Everything You Need to Know: The extreme danger to our freedoms in just three sentences.
A bit of introduction here. I recently spoke with a man who had seen some of the show. He told me he was concerned about Barack Obama "taking away our freedom." I remarked to my wife later that he was right, but not in the way he intended. He was referring to things like the new health insurance law and no, that is not taking away your freedom no matter how many times Sean Hannity tells you otherwise.
However, PHC* is threatening our freedom. So herewith, everything you need to know about the danger of the moment in just three sentences.
1. I spoke last week about a recent speech by Attorney General Eric Holder laying out a claimed legal rationale for the authority of the president to order the murder of a US citizen abroad without the need for any outside review of any sort.
2. On March 7, during his testimony before the House Appropriations Committee regarding his agency's budget, FBI Director Robert Mueller was asked if Holder's logic could also be applied to a citizen inside the US.
3. Mueller said he didn't know - that is, he didn't know if the president has the legal authority to order the extrajudicial murder of an American citizen on American soil.
And that is everything you need to know.
Footnote: This was not in the show due to lack of time, but it's surely worth including. Asked about Mueller's response, the DOJ said the answer is "pretty straightforward. ... The legal framework laid out applies to US citizens outside of the US."
Um, we know what Holder said. The question was is if that logic could apply elsewhere. It is more than a little disturbing that the DOJ did not answer that question.
*PHC = President Hopey-Changey
Sources:
http://jonathanturley.org/2012/03/08/mueller-i-am-not-sure-whether-i-now-can-kill-citizens-in-the-united-states-under-obamas-kill-doctrine/
http://rt.com/usa/news/fbi-mueller-assassination-holder-193/
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/03/07/mueller-have-to-check-with-holder-whether-targeted-killing-rule-is-outside-us/?test=latestnews
http://www.examiner.com/human-rights-in-national/ndaa-s-cia-military-targeted-killings-of-innocent-americans
Showing posts with label assassination. Show all posts
Showing posts with label assassination. Show all posts
Saturday, March 17, 2012
Left Side of the Aisle #48
This week:
Good news #1: Senate refuses to fast-track Keystone XL pipeline.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/08/keystone-xl-senate-defeats-bill_n_1333108.html
Good News #2: Voter photo ID laws in Texas and Indiana have been blocked, the first by the DOJ, the second by state courts.
http://news.yahoo.com/obama-administration-objects-texas-voter-id-law-161037385.html
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-03-12/wisconsin-voter-identification-law-is-blocked-by-second-state-court-judge
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/voter-id-rules-a-solution-in-search-of-a-problem/2012/03/12/gIQA8m8D8R_story.html
Outrage of the Week: The continuing attack on choice and birth control.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/08/kansas-abortion-bill-sales-tax_n_1327301.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/08/international-womens-day-congress-abortion_n_1332143.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/09/wrongful-birth-bill-arizona-senate-abortion-bill_n_1335117.html
Afghanistan: Time to get out - now.
http://icasualties.org/oef/
http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/world/2012/03/12/shooting-deaths-civilians-complicate-afghanistan-mission/9tyWgD0NV4SHdHlEDdFEWO/story.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/20/afghan-war-casualties_n_1161127.html
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R41084.pdf
http://iwpr.net/report-news/afghans-dispute-nato-casualty-figures
http://news.yahoo.com/afghans-urge-exit-killings-u-says-timetable-unchanged-231844103.html
http://news.yahoo.com/massacre-makes-obama-more-determined-exit-afghanistan-001919619.html
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/obama-no-rush-exits-afghanistan-rampage-225448818.html
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/alleged-afghanistan-massacre-republicans-questioning-war-effort-153152684.html
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/03/six-in-10-criticize-war-in-afghanistan-most-favor-abandoning-training-mission/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/behind-the-numbers/post/poll-few-in-us-sense-afghan-support-for-war/2012/03/11/gIQAfj4S5R_blog.html
http://www.dir.salon.com/2012/02/26/the_causes_of_the_protests_in_afghanistan/singleton/
http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2012/02/27/apologies-sound-empty/twkdPVnfmqRIyekGVwbfdJ/story.html
Everything You Need to Know: The extreme danger to our freedoms in just three sentences.
http://jonathanturley.org/2012/03/08/mueller-i-am-not-sure-whether-i-now-can-kill-citizens-in-the-united-states-under-obamas-kill-doctrine/
http://rt.com/usa/news/fbi-mueller-assassination-holder-193/
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/03/07/mueller-have-to-check-with-holder-whether-targeted-killing-rule-is-outside-us/
http://www.examiner.com/human-rights-in-national/ndaa-s-cia-military-targeted-killings-of-innocent-americans
Thursday, March 08, 2012
Left Side of the Aisle #47 - Part 4
Eric Holder says PHC* can order you to be killed
So last week Attorney General Eric Holder gave a speech at Northwestern University to explain why it is legal for the president to issue an order to have you killed.
This goes back, of course, to the case of Anwar al-Awlaki, a natural-born American citizen living in Yemen. He was assassinated in drone-attack this past September. He was killed amid US government accusations that he was involved with al-Qaeda and had been in contact with some 9/11 hijackers and the so-called "Underwear Bomber," Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab - but no proof or any sort, no evidence, was offered and there certainly was nothing that any normal person would regard as the due process that if nothing else would seem would be his due as an American citizen.
The administration still has not released the memo containing the claimed legal grounds justifying the attack, despite requests from members of Congress and FOIA requests from the ACLU and the New York Times. But Holder had a go at offering what might be called an unclassified version.
And what was the argument? In sum total, it was "It's legal because we say it is." Or, as Richard Nixon once said, "When the president does it, it's legal."
In fact, contrary to what you might have thought, according to the amazing Mr. H the idea of "due process" does not mean that anyone can offer a check on this executive power to execute executions, does not mean the White House has to show its evidence to anyone, does not mean that anyone outside the president's circle need be involved at any point.
“Due process and judicial process are not one and the same, particularly when it comes to national security,” Holder said. “The Constitution guarantees due process, not judicial process.” You could almost hear the echo effect being raised as he intoned the phrase "national security."
So what does constitute due process, according to Mr. H? When the Executive Branch, meaning the president - again alone - decides the accused is guilty.
In the case of national security, when the prosecution decides you are guilty, that is the end of the matter. No need to present evidence, no need for any sort of outside process, no need for any independent judgment, no need for anything that could in any way be called a trial, even a trial in the court of public opinion. There simply is nothing to restrain the president either in making that declaration of guilt or acting on it in the way he or she prefers. The president is the prosecutor, the judge, the jury, and the executioner all in one.
Oh, but surely I'm being unfair, because Holder insisted there is a system of “robust oversight” - which consists largely of telling some selected members of Congress what has been decided or done after it already has been decided or done. I'm reminded of the fact that there is another meaning to the word "oversight."
Still, you have to understaaaand, he pleaded. He quoted JFK's line about “defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger” and declared we are again in "an hour of danger." "We are a nation at war" and "Where national security operations are at stake, due process takes into account the realities of combat."
But the "war" here is one without a specific target - "terrorism" hardly constitutes a specific target - and without geographic limit, and with no way to determine what constitutes "victory." It is literally a war without end. It's a war in no particular place, it's everywhere all the time, a war then in which almost anything can be justified as "combat," as "acts of war," as occurring "on the battlefield" and thus beyond the reach of any law other than the so-called "law" of war.
More Holder: "We must also recognize that there are instances where our government has the clear authority - and, I would argue, the responsibility - to defend the United States through the appropriate and lawful use of lethal force.”
Now, I doubt any non-pacifist would disagree that the use of lethal force is sometimes necessary for legitimate national self-defense. The question is, who decides what is "appropriate" and when it's appropriate? Who decides and how do you decide who decides?
The point here is that by “government,” Holder means the president, alone, whoever that is. The president is, quite literally, the decider over life and death. As one commentator said, if the vice-president disagrees, tough. Shoulda been top of the ticket. If the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court thinks preaching against the United States is not a capital offense, again, tough. Shoulda taken up politics instead of the law. If the Congress objects that the president’s “surgical strikes” kill too many random men, women, and children, well, they can cry me a river. If the United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings expresses concern, well, who cares about him, anyway?
In fact, it's not even desirable to get outside input because time is of the essence! We must act now! Because, according to Holder, this authority to order murder will only be used against someone who is an "imminent threat." Which could have been a little reassuring if it weren't for the fact that Holder also said that "the evaluation of whether an individual presents an 'imminent threat' incorporates considerations of the relevant window of opportunity to act."
Which if it means anything at all means that being an "imminent threat" does not require that you are about to launch an attack, it does not even require that you are planning anything, it requires only that a-we think you will be planning something sometime in the future and b-we have an opening to get you now.
In fact, Holder said as much: "The Constitution does not require the president to delay action until some theoretical end stage of planning when the precise time, place, and manner of an attack become clear."
When George Bush said stuff like that, we screamed about the dangers of pre-emptive war. In fact, Shrub's team did say stuff like that - remember I think it was Condoleeza Rice justifying the coming invasion of Iraq on the grounds that "we can't wait for the final proof to come in the form of a mushroom cloud?" Holder's language is more nuanced, but the meaning is the same: We don't need no stinking proof.
So that is the Obama administration's position: Not only do we not need to show proof, we don't even need to have proof. All we have to do is believe. And our belief is all the legal justification that we need to kill you.
But don't worry, if it turns out later we were wrong or that we killed a whole lot of innocent people along with you, we'll write a personal note of apology.
And speaking of apologies, I offer one to John Yoo.
Footnote: Here’s one more quote:
“As president, I will close Guantanamo, reject the Military Commissions Act, and adhere to the Geneva Conventions. Our Constitution and our Uniform Code of Military Justice provide a framework for dealing with the terrorists … Our Constitution works. We will again set an example for the world that the law is not subject to the whims of stubborn rulers, and that justice is not arbitrary.”
As I expect you guessed, those were the words of 2008 presidential candidate Barack Obama. Well, Guantanamo is still open, the military commissions are still going, and we have ignored the Geneva conventions. The stubborn rulers with their arbitrary justice are not so far distant in either space or time as we would like to tell ourselves.
*PHC = President Hopey-Changey
Sources:
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/03/holder_executive_branch_reviews_of_targeted_killings_count_as_due_process.php?ref=fpa
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/03/guest-post-attorney-general-holder-says-murder-is-legal.html
http://motherjones.com/mojo/2012/03/eric-holder-targeted-killing
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/eric-holder-drone-speech-7124146
So last week Attorney General Eric Holder gave a speech at Northwestern University to explain why it is legal for the president to issue an order to have you killed.
