San Francisco, California, 9.12 am.
Mukasey’s Plea
By Patrick
Greenwald discusses Mukasey’s San Francisco speech:
His argument means that government officials must be free to break the law in a classified intelligence setting with impunity, because we can’t risk subjecting them to a court of law since, presumably, we can’t trust our country’s federal judges with classified information and so it’s preferable to allow lawbreaking by our highest government officials. That’s a pretty extraordinary — and pretty reprehensible — argument for a former federal judge and current Attorney General to be making.
Scott Horton’s take on the same speech:
Mukasey’s posture does not stop with willful ignorance of instances of abuse, it includes mischievous stonewalling to block proper Congressional investigation. When the House Judiciary Committee held hearings on political prosecutions, the Justice Department sent no one to speak, offered written submissions riddled with false statements, and refused to produce the documents that had been requested, often on absurd pretexts. In sum, the Justice Department has behaved and continues to behave not like a law enforcement agency, but like a white-collar criminal who has been caught in some very dirty dealings and is eager to obstruct the course of justice.
Disclaimer
By Patrick
From the end of a reader’s e-mail:
Disclaimer: The above email was sent from a local DC bar via a small, handheld device that dials DC pundits at random and asks them their favorite color and Project Runway contender. The sender rarely has an argument of any real weight or merit, but does strive to provide anecdotal and "soft" reactions to Very Important Bloggers who despearately need to understand how stupid and shallow the come off on any given Tuesday. Please direct all complaints, compliments or useless feedback to StopBeingAPompousAss.Com. Thank you.
A Brokered Truce
By Patrick
Juan Cole on the latest developments in Iraq:
A parliamentary delegation from Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s own coalition (mainly now the Da`wa Party and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq) defied him by going off to the holy seminary city of Qom in Iran and negotiating directly with Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr and with the leader of the Quds Brigades of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, Brig. Gen. Qasim Sulaymani.
As a result of those parleys, Muqtada al-Sadr called on his followers to stand down, though I read his statement as permitting continued armed self-defense, as at Basra where the Iraqi Army is attacking them and the US is bombing them. […]
The entire episode underlines how powerful Iran has become in Iraq. The Iranian government had called on Saturday for the fighting to stop. And by Sunday evening it had negotiated at least a similar call from Sadr (whether the fighting actually stops remains to be seen and depends on local commanders and on whether al-Maliki meets Sadr’s conditions).
Five More Months
By Patrick
Josh Marshall reacts to Clinton’s pledge that she’ll go all the way to Denver:
By saying she’ll continue through the remaining ten contests, regardless of the outcome, and implicitly, I take it, regardless of any superdelegate declarations over the next two months, Sen. Clinton is saying it’s no longer about pledged delegates, or superdelegates or popular votes. It’s about Florida and Michigan. Period.
The Stare
By Patrick
An excerpt from a the war journal of a soldier in Iraq:
The American G.I. received the same stare forty years ago in rice paddies while hunting down Charlie. Billy Yank felt it on his back while he Marched to the Sea with Sherman, saving our nation from itself. Redcoat Sally came to understand it in a Boston town square, while a brave new world teetered on Revolution. Hell, Jesus’ family – if not the Master Messiah himself – unleashed it at more than a few Roman Legionnaires, I’m sure. It’s the same look any foreign power – or more accurately, the flexed bicep of said foreign power, the soldier – gets when a majority of the local populace feels that they’ve overstayed their welcome, if such a welcome ever existed in the first place.
Telling them we know what is best and that they need to start relying on their own government and police so we can leave and everyone wins and that any help we can and do provide at least offers a new spring in a land of endless, destitute winters doesn’t often have the effect you think it would. Or should. Or could.
Banning The Penny
This Week
By Patrick
Usually I keep tabs on about 500 blogs, but writing all the posts shortens my research time, so please do keep the links and comments coming. I’ll be checking Andrew’s regular e-mail account, and though I’m probably not going to hit his 50 posts a day watermark, I’ll get as close to it as is humanly possible.
Thanks for reading.
Mental Health Break
Back in early December, I made a decision to go "balls-to-the-wall" in campaign-blogging. Back then, I vaguely assumed the whole thing would be over about a month ago. Ahem. For a blogger, things can be even more insane than for normal people in a campaign like this: we don’t just absorb all this stuff on a minute by minute basis, we try to figure it out with instant wisdom and some of us write 200 – 300 posts a week 12 to 14 hours a day, weekends included. At least that what this blog has tried to do. The campaign, meanwhile, as George Packer just pointed out, has recently entered a bit of a surreally vote-free period where we are all in danger of disappearing up a succession of other people’s posteriors and our own.
So I’m taking my own mental health break for a week or so to get some perspective on the whole thing, and remember what it’s like not to have an opinion every 23 minutes. Patrick Appel, my invaluable assistant, and master web-researcher/reader/reporter will be blogging in my stead (he also co-guest-blogged on my last break). Patrick knows the Dish as well as anyone apart from myself, reads and catches the emails I miss, and finds some of the weirdest, smartest stuff online there is. If you keep sending him links and emails and photos, he’ll keep providing as much campaign crack and other web-goodies as he can. (I’m a little nervous I’ll be busted and you won’t notice much of a difference, in fact). If withdrawal symptoms set in, my colleagues Matt, Ross, Megan, Ambers, Clive, Jim, Reihan and Graeme are at your service. Of course, if some major major stuff happens, I may post a couple of times, and I’m renowned for blog-break relapses. My decision to throw in the towel completely a few years ago lasted three days or so. But I’m trying hard this time for a brief blog-sabbatical.
I’ll be back in a little over a week – well in time for the weeks before Pennsylvania. See you then and thanks again for reading.
The WaPo Responds
It was Len Downie who kept the sexual orientation of a fallen American military hero quiet, despite many in the WaPo newsroom who opposed the well-meant if still homophobic decision. Why homophobic? Because it perpetuates the notion that there is something shameful about being gay. There is no privacy concern here because a dead person cannot have his privacy invaded any more than he can be "libeled." But the very context of the analogy to libel reveals the mindset behind Downie’s sadly retrograde "sensitivity". Yes,
Ombudsman Deborah Howell rightly noted:
The Post story would have made any soldier proud. It quoted his commanding officer: "As God would have it . . . he shielded two men who probably would have been killed if Alan had not been there." Rogers was "an exceptional, brilliant person — just well-spoken and instantly could relate to anyone."
More critical evidence of the insanity and bigotry of the military’s policy, a policy that Rogers was an activist in overturning. His relatives’ views are immaterial – many relatives of gay people want to keep their loved ones closeted. But the job of a newspaper is not to perpetuate a family’s closet. Howell ultimately agreed:
The Post was right to be cautious, but there was enough evidence — particularly of Rogers’s feelings about "don’t ask, don’t tell" — to warrant quoting his friends and adding that dimension to the story of his life. The story would have been richer for it.
And it would have been true, rather than a lie. How many dead heterosexuals have their oprientation concealed to protect their "privacy"? Please. Good for Howell.
