.

The campus police at UCLA exist within a general climate in California of police culture being a society unto itself, a separate entity. This is a national and probably worldwide problem, but in Los Angeles it is likely the most pronounced in the country. There is a built-in paranoia in police work in the best of situations, but the more insular the culture, the more paranoid it becomes.

Because much of police work is dull and routine, and can change abruptly to an emergency situation, the brain of a policeman (or I guess protective services officer, or some such) becomes programmed in a binary fashion: long inaction, then springing to action. The action phase of the program normally follows strict rules, but the programming is imperfect, and groupthink can hyperbolize police responses.

Add in the factor of a student who fits a certain ethnic or religious stereotype, and disaster can result.

The introduction of the taser presents further dangers. Because it is not normally seen as an application of deadly force, it can too easily be misused, and can become a crutch to be applied in lieu of competent police work.

And finally, there is the human weakness for exerting power over others. Of humiliating, disempowering, punishing, causing pain, taking advantage, lording over, and subduing.
These factors are worthy of further study. There are other problems endemic to police work, like alcoholism, divorce, suicide, stress, and the genuine danger of the occupation. By understanding them, methods of addressing them can be found. And incidents like the one at the library can be prevented.

I lived in Los Angeles for four months in 1968, a last fling before going into the Army. I got ticketed for hitchhiking in Northridge one night, and the policeman who stopped me was expecting trouble. He told me he was surprised that I was polite, but gave me the ticket anyway. I sometimes wonder what would have happened had I not been polite.

John Hamilton
Madison, Wisconsin

The "right to exist"

I was listening to the BBC last night, and in a report on the continuing strife in "Israel," it was mentioned that a key sticking point is that "Hamas" does not recognize the right of "Israel" to exist.

This is something I’ve wondered about for years. Just what is the "right to exist?" Can you exist without a right to exist? Can you have a right to exist, but not actually exist? Which comes first, existence or the right to exist? Who has the power to grant existence or nonexistence, and the "right" to same? Can you kill someone and still recognize their right to exist? Or spare someone’s life while denying their right to exist?

It’s a fake argument. The concept of a "right to exist" was created to be an inflexible position that neither side would yield on. "Rights" are human-created entitlements to some protections of individuals, like freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and equality before the law.

For "nations," it’s a bit different. "Nations" are abstractions, impositions of specific groups of humans to control land masses and the people within them. The "United States of America," for example, resulted from "European" settlement of the "New World," and the displacement and extermination of the indigenous occupants, known as "Indians." Indeed, all "nations" are the result of settlement, control, and political concentration of power.

In the case of "Israel"/"Palestine," both contestants for "nationhood" are fictions. There was not much of a "Palestinian" identity before the establishment of "Israel," and there was no "Israel" before 1948, when the status of "nationhood" was granted by the "United Nations," itself a human-created entity only three years in existence at the time.

The establishment of a "national" homeland for "Jews," a movement known as "Zionism," is at its root the same as the establishment of any "nation" – the identity of a group of people with common religion, ethnicity, historical experience, and place. The ancient land of "Israel" included the "province" of "Judea," the home of the "Judeans," the ancestors of today’s "Jews." Somehow the "Judeans" are able to claim control over all of "Israel." And thensome.

The plot is thickening. Jimmy Carter has written a book, "Palestine: Peace not Apartheid," and is being viciously attacked by what is known as "the Israeli lobby." Alexander Cockburn writes about the attacks in his usual insightful manner in "CounterPunch." Cockburn observes that the attempted demonizing of Carter is backfiring, and fueling sales of his book. The lock that the "Israeli lobby" has had on "American" public opinion is finally starting to break. No small factor in this break is the incompetence and scheming of the Bush crime family. As I have said many times, a criminal operation is ill-suited for diplomacy, peace-making, or problem-solving. It is only suited for crime.

Add to this the suspected Bush crime family/"Israeli" plan to bomb Iran with nuclear weapons, and the entire Mideast is on the verge of becoming an inferno. Then, of course, there is the euphemised "Iraq war." It is called a "war" for propaganda purposes, the truth being it is an occupation that followed an illegal invasion.

