On Monday a tragedy happened in my community, Greenville, SC.  A beautiful 8 year old girl named Dymia Woody was sexually assaulted and killed. She was found in a closet of an abandoned mobile home.    Another child, a fourteen year old boy has been arrested and charged in the case.  Below is the story as reported by our local NBC affiliate:

If Congress will not take impeachment action against President Bush, then everyday citizens bear the responsibility of supporting legal action against him.  At the time of this writing at least three different legal actions against the Commander in Chief have been initiated or outlined, though there may be more buried amid the mountains of calls for impeachment.  Of the three, Vincent Bugliosi drew the most attention when he described an ironclad case against Bush for first degree murder.  Two other courageous men have also gotten the ball rolling with different takes on the case, one the dean of the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover and the other the owner of a weekly newspaper in Minneapolis.  Few people here would expect the national media to help further such a cause, but somebody needs to spread awareness of the legitimacy of such cases.  Concerned citizens should take it upon themselves to learn about the thinking behind criminal proceedings against George Bush, and other members of the administration, and use the knowledge to spread awareness of and support for such actions.

Details after the flip.

Joe Horn a 62-year-old man from Pasadena, TX who shot two men in the back, killing both, has been cleared of all charges by a Harris County grand jury.  Horn called 911 when he noticed his neighbor's house being robbed.  While on the phone with 911 he indicated several times that he was going to go out and kill these two men.  The 911 dispatcher tried several times to talk Horn out of going outside.  Eventually Horn went outside, he can be heard on the 911 call shouting "Boom.  You're dead." which is followed by several shotgun blasts.  Horn then tells the 911 dispatcher that he "had no choice" and that the guy was coming at him.  The autopsy reveals, however, that both men were shot in the back.

Vincent Bugliosi spoke to more than 350 Angelinos about his new book, "The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder." Bugliosi's talk will also appear on C-SPAN.

One is struck by the continual use of terrorism against civilians on the part of Israel and its bungling accomplice in the Middle East, the US government. The mindset is clearly one of civilized western values Americans and Israeli, taking action against Arab non-western "savages".

I once had an extensive conversation with someone who insisted that rape is a more terrible offense than murder, and I am confident enough that this is a widely-made assertion and not my own straw man. In light of the recent Supreme Court decision that has determined the unconstitutionality of the death penalty in cases of child rape, which in turn is certainly the most perverse and destructive form of sexual assault, I find it appropriate to explore just how correct the five assenting Justices are in their decision. This is not my condemnation of the death penalty as a practice, which is in my mind completely separate from the ruling and constitutes a wholly different conversation. Suffice it for me to say there is no defensible rationale for that practice outside the realm of guttural assertion.

This is a necessarily sensitive topic. I welcome all points of view in response, but I ask that you read well below the fold before making your decision and reply, and that you respect the candor of the argument over considerations of social grace. This is not and cannot be a happy topic.

Please tell me I am not the only one who is tired of living in a city full of self-righteous hypocrites!  

Day after day living in a town where people think this insidious war is a "just war".  These same people drive around with a fish on the back of their car and a cross hanging from their rear-view mirror.  It makes me want to scream.  I drive by churches on Sunday morning and see the ladies in their $1000 dresses with $400 shoes and I think "this is what it is about,driving your benz to worship god and then going out to drop a few hundred on a big lunch with your well-dressed friends." How can you support this war and call yourself a Christian? How can you not feel guilty for living the way you do while so many others suffer?  

Our soldiers are dying and we are killing innocent people in Iraq.  Families with mothers and fathers, children and grandparents. Why is it so hard to think that the citizens of Iraq just want to be happy and feel safe?  Why are they sub-human? Why?

As strange as this may sound, I've come to the conclusion that due to the seriousness of this president's crimes--specifically, the possibility that he may be guilty of murder--requires that I oppose his impeachment.

This isn't a conclusion to which I came lightly.  I've been a member of the "impeach him, impeach him!" crowd since May '05, after the release of the Downing Street Memo.  But according to a second, lesser-known UK memo, Bush had already decided to go to war as early as January 2003--with or without a UN resolution.  If that is in fact true (and the White House hasn't disputed the memo's contents), then the Iraq war is an illegal war of aggression, and this president is guilty of at least second-degree murder.  I've come to the conclusion that impeaching a president on such serious grounds during a presidential election year would seriously damage the legitimacy of any subsequent criminal trial---in part because the Republicans in the 109th Congress were not willing to stop being Republican Congressmen long enough.

Impeachment would be a serious mistake unless that you believe all Bush deserves is a slap on the wrist for the crimes he has committed. Make no mistake: impeachment would be a slap on the wrist for the nature of the the Bush crimes.

