Tortured Illogic

A link to WikiLeaks

2010-12-14T20:24:00.001-05:00

North Koreans to be blamed for sinking South Korean warship

2010-05-18T22:10:00.004-04:00

This bears watching. If it turns out to be from a NK sub, this will be just the third sinking of a warship by a submarine since World War II. The others were an Indian frigate in 1971 and an Argentine cruiser in 1982.

The only thing wrong was that more of them weren't shot

2010-05-04T13:53:00.005-04:00

"The only thing that went wrong ... is that so many of the weren't shot"

A quote by a British loyalist about the Boston Massacre? No, not quite. Actually a partial quote by an American commenter on this site.

The full quote:
"The only thing that went wrong at Kent is that so many of them WEREN'T shot. "

Yep, the only thing wrong is that more U.S. citizens exersing their First Amendment rights were not shot. Oh, and I suppose that extended to the bystanders such as ROTC student William Schoeder who was walking to class. It's a pity more people like him were not shot too, according to these people. Or so they say.

There's an amazing number of people who will hold these two thoughts in their minds at the same time: The government will have to pry my weapons from my cold dead hand AND it's OK for the government to shoot down unarmed protesters because they were DFH and deserved it.

Racial profiling

2010-04-29T17:54:00.002-04:00

A Native American professor recounts an unpleasant encounter with a police officer while driving.

http://americanindiansinchildrensliterature.blogspot.com/2009/06/home-for-awhile-racial-profiling.html

A simple and powerful reminder of what war costs

2010-03-22T16:57:00.002-04:00

If you have a moment and some tissues nearby, check this out.

The Great War of Yankee Aggression

2010-03-20T22:00:00.002-04:00

"The Great War of Yankee Aggression."

How, exactly, is someone supposed to interpret this. The congressmen let slip a slight smirk, so perhaps he was making a joke -- but it really makes you wonder what sort of philosophy is behind this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXT9ZDAbK_o

2010-03-17T17:48:00.003-04:00

Ballon Juice makes this excellent point while discussing the controversy over a French TV show where ordinary people are induced to torture people to death. Some foolish people on Fox News and elsewhere are apparently under the impression that Americans would never do such a thing (despite ample evidence to the contrary).

It's pointed out that American story-telling in movies and TV likes to reduce everything to simple good vs evil story lines.

"The problem is that this attitude of good-self versus bad-other is not just a great opiate for those nagging feelings of doubt, it’s also an essential prerequisite for acts of incredible evil."

This is, of course, the point of the argument against torture, at the end of the day. We shouldn't torture people not merely because of what it does to them, but ultimately what it will do to us.

A similar dynamic was at work with slavery. Many contemporary and subsequent observers were of the opinion that slavery, while obviously detrimental to the slaves, was also detrimental to the slave owner over the long term. Indeed, I think one could make an argument that the persistent, nearly intractable social and economic laggardness of most of the Old South is a legacy of the "peculair institution."

The McCain-Lieberman Constitution Annulment Act of 2010

2010-03-09T17:44:00.003-05:00

This would be a far more accurate title for this thing.

Nazis, Imperial Japanese, Khmer Rouge and US

2010-03-09T12:23:00.003-05:00

Salon summarizes the disturbing details of CIA torture.

If you can stand it, read the whole thing, but how this treatment doesn't eventually result in war crimes prosecutions for someone is hard to see.

If no one is ever held accountable for this torture program then Nuremburg will be proven to have been nothing more than victor's justice and that our claims to the contrary were a lie.

Also under threat are the ethics of entire professions. Medical, mental health and legal professionals took part in all of this and their ethical failures here were monumental.

Palin in 2012!

2010-03-08T19:01:00.002-05:00

A great comment from commenter Blackton on Chait's column on the Health Care Debate:

"I don't mean to be too glum." Glum? Hell, you would make Gandhi suicidal. Democrats are one vote away from the most meaningful reform in most of my lifetime, the only thing greater being the Civil rights acts in the 60's. One vote. If the Democrats can't hold together for one lousy vote, then screw it all. Americans can frankly f themselves. They will deserve their misery. I say vote for Palin in 2012, we are all supposed to die that year anyway, might as well guarantee it."

The damage they did was a lot deeper than two towers and sveral thousand lives

2010-03-03T12:14:00.002-05:00

As time goes on, it appears that the terror war hawks may be right, the War on Terror does represent an existential threat to America in away that the Nazis or Communists never did -- although not in the way that the terror war hawks may mean.

As this recent discussion before the Supreme Court illustrates, certain basic liberties are under assault -- even from those we might hope would know better. Obama administartion lawyers argued that the government could criminalize filing "friend of the court briefs" in support of an oragnization that the government has deemed "terrorist. Even those with dim imaginations should have little trouble imaging the likely consequences of this sort of power.

Bin Laden's attack on New York on 9/11 was a stunning success from his point of view -- and not merely because of the immediate damage and loss of life. No, the real fruits of his strategy ripened later courtesy of our own reactions to his attack. The economic damage alone of our security measures and wars dwarfs the damage done to New York. And even more important over the long term, we did grievous damage to our liberty and our moral authority with torture, our detention policy, the PATRIOT (sic) Act, warrantless wiretapping and the eorion of principl and rule of law needed to enact and implement all of that.

Osama Bin Laden and AlQaeda have done more real, lasting damage to us than Hitler and Tojo did.

The OPR report

2010-03-01T19:44:00.002-05:00

The OPR report on the 'Torture memos" is remarkably disheartening and hopeful at the same time.

It's fate is disheartening because its quashing by Margolis is one more example of shielding the big fish while small fry get served up for dinner. It really is a scandal that the likes of Lynndie England are prosecuted while senior officials get a pass.

I agree that the CIA operatives who may have tortured or abused someone in custody based on the shoddy legal framework provided should not be prosecuted -- so long as the high muckety-mucks that authorized it are held accountable. Of course, that is not happening nor does it seem to be in prospect. Instead there's mumblings about holding people responsible who may have "exceeded" the guidelines, which sounds a lot like deciding to scapegoat some small fry again.

It's a hopeful development in another sense, because it's one more brick in what will obviously be a very long process of bringing people to justice. No one should forget that there is no statute of limitations on war crimes. Many years, even decades later crimes committed by the Nazis, by the Khmer Rouge, by South American death squads have been successfully prosecuted. Dick Cheney's ticker may give out before he faces a serious consequence but Yoo is a young man and will have to spend many more years looking over his shoulder. It's already dangerous for him to travel outside the U.S.

Speaking of Dick Cheney, his recent mild heart attack has prompted some comment about karma but I, for one, hope he sticks around for a long time. Should he die soon there is no doubt in my mind that there will be a rush, a freaking deluge, of people blaming him for what happened. The only defender he'll have left will be his daughter, but every partner in crime will suddenly coke clean about how "Dick made me do it."

Cheney, in my view, certainly does bear a lot of culpability, but he was just one man and he had plenty of help in dishonoring America. It would be a shame for those fellow criminals to get away with their crimes by burying their sins in Cheney's grave.

Thinly veiled racism at the Drudge Report

2010-02-19T20:58:00.004-05:00

Matt Drudge rarely passes up an opportunity to smear Muslims. On his site he trumpets that Five Muslim soldiers were "arrested" on allegations they Poisoned fellow soldiers at Ft. Jackson. Yet even the story he links to does not actually say anyone was arrested and other reporting says that nothing was substantiated. So much for "presumption of innocence."

It's this mindset that led to so much abuse during the Bush administration. It's the mindset that turns accused or even merely suspected detainees into "Terrorists" who can and should be tortured because they might know something. It's the mindset that leads to profiling that gets any Muslim or anyone some ignorant fool thinks may be Muslim (like a Sikh) targeted. Meanwhile we're somehow supposed to win the hearts and minds of Muslims while treating them as enemies without distinction.

Meanwhile, hours after contrary reports emerge that don't fit his narrative, Drudge leaves up his accusatory headline. A quick Google search shows it's already going viral on various right-wing blogs and sites even though it's already been debunked. As is so often the case, the truth will have a hard time ever catching up to the lie, which is the insidious thing about the way Drudge operates whenever he's dealing with one of his favorite themes (climate change, Sarah Palin, Obama approval ratings, corrupt Democrats, among others).

