The Bush administration and denial of habeas corpus and due process rights

In light of the environment in which we live -- not only how inept and authoritarian the Bush administration is, but also how rabid and blindly loyal their followers are -- it is hard to overstate how pernicious is the abolition of habeas corpus rights for detainees in U.S. custody:

New York Times, today:

The federal government agreed to pay $2 million Wednesday to an Oregon lawyer wrongly jailed in connection with the 2004 terrorist bombings in Madrid, and it issued a formal apology to him and his family.

The unusual settlement caps a two-and-a-half-year ordeal that saw the lawyer, Brandon Mayfield, go from being a suspected terrorist operative to a symbol, in the eyes of his supporters, of government overzealousness in the war on terrorism.

“The United States of America apologizes to Mr. Brandon Mayfield and his family for the suffering caused” by his mistaken arrest, the government’s apology began. It added that the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which erroneously linked him to the Madrid bombs through a fingerprinting mistake, had taken steps “to ensure that what happened to Mr. Mayfield and the Mayfield family does not happen again.” . . .

“The days, weeks and months following my arrest,” he said, “were some of the darkest we have had to endure. I personally was subject to lockdown, strip searches, sleep deprivation, unsanitary living conditions, shackles and chains, threats, physical pain and humiliation.”

Despite doubts from Spanish officials about the validity of the fingerprint match, American officials began an aggressive high-level investigation into Mr. Mayfield in the weeks after the bombings. . . .

Using expanded surveillance powers under the USA Patriot Act, the government wiretapped his conversations, conducted secret searches of his home and his law office and jailed him for two weeks as a material witness in the case before a judge threw out the case against him.

Typical breathless television report at the time:

MAXINE McKEW: An American lawyer has been detained for alleged involvement in the Madrid train bombings.The fingerprints of Brandon Mayfield, a United States citizen who converted to Islam, have reportedly been found on materials related to the bombings.He can now be held indefinitely in the US without formal charges. Stephen McDonell reports.

STEPHEN McDONELL: When a series of bombs were detonated on Madrid trains in March, 191 commuters were killed and 2,000 injured.In Spain, 18 people have been charged in relation to the blasts, six with mass murder.Islamic fundamentalists are accused of carrying out the bloody attacks but now the list of suspects has stretched as far as the US.

Oregon lawyer Brandon Mayfield converted to Islam in 1989. He's tonight being held by US officials, suspected of involvement with the Madrid bombings.FBI agents raided his home, taking computer equipment and his wife's credit cards.

AURORA McCANN, WITNESS: It's horrifying, it's absolutely horrifying.

Charles Johnson, Little Green Footballs, May 7, 2004:

More information on the Oregon lawyer, a convert to Islam, who was arrested yesterday after his fingerprints were apparently found on a container related to the Madrid train bombings: Oregon Lawyer Arrested in Madrid Bombings. . . .

But if you really want the full scoop on Mayfield and his pernicious activities, the LGF lizardoids have unearthed a treasure trove of information in this topic: Madrid
Bombing Probe Reaches Portland. Mayfield’s “mentor,” Tom Nelson, is a key figure in the International Solidarity Movement, and they are both heavily involved in pro-Palestinian groups.

Among the "treasure trove of information" uncovered by the "LGF lizardoids":

* Multnomah County Public Library in Portland: Home of the Iraqi Resistance Solidarity Network.

* Mr. Mayfield is the recipient of the "material witness" statute of the Patriot Act which means the government can hold him without charges, without representation similar to Jose Padilla.

* ... Tom Nelson, Portland Attorney and co-founder of Americans United for Palestinian Rights, who traveled in August to Palestine as part of an international (sic) ...

* Mayfield converted to Islam in 1989. He's also a former Army Officer. He's 37 years old.Do you suppose that Mayfield served in Gulf War I? Perhaps in Saudi Arabia with the arrested Wahabist financier Almoudi when a lot of the conversions were taking place?

* WOW! I've MET this guy! He came and talked to our club meeting in November 2001! At the time he was living in Newport, Oregon on the Coast. His wife is an Egyptian woman. He was here by invitation to tell us a little bit about Islam after the Trade Tower Attacks He spent most of his time explaining that Islam is a "religion of peace" and that "Islam" means submission. Of course, we also heard about how "jihad" is an internal struggle, etc, etc.

Charles Johnson, May 25, 2004 (even after the FBI released Mayfield and apologized):

Apologizing has become very fashionable for US government agencies; even the FBI is doing it now: FBI Apologizes to Lawyer Over Madrid Case. . . .

And his claim that he was “targeted because of his faith” seems to leave out the little inconvenient fact that he was linked to one of the chief defendants in the “Portland Seven” jihad group [ed: "linked" meaning he represented him as a lawyer in a child custody case], whose surviving six members pled guilty to all charges. In other words, with a fingerprint match and this connection, there was reason for suspicion; Mayfield wasn’t picked at random out of a list of Muslims.

Daniel Pipes, June 1, 2004, New York Sun:

But did U.S. law enforcement err in noting Mr. Mayfield 's identity? No, this was entirely appropriate. It would have been myopic to ignore Mr. Mayfield 's many connections to militant Islam and the global jihad, including:

* "He prayed in the same Bilal Mosque as did several individuals . . . who pleaded guilty in 2003 to conspiring to help the Taliban";

* While studying law at Washburn University in Kansas, Mr. Mayfield helped organize a branch of the Muslim Student Association, a group described by analyst Jonathan Dowd-Gailey as "an overtly political organization" espousing "Wahhabism, anti-Americanism, and anti-Semitism … and expressing solidarity with militant Islamic ideologies, sometimes with criminal results."

* Mr. Mayfield 's political profile fits that of many disaffected, America-hating terrorists: he strongly opposes the Patriot Act, inveighs against American foreign policy related to Muslim countries, and is "particularly angered," according to his brother Kent, by close U.S. relations with Israel. Mr. Mayfield speculates that the Bush administration knew in advance about 9/11 but chose to let the attacks go ahead so as to justify going to war. And on his release from custody, he compared the U.S. federal government to Nazi Germany.

New York Post Editorial, May 11, 2004 (sub. rq'd):

To hear acquaintances tell it, there is absolutely no way Brandon Mayfield could have had anything to do with the bombings in Madrid in March. . . .

Nonetheless, officials did the right thing by acting quickly. They need to get to the bottom of this case fast.

Yes, some of the evidence that's been made public so far seems circumstantial.

Mayfield is a convert to Islam who married an Egyptian woman. He attends a mosque frequented by some of the members of the Portland Seven, a suspected terrorist cell. And he defended one of its members, Jeffrey Battle, in a child-custody case; Battle later pleaded guilty to seeking to join the Taliban in 2001. . . .

Certainly, the idea of a Fifth Column here cannot be discounted, post-9/11. Several cells - the one in Portland; others in Buffalo and elsewhere - have been uncovered in the past few years.

Stephen Schwartz on David Horowitz's Front Page, titled "Our Internal Islamist Enemies", May 13, 2004:

While the attention of most Americans, and much of the Islamic world, has been focused on the scandal of American soldiers' conduct at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, other events signal a deepening and dangerous crisis for American society and its relationship to Muslims who live within the borders of the U.S.

One such development is the detention on Thursday, May 6, of Brandon Mayfield, a 37-year old lawyer from Portland, Ore., as a possible material witness or "person of interest" in the conspiracy to perpetrate the horrific Madrid metro bombings of March 11.

Mayfield, who became a Muslim after marrying an Egyptian woman in 1989, now joins the list of "new Muslims" (a term Muslims consider preferable to "convert") who have become notorious to Americans since the thin, bedraggled John Walker Lindh, barely out of his teens, was pulled from the battlefield of Mazar-i-Sharif in Afghanistan late in 2001. A soldier in the Taliban, Lindh shocked an America that never before knew such types even existed. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Then came José Padilla, a former gang member and petty criminal in his early 30s, and an associate of various Islamic extremists, held as a "dirty bomb" plotter, and
therefore as an enemy combatant, for the past two years. . . . .

And now comes Mayfield, whose fingerprint may have been identified on a plastic bag containing detonators found in Spain after the atrocity there. Mayfield had
represented Portland Seven member Battle in a child custody case when the latter was arrested.

Mayfield's biography includes other troubling items. As a law student at Washburn University, in Topeka, Kan., he helped organize a branch of the Muslim Student Association of the U.S. and Canada (MSA), which was set up by agents of Saudi Arabia's official Islamic clerical establishment to propagate the extremist doctrines of Wahhabism. . . . .

As so often these days, media find ordinary Americans anxious to swear to the normality of Brandon Mayfield -- just as other reporters in other heartland communities found relatives and friends that sprang to declare the soldiers accused of abusing Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib to be nice people. However, Mayfield's relatives appeared awfully anxious to declare the case to have proven the USA Patriot Act a failure; their response was not exactly nonideological.

So, in addition to the botched fingerprint analysis, that was the "evidence" Bush followers continued to cite even after it was clear that Mayfield was completely innocent -- he converted to Islam, had an Egyptian wife, prayed at a "suspect" mosque, started a Muslim group in college, opposed the Patriot Act, criticized the Leader in harsh terms, represented an Islamic militant as a lawyer in a child custody case, believes that the U.S. is too closely aligned with Israel, and advocates for Palestinians.

Based on that, if they had their way, he would still be locked up, alongside Jose Padilla, waterboarded and kept nice and incommunacado where he belongs. And that is precisely what the Military Commissions Act allows, at least with regard to all foreigners and alien residents. And it remains to be seen what effect the Act will have on U.S. citizens.

An argument can be made that Mayfield was only exonerated because the Spanish government was objecting so vociferously to the accusations against Mayfield by the Bush administration -- accusations which were, of course, repeatedly brushed aside because they came from know-nothing, whiny, pro-terrorist-rights Europeans. Particularly in this climate, given the mindset of Bush officials and their followers, the very idea that this administration -- really, any administration -- ought to be trusted with the power to detain people forever with no judicial review is so heinous that no protest against it is really sufficient.

Rule of Law 101 and Neoconservatism

Last year, the Bush administration and the GOP-led Congress jointly created a 5-person, tootheless, subpoena-less "panel" to monitor how "civil liberties issues" are handled as part of the "war on terror." They handpicked five members and, after a year-long delay, Bush officials recently "briefed" them about the NSA warrantless eavesdropping program and all of the great privacy protections they say they provide when eavesdropping on American citizens in violation of the law.

In a shocking and completely unanticipated development, The Boston Globe reported yesterday that the handpicked "members say they were impressed by the protections." One of the panel's appointees in particular, former Clintonite and current neoconservative Lanny Davis, did what he has come to specialize in -- namely, attack Bush critics and lavish the Bush administration and its allies with the most obsequious praise possible so as to enable an illusion of "bipartisan" support (which is, needless to say, precisely why Davis was chosen for this august panel). Davis said:

If the American public, especially civil libertarians like myself, could be more informed about how careful the government is to protect our privacy while still protecting us from attacks, we'd be more reassured. . . .

The announcement by Lanny Davis that he and his fellow Republican panel members are impressed with the program's supposed "privacy protections" has caused a tidal wave of genuinely bizarre declarations of victory among various Bush followers, who seem to think that this is not only relevant to the NSA scandal, but dispositive of it. The list of celebrators includes Captain Ed and Jay Stephenson of StopTheACLU ("Now all of you…do you really think a little truth will get in the way of the tin foil hat wearing brigades like the ACLU and Glenn Greenwald?"), along with Rick Moran at RedState, who wrote:

I have spent much of the last two years on this site railing against the hysterical, exaggerated, and ultimately dishonest charges made by people like Glenn Greenwald and others that the Bush Administration was tearing apart the Constitution and trying to set up some kind of a dictatorship. . . .

Wonder where the public got "an underappreciation for the degree of seriousness the government is giving these protections...?" Couldn't be from leftist lickspittles like Greenwald et.al. who've spent much of the last 5 years trying to convince the American people that Adolf Hitler was in the Oval Office and Nazi gaulieters were staffing the Justice Department, could it?

Just thinking about the smug, self righteous louts who have hindered every single program, every single effort to protect the people of the United States by constantly raising the specter of Hitler and dictatorship makes me sick to my stomach.

It is truly astounding to watch people incapable of understanding the point that the reason it is wrong and dangerous for the President to eavesdrop on Americans without warrants is because doing so is against the law. Shouldn't that be a simple enough proposition that every functioning adult ought to be capable of understanding it? It doesn't mean that everyone has to agree with that proposition -- if people want to continue to cling to the theory that the President is unbound by the law concerning matters of national security, obviously they are free to do so.

But there is no excuse for failing to comprehend the objections to the President's behavior, particularly since the central objection is not all that complicated. To the contrary, it is what we all learn in seventh-grade civics.

One more time: the principal problem with the President's warrantless eavesdropping is not that he is abusing the secret eavesdropping powers he seized (that is something we do not yet know, because the Congress has not yet investigated that question). Instead, the "problem" is that the President is engaging in the very conduct which the American people, through their Congress almost 30 years ago, made it a felony to engage in, punishable by up to five years in prison -- that is, eavesdropping on Americans without judicial oversight.

Thus, even if Lanny Davis and the other Republicans on the panel think the President is using his illegal powers carefully, his conduct is no less illegal. Why is it necessary even to point that out? This has been the obvious and paramount point from the beginning, as I wrote in my book (at pages 25, 60) (emphasis in original):

The heart of the matter is that the president broke the law, deliberately and repeatedly, no matter what his rationale was for doing so. We do not have a system of government in which the president has the right to violate laws, even if he believes doing so will produce good results. . . .

The NSA eavedsdropping scandal, as its core, is not an eavesddropping scandal. It is a lawbreaking scandal . . .

Fortunately, several bloggers -- Anonymous Liberal, Gavin at Sadly, No and "meatbrain" -- have superb and comprehensive posts responding to this emerging Bush-follower-claim, thus sparing me the task of having to explain, yet again, what used to be the unremarkable premise that in our system of government, the President does not have the right to violate the law, no matter how well-intentioned he thinks he is when doing so. As A.L. put it:

In a system that operates according to the rule of law, what matters is what the law says, not what Lanny Davis or the other members of some meaningless ad hoc council think. The fundamental issue here is not what sort of privacy protections the NSA program does or does not provide; the problem is that the NSA program does not comply with the law. . . .

This prohibition is categorical, and the Bush administration has no legal justification for disregarding it, particularly in light of Hamdan, which was precisely on point.

This is a BIG DEAL. A constitutional system of government cannot tolerate a chief executive who operates outside of the law, even if, in doing so, he implements policies that Lanny Davis thinks are swell. There is no 'Lanny Davis exception' to the rule of law.

That enables me to focus instead on another aspect of this story which I think is vitally important. What made this story so enticing to Bush followers is that it was "Democrat" Lanny Davis who paid homage to the great and benevolent ways in which the Leader is protecting us, as though that lends the claim some sort of extra credibility. After all, Davis is a Democrat, and he says that the President is doing nothing wrong, so that settles the issue once and for all.

But as I've argued several times before, it is no longer the Democrat-Republican distinction -- nor the "liberal-conservative" dichotomy of the 1990s -- which is the accurate barometer for predicting the views someone has regarding the most important national security and foreign policy questions facing our country (which includes domestic surveillance and law-enforcement programs justified in the name of national security).

In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, neoconservatism (defined here) has become the predominant ideology driving our government's policies in these areas, and it is the extent to which one embraces or rejects those views -- not whether one is a Democrat/Republican or "liberal/conservative" -- that is the real determinant for where one falls on the political spectrum, particularly with regard to matters of war, terrorism and related policies.

That is why "Democrat" Joe Lieberman's most vocal supporters were not "moderate" Republicans, but rather, the most extreme neoconservative Bush followers -- the Sean Hannitys and Michelle Malkins of the world. Just like Joe Lieberman, Lanny Davis (who was one of Lieberman's most vocal supporters) is a full-fledged neoconservative. The way he stays relevant is by offering himself up as the token Democrat who can always be counted on to defend the Bush presidency and attack Bush critics. Again, that is why he was chosen for this panel and it is why his extremely predictable praise for the President (as predictable as if his spot had been filled by Rush Limbaugh) is as meaningless as it is besides the point.

On the issues that matter most, the 9/11 attacks and the radicalism of the Bush administration have created a fundamental realignment in our political system. Ignoring that realignment by itself creates all sorts of misguided analysis.

This "pro/anti neoconservatism" realignment is what explains why former Reagan Justice official Bruce Fein and conservative Congressman Bob Barr are among the most eloquent Bush critics. It is why former Reagan official Jim Webb is a Democrat. And it is why Al Gore's 2000 Vice Presidential running mate, Joe Lieberman (and his comrades like Lanny Davis, or Joe Klein, Marty Peretz, and numerous other "liberal" war-and-Bush-supporting pundits), aren't, at least not in the way that the Bush administration wants to exploit the "Democratic" credentials of the Lanny Davis's to suggest that there is something surprising or meaningful about his support for the administration's policies.

Davis' support for the NSA warrantless eavesdropping program is no more surprising and no more meaningful than Michelle Malkin's support for that program would be, or Joe Lieberman's. On these issues, despite Davis' and Liberman's alleged "liberalism" on the "1990s issues," they are all one and the same. They embrace neoconservative principles -- both abroad and domestically -- and they are on the same political side, not the opposite side, of the Bush administration with regard to these issues. Clarity in political analysis requires a recognition of that realignment and an appreciation for what the Joe Liebermans and Lanny Davis's are, and what they are not.

Various items

(1) One of the favorite claims of Bush followers is that Jim Webb is going to be some sort of thorn in the side of Democrats based upon the myth that he is not a "real Democrat." It looks like half of that claim is correct -- he is going to be a thorn, but not in the side of Democrats. From The Hill:

At a private reception held at the White House with newly elected lawmakers shortly after the election, Bush asked Webb how his son, a Marine lance corporal serving in Iraq, was doing.

Webb responded that he really wanted to see his son brought back home, said a person who heard about the exchange from Webb.

“I didn’t ask you that, I asked how he’s doing,” Bush retorted, according to the source.

Webb confessed that he was so angered by this that he was tempted to slug the commander-in-chief, reported the source, but of course didn’t.

Webb's office, more or less, confirmed the report. It is difficult to fathom the hubris and self-indulgence required for someone to ask a parent of a soldier in Iraq how their son is doing only to then snidely tell the parent that the answer isn't what he wanted to hear.

(2) Whenever you think that Bush followers cannot descend any lower into un-American authoritarianism, they always prove you wrong. Congressman-elect Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to the U.S. Congress, has said that he will take his oath of office on the Koran rather than the Bible, since -- as a Muslim -- he happens to believe in the Koran and not the Bible. Dennis Prager has a column (cheered on by various extremists) insisting that Ellison "not be allowed to do so," arguing that "if you are incapable of taking an oath on that book, don't serve in Congress":

What Ellison and his Muslim and leftist supporters are saying is that it is of no consequence what America holds as its holiest book; all that matters is what any individual holds to be his holiest book.

Forgive me, but America should not give a hoot what Keith Ellison's favorite book is. Insofar as a member of Congress taking an oath to serve America and uphold its values is concerned, America is interested in only one book, the Bible.

If you hadn't read that for yourself, wouldn't it be hard to believe that someone is actually arguing this? Prager is essentially asking: What has happened to America where now it seems that people can decide for themselves what books they will believe are holy? The viewpoint which Prager derisively attributes to the "Muslim and leftist supporters" of Ellison happens to be one of the core founding principles of the Republic: "it is of no consequence what America holds as its holiest book; all that matters is what any individual holds to be his holiest book."

James Joyner and Stephen Bainbridge both provide excellent rebuttals, including Joyner's pointing out the rather obvious fact that requiring elected officials to take their oaths on the Bible would constitute a textbook case of a "religious test" prohibited by Article VI, and would almost certainly violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment as well.

As always, it is the most basic constitutional principles -- which were previously beyond challenge -- that are placed in doubt by the most rabid Bush followers. And these attacks on our constitutional values are, with no sense of irony, waged in the name of defending "America."

(3) One of the oddest and most damaging aspects of our political discourse is that some of the most significant issues -- ones which have the greatest impact on our laws and government -- somehow become too controversial for mainstream political figures even to mention, let alone seriously debate. An orthodoxy arises which one cannot even question, let alone deviate from, while still maintaining political viability.

One such topic is the role which our commitment to Israel plays in shaping U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. But another equally significant topic is the rationale behind ongoing drug prohibition laws and the havoc those laws wreak on every level. As this post from McQ illustrates (h/t Mona), opposition to drug laws and their accompanying Draconian enforcement efforts (along with still more Draconian laws to enable enforcement) is a political position which finds considerable support across the ideological spectrum. Despite that, opposition to drug laws still remains strictly off-limits for any mainstream political figure. It is hard to see exactly what accounts for that dynamic.

In response to an article I wrote at Salon regarding the increasing support for Democrats among Mountain West libertarians (in the broadest and least doctrinal sense of that term), as well as the decidedly un-libertarian agenda of the current incarnation of the Republican Party, Radley Balko claimed that Democrats would never "waste any political capital" pursuing any items important to libertarians. Included on his list of important libertarian items were various issues relating to the nation's drug laws, along with similarly intrusive federal powers:

How about cutting off funding for the DEA's jack-booted marches into California's medical marijuana clinics? While you're at it, snip the purse strings for the agency's persecution of pain specialists, too. And remove the federal ban on scientific research into the possible health benefits of marijuana. Revoke the Internet gambling ban, or -- even better -- legalize online wagering to eliminate any ambiguity. Repeal federal asset forfeiture laws. Repeal the federal minimum drinking age and the national .08 blood-alcohol standard. De-fund the FCC's war on dirty words, and the DOJ's war on dirty pictures.

Personally, I would favor each of the items on Balko's list, as I have written before with regard to some of them (although most, if not all, of those items could never be enacted by Democrats in light of the presidential veto). Very preliminarily, my sense is that the staunchest opposition to repealing or even weakening the nation's drug laws -- and certainly to repealing various federal measures designed to enforce nationalized standards of "decency" -- would be predicated on moralistic/religious grounds, and would be found among "social conservatives" who dominate the Republican Party.

One could far more easily envision a Democratic politician advocating at least mild repeals of some drug laws than a Republican political official doing so, but it is hard to understand why this issue remains so politically radioactive in light of how glaringly irrational and destructive (on every level) the drug laws are. Is there really substantial support for anti-drug laws and aggressive federal enforcement of those laws among liberals? I doubt it, although, again, that is speculative.

But what does seem clear is that the greatest impediment, by far, to being able even to discuss the issue of drug prohibition is the moralistic opposition to drug usage coming from the "religious conservatives" on whom the Republican Party depends. Indeed, for most (though admittedly not all) issues involving excessive federal power and unwarranted federal government intrusion into the lives of American adults, it is the moralist social conservatives, along with their Republican comrades (the surveillance-happy and domestic-intelligence-hungry neoconservatives), who are responsible for those excesses.

UPDATE: The Washington Post reports a slightly different version of the Webb-Bush exchange:

"How's your boy?" Bush asked, referring to Webb's son, a Marine serving in Iraq.

I'd like to get them out of Iraq, Mr. President," Webb responded, echoing a campaign theme.

"That's not what I asked you," Bush said. "How's your boy?"

"That's between me and my boy, Mr. President," Webb said coldly, ending the conversation on the State Floor of the East Wing of the White House.

How dare Jim Webb not answer the Leader's question exactly as it was asked.

The end of the Epic Harman-Hastings Drama

One last time (hopefully and thankfully) on the issue of the all-important Harman-Hastings "scandal," in response to some comments left to last night's post by a couple of Harman/Lieberman-supporting Republican bloggers:

It was obvious all along that (a) Hastings wanted the job, (b) the Congressional Black Caucus voiced mild and obligatory support for him, and (c) Pelosi had to proceed carefully so as not to trample on the sensibilities of her caucus when navigating the ambitions of various long-serving members.

Thus, Hastings' name was repeatedly floated by anonymous sources as a leading candidate -- likely by some who wanted to help Hastings get the job, likely from Harman's camp wanting to paint the impeached judge as her only real competition, likely from others with even less noble intentions wanting to harm Pelosi -- which, in turn, led to garden-variety Washington speculation and gossip about who would get this position. Idle chatter of this sort happens every day in Washington.

What transformed this mundane event from standard Washington chatter into a matter of virtual national obsession was that the media -- not followed by, but rather, as usual, led by, the right-wing propaganda machine -- concocted a towering scandal where none existed, based on a whole set of false and unsupported premises.

It was all based on the false claim that Pelosi had to choose between ranking-member Harman and "next-in-line" Hastings (which was false and based on a misunderstanding of how the Intelligence Committee operates), and that by rejecting Harman, it necessarily meant that Pelosi was going to appoint Hastings (which was also false and never supported by anything other than rank speculation, including in newspapers).

All of that, in turn, led to a tidal wave of vicious anti-Pelosi articles all based on the completely unsupported assumption that she was going to appoint Hastings to this position. She was repeatedly condemned as though she had already done so. Timothy Noah at Slate called her appointment of Hastings the "second strike" and based his demand that she be on "probation" upon her supposed support for Murtha and Hastings. And all of the depictions of Pelosi as a vindictive, inept, weakened leader (before she has ever started as Speaker) were based upon her "decision" to appoint Hastings as House Intelligence Chair.

This "story" was never anything more than an attempt to demonize and weaken Pelosi, as is readily apparent by simply observing who was fueling the whole drama. It was all invented by Bush followers who suddenly developed such an acute and earnest interest in which Democrat will lead that Committee, and then, as always, echoed by the Beltway media, which used one another's speculation as further "justification" to "report" this story.

Quite transparently, none of this ever had anything to do with "concern" over who will lead the House Intelligence Committee (which is why one searches in futility for all the in-depth media debates and analysis over the all-powerful Pete Hoekstra), but instead was all driven by the increasingly intense commitment to destroy Nancy Pelosi's ability to lead the House. It was all based on imaginary "facts" and assumptions that were completely unwarranted by the evidence, and fueled by the caricature that Pelosi is both inept and intent on destroying the Democratic Party. The entire Hastings-vs.-Harman contest was an illusory media drama from start to finish.

It's true that Hastings' name has been bandied about in many circles for some time as Harman's likely "replacement." And, sure, Pelosi and her staff are saying nice things about Hastings today (she would have loved to be able to appoint Hastings if not for that little impeachment problem) because Pelosi obviously has no interest in publicly humiliating him or offending him. Why would she? But she was never bound to appoint Hastings and there was never any evidence that she was committed to doing so.

This was simply designed as another lose-lose situation for Pelosi - either she appoints Hastings and shows she is unserious, or she does not appoint Hastings which shows, again, that she is so weak that she cannot even appoint the Chairmen that she wants. Anyone who even threatens to oppose prevailing Washington wisdom is subjected to this treatment, and there is going to be much more of this, and worse, once she actually starts.

UPDATE: Not that any more are required, but one should add to the pile of myths and falsehoods fueling this story the notion that Pelosi was "denying" Harman her natural and rightful place as Chair, or "demoting" her or pushing her aside. In fact, the House Intelligence Committee -- in addition to having unique non-seniority rules -- also has unique term-limit rules, limiting members to no more than four terms in a six term period.

Harman had met the term limits, and thus, rather than having some entitlement to become Chair, Harman was hoping that Pelosi would, in essence, break or waive the rules in order to appoint her. Pelosi did not go out of her way to "deny" Harman what would have been her rightful place, the central assumption of most of the anti-Pelosi commentary. The opposite is true: Pelosi would have had to invoke unusual steps in order to appoint Harman as Chair.

* * * * * *

The Democracy Now segment I was scheduled to do this morning regarding the House Intelligence Committee Chair position has been moved to tomorrow, to begin at the same time (roughly 8:20 a.m. EST).

Alcee Hastings and the Glories of Conventional Wisdom

(updated below)

Stephen Bainbridge responded to yesterday's post I wrote about the media's vapid and inaccurate reporting regarding Nancy Pelosi's selection for House Intelligence Committee Chair. In his post, Bainbridge repeated the myth that opposition to Jane Harman implies support for Alcee Hastings. He even entitled his post "Harman or Hastings?" and said about my criticisms of Harman: "Whatever faults Harman may have, however, pale by comparision to those of Alcee Hastings."

Multiple other bloggers (and various commenters) responded to my post yesterday by continuing to insist that Pelosi should select Harman based on claims that Hastings is such an inappropriate choice, even though I expressly pointed out (as Pelosi herself made clear from the beginning):

There is no seniority on the Intelligence Committee, so Harman is not being "demoted" by being "denied" this seat. Hastings is not the "alternative," since Pelosi can choose anyone she wants and, as far as I know, has never said that the "alternative" to Harman is Hastings. The media has just invented this dichotomy in order to foster the drama of the Serious/Substantive v. Frivolous/Bitchy choice they have decreed is what Pelosi must navigate.

It really is astonishing to observe as the media fabricates some storyline out of whole cloth -- "Hastings v. Harman!" -- and then it just becomes ossified as an immovable and unexamined premise, especially among the most superficial, partisan and mindless pundits, even though it is based on nothing, or next to nothing.

In any event, perhaps this childish drama can now be retired since a report has emerged that Pelosi will not name Hastings as Chair. Apparently, she intended to inform him this week that he would not get the position, but instead he has removed himself from consideration. From Congressional Quarterly (via TPM Muckraker):

House Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi was to meet with Rep. Alcee L. Hastings late Tuesday to close the door on his bid to become chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, a congressional aide said.

But Pelosi, D-Calif., has not yet decided who will get the job, according to the aide. . . .

Pelosi met with Harman two weeks ago to discuss the House Intelligence Committee chair job. There is little to suggest Pelosi will reverse her intention to replace Harman atop the panel.

The CQ article is subscription only, so I only know of the excerpt provided by TPM, which really doesn't say that Hastings removed himself from consideration. That claim comes from the headline provided by TPM's Justin Rood ("CQ: Hastings to Drop Bid for Intel Chair"). The excerpt only says that Pelosi planned this week "to close the door on his bid to become chairman."

Either way -- whether Pelosi "closed the door" on Hastings or he preemptively removed himself from consideration -- it seems clear that neither Harman nor Hastings will be the choice for House Intelligence Chair. Thus, as was extremely predictable, the entire media and blogosphere hysteria over this matter over the last two week, used primarily as a tool to smear Pelosi once the all-important Steny Hoyer Scandal ran its course, was based on nothing but fiction and imagination.

* * * * * * * *

I will be on Democracy Now with Amy Goodman tomorrow morning, beginning some time between 8:20-8:30 a.m. EST, to discuss the "controversy" of who will lead the House Intelligence Committee.

* * * * * * * *

To his credit, Professor Bainbridge responded to the comment I left at his site, with a new post recognizing that Pelosi need not select Hastings if she rejects Harman (this was before the CQ report was known). In it, he asks:

In any event, if not Harman, who? Greenwald comments "opposing Harman (as I have done) is not to support Hastings (as I have NOT done - quite the opposite)." Indeed, in an aside to a post attacking Harman, Greenwald did comment that "Alcee Hastings is one of the few House members who might be less desirable." Fair enough. But two questions remain: Will Greenwald explain why he thinks Hastings is "less desirable" and oppose Hastings in detail? Who does Greenwald think Pelosi should (or will) pick if not Hastings?

I attempted to respond at his site with a comment but was unable to do so, so I will post the response here:

The fact that Hastings and the CBC want him to get the job and have been lobbying for it doesn't mean that Pelosi is seriously considering appointing him to it.

There is much speculation that Rahm Emanuel did not challenge former CBC Chair James Clyburn as Majority Whip - instead Emaneul let him have that position and took the one below -- because allowing Clyburn to assume that important leadership position relieved Pelosi of the obligation to appoint Hastings as Intelligence Chair.

That satisfied the CBC. That's just speculation, but as Tom Maguire, among others, has noted, the CBC is decidedly lukewarm (at best) about its "demand" that Hastings get that position. Their advocacy for him appears cursory.

As the commenter above notes, Rush Holt would be an excellent selection and has been increasingly mentioned as a possibility, at least in blogospheric circles (Josh Marshall, for one, suggested him yesterday).

The third-ranking member currently (after Harman and Hastings) is Sylvester Reyes, who by all accounts is competent. He also opposed the war and is a member of the Hispanic Caucas, which has been pining for an important leadership role.

Either Holt or Reyes, and scores of other members, would be fine by me. The real point here is that the media has claimed - with no basis - that Pelosi is blocking Harman purely because of vindictive, personal, substance-free motives of the type typically attributed to women (it's a "cat fight" between two prima donnas) even though: (a) there is no basis for that claim and (b) there are plenty of substantive reasons why Pelosi would not want Harman to chair the Committee (I cited several yesterday).