This goes back, of course, to the case of Anwar al-Awlaki, a natural-born American citizen living in Yemen. He was assassinated in drone-attack this past September. He was killed amid US government accusations that he was involved with al-Qaeda and had been in contact with some 9/11 hijackers and the so-called "Underwear Bomber," Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab - but no proof or any sort, no evidence, was offered and there certainly was nothing that any normal person would regard as the due process that if nothing else would seem would be his due as an American citizen.
The administration still has not released the memo containing the claimed legal grounds justifying the attack, despite requests from members of Congress and FOIA requests from the ACLU and the New York Times. But Holder had a go at offering what might be called an unclassified version.
And what was the argument? In sum total, it was "It's legal because we say it is." Or, as Richard Nixon once said, "When the president does it, it's legal."
In fact, contrary to what you might have thought, according to the amazing Mr. H the idea of "due process" does not mean that anyone can offer a check on this executive power to execute executions, does not mean the White House has to show its evidence to anyone, does not mean that anyone outside the president's circle need be involved at any point.
“Due process and judicial process are not one and the same, particularly when it comes to national security,” Holder said. “The Constitution guarantees due process, not judicial process.” You could almost hear the echo effect being raised as he intoned the phrase "national security."
So what does constitute due process, according to Mr. H? When the Executive Branch, meaning the president - again alone - decides the accused is guilty.
In the case of national security, when the prosecution decides you are guilty, that is the end of the matter. No need to present evidence, no need for any sort of outside process, no need for any independent judgment, no need for anything that could in any way be called a trial, even a trial in the court of public opinion. There simply is nothing to restrain the president either in making that declaration of guilt or acting on it in the way he or she prefers. The president is the prosecutor, the judge, the jury, and the executioner all in one.
Oh, but surely I'm being unfair, because Holder insisted there is a system of “robust oversight” - which consists largely of telling some selected members of Congress what has been decided or done after it already has been decided or done. I'm reminded of the fact that there is another meaning to the word "oversight."
Still, you have to understaaaand, he pleaded. He quoted JFK's line about “defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger” and declared we are again in "an hour of danger." "We are a nation at war" and "Where national security operations are at stake, due process takes into account the realities of combat."
But the "war" here is one without a specific target - "terrorism" hardly constitutes a specific target - and without geographic limit, and with no way to determine what constitutes "victory." It is literally a war without end. It's a war in no particular place, it's everywhere all the time, a war then in which almost anything can be justified as "combat," as "acts of war," as occurring "on the battlefield" and thus beyond the reach of any law other than the so-called "law" of war.
More Holder: "We must also recognize that there are instances where our government has the clear authority - and, I would argue, the responsibility - to defend the United States through the appropriate and lawful use of lethal force.”
Now, I doubt any non-pacifist would disagree that the use of lethal force is sometimes necessary for legitimate national self-defense. The question is, who decides what is "appropriate" and when it's appropriate? Who decides and how do you decide who decides?
The point here is that by “government,” Holder means the president, alone, whoever that is. The president is, quite literally, the decider over life and death. As one commentator said, if the vice-president disagrees, tough. Shoulda been top of the ticket. If the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court thinks preaching against the United States is not a capital offense, again, tough. Shoulda taken up politics instead of the law. If the Congress objects that the president’s “surgical strikes” kill too many random men, women, and children, well, they can cry me a river. If the United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings expresses concern, well, who cares about him, anyway?
In fact, it's not even desirable to get outside input because time is of the essence! We must act now! Because, according to Holder, this authority to order murder will only be used against someone who is an "imminent threat." Which could have been a little reassuring if it weren't for the fact that Holder also said that "the evaluation of whether an individual presents an 'imminent threat' incorporates considerations of the relevant window of opportunity to act."
Which if it means anything at all means that being an "imminent threat" does not require that you are about to launch an attack, it does not even require that you are planning anything, it requires only that a-we think you will be planning something sometime in the future and b-we have an opening to get you now.
In fact, Holder said as much: "The Constitution does not require the president to delay action until some theoretical end stage of planning when the precise time, place, and manner of an attack become clear."
When George Bush said stuff like that, we screamed about the dangers of pre-emptive war. In fact, Shrub's team did say stuff like that - remember I think it was Condoleeza Rice justifying the coming invasion of Iraq on the grounds that "we can't wait for the final proof to come in the form of a mushroom cloud?" Holder's language is more nuanced, but the meaning is the same: We don't need no stinking proof.
So that is the Obama administration's position: Not only do we not need to show proof, we don't even need to have proof. All we have to do is believe. And our belief is all the legal justification that we need to kill you.
But don't worry, if it turns out later we were wrong or that we killed a whole lot of innocent people along with you, we'll write a personal note of apology.
And speaking of apologies, I offer one to John Yoo.
Footnote: Here’s one more quote:
“As president, I will close Guantanamo, reject the Military Commissions Act, and adhere to the Geneva Conventions. Our Constitution and our Uniform Code of Military Justice provide a framework for dealing with the terrorists … Our Constitution works. We will again set an example for the world that the law is not subject to the whims of stubborn rulers, and that justice is not arbitrary.”
As I expect you guessed, those were the words of 2008 presidential candidate Barack Obama. Well, Guantanamo is still open, the military commissions are still going, and we have ignored the Geneva conventions. The stubborn rulers with their arbitrary justice are not so far distant in either space or time as we would like to tell ourselves.
*PHC = President Hopey-Changey
Sources:
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/03/holder_executive_branch_reviews_of_targeted_killings_count_as_due_process.php?ref=fpa
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/03/guest-post-attorney-general-holder-says-murder-is-legal.html
http://motherjones.com/mojo/2012/03/eric-holder-targeted-killing
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/eric-holder-drone-speech-7124146
Left Side of the Aisle #47
This week:
- Successful labor sit-in with support of Occupy
http://www.salon.com/2012/02/28/a_famous_chicago_factory_gets_occupied/singleton/
- The misogyny of Rush Limbaugh and the right
http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/05/us/rush-limbaugh-controversy/?hpt=us_c2
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jFiPtzocCbofU5cdW6KdeLyNfYUQ?docId=ec713c2ef94740deb6bfbaa254e69d86
http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/03/rush-limbaugh-apology-falling-on-deaf-ears.php
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2012/03/03/a_statement_from_rush
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2012/03/02/the_democrats_are_desperate_obama_calls_sandra_fluke_the_30_year_old_victim
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2012/03/05/why_i_apologized_to_sandra_fluke
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rush_Limbaugh%E2%80%93Sandra_Fluke_controversy
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/03/sc_county_gop_if_youve_had_pre-marital_sex_you_can.php?ref=fpb
- Outrage of the Week: the travails of the rich
http://www.care2.com/causes/is-it-time-to-take-pity-on-the-rich.html
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-29/wall-street-bonus-withdrawal-means-trading-aspen-for-cheap-chex.html
- Eric Holder says PHC* can order you to be killed
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/03/holder_executive_branch_reviews_of_targeted_killings_count_as_due_process.php?ref=fpa
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/03/guest-post-attorney-general-holder-says-murder-is-legal.html
http://motherjones.com/mojo/2012/03/eric-holder-targeted-killing
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/eric-holder-drone-speech-7124146
- RIP Scroogle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scroogle
http://searchengineland.com/scroogles-gone-heres-who-still-offers-private-searching-112275
http://searchengineland.com/scroogle-org-is-gone-forever-says-site-owner-112245
Saturday, February 18, 2012
Left Side of the Aisle #44 - Part 5
Hypocrisy of Obama supporters
Finally, another sort of hypocrisy, this one of valuing political expediency and party loyalty over human rights and basic decency. And while that sounds like an all-but-routine denunciation of the right wing, in this case it's not.
During the Bush years, liberal democrats and supposedly progressive activists screamed (and legitimately so) about how George Bush - Shrub - was undermining American values and shredding the Constitution. Barack Obama - President Hopey-Changey - campaigned on how just awful all that was and how he was going to change all that. That was not just a single plank in his platform, it was central to his campaign.
But once in office he went back on almost everything he said. His administration not only endorsed the Bush regime's arguments on how national security trumps all, it went beyond it, refusing to prosecute Bush administration crimes up to and including open admissions of approving torture from Bush and "The Big" Dick Cheney themselves, expanding executive power, broadening claims justifying official secrecy, pushing for renewal of expiring Traitor Act provisions, intensifying the technically secret drone war in Pakistan, expanding the ability of government to spy on our communications, allowing the FBI additional powers to poke, prod, pry, and probe into our privacy, waging an unprecedented war on whistleblowers, seeking to destroy WikiLeaks, and allowing the torture of Bradley Manning.
Sometimes the extensions of individual, even monarchical, powers are even more shocking:
In the case of Libya, Obama not only ignored the War Powers Act, he deliberately thumbed his nose at the very idea of Congress having any say at all on if, when, where, or even why American military forces would be employed. He essentially said "It's my Air Force and I'll do whatever I want with it."
He has endorsed the power of presidents to imprison anyone, even American citizens taken on American soil, indefinitely without charge, trial, or any legal rights whatsoever based solely on that president's own unchallengeable claim that the person - the disappeared person - was in some way connected to "terrorism." But don't worry, Howard Dean is safe.
And he declared for himself the power to order the extra-judicial murder of anyone, even American citizens, anywhere in the world, on the basis of that same sort of unchallengeable claim - while refusing to reveal whatever legal argument has been invented by his administration to claim that power. But again, Rudy Guiliani need have no fears.
And how has all that been treated by far too much of what passes for the left in this country? Beyond a few quiet grumbles about how there might be some legitimate criticism on the matter, it has mostly been silence. A silence most recently demonstrated and punctuated by a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
According to that poll, fully 77% of self-identified liberal Democrats endorse the use of drones in Pakistan and elsewhere - that is, they endorse the secret and illegal CIA war. What's more, 55% still approve of them even when the targets are identified as American citizens.
And what about that symbol of Bush-era undermining of human and constitutional rights, Guantanamo Bay prison? Iin February, 2009, shortly after Obama was inaugurated and a time when he was still talking about closing the prison, a Pew Research poll showed that 64% of Democrats supported closing it down; I think we can safely assume the portion of liberal dems who felt that way was even higher. But in the new Washington Post-ABC News poll, 53% of liberal Democrats now approve of his decision to keep it open.
This is more evidence, if it was even needed, of hypocrisy on a grand scale, a scale that envelops an entire political party and even more importantly, envelops far too many of the very people who denounced the immorality and illegality of the Shrub years but now find that the chant of "elect more Democrats" silences the whisper of conscience.
The evidence says that for a large segment of self-proclaimed liberals and progressives, the old right-wing charge that their opposition to George Bush was based on political expediency rather than actual commitment rings true and I say that these people, these hypocrites, these trimmers whose morality depends on whether the president has a D or an R after the name do not deserve to be listened to, do not deserve even to be believed when, quoting Glenn Greenwald,
And yet we must struggle on. We have to keep on trying. There is a reason my blog is subtitled "Surviving a Dark Time." Far too many believed - and have convinced themselves - that the darkness lifted in January 2009. They were wrong.
