Month: September 2009

The president is no longer seeking a new law for indefinite detention, and will continue to hold terrorist suspects without charge in accordance with the system established under Bush and Cheney. Ironically, Greenwald considers this an "important victory". Here's why:

A new preventive detention law would have permanently institutionalized that power, almost certainly applying not only to the "war on Terror" but all future conflicts.  It would have endowed preventive detention with the legitimizing force of explicit statutory authority, which it currently lacks.  It would have caused preventive detention to ascend to the cherished status of official bipartisan consensus — and thus, for all practical purposes, been placed off limits from meaningful debate […]

As bad as the Obama administration is on detention issues, the Congress is far worse.  Any time the words "Terrorism" or "Al Qaeda" are uttered, they leap to the most extreme and authoritarian measures.  Congress is intended to be a check on presidential powers, but each time Terrorism is the issue, the ironic opposite occurs:  when the Obama administration and Congress are at odds, it is Congress demanding greater powers of executive detention (as happened when Congress blocked Obama from transferring Guantanamo detainees to the U.S.).

The hope is that the courts will keep those powers in check.

From a NYT magazine article on gay teens:

“When I first realized I was gay,” Austin interjected, “I just assumed I would hide it and be miserable for the rest of my life. But then I said, ‘O.K., wait, I don’t want to hide this and be miserable my whole life.’ ”

I asked him how old he was when he made that decision.

“Eleven,” he said.

Later in the article, the author listens to a gay 14-year-old argue with his mother about whether to "let his latest crush spend time in his room" alone:

As I listened to them bicker, I couldn’t help remembering what Ritch Savin-Williams, the professor of developmental psychology at Cornell, told me the first time we spoke: “This is the first generation of gay kids who have the great joy of being able to argue with their parents about dating, just like their straight peers do.”

Timothy Kincaid reflects:

I know that I knew that I was gay early on, before I knew that there was even a word for it. But like many guys my generation, I didn’t come out until my 20’s. I can’t imagine how different life would be had I let the world know I was gay at age 13.

For me, the main impact of marriage equality – or even the idea that you could have a happy, normal life as a gay person – is on the next generation. They will be the first gay people to grow up in human history with the self-confidence and self-worth of many straights. I am convinced – because I am a conservative – that this will generate a big positive shift in the culture and life of gay people. It will end enormous pain, great suffering, and all the pathologies that accompany such oppression and exclusion.

And this is a good thing for everyone.

In the race for the bottom in paranoia and nuttiness, the Republicans still have a decisive edge.

White Hall, Virginia, 12.02 pm

A most encouraging sign on the HIV ban:

The memo signals that the administration is very close to final repeal of the ban, and is now instructing agencies to be ready for the change. USCIS is clearly expecting guidance from HHS very soon, and has decided to hold applications by HIV-positive applicants rather than deny them, as the new rule will no longer prohibit their entry into the country."

Obama is coming through on this, as Bush pledged to. For many, this is a life-changer. For me, it is a new lease of life to stay in the country I love. Thanks to the many readers who did so much to make this happen.

You may remember the one – yes, one and only – digression into foreign policy that Sarah Palin made before being adopted as a hood ornament by the neocons. It was about the war on terror. She had heard about it “on the news.” This is what she believed before being re-programmed by Kristol and Scheuneman:

Alaska Business Monthly: We’ve lost a lot of Alaska’s military members to the war in Iraq. How do you feel about sending more troops into battle, as President Bush is suggesting?

Palin: I’ve been so focused on state government, I haven’t really focused much on the war in Iraq. I heard on the news about the new deployments, and while I support our president, Condoleezza Rice and the administration, I want to know that we have an exit plan in place; I want assurances that we are doing all we can to keep our troops safe. Every life lost is such a tragedy. I am very, very proud of the troops we have in Alaska, those fighting overseas for our freedoms, and the families here who are making so many sacrifices.

My italics. This is what Scheuneman got her to read out in Asia:

Prominent voices in the Democratic Party are opposing the additional U.S. ground forces that are clearly needed. 

Speaker of the House Pelosi, Defense Subcommittee Chairman Murtha, the Senate Armed Services Committee Chair, and many others, recently expressed doubts about sending additional forces! President Obama will face a decision soon when the U.S. Commander in Afghanistan requests additional forces to implement his new counterinsurgency strategy.

We can win in Afghanistan by helping the Afghans build a stable representative state able to defend itself. And we must do what it takes to prevail.

Her position is that defense should be the only part of government spending that is increased. She even backs the now-defunct F-22. 

(Photo: Jewel Samad/Getty.)

My take on Obama's re-branding of America at the UN.

As a census worker is hanged in Kentucky and protestors come to Washington with posters that said "We Come Unarmed. This Time" and as Limbaugh warns of a war of blacks against whites, this is happening:

The amount of taxes the federal government took in from the

manufacturers of all firearms and ammunition in the fourth quarter of 2008, the period between Oct. 1 and Dec. 31, increased 31 percent over

the same time period reported in 2007.

That's from the most recent Firearms and Ammunition Excise Tax Collection Report released earlier this month by the Department of the Treasury. The average increase from 2007 in the previous three quarters of 2008 was 9.7 percent.

Clearly, something is happening.

"Demand for ammunition, across caliber lines, is outpacing supply. In order to keep up with demand, manufacturers are working at full capacity, 24 hours a day, seven days a week," said Ted Novin, the director of public affairs for the National Shooting Sports Foundation.

You think this will stop the inflammatory rhetoric on taik radio and Fox? Dream on.

Gaddafi has a blog. Can Fox give him a show?

D.B. Grady wants those who oppose the war to keep their eyes wide open:

[T]he 58% of Americans opposed to the war, opposed to a continued U.S. presence there, should have a clear-eyed view of what that means. It means condemning thousands to death, and hundreds of thousands to worse. When the Taliban returns to Kandahar and women are properly, in their view, denied any and all access to medical care and education, it should not be a surprise. It should not be a shocking revelation when homosexuals are stoned to death for the crime of existing. It’s not an insidious Taliban secret to be later revealed; it is their modus operandi. The United States will not have caused it, but it will have been a party to it. We will have known something terrible was about to happen, and we will have let it. That’s a lesson we learned in Vietnam, too.

That is why this decision is so excruciating.

But one should also recall that even today in Iraq, after billions have been spent and many lives lost, the assault on gay people has intensified. There is an attempted liquidation of the gay population in US-occupied Iraq right now. And yet I have yet to see any real concern expressed by Washington, or the rest of the world. Imagine if Iraq’s Jews were being rounded up, tortured and murdered on the streets by death squads allied with the ruling Shiite powers. Do you think there would be silence? Or just a small story in the Guardian?

The Islamist world is a brutal, backward, bigoted miasma. The idea that we can change this with troops, or that its continuation is somehow America’s responsibility, is, tragically, misguided.