Want to know if a celebrity is playing both sides of the fence? Whether that new guy you're seeing is actually a Republican or just dresses like one? If your boss maxed out at that fundraiser or got comped? Whether your neighbor's political involvement stops at that hideous lawn sign?

How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it. Of this kind is pity or compassion, the emotion which we feel for the misery of others, when we either see it, or are made to conceive it in a very lively manner.

Some animals are surprisingly sensitive to the plight of others. Chimpanzees, who cannot swim, have drowned in zoo moats trying to save others. Given the chance to get food by pulling a chain that would also deliver an electric shock to a companion, rhesus monkeys will starve themselves for several days.

Biologists argue that these and other social behaviors are the precursors of human morality. They further believe that if morality grew out of behavioral rules shaped by evolution, it is for biologists, not philosophers or theologians, to say what these rules are. [The reporter is likely oversimplifying here, as journalists tend to do...]

…

Many philosophers find it hard to think of animals as moral beings, and indeed Dr. de Waal does not contend that even chimpanzees possess morality. But he argues that human morality would be impossible without certain emotional building blocks that are clearly at work in chimp and monkey societies.

To pass muster with O'Beirne, a political appointee who screens prospective political appointees for Defense Department posts, applicants didn't need to be experts in the Middle East or in post-conflict reconstruction. What seemed most important was loyalty to the Bush administration.

O'Beirne's staff posed blunt questions to some candidates about domestic politics: Did you vote for George W. Bush in 2000? Do you support the way the president is fighting the war on terror? Two people who sought jobs with the U.S. occupation authority said they were even asked their views on Roe v. Wade.

"I'm not here for the Iraqis," one staffer noted to a reporter over lunch. "I'm here for George Bush."

• Campaigns focusing only on battleground states.
• Nullification of millions of votes.
• Candidates whose only goal is to win a plurality of the ballots.
• Victories by candidates whom most of the community doesn't support.
• Apathy of the electorate toward politics.

The range of interrogation techniques, or abuse techniques, is pretty much the whole array of usual stuff that happens in countries that torture. It includes beatings, suspension, near-asphyxia, chemical burns—there were instances of burns with lighter fluid—kicks, slamming against the wall. There was at least one thumbscrew I saw. Electrical shocks with, in our case, external electrodes. I did not see any internal electrodes. There were instances of asphyxiation, food and water deprivation, deprivation of access to toilets, deprivation of access to medical care, forcing people to urinate on themselves, forcing people to masturbate, to renounce their religion, to put the urine or feces of other people on themselves, other forms of nudity, forced fondling, verbal abuse, threats against family, mock executions, forcing the victims to watch other family members being abused. They also used what's called "perceptual monopolization," which include... loud noise... (Emphasis mine. Source: The American Way of Torture).

A well-constituted court for the trial of impeachments is an object not more to be desired than difficult to be obtained in a government wholly elective. The subjects of its jurisdiction are those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust. They are of a nature which may with peculiar propriety be denominated POLITICAL, as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself.

I'll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Then I'll get on my knees and pray
We don't get fooled again
Don't get fooled again
No, no!

Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss

• Evaluate judges based on qualifications, not politics
• Will Congress set aside politics in confirmation of new justice?

It will be the office of the President to NOMINATE, and, with the advice and consent of the Senate, to APPOINT. There will, of course, be no exertion of CHOICE on the part of the Senate. They may defeat one choice of the Executive, and oblige him to make another; but they cannot themselves CHOOSE, they can only ratify or reject the choice of the President. They might even entertain a preference to some other person, at the very moment they were assenting to the one proposed, because there might be no positive ground of opposition to him; and they could not be sure, if they withheld their assent, that the subsequent nomination would fall upon their own favorite, or upon any other person in their estimation more meritorious than the one rejected.

To what purpose then require the co-operation of the Senate? I answer, that the necessity of their concurrence would have a powerful, though, in general, a silent operation. It would be an excellent check upon a spirit of favoritism in the President, and would tend greatly to prevent the appointment of unfit characters from State prejudice, from family connection, from personal attachment, or from a view to popularity. In addition to this, it would be an efficacious source of stability in the administration.

It will readily be comprehended, that a man who had himself the sole disposition of offices, would be governed much more by his private inclinations and interests, than when he was bound to submit the propriety of his choice to the discussion and determination of a different and independent body, and that body an entire branch of the legislature. The possibility of rejection would be a strong motive to care in proposing. The danger to his own reputation, and, in the case of an elective magistrate, to his political existence, from betraying a spirit of favoritism, or an unbecoming pursuit of popularity, to the observation of a body whose opinion would have great weight in forming that of the public, could not fail to operate as a barrier to the one and to the other. He would be both ashamed and afraid to bring forward, for the most distinguished or lucrative stations, candidates who had no other merit than that of coming from the same State to which he particularly belonged, or of being in some way or other personally allied to him, or of possessing the necessary insignificance and pliancy to render them the obsequious instruments of his pleasure.