Will the Bush crime family and "Israel" bomb Iran? Most likely, but not for the obvious reasons. The Bush crime family is a criminal operation by definition, so they engage in criminal activities. The "Israeli" government, as a proxy for the Bush regime and by virtue of its criminal actions in their own occupation of "Palestine," is in essence a criminal state. A partnership between two criminal regimes pretty well guarantees criminal actions. Planet Earth, beware.

The greatest tragedy in this impending conflagration is that it is all based on the imaginary concept of identity: people imposing a cohesion, a oneness, upon themselves, and projecting a similar oneness on others. "Us" and "them."

Most absurd of all is the identity with the Bush crime family. It’s understandable that people inside the family – Bush, Cheney, Rice, Negroponte, et. al. – would identify with it, but what about the rest of the BCF’s supporters?

For the haterati – Limbaugh, O’Reilly, Hannity, Savage, Coulter, and Beck – it’s also understandable. They get a lot of money and attention. But that still leaves the rest of the country. Is there enough identity with the Bush criminal regime to support another war? We’ll soon find out.

Maybe the question we should be asking is this: Does the Bush crime family have a right to exist?

The power of life and death (and lesser powers)

The image at right appeared in a local newspaper in Illinois during the first war against Iraq. It's what I call the localization of war profiteering. Things haven't changed much since then, except the current adventure in Iraq is failing.

But profits are up. Halliburton, a company that was on the verge of failure when Dick Cheney was its CEO, is reping windfall returns from the war. Others, such as Bechtel, Raytheon, Northrup Grumman, Boeing, General Dynamics, and Lockheed Martin are all doing fine. I dropped my subscription to the local newspaper, so I'm not as up on local happenings anymore.

Here in Madison it's not so obvious who is gaining from our debacle in Iraq. A Hummer dealership started around the time of the war buildup, but there's nothing else that stands out as a war-related business venture. I don't see very many Hummers on the road, so it doesn't appear to be a big money-maker.

I did have a bit of an interchange with one of the local papers in the past couple of weeks. There was a syndicated opinion column in the Wisconsin State Journal a couple of weeks ago (the date on the linked article is false) in which the author, a "researcher" at the Heritage Foundation, defended the hanging of Saddam Hussein. I found the article in the break room at work. The newspaper invited readers to respond to the article (read the responses here), and I responded. As anyone with any experience with newspapers knows, what actually happened, or what you actually wrote will not necessarily be the same as what appears in the paper. Below is a reprint of my email exchanges with the opinion page editor.

Subject: RE: The Saddam hanging
Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2007 12:14:21 -0600
From: "CN WSJ Opinion"
To: "John Hamilton"

Greetings - As letters editor for the Wisconsin State Journal, I both edited your letter and wrote the headline. I'm sorry if neither satisfied you.

The Journal runs a variety of columnists in the Sunday Forum section. The Heritage Foundation columnist we selected for the Jan. 7 issue is Helle Dale - no need to put her name in quotes.

I did graduate from high school, and college, and I've worked at newspapers for 26 years - though never on the midnight shift.

Kris Crary, WSJ letters editor
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From: John Hamilton
Sent: Wednesday, January 17, 2007 3:09 PM
To: CN WSJ Opinion
Subject: Fwd: The Saddam hanging

Greetings

I once knew someone who wrote headlines for the Wisconsin State Journal. It was clear that there were at most two requirements for the job: high school graduation (maybe) and willingness to work the midnight shift.

A good example of this qualification standard is Sunday's paper, in which the letter I sent was given the headline "His death penaly far too lenient." It could be argued that the headline writers don't have time to actually read the material to which they write headlines, but that begs the question of why have a newspaper in the first place if it is going to be a jamble of words. In the era of declining subscriptions, that might be a question you would want to ask yourselves.

Then there was the editing. I felt like John Reed in "Reds," when he bemoaned the rewriting of what he wrote. In his case it was the Communist censors. I didn't refer to "Helle Dale" as a "Sunday forum columnist." I put her name in quotes because it seemed an obvious nom de plume, an alias. Indeed, I didn't realize that the Wisconsin State Journal had a bevy of "Sunday forum columnists." Mr. Big Time.

I also put the word "conservative" in quotes intentionally because it has been my experience that it is a fake ideology, meant to cover real agendas of monopoly capital, police-statism, and scapegoatism. "Conservatism" has little to do with it.

