Month: July 2008

McCain’s Hillary Problem

John Heilemann likens McCain’s campaign to Hillary’s:

Yet in ways large and small, strategic and tactical, temperamental and attitudinal, the McCain campaign strikes me as having been cut from the same cloth as Hillary Clinton’s. Same story with the candidates themselves, in particular when it comes to their jaundiced perceptions of their rival. For supporters of Barack Obama, this might seem cheery news, since those perceptions led Clinton time and again to misplay her hand. But general elections are very different from primaries—and there are reasons to worry that Clintonianism, taken to its logical (and gruesome) extreme, may serve McCain better than it did the real McCoy.

The Rule Of Law

Greenwald dismisses my attempts to find daylight between torture and warrantless eavesdropping:

Things like “torture” and “illegal eavesdropping” can’t be compared as though they’re separate, competing policies. They are rooted in the same framework of lawlessness. The same rationale that justifies one is what justifies the other. Endorsing one is to endorse all of it. 

He Quit!

The one openly gay man the religious right was able to get on its anti-marriage equality bandwagon has just quit:

"It is with great sadness that I announce that I feel I must withdraw from openly supporting man-woman marriage in the United States. I recently learned quite a bit of disturbing information that makes it impossible for me to continue supporting a movement I no longer respect."

His Rights

John Wilkins sketches out PZ Meyers legal rights:

…a nonbeliever cannot commit blasphemy. To blaspheme, one must be within the set of belief and ritual contrasts of the faith community. Smearing pig fat is merely unhygienic behaviour to me, and throwing wafers on the ground is merely littering (and temporary littering at that, as it will be eaten by birds and ants pretty quickly. As sins go, that act of desecration is quite ecofriendly). This means, so far as I can tell, that a secular state cannot enforce anti-blasphemy provisions, as to do so forcibly includes nonbelievers in the faith community, which automatically means the state is not a secular state. It also means that pretty quickly the state becomes a one-religion state, but that’s another matter.

So protection against desecration cannot be justified on grounds of blasphemy. What about offense? Clearly a society that lacks all respect for others will shortly fail to be a society; and it is good manners not to offend someone unnecessarily. The very term "polite" indicates this, as it literally means the rules of the city (polis). In a multi-moré society if you do not avoid constantly insulting people you will cause social disruption. But a state cannot legislate that standard either; such rules evolve rapidly and without regard to the special interests of all groups. The best one can do is have laws of disruptive behaviour and leave it to a current judge to determine if the behaviour is beyond the pale or not.

…while I might think that the original wafer thief’s actions were disrespectful, in no way are they actions that should permit the kinds of reactions he, and Myers, have garnered. Sure, I think Paul’s reaction to religion is often over the top, but he has that right.

“Ninety percent of what we got was crap.”

Scott Horton interviews Jane Mayer. The quote above was from a CIA officer detailing what came out of torture sessions. The White House has been increasingly nervous about criminal prosecution since the Hamdan decision:

The reaction of top Bush Administration officials to the ICRC report–from what I can gather, has been defensive and dismissive. They reject the ICRC’s legal analysis as incorrect. Yet, to get to your last question, my reporting shows that inside the White House there has been growing fear of criminal prosecution, particularly after the Supreme Court ruled in the Hamdan case that the Geneva Conventions applied to the treatment of the detainees. This nervousness resulted in the successful effort to add retroactive immunity to the Military Commission Act. Cheney personally spearheaded this effort. Fear of the consequences of exposure also weighed heavily in discussions about whether to shut the CIA program down. In White House meetings, Cheney warned that if they transferred the CIA’s prisoners to Guantanamo, “People will want to know where they have been–and what we’ve been doing with them.” Alberto Gonzales, a source said, “scared” everyone about the possibility of war crimes prosecutions. It was on their minds.

Lighten Up, Please

Jeffery Goldberg thought the New Yorker cover was "exceedingly funny":

As someone who appreciates a good joke, as well as a bad joke, it bothers me that people are reacting so dyspeptically to the cover, and it’s a shame Obama’s campaign couldn’t have laughed it off. In my limited experience, Obama is capable of humor, though he’s not as funny as John McCain, the funniest person in the Senate, except for those times when Orrin Hatch goes blue. Also, Dianne Feinstein, who does one of dirtiest interpretations of "the Aristocrats" I’ve ever heard.

On the other hand, the WorldNetDaily crowd thinks it’s true.