Month: August 2008

Tomorrow’s Cause

by digby

Kevin says:

I’m willing to bet that a decade from now, far from being seen as the first step in reassembling Russia’s old empire, the Russo-Georgian war will be virtually forgotten, a tiny, week long border conflict over a couple of unimportant territories that had been in limbo for 17 years and were bound to blow up sooner or later

If there was no such thing as neoconservatism, I might agree. But I’m willing to bet that we will be hearing about “the betrayal” for some time to come. It’s a perfect rallying cry for those who need perpetual war to accomplish their goals.

As for the rest of Kevin’s post in which he says Bush didn’t do too badly, well I think he did as well as he could — considering it’s become pretty clear that the Georgians hadn’t yet learned that everything he says in bullshit and the best thing to do is assume the opposite.

Kevin asks:

I wonder if a gunslinging President McCain would have done as well?

It’s hard to know since he’s a corrupt, pandering politician who is clearly willing to do anything to get elected, but if we take him at his word, we’d have to assume that we’d have declared war on Russia.

Here’s a thought: what if John Mccain had been president during the Cuban Missile Crisis? I have to figure that pondering that question is why guys like Dick Lugar aren’t endorsing him.

“I’m not saying we won’t get our hair mussed. 20-30 million tops…”

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Heckuva Job Bushie

by digby

Joseph Galloway has written a thoughtful overview of the situation in Georgia and the broader implications for McClatchy today:

Although Vice President Cheney bravely rattled a sword or two and George Bush was talking a little tougher to his old soul mate Vlad the Impaler, the simple truth is that there’s not a damn thing we can do about the Russian invasion and perfidy short of nuking them. Defense Secretary Robert Gates made it amply clear that we aren’t going to do that, or much of anything else beyond sending some humanitarian medical aid and supplies for the Georgian refugees.

The Georgian government made two mistakes — it took the Bush administration’s rhetoric seriously and it ignored the Russians’ bluster — and now both the Georgians and the world had best brace themselves for further Russian military action, economic pressure and diplomatic chicanery.

The opportunity to punish the Georgians is simply too tempting for Russia to ignore, so Putin will drag them back into Moscow’s orbit, if not Moscow’s ownership, and thus fire a warning shot across the bow of other breakaway republics that are considering membership in NATO or otherwise thumbing their noses at Putin.

Washington can respond only with tough talk. We can threaten to punish the Russians by expelling them from the International Monetary Fund and the Group of Eight wealthy nations, but with a fat bankroll bulging with Arab-size oil earnings, the Russians don’t really need to care about this.

If there’s any silver lining to these dark clouds, it might be that Bush and Cheney will be so preoccupied grumbling at Bush’s buddy Vladimir and issuing empty threats that they won’t have time to issue other threats or take some irrational action against the Iranians.

Things have truly come to a sorry pass when both our military and our diplomatic threats are as empty as our national treasury, and the Russians of all people can afford to laugh them off.

This is why most people over the age of nine learn that issuing a bunch of threats and failing to carry them through — or following through and failing to succeed — is a recipe for people to stop taking you seriously. Bush and Cheney (and now McCain) have made a fetish out of sabre rattling for the past eight years and the results have been, shall we say, less than stellar. The US has shown that its volunteer military, while valiant, is undermanned and overstretched, its intelligence services are willing servants of political manipulators and its leadership is dishonest, immoral and incompetent. It’s understandable that somebody out there would think that now is the time to make a move. That it would be Bush’s soul brother Pooty-poot was entirely predictable.

BTW: I’m really glad to see Eventheliberal Michael O’Hanlon all over television again. I fully expect that he’ll be calling for nuclear war any day now.

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Gore Redux

by dday

If Ceci Connolly has a spare moment from whatever she’s doing right now, she could certainly write up this and start an enduring narrative that lasts until November.

