Thursday, April 26, 2007
Blaming the Victims
This makes me sick. The only person below I care about is Derb - my respect for him took major hit because of these fucking bullshit comments...
Boortz, others blame VA Tech victims for not fighting back
Summary:
In the April 18 edition of his daily program notes, called Nealz Nuze and posted on his website, nationally syndicated radio host Neal Boortz asked: "How far have we advanced in the wussification of America?" Boortz was responding to criticism of comments he made on the April 17 broadcast of his radio show regarding the mass shooting at Virginia Tech. During that broadcast, Boortz asked: "How the hell do 25 students allow themselves to be lined up against the wall in a classroom and picked off one by one? How does that happen, when they could have rushed the gunman, the shooter, and most of them would have survived?" In his April 18 program notes, Boortz added: "It seems that standing in terror waiting for your turn to be executed was the right thing to do, and any questions as to why 25 students didn't try to rush and overpower Cho Seung-Hui are just examples of right wing maniacal bias. Surrender -- comply -- adjust. The doctrine of the left. ... Even the suggestion that young adults should actually engage in an act of self defense brings howls of protest."
In the April 17 edition of his program notes, Boortz had similarly asked: "Why didn't some of these students fight back? How in the hell do you line students up against a wall (if that's the way it played out) and start picking them off one by one without the students turning on you? You have a choice. Try to rush the killer and get his gun, or stand there and wait to be shot. I would love to hear from some of you who have insight into situations such as this. Was there just not enough time to react? Were they paralyzed with fear? Were they waiting for someone else to take action? Sorry ... I just don't understand."
In questioning the actions of Virginia Tech students involved in the April 16 incident, Boortz joined the ranks of various commentators, including National Review Online contributor John Derbyshire, Chicago Sun-Times columnist Mark Steyn, who also writes for the National Review, and right-wing pundit and Fox News analyst Michelle Malkin.
In an April 17 weblog post on National Review Online's The Corner, Derbyshire asked: "Where was the spirit of self-defense here? Setting aside the ludicrous campus ban on licensed conceals, why didn't anyone rush the guy? It's not like this was Rambo, hosing the place down with automatic weapons. He had two handguns for goodness' sake -- one of them reportedly a .22." Time.com Washington editor Ana Marie Cox criticized Derbyshire in an April 17 post on Time magazine's political weblog, Swampland.
Steyn and Malkin have made similar statements, as the weblog Think Progress noted. In her April 18 syndicated column, Malkin wrote: "Instead of encouraging autonomy, our higher institutions of learning stoke passivity and conflict-avoidance. And as the erosion of intellectual self-defense goes, so goes the erosion of physical self-defense." In his April 18 National Review column, Steyn suggested that Virginia Tech students were guilty of an "awful corrosive passivity" that is "an existential threat to a functioning society."
Thirty-two people were killed in the Virginia Tech shooting, described by the Associated Press as "the worst mass shooting in U.S. history."
Boortz, others blame VA Tech victims for not fighting back
Summary:
In the April 18 edition of his daily program notes, called Nealz Nuze and posted on his website, nationally syndicated radio host Neal Boortz asked: "How far have we advanced in the wussification of America?" Boortz was responding to criticism of comments he made on the April 17 broadcast of his radio show regarding the mass shooting at Virginia Tech. During that broadcast, Boortz asked: "How the hell do 25 students allow themselves to be lined up against the wall in a classroom and picked off one by one? How does that happen, when they could have rushed the gunman, the shooter, and most of them would have survived?" In his April 18 program notes, Boortz added: "It seems that standing in terror waiting for your turn to be executed was the right thing to do, and any questions as to why 25 students didn't try to rush and overpower Cho Seung-Hui are just examples of right wing maniacal bias. Surrender -- comply -- adjust. The doctrine of the left. ... Even the suggestion that young adults should actually engage in an act of self defense brings howls of protest."
In the April 17 edition of his program notes, Boortz had similarly asked: "Why didn't some of these students fight back? How in the hell do you line students up against a wall (if that's the way it played out) and start picking them off one by one without the students turning on you? You have a choice. Try to rush the killer and get his gun, or stand there and wait to be shot. I would love to hear from some of you who have insight into situations such as this. Was there just not enough time to react? Were they paralyzed with fear? Were they waiting for someone else to take action? Sorry ... I just don't understand."
In questioning the actions of Virginia Tech students involved in the April 16 incident, Boortz joined the ranks of various commentators, including National Review Online contributor John Derbyshire, Chicago Sun-Times columnist Mark Steyn, who also writes for the National Review, and right-wing pundit and Fox News analyst Michelle Malkin.
In an April 17 weblog post on National Review Online's The Corner, Derbyshire asked: "Where was the spirit of self-defense here? Setting aside the ludicrous campus ban on licensed conceals, why didn't anyone rush the guy? It's not like this was Rambo, hosing the place down with automatic weapons. He had two handguns for goodness' sake -- one of them reportedly a .22." Time.com Washington editor Ana Marie Cox criticized Derbyshire in an April 17 post on Time magazine's political weblog, Swampland.
Steyn and Malkin have made similar statements, as the weblog Think Progress noted. In her April 18 syndicated column, Malkin wrote: "Instead of encouraging autonomy, our higher institutions of learning stoke passivity and conflict-avoidance. And as the erosion of intellectual self-defense goes, so goes the erosion of physical self-defense." In his April 18 National Review column, Steyn suggested that Virginia Tech students were guilty of an "awful corrosive passivity" that is "an existential threat to a functioning society."
