The Dish

"Ann Coulter is a joke. But she’s not the only joke among conservative talking heads. Many right-wing talk show hosts are absurd, Michael Savage being only the most obvious example. As pathetic as Michael Moore may be, he’s easily equaled in idiocy by the likes of Mr. Savage. That guy is a knuckle-dragging doofus … Many deeply conservative people are really creepy. You know: Home schooling, incessant prattling on about the evils of the liberal mainstream. It‚Äôs insufferable, and we can certainly understand why others are taken aback by it. Basically, political true believers of all stripes are a tad frightening. No political movement has a complete monopoly on the truth," – from the right-wing blog, Hatemonger’s Quarterly.

Will McCain’s opposition to torture hurt his chances for the Republican nomination? If the GOP defines itself as the party of torture, then it may be true. Much will depend on the rumors of some kind of compromise on the Hill. Still, Rove may counsel best to avoid a deal, and use the issue in the campaign. I’m struck by the Gallup uptick in Bush’s ratings. I’m not sure you should place any real trust in a single poll, and broader measures show much less movement. But I do think that the fast-evolving base of the GOP is likely to be roused by the promise of torturing terror suspects, and that running on Guantanamo Bay may make sense if you want to rile up these people – and, boy, do they need riling.

I understand Rove has postponed using 9/11 families against the Geneva Convention – he’ll wait till later in the campaign to do that, if it becomes necessary. But make no mistake: Rove isn’t going to duck the torture issue. He’s going to brandish it. McCain, Graham, Warner: these men represent the old Republican party, not the new pro-torture, Christianist, Jacksonian base. Rove would love to isolate the old, decent guards from the Southern base and find a candidate to continue the Bush legacy. And this may be his opportunity.

(Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty.)

Greg Mankiw, Bush’s former econ adviser, lists those who back a higher gas tax on national security and environmental grounds.

The conservative Boston Herald won’t go along with the Bush-Cheney torture policy:

At one level this battle between the White House and a rebellious handful of Senate Republicans is a war of words Рa fight over legalese, interpretations, meanings. At another level this is about core American values, about the rule of law and maintaining this nation’s reputation for taking the moral high ground. And this time George W. Bush has picked the wrong fight at the wrong time with the wrong people.

Even John Fund is getting it:

The federal government is now an astounding 185 times as big in real terms as it was a century ago. A general sense that Republicans have forgotten why they were sent to Washington is a big reason why only 43% of Republicans approve of Congress in this month’s Fox News poll. If Republicans can’t better explain how they plan to get a grip on spending, many voters will conclude they both deserve and need a time-out from power.

The more salient figure is one I won’t tire of repeating. US GNP grew 27 percent from 2000 to 2004. The government’s total estimated fiscal exposure (total of public debt plus military and civilian pensions, social security and medicare obligations and other), according to GAO, increased in the same period by 212 percent. The debt to be paid by the next generation went from $20 trillion to $43 trillion. This we are required to call fiscal conservatism. It is, in fact, complete insanity. When people say the Democrats would be worse, my only response is: how much worse could you get?

"The most frightening claim made by Bush with congressional acquiescence is reminiscent of the lettres de cachet of prerevolutionary France. (Such letters, with which the king could order the arrest and imprisonment of subjects without trial, helped trigger the storming of the Bastille.) In the aftermath of 9/11, Mr. Bush maintained that he could pluck any American citizen out of his home or off of the sidewalk and detain him indefinitely on the president‚Äôs finding that he was an illegal combatant. No court could second-guess the president. Bush soon employed such monarchial power to detain a few citizens and to frighten would-be dissenters, and Republicans in Congress either cheered or fiddled like Nero while the Constitution burned. The Supreme Court ultimately entered the breach and repudiated the president in 2004’s Hamdi v. Rumsfeld. Republicans similarly yawned as President Bush ordained military tribunals to try accused war criminals based on secret evidence and unreliable hearsay in violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the Geneva Convention. The Supreme Court again was forced to countervail the congressional dereliction by holding the tribunals illegal in 2006’s Hamdan v. Rumsfeld," – Bruce Fein, standing up for conservatism’s distrust of arbitrary executive power.

They’re debating faith and politics over at Jim Wallis’ new blog. Check it out – although I have no idea why Reed has been chosen to represent the religious right. He’s a political operative, tainted by financial scandal.

The Washington Post homes in on the essential fiction that the president is telling about his position on military interrogation: that he wants "clarity" for interrogators. There already is clarity. What Bush wants is a vague and utterly subjective standard against treatment that merely "shocks the conscience." As we know, what shocks the conscience of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld is not what shocks the conscience of most of mankind. Common Article 3 is not vague. It is crystal clear. It bans what Mr Bush has illegally authorized and wants to continue practising. Money quote:

Common Article 3, which prohibits cruel treatment and humiliation, is an inflexible standard. The U.S. military, which lived with it comfortably for decades before the Bush administration, just reembraced it after a prolonged battle with the White House. The Army issued a thick manual this month that tells interrogators exactly what they can and cannot do in complying with the standard. The nation’s most respected military leaders have said that they need and want nothing more to accomplish the mission of detaining and interrogating enemy prisoners – and that harsher methods would be counterproductive.

Mr. Bush wants to replace these clear rules with a flexible and subjective standard – one that would legalize any method that does not "shock the conscience." What shocks the conscience? According to Mr. Bush’s Justice Department, the torture techniques described above – and at least in the past, waterboarding – do not, "in certain circumstances." So Mr. Bush’s real objection to Common Article 3 is not that it is vague. It is that it will not permit abusive practices that he isn’t willing publicly to discuss or defend.

These people do not even have the courage to demand that the United States withdraw from the Geneva Convention. They want to do so by stealth and by lying. This time, they must be stopped by the Congress. And in November, we must ensure we have a new Congress that will prevent the United States government from committing war-crimes in the future.

Check out "Jesus Camp," a place where children are taught to venerate the Great Leader, George W. Bush, to speak in tongues, and adhere to the rigid politics of Christianism.

It’s a classic:

It is often said — and was said by Ratzinger when he was an underling of the last Roman prelate — that Islam is not capable of a Reformation. We would not even have this word in our language if the Roman Catholic Church had been able to have its own way. Now its new reactionary leader has really "offended" the Muslim world, while simultaneously asking us to distrust the only reliable weapon — reason — that we possess in these dark times.

My take is, in chronological order, here, here, and here. The threats on Benedict’s life are obviously obscene and repulsive. But they are sadly what we have come to expect from some elements within the religion of peace. Of course, what Benedict has said about Muslims is positively benign compared to what he has said about homosexuals. But somehow, I don’t think we’ll get an apology. After all, we don’t threaten to kill people.