A cool ad

2010-02-04T16:51:00.006-05:00

No torture and he talks

2010-02-03T18:15:00.002-05:00

Excellent summary of the facts at Obsidian Wings but the bottom line is that reading the terror suspect his rights, treating him humanely and observing due process not only upholds our honor but actually results in more intelligence than harsh "Jack Bauer" style acts.

Quote if the day

2010-01-14T17:47:00.002-05:00

Quote of the day on listening to Sarah Pailn from www.balloon-juice.com

"Listening to her speak is like Free Republic Mad Libs."

List of US forces used abroad 1798-1993

2010-01-12T02:05:00.003-05:00

This is an interesting list useful for putting some things into perspective. Some points I took away from it are these:

1) American armed intervention abroad is nothing new. This list shows about 234 instances between 1798 and 1993, or on average more than one per year.

2) There's been little real controversy over the president using military forces abroad, even in some fairly significant ways, without specific Congressional authorization. Indeed, only five of the 234 instances were declared wars.

3) That said, the vast majority of the instances were very limited in scope, casualties and duration.

4) The typical distance from the US had tended to increase as the country became more powerful, but even in the early 1800s there were interventions in the Arab world and even in the 1990s there were interventions in the Caribbean and Latin America, so there's no hard-and-fast rule on where the next intervention might be.

Down the slippery slope

2010-01-02T11:10:00.002-05:00

Sullivan:

Notice again how far down the slippery slope we have gone. Krauthammer's first position was that torture should be restricted solely to ticking time bomb cases in which we knew that a terror suspect could prevent an imminent detonation of a WMD. His position a few years later is that torture should be the first resort for any terror suspect who could tell us anything about future plots. Those of us who warned that torture, once admitted into the mainstream, will metastasize beyond anyone's control now have the example of Charles Krauthammer's arguments to back us up. Stephen Hayes, Cheney's stenographer along with Mike Allen, even argued on Fox News that Cheney's assault on the president as an alien threat to the American people was too soft and wanted to "squeeze" the pantie-bomber for more info. These are neo-fascist sentiments, empowering lawless violence by the government, justified solely by fear of terror incidents. Whatever else junking the entire history of Western jurisprudence and the laws of war is, it is not in any way conservative. It is a radical assault on one of the central pillars of our civilization.

Illinois Gitmo

2009-12-16T00:05:00.003-05:00

Loks like the Gitmo detainees will end up in Illinois. One thing I haven't heard mentioned is that this may be a tiny bit of presidential pork heading for his home state. No matter what else you mau say about it, the plan will send some cool cash to a depressed little corner of Obama's adopted state.

More disturbing evidence of possible crimes at Gitmo

2009-12-07T20:03:00.002-05:00

This Seton Hall report, based on public records, by the way, points to some disturbing evidence that the trio of so-called "suicides" at Gitmo that the military called asymmetrical warfare by detainees may have been something else. At a minimum, it appears that there was a cover-up of the real circumstances.

The shame continues.

Getting Bin Laden

2009-12-02T16:21:00.003-05:00

Andrew Sullivan makes an excellent point

Personally, the one thing that sticks in my craw the most about the Bush era was how much he too his eye off the ball by not making sure he "got" Osama.

I am not arguing that getting Osama bin Laden would have solved all our problems, made the Afghan War a success or won the War on Terror. It doesn't matter. Simple justice demands that the man responsible for 9/11 should not die in his sleep of old age. No, that will not do.

Can Obama's Afghan surge net Osama in the bargain? Impossible to say. Clearly the trail is cold. It's possible Bin Laden may already be dead. But Bush let 8 years go by without a serious effort mounted to bring Bin Laden to justice. If Obama succeeds in capturing or killing Bin Laden it would be the final repudiation of Bushism.

Citing Psalm 109 to curse Obama

2009-11-23T20:38:00.004-05:00

The Old Testament is a minefield for the unwary who would cite it for authority on action. A lot of bad conduct can be sanctioned by selective quotation, for, as Shakespeare notes, the devil can cite scripture for his purposes. The Old Testament language and style are quite alien to modern usage and exacerbated by the fact that many Bible-quoters like to use the King James version, which is also quite alien to modern ears.

The latest misappropriation of the Bible by people professing to be Christians is quoting a passage from Psalm 109, which I have highlighted below, in the context of the whole, which is the proper way to consider all Bible passages.

the KGV version:

The Psalms

109
A Cry for Vengeance
To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David.
1
Hold not thy peace, O God of my praise;
2
for the mouth of the wicked and the mouth of the deceitful are opened against me: they have spoken against me with a lying tongue.
3
They compassed me about also with words of hatred; and fought against me without a cause.
4
For my love they are my adversaries: but I give myself unto prayer.
5
And they have rewarded me evil for good, and hatred for my love.
6
Set thou a wicked man over him: and let Satan stand at his right hand.
7
When he shall be judged, let him be condemned: and let his prayer become sin.
8
Let his days be few; and let another take his office.

9
Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.
10
Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg: let them seek their bread also out of their desolate places.
11
Let the extortioner catch all that he hath; and let the strangers spoil his labor.
12
Let there be none to extend mercy unto him: neither let there be any to favor his fatherless children.
13
Let his posterity be cut off; and in the generation following let their name be blotted out.
14
Let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered with the LORD; and let not the sin of his mother be blotted out.
15
Let them be before the LORD continually, that he may cut off the memory of them from the earth.
16
Because that he remembered not to show mercy, but persecuted the poor and needy man,
that he might even slay the broken in heart.
17
As he loved cursing, so let it come unto him: as he delighted not in blessing,
so let it be far from him.
18
As he clothed himself with cursing like as with his garment, so let it come into his bowels like water, and like oil into his bones.
19
Let it be unto him as the garment which covereth him, and for a girdle wherewith he is girded continually.
20
Let this be the reward of mine adversaries from the LORD, and of them that speak evil against my soul.
21
But do thou for me, O GOD the Lord, for thy name's sake: because thy mercy is good, deliver thou me.
22
For I am poor and needy, and my heart is wounded within me.
23
I am gone like the shadow when it declineth: I am tossed up and down as the locust.
24
My knees are weak through fasting; and my flesh faileth of fatness.
25
I became also a reproach unto them: when they looked upon me they shook their heads.

26
Help me, O LORD my God: O save me according to thy mercy:
27
that they may know that this is thy hand; that thou, LORD, hast done it.
28
Let them curse, but bless thou: when they arise, let them be ashamed;
but let thy servant rejoice.
29
Let mine adversaries be clothed with shame; and let them cover themselves with their own confusion, as with a mantle.
30
I will greatly praise the LORD with my mouth; yea, I will praise him among the multitude.
31
For he shall stand at the right hand of the poor, to save him from those that condemn his soul.

They are happy to quote verses 8 and 9, but I think other verses such as 2-5, 17 and 18, 28 and 31 might be more appropriate.

I don't like Halloween

2009-10-31T20:26:00.003-04:00

I'll wish everyone a Happy Halloween, although I'm no big fan of the holiday. It's usually harmless enough, but I don't think it celebrates anything particularly positive -- unlike Christmas, Thanksgiving, July 4th, Veterans Day, etc.
And some folks always manage to use it for an excuse to be asses.
Does this make me a Grinch? Nah, he hated Christmas!

Death of the death penalty

2009-10-13T19:46:00.002-04:00

I think Texas Gov. Perry's antics to avoid moral accountability for the execution of a probably innocent man will do little to save his reputation and may in the long run prove to be as important to the eventual abolition of the death penalty in the United States as the Illinois moratorium was.

I think that, in the abstract, the state does have the right to execute certain individuals whose crimes are so heinous or who represent such a danger to society that they simply can't be allowed to live. This is why I am hesitant to condemn earlier societies that resorted to the measure, modern societies still undergoing development and groups that may have to resort to the measure in extremis such as military forces locked in mortal combat.

This theoretical acceptance does not, however, lead to acceptance of the death penalty in America. America is a society rich enough and robust enough to incarcerate people indefinitely and shows no compunction about doing so in shocking numbers, so there's no emergency need to do it. And the system has been demonstrated to be riddled with bias and outright errors.

As a matter of fact, the errors which have come to light have, frankly, shaken my confidence in the criminal justice system to the core. One doesn't expect perfection in any human system, but the error rate that is being revealed is unacceptable. It is, absolutely, a horrific thing when innocent people are deprived of their liberty (often for decades) let alone their lives. But law-and-order types should consider the collateral damage of wrongful convictions. Every innocent man rotting in jail means that a real criminal is free to keep preying on the community. And if errors are substantial and common enough it will destroy the public's confidence in the system. There are already substantial communities who do not trust the police and the courts and their distrust is provably rational.

