Nine Republican senators have joined to protest the idea of investigating deaths, waterboarding, and the rest of Darkness at Noon as reported by a CIA inspector general. After all, because Mukasey ignored torture, Holder must.
Among those signing this are
- John Kyl, minority whip
- Kit Bond, ranking member of the Intelligence Committee
- Jeff Sessions, ranking member of the Judiciary Committee.
May Aceldama take them.
This is from the LA Times, almost a day ago; the Washington Post does not yet have it, although the Washington Times does (and, being what they are, supports the letter); nor does not the New York Times
Only 24% of North Carolina Republicans think Obama was born in the United States; then again, only 89% think Hawaii counts as in the United States. And yes, that last piece of ignorance correlates with party and with distance up into the hills (nobody in the northeast of the State said it wasn't; 10% of the Appalachian end did.)
My classmate, the Confederate Libertarian, sends me:
...this is PRECISELY why the birthers are so "into" the ACTUAL BIRTH CERTIFICATE. As you've probably verified by now, you were wrong about believing (as I used to do) that Obama was a citizen anyway due to his mom. Nope, and this is why Rachel Maddow et alius look like morons saying that "well, McCain's parents had HIM outside the country, so we KNOW what's really going on, it's RACISM" blah blah. Nope, McCain's parents were both citizens which is a big difference. Obama's parents WEREN'T BOTH citizens, only one of them, which is exactly WHY the ACTUAL birth certificate is important, and any kid with any street smarts damned well knows why. Let's say, purely hypothetically of course, that Obama's mom wasn't exactly the sharpest tool in the shed, went outside the country thinking her kid would "of course" have US Citizenship, etc., and then after having already laid the egg, is told by someone that, well, no her son is NOT a US Citizen. I think you can see that if Barack got plopped in what is today Kenya (it wasn't even a country yet!), that the closest place they could go to "pretend" he was born here would be Hawaii. So dad, mom with her baby, etc. get on a plane to Hawaii, dad bribes some apparatchik to say the kid was born in such and such a hospital, and voila, he's got a birth certificate.
Set aside the CAPITAL LETTERS, and the legal question (I don't know the answer, but I suspect it to be of a piece with the rest of this; John Adams' eldest grandson was the child of a British subject, born in Berlin; if he were not eligible to be President, would he have been named George Washington Adams?) On the rest of this:
It proposes that a 18-year old freshman, without resources or connections, managed this conspiracy to fool the INS, within hours (or the birth announcement would not have been in the Hawaii newspapers). Nice trick for "not the sharpest tool in the shed" (in the real world, she got a doctorate in anthropology) operating from Kenya in 1961. (Have you any idea of what international phone lines were like in 1961? Even to Europe, let alone Kenya.)
It is a conspiracy without visible motive, unless she somehow foresaw that a half-Kenyan child would be in a position to run for President. ([cue theremin] O-O-O-O) The child of an American citizen would have gotten a residence permit, and would have been able to apply for citizenship in due course, around 1975.
The immediate effect (and purpose) of this conspiracy would have been to secure the issuance of a Hawaii birth certificate in 1961. The physical evidence will therefore show, even if this pipe-dream is correct, that the birth certificate was issued in 1961, because it was.
(Even nonsense conspiracies should avoid nonsense details. If all this were true, they would have picked Hawaii for the obvious, if minor, reason, that the Dunhams were already living there; she'd met Obama Sr while studying at the University of Hawaii.)
I am duly grateful for the mental exercise, and the evidence that the Right is, as much as in the days of Alfred Dreyfus, at war with Reason.
Hilsoy, at Obsidian Wings, has more:
I'm focused on looking forward too. And as I gaze into my crystal ball, I see a world in which members of the executive branch take it for granted that they can do whatever they want with impunity. Why not break the law? Why not eavesdrop on Americans? Why not torture people? Why not detain citizens indefinitely without charges? Heck, why not impose martial law and make yourself dictator for life? There is nothing to stop the people who make these decisions. They have nothing to fear. Because once they've made them, their actions are back there, in the past that no one ever wants to look at.
I also see a world in which everyone takes it for granted that there are two kinds of people, as far as the law is concerned. If most people tried to make the case that prosecuting their criminal acts was just "looking backwards", or a sign that the prosecutor was motivated by a desire for retribution, they'd be laughed out of court. Imagine the likely reaction if your average crack dealer were to urge the judge not to dwell on the past, or if someone who used accounting fraud to flip houses told offered a prosecutor the chance to be "very Mandelalike in the sense [of] saying let the past be the past and let us move into the future", or if I were pulled over for speeding and, when asked if I knew how fast I was going, replied that "Some things in life need to be mysterious ... Sometimes you need to just keep walking." I don't think any of us would get very far.
Is there any response to this, other than using Karl Rove's position, that any investigation (even a completely independent one, by a Special Prosecutor, or a bipartisan committee of non-officeholders, which are what Gibbs is ruling out) is partisan?
That is a declaration, long implicit in the Party of Treason, that there is no such thing as objective justice, only Republican or Democratic justice. That is the cry of totalitarianism everywhere, since Thrasymachus in Plato declared justice to be the interest of the stronger; it is false, and must be ignored.
