Don't Go Into The Light

What will happen is if Wal Mart were to prevail in this suit many of the other states would look over the rulings, and rewrite the laws they are proposing to cover contingencies.

It will however delay them implementing the laws.

Perhaps - I'm not a lawyer. I suppose it depends on the grounds used to contest the law - whether it's a technicality of some wide-sweeping concept.

For example, what if the court said "If you do it to one company, you have to do it to all", basically trashing the 10,000 employee threshold. I don't think even the most stubborn liberal would risk the fallout from a rewrite that would do so much harm to small business.

Regarding previous post smearing Murtha:

Oh my - isn't amazing how those who never knew what it is like to serve in combat question the patriotism and bravery of those who did? While the Right quibbles over the details of Murtha's and Kerry's multiple purple hearts, they ignore the simple question of why Bush Jr sought to go into the ANG in the first place.

To me, all of this talk about whether Bush showed up for all of his jumping jacks in Alabama, etc, is all an irrelevant side show that distracts attention from the core question. I personally don't really care if Bush fulfilled his entire Guard commitment, and that part of the story is open to question anyway - so lets not even go there. But the undisputable heart of the matter is that he went into the ANG (and was preferentially selected for a slot in the ANG) as a way to escape being sent to Vietnam (during that conflict - unlike today in Iraq - almost NO national guard units were deployed to combat. A gig in the guard was a sure bet that you wouldn't have to go to Nam).

Answer this one question: during time of war, did Bush go into the ANG as an "honrable" way to avoid getting sent to Vietnam? Or to put it another way, if Vietnam weren't going on, would Bush have ever sought a slot in the ANG? Please, lets be honest. The fact is that Bush had a chance to serve his country in WAR and chose instead to serve his country out of harms way. Fair enough - he wasn't the first wealthy elite to use the ANG as a means to escape combat duty. But don't turn around and pick apart the records of those who went and put their lives on the line.

Aaron,

"Oh my - isn't amazing how those who never knew what it is like to serve in combat question the patriotism and bravery of those who did?"

Hate to tell you that you have your facts incorrect again but LB is a VET.
What does that say about Murtha and Kerry when it comes from other combat vets?
BTW are you defending Murtha and Kerrys purple hearts because YOU'VE been in combat?

Well, if LB is a vet, then I would ask why he partakes in this smear campaign to cast doubt upon the record of fellow vets. All of this really comes down to trying to minimize what Kerry, Murtha, Cleland and others have done in combat. It's shameful. With the glaring lack of military service among the top war proponents in the administration, you guys know you are vulnerable to criticisms from those who went to war. So you smear, "swift-boat", cast doubt, call into question, undermine, etc - all the while ignoring the elephant in the room: what did Bush/Cheney/Wolfowitz/et al do when they had a chance to serve during wartime?

No one can answer my original, simple question: If Vietnam weren't raging, do you really think one George W Bush Jr would have found a sudden interest in serving in the Texas Air Guard?

Aaron,

I haven't partaken of any smear of Murtha's service record, and a quick reading of the actual post would serve to illustrate it - that is, if you can manage it.

I just can't decide if your continual mischaracterization of my post is ideological blindness, simple dishonesty, or symptomatic of a reading comprehension problem. Being a charitable person, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt for now.

Please visit this website. Successfully complete their program, and return here to read my post in which I said clearly that the CNS article was speculative and irrelevant. I will be patiently awaiting an apology upon your return.

If the problem is one of the other alternatives, then goodbye. I can't help you. And please don't return.

LB -

Please, lets be honest here. If the article is pure speculation (read: smear), then why do you even bother to post it here? You don't attempt to refute anything in the article. By saying the article is "speculative but interesting", you are merely trying to excuse yourself for going on to throw stones.

You also go on to say that the swift-boat attacks were never effectively disputed. I'd beg to differ, and I think that statement obvisouly shows the true intent of your post - to lend your support to the smear echo-chamber.

You also go on in your replies to various posters to say that the questions about Bush's ANG service is baseless and without merit. So apparently, you are selectively chosing to highlight articles (with the convenient caveat "it's speculation, but...") that call Murtha into question, but you downplay and cast scorn upon any similar, and far more basic, questioning of Bush's "war" record.

You say "Murtha made his bed" by criticizing Bush's conduct of the war, thus implying that Murtha has brought this kind of "speculation" about his record upon himself. Well, Mr Bush has issued very strong, politically charged comments on the war also - practically every chance he gets. And yet you cannot answer this simple question that by your standard Bush has brought upon himself: if Vietnam were not raging, would he have sought to get into the Texas Air Guard? Come on, give me your honest opinion.

My remark about Murtha making his own bed was in regard to his current situation of being the chief "cut and run" advocate on the left, and the political fallout he's had to endure since - not a reference to the CNS allegation.