Perry's actions, however, point to the corrupt nature of the system and its inability to police itself. Allowing the commission to finish its work would have been evidence that the system could recognize error and begin reforms to reduce error. Instead it provides evidence that the state cannot be trusted with this power. It not only makes mistakes, but it refuses to identify and correct those mistakes, therefore ensuring that more mistakes will inevitably occur.

Perry has provided opponents with a powerful example of why the death penalty should go.

End of empire?

2009-10-06T00:09:00.002-04:00

A Daily Kos diary about the plan for a new oil currency to replace the $US is interesting and not a little scary.

Americans have little aptitude for the lessons of history, but there's reason to worry that our Washington elite is not handling our imperial moment very well at all.

People forget that almost exactly 100 years ago the British Empire lorded over the Earth nearly as completely as the US does now. While the seeds for future problems were germinating, there's no doubt that every Briton and most everyone else in the world had no inkling that Britain's superpower status would disappear within the next two generations.

After a period of decline, Great Britain has recovered somewhat to be a respectable second-rank power, which isn't that uncommon, Spain has also managed to claw its way back into the ranks of substance, although it had a much longer time it the geopolitical wilderness. Being a continental power, the US has resources enough to avoid complete collapse if it plays its cards right, but history certainly has examples of Great Powers that did lose it all.

I don't think a US decline is inevitable in the near term (over the long term we're all dead and nothing is permanent) but we need to act soon. If the US dollar loses its status as the world currency we're going to have a damned hard time paying for this massive military establishment, for example. It might be wise to look for ways to cut back now, especially if those cutbacks can be tied to arms reduction treaties and other means to keep the numbers of weapons in foreign hands low.

Stupid talk

2009-10-02T21:19:00.002-04:00

There's been no shortage of stupid talk lately, but a column by John Perry discussing a military coup to solve the "Obama problem" is a prizewinner.

First off, it's a slander against the professionalism of the US military to suggest that something like that is even possible. It really represents the fevered fantasies of certain right-wing loonies rather than a real possibility. Perry's column doesn't actually indicate he has any real sources for any of this.

Secondly, it's yet another example of the extremism of the Right generally since Obama took office. Yes, it is true that Bush had some harsh things said about him, although to be fair most of that invective came later in his term after he had actually done a lot of objectionable things like invasions, warrantless wiretapping, disaster relief failures, etc. Obama's been in office just months and he's getting even more extreme talk -- and he's actually done relatively little so far.

Media Matters discusses the episode with a link to the original piece: http://mediamatters.org/blog/200909290042

Taser torture

2009-09-21T18:24:00.003-04:00

I don't think Tasers should be banned.

The company touts them as a non-lethal weapon to use in situations where police officers would otherwise be forced to shoot people. This is a good thing. Not just because of the inherent saving of a life, but because of important side benefits such as saving police officers from the trauma associated with taking a life and mitigating those case where a mistake is made and an innocent person is targeted by police due to the fog of war.

Unfortunately there's increasing evidence that police are overusing Tasers in situations where they would not be using deadly force. They are using Tasers to force compliance from suspects and even Tasering people for verbal remarks rather than physical resistance. And, it seems sometimes they are simply Tasering people because the Cop got pissed off. I really don't care what kind of an asshole a guy in a wheelchair might be, I can't see how it's justified to use a Taser on him.

More surprise justice

2009-09-14T21:27:00.004-04:00

Now I am no fan of Bank of America. Any bank that has this for a policy is no friend of regular folks:

But this is really good news. A judge had rejected the deal (whitewash) between the SEC and Bank of America where the government pretended it was enforcing rules and the Bank pretended it was being punished but the only people paying were Bank of America shareholders -- twice ripped off!

The inevitability of justice

2009-08-25T18:48:00.002-04:00

Our system of justice, despite all its flaws, does have certain institutional pressures that provide it a relentlessness once some wrongdoing comes to light.

Political pressure can delay, obscure and deflect criminal prosecutions but it can rarely stop it altogether. More than six decades later the occasional Nazi still goes to trial. After 30, 40 or even 50 years Civil Rights cases have resulted in convictions. War crimes, especially, are unbounded in time except for death. That is why culpable individuals such as John Yoo, David Addington, Dick Cheney and even George Bush should be very worried about the legal process that is starting to unfold.

Scot Horton, as always, sums things up very well here with seven points about the recently released report on torture. The most chilling may his first point: the worst is yet to come.

Threatening to kill children

2009-08-24T22:04:00.002-04:00

According to the IG report, this is one of the tactics we used.

It will obviously take a determined and excruciating effort to root out the rot that the Bush-era torture policies fostered. And there will be many, many voices trying to fight it. Most will claim any investigation will be merely political, although this is really laughable as many of these same people supported very political investigations during the Bush years.

In any case, there are some very important principles at stake here, and winning this battle is far from certain. But losing the battle for accountability risks very deep, profound and long-lasting (generational) damage to America. If only a few privates, sergeants, contractors and field agents are punished for this betrayal of American values then those values will have been proven hollow and meaningless for all the world to see.

Your papers, please

2009-08-17T18:33:00.001-04:00

Seems a 68-year-old man can't walk down the street without ID these days, even when he's white (and famous!).

Fourth Amendment? What Fourth Amendment?

2009-07-25T21:06:00.002-04:00

As Jack Balkin at Balkinization points out, the Cheney plan to use the military to arrest terrorists in the United States amounted to a suspension of the Fourth Amendment.

The central problem with the Cheney/Yoo/Addington theory was that it allowed the President to declare anyone in the United States an enemy combatant. Then, once the President made this declaration, the person would lose all their civil rights. The military could arrest and imprison the person without charges or any of the procedural protections of the Bill of Rights; it could torture them for information (under the theory that these techniques did not shock the conscience under the Eighth Amendment), and it could hold them indefinitely in a military prison. The problem with the Cheney/Yoo/Addington theory, in short, was that it embraced elements of military dictatorship within the United States.

Frankly, until Republicans come to terms with this, I really can't see trusting them with executive ranch power again. Ever.

Video proves police corruption

2009-07-25T18:40:00.001-04:00

The more these kinds of things happen the mroe I think video should be a regular part of all police operations. It will protect the good gops and deter the bad ones.

http://news.aol.com/article/video-clears-suspects/526114

Cheney wanted to send the Army into Buffalo!!!

2009-07-25T00:08:00.004-04:00

Can you imagine!!

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/25/us/25detain.html?_r=2&hp

It would have been quite the wake-up call, I suppose. And suppose they had screwed up? Imagine if there was collateral damage in Buffalo?

And I wonder if the military brass would have been willing to go along? I suspect that there would have been a real pushback on this one, had it gone that far.

My God, Cheney was out of control.

Pressure on Peters

2009-07-22T18:47:00.003-04:00

Lt. Col. Ralph Peters, a contributing editor at Armed Forces Journal and regular talking head on cable TV for his military "expertise," sometimes has worthwhile things to say, although often I find myself disagreeing with him.

But his recent appearances on cable shows where he appears to encourage the Taliban to actually execute a captured American soldier (that Peters apparently suspects is a 'deserter' for God knows what reason) is one of the most appalling things to occur among the punditry in quite some time. It hasn't gotten a lot of attention from mainstream media, but the online media is abuzz. One can only imagine what it would have been like if someone from the "Left" said something like that.

In any case, a Congressman has now weighed in, which may very well become a tipping point.

Links here: http://www.balloon-juice.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/massa.pdf

I honestly can't fathom what Peters is thinking here, but I don't see any justification at all for it, even of the solider was a deserter.

Not a Bible character

2009-07-12T17:49:00.000-04:00

Very thought-provoking post

http://fatherstephen.wordpress.com/2009/06/28/you-are-not-a-bible-character/

US like Rome in decline?

2009-07-10T00:09:00.003-04:00

It's one of those popular little political analogies, comparing the United States to late Republican Rome, or alternatively, to Imperial Rome.

While there certainly are some interesting parallels, especially in the relative political, military and economic dominance of the world,* it's easy to get carried away.