Similarly, Pelosi is getting mauled on the ground that Hastings is such a horrible choice even though she obviously has not appointed him yet or even said anything to suggest that it's a real possibility.

Finally, since you asked, I oppose Hastings for the obvious reason -- I think his bribery impeachment (his acquittal in his criminal trial notwithstanding) ought to disqualify him from any important leadership role. He's also shown no particular expertise or even interest in intelligence issues, and I think it's vital that someone who is both willing and able to exercise aggressive investigative scrutiny and oversight over the administration be in that position. Neither Hastings nor Harman qualify.

All along, the issue -- at least to me -- was not so much who will be selected as House Intelligence Committee Chair, but rather, that the media has spent two weeks vilifying Pelosi for refusing to appoint Harman supposedly out of "personal" animus and attempting to appoint Hastings instead, even though: (a) there has never been any evidence that "personal" issues, rather than substantive objections, motivated Pelosi's opposition to Harman and (b) there was no evidence that she was planning to appoint Hastings. It was just all fabricated and repeated endlessly as though it were true, even though it was based on nothing.

Isn't that rather apparent now? Maybe Nancy Pelosi, who became Speaker of the House due to her own ingenuity and work, isn't such a stupid, confused, weak, inept little girl after all. Maybe it would make sense to allow her to actually start as Speaker before fueling a media swarm that denounces her as a failure.

UPDATE: TPM now reports, based on the CQ article, that it was Pelosi who made the decision not to appoint Hastings, not Hastings who withdrew. From Hastings' statement:

I have been informed by the Speaker-elect that I will not serve as the Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in the 110th Congress. I am obviously disappointed with this decision.

Pelosi never said she was even considering Hastings. All of the media reports suggesting otherwise were either based on pure speculation or, as Jay B notes in Comments, may well have come from the camp of Jane Harman, who was campaigning heavily for the position (perhaps too heavily) and easily could have created the myth that it was either her or the impeached Hastings whom Pelosi was considering. Either way, it's time for the oh-so-serious-and-responsible Beltway mavens as well as those desperate to smear Pelosi to find a new gossip item with which to depict Pelosi as a vindictive, unserious loser.

UPDATE II: My response to some of the comments to this post is here.

The next two years

In an excellent new New Yorker article, Jeffrey Toobin documents how Arlen Specter lambasted the Military Commissions Act as a tyrannical, unconstitutional, profoundly unjust atrocity, only to then, like the good boy that he is, cast his vote in favor of it. After his habeas corpus amendment failed, "Specter, visibly angry, left the Senate chamber. He told reporters that he thought the habeas ban was 'patently unconstitutional' and vowed to vote against the detainee bill." The next day -- the next day -- he voted in favor of it. That's just sad.

But one of the most glorious results of the midterm elections is that it has relegated former-Chairman Specter (such a nice-sounding phrase) to an inconsequential afterthought. The more important aspect of Toobin's article is that it provides an important and potent reminder that while it is nice that Democrats, rather than Bush-loyal Republicans, now control Congress, the people who occupy the White House don't think that matters because they believe -- literally -- that Congress has no power to restrain what they do.

One episode which Toobin recounts is that Lindsey Graham travelled with Dick Cheney's counsel, John-Yoo-copycat David Addington, to Guantanamo in 2002, and on the way back, Graham tried to convince Addington to "allow" Congress to enact legislation legalizing the administration's detention and interrogation practices (which, as of that time, had no legal authorization whatsoever). In other words, just like they wanted to do with the President's illegal warrantless eavesdropping program, Congress pleaded with the Bush administration after the fact to be permitted to pass legislation approving of what the President had ordered.

But the administration refused to allow Congress to authorize what they were doing because the administration wanted it to be as clear as could be that they could do whatever they wanted in the national security area (defined as broadly as possible) and that Congress had no role whatsoever to play -- even to rubber-stamp the Leader's Will:

The Bush Administration, believing that the treatment of the detainees was a matter that belonged under the exclusive control of the executive branch, was disdainful of attempts by Congress to address the issue. “I went down to Guantánamo with a group of senators shortly after it opened, and Dave Addington was also on the trip,” Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator from South Carolina, recalled, referring to Vice-President Dick Cheney’s counsel, who has been a leading advocate in the Administration for a broad view of Presidential power.

“As we were flying back to the States, I pulled Dave aside on the plane and said, ‘You really need to come over and draft some legislation with us, and, if you do that, the Supreme Court will be much more likely to uphold what we do. It would be better to work in concert with each other when it comes to wartime decision-making about how you try and interrogate a prisoner.’

“I remember Dave had a copy of the Constitution he carried around with him,” Graham went on. “He took it out, and he said the Administration didn’t need congressional authorization for what it was doing. The President had the inherent authority to handle the prisoners any way he wanted. And I said, ‘ That may be a good legal argument, but it’s not a good political argument. The more united the nation, the better it is for everyone.’ But Dave said, ‘ Thanks but no thanks.’

On Sunday, the Boston Globe's Charlie Savage -- one of the country's few real "journalists" in the meaningful sense of that term -- documented Dick Cheney's decades-long obsession with vesting all power in a single authoritarian leader and rendering Congress almost completely impotent, nothing more than a symbolic body. One of the incidents which Savage described, one of which I was not previously aware, is that Cheney actually urged the first President Bush not to seek Congressional approval for the Persian Gulf War, arguing that the President had the power to start whatever wars he wanted regardless of whether Congress approved or not:

"I was not enthusiastic about going to Congress for an additional grant of authority," Cheney recalled in a 1996 PBS "Frontline" documentary. "I was concerned that they might well vote 'no' and that would make life more difficult for us."

Notice that, in Cheney's authoritarian mind, if Congress had voted "no" on the question of whether to declare war (or provide the President with the authorization to use military force), that would not have meant that they couldn't start the war. It just would have "made life more difficult" for them. As I have documented before, there is simply no question -- none -- that the Bush administration believes it has the power to initiate wars against other countries, such as Iran or Syria or anyone else, without having even a pretense of Congressional approval.

And starting wars isn't the only thing they believe they can do without Congressional approval. As a Congressman, Cheney was the ranking Republican in 1987 on the Committee investigating the Iran-Contra affair and, as Savage details, he expressly argued that the President had the power to ignore the Boland Amendments, the Congressional prohibition on the providing of support to the Nicaraguan contras, on the ground that Congress has no power to restrict the President's national security decisions. As Savage reports: "The 'committee issued a scathing, bipartisan report accusing White House officials of 'disdain for the law,'" which Cheney refused to sign.

Democrats replaced Republicans in Congress as a result of the midterm election but nobody has replaced Dick Cheney and George Bush. And they see Congress as irrelevant. The increasingly assertive defender of American values, the American Patriot Pat Leahy, explains in Toobin's article how Congress functioned for the last five years and what it reveals about the "character" of those who still rule the executive branch:

Specter’s own beliefs appear to have changed little over the years, but he has been forced to work in an environment in which the Republican Party, especially in Congress, has imposed ever-tighter discipline. “When Lyndon Johnson became Vice-President, he wasn’t welcome at Senate Democratic caucus meetings anymore, because it was for senators only,” Patrick Leahy, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, told me.

“But every Tuesday since Bush has been President it’s been like a Mafia funeral around here. There are, like, fifteen cars with lights and sirens, and Cheney and Karl Rove come to the Republican caucus meetings and tell those guys what to do. It’s all ‘Yes, sir, yes, sir.’ I bet there is not a lot of dissent that goes on in that room. In thirty-two years in the Senate, I have never seen a Congress roll over and play dead like this one.”

There are a lot of Democrats who, understandably enough, seem all excited about the great new policies and legislation they think they can enact now. And many people are equally excited (at least) about the Congressional investigations that are going to commence. But it is vital to keep at the forefront of our political discussions the fact that the Bush administration is composed of individuals who do not recognize the rule of law or the authority of Congress to do much of anything, and -- unless they are absolutely forced to do so, and it's unclear what that might include -- they are not going to comply with these things we used to call "laws" or with Congressional subpoenas and other mandates because they believe they do not have to. And they have said so expressly, time and again.

The rule of law is being made a mockery of every day by an administration that continues to eavesdrop on us without warrants even though there is still a law in place that makes doing that a felony punishable by five years in prison and a $10,000 fine. The Yoo Theory of Presidential Omnipotence is still the official and embraced position of the executive branch. Neither it nor its adherents have gone anywhere.

And we still don't know whether the last two years of this administration will be driven by the broken, humbled, tired and drained President whom we saw the day after the elections, or by a more-than-ever embittered and contemptuous Cheney-led administration bent on more war-making and lawlessness. I think most people assume, quite correctly, that it will be the latter.

It is good to hear Democrats talking about their intentions to investigate and to exercise oversight and impose limits on the administration's behavior, but it is vital that they recognize that doing that is not going to happen easily. It will require some extremely contentious confrontations and very difficult fights to enforce the rule of law.

There are going to be all sorts of pressures placed on those who want to impose genuine limits on this President -- from the bipartisan/centrist fetishists in the media who will condemn such measures as shrill and extremist to threats and attacks from the administration's filth machine to Congressional Democrats eager to win Beltway approval by showing they are serious, sensible, responsible, etc. But there is no more urgent task than restoring the basic principles of our system of government, and it remains to be seen whether there are Democrats in Congress who are up to that Herculean task.

The media's sudden intense interest in the House Intelligence Committee

The New Republic's Michael Crowley last night noticed something about Jane Harman that has evaded most Beltway commentators, including those who have suddenly developed such a bizarre and uncharacteristic interest in the issue of who will lead the House Intelligence Committee:

In the debate over which Democrat should lead the House Intelligence Committe, Alcee Hastings has endured a lot of well-deserved scrutiny lately. But it's only fair to note that Jane Harman wasn't exactly a lantern in the darkness in the runup to the Iraq war:

"There's a strong intelligence case that Iraq has not destroyed its weapons of mass destruction and is building the capability to use them," said Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), ranking member of the House intelligence committee. "There's a growing al Qaeda presence in Iraq, and I think the case can be made that there is a growing affiliation" between Baghdad and terrorist groups.

Growing al Qaeda presence? I knew that Harman supported the war. I hadn't realized quite how much bad intel she swallowed whole.

Harman has swallowed much more than just "bad intel" on Iraq. For instance, when it was revealed that the President was eavesdropping on Americans without warrants -- i.e. , in violation of the law -- Harman immediately became, far and away, the most prominent and vocal Democratic defender of the President's law-breaking, enabling Time Magazine to say this on January 3, 2006 -- just two weeks after the Times reported on the law-breaking, when impressions were still forming among Americans as to how grave of a scandal this was:

G.O.P. strategists argue that Democrats have little leeway to attack on the issue because it could make them look weak on national security and because some of their leaders were briefed about the National Security Agency (NSA) no-warrant surveillance before it became public knowledge.

Some key Democrats even defend it. Says California's Jane Harman, ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee: "I believe the program is essential to U.S. national security and that its disclosure has damaged critical intelligence capabilities."

In February of this year, Harman went on Meet the Press and -- echoing the sentiments of the GOP Senate and House Committee Chairmen, Pat Roberts and Pete Hoekstra -- she again emphasized, proudly, her "support" for the President's NSA warrantless eavesdropping program ("The briefings were about the operational details of the program. I support the program, I’ve never flinched from that"). Worse, while defending the President's lawbreaking, she heaped blame on The New York Times for reporting on the Leader's illegal conduct, saying: ". . . the leak to The New York Times that triggered things—and by the way, I deplore that leak" and:

This is not a covert action program, this is a very valuable foreign collection program, and I’m—I think it is tragic that a lot of our capability is now across the pages of the newspapers.

All of that led her to declare how receptive she was to a criminal investigation into the Times for reporting this story:

If the press was part of the process of delivering classified information, I think there have to be some limits on press immunity. . . . Well, it’s not clear it was a whistleblower. You have to prove that first. No. The answer is if it’s protected under the whistleblower statute, then it’s protected. Goss in his op-ed said he was trying to protect whistleblowers, but these were despicable people going around the process.

So Harman has a history of defending the administration's illegal intelligence activities. She was among the most gullible and/or deceitful when it came to disseminating the administration's most extreme (and most inaccurate) intelligence claims to "justify" the invasion of Iraq. She supports the administration's efforts to criminally investigate, if not prosecute, journalists who reveal illegal intelligence activities on the part of the President (including illegal activities about which Harman knew but said nothing).

Given her position as ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, Harman was repeatedly used by the administration -- with her consent -- as a potent instrument to shield itself from scrutiny, by creating the "Responsible Democrat" (Harman, Lieberman) v. "Irresponsible Democrat" dichotomy and then arguing that they enjoyed bipartisan support from the Good, Sensible Democrats like Harman. That's why, just like Joe Lieberman, Harman's most vociferous defenders are the most extreme Bush followers and neoconservatives. It is their agenda whom she promotes (which is why they defend her).

In light of that history, why would anyone think that Nancy Pelosi should choose Jane Harman to be the Chair of the House Intelligence Committee, a key position for exercising desperately-needed oversight over the administration's last two years of intelligence mischief and, as importantly, for investigating and exposing the administration's past misconduct? She instinctively supports, or at least acquieses to, the administration's excesses, and would be among the worst choices Pelosi could make.

Despite all of that, the mindless, petty Beltway media parrots continue to recite the adolescent-minded script that Pelosi is a vindictive, unserious and egomaniacal "girl" because she won't bestow Jane Harman with the Chair of the Intelligence Committee. To read this new column in U.S. News and World Report by Gloria Borger is like looking through a high-powered microscope at virtually every Beltway media disease. It is all there in its vapid, gory emptiness. Titled "The Lady of the House," it begins this way:

Women recognize that kind of smile: pasted, forced, painful. When it appears-say, to hide heartbreak or sadness-there's a natural sympathy, even admiration, for the spirit of the woman wearing it. But when the soon-to-be Madame Speaker emerged from a closed-door Democratic caucus recently wearing that anguished grin, there was none of that friendly sense of embrace. None whatsoever.

Instead, there was mostly this question: What was the woman thinking? That we would simply accept the toothy smile as evidence of her newfound comity with Steny Hoyer, the new majority leader whom she had just attempted to knock off? That we would think it was a good idea to make her maiden leadership power play-in supporting Jack Murtha over her foe Steny Hoyer for the job-an act of revenge instead of reconciliation? That the woman about to become the first female speaker of the House was smart to look like a girl eager to "get back" at the guy she didn't like?

All of this merely because Pelosi preferred one of her allies who agrees with her opposition to the Iraq war over someone who is not her ally and who spouts Washington establishment-ese on every issue, including the war. For the oh-so-critical position of House Majority Leader.

How, asks Borgor now, can Pelosi possibly recover from such a catastrophe and prove that she's not a silly girl and that she's not "acting like the second coming of George McGovern"? By appointing the pro-war, Washington Establishment-ese-spewing Jane Harman as House Intelligence Chair, of course:

Tacky. And divided on the best way to end the war. Pelosi has taken sides: She supports the Murtha withdraw-now scenario. And she's about to demote her more moderate fellow Californian, Jane Harman-denying her the chairmanship of the House Intelligence Committee, even kicking her off the panel. Why demote Harman?

If it's a policy dispute over the war, why not welcome Harman's voice-generally regarded as credible, even if it veers from the liberal line? If it's a personal dispute, get over it. Any member of the California delegation will tell you that the two women don't get along-and that both have probably been right over the years. But if you're speaker, why demean your exalted position by engaging in a publicly ugly, even tacky, fight? Particularly when the possible alternative to Harman is Alcee Hastings of Florida, once impeached by the Senate for ethical lapses.

This is all mindless, baseless mental garbage that Borger is spewing because all of the people like her are spewing the same thing. There is no seniority on the Intelligence Committee, so Harman is not being "demoted" by being "denied" this seat. Hastings is not the "alternative," since Pelosi can choose anyone she wants and, as far as I know, has never said that the "alternative" to Harman is Hastings. The media has just invented this dichotomy in order to foster the drama of the Serious/Substantive v. Frivolous/Bitchy choice they have decreed is what Pelosi must navigate.

At first I thought that the media's obsession with smearing Pelosi was some combination of its adolescent cravings for cattle-like demonization of the unpopular, loser Democrats, combined with the surprisingly (at least to me) strong and obvious discomfort with a woman being this politically powerful in her own right, not dependent upon appointments or derivative popularity from political spouses. And there is definitely a lot of that driving this chatter.

But now I believe that what is really responsible for this amazing obsession with undermining Nancy Pelosi before she even starts -- over matters as seemingly irrelevant (in the grand scheme of things) as Steny Hoyer and Jane Harman, no less -- is that institutionalized Beltway personalities fear a repudiation of the rotten system on which they depend and of which they are such integral parts.

They were so petrified by the possible rejection of Hoyer in favor of the anti-war Murtha because that would have been viewed by them as a repudiation of their brand of Serious Washington Centrism -- the disease which enabled the Bush administration and brought us this war. It would have meant that those who continue to prop up this war and this administration, either actively or passively, are going to suffer a loss of prestige and credibility. And that is exactly why it is so important to them that Jane Harman become House Intelligence Chair and why Pelosi's refusal to allow that will unleash even more hostility towards her.

There is nothing "credible" about Harman. Yes, she is smart and knowledgeable, but she has been wrong about everything that matters, particularly in the intelligence area. But she was wrong in exactly the same way that the Beltway geniuses and The New Republic and David Broder and Fred Hiatt were wrong. For that reason, they don't want her to be repudiated and rejected because that would constitute a repudiation and rejection of them. So they build up and glorify the "credible," responsible Harman because she represents them, and they hate Pelosi in advance for rejecting Harman for being wrong about everything because they feel rejected by that choice.

As a result, Pelosi and her opposition to Harman have to be belittled and removed from the substantive arena. Harman supported the most disastrous strategic decision in our nation's history and repeatedly defended the administration's worst excesses. That ought to be disqualifying on its face. But the Beltway media are guilty of the same crimes, so they want to pretend that Harman -- just like Steny Hoyer -- did nothing wrong and the only reason not to anoint her to her Rightful Place is because of petty, womanly personality disputes that have no place in the public arena.

For the same reason, they decree that Pelosi must prove that she's a "responsible" and serious leader. How does she do that? By embracing the Beltway establishment types, including those -- especially those -- who have been so wrong about so many things.

That's why the media has taken such an intense interest in the otherwise mundane matter of who will be House Majority Leader and House Intelligence Chair. Jane Harman, like Steny Hoyer, is the symbol of official Washington, the broken, rotted, corrupt Washington that propped up this war and enabled this administration in so many ways. Pelosi has to prove that she's one of them, or else suffer the consequences of being mauled and scorned.

The "centrist" position on the war in Iraq

This Washington Post article on the inner workings of the bizarrely revered Baker-Hamilton Commission is notable for several reasons, the first of which is that neoconservatives are stomping their feet and whining loudly because they feel that their Great Wisdom and Expertise are being unfairly ignored:

Neoconservatives, who supported and crafted much of the original Iraq strategy, say the panel was stacked against them. Michael Rubin, political adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority, resigned because he said he was a token.

"Many appointees appeared to be selected less for expertise than for their hostility to President Bush's war on terrorism and emphasis on democracy," Rubin wrote in the Weekly Standard. Baker and Hamilton "gerrymandered" the experts only "to ratify predetermined recommendations," he wrote. "Rather than prime the debate they sought to stifle it."

Only two of the 40 experts -- May and former CIA analyst Reuel Marc Gerecht -- are neoconservatives.

Seeking input from the neocons on how to solve the Iraq disaster would be like consulting the serial arsonist who started a deadly, raging fire on how to extinguish it. That actually might make sense if the arsonist were repentant and wanted to help reverse what he unleashed. But if the arsonist were proud of the fire he started and actually wanted to see it rage forever, even more strongly -- and, worse, if he were intent on starting whole new fires just like the one destroying everything and everyone in its path-- it would be the height of irrationality for those wanting to extinguish the fire to listen to what he has to say.

But more notable than the supposed exclusion of neocons (something that should be believed only once it is seen) is this claim about Washington-style balance and "centrism":

The panel was deliberately skewed toward a centrist course for Iraq, participants said. Organizers avoided experts with extreme views on either side of the Iraq war debate.

I'd really like to know what the excluded anti-war "extreme view" is that is the equivalent of the neonconservative desire for endless warfare in Iraq and beyond. The only plausible possibility would be the view that the U.S. ought to withdraw from Iraq, and do so sooner rather than later. What else could it be? Nobody, to my knowledge, is proposing that we cede American territory to the Iraqi insurgents, so withdrawal essentially defines the far end of the anti-war spectrum.

Is withdrawal -- whether incremental or total -- considered to be an "extreme view" that the Washington "centrists" have not only rejected but have excluded in advance even from consideration? That's what this article seems to suggest, and that would definitely be consistent with conventional Beltway wisdom -- that withdrawal is advocated only by the fringe radicals and far leftists (such as the individual whom Americans just knowingly installed as Speaker of the House).

There is nothing "centrist" about a Commission which decides in advance that it will not remove our troops from a war which is an unmitigated disaster and getting worse every day. It just goes without saying that if you invade and occupy a country and are achieving nothing good by staying, withdrawal must be one of the primary options considered when deciding what to do about the disaster.

Even if that is not the option ultimately chosen, a categorical refusal in advance to consider that option -- or to listen to experts who advocate it -- is not the work of a "centrist" body devoted to finding a solution to this war. If the Commission begins with the premise that we have to stay in Iraq and then only considers proposals for how to modify our strategy on the margins, that is anything but centrist. To the contrary, that is a close-minded -- and rather extremist -- commitment to the continuation of a war which most Americans have come to despise and want to see brought to an end.

Back in 2002, when the U.S. was debating whether to invade Iraq, those who opposed the invasion were, for that reason alone, dismissed as unserious morons and demonized as anti-American subversive hippies. Despite the fact that subsequent events have largely proven them to have been right, and that those who did the demonizing were the frivolous, unserious, know-nothing extremists, this narrative persists, so that -- even now, when most Americans have turned against this war -- the only way to avoid being an "extremist," and to be rewarded with the "centrist" mantle, is to support the continuation of this war in one form or another.

A desire to keep troops in Iraq even in the face of what is going on there may be many things, but "centrist" is not really one of them. Any Commission which commits itself in advance to keeping American troops fighting in Iraq for the foreseeable, indefinite future is itself "extremist" -- whether that term is seen as a function of public opinion or assessed on its own merits.

UPDATE: Via Greg Djerejian, who has all you need to know about Michael Rubin's melodramatic protest resignation from the Commission ("James Baker and Lee Hamilton, doubtless, must have been crushed--that the penetrating insights Rubin would have brought to bear are now lost forever"), here is the list of the 40 experts assembled by the Commission (h/t MD).

The meaninglessness of tenure

(Updated below - Update II - Update III - Update IV - Update V)

Ann Althouse today:

I wonder how many people "recoil" at [Andrew] Sullivan's sanctimonious pronouncements about "Christianists." He's become so devoted to that word of his. Does he not notice how snide and hostile it feels even to people who are not fundamentalists?

Ann Althouse, February 21, 2006:

I wonder how the history books would read on the cartoons story if, by some crazy chance, fascistic Islamists win World War IV.

Ann Althouse, January 22, 2006:

This isn't meant to appeal to Islamists, who, the article suggests, would find these depictions wrong. But Mutawa has Western leanings (a Ph.D. in clinical psychology and an M.B.A. from Columbia University) and is trying to appeal to kids who feel an attraction to Western culture. Interestingly, Teshkeel has acquired Cracked magazine and plans to bring it back. Not for Arab Muslims, however, for Americans.

And then there is this, from her patron, Instapundit, on October 22, 2006: "Sounds bad. (Via Dan Riehl, who thinks this means that France's accomodationist (sic) policy regarding Islamists isn't working)." And on October 13, 2006: "And Grameen's efforts to empower women have made them very unpopular with Islamists, which is reason enough to applaud." And over and over and over -- they are always "Islamists," except when they are "Islamofascists," which is, in Reynolds' world, almost as often.

But yesterday, Reynolds also objected to Sullivan's use of the term "Christianist" (which is almost certainly why Althouse wrote about it today). This is what Reynolds said when complaining about Sullivan's use of that term to describe those individuals in Tennessee who lobbied to force the cancellation of a broadcast of a Madonna concert:

This whole "Christianist" thing is kind of silly, as episodes like this one illustrate. At best, it's a vapid book-marketing term, but it seems more like a variety of bigotry on its own account, and a pretty empty variety of bigotry at that.

That from someone who routinely -- meaning on a weekly basis, at least -- refers to whole groups of people as "Islamists" and "Islamofascists."

How odd that such "sanctimonious pronouncements" about "Islamists" are everywhere -- including coming out of Althouse's and Reynolds' own mouths -- yet "do[ they] not notice how snide and hostile it feels even to people who are not fundamentalists?" People like Althouse and Reynolds love to complain about the supposed religious hostility which exists towards Christians -- a whine triggered so easily that the mere use of the word "Christianist" is sufficient for us to be subjected to it -- because feeling persecuted is an insatiable need they have.

And their "evidence" for anti-Christian "bigotry" consists of nothing more than statements and sentiments that are indescribably benign and innocuous, especially compared to the hostility and scorn that spews forth from them towards "Islamists," "Islamofascists," and similar terms. In their world, referring to people who believe that the law should comport to their Christian religious beliefs as "Christianists" is "sanctimonious," "snide" and "hostile" "bigotry" -- even though they are people who use exactly the same terms, and (in Reynolds' case) much worse, to refer to Muslims.

We are now headed into the season where this type of petulant hypocrisy flows abundantly -- it is, after all, the Season of the War on Christmas -- and it's good to see these two nonpartisan, above-it-all, "swing-voter"/professors are getting such an early start on the persecution festivities.

UPDATE: Blue Texan has related analysis of the odd spectacle of self-proclaimed "libertarian nonpartisans" pledging their allegiance to a political party dominated by "social conservatives" who advocate the most un-libertarian policies imaginable. And in this instance, these "libertarian non-partisans" go even further and anoint themselves the defenders of those same "social conservatives" and loyally echo their petty cries of religious persecution.

UPDATE II: Ann Althouse responds and seems angry:

* Glenn Greenwald is such an idiot.

* Am I supposed to respond to this foolishness?

* Glenn, you moron, in case you didn't notice, Sullivan is mocking Mormons in general.

* . . . . you disreputable slimeball.

* And your writing is putrid.

* But I do love the pathetic jealousy of your post title.

And all of that is packed into a one-paragraph outburst.

As for the actual "response," Althouse now claims she doesn't object to the term "Christianist" in general (what she said originally was: "He's become so devoted to that word of his ["Christianist"]. Does he not notice how snide and hostile it feels even to people who are not fundamentalists?"). She now claims that she was only upset because "Sullivan is mocking Mormons in general" and "he shows a hostility toward ordinary religious people who aren't trying to bully their way around the political world."

But that's both incoherent and dishonest. It's incoherent because Sullivan's post which was supposedly "mocking" Mormons had nothing to do with the term "Christianist." Althouse's claim that that was the post to which she was referring when objecting to the term "Christianist" literally makes no sense at all, since Sullivan didn't use the term there.

Her response is dishonest because the post of Sullivan's which was about "Christianists" was not merely referring to ordinary religious people going peacefully about their business, but instead, was about a new poll which revealed that "53 percent of evangelical Christians would not even consider voting for a Mormon president" -- that would be Christians who would categorically refuse to vote for a political candidate solely because of his religion.

Sullivan was describing as "Christianists" people whose specific religion so dominates their political beliefs that they would refuse even to consider a candidate who is Mormon. And he was hardly "mocking" Mormons there; if anything, he was defending Mormons from the Christianists who would refuse to vote for them for political office simply because of religious differences.

To defend her attack on the term "Christianist," Althouse completely misrepresents Sullivan's use of the term (she falsely claims that he was using it to describe "ordinary religious people who aren't trying to bully their way around the political world"). Then again, Althouse gets to be a law professor at the University of Wisconsin so perhaps my seething "pathetic jealousy" over that fact is impeding my judgment.

UPDATE III: To Althouse's professorial critique, Glenn Reynolds adds that I am "extraordinarily lame," and then links to Althouse's outburst. He claims:

The problem with the term "Christianist" isn't that it adds "ist" to the end of a religion. It's that, by parallelling "Islamist," it is a deliberate attempt at conflating people who oppose gay marriage -- or, apparently, Madonna's schlocky posturing -- with people who blow up discos and mosques, and throw gay people off of walls.

Like his colleague Althouse, Reynolds is just making up arguments and then attributing them to Sullivan because he's otherwise incapable of responding and defending his attack on the term "Christianist."

That term "Christianist" -- like the term "Islamist" (but unlike the term "Islamofascist") -- does not remotely denote violence or terrorism, as Sullivan, who coined the term, has repeatedly made clear. It merely refers to those who view Christianity not merely as a religious doctrine to govern their personal and private lives, but far beyond that, as a set of beliefs to which secular law must conform when constraining others, such as this:

The Texas Republican Party's platform, which in 2004 contained this:

We pledge to exert our influence toward a return to the original intent of the First Amendment and dispel the myth of the separation of church and state.

Or the 2006 Texas GOP Platform which declares that "America is a Christian nation." Or those who believe in laws providing that American adults who have un-Christian sex in the privacy of their own homes will be arrested and imprisoned as criminals. Or those who want to outlaw private consensual activities among consenting adults -- including pornography and gambling -- solely because such activities violate Christian morality. Or those who believe that the Federal Government ought to intervene and take control of end-of-life conflicts being adjudicated by a state court judge because the judge, when faithfully applying state law, reaches an un-Christian result. Or those who believe that our Middle East policies ought to be governed by a desire for Rapture. Or those who would refuse to vote for a political candidate because he's a Mormon.

The Republican Party to which Reynolds and his readers are so loyal (while pretending not to be) is dominated by a contingent which believes that secular law should conform to Christian doctrine. Such individuals ("Christianists") are distinct from those who merely believe in Christianity as a matter of personal religious faith ("Christians"), and the notion that the use of the term "Christianists" somehow suggests a propensity to engage in terrorism or a willingness to use violence is pure fantasy which Reynolds simply made up to justify his baseless, petulant cries of persecution and "bigotry" over the use of that descriptive term.

UPDATE IV: What makes Althouse and Reynolds' claim here so particularly dishonest is that their ideological comrade, Hugh Hewitt, previously made the same argument -- that Sullivan's use of the term "Christianist" is "deeply offensive." Hewitt was just as petulant and hysterical as Reynolds was, labelling the term "hate speech." In response, Sullivan explained exactly what the term means and what it does not mean:

Christianity, in this view, is simply a faith. Christianism is an ideology, politics, an ism. The distinction between Christian and Christianist echoes the distinction we make between Muslim and Islamist. Muslims are those who follow Islam. Islamists are those who want to wield Islam as a political force and conflate state and mosque. Not all Islamists are violent. Only a tiny few are terrorists.

And I should underline that the term Christianist is in no way designed to label people on the religious right as favoring any violence at all. I mean merely by the term Christianist the view that religious faith is so important that it must also have a precise political agenda. It is the belief that religion dictates politics and that politics should dictate the laws for everyone, Christian and non-Christian alike.

That is not a complicated distinction. Are Althouse and Reynolds (and their like-minded comrade, Hewitt) really incapable of comprehending it? "Christians" (like "Muslims") are those who believe in the religion. "Christianists" (like "Islamists") are those who believe that their religious beliefs ought to shape politics and dictate the law. "Christian fascists" (like "Islamofascists") are those who believe in the use of violence and terrorism to achieve those goals. The term "Christianist" has nothing to do with violence, only with a desire to compel others to adhere to Christian religious views via the force of politics, state power, and secular law.

What seems to be guiding Althouse and Reynolds' hatred of the term "Christianist" is that it highlights a fact which they both are eager to ignore -- namely, that the political party to which they are so devoted is dominated by individuals who believe that their religious/Christian beliefs ought to dictate the American political process, shape secular law, and exploit coercive state power to constrain the choices of their fellow citizens.

UPDATE V: As Avedon points out in Comments, Tristero actually wrote about this topic back in June, 2003 in an excellent post which concluded: "In short, not only must we make a distinction between Islam, Islamism, and radical Islamism, I think it is important to distinguish between Christianity, Christianism, and radical Christianism."

Tristero made the same basic distinctions made by Sullivan, which Althouse, Reynolds and Hewitt are incapable of understanding (or unwilling to understand, though I think it's the former) -- namely, that Christians (like Muslims) can be divided into three groups: (1) those who believe in the religion ("Christians/Muslims"); (2) those who seek to have their religious beliefs dictate politics and law ("Christianists/Islamists"); and (3) those who are willing to use violence to enforce compliance with their religious beliefs ("Christian fascists/Islamofascists" - or "Christian terrorist"/"Muslim terrorist").

