(1) Paul at Powerline calls for the impeachment of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Powerline's John complained about a speech Ginsburg gave in South Africa in which she explained the reasoning as to why Supreme Court Justices, in extremely limited circumstances, cite foreign law in their judicial opinions. John proclaimed the speech to be "reprehensible" and "far removed [] from American laws and traditions." Paul, however, thought that she should not only be criticized, but punished:
It won't happen, of course, but I think there's a case to be made for impeaching Justice Ginsburg.
Impeaching disobedient federal judges is definitely something that is on the minds of Bush followers. At the confirmation hearings of Sam Alito, Sen. Coburn questioned Alito on whether he thought a judge who referenced foreign law in a judicial opinion could be removed from office under the constitutional "good behavior" clause. Coburn said: "I very strongly and adamantly feel that it [citing foreign law in a judicial opinion] violates the good behavior, which is mentioned as part of the qualifications and the maintenance of that position."
All of this is precisely the danger which Sandra Day O'Connor warned about in a speech she gave this month:
Sandra Day O'Connor, a Republican-appointed judge who retired last month after 24 years on the supreme court, has said the US is in danger of edging towards dictatorship if the party's rightwingers continue to attack the judiciary.
In a strongly worded speech at Georgetown University, reported by National Public Radio and the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin, Ms O'Connor took aim at Republican leaders whose repeated denunciations of the courts for alleged liberal bias could, she said, be contributing to a climate of violence against judges.
Ms O'Connor, nominated by Ronald Reagan as the first woman supreme court justice, declared: "We must be ever-vigilant against those who would strong-arm the judiciary."
That's what the world of Bush followers looks like. Reporters should be thrown into prison. Citizens should be removed from political events for wearing political t-shirts. The President has the right to break the law for our own good. Politicians who criticize the Administration are traitors and should be imprisoned, or worse. And Supreme Court Justices should be impeached -- or worse. Does any of that sound like America to you?
And, oh - it's vital that we fight The Terrorists so that we don't lose our freedoms. And the principal objective of our foreign policy is to run around teaching other countries how to be democratic and free.
(2) In a post condemning Feingold's censure resolution, Jeff Goldstein predicts that the U.S. is headed for another civil war -- at least he hopes so:
But then, today’s liberal-Democrats are nothing but opportunistic and increasingly reprehensible tin-plated Macchiavellians; to many of these people, rhetoric trumps truth; spin is paramount, and power is all.
Never before in my lifetime did I find it even remotely possible that our country could fight another civil war. But I’m beginning to think that a (non-violent) civil war is coming—and that, frankly, it needs to happen. How it transpires, I have no idea—though I suspect migration patterns and a strong move to re-affirm federalist principles could provide the groundwork.
The sentiments underlying Jeff's hopes for a civil war are found in the Comments section. In response to a commenter of his who pointed out that yet another formerly pro-war Bush follower (Greg Djerejian at Belgravia Dispatch) has acknowledged his error in supporting the war, Jeff relieved himself with this outburst:
Me, I say fuck it. Surrender. I’m tired of hearing all the bitching and whining from those who, had there been a 24 hour news cycle and a media like we are now blessed with, would have called for us to pull out of WWII on a thousand occasions. Which is cool. I look great in ash.
Jeff thinks he's going to be zapped into ash if we withdraw from Iraq. For people who have been driven to that level of personal fear and irrationality, is it really a surprise that they will start screaming for the removal of federal judges, the imprisonment of investigative journalists, and "another" American civil war - just for starters?
George Bush's Presidency is disintegrating in front of our eyes. And the Republican Party which he has dominated and controlled for the last five years is extremely weak and fragile. But they are not going to just fade quietly into the night.
Many of them have become convinced -- or convinced themselves -- that it is literally a matter of their immediate and personal survival that the country be controlled by Republicans devoted to the neoconservative mindset. Many of them actually believe that if those who deviate from that worldview gain political power, that they will be irradiated or blown up by Al Qaeda. And then still others are just so filled with rage and contempt for "liberals" (meaning anyone who is not a Bush supporter) that those sentiments are, by themselves, sufficient to push them into extreme and irrational thought as they lose more and more power.
Bush followers first gained power as part of an ugly and raucous fight. There will be few limits on what many of them will be willing, and eager, to do in order to hold onto it. Removing dissident judges, imprisoning political opponents, and calling for a "civil war" is a nice start.
We should make a list of all the people whom they've identified as traitors or called for their incarceration of death - it's probably have the population.
ReplyDeleteThat's the Culture of Life.
George Bush's Presidency is disintegrating in front of our eyes. And the Republican Party which he has dominated and controlled for the last five years is extremely weak and fragile. But they are not going to just fade quietly into the night.
ReplyDeleteJust how weak they are is confirmed in today’s New York Times, where Paul Weyrich admits that about the only thing that might keep disillusioned Republicans from staying home during the next election would be the prospect of impeachment. In short, they admit that the party has virtually nothing positive to run on, and that’s quite an admission.
It’s become quite clear that this administration does not know how to govern, but they do know how to campaign. Yet, even their new campaigns about Bush’s Medicare plan and his campaign to shore up support for the war in Iraq are falling on deaf ears.
I’m afraid that there’s only one issue that might save them from total defeat in the fall. And that’s if they can make a partisan issue out of an attack on Iran, and frighten the American people about immediate nuclear attacks from that country as Bolton did yesterday.
We know this campaign is coming, we know it could be successful -- are Bush opponents ready for it? They don’t seem to be anymore prepared than they were for Feingold’s resolution on censure. Are they ready for the charges that they are unwilling to protect the US from a nuclear attack from Iran? They better be.
The administration wants to have that issue prominent just before the elections, maybe even engaging in bombing runs and “Mission Accomplished” propaganda before it becomes clear that such an action has dire consequences. But we won’t see the consequences until after the election, and after the Republicans retain their majority status.
At least that’s the plan anyway. They want that issue to dominate all others, and it relies upon “fear” which is the underpinning of all the ideas of these cornered rats. It’s all they’ve got left – nothing positive at all, just fear and smear.
"But then, today’s liberal-Democrats are nothing but opportunistic and increasingly reprehensible tin-plated Macchiavellians; to many of these people, rhetoric trumps truth; spin is paramount, and power is all."
ReplyDeleteIt's fascinating how he can take something like Feingold's censure resolution that's supported by basically NO Democrats except Feingold himself, and use it as a reference for a blanket statement about ALL Democrats.
Jeff
"reprehensible tin-plated Macchiavellians; to many of these people, rhetoric trumps truth; spin is paramount, and power is all."
ReplyDeleteIt's also fascinating how he can do it with such an accurate description of Republicans themselves.
The Rethugs want to rule,they have NO CLUE how to govern. And I'm still not convinced the '08 elections will be held. I'm figuring someone in the White House is hoping for another terrorist attack,so they can declare martial law and cancel the elections. Lord knows, they've done nothing to actually protect us
ReplyDeleteThe ash reference could be a reference to the color of the german uniforms.
ReplyDeleteGreat blog. Keep up the good work.
The ash reference could be a reference to the color of the german uniforms.
ReplyDeleteYes, that's true - or he might have meant that he would be covered in ash (from the explosions), rather than reduced to ash. The reference wasn't entirely clear, but whatever it was, it is a paranoid vision that rules the world-view of many of them.
I don't think a civil war is coming non-violent or otherwise. There are a number of voters on the fringe that would support GWB regardless of what he did, but they are a distinct minority. Even many Republicans are starting to abandon Bush. In the breakdown of a recent poll, while he still held a majority, his poll numbers dropped 14 points among Republican voters. There is a lot of buyers remorse in the purple states but the Dems have to really start stepping up to the plate to take advantage of it.
ReplyDeleteWhy was every senator's office today slammed with telephone calls, and almost impossible to reach? Because we, unlike most of them, know what it means to fight. Why is Russ Feingold the man of the hour? Because he, unlike most of his colleagues, knows we expect our leaders to fight when principle and patriotism demand it, and he is striving to meet our expectation.
ReplyDeleteFeingold's censure resolution isn't even about George Bush anymore. It's about us, our representatives and the essential nature of the Democratic Party. Are we appeasers who cower and calculate when our nation's essential liberties and values are under attack, or are we willing to take a stand and do battle for the principles our country represents? We know what the Republican propaganda says about us; the Senate Democrats' initial response to Feingold's motion suggests that propaganda is true. But there is still time for our leaders to redeem themselves.
Feingold has finally called The Big Question. In the Senate Democratic Caucus are Patriots who love the Nation and the Constitution that defines it, and Politicians who hoard their perquisites and their power. The two will now be separated, pols from patriots, goats from sheep. Thanks to Feingold, there is no longer a place to hide: sooner or later censure must be voted on, and on that day every Democratic senator will be weighed in the scales, his or her worth measured and recorded.
Our nation, endangered from without, embattled abroad, and divided within, requires leaders with extraordinary courage. Feingold's resolution, which imposes no penalty on the President other than opprobrium and exacts no cost from its supporters other than political capital, has become the test of which Democrats possess the requisite courage, and which do not. Those who fail that test -- who conform themselves to less strenuous principles than those their consituents hew to -- will pay a steep political price for their failure. Not, as the pundits will claim, for failing to "pander" to their base, but for being unworthy of it.
VichyDems
I think he meants covered in ash, as NYers were after 9-11.
ReplyDeleteWhen Republicans start talking like the censure motion is great for them, Democrats ought to see it for what it is -- whistling in the dark. If the Feingold censure motion were to be 100% backed by every Senate Democrat, the Democratic Party might finally be seen as capable of leading the country out of this morass by the 60% of Americans who already know or strongly suspect that the President broke the law.
ReplyDelete"I look great in ash"
ReplyDeleteSince he's talking about civil war, why not assume he means grey, as in blue vs grey? As in secessionist?
Vkjlls said...
ReplyDelete"We should make a list of all the people whom they've identified as traitors or called for their incarceration of death - it's probably have the population.
That's the Culture of Life."
Yup that's a real culture of life the Republicans have. They want to outlaw a womans right to choose so that when the kids grow up the Republicans can send them to pre-emptive wars to get killed.
If people in this country really want to end wars of choice all they have to do is make sure there is a law that any Congressperson that votes for war has to enlist their own kids and any other relatives of military age to go first. It's called leadership.
ueberscheisse said
ReplyDelete'"I look great in ash"
Since he's talking about civil war, why not assume he means grey, as in blue vs grey? As in secessionist?'
Exactly my thought. Maybe grey is the new red, as in blue vs. red. Grey, the color of mourning.
Glenn, you may be interested in this post from Think Progress.