Thirty-two people were killed in the Virginia Tech shooting, described by the Associated Press as "the worst mass shooting in U.S. history."
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Virginia Tech Tragedy
If you didn't see it, here's a link below to the Dateline segment from last night - a fellow Hokie captures my feelings exactly...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-6pexqtjgY
(transcript below)
Not at my alma mater
Posted: Monday, April 16, 2007 10:41 PM by Dateline Editor
by Hoda Kotb, Dateline correspondent and Virginia Tech graduate
Virginia Tech is the place I went to college, it’s the place my brother went to college, it’s the place my sister went to college. We all went there and the decision was a no-brainer. There wasn’t another school in the country we wanted to go to.
Today, I’m wearing orange, one of Virginia Tech’s colors. There school colors are actually maroon and orange. I remember in college, and we didn’t love the color scheme— we thought the two colors clashed. But today there is not another color I would rather be wearing.
When most people think of Virginia Tech, the very first thing that comes into mind is sports: football and basketball. All you would see during Virginia Tech’s football season was a sea of maroon and orange. You would hear the chant in the crowd. I can still hear it in my head, “Hokie, hokie, hokie high...Tech, Tech V-P-I.”
When you go to Tech, it’s in your blood. I think of the kind of camaraderie and the pride -- they call it “hokie pride.” It sounds corny, but it is how proud the students are of their school.
I never imagined that this is the way Virginia Tech would likely go down in history. I know everyone says that about their town: “Not my town, my town is a little town,” or “It would never happen in my neighborhood.”
But Virginia Tech is this place away from the big cities. It is away from the big city problems, away from all of it. It felt insulated. It felt safe. I never felt uncomfortable walking on that campus.
Then to hear what happened at Tech today, at my school. I couldn’t believe it—I still can’t.
It was all just so surreal today, to see the images on television and you can’t help but look at those images. I have a girlfriend that’s a professor there. Is she safe? I have friends who work on campus, friends in the communications department.
The school always meant something really warm and fuzzy to me. Today, I have a horribly sad feeling.
But I’m really hopeful because out of the worst tragedy, you watch people rise up. And it will happen on the campus of Virginia Tech.
Those students will rise up. I’ll bet on that.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-6pexqtjgY
(transcript below)
Not at my alma mater
Posted: Monday, April 16, 2007 10:41 PM by Dateline Editor
by Hoda Kotb, Dateline correspondent and Virginia Tech graduate
Virginia Tech is the place I went to college, it’s the place my brother went to college, it’s the place my sister went to college. We all went there and the decision was a no-brainer. There wasn’t another school in the country we wanted to go to.
Today, I’m wearing orange, one of Virginia Tech’s colors. There school colors are actually maroon and orange. I remember in college, and we didn’t love the color scheme— we thought the two colors clashed. But today there is not another color I would rather be wearing.
When most people think of Virginia Tech, the very first thing that comes into mind is sports: football and basketball. All you would see during Virginia Tech’s football season was a sea of maroon and orange. You would hear the chant in the crowd. I can still hear it in my head, “Hokie, hokie, hokie high...Tech, Tech V-P-I.”
When you go to Tech, it’s in your blood. I think of the kind of camaraderie and the pride -- they call it “hokie pride.” It sounds corny, but it is how proud the students are of their school.
I never imagined that this is the way Virginia Tech would likely go down in history. I know everyone says that about their town: “Not my town, my town is a little town,” or “It would never happen in my neighborhood.”
But Virginia Tech is this place away from the big cities. It is away from the big city problems, away from all of it. It felt insulated. It felt safe. I never felt uncomfortable walking on that campus.
Then to hear what happened at Tech today, at my school. I couldn’t believe it—I still can’t.
It was all just so surreal today, to see the images on television and you can’t help but look at those images. I have a girlfriend that’s a professor there. Is she safe? I have friends who work on campus, friends in the communications department.
The school always meant something really warm and fuzzy to me. Today, I have a horribly sad feeling.
But I’m really hopeful because out of the worst tragedy, you watch people rise up. And it will happen on the campus of Virginia Tech.
Those students will rise up. I’ll bet on that.
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
The President's Overreach
Guess who is the only member of Congress to sign this pledge...
The Right Seeks to Rein In Presidential Power
By William Fisher
t r u t h o u t Interview
Wednesday 04 April 2007
Leading voices in the conservative movement are demanding that the Democrat-controlled Congress restore checks and balances within the government and rein in the power of President George W. Bush.
But their point of view is consistently being drowned out by the "Ann Coulter wing" of the Republican Party, fed by the "ignorance of members of Congress about the principles of a constitutional democracy."
This is the view expressed by Bruce Fein in an exclusive Truthout interview. Fein served as associate deputy attorney general under President Ronald Reagan and is a founder of a conservative movement known as the Liberty Coalition. The Coalition has launched a new initiative, known as the American Freedom Agenda. The AFA's ten-point action program calls on Congress to:
End the use of military commissions to prosecute crimes.
Prohibit the use of secret evidence or evidence obtained by torture.
Prohibit the detention of American citizens as enemy combatants without proof.
Restore habeas corpus for alleged alien combatants.
End National Security Agency warrantless wiretapping.
Challenge presidential signing statements.
Bar executive use of the state-secret privilege to deny justice.
