Putting 'well-regulated' back into the Second Amendment

[via Prose Before Hoes]

Texas man questioned about gun-nut ricin letters

NPR: “Authorities, including the FBI, questioned a New Boston, Texas, man Thursday night in connection with an investigation of ricin-laced letters sent to government officials, including President Barack Obama,” KSLA-TV in Shreveport, La., reports.

According to ABC News, a source familiar with the case says investigators consider the man to be a person of interest at this time. The network writes that the source says the man’s wife “called authorities after she noticed strange material in her refrigerator, and noticed computer searches for ricin.”

This news from Texas relates to three letters that surfaced this week — one sent to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, one sent to a gun control group the mayor supports and a third that was mailed to President Obama. Those letters, as NPR’s Dina Temple-Raston told us Thursday, were similar and were reportedly postmarked in Louisiana. New Boston is located near the point where Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana meet.

Whether this is the guy or not remains to be seen (there’s a reason why “person of interest” and “suspect” are two different terms), but the initial evidence is compelling. “The agents are questioning a man from New Boston, Texas, whose wife called authorities after she noticed strange material in her refrigerator, and noticed computer searches for ricin,” ABC reports. You have to assume that she added this up with the statements and/or actions of her husband in the past and that she reported him to authorities because she believed he had finally done more than just shoot his mouth off.

Again, I would very much like to see gun lobbyists and their defenders in DC get some extra media scrutiny for this. Does the argument that the Second Amendment gives citizens the right to kill “tyrants” give this particular citizen the right to attempt assassination? If not, why not? And if not, when does a citizen have the right to kill themselves a tyrant? How does this interpretation of the Second Amendment actually work? It’s awfully easy to talk about it in broad terms, but when you get down to the specifics, what we’re really talking about here is allowing the assassin’s veto. I would very much like to hear someone explain why one disgruntled citizen has the right to overturn an election and the votes of millions of other citizens. And I would very much like to hear what they’d plead to avoid prison — or even the death penalty — for the act. Not guilty by reason of tyranny? Who’s ever pleaded that?

When you start talking about it in these terms, it’s pretty clear that this most definitely was not what the founders intended, because there’s no legal mechanism to deal with exercising the “right” to murder someone you consider a tyrant. The text of the Second Amendment just doesn’t support this interpretation.

What the text of the Constitution does support is the establishment of a “well-regulated militia,” to reduce the need for a standing army and to be able to respond to local crises in an age before interstates, planes, and engines made it possible to move an army into an area quickly. It is an anachronism mostly, like the Third Amendment which allows people to refuse to quarter Federal troops. It’s the solution to a problem that no longer exists.

Why else would the gun lobby and their goons argue that an amendment that contains the term “well-regulated militia” keeps government from regulating guns? It’s a sham. It’s a sham to sell as many guns and as much ammo as possible to panicky cowards who think danger lurks around every corner and that life should be entirely risk-free. For them “freedom” means everyone holds a gun to everyone else’s head, because people are inherently evil and only the threat of imminent death keeps us from devolving into chaos and anarchy. The lie is that private gun ownership is the only thing that keeps us from being overrun by criminal and terrorists and Joseph Adolph Hitlerstalin. We’re a nation of laws, not gunmen.

If it were anything but a sham, the person responsible for these letters would be able to walk away after pleading tyranny. This wouldn’t be terrorism, it’d be heroism. And that’s just not going to happen. The law simply does not support that interpretation of the Constitution.

Nor should it.

[photo via Wikimedia Commons]

NC GOP seeks to unconstitutionally establish a state religion

Raw Story:

Republican lawmakers in North Carolina have proposed a bill that they say would allow to the state to establish an official religion and defy the Constitution of the United States.

Nine state House members joined with Republican state Reps. Harry Warren and Carl Ford of Rowan County to sponsor House Bill 494 in response to a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) last month that sought to stop Christian prayers at official Rowan County government meetings.

In 2009, a court found that the Forsyth County Board of Commissioners had violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment by using sectarian prayers to open official meetings.

