Category: Old Dish

It’s very complicated but Marty Lederman’s latest post on the evolution of the Bush administration’s policies on abuse of detainees contains important new details, and glimmers of hope. It now appears that the infamous 2003 pro-torture memo may have had such a damaging effect that Justice Department lawyers [not White House lawyers, as originally posted] managed to repudiate it more swiftly than we previously understood. We still need more information – like the actual critical March 14, 2003 memo from OLC Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo to DoD General Counsel William (Jim) Haynes. Why has the administration not yet given it to the Senate? It may be the smoking gun. Marty says he’s going to work on other stuff now. But his work has been invaluable. I can only hope he will find himself morally obliged to keep tabs and post again if major developments break. We need him.

MALKIN VERSUS GOP PORK: Hats off to her. She’s targeting Alaska Republican Don Young, nominating him as “the Biggest, Oinkiest Jerk in Congress.” The conservative revolt against today’s Big Government Republicans may be gaining momentum. Better late than never.

AN EVERGREEN ALUM WRITES: “I was a Greener from 1994-1998. It’s an amusing little experimental liberal arts college out in the woods started in 1971.
I don’t know what year the official fight song was adopted, but by the time I attended, it seemed pretty dated. Enrollment at the school was nosing toward two-thirds women and probably half of them were lesbians, or at least LUGs (lesbians until graduation). The biggest sporting event at the school was not tennis or soccer, or even hacky-sack, but the women’s rugby team. Need I say more?
The men were all cowed and sensitive or had smoked enough pot that they were impotent — that is, insensitive (one of the faces of the school clock tower was stopped, permanently set to 4:20). The Squirting Geoduck was really the environmentally sensitive equivalent of the red sports car: fantasy projection.
Thanks for the attention to my alma mater. Despite my gripes, it’s quite an undiscovered gem of a school if you know how to find your niche.”

We are told that the Vatican document banning all gay seminarians, regardless of their conduct or quality, has yet to be published. Which means there is still a slim chance it will never be. Which means we have a window of opportunity for resistance. Which leads to the following thoughts …

HOW THEY GET AWAY WITH IT: How does Benedict manage to enforce discrimination that contradicts central tenets of Catholicism itself? Because the existence and nature of gay priests who are not pedophiles are suppressed by enforced silence. Money quote from a new piece in the Catholic newspaper, the Tablet: “Most gay priests, like myself, have been prevented from speaking about our own experiences, and sharing with our parishioners our rewarding lives as celibate men. Most have been formally silenced by bishops or religious superiors on the topic, so the Church can deny our existence. (That is the reason for my pseudonym: I would much prefer to write under my own name.) And many who have not been formally silenced fear reprisals from their bishops and some parishioners. As a result, the only public model of the ‘gay priest’ is the notorious paedophile. So what appears to be the Vatican’s stance is unsurprising. What moral theologians used to call ‘invincible ignorance’ only breeds prejudice, fear and hatred.”

HOW TO FIGHT BACK: There is a solution to this. It’s called courage. I am actually tired of hearing from all these gay priests who refuse to use their names and give blind quotes to the press. Memo to them: your silence is empowering Benedict and the forces of bigotry. You have a choice now: come out to your congregations, explain your lives, stand up for yourselves and the pope, or continue to be scapegoated, exiled, punished. Yes, your vows include obedience. But with this potential decree the Vatican has shown it is willing to break its own vow of precluding “unjust discrimination” against gays, and perpetuating “unfounded and demeaning” assumptions about their lives. If you cannot speak truth to unprincipled power, why are you priests in the first place? This is not just about celibate gay priests; it’s about an attempt to displace the blame for the abuse of children from the guilty to the innocent. It is so manifestly unjust that it cries out for resistance. Don’t quit; come out and fight; force the bishops to fire you in the daylight of the press and the people. If all gay priests did that, up to a third of the clergy could call the Vatican’s bluff. The time for hoping this will blow away or that somehow you can avoid facing it is over. And your time has come.

“Many Republican members of Congress must be asking themselves, ‘Is Nancy Pelosi the best fiscal conservative this Congress has to offer?'” – Tim Chapman, Townhall.com. The revolt continues. And let’s be up-front: pork-busting, however admirable and important, doesn’t cut it. I have one test for Bush’s fiscal realism: will he postpone or scale down his budget-busting Medicare drug benefit?

EMAIL OF THE DAY: “You make out as though a vote for Kerry in 2004 was a vote for competent, sober, middle-of-the-road government. Hogwash. It was a vote for Shrum, Kos, and Chirac. If George W. Bush’s reelection confirmed his worst impulses, a Kerry victory would have proven just as exhilarating to those elements of the Left now talking about “Occupied New Orleans.” That’s why many of us supported the President. Perhaps we conservatives are guilty of loving Bush not too wisely but too well, and I’d say you’ve a very well-furnished room in that glass house.”

Ouch. I’ll take my lumps. But this is yet another variation on the Dems-Would-Be-Worse theme. Ask yourself: if Kerry were president and the Congress were still controlled by the Republicans, would we be more fiscally responsible or less?

Check out this November 5, 2004 Washington Post chat between readers, Peggy Noonan and Donna Brazile. Here’s Noonan’s answer to the following question:

“Cleveland, Ohio: Is there a party for someone who favors small government, fiscal restraint, a strong national defense and a hands-off attitude on social issues?