Prohibit the president from collaborating with foreign governments to kidnap, detain or torture persons abroad.
Amend the Espionage Act to permit journalists to report on classified national security matters without threat of persecution.
Prohibit of the labeling of groups or individuals in the US as global terrorists based on secret evidence.
The AFA plans to draft legislation to achieve these goals and to lobby Congress to put the proposed measures on the House and Senate calendars.
The Coalition has also rebuffed the recent testimony of Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Robert Mueller regarding the illegal use of National Security Letters (NSLs). Appearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Mueller acknowledged that FBI personnel had violated laws and regulations and that the bureau had failed to create effective internal oversight controls.
Truthout asked about the enthusiastic applause that followed the intemperate remarks of right-wing author Ann Coulter at the recent annual meeting of CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference, in Washington, DC. Coulter implied that Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards was a homosexual.
Fein told Truthout, "Imbeciles like Ann Coulter play to the basest instincts of the conservative movement to give the president a blank check to grab whatever power he wishes."
He said the CPAC audience was composed largely of younger conservatives. Without excusing her rhetoric, Fein said that Coulter was "simply giving them a pep talk."
He expressed disappointment with the lack of any real pushback against presidential power by Congressional Democrats. "The Democrats in Congress have done absolutely nothing to tell the president he is not a king and we do not live in a monarchy. They are allowing him to trash the Constitution because most of them know nothing about the Constitution and are concerned only with making headlines about minor issues and getting themselves reelected."
Fein acknowledged that things were probably worse when Congress was under Republican control, "but only marginally."
"Neither party has shown the courage to assert the power of Congress as a coequal branch of government. Congress should be telling the president it's not OK to detain people without trials, to grab people off the streets and 'render' them to other countries to be tortured, to listen in to our telephone conversations, and to issue signing statements that nullify laws he doesn't like."
He added, "We elect members of Congress to lead, not to follow. If they are going to lead, they need to understand the Constitution and the vision of its framers, and then have the backbone to insist that the executive branch stop usurping the responsibilities assigned to the legislative and judicial branches of our government."
Fein's associates in the coalition include some of the best-known and most-respected names in the American conservative movement. They include former Georgia Congressman Bob Barr, political marketing guru Richard Viguery and David Keene, who has since 1984 been chairman of the American Conservative Union, the nation's oldest and largest grassroots conservative lobbying organization.
Some, most notably Bob Barr, led a conservative drive last year to repeal sections of the USA Patriot Act and revise others in order to preserve civil liberties.
The Liberty Coalition includes such organizations as the American Civil Liberties Union, American Families United, Americans for Tax Reform, Amnesty International, the Arab American Institute, Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, Common Cause, Concerned Foreign Service Officers, the Drug Policy Alliance, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Government Accountability Project, MoveOn.org, the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition, People for the American Way, the Veterans Affairs Whistleblowers Coalition and many others.
AFA plans to call on White House hopefuls to sign a presidential pledge committing themselves to implement the AFA's ten-point plan if elected. Thus far, Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas), presidential candidate of the Libertarian Party, is the only candidate to sign the pledge.
Fein told Truthout he doubted Sen. Hillary Clinton would sign the pledge. "Like her husband, former President Bill Clinton, Senator Clinton believes in a strong executive branch of government," Fein said.
He noted that he and his colleagues are criticized by conservatives almost as much as by liberals. "Too many people who call themselves conservatives have lost their way. Those who support George W. Bush's interpretation of executive power are not Democrats, they are monarchists. And liberals don't seem to understand that people with views like ours can be conservatives," he said.
"We have many policy disagreements with liberals and progressives, as well as within the conservative movement. But we should have no disagreement about what the Founding Fathers had in mind when they wrote the Constitution and the Bill of Rights." He added, "We welcome the participation and support of liberals and progressives who share that vision."
Asked by Truthout about the current debate over so-called "activist judges," Fein said that judicial independence was an underlying tenet of a functioning democracy. However, he added, "The solutions to most of our current problems lie not with the courts, but with Congress. It is the responsibility of Congress to address the basic questions of executive authority and separation of powers."
"Most people in Congress know nothing about the Constitution, have never read a Federalist Paper, and are mostly concerned with currying favor with the White House and getting reelected," he charged.
But the American voters who send representatives to Washington also bear a significant share of the responsibility for electing followers rather than leaders. "We get the government we deserve," he said. "Our educational system has failed to teach our young people about our principles and what we stand for as a nation. Those young people grow up and vote and some of them run for public office and get elected, and they still know nothing about the principles on which government is supposed to be based."
On the FBI National Security Letters controversy, Liberty Coalition's national director, Michael Ostrolenk, said, "The FBI has clearly abused its power and violated the constitutional rights of tens of thousands of Americans. These actions must not be tolerated in a free society. While enhanced public scrutiny and Congressional oversight are a good first step, they are not enough to protect our nation's liberty from abusive, unchecked power. Congress must act to stop the issuance of National Security Letters!"
National Security Letters are a controversial part of the USA Patriot Act. Civil liberties advocates have long argued that these secret, coercive demands for privacy records violate fundamental privacy rights. They allow the FBI to require telephone companies, Internet service providers, banks, credit bureaus, insurance companies and other businesses to produce highly personal records about their customers - without any evidence the person whose records are demanded has done anything wrong and without any judicial or independent check to protect individual rights. NSL recipients are placed under a gag order and have no recourse to object to the FBI demands under sharp penalty of law.
