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Saturday, May 19, 2007
Transatlantic Boyhood
19 May 2007 09:51 pm
Divided by a common language, as usual. "The Dangerous Book For Boys" originated in Britain, and it's been translated:
The book has been extensively rewritten for the American market to replace conkers with “stickball” and the laws of cricket with the equally incomprehensible Navajo Code Talkers’ Dictionary. A lesson on the etymology of “cor blimey” has been dropped, and a trick involving hiding a £1 coin behind your ear now uses an American quarter.
A section listing the kings and queens of England and Scotland has been replaced with the “most valuable players” in baseball. Egbert, the first king of Wessex from 802 to 839, is thus usurped by Lefty Grove, of Philadelphia, who won the baseball honour in 1931.
That would be "honor."
Russia Declares Cyber-War
19 May 2007 09:11 pm
Against Estonia?
Face of the Day
19 May 2007 08:14 pm
U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales participates in the Department of Justice National Missing Children's Day Awards Ceremony at the Lansburgh Theatre May 18, 2007 in Washington, DC. The U.S. Senate is expected to hold a confidence vote on Gonzales next week. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
Malkin Retracts
19 May 2007 08:03 pm
Good for her. I also hope that Paul addresses this issue publicly to clear up any confusion caused by the conspiracy nuts' claims.
Conservatism and Fascism
19 May 2007 04:09 pm
James Joyner responds to my reader email of yesterday. Yes, he's largely right. But the Bush administration's doctrine of executive power, its disregard for the rule of law, its politicization of the Justice Department, its indefinite abridgment of habeas corpus, its deployment of torture against detainees, including an American citizen, are cause for serious concern. I think James agrees. I also like to publish emails that push envelopes. The only seriously fascistic element in this administration is torture, the mark of fascist regimes everywhere. But creeping authoritarianism is absolutely a threat.
Maguire and Reynolds On Torture
19 May 2007 03:48 pm
They're claiming that McCain supports it. He doesn't. They also mock him as a "saint." He isn't. He's an American. Americans don't torture people. Or at least they never have until this war criminal president took over. McCain wants it banned absolutely under the law in all circumstances - as it was, until last year's disgraceful cave-in by the Congress. Look: in the one in ten million, never-happened-in-human-history, infinitesimal chance that we really do have a ticking nuclear bomb and we also know - not just suspect - but know that a detainee knows where it is, no president would not endorse torture as an extraordinary extra-legal emergency measure. Under those circumstances, he and those deputed to do it would also, however, subsequently subject themselves to the criminal process as war-criminals, and if it were retroactively seen as the correct judgment, their sentence might be commuted. Or not. I've endorsed this position as well.
But what Reynolds and Maguire and others support is the permanent routine use of torture, legally protected, and a cadre of professional CIA torturers trained to do it on a regular basis.
Continue reading "Maguire and Reynolds On Torture" »
Becoming A Man
19 May 2007 03:20 pm
Not just swagger. Another remarkable speech:
There is a verse from the Bible that is sometimes read or recited during rites of passage like this. Corinthians 13:11: “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I felt as a child, I thought as a child. Now that I have become a man, I have put away childish things.”
I bring this up because there’s often an assumption on days like today that growing up is purely a function of age; that becoming an adult is an inevitable progression that can be measured by a series of milestones – college graduation or your first job or the first time you throw a party that actually has food too.
And yet, maturity does not come from any one occasion – it emerges as a quality of character. Because the fact is, I know a whole lot of thirty and forty and fifty year olds who have not yet put away childish things – who continually struggle to rise above the selfish or the petty or the small.
We see this reflected in our country today.
We see it in a politics that’s become more concerned about who’s up and who’s down than who’s working to solve the real challenges facing our generation; a politics where debates over war and peace are reduced to 60-second soundbites and 30-second attack ads.
We see it in a media culture that sensationalizes the trivial and trivializes the profound – in a 24-hour news network bonanza that never fails to keep us posted on how many days Paris Hilton will spend in jail but often fails to update us on the continuing genocide in Darfur or the recovery effort in New Orleans or the poverty that plagues too many American streets.
And as we’re fed this steady diet of cynicism, it’s easy to start buying into it and put off hard decisions. We become tempted to turn inward, suspicious that change is really possible, doubtful that one person really can make a difference.
That’s where the true test of growing up occurs. That’s where you come in...
Continue reading "Becoming A Man" »
The View From Your Window
19 May 2007 03:14 pm
Pasadena, Maryland, 7.30 am.
For an interactive gallery of Dish readers' window views across the world, click here.
The Memoirs of Pop Stars
19 May 2007 03:04 pm
Not always very reliable:
In the early 1980s, Mick Jagger snagged a $1.6 million advance from Bantam for his life story, but returned it several years later. "We were told he said he couldn't remember enough to do a book," said Stuart Applebaum, a spokesman for Random House Inc., which also owns Bantam.
(Hat tip: CSM.)
Civil War? What Civil War?
