Author: Andrew Sullivan

Fox News Unmasked, Ctd

Chait is puzzled by News Corp's multi-million dollar donations to the GOP:

The value of News Corp to the Republican party is massive. It's worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Why also give money to Republicans? By openly donating to the party, you help tear away the mask of objectivity, thereby reducing your own value as a propaganda outlet. It seems like a bad move both for Fox and the GOP.

Malkin Award Nominee II

"I tell ya, we’ve got some new problems in Washington. Big problems. Just today, Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta said people in America are not eating enough fruits and vegetables. They want to give all the power to the federal government to force you to eat more fruits and vegetables. This is what the federal, CDC, they gonna be calling you to make sure you eat fruits and vegetables, every day. This is socialism of the highest order!" – Congressman Paul Broun (R-GA).

Malkin Award Nominee

09-29 BABES OF THE DNC CALENDAR by HumanEvents

"Certain conservative women are under attack. Why is that, you ask? … It's not simply the fact that they are accomplished campaigners. Oh, no; in many cases, these women are despised JUST because they are HOT. And let’s face it: liberal women tend to be a bunch of hideous chuds. Now, [The Fox and Rice Experience radio show] doesn’t have many friends…at least, not people who would say so aloud.

But who would YOU rather communicate with: Monica Crowley, Andrea Tantaros, and Amanda Carpenter (three beautiful and accomplished conservative women), or Rachel Maddow (who looks like a carny that should be running the ‘Dime Pitch’ or ‘Duck Pond’ game at the traveling fair)?" – Human Events, keeping it classy.

The Power To Kill American Citizens At War With The US, Ctd

To air all the arguments taking me to task, before I respond, Daniel Larison counters me:

This administration is making a claim as broad, absurd and offensive as the Bush administration did when it claimed the authority to declare anyone, including U.S. citizens, enemy combatants. The objection that this power is only going to be used against “those who wish to kill us” trusts that the government is never going to abuse its power and that the government is never going to make a mistake. One of the main reasons why we have due process is the assumption that governments routinely abuse their power and frequently make mistakes. Has the last decade of American history already vanished from our memories?

Consider how many people were wrongfully rounded up and detained at Guantanamo for years, and then suppose that they were all U.S. citizens, and further suppose that instead of being illegally detained they had all been killed by government forces (after all, they were “terrorists”!). According to this administration, not only would the government be within its rights to kill all those people (because they were “those who wish to kill us”), but that for the sake of national security there can be no oversight, no review and no accountability for the decision to kill them. These are the tactics of military governments, dictatorships and colonial empires. If we adopt those tactics, or acquiesce in them because “we are at war,” we will be embracing the legacy of those regimes.

Kevin Drum  argues along the same lines:

I'd like to know if the Obama administration really does believe that it has the authority to assassinate U.S. citizens in Washington or Topeka in the same way it believes it has the authority to assassinate them in Sanaa and Karachi. And if not, why not?

Unfortunately, they've declared the entire thing to be a state secret, so we'll never find out.

Yglesias chimes in too:

The White House obviously isn’t saying it has the legal authority to order Glenn Greenwald murdered on the streets of Rio. But they do seem to be saying that if they issue such an order based on a lot of forged evidence, that there’s no legal process through which the agents of the US government can be prevented from carrying out the hit. Now as it happens the power being alleged here is so extreme that in practice it’s difficult to imagine in being misused in this way—I both hope and assume that such an order wouldn’t be followed. But we know that broad post-9/11 surveillance powers have been misused in ways with no connection to al-Qaeda whatsoever. And there have been no real consequences for it, so in the future we should assume that there will be more abuses and more egregious ones.

The Power To Kill American Citizens At War With The US, Ctd

Massie fires back:

These things always begin with “a pretty isolated example”. And if a government kills one of its fellow-citizens without seeking any legal mandate for doing so then what is that if it’s not an “assassination”? This is not something that is dependent upon the status or salubrity of the victim. The corpse and the authority are what count. al-Awlaki is no kind of good guy but he is an American citizen and, consequently, has rights denied the average al-Qaeda horror-show.

Response imminent. But “salubrity”? Love the word, but shurely shome mishtake. How does the good health of the terrorist enemy affect these issues? Or am I missing something?