Sources:
http://www.salon.com/2012/02/08/repulsive_progressive_hypocrisy/singleton/
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2011/08/libya-here.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2011/05/little-more-bad-news-so-is-this.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2011/06/third-footnote-to-preceding.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2011/06/why-previous-post-matters.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/aclu-sues-to-force-release-of-drone-attack-records/2012/02/01/gIQArL6xhQ_story.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/poll-finds-broad-support-for-obamas-counterterrorism-policies/2012/02/07/gIQAFrSEyQ_story.html
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1893/poll-patriot-act-renewal
http://equalityanddemocracy.org/?p=89
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1125/terrorism-guantanamo-torture-polling
Finally, another sort of hypocrisy, this one of valuing political expediency and party loyalty over human rights and basic decency. And while that sounds like an all-but-routine denunciation of the right wing, in this case it's not.
During the Bush years, liberal democrats and supposedly progressive activists screamed (and legitimately so) about how George Bush - Shrub - was undermining American values and shredding the Constitution. Barack Obama - President Hopey-Changey - campaigned on how just awful all that was and how he was going to change all that. That was not just a single plank in his platform, it was central to his campaign.
But once in office he went back on almost everything he said. His administration not only endorsed the Bush regime's arguments on how national security trumps all, it went beyond it, refusing to prosecute Bush administration crimes up to and including open admissions of approving torture from Bush and "The Big" Dick Cheney themselves, expanding executive power, broadening claims justifying official secrecy, pushing for renewal of expiring Traitor Act provisions, intensifying the technically secret drone war in Pakistan, expanding the ability of government to spy on our communications, allowing the FBI additional powers to poke, prod, pry, and probe into our privacy, waging an unprecedented war on whistleblowers, seeking to destroy WikiLeaks, and allowing the torture of Bradley Manning.
Sometimes the extensions of individual, even monarchical, powers are even more shocking:
In the case of Libya, Obama not only ignored the War Powers Act, he deliberately thumbed his nose at the very idea of Congress having any say at all on if, when, where, or even why American military forces would be employed. He essentially said "It's my Air Force and I'll do whatever I want with it."
He has endorsed the power of presidents to imprison anyone, even American citizens taken on American soil, indefinitely without charge, trial, or any legal rights whatsoever based solely on that president's own unchallengeable claim that the person - the disappeared person - was in some way connected to "terrorism." But don't worry, Howard Dean is safe.
And he declared for himself the power to order the extra-judicial murder of anyone, even American citizens, anywhere in the world, on the basis of that same sort of unchallengeable claim - while refusing to reveal whatever legal argument has been invented by his administration to claim that power. But again, Rudy Guiliani need have no fears.
And how has all that been treated by far too much of what passes for the left in this country? Beyond a few quiet grumbles about how there might be some legitimate criticism on the matter, it has mostly been silence. A silence most recently demonstrated and punctuated by a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
According to that poll, fully 77% of self-identified liberal Democrats endorse the use of drones in Pakistan and elsewhere - that is, they endorse the secret and illegal CIA war. What's more, 55% still approve of them even when the targets are identified as American citizens.
And what about that symbol of Bush-era undermining of human and constitutional rights, Guantanamo Bay prison? Iin February, 2009, shortly after Obama was inaugurated and a time when he was still talking about closing the prison, a Pew Research poll showed that 64% of Democrats supported closing it down; I think we can safely assume the portion of liberal dems who felt that way was even higher. But in the new Washington Post-ABC News poll, 53% of liberal Democrats now approve of his decision to keep it open.
This is more evidence, if it was even needed, of hypocrisy on a grand scale, a scale that envelops an entire political party and even more importantly, envelops far too many of the very people who denounced the immorality and illegality of the Shrub years but now find that the chant of "elect more Democrats" silences the whisper of conscience.
The evidence says that for a large segment of self-proclaimed liberals and progressives, the old right-wing charge that their opposition to George Bush was based on political expediency rather than actual commitment rings true and I say that these people, these hypocrites, these trimmers whose morality depends on whether the president has a D or an R after the name do not deserve to be listened to, do not deserve even to be believed when, quoting Glenn Greenwald,
they want to pretend to oppose civilian slaughter and civil liberties assaults when perpetrated by the next Republican President.Greenwald also notes that 35% of liberal democrats say they oppose Obama's destructive and dangerous policies of the sort I've run through here. But while that is, as he says, "a non-trivial amount," it still marks us - those of us for who opposition to illegal wars and extra-judicial murder is a matter of conviction, not convenience - it marks us as a minority of all liberals who are a minority of the country as a whole. We are a minority of a minority.
And yet we must struggle on. We have to keep on trying. There is a reason my blog is subtitled "Surviving a Dark Time." Far too many believed - and have convinced themselves - that the darkness lifted in January 2009. They were wrong.
Sources:
http://www.salon.com/2012/02/08/repulsive_progressive_hypocrisy/singleton/
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2011/08/libya-here.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2011/05/little-more-bad-news-so-is-this.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2011/06/third-footnote-to-preceding.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2011/06/why-previous-post-matters.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/aclu-sues-to-force-release-of-drone-attack-records/2012/02/01/gIQArL6xhQ_story.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/poll-finds-broad-support-for-obamas-counterterrorism-policies/2012/02/07/gIQAFrSEyQ_story.html
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1893/poll-patriot-act-renewal
http://equalityanddemocracy.org/?p=89
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1125/terrorism-guantanamo-torture-polling
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Yes, it's you
The other day, I wrote that even if it turns out that the murder and attempted murder carried out by Jared Lee Loughner were not connected to the vicious rhetoric of the right, I would still hold the wingers responsible for the climate in which he acted. My grounds werethat
How can I be sure it was not a reach? Simple: Even some conservatives admit, if indirectly, who is really responsible for that noxious climate. For just one example, a conservative commenter at a blog I read fairly regularly said:
I'll tell you why: Because that seemed the reasonable, the natural, conclusion. More than that, it was an expectation, a reaction of "This was going to happen sooner or later, and now it has." The thought that this was a "nustso teabagger with a gun" may have distressed you - but it did not surprise you. And that is precisely the sort of "proof" to which I referred: It was indeed reasonable to speculate that Loughner is a "teabagger with a gun," who, inspired by the words and imagery of that movement's leaders, became convinced of the necessity to accomplish with bullets what ballots had failed to do. That speculation may, again, prove to be completely wrong - but it was entirely reasonable.
So conservatives, rightwingers, the whole lot of you, I'm calling you out. You knew, you knew and you know now of the risk you were running, the atmosphere you were establishing, the lines you were drawing, the physical threats you were creating; you knew then and you continued to do it, you know now and you still continue to do it, to do the same things, to create the same threats, to restate and reinforce the rancid rantings of the right and your only focused concern is to insure that whatever may happen, you do not get blamed for the results.
As I was writing this I came across the news that
So be honest with yourselves, conservatives and rightwingers, assuming that's possible: When you first heard that a Democratic Congresswoman had been shot, isn't it true that you, at least a lot of you, thought with Debra Saunders, "oh, no, it's a right-wing nut with a gun?" Didn't you? Wasn't that your immediate emotional reaction? You may later have pulled back, even grabbed the life preserver tossed by the wingiest of the wingnuts and convinced yourself against evidence that the shooter was a leftist, but that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about your gut reaction.
And then think about this: If you heard that a Republican member of Congress had been shot, would your first reaction be "oh, no, it's a left-wing nut with a gun?" You know damn well it wouldn't. It would be simple astonishment and "Who how why?" with no instant answer, no instant gut-level guilty party, springing to mind. Again, you may later find some thread of logic to claim the shooter was a leftist, but again that's not what we're talking about.
That difference, right there, tells you everything you need to know about the climate of implied violence in this country's political discourse, who it is directed against, and who is responsible for it. Yes, it's you. And you know it.
[t]he very fact that you, yes you, have created a climate where the speculation about Loughner's motives and influences, even if ultimately incorrect, was still entirely reasonable is proof enough.You might have thought that was a bit of a reach. It was not. The rightwingers know they are responsible for that climate. That's why they were so quick off the mark with their "Not us!" yelps and their "We're the real victims here" routine punctuated by their "You lefties are so mean to us!" sniffling. That's why Our Lady of the North was not retreating, she was reloading, making the around the bend and a mile down the road claim that her critics were guilty of "blood libel," a term cheapened by some to mean merely "a false accusation" but more properly labels something as the most despicable lie imaginable. It was all accuse the accuser (Rule #10) CYA, all posturing.
How can I be sure it was not a reach? Simple: Even some conservatives admit, if indirectly, who is really responsible for that noxious climate. For just one example, a conservative commenter at a blog I read fairly regularly said:
Yes, when I first heard about this, I would not have been surprised to hear it was some nutso teabagger spewing some shit about Ayn Rand while firing into the crowd.Perhaps more importantly, there was this exchange on CNN's "Reliable Sources" on Sunday between host Howie Kurtz and Debra Saunders of the San Francisco Chronicle:
SAUNDERS: You know, I've got to tell you, I'm a conservative. When I heard this story, my first thought was, oh, no, it's a right-wing nut with a gun. And I think that these stories about the Tea Party being a ticking time bomb are crap. I find them offensive, but we know that there are extremists.My own first thought in both of those cases was the question neither the commenter nor Saunders was asked: Why? Why was that your first thought? Why was it that the first thing you thought was that this was "some nutso teabagger," "a right-wing nut with a gun?" What is it about today's politics that made "teabagger" and "right-wing" central parts of your first reaction?
KURTZ: But you said, oh, no, it's a right-wing nut with a gun, because you feared that then anybody on the right would, by implication, be blamed for this shooting?
SAUNDERS: No. Because I feared it was true. I mean, that was my first thought.
I'll tell you why: Because that seemed the reasonable, the natural, conclusion. More than that, it was an expectation, a reaction of "This was going to happen sooner or later, and now it has." The thought that this was a "nustso teabagger with a gun" may have distressed you - but it did not surprise you. And that is precisely the sort of "proof" to which I referred: It was indeed reasonable to speculate that Loughner is a "teabagger with a gun," who, inspired by the words and imagery of that movement's leaders, became convinced of the necessity to accomplish with bullets what ballots had failed to do. That speculation may, again, prove to be completely wrong - but it was entirely reasonable.
So conservatives, rightwingers, the whole lot of you, I'm calling you out. You knew, you knew and you know now of the risk you were running, the atmosphere you were establishing, the lines you were drawing, the physical threats you were creating; you knew then and you continued to do it, you know now and you still continue to do it, to do the same things, to create the same threats, to restate and reinforce the rancid rantings of the right and your only focused concern is to insure that whatever may happen, you do not get blamed for the results.