Firstly, it's highly debatable whether the US is in decline at all. Every generation feels its crisis are unprecedented and that things were better in the old days -- moral rot and all that. Now, I won't argue that everything is great in the USA. Some things are better and some things are worse, but we should also remember that the good old days including things like lynchings, disenfranchisement, sexism, racism, civil war etc. If there's truly a decline going on, we're not well-placed to spot it. I think the decline was very well along in Rome before people recognized it.

And Rome was different in many critical ways from the US. This doesn't make the US immune from decline, but it does suggest that it will decline in different ways and from different causes. Personally, I think analogies to Britain's experience may be more on target.

Among the differences that I think are critical is that the US is a federal republic, not a city state that acquired and empire. There's necessarily a different relationship between the parts and the whole. The US is, geo-politically, an island and naval power, secure from physical invasion. Rome was a land power, with very long and indefensible borders. Despite regional differences and ethnic politics, the US is a remarkably homogeneous society and culture, while Roman culture, while widespread, was often confined to the elites and did not displace local cultures in many places. Finally, technology and cultural development have created a far different world from 2,000 years ago, making analogies questionable. To the extent that human nature has not changed, you can learn something from Rome's experiences, just as Plato's Republic can be mined for insights today. But too much as changed to make that your primary source material. There are no steppe barbarians to keep at bay.

Gov. Sarah Palin to hang it up

2009-07-03T16:48:00.002-04:00

Wow. Palin is resigning as governor.

It doesn't make any rational sense, but little that Palin has done has made sense, so it's possible that this is some "strategic" move on her part.

On the other hand, many are wondering if there's some bombshell about to drop. If it is, it would have to be a pretty big one, given that even Sanford's sorry saga hasn't been enough to get him out of office.

Washington Post demonstrates how deep the Beltway meia corruption has reached

2009-07-02T22:13:00.000-04:00

Selling access to lobbyists.

http://crooksandliars.com/nicole-belle/washington-post-sells-access-obama-ot

GOP complains Obama is ignoring them

2009-06-30T18:58:00.002-04:00

Jesus. What a bunch of wankers.

They give Obama not just the middle finger, but every single one of them and don't give him a single frackin vote and then they complain he's not continuing to make nice.

They are incredibly stupid and out of their depth. AT THE TIME it was pretty clear that Obama was giving them a chance to be team players. They blew him off like snot onto a rag. It was also clear that e was giving them enough rope to hang themselves.

Well, now they are hung out to dry. With Franken coming in the only people Obama needs to placate are some Blue Dog Dems and I think they're going to be a lot easier to satisfy than hey-we-got-100% GOP fools.

Here's the link: http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/torture/gop-leadership-to-obama-you-never-call-you-never-write/

Gun fantasies

2009-06-26T18:06:00.002-04:00

It's often argued by gun lovers that it's the Second Amendment that keeps us free, despite their inability to point to any actual historical evidence that there is any link between private gun ownership and political freedoms.

Over at PoliBlog there's a good discussion brewing. http://www.poliblogger.com/?p=16089

In fact there is such a disproportion between the military tools available to the modern state and what citizens could have that there's zero chance of successful armed resistance in the face of unified authorities. The examples of Waco and the Philadelphia MOVE siege provide stark reminders that even well-armed and reasonably large grouping of private citizens can't prevail in direct combat against police forces -- let alone actual military units. This was even true in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Washington quickly suppressed the Whiskey Rebellion, which involved a very substantial number of people for the time and militia forces were very instrumental in suppressing labor movements in the 1800s. It only took a few regiments of combat veterans to restore order in New York during the 1863 draft riots.

Really, gun supporters need to identify some historical cases where private gun ownership made a differences.

That said, I do think there's a good case to be made for private gun ownership for personal protection against violent crime, particularly in cases where physical remoteness from help or ineffectiveness or corruption of local police make it necessary.

Neda

2009-06-23T00:10:00.003-04:00

Like many people, I've been a fascinated observer of the recent events in Iran.

It's never easy to get a firm grasp on the politics of any foreign country, especially from afar, without a lot of study. So I won't venture a guess as to how it will all play out or what it may mean.

But I am old enough to remember the 1979 revolution, watching Iranian students march in protest in the streets of Boston. And I remember that many of them ended up having their dreams dashed as the revolution consumed their futures, as revolutions often do. Mos of the Iranian students at Northeastern U. then were the well-connected offspring of the elite classes there on oil money. Many never did go home.

Now, almost exactly 30 years later, Iran is convulsed again, with most of the population too young to know anything other than the Islamic Republic. But like the young people of 79, they demand a different future. And like the young people of 1979, many of them are paying and will pay, a stiff price.

The video of one young woman, in particular, has touched many. While there are, naturally, conflicting reports, the best ones I have seen identify her as a 26- or 27-year-old woman named Neda, who was near the protests with some friends, including an older man (often erroneously identified as her father) who was her music teacher. Her fiance is quoted as saying she wasn't all that political, and wasn't a fervent supporter of any particular candidate, but just wanted votes to count.

Watching her death on video is profoundly disturbing. Yet her fate does put a very human face on what is happening, and if the regime changes, it may very well be because of the power of her example.

Will Obama get Osama?

2009-06-17T18:38:00.003-04:00

Probably not directly, a la a Predator strike or the like, but Obama, as is is wont, may be creating the conditions for positive things to happen.

This Daily Kos dairist lays out the case for "Osama being a dead man" here: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/6/17/743628/-Osama-bin-Laden-Is-a-Dead-Man

I won't be the slightest bit surprised if Osama doesn't make it to 2010. When you think of it, the Obama administration has moved at a rapid clip on a lot of things.

Going green

2009-06-15T21:11:00.001-04:00

It's clearly a very small gesture, especially for a blog read by no one, but I'm going green in support of the Iranian voters.

More at Sullivan http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/06/yes-the-dish-is-not-green-ctd.html

Shep, look out

2009-06-12T17:48:00.003-04:00

Shep Smith, the sanest Fox News anchor, has been walking on thin ice anyway lately, because he actually said the US shouldn't torture people, but he's no doubt seeing some cracks appearing in the ice now since he made the mistake of pointing out that maybe that DHS report of Right Wing Extremist violence was full of hooey after all.

Nice summary here:

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/6/12/741721/-Fox-News-Viewers:-Fire-the-Messenger-(Shep-Smith)

It's simply amazing to me how pathological the Right Wing has become lately. It keeps getting worse. Personally, I believe the torture policy is to blame. The existence of it and the perceived need to defend it has slowly, but inexorably corrupted the political Right in this nation. As a matter of fact, I think there's a real possibility that the torture issue will actually destroy the Republican Party. As more comes to light about what happened over the Bush-Cheney years the GOP will be tainted, perhaps beyond recovery. There will always be a "conservative" party in the US, but it may be that conservatives will have to start a new party in order to escape the odor.

Vapid 4-star generals

2009-06-02T19:33:00.002-04:00

Or so Andy McCarthy calls Gen. Petreaus. http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NjFkMDM5NWMzODJhNGI3NjdlOGE0NjQ0Yjg0ZjZmMzg=

I wonder if McCarthy just cost himself a position ina future Petreaus administration.

My inclination is to go with the 4-star general on this over the former assistant US attorney.

GOP can't decide if it wants to look stupid, petty or silly, so it goes for all three

2009-05-30T22:34:00.003-04:00

I really don't know what to make of the Republican Party's need to continually top itself withs stupid, petty and silly antics.

It's bad enough that their in-house racists like take-the-bone-from-your-nose Limbaugh and Miamia-is-a-third-world-city Tancredo are calling Sotomayor "racist."

But no, the president takes his wife out for a date on Broadway and they feel the need to criticize it as supposedly insensitive while GM prepares to file bankruptcy. What? The Obamas are supposed to be in mourning, or something?

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0509/23122.html

My God, get a grip, you guys!

Chief Justice Roberts

2009-05-29T17:49:00.003-04:00

An interesting point by Jeffrey Toobin in Slate: In every major case since he became the nation’s seventeenth Chief Justice, Roberts has sided with the prosecution over the defendant, the state over the condemned, the executive branch over the legislative, and the corporate defendant over the individual plaintiff.

This is, in a nutshell, my primary discomfort with the modern GOP. Surely there are some times when the powerless deserve some help against the powerful?

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/05/25/090525fa_fact_toobin?currentPage=all

Petreaus

2009-05-29T17:13:00.004-04:00

Over at Obsidian Wings they commented about Gen. Petreaus' political savvy, ending with the comment that they hope he doesn't run for political office as a Republican someday.