In his ruling, Magistrate Judge Trevor Sharp wrote that Forsyth County prayers "display a preference for Christianity over other religions by the government" and "alienates those whose beliefs differ from Christian beliefs and divides citizens along religious lines."

Warren and Ford's bill would declare that North Carolina is "sovereign" and any court ruling about religion is nullified by the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution.

There really is so much that wrong about this. I've joked that the Republican Constitution reads, "Everyone gets a gun. Praise Jesus. The end." Nothing demonstrates the truth behind that more than this. While Republicans are freaking out over guns control and (wrongly) portraying it as unconstitutional, these guys are lining up to back an unconstitutional law. In fact, it's so unconstitutional that if you wanted to think of some crazy hypothetical example of unconstitutionality, this would be on the short list of examples you might come up with. Republicans are passionate defenders of the Constitution - right up until the point that they want to launch an assault on it.

And the circular logic is just amazing; that you can use an amendment to the Bill of Rights to nullify an amendment to the Bill of Rights. You have to stop trying to follow the reasoning before you get dizzy and puke.

Just when you think state level Republicans couldn't get more crackpottish or hypocritical, they pull something like this. Once again, just when you think you've hit the absolute bottom, you learn that there is no bottom. The GOP talent for being jawdroppingly wrong, backwards, and religiously oppressive is, in fact, endless.

Adventures in selective reading by gun fanatics

Talking Points Memo:

Larry Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America, said Sunday that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was wrong to assume that the government had the right to place limits on the Second Amendment. ”He was not speaking from a constitutional perspective,” Pratt said.

“The amendment does provide it’s own degree of scrutiny: It says, ‘shall not be infringed,’” Pratt said on “Fox News Sunday” after host Chris Wallace read a quote from a 2008 case in which Scalia wrote that the Second Amendment was not “unlimited.”

First off, when you’re to the right of Antonin Scalia, you’re way the hell and gone out in Lala Land.

Second, the amendment also says “well-regulated,” which you’ve got to assume means… well… regulated pretty well. Regulations are legal limits and Scalia is right; the Constitution does allow limits on gun ownership — in fact, it specifically requires them.

[image source]

Feinstein on Wikileaks: It's Only Journalism if I Say it's Journalism

Sen. Diane Feinstein in the Wall Street Journal:

When WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange released his latest document trove -- more than 250,000 secret State Department cables -- he intentionally harmed the U.S. government. The release of these documents damages our national interests and puts innocent lives at risk. He should be vigorously prosecuted for espionage.

The law Mr. Assange continues to violate is the Espionage Act of 1917. That law makes it a felony for an unauthorized person to possess or transmit "information relating to the national defense which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation."

The Espionage Act also makes it a felony to fail to return such materials to the U.S. government. Importantly, the courts have held that "information relating to the national defense" applies to both classified and unclassified material. Each violation is punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

No doubt aware of this law, and despite firm warnings, Mr. Assange went ahead and released the cables on Nov. 28.

Glenn Greenwald responds:

...Legal experts overwhelmingly believe that any such prosecution under that law would be extremely difficult and "extremely dangerous," but that's of no concern to the Surveillance-State-protecting, Iraq-War-supporting, defense-contractor-plutocrat:  the "liberal" Democratic Senator from California.  To argue this, she invokes the most tired and simple-minded platitude beloved by all those who want to curtail basic press and speech freedoms:  "Just as the First Amendment is not a license to yell 'Fire!' in a crowded theater, it is also not a license to jeopardize national security."

Every line of pro-prosecution rationale cited by Feinstein applies equally to journalists -- including especially the newspapers from around the world which are publishing all of the same diplomatic cables as WikiLeaks is, and which are publishing them before WikiLeaks even does.   How can it possibly be that WikiLeaks should be prosecuted for espionage, but not The New York Times, or The Guardian, or any other newspaper that publishes these cables?