ReplyDelete“Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said she and former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor have been the targets of death threats from the ‘irrational fringe’ of society, people apparently spurred by Republican criticism of the high court.” The latest right-wing campaign: “J.A.I.L. 4 Judges“
Re the civil war imagery used by the Right: I think that this has been happening for some time. What else are the so-called "culture wars"?
ReplyDeleteThe fact that they are winning the war indicates how well organized thay've been. I've written elsewhere about the neo-cons and religious right's Leninist tactics. By this, I don't mean they're commie, I mean that they've learned from Lenin that a small, dedicated core of true believers can bring about major changes.
Their strategy seems to have worked so far. They've captured the communication hubs, bullied and bribed the gate-keepers, and now set about ransacking the constitution.
They've exploited the very well-known Leninist perception that the "masses" are simply unwilling or perhaps incapable of doing anything on their own. Who does have the time to engage in a citizen's obligations when you're concerned about the necessities?
What's needed here is a decentered, non-hierarchical approach to power. The masses have been duped into believing that only groups bring about change. When faced with seemingly irreoslveable issues, they resort to apathy and say, "what can I do?"
A decentered approach 1) identifies the danger to their sense of self 2) shows that they have individual responsibility to do something about it and 3) identifies possibility where there's seeming impossibilities.
In other words, start small-let people know that they do not to be overwhlemed by power, thatt they have power to do what they can. In the aggregate, many individuals doing what they can will bring about a sense of greater empowerment as well as an awareness of the direction for further growth.
Please oh PLEASE let them bring about another civil war. I wont fire the first shot but I would LOVE it if one of them did. I'm a crack shot, I don't miss (and I'm a liberal to boot...and a veteran, unlike ANY of these screeching hate-filled, anti-Constitutional harpies).
ReplyDeleteLet them get desperate. Let them get so desperate that they cause another civil war. They will lose that one just as they lost the first one.
Rove et al thought they could achieve the yet to be achieved: using maladaptive disordered personality people for their personal gain and be able to control them. Can't be done, and now we are going to see the results as the core personality of their party starts to transpose their focus and act on what Rove et al thought was just talk.
ReplyDeleteGee, didn't those crazies know we didn't really mean too...
Re the civil war imagery used by the Right: I think that this has been happening for some time.
ReplyDeleteThat’s what I was thinking. How would a “non-violent” civil war look any different than what we have now in terms of rhetoric? They call the opposition party “The Treason Party” and “The Party of Death” and their followers sick, insane, terrorist-loving etc.
How can they possibly escalate their rhetoric anymore?
David Neiwart has been documenting their “eliminationist” rhetoric for quite some time. Rush Limbaugh says that a few liberals should be allowed to live just so we remember how bad they were. That’s not rhetorical civil war?
How does this get any worse without without actual violence?
Re: civil war: One of the things I hate the current Republican leadership for is that they've made me second-guess my admiration for Lincoln. Maybe we should have let the South secede. There would be two nations today, one liberal and prosperous in the north, one reactionary and impoverished in the south. All the conservative sunbirds would have a place to go and leave us alone.
ReplyDeleteJust ranting...
Speaking of the South: When Republicans start talking like the censure motion is great for them, Democrats ought to see it for what it is -- whistling in the dark.
Shorter Republicans: "please, oh please don't throw us in the briar patch!"
Violence? What else would you call taking out Supreme Court Justices? News sources report that Justice Ginzburg and O'Connor have received death threats. Now, the Right will deny reposnsibility for these sentiments. But that's a deceitful dodge because their rhetoric implies and tends toward this type of reaction.
ReplyDeleteEric in Ottawa: I disagree. I think the virtue lacking here is courage. As I understand it, courage means knowing what to fear and what not to fear. Fear is paramount in governing. It is the basis of authority. What the Reps have done is to replace the right fear with the wrong fear.
ReplyDeleteThe attacks on our judiciary were the first thing that sent me into psychological severance from the Bush/Frist GOP, during Schiavo. All the shrill screeching about a Republican, Baptist FL probate judge purportedly being involved in a murderous plot, engaging in "judicial activism" & etc...that all caused this disabled, elderly judge to have to live under 24/7 armed guard due to death threats, all for properly applying the law of his state (he was repeatedly upheld on appeal).
ReplyDeleteLearning now that O'Connor and Ginsburg are receiving death threats, calls for Ginsburg's impeachment -- in addition to Cornyn's reprehensible remarks of last year that O'Connor recently alluded to -- and, well, I DO NOT UNDERSTAND how these people can be regarded as conservatives. This is anarchy, and I also find myself flirting with a word I had heretofore considered hyperbolic, namely, fascist.
And about foreign law. I've made it clear here that I'm not on board with the U.S. submitting itself to so-called international law. But that said, I never had a problem with Anthony Kennedy's discussion of foreign standards when it comes to deciding what constitutes cruel and unusual punishment in the matter of executing people who committted crimes while minors. "Cruel and unusual" is a subjective standard that invites the judiciary to go far afield into morality, and I could not see where or why, on a shrinking globe, Kennedy should not be at least considering how the rest of the Western world looks at the issue. If by definition something isn't cruel and unusual because it happens anywhere in the U.S., then the clause is meaningless.
In any event, it is going to be (a) leftists and liberals, and (b) the media that the Bush supporters will be, and already are, blaming for the debacle in Iraq. Never mind that all you have to do is read Mohammed over at Iraq the Model to see how Baghdad is faring. Mohammed reproduced an awful exchange with his father, in which the old man concluded the tribal violence is uncontainable and the religious partisans eager for murder; the democratic project thus will fail, in the father's view.
That isn't the liberal media making or influencing such an assessment, or American lefitsts doing so. It's Iraqis who were hopeful about democracy taking off, but are now despondent in the face of reality.
As I understand it, courage means knowing what to fear and what not to fear.
ReplyDeleteNo sir. Courage has nothing to do with knowing what to fear and what not to fear. Courage is doing what must be done in spite of fear. It is doing the right thing and keeping your head even when you feel great fear. THAT is courage.
THAT is also what is lacking in ALL our "representatives", be they GOPer or Dem. There is no courage there except in Feingold. Everyone else gives into fear. Every single one of them.
Terminus Est: There'll always be fear. The thing to do is to channel that fear in the right and virtuous direction. People without fear are the most dangerous of sociopaths.
ReplyDeleteIt's pretty clear that what Goldstein meant was that if liberals had been in charge, Germany would have won WWII. Fortunately, Roosevelt was president instead.
ReplyDeleteOr something equally stupid.
I also find myself flirting with a word I had heretofore considered hyperbolic, namely, fascist.
ReplyDeleteAs someone who keeps fending off attacks on the term "Vichy Dems", thank you. When Godwin's Law was written, there weren't fascists slowly taking over our country. Now there are, and to arbitrarily dictate that there are certain aspects of history we're not allowed to learn from does, indeed, doom us to repeat them.
Fascists fascists fascists. Chamberlains Chamberlains Chamberlains. Vichies Vichys Vicheze. Quisling Quisling Quisling. There. I said it. Ha.
/venting
About "fear": We are entitled to expect that they will fight with the same passion we do, motivated by the same sense of what is right rather than what is merely expedient, with the same courage based on hope rather than caution based on fear.
ReplyDeleteOne finding of the MyDD poll that surprised me was that Dems and liberals are MORE afraid of another terrorist attack than Republicans. This may be the main reason we do not currently have even more violence against perceived "traitors" than we do.
ReplyDeleteSorry, I have to go to work, so can't chase down the myDD link, but I was struck by this apparent anomaly. The Bush base is acting more from comfort than from fear? Seems impossible.
Jon has a post over at Q and O that shows Republicans in 1999 saying about military efforts in Kosovo exactly what they are now accusing people of treason for saying about Iraq.
ReplyDeleteSomeone mentioned Rush. The other day he suggested Bill Clinton had Slobodon Milosovic killed. Not to mention him a while back fantasizing about kicking roughly 50% of the US population out of the country.
And this is someone who the military makes sure our soldiers can hear on the radio.
Glenn:
ReplyDeleteI find it amusing that you are so concerned about the maintenance of checks on Executive power, but ridicule use of the only check on judicial power - impeachment.
If Mr. Bush enforced foreign laws in the United States, he should most definitely be impeached for gross abuse of power.
If that is so, exactly why should Justices who are now rewriting our Constitution with foreign law be immune to checks on their gross abuse of power?
the only check on judicial power - impeachment.
ReplyDeleteBart, you're not a lawyer, are you? I can tell.
Judges (a) can only interpret and apply laws that already exist. They can't write new ones. When they apply the Constitution, righties accuse them of writing new law, but that's not the case.
(b) Judges have no army. Congress can declare war. The President can deploy troops overseas and the National Guard at home. Courts? If the political branches don't support their rulings, there's nothing they can do.
(c) Judges can only react to cases brought before them, they can't be proactive. If the President chooses not to prosecute anyone under a criminal law passed by Congress, the courts can't make him.
(d) The Founders wanted judges almost immune from political pressure. It was part of their plan to create a republic rather than an Athenian democracy: they diffused power. The House was supposed to be highly democratic, a boiling pot of popular sentiment: lots of members, locally elected, fresh every two years, few rules. The Senate was to be less democratic: the "cooling saucer" for the House's boiling tea. The President was a hybrid: a longer term of office than House members, a shorter term than Senate members, and nationally elected (but beholden to electors rather than directly to the people).
In this scheme, the courts were designed to be the least democratic of all the branches: unelected, lifetime tenure, impeachable only for reasons of personal misconduct, not for what their opinions say. But to counterbalance that autocratic nature, the Founders also made the courts the weakest branch, which they still are.
I know conservatives would love to rally the masses. Socrates is dangerous to our young people, and needs to be killed. But once he's dead, you'd erect a statue honoring him. The courts are our bulwark against that kind of populist stupidity.
Stop reading the right-wing tracts, start reading a LSAT prep booklet, and come back in three years to talk about legal issues.
/pissy snark
Jon has a post over at Q and O that shows Republicans in 1999 saying about military efforts in Kosovo exactly what they are now accusing people of treason for saying about Iraq.
ReplyDeleteHe is right. I've written about that before, here. The GOP relentlessly criticized and mocked every American military action when Clinton was President, including when troops were in harm's way.
Put another way, they engaged in every single action back then that they now claim constitutes treason.
support for the war in Iraq.
ReplyDeleteDon't think of it as a war.
Think of it as a very, very expensive campaign commercial.
Glenn - I want to know why the right wing blogger who made death threats against Sandra Day O'Connor hasn't had his goddamned hard drive confiscated. It's always someone on the left who gets the SS visit and gets their harddrive confiscated, who is accused of Sedition and publicly mocked.
ReplyDeleteKeep hammering away, please. It makes me feel somewhat better that you are here and doing this. Most days I wish I hadn't gone to law school. Maybe I wouldn't be so damned mad and worried all the time about the constitution and the rule of law (we used to have).