The Republican Party is dominated by those who belong to group (2) -- Christianists -- and to conflate that group with group (3) ("Christian terrorists") in order to discredit and mock the term "Christianists" (see Reynolds' "Update" for a particularly misleading example of that tactic) is nothing short of pure mendacity, driven by a desire to hide the fact that "Christianists" (along with their odd partners, the neoconservatives) now control and define the Republican Party.

Why I hate, rather than dislike, the Bush movement

(updated below)

Dick Cheney, October 24, 2006

Q. Are the terrorists trying to influence our election in your view?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I think they're very much aware of our political calendar here, I really do. . . . So I think they are very conscious of the electoral timetable in the United States.

I can't say that they make a specific decision for a particular act, but there's no doubt in my mind that it's a factor that enters into their thinking.

Q I have a Pentagon source that tells me there are websites out there that they've just recently translated that actually refer to the election and ask for an up-tick in violence to try and influence the election, is that accurate?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I wouldn't be surprised. It sounds right to me.

UPI, October 23, 2006

Senior U.S. government officials and military officers have suggested that Iraqi insurgents are trying to influence the U.S. midterm elections. A U.S. military spokesman in Iraq last week attributed the increase in violence at least partly to terrorists who want to influence the American vote.

His comments Thursday echoed those made by U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney two days earlier on conservative pundit Rush Limbaugh's radio show, which is carried on the Armed Force Radio network in Iraq.

George Bush, October 18, 2006

There’s certainly a stepped up level of violence, and we’re heading into an election.

Don Rumsfeld, October 26, 2006

Here they are, getting up every day saying, “We’ve got an election in two weeks in America, gang, and we want to change horses over there because we don’t like the folks we’re having to deal with now; they’re a little tough on us. So let’s get out there and let’s make some noise.“

John Hinderaker, November 10

I don't think there is any doubt about the fact that the terrorists, world-wide, were hoping for a Democratic victory. See, for example, this article by Aaron Klein. And the spike in violence in Iraq prior to the election was generally understood as an effort by the terrorists to help Democratic candidates.

New York Times, today

In the deadliest sectarian attack in Baghdad since the American-led invasion, explosions from five powerful car bombs and a mortar shell tore through crowded intersections and marketplaces in the teeming Shiite district of Sadr City on Thursday afternoon, killing at least 144 people and wounding 206, the police said. . . .The attacks were the worst in an intensifying series of revenge killings in recent months, in a cycle that has increasingly paralyzed the political process and segregated the capital into Sunni and Shiite enclaves, and threatened to drag Iraq into an all-out civil war.

Boston Globe, yesterday

Yesterday was no different: About 100 people were killed in the country. Among them was a bodyguard to the speaker of Iraq's parliament, Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, who himself escaped an apparent assassination attempt the day before. A journalist for the state-run al-Sabah newspaper was also killed, gunned down as he drove through the capital.

Washington Post, today

More than 1,000 Iraqis a day are being displaced by the sectarian violence that began on Feb. 22 with the bombing of the Shiite Askariya shrine in Samarra, according to a report released this week by the Geneva-based International Organization for Migration, a U.N.-associated group.

This increasing movement of Iraqi families, caused by the lack of security and by the growth of armed local militias and criminal gangs, is adding to the already chaotic governmental situation in Baghdad, according to U.N., U.S. and non-governmental reports released over the past weeks.

Everything they accuse others of doing -- exploiting national security for domestic political gain, being 'unserious' about war matters, playing games with the mission of the troops -- is what they do as transparently as possible. And note how they used a senior military official to make the disgusting claim that the violence in Iraq was related to a desire to help Democrats win the midterm election: "A U.S. military spokesman in Iraq last week attributed the increase in violence at least partly to terrorists who want to influence the American vote."

The idea that the sectarian violence in Iraq, which has been spiraling out of control since the beginning of the year, had anything to do with trying to make Democrats win the election was always as transparently false -- stupid even -- as it was repugnant. Yet they say anything, and the media largely lets them get away with it.

And now the incontrovertible proof is here that what they said was a lie designed to manipulate Americans into voting Republican out of a desire to punish the Democrat-favoring terrorists in Iraq, and what are the consequences? They lie and manipulate like this not only because they lack any shred of integrity and character -- although that's true -- but also because they know they can do so with impunity.

Ponder how corrupt and misleading their coordinated pre-election claim was: All the increased violence in Iraq was just about the midterm election, not a sign of a spiraling civil war. It was just The Terrorists who hate Bush, because he is so tough with them, trying to help the Democrats. Nothing was really that bad in Iraq. Once the elections are over, it will all subside, because it's only about that.

The only thing worse than government leaders lying to their citizens so blatantly about a war is lying in order to benefit themselves politically for cheap electoral gain, so that's exactly what Bush officials and Bush followers do.

UPDATE: Nobody glorifies the power of the Islamic Terrorists more than Bush followers do. As The Heretik says in comments: "What's so impressive about the terrorists and the insurgents and the Shiites and the Sunnis who yearn so for the inevitable caliphate that will stretch from Spain to Pluto and beyond is that even as they fight amongst themselves, they have time to sit down and figure out how to influence our politics here."

And he says over at his own blog: "Our midterm elections are over and the violence that was raised to influence those results has spiked even higher" (The Heretik also has an extremely satisfying illustration of what Pat Leahy is doing to the White House). And as James Raven notes, some Bush followers are blaming Nancy Pelosi for this increased violence (because her desire to withdraw from Iraq is galvanizing The Terrorists).

So, to recap: when insurgents engage in violence before the elections, that's the fault of Democrats because it's done to help them win (and credit to Republicans because it shows how tough they are on The Terrorists). When the insurgents engage in violence after the elections, that's also the fault of Democrats because they are excited by the Democrats' success (and credit to Republicans because Republicans want to stay forever, which makes the insurgents sad and listless). And when there is no violence, all credit to Republicans because it shows how great their war plan is.

Put another way, no matter what happens in Iraq (violence increases, violence decreases), and no matter when it happens (before the election, after the election), it is the fault of Democrats and it reflects well on the Republicans. Isn't it fair to say that that's the very definition of the mindset of a cultist?

Whitewashing Iraq on the Washington Post Op-Ed Page

Robert Kaplan, the national security correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, is one of our country's anointed foreign policy geniuses. In November, 2001, he attended a secret meeting (along with Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria), organized by Paul Wolfowitz, for the purpose of producing a report for President Bush on Middle East policy which, among other things, outlined all the great reasons why we should invade Iraq.

Thereafter, both Kaplan and Zakaria became two of the country's most enthusiastic pundit-advocates for invading Iraq, without ever revealing their participation in Wolfowitz's meeting (they signed confidentiality agreements not to disclose anything that was discussed). It is obviously an extremely odd situation for a "reporter" to participate with government officials in the preparation of such a report, but Kaplan told his Atlantic Monthly editors in advance and "was given approval to attend because 'everybody was in a patriotic fervor.'" None of that has impeded Kaplan's career or journalistic credibility any.

Today, this wise foreign policy analyst has an Op-Ed in The Washington Post in which he argues that the failure of the war he wanted so badly in Iraq won't fundamentally change U.S. foreign policy, but instead will lead merely to "an adjustment, not a flip-flop." Kaplan specifically claims that preemptive war on Iraq was not at all a deviation from our prior foreign policy because it was nothing more than an extension of our post-Cold War "idealistic" military interventions -- devoted towards the spreading of Good in the world -- which began with the Persian Gulf War, continued with our benevolent intervention in Yugoslavia, and merely culminated with our desire to do Good by overthrowing Saddam:

To be sure, the recent evidence that our democratic system cannot be violently exported will temper our Wilsonian principles, but it will not bury them. . . . Iraq will merely close a post-Cold War chapter in American foreign policy, one that began with the Persian Gulf War -- and with Bosnia. After the collapse of communism in 1989, idealism, the export of democracy and humanitarian interventionism were all the rage among journalists and intellectuals -- much as realism, restraint and benign dictatorship are now. . . .

The Balkan interventions, because they paid strategic dividends, appeared to justify the idealistic missionary approach to foreign policy. . . . Neoconservatives and others who had supported our actions in Bosnia and Kosovo then carried the spirit of this policy to its limits in Iraq.

See, all we were ever trying to do in Iraq was help the Iraqi people make a better life for themselves and to end oppression, so the only lesson we need to draw from all of this is that the overflowing Goodness of neoconservatives and their desire to help people just needs to be tempered a little bit by the harsh realities of a bad world. That's all: "In this decade idealists went too far; in the previous one, it was realists who did not go far enough."

This is rank historical revisionism of the most deliberately dishonest strain, designed to cleanse the sins of neoconservatives and other Iraq war advocates, and it is spreading everywhere. It is vital to preserve the truth that the invasion of Iraq was not some slightly excessive extension of our long-standing idealistic desire to help the world's oppressed people. The opposite was true.

The invasion of Iraq constituted a radical departure from decades-long American foreign policy doctrine governing what constitutes a justifiable war against another country. To justify the war which Kaplan wanted so eagerly, the Bush administration issued a National Security Strategy in 2002 (.pdf) which "shifted U.S. foreign policy away from decades of deterrence and containment toward a more aggressive stance of attacking enemies before they attack the United States." That militaristic hubris is the doctrine which drove our invasion (and it is still in place, as the Bush administration re-affirmed it earlier this year).

What makes Kaplan's revisionism all the more reprehensible is that it distorts not only the administration's justification for the Iraq invasion but also Kaplan's own rationale in favor of it. In a lengthy Atlantic Monthly article in November, 2002, devoted to all the great benefits we would reap from invading Iraq, Kaplan does not at all rely upon the magnanimous idealism that he now dishonestly claims animated support for the war. Again, the opposite is true.

In that war-advocating article, Kaplan argued that we have to move our military bases out of Saudi Arabia and an invasion of Iraq would allow "the relocation of our bases to Iraq." And Kaplan expressly wanted to replace Saddam with a pro-U.S. dictatorship which may -- or may not -- some day in the distant future foster democracy: "Our goal in Iraq should be a transitional secular dictatorship that unites the merchant classes across sectarian lines and may in time, after the rebuilding of institutions and the economy, lead to a democratic alternative."

Most of all, Kaplan -- like all neocons who are pathologically obsessed with matters of dominance and submission -- justified the war based on the "need" to show those Muslims that we are the mighty and powerful ones, just like we did when we shot down an Iranian civilian passenger jet in the 1980s and showed Iran who the boss is:

Keep in mind that the Middle East is a laboratory of pure power politics. For example, nothing impressed the Iranians so much as our accidental shooting down of an Iranian civilian airliner in 1988, which they believed was not an accident. Iran's subsequent cease-fire with Iraq was partly the result of that belief. Our dismantling the Iraqi regime would concentrate the minds of Iran's leaders as little else could.

That was Kaplan and the neocons' vision for Iraq -- permanent military bases, the installation of a pro-U.S. secular dictator (gee, who might he have had in mind?), and a display of raw power to keep the Arabs and Persians in line ("concentrate their minds"), just like that awesome occasion when we shot down their passenger plane (the invasion would also give us "a position of newfound strength" and thus President Bush, in his second term, could -- and, Kaplan assured us, would --"pressure the Israelis into a staged withdrawal from the occupied territories"). And all of that was justified by a militaristic new theory that the U.S. could invade whatever countries it wanted to invade based upon the suspicion that the country might some day pose a threat to the U.S.

The invasion of Iraq and those who advocated it, such as Kaplan, were anything but "idealistic." They were and are nothing other than malicious warmongers who invented new "theories" to "justify" waging war on countries that didn't attack us and posed no real threat to us.

What the failure of Iraq demonstrates is not -- as Kaplan so earnestly suggests today -- that the rosy-eyed, slightly naive but well-intentioned neonconservative idealists just need to be a little more restrained in their desire to do Good in the world. It demonstrates that they are deceitful, radical and untrustworthy warmongers who led this country into the worst strategic disaster in its history and should never be trusted with anything ever again. And it equally demonstrates that starting wars with no justification and with no notion of self-defense is an idea that is as destructive as it is unjust.

There is really no limit to the willingness of neonconservatives and the pro-war foreign policy geniuses who enabled them to spew untruths in an attempt to rehabilitate themselves and their militarism. Here Kaplan is making claims that are the exact opposite -- literally -- of what actually happened that led to the war and what those, like him, argued to justify that war. That they are still given space to do this by The Washington Post, and treated as "serious" foreign policy scholars, remains one of the most perplexing and dangerous outcomes of this war.

Following through on warmongering rhetoric

Those who melodramatically compare Islamic jihadists to the Nazi threat and who insist that we are engaged in some World War II-like, epic existential struggle are not just hysterical and misguided but also incredibly insincere. Their chest-beating rhetoric is virtually never accompanied by any actual sacrifice or risk -- not just personal/physical risk but even political risk or even economic sacrifice.

All of these warmongers who have been dominating our political dialogue and our foreign policy over the last five years believe that our current occupation of Iraq is only a small fraction of the military commitments we ought to be making. They harbor dreams of military confrontation with Iran and Syria, at a minimum, and the most hawkish among them -- the John McCains and Bill Kristols -- want far more troop commitments in Iraq alone. And there is a consensus of military and intelligence officials that far more military resources are needed simply to avoid a complete collapse of Afghanistan. We clearly cannot sustain our military aspirations with the current size of armed forces that we have.

Our military is spread so thin that it is on the verge of collapsing and they not only want to maintain our current commitments but also drastically expand them -- not just in Iraq, but in many other places. With all those premises assembled, what possible rationale is there for their opposition to a draft, other than (a) a desire that only other people (but never them or their families and friends) are subjected to the dangers required by their grand military schemes and/or (b) a cowardly desire to avoid the political risks of advocating unpopular measures which their chest-beating policies demand?

The bombastic analogy most frequently invoked by our non-fighting warmongers is World War II. In this vision, war advocates are the Churchill/FDR equivalent, Democrats are Neville Chamberlain, and the wandering bands of Islamic jihadists are the all-powerful Nazi military bent on world domination (and every new Islamic leader is the New Adolph Hitler). But unlike the play-acting, self-absorbed war advocates with which our country is currently saddled, Americans during World War II actually believed that fighting and winning that war was a matter of grave national urgency -- i.e., they actually believed what they were saying -- and for that reason followed through on their rhetoric by accepting a military draft.

Here is what Franklin Roosevelt, an actual "War President" -- as opposed to one who plays that role for political profit and personal fulfillment -- said when he accepted the Democratic nomination to run for President again in 1940. He expressly ran on a platform of re-instating the draft :

Just as a system of national defense based on man power alone, without the mechanized equipment of modern warfare, is totally insufficient for adequate national defense, so also planes and guns and tanks are wholly insufficient unless they are implemented by the power of men trained to use them.

Such man power consists not only of pilots and gunners and infantry and those who operate tanks. For every individual in actual combat service, it is necessary for adequate defense that we have ready at hand at least four or five other trained individuals organized for non-combat services.

Because of the millions of citizens involved in the conduct of defense, most right thinking persons are agreed that some form of selection by draft is as necessary and fair today as it was in 1917 and 1918.

Nearly every American is willing to do his share or her share to defend the United States. It is neither just nor efficient to permit that task to fall upon any one section or any one group. For every section and every group depend for their existence upon the survival of the nation as a whole.

Lying awake, as I have, on many nights, I have asked myself whether I have the right, as Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy, to call on men and women to serve their country or to train themselves to serve and, at the same time, decline to serve my country in my own personal capacity, if I am called upon to do so by the
people of my country.

In times like these-in times of great tension, of great crisis-the compass of the world narrows to a single fact. The fact which dominates our world is the fact of armed aggression, the fact of successful armed aggression, aimed at the form of Government, the kind of society that we in the United States have chosen and established for ourselves. It is a fact which no one longer doubts -which no one is longer able to ignore.

It is not an ordinary war. It is a revolution imposed by force of arms, which threatens all men everywhere. It is a revolution which proposes not to set men free but to reduce them to slavery-to reduce them to slavery in the interest of a dictatorship which has already shown the nature and the extent of the advantage which it hopes to obtain. . . .

It is the continuance of civilization as we know it versus the ultimate destruction of all that we have held dear-religion against godlessness; the ideal of justice against the practice of force; moral decency versus the firing squad; courage to speak out, and to act, versus the false lullaby of appeasement.

But it has been well said that a selfish and greedy people cannot be free.

The American people must decide whether these things are worth making sacrifices of money, of energy, and of self.

Anyone who wanted to join in that chest-beating rhetoric did so only carefully and with great thought, because they knew that doing so -- as Roosevelt made clear -- would mean that they would personally bear the burden of the war they were supporting and would be making great personal sacrifices for it of every kind. It makes no sense to claim that a country is facing some Epic Struggle for Its Very Existence but then be afraid to do what is necessary to fuel it -- whether that be tax increases to pay for it or conscripting those who are needed to fight it.

Over at Talk Left, Big Tent Democrat has the video of an MSNBC Joe Scarborough panel last night sitting around oh-so-self-approvingly recognizing that the "elite" which sends our country to war has no connection to the military. The panel, which includes the pro-war The New Republic's Michael Crowley -- all youthful and fresh-faced and un-fighting -- all lament the fact that the media and political figures who cheer on our wars have no real vested interest in avoiding wars because no sacrifice from them is required.

There is a reason why, pursuant to the Constitution, wars in the U.S. cannot be declared by the President, but instead require the consent of the American people through their Congress. As John Jay explained in Federalist 4, requiring that the American people approve of wars is essential for avoiding unnecessary wars, because Presidents will start wars that are unnecessary i.e., for their own benefit, but the people are much less likely to do so:

It is too true, however disgraceful it may be to human nature, that nations in general will make war whenever they have a prospect of getting anything by it; nay, absolute monarchs will often make war when their nations are to get nothing by it, but for the purposes and objects merely personal, such as thirst for military glory, revenge for personal affronts, ambition, or private compacts to aggrandize or support their particular families or partisans. These and a variety of other motives, which affect only the mind of the sovereign, often lead him to engage in wars not sanctified by justice or the voice and interests of his people.

That is the real test for whether one really believes that a war is justifiable and necessary -- are you willing to risk your own life or the lives of your loved ones in that war? Is there any doubt at all -- literally any -- that if their war advocacy in Iraq and saber-rattling towards Iran and Syria meant that Jonah Goldberg, Glenn Reynolds, Rich Lowry, Hugh Hewitt, Bill Kristol, and all the tough guys in the House and Senate and/or their families would actually have to do the fighting -- rather than cheering for it from a safe distance -- that they would be more careful about advocating wars?

That is so self-evident that it requires no discussion. And just ponder how much better off our country would be if that increased level of caution prevailed prior to our invasion of Iraq, caution that would have existed had they known that their war advocacy meant that they very well might do the fighting.

Personally, I don't think a draft is needed because I don't think the U.S. ought to be engaging in massive military confrontations around the world. But there are many who do think that we need to be doing exactly that, and there is just no justification for such people to fail to follow their premises to their logical conclusions -- particularly as they pompously compare themselves to FDR and Churchill and can never get enough of praising their own "resolve" and "strength."

If we are going to continue on this warmongering path -- one war after the next, using military threats and even force as our principal "diplomatic" weapon -- then it is hard not to become more receptive to the idea of a draft. But these warmongers are not only afraid of fighting the wars they advocate, but even more pathetically, are even afraid of the political risks of following through fully on their claimed beliefs.

Jose Padilla also rules Iraq

(updated below)

The New York Sun has a really, really scary column this morning about The Terrorists and how much stronger they are now because the Democrats won:

The bad guys are now celebrating the Democratic Party's sweep of Congress in the belief that the American electorate has pronounced its verdict on the grand visions of the neoconservatives — the fall guys for what is hyperbolically called the "catastrophe in Iraq."

Democrats are soul mates not just with The Terrorists generally, but also specifically with the New Head of Al-Qaeda in Iraq (an entity that did not exist until our invasion made Iraq nice and chaotic for them):

The most compelling example of this jubilation has been the audio message released by the current head of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the elusive Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, who read the election results as a victory for his dark cause. At this stage, as the Democrats articulate their plan for Iraq, they need to ponder why evil men are hailing their anti-war talking points.

The Sun helpfully provides a photograph of this "elusive" but really scary Terrorist al-Muhajir (D-Iraq):

[NOTE: see UPDATE II below]

Just to get a sense for how scary and evil The Terrorists are, that's the same person who calls himself "Jose 'The Dirty Bomber' Padilla" and who is currently sitting in a federal prison cell in Miami, awaiting trial for being a Terrorist:

So it seems he's running Al-Qaeda in Iraq (and rooting for the Democrats) from prison. That's what happens when you give Terrorists trials.

And apparently, we're supposed to base our policy in Iraq not on what we assess is best for American interests or what is right, but rather, as a reaction to the rantings of Al-Qaeda Chief Padilla/Al-Muhajir:

But the enemy is evil nonetheless. There will not be a let-up if you meet the terrorists' demands. Al-Muhajir flaunts his evil for all to hear when he says that "we have not yet quenched our thirst" for American blood. Whether the American public, or the Democrats, choose to hear him or not at this stage is beyond the point: Al-Muhajir plans to make his evil presence felt and soon. And it will be painful — if Al Qaeda's declaration of victory in Iraq is left unchallenged.

Padilla/Al-Muhajir might be imprisoned, but his plan for world domination -- modestly beginning with a total takeover of Christendom, accomplished via the easy task of extending Al Qaeda' domination from Iraq over to Spain -- is progressing rapidly: "And where is the current phase going? To Spain, naturally. For al-Muhajir vows not to rest until he is shaded by the 'olive groves of Rumiyyeh,' which in this context means the lands of Christendom, or at least the olive growing parts of it.'"

These people are less serious than comic book writers. Does The New York Sun and their neoconservative sources have some computer file somewhere with scary photographs of vaguely dark males which they pull out when it's time to present the latest villain? Is that how they forgot that they already used this photograph of the New Iraqi Hitler in the Jose Padilla drama?

Neoconservatives are clearly afraid not only of Al Qaeda worldwide control, but also what might be in store for them as a result of their deceit:

Coming in rapid succession, Saddam was sentenced to hang by an Iraqi court in Baghdad, and the neoconservatives are due to be lynched by an angry Washingtonian mob. Draping a noose around Saddam's deserving neck had been the vision of many neoconservatives, but now they must face their own reckoning for tinkering with the status quo in the Middle East.

The treatment of the poor, persecuted neconservatives is comparable to Saddam Hussein, who is about to be hanged from a rope until his neck snaps. All neoconservatives ever wanted to do was liberate Iraq and now everybody is mad at them. Al Qaeda wants to take over the whole world and is on the verge of ruling all of Europe, and they are working hand-in-hand with Democrats. It is tempting to want to mock these people and the things they "think" all day long until one realizes that the U.S. has been driven by this mentality for the last five years and, to a large degree, still is. That's when it stops being entertaining.

UPDATE: At the risk of sounding like Charles Johnson, it is striking that when Padilla was abducted in May, 2002 and branded by John Ashcroft as "The Dirty Bomber," the only photograph that was ever used of him was the darkened, meancing one above. But when Padilla finally emerged from his black hole 3 1/2 years later, it turned out that he really didn't bear much of a resemblance to that dark-skinned image:




I have no idea whether there were any deliberate alterations made back then to the photograph, but I do know that the total dehumanization of Padilla -- allowing him to be dubbed with cartoon villain names and accused of plotting the most heinous crimes, while he was not permitted to be either heard from or even seen (except in one dark and extremely menacing photograph) -- was a critical factor in enabling the Bush administration to throw him into a black hole and detain him incommunicado without provoking much protest from Americans or their media.

UPDATE II: After this was posted, the Sun removed the photograph from its page with no indication that it had made a mistake or that there was ever a photograph there. It just deleted it from existence and said nothing, much like The Washington Post recently did with its express acknowledgment that the President "misled" reporters about the circumstances surrounding Don Rumsfeld's firing. That seems to be a burgeoning journalistic trend -- just zapping embarrassing material out of existence.

After I posted this, I e-mailed the author of the Op-Ed, Nibras Kazimi, about the photograph, and he responded, so I know they received notice. I also left a comment to the article about the photograph, but they have not posted the comment. Although the photograph has been removed from the article itself, it is still sitting on the Sun's server, and that is what is now linked to above (h/t Hooboy). Since the photograph used by the Sun is no longer on the page, I can't use the exact one they posted, but it is very similar, if not identical, to the first photograph above.

Sen./Chairman Martinez protests the treatment of terrorist suspects . . . (by Vietnam)

(updated below)

Sen. Mel Martinez, the new Republican Party Chairman, sent around an e-mail this weekend praising himself for his intervention in the case of Cuc Foshee, a U.S. citizen who was just released from a Vietnamese prison. Last month, Foshee was convicted after a trial in Vietnam of a plot to overthrow the Vietnamese government ("terrorism" under Vietnamese law), which included planned bombings as well as using radio devices "to jam the airwaves of pro-government radio stations and broadcast their own message of uprising."

Martinez made Foshee's release a personal crusade, single-handedly obstructing the normalization of trade relations with Vietnam unless Foshee was released. To justify and celebrate his intervention in this case, Sen. Martinez claimed in his e-mail that Foshee was subjected to oppressive and unjust treatment by the Vietnamese government:

This week, Senator Martinez praised the return to the United States of Thuong Nguyen "Cuc" Foshee, a U.S. citizen residing in Orlando, Florida. Mrs. Foshee was arrested and imprisoned in Vietnam and for the first 14 months of her imprisonment, she was not formally charged nor allowed to seek legal counsel. . . .

Senator Martinez, U.S. Representative Ric Keller and State Department officials worked together to encourage the Vietnam government cooperated (sic) and Mrs. Foshee was allowed to return to the United States last Monday.

Behold the sheer savagery of the Communist Vietnamese regime -- arresting people and holding them for a full 14 months without formally charging them with a crime (but then giving them a full trial). Is it any wonder that Sen./Chairman Martinez was so outraged by this case?

On his Senate website, Martinez trumpets his heroic efforts to save Foshee from such Communist tyranny. Also on Sen. Martinez's site is this October 17 Press Release, issued on the day the President signed into law the Military Commissions Act of 2006, authorizing the U.S. President to detain "terrorist suspects" forever with no access to courts of any kind:

U.S. Senator Mel Martinez (R-FL) today applauded President Bush’s signing of S. 3930, the Military Commissions Act of 2006. . . .

Senator Martinez said: “We must remember the detainees this law affects are terrorists engaged in an ongoing war against the United States.

Sen. Martinez, like every Senator (other than Lincoln Chafee) in the Republican Party that he now chairs, voted in favor of the MCA. Martinez also voted against the proposed amendment to that bill which would have allowed terrorist suspects the right to challenge the accusations against them in court -- the very right given to Foshee by the Communist regime in Vietnam.

Unlike detainees in U.S. custody, Foshee actually had a right to a trial in Vietnam and was given one, and then convicted. And for the crime of trying to overthrow the government, she was given a sentence of only 15 months in prison (as opposed to the indefinite, potentially life-long imprisonment to which the U.S. subjects its detainees): "The charges carried punishments ranging from up to 12 years jail to execution, but prosecutors said their more lenient sentences reflected the fact the defendants had repented and had no previous criminal records."

Additionally, throughout her incarceration, "she had regular contact with the U.S. consul in Vietnam" (in contrast to U.S. detainees who are often held incommunicado for years and denied any contact with the outside world). And look at how the barbarian Communists mistreat the detainees in their custody:

She said her time over there was a "nightmare" starting Sept. 8, 2005, when police pulled her car over. . . . She was kept in a Hanoi detention center for a month in a small room with no windows. She slept on a concrete floor. "My backbone ached," she said.

She was given fresh water in the morning for coffee or noodles and steamed vegetables twice a day. Guards took her out periodically for interrogation. There was no torture, Foshee said, just endless questioning. "It strains your mind," she said.

Those inhumane communist animals. There is no doubt about Foshee's guilt at least with respect to some of the charges. As Times Online reports, at her trial she admitted that she broke the law:

Speaking in court today, Ms Cuc and her fellow defendants denied terrorism but admitted breaking Vietnamese laws. "I very much regret my participation in Nguyen Huu Chanh’s organisation," she said.

That organization, with which she plotted to overthrow the Vietnamese government, is run by an individual "wanted in Vietnam for allegedly plotting to bomb Vietnamese embassies" and who "was arrested in South Korea in April but was allowed to return to the US after the countries failed to agree to his extradition."

So why, then, has Sen. Martinez taken such an intense interest in securing the release of someone convicted of plotting to overthrow another government and who admitted to breaking the law -- to the point of obstructing an omnibus trade agreement with another country? The Orlando Sentinel offers one possibility -- it says that Foshee is a "Republican supporter," and the Times Online reports that:

Ms Cuc, better known in the US as Thuong Nguyen Foshee, has lived in Florida for decades after fleeing Vietnam in the 1960s. She has close ties with the Republican Party and her family describe her as a pro-democracy activist rather than a rebel against Vietnam's one-party government.

As this ex-military blogger notes, there is a substantial right-wing Vietnamese exile community in Orlando which (like the Cuban exile community in Miami does with Cuba) demands support for Vietnamese expatriates who work to overthrow the regime. This is what one of them said about the Foshee case:

To Orlando's Vietnamese, Foshee, who sat in a detention center for 14 months, is an example of how their native land continues to violate free speech and human rights.

"For a whole year, no one did anything for her," said Thien Le, who came to Orlando via Chicago, where he went to college. "She was in prison in Vietnam. Then, right when President Bush is going over there, Vietnam starts taking action."

And this is what Foshee said after being released:

I've been lost for 14 months," she said. "I have lived in this country for 40 years," Foshee said. "Today, I have a greater appreciation of the freedoms Americans enjoy. Life in America, it just doesn't compare to anywhere else."

Just compare the treatment which Foshee received from the Vietnamese government (and which has Sen./Chairman Martinez so upset) to the treatment which, say, Jose Padilla or Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri or Maher Arar received (and are still receiving) from the U.S. Government (treatment which Sen. Martinez not only defends but also voted just last month to legalize), and then ask yourself whether you would prefer to be a terrorist suspect in the U.S. or in Communist Vietnam. Is that a close call?

I used to find comparisons of the U.S. to Communist and other tyrannical regimes to be wildly hyperbolic and even offensive, a sign of irrational anti-American animus. And it is indisputably true that the U.S. still affords all sorts of liberties (beginning with free speech and the right to oppose the government) which many, if not most, governments around the world, certainly including Vietnam, do not. Still, as far as the treatment of "terrorist" suspects is concerned, what possible basis exists for objecting to those comparisons?

If anything, it's the non-waterboarding, trial-providing Vietnamese Communists who ought to find that comparison offensive. That is a painful truth to have to accept, but that is what it means to destroy the moral authority America had with regard to issues of human rights and liberty. It means that protests of this sort from the likes of GOP Sen./Chairman Mel Martinez cannot be voiced without, as Billmon put it, "triggering a global laughing fit."

If Sen./Chairman Martinez would like to see what real oppression and deprivation of human rights looks like, he can go to the southern part of his state where the criminal case of American citizen Jose Padilla -- held for 3 1/2 years incommunacado with no charges but much inhumane treatment-- appears to be falling apart in front of a Bush-appointed federal judge. Until then, there are few people less credible for speaking out against human rights abuses and infringements of liberty than the infinite-detention-supporting, torture-favoring Mel Martinez and the political party he now chairs.

UPDATE: I received an e-mail from what appears to be an American living in Vietnam who says that "You are right to argue that Martinez’s criticisms of Vietnam’s treatment of Foshee are hypocritical, given his support for detention without trial of terrorism suspects in the US. But to claim on the basis of Foshee’s case that terrorism suspects are treated better in Vietnam than in the US takes the case a bit further than the facts warrant."

He contends that the defendants here were not treated well until their case started receiving publicity and that their status as U.S. citizens, combined with the effects it could have on the trade agreement, meant that they received much better treatment than the average detainee charged by the Vietnamese government with subversion. Others in comments have made that point as well.

That point is fair enough (and likely true), but just to be clear: I didn't intend to compare the general behavior of the Vietnamese Government to the behavior of the U.S. government. I intended to compare only the Vietnamese Government's treatment of the detainees in this case (which Martinez complained about) to the treatment given to detainees by the U.S. (which Martinez supports and voted to legalize).