This week, 16 months into his campaign, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) released his first policy paper on technology. Over at the Wonk Room, former Clinton administration privacy counselor Peter Swire notes that the paper gives McCain credit for “creating” the “Do Not Call” list. But the Federal Trade Commission chairman announced the list two years earlier:

McCAIN: 2003 – McCain led in creating the FTC’s ‘Do-Not-Call’ telemarketing registry to allow consumers to opt out of receiving telemarketing calls. And, when the law was challenged in court, McCain led the effort to ensure that it was upheld.

REALITY: FTC Chairman Tim Muris announced in October 2001 that the FTC was going to do the Do Not Call list. Yet somehow McCain magically caused the Do Not Call list in 2003. And, given the independent agency status of the FTC, it is a stretch to say that ‘McCain led the effort to ensure that it was upheld.

Not quite as sexy as “inventing the Internet,” but the difference here is McCain actually put this down in writing, eliminating the need to misinterpret a quote.

This isn’t even the first of these exaggerations TODAY.

My friends, we have reached a crisis, the first probably serious crisis internationally since the end of the Cold War. This is an act of aggression.

First serious crisis, ay? If I didn’t know better, I’d say that McCain had forgotten the lessons of 9/11.

Obviously, this newfound meme of McCain’s consistent exaggerations will hit a nerve with the chattering class. George Stephanopoulos will hold a roundtable on Sunday to discuss “McCain’s honesty problem.” Cokie Roberts will lament that “McCain isn’t straight enough,” and investigative reporters will be dispatched throughout the country to look into every one of McCain’s prior statements. Children at area high schools where McCain has spoken will be grilled about their recollections. David Broder will use the word “Pinocchio,” and that’ll just open the floodgates. Howard Kurtz will opine on whether the media is being too lenient in the face of these obvious falsehoods. Chris Matthews will shout, “I mean, isn’t this getting ridiculous?… Isn’t it getting to be delusionary?” McCain will patiently try to clarify his comments but the media will have none of it. The soundbites will be clipped to make McCain look even worse. The pundits will snicker and former rivals like Mike Huckabee will say “I don’t know why he feels that he has to exaggerate and make some of this stuff up.” Newspaper editorials will openly wonder whether McCain is deliberately trying to sabotage his own campaign. The New York Times will flat-out call him “crazy.”

This is part of my new book, “Election on Bizarro Earth.” It am not good!

(reference piece)

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They Just Noticed

by digby

Some of us have been gobsmacked by this since the beginning of the Georgia crisis but it took a whole week for The Washington Post to finally write something about the fact that McCain has been strutting around — and mucking things up — with his presumptuous “I am the president” act.

McCain’s Focus on Georgia Raises Question of Propriety
After Chiding Obama, He Dwells on Crisis as a President Might

Standing behind a lectern in Michigan this week, with two trusted senators ready to do his bidding, John McCain seemed to forget for a moment that he was only running for president.

Asked about his tough rhetoric on the ongoing conflict in Georgia, McCain began: “If I may be so bold, there was another president . . .”

He caught himself and started again: “At one time, there was a president named Ronald Reagan who spoke very strongly about America’s advocacy for democracy and freedom.”

With his Democratic opponent on vacation in Hawaii, the senator from Arizona has been doing all he can in recent days to look like President McCain, particularly when it comes to the ongoing international crisis in Georgia.

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili says he talks to McCain, a personal friend, several times a day. McCain’s top foreign policy adviser, Randy Scheunemann, was until recently a paid lobbyist for Georgia’s government. McCain also announced this week that two of his closest allies, Sens. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.), would travel to Georgia’s capital of Tbilisi on his behalf, after a similar journey by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

The extent of McCain’s involvement in the military conflict in Georgia appears remarkable among presidential candidates, who traditionally have kept some distance from unfolding crises out of deference to whoever is occupying the White House. The episode also follows months of sustained GOP criticism of Democratic Sen. Barack Obama, who was accused of acting too presidential for, among other things, briefly adopting a campaign seal and taking a trip abroad that included a huge rally in Berlin.