I love that Goldstein seems to think the rest of us would miss the Bush Bedwetting Cult if they somehow seceded from the Union.
ReplyDeleteRight. Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.
I think these people, at least, the Republican political leadership and many of their shills in the media and cronies in vaious appointed positions, have every right to fear. They are highly dishonest to their base about what they fear, but then, they have to be.
ReplyDeleteThey fear the light of truth.
This particular organized crime syndicate we laughingly call a political party fears that, with anyone else gaining power, their many, many illegal, immoral, hypocritical, and downright evil acts will eventually all come to light. At that point many of them will be jailed for life (and, if their opponents actually believed in the death penalty these bozos seem to worship, they'd be given the death penalty), others will have their careers and lives ruined as a result of their actions finally seeing the light of day, and those who manage to escape this will still have their ill-gotten gains restored to the people, leaving them back to needing a job in this country they have so thoroughly ruined that jobs are very hard to come by.
Given al this, fear is a very rational reaction.
In the process of reading many comments on this site, as well as other sites like Kos, I keep finding people concluding that there is some fundamental structural flaw in the American political system that has allowed this dreadful state of affairs to develop. Constant was promoting his site yesterday. Without investigating it thoroughly, it appears to be a highly ambitious program for a Constitutional Convention.
ReplyDeleteMy own inclination is for a more conservative surgery, such as the establishment of an enhanced office of Ombudsman, somewhat on the European Model. Somehow that just seems like a more palatable solution than another Civil War.
Given the august persons present on this thread, I would be most interested in any comments on the concept of constitutional amendments to accomplish the following:
1. Comprehensive regulation and funding of campaign finances,
2. Independent redistricting commissions for House seats, and
3. A constitutionally independent Attorney General with the authority to investigate both executive and congressional malfeasance.
I need a ruling.. Would the Bible be considered foreign law?
ReplyDeleteI think that you are attributing too much thought to this right-wing reactionary behaviour. I think that their reactions, much like the foundation of their political beliefs as a whole, are based entirely on emotion. Surely, there is little reason involved when an attorney rants about the impeachment of a Supreme Court Justice because she speaks to the influence of foreign law in American jurisprudence. Instead, he is caving to a primitive emotion to react, and react without stopping to reason.
ReplyDeleteI think Jeff's ash reference was a reference to ash as a symbol of mourning. But whatever.
ReplyDeletePersonally if Jeff and others want to stage a "non-violent civil war" through "migration patterns" I'm with bgno64: Go for it guys. Could we fit 33 percent of Americans in Montana and Kansas?
honestly, I think we're entering a very dangerous period in american history. I agree that, as popular support for Bush erodes, the admin. and the far right fringe that still supports him are going to ratchet up the eliminationist rhetoric. There's already plenty of violent rhetoric all over the place, and it's only going to get worse.
ReplyDeleteAlso, what's really disturbing to me about the abu graib photos is what they say about what average americans are capable of. We tend to assume that "it can't happen here" (to quote Sinclair Lewis) because most people are too kind and too smart to support a truly evil administration. But when push comes to shove, I really wonder how many people would happily go along and become the right's "willing executioners."
Compare and contrast this with the Schiavo debacle from the other side of the aisle and I see the exact opposite of motivation AND response. Frist, a medical doctor and senator, sees a political point to be made for a lost cause that involves 1 person and gets the entirety of the 3 branches of federal government bumping and grinding in a weekend emergency capacity. Conversely, Feingold wants to uphold and defend the constitution in the face of criminal activity by the executive branch and his esteemed colleagues gasp and hide under the closest rock they can find.
ReplyDeleteIf we ever needed clear evidence that DC is messed up, we just stepped in it.
Funny that they're not into 'international laws', because these 'suggestions' are reminding more and more of those Nuremberg ones from the 30's.
ReplyDeleteAnd it's a good thing that the Magna Carta was signed in Ohio, otherwise they might not have a single fucking clue what they're talking about.
No worries, bushtards! Operation Save My Poll Numbers is already underway!
ReplyDelete.
The Rethugs want to rule,they have NO CLUE how to govern. And I'm still not convinced the '08 elections will be held. I'm figuring someone in the White House is hoping for another terrorist attack,so they can declare martial law and cancel the elections.
ReplyDeleteAnd this sounds like tinfoil-hat-talkery, until one remembers that in the immeidate wake of 9/11 Rudy Giuliani, Republican Mayor of New York, made an utterly unprecedented power grab. He demanded a 3-month extension of his mayoral term (he was term limited out at the end of the year), and threatened to illegally run for office in spite of term limits if he wasn't given his three months.
There's precedent for this kind of move. I'm just saying that if the opportunity presents itself, don't be surprised when Mr. "War President" decides the country needs more continuity. Even I'm not yet tin-foil hatted enough to believe they'd help the opportunity present itself. This probably signals a failure of imagination on my part.
With respect to bullet point (1) above (put bluntly) the Powerline folks don't know what the hell they're talking about. From the Paquete Habana, 175 US 67:
ReplyDeleteInternational law is part of American law, and must be ascertained and administered by the courts of justice of appropriate jurisdiction, as often as questions of right depending upon it are duly presented for their determination. For this purpose, where there is no treaty, and no controlling executive or legislative act or juricial decision, resort must be had to the customs and usages of civilized nations; and, as evidence of these, to the works of jurists and commentators, who by years of labor, research and experience, have made themselves peculiarly well acquainted with the subjects of which they treat. Such works are resorted to by judicial tribunals, not for the speculations of their authors concerning what the law ought to be, but for trustworthy evidence of what the law really is.
In fairness, that quote does not endorse the use of foreign sources to determine constitutional rights, but it is not an unreasonable extension to do so. The folks on the right may not like Ginsburg's particular method of jurisprudence (because they're just hankering to execute the mentally disabled).
See also generally Restatement (2d and 3d of foreign relations section 113) and associated case law. No court has held that standards such as jus cogens overrides an express statutory requriement to the contrary, but that's a long way from saying--as a categorical rule that the use of custom is grounds for impeachment or unethical to use as a ground for determining an individual right.
Perhaps the'd like to impeach this judge as well:
Mehinovic v. Vuckovic (2002)
CITATION: 198 F.Supp.2d 1322, 1344
COURT: United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia
DATE: 2002
TREATMENT: Comment (k) cited in footnote
SUMMARY: Muslim refugees from Bosnia-Herzegovina brought an action alleging, in part, that they were tortured by a Georgia resident, who was a former Bosnian Serb soldier. The court entered judgment for plaintiffs and awarded them compensatory and punitive damages, holding, inter alia, that plaintiffs showed, as to each of them individually, that defendant committed the following violations of customary international law, which conferred jurisdiction, and established liability, under the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA): torture; cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment; arbitrary detention; war crimes; and crimes against humanity. The court said that a jus cogens violation satisfied, but was not required to meet, the standard for a claim to be actionable under the ATCA.
"Whiny-ass-titty-baby" don't even begin to cover it.
Personally if Jeff and others want to stage a "non-violent civil war"...
ReplyDeleteNo, man. I'm specifically talking about a violent civil war.
Because that's what they are invoking. And you know what? You, and I, and everyone else on this side of the fence had damn well better be prepared for the day when someone actually tries to put a bullet in Ruth Bader-Ginsburg instead of merely jawing about it; you had damn well better be prepared when the cornered rats DO lash out.
This crowd will not go quietly. And if they were to start with the violence, one of two things happen: It so alienates the American mainstream that they pound the nails in their own coffins; or two, you get the likes of President Dipstick going on national TV saying that he abhors violence, but...
...and ultimately signaling some sort of tacit approval.
You and I had better be ready for the day that happens, if it happens. Liberals have already allowed themselves to be intimidated for far too long. They want a fight? I'll give them a fucking fight.
And you'd better be ready to do the same.
I don't know Goldtein's specific views on the semantics of the Iraq conflict, but I find it interesting that he's defining "civil war" down to the level where it can be non-violent and based strictly on political ideology (even though he seems to think one side is really anti-American), while many of his ideological brethren insist that an extremely violent, sectarian conflict should not be called a civil war.
ReplyDeleteI've been sounding this klaxon for years. As soon as these lunatics lose actual political power, they will all become Timothy McVeigh's.
ReplyDelete--Hesiod
Don't think that putting off an election is beyond the party.
ReplyDeleteI haven't forgotten talk of delaying the election back in 2004.
You're right glen. They are thugs by and large. They are dangerous and are definitely crossing the line into screaming fire in a crowded theater. It's time for dems to get serious and realize that the punditocracy of the right is more dangerous then most of the base. The machine itself represents less than a fraction of a fraction of a percent of republicans, but it is the machine itself that must go. Hence the deperation of the hindraker and goldstiens who forsee their money faucets turning off in the near future.
ReplyDeleteRepublicans want to cut funding to Move on precisely because they fear they themselves will be defunded for their incomeptences and near drunken innefectiveness. The right spin machine is uncanny in projecting its neurosises in attack mode.
They attack gays because many are closeted gays. They pretend that liberals are facists when they know they are the ones. It time to put this psychotic dog down.
It time to get organized for the election campaigns of the fall. Get boots on the ground. Ensure that the vote poker is not used against us. Get them out of power and shine light on the criminal processes. These guys don't belong in governement they bleong in jail, or in some cases the rooms with the padded walls.
I would be most interested in any comments on the concept of constitutional amendments to accomplish the following:
ReplyDelete1. Comprehensive regulation and funding of campaign finances,
2. Independent redistricting commissions for House seats, and
3. A constitutionally independent Attorney General with the authority to investigate both executive and congressional malfeasance.
As amendments (divorced from the question of how we obtain them):
1. Yep. Corporations aren't people, and money ain't speech.
2. Maybe. I fear they'd become political and/or crooked pretty fast no matter what we did.
3. Nope. Just wouldn't fit into the framework, and I don't want an Inquisition. Imagine Ken Starr with even fewer restraints.
But: there's nothing in the Constitution that says a Convention must stick to the purpose for which it's convened. Once it's in session, then it probably has carte blanche to rewrite everything. That's why I'm opposed to Constitutional Conventions in general. The slow, state-by-state process is much safer when there are demagogues in the house.
My $.02
I have to agree with the theory that the ash he is referring to is for mourning.
ReplyDeleteit is at least ill-advised to even suggest that you should look to foreign law for guidance. There is plenty of case precedence in the U.S. and it would be irresponsible to make legal decisions in this country using a foreign courts interpretation.
ReplyDeleteWhy?
Look at it this way: the Taliban based their legal system on the Koran. The Koran basically was their constitution.