In 2006, Alberto Gonzales threatened to prosecute The New York Times for revealing Bush's illegal NSA program, and The Weekly Standard ran numerous articles calling for the prosecution of NYT journalists and editors under the Espionage Act for having done so.  Bill Bennett demanded the prosecution of The Washington Post's Dana Priest for revealing the CIA black sites.  How can all the Good Democrats who condemned that mentality possibly not condemn Dianne Feinstein and those who think like her?  What's the difference?

For the record, you do get to yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater when there's actually a fire in that crowded theater. And you get to do it without being charged with arson. The only distinction that Feinstein makes that would separate Assange from a journalist is her say-so: "Mr. Assange claims to be a journalist and would no doubt rely on the First Amendment to defend his actions. But he is no journalist: He is an agitator intent on damaging our government, whose policies he happens to disagree with, regardless of who gets hurt." First Amendment guarantees of a free press don't apply -- so long as a sitting senator arbitrarily declares you "not a journalist."

Think what you like about Wikileaks and what they do, but this is a dangerous and irresponsible argument.



UPDATE: Joe Lieberman jumps on the "let's ignore the First Amendment" bandwagon and takes Feinstein's argument to the next logical step, suggesting that media outlets like the New York Times could be prosecuted for covering details of the leaks.

Ground Zero Should be a Glenn Beck-Free Zone

I wish I'd come across this when I was writing the roundup today. Cenk Uygur and Dylan Rattigan discuss the propriety of allowing Glenn Beck anywhere near Ground Zero.

The only thing I'd add here is that Dylan Ratigan has a really bad habit of asking absurdly long, complicated questions. Whenever I see him, I always wind up thinking, "Shut up and get to the question mark already!" Seriously, is he the only guy at MSNBC who's paid by the word?

That aside, if you see Glenn Beck near Ground Zero, it's your patriotic duty to walk up to him and say, "Git! Git!" It's not the law, but it is what's right. You know that in your special American heart.


ETA: Whoops! Almost forgot. This came to my attention as a twitter petition. Go to http://act.ly/2c0 and reweet it to sign. Maybe we can get this to be law after all.

Or definitely not. But that doesn't stop it from being funny.

Do We Really Want the President to be Just Another Pundit?

Washington Post's Michael Gerson brings some sanity, perspective, and much needed reality to the Cordoba House debate and the president's statement on the subject. As pundits, bloggers, and political opportunists write column mile after column mile hammering Obama for standing with the Constitution, he reminds us that the president is actually The President, not some idiot talking head on cable news or a blogger with an ax to grind.

[T]he view from the Oval Office differs from the view from a keyboard. A president does not merely have opinions; he has duties to the Constitution and to the citizens he serves -- including millions of Muslim citizens. His primary concern is not the sifting of sensitivities but the protection of the American people and the vindication of their rights.

By this standard, Obama had no choice but the general path he took. No president, of any party or ideology, could tell millions of Americans that their sacred building desecrates American holy ground. This would understandably be taken as a presidential assault on the deepest beliefs of his fellow citizens. It would be an unprecedented act of sectarianism, alienating an entire faith tradition from the American experiment. If a church or synagogue can be built on a commercial street in Lower Manhattan, declaring a mosque off-limits would officially equate Islam with violence and terrorism. No president would consider making such a statement. And those commentators who urge the president to do so fundamentally misunderstand the presidency itself.

In short, the people expecting Obama to come out swinging against Cordoba House think of him as just another political blowhard, no more important to the country than Rush Limbaugh. They have a deep, deep misunderstanding of what America actually is -- not just of what the Constitution says.

The Right Wing and the First Amendment -- Not the Best of Friends

Not surprisingly, President Obama's defense of the First Amendment Friday really got the right worked up -- and not in a good way.

CBS News:

On [Sunday's edition of Face the Nation], Republican strategist Ed Rollins, who was the National Campaign Director for the Reagan-Bush campaign in 1984 and the national campaign chairman for the Mike Huckabee presidential campaign in 2007, even called Obama's comments "probably the dumbest thing that any president has said or candidate has said since Michael Dukakis said it was okay to burn the flag. And it was very similar."

