Category: The Dish

Late last night, before nodding off, I wondered, as I often do, whether I’d hyperbolized the threat from the looming detention-torture bill. "Legalizing tyranny" is a very strong phrase and I don’t want to cry wolf. In the sense that this president intends to seize random Americans and rush them into black sites and torture them at will, it’s hyperbole. But in a deeper sense, I think it’s completely accurate. The system we’re talking about is to do with wartime. A president in the past has had the option of seizing enemy combatants on a battlefield and detaining them without charge as POWs. There’s no threat to liberty there. What’s new is that in this war, enemy combatants have been designated as such not just on the battlefield – but anywhere in the world. What’s new is that they are no longer entitled to POW status. What’s new is that this war is for ever. So any changes are not just for a time-limited emergency but threaten to alter basic balances in constitutional order. What’s also new is that torture is now allowed on the down-low, on the president’s authority. And what’s also new is that an enemy combatant may or may not be an American citizen.

Put all that together and you really do have the danger of taking emergency measures for wartime and transforming a peace-time constitution into an essentially martial system, where every citizen or non-citizen can be apprehended at will and detained without charge. I repeat: this is a huge deal. It really should be a huge deal for conservatives who care about restraining government power. Its vulnerability to abuse is enormous; sanctioned torture, history tells us, never remains hermetically sealed. It always spreads. It eats away at decency and law and civility. If the president sincerely believes that torture is our most potent weapon in this war, and that habeas corpus is a quaint relic from the past, then we are in far greater peril than even the most dire pessimists believe.

Clapham Common, London, 2 pm.

Good sense, as usual. Brutal on the L.A. Times. Money quote:

[T]here is room between the New York Times and myleftarmpit.com for new forms that liberate journalism from its encrusted conceits while preserving its standards, like accuracy.

I’m not sure what that new form will look like. But it might resemble the better British papers today (such as the one I work for, the Guardian). The Brits have never bought into the American separation of reporting and opinion. They assume that an intelligent person, paid to learn about some subject, will naturally develop views about it. And they consider it more truthful to express those views than to suppress them in the name of objectivity.

A reader writes:

Real patriots will break the law for the greater good and proudly face the music for their actions.  Sometimes we have to do things that are wrong, but making the wrong lawful cheapens the choice.

The president and his crowd come from the top of corporate America where one can run a company into the ground and still get paid tens of million.  Bush has no concept about self-sacrifice for the greater good. The army and CIA have always done things against the law but did it in the shadows. If they were caught, then they accepted their punishment. Oliver North made a choice. He broke the law and paid the price (sort of). This administration wants to take away that price.  It is cheapening acts of patriotism. When an interrogator looks into a suspect’s eyes, he should see a jury of his peers looking back and then he needs to make his choice.

When Americans think of torture they think of Dirty Harry standing over a serial killer whose next victim is running out of air at a remote location. Americans think of Harry as a hero for doing everything he can to save the victim. But what most people fail to realize is the thing that makes Harry the hero is not the act of torture. It is the choice to torture given he will face consequences for his action. If the consequences are removed then Harry becomes a meter maid.

Once the torture bill passes it won’t take long before many, many more terror suspects will be tortured. A time will inevitably come when a detainee is found to contain some information that could have stopped a loss of life or property.  At that time interrogators will have to account for not getting the information.  Torture will become a cover-your-ass technique.

This is a sad time for morality and accountability.

This is the Bush era.

"This matter of gay ‚Äî I want the gays mad at me. I‚Äôm not on enough of their hit lists … But I want to tell you something is, they don’t know, we’re driven by God to deal with this stuff, and I want to say to you that, in this regard, I’m not playing with you. That when it comes to the matter of this gay stuff, I know that a family is not a man and a man or a woman and a woman. It’s a man and a woman. That’s the creative order, and I’m not backing down. I’m standing flat-footed on that right there. [Applause]

Everywhere I get to speak, I am guarded by the grace of God, being strong on it. Now they’re fussing on it, they’re saying a few things, but they don’t have me, you know, in their, you know, on their web sites. They’re not coming at me strong, and I would say this. Back in the days when I was a kid, and we see guys that don’t stand strong on principle, we call them ‘faggots.’ A punk is ‚Äî and our people, I’m from the ghetto, so sometimes it does come out a little bit. I got another one I’m gonna say in a minute ‚Äî [laughter] ‚Äî that don’t stand up for what’s right, we say, ‘You’re sissified out!’ ‘You’re a sissy!’ That means you don’t stand up for principles. And I just believe that God hasn’t called us to be sissies on a principle level. We’re called to be, to stand up and be men. I’m not talking about as in gender. I’m talking about man of God, men in the marketplace, and when a U.S. senator or congressman says that he wants me to vote for them, and he’s not biblically based ‚Äî if he doesn’t have God as his Lord, how can somebody that doesn’t feel the need for God lead me?" – Bishop Wellington Boone, speaking last weekend at the Republican Values Voters summit.

Among those attending the summit: Tony Snow, Attorney General Gonzales, Senator George Allen, Governor Mike Huckabee, Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity.

"We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another," – Jonathan Swift. (Anyone know the precise source?) [Update: Of course, you do. It’s from "The Battle of the Books And Other Short Pieces" at the beginning of Chapter XVI: "THOUGHTS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS".]

The Scissor Sisters give pop music an adrenaline injection. Jake Shears flames out. And I can look at Babydaddy’s beard all day.

An open seat, formerly Republican, previously considered close. A new poll shows a massive Democratic lead. The Dem has a 40 percent lead among self-described "moderates". A fluke? Or a harbinger of an awakening?

A new survey suggests they want us out within a year:

A new WPO poll of the Iraqi public finds that seven in ten Iraqis want US-led forces to commit to withdraw within a year. An overwhelming majority believes that the US military presence in Iraq is provoking more conflict than it is preventing and there is growing confidence in the Iraqi army. If the US made a commitment to withdraw, a majority believes that this would strengthen the Iraqi government. Support for attacks on US-led forces has grown to a majority position—now six in ten. Support appears to be related to a widespread perception, held by all ethnic groups, that the US government plans to have permanent military bases in Iraq.

I can’t verify the acuracy of this poll, but felt it was relevant to the debate prompted by the NIE. More data here.

I believe her:

Mrs. Hawkins, who described herself as a rural Virginia housewife and an active Democrat, said in an interview Tuesday that she heard Mr. Allen use the slur repeatedly at a party on election night in 1976. She said Mr. Allen used the term while deprecating the intelligence of the black players on the Washington Redskins football team, which Mr. Allen‚Äôs father coached. Recalling remarks about its star running back, Larry Brown, Mrs. Hawkins said that Mr. Allen ‘started in effect bad-mouthing him, saying what a shiftless you-know-what’ he was.

She said she remembered the conversation because she was a big fan of the team and was shocked. She said Mr. Allen’s statement on Monday was ‘just plain a lie.’

Can you imagine what he says about gays behind our backs?