Within their legal system, therefore, Koranic punishments were perfectly acceptable. That's why they chopped off the hands of thieves and literally buried adulteresses in sand and stones them and beat women with chains if their bare ankle showed when they were in public.
Most Americans, when they learned about these things, said they were barbaric. Stopping such inhuman punishments were part of the administration's case for war, even.
Why would we object to a punishment that is perfectly consistent with Afghanistan's internal laws? Because, judged against the larger backdrop of humanity, those punishments were inhumane, barbaric. Cruel and unusual, as it were.
So flip it over. Why is it different for us?
Glenn:
ReplyDeleteTo understand much of what is going on in America today, Americans need to study the Zionist Movement, the creation of the State of Israel, the politics of anti-semitism, and the United States relationship with Israel.
If five years ago someone told me that our status and image in the world runs through the Israel, I'd say they were crazy. Not anymore.
well written sir - scares holy hell out of me!
ReplyDeleteThersites:
ReplyDeleteThanks for the 2 cents. Generally I agree with what you are saying: A Constitutional Convention is a terrifying prospect with the presence of the radical religious right in this country.
The public campaign financing may be the most important reform of the lot, anyway. The river of money flowing through DC is not just about favored dispensing of government contracts and such, it also distorts the entire political process.
When the ability of weathly components of the society lose the ability to buy control, the whole system will tend to right itself, and congress will start attending to the business of good governance again, IMHO.
Under those circumstances, things like the congressional ethics committees might start functioning again.
For people who have been driven to that level of personal fear and irrationality, is it really a surprise that they will start screaming for the removal of federal judges, the imprisonment of investigative journalists, and "another" American civil war - just for starters?
ReplyDeleteThat ain't the half of it.
Have you considered what would happen if it was revealed that the 9/11 attacks were staged? The national shame (at least, I hope so) at finding that we slapped ourself on the wrist and used it as a pretext to invade whoever we liked? We'd be no better than Nazi Germany.
How many members of the Bush administration would be tried for war crimes, and convicted?
Still wonder why the whole right wing is so paranoid?
Sullivan, just now:
ReplyDeleteBut you only have to watch O'Reilly or read Powerline or listen to Sean Hannity or David Horowitz to know that the only thing that really gets them fired up any more is loathing of liberals. The only way the GOP base will be motivated to vote for an incompetent, exhausted, fiscally insane administration is if they get to vote against "libruls". ... So watch out for the anti-left hate and hysteria from Republicans. It's coming. It's all they've got left.
The reason we shouldn't look to other countries is because we have the most freedom of any country. You can bitch all you want about the Patriot act, but we are still the most free country and we have the most liberal society in terms of freedoms.
ReplyDeleteThat's the funniest, stupidest thing I've read in a month. Circular reasoning at its best. We're the most liberal society in terms of freedoms. Therefore we have no need to look to other countries, because they have nothing to teach us. Therefore we have no basis for knowing how we compare to them in terms of relative freedom. Therefore our assumption that we're the most liberal society in terms of freedoms never gets challenged. Q.E.D.
Look: Ginsburg looks at other countries' laws in order to assess whether punishments inflicted by the U.S. are cruel and unusual. We are one of the only countries in the world that imposes the death penalty on minors. We are one of the only countries in the world that imposes the death penalty on the mentally deficient. We're THE only industrialized Western country with the death penalty at all.
Is a country that executes children "the most liberal society in terms of freedoms"? I don't think so. And if we don't have the simple morality to recognize the immorality of executing children by referring only to our own law, then perhaps embarrassment -- looking at what our peers are doing, and seeing how illiberal and cruel we look compared to them -- will help us recover our senses (and our souls).
Glenn is right that "Many of them have become convinced -- or convinced themselves -- that it is literally a matter of their immediate and personal survival that the country be controlled by Republicans devoted to the neoconservative mindset. Many of them actually believe that if those who deviate from that worldview gain political power, that they will be irradiated or blown up by Al Qaeda."
ReplyDeleteI think it is important to realize that many Democrats (say, starting with Joe Lieberman, going up..) share in essence the same conviction - i.e. they actually agree with the administration's policies and police-ies. They are afraid of 'damaging' this presidency thinking that this would make them vulnerable to the 'enemy'.
When one's survival is threatened, it is typical for one to think "if you are not with me you are against me", as the current administration promoted. This, in essence, explains much of the animosity between the various factions in discourse. Those of us who can relate to the rest of the world the least are the ones who want to 'defend what we have' at all cost, and they mean either material possessions or what they believe is canonical. They are the ones most afraid of the rest of the world (and the terrorists). When Bush et. al. say "our values" they mean canons (divine law) and dollars - NOT the bill of rights.
Think about it a bit: Under attack, we - the people - do not have the same priorities as to what to protect. To some it is their investments, to others it is their version of the Bible; to some it is their family, to others it is their perceived right to drive Hummers and own guns.
When people speak of 'protecting our values', they don't all mean the same things.
P.S.: You wrote: You're basically saying that foreign opinion should be weighted equally or more than U.S. opinion in some cases.
ReplyDeleteThat's disingenuous. No one --even Ginsburg -- ever said that foreign law should be given equal weight with U.S. law. All we're saying is that in some cases -- ones that involve basic human values, like whether a given punishment is "cruel and inhuman" -- it is sensible for judges to look at how other countries handle things to gain insight and perspective into how perhaps we should.
The rightists are saying that no American judge should EVER look at any foreign law in any case -- a proposition I'm astounded any adult is stupid enough to even consider.
I wish to share an observation. After reading the comments thread on Protein Wisdom, and comparing it to the comments here strictly wrt rhetoric, it appears to me that the ideological structure (if I may imprecisely describe it that way) of both threads is nearly identical.
ReplyDeleteNow maybe it's my background in mathematics and engineering... or maybe it's my background as a longtime far left libertarian alienates me from either "side". But I am repelled by this "debate", and I am not encouraged that the forces of enlightenment and rationality are going to prevail. This veers too closely to the dynamics of the French Revolution--read "Citizens" if you doubt me.
I have participated in some extremely acrid technical disputes. Won some, lost some, but really enjoyed most of them, mainly because in the losing I learned something. The "debate" here is nothing at all like that.
It makes me worry. I have no solutions. Ideologies are the apparent guiding paradigm for most people. They pick one out, put it on, and then the decision simplifications that ensue override the competing mental urge to think critically and rationally. So evidence becomes unnecessary.
For the current cause, the evidence is out there, and completely denied by the ideologues over at Protein Wisdom. I don't understand this thought process, nor how to counter, or evolve it.
The only sign of encouragement I see are those opinion polls that Glenn keeps citing. I think he's right. The average American may be narcissistic and ill educated, but is in the main not naive. Let's hope so.
And anyone who thinks they're simply going to go away after they start to lose electoral power is delusional. The Timothy McVeighs amongst them will be crawling out from under the rotting wood or leaving their keyboards and making for their local feed store for fertilizer. Think about all that venom being transferred from blogging to bombing. V for Vendetta, indeed. We ain't seen nothin' yet from these wackos.
ReplyDeleteWhat platforms or ideas do liberals have.
ReplyDeleteIt's called The Twentieth Century. Starting with Teddy Roosevelt's second term, skipping most of the 20s, and resuming with FDR and then progressing without any major hiccups through relative progressives like Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, even Nixon and Ford, and Carter. Stop at Reagan.
That's our platform: the century when America rose to its greatest strength and saved the world from narrow-minded, bigoted, greedy fascists.
Bush is reversing the whole century's progress -- Rove even says openly that's his goal.
Almost positive he meant ash as in the SS uniforms, since he was talking about WWII just before mentioning it.
ReplyDeletetake the bet Glenn -- although (I am afraid) there is a good chance you and the sorry - assed Dems who don't understand the issue you have been working hard to illucidate (kudos) will LOSE!
ReplyDeleteWhat's wrong with democrats that they still don't get the significance of the Bush administration's fascistic interpretation of the Article II powers?
It's fascinating how he can take something like Feingold's censure resolution that's supported by basically NO Democrats except Feingold himself, and use it as a reference for a blanket statement about ALL Democrats.
ReplyDeleteKey word for Democrats: synecdoche, the art of using a part for the whole, because they are constantly the victims of it. The RNC/Fox/Limbaugh etc. outrage machine is not gunning just for Feingold, they're attacking Democrats for even thinking about censuring the president—it's a Democrat (sic) idea, a left/liberal action brought by the Bush-hating Democrats. And voting against it isn't going to save your ass back home unless you're a Republican.
The GOP has been doing this effectively for years, and you'd think the Dems would learn this by now. When Limbaugh et al shrieked about Dick Durbin, it was never just about Durbin. Instead, Durbin's words became a statement typical of all Democrats, and it was all Dems, or liberals, or "the left" that was targeted. Same for Kerry's filibuster motion. Same for Murtha's comments. Same for Ward fucking Churchill for chrissakes.
I really don't know why the Dems don't do the same thing. From Frist to Coburn to Santorum to the ever-popular Bush, there's a torrent of insane words and ideas that the entire GOP could and should be tarred with, but never is.
Either way, it would really be nice if Democrats would cease voting purely out of fear and start voting based on what's right, and what they know is right.
Robby thinks a comparison between the Taliban and the Religious Right is unfair on the grounds that the Religious Right isn't actively suppressing freedoms like the Taliban did in Afghanistan. He overlooks the fact that the Religous Right does not do so because they are UNABLE to do so. But they are working on that.
ReplyDeleteOur job is to reclaim America for Christ, whatever the cost. As the vice regents of God, we are to exercise godly dominion and influence over our neighborhoods, our schools, our government, our literature and arts, our sports arenas, our entertainment media, our news media, our scientific endeavors -- in short, over every aspect and institution of human society. - D. James Kennedy
"But this is the problem with the left of this country. They have no problem with the courts ignoring our representatives and our democratic wishes"
ReplyDeleteThis is called tyranny of the majority. Carry on.
If we differ from another country, we should kick it back to the legislature and the American people to decide what to do.
ReplyDeleteHere's the heart of your problem: you think that whatever the political process comes up with should be the law, with no reference to any higher standard. Your objection isn't to judges looking at other countries; it's to judges EVER overriding the pols.
Question: if the American people overwhelming supported a law that punished juvenile delinquents by catrating them then dipping them bodily in acid, and the Legislature passed such a law, would you want the Supreme Court to uphold it under the "cruel and unusual punishments" clause? Or would you want it struck down? If you'd want it struck down, on what basis would you do so? On the fact that the judges personally considered it icky? What would be their referent if not the universal sentiment of other humans that such punishments were "inhumane"?
I'm done with this topic. You're welcome to the last word.
Republicans, for all their numerous faults, actually are trying to push through ideas. Social Security reform was shot down, to the applause of the left.