I have no doubt that the Vietnamese Government engages in all sorts of human rights abuses and infringements of liberties, and I said in the post that "it is indisputably true that the U.S. still affords all sorts of liberties (beginning with free speech and the right to oppose the government) which many, if not most, governments around the world, certainly including Vietnam, do not. "

Nonetheless, there are sentences here that can be construed to mean that I am arguing that the Vietnamese in general treat their detainees better than the Americans, and I agree that the facts of this case do not support that claim. The point here isn't to glorify the Vietnamese government, which is oppressive and tyrannical, but to demonstrate that Sen. Martinez has put himself in no position to complain.

Dick Cheney at the Federalist Society last night -- translated

(updated below)

Vice President Dick Cheney and the Federalist Society got together last night and shared some hearty laughs about the administration's ongoing eavesdropping on American citizens, inside the U.S., in violation of the law, along with the hilarious notion that these things called "laws" or "courts" could somehow restrain the Leader:

In the days following 9/11, the President authorized the National Security Agency to intercept a certain category of terrorist-linked international communications. On occasion you will hear this called a domestic surveillance program. That is more than a misnomer; it's a flat-out falsehood. We are talking about international communications, one end of which we have reason to believe is related to al Qaeda and to terrorist networks.

We are spying on American citizens inside the U.S. as they talk on the telephones in their homes. And we are doing so in secret, with no warrants or oversight of any kind. But it is a "flat-out falsehood" to say that this is "domestic surveillance." Everyone knows that when a Government spies on the conversations of its own citizens while they are inside the country, that has nothing to do with "domestic surveillance."

In addition, the entire program undergoes a thorough review approximately every 45 days. After each review, the President personally has to determine whether to reauthorize the program. And he has done so more than 30 times since September 11th - and he has indicated his intent to continue doing so as long as our nation faces a threat from al Qaeda and related organizations.

There is no need to worry about our illegal, secret spying on you, because the Leader Himself -- "personally" -- reviews this and approves of it. And even though there is a law in place enacted almost 30 years ago by your democratically-elected representatives making it a felony for us to do this, and even though the only court to rule on this issue has ruled that we are violating not only your constitutional rights, but also a federal criminal statute, we are still doing it, and we will continue to. Because we want to and because we can.

Yet none of these considerations was persuasive to a federal district court in the state of Michigan, which ruled three months ago that the NSA program violated the Constitution and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The court found, among other factors, that warrantless surveillance of terrorist-related communications would cause irreparable injury to the American Civil Liberties Union and other plaintiffs. (Laughter.)

Some loser activist federal judge somewhere ruled that we are breaking the law and violating the constitutional rights of Americans by spying on them with no judicial oversight (laughter). Isn't that hilarious! This woman, sitting in her robe, actually thinks she has some sort of authority or something over the Leader. God, that is so funny (laughter). And isn't it also hilarious how the judge unwittingly agreed with us that the ACLU are terrorists? After all, why else would the judge say that the ACLU was harmed by our surveillance of terrorists (laughter)? Get it? (laughter).

Every appellate court to rule on this issue has recognized inherent presidential authority to conduct warrantless surveillance to counter threats directed at the country from abroad. The district court's opinion — which The New York Times called "careful and thoroughly grounded" — (Laughter.) — did not distinguish any of those prior federal decisions. Nor, indeed, did the district court even cite those decisions.

Not only did the judge not mention those cases, but neither did we, the Government, because instead, we, told the judge (.pdf) that she should just mind her own business and that she had no right to butt into what we doing, so we never even bothered to justify to her what we were doing by mentioning those cases (which, in any event, have nothing to do with the NSA scandal since no court anywhere -- including in those cases -- has ever held that the President has the right to engage in warrantless eavesdropping when there is a duly enacted law such as FISA which criminally prohibits that very eavesdropping).

But since we're on the subject of separation of powers, one conclusion is hard to escape: the Michigan district court's decision is an indefensible act of judicial overreaching. (Applause.)

As law students and lawyers, of course, all of you understand that a given point of view isn't necessarily correct, or even persuasive, merely because it's been handed down by a judge. There's a reason these things are called opinions. (Laughter.) But the Michigan decision is something altogether different, and it's very troubling: It is a court order tying the hands of the President of the United States in the conduct of a war. And this is a matter entirely outside the competence of the judiciary. (Applause.).

Hey, Federalist Society patriots -- check out these premises that we have:

(1) Neither Congress nor the Courts can "tie the hands of the President" during war.

(2) We are at war forever.

(3) The war is everywhere, including inside the U.S.

(4) Ergo, by definition, no more courts, no more laws, to restrain Our Leader (raucous laughter; wild applause).

It means -- by definition -- that the Leader exists outside of and above the law, no matter what some liberal judge, the ACLU, The New York Times or all the other terrorist-lovers might say (laughter). What a court says is merely an "opinion" which we are free to ignore like we do everyone else's opinions (and that goes double for the the aspect of what the court says that is called an "Order").

We are at war, and we will be forever, and the war is Everywhere, even in our Homeland, and as a result, unlimited power is vested in our Leader, who will use it for your own Good, to protect you, because the Leader is Good and he loves you (applause, saluting, embracing, dancing).

Federalist Society meeting ends.

It is worth reminding ourselves -- as the Vice President just made quite clear again-- that the pathological individuals who occupy the White House do not recognize the power of the law or the power of the courts to limit what they can do. Therefore, the fact that Democrats now control the Congress will be of little concern to them, because the most the Democrats can do is enact little laws or issue cute, little Subpoenas --- but, as the Vice President just said, they think that nothing can "tie the hands of the President of the United States in the conduct of a war." And he means that.

I hope Democrats in Congress recognize that and are prepared to do something about it. This constitutional crisis will exist until it's confronted.

UPDATE: Anonymous Liberal, guest-posting over at The Carpetbagger Report, documents just how frivolous are the legal assertions on which Cheney depends to justify the administration's ongoing violations of the law.

And courtesy of selise, here is the mp3 audio recording of Cheney's speech at the authortarian pageant held last night by the Federalist Society.

Beltway attacks on Nancy Pelosi

The mindless group-think driving the media's caricatures of Nancy Pelosi is truly astounding to behold, even considering the source. She's not even Speaker yet, and they've already pronounced her to be a bitchy, vindictive shrew incapable of leading because she's consumed by petty personal bickering rather than serious and substantive considerations. And all of this is based on nothing.

Unsurprisingly, all of this has been concocted by the herd of all-knowing Beltway analysts who fancy themselves to be such high-minded warriors against conventional wisdom even though they are its most obedient vessels.

Over at New Republic's The Plank, we learn that the election of Steny Hoyer as Majority Leader "is a real embarassment (sic) for Nancy Pelosi" and that to have any chance to "move past" this towering defeat she must "resist her tendency to seek payback against apostates" (Michael Crowley); "Pelosi looks pretty bad right now" (Jason Zengerle); and, in short, "this was a disaster for Pelosi all the way around" (Christopher Orr). And oh - the great and powerful Tom "Hammer" Delay (who pioneered the art of punishing apostates) would never have allowed something like this to happen.

Their overseer, Marty Peretz, surveys his decades-deep familiarity with American politicians and decides that Pelosi reminds him of . . . . . of all people . . . . Bella Abzug. After he notes the many important and serious differences between the two -- "Pelosi is rather svelte, which Bella was not. Pelosi also doesn't wear a big-brimmed hat" -- he says that neither of these women can "discern between a political difference and a personal war. So if it was the former, it quickly also became the latter." Says Peretz of Pelosi: she "cannot separate personal from political differences. And where Pelosi's vanity goes, there, apparently, the House Democrats will follow."

At Slate, Timothy Noah has a column entitled "Dump Pelosi," in which he generously decrees: "Let Pelosi remain speaker for now. But let her know that, before the new Congress even begins, she has placed herself on probation." Noah warns her: "One more strike—even a minor misstep—and House Democrats will demonstrate that they, unlike Speaker-elect Pelosi and President Bush, know how to correct their mistakes."

This is everywhere, permeating all aspects of the media. Digby describes a particularly giggly version of it on MSNBC last night. These sweeping condemnations of Pelosi all arise out of two -- and only two -- incidents: (1) her support for Jack Murtha over Steny Hoyer as Majority Leader and (2) her opposition to Jane Harman becoming Chair of the House Intelligence Committee.

It is painfully obvious that Pelosi supported Murtha for one very simple and extremely common reason -- because unlike Hoyer, with whom she has a tense and uncomfortable working relationship and with whom she has worked at cross-purposes in the past, Murtha is her ally and supporter. Murtha held a blogger conference call a couple of days ago and in response to every question, he repeatedly emphasized that his intention was to concentrate on Iraq and that in all other areas, he would "do what Nancy wants." He's a Pelosi loyalist and ally and so she supported him for that job over someone who isn't.

Is that supposed to be unusual? That's how all of Washington works. It's how the world works. Here is what Peggy Noonan said in her column today about how the Bush administration operates and why Mel Martinez was made RNC Chair rather than Michael Steele:

I am taken aback this week at the level of disenchantment with and dislike of the president and his men--not among Democrats, but among Republicans. On the Hill they no longer see the White House as talented and formidable. They see it as shuttered and second-rate. . . . .

There is increased criticism too of the habit of high White House staffers to muscle critics, silence dissent, force obedience.

It is assumed by everyone, and accepted as truth that hardly needs expression, that the brilliant and independent Michael Steele was not chosen as head of the RNC for the simple reason that he doesn't look like someone who'd simply take orders. Mel Martinez was chosen for the reason that he will. I heard talk of what is called "the list"--the lengthening White House list of those who are to be treated as enemies.

The Bush administration has spent six years completely obsessed with personal loyalty to the President and intolerant of the slightest independence. The entire Congress was kept strictly in line for the last five years. Every official who showed the slightest independence was replaced by obedient Bush loyalists. Yet Pelosi does nothing other than support an ally rather than an opponent for the position immediately underneath her, and that makes her some out-of-control egomaniac consumed by personal vanity and emotional impulses.

And that's to say nothing of the fact that the Hoyer-Murtha race is being depicted as some sort of sign of hateful Democratic in-fighting that shows Pelosi has lost control, even though Republicans are mauling each other for every single House leadership position, all of which are hotly contested. Trent Lott beat Lamar Alexander by a vote of 25-24 in the Senate for the position of Minority Whip. There's nothing wrong with various factions competing for leadership positions. That's called an "election," and only those to whom Eric Alterman refers as the "smart boys" at TNR and Slate would view a simple election for House Majority Leader as some apocalyptic sign that Democrats are lame, idiotic and hopelessly divided. I'm sure Mark Halperin agrees with all of their attacks.

And then there is Pelosi's opposition to Jane Harman. It's now an article of Beltway faith that Pelosi opposes Harman because of what is being referred to as a personal "cat fight" between them, arising out of purely personal issues (like they both wore the same dress to a Capitol Hill event and Pelosi has never forgiven Harman). At Slate, Noah claims that the reasons for "Pelosi's animus are cloudy and in all likelihood personal."

I'd like to see proof that Pelosi's opposition to Harman is purely or even principally personal. I keep hearing this from them, but what is it based on? Personally, I think Harman -- who was one of the most aggressive defenders of the President's warrantless eavesdropping program ("both legal and necessary," she repeatedly chimed) and is currently under investigation for her work on behalf of AIPAC -- would make a horrendous Chair (although Alcee Hastings is one of the few House members who might be less desirable). She has been far too sympathetic to the administration's excesses and far too eager to serve as a Democratic shield publicly defending the President.

How do these all-knowing analysts know that Pelosi's opposition to Harman isn't based on these obvious and compelling substantive grounds, as opposed to the bitchy personal "cat fights" they allegedly have had? They don't know, but they keep repeating it anyway, because it seems to fit comfortably with a picture they are very eager to paint.

In fact, Noah himself references a column by what he calls "his friend Ruth Marcus, an op-ed columnist at the Washington Post,"which claims that Pelosi thinks that Harman has been "insufficiently partisan on the committee." That's the opposite of the claim being advanced everywhere that Pelosi opposes Harman for purely personal, substance-free reasons. They just make things up in order to bolster their group-driven collective imagination, and then present their group gossip as authoritative and established insider wisdom.

And, even if Pelosi's opposition to Harman were due more to personal animosity than it is to substantive disagreements, is there some suggestion that this is an unusual attribute among political leaders -- or human beings anywhere? Washington is full of all sorts of personal conflicts and animosity that drive personnel decisions of every type, yet somehow and for some reason, in Pelosi it's depicted as some unique and glaring flaw. It's worth wondering why that is.

Americans just elected new leadership quite deliberately. They are obviously fine with Nancy Pelosi. Republicans tried to make the election be about her -- constantly reminding everyone that a vote for Democrats would mean installing super-liberal Nancy Pelosi and her San Francisco values in power -- and the Democrats won. So voters have no problem with Pelosi. They want Congressional Democrats to take the lead in policy and governance because the Republicans have failed so miserably. I have no idea whether Pelosi will be a good Speaker, but I'm going to withhold judgment until she actually at least starts, and Americans are obviously doing that as well.

Yet the Beltway media mavens know better, and so they are already out in force attacking Pelosi's character with petty and baseless chattering. This country has extremely serious issues facing it, and yet these self-styled "serious" journalists are already trying to cripple Pelosi's ability to do anything before she has even begun, all based on giggly chit-chat and gossipy garbage that has no legitimacy other than the fact that they all repeat it in unison on television and in print.

It's what these pundits and journalists do. They have pre-conceived, vapid notions about everything and everyone -- all driven by deep self-love for their own superior wisdom -- and they distort reality and crowd out sober analysis of everything that matters. Nancy Pelosi, and really everyone, would be well-advised not to listen to them and, above all, never adopt as a goal trying to please or satisfy them. They are frivolous and out of touch with everything that matters and should be treated as such.

Prominent right-wing Bolton blogger calls for murder of State Department officials

(updated below - Update II)

Pam Atlas, spawn of Little Green Footballs, personal blogger to Bush nominee/U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, hard-core Lieberman supporter, and general good friend to the right-wing blogosphere, yesterday called for the State Department to be bombed and for American diplomats to be murdered (emphasis in original):

Back to terror funding our enemy. Do they really believe by feeding the crocodile, they won't get eaten?

While those have been the Israeli and American demands of the Palestinian Arabs since Hamas won legislative elections in January, two diplomatic sources yesterday who requested anonymity said the State Department would be willing to accept a government that included some Hamas members if a majority of the cabinet agreed to the terms laid out in the 2003 road map document signed by both sides as well as America, Europe, Russia and the United Nations.

Accepting Hamas? Perhaps Hamas will blow up State. Someone has to.

“We are looking at creative ways to get around this,” one diplomat said. “I would not call this ‘Hamas lite,’ but if we could get a government of negotiators instead of terrorists we’d take it.”

First, kill all the diplomats (before they get us killed.)

Atlas, of course, is not the first person to advocate State Department bombings as a result of its "appeasement" policies in the Middle East:

Television evangelist and Christian Coalition founder Pat Robertson's suggestion that a nuclear device should be used to wipe out the State Department was "despicable," department spokesman Richard Boucher said Thursday.

"I lack sufficient capabilities to express my disdain," Boucher said. "I think the very idea is despicable" . . . .

"I read your book," Robertson said. "When you get through, you say, 'If I could just get a nuclear device inside Foggy Bottom, I think that's the answer,' and you say, 'We've got to blow that thing up.' I mean, is it as bad as you say?" Robertson said.

As I have said before, the ugly bile and extremism that fuels much of the right-wing blogosphere is a story waiting to be written. This week, for instance, it was revealed that the individual who sent white powder to Keith Olbermann, Nancy Pelosi and others was an active Free Republic poster and an avid fan of Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham. The intense hate-mongering which is offered up in much of the right-wing blogosphere on a daily basis is the primary or even exclusive information diet for many people, and that is going to have consequences. Shouldn't they be examined?

For some reason, journalists are eager to talk endlessly about the handful of foolish right-wing extremists who march around wearing swastikas and Nazi costumes. That gets the media excited, despite their total isolation and lack of consequence.

But right-wing hate-mongering that is fueled by religious extremism (Christian and Jewish) is infinitely more dangerous and significant in the U.S. A strong argument can be made that religious fanaticism constitutes a significant motivating force for much of our foreign policy and certainly for the support of many people for those policies, including -- to one degree or another -- the President himself. Yet that topic makes the media very uncomfortable and it is therefore almost never discussed. It ought to be.

UPDATE: For those not understanding the point of this post, allow me to emphasize that I am not (a) arguing that Pam Atlas herself or anything she writes, in and of itself, has any sort of significant impact on anything or (b) advocating that she should be legally barred from saying things of this sort or even held legally accountable if someone inspired by her rantings acts on them (the First Amendment bars such liability and it should).

The point is that Pam Atlas, like Ann Coulter, is the exposed id of the Bush movement. She continues to be embraced by the right-wing blosophere because, for many of them, the sentiments she is expressing -- as extreme and attention-seeking though they may be -- are not at all objectionable to them because the same sentiments motivate them. There have been enormous amounts of ink spilled on the so-called "Angry Left" and the allegedly rabid liberal bloggers (mostly based on the fact that some delicate pundit received e-mails with bad words in them), but the pulsating and ever-increasing hate-mongering in the right-wing blogosphere has been all but ignored.

Independently, John Bolton has spent an unusual amount of time with her, including giving her an hour-long exclusive interview in the middle of negotiating a U.N. Resolution to end the Israel-Lebanaon war, making her extremism independently notable for that reason. Finally, for purely tactical reasons, there is much value in highlighting -- rather than ignoring -- the most extremist elements of the Bush movement. Why would anyone think it's a good idea, tactically if in no other way, to allow them to court the Pam Atlases of the world and be able to do so without any attention being brought to that? Opponents of the Bush movement should do all they can to tie people like Pam Atlas to it.

UPDATE II: This Glenn Beck interview of newly elected Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), the first Muslim ever to serve in the U.S. Congress, is one of the most reprehensible things I've ever seen on a television news program (outside of Fox). Watch the video; does CNN have anything to say about this? Hilzoy has some observations worth reading about this.

Afghanistan and Al-Qaeda -- together again

We're constantly told that the reason it is so dangerous to leave Iraq prior to the "completion of the mission" -- whatever that might mean today -- is because premature withdrawal will create a "vacuum" that will enable Al-Qaeda to use Iraq as a base for training and other activities. And it's probably true that that will happen.

But that (according to the U.S. military) is exactly what has already happened in a substantial portion of the country and we seem completely incapable of doing anything about that (if we were unable to prevent it from happening in the first place, it seems to be a fair inference that -- in the absence of a major change in strategy and a massive increases in resources -- we can't reverse it).

But worse than that is the fact that the power vacuum which we are told is so dangerous already exists not only in Iraq, but also in Afghanistan. Remember Afghanistan -- the one great success of the Bush administration -- where we rid that country of the evil Taliban and denied Al-Qaeda free rein? Except for how we haven't done any of that. Quite the opposite:

Al-Qaeda's influence and numbers are rapidly growing in Afghanistan, with fighters operating from new havens and mimicking techniques learned on the Iraqi battlefield for use against U.S. and allied troops, the directors of the CIA and defense intelligence told Congress yesterday.

Five years after the United States drove al-Qaeda and the Taliban from Afghanistan, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, director of the CIA, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that both groups are back, waging a "bloody insurgency" in the south and east of the country. U.S. support for the Kabul government of Hamid Karzai will be needed for "at least a decade" to ensure that the country does not fall again, he said.

We've been inundated with endless happy talk about how we shattered Al-Qaeda's infrastructure and have them on the run, impotently hiding in caves with no leadership (with the completely unimportant exceptions of Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri, the group's two top leaders for the last decade; but we sure did get their endless army of "number threes"). Yet all of that talk about how much we have crippled Al Qaeda is pure fiction, says Noam Chomsky the President's hand-picked CIA Director:

Hayden told the Senate panel that the Taliban, aided by al-Qaeda, "has built momentum this year" in Afghanistan and that "the level of violence associated with the insurgency has increased significantly." He also noted that Karzai's government "is nowhere to be seen" in many rural areas where a lack of security is affecting millions of Afghans for whom the quality of life has not advanced since the U.S. military arrived in October 2001. . . . .

Hayden said yesterday that "the group's cadre of seasoned, committed leaders" remains fairly cohesive and focused on strategic objectives, "despite having lost a number of veterans over the years." Bin Laden himself, and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri, continue to play a crucial role while hiding out somewhere along the Afghan-Pakistani border.

Hayden said the organization had lost a series of leaders since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. But the losses have been "mitigated by what is, frankly, a pretty deep bench of low-ranking personnel capable of stepping up to assume leadership positions." Hayden said the lower ranks are dominated by men in their early 40s with two decades of experience fighting.

Shortly before the election, someone leaked a CIA assessment to David Rohde and Jim Risen, who wrote an article in the New York Times describing the CIA's concerns about the inability of the "Afghan Government" to "exert authority beyond Kabul," as well as the corruption of its police force and army that is so pervasive that it basically requires them to be re-built from scratch. Even Bush officials, on the record, are giving extremely grim assessments of Afghanistan:

Ronald E. Neumann, the American ambassador in Kabul, said in a recently that "the United States faced “stark choices” in Afghanistan. Averting failure, he said, would take “multiple years” and “multiple billions.” “We’re going to have to stay at it,” he said. “Or we’re going to fail and the country will fall apart again.”

What is the U.S. going to do about all of this? The few war advocates left insist that all we need in Iraq is just some more troops and some more time. Except we don't have more troops (according to the military itself) and the ones we do have are spread thin and exhausted from multiple tours of duty. And even if we did have some magic troops materialize for Iraq, what would we do about Afghanistan, which -- according to Bush's own ambassador -- requires a commitment of enormous additional resources over many years just to prevent the country from "fall[ing] apart again"?

And even if these severe and dangerous problems could be solved with a massive increase in resources (money and troops) -- an extremely precarious premise, to put it mildly -- how would we pay for that? The Republican propaganda machine has made even the mere mention of tax increases politically toxic. Even the suggestion that the Bush tax cuts maybe shouldn't be made permanent was a weapon that was used by Republicans in an effort to keep themselves in power. And we are a country that is drowning in deficits and buried by debt. "Imperial overstretch" doesn't even begin to describe the untenability of our predicament.

The real problem is that we don't actually debate the issues that are the real ones because they are too politically radioactive. The real choice is whether we want to maintain our presence and controlling influence in the Middle East and, if so, (a) why do we want to do that?; and (b) what are we are going to do to enable us to maintain that dominance? But we can't discuss item (a) in any constructive way because doing so requires a debate about the role of oil and our commitment to Israel, both of which are strictly off limits, as the President himself told us:

The American people know the difference between responsible and irresponsible debate when they see it. They know the difference between honest critics who question the way the war is being prosecuted and partisan critics who claim that we acted in Iraq because of oil, or because of Israel, or because we misled the American people. And they know the difference between a loyal opposition that points out what is wrong, and defeatists who refuse to see that anything is right.

It may be the case that we need to preserve our influence in the Middle East. Perhaps we want to control oil resources or assume primary responsibility for ensuring a steady and orderly world oil market. Or perhaps we want to commit ourselves to defending Israel as the only real outpost of Middle Eastern democracy and/or an ally of one degree or another in protecting our vital strategic interests in that region (if any).

There are reasonable arguments to be made in support of all of those views (on both sides), but those issues have been cemented with a mandated orthodoxy and no examination of them is allowed (if one wants to continue to be heard in the mainstream). So we dance around the real questions and are stuck with superficial and contrived "debates" about what we are really doing, all of which obscures our choices and our reality far more than clarifying them.

If preserving our dominance of the Middle East is something we want to make a priority, then we would need to decide what sarifices we are willing to make to do so -- how we will massively expand our military, the increase in indiscriminate force we are willing to accept, and how we are going to pay for our imperial missions. Because as long as we are committed to dominating that region, we are going to be engaged in a long and likely endless series of wars against religious fanatics and various nationalistis who simply don't want us there and are willing to fight to the death -- making all sorts of sacrifices -- to prevent us from dominating their countries.

If we want to fight the wars necessary to maintain our dominance in the Middle East, then we should do so. And if we don't, then we shouldn't. But this middle course -- where we plod along aimlessly, starting wars that we're not really committed to winning and therefore are losing -- is not only the most incoherent course, but also the most destructive one.

What is indisputably clear is that our current course is totally unsustainable. That's just reality. It isn't that things have progressed too slowly in Afghanistan and Iraq. It's that the situation has deteriorated in both countries, to the point where Al Qaeda now has not one but two countries (not counting a nuclear-armed Pakistan) in which it is more or less free to operate. And the stronger they get, the more of our resources are needed to keep up. Yet we don't have the resources needed and aren't willing to make the sacrifices necessary to get them. But we pretend that's not the case by insisting on our divine entitlement to magical victory and depicting those who claim otherwise as people who hate the troops and don't want to win.

Incremental changes and some mild limits on this administration are nice and welcomed. But the damage done to the United States by this administration over the last six years is truly severe. It's fundamental damage, and it requires much, much more than some tinkering around the edges. We need a debate and re-examination of the core premises of our foreign policy and our role in the world. That, in turn, requires a willingness to call into question the most sacred orthodoxies, which, in turn, requires real political leaders with the courage, credibility and skills to do that. Does anyone see any of those?

"Only a fool -- or possibly a Frenchman -- could conclude otherwise."

(updated below)

When researching various issues, particularly Iraq, it is common to stumble upon articles and columns from 2002, 2003 and 2004 in which the war was debated. It's very difficult to avoid writing about them because it's still so hard to believe how barren and corrupt our political dialogue was back then (and it really hasn't changed much, if at all).

Following up on my post from yesterday about how those who were wrong about everything were hailed as the foreign policy geniuses of our time (while those who were right were mocked as lunatics, lightweights and subversives), this is one of the most glaring -- and infuriating -- examples I've seen (h/t TM):

The Washington Post's Richard Cohen, 2/6/2003, on Colin Powell's speech to the UN:

This is where Colin Powell brought us all yesterday. The evidence he presented to the United Nations -- some of it circumstantial, some of it absolutely bone-chilling in its detail -- had to prove to anyone that Iraq not only hasn't accounted for its weapons of mass destruction but without a doubt still retains them. Only a fool -- or possibly a Frenchman -- could conclude otherwise.

Howard Dean, 2/17/2003, on Colin Powell's speech to the UN:

Secretary Powell's recent presentation at the UN showed the extent to which we have Iraq under an audio and visual microscope. Given that, I was impressed not by the vastness of evidence presented by the Secretary, but rather by its sketchiness. He said there would be no smoking gun, and there was none.

At the same time, it seems to me we are in possession of information that would be very helpful to UN inspectors. For example, if we know Iraqi scientists are being detained at an Iraqi guesthouse, why not surround the building and knock on the door? If we think a facility is being used for biological weapons, why not send the inspectors to check it out?

The worst part of all of this is that Cohen -- the "liberal" Post columnist -- spent the rest of the year viciously mocking Dean as a McGovernite pansy who has no experience in Washington and thus knows absolutely nothing about complicated foreign affairs.

On September 18, 2003, Cohen said that "if the Bush team could digitally create the perfect patsy candidate it would be Dean." On November 11, 2003, Cohen said: "The conventional wisdom is that Dean is George McGovern all over again. I do not quibble," and that Dean "encapsulates the deep hatred among some Democrats for our president."

Cohen also grouped Dean in with Wesley Clark, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Arianna Huffington (the latter two were running for California Governor) to lament that "at the moment, the political firmament twinkles with amateurs." Should they "win, neither would have the slightest idea of what to do next. That's not because they are dumb. It's because they have never done anything remotely similar. . . . " (full Post articles read via Lexis).

Just for good measure, Cohen, on February 25, 2003 (in a column titled "Antiwar and Illogic"), referenced the reluctance in Washington to use the word "liar," but Cohen found one case where he liked it: "So it was particularly shocking, not to mention refreshing, to hear Richard Perle on Sunday call Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) a liar to his face." He then grouped Dean and Kucinich together and said: "extremes on both sides -- but particularly the war's opponents -- no longer feel compelled to prove a case or stick to the facts. As with Vietnam, this is becoming an emotional battle between ideologues who, as usual, don't give a damn about the truth."

That really is why we are in the situation we confront in Iraq. Because Richard "Only-a-fool--or-possibly-a-Frenchman--could-conclude-otherwise" Cohen and his ilk demonized and caricatured the Howard Deans of the world as pacifist, amateur, naive, stupid, frivolous, dangerous French hippies even though everything Dean was saying was true and prescient and everything Cohen was saying was false and idiotic. And they're still doing that.

Cohen wrote a column in June of this year (yes, he is still held out by the Post as someone to whom we should listen), entitled "Culpability Deficit Disorder," in which he oh-so-knowingly blamed everyone for the disaster in Iraq other than himself (including by blaming decisions that happened immediately after the invasion that he never criticized at the time, when he was still cheering loudly and worshipfully for the administration). He also now says that everything would have been great in Iraq if we had just left once Saddam was removed (something he never advocated at the time), and still rails against "the people who are so certain of their moral righteousness when it comes to the Iraq war."

In 1995, after almost 30 years of silence on the subject, Robert McNamara wrote a book about his experience with the Vietnam War as Defense Secretary from 1961-1968. When he appeared at Harvard University to speak about the book, he was incredibly contrite and accepted the disgrace that he bore as understandable and even justified. None of that, as he pointed out, mitigated or excused what happened in Vietnam. But at least he accepted responsibility for his role in it and the horrendous judgment that he exercised.

We've seen almost none of that from those who brought us the Iraq disaster and then who perpetuated it. Quite the contrary, they continue to be held out as the ones whose knowledge and wisdom we should trust.

* * * * * *

I have an article in Salon this morning regarding the opportunity Democrats have with libertarian voters (with a very small "l") as a result of the Republicans' increasing dependence upon Southern evangelical social conservatism.


UPDATE: Jonathan Schwarz has a great post highlighting some of the underlying assumptions of the pundit class, prompted, appropriately enough, by a personal encounter with Richard Cohen.

Germany's claim to "universal" power over other countries' citizens

The Center for Constitutional Rights, working with various European human rights groups and German lawyers, has "filed a lawsuit calling on German prosecutors to investigate outgoing US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for allegedly sanctioning torture." Other defendants include Alberto Gonzales and George Tenet.

None of the acts which the lawsuit alleges were committed by the defendants took place in Germany, nor were they committed against German citizens or even against any individuals in Germany. Rather, the complaint was "brought on behalf of 11 former Iraqi detainees of the notorious Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad and one Saudi currently being held at the US prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba."

The reason the prosecution is sought in Germany -- even though the alleged acts have nothing to do with Germany or German citizens -- is because Germany enacted a law granting itself so-called "universal jurisdiction," whereby it claims the right to prosecute anyone in the world for various war-related crimes regardless of where the crimes occurred or against whom they were committed. As the CCR says:

The complaint is being filed under the Code of Crimes against International Law (CCIL), enacted by Germany in compliance with the Rome Statute creating the International Criminal Court in 2002, which Germany ratified. The CCIL provides for “universal jurisdiction” for war crimes, crimes of genocide and crimes against humanity. It enables the German Federal Prosecutor to investigate and prosecute crimes constituting a violation of the CCIL, irrespective of the location of the defendant or plaintiff, the place where the crime was carried out, or the nationality of the persons involved.

Belgium previously had a similar law, but repealed it. As a result, Belgium's claim to power is now much more modest and democratic: "Belgian courts will only have jurisdiction over international crimes if the accused is Belgian or has his primary residence in Belgium; if the victim is Belgian or has lived in Belgium for at least three years at the time the crimes were committed; or if Belgium is required by treaty to exercise jurisdiction over the case."

But Germany continues to claim the power to subject other countries' citizens to its laws, to be convicted by its judges and sentenced by its government, even if those citizens have nothing whatsoever to do with Germany or with German citizens. That is nothing less than a claim to worldwide power -- to subject individuals to the rule of the German political system even though those individuals have no say in that system and no representation in it. In short, it is the assertion of government rule without even the pretense of consent by the governed.

What possible justification is there for the German Government to assert legal power over other countries' citizens for acts that were not committed in Germany or to German citizens? And how can anyone justify having Americans subjected to trial by German courts and German judges under German law, when they have no representation whatsoever in the German system of government?

This notion of one country being so hubristic that they arrogate unto themselves the right of "universal jurisdiction" -- basically the power of a world government -- seems rather dangerous and un-democratic in the extreme. "Consent of the governed" is the linchpin of the legitimate exercise of government power, and it is utterly lacking with Germany's claim of universal jurisdiction.

It doesn't matter how bad of a person one thinks Rumsfeld is or how criminal one thinks his conduct is. None of that justifies having him prosecuted by a foreign government in which he has no democratic representation and no input and which has no unique connection to his alleged crimes (in exactly the same way that the fact that certain detainees in U.S. custody may very well be evil, murderous terrorists doesn't justify denial of minimal protections of due process).

