The Dish

Hey: she was a woman without a veil. What else is a good Muslim supposed to do? And this is in Turkey: you know, the place where moderate Islam has made peace with secularism.

Do the president and vice-president have the power to declassify top-secret information, even putting operatives in danger, in order to pursue political push-back? Cheney believes so. Money quote:

"Cheney said an executive order gives him, and President Bush, power to declassify information. ‘I have certainly advocated declassification. I have participated in declassification decisions,’ Cheney said. Asked for details, he said, ‘I don’t want to get into that. There’s an executive order that specifies who has classification authority, and obviously it focuses first and foremost on the president, but also includes the vice president.’"

This may well be part of Libby’s defense, if he were to be accused of actually breaking the law in revealing classified information (as opposed to obstruction of justice and perjury). When a courtier is carrying out the wishes of a monarch, no law against disclosing classified information can hold him liable.

The new Abu Ghraib photographs published by Salon are just as horrifying as all the rest. I’m still trying to find out the basis for the report of six homicides in Abu Ghraib, rather than merely one. Rumsfeld’s point-man, General Miller, famously ordered a subordinate to treat military detainees under American control "like dogs." He isn’t fit to run a kennel.

"Because it’s fun! And fun is good," – Glenn Reynolds, on his latest technological adventure, podcasting.

We’ve had our differences, but Glenn is a very rare creature: someone who has managed to build a remarkable media empire from scratch and still exhibit all the enthusiasm of a complete newbie. We could do a lot worse in a blogospheric Pied Piper.

They’ve never been strong friends. The British prime minister sees a problem and feels obliged to offer a solution. If liberty is extinguished a little in the process, he sheds few tears. As readers of this blog well know, there were few sights more abhorrent to me lately than that of Islamist protestors in London, raging against legitimate political speech in cartoons, while threatening violence and glorifying terrorism. But the Blair response is excessive. It’s already illegal to publicly incite violence – and for an obvious reason. It’s incitement to commit a distinct and grave crime. But mere "glorification" of terrorism is an expression of a belief, unrelated to a specific future crime. Blair’s own words reveal the problem:

"The law that we passed today will allow us to take far stronger action against people who don’t just directly engage in terrorism but indirectly incite it."

How do you indirectly incite anything? By that standard, all sorts of ideas could be deemed an indirect incitement to criminality. Many ideas are indirectly dangerous or may indirectly inspire criminal behavior. Being able freely to air such beliefs is integral to the workings of a free society. We have lost many aspects of that freedom since 9/11, sometimes necessarily so. Which is what makes the unnecessary restrictions, made in the heat of the moment, all the more distressing.

Not so fast, Concerned Women for America. Get the real story here.

A reader makes a good point:

"Earlier today you quoted General Miller on the necessity of treating detainees "like dogs." Dogs have a long pedigree in interrogation, esp. in CIA-supported intelligence operations like the one in Egypt during the Cold War. But Miller’s comment is curious because in Iraq the dogs don’t appear to have been treated as badly as the prisoners.
Were the dogs psychologically abused to the point of tearing out their own fur? Were they bloodied and bruised and denied medical treatment? I know of no dog owner who rides his dogs, hoods them, attaches eletrodes to him, beats him to death, hangs him palestinian-style, or does anything else close to what our military did to those prisoners. If Miller’s assertion were actually followed, the detainees would’ve been given plenty of water and decent food, kept in a reasonably climate-controlled environment, let outside to exercise and (extending the absurdity of it) petted and rubbed and made to feel safe and loved. I know this point has been made before, but it deserves being made so long as sadists like Miller and those above him condone and encourage the torture of prisoners. Someone should ask General Miller how he treats his dogs."

If I found someone who treated dogs the way Miller treated many innocent human beings, I’d report him to the police.

I was struck by this passage in another memorable essay by gay Catholic theologian, James Alison, a convert from Protestantism:

"Part of this induction into being Catholic has been the discovery of the secret presence of Our Lady, permeating everything. For many of those of us brought up in Protestant backgrounds, it takes a long time to begin to make sense of what can come across as a psychological weirdness with which it is difficult to identify, which doesn’t seem to strike chords in us. But I have come to rejoice in and love Our Lady and the difference which she constitutes in the Church. For it is she who makes it impossible for the Church successfully to turn itself either into an ideology or into a moralistic enterprise. She can never quite be co-opted into standing for something other than what she is."

Alison is a rich resource for gay Catholics, trying to reconcile their own deep and often profound faith with the hostility of the hierarchy. His book, "Faith Beyond Resentment," was extremely helpful to me, and may be to others.

"Terrorism is not the only new danger of this era. Another is the administration’s argument that because the president is commander in chief, he is the "sole organ for the nation in foreign affairs." That non sequitur is refuted by the Constitution’s plain language, which empowers Congress to ratify treaties, declare war, fund and regulate military forces, and make laws ‘necessary and proper’ for the execution of all presidential powers. Those powers do not include deciding that a law — FISA, for example — is somehow exempted from the presidential duty to ‘take care that the laws be faithfully executed,’" – George Will, today.

Slowly, but inexorably, conservative resistance to many aspects of this administration builds.

Enough with the Kaus-bashing. This meme is the Mickster at his best, which is very hard to beat.