Category: The Dish

I mentioned it here. It’s now outside the Atlantic firewall. Enjoy.

Poor Jake. If you’re talking with Republican propagandist Hugh Hewitt on the radio or on a podcast, you really aren’t talking with someone in good faith. It pays to know that in advance.

"BILL MOYERS: Bruce, you wrote that article of impeachment against Bill Clinton. Why did you think he should be impeached?

BRUCE FEIN: I think he was setting a precedent that placed the president above the law. I did not believe that the initial perjury or misstatements– that came perhaps in a moment of embarrassment stemming from the Paula Jones lawsuit was justified impeachment if he apologized. Even his second perjury before the grand jury when Ken Starr’s staff was questioning him, as long as he expressed repentance, would not have set an example of saying every man, if you’re president, is entitled to be a law unto himself. I think Bush’s crimes are a little bit different. I think they’re a little bit more worrisome than Clinton’s. You don’t have to have–

BILL MOYERS: More worrisome?

BRUCE FEIN: More worrisome than Clinton’s– because he is seeking more institutionally to cripple checks and balances and the authority of Congress and the judiciary to superintend his assertions of power. He has claimed the authority to tell Congress they don’t have any right to know what he’s doing with relation to spying on American citizens, using that information in any way that he wants in contradiction to a federal statute called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. He’s claimed authority to say he can kidnap people, throw them into dungeons abroad, dump them out into Siberia without any political or legal accountability. These are standards that are totally anathema to a democratic society devoted to the rule of law," – from Bill Moyers’ Journal on PBS yesterday.

The largest gay money group, the Human Rights Campaign, has now backed down from excluding one of the few Democrats to support gay and lesbian equality forthrightly, Mike Gravel, from their Democratic debate. Here’s an email they sent yesterday to a complaining member:

Thank you for taking the time to express your views regarding Senator Gravel and the Presidential Forum on Logo Television. It is a welcome sign to see members of our community so engaged in following the 2008 Presidential campaign and the platform of the various candidates. The goal for the forum has always been to provide our community with a chance to hear from the candidates on issues most important to GLBT Americans.

Although we stand by the notion that having a criteria for candidates is important for a political forum, we also heard an enthusiastic response from a portion of the community who wanted to hear from Senator Gravel. Therefore we extended an invitation for him to participate in this year’s forum. It is also worth noting that HRC’s original decision is not unique or completely without precedent. Senator Gravel was also not extended an invitation to the CNN Presidential debates but petitioned the decision and was consequently invited by CNN.

"Although we stand by the notion that having a criteria for candidates is important for a political forum…"  A criteria? And what exactly was the unmentionable criterion? Money. The main focus of the Human Rights Campaign.

Here’s stunning video of Barack Obama hearing live the news of the commutation Scooter Libby’s sentence for perjury. It strikes me as revealing that Obama immediately sees a parallel to the way a young black man is being railroaded by the justice system, with no recourse. Yes, Bush had no power over Genarlow Wilson’s sentence. But the contrast is striking – and corrosive of confidence in equal justice under the law. When such injustices are a common occurrence among the poor and marginalized, the special treatment meted out to one of the president’s friends is particularly galling.

Chicago, Illinois, 9.10 am.

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I’m a litle slack-jawed at this quote from Bush in a confab with a handful of journalistic handmaidens:

"[L]ast fall, if I had been part of this polling, if they had called upstairs and said, do you approve of Iraq I would have been on the 66 percent who said, ‘No I don’t approve.’ That’s why I made the decision I made. To get in a position where I would be able to say ‘Yes, I approve.’"

I wonder if he would have voted Democrat, like so many of the non-approvers did. But the news in the story is that Bush intends somehow to ignore military reality and not abide by necessary troop rotations and draw down in the spring:

President Bush rejected the notion that he will be constrained by the availability of troops come next spring and will have to draw down the surge. He said, with a pointed ending to his answer, "The key factor that I’m confident that David Petraeus is looking at as he comes back is how to achieve the initial objective he set out, which is to provide enough security for the political process to move forward. I’m sure that in the bowels of the Pentagon people are looking at troop rotations and troop movements, but that is not the primary objective of our commander on the ground—next question."

Asked specifically if that meant that Petraeus would get the troops to continue past the spring if he needed them, he said, "We will work as hard as we can. People said we couldn’t find the troops for the last reinforcement as well," but he added that he’s mindful of troop rotations and time in theater.

He said, eventually, "We need to be in a position that can sustain a long-term troop presence," although that depends on "conditions on the ground."

"A long-term troop presence." He intends to go nowhere. He’s the kind of person who, when he sees a wall, accelerates towards it. But it’s not his car.

"So, my argument is that as we become more and more scientifically literate, it’s worth remembering that the fictions with which we previously populated our world may have some function that it’s worth trying to understand and preserve the essential components of, rather than throwing out the baby with the bath water; because even though we may not accept the reasons given for them being here in the first place, it may well be that there are good practical reasons for them, or something like them, to be there. I suspect that as we move further and further into the field of digital or artificial life we will find more and more unexpected properties begin to emerge out of what we see happening and that this is a precise parallel to the entities we create around ourselves to inform and shape our lives and enable us to work and live together. Therefore, I would argue that though there isn’t an actual god there is an artificial god and we should probably bear that in mind. That is my debating point and you are now free to start hurling the chairs around!" – Douglas Adams, Boing Boing.

"Well sometimes I get the menstrual cramps real hard." From "Raising Arizona."

Matt has a good point here, I think:

Similarly, the gay rights movement does indeed want gay couples to be unmolested in their private conduct. But their demands go far beyond that. They want to regulate who you may employ, who you may rent a house to, etc., etc., etc. — not merely a state that refrains from discriminating, but a state that takes the lead in fighting discrimination.

To me, this is all to the good. And if Cato Institute employees want to endorse it, that’s all to the good as well. But it’s not libertarianism.

That’s a fair assessment even now of the main agenda of gay rights groups. It’s not, however, my own agenda. Nor is it that of many gay libertarian/conservatives. For a different flavor of discourse on gay rights, try the Independent Gay Forum. Virtually Normal tried to grapple with this. I argued specifically against the liberal recipes for gay equality: against hate crime laws and even against employment discrimination laws. I argued that a conservative position on gay rights would leave private discrimination and prejudice alone and change only the government’s stance so that all citizens are treated equally by the state, even if they are subject to discrimination by private entities. Virtually Normal did contribute, I think, to a deeper understand that marriage rights and military service were central to the gay rights movement. In that, it helped revolutionize the gay rights movement – against the wishes of many of its leftist leaders. But I had no luck trying to shift the liberal nannying and tolerance-mongering of the gay establishment.

Still, we’re not all liberals. For the record. But it’s a quixotic position, I will sadly concede. Freedom is not as popular as it once was. And liberals have helped whittle it away.