Year: 2005

Jonathan Turley makes a powerful case for some more accountability for the detention mess. He points out the following:

True to tradition, promotion rather than punishment has been the fate of most torture-tainted officers in the Abu Ghraib scandal:

• Army Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller has been implicated in the abuses at both Guantanamo Bay and Iraq. He actually ordered Abu Ghraib personnel to “soften up” the prisoners. He was made an assistant chief of staff.

• Maj. Gen. Barbara Fast had knowledge of the abuses in 2003 as the head of military intelligence in Iraq and was accused of pressuring the interrogators. She was given a new position as the commander at the Army Intelligence Center at Fort Huachuca, Ariz., where U.S. and foreign troops are taught interrogation techniques.

• Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez was the ranking officer in Iraq and approved many of the interrogation techniques now deemed abusive. He was returned to his command in Germany of the prestigious Army V Corps.

• The officer who oversaw interrogation at Abu Ghraib, Col. Thomas Pappas, was given a light administrative punishment.

If we cannot yet hold Rumsfeld, Bush and Gonzales responsible, we can surely do better than jailing a few low-level grunts in this scandal.

A very encouraging development in Britain: a coalition of conservatives demanding more local democracy and decision-making. Yes, imagine that: a conservatism trying to reduce the power of the central government.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: “hello everyone! i was in Rome on vacation. It was a cruise. i hope you didn’t miss me too much! i’m tan EVERYWHERE! anyway, I paid 200 euros for a henna tattoo, and now i think i have crabs. can someone please help?” – Greg Gutfield, with another scintillating addition to the Huffington Post. Gutfield, by the way, is “a Virgo, loves long walks in the woods, knitting booties for his three cats, and hates mean people.”

BLAIR AND HAMAS: The Brits lead the U.S. toward greater acceptance of the terror-group.

SID GOT THERE FIRST: The moral idiocy of Amnesty International comparing the serious issues in Guantanamo with Stalin’s monstrous crimes didn’t come out of thin air. To the best of my knowledge, the first use of this metaphor was by … Sid Blumenthal. Here’s the piece. The whole thing is infuriating because it allows the Bushies and their boosters to avoid the real subject. The truth is: you can have a real grasp of Stalin’s Gulag and still be appalled by what this administration has been doing in its secret jails and torture chambers. Exhibit A in this moral universe is Anne Applebaum, Pulitzer-prize author of “Gulag,” who has not mercifully given in to moral complacency.

DOLPHIN GLOVES: Pliny wouldn’t have been surprised.

THE LEFT TAKES ON MOORE: Finally, a bona fide lefty tackles the ethics-free grandstanding of Michael Moore. Pity it’s in Britain.

MIDWESTERN COMMON SENSE: A conservative Minnesotan tackles the unconservative arguments against allowing gay couples to marry.

LEFT, RIGHT, AND POT: An email illuminates the deeper political factions in America:

I’m sure you are familiar with the idea that political alignment can be seen not just as polar (left/right) but as four quadrants based on left/right and order/freedom. This has always made a lot of sense to me. For example, libertarians can be found on the left and the right, and it doesn’t take two much imagination to see kinship between Joan Claybrook and John Ashcroft; they are both control freak meddlers.
You clearly belong in the right/freedom quadrant, and that is why you get a lot of left readership. Left/freedom folks like myself can find a lot of common ground in our thinking. Bush is pretty much a right/order type, as is the evangelical right, and their ascent is alienating right/freedom types like yourself. It threatens the unity of the Republican Party, to the delight of Democrats like myself. Americans like religion, but a lot of us have never liked holy rollers.
The biggest advantage the Republicans have is that most Americans trust them more when it comes to kicking a little ass on the battlefield. I personally think this is braindead, caused by associating the pacifist blather of the Democratic core with the quite reasonable Democrats who get nominated (Clinton/Gore/Kerry). But it is what it is. Sheer incompetence by our Republican Commander-in-chief may go a long way toward clearing up that misperception. It is amazing that grown adults have to be reminded that macho and passion are not enough, you also have to dispassionately analyze facts to prevail on the ground.
Back to medicinal marijuana, I am happy to be united with you and all other freedom-loving conservatives in decrying the unconstitutional affirmation of raw Federal power expressed in that decision.

Amen. It seems to me that the fundamental problem in today’s politics is that those who generally support freedom at home and a tough foreign policy abroad have nowhere to go any more. We have to choose between an incompetent and morally suspect war party that has little time for civil liberties at home and a mush-headed, left-leaning, reactionary party that inspires little trust on the national security front.

Worth recalling:

This country’s views and policies about marijuana are truly appalling. I have inherited problems with high eye pressure that possibly could be relieved by medical marijuana, according to anecdotal evidence, but the government refuses even to allow decent testing of that hypothesis. We permit folks to use and abuse Oxycontin without nearly the uproar that attaches to the San Francisco grandmother who makes pot brownies for AIDS patients. And I’m scared to consume marijuana in even limited quantities for even a good reason for fear of on-the-job drug testing.
When I was managing editor of The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, we published an article based on a thorough longitudinal study of a good number of Americans from their pot-using college years to early middle age. Nearly all of the subjects eventually stopped using pot, none had any injuries or serious problems arising from pot, scarcely any used any harder drugs, and all of them did far better on the measures of success used (job progression, stable relationships, home ownership) than did similarly situated individuals who had never used pot. The article was published during the “just-say-no” years, and the authors not only were surprised at the results, but hesitated to seek publication for fear of being blackballed from any government grants for future research. I should check up on the authors and see if those fears were justified.

