GOP: Washingtonians aren't real Americans

From The Washington Post (c/o Kos):

A congressional committee approved a bill yesterday granting the District a full vote in the House of Representatives, giving the measure its first victory in what will probably be weeks of fierce wrangling as it moves through Congress.

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform voted 24 to 5 for the bill, an endorsement its supporters expected. But in a likely sign of things to come, there was feisty sparring, with opponents calling the measure unconstitutional and marshaling amendments to derail it.

One amendment, which was successfully attached to the bill, seeks to prevent the District from eventually getting voting representatives in the Senate.
...
Even if it clears the House, though, the bill faces big hurdles. It would have to be approved by the Senate, where so far it has elicited little support from Republicans. It also would have to be signed by President Bush, whose staff has expressed doubts about its constitutionality. If it succeeds in becoming law, it will almost certainly face a court challenge.

In yesterday's committee session, several of the bill's opponents focused on the constitutionality of the measure. Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-Ga.) said he had an added worry: that the bill would merely be the start of an offensive by the District to secure Senate representation.

So did you get that? Citizens of Washington, D.C.-- American citizens-- have no real representation in Congress; their consolation prize is a single non-voting representative in the House. Democrats are trying to get DCers the same representation in the House that everyone else already gets, and Republicans won't support it because it could lead to them getting representation in the Senate, too.

This really should be simple: American citizens living in DC deserve the same representation as people everywhere else in the country, and anyone who believes Congress shouldn't move mountains to guarantee every citizen full representation has no business serving in an elected federal office. If you don't get that most fundamental kernel of American democracy, then I don't see how you can possibly be morally or intellectually equipped to make, execute, or interpret laws in this country. Every American citizen has the basic, inalienable right to representation in the federal government by a congressperson and 2 senators. Period.

If that is not true, then why did we declare independence from England? Remember "taxation without representation?"

Since the Constitution doesn't grant DC an equal number of congresspeople and senators, an amendment likely must be passed. This is not controversial, however, seeing as we've passed several amendments over the years granting more and more Americans the right to full representation, normally via expanding voting rights.

Why is this even in dispute? It can't be simply because the Constitution doesn't currently allow it; after all, the GOP has shown no such aversion to amending the constitution in the case of gay marriage, for instance. One reason, and one reason alone: Republicans don't want 2 more Democratic senators:

One amendment, which was successfully attached to the bill, seeks to prevent the District from eventually getting voting representatives in the Senate.
...
In yesterday's committee session, several of the bill's opponents focused on the constitutionality of the measure. Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-Ga.) said he had an added worry: that the bill would merely be the start of an offensive by the District to secure Senate representation.

Republicans are willing to deny American citizens the right to representation in the government if it buys their party more power in the senate.

How, then, could these Republicans possibly deny that they put their party over their country?

Really puts their recent attempts to "fix" election troubles with voter ID laws and purged voter rolls into perspective, doesn't it?

Please, Salon, get Camille Paglia off my browser!

When I think of Camille Paglia's writing, I think of a chutney-covered ricecake: lots of hip, snappy, intellectual-sounding ingredients on top with no substance whatsoever underneath. For all the academic vocabulary this woman uses, she has nothing insightful to say, being content instead to foist poorly researched triangulations and reflexive regurgitation of rightwing arguments that haven't been anywhere near true for many years (if they were ever true at all).

I feel like I'm reading Joe Klein, if Joe Klein did nothing but watch FOX News all day.

For instance, if you were to read her tripe today, you'd never guess that Clinton did not, in fact, give an entire sermon in a faux-drawl, but instead was merely quoting a southern writer. You would, however, get the sense that the media really is liberal, contrary to a number of Media Matters studies which show a persistent conservative slant in all major networks' coverage of news and in their talking head lineups, contrary to the lack of a motive for a corporate news agency to espouse liberal views, and despite the lack of any evidence for her case whatsoever-- as well as contrary to what everyone saw with their own eyes in election 2000. You'd have just read her argument that if FOX News just admitted they were a propaganda outlet for the GOP like Rush Limbaugh then it would be hunky dory for them to host a Democratic debate (because FOX News treated the Dem debates in '04 so fairly, dontcha know-- and does she actually think that Rush Limbaugh would be a valid person to host a debate?). And, as the fly on the turd, you'd have been told flat-out that Ann Coulter is a "feminist."

Then there was this:

"Of course, any Salon readers who still follow the mainstream media out of numbed habit will never have heard Hillary's most extreme flights of faux gemutlichkeit. All that Sunday, network radio news, for example, betrayed its liberal bias by running clips of only her noblest phrases. Heaven help any Republican who had made so lurid a gaffe!"

Yes, this is clearly an example of liberal bias, because if a conservative running for president ever made serious verbal gaffes or put on a comicbook accent, the media would make sure he could never win.

That quote was right before a "Thank God for Matt Drudge!" moment that really says all that needs to be said.

Seriously, what does she offer that we don't already get from every preening, uninformed conservative in the media today?

neoconservatism, in 5 simple lessons

Creepy. It cannot be said frequently or loudly enough: neoconservatism is unamerican. It goes against everything we stand for; neoconservatives wants to change us into the very empire we have defined ourselves against since we broke away from it over 2 centuries ago.

Bob Shrum: countering sound judgment since 1976

Why does anybody listen to this hack? (via Digby):

WASHINGTON (AP) - Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards was skeptical about voting for the Iraq war resolution and was pushed into it by advisers looking out for his political future, according to an upcoming book by one of his former consultants.
Democratic strategist Bob Shrum writes in his memoir to be published in June that he regrets advising Edwards to give President Bush the authority to go to war in Iraq. He said if Edwards had followed his instincts instead of the advice of political professionals, he would have been a stronger presidential candidate in 2004.
...
Shrum writes that Edwards, then a North Carolina senator, called his foreign policy and political advisers together in his Washington living room in the fall of 2002 to get their advice. Edwards was "skeptical, even exercised" about the idea of voting yes and his wife Elizabeth was forcefully against it, according to Shrum.
But Shrum said the consensus among the advisers was that Edwards, just four years in office, did not have the credibility to vote against the resolution and had to support it to be taken seriously on national security. Shrum said Edwards' facial expressions showed he did not like where he was being pushed to go. [emphasis in Attytood's post, but probably not in original report]

As Digby correctly notes, even without the benefit of hindsight this advice is so patently myopic that it's amazing anyone ever paid this wanker to consult a campaign for the local school board:

The mistake was not only in the rank immorality of voting for this ridiculous war (on the basis of 10 points in the polls, no less.) It was also a huge tactical political error. If the war went well, it was going to be nearly impossible to beat Bush in 2004 and everyone knew it. If the war was going badly, then a vote for it was going to tie these candidates up in knots and make them look weak and irresolute, which is exactly what happened to Kerry. There was no margin in Democratic presidential candidates voting for the war.

Will Bunch points back to a Washington Post article that covers a little of Shrum's history. Folks, this guy has consulted 8 presidential campaigns, including two against George W. Bush, the depth of whose personality flaws is matched only by his intellectual ones ("peeance and freeance," anyone?), and he has never won. Never. His tutelage helped make war hero John Kerry look like less of a man than his draft-dodging opponent. Thanks in part to his advice, the prescient climate change crusader Al Gore looked like a serial liar who had no more to say about the environment than his oilman opponent who's entire public face was a fraud conceived in 1999.

And now we see he convinced John Edwards to sell out on his better judgment to make the biggest mistake of his political career. What would have happened if all of those people looking for a candidate smart enough to see the war for what it was had not only Howard Dean, but also John Edwards? It's hard to see Kerry having survived the primary had Edwards been able to say that he was in the Senate, too, and he had the good sense to vote nay (and that's assuming Edwards wouldn't have poached a lot of Dean's followers in the process!).

This is what when there are no hiring consequences to advising Democrats and losing. This shit doesn't happen in the GOP because if you can't win, they will cut your ass loose without thinking twice. Is it any surprise that they've been more successful campaigners despite being on the wrong side of virtually every major issue lately?

Kos, who devoted part of his book to the consultant problem, distilled his commentary on this revelation in one word: Dumbass.

One slightly more positive note, however: this article sure does make you love Elizabeth Edwards even more, doesn't it?

Dear Attorney General Gonzales

Far be it for me to give such a learned, accomplished lawyer as yourself a lesson in criminal law, but FYI: when you "give inaccurate information" to Congress, and you do it right after being sworn in, there's an actual, technical term for it: perjury.

Thanks for being such a sport,
el ranchero

morals in the military

Think Progress:

Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Peter Pace said today that homosexuality is “immoral” and that he supports Don’t Ask Don’t Tell because “we should not condone immoral acts.” In an interview with the Chicago Tribune, Pace also compared homosexuality to adultery, claiming that the military should “not tolerate” homosexuality just as it rejects “military members who sleep with other military members’ wives.”

