Short Friday Music

Kids are here. Parents are here. Wedding tomorrow.

Here’s a short version of Friday Music for you:

An absolutely brilliant cover of a great song — Me First and the Gimme Gimmes – “Science Fiction Double Feature.”

The official version of the new Bond theme is out…and this mix is MUCH better. They’ve brought the orchestral bits further into the mix, and it makes all the difference, in my opinion: Chris Cornell – “You Know My Name.”

Sting has a new album of Renaissance music, which resulted from when someone gave him a lute as a gift. Really beautiful stuff: Sting – “Can She Excuse My Wrongs.”

I’m afraid that’s all I have time for this week. More next week, I promise!

Olbermann on the Military Commissions Act

Transcript and Video here.

Excerpt:

“We have handed a blank check drawn against our freedom to a man who has insisted again that “the United States does not torture. It’s against our laws and it’s against our values” and who has said it with a straight face while the pictures from Abu Ghraib Prison and the stories of Waterboarding figuratively fade in and out, around him.

We have handed a blank check drawn against our freedom to a man who may now, if he so decides, declare not merely any non-American citizens “unlawful enemy combatants” and ship them somewhere—anywhere — but may now, if he so decides, declare you an “unlawful enemy combatant” and ship you somewhere – anywhere.

And if you think this hyperbole or hysteria, ask the newspaper editors when John Adams was president or the pacifists when Woodrow Wilson was president or the Japanese at Manzanar when Franklin Roosevelt was president.

And if you somehow think habeas corpus has not been suspended for American citizens but only for everybody else, ask yourself this: If you are pulled off the street tomorrow, and they call you an alien or an undocumented immigrant or an “unlawful enemy combatant”—exactly how are you going to convince them to give you a court hearing to prove you are not? Do you think this attorney general is going to help you?”

Happy Birthday !

“”Well Jimmy, seeing how it’s your birthday, we’ll let you go.”

-Joel, “I Accuse My Parents”, MST3K #507