As I was writing this I came across the news that
Anthony Miller, who was recently re-elected to a second term as chairman of the Arizona Legislative District 20 Republican Party, stepped down from the post hours after the shootingin Tucson avowedly because of concerns for his own and his family's safety arising from "verbal and online attacks against him" - attacks which came not from the left but from local tea party members in his own district in the Phoenix suburbs, more than 100 miles from Tucson. Even for GOPpers, the threat of violence comes from those even further to their right, not from their left.
So be honest with yourselves, conservatives and rightwingers, assuming that's possible: When you first heard that a Democratic Congresswoman had been shot, isn't it true that you, at least a lot of you, thought with Debra Saunders, "oh, no, it's a right-wing nut with a gun?" Didn't you? Wasn't that your immediate emotional reaction? You may later have pulled back, even grabbed the life preserver tossed by the wingiest of the wingnuts and convinced yourself against evidence that the shooter was a leftist, but that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about your gut reaction.
And then think about this: If you heard that a Republican member of Congress had been shot, would your first reaction be "oh, no, it's a left-wing nut with a gun?" You know damn well it wouldn't. It would be simple astonishment and "Who how why?" with no instant answer, no instant gut-level guilty party, springing to mind. Again, you may later find some thread of logic to claim the shooter was a leftist, but again that's not what we're talking about.
That difference, right there, tells you everything you need to know about the climate of implied violence in this country's political discourse, who it is directed against, and who is responsible for it. Yes, it's you. And you know it.
Monday, January 10, 2011
Exploiting a tragedy
Let me specify right at the top that no specific motive has been established in the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords beyond the fact that according to witnesses and evidence, the alleged shooter, Jared Lee Loughner, was consciously targeting Giffords. So the assertion that he was driven to murder by the vicious, hateful rhetoric of the organized right and its minions can't be made without any fear of future contradiction. Maybe Loughner is just, as the attempt is already being made to define (and thus dismiss) him as, a "mentally unstable" kid and his mass murder had nothing to do with the eliminationism that comes so easily to the lips of so many reactionary wingnuts.
But I doubt it.
I mean, maybe it's just a coincidence that Giffords was graphically "in the crosshairs" of the fanatics' grande dame. But I doubt it.
Maybe it's merely a happenstance that this occurred in the wake of advocacy of "Second Amendment remedies" that involved "taking out" elected politicians. But I doubt it.
Maybe there's no connection at all to a whole world of "beat[ing] the other side to a pulp ... chas[ing] them down," of being in Congress being "on enemy lines," of the need for supporters to be "armed and dangerous," the need to "send the socialists [i.e., Democrats] down ... in a river somewhere." But I really, really doubt it.
But I'll tell you who will doubt it: the media, which is incapable of dealing with right-wing insanity except with a "both sides do it" shrug, even if they have to bend over backwards far enough to kiss the back of their own knees to do it. AP, for example, referred sweepingly (and thus indiscriminately) to "the nation's caustic political climate," a "climate" it can't find to be driven by or blamed on anyone or even any side in particular but one that just, well, just is. Then there was Matt Bai's tortured equation of Sarah Palin's "crosshairs" map with a comment at Daily Kos as if they were of equal significance, a contention made even more ridiculous by the fact that the comment at DK was that of a Giffords constituent saying because Giffords voted against Nancy Pelosi keeping her leadership position in the House Democratic caucus, the Congresswoman is "dead to me," a phrase for which there is no interpretation that involves a threat of violence.
What's more, I will tell you not only who will doubt it, who will vociferously deny it: the right wing. "Of course," you say, and quite rightly, too, because now as always they will simply be invoking Rule #12 of my list of tactics of rightwing arguing:
In an unintentionally hilarious example of the same practice on the same point, SarahPAC staffer Rebecca Mansour has claimed the crosshairs on Palin's map had nothing to do with, you know, like, guns 'n' stuff.
The first part of Rule #12 didn't get neglected, either: Mansour
Because, you see, the wingnuts and their associated wackos must be free to call those on the left "unAmerican" and "traitors" and "tyrants" and "a cancer" and "a virus" and "an infection" and "rats" and "vermin" - but call them on any of that and it's "You're against free speech" (Rule #10) and "No, you're the violent one" (Rule #17) and if you dare to point to anything clearly, even demonstrably, connected to their hate-filled spewings, then they will, as I said in an earlier such case, "scurry away like cockroaches."
Yes. You. And what's more, I have a news flash: Even if it turns out that Loughner's grievance against Giffords was the result of some disjointed, dysfunctional thought process and had nothing to do with rightwing rhetoric, it's still you. Because it has been you. And it will be you. The very fact that you, yes you, have created a climate where the speculation about Loughner's motives and influences, even if ultimately incorrect, was still entirely reasonable is proof enough.
Yes. It's you.
Footnote One: Roy Edroso has a good piece in the Village Voice about the reaction in the rightwing blogosphere to the shooting. Apparently, I underestimated the amount of "No, you're the real" whatever going on: The wingers have convinced themselves, largely on the basis of Loughner having listed The Communist Manifesto among a long list of books he liked, that he is a "committed leftist" - and what's more, some of them darkly hint, it appears that Daily Kos is somehow involved in what now assuredly is a political hit, not a "tragedy" by someone unhinged, once it's claimed the trigger-puller was somewhere to the left of Ben Nelson.
Footnote Two: There is another target for blame, one overlooked by many but not by the sharp, insightful doyens of the mass media: the internet. Yes, of course! Duh! Why didn't we all think of that? Everything is the fault of the internet!
Well, that might be okay, Mr. Bob, Sir, if it wasn't for your institutional tendency to pander to the right and piss on the left and the crappy job you and you ilk did and still do at one of your central purposes, which is to hold power to account. Do your job and there will be less need for us to do it for you. Not that I expect that to happen.
But I doubt it.
I mean, maybe it's just a coincidence that Giffords was graphically "in the crosshairs" of the fanatics' grande dame. But I doubt it.
Maybe it's merely a happenstance that this occurred in the wake of advocacy of "Second Amendment remedies" that involved "taking out" elected politicians. But I doubt it.
Maybe there's no connection at all to a whole world of "beat[ing] the other side to a pulp ... chas[ing] them down," of being in Congress being "on enemy lines," of the need for supporters to be "armed and dangerous," the need to "send the socialists [i.e., Democrats] down ... in a river somewhere." But I really, really doubt it.
But I'll tell you who will doubt it: the media, which is incapable of dealing with right-wing insanity except with a "both sides do it" shrug, even if they have to bend over backwards far enough to kiss the back of their own knees to do it. AP, for example, referred sweepingly (and thus indiscriminately) to "the nation's caustic political climate," a "climate" it can't find to be driven by or blamed on anyone or even any side in particular but one that just, well, just is. Then there was Matt Bai's tortured equation of Sarah Palin's "crosshairs" map with a comment at Daily Kos as if they were of equal significance, a contention made even more ridiculous by the fact that the comment at DK was that of a Giffords constituent saying because Giffords voted against Nancy Pelosi keeping her leadership position in the House Democratic caucus, the Congresswoman is "dead to me," a phrase for which there is no interpretation that involves a threat of violence.
What's more, I will tell you not only who will doubt it, who will vociferously deny it: the right wing. "Of course," you say, and quite rightly, too, because now as always they will simply be invoking Rule #12 of my list of tactics of rightwing arguing:
Rule #12: Whenever faced with the evil resulting from some other winger following or acting on your arguments, accuse those who point out that fact of "politicizing a tragedy." Never, never, never admit any responsibility for the meaning or impact of your own words.Lamar Alexander, for one example,
defended Sarah Palin Sunday, saying that it is irresponsible for the media to be bringing up her much-discussed image of political targets from the 2010 election in the aftermath of the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) and others in Arizona."Nothing to do with us!" is the cry. "Can't blame us! No no no! Not fair! Not fair!"
In an appearance on CNN's "State of the Union," Alexander objected to a question about the crosshairs map from host Candy Crowley, saying she was tying Palin to the tragedy.
In an unintentionally hilarious example of the same practice on the same point, SarahPAC staffer Rebecca Mansour has claimed the crosshairs on Palin's map had nothing to do with, you know, like, guns 'n' stuff.
"We never ever, ever intended it to be gun sights," she said in an interview with talk radio host Tammy Bruce Saturday. "It was simply crosshairs like you'd see on maps." Bruce suggested that they could, in fact, be seen as "surveyor's symbols."Sure, they weren't "targeting" those legislators, not even just symbolically or philosophically. They were, um, er, surveying them! Yeah! That's the ticket! No violent imagery at all! Perish the thought! In fact, Mansour went on to claim that "it never occurred to us that anybody would consider it violent." This despite the fact that Palin herself linked to the map on her "don't retreat, reload" tweet and after the election referred to it as her "bullseye" list.
The first part of Rule #12 didn't get neglected, either: Mansour
called any attempts to politicize the Arizona tragedy "repulsive."I was going to include a few more examples of that claim, that any references to GOPper eliminationism is, as Rule #12 says, "politicizing a tragedy," but there so quickly were so many, all saying the same thing, making the same arguments, often enough in much the same words, that it became too much to spend more time with; the moral vacuousness expressed became intolerable. According to the nutbags and gasbags, pointing out their hate is not, cannot be, cannot be allowed to be, an expression of moral outrage or even just frustration or anger. It can't even be simply labeled misdirected or wrong and the one thing it absolutely must not be allowed to be is the be truth. Rather it is, it must be, it can't be recognized as being other than, the left "exploiting a tragedy," making a move to "leverage a crisis," for political gain. For shame, they cry, for shaaaammme!
Because, you see, the wingnuts and their associated wackos must be free to call those on the left "unAmerican" and "traitors" and "tyrants" and "a cancer" and "a virus" and "an infection" and "rats" and "vermin" - but call them on any of that and it's "You're against free speech" (Rule #10) and "No, you're the violent one" (Rule #17) and if you dare to point to anything clearly, even demonstrably, connected to their hate-filled spewings, then they will, as I said in an earlier such case, "scurry away like cockroaches."
"Oh no no no, I didn't mean that! You can't blame me for that! That has nothing to do with me! Oh no no no!" The sniveling cowards, hiding behind the brutality of others, too low, too craven even to take responsibility for the meaning of their own words.And so here is it again: They denounce, they declaim, they rant and rave and rail about "tyranny" this and "government take-over" that and they ramble on and on about conspiracies and dark forces and looming threats and "they're going to slaughter you" and "enemies within" and how there are "anti-Americans" in the House of Representatives, but if someone actually listens, someone actually absorbs their vitriol, someone actually acts on their bilge, and does it in a way which is not to their political advantage, that is, in a way which reveals what they are truly about, reveals their soulless lust for power and domination, when they put crosshairs on specific individuals and then someone pulls the trigger, they're all wide-eyed blinking stares and "Who, me?"
