Month: April 2009

Torture Nation: Inside The Border

by digby

Nice little fourth amendment you have there. Be a shame if anything happened to it:

I admire people who are willing to test the principles and application of the constitution like this, because they are almost always brutalized for their trouble. But somebody needs to do it once in a while or judges will never have a clear cut case of an innocent person standing on his constitutional rights and being forced to comply.

h/t to Jonathan Schwartz for the title: “In The Future Everyone Will Be Tazed For 15 Minutes.”

“Congress should impeach him…”

by dday

The New York Times today called for the impeachment of Jay Bybee.

In one of the more nauseating passages, Jay Bybee, then an assistant attorney general and now a federal judge, wrote admiringly about a contraption for waterboarding that would lurch a prisoner upright if he stopped breathing while water was poured over his face. He praised the Central Intelligence Agency for having doctors ready to perform an emergency tracheotomy if necessary.

These memos are not an honest attempt to set the legal limits on interrogations, which was the authors’ statutory obligation. They were written to provide legal immunity for acts that are clearly illegal, immoral and a violation of this country’s most basic values […]

At least Mr. Obama is not following Mr. Bush’s example of showy trials for the small fry — like Lynndie England of Abu Ghraib notoriety. But he has an obligation to pursue what is clear evidence of a government policy sanctioning the torture and abuse of prisoners — in violation of international law and the Constitution.

That investigation should start with the lawyers who wrote these sickening memos, including John Yoo, who now teaches law in California; Steven Bradbury, who was job-hunting when we last heard; and Mr. Bybee, who holds the lifetime seat on the federal appeals court that Mr. Bush rewarded him with.

These memos make it clear that Mr. Bybee is unfit for a job that requires legal judgment and a respect for the Constitution. Congress should impeach him. And if the administration will not conduct a thorough investigation of these issues, then Congress has a constitutional duty to hold the executive branch accountable. If that means putting Donald Rumsfeld and Alberto Gonzales on the stand, even Dick Cheney, we are sure Americans can handle it.

I’m not sure there can even be much argument about this. Jay Bybee’s continued presence on the federal bench constitutes a moral outrage.

My petition to the California Democratic Party to pass a resolution of impeachment has as of 9am PT 684 signatures. Please sign it if you haven’t already. We’re going to have a lot more actions around this as the week progresses.

.

Saturday Night At The Movies

Conspiracy a go-go

By Dennis Hartley

Hey, Aqualung! Crowe and Affleck in State of Play

Let’s get this out of the way first. I have not seen the original BBC series that Kevin MacDonald’s terrific new thriller, State of Play, was based upon. So if there are any nuances that have been lost in translation, I will profess in advance that I am blissfully unaware of them (so, uh, feel free to fight amongst yourselves in the comments section).

Chock-a-block with paranoid journalists, shadowy assassins, corrupt politicians, and soulless lackeys of the corporate war machine (perhaps “State of the Union” would have been more apt?), the film is a mash-up of complex, old school conspiracy thrillers like The Parallax View and slicker contemporary fare like Enemy of the State. And perhaps most interestingly, it delivers its timely appraisal of corporatist Washington politics and the usurpation of responsible American journalism with a decidedly European sensibility.

Cal McAffrey (Russell Crowe) is an investigative reporter for The Washington Globe; he’s one of those grizzled, rumpled newspaper veterans of the “analog” variety. His office cubicle has that “lived-in” look; an explosion of chaotic, paper-strewn clutter that tells us that this is a guy with ink-stained fingers who actually digs deep, takes notes and probably even fact checks before he writes a story (remember that kind of journalism?). Cal, sporting unkempt long hair, a scraggly beard and frequently outfitted in a long wool overcoat, may look like he just strolled off a Jethro Tull album cover, but you sense that once he latches onto a story, he is going to get the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but.

In his years on the Beltway beat, Cal has made a lot of friends in high places, including Congressman Stephen Collins (Ben Affleck), a golden boy whose star is on the rise. Collins chairs a committee that is investigating some dubiously vetted Defense Department contract awards (are there any other kind?). Currently under the committee’s microscope is a shady Blackwater-type corporation that appears bent on spearheading the complete privatization of America’s Homeland Security operations. On the eve of the scheduled hearings, the congressman’s young female research assistant (wink wink) dies under mysterious circumstances. Cal is immediately put on the story by his requisitely crusty yet benign editor (Helen Mirren). When the panicked congressman reaches out for Cal’s counsel as a friend, the stage is set for a test of the reporter’s objective integrity, especially as the (personal and professional) circumstances become more byzantine.