(And if it were true, what then? If we must choose between Republican and Democratic justice, I know which I choose.)
- Mood:
enraged
From the LATimes:
The writer is Chandler Family Professor of Geology at the California Institute of Technology
I think this speaks for itself; but Prof. Wernicke has my sympathy.
The Washington Post reports that the Blue Dogs continue trimming the stimulus from its present inadequate amount, but not by much. Meanwhile, McCain, of Arizona, proposes half a stimulus (literally: 425 billion) concentrated on corporate tax cuts.
Tempting as it is to make cracks about his age, I think the fundamental insouciant corruption of Charles Keating's Senator is the real point here. At least this buffoon isn't President.
I copy this from ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
osewalrus , so many of you will have seen it; but I encourage you, especially those from Maine, Pennsylvania, North Dakota, and other states encumbered by an apologetic Senator of a compromising kind, to do the same:
osewalrus , so many of you will have seen it; but I encourage you, especially those from Maine, Pennsylvania, North Dakota, and other states encumbered by an apologetic Senator of a compromising kind, to do the same:We are not helpless. We will not wait for Obama or Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi or anyone else to save the stimulus bill from the conservative noise machine and the business as usual culture. We will fight back, and show them that America wants real change. Click here to get the phone number for your Sentors and Representative. Call and tell them: “Stop the failed policies of the last eight years! Government spending creates jobs, tax cuts don't! Pass the stimulus bill without any more presents to big business. No more tax cuts or other tax 'incentives'.”
Time for us to decide if we will be the Generation of the Desert or if we will be the Generation of Joshua. Will we die in the wilderness, or dare to cross the Jordan into the Promised Land?
Time for us to decide if we will be the Generation of the Desert or if we will be the Generation of Joshua. Will we die in the wilderness, or dare to cross the Jordan into the Promised Land?
On the contrary, the appeal of Locke and Mill and Paine depended on the force of their arguments. All three of them said this; I quote Mill below. (And if they are wrong about this essential point, the value of spreading their texts is doubtful.)
As a mere matter of fact, this would, I think, surprise Paine most, since he wrote when the Prime Minister had an arrest warrant out for him and the President had abandoned him to a foreign prison.
With thanks to Juan Cole, whose book on Napoleon i must review.
Added: This did, however, get to me to reread Representative Government, a useful reminder that Ajami has as little to do with Mill as the Gospels have to do with the First Crusade riding red to the fetlock through the streets of Jerusalem:
How is it possible, then, to compute the elements of political power, while we omit from the computation any thing which acts on the will? To think that, because those who wield the power in society wield in the end that of government, therefore itis of no use to attempt to influence the constitution of the government by acting on opinion, is to forget that opinion is itselfone of the greatest active social forces. One person with a belief is a social power equal to ninety-nine who have only interests. They who can succeed in creating a general persuasion that a certain form of government, or social fact of any kind, deserves to be preferred, havemade nearly the most important step which can possibly be taken toward ranging the powers of society on its side. On the day when the protomartyr was stoned to death at Jerusalem, while he who was to be the Apostle of the Gentiles stood by "consenting unto his death,"would any one have supposed that the party of that stoned man were then and there the strongest power in society? And has not the event proved that they were so? Because theirs was the most powerful of then existing beliefs?
- Considerations on Representative Government Chapter I.
And Mill is arguing here against social and economic determinism, not against proselytism by military force. I hope such minds as Ajami are treating Locke and Mill and Paine as mere flags, to be flown over whatever aggression suits him; otherwise we have here the doctrine of Robespierre and Lenin, that men must be compelled to be free.Paul Krugman is looking for a word to describe these quotes:
I consider myself a casualty, one of the many casualties of the war on terror. - Alberto Gonzales
And believe me, no one suffers more than their president and I do when we watch this.- Laura Bush, on the suffering in Iraq
Can you help?And believe me, no one suffers more than their president and I do when we watch this.- Laura Bush, on the suffering in Iraq
A voice from the University of South Carolina is complaining that Obama didn't pick anybody from the South. Apparently neither a Vice-President from Delaware nor a Secretary of State from Arkansas will do as a Southern voice for the Administration.
You know, maybe Wendell Phillips was right. If a foolish President had not given Southern traitors an unexampled and unwise clemency, we would not have been troubled with so much barbarous stupidity since. We might even have been spared from discusssing whether we should punish agents of the United States for torture.
Just after the last post, I note this, on Glenn Beck's fondness for claiming we're in 1860. Well, er, no. The Southern Democrats began 1860 by walking out of the Democratic Convention, and starting a third (and fourth) party because the nominee of the majority in the Party refused to obey them and declined to write a law for slavery in Nebraska. (He was supported in this by the majority.)
That's still a long chalk from the end of 1860, of course. Is Georgia going to secede (again) ?. Not likely. Lincoln wasn't on the ballot in Georgia; Obama got 47% of the vote.
Chapter VI of From Colony to Superpower deals with the Civil War and foreign policy under Johnson and Grant, or rather under Seward and Fish.