19 May 2007 01:24 pm
From the NYT today:
Gunmen wearing Iraqi Army uniforms and riding in pickup trucks entered a village northeast of Baghdad on Saturday and killed 15 people, Iraqi government officials said.
Brig. Gen. Nazim Sherif of the Iraqi Army said the gunmen forced the victims from their homes in Hamid Shifi, a village in eastern Diyala Province, separated the men from the women and children, then shot the men, The Associated Press reported.
Conservatism and Your Mom
19 May 2007 01:01 pm
A Freudian and evolutionary study of how we become conservative or liberal. Conservatives had happy childhoods and strong attachments to parents; liberals didn't and have more sex. But what about people who had unhappy childhoods because they were so attached to one or other parent? Or did Freud predate neoconservatism?
"A Curse Word Associated With Chickens"?
19 May 2007 12:21 pm
Okay, help me out here, will you?
Update: I'm sorry, it was "chickenshit." I love the smell of McCain in the morning.
A Christian For the New Atheism
19 May 2007 11:56 am
I'm not posting this just because I'm having dinner with Sam Harris tonight, but it can't hurt, can it? Money quote:
It is at this point that T.S. Eliot’s Notes towards a Definition of Culture is more important than ever. He forecast that the indiscriminate unification or harmonizing of a culture would achieve naught but its own debasement. In our time, when cultural diversity (to use Francis Fukuyama’s astute formulation) is little more than an "ornament to liberal pluralism", supplying the otherwise dull veneer of Western culture with a certain culinary and aesthetic flair, the multiculturalist refusal to, as Hirsi Ali puts it, "classify cultural phenomena as 'better' or 'worse' but only neutral or disparate" actually reinforces the barbaric treatment of women within Islamic communities. What is called for is not intellectual tolerance and mutually-degrading respect, but rather division.
We should be thanking these anti-theists for picking a fight that we should have started long ago. The only question now is, as Christians, will we have the courage to oppose our common foe — what Barth rightly termed "religion as unbelief" — or will we retreat to the safe-ground of religious obsolescence?
Peanut Butter and Jelly Propaganda
19 May 2007 11:43 am
It helps solve global warming?
The Really Terrible Orchestra
19 May 2007 10:52 am
Scottish understatement reaches new heights.
Circular Conservative Firing Squad Update
19 May 2007 10:50 am
The hysteria on the far right (is there any other sort any more?) about the immigration bill is remarkable to me. It's not that there aren't obviously good arguments against amnesty; it's the fever-pitch mania that drives these people. I have to say I find it baffling - not the position as such but the anger and rage. The obvious solution - much better border control and some attempt to bring most illegal immigrants out of the shadows - is obscured by emotion. The result, of course, is that the GOP has all but lost the Hispanic vote for a generation, just by the tone of their rhetoric. And they are at one another's throats. Bush, in particular, is now despised - for a policy has always publicly supported. The suicide of the right continues, and perhaps it's for the best. If these people have not asked to be sent into the political wilderness, who has?
But I do want to address David Frum's smear that I am now part of a "Blame America First" crowd, because I think our experience in Iraq and the huge damage we have done to our image in the Arab world requires us to rethink some aspects of our war-policy - like torture and open-ended involvement in the Iraqi civil war. I've been extremely clear that I believe that the US did nothing to "deserve" 9/11. But Frum tries to smear me anyway. Frum then analogizes Ron Paul to the vicious anti-Semite, Charles Lindbergh. On what grounds? I guess the same grounds that Jamie Kirchick and Ryan Sager accuse him of being an anti-Semite. Maybe there's more out there I haven't seen. But the only evidence Sager has offered to support his very grave charge of anti-Semitism is extremely thin. Is any criticism of special interest politics that includes the Israel lobby as a major offender inherently anti-Semitic? I guess that's Sager's view. It isn't mine.
On another smear front, Hugh Hewitt has just accused Peggy Noonan of being a bigot. Heh. Hewitt's faith has long been a mystery to me. His religion isn't of course. He worships power. His church is the Republican Party. I don't think the smears pouring out of the panicked right are completely accidental. Some of us are trying to figure out what has gone wrong with conservatism and what has gone so terribly wrong in the war. Others on the right regard such attempts as deeply dangerous. I hope they're right.
Quote for the Day
19 May 2007 10:10 am
"There is no dichotomy between man and God's image. Whoever tortures a human being, whoever abuses a human being, Whoever outrages a human being, abuses God's image," - Archbishop Romero.
The quote is from a new group Catholic blog, Vox Nova.
(Photo: American citizen Jose Padilla, detained without charges for over three years, and allegedly tortured into incoherence. He is being escorted, chained hands and feet, to a dental office in a secure facility by U.S. soldiers.)
Ron Paul On "The View"
19 May 2007 07:24 am
An interesting discussion. There's a reason the GOP leadership needs to smear and silence Paul. His arguments might begin to refine our debate on Middle East policy.
