The big buzz on the 'Tubes today is about a DHS report on the increased danger of right-wing extremists:
The Department of Homeland Security is warning law enforcement officials about a rise in "rightwing extremist activity," saying the economic recession, the election of America's first black president and the return of a few disgruntled war veterans could swell the ranks of white-power militias.
A footnote attached to the report by the Homeland Security Office of Intelligence and Analysis defines "rightwing extremism in the United States" as including not just racist or hate groups, but also groups that reject federal authority in favor of state or local authority.
"It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single-issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration," the warning says.
Rightie bloggers have been apoplyeptic about the news -- Malkin's response is typical -- they claim it's a "hit job" on the right hours before their tax-day protests.
My initial reaction was two-fold. The first was, hey! I've been saying for years that right-wing extremism is a much more real and present threat than Islamic extremism. Or have we forgotten the violence latent in the anti-abortion movement? The militia movement? Timothy McVeigh? That the Bush administration and its agencies were focusing our attention on the Middle East -- and not terrorism, per se -- was a political decision. They used the specter of terrorism to further their foreign-policy objectives, not to actually combat or curb terror. Especially the rightwing domestic kind, because that's kind of embarrassing, isn't it?
The Iowa Supreme Court today unanimously (!) ruled that gays have a right to marry.
The decision (pdf) was especially clear and reasonable. The court decided that gays have the right to marry under the state's "equal protection" clause - a constitutional guarantee that no group of people can be excluded from legal protections or institutions without cause.
The county defending the state's gay marriage prohibition needed to show that a societal good was being done by banning gays from marrying, and offered five reasons to that effect:
The objectives asserted by the County were (1) tradition, (2) promoting the optimal environment for children, (3) promoting procreation, (4) promoting stability in opposite-sex relationships, and (5) preservation of state resources.
Obama said his team is still evaluating the whole issue of interrogations and detentions.
"Obviously, we are looking at past practices and I don't believe anyone is above the law," he told ABC in an interview.
"But my instinct is for us to focus on how do we make sure that moving forward we are doing the right thing. That doesn't mean that if somebody has blatantly broken the law, that they are above the law," he added.
I'm sorry, but if we don't have an inquest into what happened during the Bush years - and nearly everyone has taken Mr. Obama's remarks to mean that we won't - this means that those who hold power are indeed above the law because they don't face any consequences if they abuse their power.
Now added to the pantheon of "liberal" dogma is the shrill, ideological belief that high government officials must abide by our laws and should be treated like any other citizen when they break them. To believe that now makes you not just a "liberal," but worse: a "liberal score-settler." Apparently, one can attain the glorious status of being a moderate, a centrist, a high-minded independent only if one believes that high political officials (and our most powerful industries, such as the telecoms) should be able to break numerous laws (i.e.: commit felonies), openly admit that they've done so, and then be immunized from all consequences. That's how our ideological spectrum is now defined.
Greenwald goes on to claim, quite rightly I suspect, that probably the main reason Obama -- and more importantly, Congresss -- doesn't want to go there is because they were complicit with Bush's extralegal activities. In short, if they investigate, everyone will be swept up. I suspect the DC Establishment is content with Obama's promised kinder, gentler anti-terror activities, which probably will preclude torture, if Eric Holder's recent testimony during his confirmation hearings is any indication.
Still, it's torture. Those that green-lighted torture, those leaders that approved its use, should be prosecuted to the fullest, whether they were Democrats or Republicans. It's not a matter of "settling scores," it's about holding the guilty accountable, about ensuring that government officials respect the law.
I couldn't help notice Montana Headlines' gratuitous swipe at the left netroots community today -- which is as mean-spirited as it is false. It all starts with Fox News "liberal," Kristen Powers, who called netroots leftys "ninnies" because of their "obsession about Obama's recent flip-flop on FISA":
Newsflash to the netroots and the media (which seems perpetually confused on this issue): The netroots are not the base of the Democratic Party.
Overwhelmingly white, male and highly educated, they're a loud anomaly in a party that's wholly dependent on the votes of African Americans, women and working-class whites.
First, Powers is about as "liberal" as Tokyo Rose was a good American patriot. Just as you'd expect misleading propaganda to fall from the lips of a personality on Axis radio, so should you expect a "liberal" promoted both by Fox News and the New York Post to be...well...not particularly up front about her motives. In short, she's the television version of a concern troll. Her mission: to drive a wedge between different groups in the Democratic party. (No wonder she's MH's favorite liberal!)
But is the progressive netroots "overwhelmingly white, male and highly educated"? The short answer: No. This is a movement who's "blogfather" is a first generation Latino-Greek who put himself through college with his military service. Several majorblogs include womencontributors or founders. As for "highly educated" -- what do Powers mean by that? College educated? Probably. PhDs? No. Would it matter anyway? No.
There's no doubt that the majority of bloggers are white men, that the netroots don't mirror the multicultural and class composition of the entire left. But -- unlike what MH insinuates -- that it's part of some institutional classism, sexism, and racism, inherent to the left -- well, all you have to do is look at the rightie 'sphere and the Republican establishment, which is overwhelmingly white and male, and you immediately realize that the marginalization of nonwhite, nonmale people and those of nonprofessional classes is a cultural problem. At least lefty bloggers, say, are trying to swim against the current.