Interviewing Scott McClellan on The Daily Show right now.

(The following is a passage from a novel that's been in my head for a while. I am numbering them for the sake of reference, but they will appear in no particular order. For info on the birth of this novel read here.)

Dirty Work

Everything is a big question now. Did Tommy Meese leave the country to disappear? Or was he disappeared? Rachel can't bring herself to voice the creeping thoughts in her head, but I can hear them. They are like the bittersweet in your garden. The roots never give up and they network under the soil. You pluck one out, but more keep emerging. That weed will spread from her mind to others. They'll all be asking themselves. After all, Rachel's only connection to that man is the compost that I delivered to her garden. It's only natural for them all to be wondering if I did something to him. I can sense the complex confusion of emotions. That's my curse. I sense these things.

When I first heard that Vincent Bugliosi was coming out with a new book, The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, I was skeptical.  Granted, there is now a mountain of evidence as high as K2 that this president deliberately lied to us and our elected representatives about the evidence supporting war.  For that, he should have been impeached ten times over.  However, it took only one piece of evidence out of the avalanche of documentation outlined by Bugliosi to convince me that impeachment is no longer sufficient, and that this president must be tried for murder.

Bugliosi refers to a meeting Bush held on January 31, 2003 with Tony Blair and six of Bush and Blair's top aides to discuss the Iraq issue.  According to a memo summarizing the meeting that was written by David Manning (then Blair's foreign policy adviser and later British ambassador to Washington), Bush actually indicated that he was willing to provoke a confrontation with Saddam.  This summary has never been disputed by the White House.

Cynthia Perez of Los Angeles died of a gunshot wound to the head on Tuesday at 1:15 p.m. at Huntington Hospital in Pasadena, said Assistant Chief Ed Winter of the Los Angeles County coroner's office. Perez was shot while riding in the back seat of her parent's SUV in Highland Park on Monday. According to the Los Angeles Police Department, the assailant opened fire on another motorist, Fabian Aguirre, 33, of Highland Park, who had stopped his pickup alongside the SUV. Both vehicles were at York Boulevard and North Avenue 64, waiting for the light to change.

(The following is a passage from a novel that's been in my head for a while. I am numbering them for the sake of reference, but they will appear in no particular order. For info on the birth of this novel read here.)

Gorilla Warfare

When she explained whose ring it was, it brought back so many memories and evoked painful political struggles. No one was sure what to make of it. What was his ring doing in this woman's garden? When she found it, she saw that it seemed unique and was sure it must be valuable to somebody. It was simply a sense of compassion that compelled her to find out who it belonged to. She had imagined a joyful reunion full of "saudadé", those melancholy feelings that come with warm remembrances of the past. That sense of gratefulness to have such experiences along with the grief that they are past. She certainly hadn't expected this. When two different jewelers explained to her how valuable it was, she knew she couldn't sell it or give it away without notice. Her conscience kept her from burying it back into the ground. She felt obligated to bring it to the authorities. It didn't take long for them to trace it's ownership.

Prompted by a comment exchange with jwestfield (story here and our comments here), I have decided to post passages of a murder mystery novel that is in my head. Today, I'll explain the origins of the novel. Then I'll start posting random passages. My hope is that by finally pouring some of this out of my brain and into the light of day, I might actually produce all the pieces parts for a whole story. (And, perhaps, I'll get a little feedback along the way.)

So, here's the birthing story:

Update: I'm going to figure out a system for editing the writing. If you have ideas about how to do this while preserving the process, I'd appreciate the input. Thanks!

Hillary Clinton Finally Admits - Her Only Chance of Winning is if something major happens to Barack Obama, whether that be by some political action, a health issue or somebody kills him.  

Hillary's camp is saying that's not what she meant and that the recent events involving Ted Kennedy just brought back memories -- wrong Hillary.  You said the same thing a few months ago.

Now that the Supremes have cleared the decks to begin the nasty business of administrative murder again, I went back and re-read an essay on capital punishment I'd put together a couple of years ago. I think it's held up well. Originally published here.
Also available here.  Join me below the fold, won't you?

The Committee to Protect Journalists is an independent non-profit organization devoted to protecting freedom of the press worldwide. Without freedom of the press, there can be no freedom for citizens, no true democracy.

We decry the erosion of our free press here, an erosion unfortunately perpetrated by the willing complicity of the media with the government. Here, the press has moved further and further away from its true task and responsibility--to animate our democracy with truthful reporting and penetrating analyses. Now the press for the most part seems to just be another corporation with something to sell.

In many parts of the world, however, journalists struggle to fulfill the true responsibilities of the free press--they struggle to exercise freedom in situations of true governmental repression, open and covert, and they even lose their lives for it.