Friday, May 18, 2007
Paul vs Malkin
18 May 2007 08:57 pm
Dave Weigel asks the Paul campaign about Michelle Malkin's on-air lie. Retract, Michelle. Or give us evidence that Ron Paul believes that Bush knew about 9/11 ahead of time or has openly allied with or supported conspiracy theories about 9/11. One or the other. Silence = cowardice.
Falwell's Greatest Hits
18 May 2007 08:54 pm
Download the MP3 hymns from the Thomas Road Baptist Church here. And get your favorite Falwell quotes here.
Flatland
18 May 2007 08:12 pm
A group of artists try and live in two dimensions. 6 people in a box for twenty days. Hell on earth.
Hitch vs Hannity and Reed
18 May 2007 07:44 pm
A joy to behold my old friend ripping into a semi-literate, fascist hack and a crook who abused Christianity for his own lucre and power. These people may be - just may be - finally on the run:
(Hat tip: Mike.)
Dissent of the Day
18 May 2007 07:02 pm
A reader writes:
As much as I admire your work, I have to wonder where you ever got your notions of 'conservatism'. Conservatism has nothing to do with libertarianism, and on the contrary has always had a strong authoritarian strain. Once this was expressed as reverence for monarchy, now it is the Doctrine of the Unitary Executive and a reflexive desire to defend the military. Hayek noticed what he called (in 'Why I am Not a Conservative') the conservatives' 'fondness for authority':
Let me return, however, to the main point, which is the characteristic complacency of the conservative toward the action of established authority and his prime concern that this authority be not weakened rather than that its power be kept within bounds. This is difficult to reconcile with the preservation of liberty. In general, it can probably be said that the conservative does not object to coercion or arbitrary power so long as it is used for what he regards as the right purposes. He believes that if government is in the hands of decent men, it ought not to be too much restricted by rigid rules. Since he is essentially opportunist and lacks principles, his main hope must be that the wise and the good will rule - not merely by example, as we all must wish, but by authority given to them and enforced by them. Like the socialist, he is less concerned with the problem of how the powers of government should be limited than with that of who wields them; and, like the socialist, he regards himself as entitled to force the value he holds on other people.
Bush has not corrupted conservatism, he is acting out the kind of conservatism Hayek described in this essay. I think that is the only kind of conservatism that has ever existed as a real political force.
I disagree. Yes, of course, the strain that Hayek notes is a large part of the conservative tradition. But it is not the only strand. Burke, in many ways the founder of Anglo-American conservatism, defended the American rebels and the rule of law and was deeply skeptical of those in power. The skeptical Oakeshott, the twentieth century Burke, favored peace, non-violence, and liberty - not war, torture and authority. We can get bogged down in semantics here, and a case can be made that Burke and Oakeshott are more classical liberals. But I'm loth to argue that the two greatest British conservative thinkers were not actually conservative at all. I make my case in my book. Make your own mind up.
Pocket Narcissism
18 May 2007 05:51 pm
Baby-boomer parents are the best:
TinyPocketPeople produces made to order dolls, based on digital photographs that customers upload to the website. The company was founded by two parents whose youngest daughter was starting day-care. To help make her feel safe and secure, they created mini versions of themselves that she could take with her. The concept spread by word of mouth, and it turned out the dolls weren't just popular with children. Grandparents order pocket versions of their grandchildren and long distance couples order mini-me-and-yous.
Quote for the Day II
18 May 2007 05:45 pm
"Is [Fred Thompson] anything beyond a standard Republican conservative? Will he have anything beyond a Mideast policy that consists of win in Iraq, support the surge, and oppose any timetable? Does he stand for any strategic thinking apart from what John McCain unconsciously but aptly characterized as "Bomb-bomb-bomb, bomb-bomb Iran"? On domestic issues, can Mr. Thompson go beyond standard conservative thought? I happen to be standard conservative myself, but sometimes old things need to be made new, the obvious needs to be made fresh," - Peggy Noonan, a breath of fresh air. She gets the conservative crisis. I'm not sure the boomlet for Thompson is a cure or a symptom.
Conservatives for Paul
18 May 2007 05:38 pm
TCS comes through with an honest defense of Paul's account of the longterm question of blowback in the Middle East. George W. Bush has made the same "absurd" point (to quote Rudy the Waterboarder). Buchanan naturally liked what he heard. Here's another angry Paul-supporting conservative. John Dickerson, no conservative, makes the obvious case for keeping Paul in the debates. Michelle Malkin, who regularly lambastes the MSM for spreading lies, has not yet retracted her own on-air lie about Paul believing that Bush knew about 9/11 in advance. It's a useful test of her integrity. Is she an honest blogger or a lying propagandist? If she doesn't retract, she's telling us she's the latter.
The Retro-Republican
18 May 2007 04:51 pm
A reader writes:
Been following your coverage of Paul with great interest. I just wanted to add a note of perspective. I grew up in Highlands, Texas, on the gulf coast very near the northern boundary of his congressional district (TX 14). In the 1980s, during his first run in congress, Paul was widely regarded, and not just by Democrats, as an eccentric, to put it mildly. Weirdly, principled, though. But more importantly, in light of the present debate, he was regarded as the most extreme of right-wingers.
