Enemy Combatant
Sunday, June 27, 2004
Fahrenheit: The Four-One-One:
My wife and I saw the movie early this afternoon, in a packed theater in Santa Rosa. I second a lot of what others have said about it, and just want to note that Moore makes two salient points I haven't really heard expressed so succinctly before:
1. The double-standard under which Bush's immediate post-9-11 actions have been judged: "Imagine what would have been the reaction, in the days following the Murrah Building bombing in Oklahoma City, if Clinton had made extraordinary arrangements to fly Timothy McVeigh's family out of the country?" Followed by a stock movie shot of villagers putting torch to pyre . . .
2. Bush has broken even the harsh bargain we've made with our "all volunteer" (read: impoverished, poorly-educated, with few choices) military: "In exchange for them sacrificing their time, their efforts, sometimes even their very lives, we make them a bargain: We won't send them into harm's way unless it's absolutely necessary."
I very clearly heard Moore say that Saudis were allowed to fly out of the country AFTER September 13th, so I'm not sure what Michael Isikoff's complaint is about (the movie's truthful information wasn't imparted emphatically enough to overcome his cognitive dissonance?). Lastly, I'd point out that the gruesome visage of neither Karen Hughes nor Lynn Cheney appears in the movie, so -- thankfully -- it avoids an NC-17 rating.
Saturday, June 26, 2004
The Difference Between Michael Savage and Tom Metzger? You And I Own Savage's (FCC) License To Spew Racial Hatred
From Media Matters For America:
On his June 23 radio show, host Michael Savage asserted that only when he sees Muslim extremists "hanging from lampposts in the entire Middle East . . . with their guts hanging out, then I'll believe that there's a difference between radical Islam and the rest of Islam over there."
Compare that to this, about Tom Metzger:
In 1988, three young skinheads in Portland, Oregon - members of a group called East Side White Pride - used a baseball bat to beat an Ethiopian student to death. The three were caught and convicted - that was the easy part. The important fact for [the Southern Poverty Law Center], however, was that East Side White Pride was affiliated with a much larger and more powerful group called the White Aryan Resistance (WAR), based in California.
Tom Metzger, WAR's leader, trained young racists in techniques of violence and incitement, and then sent them out to other areas to train others in their turn. [ . . . ]
One of the three youths convicted in the case had, in fact, at 16 been recruited and trained by John Metzger, Tom Metzger's son and the leader of WAR Youth, and then dispatched to Portland to make contact with East Side White Pride. SPLC was even able to obtain the letter of introduction he brought from WAR to ease his acceptance into the Portland group. Another of the killers - the one who actually swung the bat - called Tom Metzger from jail after his arrest. There was enough evidence to pursue the Metzgers and WAR for their responsibility in the crime.
Using Oregon's existing wrongful death statute, the Center sued WAR on behalf of the murdered student's family. SPLC was able to demonstrate that, even though the Metzgers were 1,500 miles away at the time of the murder, and didn't know it was being committed, they nonetheless shared in responsibility for it as a result of their urging and training the ringleader to commit this sort of violent, hate-inspired act. By careful detective work, and by gaining the help of the ringleader, who gave evidence against his former mentors, The Center obtained a $12.5 million settlement for the Ethiopian student's family, and effectively put WAR out of business.
The question is, do we have to wait for some Savage acolyte to actually kill a Muslim or an Arab, before we decide this kind of racist incitement isn't deserving of the taxpayers' license to use OUR public airwaves?
(And as a cardcarrying member of the ACLU, I can say I have no problem with kicking Savage off the air for spewing this kind of hatred. He can stand up on a soapbox in a public park, to say all this, if he wants. I just don't think he deserves nationwide syndication to broadcast such filth -- and it's a helluva better example of a "clear and present danger" to our youth than, say, catching a fleeting glimpse of Janet Jackson's titty.)
Thursday, June 24, 2004
The Bushies Have Twisted The Law Into A Pretzel That We're All Choking On Now
First this, from the Washington Post:
U.S. Immunity in Iraq Will Go Beyond June 30
The Bush administration has decided to take the unusual step of bestowing on its own troops and personnel immunity from prosecution by Iraqi courts for killing Iraqis or destroying local property after the occupation ends and political power is transferred to an interim Iraqi government, U.S. officials said.
The administration plans to accomplish that step -- which would bypass the most contentious remaining issue before the transfer of power -- by extending an order that has been in place during the year-long occupation of Iraq. Order 17 gives all foreign personnel in the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority immunity from "local criminal, civil and administrative jurisdiction and from any form of arrest or detention other than by persons acting on behalf of their parent states."
Sure; why the hell not? This administration has been off in the legal Twilight Zone since Scalia stopped the vote count. Why not declare yourself immune from the Geneva Conventions? And why not bestow upon yourself an immunity that only the "sovereign" power can give?
Next week, they'll repeal the laws of gravity, too . . . (That should help with battling the insurgents!)
Wednesday, June 23, 2004
More Fuel for the Brainwash
You know, these [U.S. soldiers in Iraq] are being fired at every day. I'm talking about people having a good time, these people, you ever heard of emotional release? You ever heard of the need to blow some steam off?
-- Rush Limbaugh, on his radio show, May 4
In the interest of blowing off steam, I say hog-tie him. Naked, that is. And snug his boil-scarred, pill-popping, chickenhawk ass right up to a very naked, very sweaty, and ultimately very jiggly Newt Gingrich.
-- Deek, a poster at Atrios's Eschaton, June 24
Tuesday, June 22, 2004
Hello, Senator Obama!
That giant sucking sound you hear is all the air quickly escaping from Jack Ryan's Senate campaign in Illinois. Seems before he and actress Jeri Ryan got divorced, he tried to drag her off to sex clubs in New York and Paris, for a little Horizontal Tango in public. Quelle romantique!