ReplyDeleteUh... okay, so their big "idea" is to end a program started by liberals. Hey, that sounds kinda like industry deregulation. And their approach to the environment. And welfare, affirmative action, education...
For christ's sake, you really can't dress up conservative "ideas" that much. They boil down to no more and no less than reversing liberal policies. You can't say the same about liberals, because conservative policies don't exist. There's just human nature.
It's like when conservatives laud capitalism as a great "system". It's great, but calling it a system is a but peculiar. It's no more and no less than human nature and application of reason.
And this is why "turn it over to the private market", while sometimes a good idea, gets kind of old. And you can't keep flogging the same approach to every single issue as if it's more than one idea, or even a new idea. So, please, enough about the many, many, many conservative ideas. They can all be scribbled on the back of a napkin.
Robby D.
ReplyDeleteIf Clinton had presided over a massive increase in deficit spending, an utterly botched medicare program leaving thousands of seniors without prescription medicine, a failed war on two fronts, thousands of dead american soldiers, a tattered constitution, abu ghraib and torture, billions in phony bills paid to Halliburton, massive scandal on an unprecedented scale at every level of his own party (Abramoff, DeLay and etc...) and the complete destruction and loss of an entire American City--I'd have been out protesting him every day of his presidency, and I"m a democrat. If you are saying that Republicans hated Clinton less than Democrats hate bush now, after five years of his being in power, no doubt you are right. But for all the wrong reasons. Bush's *policies* are intensly disliked by people who protest him, and rightly so. And as Bush's poll numbers sink down to 33 percent of the *entire* country you are left with the fact that bush hating isn't just for liberals and democrats anymore--its literally for everyone. Look to your left *and* look to your right, one out of every three americans despises president bush *for his policies* and his incompetence.
aimai
They can all be scribbled on the back of a napkin.
ReplyDeleteAnd, in fact, the Laffer Curve was.
Like the southern "fire-eaters" in the American Civil War, the "bring it on" contingent.
ReplyDeleteWhat they didn't realize is that they were dealing with a slumbering giant, the northern masses, who really didn't care about southern concerns (including slavery) all that much. Not until they seceded that is ...
.
Bush may be unpopular, and people may not be happy with him, but Clinton showed us, that the American people don't like it when Congress goes after the President. I know you will say that this is different, but if the public is not nuanced enough to see the difference between Saddam and Al-Qaeda, what makes you think they will separate Repubs going after Clinton and Dems going after Bush.
ReplyDeleteLet's see. Because most Americans have received oral sex, and only a select few have issued illegal wiretaps?
They have no problem with the courts ignoring our representatives and our democratic wishes and just doing what they think is best, even if there is no precedent for it.
ReplyDeleteUmmm ... that's part of what courts are supposed to do.
In this country, we have a Constitution that sets the ground-rules for what government can and cannot legislate. Part of the function of the courts is to determine when laws conflict, how to sort them out. The highest law of the land is our Constitution. If the courts deem that a piece of legislation contradicts the Constitution, the courts throw it out.
This is not a bad thing. What if the majority of people in this country want to establish Christianity as the official religion? That would not be allowed because it is against the Constitution -- and it is something with which Christians should be pleased: Christianity is vigorous and healthy in never-officially-Christian America and rather moribund in historically-officially-Christian Europe. What if the majority of people want to reestablish slavery? ...
Not all tyrannies are ran by small minorities. Our Constitution protects us from our democratic republic devolving into a tyranny of the majority.
Goldstein is a typical paranoid, frightened, sycophantic neocon bully who has probably never witnessed real violence in his sheltered life and has absolutely no idea what soldiers and Iraqi civilians are going through as their lives are destroyed by this ridiculous war. The spectacle of Goldstein and others like him screaming for war from the comfort of their suburban basements would be laughable if it wasn't so sad.
ReplyDeleteAnd as a Jew, I'm offended by Goldstein's cheap pandering to Holocaust imagery to justify his own curious bloodlust.
Bedwetting cultists indeed.
>>Jeff thinks he's going to be zapped
ReplyDelete>>into ash if we withdraw from Iraq[...]
>Uh, no. That was a reference to a
>withdrawal from WWII and what
>ACTUALLY HAPPENED to many many Jews.
>But your forgiven for using it in a
>new context to present me as fearful
>and irrational about Iraq.
Right. Jeff was conflating opposition to the Iraq war with the Holocaust, insinuating that liberals would be OK with his being gassed and burned.
How could anyone object to such logic and rationality?
Filth-talking, violence-advocating RW pundits like Coulter, Savage and others should worry about crazed radical-righties taking the law into their own hands and attacking perceived "libruls" and those who oppose the President.
ReplyDeleteThe pundits themselves could eventually be held accountable IN A COURT OF LAW for
the violence THEY ENCOURAGED and end up like the very-Ann Coulter-like Julius Streicher:
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/GERstreicher.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Streicher
And his final moments described:
(about 2/3 down the page)
http://www.foothilltech.org/rgeib/english/orwell/primary_sources/nuremberg.html
The hate-talkers of the Radical Right need to be made aware of this.
If the followers cross the line of violence en masse, THEY TOO will eventually be held accountable, as was Streicher.
check this out for the numerous similarities:
http://www.buzzflash.com/farrell/03/05/27.html
They are raising a big stink and complain that he is continuing the program, but I have yet to see one Democrat stand up and firmly tell say publicly that the President should stop this surveillance immediately.
ReplyDeleteWell, because you know as well as I do, that stopping the surveillance has never been the actual issue here. It's certainly framed that way by the right-wing, or Scott McClellan (but I repeat myself) whereby it's all about Democrats not wanting to spy on al Queda as part of the "on the side of terrorists" ugliness. But the real issue has always been the illegality. Which is why Feingold did not come out with a blanket resolution against wiretapping. (I mean, are you reading the posts on this blog at all?)
I give the public more credit than you do, and at least from the last poll I saw, 46% of Americans (48 percent of voters) support Feingold's censure resolution. And considering they're constantly bombarded by the prevailing right-wing framing described above, that's sayin' somethin'.
You know, RobbyD, I happen to live in a town that considers itself the buckle on the Bible belt, and you're fooling yourself if you don't think these folks lust in their hearts for a world not just where gay marriage is illegal, but where homosexuality itself is officially deemed a crime.
ReplyDeleteThe only states where you wouldn't be able to get an abortion on demand, would be places like Utah and South Dakota.
ReplyDeleteGet over it buddy. I live in Pennsylvania, and I guarantee you that the second Roe v. Wade is overturned, the religious right is pressing their campaign to get abortion completely outlawed here.
Why are you attempting to minimize the clout of the religious right - are you seeking to convince us, or yourself? They control your party, buddy. They will have veto power over your presidential candidate in 2008. And I'm fine with that; the more the wingnuts exert their influence, the more America as a whole recoils. See Schiavo, Terri.
That's what the world of Bush followers looks like.
ReplyDeleteYou paint a very grim picture of that world indeed, Glenn.
The problem is that it's not just the world of Bush followers. More Bush followers tolerate, even advocate that world, granted, but that world could not have come about without the enthusiastic support of the Democrats and Independents who have no problem with it.
The really shocking thing about the "huge news" poll you reference is that a majority of Independents, along with a healthy slab of Democrats do not support impeachment and an amazingly large number of each of the above do not even support censure.
You cannot hang this on Bush followers. They could never have prevailed in instituting such heinous policies if they didn't have that indispensable assist from the Dems and Independents. That's where we are. A majority of Americans are immoral, and immorality in government is easily accepted because it reflects the majority of Americans' own modus operandi in their personal lives.
Today is not a day I will be making phone calls or writing emails to the media or any of our elected representatives. In fact, yesterday may be the last day I spent my time doing that.
Reading the NY Times editorial today has made me literally sick. The fact that only the NY Times has deemed it worthy to focus on the stomach turning event that happened a few days ago when Israel stormed the Jericho prison with tanks, bulldozers and helicopters and subjected the inmates to such unnecessary humiliation is really the last straw for me.
Israel is being run, and has been run by a gang of thugs who are Bush's psychological twins. A people whose leit motif is to keep reminding the world half a century later of the entire litany of degradations, injustices and horrors to which they were subjected now has seamlessly adopted many of those same outrages.
Apparently, exposure to sadism left them with a taste for it.
The Israeli officials ordered the inmates to strip to their underwear, which many did, marching out with clothing on their heads, an embarrassing and completely unnecessary provocation that trampled the dignity of any Palestinian watching that spectacle. Given the humiliations that ordinary Palestinians suffer merely by trying to get through Israeli checkpoints every day, the prison raid just reinforced the already degrading reality of living under foreign occupation.
And Britain and the United States had conveniently withdrawn their monitors right before the attack.
The Israel leadership is morally bankrupt. Our country and Britain support them, and they support us. Sure. Why not? Our country and Britain support a nauseating life view in which respect for the dignity of others has been the first casuality, and once that is gone, nothing that remains is all that valuable.
The monster has been internalized. It is us, except, it is not me, and the less I have to read about, hear about and think about a world community of people who have not only swallowed the monster, but who have found it so deliciously tasty, the better,
'amused'. Why is that most, if not all, conerv- blowhards make sure to use this word in their screeches. More often than not, I can identify a fascist by this one word, usually at the beginning of their notes. Its like rule or something.
ReplyDeleteJeff just put up a piece in reply to Glenn’s post, and he references an exchange that he (Jeff) and I did have last weekend, and a post I had proposed to put up at this site. Writes Jeff:
ReplyDeletefull disclosure: One of Glenn’s guest posters contacted me earlier this week and asked me to provide her with a number of links that make clear my positions on a number of issues that would show that I am far less of a Bush Kultist than Glenn likes to make me out.
That post was supposed to go up earlier this week, but Glenn bumped it to “cover” the Feingold “censure” story. And, presumably, to pen today’s piece, who knows?
At any rate, his guest poster told me she hoped to try to bring rapprochement to the discourse. And I was happy to help.
I didn’t know at the time that “Cornered Rats” was what they were going for.
It is true that last weekend Glenn and I had decided I would write a guest post about seeking out areas of agreement and possible coalition-forging with some more libertarian-leaning, pro-Bush bloggers who were critical of the GOP’s social agenda. And I wrote that post, with some gracious cooperation from Jeff about his own social views. I put tons of time into it, and both Glenn and I meant for it to go up.
However, Glenn and I decided that with the Feingold censure arising as an issue on Sunday, the time was not right, and to postpone. After now reading that Jeff calls for a “non-violent” civil war, in which those who support Bush and those who don’t are apparently to live in different parts of the country, as well as his comments about those who have come to understand what has been so mismanaged wrt Bush and Iraq, I have very unhappily concluded that the bridge-building I had envisioned is a pipe dream.