A recent audit by the Inspector General of the Department of Justice found that FBI agents demanded individuals' personal data without proper authorization and improperly obtained telephone records under the guise of "emergency" in nonemergency circumstances.
The IG's report also found that the FBI significantly underreported to Congress for three years how it forced businesses to turn over customer data. The Justice Department also misled the American people and Congress about the explosion in the use of these intrusive demands, at one point denying investigative reporting that over 30,000 requests had been made in a single year. This report documented that, in fact, over 50,000 had been made in a year, for a total of almost 150,000 in a three-year period.
In his testimony, Director Mueller suggested a potential openness to using administrative subpoenas in place of NSLs. Administrative subpoenas are similar to NSLs, but have a very limited element of judicial oversight after records have been obtained. Civil liberties advocates argue that the demands are also unconstitutional and are not an acceptable compromise.
"The choice between National Security Letters and administrative subpoenas is a false choice," Ostrolenk said. "The Fourth Amendment demands a full and vigorous review of executive power by the judiciary. Both National Security Letters and Administrative Subpoenas are unconstitutional."
But Bruce Fein acknowledged that, with a timid and tiny Democratic majority in the House and Senate, and Republicans fearful of alienating even a greatly weakened lame-duck president, his group faces a daunting uphill battle to see its agenda enacted into law.
The Right Seeks to Rein In Presidential Power
By William Fisher
t r u t h o u t Interview
Wednesday 04 April 2007
Leading voices in the conservative movement are demanding that the Democrat-controlled Congress restore checks and balances within the government and rein in the power of President George W. Bush.
But their point of view is consistently being drowned out by the "Ann Coulter wing" of the Republican Party, fed by the "ignorance of members of Congress about the principles of a constitutional democracy."
This is the view expressed by Bruce Fein in an exclusive Truthout interview. Fein served as associate deputy attorney general under President Ronald Reagan and is a founder of a conservative movement known as the Liberty Coalition. The Coalition has launched a new initiative, known as the American Freedom Agenda. The AFA's ten-point action program calls on Congress to:
End the use of military commissions to prosecute crimes.
Prohibit the use of secret evidence or evidence obtained by torture.
Prohibit the detention of American citizens as enemy combatants without proof.
Restore habeas corpus for alleged alien combatants.
End National Security Agency warrantless wiretapping.
Challenge presidential signing statements.
Bar executive use of the state-secret privilege to deny justice.
Prohibit the president from collaborating with foreign governments to kidnap, detain or torture persons abroad.
Amend the Espionage Act to permit journalists to report on classified national security matters without threat of persecution.
Prohibit of the labeling of groups or individuals in the US as global terrorists based on secret evidence.
The AFA plans to draft legislation to achieve these goals and to lobby Congress to put the proposed measures on the House and Senate calendars.
The Coalition has also rebuffed the recent testimony of Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Robert Mueller regarding the illegal use of National Security Letters (NSLs). Appearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Mueller acknowledged that FBI personnel had violated laws and regulations and that the bureau had failed to create effective internal oversight controls.
Truthout asked about the enthusiastic applause that followed the intemperate remarks of right-wing author Ann Coulter at the recent annual meeting of CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference, in Washington, DC. Coulter implied that Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards was a homosexual.
Fein told Truthout, "Imbeciles like Ann Coulter play to the basest instincts of the conservative movement to give the president a blank check to grab whatever power he wishes."
He said the CPAC audience was composed largely of younger conservatives. Without excusing her rhetoric, Fein said that Coulter was "simply giving them a pep talk."
He expressed disappointment with the lack of any real pushback against presidential power by Congressional Democrats. "The Democrats in Congress have done absolutely nothing to tell the president he is not a king and we do not live in a monarchy. They are allowing him to trash the Constitution because most of them know nothing about the Constitution and are concerned only with making headlines about minor issues and getting themselves reelected."
Fein acknowledged that things were probably worse when Congress was under Republican control, "but only marginally."
"Neither party has shown the courage to assert the power of Congress as a coequal branch of government. Congress should be telling the president it's not OK to detain people without trials, to grab people off the streets and 'render' them to other countries to be tortured, to listen in to our telephone conversations, and to issue signing statements that nullify laws he doesn't like."
He added, "We elect members of Congress to lead, not to follow. If they are going to lead, they need to understand the Constitution and the vision of its framers, and then have the backbone to insist that the executive branch stop usurping the responsibilities assigned to the legislative and judicial branches of our government."
Fein's associates in the coalition include some of the best-known and most-respected names in the American conservative movement. They include former Georgia Congressman Bob Barr, political marketing guru Richard Viguery and David Keene, who has since 1984 been chairman of the American Conservative Union, the nation's oldest and largest grassroots conservative lobbying organization.
Some, most notably Bob Barr, led a conservative drive last year to repeal sections of the USA Patriot Act and revise others in order to preserve civil liberties.
The Liberty Coalition includes such organizations as the American Civil Liberties Union, American Families United, Americans for Tax Reform, Amnesty International, the Arab American Institute, Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, Common Cause, Concerned Foreign Service Officers, the Drug Policy Alliance, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Government Accountability Project, MoveOn.org, the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition, People for the American Way, the Veterans Affairs Whistleblowers Coalition and many others.