How can you say that I dismiss CNS by calling it speculative and yet sa y I support it at the same time? Just doesn't make sense, Aaron. If I wanted to cast aspersions on Murth's record, I would have said so in no uncertain terms.

If I wanted to smear his war record, I wouldn't have quoted two respected righty blogs that slammed CNS for publishing it.

Your question on Bush is simply misdirection - I'm not going to dignify it, since the subject wasn't brought up by me - as was also the case with the swift boaters. Bush's service was brought up by a commenter named Tom.

This is my last comment on this topic. I have been clear on my position, and if you desire to believe it to be something other than what it is, please enjoy yourself. There will, however, be no more comments on this topic. I have better things to do with my time than to beat this dead horse anymore.

Aaron,

You must be bored today or unemployeed to spend so much time posting on others sites. I noticed that you never answered my question of ever being in combat? You know so much about war records and purple hearts and refuse to answer the question.

Like the blind leading the seeing, isn't it.

"BTW are you defending Murtha and Kerrys purple hearts because YOU'VE been in combat?"

"Well, if LB is a vet, then I would ask why he partakes in this smear campaign to cast doubt upon the record of fellow vets."

Maybe I'm the only one but to me this comment raises questions. Should LB not question someone's record because they both are vets? Wouldn't that be closing ranks and protecting your own regardless to the truth? Should people like LB raise questions when people use their combat records to put forth an argument about war?

I'm of the opinion that if you use your war/military records to promote an agenda or are in a position to have an effect on the war like Kerry or Murtha then you should open that record for public viewing. It would be like finding the cure for cancer but provide no information on how you did it. Murtha and Kerry called their own records into question on the basis of experience.

Luckily, Scrappy, you don't have to worry about administration officials using their war/military credentials to promote their agenda in favor of war in Iraq. (Mainly because they don't have any such credentials).

Aaron,

Still didn't answer my question. You go on and on about military/combat when you, yourself know absolutly nothing about it. You talk big but its all hot air. Come back when you grow up.

Article by James Webb, Secretary of the Navy under President Reagan:

Purple Heartbreakers

By JAMES WEBB
Published: January 18, 2006

Arlington, Va.

IT should come as no surprise that an arch-conservative Web site is questioning whether Representative John Murtha, the Pennsylvania Democrat who has been critical of the war in Iraq, deserved the combat awards he received in Vietnam.

After all, in recent years extremist Republican operatives have inverted a longstanding principle: that our combat veterans be accorded a place of honor in political circles. This trend began with the ugly insinuations leveled at Senator John McCain during the 2000 Republican primaries and continued with the slurs against Senators Max Cleland and John Kerry, and now Mr. Murtha.

Military people past and present have good reason to wonder if the current administration truly values their service beyond its immediate effect on its battlefield of choice. The casting of suspicion and doubt about the actions of veterans who have run against President Bush or opposed his policies has been a constant theme of his career. This pattern of denigrating the service of those with whom they disagree risks cheapening the public's appreciation of what it means to serve, and in the long term may hurt the Republicans themselves.

The approach has been to attack an opponent's greatest perceived strength in order to diminish his overall credibility. To no one's surprise, surrogates carry out the attacks, leaving President Bush and other Republican leaders to benefit from the results while publicly distancing themselves from the actual remarks.

During the 2000 primary season, John McCain's life-defining experiences as a prisoner of war in Vietnam were diminished through whispers that he was too scarred by those years to handle the emotional burdens of the presidency. The wide admiration that Senator Max Cleland gained from building a career despite losing three limbs in Vietnam brought on the smug non sequitur from critics that he had been injured in an accident and not by enemy fire. John Kerry's voluntary combat duty was systematically diminished by the well-financed Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in a highly successful effort to insulate a president who avoided having to go to war.

And now comes Jack Murtha. The administration tried a number of times to derail the congressman's criticism of the Iraq war, including a largely ineffective effort to get senior military officials to publicly rebuke him (Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, was the only one to do the administration's bidding there).

Now the Cybercast News Service, a supposedly independent organization with deep ties to the Republican Party, has dusted off the Swift Boat Veterans playbook, questioning whether Mr. Murtha deserved his two Purple Hearts. The article also implied that Mr. Murtha did not deserve the Bronze Star he received, and that the combat-distinguishing "V" on it was questionable. It then called on Mr. Murtha to open up his military records.

Cybercast News Service is run by David Thibault, who formerly worked as the senior producer for "Rising Tide," the televised weekly news magazine produced by the Republican National Committee. One of the authors of the Murtha article was Marc Morano, a long-time writer and producer for Rush Limbaugh.