Leaving whole sentences out is certainly an editing prerogative, but if it changes the meaning of what is written, you might as well write your own letter. Below is the URL for the WSJ version for comparison with what I actually wrote.

http://www.madison.com/wsj/home/forum/reader/index.php?ntid=114945&ntpid=1

In order to improve the editing function, the powers that be, such as they are, at the Wisconsin State Journal might want to apply the high school graduate requirement a bit more strictly.

John Hamilton
Madison
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Date: Tue, 9 Jan 2007 10:40:58 -0800 (PST)
From: John Hamilton
Subject: The Saddam hanging
To: wsjopine@madison.com

To the editor:

It would be nice to have the income one can get by writing predictable, simplistic doctrine for the Heritage Foundation. Unfortunately, “conservative” doctrine is no help in understanding the folly of Saddam Hussein’s execution.

“Helle Dale” writes “If ever there were a candidate for the death penalty, surely Saddam would be it…” This statement raises two semantic questions. Is there such a thing as candidacy for the death penalty? And how is it that we refer to death as a penalty? If death is a penalty, then it is one that awaits every one of us. Indeed, Saddam Hussein suffered a much milder "penalty" than sufferers from cancer, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, tuberculosis, and any number of other diseases.

Ms. Dale also argues that “Saddam displayed no remorse whatsoever,” enhancing his “candidacy” for the death “penalty.” In other words, Saddam Hussein provided an excuse for intentional, premeditated taking of another person’s life, otherwise known as murder.

The message is clear: killing another person is okay, as long as you have an excuse. There’s just one problem with this reasoning. Everyone who kills another person has an excuse. If the desire is there, an excuse can be found.

John Hamilton
Madison
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This is but a mild example of the arrogance of the established news media. What it bespeaks is an attitude of overseership, of truth-monitoring. "We'll decide what you said. Like it or lump it." The Wisconsin State Journal is the "conservative" newspaper in Madison. I didn't think they would print the letter at all, so in that sense they exceeded my expectations.

Thankfully, we now have the Internet, and the ability to offer our own versions of truth. Many thanks to Google for offering this blog service. I hereby state for the public record that I do not believe that the hanging of Saddam Hussein was a far too lenient punishment. It was a gruesome, sadistic act, done in barbaric fashion. It set a bad example for the people of Iraq, for the American people, and for the rest of the planet. It was nothing to be proud of, though it's safe to say Bush is proud of it. He finally has admitted to watching the video, after denying seeing it. In Bushspeak that means he watches it repeatedly.

As I wrote in the letter, the use of the term "death penalty" gives death a bad name. We all die. If death is a penalty, then life is a penalty, because death is a part of life. The real penalty is the bad Karma that results from assuming the power of life and death. As long as we believe we have that power we will reap the results.

Always look on the bright side of life

It took a while for me to see the silver lining in the dark cloud of Bush's speech, but there is one. We now know that we will be participating in the removal of a president. The only question is the form it will take: impeachment or recall?

Impeachment is the likely course, but it depends on initiative from above, in the two houses of Congress. But thanks to some vile "right-wingers" in California, the recall option is something we now know can work.

Ever since the stolen election of 2000, the United States of America has been experiencing the surreal phenomenon of the most undeserving, incompetent, malevolent, and criminal presidency in its history, past, present, or future. That is, if the country has a future. If it does have one, another president like Bush will be its last.

So Bush not only must be removed, he will be. The whole country is turning against him. When Republicans abandon ship, it's all over but the shouting. The shouting will be fun to watch.

Looking back at the Bush fiasco, the most curious thing to me is that he has stayed in office so long. If someone this mediocre, this incompetent, this ill-willed, and this delusional can ascend to the nation's highest office and remain there for six years, something is very wrong with the country as a whole.

How is it that the established media have enabled him for so long? Are our corporations so craven that they send huge amounts of money to get him and his supporters elected? Are the people so compiant and gullible that they believed in him for, hmm, about five years? That's a tricky question, because it's pretty clear Bush wasn't elected either in 2000 or 2004. But an effective minority supported him. Whatever the case, a profoundly bad president has remained in office for six years. A brain-damaged drug and alcohol addict. A man with the maturity level of a five-year old child. A corporate criminal. The enabler of the worst attacks on American soil in its history. An international menace. A domestic menace.