[…]

But McCain and his aides say his tough rhetoric on the Georgia crisis, along with his personal familiarity with the region, underscores the foreign policy expertise he would bring to the White House.

The problem is that it sends mixed messages to the players. But then, that’s probably the point:

His focus on the dispute has also allowed McCain to distance himself somewhat from President Bush, who has been sharply criticized by many conservatives for moving too slowly to respond to Russia’s military incursion into Georgia and South Ossetia, the breakaway province at the heart of the dispute. McCain’s first statement on the conflict last Friday came before the White House itself had responded.

In often-lengthy remarks about Georgia this week on the campaign trail, McCain repeatedly talked of how many times he had been to the region, let it be known that he had talked daily with Saakashvili since the crisis began and made it clear that there had been times he thought Bush’s response could have been stronger.

He provided a primer for why Americans should care about the “tiny little democracy” and tried to tie the foreign crisis with a domestic one: oil. Georgia is “part of a strategic energy corridor affecting individual lives far beyond” the region, he said.

“His statements have been very presidential,” said John R. Bolton, a former U.N. ambassador under Bush who has since become one of the sharpest critics of the administration’s recent foreign policy. “These are the kinds of things that the president should have been saying from the beginning.”

How nice for him. He gets to “act” presidential, appeal to his conservative base, distance himself from the hated Bush and make a pitch for perpetual war for perpetual peace. And knowing the Mayberry Machivallis’ belief that there is no such thing as policy, only politics, they probably conspired with him to let him do it. After all, the Big Money Boyz goals have a big stake in keeping things all riled up in oil country.

But lest you think that the Washington Post is being too hard on the old boy, never fear. He’s got it all under control:

At the same time, McCain also appears sensitive to going too far. In remarks both Wednesday and yesterday, for example, McCain explicitly ruled out direct military action against Russia, a step advocated by some hard-line conservatives.

“We want to avoid any armed conflict, and we will not have armed conflict,” McCain said at a fundraiser yesterday in Edwards, Colo. “That’s not the solution to this problem. But we have to stand up for freedom and democracy as we did in the darkest days.”

Big of him to “rule out” military conflict, don’t you think. Seeing as he’s only one of a hundred Senators it’s quite a feat, but he seems to be in charge of Americn foreign policy right now, so I guess we should be happy that he’s not calling for nuclear strikes.

I’m not sure I understand this, however:

The Obama campaign has been generally cautious in its remarks about the Georgia conflict, and the campaign yesterday declined to comment on the appropriateness of McCain’s role. But earlier this week, Obama adviser Susan Rice said McCain “may have complicated the situation” with his early tough rhetoric on the dispute.

I don’t know why they shouldn’t comment on it unless they feel that the earlier taunting about presumptuousness and celebrity have rendered them impotent to attack McCain when he’s behaving as if he’s already president — or that the public will somehow reward them for their “proper behavior.” That’s a bad bet.

The pictures this week have been pretty bad. McCain has looked like he’s already president and the Democrats have simply been nonexistent. We can hope that nobody was paying attention — but then they didn’t need to be. All they had to do was see the images on TV in passing to get the idea that McCain was being sought out by reporters for his views on the crisis and Obama wasn’t. For those who were paying attention it was even worse.

I certainly hope the Obama campaign wasn’t counting on the press to see the rank hypocrisy of McCain’s actions in time to stop the damage. One of the cardinal rules of dealing with the mainstream media is that they wait for the rival to put out a press release or chat them up on something like this before writing about it. They publicly admit that if the other side doesn’t make an issue of something, they won’t do it themselves. If the Obama campaign didn’t complain that McCain was acting like he’d been anointed Emperor (as the article seems to suggest) then that was a mistake. The press hasn’t mentioned it until now — when it’s so obvious even they couldn’t ignore it — and it’s too late to undo the damage. McCain has definitely shown himself to be a “strong leader” (however bad his leadership) in a crisis, even to the extent that he’s managing it without being president. Let’s hope that Phelpsmania is the more enduring memory of this week.