Yes. You. And what's more, I have a news flash: Even if it turns out that Loughner's grievance against Giffords was the result of some disjointed, dysfunctional thought process and had nothing to do with rightwing rhetoric, it's still you. Because it has been you. And it will be you. The very fact that you, yes you, have created a climate where the speculation about Loughner's motives and influences, even if ultimately incorrect, was still entirely reasonable is proof enough.
Yes. It's you.
Footnote One: Roy Edroso has a good piece in the Village Voice about the reaction in the rightwing blogosphere to the shooting. Apparently, I underestimated the amount of "No, you're the real" whatever going on: The wingers have convinced themselves, largely on the basis of Loughner having listed The Communist Manifesto among a long list of books he liked, that he is a "committed leftist" - and what's more, some of them darkly hint, it appears that Daily Kos is somehow involved in what now assuredly is a political hit, not a "tragedy" by someone unhinged, once it's claimed the trigger-puller was somewhere to the left of Ben Nelson.
Footnote Two: There is another target for blame, one overlooked by many but not by the sharp, insightful doyens of the mass media: the internet. Yes, of course! Duh! Why didn't we all think of that? Everything is the fault of the internet!
“Face the Nation” host Bob Schieffer ended his broadcast with a lament about the power of the Internet in a “dangerous hair-trigger time.”In addition to being a wonderful example of a political form of the passive voice where everyone is equally to blame (and thus no one is to blame), it translates to "If only you'd all shut up and let us decide what's important and what isn't and let us decide the proper limits of the range of debate, everything would be fine."
“We scream and shout, hurl charges without proof. Those on the other side of the argument become not opponents but enemies. Dangerous, inflammatory words are used with no thought of consequence. All is fair if it makes the point,” he said.
“Those with sick and twisted minds hear us too and are sometimes inflamed by what the rest of us often discard as hollow and silly rhetoric. And so violence becomes part of the argument.”
Well, that might be okay, Mr. Bob, Sir, if it wasn't for your institutional tendency to pander to the right and piss on the left and the crappy job you and you ilk did and still do at one of your central purposes, which is to hold power to account. Do your job and there will be less need for us to do it for you. Not that I expect that to happen.
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Just when you thought it couldn't get worse
The O-gang has filed its response to the ACLU-CCR suit on behalf of Anwar al-Awlaki's father, who is seeking an injunction against the administration's declared intention to kill Awlaki without any sort of due process despite the facts that he is a US citizen, and is neither on or near any actual battlefield.
The response - big surprise - calls for the case to be dismissed out of hand. Pres. Hopey-Changey has already established a record showing that he does not want any of his actions questioned by the courts. What's important is the basis for the argument. I'm going to turn the next paragraph over to Glenn Greenwald:
This has gone past outrageous right into depraved. I want you to imagine just 10 years ago reading a novel with a plot revolving around a president having the authority to kill US citizens simply on their own say-so, based on secret evidence no one outside their circle ever sees and which no court can review and no one can challenge. You would probably think the idea was too far-fetched to be taken seriously. But that is exactly the power Barack Obama is now claiming for himself.
I'm only having trouble deciding one thing: The WaPo reported that
So here's the thing I can't decide: Does that make this more outrageous or not?
I expect there will be more to say about this, more than I can deal with here and now. But it's hard to express how angry and depressed at the same time it makes me.
Footnote: Marcy Wheeler points out that in its brief,
(I thought the issues in the case revolved around the limits of executive authority and how that sort of question became "non-justiciable" is a mystery to me, but never mind.)
But as Wheeler points out, the O-crowd won't even commit to saying if al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the group with which Awlaki is allegedly involved, is part of al-Qaeda itself or just "associated" with it. That makes the entire argument problematical since the Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) passed after 9/11 only authorizes the president to act against those involved with or aiding and abetting those who attacked on that day - and AQAP did not exist at that time.
As a sidebar to the Footnote, she also mentions that the brief whines that the White House and military "simply can’t be expected to operate under 'generalized standards' and 'general criteria.'" Hmmm. Generalized standards. Aren't they what we call laws?
A Second Footnote: In response to the suit,
The response - big surprise - calls for the case to be dismissed out of hand. Pres. Hopey-Changey has already established a record showing that he does not want any of his actions questioned by the courts. What's important is the basis for the argument. I'm going to turn the next paragraph over to Glenn Greenwald:
At this point, I didn't believe it was possible, but the Obama administration has just reached an all-new low in its abysmal civil liberties record. ... [W]hat's most notable here is that one of the arguments the Obama DOJ raises to demand dismissal of this lawsuit is "state secrets": in other words, not only does the President have the right to sentence Americans to death with no due process or charges of any kind, but his decisions as to who will be killed and why he wants them dead are "state secrets," and thus no court may adjudicate their legality. [Emphasis in original.]I say again, Mr. President, as I did back in April, just who the hell do you think you are?
This has gone past outrageous right into depraved. I want you to imagine just 10 years ago reading a novel with a plot revolving around a president having the authority to kill US citizens simply on their own say-so, based on secret evidence no one outside their circle ever sees and which no court can review and no one can challenge. You would probably think the idea was too far-fetched to be taken seriously. But that is exactly the power Barack Obama is now claiming for himself.
I'm only having trouble deciding one thing: The WaPo reported that
[g]overnment lawyers called the state-secrets argument a last resort to toss out the case, and it seems likely to revive a debate over the reach of a president's powers in the global war against al-Qaeda. ...Which means that its inclusion in the brief is an indication that the government does not have a lot of confidence in its other arguments and thinks this is its trump card.
Robert M. Chesney, a national security law specialist at the University of Texas School of Law, said that Obama lawyers would undoubtedly prefer not to stoke the state-secrets debate, or to risk judicial review of its claim to a borderless battlefield. ...
"You're trying to avoid a judicial ruling on the merits of the whole issue," Chesney said, adding, "But at the end of the day, if it's your best argument in a case you want to win, you're going to make that argument."
So here's the thing I can't decide: Does that make this more outrageous or not?
I expect there will be more to say about this, more than I can deal with here and now. But it's hard to express how angry and depressed at the same time it makes me.
Footnote: Marcy Wheeler points out that in its brief,
the government does not commit to the basis for its authority to kill an American citizen like Anwar al-Awlaki with no review.That is, the government never actually makes a case for the authority it's claiming to order a hit on a citizen. They just assert the authority is there and focus on arguing that al-Awlaki's father doesn't have standing to bring the case and doggone it, even if he does, a presidential order to kill his son without due process is a "political question" that the courts shouldn't even touch.
(I thought the issues in the case revolved around the limits of executive authority and how that sort of question became "non-justiciable" is a mystery to me, but never mind.)
But as Wheeler points out, the O-crowd won't even commit to saying if al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the group with which Awlaki is allegedly involved, is part of al-Qaeda itself or just "associated" with it. That makes the entire argument problematical since the Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) passed after 9/11 only authorizes the president to act against those involved with or aiding and abetting those who attacked on that day - and AQAP did not exist at that time.
As a sidebar to the Footnote, she also mentions that the brief whines that the White House and military "simply can’t be expected to operate under 'generalized standards' and 'general criteria.'" Hmmm. Generalized standards. Aren't they what we call laws?
A Second Footnote: In response to the suit,
Justice Department spokesman Matthew Miller said that the groups are asking "a court to take the unprecedented step of intervening in an ongoing military action to direct the President how to manage that action - all on behalf of a leader of a foreign terrorist organization."Besides referring to it as "an ongoing military action" with all the implications of "the battlefield is everywhere" so no one is ever captured "away from the battlefield," I guess means that in the minds of the O-gang, innocent until proven guilty is another "general criteria" to which the administration can't be expected to adhere.
Thursday, April 08, 2010
It's just a question
Having been out of touch for a few days, it was only last night that I became aware of the newspaper reports in the New York Times and the Washington Post that President Obama had ordered the “targeted assassination” of Anwar al-Awlaki. I note that the references were not to “capturing” or “kidnapping” him so he could be brought here for trial, but to assassination. The question that arises is:
Mr. President, just who the hell do you think you are?
We (supposedly) have no king, no czar, no leader with absolute authority. So who do you think you are that you can order the murder - and let’s be honest here, that’s what we’re talking about, the cold-blooded murder - of an American citizen? An American citizen who has been convicted of no crime, who has had no day in court, but is to be stabbed or shot down in the street or have his body ripped to shreds by a bomb based solely on the kind of intelligence that has served us so well in the Middle East, from the fall of the Shah to the supposed existence of WMDs.
Mr. President, just who the hell do you think you are?
You are claiming for yourself a power, an authority, that even the Bush administration - that shredder of the Constitution, that underminer of privacy, that stripper of civil liberties, that embracer of torture, that invader of foreign lands without justification - an authority even the Bush administration did not claim for itself: the power to order, on your own authority, subject to no oversight and no need for proof beyond your personal belief, the “extrajudicial killing,” the “targeted assassination,” the murder, of American citizens.
It is bad enough that we even talk about “targeted assassinations,” bad enough that we openly embrace methods for which we previously denounced ideological enemies - and hypocritical enough that we will still denounce them for it. But with this, a bright red line is to be crossed, a bright red line that once crossed can’t be uncrossed: the officially-sanctioned, cold-blooded murder of an American citizen, someone supposedly protected by Constitutional guarantees of due process at least from their own government even if they are outside the US, guarantees that apparently evaporate in the face of the all-powerful mantra “terrorism.”
Mr. President, just who the hell do you think you are?
And once that line is crossed, where can you draw a new one? Indeed, how can you draw a new one? Bluntly, Mr. President, if some future administration approved a domestic “targeted assassination,” how could you object? Because “domestic” is different from “foreign?” That sort of absolute distinction was supposed to exist regarding US citizens. If the one can be ignored, why not the other?
Once that bright red line represented by the murder of Awlaki is crossed, what is to prevent the slippery slope, what is the impenetrable roadblock on the path, to the targeted murder of some future administration’s domestic political opponents based on a claim that they were a danger to “security?” And if that seems far-fetched, just remember that it was not that long ago that an administration embracing torture and ordering the murder of a US citizen would have seemed equally unthinkable.
Mr. President, I say again: Just who the flaming hell do you think you are?
Footnote: An edited version of the above was sent to the White House as an email; the editing was to keep it below the 2500-character limit. Which was an annoying experience because when I finally got it down to a length the WH system would accept, it turned out to be a trace over 2000 characters. The method they use to judge length, whatever it is, is seriously screwed up.
Mr. President, just who the hell do you think you are?
We (supposedly) have no king, no czar, no leader with absolute authority. So who do you think you are that you can order the murder - and let’s be honest here, that’s what we’re talking about, the cold-blooded murder - of an American citizen? An American citizen who has been convicted of no crime, who has had no day in court, but is to be stabbed or shot down in the street or have his body ripped to shreds by a bomb based solely on the kind of intelligence that has served us so well in the Middle East, from the fall of the Shah to the supposed existence of WMDs.