This is not a case where numerous countries have jointly convened an international tribunal to judge war criminals from a country which no longer has a functioning government, nor is it a case of subjecting an individual to a system of international laws by which the defendant's government has agreed to be bound. This is just an exercise of raw and arrogant power -- wholly undemocratic, unaccountable power -- by one government which apparently thinks it is authorized to assert its rule over the entire world.

The sentiments fueling this effort are clear and understandable. The CCR represents numerous Iraqis and other foreign nationals held in Abu Grahib and Guantanamo who have been subjected to hideous abuses -- physical, psychological and legal -- and they are searching for ways to advance their clients' interests and hold the wrongdoers accountable. Not only is there nothing wrong with that, that is their obligation. But that doesn't make their effort any less dangerous or wrong.

After all, it's also true (without positing any equivalencies one way or the other) that there really are Islamic extremists plotting to slaughter large numbers of innocent civilians around the world and it is necessary to find them, stop them and punish them. But in neither case do the desirable ends justify the use of undemocratic and lawless means to achieve them.

As always, exotic and extreme powers -- whether it be unchecked executive powers to break the law, the ability to criminalize the expression of certain opinions, the power to eavesdrop with no oversight, having foreign governments assert "universal" jurisdiction -- ought not be cheered on simply because they happen to be exercised in a way that seems desirable, or against individuals who are dangerous or destructive in some way. There is a responsibility to assess those powers as a general principle -- not only when wielded by those whom one likes against those whom one dislikes, but to assess their potential for abuse and how they might be used by different governments towards different ends.

Even if one thinks that Donald Rumsfeld is the most evil war criminal in history, and that the invasion of Iraq was the most evil and criminal act of aggression in the last century, the German Government has no authority whatsoever to subject Rumsfeld to its courts, its political officials and its laws. And the profoundly anti-democratic attempt to do so is no less disturbing merely because one believes that it is being pursued with noble goals or against individuals who merit punishment.

UPDATE: Several people have defended the theory of "universal jurisdiction" in the comment section -- very unpersuasively (in my view) though intelligently. As a result, the ensuing disussion in the comment section is quite substantive and informed and sheds much additional light on this topic, for those interested.

Our wise national security guardians

(updated below)

Once the U.S. invaded Iraq and realized that (a) the WMDs that "justified" the war didn't actually exist and (b) we were completely unprepared to fight the well-armed and well-planned insurgency, we had ample opportunity to adjust, change course, alter our objectives, or leave.

The reason we didn't is because the country was continuously lied to by the most morally depraved people one can fathom, who were so afraid of admitting error regarding the wisdom of the invasion that they kept insisting to Americans that things were going great and that everything would be fixed very soon. That, far more than the original decision to invade Iraq, is the real crime here. And many of them continue to do it, some with more brazenness than ever before.

Mark Steyn is the revered foreign policy genius-analyst of the neoconservative warmongers and the right blogosphere. This is what he said in an interview with Right Wing News on June 29, 2005 about Iraq:

John Hawkins: Take a look at Iraq and tell me how you think we've handled it up to this point and look ahead one year to June of 2006, just a few months before the mid-term elections in the US, and tell me where you see things going.

Mark Steyn: I think Iraq is on the wane as a domestic policy issue in the US. American troops will be there for some time, but increasingly in a supporting role to the new Iraqi forces. I was interested to see, for example, that it was the Iraqi army which rescued the Australian hostage Douglas Wood. A year ago, this would almost certainly have been a western Special Forces operation.

So, although there will be many terrible individual atrocities in the days ahead, there’s no strategic purpose to them other than to drive a weak-willed US Congress into cutting and running. My bet is that enough of the American people are made of sterner stuff, and that Democrats who continue to argue for retreat – and thus defeat - will find the anti-Iraq drum has less and less resonance.

There’ll be other changes with the Iraqis in the driving seat, rather than a Bush Administration that has to keep one eye out on whether Dick Durbin’s going to blubber all over the Senate floor again. Baghdad is likely to be far less squeamish about its enemies than Washington is.

I don't just mean in the sense of that TV show they have over there, the one where they broadcast the interrogations of captured insurgents, which is the only reality TV show I enjoy watching. I'm also thinking of the Syrian border, where Iraqi troops are much more likely to exercise their right of hot pursuit than the Americans are. This time next year, it could be Iraq destabilizing Syria rather than the other way around.

Is it even possible to be more wrong than that? And that's why we stayed, doing what we were doing. Because the self-serving propagandists like Mark Steyn paraded around as experts -- and were hailed as such -- and kept telling Americans that the Iraqi Army was almost self-sufficient . . . just a little bit longer because we're making really great progress . . . . those who keep telling you that violence is escalating and we're not making progress are cut-and-run cowards who hate America and want us to lose. . . . ignore the reports from the Bush-hating media because they are inventing stories about violence . . . Churchill would stay and so should we.

After Steyn gave that indescribably false and dishonest answer, the question Hawkins asked next was this: "Why do you think the American left has become so incapable of dealing with foreign policy threats?" That's from the architects and cheerleaders and implementors of the invasion of Iraq, the greatest strategic disaster in our country's history and one of its most disgraceful acts. "Why do think the American left has become so incapable of dealing with foreign policy threats?" (Steyn's answer was as trite as it is empty: "the complete evaporation of the moderate credible foreign policy Scoop Jackson Democrats" -- meaning: "not enough Joe Liebermans who endorse mindless neoconservative warmongering").

As a comparison, read these two analytically superb posts from Swopa, detailing why it has been clear not for months, but for years, that this sectarian war was not only inevitable but also that the U.S. had no power to stop it. That is the most tragic part about what is happening in Iraq. None of it was unforeseeable. To the contrary, it was all not only foreseeable, but foreseen and warned about -- by the unserious, frivolous, America-hating crazies who were demonized and laughed at (and unbelievably, still are) by the warmongers (in both parties) and their mindless allies in the press.

I know I've written about this several times before, but it is truly unfathomable that the people who are responsible for this disaster -- not just the ones who advocated it in the beginning, but much worse, the ones who continued to insist that things were going well and that everything was progressing nicely and that reports to the contrary should be dismissed and ignored -- continue to be accorded respect and treated as though they have great credibility. Why is that?

And conversely, why are those who were so right and prescient and wise in their counsel treated as though they are lightweight, laughable morons who can't be "trusted with national security"? Why is it that when one watches news programs, one still encounters all of those smug, all-knowing little sneers whenever there is a reference to Howard Dean or Nancy Pelosi and national security, whereas John McCain and Charles Krauthammer and Robert Kagan and Lawrence Kaplan -- Iraq War lovers all -- are addressed with whispered reverence as we wait for their wise and weighty pronouncements about What We Should Do Next?

It's like watching a patient who has lost limbs and organs due to a surgeon's gross malpractice continue to return to that same surgeon for the next operation, while scoffing at the doctors who warned of the dangers. Iraq is far too intense of an ongoing tragedy to be engaging in blame-assigning vendettas just for fun. The point is that with regard not only to Iraq -- but also Iran and North Korea and every other foreign policy problem -- we need to figure out who we should be listening to and who we should be ignoring, and it really isn't that hard to figure out. At least it shouldn't be.

UPDATE: Think Progress notes the attempt today by a pro-war blogger to equate Philadelphia and Baghdad in terms of violence (h/t Atrios) -- a truly disgusting comparison first promoted by Glenn Reynolds when he oh-so-hilariously joked about the war that his readers have been told for three years is going so great: "A PHILADELPHIA QUAGMIRE? Stop the killing. U.S. out of Philadelphia now!" And, of course, he added: "Yes, by historical standards the war in Iraq isn't terribly bloody, which does tend to get lost in the media coverage."

Speaking of national security frauds posing as experts, National Review's Rich Lowry has a surprisingly insightful refutation of the numerous myths taking root with regard to the midterm elections.

The Military Commissions Act in action

The Bush administration's treatment of Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri ought to be shocking and horrifying. Instead, it is now not only depressingly familiar, but also something that is formally sanctioned by the U.S. Congress.

In 2001, al-Marri, a citizen of Qatar, was in the United States legally, on a student visa. He was a computer science graduate student at Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois, where he had earned an undergraduate degree a decade earlier. In Peoria, he lived with his wife and five children.

In December, 2001 he was detained as a "material witness" to suspected acts of terrorism and ultimately charged with various terrorism-related offenses, mostly relating to false statements the FBI claimed he made as part of its 9/11 investigation. Al-Marri vehemently denied the charges, and after lengthy pre-trial proceedings, his trial on those charges was scheduled to begin on July 21, 2003.

But his trial never took place, because in June, 2003 -- one month before the scheduled trial -- President Bush declared him to be an "enemy combatant." As a result, the Justice Department told the court it wanted to turn him over to the U.S. military, and thus asked the court to dismiss the criminal charges against him, and the court did so (the dismissal was "with prejudice," meaning he can't be tried ever again on those charges). Thus, right before his trial, the Bush administration simply removed Al-Marri from the jurisdiction of the judicial system -- based solely on the unilateral order of the President -- and thus prevented him from contesting the charges against him.

Instead, the administration immediately transferred al-Marri to a miltiary prison in South Carolina (where the administration brings its "enemy combatants" in order to ensure that the executive-power-friendly 4th Circuit Court of Appeals has jurisdiction over all such cases). Al-Marri was given the "Padilla Treatment" -- kept in solitary confinement, denied all contact with the outside world, including even his own attorneys, not charged with any crimes, and given no opportunity to prove his innocence. Instead, the Bush administration simply asserted the right to detain him indefinitely without so much as charging him with anything.

Last month, Congress endorsed this behavior and expressly vested the President with the power of indefinite, unreviewable detentions when it enacted the so-called Military Commissions Act of 2006. And the Bush administration has wasted no time relying on that statutory authority to justify the exercise of this extreme detention power. From the AP today:

In court documents filed with the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., the Justice Department said a new anti-terrorism law being used to hold detainees in Guantanamo Bay also applies to foreigners captured and held in the United States.

Immigrants arrested in the United States may be held indefinitely on suspicion of terrorism and may not challenge their imprisonment in civilian courts, the Bush administration said Monday, opening a new legal front in the fight over the rights of detainees.

The MCA authorizes the administration to detain any non-citizen (at least) as an enemy combatant and does not require that they be charged with any crime nor given an opportunity to prove their innocence. That includes resident aliens and foreigners who have legally entered the U.S.:

"It's pretty stunning that any alien living in the United States can be denied this right," said Jonathan Hafetz, an attorney for Al-Marri. "It means any non-citizen, and there are millions of them, can be whisked off at night and be put in detention."

This is not a case of someone being detained on a battlefield or even overseas, nor is it the case of someone who entered the country illegally. He was in the U.S. legally and was detained while sitting at home. And just as he was about to start his criminal trial, the President essentially cancelled the trial and ordered him detained indefinitely and incommunicado. As Amnesty International has said with respect to this case:

The practice of detaining people incommunicado has been condemned by human rights bodies, including the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, as a human rights violation which can lead to other violations such as torture or ill-treatment or interrogation without due process safeguards.

Access to a lawyer is an important safeguard to ensure that detainees’ rights are protected, not only with regard to criminal or other proceedings, but also with regard to conditions of detention and a detainee’s physical and mental health. Prolonged incommunicado detention or solitary confinement can in itself be a form of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.

Sermons like that about the value of basic individual rights and the imperatives of due process were previously delivered by the United States. Now, they need to be delivered to us, because we seem to have rejected them.

The denial of habeas corpus rights is the most Draconian aspect of the MCA, as it authorizes detention for life with no real review and no meaningful opportunity to prove one's innocence. Sen. Chris Dodd said prior to the election that he regrets the decision not to filibuster the MCA: "I regret now that I didn't do it . . . This is a major, major blow to who we are." And Sen. Pat Leahy, soon-to-be Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has confirmed that he is "drafting a bill to undo portions of a recently passed law that prevent terrorism detainees from going to federal court to challenge the government's right to hold them indefinitely."

That has to happen. At the very least, re-establishing habeas corpus rights for detainees is an absolute imperative. We simply cannot be a country that vests in the President the power to order people imprisoned for life with no real review of the charges against them, particularly when the detainees are not detained on any battlefield, and particularly when they are detained inside the U.S.

There is no greater betrayal of the core principles of American political life than to have the federal government sweep people off the streets, throw them into a black hole with no contact with the outside world and no charges asserted of any kind, and simply keep them there for as long as the President desires -- in al-Marri's case, with respect to detention, now five years and counting.

As always, the most extraordinary and jarring aspect of cases like this one is that these principles -- which were once the undebatable, immovable bedrock of our political system -- are now openly debated and actively disputed by our own government. By itself it is astonishing -- and highly revealing about where we are as a country -- that such precepts even need to be defended at all.

George Bush and GOP House Leaders: "conservatism" defined

(updated below)

Of all the dishonesty and political manipulation to which we have been subjected over the last five years, a good argument can be made that this is the most dishonest yet:

Since the election, a chorus from the right has been noisily distinguishing between conservative and Republican, blaming deviation from conservative principles for the election losses. From George Will to Rush Limbaugh, conservatives cut loose with criticisms of the Republicans for spending too much at home and getting bogged down in Iraq.

"Conservatism" -- like "communism" -- has only one real definition, only one definition that matters: "that which 'conservatives' and the leaders they support do when in power." Conservatism is a set of principles about how government ought to function and the policies which political leaders should implement. And those principles can be known not by how they exist in some Platonic form, abstractly enshrined by think tank groups or in textbooks. One knows it by how its proponents -- "conservatives" -- actually govern and by who and what they support.

And what "conservatives" have supported for the past six years -- vigorously, loyally, unambiguously -- is George W. Bush and the Republicans who have controlled the Congress. "Conservatism," in its only meaningful sense, is that which they have done. Just like Fidel Castro and Leonid Brezhnev and Pol Pot and Mao Tse-Tung and Josef Stalin and the whole array of Communist regimes can't be extricated from "Communism," George Bush and his Congressional servants can't be removed from "conservatism." They, and what they have done, are "conservatism" by definition.

There are ways for political movements to eject the leaders they chose in the event that those leaders stray from the "right beliefs." In 1976, Gerald Ford was the Republican President, but conservatives believed he was insufficiently conservative -- not a real conservative -- so they supported the primary challenge of Ronald Reagan.

In 1980, Jimmy Carter was the Democratic President, but liberals believed he was insufficiently liberal -- not a real liberal -- so they supported the primary challenge of Ted Kennedy. As The Washington Monthly recounts: "By 1980, many liberals were in open revolt against Carter, abandoning him to support Ted Kennedy's ultimately-doomed primary challenge even as the public was sending unmistakable signals that it was sick of Kennedy-style big government."

In 1992, the first George Bush was the Republican President, but conservatives believed he was insufficiently conservative -- not a real conservative -- so they supported the primary challenge of Pat Buchanan. As William Safire described it at the time: "Buchanan is using the Republican primary campaign in 1992 as the springboard for his long-range plan to wrest control of the party from hawkish neoconservatives and pragmatic moderates. Right from the start, he was a Goldwater 'true believer,' never happy with the necessary compromises of Nixon and Reagan."

But George W. Bush, with very rare exception, was enthusiastically embraced by conservatives at all times -- in his 2000 primary fight against John McCain, in the 2000 general election, and again in the 2004 general election. It was conservatives themselves who made George Bush (and the individuals who controlled Congress) the standard-bearer of their political movement for the last six years, and there was no attempt to separate them from conservatism.

Who are the supposed "real conservatives" who were repudiating George Bush and the GOP Congresional leaders? Is it Mitt Romney, who in 2004 hailed the "the courageous and compassionate leadership of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney." Is it Rick Santorum, who solemnly told us: "every generation has but a moment to carry the torch that defines who we are and what we will be," and then made clear who he thinks will do that for conservatives: "George Bush has shown his compassion by advancing his faith-based initiatives, strengthening marriage, and fighting to let the American people define marriage, not left-wing judges."

It is Rush Limbaugh, who, at the time of Reagan's 2004 death, said: "Reagan was right just as George W. Bush is today, and I really believe that if Reagan had been able he would have put his hand on Bush's shoulder and say to him, 'Stay the course, George.' I really believe that." How about James Dobson: "According to Dobson, evangelical Protestants played a major role in re-electing President George W. Bush, giving him a 'great mandate.'"

The leading "conservative" political magazine, National Review, told us this about George Bush and "conservatism" in 2004: "In his bid for reelection, George W. Bush deserves the support of conservatives." Although the NR editors acknowledged that "mistakes" were made, they said that "Bush has shown evidence of being able to learn from his mistakes. We have made political strides in Iraq." They also said, while noting the "legitimate conservative criticisms that can be made of his record," that "Bush deserves conservative support, as well, on domestic issues." Thus: "For conservatives . . . backing Bush's reelection should be an easy decision."

And here is Jonah Goldberg anointing George W. Bush as the heir of Reagan conservatism and the Republican Party as the vessel of pure Reaganism:

But it is now clear that Bush's own son takes far more after his father's old boss than he does his own father, at least politically speaking. From tax cuts (and deficits, alas), to his personal conviction on aborrtion (sic), to aligning America with the historical tide of liberty in the world, Georrge (sic) W. Bush has proved that he's a Reaganite, not a "Bushie." He may not be a natural heir to Reagan, but that's the point. The party is all Reaganite now. What better sign that this is now truly and totally the Gipper's Party than the obvious conversion of George Bush's own son?

So let us smash the ludicrous pretense that Bush and the Republicans are somehow "separate" from "conservatism" before that toxic and grossly dishonest notion can take root. Until 2005 -- when the Bush presidency irrevocably collapsed -- who were the "real conservatives" who were insisting that George Bush was not one of them? The few who did -- Pat Buchanan, Andrew Sullivan, Bob Barr, Bruce Fein -- were deemed apostates and, in any event, compose such a small group that they are merely the exception that proves the rule.

Particularly after 2004 (but almost never before), it is true that there are conservatives who dissented here and there on isolated, largely overlooked policy issues, but the vast majority of self-proclaimed "conservatives" claimed George Bush as their leader and the entire GOP Congressional leadership -- Tom DeLay, Denny Hastert, Bill First, Mitch McConnell -- as their own. That is just a matter of undisputed historical fact.

It is completely incoherent for a political movement that selected its own leaders and propped them up and supported them for years to suddenly insist -- once those leaders become wildly unpopular and are revealed as failures -- that somehow they are not "real" members of that political movement. Nobody forced George Bush on conservatives. They picked him, stuck by him, and long into his presidency, insisted that he was their leader and the face of conservatism. And so he is.

All of this is depressingly predictable. Last year, Digby famously defined "conservative" this way: "'Conservative' is a magic word that applies to those who are in other conservatives' good graces. Until they aren't. At which point they are liberals." And Rick Perlstein has pointed out many times that, just like Communism: "In conservative intellectual discourse there is no such thing as a bad conservative. Conservatism never fails. It is only failed." But the predictability of all this doesn't make it any less deceitful, dangerous or just wrong.

It is the responsibility of journalists and, really, everyone, to preserve the basic truth that our country has been run exclusively by conservatives for virtually all of the last six years. It is true, as many (including myself, repeatedly) have noted, the Bush movement discarded "conservative principles" as they exist in text books. But it is equally true -- and far more important -- that all that has been done to this country has been done under the banner of "conservatism" and has been done by self-proclaimed "conservatives." There should be no debate about that because it is simply fact.

UPDATE: I want to clarify one point. A commenter cited the new book by Andrew Sullivan (which I just finished reading and will review in the next day or two) as evidence that "real conservatism" does exist and that it is fundamentally different than the radicalism of the Bush administration. I agree with that in the abstract, and that was the primary point I made in the three posts of mine to which I linked in the last paragraph (namely, that there is a universe of difference between what "conservatives" have claimed are their core beliefs and what they have supported under the Bush presidency). That's just obvious.

The real point, though, is that whatever it is that Sullivan (and other genuine self-proclaimed "conservative" Bush critics like him, including George Will) is describing, it is not American political "conservatism," at least not in any real sense. Maybe it comports more faithfully to textbook conservative principles (it does). Maybe the mythical, Goldwater Conservative (the Platonic form) would be more receptive to it than he would to Bush radicalism (he would). But the vast majority of self-identified "conservatives" in real life, today, do not subscribe to those views. In most cases, they believe in the opposite. That's why they so vigorously supported the Bush movement and GOP Congressional leaders.

So operationally, in reality, in the only meaningful sense, "conservatism" has become the Bush movement and those who built it up and supported it for the last six years. The face of American conservatism is Rush Limbaugh, James Dobson, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, National Review, and the Bush movement -- what they are has very little to do with what Sullivan and others describe as their set of political beliefs. Semantic disputes over "real conservatism" are meaningless. In the only way that matters, "conservatives" are those who are responsible for the Bush presidency and everything it brought.

Why the Beltway class can't comprehend the Russ Feingolds of the world

(updated below)

When Russ Feingold announced in March that he would introduce a resolution to censure President Bush for breaking the law by eavesdropping on Americans without warrants, a clear two-pronged consensus immediately arose among Beltway pundits and politicians -- including Republicans and many Democrats as well:

(1) Feingold had just disastrously handed a huge "gift" to Republicans, because opposition to Bush's warrantless eavesdropping would doom the Democrats politically, and,

(2) Feingold had introduced this resolution not because he really believed anything he was saying about it, but only as a "political stunt," selfishly designed to advance his own political interests (at the expense of his party) by shoring up the "liberal base" for his 2008 presidential run.

As for premise (1), Democrats spent all year opposing warrantless eavesdropping (mostly mild and reluctant opposition, though in some cases passionate). That opposition culminated in a House vote just 6 weeks before the election where 85% of Democrats voted against a bill to legalize warrantless eavesdropping.

Thereafter, Republicans did everything possible to make that an issue in the campaign, and Democrats just crushed Republicans in the election. As but one example, 12-term GOP incumbent Nancy Johnson made her support for warrantless eavesdropping (and her challenger's opposition to it) a centerpiece of her campaign. She was easily defeated.

As for premise (2), Russ Feingold announced today, definitively, that he is not running for President in 2008.

It is hard to overstate how ignorant and wrong Beltway pundits are about everything, and how barren and corrupt inside-Washington conventional wisdom is.

Russ Feingold has spent his entire idiosyncratic political career espousing views because he believes them, even when those views are so plainly contrary to his political interests. He infuriated his entire party by being the only Democratic Senator to vote against dismissal of the Clinton impeachment charges prior to the Senate trial. He pursued campaign finance reform hated by incumbents in both parties.

And in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, he seemed to be the only elected official immune from irrational pressures, as he not only was the only Senator to vote against the "Patriot Act," but was also the only Senator who refused to blindly pledge his loyalty to limitless presidential power, emphasizing on the Senate floor as early as September 14, 2001:

Like any legislation, this resolution [authorizing military force in Afghanistan and against Al Qaeda] is not perfect. I have some concern that readers may misinterpret the preamble language that the President has authority under the Constitution to take action to deter and prevent acts of international terrorism as a new grant of power; rather it is merely a statement that the President has existing constitutional powers . . . .

Congress owns the war power. But by this resolution, Congress loans it to the President in this emergency. In so doing, we demonstrate our respect and confidence in both our Commander in Chief and our Constitution. . . .

Our response will be judged by friends and foes, by history, and by ourselves. It must stand up to the highest level of scrutiny: It must be appropriate and constitutional.

Within this confusing scenario, it will be easy to point fingers at an ever increasing number of enemies, to believe that the ``the enemy'' is all around us, that the enemy may even be our neighbor. The target can seem to grow larger and larger every day, before the first strike even occurs. And this, of course, is exactly what the terrorists want. They seek to inflate their numbers and their influence by retreating into the shadows. They seek to turn us against each other, and to turn us against our friends and allies across the world, but we will not allow this to happen.

Despite all of that, when Feingold stood up and advocated censure -- based on the truly radical and crazy, far leftist premise that when the President is caught red-handed breaking the law, the Congress should actually do something about that -- the soul-less, oh-so-sophisticated Beltway geniuses could not even contemplate the possibility that he was doing that because he believed what he was saying. Beltway pundits and the leaders of the Beltway political and consulting classes all, in unison, immediately began casting aspersions on Feingold's motives and laughed away -- really never considered -- the idea that he was motivated by actual belief, let alone the merits of his proposal.

That's because they believe in nothing. They have no passion about anything. And they thus assume that everyone else suffers from the same emptiness of character and ossified cynicism that plagues them. And all of their punditry and analysis and political strategizing flows from this corrupt root.

Not only do they believe in nothing, they think that a Belief in Nothing is a mark of sophistication and wisdom. Those who believe in things too much -- who display political passion or who take their convictions and ideals seriously (Feingold, Howard Dean) -- are either naive or, worse, are the crazy, irrational, loudmouth masses and radicals who disrupt the elevated, measured world of the high-level, dispassionate Beltway sophisticates (James Carville, David Broder, Fred Hiatt). They are interested in, even obsessed with, every aspect of the political process except for deeply held political beliefs -- the only part that really matters or that has any real worth.

For that reason, when Feingold announced his censure resolution, the merits of it were virtually ignored (i.e., should something actually be done about the President's deliberate lawbreaking? What are the consequences for our country for doing nothing?). Instead, Feingold's announcement was immediately cast as a disingenuous political maneuver and discussed only in cynical terms of how it would politically harm the Democrats.

This was the first line of the AP article on Feingold's resolution:

While only two Democrats in the Senate have embraced Sen. Russ Feingold's call for censuring President Bush, the idea is increasing his standing among many Democratic voters as he ponders a bid for the party's presidential nomination in 2008. . . .

And as is so often the case, Beltway Republicans and Democrats worked in tandem with this cynical, substance-less storyline -- because it's how they all really think. Thus, the Post reported that Republicans "denounced the censure resolution as a political stunt by an ambitious lawmaker positioning himself to run for president in 2008."

Many Democrats (though not all), petrified by Feingold's stand, made the same accusation. As David Limbaugh gleefully recounted:

Feingold's move is not one of moral courage, but raw political ambition. In the words of Democratic senator Mark Dayton, Feingold's move is "an overreaching step by someone who is grandstanding and running for president at the expense of his own party and his own country."

And the AP article also reported this:

"This is such a gift," Rush Limbaugh said on his radio show. The National Review came to the same conclusion. In an online editorial titled, "Feingold's Gift to the GOP," the conservative magazine wrote that Republican National Committee chairman Ken Mehlman would hug Feingold if given the chance.

Marshall Wittmann insisted that Feingold was dooming the Democrats and if Democrats didn't drop the whole issue of warrantless eavesdropping, it would ensure GOP victory:

The Moose avers that Russ Feingold is the GOP's man of the hour. . . . . Here is the bottom line - the American people are not going to penalize the President for being overly zealous in preventing a destruction of an American city. That is what the Republicans know and they are gleeful about a debate on this issue. And they are co-dependent on the Democratic left to keep this issue alive.

And then there was this most wretched column by Eleanor Clift, vividly echoing all of those brilliant Beltway insights with one textbook case study on how our Beltway political class, across the board, "thinks":

Republicans finally had something to celebrate this week when Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold called for censuring George W. Bush. Democrats must have a death wish. Just when the momentum was going against the president, Feingold pops up to toss the GOP a life raft.

It’s brilliant strategy for him, a dark horse presidential candidate carving out a niche to the left of Hillary Clinton. . . . . There is a vacuum in the heart of the party’s base that Feingold fills, but at what cost? . . . .

The broader public sees it as political extremism. Just when the Republicans looked like they were coming unhinged, the Democrats serve up a refresher course on why they can’t be trusted with the keys to the country.

[The same thing happened when Feingold announced that he favors same-sex marriages. He can't possibly be motivated by actual belief, so AP tells us why he really did it: "Sen. Russ Feingold, a potential presidential candidate, said Tuesday he supports giving gays and lesbians the right to marry, again positioning himself to the left of possible 2008 rivals."]

All of this Beltway certainty about the motives of Feingold's Censure Resolution and the political consequences of it could not have been any more wrong. Feingold obviously hadn't decided to run for President and apparently wasn't planning on it. And 2006 saw endless controversy over the NSA program -- from hearings to court cases to Feingold's resolution to a final House vote in which Democrats overwhelmingly opposed the President's NSA program -- and Americans stomped on the Republicans and put the Democrats in power.

The Beltway pundit class and the premises which generate conventional Washington wisdom are corrupt to their core and always wrong. And this Feingold announcement illustrates a major reason why that it so. They operate from a set of completely unexamined, empty premises that reflect their own character and belief system, but nobody else's. They have no core convictions and no passion and think that those attributes are the marks of sober, responsible people. And they project those character flaws onto everyone else and assume that nobody other than unserious lunatics are motivated by real belief.

All of that combines to produce a worldview that is as inaccurate as it is bereft of integrity and principle. The excitement over new politicians like Jim Webb and Jon Tester -- and the passion inspired by Russ Feingold and even Howard Dean -- has nothing to do with long-standing and increasingly obsolete liberal/conservative stereotypes (the only prism through which the media can analyze the election results, which is why they are so confused). Instead, the excitement is due to a widespread hunger for people who are outside of and immune to the entire, soul-less Beltway machinery -- a system which, in every aspect, is broken and empty at its core.

UPDATE: One of the best/worst examples of this emptiness comes, unsurprisingly, from The New Republic, courtesy of Ryan Lizza, who chortled at the political stupidity of Feingold's censure resolution but -- of course -- knew exactly why Feingold was doing it (h/t Michael):

Feingold is mystified by the reaction. Democrats, he said this week, are "cowering with this president's numbers so low." The liberal blogosphere, aghast at how wimpy Democrats are being, has risen up in a chorus of outrage: . . . .

The nature of the split is obvious. Feingold is thinking about 2008. Harry Reid, Charles Schumer, and other Democrats are thinking about 2006. Feingold cares about wooing the anti-Bush donor base on the web and putting some of his '08 rivals--Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Evan Bayh--in uncomfortable positions. Reid and Schumer care about winning the six seats it will take for Democrats to win control of the Senate . . . .

So the partisans on the left cheering Feingold appear to have both the policy and the politics wrong. Censure is meaningless. Changing the FISA law is the way to address Bush's overreach. And the only way for Democrats to change FISA is for them to take back the Senate. This week, Feingold's censure petition has made that goal just a little bit more difficult to achieve. What an ass.

So knowing and sophisticated. So wise and insightful to the hard-core political realities. Always above the lowly impassioned masses and their misguided, simplistic notions (such as the belief that there should be consequences for presidential lawbreaking -- how excitable and stupid that is). TNR is always so cleverly restrained and calculating.

And the stupid liberal blogosphere -- cheering on Feingold's stand against the President. As though that's about anything other than Feingold's '08 presidential run. How "obvious" that is.

And all of that is to say nothing about the complete incoherence of Lizza's "argument." How could "changing FISA" -- what Lizza calls "the way to address Bush's overreach" -- possibly be a solution to the president's lawbreaking when the whole point is that the President claims he has no obligation to comply with FISA because Congress can't limit his eavesdropping activities?

Censure was the only way (short of impeachment) for Congress to force the President to comply with the law and to express its objections to the President's lawbreaking. "Changing FISA" was -- and still is -- a complete non-sequitur to the President's conduct, which is based on the premise that FISA (like all laws that limit the President's conduct concerning national security) is a nullity. But to Lizza, that's the more moderate, passionless and less disruptive course. Therefore, by definition, it's the best one -- the only one that responsible and sophisticated political experts like him would ever consider.

How myth gets built into conventional wisdom

Here are two examples perfectly illustrating how conventional wisdom is created by journalists and pundits who are either lazy, dishonest, or both:

(1) James Carville tells The New Republic's Ryan Lizza that he thinks Harold Ford should replace Howard Dean as DNC Chair. Lizza turns that into a claim that "some big name Democrats want to oust DNC Chairman Howard Dean, arguing that his stubborn commitment to the 50-state strategy and his stinginess with funds for House races cost the Democrats several pickup opportunities."

That in turn leads Anne Kornblut in her article today in The New York Times -- identifying the "winners and losers" in the midterm elections -- to assert that "the jury is still out on Howard Dean" because:

With rumblings of a movement to draft Mr. Ford to replace Mr. Dean at the national committee, several Democrats privately said Mr. Emanuel was winning the power struggle.

“It’s pretty clear that the committees work and the D.N.C. works, but they don’t work together,” said James Carville, the Democratic strategist. “And now we’re getting ready to gear up in a presidential year, and I think Harold Ford would be a great chairman.”