When I was working in Democratic politics in Austin in the mid-80s, we'd just shake our heads at Ron Paul and his gold standard, etc., and think Whew, guy's an extremist. And looking back, he was certainly the most conservative member of the Texas delegation, even then a conservative delegation. Well, that delegation has changed manifestly. To a number, the rest of the Republicans in the Texas delegation are now far to the right of Paul. They've changed, reflecting the rightward slide of the politics in America in the past 25 years. Ron Paul has remained the same, still weirdly principled (in that it's now kind of weird to be principled) a time capsule for what American conservatism used to look like.
I think the GOP has just adjusted to being the party of Dixie.
God and Starbucks
18 May 2007 04:49 pm
The fundies are everywhere.
Quote for the Day
18 May 2007 04:45 pm
"When I ask myself how I know I believe, I have no satisfactory answer at all, no assurance at all, no feeling at all. I can only say with Peter, Lord I believe, help my unbelief. All I can say about my love of God, is, Lord help me in my lack of it. I distrust pious phrases, particularly when they issue from my mouth. I try militantly never to be affected by the pious language of the faithful but it is always coming out when you least expect it. In contrast to the pious language of the faithful, the liturgy is beautifully flat," - Flannery O'Connor, in a letter to Elizabeth Hester, August 2, 1955.
(Photo: Johannes Simon/Getty.)
The "War Czar"
18 May 2007 04:44 pm
Jut in case you had your hopes up, here's a useful backgrounder.
The View From Your Window
18 May 2007 04:12 pm
Mesa, Arizona, 10.30 am.
For an interactive gallery of Dish readers' window views across the world, click here.
Another Brilliant MSM Move
18 May 2007 03:17 pm
They're slowly killing off editorial cartoons:
What troubles today's publishers and editors is less a matter of subtlety than cost. Faced with declining advertising revenues and evaporating print audiences, newspapers increasingly opt to buy cartoons through syndication, which offers access to hundreds of prints for as little as $35 a week, compared to more than $35,000 a year for a staffer. Faced with such an opportunity for savings, many penny-pinching outlets forget loyalties and lose their honor fast. In the late 1990s, for example, The Village Voice told cartoonist Jules Feiffer that, after forty years and a Pulitzer Prize, it wanted to squash his $75,000 salary but still run his work. Universal Press Syndicate offered the rights for some $200 a week.
When I was a kid, editorial cartoons were one of my first introductions to political debate. They are a precious and vital resource. If newspapers kill them off, they will be committing suicide. But that suicide is already well-advanced, isn't it?
Another Democracy
18 May 2007 02:43 pm
India is the latest democracy to be forced to grapple with the political claims of fundamentalist religion. Hinduists are threatening the secular balance of the largest democracy in the world. Money quote:
What has been happening in India is a serious threat to the future of democracy in the world. The fact that it has yet to make it onto the radar screen of most Americans is evidence of the way in which terrorism and the war on Iraq have distracted us from events and issues of fundamental significance. If we really want to understand the impact of religious nationalism on democratic values, India currently provides a deeply troubling example, and one without which any understanding of the more general phenomenon is dangerously incomplete. It also provides an example of how democracy can survive the assault of religious extremism.
In May 2004, the voters of India went to the polls in large numbers. Contrary to all predictions, they gave the Hindu right a resounding defeat. Many right-wing political groups and the social organizations allied with them remain extremely powerful, however. The rule of law and democracy has shown impressive strength and resilience, but the future is unclear.
McCain's Pets
18 May 2007 02:00 pm
Sam the English springer spaniel, Coco the mutt, turtles Cuff and Link, Oreo the black and white cat, a ferret, three parakeets and 13 saltwater fish.
Rudy will be after him. Giuliani has none. No dog would have him.
(Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty.)
Black Women In '08
18 May 2007 01:47 pm
Obama or Clinton? Clinton so far.
Beard Porn
18 May 2007 01:46 pm
Sports Illustrated gives us a photo-gallery of hot sports stars with facial hair. I may have to get a subscription.
What "Torture" Is
18 May 2007 01:09 pm
Brit Hume and Mitt Romney do not get to invent the meaning of a word. Here's the federal law itself from 18 U.S. Code § 2340 (Definitions):
"As used in this chapter— (1) 'torture' means an act committed by a person acting under the color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical control;
(2) 'severe mental pain or suffering' means the prolonged mental harm caused by or resulting from— (A) the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering; (B) the administration or application, or threatened administration or application, of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality; (C) the threat of imminent death; or (D) the threat that another person will imminently be subjected to death, severe physical pain or suffering, or the administration or application of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or personality; and
(3) 'United States' means the several States of the United States, the District of Columbia, and the commonwealths, territories, and possessions of the United States."
It is not an opinion that "enhanced interrogation techniques" are torture. It is a legal fact. And it is also a legal fact that the president is a war criminal.