Mr. President, just who the hell do you think you are?
You are claiming for yourself a power, an authority, that even the Bush administration - that shredder of the Constitution, that underminer of privacy, that stripper of civil liberties, that embracer of torture, that invader of foreign lands without justification - an authority even the Bush administration did not claim for itself: the power to order, on your own authority, subject to no oversight and no need for proof beyond your personal belief, the “extrajudicial killing,” the “targeted assassination,” the murder, of American citizens.
It is bad enough that we even talk about “targeted assassinations,” bad enough that we openly embrace methods for which we previously denounced ideological enemies - and hypocritical enough that we will still denounce them for it. But with this, a bright red line is to be crossed, a bright red line that once crossed can’t be uncrossed: the officially-sanctioned, cold-blooded murder of an American citizen, someone supposedly protected by Constitutional guarantees of due process at least from their own government even if they are outside the US, guarantees that apparently evaporate in the face of the all-powerful mantra “terrorism.”
Mr. President, just who the hell do you think you are?
And once that line is crossed, where can you draw a new one? Indeed, how can you draw a new one? Bluntly, Mr. President, if some future administration approved a domestic “targeted assassination,” how could you object? Because “domestic” is different from “foreign?” That sort of absolute distinction was supposed to exist regarding US citizens. If the one can be ignored, why not the other?
Once that bright red line represented by the murder of Awlaki is crossed, what is to prevent the slippery slope, what is the impenetrable roadblock on the path, to the targeted murder of some future administration’s domestic political opponents based on a claim that they were a danger to “security?” And if that seems far-fetched, just remember that it was not that long ago that an administration embracing torture and ordering the murder of a US citizen would have seemed equally unthinkable.
Mr. President, I say again: Just who the flaming hell do you think you are?
Footnote: An edited version of the above was sent to the White House as an email; the editing was to keep it below the 2500-character limit. Which was an annoying experience because when I finally got it down to a length the WH system would accept, it turned out to be a trace over 2000 characters. The method they use to judge length, whatever it is, is seriously screwed up.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Speaking of guns and such
Among the reasons why the open brandishing of guns at town hall meetings and at least one presidential appearance (yes, I know they weren't "brandished" in the legal meaning of the term; I don't care) disturbs me so is the general air of threat and menace it's intended to create - particularly because that threat is not just rhetorical.
Last week, Frank Rich told Rachel Maddow that he
I called it, too, the day following the election:
A wonderfully insightful observation on this came from one of those supposedly-funny-but-usually-not people Keith Olbermann sometimes has on at the end of Countdown. I actually don't remember which one it was - they all kind of blend together in their not-funny-ness - but I do remember this one bright moment, when he, whoever it was, said in the wake of right wing mobs screaming at town hall meetings that "I want my America back!" that the birthers and the deathers are going to get together and "just cut to the chase" and issue t-shirts reading "Can't you see he's colored?"
But do not forget for a moment that Barack Obama is not the cause of this, he is merely the focal point - a useful one for the racism and xenophobia that underlies much of the right-wing rage, to be sure, but still a focus, not a source. As the work at Orcinus makes more than clear, this kind of thinking predates Obama and was already on the rise and would have continued, frankly, no matter who was elected: Obama becomes a source of rage; McCain would have become a source of validation of it.
This is, bluntly, a dangerous time and I am honestly concerned about outbreaks of serious, overt political violence. That does not mean it will happen, only that there is the real potential for it. Dismissing concerns about people deliberately wearing guns to public events, as is being routinely done by far too many, with "they weren't breaking the law" and "well, I wouldn't do it, but..." and to label them as at worst harmless cranks whose real "crime" is to possibly provoke people who favor gun control to organize is to engage in willful blindness of a sort that could have tragic consequences.
Last week, Frank Rich told Rachel Maddow that he
has become increasingly concerned about similarities between the “political rage” he sees today and that which preceded the assassination of John Kennedy in 1963because of the increase in violent rhetoric directed against the Obama administration.
“I’ve been worried for some time, even before the events surrounding these health care town halls,” Rich [said] on Wednesday. “It began during the campaign, where people were shouting ‘treason’ and worse about Obama at Palin rallies - and, essentially, no one in the Republican Party would condemn it. ... It’s just been stepping up ever since then.” ...Rich is hardly the first to raise such concerns. Dave Neiwert and Sara Robinson at Orcinus have for the past few years tracked the growth of what they call "eliminationist" rhetoric, where your political opponents are no longer "opponents" but "enemies" and those who are different from you socially, ethnically, racially, by sexual preference, whatever, are not merely "different" or even "offensive" but an "infestation" - and they are not to be merely denied or defeated, they are to be destroyed, "eliminated" like vermin, like the cockroaches to which they are often likened. It is a violent, hating thread at the seam of right-wing rhetoric directed at blacks, Muslims, gays and lesbians, undocumented workers, anti-war protesters, whoever is the convenient target of the moment.
Rich suggested that although President Obama is hopefully well-protected, he sees a potential for something like the bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building in 1995. “I think we have to worry about right-wing political violence ... that doesn’t necessarily manifest itself in a presidential assassination,” he told Maddow.
I called it, too, the day following the election:
But let's be clear here: Obama overwhelmingly won the electoral vote, but he won the popular vote by just 52-46. That's a clear margin, to be sure, but hardly genuine "mandate" territory. We are still a divided nation and the wackos and nutballs populating the right edge of our political discourse are not going to go away. I do not even expect a moderation in their rhetoric; in fact I expect it to escalate.And so it has, to the point where earlier this month even hard conservative David Frum felt compelled to call leading right wing voices on it:
The Nazi comparisons from Rush Limbaugh; broadcaster Mark Levin asserting that President Obama is "literally at war with the American people"; former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin claiming that the president was planning "death panels" to extirpate the aged and disabled; the charges that the president is a fascist, a socialist, a Marxist, an illegitimate Kenyan fraud, that he "harbors a deep resentment of America," that he feels a "deep-seated hatred of white people," that his government is preparing concentration camps, that it is operating snitch lines, that it is planning to wipe away American liberties": All this hysterical and provocative talk invites, incites, and prepares a prefabricated justification for violence.That attitude by the right-wing broadcasters draws on the fanaticism and hatred that drives their audiences and then feeds it back, reinforcing it in a reproductive cycle of increasing fury that self-justifies, even celebrates, both their paranoia and their bigotry, a fury marked by undeniable calls for violence and assassination.
And indeed some conservative broadcasters are lovingly anticipating just such an outcome.
Here's Fox News' Glenn Beck clucking sympathetically that white males are being driven into murderous rage by "political correctness."
Here again is Beck chuckling as he play-acts the poisoning of Nancy Pelosi.
Just yesterday, the radio host Sean Hannity openly contemplated violence - and primly tut-tutted that if it occurs, the president will have only himself to blame.
A wonderfully insightful observation on this came from one of those supposedly-funny-but-usually-not people Keith Olbermann sometimes has on at the end of Countdown. I actually don't remember which one it was - they all kind of blend together in their not-funny-ness - but I do remember this one bright moment, when he, whoever it was, said in the wake of right wing mobs screaming at town hall meetings that "I want my America back!" that the birthers and the deathers are going to get together and "just cut to the chase" and issue t-shirts reading "Can't you see he's colored?"
But do not forget for a moment that Barack Obama is not the cause of this, he is merely the focal point - a useful one for the racism and xenophobia that underlies much of the right-wing rage, to be sure, but still a focus, not a source. As the work at Orcinus makes more than clear, this kind of thinking predates Obama and was already on the rise and would have continued, frankly, no matter who was elected: Obama becomes a source of rage; McCain would have become a source of validation of it.
This is, bluntly, a dangerous time and I am honestly concerned about outbreaks of serious, overt political violence. That does not mean it will happen, only that there is the real potential for it. Dismissing concerns about people deliberately wearing guns to public events, as is being routinely done by far too many, with "they weren't breaking the law" and "well, I wouldn't do it, but..." and to label them as at worst harmless cranks whose real "crime" is to possibly provoke people who favor gun control to organize is to engage in willful blindness of a sort that could have tragic consequences.
Monday, June 08, 2009
Over and done
Updated Updated Again At the top, an observation and a distinction. First, the observation: Every one of us, no matter where we fall on the political spectrum, has a worldview, a way of perceiving the world and how it operates; a view, if you will, of the structure of physical and social reality. That worldview significantly shapes our views on matters of philosophy and morality and it informs our positions on issues of public policy. Even those who have no concern with the latter still have a worldview shaping the former. What that worldview consists of can vary wildly from person to person, but every sane, sentient being has one; you can't function without it.
Next, the distinction: There are two kinds of people populating the right-hand reaches of the American political spectrum. One is conservatives, here understood as people who have an ideology in which they believe but with who it is possible to have intelligent disagreement. I have had numerous exchanges with conservatives which were, most commonly, unproductive in the sense of either of us being convinced by the other or of finding significant agreement - but which nonetheless remained civil.
The other is the right-wing flakes, the right-wing nutcases, the wingnuts, or as I commonly abbreviate it, the wingers. (Those wingers directly connected to the Republican Party are those I call GOPpers.) They are the subject here.
For some time I have observed with varying degrees of annoyance and bemusement the predictable tactics of the wingers in debates - or rather, their tactics in avoiding actual debates. I put together a list of such tactics; actually, there were several versions of the list because, again, it was originally done rather light-heartedly or snarkily.
But no more. Not any more. I have had it. I have had it with the evasions, the dodges, the schemes and slime that make up winger discussions. This is my most comprehensive (but not necessarily all-inclusive) list of winger tactics, their rules of engagement, if you will - and I will guarantee you that you have run up against every single one of these tactics, probably multiple times and often more than one in any encounter. This is no longer a light-hearted list or a flip recital, but an indictment of deceit and philosophical bankruptcy on the part of a significant part of the American right.
Rule #1: Deny, deny, deny.
Rule #2: Attack, attack, attack.
Rule #3: When facts are undeniable, change the subject. This can be done in various ways, for example:
- Introduce irrelevant details on a tangential point.
- Pluck out from what your opponent said an individual phrase you think you can attack, even if it’s one that was just tossed off quickly, and treat that as if it’s the focus of the entire discussion.
- More subtly, try to tie your opponent up in piles of minutia to the point where everyone, including your opponent, loses track of the thrust of their argument.
- Apply Rule #4.
Whenever possible, insist that your changed subject is the "real" one under discussion.
Rule #4: Issue a lengthy, ranting denunciation of “the left” of the form “What about...,” being sure to include the words “hypocrites” and/or “hypocrisy,” thereby arguing that the left can’t legitimately criticize the right, while by using this tactic insisting that the right can continue to criticize the left. (Note: Where possible, include the phrase “you liberals.”)
