Remember them? According to embarrassed liberals like Jacob “I wish Clinton was still president” Weisberg, they don’t exist. Maybe Jake should take a trip to the USC for a conference February 17, organized by Southern Californians for Democratic Action. I heard about it from feisty blogger, Matt Welch. The conference will feature, among others, Robert Reich (would-be Massachusetts governor and close friend of Mickey Kaus), Arianna Huffington, Maxine Waters, Tom Hayden, and Ed Begley Jr. Barbra, Warren and Annette will be at the cocktail party, natch. Here’s an extract from the press release:
This conference will examine how many of our constitutional rights the Bush administration has abolished using the tragedy of 9-11 as an excuse. The Patriot Bill, the anti civil liberties doctrine forced through Congress by John Ashcroft, has ravaged our 1st, 4th, 5th and 6th amendments. Now the question is can we still save what is left of our economy, our environment, our social programs, our arms control agreements, our health care system, our immigration policy, our justice system, in short, our democracy. The Bush administration has used the war on terrorism to ram through its pro-corporate agenda, guaranteeing that the permanent war economy, which has been with us for 50 years, will now be accompanied by permanent war. Speaking for the administration, Cheney said we will be at war for the rest of our lives. Nobody blinked. Suddenly our troops are in the Philippines and Somalia. What’s next; Iraq, Iran, the Sudan? If it’s a third world country it’s apparently up for grabs. Why, with a sinking economy and a determination to maintain a state of war, is Bushs’ [sic] rating so high? The Bush administration has cleverly kept the threat of terrorism at such a fever pitch, the public has lost all sense of reality. Hopefully the Enron debacle will crack open the door to truth, and people will at last see how deep that corruption runs in this administration. This conference is intended to hasten that process.
So constitutional rights haven’t just been curtailed; they’ve been abolished. The criterion for intervention is not state-sponsored terrorism, but just being a Third World country. As Paul “Enron” Krugman has asserted, the war is not actually a war against terrorism, but a war for corporations. And you, dear readers, have “lost all sense of reality.” I wonder if Bob Reich really believes this. Perhaps his opponents in Massachusetts will ask him.
The Dish 