I read in Al Jazeera that A Bahraini court has sentenced six Twitter users to one year in prison for allegedly insulting King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa….The six were charged by the lower criminal court with “misusing the right of free expression”…and “undermining the values and traditions of Bahrain’s society towards the king”.

I guess the good news is that the courts said  the right of free expression and used a lower case “k” when referring to the king. The bad news, to me, is everything else and I am afraid that even the good news is just window dressing.

The United States 5th Fleet is stationed in Bahrain so we have to be nice to our host (I tried to resist saying kowtow). Our host, in this case is a regime that called in the Saudi army to help it put down peaceful protests. Our host is a minority Sunni regime that suppresses its Shiite majority. A host that, by its own admission, has killed and tortured its own citizens when they protested.

The FIA runs a Formula One race in Bahrain and that bothers me, but it bothers me even more that we have a Navy fleet stationed there. I don’t know, for sure,  how many fleets we have, but I think it is six and I know we have to put them somewhere and many democratic governments don’t want a US Navy fleet stationed in their country. As an aside,I do know that we have eleven aircraft carriers and the next most powerful country – still Russia – has only one, so we are pretty safe on that front. End aside.

According to a PR release, the fleet is there to ensure the free flow of oil through the Gulf, as well as monitoring Iran and deterring piracy and navy officials have said there is no sign that the protesters  intend to direct their hostility toward us. I guess that the latter is good news, but – really – what are we doing there? Why are we the world’s protector of the world’s free flow of oil? Why don’t the oil producers protect their oil? They are the ones making huge profits. Why do we have to subsidize Arab oil?

I think it perverts us. It leads our leader to pretend everything is great in Bahrain when it isn’t. It leads Hillary Clinton to say I am impressed by the commitment that the government has to the democratic path that Bahrain is walking on. when they are putting people in jail for misusing the right of free expression. 

In early August 1962 – atleast I think it was 1962, it could have been 1966 – my dad took me to to the Democratic California State Convention at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco. In those days, the Fairmont, owned by Ben Swig, was the Democratic Hotel and the Mark Hopkins Hotel –  across the street and owned by cowboy movie star Gene Autry – was the Republican hotel. This convention was to nominate Governor Pat Brown to run for either a second term against Richard Nixon – which he won – or a third term against Ronald Reagan,  – which he lost – and all of California’s Democratic big wigs were there.

By now, I had become a little used to going to Democratic Conventions with my dad, having gone to the 1960 National Convention earlier. My dad was not very good at remembering names which was a distinct disadvantage at a convention of glad-handers where the whole point was what we now call networking. My dad’s strategy was that we could walk around together but, if he stopped to say Hello to somebody, I would just keep walking. If my dad knew their name, he would call me back and introduce me to his friend? acquaintance? famous-to-everybody-but my-dad luminary?  If he did not know their name, I would just keep walking. Since I knew almost nobody and my dad couldn’t remember alot of names, often I would wander around among the big wigs, alone, for a while.

As an aside, I am not sure when the Convention’s business was over, but the drinking and partying continued way past the legal-bar-closing time of 2:00 AM. I did not want to pay the exorbitant fee of $2.00 to park, so I had parked about a mile away, across Van Ness Avenue, in a residential area. As an aside to the aside, Van Ness is so wide because the buildings on one side were dynamited to make a fire break after the earthquake of 1906 which is also why there are no wooden Victorians to the east of Van Ness and so many on the west side. End of aside to the aside. Anyway, about 3:00 AM, I walked back to my car. The streets were mostly empty because of the hour, but every bus zone, every fire hydrant, every no parking zone -really – had a car in it. There were no tickets on any of the windows: it was a graphic demonstration of  how politicians – and Police Chiefs, and Fire Chiefs, and assorted highranking public employees, just big wigs in general – don’t feel it necessary to follow the laws they make. I won’t say that I was devastated, but I did become more cynical and angry as I walked. End aside.

One of those big wigs was an old man whose name I don’t remember and I don’t think that my dad did either. (When I say old man, it comes from the perspective of a young twenty-something; the old man would now look considerably younger but, then, he could have been anything over 70.) Anyway, when my dads called me over and I shook hands with the old man, I was told that the old man’s grandfather had shaken hands with President George Washington so I was three handshakes away from Washington himself. At the time, it did not seem like a very big deal because, among other things, at the time I did not not think of myself as very young, so that the connection could easily be stretched by, say, 17 years and the old man was sort of wasting his time with me. Now the connection seems pretty amazing, and just marginally possible which I guess was the point.

This was the early to mid 1960’s: let’s say 1962. If the old man was 86, he would have been born in 1876. Let’s say that a handshake doesn’t count until a child is five and knows what they are doing, that means the earliest time he could have meaningfully shaken his grandfather’s hand was 1881. If his grandfather lived to be 86, that means the earliest time he could have meaningfully shaken Washington’s hand was 1799. The same year that Washington died. But, Washington died at the very end of 1799 – December 14th – making the whole thing possible. Giving me only three degrees of separation from the first President of the United States.

Just look at this couple. Look at the guy, with that charming smile. How can anybody not trust him to always do what is right.

And that is the rub, a big part of me thinks it must be right if Obama did it instead of looking at it objectively.  For the first time, I am starting to understand why otherwise sane Republicans overlook Bush’s many flaws. Like I look – or, maybe, overlook is more accurate – at Obama’s ordering of Drone Strikes backwards, they must do the same with Bush’s overspending.

I read where one of the mothers of the children killed at Newtown wanted her son shown in an open casket at his funeral service. She wanted people to actually see the damage that a modern assault rifle causes: the child’s face half missing, his left hand almost gone (the weapon used is designed to cause as much damage as possible, the damage is not collateral, it is the point). I think we should do the same with drone strikes.

The strike above killed 12 civilians – three were children – on their way back from the market. According to Yemeni paper that printed this picture, The villagers who rushed to the road, cutting through rocky fields in central Yemen, found the dead strewn around a burning sport utility vehicle. The bodies were dusted with white powder — flour and sugar, the witnesses said — that the victims were bringing home from market when the aircraft attacked. A torched woman clutched her daughter in a lifeless embrace. Four severed heads littered the pavement. I think that this should be in The New York Times, I think that it should be on television.

Obama ran on transparency, or – at least – that is what I most resonated with. I didn’t think that he was going to be a wild eyed liberal but I thought that he would be more transparent than the Bush Administration. I did think we would get away from the Under Siege mentality that justified The Patriot Act – what a hypocritical name! – that justified torture: I did not think we would get an administration that would deny – for a year – even the existence of a paper authorizing the killing of Americans.  It never occurred to me that we would get an administration that says it has the right to kill Americans without a trial, or even a hearing, or even a judicial second opinion. An administration that issues a white paper that says: Were the target of a lethal operation a U.S citizen who may have rights under the Due Process Clause and the Fourth Amendment, that individual’s citizenship would not immunize from a lethal operation. An administration that uses that kind of Orwellian language to hide what is really going on. That wants to keep the lid on the casket.

The Obama Administration is saying We have the power – the legal right – to kill anybody we want without a trial. Trust us we won’t abuse that power. I do trust them, but I didn’t trust Chaney and that is a problem. We are supposed to be a nation ruled bu Law not the decision, no matter how well considered, of one man. Even if if that one man is Barrak Obama.