Iraqi constitution delay illegal under TAL

News services are currently reporting:

BREAKING NEWS
Updated: 3:39 p.m. ET Aug. 15, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Several members of the committee drafting Iraq’s constitution said Monday they had agreed to seek a 10-day extension to the Aug. 15 deadline to try to complete negotiations over the highly contested charter.

According to Juan Cole, posting a short time ago, this is illegal:

Every indication is that a final text of Iraq’s permanent constitution
just won’t be reported out of the drafting committee in time to have
parliament vote on it on Monday. Now Iraqi politicians are talking
about having parliament amend the interim constitution to allow a delay
of say, two weeks. In fact, according to the Transitional
Administrative Law, if the committee did not ask for an extension by
August 1 (which it was pressured not to do by the Bush administration);
and if the parliament did not approve the new constitution by August
15; then parliament should be dissolved.

UPDATE:  AP now reporting Iraqi parliament voted "unanimously" to delay constitution deadline by 7 days….

Cindy Sheehan and the threat of peace

The debate continues to rage in the blogs over the number one Technorati search topic, Cindy Sheehan. Fortunately one of my favorite bloggers, Michael Dietz of Reading A1, sorts through the most interesting of the clashes, that of John Cole of Balloon Juice vs. Andrew Northrup of The Poorman:

Radical grief. 

So I come to check the blogs of a silly Saturday, when you don’t expect much to be happening, and hey lookee, there’s been something of a dust-up: at The Poor Man, The Editors has administered a righteous and thoroughly deserved ass-whupping to John Cole, on the occasion of this rancid little screed re: Cindy Sheehan, in which Cole rips off the mask of thoughtfulness and civility that had seduced a few lefty bloggers (er, ahem, harrr) into thinking he was some sort of reachable conservative.  So thoroughly did The Poor Man eviscerate the poor man, so petulant and incoherent the victim’s response, that anything further from me would be piling on.

Allow me, then, to pile on.

Read, as they say, the rest.

The Huffington Post has a Sliming Cindy update.  If you were wondering just how low the HawkBlogs could go in their insane, desperate quest to Joe Wilson Cindy Sheehan, here’s the answer.  I must admit that I don’t understand how Cindy and her husband separating is relevant to Cindy’s confrontation with G WMD Bush any more than I could understand how Valerie Wilson’s identity had anything to do with whether Niger sold  yellowcake to Iraq or not.  I guess you have to have a secret Republican Wingnut Family Values Decoder ring or something.

 

Sibel Edmonds Speaks and Bob Dreyfuss Explains

Saturday on the Weekend Interview Show I’ll be talking with Sibel Edmonds about the new Vanity Fair article which finally disclosed the reason for her gagging: The corruption of the Speaker of the House of Representatives. National Security indeed.

In the second hour I’ll be talking with veteran reporter Bob Dreyfuss about the FBI investigation into the Israeli spies operating out of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee and the Department of Defense.

Update: The show’s over, archives here. I need a fast typist to write up a transcript of the Sibel Edmonds interview. I’ve already got it started for you. When I asked her whether she thought that the unnamed State and Defense Department officials in her case were tied in any way to the AIPAC spy scandal, she replied:

“Absolutely. And I cannot go into any details – and maybe some other investigative journalist … will come here an do the rest of this article – but even the AIPAC spy scandal as far as I’m reading today is just touching the surface of it. It’s going only to a certain degree. It doesn’t go high enough, in what it involves and how far it goes, and that’s as far, and the best – as far as I can explain.”

Later in the interview, around the time we were discussing what she can’t say about September 11th, Edmonds said that when her story is finally told, it will make the AIPAC scandal look “lame” in comparison.

Green Day’s Anti-Recruitment Video

The Rude Pundit

Simple. A bit sappy. And as effective as a mallet to the head. Or that bleeding heart grenade on the cover of the album itself.

We have entered the hottest part of the summer. Between this, a song on the Rolling Stones’ new album, and Cindy Sheehan’s vigil at Crawford, Texas, we’ve also entered a season of discontent and resistance. At last.

See the video here.

Click on “Wake me up when September ends” in Latest News or click here for broadband Windows Media version.

Sibel Edmonds Speaks and Bob Dreyfuss Explains

Saturday on the Weekend Interview Show I’ll be talking with Sibel Edmonds about the new Vanity Fair article which finally disclosed the reason for her gagging: The corruption of the Speaker of the House of Representatives. National Security indeed.

In the second hour I’ll be talking with veteran reporter Bob Dreyfuss about the FBI investigation into the Israeli spies operating out of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee and the Department of Defense.

Listen live 4-6 pm eastern time

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