I think that's short-sighted. I do hope he considers running, if he thinks he has something to contribute.

Currently I'm wishing Obama well. I think he's being a necessary corrective to Bush-era disasters. I said during the campaign and believe still that Bush represented such an epic failure of values and competence that we needed a complete "anti-Bush" as the next president and Obama is about as un-Bush as you can get.

That said, I think Obama is a singular individual and I see very little evidence that Democrats, generally, have improved at all over the feckless, short-sighted, morally cowardly bunch of hacks they've been. While the Bush-era disaster is, rightly, laid at the feet of the GOP, Democrats did not cover themselves in glory as the opposition, either.

Once Obama's 8 years are over (and I do assume he will be re-elected) the country may well be ready for a swing closer to the middle and someone like Petreaus may be a good choice. Generals tend to be pragmatic individuals, especially the good ones, and not particularly ideological. Given that the Republicans seems determined to go through at least one more round of drubbings in 2012, someone like Petreaus (or maybe a Huntsman-Petreaus ticket) could lead them back from the wilderness. A Huntsman-Petreaus ticket might win the White House, but it's highly likely they would start out with the Congress still controlled by the Democrats, which creates some interesting potential political dynamics as well. It may be that most of the legistlation that gets passed by a H-P administration would be Democrat originated but with signifcant concessions to the middle ground of a moderate GOP. Hard-core left Dems and the Rightist GOp rump might both find themselves left out in the cold -- which would be the best possible outcome.

Powerful testament

2009-05-25T19:46:00.003-04:00

Sometimes the best things on Andrew Sullivan's blog are not his writings, but the thoughtful comments of his readers.

Here is an exceptional one: http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/05/what-mancow-teaches-us.html#more

Link to President Obama's speech

2009-05-21T20:27:00.000-04:00

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-by-the-President-On-National-Security-5-21-09/

Link to former Vice President Dick Cheney's remarks

2009-05-21T20:26:00.002-04:00

Cheney's text http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2009/05/text_of_cheneys_aei_speech.asp

Slate contrasts Cheney's lies to Obama's straightforwardness

2009-05-21T20:24:00.001-04:00

A good read here. http://www.slate.com/id/2218762/pagenum/all/#p2

Another brilliant strategic move by Obama

2009-05-15T23:51:00.002-04:00

Utah Gov. Huntsman, widely believed by reasonable people (i.e. not Republican wingnuts) to be the Republican's best hope for a credible alternative to Obama is going to be the next ambassador to China.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/5/15/732073/-Confirmed:-Utah-Gov.-Jon-Huntsman-Named-Ambassador-to-China

This is a win for both of them. Huntsman gets to be out of the country during the GOP Civil War, burnishing his foreign policy resume and doing something important (Ambassaor to China is akin to ambassador to the USSR during the Cold War).

Obama takes a key potential rival out of the picture for 2012. It's highly unlikely that Huntsman wouldtake this job from Obama and then turn around and come back to run against him. Plus being in China is not the place to make domestic political contacts.

But most importantly, it allows Huntsman to sit out the GOP nastimess. It allows him to leave Utah as a beloved and popular governor (at the top, so to speak).

Absolutely no question THIS was criminal

2009-05-14T18:30:00.003-04:00

This report has the details : http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-05-13/cheneys-role-deepens/

But the bottom line is that apparently Cheney's office suggested waterboarding a captured Iraqi intel officer about supposed links between Iraq and Al Qaeda. It didn't happen, because the interrogators refused, fining the request "reprehensible." That part is good. Somebody drew the line.

But the key point here is that the request was completely improper. Regardless of any and all arguments about torture, terrorists and yada yada proffered by apologists, one fact that is beyond dispute is that the Geneva Conventions did apply to the war in Iraq. No ifs, ands or buts about it. The Iraq was was pure state-to-state conflict between signatories of the Geneva Conventions. If they didn't apply in this case then they simply don't apply anytime. The Iraqi in question was an official of the Iraqi government, acting in his official capacity. If the Geneva Conventions didn't apply yo him, they apply to no one. The fact that the Vice President's office made the request shows a complete contempt for the law. What possible excuse was there?

Emmett Till

2009-05-14T12:22:00.001-04:00

And what does Emmett Till have to do with the subject of torture of detainees?

Read this and find out. http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/5/14/731205/-The-Face-of-Emmett-Till

Fresh blood

2009-05-11T23:56:00.003-04:00

Andrew Sullivan is alarmed about McChrystal's possible connection to detainee abuse. http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/05/stanley-mcchrystal-a-history-of-torture.html

I'd like to find out more, but I'm generally in favor of firing unsuccessful generals. One of the worst attributes of the Bush era was an extreme reluctance to fire anyone over failures, although any hint of "disloyalty" resulted in a swift sacking.

In contrast Gates (and Obama, it seems) have demonstrated a commendable willingness to demand results and let go leaders who fail to achieve them. Serious failures of judgement, such as that exhibited by Caldera with the Air Force One flyover, have also been cause for termination.

It's unfortunate for those involved, of course, who have in many cases served long and admirably. And there should be no shame in being relieved under those circumstances. It's not a scandal. Not everyone is suited for every job. But at these very high levels, with so many lives at stake there can be no shirking of the command responsibility to demand results. Generals, in particular, should understand that nothing less than success is acceptable and that the commander-in-chief will keep trying until he finds the right man or woman for the job.

I can't help but think that Obama is, here, also following the lead of his hero Lincoln. He's searching for his Grant. Only time will tell in McChrystal is Grant or just another Pope, Burnside, Hooker or McClellan.

War crimes cannot be pardoned

2009-05-11T20:53:00.002-04:00

Scott Horton makes some interesting points about the limits on the U.S. government's poweres to shield Bush-era officials from war crimes prosecutions. Read the whole thing here, http://www.harpers.org/subjects/NoComment#hbc-90004897 but the bottom line is that former Bush officials linked to the torture polices should be very wary about overseas travel -- ever.

Chait states the obvious

2009-05-06T18:18:00.001-04:00

But clearly and for that he deserves a link http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=db244f73-129d-444d-a090-2bf39c026d1d&p=2

GOP rebranding fail

2009-05-06T12:23:00.002-04:00

Good summary of the problem here from Lincoln Mitchell at the Huffington Post:

The quandary in which the Republican Party now finds itself is not due to a public relations problem, but stems from being strongly identified, and not without good reason, with the Bush administration. The Bush administration is broadly viewed as a failure, not because it didn't present itself well, but because it mishandled both the economy and foreign policy to disastrous effect. Additionally, some of the ideas which have been foundation of the Republican Party have, in the cases of radical social conservatism and unregulated financial sectors, become the views of an increasingly small minority of Americans. Other bedrock Republican views, such as fiscal conservatism and a realist based foreign policy, were abandoned altogether by the Bush administration and the Republican Party in the last decade. These are problems are profound and go to the core not just of the party's image, but to its vision, message and raison d'etre.

The link http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lincoln-mitchell/rebranding-will-not-be-en_b_196312.html

Meanwhile Rush is saying the Republicans don't need a listening tour but a teaching tour.

Right.

Here's the deal. The only GOP hope seems to be that Obama will really, really step in it, a la Clinton-Lewinsky or Nixon-Watergate or Johnson-Vietnam or at least Kennedy-Bay of Pigs.

This is never a good strategy, of course, While one should always be prepared to capitalize on your opponent's blunders you can't sit around just waiting for one to occur. There are legitimate questions about the long-term impact of some of Obama's policy preferences and they may turn out to be bad ideas, but they are, by definition, long-term questions and completely irrelevant to the GOP's short-term prospects. In the long-term Obama's time as president will be up, too, and the GOP will have to run against someone else.

But right now they have to cope with Obama, and they're still completely clueless about how to do so. Every single piece of real-world evidence about the intellect and instincts and character of Obama show that he's highly unlikely to make the sort of blunders that hobbled Clinton, Nixon of Johnson. He's a little more likely to fall victim to the sort of hubris that got Kennedy in political trouble but that's a slender thread indeed and Kennedy's blunders were masked by some big successes.

Nope, they can't wait around hoping Obama messes up big time. They have forgotten, but the public surely hasn't, that Obama has an easy act to follow. It's hard to imagine that any blunder he could commit would compare to Bush and therefore even his mistakes will not loom large in the public eye.