"This is an emotional issue," Rollins said. "Intellectually the president may be right. But this is an emotional issue. People who lost kids, brothers, sisters, fathers, what have you, do not want that mosque in New York."

"Intellectually the president may be right"; that's kind of the whole freakin' point, isn't it? The First Amendment exists to protect the rights of the minority from the whims of the majority. We're supposed to make emotionalism primary now? Since when?

I remember, in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, Republican pundits expounding on the rationality of the right. The left were being all emotional about things, just because it was a sure bet that a helluva lot of people were going to die based on incredibly flimsy evidence. The Republicans were the rational ones, they argued, because the only logical response to Bush administration propaganda was to freak out, crap your pants, and crown Bush Emperor or the Universe. At least Rollins is being more honest about his argument these days.

Bonus fun: "People who lost kids, brothers, sisters, fathers, what have you, do not want that mosque in New York." Is it the State of New York that you're proposing we make a First Amendment-free zone now or is it just the city, Ed? If you could clear that up for us, that'd be great.

Former Republican National Committee chair Ed Gillespie also weighed in:

"I thought it was an incredibly revealing comment by the president. You know, he basically said that the 70% of Americans who are opposed to this controversial imam building this controversial mosque at ground zero are seeking to deny the religious freedom of Muslims in this country. That's how he cast it," Gillespie said.

"It was said in the reporting this morning that he made a conscious decision to weigh in on it in that regard. I think it tells you that he has a very disdainful view of the American people. And I think that's one of the reasons his favorability ratings have come down, not just his job approval ratings. People see that in him. There's a kind of a condescension toward Americans that they don't like."

Again, that 70% are against it is irrelevant -- if even true. FOX News polling shows that 64% think it's "wrong" to build the community center near Ground Zero, but that 61% agree that "the Muslim group has the right to build a mosque there."

In any case, the First Amendment says what the First Amendment says. It doesn't say, "Go ahead and repress a minority if the majority wants to." And the only reason Feisal Abdul Rauf is a "controversial imam" is because fearmongering demagogues keep telling everyone that. The fact is that he's a moderate-to-progressive Muslim who'd worked closely with the Bush administration. Now he's a radical just this side of Osama Bin Laden -- how's that for gratitude? Note to minority groups; Republicans are not your friends. As soon as they need to demonize you, under the bus you will go. Ask Hispanics, Muslims, and African-Americans.

"This is America, and Our Commitment to Religious Freedom must be Unshakeable"

President Obama on Cordoba House, the place of Islam in America, and what this nation really stands for:

Crooks and Liars has the transcript, if you need one. Of course, all the rightwing blogs are going completely mental over the address, which proves -- for them -- that the president is a secret Muslim terr'ist bent on destroying America. At this point, I'm having a little trouble giving a damn what these losers think.

Either we stand by our core principles or we don't. I don't care how deep the critics' bigotry or cowardice runs, we don't throw aside freedom because a bunch of terrified haters have decided it's time to freak out.

Teabaggers Hate on The Constitution

This morning, I wrote a story about how FOX believes they've detected hypocrisy from the left on illegal immigration and how FOX is wrong about that. Now, thanks to Think Progress, we have some actual hypocrisy about the issue -- from the right.

Imagine, if you will, a bunch of teabaggers in Ramona, California. They're sitting around with their signs about how Obama and Democrats are ignoring the Constitution and, therefore, hate America and are Nazi/Commies. Then Rep. Duncan Hunter gets up on stage and says this:

QUESTION: Would you support deportation of natural-born American citizens that are the children of illegal aliens?

HUNTER: I would have to, yes. [...] We simply cannot afford what we're doing right now. California is going under. How much in debt are we? Twenty billion dollars? [...] And we're not being mean, we're just saying it takes more than just walking across the border to become an American citizen. It's what's in our souls.

OK, first off, Hunter's argument about the "American soul" is laughable on its face. We're talking about children born in America to illegal immigrants -- they didn't just "walk across" any border. Hunter's reputation for being not exactly bright isn't damaged by this statement.

