one expat's life in Korea
Thus the limitless malice of Internet commenting: it’s not newly unleashed anger but what we all think in the first order, and have always in the past socially restrained if only thanks to the look on the listener’s face—the monstrous music that runs through our minds is now played out loud.
Too Little, Too Late? Lawmakers Talk Impeachment
Less Than Six Months Before Bush Leaves Office, Partisan Debate Erupts
By TOM GIUSTO
WASHINGTON, July 25, 2008—
Less than six months before President Bush leaves office, the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing today on whether he should be impeached.
As could be predicted, the hearing was highly partisan. Democrats said they wanted accountability. Republicans called the hearing a show trial. People on both sides showed anger and emotion.
The hearing was about executive power and its constitutional limitations. The Democrat-controlled Judiciary Committee is concerned the Bush administration exceeded its authority in several areas including the following: improper politicization of the Justice Dept; misuse of presidential signing statements; misuse of surveillance, detention, interrogation and rendition programs; manipulation of intelligence and misuse of war powers; improper retaliation, and obstruction of justice in the Valerie Plame CIA agent outing case, and misuse of executive privilege.
There were 13 witnesses including current and former members of Congress, most of whom accused the Bush administration of abuse of power. Democrats and Republicans on the Committee spent an hour on opening statements presenting their opinions either justifying Bush's actions or accusing him of being the worst president in U.S. history.
Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., chairman of the committee, defended holding such a hearing while the president was on his way out of office.
"And we're not done yet," Conyers said. "We do not intend to go away until we achieve the accountability that the Congress is entitled to and the American people deserve."
Ranking Republican member Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, disagreed.
"This week it seems that we are hosting an anger management class," he said. "Nothing is going to come out of this hearing with regard to impeachment of the president."
But Democrat member Rep. Robert Wexler of Florida was angry at the president.
"Never before in the history of this nation has an administration so successfully diminished the constitutional powers of the legislative branch," Wexler said. "It is unacceptable, and it must not stand."
Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., didn't mince words in her feelings about Bush.
"It is my judgment that President Bush is the worst president our country has ever suffered," she said. "Making judgments that have jeopardized our national security, impaired our economy, and diminished the freedom and civil liberties of the American people."
Here, the students are denied everyday teenage items in South Korea. No cellphones, no fashion magazines, no TV, no Internet, no game machines.
Dating, going to concerts, wearing earrings, getting manicures, or simply acting their age - all these are suspended because they are deemed distracting for an overriding goal. Instead, the students cram from 6:30 a.m. to past midnight, seven days a week, in a campus kilometers away from the nearest public transportation, to clear one hurdle that can determine their future - the national college entrance exam.
South Koreans compare their obsessive desire to get their children enrolled in top-notch universities to "a war."
...School background looms large in the life of a South Korean. What university people attend in their 20s can determine their position and salary in their 50s. Top-tier schools like Seoul National, Yonsei and Korea Universities hardly register in the global lists of top schools, but at home, their diplomas pass as a status symbol, a badge of pride both for the students and their parents. On exam day, mothers pray at churches or outside the exam halls.
The life of a South Korean student, from kindergarten to high school, is shaped largely by the quest of doing well in standardized examinations to enter a choice university. That system is often credited with fueling the nation's economic success but is also widely criticized.
When massive anti-government protests shook South Korea in recent weeks, first over President Lee Myung Bak's agreement to import U.S. beef and later over his other policies, many of the demonstrators were teenagers protesting the pressure-cooker conditions at school. Among students between 10 and 19, suicide is the second most common cause of death after traffic accidents.
Lee's trouble started when people accused him of filling many top government posts with people who have ties with his alma mater, Korea University. Still, when he replaced his entire presidential staff this month, all but one of his 10 senior secretaries were graduates from the nation's three best-known universities. When the news media report government appointments, they always highlight the officials' school backgrounds.
It is no surprise that most students in this cram school say they enrolled voluntarily.
"A Macedonian journalist has been charged with murdering two elderly women — crimes he wrote about for his newspaper — and police said Sunday they were investigating his possible involvement in a third death.
. . .Police began to suspect Taneski, 56, after reading his articles about the crimes in the national daily Utrinski Vesnik and noticing details that had not been released to the public"
