Category: The Dish

A reader writes:

I don’t want Ron Paul to place second in Ames, per Ruffini’s prediction.  I want Paul to WIN Ames.  I want him to take the whole thing.  This would accomplish two worthy objectives.  First, it would end the campaign of that despicable charlatan, Mitt Romney, who is stuck in single-digits everywhere except for Iowa and New Hampshire, the two states into which he has poured his entire warchest.  Beating Romney in Ames would eviscerate the paper tiger that is Mitt Romney.

Secondly, a Ron Paul victory at Ames would give Paul instant credibility as the small-government conservative in the race, as well as the only Republican candidate for a sane foreign policy.  Rudy’s preaching small government on domestic issues, but is ready to double down on neoconservatism, complete with torture, a disregard for the Constitution, and nation building.  Thompson is about to become the candidate of the Religious Right; a very credible source informs me that a Faustian bargain is about to be cut that will seal the deal.  And of  course, McCain is done.  A Paul victory at Ames would make him a serious candidate, one who could win the votes of old-school conservatives and Republicans who remember the party that existed before Bush.

I take back all my fears about the piece. It’s a fair, superb account of Ron Paul’s history, ideology, character and significance, including completely relevant material about some of the kooks his campaign has indeed attracted. Here’s the explanation for the congressman’s strange political success:

The Victoria Advocate, an influential newspaper in the district, has generally opposed Paul for re-election, on the grounds that a “lone wolf” cannot get the highway and homeland-security financing the district needs. So how does he get re-elected? Tim Delaney, the paper’s editorial-page editor, says: “Ron Paul is a very charismatic person. He has charm. He does not alter his position ever. His ideals are high. If a little old man calls up from the farm and says, ‘I need a wheelchair,’ he’ll get the damn wheelchair for him.”

And here’s Caldwell’s shrewd analysis of Paul’s salience:

Whatever the campaign purports to be about, the main thing it has done thus far is to serve as a clearinghouse for voters who feel unrepresented by mainstream Republicans and Democrats. The antigovernment activists of the right and the antiwar activists of the left have many differences, maybe irreconcilable ones. But they have a lot of common beliefs too, and their numbers — and anger — are of a considerable magnitude. Ron Paul will not be the next president of the United States. But his candidacy gives us a good hint about the country the next president is going to have to knit back together.

Glenn Greenwald discovers a beaut: the Bush administration’s detailed criticism of Russia’s treatment of prisoners and detainees. Here’s part of what they oppose:

Government technical regulations that require Internet service providers and telecommunications companies to invest in equipment that enables the [Foreign Security Service] to monitor Internet traffic, telephone calls, and pagers without judicial approval caused serious concern… Lengthy pretrial detention remained a serious problem… According to Human Rights Watch’s (HRW) report on torture in Russia released in November 1999, torture by police officers usually occurs within the first few hours or days of arrest and usually takes one of four forms: beatings with fists, batons, or other objects; asphyxiation using gas masks or bags (sometimes filled with mace); electric shocks; or suspension of body parts (e.g. suspending a victim from the wrists, which are tied together behind the back). Allegations of torture are difficult to substantiate because of lack of access by medical professionals and because the techniques used often leave few or no permanent physical traces.

If you examine the Decider’s executive order issued yesterday, you will find considerable lee-way for the CIA to use beatings with fists, and suspension of body parts, i.e. stress positions. The administration refuses to call these things torture when the US does it, but has no problem with plain English in talking about the Russians. And, of course, the ability to wiretap Americans without a court warrant was a critical goal of the Cheney executive branch coup after 9/11.

So repeat after me: Putin doesn’t torture anyone. And neither does Bush.

Marty Lederman explains:

The only truly important section of the E.O. is section 3(b)(i)(C), which defines the category of violence that will be deemed to violate Common Article 3 for purposes of determining whether a CIA interrogation program comports with CA3. In addition to torture as defined by the federal criminal statute, and the forms of violence that remain prohibited under the new WCA, that subsection of the E.O. prohibits only "other acts of violence serious enough to be considered comparable to murder, torture, mutilation, and cruel or inhuman treatment, as defined in [the War Crimes Act]."

In other words, if a form of violence is not already prohibited by federal criminal law, and is not "comparable" to the forms of violence prohibited by the WCA, the CIA is not prohibited from using it.

Does this prohibit the CIA "enhanced" techniques? Who knows? Are they "comparable" to what the WCA prohibits? You tell me.

Whatever else these new rules are, they are anything but clear. You can read the full text here.

Meet the iLimb:

The newly released iLimb is the first prosthetic hand to have fully functional motorized digits that move and bend independently, its makers say. Electrodes taped to the skin transmit signals to tiny motors that power the fingers.

Previous artificial hands had only a thumb and forefinger that worked in a clawlike grasping action. But the new device allows amputees to carry out more delicate movements such as peeling a banana, typing on a computer, or eating with a knife and fork.

The iLimb is also covered by a semitransparent "cosmesis" that is computer modeled to look like human skin.

They have a larger carbon footprint than the average Hollywood poseur:

"Worms produce a significant amount of greenhouse gases. Recent research done by German scientists has found that worms produced a third of nitrous oxide gases when used for composting," an expert was quoted as saying.

In an interview with a leading renewable resources journal, Jim Frederickson, senior research fellow at Britain`s Open Universities faculty of technology, said the German research showed that worm composting has deleterious effects on the environment that should be considered more seriously.

Tim Ash explains:

Osama bin Laden’s plan was to get the U.S. to overreact and overreach itself. With the invasion of Iraq, Bush fell slap-bang into that trap. The U.S. government’s own latest National Intelligence Estimate, released this week, suggests that Al Qaeda in Iraq is now among the most significant threats to the security of the American homeland.

The U.S. has probably not yet fully woken up to the appalling fact that, after a long period in which the first motto of its military was "no more Vietnams," it faces another Vietnam. There are many important differences, but the basic result is similar: The mightiest military in the world fails to achieve its strategic goals and is, in the end, politically defeated by an economically and technologically inferior adversary.

Even if there are no scenes of helicopters evacuating Americans from the roof of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, there will surely be some totemic photographic image of national humiliation as the U.S. struggles to extract its troops.

Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo have done terrible damage to the U.S. reputation for being humane; this defeat will convince more people around the world that it is not even that powerful.

(Photo: Wissam al-Okaili/AFP/Getty.)

Rod Dreher writes a painful post:

Reading this story today made me reflect on something that explains a lot about why I reacted, and do react, with such strong emotion to the Catholic sex abuse story — and why, in the main, it cost me my Catholic faith. I don’t think I’ve ever talked about this. Maybe I should.

Some people have been bold enough to ask me over the years if I had been molested as a child. I wasn’t, but it’s not an unreasonable question. But something did happen that could easily have gone that way, and only know, over 25 years later, is it becoming clear to me how much that one incident affected my thinking and feeling.

I was 14, and went with a school group on a weeklong summer trip to the beach…

The rest is here.

They can dream, can’t they?

They’re worried, aren’t they? There’s a confluence of interest here between neoconservatives desperately trying to portray limited government conservatism as inherently nutty and the NYT-lefties who simply cannot imagine why more government isn’t the answer to everything. But, we’ll see what the piece says. Chris Caldwell is a good reporter and the piece may not be as bad as it sounds. By the way, remember how the NYT covered the Howard Dean phenomenon? Exactly.