The Republicans have to address the substance of the public's criticism. The public views the Bush era as an across-the-board failure and the very, very, very first step in regaining the public's trust is that the GOP must acknowledge that Bush was a failure. So far the GOP response has been to wilfully insist that everything was just fine the last 8 years and the public is must too stupid, misinformed or daft to realize it. The public, naturally, disagrees and considers the GOP to be daft and/or stupid to say so.

Pointing out that the Democrats are spenders, for one small example, has no traction. The public says "and your point is ... ." Because in the public's view the Republicans were also big spenders, but the Republicans didn't spend any of it on them. The GOP has to show that it can be trusted with the money and the only way it will have to do that is at the state level. So GOP governors and state lawmakers, get to it.

The worms begins to turn

2009-05-04T14:47:00.004-04:00

First off, when Fourth-graders begins to ask about torture (and Rice has to respond with legalisms to her vain attempt to defend it) then I think we can see signs that the tide is turning.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/03/AR2009050301739.html

On top of that, the latest New York Times article featuring dramatic CYA by Porter Goss and Condi Rice is more evidence that things are going south for the torture crowd very fast.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/04/us/politics/04detain.html?ref=politics

I think that Cheney, Addington, Yoo and others should be getting very, very worried. Their unindicted co-conspirators are scrambling for the exits and they will be left holding the bag. What is interesting is whether Bush, himself, will be held accountable or Cheney will take the fall.

One amazing thing about all this is how quickly it's unravelling. Indeed. if it were not for the economic crisis this would probably be transfixing the nation. The economic crisis will ebb, but the problem for war criminals is that their crimes never become too old to deal with. Cheney's health may eventually save him from the worst ( a la Pinochet), but younger guys like Addington and Yoo may see justice done.

Froomkin dismatles Krauthammer

2009-05-01T20:34:00.002-04:00

Well worth the read, as is Krauthammer's shameful apologia for torture, which marks a new low in a genre noted for sewer-dipping.

Froomkin: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/white-house-watch/torture/krauthammers-asterisks.html

Krauthammer: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/30/AR2009043003108.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

Daniel Larison on target

2009-04-29T19:15:00.001-04:00

Larison is one of the best of the new conservative voices. Pointing out the imperviousness of the GOP party regulars and movement conservatives to their plight he notes they refuse to listen.

Nowadays, if they acknowledge mistakes at all, mainstream conservatives are keen to pin responsibility on anyone but themselves while tarring anyone who points out the obvious errors of the last decade as treacherous or some crypto-liberal eager to score points with the media.

Jim Manzi redeemed!

2009-04-29T17:52:00.001-04:00

Mr. Manzi redeems himself with a powerful argument against Waterboarding.

Long, but very well worth the read: http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NWZhNjg4MTQzZjUxNjBiNjczNzVmNmMxMTMzOGI2YWY=

GOP = Whigs

2009-04-29T00:07:00.002-04:00

Not as crazy as it seems. This Death Spiral of the GOP is far more serious than the problems the Dems had with their crazy Left. If the Repuboicans don't shake out of it somehow then there may be an opening for a real Center-Right party to emerge.

Point made at http://oxdown.firedoglake.com/diary/5011
This leads to an opportunity for a new Party to emerge. What that will look like is very unclear right now, but we should not kid ourselves as Democrats that our electoral victories are all due to the public wanting to do things our way. When your choices are a Party you disagree with most of the time and the bat-shit insane, well that is not really much of a choice, is it?

Cheney's legacy

2009-04-23T15:22:00.000-04:00

Andrew Sulivan's devastating summary:

It is very rare to get someone with the same stratospheric levels of arrogance and incompetence as you find in Dick Cheney. Let's go to the tape: A war launched on false premises, a trillion dollar debt in a period of growth, a destruction of America's moral standing, the loss of one major city (New Orleans) and the devastation of another (New York City), two horribly bungled military campaigns that have trapped his successors for decades, a political party decimated for a generation, his closest aide in jail for obstruction of justice, his own daughter and grand-child targeted by his own party as second-class citizens in the state they live in. And a war criminal. Did I miss anything?

Froomkin explains how it's the cover-up that often gets you

2009-04-22T19:28:00.000-04:00

Good read: http://www.discourse.net/archives/2009/04/its_often_the_coverup_that_gets_you.html

It's not torture if we do it.

2009-04-17T18:01:00.001-04:00

As Andrew Sullivan notes, this seems to be the U.S. stance:

Does anyone believe that if Iran, say, captured an American soldier, kept him awake for eleven days straight, bashed his head and body against plywood walls with a towel around his neck, forced him to stand and sit in stress positions finessed by the Communist Chinese, stuck him in a dark coffin for hours, and then waterboarded him, that the NYT would describe him as a victim of "harsh interrogation techniques"? Do you think Mike Allen would give anonymity to a top Iranian official who defended these techniques as vital to Iran's national security?
The last seven years have revealed that almost the entire American establishment views itself as immune to the moral and ethical rules it applies to every other country in the world. Now we know, at least. And you can be sure they will protecting each other to the bitter end.

Thinking alike

2009-04-17T00:19:00.000-04:00

Digby thinking along the same lines:
However, I have to wonder if by releasing the memos they aren't at least obliquely asking for the public to "make" them do it. They could have kept them secret, after all. If there were significant public pressure as well as pressure from congress, they would have enough cover to launch an investigation with the assurance they aren't going to go the Bad Apple route.

Obama's game

2009-04-16T17:17:00.003-04:00

First off, the release of the torture memos is laudable and very, very important. And I think that Holder's assurances that CIA operatives not be prosecuted for war crimes they may have performed undeer guidance from the DOJ memos may be defensible for now. That's because the real targets for prosecution should first, and foremost, be the policymakers who ordered the torture. I don't want to see any more Lyndie England affairs, where some grunt takes the fall for official misconduct.

That said, Greenwald is critical of Obama's call for the following good reasons.:

The more one reads of this, the harder it is to credit Obama's statement today that "this is a time for reflection, not retribution." At least when it comes to the orders of our highest government leaders and the DOJ lawyers who authorized them, these are pure war crimes, justified in the most disgustingly clinical language and with clear intent of wrongdoing. FDL has a petition urging Eric Holder to immediately appoint a Special Prosecutor to determine if criminal proceedings should commence. Obama did the right thing by releasing these memos, providing all the information and impetus the citizenry should need to demand investigations and prosecutions. But it is up to citizens to demand that the rule of law be applied.

Here's what I think may be going on. I think Obama is in a very delicate situation here. The very last thing he wants is for this to be perceived as a partisan affair, mere retribution against the losing party using the legal system. Given the extremely toxic partisan atmosphere of modern US politics there will inevitably be some who will make this charge, but it is vital that it not stick. Obama seems to have the rare ability to look at the long-term and I think he's very, very reluctant to set any precedents down that road.

Therefore it's very important that he be seen as being forced to take action. He can't take the lead. That's why criticism from Greenwald and others is useful because it helps build that pressure.

If Obama had any interest in actually blocking the eventual prosecution of somebody for war crimes this would have been a good place to draw his line by redacting the hell out of the memos, as certain powerful elements apparently wanted. Instead nearly every damning word has been released.

Remember there is no statute of limitations for these crimes. I fully expect that prosecutions will come. Indeed, as more and more evidence comes out it the pressure will become irresistible. Remember that there are, apparently, videos and photos of much, much worse things that were done. "Murder and rape" were the words Sen. Lindsey Graham used.

By all means keep complaining. I doubt that Obama actually minds.

Patriotism

2009-04-15T19:19:00.001-04:00

From Robert Reich's blog:

An acquaintance from law school, now a partner in one of Washington's biggest and wealthiest law firms, explained to me one day over lunch how he and his partners use tax rules to create offsetting taxable gains and losses, and then allocate the gains to the firm's foreign partners who don't pay taxes in the United States. That way, they keep the losses here and shelter their income abroad. I noticed he had an American flag lapel pin. "You're supporting our troops," I said, referring to his pin. "Yup," he replied, entirely missing my point.True patriotism isn't cheap. It's about taking on a fair share of the burden of keeping America going.

They are so stupid it hurts

2009-04-14T20:46:00.005-04:00

As Greenwald points out as the Right Wing suddenly rediscovers the dangers of unbridled governmental power: All of the enabling legislation underlying this Surveillance State -- from the Patriot Act to the Military Commissions Act, from the various FISA "reforms" to massive increases in domestic "counter-Terrorism" programs -- are the spawns of the very right-wing movement that today is petrified that this is all being directed at them.