And I do mean unhappily. I agree w/ Jeff on myriad issues, but not about the NSA illegalities, and not about the reality in Iraq. Unfortunately, Jeff’s “civil war” post made, um, ashes of my own. I am not in a state of civil war with my fellow countrymen, don’t want to be, and dislike his declaration even if he employed it as a mere metaphor. At a minimum, his going down that road rendered my post a silly joke.
eyes wide: You might be interested in the posting Helena Cobban's done of a recent article by Mearsheimer and Walt on the influence of the Israeli Lobby: Major new article on the pro-Israel Lobby. As Cobban notes, these are quite respectable, non-Liberal-based academics, whose writings are excellently documented.
ReplyDeleteI do not agree with your pessimism though. That way leads to despair. While the present may give no signs of hope, the crisis itself provides needed space to identify prioroties, possibilities for individual growth, and a chance to exhibit that very important virtue of courage.
The fact that you think the Religious Right in anyway resembles the Taliban
ReplyDeleteYou expect anyone to take you seriously after saying something like that? I just gave you a quote from one of the leading figures of the Religious Right in which he flat out asserts that his goal is to establish a theocracy and exercise dominion over every aspect of human existance.
No one is establishing an official religion
ReplyDeleteMissouri is contemplating a resolution to do just that.
Civil war? I'm sure there'll be something good on TV that day.
ReplyDeleteThey are cornered rats with nuclear weapons and fully-stocked bunkers. They've got your ash right here...
ReplyDeleteDespite Neiwert's caution to distinguish between fascism, psuedo-fascism, and proto-fascism, I have a hard time not seeing the implied suggestion that Supreme Court Justices should be executed as anything but creeping fascism.
ReplyDeleteNot to be outdone, lawyer-author Edwin Vieira told the gathering that Kennedy should be impeached because his philosophy, evidenced in his opinion striking down an anti-sodomy statute, "upholds Marxist, Leninist, satanic principles drawn from foreign law."
Ominously, Vieira continued by saying his "bottom line" for dealing with the Supreme Court comes from Joseph Stalin. "He had a slogan, and it worked very well for him, whenever he ran into difficulty: 'no man, no problem,' " Vieira said.
The full Stalin quote, for those who don't recognize it, is "Death solves all problems: no man, no problem." Presumably, Vieira had in mind something less extreme than Stalin did and was not actually advocating violence. But then, these are scary times for the judiciary. An anti-judge furor may help confirm President Bush's judicial nominees, but it also has the potential to turn ugly.
I should have noted that the call above for the impeachment of Kennedy was in response to his citing foreign opinion in his opposition to the death penalty for juveniles.
ReplyDeleteIt may be worth pointing out to Goldstein that the secular Saddam may have been a lesser threat to him than Iraq's current Shia leaders, who are beholden to Iran. Remember Saddam was supposed to be a bulwark against Islamic fundamentalism?
ReplyDeleteRobby D--
ReplyDelete"You guys are amazing. Do you even use logic in your reasoning? Democrats were in power for 40 years, losing the war on poverty and messing up a various number of things."
No they weren't. 1954-1994 Democrats controlled the *house.* 54-60: Eisenhower, Republican President. 68-76: Nixon & Ford, Republican Presidents. 80-92: Reagan & Bush, Rep. Presidents.
So for 26 out of the 40 years, Republicans controlled the executive branch.
54-58, 80-86: Republican-controlled Senate.
But let's look at what the Dems actually did when they had power: passed the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, Medicare, Medicaid, the Clean Air & Clean Water acts (signed by an R President), passed a major deficit reduction act in 1993. That's the tip of the iceberg. What crack are you smoking?
It's ironic hearing O'Connor bitch about the authoritarian tendencies of the Bushbots now that they have set their sights on judges.
ReplyDeleteShe sold her soul -- and her reputation amongst future historians -- in Bush v. Gore.
Man, how this reminds me of Martin Niemoeller's quote that begins: "First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out -- because I was not a communist;...."
Why do you choose to censor yourself? Is this little pissing match too much fun for Glenn? . . .
ReplyDeletePerhaps what you wrote makes him look too reasonable, and that doesn't fit with Glenn's myopic and selective post? Seems a shame.
I encourage diversity of views on my blog and I knew that when I asked Hypatia to contribute some guest posts that some posts would express views with which most people around here disagreed, including me. But that was fine. She's always well-reasoned and provocative and so I asked her to contribute some posts.
The post she wrote over the weekend contained some praise for Instapundit and Jeff Goldstein which I thought was unwarranted and wrong, to put it mildly, but I told her I would post it. Then the Feingold announcement came on Sunday and it was clear that that topic would dominate the discussion around here, and her post - which had nothing to do with the NSA scandal - would get overlooked and ignored. So we agreed to post it in a few days once things were less concentrated on the Censure Resolution.
Then she thought about it more and decided she didn't want to post it after all - for the reasons she just described. Jeff apparently wants to think that he's some sort of martyr because Hypatia wrote a powerful expose showing how reasonable and fair-minded Jeff is and I censored it out of fear that he would look too good. It's hard to even say anything in response to that. I almost never need to say anything about Jeff to depict him a certain way. I just quote him - like I did here - and that always shows everything that needs to be shown.
patrick writes:Perhaps what you wrote makes him look too reasonable, and that doesn't fit with Glenn's myopic and selective post? Seems a shame.
ReplyDeleteIt was my decsion, entirely, to kill that post (as opposed to our mutual decision to postpone it briefly). I no longer believe what I set forth in it, and thus would not want it appearing under my (cyber) name -- and that is what I told Glenn, when I emailed him last nite telling him not to ever run it.
If Jeff is endorsing a civil war -- which he now says he considers to be an extension of a "culture war" -- then I can't point to him as someone with whom I hold enough in common that we could work together politically. That civil war post and its feverish tone simply blew me away. He has dismissed Feingold, and those of us who support holding our President accountable for violating the law, in the most angry and extreme terms. Feingold and his censure resolution -- which I support -- serve as the occasion for Jeff to denounce all "liberals," and and to call for some sort of civil war. (What Feingold's resolution has to do with a "culture war," beats me.) Jeff specifically mentioned living in separate sections of the country from his fellow countrymen, whom he clearly believes to be his enemies -- if they oppose Bush on the NSA matter or Iraq. Well then, fine, I'm Jeff's enemy who should live in Bad Guys state(s).
I do not deem any of that to be reasonable, and do not deem that it shows that Jeff is such.
Why haven't any Democrats called for the stop of this program. They are raising a big stink and complain that he is continuing the program, but I have yet to see one Democrat stand up and firmly tell say publicly that the President should stop this surveillance immediately.
ReplyDeleteIt's not about the surveillance -- it's about the oversight (or more accurately, the lack thereof). It's about the rule of law.
A GOP president with a GOP-controlled Congress has NO EXCUSE WHATEVER to violate the law. FISA was amended with the PATRIOT act, and could have been amended further, with certain passage.
Why that wasn't done seems obvious -- they don't WANT oversight, because the scope of the program goes far beyond what the President has admitted, and likely has little or nothing to do with keeping America safe.
.
Cynic librarian: Thanks for the link, and I will go read and evaluate that article.
ReplyDeleteI must say there is something in you and in hypatia to which I respond on a visceral level. To me, it is the innocence of heart you both possess, along with powerful intellects, that I find so appealing.
My own cycle, probably neurotic, goes like this.
Awareness leads (unfortunatly, given present conditions) to
outrage.
Outrage lead to OUTRAGE.
OUTRAGE leads to despair.
Despair leads to pessimism.
I stay there for a day or two, and when pessimism leads to surrender, which leads to self-loathing, I drag out all my Albert Schwietzer stuff and re-read it.
Usually, that makes me want to rejoin the fight.
But each time, I wonder more and more whether those friends of mine who stay completely out of the macro issues and concern themselves instead with the small,
tiring, time-consuming, courageous individual acts of rescue, support and charity in which they are engaged during every spare hour of their lives to help animals and specific unfortunate, victimized individuals in need of aid, instead of taking on the world, are not acting in a more rational fashion.
Finally, thersites2, another of my very favorite posters, writes that the Laffer curve was scribbled on the back of an envelope.
Wasn't the Gettysburg address also?
Good ideas don't take that much space.
If I recharge myself, I will return to write a post about why I think those who oppose tax cuts for the rich (along with tax cuts for the middle class and the poor who pay taxes) are among the most irrational and uninformed people in this society.
patrick asks Glenn I don't think Blogger charges by the post, so what's the harm in putting up her work?
ReplyDeleteThe harm would be the violation of my express decision that he should not.
PS. I just heard on AirAmerica that our government, led by John Negreponte (along with Britain and Israel, it would seem) have authorized death squads which round up groups of Muslims, including 3 and 5 year old children, bind their hands and feet, take them into another room, and shoot them in the head.
ReplyDeleteSomeone is going to have to explain to me quickly why the United States Government, including the vast majority of Republicans and Democrats, is engaged in a policy of genocide.
so lemme get this straight.... Goldstein wants to kill Iraqis to avenge al-Qaeda's 9/11 attack on a city that is overwhelmingly antiwar and anti-Bush and whose tough liberal residents would be on the front lines of his proposed civil war.
ReplyDeleteokey.
Oh dear lord, this is a total pile of wrong thinking.
ReplyDeleteFirst, you say that somehow the approval rating is some measure of power. The approval rating is a measure of power like the amount of apples in my pocket measures tire pressure. My tire may actually have enough pressure to support 50 apples, but this is completely arbitrary. The same pretty much applies to the opinion polls. Is there a logical consequence for having a low approval rating? Not unless the incumbant is up for re-election.
But he's not.
The opinion poll also doesn't measure what's important to people, it simply asks, "Do you approve of the President?" Which is to say that homosexuals won't, people who don't like war won't, people who don't like the color blue won't, people who have messed with Texas won't. "Do you approve of apple pie?" Well are we talking cinnamon apple? Does it have penuts in it? I'm allergic to penuts. "Shut up and answer the question." OK sir.
Then you go on to assume blogs actually mean something. They don't. That's a really high opinion of yourself if you believe that, but I'd challenge you to put your money where your mouth is: Write a book. You're probably going to be suprised that -- unlike being a lawyer -- blogs don't actually change anything. When you pander the republiblogs for calling for the condemnation of X, and you make the accusation that they're ineffective due to some kind of metric, you have shown a serious and strange naivety about the internet. This blog, for instance, means nothing. None of them change anything. I can find blogs on the internet which deny the holocaust and say Elvis and Hitler live in South America, but that doesn't make it real. What you've failed to do is make any type of point whatsoever about those who are different then yourself. The blogs you point to -- some of them are very well written and speak in a civil and even tone. I see nothing of visciousness or desperation in their tone other then you trying to assign them some such. That's where the argument falls flat. Anyone who clicks those links will realize that they are civil, even-keeled people, just the same as you are. The difference is that, unlike you, they are talking about issues. Not other blogs.