Update: On the other hand, I may (happily) be wrong about this:

When he left for vacation in his birth state a week ago, ahead of the convention season, the Illinois senator had a three-point edge over McCain in the Gallup Daily tracking poll.

By Thursday, as Obama packed his bags to fly back to the US mainland, his Gallup lead was still three points — 46 percent to 43.

The moving average failed to budge despite a rhetorical onslaught by McCain on the crisis in Georgia, as the Republican’s campaign scented an opportunity to hammer Obama on his perceived weak spot of foreign policy.

“I would attribute this to the amount of coverage of the Olympics, and the fact that foreign affairs generally isn’t of much interest to Americans except under very unusual circumstances like the war in Iraq,” pollster John Zogby said.

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More Civilized Behavior

by digby

Following up on my earlier post about “civilized society” here’s one to make you really wonder how some people can look themselves in the mirror without throwing up. From Dave Neiwert at FDL:

We’ve already seen, here in the States, the travesties created by the Republican push to deport illegal immigrants: police-state tactics, the bastardization of justice, the destruction of families, the inhuman treatment of cancer victims. But that’s just the beginning of the ugliness. Then there’s what happens afterwards — particularly to the children. A La Jornada report (translated; see original here) gives the basic outline:

During the first seven months of the year, at least 90,000 Mexican children were deported by the U.S. government, in the context of its anti-immigration policy, reported a study of the working group for migration issues of the PRI in the Chamber of Deputies. It also has deported around 300,000 adults. He reported that about 15 percent of children, some 13,500, are living along the Mexican border, without any government protection. Those best off are attended by religious institutions or NGOs. The group’s coordinator and secretary of the Commission on Population, Borders and Migration Affairs, the PRI deputy Edmundo Ramirez Martinez, pointed out that children are entrusted to polleros, or traffickers, to be brought to the United States with their parents and if the would-be migrants are deported, the children are virtually stranded on the Mexican border.

Neiwert goes on to describe what happens to these kids. Think the worst and you would be right.

It’s just as awful in its own way when they “keep the families together” — in prison camps:

The whole thing is an extrajudicial, privatized boondoggle (what else is new?) in which a bunch of people are basically jailed with little or no due process (what else is new?)

But can someone please tell me how this can be necessary?

Jeans and t-shirts have been replaced with jail uniforms; children are issued uniforms as soon as they can fit into them ? and everyone must wear name tags, even the babies.

Name tags, sure. Jail uniforms? Purely dehumanizing.

Keep in mind that these are all people from countries other than Mexico. It’s a result of the ending of the “catch and release” program that allowed these migrants, many of whom were seeking asylum, to be released on humanitarian grounds. The kids used to be sent to a residential facility where they went to school. Here they gt one hour of instruction (English) a day and are allowed on hour of indoor recreation.

Nobody knows how long these children will be kept behind bars. From an editorial in the Austin Statesman:

[I]llegal immigrants who commit crimes get speedier legal attention than these children, who have done nothing wrong other than follow their parents.

Nothing will change until reforms are initiated, and Congress has done little to fix a broken immigration policy and the machinery to enforce it. The result is the private prison facility in Taylor and a smaller one in Pennsylvania.

According to those familiar with the families in the private prison, children of those apprehended are dressed in prison jumpsuits and receive only one hour of schooling and one hour of recreation a day. The trade-off is that they get to remain with their families.

Hard information on the program and the private prison is difficult to come by. The company running the prison refers questions to the immigration office, and the immigration office has had little to say about the situation.

News of the 400 people — 200 of them children — being held in the T. Don Hutto unit in Taylor has sparked protests from several groups interested in immigrant issues. They are concerned about everything from care and feeding of those being held to the psychological effect of incarceration on children and families.

Federal authorities began detaining all unauthorized immigrants last summer. The reason for the detention was that so many who were charged with unauthorized entry into the United States never appeared for their court dates. They melted back into the population.

