Look, I support many of the measures the administration has put in place to try and prosecute terrorists. A large amount of the criticism has been way overblown. Military tribunals are almost certainly necessary. The war mandates changes that we shouldn’t contemplate in peacetime. The priority right now is to prevent more massacres of American citizens. But you’d have to be brainless not to realize that many of these measures can be improved, amended, and corrected after a healthy debate. I’d like to see much more detail on the procedures of military tribunals; judicial review of their decisions; government eavesdropping of lawyer-client conversations only by an independent judge – not government lawyers; and other fixes. Many people – from Jeff Rosen and Laurence Tribe to Akhil Amar to Stuart Taylor Jr. – are not viscerally opposed to emergency measures but worried (as we all should be) about any unnecessary endangerment of civil liberties. They and others have made important contributions to the debate, which needs to continue. In that respect, Attorney General Ashcroft’s tone at yesterday’s hearings was way off. He came close to asserting that the Congress itself was somehow soft on terrorism for raising questions about new laws. I agree with the Washington Post today that that’s offensive and dumb. The administration has done a sterling job in this war so far. Hubris shouldn’t lead them to push their luck.
BEGALA AWARD NOMINEE: “The Enron analogy will soon become a tired cliché, but in this case the parallel is irresistible. Enron management and the administration Enron did so much to put in power applied the same strategy: First, use cooked numbers to justify big giveaways at the top. Then, if things don’t work out, let ordinary workers who trusted you pay the price. But Enron executives got caught; Mr. Bush believes that the events of Sept. 11 will let him off the hook.” – Paul Krugman, New York Times today.
WHILE I’M AT IT: “Money to rebuild New York? Sorry, no.” – from the column cited above. Now, everyone knows that a large sum of federal money has already been apportioned to New York City for recovery and rebuilding. So what can Krugman mean? Read the column again and you’ll see there’s no qualification here. He doesn’t say “More money to rebuild New York?” Or: “Enough money to rebuild New York?” Is Krugman unaware of the funding? Or is this simply a smear?
The Dish 