AFA plans to call on White House hopefuls to sign a presidential pledge committing themselves to implement the AFA's ten-point plan if elected. Thus far, Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas), presidential candidate of the Libertarian Party, is the only candidate to sign the pledge.
Fein told Truthout he doubted Sen. Hillary Clinton would sign the pledge. "Like her husband, former President Bill Clinton, Senator Clinton believes in a strong executive branch of government," Fein said.
He noted that he and his colleagues are criticized by conservatives almost as much as by liberals. "Too many people who call themselves conservatives have lost their way. Those who support George W. Bush's interpretation of executive power are not Democrats, they are monarchists. And liberals don't seem to understand that people with views like ours can be conservatives," he said.
"We have many policy disagreements with liberals and progressives, as well as within the conservative movement. But we should have no disagreement about what the Founding Fathers had in mind when they wrote the Constitution and the Bill of Rights." He added, "We welcome the participation and support of liberals and progressives who share that vision."
Asked by Truthout about the current debate over so-called "activist judges," Fein said that judicial independence was an underlying tenet of a functioning democracy. However, he added, "The solutions to most of our current problems lie not with the courts, but with Congress. It is the responsibility of Congress to address the basic questions of executive authority and separation of powers."
"Most people in Congress know nothing about the Constitution, have never read a Federalist Paper, and are mostly concerned with currying favor with the White House and getting reelected," he charged.
But the American voters who send representatives to Washington also bear a significant share of the responsibility for electing followers rather than leaders. "We get the government we deserve," he said. "Our educational system has failed to teach our young people about our principles and what we stand for as a nation. Those young people grow up and vote and some of them run for public office and get elected, and they still know nothing about the principles on which government is supposed to be based."
On the FBI National Security Letters controversy, Liberty Coalition's national director, Michael Ostrolenk, said, "The FBI has clearly abused its power and violated the constitutional rights of tens of thousands of Americans. These actions must not be tolerated in a free society. While enhanced public scrutiny and Congressional oversight are a good first step, they are not enough to protect our nation's liberty from abusive, unchecked power. Congress must act to stop the issuance of National Security Letters!"
National Security Letters are a controversial part of the USA Patriot Act. Civil liberties advocates have long argued that these secret, coercive demands for privacy records violate fundamental privacy rights. They allow the FBI to require telephone companies, Internet service providers, banks, credit bureaus, insurance companies and other businesses to produce highly personal records about their customers - without any evidence the person whose records are demanded has done anything wrong and without any judicial or independent check to protect individual rights. NSL recipients are placed under a gag order and have no recourse to object to the FBI demands under sharp penalty of law.
A recent audit by the Inspector General of the Department of Justice found that FBI agents demanded individuals' personal data without proper authorization and improperly obtained telephone records under the guise of "emergency" in nonemergency circumstances.
The IG's report also found that the FBI significantly underreported to Congress for three years how it forced businesses to turn over customer data. The Justice Department also misled the American people and Congress about the explosion in the use of these intrusive demands, at one point denying investigative reporting that over 30,000 requests had been made in a single year. This report documented that, in fact, over 50,000 had been made in a year, for a total of almost 150,000 in a three-year period.
In his testimony, Director Mueller suggested a potential openness to using administrative subpoenas in place of NSLs. Administrative subpoenas are similar to NSLs, but have a very limited element of judicial oversight after records have been obtained. Civil liberties advocates argue that the demands are also unconstitutional and are not an acceptable compromise.
"The choice between National Security Letters and administrative subpoenas is a false choice," Ostrolenk said. "The Fourth Amendment demands a full and vigorous review of executive power by the judiciary. Both National Security Letters and Administrative Subpoenas are unconstitutional."
But Bruce Fein acknowledged that, with a timid and tiny Democratic majority in the House and Senate, and Republicans fearful of alienating even a greatly weakened lame-duck president, his group faces a daunting uphill battle to see its agenda enacted into law.
Thursday, April 05, 2007
Faux News
*These are not my words, but I agree with all of them:
The median age of a Fox viewer tops 60 - it is disproportionately conservative and Republican. In the 2004 election Fox viewers preferred President Bush over John Kerry by an astonishing 88 percent to 7 percent. Bush's backing among Fox viewers was more solid than his support among white evangelicals, gun owners or supporters of the Iraq war.Before and after the Iraq war, a majority of Americans have had significant misperceptions, and these are highly related to support for the war in Iraq. An in-depth analysis found 48% incorrectly believed that evidence of links between Iraq and al Qaeda have been found, 22% that weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq. Another key perception is that Iraq was directly involved in September 11, although US intelligence agencies and President Bush himself have confirmed there is no evidence for it. The polling reveals that the frequency of these misperceptions varies significantly according to individuals’ primary source of news. Those who primarily watch Fox News are significantly more likely to have the above misperceptions, while those who primarily listen to other sources are significantly less likely.Far from being conservative, Fox News is an organization dedicated to getting Republicans elected to office. To be sure, it has certain formal properties of a 24 hour cable news network and, on occassion, other media figures have been known to pretend that this is what Fox News is. But no one is seriously confused here about Dick Cheney's favorite network. It's an arm of the Republican Party, a group of vicious hatchet-men leavened by occassional doses of Alan Colmes, David Corn, and Jim Pinkerton.
