Category: The Dish

Dahlia Lithwick maintains her admirable and relentless dissection of the terrible abuse of power and the constitution in the Padilla case, one of the most important cases in the history of American liberty. Money quote:

This is why the White House yanked Padilla from the brig to the high court to the federal courts and back to a Florida trial court: They were only forum shopping for the best place to enshrine the right to detain him indefinitely. Their claims about Padilla’s dirty bomb, known to be false, were a means of advancing their larger claims about executive power. And when confronted with the possibility of losing on those claims, they yanked him back to the criminal courts as a way to avoid losing powers they’d already won.

The right to detain him indefinitely. It’s as good a definition of creeping tyranny as any we have.

"In the American Conservative piece I wanted to offer some resistance to the assumption of conservative religious unanimity. I tried to point out that conservatism has no necessary relation to religious belief, and that rational thought, not revelation, is all that is required to arrive at the fundamental conservative principles of personal responsibility and the rule of law. I find it depressing that every organ of conservative opinion reflexively cheers on creationism and intelligent design, while delivering snide pot shots at the Enlightenment. Which of the astounding fruits of empiricism would these Enlightenment-bashers dispense with: the conquest of cholera and other infectious diseases, emergency room medicine, jet travel, or the internet, to name just a handful of the millions of human triumphs that we take for granted?" – Heather Mac Donald, part of the conservative solution, rather than part of the conservative problem.

The Onion has a dream.

You knew some crackpot would come up with it (apart from Jerry Falwell and Robert Knight). In his new book, Dinesh D’Souza does more to prove the parallels between Islamism and Christianism than I ever could. I’ll hold my peace because I’m reviewing the book for The New Republic. But Eric Scheie has a lot of sensible things to say. Money quote:

Like many bloggers, I’ve struggled over the definition of "conservative." If D’Souza’s conservatism includes a cultural alliance with declared enemies of America who stone women and execute gays, I guess I’m on the other "side" – even if I’d rather not be.

There’s an alternative alliance out there: pluralists and freedom-lovers against theocrats of all stripes. It comes in conservative and liberal varieties.

"What is it you expected from the beginning? That we’d have this thing done in two hours, so you could run to the fridge and grab a coke? That’s not a failing of President Bush, Mr. Dreher, it’s a failure in the depth of your thought.

And, now, your judgment, to record what, albeit it in monotone, is no less than an anti-war, anti-Bush screed for NPR, empowering them to pimp you out as this day’s useful idiot suggests that if you had anything to do with decision making in Iraq, things would be worse.

Fine, Mr. Dreher … you’ve jumped the warship, you’re out on your own. Please have the sense, the courtesy, the human decency to go sink to the bottom alone somewhere. While brave Americans are still fighting and dying for a necessary cause, those of us out here in the real world with experience and stamina have just that much more rowing to do, now – and still miles to go before we rest.

Go read or write a book, or something. You certainly don’t have what it takes to fight, or even help fight a difficult war. With benefit of hindsight, I’m forced to assume you never really did," – Dan Riehl, discussing Rod Dreher’s recent essay.

The post is almost a clinical exhibit in the hard right’s lamentable disposition to attack viciously anyone who dares question Bush administration orthodoxy.

How did Fred Kagan go from advocating a surge of 80,000 troops as necessary for success in Baghdad last December 4 to only 30,000 last December 27? Greg Djerejian wants to know.

In trying to understand how George W. Bush destroyed conservatism as a coherent governing philosophy, the figure of Michael Gerson is critical. In his religious fundamentalism and economic and social liberalism, Gerson epitomizes the withering of the tradition of limited government, personal responsibility and individual freedom on the right. It’s government’s task, in Gerson’s eyes, to tackle most every human problem – from family breakdown to religious upheaval in the Middle East – or face the terrible epithet of being deemed morally "cold". Freedom means selfishness to Gerson, because free people don’t always act up to his exacting moral standards. This quote captures Michael’s philosophy perfectly:

Campaigning on the size of government in 2008, while opponents talk about health care, education and poverty, will seem, and be, procedural, small-minded, cold and uninspired. The moral stakes are even higher. What does antigovernment conservatism offer to inner-city neighborhoods where violence is common and families are rare? Nothing. What achievement would it contribute to racial healing and the unity of our country? No achievement at all. Anti-government conservatism turns out to be a strange kind of idealism—an idealism that strangles mercy.

If you don’t believe big government is the answer to the problems of poverty, you have no mercy? Suddenly, Bush’s attack on the conservative soul becomes more comprehensible.

The British prime minister has been politically destroyed by the Iraq war. Gerard Baker believes the opprobrium is excessive:

People used to shout ‘fascist’ at Margaret Thatcher but I don’t really ever think their heart was in it. With Mr Blair it’s deadly serious. Imagine the raucous, triumphant, mocking Shia at Saddam Hussein’s execution ‚Äî minus the beards ‚Äî and you have a sense of what most of these people feel about the Prime Minister.

(Photo: Luke McGregor/AP).

They’ve flipped – according to the latest AP/Ipsos poll. Noam Scheiber notices:

While 52 percent of Republicans support the surge according to a just-released AP/Ipsos poll, some 60 percent of white evangelicals oppose it, as do 56 percent of self-described conservatives.

So we have the beginnings of what I referred to today on the Chris Matthews’ Show: an anti-war, socially conservative surge in the Republican party. Now all you have to do is add economic populism to that mix, and you’ve got yourself a powerful electoral combination. Is this the horse Sam Brownback plans to ride in on? Someone surely will.

(Photo: Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas.)

For stating the obvious about the president’s exhausted speech, Peggy Noonan gets tagged with the "Bush Derangement Syndrome" by Hugh Hewitt’s side-kick, Dean Barnett. At some point, someone will surely point out that "Bush Derangement Syndrome" is more accurately applied to those who still believe the president is even minimally competent. Like Dean Barnett and Hugh Hewitt, for whom Bush is still one notch down from Lincoln.