Bush makes Texan civil liberties czar

[rainbow4321]

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/washington/stories/061105dnnatpatriot.135d01e2c.html


President Bush, accused of dragging his feet in establishing a new board to protect Americans' civil liberties, on Friday tapped Houston lawyer Carol Dinkins to chair a panel created as part of the nation's post-Sept. 11 intelligence overhaul.

The president also nominated retired vice admiral John Scott Redd to run the National Counterterrorism Center, which he visited Friday to promote the topic at the center of the privacy debate: the Patriot Act. A partner in the Houston-based law firm of Vinson & Elkins, Ms. Dinkins worked as deputy attorney general under President Reagan.

Specializing in environmental law, she has long worked with the Nature Conservancy of Texas and served as state Parks and Wildlife Department commissioner when Mr. Bush was governor.

Ms. Dinkins is a former law partner of Al Gonzales, Mr. Bush's attorney general. In 2002-03, she chaired the American Bar Association committee that reviewed Mr. Bush's judicial nominees.

[rodeodance]

1. um...2 more Texans that Bush knows coming to his administration. talk

about a closed society!--no new blood/ideas=--probably more of the same.

[mcscajun]

2. Dallas News has a warped sensibility for certain.

"Civil Liberties Czar" ??

Can any phrase be MORE of an oxymoron?

I think my head would explode, but because it was the Dallas News and not anyone inside BushCo that used the phrase, my head is safe. For now.

[ixion]

11. yeah, that was my thinking as well

:eyes:

[rainbow4321]

13. They can't sell papers anymore...

I just got a Domino's pizza delivered and with it came a free copy of Sunday's DMN..they really are desperate to increase their circulation. The whole neighborhood gets free copies at the end of their driveways each month.
What do they expect? They are a right wing rag in Dallas County which went 49% BLUE on election day.




edited for typo

[ninkasi]

14. That struck me, too...

But of course, everything they do is the exact opposite of what they say. It's going to be a long, long time til we can get this country back to sanity...I'm afraid it's almost too late.

America can't stand many more of Bush's buddies stealing from what's left of the taxpayer's money. We could solve a lot of problems by rolling back the tax cut on the obscenely wealthy, but he'll never do that.

The irony is that if Bush hadn't stolen both elections, we'd still have our liberties. It's been him and his corrupt administration that have caused the damage.

[havocmom]

15. Was thinking the only logical way to use those three words in a sentence

would be to also have the word overthrow in there with them

[leveymg]

3. Civil Liberties "CZAR"?!?!?!?

Extremely odd juxtaposition. Oxymoron.

Is this what it's come to -- Bush appoints some Republican lawyer to the DHS as the custodian of the Bill of Rights? Help!:wow:

[rzemanfl]

5. Shouldn't it be "czarina?" n/t

[rzemanfl]

4. Well, I am so relieved that this Republican bitch lawyer is going

to be watching out for my rights. I am sure that she and Gonzales will have big differences of opinion on the extent the government can intrude on our lives...

[acmejack]

6. Here is her bio:

Carol Dinkins, a partner with the law firm of Vinson & Elkins in Houston, is a staunch environmentalist and conservationist.

In 1979 Governor Bill Clements appointed Ms. Dinkins chair of the Governor's Task Force on Coastal Zone Management, and in 1981 President Ronald Reagan appointed Ms. Dinkins assistant attorney general of the Environmental and Natural Resources Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. She was the first woman to hold that post.

While at the Justice Department, she was recognized by the American Lawyer as the best litigating chief then in the department. President Reagan later appointed Ms. Dinkins deputy attorney general of the United States, which made her the highest-ranking woman ever to serve in law enforcement at that time. As deputy attorney general, Ms. Dinkins was responsible for the day-to-day management of the Justice Department's more than 60,000 employees. Appointed to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission in 1997, Ms. Dinkins is the only commissioner ever to have visited every state park in Texas.

V& E is the law firm that represented Enron.

[alarimer]

8. I knew that name sounded familiar

It doesn't sound like she has any experience in the field of civil liberties. Besides Bush isn't really interested in protecting civil liberties; this is just a bone for the anti-patriot act types. "See, we really care about civil liberties- we have a CZAR!"

[Solly Mack]

7. Amazing. They make laws to strip us of rights (Patriot Act)

and then form committees to ascertain if our rights are being eroded....never once seeing the irony.
...or remembering the Constitution.

and the truly mind numbing thing is? some idiots will see this as a good thing.

[truthisfreedom]

9. informal. that's the definition bushco chooses. informal=nothing.

czar.

czar P Pronunciation Key (zär, tsär)
n.
also tsar or tzar (zär, tsär)

1] A male monarch or emperor, especially one of the emperors who ruled Russia until the revolution of 1917.
2] A person having great power; an autocrat: “the square-jawed, ruddy complacency of Jack Farrell, the czar of the Fifteenth Street police station” (Ernest Hemingway).
3] Informal. An appointed official having special powers to regulate or supervise an activity: a racetrack czar; an energy czar.

and who "regulates" civil liberties? is bushco once again expanding government?

i thought our civil liberties were defined by the Constitution. why do we need some schmuck regulating them?

[asjr]

10. This WH is becoming more and more incestuous.

[Daphne08]

12. I'm so sick of this

This is cronyism and a cover-up of the potential dangers of that act!

[SoCalDem]

16. So...has she been fitted for her tiara yet??

Czarina Dinkins..:puke:..

I object strongly to all the invocations of Czar...especially when we are supposed to be a free society..

Why not just call these folks what they are.. Appointed "managers" in charge of whatever they have been asked to do, Why continue to call them "Czar"?

[UTUSN]

17. Something about "Civil Liberties" and "Czar" Just Screams "Texas" n/t

[struggle4progress]

18. The Texas Nature Conservancy looks like a front for big oil:

Quintessential role reversal: Hollywood's latest bad guy
by Judi McLeod
June 9, 2003

<snip> Eight years ago, Mobil Oil gave the Nature Conservancy what was one of the group’s largest corporate donations, a patch of prairie that encompassed the last native breeding ground of a highly endangered feathered friend. <snip>

To get an inkling of the magnitude of Mobil Oil’s gift to the Conservancy, the entire breeding population of Attwater’s prairie chickens can be found on 2,300 acres, a tallgrass prairie, one hour south of Houston as the crow flies. <snip>

What did the bequeathed do as a first move? They sank a well under the bird’s nesting ground. <snip>

In any case, the Conservancy wanted the Texas City Prairie Reserve to be showcased the world over as a national model to show that drilling can be accomplished without harming the environment. Besides, bottom line drilling profits anticipated could always be used altruistically, to buy up more habitats for the birds. <snip>

http://www.canadafreepress.com/2003/main060903.htm

[justgamma]

19. So the new czar

is part of the group that picked the judge that said it was just fine and dandy to call your employees racial slurs and every nasty name in the book?
Well, that's just Bush.