Re-Thinking The War III
18 May 2007 12:40 pm
Ross thinks I'm way too excited by Ron Paul. Hey, excitability is my brand, isn't it? And I do get a frisson from the candor and fearlessness of the guy. I'm not alone. But I don't think Paul is a credible president, I don't think he has a chance, and there is a doctrinaire libertarianism about him that is not congenial to me. His comments about black criminals are unfortunate - but I see no evidence of anti-Semitism at all, unless anyone critical of the Israel lobby is automatically an anti-Semite. I do think Paul has done us all a service by bringing a conservative critique of the Bush foreign policy to the fore. It's healthy to have an actual debate about foreign policy and conservatism. And I don't buy Ross's idea that the fundamental divide is between realists and idealists. I think the last six years have opened up a deeper and more interesting debate between neoconservatism and paleoconservatism in foreign affairs, between internationalism and isolationism.
In thinking about this, I think the best way to sum up my own evolving view is as follows: 9/11 was the best argument that the U.S. needs to remain engaged in the wider world. At the same time, the Iraq war has become the best argument that the U.S. shouldn't actually become an empire, least of all in the Middle East...
Continue reading "Re-Thinking The War III" »
Smearing Paul
18 May 2007 11:21 am
This dialogue between John Gbson and Michelle Malkin actually takes it as a premise that Ron Paul stated that Bush knew about 9/11 in advance. Here's Gibson:
According to a recent Rasmussen Report poll, 35 percent of Democrats think President Bush knew about the 9/11 attacks beforehand. The so-called 9/11 Truth Movement has already infected people like Rosie O'Donnell and one in three Democrats, and many other people, Americans evidently, including Congressman Ron Paul.
How on earth did Gibson get that from the debate on his own cable channel? Here is Malkin:
I'm glad that this moment provided great TV for FOX News — it was a very instructive exchange — but Ron Paul really has no business being on stage as a legitimate representative of Republicans, because the 9/11 truth virus is something that infects only a very small proportion of people that would identify themselves as conservative or Republican. And as you say, John, this is far more prevalent, this strain of 9/11 truth virus, on the left, and in much of the mainstream of the Democratic Party as that Rasmussen poll showed.
Gibson and Malkin owe Paul an apology. They are knowingly smearing under the guise of journalism.
The Irony
18 May 2007 10:57 am
Has anyone else noticed the bizarre spectacle of many Bush-backing blogs demonizing Ron Paul for not saying that we deserved 9/11, at the same time eulogizing a man who absolutely and explicitly said that we did deserve 9/11: Jerry Falwell.
Romney on McCain-Kennedy
18 May 2007 10:32 am
There's the 2005 Romney and the Hewitt-Trained 2007 Romney. Surprise! My boss, James Bennet, has the best low-key description of Romney I've yet heard: he aims to please. And how.
Betrayal
18 May 2007 09:42 am
A reader has a literary insight into the current president and the creeping brutalism of the GOP:
On a long plane ride the other day I came upon a passage in James Bradley's "Flyboys" that you may not have seen, and that touches on the history of torture, how abberant this is for us. It's an account of the air war over Japan in World War Two, and about, among other things, the inhumanity of the Japanese captors towards American pilots. A downed pilot named Nielson remembers:
"I was given what they call the water cure. I was put on the floor with my arms and legs stretched out, one guard holding each limb. A towel was wrapped around my face and water was poured on. They poured water on this towel until I was was almost unconscious from strangulation, then they would let up until I'd get my breath, then they'd start all over again. I felt more or less like I was drowning, just gasping between life and death."
As Bradley points out, this torture had been used by Americans in the Phillipines, to general scandal and American outrage; there's an account in Morris's " Theodore Rex". When news of these tortures, along with the execution-murders of American prisoners, reached the U.S., the headline in the TIMES ran:
"TOKYO STANDS ALONE AS A CRUEL CAPTOR IN DEFIANCE OF GENEVA CONVENTION."
The hero of the book is, of course, one of the flyboys who ran these risks of torture and killing at the hands of a government that defied the Geneva Convention: George H. W. Bush.
Bush on Comey
18 May 2007 09:24 am
It's a classic:
I'm not going to talk about it... I'm not going to move the issue forward by talking about something [that's a] highly classified subject.
Here's the video:
Translation: go Cheney yourself.
Face of the Day
18 May 2007 09:00 am
The new Justice Minister Rachida Dati answers journalists questions after the official handover ceremony, 18 May 2007 at the ministry in Paris, the day the government of French newly appointed Prime minister Francois Fillon was named. By Dominique Faget.
The Fate of Conservatism
18 May 2007 07:53 am
A reader writes:
You wrote:
"What matters is faith in a leader and unremitting violence in accomplishing goals. Whatever else this is, it isn't conservatism as I have come to understand it."