Pace's declaration of the necessity of morality in the military, while odd to hear from a general and chief of staff in any case, would sound less grossly hypocritical if he weren't sending injured troops back to Iraq, or had more qualms about not properly equipping combat troops with things like body armor, or was prepared to explain how, exactly, he would make up for the shortfall in troop levels in key positions due to "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" seeing as it's, ya know, the troops who suffer most when we have such shortfalls. Not even the "it's just how I was raised" defense protects against that.

inside baseball-- on the myth of "doing well while doing good"

I call this post "inside baseball" because it's about blogger/"netroots" scuttlebutt and insider issues. I try to stay out of this crap normally because, frankly, for most people it's not that interesting, but I had to say something here.

Most of us starry-eyed idealists have a cause that we believe in, a vision of "the greater good" to which we commit ourselves, be it religious, political, social, or all 3. We join together in common cause and form movements to change society for the better. Some of us, however, get too wrapped up in, say, personal ambition and the desire for "fame" in whatever size circle that may be along the way, and it almost inevitably comes at odds with the work we originally set out to do. And for many, myself included, our abilities don't quite match our ambitions. In some cases, such people grow envious of others who have been more successful in the cause, and manage to lose all perspective in seeking to supplant that person instead of working together for the greater good (call this the "Cain and Abel" complex).

And the smarter members of the opposition are always ready to capitalize on it to strike a blow against the whole movement.

Maryscott's "cry me a river" act has been needing calling out for a long time. MLW gets way more traffic than a lot of sites, and is quite successful for what it is (i.e., a political blog). That being said, it will never be near the size of dKos because Maryscott and the writers there got hung up on their cliquish condescension of all bigger, less ideologically pure blogs and their needless offending of every demographic that isn't stereotypically "left." In my opinion, the scatterspray tactics and self-centered whining do more harm than good at the end of the day, but hey, it's her blog. Anyway, I'm no fan, but even I never thought she'd actually do this.

I can't imagine that interview going any better for Gibson, FOX News, and conservatism, and all he had to do was let her talk.

And, for the record: if you think Daily Kos is "centrist," you need to get out more.

the Gonzales 7

Even though Walter Reed is getting all the attention (and by the way, as if that story isn't bad enough, Salon is reporting that the Bush Administration is sending injured troops back to Iraq), it is the US Attorney purge scandal that has the most significant ramifications for the government. I first touched on the scandal here, and providing a touch of background, but I really just wanted to focus on a small part of the mess in New Mexico. Today, I want to pull the camera back and show "the big picture" (and wow, is it ever big on this one).

TPMMuckraker, by the way, is far and away the best place to go for information on this scandal, and I strongly recommend taking a stroll down their website.

The scandal deals with the firings of 8 US Attorneys, all Republican, all Bush appointees, from around the country. US Attorneys serve "at the pleasure of the president," meaning they have all the job security of a union agitator at Wal-Mart, but the issue is that 4 or 5 of them (Carol Lam in California, John McKay in Washington state, David Iglesias of New Mexico, and Bud Cummins of Arkansas) have admitted that they were leaned on to overprosecute Democrats or underprosecute Republicans before they were ultimately canned, at least a couple of said instances having clearly been attempts to sway the '06 midterm elections.

First of all, it is increasingly likely that these attorneys were actually conscientious exceptions of a much larger pool of pushed prosecutors. From an academic study of corruption prosecutions by US Attorneys, via ePluribus Media :

Data* indicate that the offices of the U.S. Attorneys across the nation investigate seven (7) times as many Democratic officials as they investigate Republican officials, a number that exceeds even the racial profiling of African Americans in traffic stops.

The performances of these 7 oddballs, with the exception of Nevada's Daniel Bogden, didn't mesh with the greater pattern very well.

Secondly, the Administration's touch is all over this scandal. Shall we count the officials involved? Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is not only the boss of these 7, but was the one who did the firing. He was empowered to replace the attorneys with anyone he wanted (and without congressional approval) thanks to a little-known provision to, you guessed it, the USA PATRIOT Act, inserted by an Arlen Specter staffer unbeknownst even to Specter himself (or so we're expected to believe, anyway). One of the attorneys, Bud Cummins of Arkansas, was fired by then-White House counsel Harriet Miers. Karl Rove was urged by the NM GOP chief to can Iglesias, about whom he simply quipped "He's gone" (Not long before Rove's entry into the scandal, it had been reported that the Justice Dept. fired the attorneys "with input from the White House", and more details since have come out about Turdblossom's involvement). Deputy White House counsel William Kelly is being requested for an interview on the matter by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The scandal could also taint a number of congressional Republicans, as well. Aside from Arlen Specter (who is all over this scandal), Heather Wilson, Pete Domenici, John Kyl, and Doc Hastings, who you may remember was placed by Tom Delay to head the Ethics Committee after it had proven, shall we say, "troublesome" under Joel Hefley.

Amongst all this chaos of sleaze, however, there is a hard core. A "center" of the controversy. The point that provides the necessary perspective for all the other points. It's the story of a trial in San Diego of a comically corrupt congressman named Duke Cunningham. After his conviction, the prosecutor got one of his bribers, Mitchell Wade, to snitch on some other people involved. Then, just before the firings, the prosecutor rolled out indictments for defense contractor Brent Wilkes and the former executive director of the CIA, Kyle "Dusty" Foggo.

That prosecutor was the recently-fired US Attorney Carol Lam of San Diego.

The issue of Lam's firing as a way to derail her ever-evolving investigation into the hydra-like circle of GOP corruption should be the focal point of all discussion of the issue, as it's where the Administration and the party at large had the most to lose, and thus the most incentive to act, and it's where the greatest effect will be felt. From Josh Marshall:

Now let's cut to the chase, the big story at the heart of all of this: San Diego and the firing of Carol Lam.

Given what we know about New Mexico and Washington state, it simply defies credulity to believe that Lam -- in the midst of an historic corruption investigation touching the CIA, the White House and major Republican appropriators on Capitol Hill -- got canned because she wasn't prosecuting enough immigration cases. Was it the cover? Sure. The reason? Please.

I'm not sure Lam would have been canned simply for prosecuting Cunningham. His corruption was so wild and cartoonish that even a crew with as little respect for the rule of law would have realized the impossibility of not prosecuting him. But she didn't stop there. She took her investigation deep into congressional appropriations process -- kicking off a continuing probe into the dealings of former Appropriations Committee Chairman Jerry Lewis. She also followed the trail into the heart of the Bush CIA. Those two stories are like mats of loose threads. That's where the story lies.

I have a feeling they'll offer up Gonzales' head to placate the Democrats before they'll reinstate Lam. Prosecutors who give primacy to the rule of law are trouble in this administration.

everyone's favorite pastime... developing top 10 lists

Now it seems the recording industry's doing it as a gimmick to sell albums. I wouldn't pay too much attention to their list, it makes little sense (except, as Salon notes, from a marketing standpoint). I'll join in the fun here, though, and I suggest you do, too.

First, a note about my hermeneutic. What factors should we use to evaluate albums: sales, influence, proportion of good tracks to filler, or stuff that just plain RAWKS? Obviously, many factors should be weighed, though I personally am going to give influence on later music a position of primacy, followed by "rockin'"-ness, then the other stuff. I'm also going to stick to rock, for fear of venturing too far out of my element.

1. The Beatles' White album
2. Bob Dylan's The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan
3. The Jimi Hendrix Experience's Electric Ladyland
4. The Sex Pistols' Nevermind the Bollocks
5. Grateful Dead's American Beauty
7. Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here
8. U2's The Joshua Tree
9. Cream's Disraeli Gears
10. Nirvana's Nevermind

I've obviously missed glam rock entirely, and that did take up the better part of a decade's worth of rock, but I feel that, for one, it was a shitty era with no one worth replacing any of the albums above, and for two, the things worth remembering and that were worth passing along from glam were borrowed from Hendrix, Floyd, and Cream.

As with any list, there were albums I wanted to add but couldn't, so here's a quick and dirty 11-20, in the order I thought of them:
11. Tool, Anima
12. Metallica, Master of Puppets
13. Elvis Presley, self-titled
14. Bruce Springsteen, Born to Run
15. The Doors, self-titled
16. The Rolling Stones, Sticky Fingers
17. Led Zeppelin, IV
18. R.E.M., Green
19. The Pixies, Doolittle
20. fine, Bon Jovi, Slippery When Suck

"easy access to guns"

From The New York Times:

Violent crime rose by double-digit percentages in cities across the country over the last two years, reversing the declines of the mid-to-late 1990s, according to a new report by a prominent national law enforcement association.

While overall crime has been declining nationwide, police officials have been warning of a rise in murder, robbery and gun assaults since late 2005, particularly in midsize cities and the Midwest. Now, they say, two years of data indicates that the spike is more than an aberration.

