The Dish

You can read the full obit of my friend, Eric Rofes, here. He died far too young of a heart attack in Provincetown. He was found in bed surrounded by books and a laptop. Is there a better way to depart? Eric was a veteran of the old left, but he could never be described through any simple ideological prism. His work was as complex as his life, and his great contribution to gay politics and culture was to insist on such complexity at all times. He saw both marriage and sexual freedom, for example, as integral to human flourishing; and defended the ability of human beings to choose either. He was terrifically smart and deeply humane, befriending me, for example, when I was targeted by puritanical parts of the gay left, and always standing up to busy-bodies and moralizers on all sides. He was also honest – completely and deeply honest. The longer I live the more I treasure that virtue, the humility it requires, and the faith that sustains it. Eric proved it’s possible to live that virtue. And he did so with enormous grace and good cheer.

Wenatchee, Washington State, 7.30 pm. (My reader lives in a cabin.)

Several readers have lamented that their own views aren’t as stunning. Don’t let that deter you. Sure, I’m impressed with beautiful photos, but the point of this series is not just beauty, but place. It’s the specificity of time and place that makes these photos fascinating, at least to me. So keep sending the backyards, brick walls and office buildings. And no more sunsets or rainbows or sight-seeing car-window views, ok?

The Christianist leader, James Dobson, just wrote the following for CNN, about the FMA:

All of these senators are smart enough to know that, first, it would create utter chaos to have 50 different definitions of marriage in one country, where every state is required by the Constitution to support the laws of the other 49. Come on, Senator McCain and company. You and your colleagues know better than that.

For well over a century, the United States lived with different state laws on civil marriage. Many of Dobson’s fundamentalist preachers were as certain then that black-white marriages were as alien to God’s will as they believe same-sex marriage is today. There was no "utter chaos." Moreover, the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act and all constitutional precedent prevent the imposition of one state’s civil marriages on any other state. These facts are not in dispute. James Dobson is an intelligent man; and he’s engaged in deliberate deception. Notice also Dobson’s view of God:

If the battle to protect marriage takes even five more years, liberal judges and activists will have destroyed this 5,000-year-old institution, which was designed by the Creator, Himself.

So the Creator of the universe is no match for liberal judges! And 5,000 years can be erased in half a decade. Whoever knew the judiciary had so much power?

Good news on the environmental front. American emissions of carbon dioxide all but halted in 2004 – 2005. This was despite economic growth of 3.5 percent. Actually, the U.S. has been making progress on carbon dioxide for a while, but the improvement just accelerated:

U.S. carbon dioxide intensity (energy-related carbon dioxide emissions per unit of economic output) fell by 3.3 percent in 2005. From 1990 to 2005, the carbon dioxide intensity of the economy fell by 24.3 percent.  By 2004 (the latest year of data for all greenhouse gases), carbon dioxide intensity had fallen by 21.8 percent and emissions of total greenhouse gases per dollar of GDP had fallen by 23.4 percent.  The 3.3-percent drop in carbon dioxide intensity of the economy in 2005 is greater than the average reduction of 1.8 percent per year experienced since 1990.

The reason? Gas prices, dummy. The consumer does respond to price pressure. By far the quickest, simplest, fiscally responsible measure we could take to deal with global warming and advance in the war on terror would be a $1 rise in the gas tax. Are Americans really serious about this war? Or are they as serious as their president?

"If he were to be tried and convicted of treason, yes, I would have no problem with him being sent to the gas chamber. It is about revealing classified secrets in the time of war. And the media has got to take responsibility for revealing classified information that is putting American lives at risk," – San Francisco talk show host Melanie Morgan, on what she’d be happy to see happen to the NYT executive editor, Bill Keller.

"Journalists reporting on high-profile legal or political controversies cannot function effectively without offering some measure of confidentiality to their sources. Their ability to do so yields substantial benefits to the public in the form of stories that might otherwise never be written about corruption, misfeasance and abuse of power. A person with information about wrongdoing is often vulnerable to retaliation if exposed as an informant," – Ted Olson, conservative Republican, who hasn’t quite surrendered to the notion of an untrammeled executive in a constitutional democracy.

The more you read, the more you see what a body-blow this is to our quasi-monarchical president. The ruling clearly states that the interrogation methods currently authorized by Rumsfeld and the CIA are unlawful. There’s also a warning against the over-broad executive interpretation of Congress’s Authorization for the Use of Military Force – which implicates the NSA program. Big news, methinks. The Founders have not been disproved. This constitutional system works, even in wartime, and even under an administration with demonstrable contempt for the rule of law.

Intellectual porn for classical liberals and conservatives of doubt, courtesy of Greg Mankiw and Google.

King George, it appears, is still just a president; and the constitution still guards against his arbitrary use of power. But according to Marty Lederman, the Hamdan ruling is much more significant than the mere war-crime trials point. The ruling reinstitutes Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, and forces the president to obey the law. Money quote:

The Court appears to have held that Common Article 3 of Geneva aplies to the conflict against Al Qaeda. That is the HUGE part of today’s ruling. The commissions are the least of it. This basically resolves the debate about interrogation techniques, because Common Article 3 provides that detained persons "shall in all circumstances be treated humanely," and that "[t]o this end," certain specified acts "are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever"‚Äîincluding "cruel treatment and torture," and "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment." This standard, not limited to the restrictions of the due process clause, is much more restrictive than even the McCain Amendment. See my further discussion here.

This almost certainly means that the CIA’s interrogation regime is unlawful, and indeed, that many techniques the Administation has been using, such as waterboarding and hypothermia (and others) violate the War Crimes Act (because violations of Common Article 3 are deemed war crimes).

If I’m right about this, it’s enormously significant.

I’m not legally qualified to render a judgment. But if the court has finally managed to force this president to reverse his abandonment of Geneva, then it is a great day indeed.

Steven Bainbridge writes on another quiet expansion of executive power. Remember: these "emergency" powers now rest on the concept of a permanent emergency. Which is to say, they are designed to redesign the American constitution as one in which the presidency exercizes quasi-monarchical power.