Second, he says we ought to deport children of undocumented parents who were born in the US. He gets wild applause, whistles, and cheers from his Constitution-lovin' audience. There's just one little hitch here; turns out that isn't Constitutional. Again, Hunter's reputation for being an idiot is safe, as is the collective rep of his teabagger audience.

So, for those keeping score at home, teabaggers love the Constitution -- until they think it's a bad idea. Then they don't love it so much. More evidence that teabaggers think "Unconstitutional" is just a shorthand for "stuff I don't like."

Healthcare Reform Lawsuit by State Attorneys General is Political Theater

The Hill's Congress Blog has a sort of "question of the day" post they call "The Big Question." Every day, they get a bunch of policy wonks, partisans, bloggers, and experts to answer a question. I usually don't pay it much attention, because it's pretty light on the "expert" category and heavy on the "partisan" category.

This one is no different. Today's "Big Question" was "Thirteen state attorneys general have filled [sic] a lawsuit claiming that the new healthcare reforms are unconstitutional. Is this a real legal challenge or a political stunt?" They asked it of the President of the John Birch Society, a wonk at the Center for American Progress, two bloggers, two talk radio hosts, a Democratic strategist, a political science professor, and a law professor. So let's separate the wheat from the chaff.

Frank Askin, professor of law at Rutgers University, said:
I would call it a political stunt. They are confusing their policy preferences and constitutional law. While I would be the last one to provide assurances as to what the right-wing Supreme Court majority might do (I was certain the court would never stop the counting of Florida ballots and the appoint George W. Bush president in 2000), there is no support in constitutional law or history for the challenges to the healthcare legislation.

[...]

Alan Abramowitz, professor of political science at Emory University, said:
In my opinion it is clearly more of a political stunt. There is little or no chance that the courts will rule the healthcare reform law unconstitutional. I believe that all of these state AGs are Republicans and that several of them are either running for reelection or for governor. These lawsuits are a good way of building support among conservative primary voters and donors, although they carry some risk of alienating voters who stand to benefit from provisions such as allowing coverage of children up to age 26, prescription aid to seniors in the donut hole, and barring exclusion of children with preexisting medical conditions from coverage. 

So, if you limit it to people who'd actually know and would give you an honest answer without spin, the answer is "Yeah, it's political theater." The answer from the Bircher is especially entertaining in its over-the-top paranoid insanity (actual quote: "The time for reversing our nation's plunge into totalitarian government is fleeting."), but giving him as much authority as a law professor is incredibly misleading and serves the public very, very poorly.

Sometimes, the reader has to be their own editor. Whittle this down to the non-propaganda and the answer becomes pretty clear.

Griper Blade: The United States of God

My earlier views of the unsoundness of the Christian scheme of salvation and the human origin of the scriptures, have become clearer and stronger with advancing years and I see no reason for thinking I shall ever change them.
-Abraham Lincoln, to Judge JS Wakefield, after Willie Lincoln's death in 1862.

It's unfortunate for the religious right that history exists. They'd have you believe that every President of the United State spent all of their time thinking about God -- what God wanted from them, what God wanted from the country, what they could do that would please God, etc. George Washington, for example, shuffled around his office on his knees, hand clenched in constant prayer, fulfilling his duty as elected lead shaman of a new democratic republic. Every president thereafter followed Washington's lead.

But the hole in this rewritten history is that there have been four presidents -- at least -- who weren't Christian. John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Millard Fillmore, and William Howard Taft were all Unitarian. Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Andrew Johnson didn't belong to any church at all. Turns out a lot of heathens have been elected lead shaman.

That someone bothered to write these sort of facts down represents a problem for right wing revisionists who claim the US is -- and always was -- a "Christian nation." But what has been written can be erased, truths are only problematic so long as they're known. The ongoing effort to transform a secular government based on law and reason into a big church based on reverence for Jesus is a big project. Every unfortunate fact must be hidden -- preferably by painting over them with new "facts."

