Category: The Dish

"Terrorism is not the only new danger of this era. Another is the administration’s argument that because the president is commander in chief, he is the "sole organ for the nation in foreign affairs." That non sequitur is refuted by the Constitution’s plain language, which empowers Congress to ratify treaties, declare war, fund and regulate military forces, and make laws ‘necessary and proper’ for the execution of all presidential powers. Those powers do not include deciding that a law — FISA, for example — is somehow exempted from the presidential duty to ‘take care that the laws be faithfully executed,’" – George Will, today.

Slowly, but inexorably, conservative resistance to many aspects of this administration builds.

Enough with the Kaus-bashing. This meme is the Mickster at his best, which is very hard to beat.

Well you can’t accuse them of bias. A reader notices:

"What’s interesting about how Cheney’s interview is playing out tonight over the airwaves is that Fox News is not releasing the video to other networks yet, only a transcript and a still image. All the broadcast evening news shows, and all the cable chat shows on CNN and MSNBC are only able to put up quotes next to a little box photo of Cheney. Far from humanizing him, viewers who didn’t get home early enough to see Hume’s show (and the vast broadcast audience) are not getting the calming effect of Cheney speaking, but the disembodied effect of a rather sinister old file photo next to quotes."

Embargo the news; embargo the interview.

Well, I just watched the veep. He has a calming demeanor and an under-rated TV presence. But two things he dodged. The first was the question of whether he had been following the usual hunting protocols. I have no clue what those are and defer to others. But his formula of taking full responsibility, and giving the bottom line as "I shot the gun," doesn’t answer the question of whether he was negligent in the way he was hunting. I’m sure he didn’t mean to hurt his old friend; and I’m sure his friend won’t hold it against him. But it does make a difference if this was an accident that could happen under perfect hunting protocols or not. Thirty yards seems pretty close to me. Whittington was wearing the right gear. Well, you can see what I’m getting at; and hunters will no doubt come up with an answer. Violating basic hunting procedures makes this a little more embarrassing than a pure accident. I’m not saying Cheney did. I’m just saying he dodged that question. Why?

As for the press strategy: completely unconvincing. He waited, he argued, for accuracy’s sake. First reports are always wrong, he claimed. So what? He knew that he’d shot someone accidentally; that person was seriously wounded and taken to hospital; and that’s all he needed to report to the national media. As soon as the family had been informed, the press should have been called. It’s a no-brainer. It’s the press’s job to get the details and determine what happened in greater detail. The White House clearly thought that was the right approach, as Cheney said. But Cheney, apparently, trumps the White House on a big story like this when it involves him. So the mystery is not solved, and may never be. Look: this is not a big deal, although it’s fascinating in a way. It’s just a small deal of dodging, arrogance, and weirdness. Like a lot of stuff related to Cheney. Just ask Scooter.

This reader is onto something:

"I’m not a paranoid lefty who ascribes the worst motives and monster qualities to Bush/Cheney/Rove. So I’d never say they shot someone on purpose. However, it’s worth noting that this Cheney debacle has provided cover and substantially diverted attention from some otherwise very icky news stories this week: Congress close to deep-sixing any investigation into the NSA spying program; Chertoff and HSA getting slammed by a new Katrina report and hearings; new Abu Ghraib torture photos; the Shays hearings; Rice getting grilled by members of her own party over lack of progress in Iraq, etc.

On balance, if I were a Bush flack I’d take a bizarre hunting accident over those more terrible news stories any day. In fact, now’s the time to release names or reports or legislation or bill signing statements or nettlesome employees while we’re fixated on the fact that the Vice President shot a man in the face on his way to confirming once and for all how awful his judgment is."

My only quibble is that the pretty good economic news was drowned out.

Many people are still under the illusion that the abuses documented again today at Abu Ghraib were entirely improvised by a handful of people on the night shift, rather than a matter of widespread practice and policy. Here are two interviews with two former interrogators, Roger Brocaw and Tony Lagouranis. Since the president has declared himself immune from the McCain Amendment, this issue still needs addressing. Alas.

"You have to treat the prisoners like dogs. If you treat them, or if they believe that they’re any different than dogs, you have effectively lost control of your interrogation from the very start. So they have to earn everything they get. And it works," – Major General Geoffrey Miller, sent by Donald Rumsfeld to Abu Ghraib in order to "Gitmoize" the facility.

That’s from a first-hand account by the woman he was talking to, Brigadier Janis Karpinski. Miller has never been disciplined. Here’s someone following Miller’s instruction:

"This is either a cover-up story or an incompetence story. Karl was constrained, as was the entire communications operation, because the Vice President had arranged for how this was to come out," – a top Republican in Time’s useful ticktock on how the vice-president runs this administration.

Note that the editor of the local paper

"said he is ‘mystified’ about the chain of events and that the public should have been notified much earlier, even if the shooter had been some random guy."

Off-message, no? Even the hand-picked journalists aren’t playing along. But I like the Republican formulation: "either a cover-up or incompetence." Kinda like Iraq and Katrina, no?

That’s Brit Hume’s description of Cheney’s view of how his office handled the press after he shot a good friend. No surprise. Cheney has never to his knowledge made a single mistake while in office. Nor has the president, except for Paul O’Neill. To his credit, Hume asked Cheney if he’d been drinking. And he had – at lunchtime, apparently. I have a feeling that Cheney’s audience with Hume will lance this story. Unless more facts emerge, of course.

Finally, an explanation from a reader that helps me understand Mickey better:

"Our culture’s ‘surface revulsion’ to homosexuality isn’t really that superficial and it is not ‘genetic’; it is deeply imbedded in our Judeo-Christian heritage.  Well, actually, in our Judaic heritage, and it’s all about germs.

As a person of faith, you are no doubt familiar with the traditional, though now discarded proposition (which came to me via the Articles of Faith of the Anglican Church), that the moral, but not the sanitary, laws of Moses are carried forward and incorporated in the New Covenant.  Of course, at some point a bright light, probably some pagan classicist, observed that moral and sanitary laws were indistinguishable in most ancient Mediterranean and Semitic culture – physical purity WAS religious purity. Conversely, physical impurity WAS religious, or moral, impurity.  This was equally true in its broadest features in Greece and Canaan. The physical spilling of blood, not the act of murder per se, within the polis, for example, resulted in ritual uncleanness.  Hence, the need for public expiation. In the Jewish context, the taboos became increasingly elaborate and, typical of ancient Hebrew society, tended to fixate on things sexual, consistent with the procreative and sanitary anxieties of a small, weak nomadic society traveling among more numerous settled populations.  Semen, menstrual fluid, urine, feces – all are unclean. The Hebrew phobia of homosexuality ultimately derives from this culturally transmitted notion of ritual uncleanness. So, Kaus’s "revulsion", far from being ‘genetic’, is ultimately ‘memetic’. It is a culturally inherited and imprinted response that is based in the idea that homosexuality is ‘dirty’."