What American 'conservatism' has become fits closely within the definition of fascism: an intensely nationalist movement intent on defining membership in the 'nation' on linguistic, religious, and (increasingly) ethnic/racial criteria, accompanied by an unquestioning loyalty to (male) authority, enshrined in family leaders, business leaders, religious leaders, and especially, the leader of the nation, who is seen as embodying the Nation. Loyalty to the Party or Movement and its ideology is of great importance. Violence is the preferred means of accomplishing goals. Diplomacy, compromise, negotiation, are all identified with (feminine) weakness. The rule of law is also despised, because it lacks the immediacy of (violent) action, and its emphasis on balance and its concern with proper procedure is also seen as a sign of (feminine) weakness.
This is the outcome of the bargain the GOP made with the Devil back when it decided to go for the Wallace voters after the ’68 and ’72 elections. Kevin Phillips has repented a hundred times over for counseling the Southern Strategy, but too late. The GOP has discovered that when you sell your soul to the Devil, the only question is when does the Devil come to collect? Well, he's come.
And he's brought the waterboard.
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Let The Debate Continue
17 May 2007 07:20 pm
Rudy Giuliani argued in Tuesday's debate that any notion that U.S. involvement in the Middle East has contributed to anti-American feeling there and therefore helps foment Islamist terror is "absurd." But the 9/11 Commission explored just that dynamic. Has he read the report? I am not an isolationist. But I do believe that assessing the consequences of our foreign policy with respect to the power of Islamist sentiment in the Middle East is a legitimate inquiry. To give a simple example: the decision to bomb Iran for its nuclear activity may be wise or unwise. But we surely have to factor into our decision the blowback across the Muslim world that bombing a Muslim country would create. We have to assess whether it would so inflame Iranian public opinion that it would do more harm than good. This isn't leftism or anti-Americanism. It's common sense and prudence. There is something about the current debate about the war on the right that is deeply unhealthy. Ron Paul, for all his faults, is fresh air. We need more of it. To stir things up some more, here's a direct challenge to Rudy Giuliani. Quit the bullying and start debating, Mr Mayor. And get off that white horse. You're not our dictator yet.
Comey
17 May 2007 06:46 pm
If it weren't for the Republican debate, the death of Christianist Falwell, and the continuing U.S. Attorneys scandal, the Comey testimony would, I think, have been a huge story. Marty Lederman has gone cable on it. Here's a must-read post. And here's another.
Leahy Gets Madder
17 May 2007 06:10 pm
He's sending letters to administration officals that ring with the kind of passion usually reserved for condo association meetings. Josh has the documents here and here. Money quote to Gonzales:
You ignored the subpoena, did not come forward today, did not produce the documents and did not even offer an explanation for your noncompliance. Your action today is in defiance of the Committee's subpoena without explanation of any legal basis for doing so.
To which Gonzales offers no real response. He doesn't care. And neither does the president.
The Music of Chemistry
17 May 2007 06:07 pm
Protein as melody:
"We assigned a chord to each amino acid."
Face of the Day
17 May 2007 05:15 pm
A mourner pays her respects at a viewing for the late Rev. Jerry Falwell at Arthur S. DeMoss Learning Center of Liberty University May 17, 2007 in Lynchburg, Virginia. By Alex Wong/Getty.
Standing Up To War Crimes
17 May 2007 04:36 pm
Commander Matthew Diaz is being prosecuted by the government for trying to secure legal representation for some of the many detainees locked up for ever in Gitmo. We know what Mitt Romney believes: no suspect detained by the military should have a right to lawyers, even military ones. But Diaz was a military lawyer of 18 years' experience. And he knows the law - and the Geneva Conventions. That's why he's been targeted by the Bush administration. The Dallas Morning News has an exclusive interview with Diaz. Money quote from an explanatory piece:
In an hourlong interview after the opening day of trial on Monday, Cmdr. Diaz laid out his reasoning.
What is illegal, he said, is the Bush administration's prosecution of the war on terror. He accused officials of violating international law, such as the Geneva Conventions on the humane treatment of war prisoners, and the U.S. Constitution's guarantee of due process. "I made a stupid decision, I know, but I felt it was the right decision, the moral decision, the decision that was required by international law," Cmdr. Diaz said. "No matter how the conflict was identified, we were to treat them in accordance with Geneva, and it just wasn't being done." ...
In his interview with the News, he recalled two prosecutors, in particular, who "objected to the way the system was set up to guarantee a conviction. I don't believe they lasted long ... they didn't make it to the first hearings."
Of course they didn't. Video of the Diaz interview here.
The Party of Torture
17 May 2007 04:00 pm
The Washington Post and Greg Djerejian weigh in on the Republican party's shift toward withdrawal from the U.N. Convention Against Torture and the Geneva Conventions.
Rudy's Real Platform
17 May 2007 03:50 pm
The Onion has the scoop.
The View From Your Window
17 May 2007 03:41 pm
Hollywood, California, 3 pm.
Reality Check
17 May 2007 03:20 pm
Read this story from the NYT today, detailing the chaos and violence now engulfing several major Iraqi cities. This country cannot be put together again. And its spiral toward chaos is increasing in velocity, not decreasing.
