Category: Politics

Will he figure out how the Constitution works on November 7th?

Until today, we were nothing more than a nation of lawlessness strangely organized with sham system of courts, laws and rules. Thankfully, President Bush fixed that oversight by signing the torture bill into law. Consider these quotes from our Dear Leader:

  • “With the bill I’m about to sign, the men our intelligence officials believe orchestrated the murder of nearly 3,000 innocent people will face justice,” Bush said.
  • “It is a rare occasion when a president can sign a bill that he knows will save American lives,” Bush said. “I have that privilege this morning.”
  • “We will answer brutal murder with patient justice,” Bush said. “Those who kill the innocent will be held to account.”

That last quote deserves a little ranting. Patient justice is an interesting euphemism for beating the shit out of detainees until we get the answer we like. And it’s worth noting that our president wants refuses to hold those who torture the innocent to account. Worth noting, since more than 200 years of legal, ethical, and historical precedent suggests this is the wrong action.

One more quote warrants attention:

“Over the past few months, the debate over this bill has been heated, and the questions raised can seem complex,” he said. “Yet, with the distance of history, the questions will be narrowed and few. Did this generation of Americans take the threat seriously? And did we do what it takes to defeat that threat?”

With time the question we’ll most ponder is whether or not this generation took the threat seriously. As long as we scrunch up our faces with mad determination, we’re doing well. This president sees no distinction between accepting the threat and taking specific actions to counter the threat. He is incompetent.

Does this make me a political vegan?

This, from an article about Sen. Specter’s efforts to acknowledge existing Constitutional principles within the recent torture bill, shows what’s wrong with Congress:

But for at least some Democrats involved in lobbying on the bill, the defeat of these amendments — plus Specter’s — was not entirely an unhappy result. Some lawyers representing detainees told lawmakers before the vote that they were convinced the Supreme Court would strike down Bush’s version of the bill.

They argued against a compromise — such as Specter’s unoffered amendment — on grounds that it could make the outcome more difficult for the court to reject, a senior Democratic aide said. “We were hearing from some of the constitutional experts that . . . it is better to leave the pig ugly than put lipstick on it,” the aide said, explaining why Democrats did not propose a habeas corpus amendment that might have won.

I understand the logic, but it’s a sad indictment of the hacks in Congress that everyone can just leave the mess to the Supreme Court. That’s certainly no guarantee that the President will be held to his Constitutional limits.

Do it for Thomas Jefferson

Should any polls suggesting that Virginia’s same-sex marriage ban will fail needs to focus on stories like this one from Manassas:

In the past three years, the Manassas City Council has received two applications for home-based massage therapy businesses, and members have approved both. Then Howard Daniel, who is gay, applied.

The backlash against Daniel’s request began last month when nearly two dozen people, many of them members of a local church, spoke in opposition to it at a public hearing. When it came time for the city to decide on Daniel’s application the next week, council members balked and voted instead to consider changing the city’s zoning laws.

The city’s response and the community opposition have blindsided Daniel and his supporters, one of whom had an anti-gay message written on his car.

Manassas should be familiar to anyone who cares about individual rights.

Questions of discrimination are already sensitive in Manassas, which is currently under federal investigation for housing policies that allegedly target Hispanic residents, a violation of the Fair Housing Act.

It’s all okay in this case, though, because the members of the council are principled:

If the council votes on Daniel’s application at next Monday’s meeting, at least three of the council’s six members said they are likely to vote against it. One is Jackson H. Miller, the Republican candidate for the 50th District of the House of Delegates, who introduced the motion to approve another massage therapy business a year earlier.

“I’ve had a mixed record on home businesses,” Miller said. “I’m opposed if neighbors are opposed. That’s been my standard,” he said, noting that he voted with the council earlier this year to reject an application for a home-based optometry clinic.

This majoritarian belief that individual rights are subject to the review of others must stop. Until it does, it just reveals bigotry. It’s that simple.

Will the Decider be a Vetoer?

Hey, guess what? Republicans are economic geniuses. The deficit is down! Of course, it still exists, so there isn’t really much to be happy about. But I’ll let the president bask in his fantasy world:

During his news conference, Bush predicted that the Republicans would maintain control of both the House and the Senate in part because of Democrats’ stand on taxes.

“There’s a difference of opinion in the campaign about taxes,” Bush said. “I would like to … make the tax cuts permanent. And the Democrats will raise taxes.”

President Bush is lying, or at least delusional, if he thinks his actions as president will lead to permanent tax cuts. Trillions in unfunded liabilities means there will be a tax increase coming. Just because it doesn’t happen while he occupies 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue does not mean he did not raise taxes. That doesn’t mean I think Democrats are correct to want to raise taxes (“only” on the “rich”). They’re not, even though they’ll try, because slashing spending is much more immediate, with more predictable results. But with two sides of the budget problem, spending and revenue, focusing on one, however misguided, is better than focusing on neither.

My recommendation? The president should say I told you so when tax increases land on his desk in 2007 as he stamps a veto on the legislation. Rinse and repeat every time the Congress sends the same tax hike his way. Mmmmm, gridlock.