And here we come to Virginia Rep. Randy Forbes. Not surprisingly, Forbes is a Republican and a loyal and reliable foot soldier for the religious right. History offends Forbes' Christian sensibilities, so history must be changed. Forbes has a plan to do just that... [CLICK TO READ FULL POST]

Griper Blade: The Tyranny of a Short-Term Majority

A majority taken collectively is only an individual, whose opinions, and frequently whose interests, are opposed to those of another individual, who is styled a minority. If it be admitted that a man possessing absolute power may misuse that power by wronging his adversaries, why should not a majority be liable to the same reproach? Men do not change their characters by uniting with one another; nor does their patience in the presence of obstacles increase with their strength. For my own part, I cannot believe it; the power to do everything, which I should refuse to one of my equals, I will never grant to any number of them.
-Alexis de Tocqueville, "Democracy in America."

That reasoned argument against what de Tocqueville called "the tyranny of the majority" is a total crock. A bunch of hooey. Liberal claptrap from a French intellectual with no real understanding of democracy. Never mind that James Madison agreed in the Federalist Papers, warning of "the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority" -- Madison was just some loonie leftist. The majority is all-powerful. If you can get enough people to agree with you, you can do anything you want to anybody. There are no such thing as rights, only privileges that can be voted away at any time. Get enough people together and you can even take someone's First Amendment rights away -- if people don't like what you're saying, they can use the power of democracy to shut you the hell up.

So sayeth that great American patriot Kenneth Starr. Best known for an unsuccessful witch hunt against then-President Bill Clinton, Starr is the dean of Pepperdine law school -- which makes you wonder what kind of education Pepperdine law students get for their money.

At issue was California's Prop. 8 -- a ban of same sex marriage. The state Supreme Court had previously ruled that gays and lesbians had the right to marriage. Prop. 8, which passed as a referendum, would remove that right and retroactively undo the marriages that have occurred since the court's ruling.

But, since the court ruled that marriage was a right, not a privilege, Prop. 8 became a classic example of the "tyranny of the majority" -- with a simple majority vote, Californians took a right away from a minority group. The ballot measure is now in California's Supreme Court, where Ken Starr -- representing Prop. 8 supporters -- argued yesterday that there's really no such thing as "rights." At least, not if you're in the minority.

"Swallow the bitter pill and act with diligence if one is weak, enjoy all one's rights if powerful: that's my doctrine," wrote the Marquis de Sade. Starr apparently agrees... [CLICK TO READ FULL POST]

Griper Blade: A Trickle When We Need a Flood

It's one of those good news/bad news things. Yesterday, the Justice Department released nine of the Bush administration's secret memos [all PDF] detailing legal opinions on the president's "War on Terror." What they reveal is a frightening disregard for American principles. Knowing that some of these memos would eventually come out, the Bush administration renounced the arguments put forward in them -- days before the new president took office.

McClatchy Newspapers:

In the waning days of the Bush administration, the Justice Department renounced some of its own sweeping legal justifications, which were enacted after the 9/11 attacks, for spying on Americans and for harsh interrogations of terror suspects.

In a memo written five days before President Barack Obama took office, Steven Bradbury, the then-principal deputy assistant attorney general, warned that a series of opinions issued secretly by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel "should not be treated as authoritative for any purpose."

Bradbury said he wrote the 11-page document to confirm that "certain propositions" in memos issued by the Justice Department from 2001 to 2003 "do not reflect the current views of this office."

They were just spitballin', throwing ideas at the wall to see which stuck, running them up the flag pole to see who saluted. Never mind that, from 2001 to 2003, those legal opinions remained unopposed by the Bush administration -- unused bullets in their arsenal of legal defense.

And, believe it or not, this is the good news part -- that these memos saw the light of day at all. The bad news is that the Obama administration is sitting on "dozens" more... [CLICK TO READ FULL POST]

Choosing Ignorance

One of my favorite openings for one of my posts was written in July, 2007. That post, titled "Monument to BS Works Out Pretty Much the Way You'd Expect," was a post about the opening of the Creation Museum.