The most striking part of this, for me, is the sketch of the boorish incompetence of the Confederate diplomatic mission. Granted they had a difficult mission (it was an offense to the United States for responsible ministers even to talk to Confederate emissaries), but their greatest success was not even of their doing: Capt. Wilkes, USN, took two of them off the British steamer Trent without any of the appropriate formalities; the British dusted off the American objections to this sort of high-handedness from the War of 1812, and the resulting quarrel might actually have led to British recognition of the Confederacy.
But when Mason was released, and got to Britain, his speeches in favor of slavery and his bad aim with tobacco juice got him nowhere; Slidell did not understand how the French Government operated, or what the ministers wanted; the Confederate emissary to Saint Petersburgh never got there; and the star of the show, John Pickett of Kentucky, sent to Juarez in Mexico, managed to get arrested for brawling on the streets of Mexico City, offended and insulted the Mexican ministers, and eventually had Juarez intercepting his messages home and passing them on to Washington.
Herring describes this as provincialism and extreme cultural insensitivity, since he is discussing Europe as well as Latin America; he has described the same sort of thing as racism when talking about Polk or the American ministers to Mexico, like Joel Poinsett of Tennessee and Anthony Butler of Mississippi. I think he's right this time; assuming that any situation can be handled by a crude bribe, like Poinsett, or being more anti-Catholic than the anticlerical Juarez, like Pickett, isn't racism.
But provincialism can work for you, if you're a good enough diplomat. The Union minister to Russia, Cassius Clay, was also from Kentucky, and, like Dr. Franklin, he was a great success as a Noble Savage: pigeonwing dancing, Bowie knives, dueling, and all. Herring's source on Russia, Distant Friends, is about the relationship between Russia and the United States before Seward, and argues that the two got along because they had no interests (except a few sea otters) in conflict and each liked the existence of another state which might stand up to England. The problems of the hyperpower are not new.
The essential stupidity of Confederate foreign policy in general is another post: the Confederacy went to war for terms which mere victory could not achieve: would an independent CSA get its slaves returned from Massachusetts or a slave code in Nebraska? Yeah, right. (If Columbia had been supine at the conqueror's feet </lush metaphor>;, perhaps, but that was not in the cards.)
Herring does discuss how the Rebels solved the Union blockade on their foreign trade: to embargo cotton themselves (they burnt 2.5 million bales) before the Union could get its blockade in place. Again a fondness for the apocalyptic solution: if England doesn't rescue us, England and the Confederacy are going down together. It failed, as it fully deserved to: cotton production soared in Egypt and Bombay Presidency, and survived the re-entry of American cotton into the world market; and the North sold all the cotton it could from reconstructed areas. (Herring notes that this embargo, unlike 1807, was obeyed; but the South obeyed the Embargo of 1807 too.)
The end of the chapter deals with Seward and Hamilton Fish. Seward did make an amazing number of possible expansions of American power the Dominican Republic, the Danish West Indies, the Panama isthmus, Tiger Island in Honduras, Korea, Taiwan... Herring would use this to prove the normalcy of American expansionism, but what's really impressive is how fragile these deals are. The Danish deal blew over when a hurricane came through; but isn't Congress capable of remembering that there are hurricanes in the Caribbean without that?
The deals which came off during this whole period had someone pulling strongly for them at the other end: Alexander II was happy to get money for an indefensible possession like Alaska, which was no longer paying for itself (and Seward still got rooked on the price). The Kingdom of Hawaii reached close agreement with the United States because the haoles running the Islands' foreign affairs wanted very much to be inside the United States sugar tariff; and in exchange, Hawaii agreed not to lease bases to any third power, which the Hawaiians also wanted. (The Americans would have preferred an American base at Pearl Harbour, but were evaded.) The American share of the protectorate in Samoa began as an unauthorized agreement between the British, German, and American consuls to make Apia a neutral zone in the tribal wars.
There is an imperial ideology that this is how states get inveigled into adventure: the innocent imperial proconsul is just minding his own business when some foreigner decides to involve them in his private affairs; but that doesn't mean there is no truth to it.
Senator Bunning (R.-Ky) reached the public eye as a star pitcher for the Detroit Tigers fifty-some years ago. He voted against the auto bailout on Thursday; he was disinvited from a baseball-sgning event in the Detroit suburbs on Saturday.
Back some two or three months ago, Michigan was a battleground state....
Dick Cheney, of all people, lobbied for the GM bailout: "If we don't do this, we will be known as the party of Herbert Hoover forever." And so they will. In the immortal words of Langston Hughes, their hind brains don't work; but like Shelby, the Hoover of Alabama, many of them don't just have ideological motives to be stupid: Alabama has Mercedes, Hyundai and Honda plants.
But they're not just corrupt; they don't stay bought. The Detroit firms have consistently given more to the Republicans too.
With thanks to Digby.
More: James Surowiecki has more. GM's wage bill is 10% of its costs, and this is a tweak in that amount; if the loan was sound after breaking the UAW contract, it should be equally sound without breaking it. So not only is this wage control, it's wage control without economic purpose.
But IOKIYAR.