It's a "movement" of one, because all of this comes from James Carville's stray comment placed in TNR (and he's also the only one Kornblut quotes). But now this will be conventional wisdom -- tacitly accepted everywhere and never examined -- that Dean is in trouble, that a major faction of the Democratic Party wants Dean out as DNC Chair, that there is a war among various Democratic factions over Dean.

This will all now be "fact" even though Carville has no constituency whatsoever, represents nobody, has no way to oust Dean, and is simply venting long-standing animosity he has towards the insurgent, anti-establishment Dean (who, unlike an envious Carville, actually represents and is supported by large numbers of people). But Carville's one comment, to lazy reporters, means now that there is some major tension among "Democrats" and that some imagined "jury" is still out on Howard Dean. All of that is based on nothing.

(2) Jonah Goldberg yesterday publishes an e-mail he claims he received from some anonymous person. That person claims that he was present for Jim Webb's victory speech, and then claims that this is what happened there:

They had to run that clip because the much of the rest of [Webb's] speech was an absolute riot.

He started off by mentioning that "tomorrow is an extremely important day for America," and the crowd went wild, thinking he was talking about taking power. But of course, he launched into his praise of the Marine Corps, and the crowd cheered a little less loudly. Then he thanked all the brave veterans and brave men still fighting, and the crowd cheered a little less loudly again.

Then he mentioned that he received a call from Sen. Allen, and the crowd went nuts again. Then he mentioned how pleasant and dignified Allen was, and the crowd grew quiet. Then he said he was having lunch next week with Allen — and the crowd was dead silent. Finally he told the audience that they should all thank Sen./Gov. Allen for his many years of dedicated service to the people of Virginia — and you could almost hear the people gathered looking at each other asking, "What the $#@! did we just do?"

It was priceless.

Jonah labels this "good stuff." This led, in turn, to all sorts of right-wing pundits citing this anonymous e-mail and calling it a "report," as though it's authoritative and accurately describes what really happened. So from now on, it will be conventional wisdom -- established fact -- that Democrats hate the Marines, hate the troops, hate any sort of conciliation or grace in victory, and are basically a bunch of unpatriotic, anti-military creeps who are going to have severe tension with Jim Webb.

How many hours until it's on Fox, and then elsewhere? And all of that will be based on a single anonymous e-mail which Jonah Goldberg claims to have received, and it will now to be considered established fact, to be repeated over and over in all sorts of venues ("but some signs suggest that there is already tension between the military hero Webb and the more traditional Democrats who make up the base of the party . . . . ").

Relegating extremists to the fringes

One theme that has emerged among a very specific strain of embittered Bush followers -- exemplified by the likes of Marty Peretz, John Hinderaker, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Althouse and Glenn Reynolds -- is that Al Qaeda and America's other enemies, such as Iran, are celebrating the results of the midterm elections because Democrats are their allies.

To make this claim, they cite a series of playground taunts from Al Qaeda leaders in Iraq and various Iranian political officials mocking President Bush because his party was rejected by Americans in the election and because he lost Donald Rumsfeld. Taking these taunts with the utmost seriousness, these Bush followers claim this to be proof that Democrats are the allies of the Terrorists and/or demand that Democrats take immediate action in response in order to prove that this is not the case.

Ann Althouse asks: "What will the Democrats do to push back against that?" Marty Peretz echoes her "thought":

And Friday, according to an article by John Hemming from Reuters, Khameini that the defeat of the Republicans on Tuesday was a victory for Iran. Let's hope that the Democrats don't make it so.

One way to prevent this from seeming to be objectively true would be to have Nancy Pelosi end her ugly and personal vendetta against Jane Harman as the chair of the House Intelligene (sic) Committee. But, let's face it, it will take more than that. Much more.

John Hinderaker has a whole post with one declaration after the next like these:

I don't think there is any doubt about the fact that the terrorists, world-wide, were hoping for a Democratic victory. . . . And the spike in violence in Iraq prior to the election was generally understood as an effort by the terrorists to help Democratic candidates. . . .

Do the Democrats feel at all sheepish at having their victory hailed by al Qaeda? Do they feel any pressure to demonstrate to the American people that they are not a de facto ally of the terrorists? Not as far as we've noticed so far.

But when the Democrats stop celebrating, they may want to pause long enough to consider a simple question: Why are the terrorists so happy that they won? . . . . . Strategy Page has a closely related analysis; read it all:

Now, the stage is set for al Qaeda to win a major victory. It was a simple matter of getting the American media to ignore the battlefield victories while accentuating al Qaeda's attacks. What could not be accomplished on the battlefield – an American retreat from Iraq – was instead achieved in American newsrooms.

I think that's right. And the Democratic Party, to the extent that it exists independendly (sic) of the mainstream media, has been an accessory at every step of the process.

There is no point in bothering to refute any of this because it is so vile and just plain stupid that it is self-refuting. This was the rhetoric upon which they and their Leader increasingly relied as the inevitability of their loss became clearer, and the more they spew this sort of trash, the better it will be for the country, because with it, they so transparently reveal what they really are.

I note all of this not in order to respond to these "arguments" but instead to note the response to it all from Ed Morrissey, who said this:

It's the kind of stupid rant that makes radical Islamists and their sympathizers swoon with delight, but is filled with hyperbole and crude attempts at psychological warfare and propaganda. They try to play into the mood of their enemies, and they demonstrate their ability to monitor news feeds in their attempts to provoke Americans across the political spectrum. That's one reason why it's a mistake to allow them to succeed, but there are more as well.

Radical Islamists want to divide Americans in order to defeat us. They will play on our differences, stoking the fires of resentment and generating more hatred between us than we have against our enemies. . . . Besides, if we take Abu Hamza at his word about the Democrats, then we have to take him at his word about Bush as well, and about our troops.

The partisan sniping has ceased to be germane. We've already had the election, and the Democrats are in charge -- and they will be for two years no matter what. Obviously, we will watch closely to ensure that they do not surrender to terrorism, but I'm not going to take Abu Hamza's word that they will before their majority session even starts.

They are Americans, and Americans put them in charge, and they have earned the right to show us how they will face the enemy now that they control the agenda. If they fail, I'll be the first to castigate them for losing ground to the terrorists. However, I'm going to base that on their actions, and not on the word of a murderous thug who couldn't care less whether their American victims are Democrats, Republicans, Greens, Libertarians, or LaRouchists.

I'm hoping we can find common ground with them now that they have the responsibility to govern. If we can't, then let's criticize them for their actual failures, and not get so intent on grasping at any way to attack them that we start becoming repeater stations for the ravings of genocidal lunatics.

The idea that Al Qaeda and Iran were rooting for the Democrats to win in the midterm elections -- or that they want Jane Harman to be blocked from ascending to the Chair of the House Intelligence Committee because they prefer some more liberal Democratic Congressman -- isn't just malevolent. It's outright stupid and childish -- just as those endless claims as part of the 2004 election that Al Qaeda was rooting for John Kerry were. Digby explained exactly why that is so yesterday in the course of speculating as to why Rumsfeld was not fired before the election:

It is also probable that Bush, Cheney and Rove all believed that any sign they were listening to the opposition would be perceived as weakness by the terrorists which I think is one of their fundamental mistakes in running the war on terror. Like most immature bullies they attach much too much importance to silly schoolyard taunts . . . .

How much do you think Junior hates [hearing Al Qaeda taunts that he fired Rumsfeld and lost the election]? I would guess it bothers him quite a bit, judging from his rhetoric over the past five years.

I suspect they think the world sees things through the same schoolboy lens as they do and truly believed that if their voters saw al Qaeda dissing the Prez before the election they would recoil from their weakened leader in disgust.

Perhaps they are right. And I suspect they couldn't take the idea of Democrats gloating (we are pretty much the same as al Qaeda in their minds) either.

In many respects, we have had a foreign policy over the last five years based on the mentality of the most irrational, insecure 8-year-old playground bully -- hence, the obsession with Al Qaeda's chest-beating proclamations and the increasing identity between the Bush movement and Al Qaeda in terms of both rhetoric and thought process. But I think Morrissey's sober response to his comrades illustrates something important.

Even among those who have been supportive of this presidency, there are differences. I think the country now has a real opportunity to re-define what is acceptable political dialogue and to raise the standard -- even if only a little bit -- for what is deemed to be respectable mainstream views and what is deemed to be extremist, moronic bile.

This election constitutes a rather resounding rejection of the mindless militarism, hysterical fear-mongering, un-American embrace of lawlessness, and adolescent hate-mongering which have fueled the Bush movement. These tactics have been the bread and butter of people like Dick Cheney, Bill Kristol, Marty Peretz, John Hinderarker, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Reynolds, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter and the rest of those who have become intoxicated by neoconservative fantasies of Global, Endless, Glorious Epic War against an endless array of Enemies, real and imagined, foreign and domestic, out in the open and hiding under everyone's bed (or in the Democratic Party and at The New York Times).

There is a real opportunity to relegate that strain of Bush follower -- to quarantine them -- to the impotent fringes, where they belong. And ironically, they are seeking to isolate themselves, as they insist, with the belief-affirming self-delusion that has come to define everything they do, that the reason they lost the election is because they weren't extreme enough.

They believe Americans wanted them to be more militaristic and more ideologically pure. Let them do that. They will quickly become an even purer and more transparent version of what they have been -- the Party of James Dobson, Rush Limbaugh, Bill Kristol and Dick Cheney -- combining rabid, fantasy-based warmongering (both domestically and abroad) with religious and moralistic governmental control, all in one toxic, extremist mix.

It is both tempting and easy to mock all of these earnest appeals to "bipartisanship" that we're hearing. And coming from the likes of George Bush -- even a humbled and defeated George Bush -- such appeals understandably provoke great cynicism, even laughter. And they should. Certain individuals have demonstrated that they are irredeemable, and he is at the head of that line.

But it is also true that the country faces serious problems and to the extent that there are responsible, serious adults capable of working together despite political and ideological differences, all the better. That ought to be welcomed.

But that needs to be pursued in conjunction with consigning the most rabid and rotted elements of the Bush movement to the dustbin (and exposing what they have done is a necessary part of that). They will do most of the work themselves -- they already have, and the more they feel weak and rejected, the more rabid they will get. And they have stubborn allies, including in the national media which has long operated from the premise that they are to be taken seriously, although I think the odor of defeat will help to erode much of that perception.

What is worthwhile is to do everything possible to highlight the differences among them so that their isolation becomes more complete, more quickly. The strain of the Bush movement reflected in the above-excerpted comments has been posing as part of our political mainstream even though they are anything but that, and it's time that they return to the fringes where they belong.

Coming attractions

What was it that we were always told by Bush followers every time the Bush administration successfully dragged the country yet another step towards extremism and radical lawlessness? I believe the phrase was "elections have consequences." Indeed they do.

Eric Lichtblau has an article in this morning's New York Times as pleasing to the ear as any Mozart symphony:

The Bush administration escalated its defense of the National Security Agency’s domestic wiretapping program on Thursday, even as Democrats in Congress vowed to investigate the program aggressively once they assume power. . . .

But Democrats sounded impatient to begin getting more answers after what they characterized as 11 months of stonewalling by the administration since the program was publicly disclosed last December.

“This administration first hid its domestic spying program from Congress and Americans for years, and when it was discovered, has ducked and weaved on its legal justifications,” said Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, who is to become chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee when Democrats take control.

Republicans have held out hope of getting such legislation approved by the full Congress during the lame-duck session, and Mr. Bush pushed anew on that front Thursday, calling passage an “important priority in the war on terror" . . . .

Emboldened by their electoral victory, Democrats said they believed it would be all but impossible for the Republicans to pass wiretapping legislation before the current Congress adjourns, or to win approval of separate legislation immunizing telephone companies from liability over their cooperation in wiretapping operations.

“There’s no chance of that happening,” predicted a senior Democratic aide for the House Judiciary Committee, who spoke only on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the issue.

Indeed, rather than move to authorize the program, Democrats said they would push in January to investigate how the program had been run and would seek legislation to restrict or ban outright the use of wiretaps without warrants.

Let's just repeat that -- "rather than move to authorize the program, Democrats said they would push in January to investigate how the program had been run . . . . "

There are three joyous things to note about this long passage:

(1) the article quotes Arlen Specter's views of this whole matter, but I don't need to include them in the excerpt because soon-to-be-former-Chairman Specter is completely irrelevant;

(2) the article prominently includes -- as do I -- the views of soon-to-be-Chairman Pat Leahy, because his desires with regard to whether investigations will proceed are all that matter; and

(3) there is no need to desperately search around for one of the so-called "moderate GOP Senators" to provide some glimmer of always-illusory hope that they will perform a miracle and dissent from the Leader, because while they are welcomed in the work to restore our system of checks and balances, they are no longer needed (and, in any event, I have no doubt that many of them learned from this election -- as they watched one comrade after the next be removed from the Congress -- that voters want independence from the Leader).

Elections have consequences. With elegant understatement, the article also includes this:

“If Congress has some hearings and digs into this, we may know a lot more,” said Cindy Cohn, legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is suing AT&T.

Indeed, we might. Right now, we don't actually know anything about how the administration has used the secret, illegal eavesdropping powers it seized for itself, because the program has been kept secret from the Congress, because the GOP-controlled Intelligence Committee vowed to investigate and then decided not to, and because the administration has repeatedly breached its promises to disclose information about the program and Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts (another vulgar phrase never to be uttered again) allowed them to do so with impunity.

Presumably, there is some reason why the administration has been so eager to conceal all of this information about the NSA program and to block any investigation. Under our system of government, that's what Congress is for -- finding out. And it seems that Democrats understand that. From The LA Times:

"The American people sent a clear message that they do not want a rubber-stamp Congress that simply signs off the president's agenda," said Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), who is in line to become chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. "Instead, they have voted for a new direction for America and a real check and balance against government overreaching." . . .

Now that they have the power of the subpoena, Democrats expect to be able to get the administration's attention. A number of senior Democrats have complained that the administration has ignored their inquiries.

Apparently, Democrats are according yesterday's "demand" by the President that the Terrorist Surveillance Act be passed by the lame duck Congress all of the respect it merits. And it is truly a miraculous sight -- almost surreal -- to read that the Democrats are going to block the President from having his "national security" wishes granted and instead investigate what he has been doing.

It actually feels like we have more than one branch of government again. The days of listening to the President make demands and then reading all of the GOP Committee Chairmen say what a superb idea it was and stress how important it is to do everything the President wants as quickly as possible seem to have come to an end. Much vigilance is required with regard to the Democrats -- that should not be overlooked -- and the administration will undoubtedly resist in all sorts of ways, but this is a superb start to restoring the basic mechanics of our system of government.

Extremely odd behavior from the Washington Post re: the President's Rumsfeld lie

(updated below - Update II)

It is now conclusively clear that President Bush lied last week, several days before the election, when he vowed definitively to reporters that Donald Rumsfeld would remain as Defense Secretary for the next two years. At the time he made that statement, he was deep into the process of replacing Rumsfeld, if not already finished, and the President knew that the statement he made about Rumsfeld was false at the time he made it. That is the definition of "lying."

There can be no reasonable dispute about this, since the President at his Press Conference not only admitted lying when he told the reporters that Rumsfeld would stay, but he even went on to explain his reasons for lying ("the reason why is I didn't want to inject a major decision about this war in the final days of a campaign. And so the only way to answer that question and to get you on to another question was to give you that answer"). The decision was clearly a fait accompli before the election, as the President himself said: "win or lose, Bob Gates was going to become the nominee."

The President's admission of lying was so glaring that even Byron York immediately described it as such (as did other conservatives such as James Joyner). So what are the consequences, the implications, the fallout? So far, virtually nothing, and the behavior of The Washington Post shows why that is the case:

As I noted in the post I wrote two days ago about the President's Rumsfeld lie, The Washington Post article which reported on the Press Conference, written by Michael Fletcher and Peter Baker, detailed the Rumsfeld lie and even described what the President did with unusual candor, i.e., that the President "appeared to acknowledge having misled reporters." It's so unusual to see a major newspaper accurately report on the President's dishonesty that I noticed and praised the Post's candor ("It's encouraging (although it should be commonplace) that the Washington Post is calling this what it is"). At the time, as I quoted in my post, this is what the Post article reported about the President's Rumsfeld explanation:

At his news conference, Bush called the election results a "thumping" but vowed to maintain his policy of refusing to pull U.S. troops out of Iraq "before the job is done." Bush indicated that he had made the decision to replace Rumsfeld before the elections, but he said he had not held a "final conversation" with the defense chief or talked to Gates at the time he told reporters in response to a question last week that Rumsfeld would be staying on.

Asked about that comment, Bush said he made it because "I didn't want to inject a major decision about this war in the final days of a campaign," Bush said. He appeared to acknowledge having misled reporters, saying, "And so the only way to answer that question and to get you onto another question was to give you that answer."

He added later, "Win or lose, Bob Gates was going to become the nominee.

But at some point, the Post fundamentally changed this article (without leaving any indication that it did so). Now, in that same Post article, the passage I quoted about the President's having acknowledged that he "misled reporters" is gone entirely -- just disappeared, deleted with no trace -- and instead one finds only this:

He said that he had begun to contemplate Rumsfeld's exit before the election -- even while he was publicly vowing that he would keep the defense secretary through the end of his term and insisting that polls forecasting Republican defeat were wrong. "I thought we were going to do fine yesterday," Bush insisted. "Shows what I know." But "win or lose, Bob Gates was going to become the nominee."

At some point, the Post changed what was the accurate reporting -- that Bush expressly acknowledged that he "misled" reporters because he had "indicated that he had made the decision to replace Rumsfeld before the elections" -- by claiming in the new version that he merely "contemplated" Rumsfeld's exit before the election. Worse, the Post deleted entirely the accurate statement that the President "appeared to acknowledge having misled reporters." (If one does a search of the Post for the deleted paragraphs, the article will still come up in the Post's search engine, but the entire passage is nowhere to be found in the article).

Ironically, the explanation for why this happened may be found in today's Howard Kurtz column, the whole point of which is to explore the unbelievably stupid question of whether Bush's lie about Rumsfeld was "on par with [meaning: as bad as] President Bill Clinton's hair-splitting defense in the Monica S. Lewinsky investigation that 'it all depends on what the definition of is is'"? In other words, was Bush's pre-election "untruth" about management of the Iraq war as bad as Clinton's lie about sex with Monica? In the course of pondering that idiocy (even quoting "experts" comparing the two lies), Kurtz says this:

Did the president of the United States make a rare admission on national television that he had told an untruth?

Or had he merely engaged in a dodge of the sort that is common in politics?

Journalists by nature shy from pinning the "liar" label on any political leader, but President Bush's acknowledgments that he had not been forthcoming about his plans to dump Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld have kicked up a fuss at the White House and sparked a debate about the limits of presidential evasion.

As Kurtz's own column illustrates, journalists most certainly do not "shy away from pinning the 'liar' label on any political leader." All of the wise and brave pundits and other Beltway luminaries -- one after the next -- fell all over themselves calling Bill Clinton a "liar" continuously because he claimed not to have had sex with Monica Lewinksy. In that instance, they were more than happy to use the word "liar" as clearly and freely as can be imagined.

Journalists "shy away" from pinning the "liar label" not -- as Kurtz claims -- "on any political leader," but on the specific political leaders who currently occupy the White House. And for proof of that, Kurtz need look no further than his own newspaper, which appears to have engaged in some sort of Stalinist-like purging of history by zapping out of existence the Post's accurate detailing of the President's Press Conference admission of lying.

So the President got caught lying to the American people, several days before an election, about a matter of unquestionable importance -- namely, who will manage our war in Iraq and, more broadly, will the President change how the war is being managed? And not even the President claims there was some national security "justification" for lying. It was a pure political calculus: "I didn't want to inject a major decision about this war in the final days of a campaign."

(And incidentally, this is not the first time Bush lied this way; last May, he assured reporters that Treasury Secretary John Snow was not leaving and specifically stated that Snow "has not talked to me about resignation," even though Snow had already told the President he was leaving and the decision to replace Snow had already been made and finalized). All Howie Kurtz can do is wonder whether this was as "on par with" the Greatest Evil Ever -- Bill Clinton's lie about Monica Lewinsky.

Why did The Washington Post delete the passage in its own article detailing how the President misled reporters when he answered their questions about Rumsfeld? Presidents simply do not have the right to lie to Americans about important matters of public concern, particularly before a major election. If we don't embrace and enforce that standard, what standard exists? And if newspapers like the Post are too afraid to detail dishonest statements that come from our highest political officials -- to the point where they publish such revelations only to then surreptitiously delete them -- what possible purpose do journalists serve?

UPDATE: It seems that some people (including certain bloggers) are missing the point of this post completely. The crux of the post is not about Bush's lie regarding Rumsfeld, but instead, is about how The Washington Post reported this lie, and then un-reported it. Some of the confusion may be my fault (although the post title, by itself, seems to make that sufficiently clear), but this comment from sysprog is highly clarifying and, in its own right, worth reading.

UPDATE II: Even Newt Gingrich recognizes that the President essentially acknowledged at his Press Conference that he lied about Rumsfeld, and Gingrich objects:

"We need candor, we need directness," said Gingrich, a potential 2008 presidential candidate."We need to understand the threats we faced with are so frightening and so real, the danger that we'll lose two to three American cities so great, that we cannot play games with each other, cannot manipulate each other, we have to have an open and honest dialogue, and I found yesterday's staments at the press conference frankly very disturbing."

He condemned Bush's admission that in making last week's statement about Rumsfeld, he had known he was being misleading.

"It's inappropriate to cleverly come out the day after an election to do something we were told before the election would not be done," Gingrich said. "I think the timing was exactly backwards and I hope the President will rethink how he engages the American people and how he communicates with candor."

Gingrich has all kinds of politically self-interested motives for trying to distance himself this way from this increasingly and unprecedentedly despised President, but he is right about what the President did. If Byron York, James Joyner and Newt Gingrich can all recognize and say that the President admitted to lying at his Press Conference, why did The Washington Post delete that passage and deprive its readers of that knowledge?

Intellectual Dishonesty Personified: Charles Krauthammer

Charles Krauthammer, November 9, 2004, on Bush's 2004 victory:

Later than most two-term presidents, George Bush got his mandate. . . . This election was a referendum on Bush's handling of his first, accidental mandate. The endorsement was resounding. . . .

Second, there was the popular vote. Bush supporters should not gloat too much about the popular vote, given the fact that they lost it last time. Nonetheless, if you have already won the electoral vote, it is OK to talk about the popular vote as a kind of adjunct legitimizer. And a 3 1/2 million vote margin is a serious majority.

The results of the 2006 election:

Candidates planning to caucus with the Democrats took 24 of the 33 Senate seats at stake this year, winning seven million more votes than Republicans. In House races, Democrats received about 53 percent of the two-party vote, giving them a margin more than twice as large as the 2.5-percentage-point lead that Mr. Bush claimed as a “mandate” two years ago — and the margin would have been even bigger if many Democrats hadn’t been running unopposed.

Charles Krauthammer today, on the 2006 victory by Democrats:

On Tuesday Democrats took control of the House and the Senate. As of this writing, they won 29 House seats (with a handful still in the balance), slightly below the post 1930 average for the six-year itch in a two-term presidency. They took the Senate by the thinnest of margins -- a one-vote majority, delivered to them by a margin of 8,942 votes in Virginia and 2,847 in Montana. . . .

Nonetheless, the difference between taking one house vs. both -- and thus between normal six-year incumbent-party losses and a major earthquake that shakes the presidency -- was razor-thin in this election. A switch of just 1,424 votes in Montana would have kept the Senate Republican. . . .

But the great Democratic wave of 2006 is nothing remotely like the great structural change some are trumpeting. It was an event-driven election that produced the shift of power one would expect when a finely balanced electorate swings mildly one way or the other.

To recap:

The 2004 victory by President George W. Bush with a margin of 3.5 million votes (and by one closely decided state) was a "resounding endorsement" and a glorious triumph that vests the President with a powerful and clear "mandate." That was a "serious majority."

The 2006 victory by Democrats with a margin of 7 million votes was a victory by the "thinnest of margins" and was "razor-thin." It was a banal and weak outcome that was even "slightly below the post 1930 average for the six-year itch in a two-term presidency," and it was nothing more notable or meaningful than "an event-driven election that produced the shift of power one would expect when a finely balanced electorate swings mildly one way or the other."

The President's designs on the lame duck Congressional session

(updated below)

When we last left the Republican Senate, in the week before they adjourned, they were so busy legalizing torture and indefinite detentions that they ran out of time to also give the President the power to eavesdrop on Americans in secret. The House had hastily passed Heather Wilson's version of the "Terrorist Surveillance Act," but the Senate had no time to vote on it prior to adjournment. As a result, warrantless eavesdropping continues to be criminal in this country (even though the President continues to engage in it).

For that reason, enactment of a warrantless eavesdropping bill remains a top priority for the President -- probably even more important to him now than even before the election -- because such a bill would not only gives him legal authority to eavesdrop with no judicial oversight, but it also would help protect himself against the legal consequences of having repeatedly broken the law. It is worth remembering that a federal court has already ruled his eavesdropping program to be both unconstitutional and in violation of the criminal law, and another judge, the highly respected District Court Judge Gerard Lynch of the Southern District of New York, is likely to issue a ruling soon on the same issues in the absence of Congressional legislation legalizing the program.

It seems highly unlikely that Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi will have as one of their priorities the enactment of a bill to legalize Bush's eavesdropping program. For the new 110th Congress, a long-overdue investigation of warrantless eavesdropping seems far more likely than legalization of it, to put it mildly. For that reason, the President made clear in a Rose Garden speech today that he wants Congressional action taken on that bill during the lame duck session, to convene before Democrats take over in January:

We'll discuss the way forward for our country, and I'm going to tell them what I just told our Cabinet. It is our responsibility to put the elections behind us and work together on the great issues facing America.

Some of these issues need to be addressed before the current Congress finishes its legislative session, and that means the next few weeks are going to be busy ones.

The first order of business is for Congress to complete the work on the federal spending bills for this year with strong fiscal discipline and without diminishing our capacity to fight the war on terror.

The other important priority in the war on terror is for the Congress to pass the Terrorist Surveillance Act.

Until January, the Senate majority will still be filled with the likes of Conrad Burns, Rick Santorum, George Allen and Michael DeWine, and Republicans would almost certainly be able to scrounge up the 50 votes needed to pass the Heather Wilson "Terrorist Surveillance Act" bill. That bill was never exactly what the White House wanted, but it would certainly be better than nothing at this point.

In the lame duck session, if Republicans are really so audacious as to try to pass that bill, Democrats could stop enactment of the Wilson bill by filibuster. In its report on the President's Rose Garden speech, CNN discussed the various bills the President wants passed in the lame duck session and said:

The Terrorist Surveillance Act is likely to face the stiffest opposition, as both parties have criticized the measure that would authorize the administration's surveillance program, which allows wiretapping on phone calls between people in the United States and suspected terrorists overseas.

I don't know of any Senate Republicans who have ever criticized "The Terrorist Surveillance Act," so I am unclear what the basis is for this claim [and just, by the way, is it really too much to ask CNN not to describe the new bill as one that "allows wiretapping on phone calls between people in the United States and suspected terrorists overseas" -- can someone, somewhere, please explain to CNN that we already have a law (called FISA) that allows exactly that. Is it really any wonder that many Americans have never properly understood what is at stake with the NSA scandal in light of the highly impaired individuals who are responsible for informing them about these matters?).

It needs to be borne in mind at all times just how bowed and weakened the Republicans are. Their bellicose threats are empty and their demonizing rhetoric is impotent, and the Democrats have nothing to fear -- least of all from them. This photograph from today speaks volumes:

The Bush movement spent the last five years completely ignoring Democrats like Nancy Pelosi, except when it came time to mock them as Osama bin Defeatocrats. Now the President has to have a personal sit-down with her at the White House and treat her with the greatest respect.

How do you think Tom DeLay, Dick Cheney and Karl Rove feel inside as they watch Nancy Pelosi and Charlie Rangel and Barney Frank and John Conyers take over their Congress? This is a humbling and crushing blow to them -- only a fraction of what they deserve and what the country needs, but substantial nonetheless (just as an aside, for a politician widely viewed as weak, Nancy Pelosi has done everything right politically, and really nothing wrong, both before the election and since).

By stonewalling and concealing all relevant information from Congress, the White House has ensured that the very Senators and Representatives whom they want to amend FISA and legalize the NSA program know nothing about that program. Even several GOP Senators made clear that it is impossible to amend FISA in any meaningful way without first holding hearings to find out what the administration has been doing with its secret eavesdropping powers (those same GOP Senators, needless to say, shortly thereafter announced that they would support legalizing the program even without the information they said was "necessary" to make a meaningful choice).

The administration has not only kept Congress completely in the dark about how it has been eavesdropping, but they also have repeatedly violated their promises to disclose information about those activities. Their behavior was so severe that it prompted even the meek and exceedingly cooperative Jay Rockefeller to complain vociferously (for him). At the very least, Democrats cannot be pressured into hastily enacting any eavesdropping bill while they still are in the dark, and I don't expect that they will (though how the Democrats will really behave is still a big unknown).

Already the pious and wise Beltway pundits are speaking in scripted unison about how Democrats better realize that they need to be conciliatory and moderate and well-behaved. That's all well and good, but Democrats also need to realize that they have resoundingly triumphed and the Bush movement is staggering around in a weakened and humiliated state. They need to ensure that the "lame duck" sesssion of Congress lives up to its name in every respect.

UPDATE: It doesn't look like there there is excessive meekness or conciliation coming from the soon-to-be Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Rep. Charlie Rangel, who "revealed yesterday that he's got his eye on Capitol Hill office space now held by . . . Vice President Dick Cheney":

"Mr. Cheney enjoys an office on the second floor of the House of Representatives that historically has been designated for the Ways and Means Committee chairman," explained Rangel . . . "I talked to [future House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi about it this morning," a giddy Rangel crowed during a news conference at his Harlem office. "I'm trying to find some way to be gentle as I restore the dignity of that office," chuckled Rangel. "You gotta go, you gotta go."

Many of the tactics Republicans used over the last five years to strip the Democrats of all power and participation in our government were psychological -- drastically reducing their staffs, shoving them into dingy and tiny basement offices. One doesn't want to replicate the worst Republican offenses, but it is necessary that they taste some of their own medicine -- for practical reasons as well as for fairness and justice.

Soon-to-be-Chairman Rangel seems eager to get a start on all of that. I wonder if Fred Hiatt and David Broder approve of his plan.

UPDATE II: According to Kos, Heather Wilson's race is not yet decided and she still may lose. Having the "TSA" House sponsor lose would be sweet justice. The same is true for Jean Schmidt, though both she and Wilson have very small leads with provisional and other ballots left to be counted.

Hugh Hewitt shows how Bush followers literally deny reality

(updated below)

In the three weeks prior to the election, Hugh Hewitt was repeatedly insisting that Republican candidates were tied or ahead even when the consensus of polls showed those candidates were actually behind, sometimes by substantial margins. He wasn't just predicting that the GOP candidate behind in the polls would win (there's nothing wrong with being hopeful). He was doing something completely different -- he was insisting that the GOP candidates who were behind in the polls were, in fact, ahead in the polls.

In response to e-mails he received, he condescendingly explained his "thinking" behind this outright distortion of reality:

I get a lot of e-mail asking me why I point to polls like the one favoring Steele when I discount some polls favoring some Democrats.

Because this question comes mostly from lefties, I will pause to explain in as uncomplicated a fashion as possible.

Polling methodology and models favors Democrats.

So polls that show Republicans tied or ahead I see as indicating a race in which the Republican is in the lead.

Polls that show a Republican within striking distance I see as a poll indicating a dead heat.

It shouldn't be that hard to grasp, even for a lefty.

So, like everything else in the world -- from war zone reports to intelligence assessments and everything in between -- polling data can be ignored and disregarded at will (when it's unpleasant) because it is oh-so-unfairly biased against the Republicans. Hewitt took the data that he didn't like, literally changed it in his own mind to make it more pleasant, and then embraced the fictitious data as his reality. And he expressly acknowledged doing so by insisting that data is biased.

In fact, polling data for this election was remarkably accurate. It predicted the vast majority of races almost completely accurately. In the instances where there was a discrepancy, the discrepancy was almost in every case favorable to the Republicans -- meaning the poll showed Democrats with a smaller lead than they ended up with (or behind by more than they actually lost by).