The accusations against Mr. Murtha were very old news, principally coming from defeated political rivals. Aligned against their charges are an official letter from Marine Corps Headquarters written nearly 40 years ago affirming Mr. Murtha's eligibility for his Purple Hearts - "you are entitled to the Purple Heart and a Gold Star in lieu of a second Purple Heart for wounds received in action" - and the strict tradition of the Marine Corps regarding awards. While in other services lower-level commanders have frequently had authority to issue prestigious awards, in the Marines Mr. Murtha's Vietnam Bronze Star would have required the approval of four different awards boards.

The Bush administration's failure to support those who have served goes beyond the smearing of these political opponents. One of the most regrettable examples comes, oddly enough, from modern-day Vietnam. The government-run War Remnants Museum, a popular tourist site in downtown Ho Chi Minh City, includes an extensive section on "American atrocities." The largest display is devoted to Bob Kerrey, a former United States senator and governor of Nebraska, recipient of the Medal of Honor and member of the 9/11 commission.

In the display, Mr. Kerrey is flatly labeled a war criminal by the Vietnamese government, and the accompanying text gives a thoroughly propagandized version of an incident that resulted in civilian deaths during his time in Vietnam. This display has been up for more than two years. One finds it hard to imagine another example in which a foreign government has been allowed to so characterize the service of a distinguished American with no hint of a diplomatic protest.

The political tactic of playing up the soldiers on the battlefield while tearing down the reputations of veterans who oppose them could eventually cost the Republicans dearly. It may be one reason that a preponderance of the Iraq war veterans who thus far have decided to run for office are doing so as Democrats.

A young American now serving in Iraq might rightly wonder whether his or her service will be deliberately misconstrued 20 years from now, in the next rendition of politically motivated spinmeisters who never had the courage to step forward and put their own lives on the line.

"A young American now serving in Iraq might rightly wonder whether his or her service will be deliberately misconstrued 20 years from now, in the next rendition of politically motivated spinmeisters who never had the courage to step forward and put their own lives on the line.

This is you Aaron, plenty of opinion on the war without the courage to put up or shut up. Besides, one only has to look at the party affiliation that screams LIB in this article.

Still didn't answer my question?

Scrappy (appropriate handle, I can see)-

I didn't support the war, I am not in political office, and most importantly, I have NOT attacked the service records of those who did go to war (unlike the Republican leaders you seem to admire). Futhermore, I am not the commander-in-chief and have not decided to unilaterally wage a wasteful war of choice. So why are you fixated on my background? Further, you never answered my one simple question regarding Bush - do you personally think he went into the Guard because he loves that kind of service, or did he do it as a politically viable means to avoid Vietnam? Just be honest. Certainly, since he is commander-in-chief and has decided to prosecute a war of choice, and since he has had his minions attack the war records of those who oppose him, then his record in war - unlike mine or yours or LB's - is a relevant question.

Why do you shy away from this question? Do you only have this question for Murtha, Kerry, Cleland, and (ridiculously) for me? But not for Bush?

Aaron,

First of all, I'm an Independent mostly because I have a distaste for the "Party" lines and I question everything including motivation.

"do you personally think he went into the Guard because he loves that kind of service, or did he do it as a politically viable means to avoid Vietnam?"

I think that Bush may have made the choice right for him. People join the service for a lot of reasons, some join the reserves and others don't, again for many reasons.
A close friend of mine is in the reserves and flew bodies from the WTC to Dover and later went to Afganistan when his unit was called up. There are a lot of veterans that could still be called up including those that would effect me. Would you ask me if my friend joined to avoid active service? No, because that would be a stupid question.

"Oh my - isn't amazing how those who never knew what it is like to serve in combat question the patriotism and bravery of those who did?"

I fixated on your background mostly because you, yourself it brought it into question in the quote above.

"he has had his minions attack the war records of those who oppose him, then his record in war - unlike mine or yours or LB's"

Would you call yourself one of the minions of the Democrats? Is freedom of speech dead or are people responsible for what they say? Murtha is a public figure and put his record up by becoming an advocate for cut-and- run using his experience from Vietnam. Kerry brought his own up as a campaign point. Bush didn't but it became public knowledge anyway and he still got elected twice.

I've heard a lot about Murtha's record from Pundits, newspapers and bloggers but very little from Republican leadership that I can recall.

If you would like to know my personal opinion of Murtha....he's a jackass and coward. That opinion has nothing to do with political affiliation..... It's everything to do with "a veteran," someone who should recall the experience, doing everything he can to undermine the troops on the ground, their morale and that of their families.

As for the opinions of this NOT not having an effect on the soldiers or their families... crap.

I question Murtha's patriotism and bravery and POLITICAL MOTIVATION mostly because I've experienced every side of this one issue except political gain/Murtha's.

You threw out the question of patriotism and bravery of a combat veteran but then acknowledged that you have never served. What make you think that you can even grasp what it means to a soldier who's living it?