Month: April 2009

First Principles

John Cole was surprised by the right on torture:

Considering what they have done with virtually every other aspect of the Bush years, I honestly expected them to do what they did with the trillions of dollars of spending and debt that happened with a Republican congress and a Republican President Bush – first, pretend it didn’t happen, then after being forced to acknowledge it did happen, claim that everyone was doing it and blame the Democrats and scream about Murtha and Barney Frank, and when that didn’t work, just pretend that it was “other” Republicans who aren’t “real conservatives” (Move along, these aren’t the wasteful spenders you are looking for) while ranting about earmarks. That is what they did with spending, I figured they would do it again with torture.

But they didn’t and they aren’t. Instead, they are mobilizing and going balls to the wall in defense of sadism. It is really quite amazing, and a testament to just how sick and detestable and rotten to the core the Republican party has become.

What's more staggering is they they defend torture at the same time as produce best-selling books on the threat of tyranny and fascism. They take to the streets to protest a president who threatens to raise taxes in the future on the successful; but they actually support the right of a president to seize anyone at will, detain them without charges and torture them.

I know how Specter feels. I've never been a Republican but they have come to make me feel sick to my stomach.

Marriage In Maine

After public hearings which demonstrated considerable support for marriage equality, the joint judiciary committee of the Maine legislature just voted 11 – 3 that a full marriage equality bill "ought to pass without amendment." The state Senate will take up the matter next week. If you live in Maine, here's a guide to lobbying your state senator.

Nothing Shifts The Racial Gap

The data remain as stubborn as ever:

The 2008 score gap between black and white 17-year-olds, 29 points in reading and 26 points in math, could be envisioned as the rough equivalent of between two and three school years’ worth of learning, said Peggy Carr, an associate commissioner for assessment at the Department of Education.

Even as all races continue to make gains, the demographic mix in America means that educational standards are stuck in the 1970s:

Despite gains that both whites and minorities did make, the overall scores of America’s 17-year-old students, averaged across all groups, were the same as those of teenagers who took the test in the early 1970’s. This was due largely to a shift in demographics; there are now far more lower scoring minorities in relation to whites. In 1971, the proportion of white 17-year-olds who took the reading test was 87 percent, while minorities were 12 percent. Last year, whites had declined to 59 percent while minorities had increased to 40 percent.

The Bitter End Of Rovism?

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Rove only knows polls, so maybe this will help:

In the latest New York Times/CBS News poll, released on Monday, 31 percent of respondents over the age of 40 said they supported gay marriage. By contrast, 57 percent under age 40 said they supported it, a 26-point difference. Among the older respondents, 35 percent said they opposed any legal recognition of same-sex couples, be it marriage or civil unions. Among the younger crowd, just 19 percent held that view.

Just as interesting, support for marriage equality seems to have jumped in the last month or so in the wake of news from Vermont and Iowa:

Forty-two percent of Americans now say same sex couples should be allowed to legally marry, a new CBS News/New York Times poll finds. That's up nine points from last month, when 33 percent supported legalizing same sex marriage.

Polls do change and only time will reveal if this uptick holds. But the generational shift has now been well-documented in many polls.

Malkin Award Nominee

"Is Obama rushing another attack? … That’s the working M.O. of this administration: no matter what we do, we’re going to eventually get hit again. The Obama administration views the seven years after 9/11 as more a fluke than a successful strategy by George Bush to prevent domestic terror attacks. So if the working theory is that we’re going to get hit again, what is the best response? After all, the public does credit George Bush with keeping us safe at 9/11. The best strategy would look something like taking a band-aid off quickly. Get the pain over fast. And if an attack happens quickly enough into the new administration, they can blame Bush.

So the Obama administration is working hard to release all the memos on interrogations, change all the policies Bush implemented, and clear out the old as fast as possible. Never mind that if it were done slowly over time, our terrorist enemies might not be so incited to attack.

If your working premise is that they are going to attack anyway, get them incited quickly, get it over with, and blame Bush.

There is no other justification for so quickly making us less safe," – Erick Erickson of RedState, arguing that the president is aiming to get al Qaeda to kill Americans early in his term of office.

I really don't know what to say in the face of this, except to note that the Republican right is so deranged at this point, I blame no one for wanting to get out of the same party that these creeps and monsters belong in.

The Cannabis Closet: Kept From Serving, Ctd.

A reader writes:

This is in response to the law student and aspiring judicial clerk. I clerked for a federal circuit court judge within the last few years, and I was not drug-tested, nor was any other clerk that I know of. Federal judges are quite independent, so perhaps there are judges or even whole districts or circuits who do test. But the general sense I got was that the judicial branch cared a lot less for this sort of thing than the executive (I turned down a job with the Justice Department in part because I was not willing to lie on the background check). I think it's telling that the judges tasked with sentencing drug offenders (or denying their appeals) at least partly recognize the absurdity of the whole thing.

Another dissents:

As an attorney I have no sympathy for the law student who "won't be able to pass a drug test" after graduation because it would compromise their beliefs to stop smoking marijuana. That sounds like classic addict talk.

To use their examples: if someone drank every night they would be called an alcoholic; if they used cocaine every night they would be labelled a drug addict. What is someone who gets high every night? This person sounds more like a person with a dependency problem than a righteous crusader: they have preemptively decided that their habit is more important than their career goals.

I do not think smoking marijuana is inherently wrong, and am in favor of discussions towards legalization. However your entries on this topic seem to have a large number of high-functioning addicts pissed off that their illegal habit makes things harder for them rather than cogent arguments for legalization.

Another writes:

While undergoing the post-hire security clearance process for one of the Departments of DHS, I was pulled aside by my superior. Without knowing if I had or had not, she wanted to make sure I was going to tell them of prior drug use. If I denied ever using pot, she told me, it would raise a red flag and my clearance would surely be held up.

"Fortunately" for me, I have only smoked a very minor amount of pot many years ago during my undergraduate years, and that seemed to fit the investigator's mold of typical behavior. My clearance went through. And sure enough, when a colleague of mine, who honestly had never used any kind of drug, said so to her investigator, she was treated with suspicion and incredulity.

The hypocrisy is astounding. Drugs are bad, but we know everone has used them, and that's ok – but only if it was a long tome ago. Actually, it's so ok that if someone claims to NOT have used drugs at some point, they must be lying.

What If We Had Raped Zubaydah?

A reader writes:

I sort of think of torture like rape: It may not kill the victim, but it gives so much power to the person inflicting it and causes so much trauma to the victim that it’s obviously beyond moral second-guessing: it’s wrong beyond the pale. Rhetorically, I suspect that if we were officially raping females suspected of terrorism, there would be legitimate outrage.

Though one can’t be sure. I’m constantly surprised by what we tolerate in this country.

I presume Cheney would regard it as a "no-brainer." Or an "enhanced penetration technique". Of course, we do have evidence for the rape of prisoners under Bush as commander-in-chief – in Abu Ghraib and elsewhere.