“There are pockets of crime in this country that are astounding,” said Chuck Wexler, the executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, which is releasing the report on Friday. “It’s gone under the radar screen, but it’s not if you’re living on the north side of Minneapolis or the south side of Los Angeles or in Dorchester, Mass.”

Local police departments blame several factors: the spread of methamphetamine use in some Midwestern and Western cities, gangs, high poverty and a record number of people being released from prison. But the biggest theme, they say, is easy access to guns and a willingness, even an eagerness, to settle disputes with them, particularly among young people.

Hmm, I thought I remembered something happening 2 years ago that conservatives assured us, over the protests of police unions and law enforcement agencies, would have no effect on violent crime. Nah, just a figment of my imagination.

I know, I know, post hoc, ergo propter hoc. Still, the timing is uncanny. Funny thing is, I'm actually not a big believer in gun control, but now I'm second-guessing myself.

Jose Padilla-- why this case matters

I had intended to write something on the Padilla case and its developments when we heard recently that, amazingly, Padilla was ruled competent to stand trial. Findlaw.com has a good article on the background of the case and where it currently stands (the article, however, does not mention the recent and highly convenient misplacement of the tape of Padilla's final interrogation by the Pentagon). Suffice it to say, the government's treatment of Padilla, who is an American citizen, is not quite as much fitting of the term "Kafkaesque" as "Koestleresque" (for those of you unfamiliar with Darkness at Noon, I'm referring to the "semi-torture" to which the main character Rubashov is subjected alongside the "Kafkaesqueness" of his charges and trial, much of which we know Padilla to have also suffered).

Elaine Cassel notes in the Findlaw article that U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke, who is currently presiding over Padilla's case, pretty much had to rule him competent based on the absurdity of the bar for using post-traumatic stress disorder as the basis for incompetency (and, from my non-lawyer perspective, Cassel's reasoning appears sound). The cases cited where such a defense was effective are about as laughably ridiculous as one could possibly imagine:

Consider the case of Russell Weston, who in 1998 stormed the U.S. Capitol building with a .38 caliber handgun. He was on a mission, he said, to dismantle the "Ruby Satellite System" that was spreading a deadly disease. He shot and killed two police officers because, he said, they were getting in the way of his reaching the controls of the system. However, he explained, they only appeared to be dead; they would wake up when he gave the order.

Weston was found incompetent, and ordered to be medicated in order to regain competence. To this day he is hospitalized in a North Carolina federal prison hospital, still being medicated. Even the government's experts say that Weston will likely never be competent to be tried.

A more recent example is Andrea Yates, the Texas mother who murdered her five children by drowning. (I discussed the Yates case in a prior column.) She was originally found to be incompetent because she was diagnosed as being profoundly depressed reported auditory hallucinations. She was hospitalized, medicated, found competent, and tried within three months.

If this is an accurate representation of the bar for PTSD-based incompetency, then it is perhaps understandable that Padilla did not qualify, as almost no one ever would, including many people who, by any reasonable standards, would be incompetent to stand trial.

His lawyers are now pushing for a dismissal based on egregiously inhumane conduct on the part of the government, and that makes a lot of sense considering what he went through. Glenn Greenwald has been on this case for a long time, and discusses Mr. Padilla's treatment here. It's a long post, and I suggest you read the whole thing, but here's a snippet:

For nearly two years – from June 9, 2002 until March 2, 2004, when the Department of Defense permitted Mr. Padilla to have contact with his lawyers – Mr. Padilla was in complete isolation. Even after he was permitted contact with counsel, his conditions of confinement remained essentially the same.

He was kept in a unit comprising sixteen individual cells, eight on the upper level and eight on the lower level, where Mr. Padilla’s cell was located. No other cells in the unit were occupied. His cell was electronically monitored twenty-four hours a day, eliminating the need for a guard to patrol his unit. His only contact with another person was when a guard would deliver and retrieve trays of food and when the government desired to interrogate him.

His isolation, furthermore, was aggravated by the efforts of his captors to maintain complete sensory deprivation. His tiny cell – nine feet by seven feet – had no view to the outside world. The door to his cell had a window, however, it was covered by a magnetic sticker, depriving Mr. Padilla of even a view into the hallway and adjacent common areas of his unit. He was not given a clock or a watch and for most of the time of his captivity, he was unaware whether it was day or night, or what time of year or day it was.

In addition to his extreme isolation, Mr. Padilla was also viciously deprived of sleep. This sleep deprivation was achieved in a variety of ways. For a substantial period of his captivity, Mr. Padilla’s cell contained only a steel bunk with no mattress. The pain and discomfort of sleeping on a cold, steel bunk made it impossible for him to sleep. Mr. Padilla was not given a mattress until the tail end of his captivity. . . .

Other times, his captors would bang the walls and cell bars creating loud startling noises. These disruptions would occur throughout the night and cease only in the morning, when Mr. Padilla’s interrogations would begin. Efforts to manipulate Mr. Padilla and break his will also took the form of the denial of the few benefits he possessed in his cell. . . .

Mr. Padilla’s dehumanization at the hands of his captors also took more sinister forms. Mr. Padilla was often put in stress positions for hours at a time. He would be shackled and manacled, with a belly chain, for hours in his cell. Noxious fumes would be introduced to his room causing his eyes and nose to run. The temperature of his cell would be manipulated, making his cell extremely cold for long stretches of time. Mr. Padilla was denied even the smallest, and most personal shreds of human dignity by being deprived of showering for weeks at a time, yet having to endure forced grooming at the whim of his captors.

A substantial quantum of torture endured by Mr. Padilla came at the hands of his interrogators. In an effort to disorient Mr. Padilla, his captors would deceive him about his location and who his interrogators actually were. Mr. Padilla was threatened with being forcibly removed from the United States to another country, including U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he was threatened his fate would be even worse than in the Naval Brig.

He was threatened with being cut with a knife and having alcohol poured on the wounds. He was also threatened with imminent execution. He was hooded and forced to stand in stress positions for long durations of time. He was forced to endure exceedingly long interrogation sessions, without adequate sleep, wherein he would be confronted with false information, scenarios, and documents to further disorient him. Often he had to endure multiple interrogators who would scream, shake, and otherwise assault Mr. Padilla.

This is treatment that our goverment does not reserve even for serial killers and child rapists, who are not only spared from all manner of torture but allowed access to courts (not to mention, other humans).

Perhaps what has thrown some people's "torture" scents off (or, more aptly, allowed them to rationalize it away) is the psychological emphasis of Padilla's treatment. Certainly the low "physical" element of it is the Administrations' justification. Psychological torture, however, is just as damaging to the mind as physical. Consider, also, that for the torturers, focusing on the mind rather than the body has its advantages: it leaves no marks so it's harder to prove, people are less appalled b/c it doesn't fit their conventional images of what "torture" looks like (making it easier to deal with both for the bystanders and the interrogators themselves), and it's more difficult to defend oneself against. Furthermore, one can see the effects pretty quickly. My understanding is it can take only days (or even hours) of complete isolation before one begins to suffer psychological damage that can take many years of therapy to heal.

This leads into a necessary discussion of his current competency, however. As one would expect, the torture of Mr. Padilla-- and let's not mince words: we called this "torture" when the Soviets engaged in it, it's torture now-- was so psychologically damaging and disorienting that it has caused him to regard everyone he sees (except, ironically, his torturers) as possible ruses or government agents acting out a new stage of his interrogation, including his own defense attorneys. From Naomi Klein, writing for The Guardian UK:

According to his lawyers and two mental health specialists who examined him, Padilla has been so shattered that he lacks the ability to assist in his own defence. He is convinced that his lawyers are "part of a continuing interrogation program" and sees his captors as protectors. In order to prove that "the extended torture visited upon Mr Padilla has left him damaged", his lawyers want to tell the court what happened during those years in the navy brig. The prosecution strenuously objects, maintaining that "Padilla is competent" and that his treatment is irrelevant.

The US district judge Marcia Cooke disagrees. "It's not like Mr Padilla was living in a box. He was at a place. Things happened to him at that place." The judge has ordered several prison employees to testify on Padilla's mental state at the hearings, which began yesterday. They will be asked how a man who is alleged to have engaged in elaborate anti-government plots now acts, in the words of brig staff, "like a piece of furniture".

Is it any wonder why that they believe he is unfit to stand trial? And is the absurdity of the bar for incompetency not apparent?

Perhaps the sickest part of it all, however, is one simple fact undisputed by the government: even though Mr. Padilla is the only one who suffered this treatment and is getting to chance to defend himself in court, there are many others like him who are getting no such opportunity. From Naomi Klein, again:

These same practices have been documented in dozens of cases of "extraordinary rendition" carried out by the CIA, as well as in prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Many have suffered the same symptoms as Padilla. According to James Yee, a former army Muslim chaplain at Guantánamo, there is an entire section of the prison called Delta Block for detainees who have been reduced to a delusional state. "They would respond to me in a childlike voice, talking complete nonsense. Many of them would loudly sing childish songs, repeating the song over and over." All the inmates of Delta Block were on 24-hour suicide watch.