They are really so incredibly stupid that it hurts to even think of it. For years I have wondered why they thought this was a good idea. Did they ever stop to consider if they wanted Hillary to have this kind of power, for example? They're just lucky it's Obama.

Pirates misjudge

2009-04-14T20:43:00.003-04:00

Evidently the reinforcing pirates turned back when it dawned on them what a monumentally bad idea it was to go near the Navy.

And Navy SEALS did what they do so well and we had a good outcome. Bravo to them and due credit to Obama. He made the policy call and then let the experts do the deed. This is a formula for success.

Pirates summon reinforcements?

2009-04-10T15:48:00.001-04:00

Curious development in the pirate standoff. Reportedly other prirates are heading to the scene to "show solidarity" and otherwise complicate things.

It's hard to see how this would work out well for the pirates. Exposing themselves in the opne to a naval flotilla seems like giving up their biggest strength, which is stealth.

Bears watching.

Red Cross torture report

2009-04-08T18:12:00.001-04:00

Link is here:http://www.nybooks.com/icrc-report.pdf

Rush lets caller call him a "brainwashed Nazi"

2009-04-07T21:10:00.003-04:00

Frankly, I'm surprised Rush Limbaugh lets this guy go for so long. http://mediamatters.org/countyfair/200904070031?show=1

The caller really lets him have it for Rush's support for torture, which really seems to be the caller's biggest beef about the Republicans.

There's a lot about the Bush GOP's regime that I didn't like, but a lot of it I could have forgiven (it's not like the Democrats are any better on a lot of things) but the torture issue is the one I know I can't get over. The Republican Party will not be worthy fo support until the day it purges itself of the torture supporters.

Forever at risk

2009-04-06T18:05:00.002-04:00

Meanwhile, (Phillip) Sands reiterated a warning that he made in his book. “If I were they,” he said, referring to the former officials in question, “I would think carefully before setting foot outside the United States. They are now, and forever in the future, at risk of arrest. Until this is sorted out, they are in their own legal black hole.”

The article: http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2009/04/13/090413ta_talk_mayer?ref=fp5

Make them less willing to help us commit war crimes

2009-04-04T17:02:00.001-04:00

Kevin Drum makes the excellent point that embarrassment is the reason why the torture memos ought to be released.

Brennan's argument is that release of the memos might embarrass allies who helped us torture prisoners. He might even be right. But if that makes foreign intelligence services more cautious about helping us commit war crimes in the future, that would be a argument in favor of releasing the memos, not against it.

Excellent Frum

2009-04-01T18:34:00.001-04:00

Note in the comments that many don't get it.

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/03/28/david-frum-lies-about-me-and-the-lying-liars-who-tell-them.aspx

A must-read from The Atlantic Monthly

2009-03-31T17:36:00.001-04:00

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200905/imf-advice

From the IMF

Party of torture

2009-03-30T22:07:00.002-04:00

Obsidian Wings speculates that Gen. Petreaus may have ruined his chances of being a future GOP presidential nominee by coming out against former VP Cheney's pro-torture remarks.

http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2009/03/it-could-have-been-a-brilliant-career.html

Unlike some KOS folks, I don't find it at all surprising that Petreaus is against torture. You'd be hard pressed to find a senior US officer who believes otherwise.

But if it turns out to be true that the GOP will have a pro-torture litmus test in the future, then that party is in much more danger than I thought. It will indeed spend a very long time in the wilderness in that case, because Americans will not support a pro-torture party.

Playing with fire?

2009-03-29T18:55:00.002-04:00

I guess these rich guys don't get it. http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2009/03/populist-anger-made-simple.html

The vital point

2009-03-29T17:00:00.003-04:00

Made by Andrew Sullivan while talking about the possible Spanish war crimes proscutions againts US lawyers, emphasis mine:

The lawyers are the beginning. Bush and Cheney are - and must be - the ultimate targets. They belong in jail. And there are no statutes of limitations on war crimes.

Details: http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/03/is-justice-closing-in-on-yoo.html

Interesting discussion of science and faith

2009-03-29T16:57:00.001-04:00

http://network.nature.com/people/rpg/blog/2009/03/21/on-the-nature-of-faith-part-2

GOP budget

2009-03-27T19:12:00.002-04:00

Who knew it was so easy?

Drip, drip, drip. Yes, it was torture

2009-03-27T19:05:00.001-04:00

Step by step, drip by drip, the torture regime is falling apart.

The latest blow is another former Bush administration lawyer who was involved with Gitmo saying that yes, it was torture and the administration's entire approach was misguided and borne of panic.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/27/guantanamo-torture-decrie_n_180123.html

WE did it

2009-03-26T20:52:00.002-04:00

An impassioned plea from a posting at Daily Kos about the need for prosecutions on torture:

We did this, Americans did this, and....in the eyes of the rest of the world.... YOU did this.
Rape. Torture. Murder. It is what Americans do. Unless we prove it isn't.
Unless YOU now make sure that WE investigate charge and try the people who authorized, ordered and carried out these acts... as YOUR government, in YOUR name, with YOUR money, by YOUR soldiers and intelligence agencies....YOU did this.
Because you are an American, and Americans did this.
And unless we do something about it, that IS the historical record. America did this. Not Bush or Cheney, America.
Right up to the day that we charge the individuals who did this...as individuals.
Right up to the day we try the President and Vice-President who did this....NOT as Americans. Not as representatives of America. But as men. Men who have broken the law NOT in the name of every American. But in their own name.
Until these MEN are brought to justice and tried as War Criminals, these are not just their crimes as individuals who broke the law. These are ALL of OUR Crimes, as Americans.
The only way to clear YOUR name, to clear America's name....is to charge, try, and convict George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld as men, as private individuals, who committed War Crimes NOT in our name, NOT with our consent, but in their own name, on their own abused authority.
Is their any greater crime, any greater sin possible, than to rape and torture a fellow human being to death? And yet this IS what we did.
As much as we seem to want to pretend we didn't.
Until the responsibility lies directly on the individuals who ordered these inhuman atrocities, then it lies with us, the People in whose name this was done. Until WE find THEM guilty, we are guilty. As Americans in an America that does torture.
Until we prove we don't. Through prosecuting those who did.
Until Justice is done. Or at least attempted, those who are not attempting it, US....
....Each Of Us Shares This Sin.

The whole thing here: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/3/26/712768/-Torture:-Prosecute,-Or-Each-Of-Us-Shares-This-Sin

"A deeply broken nation"

2009-03-26T17:10:00.001-04:00

Greenwald. He's not succinct, but he generally gets around to making very damning points:

The key dynamic underlying all of this -- the linchpin that allows it all to happen and, historically, the primary hallmark of a deeply broken nation -- is the total elimination of the rule of law for the ruling class, with a simultaneous intensification of the law as a weapon against the citizenry. Does anyone expect there to be any widespread prosecutions for those most responsible for the looting, systematic fraud and grand-scale theft of the last decade? Identically, as more and more evidence emerges of the vast war crimes of the prior administration, the failure to enforce the law and our legal obligations against our nation's most powerful becomes even more transparent. As law professor Jonathan Turley put it on Rachel Maddow's show Monday night:
The president refuses to allow the investigation of war crimes. And we just found out the international Red Cross, also the definitive body on torture, found that this was a real torture program. And yet, the president is having a debate with the guy [Cheney] over whether it was good policy. . . .
It is just as bad to prevent the investigation and prosecution of a war crime as its commission because you become part of it. There‘s no question about a war crime here. . . .
You know, some people say, what do you need, a film? We actually had films of us torturing people. So this would be the shortest investigation in history. You have Bush officials who have said that we tortured people. We have interrogators who have said we tortured people. The Red Cross has said it. A host of international organizations have said it. . . .
He should be appointing a special prosecutor. There is no question about that. This is the most well-defined and publicly known crime I have seen in my lifetime. There is no debate about it. There is no ambiguity. It is well known.
Contrast these desperate efforts to avoid any criminal accountability at all for the country's most powerful lawbreakers with the merciless application of criminal law to ordinary Americans. As Brown University Glenn Loury recently wrote:
Simply put, we have become a nation of jailers and, arguably, racist jailers at that. The past four decades have witnessed a truly historic expansion, and transformation, of penal institutions in the United States — at every level of government, and in all regions of the country. We have, by any measure, become a vastly more punitive society. Measured in constant dollars and taking account of all levels of government, spending on corrections and law enforcement in the United States has more than quadrupled over the last quarter century. As a result, the American prison system has grown into a leviathan unmatched in human history.

