Category: America

The legislation that passed the senate yesterday, which legalizes torture, suspends habeas corpus, strips judicial oversight, and includes war crimes immunity in an effort to turn this proud nation into a Potemkin democracy, is in my opinion the saddest moment of our national history post-9/11. My favorite analyses:

• New York Times: “ Congress passed a tyrannical law that will be ranked with the low points in American democracy, our generation’s version of the Alien and Sedition Acts.”
• Salon: “ The Senate’s rush to judgment underscores the dangers of negotiating with the Bush administration once the White House takes an extreme position. The three GOP dealmakers (Graham, John McCain and Senate Armed Service Committee chairman John Warner) succeeded in their effort to get the president to retreat from his deliberate attempt to eviscerate the Geneva Conventions and undermine the Supreme Court decision in the Hamdan case. The Senate Republican troika were aided in their headline-making efforts to outlaw torture by an army of former military lawyers and such high-profile recruits as former Secretary of State Colin Powell. But history may judge this to be a Pyrrhic victory. In exchange, the White House was allowed to blatantly rewrite the pending legislation in regard to habeas corpus and the definition of enemy combatants.”
• From the Salmon: “These prisoners will have no legal recourse to challenge their imprisonment, and should the president ever decide to bring them before a military tribunal, they can be convicted using secret evidence and evidence obtained through coercion or hearsay. And since we can’t afford accountability while we’re at war, we’ve also made these changes retroactive, to absolve the executive branch of past criminal acts.”
• The Baltimore Chronicle & Tribune: “The Republican senators flinched, and in last week’s so-called “compromise” chose Bush over the Constitution. In doing so, they turned their backs on a rule of law that stretches back over nearly eight centuries to an epic moment in 1215 on a meadow by the River Thames in the United Kingdom.”
• Alexander Hamilton: “The establishment of the writ of habeas corpus … are perhaps greater securities to liberty and republicanism than any it [the Constitution] contains. …[T]he practice of arbitrary imprisonments have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny. …To bereave a man of life, … or by violence to confiscate his estate, without accusation or trial, would be so gross and notorious an act of despotism, as must at once convey the alarm of tyranny throughout the whole nation; but confinement of the person, by secretly hurrying him to jail, where his sufferings are unknown or forgotten, is a less public, a less striking, and therefore A MORE DANGEROUS ENGINE of arbitrary government.”
• Thomas Jefferson: “… trial by juries in all cases, no suspensions of the habeas corpus… These are fetters against doing evil, which no honest government should decline.”

Well, we’re now about a month from the accountability moment, as Bush called the 2004 election. I think it’s time that all Americans who care about whether we preserve the principles on which this country was founded stand up and show the Congress what we think of this hollowing out of our democratic heritage.

Boston Globe (yesterday): Panel OK’s 2 rival wiretapping bills. Ok, I’m very unhappy of this trend of the senate to roll over for the Administration’s power-mad citizen surveillance schemes. “What, the covert warrantless wiretaps were illegal? Well, let’s just make ’em legal!!”

But here’s the rare thing, at least where Virginia senator John Warner is concerned: I have a small amount of new respect for a few of those senators, namely the senators from the Senate Armed Services Committee (McCain, John Warner, Lindsey Graham) who announced their continued opposition to proposals from the White House that limit an defendant’s access to evidence if it is classified. I can think of no system more ripe for abuse than one in which the Executive Branch collects evidence without notifying the judicial branch through a warrant application; classifies the evidence; then uses it to convict someone with no opportunities for challenge.

Overall the picture out of judiciary as painted by this article looks like total disarray and a complete lack of inclination for the senate to fall in line behind Bush’s police state measures. Thank goodness, democracy is messy.

I didn’t post anything yesterday about September 11. It’s not that I didn’t think about it. How could I not? I was in Cambridge, just a few miles from where I live now, when I first saw the news on Yahoo. I am constantly surrounded by reminders of that day, whether the profound (the silent presence of a 9/11 widow in our soprano section, the memory of Doug, the skies over the Charles that were so eerily silent that week) or the mundane (long lines and byzantine security procedures at the airport, five years of online saber rattling by both sides).