Peggy Noonan: Smaller government? The Dems will never, ever give you that. Lower taxes? Go Republican. A just and fair tax code? Watch the Republican president. Wedge issues? Blame judges: they distort the system, and the GOP resists their distortion. A strong defense? The whole history of the past 40 years is weak Dems and strong Reps. You may be a libertarian but keep watchin the Republicans: they are the long term hope.”

Yesterday, in the Wall Street Journal, Noonan wrote the following:

“The Republican (as opposed to conservative) default position when faced with criticism of the Bush administration is: But Kerry would have been worse! The Democrats are worse! All too true… But saying The Bush administration is a lot better than having Democrats in there is not an answer to criticism, it’s a way to squelch it. Which is another Bridge to Nowhere.”

Peggy Noonan: somewhere out there, there’s a bridge with your name on it.

BEGALA AWARD NOMINEE: “At every turn [Oliver Twist] is menaced by adults whose grotesqueness, while comical, is also a measure of their moral deformity, and of the ugliness of the society that makes them possible. The worst thing about these villains, who tend to occupy positions of at least relative power, is that they believe their sadism and lack of compassion to be the highest expressions of benevolence. Like Barbara Bush after seeing the “underprivileged” citizens of New Orleans exiled to the Astrodome, they insist on telling Oliver that things are working out pretty well for him.” – A. O. Scott, New York Times today.

“Scratching my head about Rita and the economy at the same time, I came across a revealing picture. Why are oil prices so high? Hurricanes? Iraq? Unrest in Nigeria maybe? Or could it be the fact that every single vehicle but one in this picture is an SUV or a truck?”

Armando did respond, but won’t correct. Here’s his post:

See, what Sully does not get is that Summers dismissed bias as an explanation for underrepresentation of women in the sciences offering this nonsensical theory of standard deviations as the explanation.
Frankly, what Summers did as President of Harvard is inexcusable.
Parsing his words for some innocent interpretation is beside the point.
I leave that exercise for Sully.
Summers himself has admitted and apologized for his error.

First off, Summers’ explicit topic was not “under-representation of women in the sciences.” It was, in his words, “the issue of women’s representation in tenured positions in science and engineering at top universities and research institutions.” I know these distinctions are little subtle for Armando, but most people of average intelligence and basic reading skills can make the distinction between all women in all sciences and tenured faculty at the very top of the higher education tree. Second, one of the three explanations that Summers posited was indeed, in his words, “patterns of discrimination in a search.” Does Summers “dismiss bias” as a factor? Again, in his own words, the considerations of innate congitive skills at the very top of the scientific field are “reinforced by what are in fact lesser factors involving socialization and continuing discrimination.” Whatever else that is, it isn’t a dismissal. It’s an attempt at a provocative analysis. Poor Armando. The notion of “standard deviation,” one of the most basic principles in statistics, is “nonsensical”? As one of my readers commented,

Are you out of your friggin’ mind? You expect one of the LostKosKidz to understand something like deviation from the mean? C’mon. Have you ever read one ounce of analysis over at the LostKosKidzKomedyKlub? It’s all based on the theory that, if our side screams real loud, we’ll win the argument. And the site gets so many hits because it has a comments section the commenters tries to outscream each other. Don’t stay up late for a correction.

Point taken. I’ll stay up late finishing a column instead.

The Congressional Republicans try and cut the budget by removing “attache positions in the Foreign Agricultural Service.” Er, try harder, guys. And get the math right, please.

A reader pushes the envelope:

Perhaps Benedict saw the success Rove and Co. had using gays as a divisive power-play issue and seeks to do the same with the Catholic Church? Prey upon Latin American and African distaste for homosexuality to gain influence there, keep the conservative Euro and American Catholics close at hand (you know, the rich white people) and rule in a dissentless bubble.
If so, let’s hope he’s watching what’s happening to that barrel of monkeys these days. The Catholic Church may very well have its own Katrina moment. Time will tell.

According to Bob Novak, the rich, white people in Aspen have already abandoned the Bush ship.

I’m not making this up but the Evergreen State College in Washington State has the geoduck as their athletic mascot. There’s even a “Geoduck Fight Song.” It goes like this:

Go, Geoducks go,
Through the mud and the sand,
let’s go.
Siphon high, squirt it out,
swivel all about,
let it all hang out.

Go, Geoducks go,
Stretch your necks when the tide
is low
Siphon high, squirt it out,
swivel all about,
let it all hang out.

Nothing whatever to do with penises. At all. Over to you, Wonkette!

National Review calls for the withdrawal of the nomination of Julie Myers to to lead U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

OPERATION OFFSET: Sure, cut out the pork. But Kevin Drum has candidates for deeper savings. It’s easy, m-kay?

CHECKING ON ARMANDO: No correction yet, despite considerable dissent in the comments section. One emailer says: “His refusal to admit error, despite repeated demonstrations of his mistake, is not evidence of any liberal dishonesty. It’s evidence of his personal stubbornness, nothing more. I hope you will note that the left is already taking him to task for his inflammatory and incorrect remarks.” Glad to hear it. But Daily Kos is the biggest blog on the planet and it has published something demonstrably untrue. If Armando won’t correct, the site’s managers should. And if they don’t, they should be held accountable. We all make mistakes, blog hyperbole or sometimes sloppy language. Blogging makes that inevitable. I’m no exception. But the blogosphere’s credibility depends on correction. Why is Kos refusing to correct?