Saturday, June 19, 2004
9-11-01: A Tragedy of Errors
THIS is where the real scandal lies: Even if you were a rabid Bush supporter, the 9-11 timeline the Commission has put together should give you pause. Every single thing that could go wrong, did go wrong that morning, it seems. "Shoot-down" authorization didn't seem to be made until all the planes had crashed, and in any event, was never communicated to the fighter pilots. Radio contact between the FAA and NORAD indicates disbelief that this wasn't a drill, and repeated confusion over where, and how many, planes had been hijacked. Fighter pilots, once finally scrambled, searched the skies over Boston, in vain, looking for the "phantom" Flight 11, which had already been the first to crash into the Towers. A second set of fighters were scrambled from Andrews AFB, evidently "outside the military chain of command" entirely. Ever see a dog chase its tail?
Bushco, on the morning of 9-11, flunked the most basic test of a national government, the one role even the most rightwing conservative must concede it irreducibly has: Defending us against foreign attack. If this timeline proves essentially correct, we've got MUCH bigger problems on our hands than whether Cheney got Bush's OK first for the "shootdown" order, whether Rummy was "out of the loop," etc. Al Qaeda's diabolically brilliant ju-jitsu move showed that when it comes to protecting us against a catastrophic attack (set into motion by fewer than two dozen men with nothing more than boxcutters), we can't even walk and chew gum at the same time.
Saturday, June 12, 2004
Meanwhile, Back At The Worst. Presidency. Ever.
Now that the weeklong media Reagasm seems to have spent itself, we can turn our attention back to the ongoing war crimes coverup, where I predict Bush has got a reeeely bad week ahead of him: Revelations both that the torture was so much worse than we've seen so far (women and children, now) AND documentation that it all was approved at the highest levels.
Think about it for a minute, folks: A legal memo just surfaced arguing that these acts WOULD be war crimes EXCEPT if the president expressly approved them, and suddenly -- who'da thunk? -- these savage practices started being imposed everywhere -- in Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, the federal detention center for illegal immigrants in NY . . .
. . . I guess someone should have explained that part to Chimpy: When you take the gloves off -- you leave your fingerprints all over everything.
Wednesday, June 09, 2004
Finally, some good news!
The grapevine around the Supreme Court (which, I assume, leaks like a sieve) indicates Bush will likely lose all three detainee cases pending there -- and soon, before the Court goes on hiatus at the end of June:
While Supreme Court forecasts are hazardous at best, the conventional wisdom among former Supreme Court clerks is that recent disclosures about the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and internal administration memos disavowing compliance with international treaties involving treatment of prisoners has badly hurt the government’s arguments before the court and turned two key “swing” justices—Sandra Day O’Connor and Anthony Kennedy—against it, the lawyer said.
Insider thinking within Justice has the Supreme Court voting six to three against the administration on Guantanamo and by a perhaps even larger margin in the Padilla and Hamdi cases.
Ladies and gentlemen, we may just win back our Constitution, after all . . .
Now We Know Why They're Dumping Cheney:
Hey, it had to happen. Get them boys over at Archer Daniels Midland to do some "sweat equity" work toward Pioneer status.
Military Lawyers Smoke Crack, Write Torture Memo
The latest legal memo to surface, the one claiming that Bush in wartime has greater powers than did the English kings under the Magna Carta (see particularly paragraphs 38 through 40), is getting the "rubber hose treatment" in the legal blogosphere. As well it should.
Aside from ignoring completely the Supreme Court's "Steel Seizure" case from the Truman administration, establishing that the President has no inherent wartime authority to do what Congress expressly forbids (which should shoot down the argument that there's "No Controlling Legal Authority"), this memo also tries to revive the moribund Nuremberg defense for those constitutional imbeciles who are expected to claim "they were just following [Bush's] orders" in the inevitable war crimes trials to follow.
If I may indulge in a bit of legalese, this memo is what we lawyers like to call "unbe-fucking-lievable." Whoever wrote it ought to be disbarred; whoever followed it needs to go to jail.
Write your Representatives and Senators, people. In longhand. On paper. Or call them on the telephone. Tell them -- in a calm, reasoned and polite manner -- that they need to grow a backbone, and to start the process of removing this tyrant and his entire vile and treasonous entourage from office immediately.
Saturday, June 05, 2004
Is Nothing Sacred Anymore?
The only unabashed socialist in the U.S. Congress -- and he's shilling for Wal-Mart in Vermont? Say it ain't so, Bernie!
Thursday, June 03, 2004
Was Today Bush's D-Day?
What a day it was: Tenet takes a powder, while Bush "lawyers up" in the Plame investigation.
Coinky-dink? Maybe . . . maybe not.
Wednesday, June 02, 2004
The Most Sensible Politician Ever To Call Crawford, TX Home
is not who you think:
Crawford may be the heart of Bush country, but the town's mayor says John Kerry is the best choice for president.
"I don't see where I'm better off than I was four years ago," Robert Campbell said Tuesday. "I don't see where the city is any better off."
The Kerry campaign recently listed Campbell as one of 100 black mayors around the country - seven of them Texans - who support the Massachusetts senator over President Bush. But the campaign has not focused particular attention on the endorsement.
Tuesday, June 01, 2004
Uh, right. Hand us that back, too, OK? And, from now on, don't touch anything!
GOP Spin Machine (Dutifully Drinking Their Kool-Aid) Announce In Unison That Gore Is "Crazy"
Ah, the Mighty One-Note Wurlitzer! Bob Somerby over at the Daily Howler, and a new upstart --Media Matters (scroll down to May 28th) -- pretty much nail the wingnuts' lying asses on this one.
They should know better than to try to practice Soviet psychiatry (political dissent = psychosis) without a license!