Human Rights Watch has exposed a US-run detention facility near Kabul known as the "prison of darkness" - tiny pitch-black cells, strange blaring sounds. "Plenty lost their minds," one former inmate recalled. "I could hear people knocking their heads against the walls and the doors."

Now none of these people will be able to defend themselves adequately in court, either, assuming they ever see the light of day again.

The people running this country and the movement they represent do not believe in our principles. The rule of law, habeas corpus, the right to a fair jury trial (which Thomas Jefferson called "the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution"), and the dignity of all humankind bestowed with certain inalienable rights, are all foreign, repugnant concepts to these authoritarians and half-wits.

gay Republicans and victimization

In one of the weirder subplots of this year's CPAC conference, we have the story of Matt Sanchez, Marine reservist, "professional victim" as Atrios calls him, and... former gay porn star. The last bit, as you can guess, was not information he volunteered, but rather was discovered by the blogs after he accepted his professional victim award at CPAC and shook hands with a woman who, that same night, called John Edwards a "faggot" and implied that such a term should not be barred from civil discourse.

So here he is on Salon, decrying his treatment by the blogs. According to his account, he wrote an article at Columbia University, where he's currently a student, pointing out the anti-military bias of the students. As one would expect, FOX News discovered him and put him on Hannity and Colmes and Bill O'Reilly so he could tell all the red-blooded conservatives about the Godless commies at American universities. He even got to write a column in that paragon of unbiased journalism, the New York Post!

Eventually, he got invited to CPAC's annual meeting to accept an "academic freedom" award (which is really more of a "spread the word about Godless commies in academia" award) and get a big "Attaboy!" from one of the most famous bigots in modern politics, and as the furor over her remarks reached its pinnacle, he got targetted as well. That's when his adult film past was discovered and used to further denigrate him and he started getting all kinds of hate mail over it (so he claims, yet, as is typical of these allegations, he doesn't actually produce any).

Okay, as you can tell, I'm not super-sympathetic to this guy. He says he got hate mail, and if he did, there I can sympathize. People can be pretty ugly and really sanctimonious at times, and admittedly, there were some pretty nasty things said to him in the "letters" section of this article.

Here's my problem, though. First of all, the guy says he was "outed" on the little one sentence synopsis. Maybe that was the editors addition, maybe it was his, I dunno, but his suggestions of victimization by his past being exposed makes the same implication. This is not being "outed." People who are in the closet don't sell videos of themselves performing the very acts they are hiding. You can't make money off of being gay and then turn around and cry foul when people bring that fact up in response to your attacks. Aside from the fact that Sanchez is trying to draw people's pity and outrage for a moral crime that was not committed, this kind of slippery use of the term "outing" minimizes the pain and alienation that can accompany real, honest to God outing of people who really did hide their orientations.

Second, Sanchez is obtuse, willfully or otherwise, to the actual reasons for his ridicule. Matt Sanchez is lambasted by the left for the same reasons that Mary Cheney is: they're the Uncle Toms of their demographic. They support a movement that hates "their kind," wants their second-class citizenship enshrined in the Constitution, and is gleeful at the thought of their impending damnation in eternal Hellfire, and in return they are given money and fame to skew the arguments and distort the issues that would free their fellow gays to join the rest of the country in full, equal citizenship. Granted, this guy wasn't originally banking on his homosexuality for his victimization screeds (though he is now), but his self-applied identity as a victim of liberal anti-militarism was intended to support conservative talking points that all liberals "hate the troops" and "want the terrorists to win," thereby hamstringing liberal efforts to establish equality for GLBTers. It's all of a piece. And if he wasn't pushing those ideas himself, he was allowing and even encouraging Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, and others to do so.

Mr. Sanchez writes:

"I am embarrassed to admit that was I worried that my fellow conservatives would distance themselves from me when the news about my film career broke. The opposite has happened. I've been asked to give my point of view, invited to speak at various functions, and invited back on television. My peers on the right have gone out of their way to give me a vote of confidence and avoid a rush to judgment."

Umm, duh! Because you support so many conservative arguments:
1. gays are debauched
2. liberals are hypocrites
3. liberals don't really support gays or Hispanics
4. liberals hate the military
5. the GOP is the "real" party of equality
and, of course, our brand new Ann Coulter approved talking point:
6. "faggot" isn't really about homophobia because, look, gays love people who say it!

The "professional victim" thing is also a tactic deplored on its own merits. In every group there are a couple of wackos; this is true of liberals as well as conservatives. When conservatives, however, push themselves into a large group of liberals and then cry about how a couple of students, or protesters, or anonymous blog commenters hurt their feelgoods, it reeks of hypocrisy because the wackos and name-callers on the conservative side get columns in the nation's marquee newspapers, an entire news channel and multiple think-tanks of their own, and prominent patronage posts in the federal government. And, of course, they write New York Times bestsellers.

This is all, of course, beside the rather obvious point that his "victimhood" relies on a number of false arguments, like how people who supposedly dislike wire-tapping were willing to dig into Sanchez's "private life"-- ya know, his super-secret private in-the-closet career in adult film-- and how this is about diversity "unless you don't agree with them." No, Matt, it's about selling out fellow GLBTers by supporting those who wish to oppress them (and you).

So forgive me if I don't cry you a river when a handful of powerless liberals write mean things about you.

a question for Ann Coulter

Where did Bob Ney (R-OH) go after getting nailed for corruption?

And what was Mark Foley's (R-FL) answer to getting out of the spotlight after he was outed as a sexual predator for male Congressional pages?

And Mel Gibson, after his "Jews are responsible for all the wars" tirade?

Where did Ted Haggard go after everyone found out he was sleeping with a male prostitute?

It sounds like the stock answer to the "Ann Coulter is a f*%king bigot" allegations coming from, well, pretty much everyone with ears to hear (even lots of Republicans) is to say that the "point" of Coulter's bigotry was to lambast the tactic of entering rehab to wash away past indiscretions by "the Left." This is, of course, a little different from the "you have to go to rehab after saying un-p.c. stuff" argument, which others have used, but the former is the defense Coulter herself used on Hannity and Colmes.

In any case, it appears that the most high-profile uses of the tactic as of late have occurred on the other side of the Great Divide.

I will give her this: she said that the American people don't buy it when people use rehab to wash away their sins. I think she's exactly right.

the dictionary definition of hypocrisy

From TPM:

In the wake of the Libby verdict, Fox News has wheeled out a brigade of legal analysts and their usual TV hosts, all of whom are reaching oddly similar conclusions: The verdict is flawed, and there was no underlying crime.

So the conservative gasbags on FOX News were complaining about the verdict because there was no underlying crime. That is, though Libby lied, he lied about something that is not, in fact, a criminal act. In a perjury and obstruction of justice trial. Of someone in the White House.

Of course, I'm just being facetious. After all, there is a major difference between the two cases: unlike adultery, leaking the identity of a clandestine CIA operative is, in fact, a federal crime. It could even constitute an act of domestic terrorism according to the Patriot Act.

Libby's a new wife

Ruh roh Raggy, here's more bad press for the "faggot" Right and the party of Walter Reed (which Jack Cafferty, BTW, thinks will be the next Katrina). The Republican Vice President's (until his indictment) Chief of Staff is officially a felon, and the line that he was told Plame's identity by reporters is officially a lie.

Ya gotta feel for Tony Snow, it's been one hell of a week and a half.

And the current Resident-in-Chief's approvals?

Zogby: 30%
USA Today/Gallup: 33
Newsweek: 31
FOX/Opinion Dynamics RV: 34
CBS/New York Times: 29 (!)
Time RV: 34
ABC/Washington Post: 36
Diageo/Hotline RV: 36

How much lower will they go? How much lower can they get?

Breaking the News

Here is a must-read article from Mother Jones on the problem with today's news media (particularly newspapers), and why their work is rather swiftly degrading in depth, research, and vetting.

I find it striking that, for supposedly being all conservative, movement conservatives in the government don't generally "get" the concept that laws and regulations, as a rule, have not always existed, but rather were consciously introduced and passed. Generally, they were created by smart people, and for a damn good reason, so maybe one should think twice before gutting them. Of course, the rank dishonesty displayed by the FCC chairman at the beginning of the article shows how interested they are in preserving the quality of anything besides their own wallets.

Deregulation in almost any form is snake oil, pure and simple. It almost never works, but always lines the pockets of society's predators. Anyone who brings the idea to you is in all likelihood hiding an ulterior motive.

"especially immigration and illegal drugs"

For those of you who've been living under a rock (or perhaps abroad?), in January a dozen or so US Attorneys were quietly fired under questionable circumstances. One had issued indictments for several Republicans, including the guy who was, by all accounts, the big cahuna in the Duke Cunningham scandal, only a couple of weeks beforehand. The attorneys will be testifying to Congress this week about the (questionable) circumstances of their firing.