The Military Versus Torture
17 May 2007 02:53 pm
In my view, last Tuesday's revelation of the GOP as a proudly pro-torture party marks the moment when they have become a danger to national security and to the integrity of American democracy. I'm not the only one appalled by what has happened to Republicanism that it could have degenerated into a party of Hollywood-inspired thuggery and lawlessness. Among others are the commandant of the Marine Corps from 1995 to 1999 and the commander in chief of U.S. Central Command from 1991 to 1994. They know more about warfare and torture than Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani ever could. And like every senior military official, they strongly oppose the authorization of torture as American policy. Because they want to win the war. Money quote:
As has happened with every other nation that has tried to engage in a little bit of torture -- only for the toughest cases, only when nothing else works -- the abuse spread like wildfire, and every captured prisoner became the key to defusing a potential ticking time bomb. Our soldiers in Iraq confront real "ticking time bomb" situations every day, in the form of improvised explosive devices, and any degree of "flexibility" about torture at the top drops down the chain of command like a stone -- the rare exception fast becoming the rule...
This has had disastrous consequences.
Read the whole thing. It's vital to grasp that torture is not only evil, illegal and criminal. It is also the greatest gift we have given bin Laden since 9/11.
(Photo: An Iranian couple walk past mural paintings depicting scenes from the torture of Iraqi prisoners by US soldiers at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, on a major highway in the Iranian capital Tehran 01 June 2004. By Behrouz Mehri/AFP/Getty.)
Bin Laden on Iraq and 9/11
17 May 2007 02:36 pm
Ron Paul was not hallucinating. Here's a speech from the monster - whom Bush has failed to kill or capture - in October 2001, justifying the 9/11 attack:
Millions of innocent children are being killed as I speak. They are being killed in Iraq without committing any sins, and we don't hear condemnation or a fatwa (religious decree) from the rulers...
When people at the ends of the earth, Japan, were killed by their hundreds of thousands, young and old, it was not considered a war crime, it is something that has justification. Millions of children in Iraq is something that has justification. But when they lose dozens of people in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam (capitals of Kenya and Tanzania, where U.S. embassies were bombed in 1998), Iraq was struck and Afghanistan was struck.
As I have said before, I don't believe this was a necessary or sufficient reason for al Qaeda to strike on 9/11. Their theology is sufficient. I don't believe that we did anything to "deserve" 9/11. But I do believe that in fighting enemies, we do well to listen to them, to understand their motives, in order better to defeat them. Let me quote someone who agrees with me:
Bin Laden and his terrorist allies have made their intentions as clear as Lenin and Hitler before them. The question is: Will we listen? Will we pay attention to what these evil men say? America and our coalition partners have made our choice. We're taking the words of the enemy seriously.
That's the president. So should we listen to OBL in trying to understand the motivations for his actions? Or shouldn't we? I'm confused. And should those who listen be ruled thereby inadmissable to primary debates? It appears so.
(Hat tip: Anonymous Liberal).
Ron Paul in New Hampshire
17 May 2007 02:14 pm
I don't agree with all of this, but it is worth airing. There is more potential support for his position among Republicans, conservatives and independents than some now think. Listen to the applause at the end. They're not leftists.
Email of the Day
17 May 2007 01:42 pm
A reader writes:
You wrote:
"There is no state more abject than the man broken on the waterboarding rack, or frozen to near death, or forced to stand for days on end, or hooded and strapped to shackles in a ceiling, or having his legs pulpified by repeated beating, or forced to eat pork and drink alcohol against religious strictures."
I'd say that there is only one state more abject than that. The torturer, who has voluntarily abdicated his humanity and actively works to destroy the freedom of his brothers and sisters. And that pitiful state is exactly what we're being reduced to.
Insta-Porn
17 May 2007 01:25 pm
Here's an image to get Second Amendment fans all worked up. If you look real close, you'll see they're all guns. There are 29,569 of them - one for every person killed by a gun in America in 2004. The photographer, Chris Jordan, specializes in large photos of massive amounts of objects - from cell-phones to plastic bottles to vicodin pills. His way cool website is here.
Destroying Ron Paul
17 May 2007 01:01 pm
The Rove machine creaks into action. He really must be a threat, mustn't he?
Torture, Moral Vanity and Freedom
17 May 2007 12:25 pm
One defensive reply from those who favor legalizing and authorizing torture of military detainees is that those of us who oppose it are preening morally or subject to moral vanity. Unfortunately, when you passionately oppose an absolute moral evil, it is very hard to avoid such an impression. All I can say is that I do not think of myself as a moral exemplar in any way. I'm a guilt-ridden, self-hating Catholic who was nonetheless brought up to believe as a matter of fundamental morality that torturing another human being - the deliberate infliction of cruelty and suffering on a defenseless person - is categorically evil. Nothing can make it good. It cannot be placed in a utilitarian context, because its violation of human dignity is so grave it is an absolute evil. This, by the way, is not a marginal position for a Christian. No Christian church, authority or theologian justifies torture. Christianity condemns it without reservation. And the fact that the church itself has inflicted torture in the past has perhaps helped to make this stricture absolute.