To what purpose then require the co-operation of the Senate? I answer, that the necessity of their concurrence would have a powerful, though, in general, a silent operation. It would be an excellent check upon a spirit of favoritism in the President, and would tend greatly to prevent the appointment of unfit characters from State prejudice, from family connection, from personal attachment, or from a view to popularity. In addition to this, it would be an efficacious source of stability in the administration.

It will readily be comprehended, that a man who had himself the sole disposition of offices, would be governed much more by his private inclinations and interests, than when he was bound to submit the propriety of his choice to the discussion and determination of a different and independent body, and that body an entire branch of the legislature. The possibility of rejection would be a strong motive to care in proposing. The danger to his own reputation, and, in the case of an elective magistrate, to his political existence, from betraying a spirit of favoritism, or an unbecoming pursuit of popularity, to the observation of a body whose opinion would have great weight in forming that of the public, could not fail to operate as a barrier to the one and to the other. He would be both ashamed and afraid to bring forward, for the most distinguished or lucrative stations, candidates who had no other merit than that of coming from the same State to which he particularly belonged, or of being in some way or other personally allied to him, or of possessing the necessary insignificance and pliancy to render them the obsequious instruments of his pleasure.

• The media has lionized New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, but he shares responsibility for what happened in his city. His government knew thousands of people wouldn't have financial or logistical means to evacuate New Orleans. Yet he didn't use dozens of available school buses to help evacuate people, so they sat empty on their lots. Instead, Nagin arranged for the Superdome to become "a shelter of last resort," without first adequately stocking it with food and supplies. Also, even though New Orleans knew one day wasn't enough time for an evacuation, Nagin didn't issue an evacuation order until the day before the storm hit.
  
  In addition, Amtrak offered its last train out of New Orleans, with room for several hundred passengers, to the city for evacuation efforts. Incredibly, Nagin's government rejected the offer.
  
  
• Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco waited a few days before agreeing to an evacuation order. Also, after Hurricane Katrina struck, Blanco didn't call in the National Guard for a day. Blanco obstructed relief efforts, too, by refusing to allow the feds to take command in New Orleans. She feared an effort by Republicans to portray the action as an admission her government bore responsibility for the catastrophe in New Orleans.
  
  
• Of course, the federal government under the command of President Bush deserves blame. For nearly a week after Katrina, the federal government had no personnel in New Orleans. The absence of FEMA workers and military forces during that time permitted starvation and chaos. If a government can't take care of its citizens, it surrenders its legitimacy. The government of the United States has dangerously approached that point vis-a-vis New Orleans.
  
  Rank incompetence from our government officials has exacerbated public anger over the slow response. For instance, the Secretary of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, didn't know refugees were suffering and dying in a New Orleans convention center, after the networks had been covering that situation incessantly. The (now thankfully former) director of FEMA, Michael Brown, overshadows Chertoff's idiocy, though. He, too, had no idea about the conditions in the convention center. He wasn't cognizant of the flooding in New Orleans. And, after the dreadful response of his agency to Katrina, Brown professed not even to know why anyone had a problem with him! I guess, however, we couldn't expect anything more from a former horse breeder... who was fired.
  
  Bush makes much ado about his ability to delegate. His delegation of authority to unqualified boobs who supported his campaign instead of intelligent administrators with decades of experience should indeed earn the attention of the American public. They should punish Bush and his supporters for it in the midterm 2006 elections.
  
  
• Attempting to defend the performance of his department, Chertoff raised a good point: FEMA was designed to work with local government personnel after a disaster. It wasn't set up for a calamity in which local governmental infrastructure has collapsed. That doesn't excuse the national government's five day delay in reaching New Orleans. But it raises the important question, just why wasn't FEMA prepared to handle a disaster so massive, it might have to work on its own?
  
  During the reorganization of the federal government after September 11, 2001, the Congress and the President should have taken their time to make the Department of Homeland Security more efficient, and FEMA itself more robust. After all, what if terrorists pulverized a region with an atomic strike? Or, what if a natural phenomenon destroyed an area, which has actually happened? The federal government had an excellent opportunity to strengthen FEMA for such catastrophes, but neither the Congress nor the President took advantage of it. Their short-sightedness haunts us now.