One case that has become the exemplum for the entire scandal is that of the US Attorney for the state of New Mexico. It appears that, at some point during the week before the November midterms, he was contacted by two lawmakers trying to get him to speed up an indictment of a state Democrat on corruption charges. It now appears that those two lawmakers were Rep. Heather Wilson (who, you may remember, just barely survived her re-election by 875 votes out of nearly 211,000), and Senator Pete Domenici. As if it even needs to be mentioned anymore, they're both Republicans.

This weekend, both the White House and Sen. Domenici have gone into full damage control mode, as this scandal could get pretty big. And here's where I'd like to put in my 2 cents that, so far, no one else seems to have noticed. The White House/Domenici tactic from here is to paint the attorney as someone who's performance necessitated his ouster, rather than his partisanship. It also has nothing to do with filling posts with cronies or deepening the rather drained and wanting GOP bench.

We've talked a lot about "dog whistle politics" and GOP racist code in this wee corner of the blogosphere, and I feel like I'm starting to get a feel for it, and am learning where to look for it and when to expect it. Domenici, suddenly mired in bad press and staring down the barrel of his own re-election in '08, needs someone, to give him a break and come to his aid: GOP voters, those who really understand him and what New Mexico's problems are and why this attorney needed to go.

Everyone feel primed and ready?

From Sen. Domenici's statement:

During the course of the last six years, that already heavy caseload in our state has been swamped by unresolved new federal cases, especially in the areas of immigration and illegal drugs. I have asked, and my staff has asked, on many occasions whether the federal prosecutors and federal judiciary within our state had enough resources. I have been repeatedly told that we needed more resources. As a result I have introduced a variety of legislative measures, including new courthouse construction monies, to help alleviate the situation.

My conversations with [the US Attorney] over the years have been almost exclusively about this resource problem and complaints by constituents. He consistently told me that he needed more help, as have many other New Mexicans within the legal community.

My frustration with the U.S. Attorney’s office mounted as we tried to get more resources for it, but public accounts indicated an inability within the office to move more quickly on cases.[emphasis mine]

Why was the highlighted snippet so important to add? What bearing does it have on his larger point? Ahh, more important to the question (remember your audience) is, what kind of US Attorney would be neglectful of immigration and drugs cases in New Mexico and would be constantly asking for more government aid and more American dollars to do a job that, one would assume, other US Attorneys have done without extra it?

Meet United States Attorney David Iglesias.

a screw-up that boggles the mind

This is pretty amazing. From The New York Times (c/o Josh Marshall):

WASHINGTON, Feb. 28 — Last October, the North Koreans tested their first nuclear device, the fruition of decades of work to make a weapon out of plutonium.

For nearly five years, though, the Bush administration, based on intelligence estimates, has accused North Korea of also pursuing a secret, parallel path to a bomb, using enriched uranium. That accusation, first leveled in the fall of 2002, resulted in the rupture of an already tense relationship: The United States cut off oil supplies, and the North Koreans responded by throwing out international inspectors, building up their plutonium arsenal and, ultimately, producing that first plutonium bomb.

Okay, now this nuclear program stuff is a little confusing, so Josh explains:

Speaking very broadly, there are two big ways to make nuclear weapons -- with uranium and plutonium. Each involves different technical challenges and processes. And each has a different bang you get versus the complexity of the task of putting the thing together.

The big issue with North Korea has always been their plutonium production. Back in 1994, they were on the brink of being able to produce bombs with the plutonium they were making. The US came close to war with the North Koreans over it. But the two countries settled on something called the 'Agreed Framework' in which the North Koreans' plutonium production operation was shuttered and placed under international inspection in exchange for fuel oil shipments and assistance building 'light water' nuclear reactors.

We don't need to get into the details of the agreement at the moment. The relevant point is that from 1994 to 2002 the North Korean nuclear weapons program was frozen in place. The strong consensus judgment was that they had not yet made any nuclear weapons. And during that period they could not access the plutonium they had already produced.

It was on the basis of this alleged uranium enrichment program -- which may well not even have existed -- that the US pulled out of that agreement. This allowed the North Koreans to get back into the plutonium business with a gusto. And they have since produced -- by most estimates -- at least a hand full of nuclear weapons, one of which, albeit a rather feeble one, they detonated last October.

As he rightly notes, this is a pretty serious fuck-up even if the uranium program was real. But it's entirely possible that the Bush Administration undermined the one and only working deterrent to a North Korean nuclear arsenal and then did NOTHING while Kim Jong Il developed just such a thing over a figment of the CIA's imagination.

It's difficult even to articulate how big of a botch this was, what supreme incompetence at the highest levels this required. Like the Iraq War and the Bush Administration itself, this is a fuckup that has transformed world politics. Of all the nations that could've gone nuclear, North Korea was the worst case scenario (the second worst, incidentally, is Iran). Bill Clinton achieved a diplomatic solution that at worst slowed North Korean nuclear development to a crawl, and at best halted it entirely, yet after only a single year in office, George W. Bush demolished it and replaced it with... nothing.

And here we are, with a world that is significantly more perilous than it was only a decade ago, due perhaps single-handedly to George W. Bush.

have you heard about Deamonte?

It's a funny phenomenon: You take an obvious moral imperative and bring it out into the open, and people get so easily sidetracked into discussions of money, and options, and then it veers off into weird ideological quasi-realities where the central issue is personal responsibility and parental duties and who's to blame and class warfare and socialism and capitalism and "the market"... and then a story like this comes around and snaps the whole issue back to a moment of utter, cold, crystalline, clarity.

This is madness, and it must stop.

Orcinus

I've added a new blog to my blogroll there on the right side of the screen: Orcinus. It's maintained mainly by a freelance journalist named David Neiwert, and it's very content-heavy and thematically oriented.

That theme is authoritarianism.

There's a lot of great material there on not only authoritarianism per se, but also things like eliminationist rhetoric, institutional (and individual) discrimination, rightwing quasi-fascism, and anti-immigrationism. And, of course, Michelle Malkin.

There's also, interestingly, a lot of discussion there of futurism, which from what I gather is the directing of science and systems theory to figure out what scenarios are most likely to happen in the relatively near future, especially considering potential crises like climate change, overpopulation, and peak oil.

I try to keep the blogroll short, limited to what I see are the couple very best blog out there. This one definitely belongs on the list.

what might have been

There's been a growing phenomenon of people looking back on a certain election in a way I've never experienced. Take this, for example, from Richard freakin' Cohen (c/o mcjoan at dKos):

There were so many reasons not to vote for him -- none, in retrospect, much good...

Gore would not have taken the United States to war in Iraq. He would have finished the job in Afghanistan -- it was al-Qaeda and its Taliban enablers who were responsible for the attacks on us on Sept. 11, 2001, not Saddam Hussein, no matter how vile he might have been. Gore would not have dealt with the Iranians and the North Koreans in such a juvenile fashion -- axis of evil, after all -- and all over the world, wherever you and I went, we would not detect such anger toward America. The last time I saw Gore was at a screening of his now-acclaimed movie, "An Inconvenient Truth." I wrote at the time that, on paper at least, he was the near-perfect Democratic presidential candidate -- right on the war, above all. This observation, hardly original with me, is being echoed elsewhere, and it would be impossible for Gore to ignore it. Jimmy Carter said Sunday on ABC's "This Week" that he thought Gore ought to run and had told Gore so insistently. "He almost told me the last time I called, 'Don't call me anymore,' " Carter said. What Gore told me was something similar: "I think there are other ways to serve."

And what about this, from an SNL opener several months ago?

It's weird: in both of these pieces (and countless other references to Al Gore in public and private discourse) there's an underlying sense of sadness, a national understanding that we, enticed by the siren songs of W's faux folksy everymanness and Nader's angry righteousness (or perhaps, self-righteousness), made a horrible mistake in 2000. It's not just that we allowed a vindictive, arrogant man-child to take the presidency (and inexplicably re-elected him with the first honest-to-God majority in 16 years) or that we allowed an election to be essentially subverted. We've seen buyer's remorse of that stripe before. People often joked about how Clinton should've lost, or Bush Sr., or Reagan, but the difference lies in looking at their opposition. In Clinton's lowest moments, people may have wished he'd lost, but there was no widescale gazing sadly at Bush Sr. and wishing he'd won. There were no masses pining for the return of Dukakis, or Mondale, or tellingly, John Kerry, even despite the admirable fight he's been waging in the Senate over a host of issues ever since his loss.

