Month: May 2009

A Question Of The Rule Of Law, Ctd.

Henry Farrell has at Clive Crook. My response here. A dissent here. What we can say is that these debates are themselves helpful. I don't mean that as a truism. I mean that because even if we do not get to sustain the rule of law, we have begun to expose the full extent of the last administration's brutality and lawlessness.

The OLC Memos, the ICRC Report and the Senate Armed Services Committee Report alone are definitive proof that the Bush administration knowingly violated the Geneva Conventions' Article 3, premeditatedly violated the UN Convention on Torture, set up an ongoing torture apparatus within the CIA, directly authorized the abuses at Abu Ghraib, and lied again and again and again about all of it. In history and in front of the world, they are slowly being exposed and being held accountable in the court of public opinion and under the heavens.

In the end, that must count for something.

The Case Of Matthew Shepard, Ctd.

A reader writes:

I believe the left has abandoned its principles here in same way that the right abandoned it's principles on torture.  Outside of the issue of hate crimes, you will find progressive thinkers opposed to slapping on more jail time as a solution to everything.  This is why, they say, you will find overcrowded prisons costing the state in terms of upkeep and lost economic potential.  Moreover, they say, long prison sentences automatically imposed (by such laws as the three strikes rule) take justice out of context and only contribute to the problem.

Why, then, do these same people suddenly want to throw away the key for those who inflict pain on others from prejudice? Is it because they think the prison system works for bigots where it fails everyone else? This is a profound contradiction that at least requires explanation.

Matthew Shepard was murdered. If the penalty for murder is not enough, then the real problem is how we treat murder cases.  All of them.

I agree, but then I've never been on the gay left and have always opposed these laws. There is a real debate about the 20/20 story and, for the sake of balance, you can read the critiques of it here and here. I should be clear: I do not for a minute believe that the bigotry behind the Matthew Shepard murder was a hoax. I think it was murkier and more complicated – i.e. more human – than some want it to be. Of course, if you believe that his murderers deserved the maximum sentence because they brutally murdered someone, and not because they were meth-fueled bigots, it doesn't matter. I want the same laws against the same acts enforced equally on everyone. If police don't enforce the law equally, get on their case. But leave the laws alone.

Home News

The web always surprises. I expected this year's traffic to be markedly down over the same time last year, which was during a frantic and historic primary race. I was wrong. I'm told the Dish's total pageviews in April 2008 were 6.3 million; this past April, they were 10 million. There was one extraneous bump – the fellated priest logo – but that doesn't begin to account for the jump. As to unique visitors – i.e. actual individual human beings – who read the Dish in April 2008: there were 925,000 of you. Last month, there were 1,353,000 of you. The web keeps growing, and we seem to be growing with it.

Thanks for coming, and staying. And thanks to Chris Bodenner and Patrick Appel, without whom I couldn't begin to keep up the pace.

Small Boots To Fill

Ross marks Obama's first 100 days:

[Obama's] administration has only just begun to define itself, and things will almost certainly get harder as the shadow of the Bush Administration recedes.  The policy debates for which this administration will be remembered are still ahead of it, and the crises and the defining moments they generate are still to come as well. In a variety of different ways, George W. Bush helped make Barack Obama's first hundred days a ringing success. But he won't be there to help forever.

Condi Rice’s Bad Day

She is used to Beltway journalists who are often more interested in bragging of their access than asking tough questions. Then she met some students who know she is knee-deep in the torture regime. Scott Horton examines her defense. This point seems particularly pertinent:

She perpetuates the Abu Ghraib myth (“Abu Ghraib was not policy”), even as the Senate Armed Services Committee report demolishes it. The words she uses are essentially identical to those she uttered to me at a group meeting in the White House in May 2004. But the efforts to delink the abuses in Iraq from the formation of policy in Washington—a process in which Condi played a focal role—have gone flat. The Senate report makes clear that the abuses at Abu Ghraib flowed directly from policy choices made in the National Security Council that Condi ran.

Then the untruths that must come when defending the indefensible:

Rice insists that no one was tortured at Guantánamo. She cites an OSCE report that called it a “model medium security prison.” But, as the report’s author stressed, this was a characterization of the physical facility. How about the treatment of the prisoners? On that score, the OSCE had a different conclusion: it was “mental torture.” The Red Cross did complete two studies of detainees at Guantánamo, and Condi’s characterization of them is false. The first report concluded that the treatment of prisoners, particularly isolation treatment, was “tantamount to torture.” The second examined the use of the Bush Program and concluded it was “torture,” no qualifications. Rice was furnished copies of these reports. Did she take the time to read them?

Infodemics

David Rothkopf has been watching too much cable:

Swine flu! World Health Organization at alert level 4! Markets rocked by sell-offs! Howie Mandel was right! Never shake hands! Bathe in Purell! See if you can borrow a face mask from Michael Jackson! Or hold your breath whenever you are near a ham sandwich! Armies of pigs in uniform marching on Washington! Orwell was right: the animals have turned on us, become more dangerous than us! Four legs bad, two legs good! Head for the hills!

Once again, the media is reacting to a potential threat with its usual calm, responsibly recognizing that sensational coverage of diseases can have far worse consequences than the diseases themselves. Or not.

Drum defends the hacks.