Save the mudslinging for the courtroom, if that's your style.
Many of them have become convinced -- or convinced themselves -- that it is literally a matter of their immediate and personal survival that the country be controlled by Republicans devoted to the neoconservative mindset.
ReplyDeleteConsidering the numebr of Republicans that could and should end up in jail when the Bush bubble bursts, it may in fact be a matter of survival for them.
patrick writes:Would Jeff be valid if he were to dump a posting that, hypothetically, he would write about you because you wrote the following:
ReplyDelete"those of us who support holding our President accountable for violating the law
as being unhinged and reality-challenged? I would submit that your quoted words are both of those descriptives, yet I continue to address you.
And you would be mistaken to so charctarize me and my views. Many here are lawyers or well-informed-on-the-law laypeople, and we have thrashed through the NSA legal issues in more depth and detail than virtually anywhere else online. See Glenn's sidebar for the "Compendium of NSA Arguments."
As regular readers here would know, some of the most penetrating and damning legal analyses wrt Bush has come from right-wing legal scholars. They are correct.
In any event, when I call for a civil war and announce that I want to live separately from those who disagree with me about a president's policies -- in segregated states or regions, for christ's sake --then you could reasonably call me unhinged.
anon: The blogs you point to -- some of them are very well written and speak in a civil and even tone. I see nothing of visciousness or desperation in their tone other then you trying to assign them some such.
ReplyDeleteThen especially vis-a-vis Powerline, you simply have not been paying attention.
If Goldstein is such a wanker, why to you continually link to him, and why is he on your blogroll?
ReplyDeleteMy blogroll is a list of blogs that I read regularly, not a list of blogs that say things I agree with. I purposely don't confine myself to blogs where I find opinions that I agree with. I purposely seek out blogs which express the whole gamut of views - even ones I find reprehensible - so that I can be exposed to different ideas. That has multiple advantages which I've written about before.
Jeff is representative of a not insignificant strain of thought in our country. That strain of thought happens to occupy the White House and control both houses of Congress at the moment, so I find it significant and worthy of discussion. Jeff spends a lot of time setting forth the rationale on which his views are based and therefore his posts are often valuable in understanding how Bush followers think and what they are doing.
patrick writes: I doubt the combined legal firepower here matches the army of lawyers in the government that signed off on all of the international spying.
ReplyDeleteAgain, regular readers here would know that any number of those lawyers quit or were pushed out, when they refused to sign off on that (and other) program. John Ashcroft refused when they came to him in his hospital bed, after his stand-in had also refused. Do the names Comey or Goldsmith mean anything to you? Arlen Specter wants them to testify regarding their disagreements (and departures, the latter I believe to Harvard to teach), and the Administration is preventing that by invoking privilege.
Or the number of words posted at PW on the subject. Of course, we're all sycophantic Zionist BusHitler clones over there, right? Oh, wait, that was the subject of the posting you now can't even stomach to look at.
Jeff is a frequently clever political satirist, and his views on academe often comport with my own. But neither he nor his site evince much legal acumen --which is fine, that isn't his niche.
But this site does evince it, especially Glenn's posts.
Glenn, here's a couple of examples
ReplyDeleteI found on AOL message boards:
http://radamisto.blogspot.com/2006/02/more-aol-eliminationism.html
http://radamisto.blogspot.com/2005/12/eliminationist-rhetoric-on-aol.html
Well then, that settles it. Your pronouncement that Glenn has achieved mastery of the subject area, to the absolute exclusion of any argument the Attorney General of the United States or any legal scholar who may have amassed "10 years of First Amendment litigation" settles the argument. I'm convinced. I can guarantee you that I will not ever vote for George W Bush again for President.
ReplyDeleteYour moral and claimed intellectual smugness is nauseating.
And you'd be so much more convincing if you weren't throwing out the tired old trope about "never voting for Bush again." Seems to me I've heard that one about a thousand times from Bush supporters with nothing more constructive to say.
Address the issue: the Administration refuses to provide an avenue for proper investigation and oversight of the legal questions of the wiretapping program. The Republican-controlled Congress refuses to swear in the Attorney General of the United States, effectively making his testimony a paper tiger. Several members of that Congress, after vociferously expressing their wish to see the matter investigated, spin like a child's top in their hurry to carry water for the Administration.
More legal scholars than Glenn have already provided the detailed analysis that declares the program illegal. But you studiously ignore them in favor of attacking Glenn and other posters here. Could it be that your argument is weak, worthless, and without merit? Your logical fallacy of appeal to authority is duly noted; come back when you have something substantial to say.
D
anonymous: While I agree with some of what you say about blogs, I disagree with several of your main points. That objection can be met by simply observing that the blogosphere is place where information can flow that otherwise doesn’t make it into the mainstream press. Seen as a tool rather than a mythical “space” where the public meets the blogosphere can perform a necessary function in an age when insiders of both camps manipulate and twist the mainstream media to their own advantage.
ReplyDeleteGranted, logically a poll about issue X does not necessarily tell us about the priority that that issue has in people's lives. On the other hand, it doesn't tell us that it's not important either. Recent wisdom held, for example, that the economy was the most important thing for people. A recent poll, however, shows that the Iraq War is a priority issue for folks at this time.
Given Bush's recent ratings on his handling of that war (around 32 percent or so), it would seem that Glenn has some grounds for thinking that the polls on eavesdropping might just as well be high on people's priority list--especially since it's related to how Bush is handling the war. You would admit, wouldn't you, that Mr. Bush has made it a point that NSA spying is a key part of his so-called "war" on terror?
As to a larger issue about whether polls about a President's popularity mean anything since he's not running for office anyway: It seems to me that a major theme in Bush's rhetoric has been that this war benefits everyone--not just the 36 percent that back him. If 60 percent or so of the rest of the people think that he's "incompetent" at running this war, then who's he fooling in telling us that he's waging the war for us? As far as I can tell, most people would rather have him not run this war for us. Not only that, a majority now think that this "war" isn't benefitting them at all.
I've heard your type of argument before. It goes something like this: Polls are not important because Bush has insight into "what's really important for America." This builds on the relatively sane notion that the majority of the poeple can be quite wrong in their judgments and it takes a man of character to stand for what is really true and right.
Now, this argument cuts both ways. Unfortunately, there's no guarantee that either Bush is right or the majority are right. Given Bush's recent floundering, deception, lies, and outright ineptitude, people find themselves questioning how right he can be, however.
I think most people have given Bush the benefit of the doubt for too long. They've done so for various reasons, the most important being perhaps the idea that you don't criticize the commander-in-chief when troops are in the field. That sounds like the fallacy of tradition.
People are beginning to grow weary of this argument, as well as the others. Even with the stranglehold on information and news, people are coming to the quite reasonable and common-sense view that Bush and his administration are bad for them.
In our form of government, the only form of redress against the incompetence of the executive is the legislature--especially an executive branch that has shown itself deaf to the will of the majority. As many have argued, it's the legislature that embodies the will of the people. Since the will of the people at this time questions the veracity and competence of this administration, it's legislators like Feingold whom the people think will do the job of calling the President to task for his lawlessness.
sorry for the long post...
Two quick points - one, the American courts initially based non-Constitutional, non-statutory decisions on English common law. So the very foundations of our legal tradition are most definitely foreign.
ReplyDeleteSecond, as someone who has lived in DC for twenty plus years and who travels frequently to NYC, I completely disagree with the notion that liberals are more afraid of terrorists than the wingers. My experience is that people here and in NYC basically live their lives with a fatalistic sense that what happens is going to happen. It's the folks in Crap-Your-Pants, Oklahoma or Piss-on-the-Floor, Alabama who seem to be consumed with fear. Which is interesting, since it seems that even the Al Queda types view this as fly over country.
The Rethugs are a bunch of huge pussies who like to spout manly rhetoric. But mostly they are a bunch of doughy fat-assed white guys who lack both physical and moral courage.
One of my favorite sayings: "A snake always bites hardest just before it dies."
ReplyDeleteLove this new "flypaper" strategy -- fight the trolls in the "downstairs" thread so we don't have to fight them "upstairs"
ReplyDeleteGuess it is getting hard for even the "copy and paste" style of troll to find meaningful crap to fill up his clipboard -- sure, the repug sites are full of moronic, insane talking points to make excuses for the chimperor-in-charge.
But who needs to respond to off-topic talking points when a the smrking chimp has a 33 percent approval rating? The facts are starting to speak for themselves -- loud and clear!!!!!
Only a moron engages our resident troll, as if there is any reason to derail a thread to respond to text that was just copied and pasted from anothe repug site.
What type of egostical, self important moron would even get up on their little soapbox to respond to our resident troll's blatantly off-topic repug talking points?
Guess their is an idiot born every minute, but thankfully, most Americans are no longer drinking the kool-aide.
My blogroll is a list of blogs that I read regularly, not a list of blogs that say things I agree with.
ReplyDeleteSeriously. I've got Human Events in my bookmarks but I damn well don't agree with much of what is written there.
What kind of narcissistic self-indulgent freeper devotes a whole post to nothing other than criticizing other posters? What is the point? What psychological issues does the anonymous poster have that makes them attempt to criticize others with nothing as a method of making themselves feel better?
ReplyDeleteOne of the funniest aspects of this "civil war" hoped for by these incontinent Republicans is that they presume that it would present them with the opportunity to build their little Right-wing paradise from scratch! (heh) You'll have to get past me first, you doughnut choked hyper-infant! I'm former USMC (and I keep in myself in damned fine shape, Cheeto-boy) and I'm going to be fighting on the side that stands for the liberal principles that the US was founded on. I'm going to be one of the hardnoses that makes sure that all of the infrastructure that was built by Halliburton gets put to good use ('cause I HATE wasted money!), meaning that all of those barbed wired ringed camps that they're busy constructing right now get filled with the homegrown version of the fascists that we fought in WWII. You think torture is a legitimate tool of wartime? Glad to hear it, because you're gonna be stacked in shit-smeared naked pyramids with the rest of your hooded brethren after we've had you all in "stress positions" for a few days! You'll be spending the rest of your worthless Nazi life in a secret prison without any chance of a trial and your family will be kept under constant surveillance. And the cherry on top? We'll be hiring guards for your prison from the group that you loved to call "ragheads". Oh, and we'll use the NSA to track down everything you've said online (and we'll be sure that your "raghead" guards have the files...just to keep them "motivated").
ReplyDeleteYou want a civil war? There's an old saying "be careful what you pray for".