It is understandable in this age of terrorism that authorities want to keep tabs on illegal immigrants and ensure their appearances in courts. But there should be a way to see that they have their day in court without imprisoning their children.

Keeping families intact would appear to be a humane policy, as well. But the result of the new detention policy has been to jail children, and that is not acceptable. Those who have visited the detainees, some of whom are seeking political asylum, say the detention is damaging.

Little kids in prison jumpsuits and nametags presents a sad picture.

They say the sign of a civilized society is how it treats the most vulnerable among them — at least that’s what the conservatives always say when their defending fetuses. Actual living children are not so important.

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Even The Kangaroos Were Offended

by digby

It’s not as if the military commissions are filled with a bunch of bleeding heart liberals — this guy must be very, very bad for this to be happening

For a second time, a military judge Thursday barred a U.S. general at the Pentagon from acting as a legal advisor in the trial of an accused terrorist at the Guantánamo war court.Judge Stephen Henley also ordered a new top-level review of the charges against Mohammed Jawad, about 23, who is accused of attempted murder for allegedly throwing a grenade as a teen that wounded two U.S. soldiers and their translator in a bazaar in Kabul, Afghanistan.Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann’s aggressive advocacy of the trials by military commission — in the media and other public statements — ”compromised the objectivity necessary to dispassionately and fairly evaluate the evidence and prepare the post-trial evaluation,” Henley ruled.Defense attorneys had argued that Hartmann had become so preoccupied with the prosecution’s side of the war crimes court — and the Jawad case in particular — that he pressured prosecutors to charge him.Henley ruled that while the case’s prosecutors swore out the charges properly, Hartmann could not serve as a ”neutral” advisor on the case.”The judge found that in the interests of justice General Hartmann is disqualified from further action in this case,” said Air Force Maj. Gail Crawford, a military attorney serving as spokeswoman for the trials.[…]
The ruling echoed one in May by Navy Capt. Keith Allred, another judge, who banned Hartmann from oversight of the just completed trial of Osama bin Laden’s driver, Salim Hamdan.Hartmann took charge of the system a year ago and has emerged a relentless, aggressive champion through frequent shuttles between the Washington DC Beltway and this remote base.So much so that on Wednesday another Guantánamo general, Army Brig. Gen. Gregory Zanetti, testified that Hartmann was ”abusive, bullying and unprofessional” in his drive to stage the tribunals in a crude compound called Camp Justice on an abandoned airstrip here.In his defense, Hartmann said this week: “It is my obligation, my mission, my duty to make sure the commissions move and work.”[…]
Jawad is accused of throwing a grenade into the military vehicle carrying American military in December 2002, more than a year into the U.S. invasion.No one was killed, but three men were wounded.His lawyer wants the charges dismissed on grounds Jawad was captured as a teenager, treated brutally in U.S. custody and wasn’t a member of a terrorist organization.In his oral ruling, Henley, an Army colonel, found that the general failed as legal advisor to pass along a defense counsel’s analysis of ”mitigating and extenuating circumstances” in the case to the Pentagon authority deciding on which cases to bring to trial.”The issues raised by the original defense counsel warranted consideration,” Henley said.

We knew these military commission trials were going to be kangaroo courts, but this guy even went beyond the minimal requirements for respecting the basic tenets of the rule of law.

It’s intriguing that they mention he’;s been shuttling back and forth between Guantanamo and DC. Who’s he been meeting with? And why are they in such a hurry to have these trials and then lock these guys up forever anyway? BushCheney is on its way out. It’s soon going to be somebody else’s problem. Why the rush?

In the meantime, this general should probably be strongly encouraged to retire. Whatever the Cheneyites think he brings to the party doesn’t seem to be working.

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De-Swifting

by dday

The Obama campaign has pretty much figured out that the current media landscape is going to give credence to the same set of prevaricators and liars that they allowed to shape the election in 2004. There’s no internal debate over whether or not to give something like Jerome Corsi’s book oxygen – it’s the media world we live in that he will appear all over cable news (not just the right-wing outlets) and in everyone’s newspapers. The reason given by the media is always that “it’s a best-seller,” but that’s a system the conservative movement has been gaming for years, and frequently after the boom cycle of early publicity to get their wingnuts onto the teevee the books get remaindered and available for purchase for a penny.