In what has to be a truly scary moment for the current resident and his fixation on his legacy, how "history will judge his presidency," the country is starting to openly wish it had elected Al Gore instead. Perhaps even scarier, above we have Richard Cohen, no flaming lefty, implying that he wishes it had been Al Gore at the helm on 9/11, steering our military policy. My guess is that most voters aren't there yet, but more and more people are coming around every day, and with Gore getting and Oscar and potentially a Nobel peace prize, and with influential media personalities openly pining for his candidacy in 2000 and hoping for the same in 2008, we could someday, perhaps before this administration is even over, see a poll indicating just such a sentiment.

the myth of the purple finger

Sez Josh Marshall:

Even among critics of the war, it's often accepted as granted that a key aim of this effort was democratization -- only that it was botched, like so much else, or that the aim of democracy, in a crunch, plays second fiddle to other priorities. Not true. The key architects of the policy don't believe in democracy or the rule of law. The whole invasion was based on contrary principles. And the aim can't be achieved because those anti-democratic principles are written into the DNA of the occupation, even as secondary figures have and continue to labor to build democracy in the country.

I've been wrestling with this graph all day, trying to figure out why it bugs me. On the surface, Marshall is right: the Bush Administration doesn't believe in the rule of law, as we've seen over and over again, and Cheney's and Bush's ideological adherence to democratic principles is in question as well (how can you have a democracy without the rule of law? without habeas corpus?). And yes, these tendencies have caused us all sorts of problems in Iraq, mainly in the form of fomenting distrust in us and the Iraqi government.

Nevertheless, my eyes keep getting drawn back to "a key aim of this effort was democratization" and its reference later as "the aim." I'm not accusing Marshall of this, by any means, but we would do well not to forget that the aim of this whole endeavor in Iraq is not democratization, but the discrediting and elimination of terrorism, specifically the terrorists that threaten us at home and our interests abroad. The democratization part was conceived of and remains merely as a means to that end. It's increasingly important as the occupation drags on to remember not only the order of our priorities there, but this crucial link in W's head between democratization and terrorism, a notion that I believe is truly dangerous, especially applied as cynically as it always is by human governments.

Back in the wonder years of the invasion, there arised a metaphor in the blogosphere (espoused principally, I believe, by Markos) called "the Myth of the Purple Finger." It was a play on the Iraqi elections and subsequent media manipulation by the Bush administration and their apologists, where they'd play, over and over again, videos and pictures of Iraqis during the election waving their fingers around celebrating the first (and second, and third...) votes in Lord knows how long (you may remember, their fingers were colored purple as proof that they had voted).

"The Myth of the Purple Finger" was a critique of the media hype that said that elections=progress even if they fail to create a government the people consider legitimate. There was a deeper fallacy at work, however: the myth, unwittingly at first, pointed straight at the idea, taken on faith by neoconservatives and classic liberals alike, that terrorism cannot persist in a free democracy, that democracy by its very existence deals a mortal wound to the morale and negative emotions necessary to engage in terrorist acts. One of the weirder aspects of national discourse in the run-up and early period of the war was hearing virtually identical arguments made in support of the war by, for instance, George W. Bush and Peter Beinart of The New Republic, showing a sort of intersection between the ideologies between these two normally-divergent groups.

This supposed power of democracy is, in the really-real world, non-existent. Democracy (especially the sectarian, exclusionary type that was the only outcome ever possible in Iraq) does not preclude terrorism any more than fabulous wealth precludes depression. If it did, we would have never had Timothy McVeigh or abortion clinic bombers, Germans would never have heard the names Bader-Meinhof, and has anyone ever heard of Northern Ireland? And how, then, do we explain all those supposed Islamist terror cells in the US and Europe that the same Bush administration keeps warning us about? All sorts of things can motivate people to resort to terrorism, usually related a tribe feeling excluded or oppressed, or related to some perceived moral imperative going unheeded by the current regime. Installing a democracy, however, does not automatically fix this problem, and as we're seeing in Iraq, can even make it worse.

The entire strategy for pacifying Iraq and alienating/eliminating the terrorists was based on this flawed logic, and thus, in respect to the core rationale for the invasion, whether or not Iraq achieved democratization is irrelevant. Even if the Bush Administration genuinely cared about democracy in the Middle East and achieved such in Iraq, there's no evidence that either international or domestic terrorism there would have disappeared.

Clusterf#%k 101

Sy Hersh has written a great article, available in the New Yorker (yes, that does mean it's long-- unlike The Economist, however, that also means it's worth it) on the web of relationships and power politics in the Middle East, focusing especially on Iran, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, and the US. It's a complex situation for sure, but a narrative that emerges almost immediately is that the US lunged headlong into an impossible strategic situation in Iraq, propelling its longtime enemies (and those of its allies) to increased power. The same action virtually forced us to take opposite sides in Iraq (i.e., the Shiite allies of Iran and Syria) from those we take everywhere else (the Sunnis-- specifically the Saudi royal family), thus making the situation even worse for everyone in the region... except Iran, the one player we want to screw over all others.

Now our #2 ally in the Middle East and #1 financier, Saudi Arabia, openly threatens to side with those currently killing the most US troops if we dare to leave.

Heckuva job, Dubya!

Judgment and foresight

Why vote for people who got snookered when you can vote for someone who had it right at the time?

Barack Obama, 1 month after Congress' vote to authorize military force in Iraq:

(c/o Josh Marshall)

God, god, G-d

And one more thing about this religion stuff: often in the netroots you see the the name "god" spelled in all lower cases. When I see this, I get the exact feeling as when I hear W say "the Democrat party." Looks to me that, in both cases, the speaker wants to insult people so badly that they're willing to break with linguistic tradition to do so. The word "Democrat" is a noun; "Democratic" is an adjective. Thus "Democrat party" is grammatically wrong.

Similarly with the former example, however. One of the very few actual ironclad rules in the English language is that proper names are capitalized. Fucking always. If you name your dog "Dog," from that moment forward every time you refer to its name in writing, you capitalize it. Same with deities when the word "god" is used as the being's proper name: "God, my dog Dog worships me as if I were a god."

I don't get it: is not believing in a deity the excuse for this? It would be a pretty shoddy defense, unless you also don't capitalize santa claus or huck finn.

separating the sheep from the goats

Damn you people! I haven't been posting lately, obviously, but I can't stand this religious conversation in the blogosphere anymore, so I'm going to have to add my $.02 (since this is sort of a pet issue of mine).

In case you've missed it so far, Bill Donahue, wack-ass nutjob from the Catholic Alliance, threw a fit over Amanda Marcotte from Pandagon's posts about the Immaculate Conception and got her fired (sorry, "she resigned"). Then Atrios exploded the whole issue with a series of long (for Atrios) posts about the role of religious people in the Democratic party vis-a-vis the netroots, as in "Why do the netroots hate Christians so much?" etc. (see here on "people of faith", then on Romney's Mormonism, then on religious people as "the heart and soul" of the party, then fighting about it with Kleiman, then on Atrios' own perspective on religion generally, then on Mormonism vs. atheism). Then everyone linked to Atrios' points, as is the general practice, then Digby jumped in, then all the Kossack diarists started throwing pies at each other, then Kos jumped in, then Jim freakin' Wallis jumped in, then DLC guys like Ed Kilgore jumped in. Ed, by the way, links only to Atrios' front page, while most others don't link to him at all; really helpful, guys, thanks.

I hate this fight because it pits a lot of people I otherwise deeply respect against each other on a subject heavily fraught with political, emotional, and philosophical baggage. But I do have opinions on this matter and I feel like I have a fair amount of "expertise" on it, being someone who encounters both sides of the debate on a virtually daily basis. Hopefully when this is all said and done, I will have at least helped some of you to untangle not only the conversation itself, but your own beliefs on the matter by tracing my own reactions.

First of all, the Pandagon thing. So here's what Amanda Marcotte, the proprietor of that establishment, said that got Donahue all riled up:

Q: What if Mary had taken Plan B after the Lord filled her with his hot, white, sticky Holy Spirit?

A: You’d have to justify your misogyny with another ancient mythology.

So, looking at that quote honestly, I want to side with Marcotte, and on the issue of the post (birth control), I think she's right about the Church's ridiculous stance. The Catholic Church's opposition to birth control has certainly, in my opinion, done more harm than good. But I can't; there's just no context in which the quote above isn't offensive. Much as I hate to say it, Donahue was right to be offended (not right to gloss over the substance of her post or right to try to get her fired, mind you).

And I noticed afterwards, reading posts by Atrios and Kos and Digby and Glenn Greenwald and John Aravosis, I realized that, as a practicing Christian, I've never been offended by any of them, even when they talk about religion from the standpoint of being agnostics or atheists or just pissed off at some religious group. And I think, on some level, maybe that's what has differentiated the "big blogs" from everyone else. Yes, Marcotte is a good writer, as are many bloggers, but perhaps too often they offhandedly offend some group and end up alienating lots of potential readers, whereas Atrios' "don't be an asshole needlessly" approach has helped him retain many of the people who visit his site, thus becoming regular readers. It's at least had an effect on the blogs I read; I've been turned off of more than one blogger because they make insulting generalizations about Christians, or religious people, or southerners, or Texans, or meat-eaters (yes, it can get that petty), or even conservatives (I'm not, but I have family and friends who are, so it still offends me). Eyerolling generalizations about people irritates the hell out of me and often demonstrates a huge flaw in one's thinking.

