Category: The Dish

Philip Klein explains the analogy.

Yes, the condemnations of torture were a relief. But, of course, on close reading in full context the day after, this reader is correct:

Just pretend it’s Hillary Clinton testifying rather than a right-wing Republican. If it were, you’d be ranting and raving and comparing her to Josef Mengele by now. There are so many holes in his testimony that you could drive any kind of torture through them – as Bush most certainly will. That’s why he was chosen.

He gave no commitment to ruling that the current interrogation techniques – clearly torture under the plain meaning of the law – will be regarded as such by the incoming attorney-general. But he seems clearly committed to the rule of law in the Goldsmith mold. Which means, one hopes, that the worst excesses might be contained. Look: what else can we do? The Congress cannot stop it – because Bush will simply add a signing statement saying the Congress is irrelevant. We’re left with the AG.

A reader is aghast at my failing to make this point:

I’m bascially a libertarian. I try to keep everyone honest. When Larry Craig was snared, I was neither happy nor sad. But I snickered at first because, hey, toilet seat flirtations are just funny. But as the case became clear, I got a chill– What if the actions of Larry Craig weren’t the actions of a married, repressed, homosexual politician? What if Barney Frank did them? And had no wife to "hypocritically" keep it a secret from? What if Barney Frank went into a public restroom and showed a ring to the man next to him in a stall, as an ambiguous signal? What if Barney Frank spread his legs wide enough to touch the other man’s foot? But Barney Frank never verbally said that he wanted homosexual sex? And certainly never said he wanted the sex in public?

Craig’s only crime is that he hinted at a desire for sex with another man, which, if given the opportunity, he may even have asked for at a hotel across the street. To prosecute him is to threaten the same for a straight man stopping to ask a prostitute for directions with a smile. A smile, the cretin! He saw how high her skirt was! He KNEW what he was getting into!

When I read the facts of the case, I figured Larry Craig was eventually going to win a HUGE settlement. The government has overreacted by endorsing sting operations that tag gay men as guilty before they even vocalize an intent to commit an actual crime.

Another writes:

Yes, he’s a ‘product of his age.’ I wonder, though, where many of us over the age of 50 would be if we had not experienced/taken advantage of/benefited and advanced  from the Stonewall awakening and the seventies.   Obviously, Sen. Craig was not able to find sufficient strength to overcome his inner struggle(s).  But to see him simply/merely as a hypocrite is not good enough.

How tortured must he have been – extremely panicked, not simply embarrassed – by his Minneapolis arrest?  His exposure on so many levels.  How many of us have been forced to face the same struggle (and its potential consequences) in similar circumstances?

There’s a story behind the senator’s story that needs to be told, understood and appreciated.  There but for our fortunate place in history – and a good amount of inner strength – go so many of us.

Our dynasticism deepens with hoopla over one of the younger Bushes endorsing Giuliani. Also: Connie Mack, Jr. Yes, we need to worry about the next generation of dauphins now, as well.

A reader writes:

I’m currently reading The Power Broker by Robert Caro, probably the definitive biography of Robert Moses, and came across this passage, referring to one of Moses’s first political battles, a battle over eminent domain in Long Island, that struck me:

"If ends justified means, and if the important thing in building a project was to get it started, then any means that got it started were justified. Furnishing misleading information about it was justfied; so was underestimating its costs.

Misleading and underestimating, in fact, might be the only way to get a project started…But what if you didn’t tell the officials how much the projects would cost? What if you let the legislators know about only a fraction of what you knew would be the projects’ ultimate expense?

Once they had authorized that small initial expenditure and you had spent it, they would not be able to avoid giving you the rest when you asked for it. How could they? If they refused to give you the rest of the money, what they had given you would be wasted, and that would make them look bad in the eyes of the public. And if they said you had misled them, well, they were not supposed to be misled. If they had been misled, that would mean that they hadn’t investigated the projects thoroughly, and had therefore been derelict in their own duty…Once a Legislature gave you money to start a project, it would be virtually forced to give you the money to finish it."

Will he throw his support to McCain or Giuliani? If Giuliani, a big deal. Why not Huckabee?

A new line of greeting cards – "for the pretentious ass who’s never wrong". 

We’re Arabs. The travails of getting work as a non-Muslim actor in the Middle East. It’s gotten a lot worse.

In a rapidly warming world, everyone wants some ice. The Brits are now making their move. They’re not the only ones.

Matt notices a slight shift in rhetoric in Bush’s arguing yesterday that the US must act to prevent Iran even having the knowledge to make nuclear bombs:

Were you to want to use military force against the Iranian nuclear weapons program tomorrow, you’d run into the problem that there’s nothing there. If you define the threshold down to some kind of war on knowledge, however, you put yourself in a position where maybe you can define the centrifuges Iran already has as constituting the knowledge they must be denied or at least a program to obtain the knowledge. Thus you have, on the level of rhetoric though not international law or sound diplomacy, the justification for military action.

My own sense – and, of course I do not know for sure – is that the decision to bomb Iran under this president has already been made. It has been made by Bush and Cheney. It was probably made months ago. Nothing – no facts, no arguments, and certainly no democratic or constitutional processes – will be allowed to come in the way of this. The public arguments are just an attempt to provide some rationale for what will happen, and are interesting solely as a means to detect what is actually going on behind the scenes. We have no role here. There was one accountability moment, remember, which was November 2004.

And when the Decider makes the decision, his putative heir, Giuliani, will declare that any opposition to it is a function of cowardice or masochism or treason. The military will be placed in the awful position of having to obey orders that are constitutionally unlawful. Fred Kaplan mulls the scenario here. In the next sixteen months, in other words, we may face a constitutional crisis that is no less grave because we can see it coming. I pray I’m wrong. Since these decisions are made in total secrecy, we have no way of knowing. But it seems to me that such a grave step would be extremely reckless without a full Congressional debate.