So instead of hoping that these smears go away, the campaign and its allies are fighting back. Chief among them is Media Matters, and Paul Waldman was brilliant with Corsi on Larry King’s show last night.

They’ve also unearthed Corsi’s latest media appearance, on a pro-white radio show. I’m guessing that wasn’t a hard booking for him to nail down.

In an appearance on the August 13 edition of CNN’s Larry King Live, after Media Matters for America Senior Fellow Paul Waldman noted that Jerome Corsi, author of The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality, had “put up on right-wing Web sites a whole series of bigoted and hateful posts,” Corsi replied that “you haven’t mentioned all my apologies for those statements.” But notwithstanding Corsi’s apologies for his comments, Corsi is reportedly scheduled to appear with host James Edwards on the August 17 edition of The Political Cesspool Radio Show, which, according to its “Statement of Principles,” “represent[s] a philosophy that is pro-White” and which “heartily endorse[s] and accept[s] as our own, the founding tenets of the Council of Conservative Citizens [CCC].” According to a Fall 2007 article in the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Report, ” ‘The Political Cesspool’ in the past two years has become the primary radio nexus of hate in America.” Corsi previously appeared on the July 20 edition of the show, in which he promoted The Obama Nation and criticized Sen. Barack Obama.

There’s also a concerted pushback inside the campaign as well, consisting of mau-mauing the media in the same way that conservatives ensure their message is heard.

Obama advisers say that whenever they hear that Corsi has been booked for an appearance on a network program, they are quickly contacting the program’s producers to rebut the book’s charges in phone conversations and giving them a whole run-down of past Corsi quotes that are controversial.

Obama aides also vow to insist that the producers allow them to have on a campaign surrogate to attack the charges, and are expecting to recruit more campaign surrogates, well plied with talking points, to push back against the book.

They’ve put out a 40-page document outlining all the falsehoods in the book. And they’re using a viral email strategy to push the facts along.

There’s no question that Obama’s team is better prepared for this than John Kerry’s was, but of course that’s a low bar. What’s notable is how a few of the media fish aren’t totally biting at this one. They’re giving Corsi publicity, sure, but they are feeling the pressure to present the other side. And Joe Klein, who has been eating his Wheaties lately, is making his disgust known and connecting it directly to the McCain campaign.

I know that people like me are supposed to try to be fair…and balanced. (The Fox mockery of our sappy professional standards seems more brutally appropriate with each passing year.) In the past, I would achieve a semblance–or an illusion–of balance by criticizing Democrats for not responding effectively when right-wing sludge merchants poisoned our national elections with their filth and lies. And it is true, as John Kerry knows, that a more effective response–and a bolder campaign–might have neutralized the Swiftboat assault four years ago. It is also true that Corsi’s book this time is far less effective than his Swiftboat venture, since it doesn’t come equipped with veterans willing to defile their service by telling lies to camera.

But there is no excuse for what the McCain campaign is doing on the “putting America first” front. There is no way to balance it, or explain it other than as evidence of a severe character defect on the part of the candidate who allows it to be used. There is a straight up argument to be had in this election: Mcain has a vastly different view from Obama about foreign policy, taxation, health care, government action…you name it. He has lots of experience; it is always shocking to remember that this time four years ago, Barack Obama was still in the Illinois State Legislature. Apparently, though, McCain isn’t confident that conservative policies and personal experience can win, given the ruinous state of the nation after eight years of Bush. So he has made a fateful decision: he has personally impugned Obama’s patriotism and allows his surrogates to continue to do that. By doing so, he has allied himself with those who smeared him, his wife, his daughter Bridget, in 2000. Those tactics won George Bush a primary–and a nomination. But they proved a form of slow-acting spiritual poison, rotting the core of the Bush presidency. We’ll see if the public decides to acquiesce in sleaze in 2008, and what sort of presidency–what sort of country–that will produce.

