Category: The Dish

Bainbridge has clearly had an ideological epiphany. Join the pack here.

A Bob Hope moment to piss off my liberal readers:

Other YouTube suggestions for best movie line ever eagerly solicited.

Deroy Murdock wants to expand Gitmo. How?

Gitmo should grow into a global destination where foreign countries may deposit terror convicts and suspects for safekeeping.

Notice the very broad criterion for imprisonment: mere terror suspects. That, of course, has been the criterion for a large number of Gitmo detainees as well. Who determines these suspects? Syria, Egypt, Pakistan, Uzbekistan … and any other regime with a few dissidents to fear, torture or lock up. Murdock does not mention torture as such (Bush-backers don’t use the t-word), or rather he endorses it under the strict condition that the techniques be "non-fatal."

If you want to read a piece that endorses indefinite detention of anyone deemed suspicious of "Muslim fanaticism" anywhere on the planet, including the US, and subject to torture as long as it is "non-fatal", then welcome to National Review.

Here’s another cogent argument for why there is simply no principled or coherent defense of the commutation of Libbby’s sentence. Whatever your views about the case, the underlying crime and the prosecution, you cannot get past these facts about the commutation process:

The DOJ guidelines [for commutation] also contain a substantive component: They describe the factors ordinarily to be considered when assessing whether to commute a sentence – that is, they describe the very unusual circumstances under which the President can justifiably single out one person for special treatment, in a way that does not undermine public confidence in the bedrock concept that all persons should stand equal before the law. To begin with, the guidelines admonish that commutations ordinarily should not be given until the individual under consideration has served some period of time in jail, and has either exhausted or given up his or her appeals. Furthermore, the guidelines emphasize that commutations should be reserved for individuals who have accepted responsibility and expressed remorse for their criminal conduct.

The reason for these limitations is clear and inarguable.

Because a commutation does not call into question the underlying conviction, it is expected that commutations will be reserved for people who are genuinely remorseful – as opposed to those who continue to deny guilt, through the legal process or otherwise. In addition, because the individual has committed a felony, there is an expectation that he or she will serve at least some jail time before being given a break.

Scooter, of course, does not come within a country mile of qualifying for these preconditions set forth under the guidelines. Let’s suppose, following some Republicans’ arguments, that we were to exempt him from the jail-time requirement on the theory that any incarceration would be too much given that the offense is purportedly so minor. It is still clear beyond a shadow of a doubt that Libby has shown no acceptance of responsibility at all, much less any remorse, for his criminal conduct. Under the DOJ guidelines, this omission would be the end of the story.

Read the whole thing. What we have witnessed is a president’s contempt for the justice system and rank favoritism for a friend and acolyte. It fatally undermines the very concept of equal treatment under the law. It is the mark of a monarchy, not a republic.

A reader writes:

Gerson writes:

"But Second Life is more consequential than its moral failures. It is, in fact, a large-scale experiment in libertarianism. Its residents can do and be anything they wish. There are no binding forms of community, no responsibilities that aren’t freely chosen and no lasting consequences of human actions. In Second Life, there is no human nature at all, just human choices."

A world without consequences? That’s not libertarianism, it’s liberalism.

Indeed, libertarianism is about conferring liberty and concomitant responsibility where they most rightly should rest – on the individual. Liberalism is about granting the individual choice (at least socially) but spreading the economic risks (the consequences) over the entire group.

A reader writes:

There may be no rational explanation.

A shrewd operator like Cheney might well have foreseen that outing Plame would produce a storm of inquiries and bring more, not less, attention to the dubious WMD argument for war. But he went ahead anyway. Possibly he was sending a signal to any restive CIA analysts to keep their mouths shut if they wanted to keep their jobs. And given an acquiescent Congress and easy-going media, he may have thought there would be no consequences.

But I often get the impression that Cheney is just barely keeping a lid on his anger and spite. Maybe this time it blew. The visceral need for payback trumped calculation.

Then again, maybe he isn’t as shrewd as we all assume.