The median age of a Fox viewer tops 60 - it is disproportionately conservative and Republican. In the 2004 election Fox viewers preferred President Bush over John Kerry by an astonishing 88 percent to 7 percent. Bush's backing among Fox viewers was more solid than his support among white evangelicals, gun owners or supporters of the Iraq war.Before and after the Iraq war, a majority of Americans have had significant misperceptions, and these are highly related to support for the war in Iraq. An in-depth analysis found 48% incorrectly believed that evidence of links between Iraq and al Qaeda have been found, 22% that weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq. Another key perception is that Iraq was directly involved in September 11, although US intelligence agencies and President Bush himself have confirmed there is no evidence for it. The polling reveals that the frequency of these misperceptions varies significantly according to individuals’ primary source of news. Those who primarily watch Fox News are significantly more likely to have the above misperceptions, while those who primarily listen to other sources are significantly less likely.Far from being conservative, Fox News is an organization dedicated to getting Republicans elected to office. To be sure, it has certain formal properties of a 24 hour cable news network and, on occassion, other media figures have been known to pretend that this is what Fox News is. But no one is seriously confused here about Dick Cheney's favorite network. It's an arm of the Republican Party, a group of vicious hatchet-men leavened by occassional doses of Alan Colmes, David Corn, and Jim Pinkerton.
Monday, April 02, 2007
Creeping Fascism
The issue below could be my single issue in voting for president in 19 months. Incremental loss of freedom in America is far more alarming to me than the overreaches of the dying US labor unions, or welfare payments, or US membership in the UN, or illegal immigration, or the war on the unborn, or the "war" on Christians, or gay rights, or what happens in Iraq.
Your modern-day Republican Party
Leading GOP presidential candidates believe in the power of imprisoning American citizens with no charges or review.
Glenn Greenwald
Apr. 01, 2007 (updated below)
Various Republican candidates attended a meeting of Club for Growth, and afterwards, National Review's Ramesh Ponnuru spoke to Cato Institute's President Ed Crane about what they said. This brief report from Ponnuru is simply extraordinary:
Crane asked if Romney believed the president should have the authority to arrest U.S. citizens with no review. Romney said he would want to hear the pros and cons from smart lawyers before he made up his mind.Mitt Romeny can't say -- at least not until he engages in a careful and solemn debate with a team of "smart lawyers" -- whether, in the United States of America, the President has the power to imprison American citizens without any opportunity for review of any kind. But in today's Republican Party, Romney's openness to this definitively tyrannical power is the moderate position. Ponnuru goes on to note:
Crane said that he had asked Giuliani the same question a few weeks ago. The mayor said that he would want to use this authority infrequently.It sounds like Giuliani is positioning himself in this race as the "compassionate authoritarian" -- "Yes, of course I have the power to imprison you without charges or review of any kind, but as President, I commit to you that I intend (no promises) to 'use this authority infrequently.'"
Two of the three leading Republican candidates for President either embrace or are open to embracing the idea that the President can imprison Americans without any review, based solely on the unchecked decree of the President. And, of course, that is nothing new, since the current Republican President not only believes he has that power but has exercised it against U.S. citizens and legal residents in the U.S. -- including those arrested not on the "battlefield," but on American soil.
What kind of American isn't just instinctively repulsed by the notion that the President has the power to imprison Americans with no charges? And what does it say about the current state of our political culture that one of the two political parties has all but adopted as a plank in its platform a view of presidential powers and the federal government that is -- literally -- the exact opposite of what this country is?
As Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson wrote in his concurring opinion in Brown v. Allen, 344 U.S. 443, 533 (1953):
Executive imprisonment has been considered oppressive and lawless since John, at Runnymede, pledged that no free man should be imprisoned, dispossessed, outlawed, or exiled save by the judgment of his peers or by the law of the land. The judges of England developed the writ of habeas corpus largely to preserve these immunities from executive restraint. And another lefty, subversive, Chamberlain-like appeaser whined:
"I consider [trial by jury] as the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution" -- Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Paine, 1789. ME 7:408, Papers 15:269.And the power that Guiliani is dreaming of exercising (but don't worry - only "infrequently"), and the power which Romney thinks must be subject to a grand debate among lawyers before he decides whether he has it, was found by the Supreme Court just three years ago in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld -- after George Bush exercised that power against American citizens, with hardly a peep of protest -- to be in violation of the most basic Constitutional guarantees. Explained the Hamdi majority, stating the bleeding obvious:
It would turn our system of checks and balances on its head to suggest that a citizen could not make his way to court with a challenge to the factual basis for his detention by his government, simply because the Executive opposes making available such a challenge. Absent suspension of the writ by Congress, a citizen detained as an enemy combatant is entitled to this process. And the Court's left-wing terrorist-lover, Antonin Scalia, was joined by John Paul Stevens in dissenting on the ground that the opinion did not go far enough in proclaiming just how repugnant such a power is to our basic Constitutional framework, and Scalia explained: "The very core of liberty secured by our Anglo-Saxon system of separated powers has been freedom from indefinite imprisonment at the will of the Executive."
Yet Rudy Guiliani expressly does not believe in this "very core of liberty secured by our Anglo-Saxon system." And Mitt Romney has to convene a team of lawyers before he can decide whether he does. And Romesh Ponnuru can pass along these views as though they are the most unremarkable things in the world, nothing that warrants comment, just the latest position of the Republican candidates, like whether they believe in adjustments to the capital gains tax or employer mandates (though Ponnuru did note, without specifying the reasons, that Cato's "Crane says he was disappointed with Romney's answer to his question the other night").