It still has a hint of that Village aroma, but the words “character defect” are pretty strong.

We’ll see how this progresses, and if the coverage changes when the inevitable TV campaign gets matched to the book, but for now, it’s actually important that we all keep on top of this. The right is extremely good at character assassination, and the only way to counteract it is to punch right back and expose them.

* BTW, Corsi has some other beliefs that I’ll bet you won’t see on your average cable news hour…

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Back From The Slime

by digby

I know that comment sections of MSM stories are often sewers, but this one, about the tragic shooting in Arkansas yesterday, is particularly vile. For those of you who don’t recall what it was like when the wingnuts didn’t have to defend their own leaders all the time, this is a preview of what happens when they can fully engage their bottom feeding love of character assassination.

For the record, the motive of the shooter in the Arkansas killing yesterday is still unknown. it is now confirmed that he wasn’t one of the victim’s employees (and the Politico should correct their post.) He was fired from a Target store for writing graffiti on the wall.

But the wingnuts have already fashioned their own self serving story lines in which he is part of the Clinton Body Count and that he was fired from one of the victim’s car lots for no reason, with dark hints of conspiracies and Obama hit lists etc. ( This response is particularly charming.) Get ready for more to come. These people are going to have nothing but time on their hands to do what they love: hate Democrats. And some of them will make a tidy profit at it.

H/T to MS

Civilized Society

by digby

Via TChris at Talk Left we get the news that a police officer has actually been charged in a taser death. Apparently the cop shot the prisoner full of electricity nine times and then failed to get medical attention to him when it was clearly needed.

TChris points out that the judge actually said something you would think should be obvious:

“In a civilized society, abuse by those who are given great authority cannot be tolerated,” Nevils said in a statement.

It’s pretty to think so, but it’s also pretty hard to make the case that we are a civilized society these days:

He was 17 when he came to New York from Hong Kong in 1992 with his parents and younger sister, eyeing the skyline like any newcomer. Fifteen years later, Hiu Lui Ng was a New Yorker: a computer engineer with a job in the Empire State Building, a house in Queens, a wife who is a United States citizen and two American-born sons. But when Mr. Ng, who had overstayed a visa years earlier, went to immigration headquarters in Manhattan last summer for his final interview for a green card, he was swept into immigration detention and shuttled through jails and detention centers in three New England states. In April, Mr. Ng began complaining of excruciating back pain. By mid-July, he could no longer walk or stand. And last Wednesday, two days after his 34th birthday, he died in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in a Rhode Island hospital, his spine fractured and his body riddled with cancer that had gone undiagnosed and untreated for months. On Tuesday, with an autopsy by the Rhode Island medical examiner under way, his lawyers demanded a criminal investigation in a letter to federal and state prosecutors in Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont, and the Department of Homeland Security, which runs the detention system. Mr. Ng’s death follows a succession of cases that have drawn Congressional scrutiny to complaints of inadequate medical care, human rights violations and a lack of oversight in immigration detention, a rapidly growing network of publicly and privately run jails where the government held more than 300,000 people in the last year while deciding whether to deport them.

Or this:

The military jurors who gave Osama bin Laden’s driver a light sentence want him freed from Guantanamo once he completes it in December and were frustrated to learn that the military can hold him indefinitely, one of the panelists said Wednesday.In a telephone interview, the juror said the panel of six U.S. military officers did not learn until the trial ended Thursday that the Pentagon retains the right to hold Salim Hamdan as an “enemy combatant” even after he completes his sentence.”After all the effort that we put in to get somebody a fair trial . . . and then to say no matter what we did it didn’t matter — I don’t see that as a positive step,” the juror said.

We care a great deal about the sexual foibles of politicians and whether or not a fourteen year old girl does the “moral correct” thing and has a child against her will. Things like this, not so much.