He is now ahead of John McCain in cash-on-hand, and third overall, behind Giuliani and Romney. Whereas McCain is fading, Paul is, er, surging. It’s amazing what integrity, conviction and a little courage can do, isn’t it? Money quote:

Paul, who polls show with support in the low single digits, said his surprisingly strong fundraising is the best measure of his support.

"I think people have underestimated the number of people in this country who are interested in a freedom message," says the Republican congressman from Texas, who has strong libertarian leanings.

(Photo: from a reader in Pittsburgh who writes:

Ron Paul grew up just outside Pittsburgh in the then-rural suburb of Green Tree on a five-acre farm where his father ran a small local dairy operation. On June 29, he visited his old neighborhood, which included his grandma’s house in the enclosed picture. Paul slipped in and out of Pittsburgh with no entrourage, no fanfare and no pr efforts (in fact, his press guy missed the plane from DC and had to catch up by Greyhound).

He was met by an NBC "Today" show crew that taped a segment on him for its upcoming August-airing series on candidates’ childhood homes, "Candidates Cribs." As part of a longer story I am working on for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, I spent several hours with Paul as he knocked on the doors of several houses that once made up the Paul Family compound and visited a local museum to look at old pictures of his high school sports teams (he was a track star and a jock). Coat-and-tieless, wearing black running shoes, he was his usual regular-guy self. (He reminds me of another local hero, Mister Rogers — same gentle, laid-back personality and a Pittsburgh accent that can still be detected despite decades living in Texas.)

If you didn’t know who Dr. Paul was (and virtually no one did), you’d  never have guessed he was even the most-local of politicians. The fact that he’s running for President and has probably raised enough money via the Internet to keep himself and his honest, GOP-shaming libertarian principles in the race all the way, is a hoot — and a minor hopeful miracle of the new Digital Age.)

Agreed. Know hope. Ann Coulter isn’t the only voice for conservatism in America.

A reader writes:

There are two "whys" to be answered:

1) Why did Libby lie in the first place? To keep the prosecutor from getting to Cheney. That one is simple.

2) Why did Libby risk his career by committing perjury, which is not a common-or-garden variety of lie? This is a more complicated issue, because one would presume that Libby would know better than to risk a perjury rap. Here, my view is that Libby was entirely confident that he would not get caught, because he assumed that the journalists with whom he had spoken would never testify. He probably lied all the time, and never got caught, so why should this time be different? He could not have predicted that Fitz would squeeze testimony out of the reporters.

That sounds right. But he’s a perjurer nonetheless. And this president has declared that perjury by a senior aide does not require any jailtime. Remember when he was promising to restore honor to the Oval Office?

"What do the four [senators] share in common except a loss of confidence in the troops and their ability to win? Senator Voinovich is 70; Senators Domenici and Lugar 75, Senator Warner 80. Though Senator Voinovich only joined the club in 1999, Senator Domenici has been in the Senate for 35 years, Senators Lugar and Warner 29 years. The combination of advanced age and long tenure in government seems to increase a senator’s sense of self-importance even as it decreases their connection to the GOP’s base," – Hugh Hewitt, on his blog.

It’s hard to get a clearer definition of Jacobinism. Contempt for age, and experience, immunity to the practical arguments all these senators have made, description of policy disagreements as an attack on the troops,  and an insistence that the only valid qualification for office is ideological conformity with "the base". If conservatism is ever to recover, it is going to have to leave radical zealots like Hewitt behind.

Der Spiegel realizes what’s behind Islamism in the Middle East:

The average member of the Muslim Brotherhood isn’t a rabble-rouser, either — he’s a doctor, pharmacist, teacher or lawyer. He wears Western trousers and shirts, not the ankle-long dishdashah garment traditionally worn by Arab men. He’s middle class — and he’s filled with rage. Rage over what he sees as the close cooperation between his government and the hopelessly corrupted West. Kept from pursuing his political aims, he is often a functionary amongst his contemporaries in Arab professional associations for doctors, engineers and attorneys.

Those who cure us will kill us.