Interestingly, on this issue there was one notable exception: Tristero, who writes on Digby's blog and has offended my religious sensibilities on a number of occasions, totally nailed the issue with people attacking the people or politics they don't like by attacking religion:

To attack the religious beliefs of someone like Donohue is to completely miss your target. That's right, to mock Donohue's religion is tactically useless. Because his christianism, not his Catholicism, is the danger. And it is a very, very grave danger.

Stated another way, the argument is that Donohue's religious beliefs and practices are none of my, or anyone else's business other than those in his church. His political actions most certainly are, and they deserve our full, uninhibited, and completely withering contempt. As for his craven hiding behind the skirts of priests to deflect criticism, Donohue and his fellow christianists, whatever their denomination, deserve widespread denunciation from the larger Christian community.

There's something about religion informing politics that often historians are the only ones to really "get": it's usually the reverse of reality. Donahue uses his Catholicism to shield his anti-semitism and misogyny, and he views Catholicism through the prism of hate, but he doesn't need Catholicism for them. If he lost his faith tomorrow, he'd still be a bigot. Similarly, even as Christianity recedes from the European landscape, racism and anti-semitism persist; hyper-nationalist political parties in France and elsewhere are polling better than ever before. And there are plenty of secular misogynists in American society.

Moving on. I want to talk a little bit about Atrios. First of all, I would strongly suggest that you go back and read his posts that I linked to above. You'll find that Atrios is thoughtful, respectful but not "pc," and fair in his estimation of the role of religion in politics (for what it's worth, I'm of the opinon that he is quite possibly the single most insightful political observer in our entire national discourse; the fact that Atrios and Digby write on free, low-publicity little blogs while Joe Klein and David Brooks have columns in some of the nation's most prestigious news publications and Bill Kristol appears on marquee news shows on a weekly basis signifies more than perhaps anything else how decrepit and dysfunctional our current journalistic system is. Talk about "failing upward!").

Atrios is right on a point with which I've only slowly been reconciling myself, and he's largely the only one saying it:

I tend to try to have a "don't be an asshole needlessly" attitude when it comes to dealing with religious beliefs that no one is trying to impose on me, but there's no requirement for people to share that attitude. Beliefs cloaked in religion shouldn't be granted automatic immunity from scrutiny, and nor should the sometimes powerful institutions run by people, not angels or saints, around which the various religions are organized. While genuine bigotry exists against people of various faiths which is the equivalent to the kind of bigotry which exists against gays or African-Americans (involving unfair symbols or stereotyping rooted in historic oppression, assigning unshared beliefs to an entire group, etc...), mocking or having contempt for actual religious beliefs isn't by any reasonable definition "bigotry." It's simply heated disagreement, and as with disagreements about politics, or sports, or whatever, sometimes people who disagree with each other use mockery and insults in their discourse. Religious people may think that their beliefs about religion are on a different level than these things, but, you know, I don't really agree with that.

And that's the basic issue. We disagree about things. We don't all share a belief in God, or the supernatural, or the spiritual plane, or whatever. Those who believe in these things don't agree on the details. There are a tremendous variety of belief systems in this country and across the world. The tendency to divide people into "faith" and "non-faith" has, as I wrote, obscured these differences, but the fact is that disagreement within "communities of faith" is no different than disagreement between religious and non-religious people. While I think there are those who genuinely believe in a "many paths to God" kind of worldview (and I have no opinion on whether that's theologically sound within the Christian or any other tradition), plenty of people don't actually share that worldview. They believe "other" beliefs are wacky, or stupid, or nuts, or contemptible, or immoral, or likely to lead to eternal damnation, etc.

Having religion is fine and having your religion inform your politics (a la rightwingers, and even progressives like Wallis) is fine. But when you do that you essentially make your religion a political philosophy, which is also fine, but that means it's open to criticism and even ridicule just like any other political philosophy. For religious people to take fringe and dangerous views, as they do on birth control, abortion (remember, many American religious fundamentalists also support terrorism-- in the form of abortion clinic bombers), Israel, or global warming, associate those views with their religion and then take offense that anyone would dare criticize their "religious views" is a pretty dirty political trick that, to everyone else, reeks of moral cowardice and hypocrisy.

For religious people to claim "persecution" based on this tactic is similarly hypocritical. There are entire radio and television stations dedicated to damning agnostics and atheists to Hell, street preachers screaming at them as they go to work and unwind at any of the nation's party districts, and mainstream politicians like Mitt Romney talking openly about how only "people of faith" should be leading this country. Secularists are tacitly banned from the elected office: aside from one Muslim and a handful of Jews, pretty much the entire elected government of every state is composed of Christians. And remind me again how many avowed non-Christians have been president?

This is why I'm bothered with the neologism "people of faith." Besides the Atriotic argument that different religious belief systems are, in fact, quite different, both in means and in the goals themselves, this term is similar in tactic to "pro-life" and "pro-choice": it's designed to bring a particular group together by alienating another group. It's triangulation. In the latter examples, it's understood that the others are "anti-life" or "anti-choice," which in most cases is simply bullshit, while in the former case, it's meant to bring together Catholics and Evangelicals and Jews by isolating agnostics and atheists.

Alienating non-believers is something of which Jim Wallis, whom I otherwise love, is one of the biggest offenders (no pun intended). His constant sneering at "the secular Left" besmirches what are often otherwise valid points (read his post linked above and you'll see what I mean). Yes, it's true that the left and the Democratic party often have trouble dealing with religious people and, in particular, pointing out the religious motivators for liberal or Democratic viewpoints, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's because they hate religion or don't think it's a valid philosophy. In the case of his skirmish with Kos above, it seems like he wants so much to maintain balance by shitting on the "secular Left" and the Christian Right equally that he attributes to Kos an opinion he quite simply doesn't have and didn't exhibit at any point: namely, that religion can't be the prime motivator for a good Democrat's political views. All Kos said was that religion's only one of many possible motivators, and Kos is exactly right.

So now, unfortunately, I have a problem, and you may have picked it out en route to this paragraph. How can I say Donahue was right to be offended by Marcotte, and then agree with people saying that, when you have dangerous/fringe political views, you can't hide behind your religion and call foul when someone turns their guns on it? This is the part where my opinion is still in motion, but to me it turns on Atrios' "don't be an asshole needlessly."

Keep firing, assholes!

Marcotte failed in her jab at the anti-birth control crowd because, in bombing Donahue's car, she sprayed a lot of undeserving people with shrapnel. Cue Tristero and his point that attacking one's religion is sloppy rhetorical targetting. Atrios is still right that it's not morally wrong to attack someone's philosophical/theological underpinning for political views, but you have to be precise about it and aim for the part that really is objectionable and that doesn't alienate vast tracts of the American people that you really don't want alienated. If we're talking about a basic religious tenet shared by the vast majority of the populace, in all likelihood the tactic will prove ineffective and quite possibly counterproductive, as your attacks may well hit lots of bystanders and even allies.

Atrios has been snookered!

It went fine for me, but it looks Atrios' upgrade to the newer, googlier Eschaton has a taken a dramatic turn for the worse. You can still read his hyper-ironic goodness here, for the moment.

TIME cops out again

I think I just hurt my eyeballs from rolling them so hard. TIME Magazine's Person of the Year is... Nancy Pelosi? George W. Bush? Kim Jong Il? John Murtha?

Nope, it's everyone! Literally... everyone! Joy! As August Pollack put it, it's Everybody Gets A Trophy Day!

Seriously, though, the idea is that, apparently, since lots of people blog and use Youtube and have Facebook accounts, we have, I guess, been more significant than any single person, or something. I really didn't need TIME magazine to tell me that the sum total of everyone who uses the internet has had a greater effect on world events than any single person (nor, by the way TIME, did I need you to know that there are, in fact, a rather large number of people on the planet, and in this country for that matter, who have not used the internet much at all in the past year. They're called the poor, and believe it or not TIME, there are a lot of them. It's a little weird that such a prestigious magazine so callously assumed that EVERYONE, or even just everyone who ever reads TIME, has access to the internet and its requisite tools enough to do things like record Youtube videos.).

There's more to this, though, than just a lame choice for the distinction. It caps a number of questionable choices as of late that the magazine has made to avoid doing anything that could piss off redstate neanderthals who don't get the point of Person of the Year (which, as many of you likely know, is pointing out the person with the greatest effect on current events, be it positive or negative (which is why they could choose Adolf Hitler in 1938). George W. Bush, if I remember correctly, held the distinction both in 2000 and 2004, which can grant even if I don't agree (the person with the most effect on world events in 2000 was not George Bush: it was Bill Clinton) but in 2001 it was Rudy Giuliani. Now one could easily argue that W deserved it more than Guiliani because he actually guided national policy at that time, kicking off the War on Terrorism and going into Afghanistan, but even that's a cop-out.

