The Dish

Some photos to cheer you up – at a right angle.

Sunday viewing:

The National Security Archive has posted all the court documents here. Enjoy.

It’s an absolutely riveting segment on Hannity and Colmes, where Sean Hannity is exposed as someone who preens as an orthodox Catholic in public, and is subsequently called a hypocrite by a theocon priest. Hannity, you see, supports legal, accessible birth control, as I do. By so doing, Hannity has dissented from the Catholic hierarchy’s view of sex: that it must invariably be open to procreation. And that very doctrine is the sole reed on which the entire edifice of the Church’s opposition to gay relationships stands: not that gays are incapable of love, but that we are barred sex, because such sex cannot be procreative. That’s why the Church (until its recent calumnies against "intrinsic disorders") could always claim it wasn’t homophobic. They were simply saying: hey, it’s the same rule for straights, guys. Pity that means you can’t have any sex – but they have to only have procreative sex with one other person their entire life. That’s not so easy either.

So Hannity’s position and my position are identical. And I feel his pain as a dissident Catholic. But, of course, I support legal birth control for straight couples, and he opposes even civil unions for gay couples. I’ve got his back but he … well, let’s leave that metaphor right there, shall we? The good news is: Finally, a right-wing Catholic is hoist by his own theocon petard. And notice how Hannity doesn’t really engage the theology, as I have tried to do. He just hurls the sex abuse crisis back in the priest’s face. Class-act, Hannity. Every time.

Still, the exchange does seem to me to open all sorts of possibilities for the theocons. Why not ask of all allegedly Catholic politicians: do they support legal access to birth control, and do they use it? If Benedict wants to enforce total public orthodoxy on issues important to Catholicism, he should be consistent. He should demand obedience not just on abortion, but gays and contraception as well. I have a feeling a lot of Catholic conservatives are going to find themselves seeing the bright side of secularism all of a sudden. Which leads to a fascinating question: will the Catholic hierarchy treat Giuliani the way they treated Kerry? And will the theocon right react the same way?

Stupid poetic justice, as Homer would say.

Has the image of the Republican party finally jumped the shark? My take is here in the Sunday Times. Money quote:

Scandals come and go in politics. In second terms for presidents, they invariably happen. The last two two-term presidents had crippling scandals knock them sideways in their final years. Reagan had Iran-contra. Clinton had Lewinsky. They still managed to achieve things — especially Reagan. But what’s happening now in Washington feels both superficially less riveting and more damaging.

Think of it as a perfect storm of many, many scandals, meeting over the increasingly warm political water of the Iraq war and becoming something potentially more lethal. In many ways the entire future of American conservatism is at stake.

(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty.)

Oulu, Finland, noon.

One man stands up to Coulter.

"Do you understand how it might be difficult for me to understand that a tape related to this particular individual just got mislaid?" –  U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke, referring to a critical tape of a critical "interrogation session" with Jose Padilla, that the government has "lost."

"I don’t know what happened to it," said Pentagon attorney James Schmidli. It seems to me that, in the matters of habeas corpus and torture, this administration deserves no benefit of any doubt. They disappear people; and now they disappear critical evidence. Such critical evidence relates to the detention of a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil for over three years without charges, allegations of torture and abuse, and psychological trauma.

"To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle."

Matthew Parris remembers John Inman, the actor who played the queeny, closeted "Mr Humphries" of BBC’s comedy classic, "Are You Being Served?"

I’m not qualified to say whether the federal appeals courts decision on the second amendment with respect to DC is rooted in sound jurisprudence; and, in general, I’ve been persuaded that European-style gun-control won’t work in America. I’m also inclined to support gun rights, within reason. But it’s clear I’m in a tiny minority in these respects in Washington D.C., where I live most of the year. My fellow residents of the District overwhelmingly support their gun laws, the mayor supports them, the cops support them – and many of us live literally in the line of fire. As I blogged recently, two people were shot in broad daylight on my block two weeks ago today.

Nonetheless, I know that the U.S. is not a democracy. It’s a republic. The importance of courts is precisely that they strike down laws and policies supported by overwhelming majorities, if such laws and policies violate constitutional rights. Is this judicial tyranny? Is an interpretation of the constitution that, according to the Washington Post, is radically new a work of tyrannical men in black robes? I don’t think so. But I wish others would be as consistent in their view of the role of the judicial branch.