Teaching tolerance one ignorant argument at a time

I’d planned to ignore James Taranto and his Best of the Web Today going forward, as his enthusiastic support for torture leaves him unfit to influence my thinking on anything. However, today’s edition is too instructive to withhold commentary. In reporting that Rep. Jim Kolbe knew of Mark Foley’s behavior, Mr. Taranto wrote:

Kolbe is gay, the only GOP House member to have publicly acknowledged homosexuality. And the revelation got us to thinking: We hear a lot about “homophobia,” or fear of homosexuality, but if Foley’s fellow Republicans failed to be alarmed by his “overly friendly” emails, maybe it was because of something more like homo-obliviousness. Most people just don’t think that much about homosexuality.

I know Republicans have a serious case of “homo-obliviousness,” as evidenced by their cries of foul every time the Democrats propose a Constitutional amendment to prevent same-sex marriage. Oh, wait…

When we first read those emails, we found them odd and a bit creepy. But it occurs to us that if a 50-year-old man sent a 16-year-old girl an email asking her to send a picture of herself, that would have set off loud alarm bells and brightly flashing lights. We know how the mind of a heterosexual man works, being in possession of one, and when a guy asks a gal he barely knows for a picture, it means that he has a sexual or romantic interest in her.

It’s quite important to distinguish between the minds straight and gay men, as we all know they’re different. Good grief. I think we all know how the next paragraph will play out.

When a guy asks another guy for a picture, what does it mean? When we stop to think about it, probably the same thing, but it wasn’t obvious to us because it simply isn’t part of our experience. We suspect the same was true of Hastert and other House leaders. Kolbe, on the other hand, because he is gay, probably understood better what Foley was up to and that it wasn’t good.

This is perhaps the dumbest possible defense of Republican leaders in the House. Believing that Rep. Kolbe would be better positioned to understand Mark Foley’s gay mind because he is also gay is offensive. There is no way for Mr. Taranto to wiggle out. Of course, I doubt he cares, as evidenced by this later comment on a story in which Missouri Senate candidate Claire McCaskill refused to dismiss fundraising help from former President Clinton, which she presumably should’ve done because he was also involved in a lying sex scandal. Parroting Ms. McCaskill’s response with his attempt at humor, Mr. Taranto concludes:

… say what you will about Mark Foley, at least you can trust him with your daughter!

I guess this is supposed to be funny, but I’m not laughing. This scandal is about abuses of power rather than some warped notion that one predator being gay means all gays are predators. That the Republican Party and its apologists don’t understand that speaks volumes.

I’m sure his self-defense is sincere

Rep. Chris Cannon made a few comments about the scandal surrounding former Representative Mark Foley. Consider:

“These kids are actually precocious kids,” Cannon, R-Utah, told KSL Radio’s Nightside. “It looks like uh, maybe this one email is a prank where you had a bunch of kids sitting [around] egging this guy on.”
…

“Frankly, this is the responsibility of the parents,” Cannon said. “If you get online you may find people who are creepy. There are creepy people out there who will do and say creepy things. Avoid them. That’s what you have to do. And maybe we can say that a little more to the pages.”

Personally, I don’t find those comments particularly infused with a “blame the victim” mentality. I think he did try to deflect the scandal a bit by highlighting the alleged prank by one of the pages involved, as well as a common sense statement that does little to address the heart of the scandal, i.e., the alleged cover-up. Whatever. Rep. Cannon is a politician, so this sort of non-response is unsurprising. His response to outrage over his original statements wouldn’t be surprising if he backed up his response with his votes on various matters. Consider:

“The point of what I said is that institutions can’t protect kids in a day when you have instant messaging and cell phones that do texting but also take pictures.,” Cannon said in an interview Friday. “Parents need to take some responsibility and teach their kids what to do.”

Perhaps Rep. Chris Cannon could demonstrate his opinion the next time some inane bill comes before the House to protect kids from the dangers of this or that cultural obscenity, a “danger” I suggest is considerably less harmful than the advances of a sexual predator.

Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan

I guess we can’t legislate vice out of existence

I haven’t written about the Mark Foley scandal because I haven’t had much to add. What could I really say that isn’t common sense? Bad Congressman. Duh. The interesting parts will develop between now and November 7th, at least. The blanket, unthinking conservative attack on gays as a scapegoat will continue, but better bloggers than me already have that covered. What I like is the blame being thrown at Democrats, as if it’s their fault for (allegedly) waiting until now to spring this news. Uh-huh.

The Democratic Party seems intent on replaying this mistake with the Foley affair. Let’s temporarily put aside the timing of the release of the Instant Messages and who-knew-what-when. Let’s just say for the moment that while the media currently hounds the Republican leadership, it’s a safe bet that it wasn’t the Republican leadership that plopped Foley’s IM’s into the lap of ABC News. If whoever was the errand boy delayed delivery to best achieve maximum political benefit, then the Democrats’ newfound status as the party of conventional morality will receive a decided blow.