The person who deserved it in 2001, indisputably, was Osama bin Laden.

That, of course, would be controversial to the mouth-breaters who don't get that this isn't an award, so what did TIME do? They made it into an award. That's why "women whistle-blowers" got it in 2002, and "the American soldier" in '03, and freakin' Bono and Bill and Melinda Gates in '05. Really? In all that time, no Terri Shiavo? Karl Rove? Tom Delay? Howard Dean? Ahmed Chalabi? Project for a New American Century? The Christian Right? Swift Boat Veterans? The Netroots? OPEC? Al Gore?

This is just another example of how the national press is been so cowed by the Right that they're willing to change the rules to appease them, no matter if the Right's beef actually has any merit whatsoever. In fact, TIME itself has been more than a little suspect the last couple of years. Just recently they gave James Dobson a column so that he could his junk science claims on the evils of same-sex marriage, but never bothered to fact-check the column. Or take a look here at the difference between the covers in November 1994 (when the GOP took the House) and November 2006 (when Democrats took the House, both liberal and centrist, in larger numbers than the GOP did at any point since the Eisenhower Administration). And how could we forget their unbelievably grotesque hagiography of Ann Coulter last year?

You can see a more exhaustive list at Media Matters.

moonwalking

The big story today is Reid's statement on W and St. McCain's super-awesome idea to go double-or-nothing in Iraq ("double down" is not the right metaphor, as I mentioned a couple of days ago, and in order for either metaphor to be accurate, you have to remember that American and Iraqi lives are the chips). From Reuters:

Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid said on Sunday he would support a short-term increase in U.S. troops in Iraq being weighed by President George W. Bush if it is part of a broader withdrawal plan.

Bush has been talking to experts about a new Iraq strategy and a short-term increase in U.S. troops to help make Baghdad more secure is one idea that has been presented to him.

"If it's for a surge, that is, for two or three months and it's part of a program to get us out of there as indicated by this time next year, then, sure, I'll go along with it," said Reid, who will become the majority leader when Democrats take control of the Senate next month from Bush's Republicans. He spoke on ABC's "This Week" program.

People are freaking out about this statement (just check out dKos tonight!), and clearly the press is planning to run with this as far as they can because the press luuuuvs stories about "Democrats in disarray!" "Democrats go all weak-kneed before the massive codpiece of the W!" "All the sensible, serious people support the latest "one last chance" in Iraq!"

Both, so it seems to me, are relying on a certain "trimming" of the major qualifier in Reid's statement. These people are reading the statement as "I support the president's [and John McCain and Joe Lieberman's] plan to increase troops in Iraq."

But that's not what he says. Look at the original statement again: "If [the president's likely plan to increase troops is] for a surge, that is, for two or three months and it's part of a program to get us out of there as indicated by this time next year, then, sure, I'll go along with it."

Atrios is virtually alone in the blogosphere as someone who caught this distinction:

People seem to be upset that Reid sorta-endorsed the McCain/Lieberman plan to increase the number of troops in the short run. I don't really see it that way - no Senator can expect to micromanage troop levels in Iraq. Reid basically said that he's fine with any strategy which has the goal of getting the troops out by about next Spring. That, of course, isn't the McCain/Lieberman strategy. [emphasis mine]

That last part's the catch. Reid's only saying that he'll go along with a 3 month long surge that actually is part of that "moonwalking" plan the generals were talking about right after the election, a plan to withdraw while appearing to escalate. Whether or not that's a good idea is a different matter, but that's not what the W will probably settle on (and certainly not what McCain/Lieberman is talking about when he advocates for a troop increase). The president is not done in Iraq, he still thinks he can "win" it, and any troop additions will not be part of a withdrawal plan; they'll be part of an escalation, pure and simple. Thus, is the president's surge only supposed to last for 2 to 3 months? No. Is it part of a program to withdraw by this time next year? No.

Then there's no evidence, based on this quote, that Reid is or would ever sign onto an escalation.

John McCain wants you to STFU

So St. John's in a wee bit o' trouble. Looks like W's actually taking his idea to increase the troop levels in Iraq seriously. Even worse, it comes right on the heels of a Iraq Study Group report that a) recommends a drawdown of troops in 2 years, and b) has ideas widely held as good advice by the public ("widely," as in 79% in some cases!). The problem is, when McCain proposed increasing troop levels, he didn't actually want W to go along with it. That way, when 2008 comes and he has to run against the Democratic nominee, his fellow GOP candidates, and the president, he would have the ultimate debating piece on the signature issue of the day: "Well, ya know Ms. Ifill, we could've won the war if the president had gone along with my suggestion!"

As it stands if W increases troop levels, though, McCain will have been LBJ'ed without even getting elected first!

All is not lost, however, for the Washington press corps' favorite right-winger. After all, at the moment, there's really only one group out there that doesn't have a huge crush on St. McCain: the blogs. In fact, no one hates John McCain more than the kids at Daily Kos, except maybe the kids at RedState. And there's no one louder and no one with a more... troublesome... record for dethroning public figures than the blogosphere.

And leave it to McCain to find a fix for them (and by them, I mean us):

The other section of McCain's legislation targets convicted sex offenders. It would create a federal registry of "any e-mail address, instant-message address, or other similar Internet identifier" they use, and punish sex offenders with up to 10 years in prison if they don't supply it.

Then, any social-networking site must take "effective measures" to remove any Web page that's "associated" with a sex offender.

Because "social-networking site" isn't defined, it could encompass far more than just MySpace.com, Friendster and similar sites. The list could include: Slashdot, which permits public profiles; Amazon.com, which permits author profiles and personal lists; and blogs like RedState.com that show public profiles. In addition, media companies like News.com publisher CNET Networks permit users to create profiles of favorite games, gadgets and music.

"This constitutionally dubious proposal is being made apparently mostly based on fear or political considerations rather than on the facts," said EFF's Bankston. Studies by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children show the online sexual solicitation of minors has dropped in the past five years, despite the growth of social-networking services, he said.

A McCain aide, who did not want to be identified by name, said on Friday that the measure was targeted at any Web site that "you'd have to join up or become a member of to use." No payment would be necessary to qualify, the aide added.

In this political climate, members of Congress may not worry much about precise definitions.

Bloggers would also be responsible for content posted in the comments section of their blogs, and could be fined $300,000, which would more than bankrupt just about any blogger on the first offense. Thus, McCain gets to chill online political activity (and perhaps annihilate it entirely) while hiding behind the "chasing child molesters" monster.

And he has the gall to do this in the same week that the Republican Congress absolved itself of any wrongdoing in aiding and abetting a sexual predator for 5 frakin' years.

These Republicans, St. McCain included, really are beneath contempt.

Make no mistake about it, folks: John McCain is a rightwing neocon nutjob who wants more government in your personal life, has no respect for the freedoms guaranteed you by the Bill of Rights, and is willing to risk more American lives if it will win him political points. A vote for John McCain in '08 is a vote for more of the same.

notes on the Democratic victory

Sorry, people, looks like the election exhausted me for a while! Hopefully I'm recharged and ready to start up again, but I won't guarantee anything. I will try to keep up with this, though.

So about the election: what a ride, eh? I have to say, we were successful way beyond my expectations. The House looked like it was ours coming in, but I really didn't think we were gonna win the Senate! Obviously, it's only a Democratic Senate pending Senator Johnson's (D-SD) recovery from what appears to be a stroke, but the victory is amazing nonetheless. I would never have guessed that Webb would win in Virginia. That's awful news for the GOP, as the Commonwealth has been trending blue for a while, but does this mean it's reached the tipping point? Virginia's already elected a Democratic governor (to succeed the last governor, who also was a Democrat) and booted a popular Senator and former governor for a Democrat that, contrary to the media narrative, is no conservative. In fact, Jim Webb is an economic populist (as in, pro-worker, anti-big business, raves against rising income inequality), which is the old conservative's bogeyman. Are Virginia's 13 electoral votes going to be in play in 2 years?

A note about the media narrative also: the big story after the election was the election of "conservative Democrats." Everyone was talking about this, from Rush Limbaugh to David Brooks to the front page of the NYT. Only the American media would be so ditzy and gullible that they would believe the right-wingers "conservative Democrat" horseshit after the election of, among others, the first Socialist senator (Bernie Sanders, I-VT)! Jim Webb rails on income inequality; Jon Tester wants to repeal the USA PATRIOT Act; Sheldon Whitehouse (the quintessential Nor'eastern liberal) defeated a Republican incumbent who was both popular and moderate; Ned Lamont won his primary over a centrist Democrat who was, again, both popular and moderate... the list goes on. This was a victory for Democrats of all stripes, but liberals/progressives were more than amply represented in the winner's circle.

And by the way, it's doubly stupid for the media to pretend like conservative Democrats are a new phenomenon. What the hell kind of Democrats do they think people have been electing in the South for the last, I dunno, century?