Following is a chart comparing the final polls of Rasmussen Reports for the 11 Senate races it (and the rest of the country) identified as the "Nation's Closest Senate Races" (Connecticut is the only race excluded here due to its confused party breakdown). The table shows the final RR poll for each race, the actual election results, the differential between the two, and indicates whether the differential favored the Republican or the Democratic candidate:

STATE	RR Final Poll	Actual Result	Differential
MD	50-45 Cardin	54-44 Cardin	5% (against Dem.)
MI	56-40 Stabenow	57-41 Stabenow	0%
MO	49-48 McCaskill	49-47 McCaskill	1% (against Dem.)
MT	50-48 Tester	49-48 Tester	1% (for Dem.)
NJ	48-43 Menendez	53-45 Menendez	3% (against Dem.)
OH	54-43 Brown	56-44Brown	1% (against Dem.)
PA	55-42 Casey	59-41 Casey	5% (against Dem.)
RI	52-44 Whitehouse	53-47 Whitehouse	2% (for Dem.)
TN	51-47 Corker	51-48 Corker	1% (against Dem.)
VA	49-49 Tie	49-49 Webb	0%
WA	54-42 Cantwell	58-39 Cantwell	7% (against Dem.)

In the 11 Senate races identified by Rasmussen as "the closest Senate races" (excluding CT), Rasmussen's polls predicted the exact outcome in 2 of them. For the 9 races where there was a disparity, 7 of the 9 disparities were in favor of the Republicans. Only 2 of the 11 races showed a gap in favor of Democrats, and in those two races (RI and MT), the difference was miniscule -- 1% and 2%.

It wasn't just Rasmussen. Polls in general were either remarkably accurate or, to the extent they were wrong, were largely skewed in favor of Republicans (at least in terms of what they predicted versus the actual result). The Real Clear Politics average final polls (which averages the outcomes of multiple polls from around the country) show that for the same 11 Senate races, the polling disparities favored Republicans in 8 0f the 11 races, often by considerable margins. In the 3 races where the disparities favored Democrats, it was by very small margins of 1-3 points.

The point here is not to mock Hewitt for being wrong in virtually every prediction he made. It's natural for most people to have their partisan desires influence their predictions, and predicting races even within the science of polling, let alone without it, is extremely difficult. I wouldn't hold it against anyone to have predicted wrong.

But mere inaccurate predictions isn't what Hewitt is guilty of. It's the willingness -- so common among Bush followers -- not only to ignore, but also consciously to deny and reject, information that undercuts their desired beliefs, and to insist that even the most objective facts are "biased." As Stephen Colbert (who has the hardest job in the world -- satirizing people who are beyond satire) put it at the White House Correspondents Dinner:

Now, I know there are some polls out there saying this man [the Preident] has a 32% approval rating. But guys like us, we don't pay attention to the polls. We know that polls are just a collection of statistics that reflect what people are thinking in "reality." And reality has a well-known liberal bias.

Isn't that exactly what Hugh Hewitt argued? And Hewitt isn't unique in this regard at all. The President himself said yesterday that he really believed Republicans would win the election despite all of the data to the contrary -- and his rattled, disoriented, almost pity-inducing performance strongly suggested that he was telling the truth about that. He wasn't just being optimistic. He saw the polling data but, like Hewitt, decided that it wasn't real, because it was unpleasant, because it conflicted with his perceptions, and because he did not want it to be real.

Nor is this reality-denial syndrome confined to polling data. It is visible in virtually every realm, most glaringly in Iraq. Dismissing unpleasant polling data and insisting that you're winning is exactly the same dynamic as dismissing reports about a civil war in Iraq and insisting that things are going well, or dismissing reports about the inability of inspectors to find WMDs and insisting that they are really there, hidden somewhere. It's one thing to assess reality and draw the wrong conclusions from it or exercise wrong judgment about it. Everyone does that.

But the President and his followers don't just do that. Like children -- or, more accurately, like those who are driven by an unshakable, faith-driven belief that they are Right -- they just ignore reality when it isn't what they want it to be or think it should be, and they just magically invent a different reality that they like better, and then stay there. Hewitt expressly described how he does that, and he is about as pure an expression of the Bush movement as it gets. The President and his followers simply don't accept or live in reality and literally don't believe in facts.

UPDATE: A closely related reality-denying syndrome is the way in which Bush followers are interpreting the resounding rejection by Americans of their Leader and their political movement as some sort of endorsement of all of the particular views of Bush followers - as in: "hey, Republicans were crushed because they weren't extreme enough and didn't pursue my fanatical views enough on Issue X, Y and Z."

With this twisted reasoning in place, the most virulent supporters of the Iraq War are actually claiming that the election affirms that most Americans agree with them. Just ponder that for a minute. Unsurprisingly, Glenn Reynolds is one of the most vivid illustrations of that reality-detached though process, as Blue Texan -- the world's foremost scientific expert in Instapundit deceitfulness -- amply, and amusingly, documents here.

UPDATE II: This post was actually the one to which I meant to link. Although it debunks the election claims made by Reynolds specifically, it is a fairly thorough compilation of the standard (and false) conventional wisdom assertions that always circulate through right-wing punditry and the national media as to why Democrats are so hated by voters.

The Bush meaning of "bipartisanship"

(updated below)

The President is going to include all sorts of flowery odes to the beauty of bipartisanship in his upcoming speech this afternoon -- much to the inevitable delight of the wise Washington pundit class, which will excitedly take him at his word and demand that Democrats "work with" the President rather than oppose and investigate him.

But what the Bush administration really means by "bipartisanship" -- as they are already making quite clear -- is that the Democrats in Congress do nothing to stand in their way and, most especially, that Democrats recognize that there will be no looking into what the Leader has done or subjecting his Decisions to any scrutiny. From Time's Mike Allen, today:

Advisers expect a battle royale over the balance of powers if Democrats use their new subpoena power to try to conduct what the White House is already calling "witch hunts." Bush and Vice President Cheney have made the expansion of executive power one of their hallmarks, and advisers say they do not plan to give up any of the ground they have won without a fight all the way to the Supreme Court. "We're going to have a fierce constitutional showdown over the boundaries of power between the executive and legislative branches," one adviser said. "The executive usually wins those battles, so we think we'll consolidate our gains."

To this administration, "witch hunts" means: refusing to allow them to rule in total secrecy and, instead, trying to find out what has really been going on in our Government.

This is a confrontation which the country desperately needs. The anonymous boasting to Time that "the executive usually wins those battles" and that they "think [they'll] consolidate [their] gains" is pure bravado that they don't believe. They just lost exactly that type of battle when the Supreme Court in Hamdan all but ruled that they were war criminals who had no right to act -- even with regard to how they detain and interrogate suspected terrorists -- in contravention of the Congress.

It is vital to remember that we already have a constitutional crisis in our government. The choice is not whether to create one (since it already exists), but whether to confront and battle it, or acquiesce to it (as the Republican Congress has done). While it is nice that Democrats have taken over the Congress, it is vital to remember that we have a President who has repeatedly made clear that Congress is irrelevant in our system of government and cannot limit the President in any way. Re-establishing the rule of law -- and the principle that the President is not above it -- is still the most compelling priority for our country.

These anonymous shots across the bow are about trying to intimidate Congressional Democrats away from real oversight and trying to bully them away from investigating-- by boasting how the White House will inevitably win such fights, both legally and politically. And the White House no doubt expects to recruit the David Broders and Fred Hiatts of the world to sternly lecture the Democrats about their obligations to be cooperative and about how it is so mean and "divisive" to investigate the Leader. Instead, Democrats will be told that they should "work with President Bush" instead (meaning: ignore their base that elected them and just, all Arlen-Specter-like, politely request permission to modify a few things here and there on the President's wish list in order to cast the appearance of compromise).

If there is anything that should be viewed as impotent at this point, it is Republican threats, accompanied by their boasting of inevitable victory. One of the most important things our country needs is a bright light to be shined on what this Government has done, and if the Bush administration really wants to resist those inquiries and claim the right not just to be above the law, but also immune from scrutiny, all the better.

As effectively as anything, that resistance will highlight exactly what they are. And the ensuing fight -- framed as the President's claimed entitlement to continue to operate in complete secrecy, with no limits or checks, just as he did for five years with a rubber-stamping Republican Congress -- is exactly the one that Democrats should aggressively seek out and engage.

* * * * * *

The President at his Press Conference was just asked why it was that he definitively told reporters only a week ago that Rumsfeld would stay for the next two years, only to now have him resign, and his answer was really remarkable. He all but said that he lied when he said Rumsfeld would stay because he did not want to "inject" such a critical question about the war into the election with just a few days to go. As a result, he said, he told them that Rumsfeld would stay to get them to ask other questions.

* * * * *

I'm wondering if there is a greater irony, ever, than the President lecturing the media about how the election was so close, and as a result, the American people expect them to work together "to get stuff done."

* * * * *

That was a rather bizarre press conference. The President seemed very rattled, confused, even disoriented. I believe him when he said that he expected -- even in the face of all the evidence to the contrary -- that they would win the election, because they are simply Right about things. He believes that his being Right and Good means he will win, no matter how contrary the evidence is. That is exactly what has happened with Iraq, too - and it is why we are not leaving, no matter how many new Defense Secretaries and Baker Commissions are brought in to say that things aren't going well. The parallel is exact.

* * * * *

The dishonesty in Bush's answer about why he said last week that Rumsfeld would be staying is too glaring even for Byron York to overlook it. York explains Bush's inconsistent answers to his comardes at the Corner here and here.

UPDATE: It's encouraging (although it should be commonplace) that the Washington Post is calling this what it is, but the phrase "misled reporters" in this passage should have been replaced with "misled the nation":

At his news conference, Bush called the election results a "thumping" but vowed to maintain his policy of refusing to pull U.S. troops out of Iraq "before the job is done." Bush indicated that he had made the decision to replace Rumsfeld before the elections, but he said he had not held a "final conversation" with the defense chief or talked to Gates at the time he told reporters in response to a question last week that Rumsfeld would be staying on.

Asked about that comment, Bush said he made it because "I didn't want to inject a major decision about this war in the final days of a campaign," Bush said. He appeared to acknowledge having misled reporters, saying, "And so the only way to answer that question and to get you onto another question was to give you that answer."

He added later, "Win or lose, Bob Gates was going to become the nominee."

We've become so accustomed to being lied to in this manner by our political leaders that the President can just casually admit to it (just like he can casually admit to breaking the law), and it causes only the most minor of controversies, if that.

The Great Victory - crushing the developing myths

(updated below)

The outcome of this election -- even with the not-yet-fully-finalized Senate victories in Virginia and Montana -- is as resounding and clear as it gets. For exactly that reason, all sorts of devastated Bush followers and confused and desperate media mavens are busy spawning myths about what happened -- often, in the case of the mindless pundits, unwittingly, even unconsciously. Most Americans know exactly what happened here, but it is nonetheless vital that these myths be smashed from the start and the clear lessons of this election be safeguarded:

(1) This is a shattering and humiliating defeat for the Republican Party. The excuse that it is just run-of-the-mill, standard sixth-presidential-year impatience is pure nonsense. In the sixth year of President Clinton's presidency, Democrats in the midterm elections gained seats in the House and there was no change in the Senate.

When a President and his political party are liked and their positions are in line with what Americans want, they win, even in the allegedly cursed "sixth presidential year." By contrast, when a President is deeply unpopular and his party perceived to be rife with radicalism and corruption, they lose. And when that perception is particularly strong and widespread, they lose badly. That is what happened here, and there is nothing mundane about. These results are extraordinary, and every Bush follower knows it.

(2) This was a resounding and emphatic rejection of the core, defining premises of the so-called "conservative" movement and what has morphed into the grotesque Republican Party. Nobody doubts that Americans vigorously rejected George Bush and his signature policy -- the invasion of Iraq. But it wasn't only Bush and Iraq.

Democratic candidates won -- in every part of the country and regardless of their ideology -- by committing themselves to one basic platform. They vigorously opposed what have become the defining attributes of the Republican Party and they pledged to put a stop to them: unchecked Presidential power, mindless warmongering, a refusal to accept or acknowledge realities (both in Iraq and generally), and the deep-seated, fundamental corruption fueling the Bush movement and sustaining their power.

Virtually every Democratic winner, from the most conservative to the most liberal, in the reddest and bluest states, have that in common. They all ran on a platform of putting a stop to the radicalism, deceit and corruption that drives the so-called "conservative" political movement.

Yes, it is true that some of the Democratic winning candidates are pro-life and/or opposed to gay marriage. None of that is new (Democrats are led in the Senate by a pro-life politician and most of them are on record opposing gay marriage). Their doing so prevented the Rovian Republicans from creating sideshows designed to obscure and distract from the vast damage which these Republicans have done to the country. But abortion and gay marriage aren't the issues that determined, or even meaningfully influenced, the outcome of this election, and everyone knows that.

Democrats didn't win by pretending to be anything. Democrats won because they emphatically and unapologetically vowed to oppose what the Republican Party has become and to put an end to its deeply corrupt and destructive one-party rule -- and that is what Americans, more than anything else, wanted.

(3) Republicans lost in every region and were defeated in critical races even in the reddest of states, such as Kansas, Indiana and Arkansas. The Republicans are rapidly collapsing into a regional party -- the Party of the South -- and even there, they lost incumbents and vast amounts of their support. They have pandered to such a small and deranged band of extremists for so long, and they are now finally paying the price in the form of a disintegrating movement and continuously shrinking band of followers.

(4) The notion that this is a victory for some sort of mealy-mouthed, Bush-lite, glorified centrism is absurd on its face. Democrats won by aggressively attacking the Bush movement, not by trying to be a slightly modified and duller version of it. The accommodationist tack is what they attempted in 2002 and 2004 when they were crushed. They won in this election by making their opposition clear and assertive.

Many of the Democrats who won were exactly those candidates who were supported most enthusiastically by the most liberal blogs. Atrios, for instance, raised money for only a handful of challengers and many of them won -- against Republican incumbents in previously red districts: Jon Tester, Patrick Murphy, Joe Sestak, Nick Lampson, Chris Carney. The same is true for the FDL/C&L list of candidates (Amy Klobuchar, Ben Cardin, Sherood Brown, Kirsten Gillibrand) and the Daily Kos/MyDD list (Jim Webb, Tim Walz).

Liberal blogs tend to support underdog Democratic candidates who are challenging Republican incumbents or open seats, i.e., the races that are most difficult to win. And yet a huge bulk of the winning Democratic candidates who won in those races were the ones supported by liberal blogs. And many blog-favored Democrats who lost were ones running in very red districts against GOP incumbents -- such as Angie Paccione (against the heinous Marilyn Musgrave) and Victoria Wulslin (against the equally horrible Jean Schmidt) -- and they came very close to winning.

Given those facts, the idea that this was some great repudiation of the blog-wing of the Democratic Party or that it was an endorsement of Broder-like, plodding centrism is purely wishful thinking on the part of those who wish it were so. The Democrats who won have one thing in common -- aggressive and unapologetic opposition to what the Republicans have become.

(5) The basic mechanics of American democracy, imperfect and defective though they may be, still function. Chronic defeatists and conspiracy theorists -- well-intentioned though they may be -- need to re-evaluate their defeatism and conspiracy theories in light of this rather compelling evidence which undermines them (a refusal to re-evaluate one's beliefs in light of conflicting evidence is a defining attribute of the Bush movement that shouldn't be replicated).

Karl Rove isn't all-powerful; today, he is a rejected loser. Republicans don't possess the power to dictate the outcome of elections with secret Diebold software. They can't magically produce Osama bin Laden the day before the election. They don't have the power to snap their fingers and hypnotize zombified Americans by exploiting a New Jersey court ruling on civil unions, or a John Kerry comment, or moronic buzzphrases and slogans designed to hide the truth (Americans heard all about how Democrats would bring their "San Francisco values" and their love of The Terrorists to Washington, and that moved nobody).

All of the hurdles and problems that are unquestionably present and serious -- a dysfunctional and corrupt national media, apathy on the part of Americans, the potent use of propaganda by the Bush administration, voter suppression tactics, gerrymandering and fundraising games -- can all be overcome. They just were.

Bush opponents haven't been losing because the deck is hopelessly stacked against them. They were losing because they hadn't figured out a way to convey to their fellow citizens just how radical and dangerous this political movement has become. Now they did, and as a result, Americans see this movement for what it is and have begun the process of smashing it.

(6) This is only one small step towards the restoration of our country and its defining values, not a magic bullet. There is much work to be done, accountability to be imposed, facts to be uncovered, radicalism to be reversed, damage to be undone, and the rule of law to be re-established. And none of that will be easy.

Even Democratic control of both the House and Senate is no guarantee that the abuses will end. Quite the contrary. It is worth recalling that the central premise of this President is the Irrelevance of Congress and of everything else other than his will and his power. Takeover of the houses of Congress and the end of one-party rule is but one weapon to be used in the ongoing fight. It is not the end of the fight. Far, far from it.

But if nothing else, yesterday's results should galvanize everyone who recognizes the danger this country has been placed in by the radical, hate-mongering, deeply corrupt authoritarians who have been controlling (and destroying) it. That movement has been severely wounded, but not yet killed.

UPDATE: I have posts up at C&L here and here. The latter post, which is basically a summary of point (5) above, has generated substantial controversy and anger in the comment section, which was not unexpected. But it is a point that I think really needs to be emphasized, particularly while the emotions from last night are still vibrant.

Tradesport predictions and other election matters

(Updated below - Update II - Update III (Fox exit polls - very good) - Update IV - Update V - constant updates now)

Since the first election results won't be available until 6:00 pm EST (the full polling closing times are here), and exit polls are being tightly controlled, the next best thing to satisfy the craving for an election fix is Tradesports, a very active and (seemingly) informed market for political junkies to trade in predictive shares for each individual Congressional race and overall control of Congress. In the same way The New York Stock Exchange functions, the trading transactions at various prices between willing buyer and seller produce (at least in theory) an accurate probability for the outcome of each race.

Below are the percentages assigned for each listed outcome. The Democrats need a net gain of six seats to gain control of the Senate, and if this trading market is right, they would pick up exactly six seats (the Democratic "turn" seats are bolded below). On the race-by-race list, the market is betting that no Democratic incumbent loses (none is even close to endangered):

Senate seats to watch

Arizona - turning Democratic - 7.9%
Connecticut - remaining Democratic (Lamont) - 4.0%
Connecticut - remaining "Democratic" (Lieberman)- 94.7%
Maryland - remaining Democratic - 65.3%
Michigan - remaining Democratic - 94.9%
Minnesota - remaining Democratic - 92.9%
Missouri - turning Democratic - 60.0%
Montana - turning Democratic - 69.0%
New Jersey - remaining Democratic - 94.2%
Ohio - turning Democratic - 96.2%
Pennsylvania - turning Democratic - 94.2%
Rhode Island - turning Democratic - 68.0%
Tennessee - turning Democratic - 22.0%
Virginia - turning Democratic - 66.0%
Washington - remaining Democratic - 92.2%

Conventional wisdom (and polling data) suggests that the most difficult (necessary) races for the Democrats to win will be Virginia and Missouri (Rhode Island is close behind), and the Tradesports market is consistent with that view. The most vulnerable Democratic seat according to Tradesports (and recent polls) is Maryland.

Despite the fact that Democrats are favored on the Tradesports individual race-by-race list to win the 6 needed Senate seats, Tradesports currently lists overall Republican retention of the Senate as 69.5% likely (this discrepancy is likely explained by the fact that because Democrats must win all six of the seats they have a real chance to win and cannot lose any that they are favored to keep, they have no margin for error).

By contrast, the Tradesports market is virtually certain that Democrats will take control of the House. It lists the chances of Republican retention of House control at 16.5% (consistently, the chances that Democrats will win the needed 15 or more seats is 84%; that they will win more than 24 seats is at 50%).

Many of these races, particularly the close ones, fluctuate, sometimes wildly, even by hour. I will add updates if they are warranted, and will also add updates here of any relevant or potentially relevant election information brought to my attention.

UPDATE: As a reminder, I am posting at C&L today as well, and have posts here, here and here.

UPDATE II: Say what you will about Rich Lowry (as I often do), but he has excellent inside Republican sources (which use NR as one of their propaganda venues), and his reporting of the conversations he has with them is generally quite reliable (which is why I cite them as much as I do).

Lowry has some pessimistic posts up at the Corner right now (pessimistic, that is, for those like Lowry who are rooting for Republicans). He says that GOP insiders consider 8 House seats almost certainly gone, 8 more that will likely be lost (barring some very unforeseen changes), and 20 more that are "true toss-ups." If that is even remotely accurate, the Democrats will pick up the 15 seats they need easily, and then it will be a matter of how much that can be padded.

In an earlier post, Lowry said that the vile Jean Schmidt is in danger of losing. He also says, in a separate post, that the DSCC is optimistic about Virginia and "cautiously optimistic" about Missouri (the two key Senate races, along with Maryland). He adds that they are "jubilant" about Pennsylvania (the ejection of Rick Santorum from elected politics really is a richly deserved event, though nowhere near sufficient for today)

Finally, there is this guide from GOP pollster Frank Luntz identifying the significance of the early races in the states where the polls close first -- first Kentucky and Indiana at 6:00 p.m. EST, followed by a whole host of other states at 7:00 p.m. Eve Fairbanks at The Plank has a similar analysis.

With all of this -- meaning anything other than actual results -- take it purely for entertainment and with a huge grain of salt, no matter how authoritative it may sound. Anything that is not an actual result should be deemed totally unreliable (as 2004 taught), and I'm posting it solely to help take the edge off the cravings and fixes that I know are intense.

UPDATE III: Fox News just released some of its exit polling data, which were uniformly positive for Democrats (remember, of course, how unreliable exit polls were in 2004).

Voters said they disapproved of Bush's job performance by a 41-58 margin (and Chris Wallace noted that for the 1994 GOP sweep, Clinton's approval rating was higher than that -- 44).

Voters (42%) said the most important issue was "scandals" -- and those who said that, unsurprisingly, voted for Democrats 61-36%.

The second most important issue (33%) was Iraq -- and those who said that, unsurprisingly, voted for Democrats 61-36%.

When asked whether their votes were decided by national or local issues -- many believe that they key for a huge Democratic win is to have a nationalized election -- voters said they decided based on national issues by a 62-33% margin.

Almost 20% of voters were identified as "late deciders" -- those who made up their mind in the last week. Of those, 57% said they voted Democratic and 39% said they voted Republican. So much for the epic late Republican swing.

Finally, Fox said it conducted its own telephone polls in 11 key Senate states, and that 6 Democratic challengers in those states are "running strong," while 3 Republicans look like they will hold on. They were cryptic about it because they don't want to identify any specific state until the polls close, but that is clearly good news for Democrats as well.

UPDATE IV: ThinkProgress has obtained CNN's state-by-state early exit polling data. It is obviously extremely encouraging, but proceed with extreme caution. This was exactly the sort of data that caused Bob Shrum to call John Kerry "Mr. President" at around 4:00 p.m. in November, 2004.

UPDATE V: Kate O'Beirne is very unhappy based on what her sources are telling her (and these hard-core, old hand Bush followers who have been around DC forever, like her, have decent to excellent sources):

POST-MORTEM, PRE-MORTEM [Kate O'Beirne]

A survey of 1200 likely voters taken in 12 swing districts this past Sunday and Monday might explain why Republicans might have a long night ahead of them. The veteran GOP pollster says he has "never seen anything like it." Asked who is more likely to cut taxes for the middle class - 42 percent said Democrats, 29 picked Republicans. Who is more likely to reduce the deficit? 47 - Democrats, 22 - Repubicans. And, who is more likely to control spending? Democrats - 38, Republicans - 21. In the past, even if Repubicans didn't win some race or another, they were more trusted on taxes and spending issues.

Thus far, the Fox "All-Star" Panel is like a morgue. Brit Hume and Fred Barnes seem on the verge of tears and Bill Kristol feels his Iran War slipping away. They have their exit polling data and are being very clear that it's extremely pro-Democratic. Again, though, exit polling can be wildly off (though exit pollsters claim to have fixed the problems that plagued them in 2004).

Very up-to-date results for every Congressional race will be posted here throughout the night.

Finally, Markos says this:

And on a non-House note -- don't look at the exit polls. DON'T. They don't mean squat. We'll be getting real results in a few hours. I'm not blogging them because, quite frankly, I don't believe them.

He's absolutely right. I will blog it when I get it, because I think it should be up to you, not me, to decide what information you believe or not believe, but Markos' admonition is wise.

* * * * * * *

Actual results are now coming in from Kentucky, the only state where all polls closed at 6:00 p.m. EST. The key race there is the challenge to Republican incumbent Rep. Ann Northup. That is considered a toss-up race, so a Democratic win there would be a good sign. With 37% of the precincts counted, the Democratic challenger is winning 51-48%. Those are actual results.

Another very good results page for House races is here, which is the DCCC page that Senators and House members are allegedly using for their news, so it is reputed to be very up-to-date.

From now on, I will add updates without noting them at the top.

* * * * * *

Polls in Indiana and most Florida districts have now closed and results are starting to become available. As a reminder, this post and this one offer a good analysis as to what to look for with these early races.

* * * * * * *

Glenn Beck on CNN just said that the most "perplexing" event to him was that Rick Santorum is going to lose, because he is the "Winston Churchill of our generation that we've all been looking for." Watching the carousel of Bush followers really reminds one so vividly why it's so necessary that Republicans not just lose tonight, but be shattered, smashed and deeply humbled.

Of course, most Bush worshippers are trying to claim that Republicans are losing not because people are angry about the Iraq war or Republican radicalism, but because Republicans weren't "conservative" enough on spending, immigration, even terrorism, etc. etc. -- as though Republicans are losing because they weren't sufficiently extreme and people wanted more warmongering and intense partisanship from the Bush administration. They simply can't accept that the core of the country -- its center -- has abandoned their political movement in disgust over its deep-seeted deceit, corruption and extremism.

In Kentucky, Ann Northup is behind her challenger by a slightly larger margin, with 74% of the precincts counted. In Florida, "Mark Foley" (who is really Joe Negron) is running about even with the Democratic challenger, with 10% of the precincts counted. Virginia Senate race results starting to become available.

* * * * * *

I didn't see it, but Mona in Comments said: "Bill Kristol just told Brit Hume that George Allen would be winning, 'but for the blogs.' They are all talking about how important the blogosphere has been in this election."

Yarmuth up by 4,000 with 81% of the precincts counted, but if one doesn't know what precincts remain to be counted, it's difficult to assess the significance of that lead.

In Indiana, the three Democratic challengers in the close races are all leading the Republican incumbents (two of them by large margins), with roughly 25-30% of the precincts counted.

In Virginia, Allen has a very slight lead over Webb (50-49) with only 25% of the precincts counted. Again, without knowing what is and is not counted, it's still far too early to read anything into that. But that race is indispensible if Democrats are to take control of the Senate.

* * * *

Fox has called IN-08 for the Democratic challenger over the GOP incumbent Rep. John Hostettler. That's one seat down, 14 to go, and then the Subpoenas can go out.

* * * * *

Fox just called Pennsylvania (ending the career of the "Winston Churchill of our generation), as well as New Jersey, in favor of Bob Menendez. Neither of those is a surprise, but the Menendez race is not really close, and many thought it might be.

The Fox commentators are saying that the actual results are coming out better for Democrats than the final polls, which means that the last deciders broke largely for Democrats (so much for the great John Kerry controversy, so much for the "tightening" of the race, so much for all of the talking points Republicans were pushing for the last week).

* * * * *

Mike DeWine's lost to Sherrod Brown is now official (I find it particularly gratifying when the GOP Senate Judiciary and Intelligence Committee members -- who were active in helping the administration conceal and then escape responsibility for its lawbreaking, are defeated). That's 2 Democratic pick-ups thus far (Pennsylvania and Ohio) along with a key Democratic hold (New Jersey).

Chuck Schumer just said that although Webb and Allen are currently even, the Northern Virginia precincts which will be favorable to Webb have not been counted, and he certainly seemed optimistic about the outcome. If Democrats win Virginia, control of the Senate will likely hinge on Missouri.

* * * * *

That last statement was a somewhat overstated. In order to takeover the Senate, the Democrats (in addition to winning in Virginia and Missouri) also would have to win in Montana, Rhode Island and Maryland - none of which is certain.

* * * * *

Both CNN and Fox are projecting Joe Lieberman's victory over Ned Lamont. The Kentucky race with Ann Northup is almost completely counted and it looks (to me) as though she will lose. That is an important pick-up for Democrats, because that race was far from certain.

* * * *

Both CNN and Fox called Maryland for Ben Cardin over Michael Steele. That's good and important. They need to win in Montana, Rhode Island, Missouri and Virginia (still looking uncertain) for Senate control (assuming they lose in Tennessee and Arizona).

Also, it seems clear Democrats will take over the House, but I haven't seen much evidence that it's going to be some sort of massive, overwhelming sweep. It might be, but I don't think that what we know now suggests that, because many of the toss-up races are extremely close, and even some of the seats Democrats were expected to win (such as Mark Foley's seat) look like they might stay Republican.

* * * * *

Brit Hume bids a sad farewell to Ann Northup -- a Democratic win in Kentucky.

* * * * *

Good-bye to Lincoln Chafee, hello to Sheldon Whitehouse, in Rhode Island - another Democratic pick-up in the Senate. That means (a) Republicans pick-up nothing in the Senate (Democrats hold all of their seats) and (b) Democrats need Virginia, Missouri and Montana for Senate control.

* * * * *
Another Democratic takeover in the House -- IN-02 -- Donnelly over Chocala.

* * * * *

I just watched CNN interview Atrios at the Bloggers party about the various races, and afterwards, the anchor asked the reporter which races the conservative bloggers were focused on, and she said: "a lot of them are focused on the gay marriage amendments." I bet they are. If I were them, I'd also want to look at anything other than the House, Senate and Governships.

* * * * *

I wonder how Tom Delay and Karl Rove feel watching Nancy Pelosi take over their Congress?

I really highly recommend watching Fox News; it's like being at a wake for a person that you're really happy has died, but everyone else is in deep mourning.

* * * * *

The key right now is Virginia - Allen has clung to a small lead the whole time and it still hasn't vanished, with 82% of the precincts reporting. Chuck Schumer said awhile ago that it's the pro-Webb Northern Virginia precincts left, but I'm not convinced that's true. We'll see.

* * * * *

Connecticut's Republican Rep. Nancy Johnson stayed in Congress for almost 25 years, and she ran very aggressive and manipulative ads (focused, in part, on how Democrats oppose eavesdropping on terrorists) in order to win a 13th term. But she has been uprooted from that moldy seat, as she lost to her challenger.

That was considered an important seat for determining how big the Democratic victory would be. Major Garrett on Fox is reporting that GOP strategists are now hoping to confine Democratic House pick-ups to 20, rather than 30 or more.

* * * *

When one focuses on the House race-by-race, one realizes just what lowly, corrupt riff-raff has composed the Republican Congressional majority for so long: Democrats, for instance, are apparently picking up Bob Ney's abandoned (indicted), Curt Weldon's seat in Pennsylvania (under investigation), Tom DeLay's seat in Texas (indicted), and Don Sherwood's seat in Pennsylvania (mistress-beating scandal). Almost appropriately, though, "Mark Foley" is still running slightly ahead in his Florida district and may actually win.

Still some excellent, highly deserving Republican loss possibilities remaining: Ohio's Jean Schmidt, New York's Tom Reynolds, New Mexico's Heather Wilson.

I am currently in a time zone three hours ahead of the East Coast, so my blow-by-blow blogging is likely to end soon, though I will obviously have more to say tomorrow.

* * * *

If it turns out, as it might, that the Republicans hang on to control of the Senate because of Virginia and Tennessee (and if they can minimize House losses by, among other things, taking two Democratic seats in Georgia and hanging on to the two endangered Florida seats), it really will mean that the Republican Party is well on its way to becoming a regional party - The Party of the South. Republicans are incapable of competing in the Northeast and West Coast, and are being increasingly rejected by the Midwest and Mountain West.

* * * * *

I neglected to add the heinous Marilyn Musgrave and J.D. Hayworth to the list of GOP Representatives who so richly deserve to lose.

Just in case anyone needs a reminder about who they are

The Bush administration and the Rush Limbaugh Show have all but merged this year. Rush's Bush co-host yesterday was Tony Snow, who chatted with Rush about many things, beginning with how terrible it is that "Democrats" hate the troops:

SNOW: You know, again, so I think what John Kerry's comments did was reiterate the fact that Democrats tend to have a view of the military that is not always fully respectful and even when they say they're supporting them, they're undercutting them. I mean they not only undercut them by refusing to fund the ongoing operations in Afghanistan and Iraq (remember Senator Kerry voting for it before he voted against it?) but also constantly trying to undermine public confidence in that military by describing defeat what people on the ground see as hard-won victory. These people -- don't you think, Rush, these people -- deserve our respect?