I have to say that if there’s ever a good reason for civil disobedience it’s in defense of your own health. The idea that people dealing with chemo or other serious issues cannot avail themselves of a plant that grows on God’s green earth is so preposterous it beggars belief. Voters in many states grasp this truth, and yet their deliberations are over-ruled by the federal government. The Clintonites were no better. But the current situation is yet another indication of how far Washington conservatism has drifted from its roots in human liberty and empirical science. Maybe this latest insult will fuel a real revolt from the grass-roots, if you’ll pardon the expression. It’s about frigging time.

I’m waiting to read the full context of the Pope’s remarks decrying the possibility of a gay couple committing to each other as “anarchy.” But at first blush, I would think that “anarchy” would better describe a world in which gay people have no context for their relationships, no social support for connecting sex with love, no chance of being fully a part of their own families. But I’m hardly surprised by the inflammatory rhetoric or the contempt for modernity and for human freedom voiced by this Pope. We knew what we were getting. Is he persuasive? Well, for that he would need an argument, an engagement with the social forces that have propelled gay relationships to the forefront of contemporary debate. Easier to pontificate and condemn. And he sure knows how to do both of those. Meanwhile, Europe continues to ignore him. Close to 60 percent of the Swiss just voted to allow gay couples to have most of the rights and responsibilities of civil marriage. If I’d stayed in Britain, I’d only have to wait a few months for full legal marriage rights. Maybe if the Pope voiced a little more charity and listened a tiny bit more, more people would listen back.

A great term for the Rehnquist court’s jurisprudence.

MORE ON SECULARISM: An interesting elaboration from Revolutionary America over at Jon Rowe’s blog.

They’re not getting any saner.

An emailer puts it succinctly:

In this case, all the liberal judges (Stevens, Ginsburg, Souter, Breyer) voted for the ban on state laws regarding medical marjuana, and conservative judges (Thomas, Rehnquist, O’Connor) were the only ones to vote against the ban. (Moderately liberal Kennedy also voted for the ban, as did conservative Scalia, though he had different reasons, ultimately making a 6-3 decision). This case, of course, has less to do with marijuana itself as states vs. federal rights — true conservatives see this and similar arguments as states rights issues that should not be dictated by the federal government.
The main reason traditional conversatives and libertarians complain so much about Bush so much is that he’s NOT much of a conservative in the historical sense (only the social one), and on so many issues wants the federal government to set policies for all 50 states whether they have shared values/needs or not — in other words, the exact same thing conservatives hate about liberals. So you ultimately have a lot of conservatives agreeing with Bush’s ideals, but not how he’s going about them. And, conversely, you have situations like this, where Bush gets his supreme court victory not by conservative justices who agree with him on the morals, but by liberal justices who believe the federal government should always trump states rights. Strange bedfellows indeed.

Not so strange, actually, Statists – of right and left – have much in common: primarily, a low priority for individual liberty and federalism. Bush fits easily into this mold. But this was Thomas’ finest hour.

U.S. CHURCH ATTENDANCE: It may not be nearly as high as most of the media would have us believe. Here’s a very interesting analysis.

ELECTION TIME: It’s must be that time of year in Oxford. When you’re there, as I was, running for political office in the Union, it becomes completely absorbing. Gossip is crucial. One of my key advantages in running for president was that my room-mate was editing the college newspaper’s gossip column. I think I would have been toast without him. As it was, I only just pulled it out. (If memory serves, I won by 15 votes out of well over a thousand.) Now, with the web, there’s no filter for gossip at all. There’s even this web-page.

Regardless of how you feel about medical marijuana – I’m strongly for it – the Supreme Court case was really about the right to the federal government to tell states what to do. If the feds can forbid someone who grows pot in his own garden, sells none of it, uses it for his own medical use and is allowed to by his own state, it’s still covered by the Interstate commerce exemption. Yeah, right.

“It’s a long, hard struggle and very gradually maybe we are making progress. There are tough times ahead.” – John McCain, telling the truth about Iraq.

“The level of activity that we see today from a military standpoint, I think, will clearly decline. I think they’re in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency.” – vice-president Dick Cheney, spinning again.

Now here’s an under-studied subject. And when luminaries like Jeffrey Goldberg and David Segal are behind it, we have a genuine cultural event. Among the important inquiries of JewsRock.org:

Before he donned a ten-pound cod piece and high heels, Gene Simmons was known as Chaim Witz. And guess who started life as Ellen Cohen.

Must-read.

DEBUNKED: Remember Super-AIDS? Remember the five hysterical stories in the New York Times? My suspicions have been borne out:

No super-strain has emerged. The patient, whose name has been withheld, has responded to drug therapy. No one – not even the man’s known sexual partners – was found to be infected with the same HIV strain.

Here was my take back in February:

I’ll make a rash prediction: this guy will have a much improved immune system in a few months.

The credibility of New York City’s Health Department – and the NYT, for that matter – is damaged. This isn’t to say we don’t have a problem, especially with the crystal meth epidemic. But serious health officials and journalists have their work cut out to regain trust. I wonder if the NYT will run a front-page debunking as prominently as the original story they hyped.

AIRFORCE ACADEMY UPDATE: John Cole has the latest. Basically, the leadership has now admitted they have a huge problem of Christianist indoctrination in the Academy and the superintendant says it could take six years to fix it. Six years. That’s how deep the bias has become. Well, at least now it’s being addressed.

BRIT-BLOGS: Why haven’t they had the same impact as the American ones?