It's all over for Bush, but we have much work to do. A solid recall movement can be a great catalyst for taking a good look at ourselves. We can't let this happen again. For now, though, let's cheer up. We will be getting a new president before the year is up, maybe even before the summer. I wouldn't be concerned about Cheney becoming president. He won't be there for long (likely about two months), and he won't be able to do much harm in his short time in office.

Or, as Eric Idle put it, always look on the bright side of life.

A golden opportunity

I watched Nancy Pelosi's inaugural speech during my lunch break yesterday. She was sparkling and inspiring, but the most fun was when the camera cut to Dennis Hastert, stewing in the back of the hall. I used to live in his district, and did some canvassing for his 1990 opponent, Patrick Welch. Welch almost won, but Hastert had more money. Since then Hastert got his district (the 14th district of Illinois) gerrymandered, guaranteeing victory. Illinois had a Republican trend for a while, but it ended with the nauseous corruption of former Secretary of State and Governor George Ryan.

Nauseous corruption nationwide is what made possible the rise to prominence of the Bush crime family. Washington, D.C. is now known for its "culture of corruption," but it really should be called the culture of criminality. The formerly "Republican" Congress, with its connection to lobbyist Jack Abramoff, to the schemes of Tom DeLay, to legislation for sale to the highest bidder, and to its support for the Bush crime family, finally proved to be too much for the American people.

What a golden opportunity! Now that it has become pretty obvious that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Gonzales, Negroponte, Chertoff, Bolton, et. al., are nothing more than common criminals, we can now broaden the inquiry.

What about every last thing that "Republicans" stand for? All of it is criminal. That is why it was so easy for them to look the other way while the country was being attacked. That is why it was so easy for them to look the other way when one of our greatest cities was being destroyed. That is why it was and is so easy for them to lie the country into war. That is why it is so easy for them to look the other way while an entire country (Iraq) is being destroyed. That is why it is so easy for them to look the other way while our climate is reaching the boiling point.

Now that we know that "Republicans" are criminals, let's look at their "beliefs," their "policies." Upward redistribution of wealth and income, for one. Tax cuts for the rich, regressive taxation (higher taxes as income declines), subsidies for corporations that donate to campaigns, no-bid contracts for corporations like Halliburton.

When "Republicans" are in power, environmental protection is reduced, workers' rights and protections are reduced, occupational health and safety is reduced, health care declines, clear-cut logging increases, corporate farming increases, pollution increases, prison populations increase, with an increasing percentage of poor and minority prisoners, and civil liberties are restricted.

This is no coincidence. The "culture of corruption" goes hand in hand with all of the "Republican" criminal policies because the "Republican" party is the criminal party. They are thugs, mobsters, crooks, liars, thieves, whores, murderers, cutthroats, torturers, kidnappers, terrorists, robbers, and perverts. They should be run out of the country on a rail, except who would take them? Not their former clients, like Saddam Hussein's Iraq. They double-crossed him, even allowing a snuff film of his "execution." The Gambino family must be in awe.

I don't mean to suggest that "Democrats" are necessarily any great gift from the Beyond. Bill Clinton gave us NAFTA, CAFTA, the WTO, neo-liberalism, the Communications Act of 1996, the bombing of Belgrade, the starvation of Iraq's children, and wefare "reform." He looked the other way (though he peeked back) at the slaughter in Rwanda, was the first president to approve "extraordinary rendition," and, most tellingly, has become good friends with George H.W. Bush, the patriarch of the Bush crime family.

In spite of all this, the one difference with "Democrats" is that, by and large, they advocate for distributive justice and protection of the ecosystem. They need a lot of prodding and cajoling, but can be depended on to practice the art of the possible.

The "Republicans" can be depended to advocate for criminal "policies" and actions, such as the impending attack on Iran and God knows where else, "privatization" of Social Security, spying on you and me, and they want touch-screen voting so that they can be guaranteed endless and limitless power. They want a corporate state, so that energy, pharmaceutical, weapons, finance, agribusiness, chemical, and communications media corporations monopolize our production and employment. They may not all be sociopaths, but they do have the disorder of acting against the general well-being of society and the planet. They are bad people, and should never be trusted, believed, or elected. Jail is the appropriate place for them, and with our support, the 110th Congress just might seize this golden opportunity to put them there.