Rule #5: Make the particular stand for the whole. Find something offensive or silly some liberal or leftist, somewhere, sometime, said or did and declare it as identifying the entire left half of the American political spectrum. Demand that your opponent spend their time denouncing that example rather than discussing the original topic.
Rule #6: Never answer a question. When faced with one, ignore it and respond with a question, preferably on a different point. If possible, the question should be accusatory. (See Rule #4.) If you do not get an answer, repeat the question and loudly demand it be answered while continuing to ignore the original question you were asked. If you do get an answer, ignore it. If necessary, drop the matter without acknowledging having gotten a reply; if possible, repeat the question, insisting it has not been answered, even if it has.
Rule #7: Demand every remotely questionable assertion by your opponent be proved in every conceivable detail, right down to dates, times, and places, complete with signed affidavits. Refer to all factual assertions by your opponents as "just your opinion" even if the demanded level of proof is supplied.
Rule #8: Assert unsourced statistics and facts with great assurance. Reply to requests for proof by saying some version of "You can look it up." You thereby demand that your opponents do the work of proving your argument for you.
Rule #9: Frame the debate in false choices; for example, by responding to a call for withdrawal from Iraq with "Do you want to win or lose in Iraq?"
Rule #10: Accuse the accuser. As appropriate, use "You're being intolerant!" or "You're the real racist!" If something you said is challenged as bigoted or otherwise wrongful, decry the "suppression" of your "free speech."
Rule #11: When a claim of yours has been debunked, continue to use it nonetheless. When it has been debunked so thoroughly and completely that continuing to use it is counterproductive, stop claiming it for a time, perhaps a few months, after which assert it again as if the debunking had never happened.
Rule #12: Whenever faced with the evil resulting from some other winger following or acting on your arguments, accuse those who point out that fact of "politicizing a tragedy." Never, never, never admit any responsibility for the meaning or impact of your own words.
Rule #13: When all else has failed - and even when it hasn't - lie.
It was the application of those last two rules to the terrorist murder of Dr. George Tiller that was my breaking point. Tiller - who performed entirely-legal late-term abortions - was subjected to a decades-long campaign of demonization and vilification. He was compared to a Mafia hit man, to Hitler, to Stalin, to al-Qaeda, to the Taliban. He was called "Tiller the Killer" and his clinic was labeled a "barbaric" "abortion mill." He had already been shot once - in 1993 - and unsuccessfully pursued and persecuted by Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline, the same anti-choice asshole who a few years ago sought the complete medical records of 90 women and girls as part of a fishing expedition about "underage sex" and "illegal" abortions.
"If we allow Dr. George Tiller and his acolytes to continue," Bill O'Reilly declared, "we can no longer pass judgment on any behavior by anybody. What Tiller is doing is that bad."
He was, that is, the ultimate evil. The evil by which all other evils were to be judged. The one who if "allowed" to "continue," would make the very concept of moral judgment invalid.
Yet when he was shot down in cold blood by a right-wing fanatic - another in the unbroken string of white male Christians who have murdered abortion providers - almost with exception those same voices were shocked, shocked, that such violence occurred and
I am sick of the fundamental immorality of winger positions. I am sick of the fundamental intellectual cowardice of their attitudes. And most of all I am sick to death of the fundamental dishonesty of their arguments.
Wingers do not know how to argue honestly. They do not want to know how to argue honestly. They just want to screech their memorized lines of hatred and contempt for anything and anyone they don't see as of immediate benefit to them, without regard to context or truth.
I will play their game no longer. The next time I see some smarmy jackass proclaiming they only want "reasonable discussion" only to take any disagreement with their bullshit as proof of your being "unreasonable," they will find just how "unreasonable" I can be. As Jon Stewart said in a different but related context, I'm not gonna be your monkey.
Footnote: Tangentially related but worthy of mention is the news that Dr. Tiller's memorial service was moved to a bigger church because his own church couldn't hold the crowd and
Another Footnote: KTK at LeanLeft had a good rant on much the same point a few days ago:
Updated because I forgot to include an important rule. It has been placed as Rule #11; the old Rule #11 and Rule #12 have been renumbered as Rule #12 and Rule #13.
Updated Again to note the addition of
Rule #14
Rule #15
Rules #16 and 17
Next, the distinction: There are two kinds of people populating the right-hand reaches of the American political spectrum. One is conservatives, here understood as people who have an ideology in which they believe but with who it is possible to have intelligent disagreement. I have had numerous exchanges with conservatives which were, most commonly, unproductive in the sense of either of us being convinced by the other or of finding significant agreement - but which nonetheless remained civil.
The other is the right-wing flakes, the right-wing nutcases, the wingnuts, or as I commonly abbreviate it, the wingers. (Those wingers directly connected to the Republican Party are those I call GOPpers.) They are the subject here.
For some time I have observed with varying degrees of annoyance and bemusement the predictable tactics of the wingers in debates - or rather, their tactics in avoiding actual debates. I put together a list of such tactics; actually, there were several versions of the list because, again, it was originally done rather light-heartedly or snarkily.
But no more. Not any more. I have had it. I have had it with the evasions, the dodges, the schemes and slime that make up winger discussions. This is my most comprehensive (but not necessarily all-inclusive) list of winger tactics, their rules of engagement, if you will - and I will guarantee you that you have run up against every single one of these tactics, probably multiple times and often more than one in any encounter. This is no longer a light-hearted list or a flip recital, but an indictment of deceit and philosophical bankruptcy on the part of a significant part of the American right.
Rule #1: Deny, deny, deny.
Rule #2: Attack, attack, attack.
Rule #3: When facts are undeniable, change the subject. This can be done in various ways, for example:
- Introduce irrelevant details on a tangential point.
- Pluck out from what your opponent said an individual phrase you think you can attack, even if it’s one that was just tossed off quickly, and treat that as if it’s the focus of the entire discussion.
- More subtly, try to tie your opponent up in piles of minutia to the point where everyone, including your opponent, loses track of the thrust of their argument.
- Apply Rule #4.
Whenever possible, insist that your changed subject is the "real" one under discussion.
Rule #4: Issue a lengthy, ranting denunciation of “the left” of the form “What about...,” being sure to include the words “hypocrites” and/or “hypocrisy,” thereby arguing that the left can’t legitimately criticize the right, while by using this tactic insisting that the right can continue to criticize the left. (Note: Where possible, include the phrase “you liberals.”)
Rule #5: Make the particular stand for the whole. Find something offensive or silly some liberal or leftist, somewhere, sometime, said or did and declare it as identifying the entire left half of the American political spectrum. Demand that your opponent spend their time denouncing that example rather than discussing the original topic.
Rule #6: Never answer a question. When faced with one, ignore it and respond with a question, preferably on a different point. If possible, the question should be accusatory. (See Rule #4.) If you do not get an answer, repeat the question and loudly demand it be answered while continuing to ignore the original question you were asked. If you do get an answer, ignore it. If necessary, drop the matter without acknowledging having gotten a reply; if possible, repeat the question, insisting it has not been answered, even if it has.
Rule #7: Demand every remotely questionable assertion by your opponent be proved in every conceivable detail, right down to dates, times, and places, complete with signed affidavits. Refer to all factual assertions by your opponents as "just your opinion" even if the demanded level of proof is supplied.
Rule #8: Assert unsourced statistics and facts with great assurance. Reply to requests for proof by saying some version of "You can look it up." You thereby demand that your opponents do the work of proving your argument for you.
Rule #9: Frame the debate in false choices; for example, by responding to a call for withdrawal from Iraq with "Do you want to win or lose in Iraq?"
Rule #10: Accuse the accuser. As appropriate, use "You're being intolerant!" or "You're the real racist!" If something you said is challenged as bigoted or otherwise wrongful, decry the "suppression" of your "free speech."
Rule #11: When a claim of yours has been debunked, continue to use it nonetheless. When it has been debunked so thoroughly and completely that continuing to use it is counterproductive, stop claiming it for a time, perhaps a few months, after which assert it again as if the debunking had never happened.
Rule #12: Whenever faced with the evil resulting from some other winger following or acting on your arguments, accuse those who point out that fact of "politicizing a tragedy." Never, never, never admit any responsibility for the meaning or impact of your own words.
Rule #13: When all else has failed - and even when it hasn't - lie.
It was the application of those last two rules to the terrorist murder of Dr. George Tiller that was my breaking point. Tiller - who performed entirely-legal late-term abortions - was subjected to a decades-long campaign of demonization and vilification. He was compared to a Mafia hit man, to Hitler, to Stalin, to al-Qaeda, to the Taliban. He was called "Tiller the Killer" and his clinic was labeled a "barbaric" "abortion mill." He had already been shot once - in 1993 - and unsuccessfully pursued and persecuted by Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline, the same anti-choice asshole who a few years ago sought the complete medical records of 90 women and girls as part of a fishing expedition about "underage sex" and "illegal" abortions.
"If we allow Dr. George Tiller and his acolytes to continue," Bill O'Reilly declared, "we can no longer pass judgment on any behavior by anybody. What Tiller is doing is that bad."
He was, that is, the ultimate evil. The evil by which all other evils were to be judged. The one who if "allowed" to "continue," would make the very concept of moral judgment invalid.
Yet when he was shot down in cold blood by a right-wing fanatic - another in the unbroken string of white male Christians who have murdered abortion providers - almost with exception those same voices were shocked, shocked, that such violence occurred and
they scurried away like cockroaches and hid. "Oh no no no, I didn't mean that! You can't blame me for that! That has nothing to do with me! Oh no no no!" The sniveling cowards, hiding behind the brutality of others, too low, too craven even to take responsibility for the meaning of their own words.So I have had it. Once and for all. I have had it with these weasels, these cretinous buffoons, these whining crybabies, these lying, self-interested, selfish, contemptible, slime-eaters swimming in their own mental vomit while thinking it champagne.
I am sick of the fundamental immorality of winger positions. I am sick of the fundamental intellectual cowardice of their attitudes. And most of all I am sick to death of the fundamental dishonesty of their arguments.
Wingers do not know how to argue honestly. They do not want to know how to argue honestly. They just want to screech their memorized lines of hatred and contempt for anything and anyone they don't see as of immediate benefit to them, without regard to context or truth.
I will play their game no longer. The next time I see some smarmy jackass proclaiming they only want "reasonable discussion" only to take any disagreement with their bullshit as proof of your being "unreasonable," they will find just how "unreasonable" I can be. As Jon Stewart said in a different but related context, I'm not gonna be your monkey.
Footnote: Tangentially related but worthy of mention is the news that Dr. Tiller's memorial service was moved to a bigger church because his own church couldn't hold the crowd and
[t]he funeral was protected by 50 American Legion Riders who roared up on motorcycles and formed a shield around Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita to honor Tiller's Navy service.I don't have a lot of use for the American Legion but that, I think, was cool.