It would be as if there were a blog item on the American Prospect blog by Ezra Klein along these lines:
Spoke to both Clinton and Obama today and asked whether they intended to seize and nationalize all American industries after they are inaugurated. Clinton said she would have to consult first with lawyers and decide only after a full debate, and Obama said he would likely only nationalize some industries, perhaps not all.Or:
Spoke to both Edwards and Clinton today and asked whether they intended to shut down conservative Christian churches. Edwards said he would want to hear the pros and cons from smart lawyers before he made up his mind, and Clinton said that she would want to use this authority infrequently.Ponnuru's report must be viewed in its context -- the context being that the hero and icon of the Republican Party over the last six years has, in fact, imprisoned U.S. citizens and insisted that he has the power to throw Americans into black holes indefinitely with no charges or review of any kind.
That is the modern Republican Party. Its base, its ruling factions, simply do not believe in our most basic Constitutional guarantees. For anyone who wants to dispute that, how is it possible to reconcile the above with any claim to the contrary?
And I doubt any Republican candidate could simply stand up and emphatically oppose this grotesque idea without creating real problems for himself among Republican primary voters -- not even so much because executive, due-process-less imprisonment is important to the Republican base, but rather, because it has become a symbol of the Bush presidency, and one shows loyalty to the Movement by defending it (and the worst sin -- disloyalty -- by opposing it).
These days, it's only those despicable "liberals" who whine about quaint "terrorist rights" like due process, so the loyalties of any Republican will be immediately suspect if they start chattering about annoying and obsolete liberal ideas like "due process" as a way of limiting the Leader's powers in Fighting The Terrorists.
The next time journalists want to write about political extremism by focusing on things like "the Far Left MoveOn.org" or bad words on the "Far Left blogs" -- without ever citing a single belief that is actually "extremist" -- why not instead focus on the fact that Mitt Romeny is open to, and Rudy Giuliani explicitly favors, vesting themselves with the very powers that this country was founded in order to banish? One of our two major political parties believes that the U.S. President should have powers that not even the pre-Revolution British King possessed. Maybe that is worth some commentary and examination.
UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan cites the views on this matter of Winston Churchill -- whom Bush followers love to trot out (manipulatively) as their prop to symbolize endless warfare -- expressed when Churchill was, as Sullivan puts it, "fighting a war against the greatest evil imaginable, when the very survival of Britain as an independent and free country was in the balance":
The power of the executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him judgement by his peers for an indefinite period, is in the highest degree odious, and is the foundation of all totalitarian governments whether Nazi or Communist.The extent to which the dominant factions of the Republican Party are hostile to our most basic constitutional traditions and defining political principles really cannot be overstated. They simply do not believe in them.
And, in response to various comments and e-mails, I do think we ought to hear much more from Democratic candidates as well on these issues. But most Congressional Democrats (including all of the presidential candidates) voted against the Military Commissions Act in October, 2006 (and in favor of habeas corpus rights even for non-citizens at Guantanamo).
For that reason (among others), I would be surprised if any of the credible Democratic candidates favor the Giuliani View (perhaps shared by Mitt Romney, pending the outcome of the Grand Lawyer Debate he needs to hold before deciding) that the President of the United States has the power to imprison American citizens without any process or review. Although Democrats generally have hardly been warriors in defense of our basic liberties during the Bush presidency, the belief in an inerrant, unchecked, omnipotent President is a unique by-product of the war-loving, liberty-hostile factions dominating the Republican Party.
Your modern-day Republican Party
Leading GOP presidential candidates believe in the power of imprisoning American citizens with no charges or review.
Glenn Greenwald
Apr. 01, 2007 (updated below)
Various Republican candidates attended a meeting of Club for Growth, and afterwards, National Review's Ramesh Ponnuru spoke to Cato Institute's President Ed Crane about what they said. This brief report from Ponnuru is simply extraordinary:
Crane asked if Romney believed the president should have the authority to arrest U.S. citizens with no review. Romney said he would want to hear the pros and cons from smart lawyers before he made up his mind.Mitt Romeny can't say -- at least not until he engages in a careful and solemn debate with a team of "smart lawyers" -- whether, in the United States of America, the President has the power to imprison American citizens without any opportunity for review of any kind. But in today's Republican Party, Romney's openness to this definitively tyrannical power is the moderate position. Ponnuru goes on to note:
Crane said that he had asked Giuliani the same question a few weeks ago. The mayor said that he would want to use this authority infrequently.It sounds like Giuliani is positioning himself in this race as the "compassionate authoritarian" -- "Yes, of course I have the power to imprison you without charges or review of any kind, but as President, I commit to you that I intend (no promises) to 'use this authority infrequently.'"
Two of the three leading Republican candidates for President either embrace or are open to embracing the idea that the President can imprison Americans without any review, based solely on the unchecked decree of the President. And, of course, that is nothing new, since the current Republican President not only believes he has that power but has exercised it against U.S. citizens and legal residents in the U.S. -- including those arrested not on the "battlefield," but on American soil.
What kind of American isn't just instinctively repulsed by the notion that the President has the power to imprison Americans with no charges? And what does it say about the current state of our political culture that one of the two political parties has all but adopted as a plank in its platform a view of presidential powers and the federal government that is -- literally -- the exact opposite of what this country is?
As Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson wrote in his concurring opinion in Brown v. Allen, 344 U.S. 443, 533 (1953):
Executive imprisonment has been considered oppressive and lawless since John, at Runnymede, pledged that no free man should be imprisoned, dispossessed, outlawed, or exiled save by the judgment of his peers or by the law of the land. The judges of England developed the writ of habeas corpus largely to preserve these immunities from executive restraint. And another lefty, subversive, Chamberlain-like appeaser whined:
"I consider [trial by jury] as the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution" -- Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Paine, 1789. ME 7:408, Papers 15:269.And the power that Guiliani is dreaming of exercising (but don't worry - only "infrequently"), and the power which Romney thinks must be subject to a grand debate among lawyers before he decides whether he has it, was found by the Supreme Court just three years ago in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld -- after George Bush exercised that power against American citizens, with hardly a peep of protest -- to be in violation of the most basic Constitutional guarantees. Explained the Hamdi majority, stating the bleeding obvious:
It would turn our system of checks and balances on its head to suggest that a citizen could not make his way to court with a challenge to the factual basis for his detention by his government, simply because the Executive opposes making available such a challenge. Absent suspension of the writ by Congress, a citizen detained as an enemy combatant is entitled to this process. And the Court's left-wing terrorist-lover, Antonin Scalia, was joined by John Paul Stevens in dissenting on the ground that the opinion did not go far enough in proclaiming just how repugnant such a power is to our basic Constitutional framework, and Scalia explained: "The very core of liberty secured by our Anglo-Saxon system of separated powers has been freedom from indefinite imprisonment at the will of the Executive."
Yet Rudy Guiliani expressly does not believe in this "very core of liberty secured by our Anglo-Saxon system." And Mitt Romney has to convene a team of lawyers before he can decide whether he does. And Romesh Ponnuru can pass along these views as though they are the most unremarkable things in the world, nothing that warrants comment, just the latest position of the Republican candidates, like whether they believe in adjustments to the capital gains tax or employer mandates (though Ponnuru did note, without specifying the reasons, that Cato's "Crane says he was disappointed with Romney's answer to his question the other night").
It would be as if there were a blog item on the American Prospect blog by Ezra Klein along these lines:
Spoke to both Clinton and Obama today and asked whether they intended to seize and nationalize all American industries after they are inaugurated. Clinton said she would have to consult first with lawyers and decide only after a full debate, and Obama said he would likely only nationalize some industries, perhaps not all.Or:
Spoke to both Edwards and Clinton today and asked whether they intended to shut down conservative Christian churches. Edwards said he would want to hear the pros and cons from smart lawyers before he made up his mind, and Clinton said that she would want to use this authority infrequently.Ponnuru's report must be viewed in its context -- the context being that the hero and icon of the Republican Party over the last six years has, in fact, imprisoned U.S. citizens and insisted that he has the power to throw Americans into black holes indefinitely with no charges or review of any kind.
That is the modern Republican Party. Its base, its ruling factions, simply do not believe in our most basic Constitutional guarantees. For anyone who wants to dispute that, how is it possible to reconcile the above with any claim to the contrary?
And I doubt any Republican candidate could simply stand up and emphatically oppose this grotesque idea without creating real problems for himself among Republican primary voters -- not even so much because executive, due-process-less imprisonment is important to the Republican base, but rather, because it has become a symbol of the Bush presidency, and one shows loyalty to the Movement by defending it (and the worst sin -- disloyalty -- by opposing it).
These days, it's only those despicable "liberals" who whine about quaint "terrorist rights" like due process, so the loyalties of any Republican will be immediately suspect if they start chattering about annoying and obsolete liberal ideas like "due process" as a way of limiting the Leader's powers in Fighting The Terrorists.
The next time journalists want to write about political extremism by focusing on things like "the Far Left MoveOn.org" or bad words on the "Far Left blogs" -- without ever citing a single belief that is actually "extremist" -- why not instead focus on the fact that Mitt Romeny is open to, and Rudy Giuliani explicitly favors, vesting themselves with the very powers that this country was founded in order to banish? One of our two major political parties believes that the U.S. President should have powers that not even the pre-Revolution British King possessed. Maybe that is worth some commentary and examination.
UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan cites the views on this matter of Winston Churchill -- whom Bush followers love to trot out (manipulatively) as their prop to symbolize endless warfare -- expressed when Churchill was, as Sullivan puts it, "fighting a war against the greatest evil imaginable, when the very survival of Britain as an independent and free country was in the balance":
The power of the executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him judgement by his peers for an indefinite period, is in the highest degree odious, and is the foundation of all totalitarian governments whether Nazi or Communist.The extent to which the dominant factions of the Republican Party are hostile to our most basic constitutional traditions and defining political principles really cannot be overstated. They simply do not believe in them.
And, in response to various comments and e-mails, I do think we ought to hear much more from Democratic candidates as well on these issues. But most Congressional Democrats (including all of the presidential candidates) voted against the Military Commissions Act in October, 2006 (and in favor of habeas corpus rights even for non-citizens at Guantanamo).
For that reason (among others), I would be surprised if any of the credible Democratic candidates favor the Giuliani View (perhaps shared by Mitt Romney, pending the outcome of the Grand Lawyer Debate he needs to hold before deciding) that the President of the United States has the power to imprison American citizens without any process or review. Although Democrats generally have hardly been warriors in defense of our basic liberties during the Bush presidency, the belief in an inerrant, unchecked, omnipotent President is a unique by-product of the war-loving, liberty-hostile factions dominating the Republican Party.
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