To drum up the idea of a white, male overseer class in lefty politics, MH trots out a tired 80s era wisecrack that liberals seek to erect "a welfare state with a highly centralized government" and to install themselves as its bosses. Of course, what liberals and progressives want is an egalitarian society that offers all full and equal opportunity to succeed, prosper, and contribute to society. It is true that we don't always rule out government solutions or government-aided programs to ensure that egalitarianism, and that we think that government should be run as efficiently and effectively as possible and needs good, competent administrators to function. There's nothing wrong with working for the government -- if you do a good job.
Ironically, I suspect that not a few conservatives who read MH or LiTW are themselves members of government. They might not agree with MH's assessment as to our goverment workers' roles. Or they may. After all, which party was it that seeks to centralize government? Which president passed No Child Left Behind? Which president enacted the most far-reaching and intrusive domestic spy network in the history of the republic? Which president has blocked states' efforts to set its own legislative agendas, time after time? (Think California's emissions standards, or Montana's legalization medicinal marijuana.)
Of course, past and current Democratic members of government have been just as bad at clutching power and wanting to maintain or extend the power of the federal government. But isn't that more the result of the corrupting quality of money and power than it is of ideology? The natural reaction is to call for more sunlight on government activity -- but where are the conservatives in the call for ethics reform?
But the worst offense in MH's post was the insinuation that the netroots' problem with the recent FISA bill was a matter of a "transgression against progressive purity," and the proper subject of disdainful amusement.
Since when have civil liberties become a matter of "progressive purity"? Are we the only supporters of individuals' protections from unwarranted surveillance by the government? Are we the last group of people in the country who believing in inalieable rights? I'm not so sure we are -- and I'm certain we shouldn't be. Certainly there wasn't much support for the bill and for retroactive telecomm immunity, and certainly not from the Democratic "base," as Powers insinuated. Most folks shrugged, because they didn't really see the harm in it, and most Republicans and conservatives seemed to meekly support it because their "team" invented it.
But in the end, where you stand on the FISA bill reflects where you stand on constitutional guarantees of liberty. If you supported it, you think that certain freedoms and liberties should be curtailed in the interest of a greater national good. In short, you view our rights, in John Rawls' words, as a "socially useful illusion." The problem with that, of course, is that now any right can be limited if it's seen to serve public and societal utility -- but just who decides what's good, just, and useful?
In the end, if you opposed the FISA bill, you support inviolate rights, which extend even to those you don't like or disagree with. In 2009, when Barack Obama is sworn in as president, and our nation's intelligency agencies start tuning their equipment into the conversations and personal information of conservative activists and ideologues, I'll still oppose FISA.
It's ironc then, in the second half of MH's post, after a lengthy rehash of regurgitated talking-points, he writes this:
It is unfortunately true, of course, that all too many posts in regional blogs like those found in the Montana blogosphere simply rehash talking points about national politics that have already been endlessly regurgitated.
For the Fourth, Ochenski penned a brilliant column comparing Jefferson's complaints against the English King justifying American independence to contemporary infractions wrought by the Bush administration.
The battle over immunity for telecomm companies who broke the law in assisting the Bush administration's extra-legal spying activities is heating up: basically, it looks like House Democrats are again caving. The latest: the FISA bill will be split in two, so that the renewal of the FISA law and the immunity provision can be voted on separately, making it easier that both will be passed.
A letter from the US Chamber of Commerce supporting telecomm immunity (pdf) makes the bill's odiousness official:
The Chamber firmly believes that the immunity provisions in S. 2248 are imperative to preserving the self-sustaining "public-private partnership" that both Congress and the Executive Branch have sought to protect the United States in the post-September 11 world. The Chamber encourages you consider the effects on the nation's security should private sector involvement be muted and relegated to the sidelines in instances when industries can help the government protect this nation.
McJoan: "Of course, they are conveniently ignoring the fact that private sector involvement can be done legally, and had been done legally for decades."
If telecomm companies acted within the law, they have nothing to fear.
(Kevin Drum has an interesting perspective on the fight: he thinks that telecomm companies themselves aren't fighting too hard for this bill because they might have signed an indemnification agreement with the government in 2001, making the government liable for any punitive costs incurred by the telecoms supporting their illegal programs. It's really the Bush administration who wants to avoid a court case, out of fear of how much such a case would reveal about the extent of their wiretapping program. That is, if it's revealed that "everybody in the country" has had their calls tapped...ordinary folks will be p*ssed.)
But here we are, we "liberals," demanding that Congress hold the administration and private corporations to obey the legal restrictions of the FISA court, as Glenn Greenwald puts it, "a classically Kafka-esque court that operates in total secrecy," and "notorious for decades for mindlessly rubber-stamping every single Government request to eavesdrop on whomever they want."
At the time the FISA court was established, it had many opponents across the political spectrum. William Safire, 1978:
To prevent Presidents from listening in to political opponents in the guise of protecting national security, the new Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act has been proposed.
