Parliament was in uproar on Monday over the leaked inquiry report which is said to blame senior BJP figures including Atal Behari Vajpayee and LK Advani.
The Liberhan commission report was submitted to the government in June but its contents have not been made public.
Some 2,000 people died in riots across India after the mosque was demolished.
The last week of New Democracy’s internal electoral campaign has started. Lots of calls to left, right and centre have been made by all three candidates who want to become the future PM candidate. And therein lies the problem.
The sorry state of New Democracy, and the wider Greek society, is reflected by the lamenting comments of Antonio Samaras last weekend, when he was saying that it is not acceptable in Greece to bang one’s own drum as a liberal or conservative right-winger. The word right has such bad (and wrong) connotations.
It gets worse because the intuitive answer to everything is more Government, not less. One could expect that approach from Pasok, or particularly from Syriza, but from New Democracy too? As an innocent bystander, I benefit from the right to summarise the New Democracy dilemma in a couple of bullet points:
· Right or not right? Which one is right, or is it simply wrong?
· More or less Government? The answer shouldn’t be not more or less the same.
· Liberal or conservative? Value liberal or conservative? Economically liberal or not? What’s liberal in Greece? Has anyone heard of Christian Democrats?
There is no straightforward answer to these questions, but it surprises me that the system, whatever it is, doesn’t allow any type of clarity in party programming. Everything is a bit wishy-washy. It reflects the voters who doubt anything Government does but still want its protection. It is intellectually dishonest, but it serves a purpose.
Whoever wins the New Democracy ballot will have a major task ahead, but in a country which doesn’t break out from a de facto two party system, the tide will always turn after a while. Now is a good occasion to gather the courage. New Democracy needs to throw the skeletons out of the closet and come outside. It’s a brand new day out here.
Check out the excerpt from my latest blog post on The Things:
Of course we have all seen the Tea Party movement. A movement of people who protest taxes and I mean all taxes. I guess they don’t like the military, or having roads, or schools. A movement to end the government’s taxes doesn’t necessarily mean revolt, it is only an ideal, but then you look at there website and see words like “Judgement Day.” As if the biblical ending of the world is going to happen on the day they protest. I find such psychological use of ” end of the word” statements at least frightening if not the gears of war.thethings.info, Is the Right Planning a Revolution?, Nov 2009
You should read the whole article.
The rabid right is having apoplectic fits over Republican Congressman Joseph Cao's vote for Healthcare reform. An example from Twitter:
RT @RightBloggerPat: @AnhJosephCao You Bastard piece of shit fuck! GO BACK TO Saigon, South Vietnam where you fucking BELONG GOOK! #TCOT
Don't bother trying to track this upstanding citizen on Twitter, his tweets are protected and you have to give the secret Nazi handshake to follow him. But his blog ( http://www.politicalbyline.com/ ) is wide open, and on it, he states that he pulled his post about Rep. Cao, not because he had second thoughts of decency, but because he was afraid that his server was going to crash. I couldn't resist replying to one of his supporters who goes by the name of "Bone", who posted the following comment on Mr. Pat's rant: 
Right on, man. It’s about time a guy stood up to these crackheaded libtards. Isn’t it enough that that motherfucking shit RINO Viet Congressman totally sold out and voted for obamacare? Now these uppity fucking morans gotta come here and get all liberal kkk on your blog? Fuck em. My reply to "Bone" noted that at least "this uppity F---ing maran" knew how to spell the word "moron", and recommended that he spend some time at the informative website http://www.aryan-nations.orgIt's worth noting that my reply did not last on this conservative blog for more than five minutes before it was taken down. But let's see if you can have more luck: http://www.politicalbyline.com/
Let me be as clear as possible so to understand the ever-scaling political conflict between Colombia and Venezuela's governments:
So here's a Muslim politician (Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi), who happens to be not just a member but a Veep of a hard-core Hindu right-wing political party (the BJP), criticizing the home minister (P Chidambaram), a Hindu Brahmin, for attending an event where a Muslim organization (Jamiat-e-Ulema Hind) adopted a resolution against the singing of a national song (Vande Mataram), calling it un-Islamic.
