It strikes me as a good one:
You can think the filibuster is a terrible idea. And you may think that it should be abolished, as indeed it can be through the rules of the senate. And there are decent arguments to made on that count. But to assert that it is unconstitutional because each judge does not get an up or down vote by the entire senate you have to hold that the United States senate has been in more or less constant violation of the constitution for more than two centuries.
I should add that I think both parties bear blame for the current impasse. But one small point about conservatism. Historically, it has tended to support many measures that prevent governments from doing things, impede legislative efficiency, and generally promote inaction over action. It has now become, in some respects, the opposite.
THE PENNY DROPS: Rich Lowry realizes the danger for the administration in the Gitmo affair. My prediction: this is just the beginning. And what we may find out is not going to be pretty. Here’s one small part of what’s coming:
78. On various occasions, Plaintiffs’ efforts to pray were banned or interrupted. Plaintiffs were never given prayer mats and did not initially receive copies of the Koran. Korans were provided to them after approximately a month. On one occasion, a guard in Plaintiff Ahmed’s cellblock noticed a copy of the Koran on the floor and kicked it. On another occasion, a guard threw a copy of the Koran in a toilet bucket. Detainees, including Plaintiffs, were also at times prevented from calling out the call to prayer, with American soldiers either silencing the person who was issuing the prayer call or playing loud music to drown out the call to prayer. This was part of a continuing pattern of disrespect and contempt for Plaintiffs’ religious beliefs and practices.
There’s more:
205. Defendants regularly and systematically engaged in practices specifically aimed at disrupting Plaintiffs’ religious practices. These acts included throwing a copy of the Koran in a toilet bucket, prohibiting prayer, deliberately interrupting prayers, playing loud rock music to interrupt prayers, withholding the Koran without reason or as punishment, forcing prisoners to pray with exposed genital areas, withholding prayer mats and confining Plaintiffs under conditions where it was impossible or infeasible for them to exercise their religious rights.
This is from a lawsuit filed by four British former inmates at Gitmo. They were released without being charged. Do we believe them? I don’t know. I sure don’t want to believe them; and I wish that none of this was even faintly relevant in the war on terror. Reading this kind of stuff about American interrogators in a war we must win can only produce anguish and distress, a desire to just move on, a need to ignore. All I can say is that, given what we already know, their charges are, horrifying to say, credible. And the consequences for winning the war of ideas in the Islamic world? Incalculably bad.
QUOTE FOR THE DAY: “It’s either going to be God’s people out there enjoying the neighborhoods, breathing the air or it’s going to be God’s enemies owning the public square and polluting it. It’s not ever both.” – Christian reconstructionist, Steve Schlissel. I used to think of this guy as a real extremist. But isn’t that quote interchangeable these days with mainstream conservatism? Notice his cooptation of the term “public square,” a phrase deployed in this context by many much more moderate theocons.
The Dish 