But the real story here is the party’s eagerness to use victimized children as a campaign prop. The Patty Wettering campaign spot that I linked to earlier today tips the Democrats’ hand. Wettering is best known as a children’s advocate. Her own 11 year old son was kidnapped and never found. Thus, Wettering has the proverbial Cindy Sheehan cloak of putative “absolute moral authority” that the simple-minded so admire.

Yeah, okay, so the Democrats maybe held onto this information to use it an opportune time. Doubtful, but even if true, it’s clear to everyone but the most simple-minded partisan hack that the Republican leadership in Congress knew long ago. Any shame the Democrats may deserve in this, the Republicans have brought far more on themselves. But that’s not key here. What is key is that, if the parties were reversed in this story, we’d be calling this Karl Rove’s “October surprise”. What’s good for the goose…

Hat tip: John Cole

It’s still the warrantless causing the problem

I’m sure I’m stepping into intellectual muck with this, but why should that stop me? This ruling seems absurd:

The Bush administration can continue its warrantless surveillance program while it appeals a judge’s ruling that the program is unconstitutional, a federal appeals court panel ruled Wednesday.

Obviously, the Bush administration’s claims of harm from terrorism should this surveillance program be scuttled (temporarily, at least) have some merit. However, is it too unreasonable to put a halt (permanently temporarily, at least) to the warrantless part of it? Unless the court intends to find that the Fourth Amendment doesn’t cover government action if the spooky people threaten us, I don’t understand why forcing the Bush administration to use existing FISA wiretapping provisions that allow for retroactive warrants would be unreasonable.

The Bush administration’s legal “reasoning” is what’s new here, not the Fourth Amendment. The administration should have to prove itself, not receive a temporary reprieve from obeying the Constitution.

The Decider is the Divider

From the campaign trail:

President Bush ratcheted up his campaign offensive against Democrats on Tuesday with perhaps his bluntest rhetoric yet as he accused them of being “softer” on terrorists and willing to allow attacks on Americans rather than interrogate or spy on the nation’s enemies.
…

“Time and time again, the Democrats want to have it both ways,” he told donors here. “They talk tough on terror, but when the votes are counted, their softer side comes out.”

He added: “If you don’t think we should be listening in on the terrorist, then you ought to vote for the Democrats. If you want your government to continue listening in when al-Qaeda planners are making phone calls into the United States, then you vote Republican.”

It should be obvious that he’s lying about the debate on listening in on terrorists. People like me (not just Democrats) want our intelligence community listening in on the terrorists. We just want President Bush to follow the Constitution he swore to uphold. All of it, of course, but mostly the part about warrants. If it’s obvious they’re terrorists, what’s the difficulty in getting the (retroactive) warrant?

To President Bush’s specific accusation: what about when the hard choices are necessary to win a war? Whose soft side comes out then?

Is it January 2009 yet?

State lotteries are free to corrupt

We all know that Congress wants to protect us from ourselves, even when we’re not putting ourselves in danger, but shouldn’t someone in power call Rep. Jim Leach on his defense of the online gambling bill?

Proponents of the measure heralded its passage as a victory for family values and a blow against an addictive vice. Jim Leach, the Iowa Republican who sponsored the bill, said it will prevent casinos from further extending their corruptive reach. “Religious leaders of all denominations and faiths are seeing gambling problems erode family values,” Leach said in a statement. “If Congress had not acted, gamblers would soon be able to place bets not just from home computers, but from their cell phones while they drive home from work or their BlackBerries as they wait in line at the movies.”

Two glaring holes in Rep. Leach’s reasoning jump out. First, aside from the silly, meaningless declaration that “gambling problems erode family values,” (“Sorry, son, we don’t have any family values left. Jimmy from down the street, his father has a gambling problem that eroded what we had left. The good news is I needn’t bear responsibility for your well-being. There’s a prostitute in your room, get going.”), he does not provide any data support for his claim that religious leaders are seeing gambling problems. Has he heard from one religious leader from each denomination? A hundred? A thousand? Or is it just a line of unsubstantiated crap that he can throw to his base to encourage them to give Republicans another term of control?

I suspect he has no data, but even if he does, so what? People should be free to spend their money as they see fit. If potential harm dismisses any claim to liberty, why isn’t Congress banning every other activity which could cause harm. Let’s go all the way, because we don’t want to erode family values. People drown in bath tubs. Let’s ban bath oils, which only encourage people to engage in the dangerous activity of taking baths. And showers are out, because people could slip and die. Sponge baths (no tubs or buckets – drowning risk – water faucet only) only.

Second, Rep. Leach’s examples of gambling addiction out of control are lacking. While driving? Seriously? Let localities ban cell phone use while driving if it’s a safety hazard. That’s not a federal issue. And gambling by BlackBerry while waiting in a movie line? Ummm, if the person is so addicted and out of control, how is he able to step away from the BlackBerry gambling long enough to watch a movie? Again, though, if that’s how someone wants to spend his time, so what? Clearly liberty now only extends to the minimum boundaries of what Rep. Leach likes.

Source: Wil Wheaton, blogging at Card Squad