But for those who believe such a moral argument is somehow inherently self-righteous, let me try another tack. In a constitutional democracy based on the unalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, the abolition of torture in wartime was a defining mark of America. Washington himself set the moral standard and insisted on humane treatment of all military prisoners - as a defining mark of a new civilization. And the connection between liberty and torture is a very close one. There is no human being who has less liberty than a person being tortured ...
Continue reading "Torture, Moral Vanity and Freedom" »
Creating New Senses
17 May 2007 11:52 am
Scientists are making a new human being - by manipulating the old one:
For six weird weeks in the fall of 2004, Udo Wächter had an unerring sense of direction. Every morning after he got out of the shower, Wächter, a sysadmin at the University of Osnabrück in Germany, put on a wide beige belt lined with 13 vibrating pads — the same weight-and-gear modules that make a cell phone judder. On the outside of the belt were a power supply and a sensor that detected Earth's magnetic field. Whichever buzzer was pointing north would go off. Constantly.
"It was slightly strange at first," Wächter says, "though on the bike, it was great." He started to become more aware of the peregrinations he had to make while trying to reach a destination. "I finally understood just how much roads actually wind," he says. He learned to deal with the stares he got in the library, his belt humming like a distant chain saw. Deep into the experiment, Wächter says, "I suddenly realized that my perception had shifted. I had some kind of internal map of the city in my head. I could always find my way home. Eventually, I felt I couldn't get lost, even in a completely new place."
The effects of the "feelSpace belt" — as its inventor, Osnabrück cognitive scientist Peter König, dubbed the device — became even more profound over time. König says while he wore it he was "intuitively aware of the direction of my home or my office. I'd be waiting in line in the cafeteria and spontaneously think: I live over there." On a visit to Hamburg, about 100 miles away, he noticed that he was conscious of the direction of his hometown. Wächter felt the vibration in his dreams, moving around his waist, just like when he was awake.
You can learn to see with your tongue as well. Trippy.
Boring Meetings
17 May 2007 11:29 am
A fact of modern life. But, with new opinion surveys from the workplace, some people are trying to figure out how to alleviate them.
The Party of Torture
17 May 2007 11:07 am
Watching the Daily Show and Colbert last night, I felt for the first time that the plain fact of one party supporting war crimes is now on the radar screen. Most Americans don't want to discuss this, know about it, or think about it. But increasingly, the explicitly pro-torture position of the GOP will define their party. And it should define their party. The attempt to hide behind the ludicrously Orwellian term "enhanced interrogation techniques" won't work if it's properly challenged. The picture above is of an "enhanced interrogation technique". Romney's and Giuliani's position that they don't favor "torture" but would support any method necessary to extract information - like the above - is transparently absurd. The simple legal definition of torture must be thrown in their faces at every opportunity. These people do not get to define torture in a country under the rule of law. We are not in a Lewis Carroll novel. The law and our treaty obligations define torture. And its definition is clear in the UN Convention to which the U.S. is a signatory:
"any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession."
Does Rudy really believe that techniques that he supports and were deployed and finessed by Stalin and Pol Pot do not fall into this category? Does he really believe that waterboarding does not qualify under this plain legal definition? If Giuliani and Romney intend to withdraw the U.S. from the U.N. Convention against torture, as they declared on Tuesday night, then they must be asked to say so clearly and explicitly. If they believe that a president is above the law on these matters, then they should be forced to say so. They cannot be allowed to support violation of the rule of law and violation of international treaties on the down-low. If they want to get electoral dividends from a Republican base in love with torture, they must also face the consequences of supporting withdrawal from the U.N. treaty against torture. They must place America formally and legally on the side of countries and regimes that torture prisoners. Morally, they've already done so.
Banning Paul
17 May 2007 10:19 am
The GOP leadership moves swiftly to prevent any actual debate about the course of the party over the last ten years. They will ban such debate to their long-term detriment. The GOP increasingly seems like a church enforcing orthodoxy and loyalty, not a party welcoming diversity and discussion.
Remembering Falwell
17 May 2007 10:15 am
A fitting tribute:
I don't know what history will deem to be Falwell's greatest legacy. For me, it will always be his Institute of Biblical Studies — a videotape home Bible college he touted as the "finest biblical studies program ever developed." Years ago, I bought the video course — "just four easy payments, all major credit cards accepted" — and, for fun, I completed it, earning the diploma.
The many biblical lessons I learned included: 1) there were dinosaurs on Noah's ark and they "took up as much space as they wanted"; and 2) Jesus advocated the death penalty: "If ever there was a platform to cry out against capital punishment, our Lord had it on the cross." No kidding.
Hitch says what a Christian cannot here.
Astonishing Testimony
17 May 2007 09:27 am
Here's the video of James Comey, former deputy attorney general, testifying to the utter lawlessness of this president and his pliant creature, Gonzales. I never thought I'd say this but in comparison with his successor, John Ashcroft is an honorable man.