“Paterson has no comprehension of upstate New York, absolutely none, and has chosen someone better at representing cows than people. What you have is the daughter of a lobbyist, instead of the daughter of a former President or the son of a former governor. This is the hack world producing the hack result that the hacks are happy with,” – Lawrence O’Donnell.
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Yglesias rounds up some bewildering Republican talking points.
New York, New York, 3.39 pm.
A.L. thinks war crimes prosecutions may be counter productive:
I think the best option here is something along the lines of the "Truth Commission" proposals that have been bandied about. What I want is a thorough, official investigation that exposes all the facts and, ideally, issues an official report declaring that the Bush administration violated the law, identifying the primary culprits, and condemning–in the strongest words possible–their actions.
That would at least keep these acts from being swept under the rug and would inflict some much deserved reputational harm on those responsible for them. That kind of strong, public condemnation may be enough to deter future administrations.
I fear that if we try to do anything more than that, by launching actual prosecutions, it may backfire and result in acquittals. I completely sympathize with those who favor war crimes prosecutions. The conduct at issue here rises to that level and those responsible for it certainly deserve such treatment. But practical concerns do matter. War crimes prosecutions would serve no useful purpose if they result in acquittals which are then spun by the Republicans and the media as vindication for the conduct itself. The goal here should not be maximal punishment, but maximal deterrence.
And then there is simply whether the rule of law applies to those in control of the government. Bush and Cheney claimed it didn’t. That precedent is what we’re up against.
A reader writes:
I guess I feel a little like you must have felt as a Catholic all these years, Andrew. You see I’m a Jewish Catholic. My grandfather lost virtually his whole family in the Holocaust, and he was lucky to escape alive (he managed to get into Switzerland after several failed attempts). Both of his brothers were killed by the Nazis in the gas chambers that Williamson doesn’t believe existed. Lifting his excommunication felt like a slap in the face.
Maybe reconciliation with the Lefebvrites is a good thing. I don’t know. But they are the lost sheep, and they are the ones who must return to us. And certainly, to do something like this without even acknowledging this man’s abhorrent beliefs is appalling. I guess the question I have for you is: after all these years, after all the crap the Vatican and the hierarchy have thrown at gay people, how have you dealt with it? How have you dealt with being insulted by our church on a daily basis?
I did my best to explain that in Love Undetectable. In the end, I do not experience being Catholic as a choice any more than I experience being gay as a choice. So all the questions seem somewhat moot after a while. That this combination incurs great pain is obvious. To be rejected in the very heart of the place you love the most is extremely painful. But it is strange for a Christian of all people to believe that life should be without pain. And we all have our own unique variety of it.
A reader writes:
Thanks for the amazing inaugural photo. How fitting that Clarence Thomas is asleep while Obama speaks.
I’m a layman on economics but do my best to make sense of the arguments out there. I found Bruce Bartlett helpful as usual:
The problem is that fiscal stimulus needs to be injected right now to counter the liquidity trap. If that were the case, I think we might well get a very high multiplier effect this year. But if much of the stimulus doesn’t come online until next year, when we are likely to be past the worst of the slowdown, then crowding out will greatly diminish the effectiveness of the stimulus, just as the critics argue…
Thus the argument really boils down to a question of timing. In the short run, the case for stimulus is overwhelming. But in the longer run, we can’t enrich ourselves by borrowing and printing money. That just causes inflation.
The trick is to front-load the stimulus as much as possible while putting in place policies that will tighten both fiscal and monetary policy next year.
How we do that is above my paygrade but the principle makes sense to me. Any big stimulus should focus on getting demand into the economy now or very soon; it should be followed by a pledge to look very closely at the long-term fiscal pressures and alleviate them. Social security and Medicare have to be on the table; but so too do corporate welfare, and defense. Not easy, but in this crisis, opportunity.
[Update: readers quickly noticed that Bruce links to a CBO report that doesn’t exist. I’ve removed the sentence and the link. The broader point remains.]
Sanity prevailed:
During the transition period, unknown to the public, Obama’s legal, intelligence, and national-security advisers visited Langley for two long sessions with current and former intelligence-community members. They debated whether a ban on brutal interrogation practices would hurt their ability to gather intelligence, and the advisers asked the intelligence veterans to prepare a cost-benefit analysis. The conclusions may surprise defenders of harsh interrogation tactics. “There was unanimity among Obama’s expert advisers,” Craig said, “that to change the practices would not in any material way affect the collection of intelligence.”
Behind that pseudo-toughness was pseudo-security.
"This is William Kristol’s last column," – New York Times.
When I first heard of alleged mistreatment at Guantanamo Bay, I went on record scoffing at it. Pure Qaeda propaganda, it seemed to me. Why was I so dismissive? Because I knew the US armed forces would never torture or mistreat prisoners systematically. Maybe a few violations that would be disciplined – but the idea of a vast array of methodically planned and executed outrages against human dignity was absurd. Besides, I told myself, no president would be so crazy as to launch a war of ideas against Jihadism by torturing Muslims and exploiting specific cultural Muslim taboos.
We know the rest. But yesterday’s WaPo has some new detail. It tells the story of how the military did indeed first approach Gitmo – humanely, in concert with the International Red Cross. That’s not surprising and what most of us just assumed. The rank and file have been relentlessly trained in humane treatment and the Geneva standards. This was America, after all, and there are some things one just takes for granted.
But we didn’t account for Bush. Humane treatment was terminated when Donald Rumsfeld intervened to order torture and abuse out of a frantic pursuit of intelligence. The Rumsfeld-Cheney-Addington axis keeps saying that the torture emanated from below and that they merely accommodated demands from soldiers and interrogators. In Gitmo, at least, the reverse was true. It was Bush and Cheney who intervened – judging that only torture could work and making successful prosecution of the worst terrorists now impossible. It is Bush and Cheney and their civilian clique who need to be held accountable.
(Photo: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty.)
The Dish 