A Quick Preview of the Start of World War III

What Russia's newest ICBM looks like when it takes off.

Power politics reaches an absurdity in which that power cannot be used without mutual assured destruction and the destruction of most of the foundations for life on earth. The alternative is a moral consensus based on a respect for human dignity and our common humanity. This can be based on the concept of universal equality, the UN Declaration of human rights or medical ethics. Even in the face of current atrocities, ethnic cleansing, and genocide our leaders have not been capable or inclined to put forward these values.

“The Yars and Topol-M, along with America's own state-of-the-art ICBMs, the LGM-30G Minuteman-III and UGM-133 Trident II, are stark reminders that mutually assured destruction continues to define nuclear warfare, despite various nuclear arms treaties. It's easier to add more warheads to an ICBM than to build a missile defense system that can effectively shoot down those additional warheads, meaning there isn't much either side can hope to do once a nuclear power decides to launch—except fling off their own set of ICBMs and irradiate the other side of the globe as well.”

Stealing $500 is a felony.

A settlement for fraudulent behavior which cost billions of dollars is just the cost of doing business.

Rolling Stone -- Matt Taibbi
Eric Holder, Wall Street Double Agent, Comes in From the Cold
Barack Obama's former top cop cashes in after six years of letting banks run wild.

“Here's a man who just spent six years handing out soft-touch settlements to practically every Too Big to Fail bank in the world. Now he returns to a firm that represents many of those same companies: Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup, to name a few”.

“Holder doesn't look it, but he was a revolutionary. He institutionalized a radical dualistic approach to criminal justice, essentially creating a system of indulgences wherein the world's richest companies paid cash for their sins and escaped the sterner punishments the law dictated.”

Previous Blogs on this topic

• Just the Cost of Doing Business
• Too Big to Jail

Judge Thomas on the Declaration of Independence

Whether or not you agree with Justice Thomas's opinion in the same sex marriage case, his opinion is worth reading. This is important because at a time when not only autocracy but an inhuman carnage and ethnic cleaning are being not only practiced but promoted in world affairs, the United States has had trouble conveying our own values in a battle of Ideas.

Library of Law and Liberty - Ken Magugi
Confederate flag waving at the Supreme Court

“Human dignity has long been understood in this country to be innate. When the Framers proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence that ‘all men are created equal’ and ‘endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,’ they referred to a vision of mankind in which all humans are created in the image of God and therefore of inherent worth. That vision is the foundation upon which this Nation was built. The corollary of that principle is that human dignity cannot be taken away by the government. Slaves did not lose their dignity (any more than they lost their humanity) because the government allowed them to be enslaved. Those held in internment camps did not lose their dignity because the government confined them. And those denied governmental benefits certainly do not lose their dignity because the government denies them those benefits. The government cannot bestow dignity, and it cannot take it away.”

Real Clear Politics -- Rich Lowry
What Clarence Thomas Can (Still) Teach George “Sulu” Takei

As Thomas writes, “Our Constitution — like the Declaration of Independence before it — was predicated on a simple truth: One’s liberty, not to mention one’s dignity, was something to be shielded from — not provided by — the State.”

Supreme Court Ruling Won’t Stop Search for Execution Drugs

Time -- Josh Sanburn

Supreme Court Ruling Won’t Stop Search for Execution Drugs

Breyer and Ginsberg oppose the death penalty

"Death penalty opponents, however, found one thing to applaud on Monday. In a lengthy dissent written by Justice Stephen Breyer and joined by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the justices called into question the entire death penalty system and whether it violates the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Breyer wrote that the delays involved in actually executing death row inmates along with the arbitrariness of sentences over the last few decades has led to the practice of capital punishment in the U.S. to be unconstitutional." “Justice Breyer asked, ‘How long are we going to have this conversation?’ By any measure, we’ve essentially abandoned the death penalty as a society,”