After Rush agreed that "there's been no question that [Democrats have] been impugning the troops while trying to get credit for supporting them," Snow explained why Democrats don't have the respect for the troops which Snow and Rush have:

SNOW: No, that's absolutely right, and the other thing is none of these folks have really spent enough time around the all volunteer military to understand we've got the best educated, the best trained, and also the most professional military we've ever had. These folks -- and I know you've been out there. I remember when you went to Afghanistan. These people are amazing.

It only makes sense that the war hero Snow and his comrade-in-arms Limbaugh would have such an appreciation for the military because -- as Snow suggests -- they have devoted so much of their lives to military service, whereas Democrats like Jack Murtha, John Kerry, Wes Clark, Jim Webb, Patrick Murphy, Tammy Duckworth, Jay Fawcett and the rest of the cut-and-run, military-hating cowards (including the anti-Rumsfeld war critic Generals) don't understand the military the way Rush and Snow do. They hate the troops because they haven't "really spent enough time around" the military. Rush avoided the Vietnam draft under extremely suspicious circumstances (sometimes he claims it was due to a hurt knee and other times due to an anal cyst), but he visited Afghanistan, so he knows the hard, cold realities of war.

Snow then explained that Americans have been turned against the Iraq war not because it's failed and wrong, but only because a propagandizing media only shows the bad things and hides the good things ("what they constantly get on television and newspapers is a failure narrative. They hear body counts, they don't hear about successes"). Americans suffer from a Marxist-type false consciousness about the war.

As a result, Snow claimed, "the war is more popular in Iraq than it is in the United States because the Iraqis actually get to see the Americans in action." If that's true, then the war in America must be really, really unpopular, because:

_Almost four in five Iraqis say the U.S. military force in Iraq provokes more violence than it prevents.

_ About six in 10 Iraqis say they approve of attacks on U.S.-led forces . . . About 61 percent approved of the attacks _ up from 47 percent in January. A solid majority of Shiite and Sunni Arabs approved of the attacks, according to the poll. The increase came mostly among Shiite Iraqis.

And:

The State Department, meanwhile, has also conducted its own poll, something it does periodically, spokesman Sean McCormack said. The State Department poll found that two-thirds of Iraqis in Baghdad favor an immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces, according to The Washington Post. McCormack declined to discuss details of the department's Iraq poll.

It is a rather compelling sign of just how freely and casually Bush officials lie when Snow claims that the war is popular among Iraqis even though the Government's own poll shows that " two-thirds of Iraqis in Baghdad favor an immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces" and an independent poll shows that the same percentage of Iraqis generally -- from both sides of the sectarian war -- actually approve of violent attacks on U.S. troops, a percentage which has increased substantially this year.

After Rush -- in one of the first questions -- explained that "the Democrats have lost all white voters. They've lost women and they've lost --," Snow cut him off but then agreed with Rush's view, and Snow then revealed where he gets his analysis about the American electorate:

SNOW: They've lost men. They've lost women. Absolutely right, and I'm glad you pointed that out. Captain Ed Morrissey was one of the guys -- I don't know if you saw that this morning, but he was going through them. There have been really big shifts going on, and I think it's kind of the natural by-product that people really taking a look at what Democrats are doing . . . .

The "Captain" reference is superb, because it shows -- again -- how Republicans know more about the military because they spend more time around it -- like Captain Ed. Ed Morrissey is a nice and reasonable guy, but someone needs to tell Tony Snow that "Captain" is a nickname, a plaything, a fantasy -- like the President's fighter pilot costume, Rush and Snow's in-depth and personal military expertise, and what Snow called the "miraculous" situation we brought about in Iraq. That's all make-believe, but they don't see a difference.

So to recap Snow's arguments about why we should maintain the Republicans' monopoly on political power: The situation in Iraq isn't just sunny and great - it's "miraculous." Anyone who says otherwise is "undercutting" the troops. Americans are only against the war because the media has brainwashed them with lies about how things aren't great in Iraq, but they really are going great.

Also, Iraqis love the war so much and want to have the occupation remain forever, because -- unlike the Democrats -- they've seen the U.S. military up close and personal and just absolutely love it. Finally, Democrats hate the military because "none of these folks" have been near the military, whereas Republican war heroes like Rush, Tony Snow and their other make-believe warriors understand the realities and complexities of war and they love the war and the military (from a safe distance).

Does anyone really think that this country can withstand two more years of this?

The White House and the right-wing blogosphere -- mirror images

(updated below)

Right-wing pundits and bloggers have long demanded that the Bush administration make public the hordes of government documents which were obtained from Saddam's files by the U.S. military in Iraq. Those documents, they argued, would finally vindicate their faith-based belief that Saddam really did have WMDs. It was in order to satisfy those demands that the Bush administration -- at the personal direction of the President -- published those documents on the Internet (including, as we now know, how-to instructions in Arabic for building a nuclear weapon).

That revelation led Digby to this important epiphany:

This isn't just another instance of "the buck stops here" accountability. This is an instance of direct, personal intervention by the president who countermanded the advice of his experts and ordered something to be done that resulted in nuclear secrets, written in arabic, landing on the internet. He did this because he listened to the crew of childlike idiots, both in the congress and on the radio and internet, who comprise the heart of his political movement.

It illustrates something I don't think I've ever fully understood before. Bush listens to the 101st keyboarders and believes their delusionary drivel. In essence, the nation is being led by Limbaugh, Powerline and Michele Malkin.

If that doesn't scare the hell out of you, I don't know what will.

I couldn't agree more with that, and the evidence to prove it has been steadily mounting over the last year or so. When the President first used the term "Islamic fascists" in a speech back in August, a controversy arose over whether the term was unduly inflammatory, anti-Muslim, etc. But I thought the more notable aspect of the speech was that this was a term dredged up from the lowest and most radical blogospheric swamps, which have long used that term when discussing The Terrorists.

The President's sudden usage of it was not accidental. It was as though the President, when discussing the "Global War on Terror," suddenly became a commenter at Little Green Footballs or a poster at The Corner. It was at that point when the convergence of the White House and the most rancid elements of right-wing punditry became complete.

And as I previously documented, the President's foreign speeches over the last year, particularly with regard to the Middle East generally and Iran specifically, aren't merely influenced by neoconservative thought. Far beyond that, his speeches have become almost exact replicas of what one regularly reads in The Weekly Standard and in the other most extremist and most crazed neoconservative precincts on the Internet. More and more, what comes out of the White House is indistinguishable from what one hears on the Rush Limbaugh Show and reads on the worst and most irrational right-wing blogs.

There are many causes for this development and many incidents which prove it. Personnel changes alone demonstrate what this administration has become. To the cheers of most right-wing extremists, Tony Snow was moved from his position as rabid Fox News cheerleader to Press Secretary in order to become the face of the administration. Cheered on by the same voices, the administration hired Karl Zinmeister away from the American Enterprise Institute to put him in charge of domestic policy. And most importantly, the handful of "dissidents" from the first term (meaning those who pretended to want to moderate the administration's behavior from time to time and on the margins) have been purged entirely, and in their place are the blind loyalists and the True Believers.

What is alarmingly clear is that the internal power struggles inside of the administration have all been decisively resolved in favor of the extremists who are, in every way, indistinguishable from the right-wing bloggers and pundits whose views are so radical and unhinged that they never cease to shock or disgust. As Digby put it: "the nation is being led by Limbaugh, Powerline and Michele Malkin." And it's no coincidence that the President spends time with Rush Limbaugh, the Vice President appears almost exclusively on rabid right-wing talk radio, and they have expended great efforts to pull closer to them the most extreme right-wing pundits, "journalists," and bloggers. That's their element. It is now what they are.

One sees this all the time now. Arguments that one reads in The Weekly Standard or National Review or hears from Sean Hannity come out of Tony Snow's mouth -- and even the President's -- a day or two later. And this coordination is not just confined to rhetoric. It isn't about mollifying the base with energizing speeches. As the posting of those Iraqi documents reflect, the actions of the Bush administration at the highest levels now mirror the desires of the most extremist elements of the Bush movement because they are one and the same.

One can listen to Sean Hannity, or read John Hinderaker or Michelle Malkin or David Horowitz, and mock the derangement and dishonesty. But that isn't how Dick Cheney or Don Rumsfeld or the President react, and it's certainly not how their top-tier of aides in the various power centers in the administration react. If Dick Cheney had a blog, it would look like Powerline. If Don Rumsfeld had a blog, it would read like LGF. And any of their most influential aides and advisors could post at the Corner or write regularly for The Weekly Standard and nothing would be different.

The longer the administration stays in power and -- even more significantly -- the less popular they become, the more willing, even eager, they become to throw caution to the wind. Almost from a sense of vindictive bitterness, they insist upon their entitlement to do whatever they want. And "what they want" has become progressively more orthodox, more radical, and more dangerous.

That is, more than anything else, what this election is about tomorrow. It really only will determine one question -- will this extremist movement be fully liberated to spend the next two years pursuing its twisted visions with no limits at all, or will it at least have some mild hurdles and impediments to slow it down? I don't write about the John Hinderakers or Glenn Reynolds or Michael Ledeens of the world because it's fun and easy to mock their deceit and derangement, even if that's true. I write about them because they are perfect reflections of the mentality that is governing our country and that has been governing it -- and destroying it -- with no limits at all for five years now.

* * * * * * *

John Amato is in Washington for CNN's blogger/election party, so I will be contributing a few shorter posts at C&L over the next few days (until Wednesday). Posting will continue here in its normal pattern. My first C&L posts are here, here and here.

UPDATE: I have a post up at C&L regarding some facts about the election tomorrow. The post is here.

What do National Review, Rich Lowry, and the AEI have to say about Michael Ledeen's lie?

(Updated below - Update II - Update III with Ledeen's "response" - Update IV)

I want to return to the point I raised yesterday about Michael Ledeen -- as first noticed by Mona at Inactivist -- because I think it merits much more attention, and is reflective of several important points. Michael Ledeen -- a so-called "Freedom Scholar" at the warmongering American Enterprise Institute and a Contributing Editor of National Review -- is one of the neocons included in the much-discussed Vanity Fair article publicized yesterday. That article reported that numerous leading neocons have now turned on the Iraq war by heaping all the blame on the President, Don Rumsfeld, and in essence, everyone else but themselves.

Several of the neocons -- including Richard Perle, David Frum, Michael Rubin and Ledeen -- petulantly complained yesterday that the VF press release publicizing the article mischaracterized their views, took them out of context, etc. etc. But in National Review, Ledeen went further than that. Much further.

In contesting the accuracy of the VF article, Ledeen not only denied that he ever supported the invasion of Iraq, but further, he affirmatively claimed that he opposed the invasion. And that is just an outright lie. Here is part of what Ledeen wrote yesterday at NRO's Corner (I encourage anyone to read the full comment to see the context, which makes this even more incriminating, not less):

I do not feel "remorseful," since I had and have no involvement with our Iraq policy. I opposed the military invasion of Iraq before it took place and I advocated—as I still do—support for political revolution in Iran as the logical and necessary first step in the war against the terror masters.

That is about as unambiguous a claim as it gets. Leeden states that he "opposed the military invasion of Iraq before it took place." Therefore, he argues, he cannot be fairly used by VF as an example of a neocon who has recently abandoned the war because, Ledeen claims, he was anti-war from the start.

But as Mona pointed out last night, Ledeen wrote a scathing August, 2002 article in National Review, the sole purpose of which was to argue for what he called "the desperately-needed and long overdue war against Saddam Hussein and the rest of the terror masters." To support the invasion, Ledeen claimed "that Saddam is actively supporting al Qaeda, and Abu Nidal, and Hezbollah."

Ledeen's pro-invasion article in NR was written in response to a television appearance two days earlier on Face the Nation by Brent Scowcroft, the former National Security Advisor for George Bush 41. Scowcroft is one of the most despised figures for neocons -- because he insists that reality ought to be taken into account when formulating foreign policy and because they blame him for not toppling Saddam back in 1991 -- and his vocal opposition back then to the invasion of Iraq was seen by neocons as a real threat, because many speculated that Scowcroft was communicating the views of Bush 41 and his close circle.

On Face the Nation, Scowcroft argued vehemently against invading Iraq:

It’s a matter of setting your priorities. There’s no question that Saddam is a problem. He has already launched two wars and spent all the resources he can working on his military. But the President has announced that terrorism is our number one focus. Saddam is a problem, but he’s not a problem because of terrorism. . . .

If you look – let's suppose, for example, we're all ready and we launch an attack on Saddam Hussein tomorrow. It will be tough. It will not be a cakewalk. But can we take him out? Yes, we can take him out. Now what would the world – or what would the region look like if we did that right now?

And to attack Iraq while the Middle East is in the terror that it is right now and America appears not to be dealing with something which to every Muslim is a real problem but instead go over here I think could turn the whole region into a cauldron...

Ledeen's entire article in NR was to attack Scowcroft's public argument against invading Iraq, and this is what Ledeen said:

It's always reassuring to hear Brent Scowcroft attack one's cherished convictions; it makes one cherish them all the more. . . .

So it's good news when Scowcroft comes out against the desperately-needed and long overdue war against Saddam Hussein and the rest of the terror masters. As usual, Scowcroft has it backwards: He's still pushing Saudi Arabia's Prince Abdullah's line that you've just got to deal with the Palestinian question. Blessedly, President Bush knows by now that the Palestinian question can only be addressed effectively once the war against Saddam and his ilk has been won. And then Scowcroft says "Saddam is a problem, but he's not a problem because of terrorism."

This is the head of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Commission? Doesn't he read the newspapers? He doesn't seem to realize that Saddam is actively supporting al Qaeda, and Abu Nidal, and Hezbollah.

However, nobody is perfect, and Scowcroft has managed to get one thing half right, even though he misdescribes it. He fears that if we attack Iraq "I think we could have an explosion in the Middle East. It could turn the whole region into a caldron and destroy the War on Terror."

One can only hope that we turn the region into a cauldron, and faster, please. If ever there were a region that richly deserved being cauldronized, it is the Middle East today. If we wage the war effectively, we will bring down the terror regimes in Iraq, Iran, and Syria, and either bring down the Saudi monarchy or force it to abandon its global assembly line to indoctrinate young terrorists.

This article is as unambiguous as it is vile (what kind of person hopes that an entire region of the world turns into a "cauldron" -- but leave that to the side for now, because the focus here is Ledeen's lying, not the depraved nature of his views). The whole point of Ledeen's article is to mock Scowcroft for opposing the invasion of Iraq and to argue why the invasion is, as Ledeen put it, "desperately-needed and long overdue." Ledeen even calls the invasion of Iraq one of his "cherished convictions."

Following up on mine and Mona's post from last night about Ledeen's lie, Meteor Blades over at Daily Kos found an August, 2002 interview Ledeen gave to Jamie Glazov at David Horowitz's Front Page. Ledeen was part of a panel of other war-mongers such as Richard Pipes and Fred Barnes, and he repeatedly and umambiguously argued in favor of invading Iraq. Meteor Blades excerpted many of the relevant examples, but here is just one sample:

Question #2: Okay, well if we are all so certain about the dire need to invade Iraq, then when do we do so?

Ledeen: Yesterday.

For Ledeen to now deny in National Review that he ever supported the invasion of Iraq -- and, more astoundingly, to affirmatively claim that he "opposed the military invasion of Iraq before it took place" -- is outright lying, and there is no other way to put it. And the lie has to be deliberate -- what other explanation is possible? Ledeen exists in the most extreme warmongering habitats -- the AEI and National Review. The invasion of Iraq was sort of an important topic in those places over the last four years at least. I think Ledeen knows what his views of the war were.

I don't think any sentient human being will believe that Ledeen forgot that he was a proponent of this invasion. It is clear that he simply wants to disassociate himself from the worst strategic disaster made by our country in a long time, if not ever, by lying about his support for it. He's trying to preserve his credibility in order to enable himself, NR, and the AEI to continue to drive our country's foreign policy -- particularly the additional regime change adventures they want in many more countries -- and it is intolerable for this to be permitted.

There are several implications here. First, I think it is quite telling that one of the most vocal and revered warmongers in our country -- at least revered by Bush-worshipping, warmongering institutions like AEI and NR -- is so ashamed of the war in Iraq that he has taken to outright lying about having supported it. That is a powerful reflection of what this war has become.

Second, doesn't Rich Lowry, the Editor of NR, have an obligation -- at the very least -- to print a retraction or correction of Ledeen's lie? And are NR's journalistic standards so low or non-existent that they would continue to allow someone like Ledeen, who blatantly lies about such a critical issue, to continue to write for them? You can (and, I think, should) ask Lowry about that by e-mailing him here, and it be worth doing the same to Kathryn Jean Lopez, whom I believe has some editorial responsibility for The Corner. You can e-mail her here.

Third, the AEI ought to explain why one of its "Freedom scholars," who specializes in Middle East policy, is lying about the public advocacy he engaged in with regard to the invasion of Iraq. The contact page for AEI is here. Veronique Rodman of the AEI can be e-mailed here and Andrew Levy can be reached here.

The AEI is one of the most dangerous organizations in this country and Ledeen (as Marcy Wheeler, among many others, has amply documented) is one of its most extremist and dangerous "scholars," especially now that the next target on the neocon Dream List is Iran. Ledeen is literally obsessed with changing the governments in a whole host of countries that are hostile to Israel and/or the U.S., most particularly Iran. And the kind of dishonesty that is so glaring in this one instance is par for the course in how he and his fellow neocon warmongers argue and advocate.

It's just not usually as easily demonstrable as it is in this case. For that reason, I think it would be very valuable to expose Ledeen's dishonesty -- and particularly to emphasize that his lies are in the service of his efforts to hide what he quite revealingly believes is the shameful fact that he supported the war in Iraq.

People are entitled to express a wide range of opinions and to be forgiven for being wrong sometimes. We are all wrong sometimes. But the type of dishonesty and willingness to say anything, no matter how false, that is evident in Ledeen's efforts to save himself has become so pervasive and acceptable at the highest levels of our government and pundit class, and it has completely destroyed the quality and value of political debate in our country. Nobody is entitled to do that, and it's difficult to think of a more important priority than re-establishing the most minimal standards of honesty in our political discourse. That begins by making liars like Ledeen have some accountability and consequences for their lies.

UPDATE: As Greg Djerejian points out via e-mail, Ledeen also wrote a September, 2002 Op-Ed for The Wall St. Journal in which he said, among other things:

Saddam Hussein is a terrible evil, and President Bush is entirely right in vowing to end his reign of terror . . . . If we come to Baghdad, Damascus and Tehran as liberators, we can expect overwhelming popular support. They will join us if they believe we are serious, and they will only believe we are serious when they see us winning. Our first move must therefore show both our power and our liberating intent. . . . .

And just as a successful democratic revolution in Iran would inspire the Iraqis to join us to remove Saddam, it is impossible to imagine that the Iranian people would tolerate tyranny in their own country once freedom had come to Iraq. Syria would follow in short order.

Like all of his neoconservative comrades, Ledeen was wrong about everything. Much worse, rather than acknowledge it, he is now outright lying about what he advocated.

UPDATE II: I doubt I need to say this, but I really urge you to make whatever e-mails you send to Lowry, Lopez and AEI civil and substantive. As Norwester's email reflects, the objective should be to prompt a response from them and action on their part, not to heap abuse on them (regardless of whether it is well-deserved).

UPDATE III: Michael Ledeen pretends to "respond" to these accusations with this item he just posted in the Corner, in which he says that "the usual suspects are up in arms that I am a 'liar' . . . ." His response is as barren as his integrity is:

First, with gross dishonesty (not to mention in violation of the most basic blogosphere practices for ethical debates), Ledeen does not link to either my post, the post at Kos from Meteor Blades, or Mona's post -- in fact, when referring to the "usual suspects" who are accusing him of lying, he doesn't link to anyone's argument. As a result, and as was likely intended, those reading what he wrote at National Review have no access to the evidence against him and therefore no way to assess the truth or persuasiveness of those accusations or of Ledeen's response to them. By doing that, he can ignore all of the incriminating evidence against him (as he does) and just lie about what the evidence is (as he also does).

If Ledeen thinks that the evidence against him is unpersuasive, why doesn't he let NRO readers see it by linking to it? I linked to his original comment, his past articles, and his "response" today precisely because I want everyone to see them.

Second, Ledeen simply ignores all of the evidence which conclusively demonstrates that he lied when he claimed yesterday that he opposed the invasion of Iraq. How can Ledeen possibly reconcile that claim with this:

Question #2: Okay, well if we are all so certain about the dire need to invade Iraq, then when do we do so?

Ledeen: Yesterday.

Anyone who said that, and now claims to have opposed the invasion of Iraq, is outright lying, by definition. Why can't Ledeen just admit that?

Third, Ledeen quotes a long passage from his 2002 book in which he advocates undermining Saddam's regime with a combination of military maneuvers (create "no trespassing zones" in the North and South) and all sorts of political acts to destabilize the regime. But so what? None of that even arguably constitutes his having "opposed the military invasion of Iraq before it took place," and Ledeen expressly advocated that invasion in several quite public venues after publication of that passage.

This behavior really is pathological and even infantile. What kind of person just outright lies like this and then lies more in order to cover it up? Is Rich Lowry now convinced that Ledeen's original claim to have opposed the invasion -- which he is re-affirming with this new post -- meets National Review's journalistic "standards"?

People like Ledeen simply can't accept responsibility for anything they do or say, and above all, they can never acknowledge an error or mistake. They are single-minded fundamentalists who believe that they have such a monopoly on what is Good and Right that anything they do -- up to and including blatantly lying and then refusing to admit it when they are caught red-handed -- is justified by the overarching importance of their crusades.

UPDATE IV: Jonathan Schwarz uses Nexis to document still more pro-invasion statements from that self-proclaimed anti-war activist Michael Ledeen. His continued insistence that he opposed the war -- and Rich Lowry's silence and failure (at least thus far) to print a retraction or correction -- is just inexcusable.

It's all the fault of the Iraqi people

(updated below)

At least the squirming, conniving neconservatives in this Vantiy Fair article are blaming their failed war on George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld. As ugly as it is to watch the war's prime architects and chief advocates pretend that they had nothing to do with this disaster, more despicable still are the ones who are blaming the Iraqi people for what has happened. Look at what Paul Mirgenoff at Powerline said yesterday:

Unfortunately, though, more was required of the Iraqi people than just voting. The situation called on them to elect leaders who would work in good faith for national reconciliation, rather than tilting substantially in the direction of one sectarian faction. The Iraqis failed to do this when they voted in the Shia-militia-friendly Maliki government, thereby making it difficult, if not impossible, for the U.S. to work with the current government to curb sectarian violence.

The Iraqis, of course, are not the first people to make a very bad decision at the polls. The fact that they did so is not necessarily evidence of some national "genetic" flaw, much less a demonstration that democracy can't work in the Middle East. It just means that the Iraqi people did less than what a difficult situation required, and that we must face up to and deal with the consequences.

We invaded their country, removed their government, disbanded their military, shattered their infrastructure, and -- for the last three years -- all but stood by while the country was taken over by murderous gangs and lawless militias and predictably collapsed into civil war. But it's all their fault because they voted for the wrong candidate six months ago. If only the Iraqis had elected Ahmad Chalabi as Prime Minister, it would have all worked out great.

What makes Paul's excuse-making extra disgusting is that -- like so many of these war advocates who are blaming others for this debacle by claiming that it's all due to past mistakes by other people which they never criticized at the time -- Paul praised Maliki's election in April as the key event for achieving "national unity":

David Ignatitus in the Washington Post supplies something that has been lacking in the MSM -- an acknowledgement that the selection of Jawad al-Maliki to be Iraq's prime minister is good news. As a bonus, Ignatius explains why the selection enhances the chances of national unity. For one thing, al-Maliki represents "a modest declaration of independence from Iran." And by resisting Iranian pressure to back Ibrahim al-Jafari, Shiite leaders "stood up for a unified Iraq."

Anyone who advocated and defended this war for this long has great culpability. But the inability of so many of them to accept basic responsibility for what they have done -- pretending that it's everyone else's fault other than their own and simply lying about their prior views in order to make it seem like it all would have worked out great if everyone had just listened to them -- is just pathological. It really is difficult to maintain the most minimal amounts of civility or respect when writing about people like Paul because they so plainly deserve neither.

UPDATE: Paul also wrote this post in February, 2006, in which he explained that warnings about an imminent so-called "civil war" in Iraq were just the malicious invention by the "MSM." He entitled the post "The Civil War that Isn't":

Elements of the MSM seem to await a civil war in Iraq with the same breathlessness that Marxists used to await the final crisis of capitalism. . . .

Elements of the MSM make these two claims about the Bush administration -- that it failed to anticipate the very real prospect of a civil war in Iraq and that it has been incompetent in its management of post-invasion affairs. But there's a tension between these claims. If a civil war was likely, then the fact that we don't have one at this point (by any intelligent definition of the term) suggests that the administration has dealt skillfully with the politics of post-invasion Iraq.

"The administration has dealt skillfully with the politics of post-invasion Iraq" and worries about a "civil war" are just the hysterical desires of a Bush-hating media, which refuses to recognize how adept everything is being handled by the administration. That's basically what the administration and their followers claimed for the last two years, even as Iraq disintegrated before our eyes (it's the liberal media's fault for over-reporting the bad news because things are really going great there). Remember, though: everything happening now is all the fault of the Iraqis.

UPDATE II: As Mona at Inactivist astutely notes, National Review's Michael Ledeen -- one of the blame-shifting neocons quoted in the Vanity Fair article -- has the audacity to claim today in the Corner that he "opposed the military invasion of Iraq before it took place," even though he wrote an August, 2002 National Review article advocating the war in Iraq:

It's always reassuring to hear Brent Scowcroft attack one's cherished convictions; it makes one cherish them all the more. . . . So it's good news when Scowcroft comes out against the desperately-needed and long overdue war against Saddam Hussein and the rest of the terror masters. As usual, Scowcroft has it backwards.

In the same article, Ledeen mocks Scowcroft for worrying that an invasion of Iraq "could turn the whole region into a caldron and destroy the War on Terror." Ledeen scoffed: "One can only hope that we turn the region into a cauldron, and faster, please. If ever there were a region that richly deserved being cauldronized, it is the Middle East today."

As Mona asks: "You got your cauldron, Mike. Happy now?" Apparently not, since he's now falsely denying that he ever supported the war.

UPDATE III: More on Ledeen's lying, and what can (and, in my view, should) be done about it -- here.

Fox's election weekend propaganda marathon -- "Way more dangerous than Nazis"

Fox News has re-arranged its programming schedule this weekend -- why this weekend? -- in order to broadcast at five different times a genuinely demented fear-mongering propaganda film entitled "Obsession: The Threat of Radical Islam." The whole point of the film -- the only point -- is to show menacing footage of Muslims, accompanied by very scary music, and then assert, over and over, that they are devoted to killing all of us and that the threat they pose is exactly the same as the threat of Nazi Germany, except it's much, much worse.

Fox itself describes the film this way:

We often hear that 9/11 was a wake-up call for Americans. But have Americans really woken up to the truth of how much radical Islamists want us dead, and the lengths to which they are willing to go to fulfill their mission?

According to a shocking new documentary called "Obsession," the free world is still unprepared to face the unwavering commitment of those who have pledged their lives to our destruction. The film states that we suffer not so much from complacency, but from the naïve disbelief that we remain targets of thousands, perhaps millions of radical Muslims around the world.

The film takes the position that there is no middle ground for radical Islamists -- or Islamic fascists, to use the phrase invoked by President Bush . . . We see in “Obsession” how closely the Hitler youth bear resemblance to the young Islamic fundamentalists training with Hezbollah, Hamas and other terrorist groups.

Of course, Nazi Germany did not train children in the use of suicide belts, as the Islamic fascists do. But manipulating the pliant minds of youth toward fanatical hatred employs the same techniques. Unlike our confrontation with Nazi Germany, the current crisis may be worse . . . .

Thus, it may well be that today’s fascists are a far greater threat to the free world than the fascists of yesteryear. But there is still time to prevent them from gaining any more ground, if we begin to take the threat more seriously.

The last third of the film -- at least the excerpts I saw -- consists of scenes of Nazi Party rallies and German military parades, accompanied by horror-film music and interspersed with various people explaining that the Islamofascists are exactly the same as the Nazis, except -- to quote one of them -- "way more dangerous." That would be the same Nazi Germany whose army, even when already consumed by warfare against several large countries, still had "around 3 million [soldiers] (including 200,000 from its allies) [] available for Operation Barbarossa against the Soviet Union," and which also "included 142 infantry divisions, 17 panzer divisions and 4,000 tanks" (to say nothing of its vast air force and submarine fleet).

Fox says that the critical question answered by the film is this: "How determined to kill you is radical Islam?" To justify its decision to select this weekend (of all weekends) for saturating its airways with this extreme propaganda, Fox claims, falsely, that the film is a "shocking new documentary." In fact, it is actually a year old, having debuted at a film festival in 2005.

This film has to be seen to be believed. No description could do it justice. An abridged clip is here.

The irony that pervades this film, as well as Fox's promotional fear-mongering, is so glaring that it's hard to believe that anyone would overlook it. The central point of the film is that evil Islamic extremists are using fear-mongering tactics to get Muslims to hate the U.S. Worse, Islamic leaders -- in order to induce a desire to fight -- are telling their followers that they face a deadly and evil enemy which wants to dominate their countries and destroy them and their religion. The film menacingly explains that they even tell their followers that they are engaged in self-defense and that fighting is necessary to preserve their values and to survive. What sort of monsters would use rhetorical tactics like that?

Here, for instance, is what Itamar Marcus (from some group called "Palestinian Media Watch") says in the film about the evil fear-mongering tricks used by Muslim leaders:

What they are saying is that the U.S. is a threat, a danger to them, is trying to dominate them, is trying to turn the whole word into America, and this is what they are telling their people they have to fight against. . . .

One of the main ways they get the people to be willing to fight and endanger their lives and hate the west is to present the war as an act of self-defense. . . .

If you want to get people to fight, you have to make them think there is a threat and that they're in danger.

One shudders at the evil of those who would use such manipulative tactics. Similarly, a woman named Nonie Darwish, whom the film labels as a "Daughter of a Shaid (Martyr)," explains:

So in order for you to do jihad, you have to find a good reason, so the best reason is we are defending ourselves - there is an enemy out there who wants to get us.

Of course, one thing we can be thankful for is that -- unlike the violent, fear-mongering warriors they have -- our political and religious leaders (and television networks) are responsible and sober and would never use Fear of the Enemy, or religious fanaticism, as a means for justifying war. Consider, for instance, the peace-loving and inspiring speech delivered this week by Rev. David Clippard, Executive Director of the Missouri Baptist Convention, to which Sen. Jim Talent and Sen. Michael DeWine are making a pilgrimage this week:

Today, Islam has a strategic plan to defeat and occupy America . . . . What they are after is your sons and daughters . . . .They are coming to this country in the guise of students, and the Saudi government is paying their expenses . . . .They are trying to establish a Muslim state inside America, and they are going to take the city of Detroit back to the 15th century and practice Sharia (or Islamic) law there. . . .

Your freedom is on the floor with their foot on it, with their sword raised, and if you don't convert, your head comes off. . . .

I don't hate Islamic people . . . We need to love these folks, go after them and love them, one at a time. We need to crucify them with Christ.

And when is the last time George Bush or Dick Cheney delivered a speech or gave an interview without warning of the grave and unprecedented dangers we face from a mortal enemy that wants to destroy our society and everything we love and kill all of us?

In sum, Fox -- with the aid of the scariest music possible and continuous imagery of Nazis -- is inundating its viewers all weekend before the election with this implicit message:

Islamic religious leaders are evil and "way more dangerous" than Nazis. They want to kill each and every one of you and you are in severe danger like you've never previously imagined. These frightening Muslim leaders propagandize their followers by inculcating them with pervasive fear. They convince them that they have to fight in order to defend themselves against those who want to dominate them, deprive them of their religion, and kill them and their children.

Vote Republican so that you will be protected from these evil fear-mongering monsters who want to dominate you, deprive you of your religion, and kill you and your children.

This is the poison that the Bush movement has been feeding to this country for five years now, and like all toxins, it has had a devastatingly corrosive effect. Fear (and the desire for destruction which naturally accompanies it) is the only substance that fuels their movement, which is why the likes of Fox News, following in the footsteps of the Leaders whom they serve, have devoted themselves to the only goal they know -- flooding the country with as much fear as possible in the hopes that it will save their dying movement from full-scale political collapse.

Some day, this film will be an exhibit in a museum, powerfully illustrating what the Bush movement was and how its followers attempted to justify its conduct and keep it in power.