Another Footnote: KTK at LeanLeft had a good rant on much the same point a few days ago:
What is worth noting is the constant, continued, and utterly indifferent approach to intellectual responsibility on the part of the right that pervades these kinds of discussions. ...I hope I can be added to his list of people who "get it." :-)
It is simply impossible to debate right-wingers productively because they will not, and do not seem to be able to, address the actual issues at hand, or offer arguments that are relevant, logically coherent, grounded on fact, and responsibly aimed at illuminating the issue.
Updated because I forgot to include an important rule. It has been placed as Rule #11; the old Rule #11 and Rule #12 have been renumbered as Rule #12 and Rule #13.
Updated Again to note the addition of
Rule #14
Rule #15
Rules #16 and 17
Tuesday, May 06, 2008
RIP x2
Two recent deaths worth noting.
First, the May 3 International Herald Tribune made note of the passing of Philipp Freiherr von Boeselager. You very likely never heard of him - I certainly didn't know the name - but you likely have heard of his claim to fame: He was a member of the group of German officers that attempted to assassinate Adolph Hitler in July 1944. He was believed to have been its last surviving member.
He was 90.
The other case was that of Mildred Loving. I expect you did hear about her death, since she was one-half of the Virginia couple who made history when in 1967 the Supreme Court ruled bans on interracial marriages were unconstitutional. But what you may not have known, which I learned at Off the Kuff thanks to a link from Kevin Hayden at The American Street, was this, from a statement she issued on June 12, 2007, the 40th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision:
First, the May 3 International Herald Tribune made note of the passing of Philipp Freiherr von Boeselager. You very likely never heard of him - I certainly didn't know the name - but you likely have heard of his claim to fame: He was a member of the group of German officers that attempted to assassinate Adolph Hitler in July 1944. He was believed to have been its last surviving member.
Von Boeselager, disturbed by the Nazi campaign of extermination against the Jews and by German atrocities that he witnessed as a lieutenant on the Eastern Front, joined an anti-Hitler conspiracy in 1942 and later took part in the plot being organized by Colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg....Von Boeselager obtained explosives, which von Stauffenberg carried in a briefcase into a meeting with Hitler and some of his top staff. But after he left the room, someone else moved the briefcase with the result that the blast had less impact than intended. It demolished the room and killed three officers - but Hitler received only minor injuries. Some 200 conspirators were captured and killed but no one revealed von Boeselager's role so "he did not need to use the cyanide capsule he kept on hand."
He was 90.
The other case was that of Mildred Loving. I expect you did hear about her death, since she was one-half of the Virginia couple who made history when in 1967 the Supreme Court ruled bans on interracial marriages were unconstitutional. But what you may not have known, which I learned at Off the Kuff thanks to a link from Kevin Hayden at The American Street, was this, from a statement she issued on June 12, 2007, the 40th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision:
Surrounded as I am now by wonderful children and grandchildren, not a day goes by that I don't think of Richard and our love, our right to marry, and how much it meant to me to have that freedom to marry the person precious to me, even if others thought he was the "wrong kind of person" for me to marry. I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry. Government has no business imposing some people's religious beliefs over others. Especially if it denies people's civil rights.Well said. Well said, indeed.
I am still not a political person, but I am proud that Richard's and my name is on a court case that can help reinforce the love, the commitment, the fairness, and the family that so many people, black or white, young or old, gay or straight seek in life. I support the freedom to marry for all. That's what Loving, and loving, are all about.
Friday, April 04, 2008
Forty years
The video is via Dday at Hullabaloo.
Even at this distance, even at 40 years, I can't watch this without choking up at the fact that this was the last speech he ever gave, coming less than 24 hours before his murder. That the very last, the very last, public words he spoke were:
And so I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man! Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!I remember hearing - I don't know how true this is, but I did hear it - that at that particular time he was physically exhausted and emotionally spent and so either he wasn't supposed to speak that night or that he hadn't prepared a speech. Either way, if so it means the whole speech was extemporaneous, making it all the more remarkable.
Watching the video - and I believe this is without the benefit of hindsight, but of course I can't prove that - you can see the weariness in his face. This is a tired man, a man who needs some time away from the arena but who knows he is unlikely to allowed it. And you can hear the resignation in his tone and in his words, the magnificent resignation of his namesake, who, not knowing what the future would hold and even possibly doubting he would have one, still stood before the assembled power of the Catholic Church at the Diet of Worms and said "it is neither safe nor honorable to act against conscience" and added, at least according to tradition, "Here I stand. I can do no other."
Martin Luther King, Jr. stood in the halls of conscience and could do no other. Unlike his namesake, his resignation, sadly, proved well-founded and we are the lesser for it. But what we are called on to do, still called on to do these decades later, is in the words of a different sort of martyr, "Don't mourn. Organize." To uphold the message, respect the messenger, and deny both to the bigots, buffoons, bozos, and bastards of the rabid right who are trying to reinvent Martin Luther King as Alan Keyes.
Footnote: August J. Pollak of Some Guy With a Website has the text of the speech Robert F. Kennedy gave that night in response to the news. He also provided this link to where you can hear the speech. Knowing as we do what happened just two months later, June 5, 1968, it has its own special poignancy.
Footnote to the Footnote: Listening to the speech, hearing RFK's soft Hyannis accent, noting that he quoted Aeschylus and referred to the ancient Greeks, I found myself wondering what the present-day right-wing smear merchants would have done to this "effeminate, poetry-quoting, elitist New England liberal." How far we have fallen.
Wednesday, January 02, 2008
Footnote to the preceding
The photo was taken in the immediate wake of the bomb blast that occurred as Benazir Bhutto was killed. I include it here because while I have, happily and fortunately, never directly experienced anything nearly so dreadful, still it expresses how I often feel looking at the world: a dazed, helpless rage at the devastation and bloodshed I see around me, silently screaming "why?" even as I know there is no answer. That's one of the reasons I think I should no longer commit myself to posting daily. I have described it in the past as "the world is too much with me," I just feel overwhelmed and I need to step away, even just for a day or two.
Okay, dude, definitely time to can the melodrama for a while.
Footnote: I found the picture through Wonkette, to which I must have gone from somewhere else since I never read it. Still, be it known that at this link she has a number of photos surrounding the assassination, if you care to check them out.
One related thing: The pictures, obviously, come from Getty Images; if I read the site correctly, by using this "preview" version I'm not running afoul of any copyright issues. I know a lot of you don't care about that and think online is a free-for-all or more exactly a "free-for-me," but having had my work both as a writer and a photographer ripped off without even attribution, much less payment, I do care.
Death is always with us
The biggest news of late, of course, was the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. Too much of that - including the consequences - is too unresolved for me to imagine I could cast any more light on it than others already have (or have tried to), but I do have one thought about the Musharraf government's patently bogus story about how she died: I don't know if they are directly responsible for her death either by being the killers or by deliberately letting it happen, but I do know they are trying damn hard to avoid being blamed for it - which only serves to make me more suspicious of Musharraf than I already would have been.
The ludicrousness of the official story - that she was killed by striking her head on a sunroof lever as a result of the bomb's concussion - was apparent to many from the start, especially since it was the third story they came up with. But now there is video of the shooting which clearly shows something happened to her before the blast, a something that damn well looks like an impact. (The video is a little grainy, but pausing it at the right moment clearly shows Bhutto starting to fall, her scarf and her hair lifted up as if having been struck with force from a low angle.)
And it also has emerged, according to the New York Times for Monday,
Footnote the first: Last week, William Arkin noted in the Washington Post that in the very near future
Footnote the second: While Bhutto, not entirely without cause, became the symbol for democracy in Pakistan, it is well to keep in mind that neither she nor her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, could be classified as angels.
Footnote the third: McClatchy newspapers reported on Monday that an aide to Bhutto said that on the very day she was assassinated, Bhutto
This is by no means to say that I think the Musharraf regime could not be behind Bhutto's murder, only that this would not have been the cause.
The ludicrousness of the official story - that she was killed by striking her head on a sunroof lever as a result of the bomb's concussion - was apparent to many from the start, especially since it was the third story they came up with. But now there is video of the shooting which clearly shows something happened to her before the blast, a something that damn well looks like an impact. (The video is a little grainy, but pausing it at the right moment clearly shows Bhutto starting to fall, her scarf and her hair lifted up as if having been struck with force from a low angle.)
And it also has emerged, according to the New York Times for Monday,
that her doctors felt pressured to conform to government accounts of her death....one which, needless to say, will never be performed. The result is that, as others have already said, it's likely we will never know for certain the exact circumstances of her murder - especially since the site was hosed down rather than blocked off and protected for forensic investigation, which needless to say (but I will) should not increase anyone's confidence in the Pakistani government's intention to find out what really happened.
Athar Minallah, a board member of the hospital where Ms. Bhutto was treated, released her medical report along with an open letter showing that her doctors wanted to distance themselves from the government theory that Ms. Bhutto had died by hitting her head on a lever of her car’s sunroof during the attack. ...
Mr. Minallah ... said the doctor who wrote the report, Mohammad Mussadiq Khan, the principal professor of surgery at the Rawalpindi General Hospital, told him on the night of Ms. Bhutto’s death that she had died of a bullet wound. ...
The medical report, prepared with six other doctors, does not specifically mention a bullet because the actual cause of the head wound was to be left to an autopsy,
Footnote the first: Last week, William Arkin noted in the Washington Post that in the very near future
U.S. Special Forces are expected to vastly expand their presence in Pakistan, as part of an effort to train and support indigenous counter-insurgency forces and clandestine counterterrorism units, according to defense officials involved with the planning.Arkin, who quotes US CentCom Commander Adm. William Fallon as saying Pakistan is showing "more of a willingness to use their regular army units" along the Afghan border, thinks that, plus the expanded US role, could make 2008 "a better year." Frankly, I very much doubt it.
Footnote the second: While Bhutto, not entirely without cause, became the symbol for democracy in Pakistan, it is well to keep in mind that neither she nor her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, could be classified as angels.
Footnote the third: McClatchy newspapers reported on Monday that an aide to Bhutto said that on the very day she was assassinated, Bhutto
had planned to reveal new evidence alleging the involvement of Pakistan's intelligence agencies in rigging the country's upcoming elections....There has been some speculation that it was this report that got Bhutto killed, but I very much doubt that. First, because unless Bhutto was the only person who knew its contents, killing her would not prevent the report's release. Second, because while gaining nothing, such an assassination could well increase the report's impact: Now, instead of being "charges by the opposition," it becomes "the final act of a martyred hero of democracy!"
Bhutto had been due to meet U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., and Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I., to hand over a report charging that the military Inter-Services Intelligence agency was planning to fix the polls in the favor of President Pervez Musharraf.
This is by no means to say that I think the Musharraf regime could not be behind Bhutto's murder, only that this would not have been the cause.
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