Just outside of Cincinnati -- in Petersburg, Kentucky -- stands a 60,000 square foot, $27 million monument to gullibility, fanaticism, and the ability to believe the stupidest damned things despite all evidence to the contrary. Answers in Genesis's Creation Museum features exhibits showing humans co-existing with dinosaurs, offers 'proof' that there was once a global flood, and warns us not to judge Cain for marrying his sister.

Yeah, it's that nuts.

Why revisit a museum that has an exhibit of a triceratops wearing a saddle and tells people that dinosaurs were packed into a 450X75X45 ark? Because today is the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin. The good news is that more people believe in evolution than this stuff, the bad news is that neither belief holds a majority. According to Gallup, fully 25% of Americans believe that creationism offers a better explanation of all the species that populate the planet than evolution. Put more simply, a quarter of Americans believe that it's all explained by magic, as opposed to a complex scientific system that actually works in the real world -- evolutionary biology is an applied science. It's like disbelieving in math, despite the fact that people use it constantly to come to working answers. If it works, if it generates results, it's obviously true... [CLICK TO READ FULL POST]

Griper Blade: There's Only One Side to This Story

It's easy to look at a new Rasmussen poll and think that the United States is no longer a nation of laws. In that poll, 54% think war crimes weren't committed by the Bush administration. Worse, only 25% do. 70% believe "it would be bad for the United States if the former president and senior administration officials were brought to trial for war crimes," with even 54% of Democrats agreeing.

But these are the results of a population kept in ignorance. The media, with their stupid "two sides to every story" reporting, felt the need to pretend that no one really knows what torture actually is. Congress, spineless throughout the Bush's two terms -- even when his approvals were in the tank -- got the vapors and fell into a faint every time someone mentioned holding any Bushie accountable for anything. There were investigations into all sorts of crimes, complete with sacrificial lambs, but when it came right down to it, the investigations didn't accomplish anything, because there was no action taken on the findings. If the public thinks torture isn't a war crime, the press and Congress can be blamed for it. When it comes to this issue, both have failed miserably. The correct response to Rasmussen's question about war crimes should've been "how the hell should I know? No one tells me anything."

Those who study the issue closely and have some expertise in determining torture have done just that -- determined that the US, under orders from the Bush administration, has tortured. There isn't any gray area here; it's a crime like rape or theft -- either you did it or you didn't, you can't kind of do it a little, but not really... [CLICK TO READ FULL POST]

Griper Blade: The Unpunished Crime Might as Well be Legal

I usually hate these "two headlines" things, where two sources report the same event and come up with entirely different takes. Usually, this means that, of the two, one of them is BS. But not always. Sometimes the event is difficult to assess and the headlines they write depend as much on what the writers had for breakfast that morning as anything else. If your inclined to see bad news, you'll see bad news.

The event in question here is an appearance by Barack Obama on This Week with George Stephanopoulos Sunday. Raw Story reports "Obama not likely to prosecute torture." Meanwhile, USA Today's The Oval blog tells us "Obama: Time to look forward, but Bush aides aren't above the law."

Given the noncommittal nature of Obama's statements to Stephanopoulos, it's easy to see how this could happen. He really didn't give any definitive answer. Maybe there will be prosecutions for torture, maybe not... [CLICK TO READ FULL POST]

Griper Blade: A Little Free Advice

There's no shortage of people willing to give incoming president Barack Obama advice. Even Readers Digest has gotten in on the action with advice ranging from the jaw-droppingly hypocritical (Karl Rove advises him to "encourage debate") to the solid (former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright says, "Restate the Case For U.S. Leadership Abroad"). I always say that free advice is often worth only what you paid for it. Luckily, the advisee's under no obligation to take it.

For a great example of worthless advise, we can turn to the reclusive Vice President Dick Cheney. Many believe Dick's the power behind the throne, the real president using Bush as a figurehead. I think it's probably a little more complicated than that, but the portrayal's probably true enough for brevity. George can barely manage the English language, so someone's doing all the mental heavy lifting in the Bush administration. That someone seems to be Dick.