But I cannot participate in the sanctification of September 11. And I cannot give the administration a free pass for continuing to drag us into unrelated conflicts in memory of that day. Too much wrong has already been done in the name of this day.

Ironically, I’m flying (on business) for much of this week, so I don’t really have the time or energy to say more. But this column by H. D. S. Greenway in the Globe, calling the administration on their policies, is a good start.

Funny what happens when you’re out of the country for a week. I totally missed Donald Rumsfeld going off the deep end and claiming that critics of the Bush administration’s conduct of the war were propping up fascism. Huh?

It’s a type of criticism we’ve heard from this administration and its toadies before: we must live in fear. We must not question the president, regardless of the evidence; to do so is treasonous. It’s the same message that got a pass from the American people for the last five years.

How astonishing, then, that MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann was able to turn Rumsfeld’s syllogism around on him, comparing Bush’s government to Neville Chamberlain’s in their certainty of their command of the situation and impugning the integrity of their chief critic, Winston Churchill. It’s six and a half minutes of some of the finest display of journalistic integrity and courage since Edward R. Murrow, whom Olbermann invokes to good effect:

We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law.

We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were for the moment unpopular.

Indeed. See also Slate’s roundup of reaction from both sides of the blogosphere.

I don’t know that there’s anything more inspirational on the anniversary of the post-Katrina disaster as this prank by the Yes Men, who impersonated HUD officials to tell a crowd of contractors and media in New Orleans that HUD would be refocusing its efforts on getting people back into their homes, rather than knocking the homes down and letting new contracts for mixed-income flats. Read the article. It, combined with the constantly excellent reporting from the New Yorker on the disaster and reconstruction (much of which is missing from the archive link), ought to raise some questions.

Interesting article in the New York Times about the impact of blogs on the Lieberman/Lamont primary: In Race, Bloggers Throw Curves and Spitballs. The title should tell you what’s coming: hand-wringing about the role of blogs in political discourse, combined with laments about the maturity of blog writers and a harkening back to the good old days when the campaign controlled “the message.” In fact, the second page contains what is perhaps the perfect quotation, from a pro-Lieberman blogger:

Mr. Gerstein complained that for all the reasoned arguments by some bloggers, too many resort to crude humor and angry diatribes that “don’t pass the maturity test.”

“Too much of what passes for political commentary in the blogosphere is pretty juvenile and petulant, and that’s not the way you persuade people,” he said. “If the blogging community is going to have a real impact, they’re going to have to have a reckoning soon about their place in the real political world, because in that world there’s a caricature of them as being dominated by crazies.”

You can quote me on this: that’s a bunch of sanctimonious bullshit.

First of all, the quotation shows a profound misunderstanding of the nature of blogging and bloggers. There is no “dominating” the blogosphere, just as there is no controlling its speech. Blogging is free speech. Everyone is free to say whatever they want to say in a blog about any political race. The campaign can wring its hands, but the truth is that people have opinions that aren’t in sync with the message that the campaigns want to project. Really, the last thing that the people who have opinions about politics want is to have those opinions subjugated to the message of the campaign. That has never worked, from the Roman forum through the water cooler, and it won’t work in the blogosphere. If I want to state an opinion in the blogosphere, I’m free to do so.

In fact, let’s state two. First: Joe Lieberman’s argument that questioning the administration’s actions in Iraq is equivalent to acting against the country’s interests isso servile, craven, reprehensible and counter to the interests of democracy that they constitute a dereliction of his duty as a senator. Second. Ned Lamont is coasting pretty well on anti-Lieberman anger among the base and has a long way to go before he can prove to me that a Senator Lamont won’t be the new boss, same as the old boss.