Thersites2 said...
ReplyDeletethe only check on judicial power - impeachment.
Bart, you're not a lawyer, are you? I can tell.
:::heh:::
You can, huh? Someone notify the bar...
Judges (a) can only interpret and apply laws that already exist. They can't write new ones.
That is what Article III says...
When they apply the Constitution, righties accuse them of writing new law, but that's not the case.
Really?
Feel free to point out the provisions of the Constitution which provide for the "right to abortion" or the "right to commit sodomy." There are dozens of other examples of jusges making up law out of whole cloth, but these are a couple of the more egregious.
(b) Judges have no army. Congress can declare war. The President can deploy troops overseas and the National Guard at home. Courts? If the political branches don't support their rulings, there's nothing they can do.
Unless, of course, the elected branches have a greater respect for the Constitution than do the judges.
(c) Judges can only react to cases brought before them, they can't be proactive.
That is why the ACLU and likeminded groups exist...
(d) The Founders wanted judges almost immune from political pressure. It was part of their plan to create a republic rather than an Athenian democracy: they diffused power.
And this reading is based on what?
In this scheme, the courts were designed to be the least democratic of all the branches: unelected, lifetime tenure, impeachable only for reasons of personal misconduct, not for what their opinions say. But to counterbalance that autocratic nature, the Founders also made the courts the weakest branch, which they still are.
Very nice theory straight out of your 8th grade civics book. However, this theory presupposes that Congress and not the judiciary enacts new laws that the the judiciary feels bound by the actual enacted law.
I know conservatives would love to rally the masses. Socrates is dangerous to our young people, and needs to be killed. But once he's dead, you'd erect a statue honoring him. The courts are our bulwark against that kind of populist stupidity.
The "populist stupidity" which you oppose is democracy. The Athenian courts making up the law as they went along killed Socrates.
In the end, regardless of all your squawking about democracy, the left doesn't trust the people with power. To get around democracy, you have given us the "living constitution," the unelected bureaucracy and the unaccountable courts.
Stop reading the right-wing tracts, start reading a LSAT prep booklet, and come back in three years to talk about legal issues.
LSAT prep book! Are you a snot nosed law student? My advice is to challenge what your law professors at every opportunity. I did. They often have never practiced law themselves and are often wrong.
USMC anon, I must say such sentiments as you express are not foreign to me, but I am always frightened when they swell up. If it came down to violence between the "Left" and the "Right" in this country, true American patriots must always refrain from cruel and unusual punishment, particularly in the aftermath. One of the things that distinguishes the Western Allies from the Soviet Union is their treatment of the Germans and the Japanese after WWII. But then I worry that such violence is inevitable. Can anyone on the Right ever even be approached with the idea that they are fundamentally wrong? Civility seems impossible. Indeed, the Republican psychic armor is so sophisticated that it is they who immediately clothe themselves in "civility" and are unable to see evidence to the contrary. Grover Norquist: "Bi-partisanship is date rape." Is now civility?
ReplyDeleteBart :Feel free to point out the provisions of the Constitution which provide for the "right to abortion" or the "right to commit sodomy."
ReplyDeleteYou seem to have something against homosexual practices. What if someone were to demonstrate convincingly to you that George43, Cheney, Libby, Mehlman, Condi Rice, Scott McClennan, and about 20% of Republican Senators are closeted gays who either indulge in homosexual activity or remain abstinent out of fear of being exposed if they were active?
Now, I of course am not saying that any of the above are in fact closeted homosexuals. We know they are all straight.
But I am wondering if you found out that they were gay, would you continue to support them as strongly as you do or would you turn on them because of your hatred of homosexual practices?
Just curious.
Also, where exactly in the Constitution does it say there is a "right to engage in heterosexual intercourse"? I am not saying that such language is not there, as I haven't memorized the Constitution, but if you tell me where that appears so I can look that up, I would appreciate it.
If it turns out it's not there, then of what significance is your comment that the "right to commit sodomy" does not appear in the Constitution?
Thanks.
bart says:
ReplyDelete"Feel free to point out the provisions of the Constitution which provide for the "right to abortion" or the "right to commit sodomy." There are dozens of other examples of jusges making up law out of whole cloth, but these are a couple of the more egregious."
They can be found in the 1st, 4th, 8th, 9th, and 14th Amendments. Any other questions?
There really is no longer any point in actually addressing ourselves to the trolls on the web--a priori, it seems, they are unconvincible--but it would behoove us to better understand what they are saying. Let's take Bart.
ReplyDeleteFeel free to point out the provisions of the Constitution which provide for the "right to abortion" or the "right to commit sodomy." There are dozens of other examples of jusges making up law out of whole cloth, but these are a couple of the more egregious.
I'm glad he put it like this, because it goes right to the "heart" of contemporary American fascist thinking, which has always been about oppressing groups which are different. America is based on the protection of individuals from the Sate (and we have come to understand that as not just the Federal Government, but all levels of American government). The Founding Fathers did not enumerate determinate list of rights to be protected, because they saw the Constitution as a living document, and foresaw the recognition of freedoms which had not at that time been imagined, as the concept of freedom matured. Freedom at the time meant freedom for the gentry--rich, white, male. Progress is growing freedom to include those who have been denied it in the past. But these are always freedoms for individuals to operate without being harassed by the government. Once we recognize that, e.g., homosexual sex is no more criminal than heterosexual sex, to overrule laws which criminalize it is moving in the direction of freedom. This is not the sort of freedom which Bart and his ilk have in mind. They want to protect the freedom of the powerful (the wealthy) to oppress those who lack power.
Unless, of course, the elected branches have a greater respect for the Constitution than do the judges.
Given everything else said on this blog in the past five months, this is just a laughable statement, but I do believe it is earnest. The problem may be that political reasoning by extreme partisans is just not constrained by reason:
http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2006/03/this_explains_a.html
I'm also fairly confident in asserting that it is precisley "populist stupidity" which killed Socrates. That constant truth that enough of the people will always support evil men. The troubling thing about 34% approval is that it's probably enough to descend the rest of the world further into hell.
thersites:
ReplyDelete3. A constitutionally independent Attorney General with the authority to investigate both executive and congressional malfeasance.
As amendments (divorced from the question of how we obtain them):
...
3. Nope. Just wouldn't fit into the framework, and I don't want an Inquisition. Imagine Ken Starr with even fewer restraints.
Ummm, lots of states have elected AGs, in some cases (NY, for instance), they're even from the other party. Haven't been insurmountable difficulties or all-out wars so far ... but then again, we haven't seen the Republicans really scrape bottom yet.
Cheers,
from comments I made elsewhere re:Russ's censure efforts:
ReplyDeleteIt forces the republiclowns who waffle and flip-flop on Bush to kiss the pig wearing lipstick...
There is no amount of expediency to apply to the moral obligation to speak out against a moral wrong.
MLK's funeral saw some of this, to an ovation and cheers.
It wasn't entirely feasable, but few things are in the minority party.
It contains timeliness.
George Bush is trying to spread vitriol with iran, Pakistan, India. He is pissing gasoline onto a fire.
He needs and deserves censure, as do Cheney and Bolton.
Reports are narrow and selective- 'security council issues wanrting...' then you find out the IAEA has worked with them and it turns out that the security council wants additional transparency with mitigating factors thrown in to background another homespun false background.
If nukes were that important we would have not cut taxes and used that to control russian loose nukes.
Stop letting them frame the debate. They are disingenuous at best with their supposed concern a about proliferation.
-Mr.Murder
A Haiku for Bush Supporters
ReplyDeleteHear the cornered rats
Chittering in the dark hole
How they fear the light!
Every Democratic Senator and (8 Republican Senators) just voted to keep stealing money from The Social Security Trust Fund. These Senators are so hypocritical that they are starting to remind me of Mark Souder; that is especially true of John Kerry...
ReplyDeleteBoth Senators from Indiana voted to keep stealing money from future generations. That is shameful and they should both be thrown out of office.
For decades both The Democrats and The Republicans have been robbing the Social Security Trust Fund. The Social Security Trust Fund is currently getting about 300 Billion extra dollars per year. The Republicans and Democrats have stolen ALL OF THIS MONEY and left IOU's in the Social Security Trust Fund. This is criminal. If corporate America did this our Federal Government would arrest them and throw them in jail...
Do you know why they keep stealing it?
So they can spend it on other programs and so that the Federal Deficit does not look as large. If you include the money The Federal Government will steal from The Social Security Trust Fund, so called "Emergency" appropriations for things that are not emergencies, and the money the Federal Government is budgeted to spend through the normal budget process the Federal Budget Deficit this year is ABOUT 700 Billion dollars.
Do you know why they keep reporting a budget deficit of about 400 billion dollars?
They do not count the money they steal from The Social Security Trust Fund and leave an IOU for...
Where do they think the money will come from to pay The Baby Boomers when they retire you ask?
They do not care. They will not be in office and it is not their problem... Their only intention is to get re-elected. They do NOT care about the future of this Country.
I am extremely irritated at every Democratic Senator in office and the eight "So called Republicans" who voted to keeping stealing from The Social Security Trust Fund. Evan Bayh and Richard Luger are my Senators and they just voted to continue robbing The Social Security Trust Fund...
None of these Senators can be called a fiscal conservative. It is NOT fiscally conservative to rob future generations to pay for Government spending today...
Another thing that makes me angry is all of the time and energy The Democratic Party has put into talking about saving Social Security in the last few years. I can remember both Al Gore and John Kerry on their high horses when they were running for President promising to save Social Security and setup a "lockbox."
Every Democratic Senator voted against the "lockbox" on March 16th, 2006. John Kerry voted against it after campaigning on saving Social Security when he ran for President; what a hypocrite (Otherwise known as a Mark Souder).
I want to know what you think about this vote.
I consider myself fairly moderate in my politics; however, the idea of impeaching a judge just because you disagree with an interpretive method the judge utilizes is a scary realization. If the Congressional leadership (regardless of the party) was to begin impeaching judges just because they disagree with the decision of the court, we will have effectively lost an independent judiciary and ultimately the checks and balances the fore fathers set in place.
ReplyDeleteBeware of the false claims you hear from Rush Limbaugh saying Clinton ordered warrantless wiretapping. It's amazing what happens when Americans do their research. No, this isn't what you'll find in the Bible. But myths are what's revealed every time Bush exhales.
ReplyDeleteI have a comment on the book title. It is probably too late, but I always wonder why books get titled in such a way that a large part of an audience one wants will be immediately put off. I refer to the words "President Run Amok". The choir will love it, but there are people who don't yet believe that he has that you want to have read the book. "How does a Patriot Act" is a fabulous title, one that could pull some of those people in. Why interfere with that through a subtitle? In any event, thank you for writing this book.
ReplyDelete