That unipolar moment didn't last long

2009-03-25T20:26:00.001-04:00

Housing Doom reacts to news that China wants the world to consider a new reserve currency other than the US Dollar: After Wednesday’s festivities I’m confident that China has now made the opening gambit in its inevitable confrontation with America. The process will take a bit over 60 years and we might as well be civilized about it — since it’s going to take a while …

http://housingdoom.com/2009/03/25/public-radio-the-us-dollar-and-threats/

It was knowable

2009-03-25T19:07:00.002-04:00

Daily Kos has a good post running down how the factors leading to today's financial woes were predicted.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/3/25/713036/-Nobody-Could-Have-Known

It's like the cries that "No one could have predicted the levies would fail" in New Orleans. Of course the Weather Channel was doing the first episode of its then-new series "It Could Happen Tomorrow" about New Orleans and its vulnerability to hurricanes. It was the second most likely disaster (after a new SF earthquake -- how ready are we for THAT).

This "nobody could have predicted it" excuse is really lame.

Obama is boring

2009-03-25T18:50:00.002-04:00

At least that's the meme on the Right.

What I don't get is how this is supposed to be a bad thing. Last year all they could talk about was how exciting Obama was and how his supporters were just being swept away with emotion. Back then that was supposed to be a bad thing.

Logically the Right should be happy that Obama is now boring.

Of course, logic has been banished from modern conservative discourse. It's far too inconvenient.

Great post on educational, bureaucratic and legal craziness

2009-03-24T18:43:00.000-04:00

Read the whole thing: http://www.samefacts.com/archives/education_policy_/2009/03/zero_tolerance_and_sanity.php

Gutfeld is gutless

2009-03-23T23:24:00.003-04:00

A little-known conservative "comedian" named Gutfeld made a crack insulting the Canada and the Canadian armed forces (who have lost more troops in Afghanistan than any US ally) apparently doesn't have the balls to actually apologize when he says something stupid. That's evidently beneath his dignity, although apologizing is not beneath the dignity of the President of the United States (Special Olympics).

Are we ready for what we're going to find out?

2009-03-23T20:21:00.002-04:00

More torture memos to be declassified that will be very embarrassing to the CIA, Newsweek reports.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/190362

What we already know is horrific enough, but the intel community is fighting so hard to keep the secret that one can only wonder how bad it must be.

And percolating in the background is the whole question of the secret surveillance program that was so objectionable that even John Ashcroft thought it went too far. And Ashcroft was OK with the torture. How bad will THAT news be, when (if?) we find out?

Maximal pain

2009-03-23T18:07:00.001-04:00

Via Scott Horton, Alan Dershowitz on torture; http://www.harpers.org/archive/2009/03/hbc-90004600

Extract:

But I want more painful. I want maximal pain, minimum lethality. You don’t want it to be permanent, you don’t want someone to be walking with a limp, but you want to cause the most excruciating, intense, immediate pain. Now, I didn’t want to write about testicles, but that’s what a lot of people use. I also wanted to be explicit because I didn’t want to be squeamish about it. People have asked me whether I would do the torturing and my answer is, yes, I would if I thought it could save a city from being blown up.

Class warfare?

2009-03-23T14:05:00.003-04:00

The rising economic inequality of the last few decades has been raising alarms in some quarters for quite some time, but a number of factors disguised it until recently.

Perhaps one of the most important was the entry of women into the workforce, which allowed most middle-class families to maintain a middle-class standard of living even though it took more hours of labor to do so. Women derived some benefits in self-actualization and independence from this trend, so it was not entirely unwelcome. But there was a natural limit on how far this could go.

A second factor disguising the inequality was the rise of Wal-Mart and other discounters and the ability to keep costs down by inports from China and other low-labor cost countries. It became possible to maintain the essentials of life at a lower cost.

A third factor was the rise in home values and the stock market rise, both of which made it seem as if people were building wealth (in home equity and 401k balances) even as they tapped out their savings and credit limits to maintain the middle class lifestyle they aspired to.

Not the fact that all this was built on sand and could not be sustained was recognized by some. There have been no shortages of Cassandras. But it was politically expedient to dismiss them and the rich and powerful could marshal a lot of resources to marginalize those voices.

But the market will, as it always will, eventually rule. And despite the fact that the rich and powerful pay lip service to the "Market" they don't really want the market to freely operate. What, after all, is the use of riches and power if it can't protect you from bad things?

Unfortunately one of the major parties lost sight of its responsibility to all the citizens and one of the major intellectual movements was hijacked by powerful interests to the point that timeless conservative principles such as rule of law and limited government were completely perverted to the point where "conservatives" would seriously argue for unlimited executive powers including the ability to disappear people, engage in torture and simply ignore Congress when the executive decided it was proper, and all of this without judicial review.

Well, it may very well be that the worm has turned.

There are people screaming that AIG's contracts are sacrosanct and that the government has no power to void them. Well, folks, if the government has the power to arrest you without charges, torture you to madness and detain you as long as it wants without trial, what chance do your little pieces of paper stand?

Fools.

Private prisons

2009-03-21T15:41:00.000-04:00

One of the more damagaing fetishes that swept through conservatism the last couple of decades is the urge to privatize government functions as much as possible.

While attractive in principle for many supporting governmental functions that have private sector equivilents (fleet maintenance for example) I think it can lead to serious trouble when applied to core governmental functions. It's popular to say that government ought to be run like a buisiness, but that's only true in a limited sense. Private sector practices and innovations can be copied by the government when appropriate, but it's important to remember that the goal of a private activity is not the same as a government.

And some state functions are simply inappropriate ti delegate to private parties, especially those having to do with the state's coercive power. While armies, for example, can sometimes save money by using civilian contractor support, the closer to the firing line they are the less appropriate iot is. Likewise therre is a role for private security concerns, but the power to arrest people and use dealy force that we give police offciers can't legitimately be turned over to private parties. It's hard enough to exercise adequate control and protect people's rights when these are agents of the government, let alone private parties.

One core function thta I have alwayts felt was inmappropriate to turn over to private hands in incarceration. The incentives to abuse prisoners or neglect prisoners is too strong and the checks too weak. The prisomers have no power to remove themselves, by definition. I presume the "customers' of the prison system are the law-abiding citizens, but they are not affcted or even aware of the conditions and therefore market forces don't really apply. If there's no market then I dont see how a private sector solution makes sense.

And it turns out that actual experince shows that this is a problem. http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=15308.

More fallout from Stewart vs. Cramer

2009-03-18T11:17:00.002-04:00

One of the most consequential interviews since Palin and Couric.

http://www.wiredtocare.com/?p=1289

AIG

2009-03-16T21:43:00.002-04:00

There are undoubtedly all sorts of legal and technical reasons why this AIG bonus situation is the way it is.

But there's also a political reality at work here, and if the government is going to retain the ability to act it's going to have to find a way to rein this crap in. Pitchforks and torches don't make good public policy but pushing the peasants' noses into the manure pile is a good way to provoke them.

As many have pointed out, blue collar workers' contracts have been far from sacrosanct in this crisis, I see no reason why white collar workers' contracts should be -- especially when the white collar workers in question (at AIG) played a direct role in causing the crisis, something that can't be said about folks like the autoworkers.

Cheney re-emerges

2009-03-15T19:04:00.002-04:00

I don't want to reward CNN's John King by watching his interview of VP Cheney, but fortunately there are some reporters who get paid to watch this sort of thing so I don't have to and here is a summary of what was said: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-cheney16-2009mar16,0,2699764.story

I guess it would be expecting too much for the previous administration to at least wait until the first 100 days go by before launching into partisan criticism of the new administration, but the Bush crowd was never much for observing customary restraints.

It's pretty disgusting for Cheney to criticize the abandonment of torture and other illegal behavior as making us less safe, but it's no surprise. But it's really rich to claim that Bush's policies were not to blame for the economic mess. I'm quite sure that if we were still sailing along in our blissful bubble that the Bush folks would be rushing to claim credit for it and saying that Obama was just coasting off their success.