First, some hysteria from Minnesota wingnut Michele Bachmann:
Now, a sad developing story from rural southeastern Kentucky:
WASHINGTON — The FBI is investigating the hanging death of a U.S. Census worker near a Kentucky cemetery, and a law enforcement official told The Associated Press the word 'fed" was scrawled on the dead man's chest.
The body of Bill Sparkman, a 51-year-old part-time Census field worker and occasional teacher, was found Sept. 12 in a remote patch of the Daniel Boone National Forest in rural southeast Kentucky. The Census has suspended door-to-door interviews in rural Clay County, where the body was found, pending the outcome of the investigation.
Investigators are still trying to determine whether the death was a killing or a suicide, and if a killing, whether the motive was related to his government job or to anti-government sentiment.
Investigators have said little about the case. The law enforcement official, who was not authorized to discuss the case and requested anonymity, said Wednesday the man was found hanging from a tree and the word "fed" was written on the dead man's chest. The official did not say what type of instrument was used to write the word.
FBI spokesman David Beyer said the bureau is helping state police with the case.
"Our job is to determine if there was foul play involved – and that's part of the investigation – and if there was foul play involved, whether that is related to his employment as a census worker," said Beyer.
Beyer declined to confirm or discuss any details about the crime scene.
Lucindia Scurry-Johnson, assistant director of the Census Bureau's southern office in Charlotte, N.C., said law enforcement officers have told the agency the matter is "an apparent homicide" but nothing else.
Census employees were told Sparkman's truck was found nearby, and a computer he was using for work was found inside it, she said. He worked part-time for the Census, usually conducting interviews once or twice a month.
Sparkman has worked for the Census since 2003, spanning five counties in the surrounding area. Much of his recent work had been in Clay County, officials said.
Door-to-door operations have been suspended in Clay County pending a resolution of the investigation, Scurry-Johnson said.
The U.S. Census Bureau is overseen by the Commerce Department.
"We are deeply saddened by the loss of our co-worker," Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said in a statement. "Our thoughts and prayers are with William Sparkman's son, other family and friends."
Locke called him "a shining example of the hardworking men and women employed by the Census Bureau."
I happen to know the part of the state where this incident occurred, having grown up not far from there, and it is a place where deep resentment and a culture of miseducation is pervasive. Unfortunately there are many such pockets in our country. Our representatives know this, yet they continue to fan the fires. It's time we hold them accountable.
Sometimes the insanity becomes too much to watch, which is why we must watch it. Can a nation this divided still stand? Can a culture of miseducation, in-civility, and crude discourse perpetuate itself over generations? Have we already crossed the great divide?
If nothing else, this video inspires me to raise my own level of discourse--to check my platitudes, and to have reasoned, rational positions based on facts.
Tea Party protesters trying to tout the size of their march on Washington last weekend have been passing around a photo of a packed National Mall. But the picture is years old.
Politifact asked Pete Piringer, public affairs officer for the D.C. Fire and Emergency Department, if the rally was big enough to fill that space. Piringer said no -- and moreover, the picture can't be from 2009.
Yet the photo showed the crowd sprawling far beyond that to the Washington Monument, which is bordered by 15th and and 17th Streets.There's another big problem with the photograph: it doesn't include the National Museum of the American Indian, a building located at the corner of Fourth St. and Independence Ave. that opened on Sept. 14, 2004. (Looking at the photograph, the building should be in the upper right hand corner of the National Mall, next to the Air and Space Museum.) That means the picture was taken before the museum opened exactly five years ago. So clearly the photo doesn't show the "tea party" crowd from the Sept. 12 protest.
"I've seen bigger crowds at Montreal Expos games, but I still wouldn't fake a photo just to justify your predictions of millions descending on Washington," said one gleeful Democratic media strategist. "This is grade-A stupid and just plays into the argument that these were astroturf protests to begin with. They've always brought the noise, but the question that was supposed to be answered this weekend was, could they bring the numbers? In that respect this was an unmitigated disaster."
A number of conservative blogs have since taken the photo down. Some have corrected their posts. Others say the circulation of the picture was a left-wing conspiracy to discredit the event. However, many of them are still claiming that at least a million people attended the march. Nate Silver estimates about 70,000 protesters showed up.
It isn't the first failed attempt by the protesters to inflate the size of the event. On Saturday, organizer Matt Kibbe announced on stage that ABC News had estimated a crowd of 1 to 1.5 million. ABC News had reported no such thing.