The problem, of course, is that while Cheney's more articulate than Bush, he's not any smarter. He just thinks he is. If Cheney's as hands-on as everyone believes he is, then he shares the blame for what a freakin' disaster George W's two terms have been. For example, Cheney -- like the rest of the neocons gathered around the White House -- thought invading Iraq was the best idea anyone ever had. No matter what you think about the idea that Dick Cheney's the true leader of the Bush White House, everyone agrees that he plays the part of a top adviser, at the very least. So recent history shows that we can put Dick's free advice in the "worth what you paid for it" column.

To get an idea of just how poor Dick's advice can be, we can look at his interview with Rush Limbaugh yesterday, See, the vice president will not sit down with anyone who's likely to ask him difficult questions and no one else is guaranteed to throw softballs the way Rush did... [CLICK TO READ FULL POST]

Griper Blade: Pardon Me?

The presidential pardon has been a controversial matter since day one. Virginian George Mason would've been one of the signatories to the new constitution of the United States of America, but disagreed with basic ideas in the document -- including the pardon -- and refused to sign. On the power of the pardon, Mason worried that a president who had "secretly instigated to commit crimes" with others might use it to prevent "a discovery of his own guilt."

But it was Alexander Hamilton who prevailed in that debate. "The principal argument for reposing the power of pardoning in the chief magistrate is this: In seasons of insurrection or rebellion, there are often critical moments when a well-timed offer of pardon to the insurgents or rebels may restore the tranquillity of the commonwealth," he wrote in the Federalist Papers. Unfortunately, Hamilton only foresaw the presidency as a position held by "a single man of prudence and good sense."

Which recent resident of the White House doesn't that sound like to you? Mason's argument is starting to look better...

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Griper Blade: An End to Gitmo

It's hard to think of a better symbol of the abuses of the Bush administration than the prison at Guantanámo Bay, Cuba. It was put in Cuba so the administration could claim that American law didn't apply there. It was meant to be a loophole in the Constitution and the American concept of justice. "Cuban sovereignty over Guantanámo exists only in the abstract," wrote human rights lawyer Joanne Mariner for FindLaw.com. "Yet it is, for the U.S. government, a convenient legal fiction. In the current litigation over the fate of the hundreds of detainees held on Guantanámo, the government's position is premised on the fact that Guantanámo is technically foreign soil. Because Guantanámo is part of Cuba, argues the government, it is beyond the reach of American courts."

Of course, this was a ridiculous argument -- the prisoners are inarguably in US custody, not Cuban -- and it was eventually shot down by the courts. Prisoners at Guantanámo Bay had the right to habeas corpus restored, with the right to trial. So, the administration decided the wisest thing to do would be to drag their feet. In June, I ran the math and figured out that, at the rate the trials were going, the last Gitmo detainee could expect to see the inside of a courtroom about 583 years from now. The phrase "justice delayed is justice denied" is usually meant less literally.

Many of the detainees at Guantanámo were innocent, swept up in a bounty program that required no proof of anything. People would be captured by locals and basically sold to the US. Some were terrorists, but some were just neighbors someone had a problem with, street criminals, political rivals, or complete strangers kidnapped and turned in for the bounty. As a result, innocent people were exposed to terrorist ideology and radicalized. In the end, Gitmo is creating terrorists and terrorist sympathizers.

McClatchy Newspapers:

Mohammed Naim Farouq was a thug in the lawless Zormat district of eastern Afghanistan. He ran a kidnapping and extortion racket, and he controlled his turf with a band of gunmen who rode around in trucks with AK-47 rifles.

U.S. troops detained him in 2002, although he had no clear ties to the Taliban or al Qaida. By the time Farouq was released from Guantanamo the next year, however — after more than 12 months of what he described as abuse and humiliation at the hands of American soldiers — he'd made connections to high-level militants.

In fact, he'd become a Taliban leader. When the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency released a stack of 20 "most wanted" playing cards in 2006 identifying militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan — with Osama bin Laden at the top — Farouq was 16 cards into the deck.

And each day these people are kept in our tropical concentration camp, the more likely it is that they'll become terrorists themselves -- or at least terrorist sympathizers...

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