The Dish

The Rudy campaign hones its message.

In limbo?

There’s a typhoon that could be about to sink Bangladesh. Category Five?

I guess we should be grateful that Richard Posner is airing the kind of theories that we may see turned into practice under a potential Giuliani presidency:

Judge Richard Posner, a supposedly liberal-leaning jurist regarded by many as a future US Supreme Court candidate, said traditional concepts of criminal justice were inadequate to deal with the terrorist threat and the US had "over-invested" in them. His proposed "big brother" solutions flabbergasted delegates at the Australian Bar Association’s biennial conference, where David Hicks’s lawyer, Major Michael Mori, is to be awarded honorary life membership. "We have to fight terrorism with our strengths, and our strengths evolve around technology, including the technology of surveillance," said Judge Posner, a prolific legal scholar who sits on the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.

"Are there terrorist plots that are at a formative stage among the large US Muslim community of two to three million people?

In the 600,000 Canadian Muslim population, are there people planning attacks on the US? What we have to do is discover the extent of the terrorist threat to the US. There is a danger, and it demands a rethinking of some of our conventional views on the limits of national security measures. We should think of surveillance as preventative, not punitive. We should think of controls that have nothing to do with warrants or traditional criminal justice to prevent abuses."

Judge Posner said the US temper and culture could not sustain repeated terrorist attacks.

I think this latter justification needs to be made more explicit. One reason some conservative legal types have acquiesced in legal torture and the indefinite suspension of habeas corpus is because, I think, they believe that these measures do prevent terror attacks and that if we experienced another one, the American people would demand some kind of emergency rule even more draconian than the executive branch under Cheney and Addington. So because of al Qaeda, we have to choose between a mild, torture-lite, only-a-few-people-detained-without-trial, secret tribunal, universal surveillance regime, and Musharraf-land. The inference is: American liberty is over for a generation or two. And this doctrine is coming from a libertarian. Can you imagine what the right’s more authoritarian judges believe?

A reader writes:

I researched your Clinton hatred and came up with this link from Kevin Drum’s comments section: Sex, Lies and Us. Pretty good argument, better than the tiring "Nixon In A Pantsuit" stuff.

That said, in the end it will come down to the lesser of evils, always does.  You seemingly disagree but I think "moral politician" is an oxymoron.

I have consistently said that Clinton’s substantive record as president was impressive. I said it at the time. But that doesn’t mean he and his wife aren’t sleazeballs. Maybe all politicians are sleazeballs. And I prefer sleazeballs and charlatans to war-criminals and Christianists. If you doubt the latter, here’s my relative of defense of Clinton from the depredations of Ken Starr from 1998 in the NYT. 

A discouraging outreach. Juan Cole isn’t panicking:

Bhutto’s stance against Musharraf has raised the possibility of an all-parties political alliance against him, and all the major parties are pledging to boycott the elections he has called for this winter. For his part, Musharraf for all the world like a Brian Love in uniform, accused Benazir of producing "bad vibes" and figured out that maybe she would now be difficult to work with.

Manan Ahmed voices sensible skepticism of Bhutto’s democratic credentials. But at this point, as he concedes, she’s more in touch with her country than Musharraf, no? And other leaders are in jail. American lawyers are organizing a peaceful protest to support the rule of law in Pakistan. Insert your Cheney joke here. Here’s an interview with Imran Khan, just before he was thrown in jail:

Malkin has another reason to spring out of bed each morning.

It’s not really in dispute any more:

Sam Stein: Could you set the record straight about the tip? Your manager says they left something but you contend it never happened.

Anita Esterday: If your phone is ringing from six in the morning till four in the afternoon and customers are saying what’s wrong, the telephone lines are down, and it’s because reporters are trying to get through, you say whatever you have to say [to get them to go away]. I don’t know if they left a $100 tip or not but I haven’t seen it yet. And none of the other waitresses have said they got the tip.

But a $100 tip was left, according to the Clinton campaign. The campaign won’t say who left it or who received it. That’s old news now. They won the news cycle – even against such a right-wing attack operation like NPR. Not a huge deal – but just one of those signs that help you understand the nature of the candidate in question.

Richelieu explains:

Act shocked and amazed when Rudy soars over all expectations to a stunning and amazing third place finish in Iowa with 17 percent of the vote (or even get lucky and hit second place), while Mitt Romney "loses" Iowa by only winning with 38 percent to Mike Huckabee’s stunning 32 percent. Then ride that "upset" bounce (the bounce you officially don’t believe in) into New Hampshire on breathless press coverage and win another huge and amazing upset, beating a wounded Romney and McCain, among the most pro-choice and moderate-friendly GOP primary states. Run the table thereafter to win the nomination, clinching it on February 5.

I bring you Badtux the Snarky Penguin. The OJ post is a classic.