At this point I’m surprised there are as many people like that judge or those jurors around. There’s certainly not much outcry in our society against such behaviors. As long as it’s being done to a despised class — police suspects, foreigners or alleged terrorists — there’s virtually no social or official disapprobation. It’s actually quite rebellious to stand up for the right of human beings not to be capriciously killed or detained indefinitely by the authorities. I salute those who manage to do it.

H/T to BB
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Happy Anniversary

by dday

Following on Digby’s post about seniors being the lagging demographic for Obama in this election (and really the only one – the myths of his struggles with Hispanics, women and the white working class have all been debunked for the most part), Democrats are marking the 73rd anniversary of one of the most successful government programs ever created – one that has lifted the elderly out of poverty to a historic degree – and one that John McCain and the conservative movement want to destroy. The DNC put together a Web video featuring Franklin Roosevelt’s grandson, and it’s pretty solid.

The public is very much with us on this, and highlighting McCain’s “Social Security is a disgrace” comment makes sense. Obama put out the same message in a statement today.

On this anniversary of Social Security, let’s reaffirm our commitment to ensuring that Social Security remains a safety net that seniors can count on today, tomorrow, and always. It is impossible to fully measure Social Security’s value for its recipients, as well as for those who look after and love them. Nearly 13 million seniors depend on it each month to keep from falling into poverty, and millions more depend on survivor and disability benefits to protect their retirement.

As President, I will protect Social Security for today’s seniors and future generations. That means strengthening Social Security’s solvency while protecting middle class families from benefit cuts, tax increases or increases in the retirement age. It means treating Social Security not as a political football or describing it as an “absolute disgrace,” but instead honoring it as the cornerstone of the social compact in this country. And it means opposing efforts to privatize Social Security, as I did when President Bush proposed risky private accounts a few years ago. Privatization is wrong and tears at the fabric of Social Security – the very idea of mutual responsibility – by subjecting a secure, earned retirement to the whims of the market. The Bush privatization plan that Senator McCain now embraces would tell millions of elderly Americans that they’re on their own, putting them at risk of falling into poverty. That’s not what this country is about.

It’s time to reclaim the idea that in this country, we’re all in it together. That is America’s very promise – and Social Security’s very guarantee. And it requires a President who will change the ways of Washington, protect the people’s interests, and bring Americans together to meet the great challenges of our time. That is exactly the sort of leadership I intend to offer.

Now, during the primary Obama highlighted Social Security and framed it as a looming problem, which was unfortunate and frankly wrong, but it’s important to note that his solution has always been progressive, by raising the cap on payroll taxes above $250,000. And, the Democratic platform steered and adopted by the Obama campaign specifically includes this statement:

We recognize that Social Security is not in crisis and we should do everything we can to strengthen this vital program, including asking those making over $250,000 to pay a bit more.

McCain and conservatives reject Social Security because it shows the promise of good government solutions to impact people’s lives in a positive way. They want to enrich fund managers and corporate board rooms by plunking savings into a volatile stock market. The AFL-CIO is hitting this pretty hard as well, dropping a mailer that specifically cites McCain’s wealth and concludes “If John McCain lost his social security, he’d get by just fine… would you?” The mailer specifically targets union retirees in Rust Belt state, and the labor federation’s goal is to reach a million union retirees in the next few weeks.

The point is that I think Democrats recognize this as a problem and are using the extreme views of McCain on Social Security to paint him as unacceptable. The Village has been conditioned into viewing Social Security and all entitlements as a scourge, but we’ve one this one already and we can do it again, and in the process Obama can pick up the support of seniors who view him as on their side. This new Olympics ad continues that theme:

There’s also this ad contrasting McCain’s chipper comments about the economy in recent months with the testimony of ordinary Americans who are struggling and worried.

Obviously policy arguments like this are often swamped by whether or not one’s vacation spots are elitist, but a populist message in this time, and more important, putting the focus on McCain and his failed conservative vision, is going to have some effect. And a little fearmongering on Social Security is completely in bounds.

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