Predictably, opponents of warrantless wiretapping cheered; the act seems to require a court warrant before tapping can being. But nobody is reading the fine print, which adds up to the most sweeping authorization for the increase and abuse of wiretapping and bugging in our history...
Conservatives like to assist law enforcement, and to curtail espionage; we do not like to make it harder for "our side." But this natural inclination to help out the law must be outweighed by a responsibility to protect the law-abiding individual from the power of the government to intrude. And this bill would turn every telephone instrument in every home into a suspected household spy.
Included among FISA's opponents were the telecommunications companies, who disliked the provision that forced them to comply with FISA warrants and violate the privacy of their customers.
There you go. Here we are fighting to hold the government and its minions accountable to a law that many reasonable folks back in 1978 thought was too sweeping and too poor a check on the government's potential to violate individuals' civil liberties.
FISA's bad enough. That anybody would favor telecomm immunity - thus approving of the government violating the law at its own discretion - is beyond me.
The UK's Guardian conducted an interview with presidential candidate Hillary Clinton about the US president's executive authority. In it, she decried the current administration's overreach of powers and said, if elected, she'd curtail some of the executive's powers.
"I think I'm going to have to review everything they've done, because I've been on the receiving end of that," she said. Ms Clinton stated it was "absolutely" conceivable that, as president, she would give up executive powers in the name of constitutional principle.
"That has to be part of the review I undertake when I get to the White House, and I intend to do that," she said.
It's "conceivable" she'd "give up" executive powers? In the name of "constitutional principle"? That's not very reassuring. And is anyone else uncomfortable with the idea that our rights will be protected at the pleasure of the executive? After all, if the President is breaking the laws and violating the Constitution, he should be impeached. That's Congress' job. And how has Senator Clinton stood on that issue?
That's right folks. You all foolishly thought that God didn't play directly in American politics or the heated issues of today. Wrong, wrong, wrong. We have it from a good source that:
This nation was "one nation, under God" until the ACLU and its lawyers kicked God out of our country. Without God, we are not under his divine providence and are subject to the evil of the world that manifests itself in terrorist attacks. The [9/11] victims' families can thank the ACLU for that.
I always thought that God was supposed to be all powerful or something. Imagine my surprise that he takes his marching orders from a few fine lawyers at the ACLU. If anything, the power to push around the alpha and the omega makes me more interested in joining the ACLU, so that I may become an overlord as well.
Jokes aside, this letter to the editor made me laugh. The ACLU did not push God out of our country, nor did the mint cause God to come into out country when that phrase was punched on to our money. Rest easy, readers.
Data on the chip will include not just the citizen's name and address but also work history, educational background, religion, ethnicity, police record, medical insurance status and landlord's phone number. Even personal reproductive history will be included, for enforcement of China's controversial "one child" policy. Plans are being studied to add credit histories, subway travel payments and small purchases charged to the card.
Brought to you by China Public Security, incorporated in Florida and funded by Texas investment funds and California investment banks.
Got concerns about our cozy relationship with China? Not liking how doing business with the Communist government that contracts American firms to do unethical, anti-democratic projects? (You wouldn't want to be left out in case the domestic market opens up!) Unnerved that free-market ideologues in our government have decided that risks associated with product consumption properly lies with the consumer? (Like say, watching out for lead in your toys or antifreeze in your toothpaste? By the way, the Chinese official responsible for the lead paint debacle offed himself. Gotta love the Chinese attitude towards white-collar crime.)
A lot of people like to say, uh, scare monger about China, right? A lot of politicians - and I know you talk about that issue all the time. I think people should be careful of what they wish for on China, you know, if China were to revalue its currency, or if China is to start making, say, toys that don't have lead in them or food that isn't poisonous, their costs of production are going to go up, and that means prices at WalMart here in the United States are going to go up, too. So I would say that China is our greatest friend right now. They're keeping prices low, and they're keeping prices from mortgages low, too.
So what if your kid's got lead poisoning! It's for the good of the nation! Suck it up!
(In a side note, check out the last bit of the video. While I certainly don't agree with Burnett's economic Machiavellianism, she doesn't deserve the weird sexual harassment Matthews dollops on her, on the air!
Anyone who doesn't understand the insidious nature of sexual harrassment should take a look at the video of that exchange. Here you had a professional woman discussing a very serious and urgent subject on a news program. And Chris Matthews, (in an apparent attempt to disprove the fact that he has a sexual fetish for mature, beefy men) treated her like someone he was trying to pick up in a bar (very clumsily, as you would expect.) She was confused, embarrassed and knocked completely off balance by his inappropriate remarks, made all the worse because she was on the air. (It would have been just as wrong, however, if she'd been in a meeting or in a regular workplace conversation.) The woman was trying to do her job and this moron got all cute acting as if he couldn't hear a word she said. How "nice" of Matthews to make her feel and look like a fool in front of hundreds of thousands of people. I'm sure she really enjoyed that "compliment."
If you haven't seen it, check it out. Very strange. Will anybody call him out on it?)