See how easy that is? It’s speech. It’s free. And if you don’t like it, respond in kind. Don’t try to silence me.

Finally, I think the most fundamental misunderstanding here is the conflation of anti-Lieberman blogs with organized opposition. While some of them may well fall into that camp, I’m pretty sure there are a bunch—like me—who are just citizens with opinions and a publishing tool. And when you look at it in that light, it becomes a different argument. Consider:

…for all the reasoned arguments by some voters, too many resort to crude humor and angry diatribes that “don’t pass the maturity test.”

“Too much of what passes for political commentary in the electorate is pretty juvenile and petulant, and that’s not the way you persuade people,” he said. “If the voting community is going to have a real impact, they’re going to have to have a reckoning soon about their place in the real political world, because in that world there’s a caricature of them as being dominated by crazies.” [Emphasized words substituted to prove the point]

Bottom line: the bloggers are citizens. You should respond to them accordingly. In the final analysis, the best thing to do is to respond with persuasive speech, and there hasn’t been anything from either the Lieberman campaign or his independent supporters that persuades me that he’s worth keeping around.

I got a glimpse into the mind of global warming deniers today, as I was waiting for my lunch in a pizza shop near my office. Abutting a story about The Independent Republic of California doing a deal with the UK to create an international market in greenhouse emissions (not itself a bad thing) was a reader reaction that said (effectively) “Carbon dioxide has nothing to do with global warming. The sun has been getting stronger since 1905.”

Um. OMGWTFBBQ?

If anyone doubts that America enjoys a multiplicity of belief systems, look no further. Somewhere in the vast heartland of the country is a guy who believes with all his heart (and with no scientific evidence) that we have nothing to do with the global rise in temperature, melting icebergs, etc. Nope. It’s that pesky sun.

I’d be really curious to hear someone attempt to explain, without going to Biblical sources and speculations about when life begins, why I should agree with the President’s veto of the stem cell research bill. Because honestly, there seem to be far more articles written from the other side that are a lot more convincing to me.

I find appalling the posturing about the morality of working with cells that were created in petri dishes that would otherwise be discarded. I find it especially appalling when it comes from the mouths of people who think it’s OK to vote on someone else’s marriage or to send our young people to die in Iraq on the basis of trumped up intelligence.

In the echo of the Supreme Court’s resounding affirmation last week of the rights of individuals to a fair trial, of the limits of the power of the executive, and of a system of checks and balances—in other words, the principles on which our country was founded, ill-defined war or no—this 230th anniversary of the independence of our country seems especially dear. So I like to turn back to the source of much of that dearness, as well as to look around for some other words of inspiration. As Thomas Jefferson wrote in the last letter of his life, ten days before his death:

May it [the Declaration of Independence] be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all,) the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government. That form which we have substituted, restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion. All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God. These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them.

The emphasis, of course, is mine.

I find it interesting that one of the wealthiest men in America thinks that the estate tax giveaway currently being debated by Congress is a bad idea. After all, I thought the whole point of the estate tax repeal was to benefit the wealthy. But if the wealthiest Americans think that it’s a bad idea, then who thinks it’s a good idea?

And just how bad an idea does Buffett think the estate tax repeal is? There have been various quotations from him over the past few days that suggest that he thinks it’s a very bad idea indeed:

• NY Times, A Gift Between Friends: “As for any thought he might have had in giving the bulk of his billions to his three children, Mr. Buffett was characteristically blunt. ‘I don’t believe in dynastic wealth,’ he said, calling those who grow up in wealthy circumstances ‘members of the lucky sperm club.’”
• NY Times, Buffett’s Billions Will Aid in the Fight Against Disease: “Mr. Buffett was scathing yesterday in describing his feelings about estate taxes, which the Bush administration is trying to kill. The ability of rich men to pass on ‘dynastic wealth’ to their grandchildren is offensive to the American tradition of meritocracy, he said. He gets particularly upset at his country club, he said, hearing members complain about welfare mothers getting food stamps ’while they are trying to leave their children a more-than-lifetime-supply of food stamps and are substituting a trust officer for a welfare officer.’”
• Boston Globe, Buffett gives billions, hits bid to repeal the estate tax: “‘I can’t think of anything that’s more counter to a democracy that dynastic wealth,’ he said. ‘The idea that you win the lottery the moment you’re born: It just strikes me as outrageous.’”
• CommonDreams.org (from 2001), Dozens of the Wealthy Join to Fight Estate Tax: “ Mr. Buffett said repealing the estate tax ‘would be a terrible mistake,’ the equivalent of ‘choosing the 2020 Olympic team by picking the eldest sons of the gold-medal winners in the 2000 Olympics.’”

Looks like we may have to put the institution of Fitzmas as a national holiday on hold: Leak Counsel Won’t Charge Rove, Lawyer Announces. The thing about this, after Rove’s five grand jury appearances, is that I’m not sure it changes anyone’s mind about his innocence or guilt; it only shows that Pat Fitzgerald couldn’t prove his involvement sufficiently to send him to trial.

Looks like the majority Congress is back with a big knife for Elmo again: the House Appropriations subcommittee on health and education funding voted to whack 23% from the PBS and NPR budgets next year. Wish they would have thought of the “economic responsibility” argument when they were handing out tax cuts like candy.

Sign the MoveOn petition if you feel (as I do) that noncommercial broadcasting is still important and relevant, and worth paying for.

Thanks to Isis, formerly Fury, I’m reminded to point to this Boston Globe article about Bush’s signing statements, in which the president pledges to ignore parts of the laws that are inconvenient to him—the same laws that he is sworn to uphold. It makes some astounding points about the scope (number of signing statements issued in Bush’s presidency: 750, or about 150 a year), audacity (Bush’s signing statements nullified concessions that the administration made to Congress to get bills passed and have systematically eliiminated virtually every congressional reporting requirement for the executive branch that has been passed by Congress in the last five years), and far reaching implications (not only is Bush claiming the power to (un)make laws, by doing it under the rubric of “consistency with the law and with his duties as commander in chief,” he usurps the power of the Supreme Court to interpret the law as well).

If there was ever evidence needed of a pattern of behavior by George W. Bush that called for impeachment, I think this is it.

…go the Bush Administration veterans. Last week it was Andy Card, today it’s Scott McClellan. And buried by McClellan’s resignation, a note that Karl Rove is stepping away from his policy coordinator position to return to his core competency of oozing slime political strategy oversight for the upcoming 2006 elections.

I’d love to see what the internal death pool looks like at the White House. It’ll be interesting to see who else steps up to Josh Bolten’s call to get out of the pool.

Great coverage on this issue in Talking Points Memo, of course, including a note that Turd Blossom’s replacement as policy coordinator was involved in the 2000 Recount Riot in Florida, also known as the Brooks Brothers Riot. Also like the observation that if Tony Snow, Fox News radio host, takes over the White House press secretary job, it would be “more like an interdepartmental transfer than a job change.”

New York Times: DeLay Decides to End Career in Congress. That’s one of those “fair and balanced” headlines. The reality is probably closer to the spin in the email today from Howard Dean to the Democratic faithful: “This comes after Friday’s news that a key former DeLay aide pleaded guilty to conspiracy and agreed to cooperate with the ongoing federal investigation of DeLay’s money-for-influence machine.”

Someday someone will write the story of Tom DeLay’s fall from power, from the money laundering indictments and the insane steps that the House Republicans took to keep him in power then (including the passage of the DeLay Rule, which allowed indicted Congressional leaders to continue to hold their posts), and concluding with the Jack Abramoff saga. And they won’t be able to write about it without using the word blog more times than in any political biography ever written—with the possible exception of Trent Lott’s.

My favorite quotation from the article: “‘Our party will continue to succeed, because we are the party of ideas,’ Mr. Bush said” (emphasis added). No comment.