If it’s starting to sound like you may have been here before, there’s a reason for the plot point déjà vu. Three reasons, actually. The trio of writers who adapted the screenplay is kind of like the Crosby, Stills & Nash of conspiracy thriller scribes. Tony Gilroy wrote Michael Clayton, which was about deadly corporate machinations; Matthew Michael Carnahan did Lions For Lambs , which delved a bit into the grey areas in the relationships between Beltway journalists and politicians; and Billy Ray scripted Breach (based on a true story) which dealt with duplicity and betrayal within the intelligence community.

I think it’s notable that the film also gives a nod to the advent of the blogosphere, and the ripple effect it is has had on traditional mainstream journalism (something my friend Digby has written about, oh, once or twice). When a cub reporter (Rachael McAdams) from the news paper’s online division ingratiates herself into a co-assignment with Cal on the congressional assistant’s murder story, he initially reacts with a fair amount of hostility. There’s a great little scene where Cal calls her with some urgent information that she needs to write down; the look on his face as he waits for her while she is obviously scrambling to find a pen says it all. Eventually, however, despite the “oil and water” mix, the pair develops a working dynamic that vacillates between the time-honored student/mentor relationship and Woodward and Bernstein following the money.

Despite the utilization of a few genre clichés (I think there has been a rule ever since All the President’s Menthat you are required to have at least one tense scene that takes place after hours in a dark and foreboding underground parking garage) I found the film quite involving, thanks to a great cast and tight direction. It was fun to watch Mirren and Crowe working together; these are two of the finest actors currently walking the planet (although I wish they would have given Dame Helen a bit more to do aside from pacing and fuming about imminent deadlines). The underrated Robin Wright-Penn (excellent as the congressman’s wife) is also on hand. I think MacDonald, who also helmed The Last King of Scotland, has the potential to become the next Costa-Gravas. His feature films all vibe an undercurrent of docu-realism; perhaps not too surprising, since he made his bones with highly lauded documentaries like Touching the Void and One Day in September. In a spring season of mall cops and 3-D monsters, with Summer Release Purgatory looming, State of Play is one film at the multiplex that will not require putting your brain on hold.

Previous posts with related themes:

The International

Michael Clayton

Frost/Nixon

Lions for Lambs

Breach

Charlie Wilson’s War

War, Inc.

The Good Shepard

Seven Days in May

Update: Digby here. I happened to catch this one too and enjoyed it. I just wanted to add that it is particularly interesting for Village watchers. The un-self consciousness with which the characters live out their conflicts of interest and incestuous relationships is quite real, I think. Only in journalism would someone be assigned a story in which one of his closest friends is a principal — for both the cynical and naive reasons one might do such a thing. Despite it’s realistic portrayal of that conflict, the film treats it as business as usual, which I think is quite right. To those of us who don’t live and work in the Village, all these elites intertwined through their familial, collegiate and professional ties look suspiciously like the political arm of an aristocracy. Silly us.

California Clout

by digby

Following up on dday’s idea to have the California Democratic Party follow the lead of a unanimous vote by the Los Angeles Dem party and pass a resolution to impeach Judge Jay Bybee, let me just emphasize that this is not an obscure, tilting at windmill exercise. The fact is that the Speaker of the House is from California and as dday points out below, there are numerous members of the house Judiciary Committee from California, Los Angeles in particular. Bybee is on the 9th circuit Court, which covers California. This is something where the state delegation should have plenty of juice if we can exert grassroots pressure for them to take action.

This is not unprecedented. Federal judges have been impeached for many reasons over the years and not just for personal indiscretions or corruption as some would like us to believe:

Samuel Chase, Associate Justice, Supreme Court of the United States.

Impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives on March 12, 1804, on charges of arbitrary and oppressive conduct of trials; Acquitted by the U.S. Senate on March 1, 1805.

James H. Peck, U.S. District Court for the District of Missouri.

Impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives on April 24, 1830, on charges of abuse of the contempt power; Acquitted by the U.S. Senate on January 31, 1831.

West H. Humphreys, U.S. District Court for the Middle, Eastern, and Western Districts of Tennessee.

Impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives, May 6, 1862, on charges of refusing to hold court and waging war against the U.S. government; Convicted by the U.S. Senate and removed from office, June 26, 1862.

Charles Swayne, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida.

Impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives, December 13, 1904, on charges of abuse of contempt power and other misuses of office; Acquitted by the U.S. Senate February 27, 1905.

George W. English, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Illinois.

Impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives, April 1, 1926, on charges of abuse of power; resigned office November 4, 1926; Senate Court of Impeachment adjourned to December 13, 1926, when, on request of the House manager, impeachment proceedings were dismissed.

Harold Louderback, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

Impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives, February 24, 1933, on charges of favoritism in the appointment of bankruptcy receivers; Acquitted by the U.S. Senate on May 24, 1933.

Halsted L. Ritter, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.

Impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives, March 2, 1936, on charges of favoritism in the appointment of bankruptcy receivers and practicing law while sitting as a judge; Convicted by the U.S. Senate and removed from office, April 17, 1936.

Walter L. Nixon, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi.

Impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives, May 10, 1989, on charges of perjury before a federal grand jury; Convicted by the U.S. Senate and removed from office, November 3, 1989.

It is unlikely that Bybee would be removed because there are a minimum of 34 bloodthirsty, pro-torture Senators in the congress. And perhaps the man is so rigid that nothing could ever make him resign, not even the disgust of his peers and shunning by decent people everywhere. But he should be impeached anyway, if only so that the Judiciary Committee can publicly consider this outrageous notion that obscure Justice Department lawyers can indemnify agents of the government from illegal activities by issuing a badly reasoned, secret memo.

Seriously, if that’s the case, then we have a dictatorship, the exercise of which depends entirely on the good will of the president and the lawyers he chooses for the Justice Department.

Sign the petition — especially if you are a Californian. (Sign it anyway, even if you’re not.) This is a small grassroots effort that has a chance to work its way up the system through some specific members of congress who have to answer to liberals at the ballot box.

Make them do it.

Yes We Can Impeach Jay Bybee

by dday

As we read with growing horror the most recent torture memos, knowing that there are more revelations to come, I think a lot of us are asking the question that mcjoan asked yesterday. “Now what?” How can we address this moral rot that continues to eat away at our legitimacy? What can be done? Mcjoan offers a couple suggestions.

The process by which our government came not only to torture, but through torturous logic try to convince themselves that it was legal is not just the product of evil. It’s the product of excessive, unchecked power that has proven far too easy to seize, to hold, and to exercise.

And we can’t allow that to happen again.

Mcjoan is right that our corroded, accountability-free zone in Washington will require an incredible amount of effort just to bring us to these steps. We need to counter the establishment pressure to move away from this evil with our own pressure, to support the rule of law, to recognize that justice delayed is justice denied, and that a failure to hold accountable these acts will result in them returning, in spades, in the future. Without this accounting, in a very real sense our democracy dies.

And there is an actual mechanism, a way to leverage grassroots anger and push the elected officials who can make these decisions, at least in one case. We can prove the desire for accountability in the country and take a systematic approach to restore democracy and the rule of law. And it starts with Jay Bybee.

We’ve been talking about this, but I want to reiterate that the California Democratic Party can speak with one voice about this next week. Grassroots activists submitted a resolution to be decided at next week’s convention in Sacramento that would call for the impeachment of Jay Bybee from the 9th Circuit. This resolution has already been accepted, UNANIMOUSLY, by the Los Angeles County Democratic Party. It can pass at the state level.

Impeachment would require a majority vote in the House, and removal would need a 2/3 vote in the trial in the Senate. I agree with Jonathan Zasloff that there are likely 34 Republicans in the Senate willing to go on record as objectively pro-torture, and thus removal would be less likely to be successful. I also agree that the Congress should be compelled to do this anyway.

Regardless of the Obama Administration’s decision on prosecution, then, impeachment hearings and a Senate trial for Bybee would signal a necessary reassertion of Congresional authority and would ensure at least some minimal accountability.

Alas, emphasis there should be on the “minimal.” I would hope that the House would impeach, but Senate Republicans would clearly vote no to prevent removal.

I don’t know how the politics work on this. The Beltway media will clearly spin this as the Democrats obsessed with the past and not concerned about the supposedly grave national security implications. On the other hand, Republicans would be forced to defend an incompetent, ethically-challenged judge.

But maybe, given how unclear the politics are, it might be best to do, you know, the right thing. John Conyers should start scheduling preliminary hearings right away.

Resolutions are somewhat toothless unless used properly AFTER the fact. In the resolution (which I’ll put below), it is stipulated that “a copy of this resolution with its original authorization be sent to the Office of the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, the Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, and the Majority Leader of the United States Senate, and that copies of the signed resolution be sent to each member of the California delegation to the United States Senate and House of Representatives.” California members of the HJC include Zoe Lofgren, Maxine Waters, Howard Berman, Brad Sherman, Adam Schiff and Linda Sanchez. The last five, at least, have part or all of LA County in their districts, and could be told RIGHT NOW that their local party has resolved unanimously to impeach Bybee. Should the entire state party agree, all the California members, including the Speaker of the House, and the two Senators (both of whom voted against confirming Bybee) can be told the same. And resolutions like this could spring up all over the country, increasing pressure from the bottom up for the Congress to act.

It starts next week in Sacramento. The Resolutions Committee meeting will be held at 3:00 on Friday, April 24, at the Sacramento Convention Center, 1400 J St., Sacramento, CA. If you’re in the area or if you are a delegate, you can come to the meeting and advocate for the resolution. But the decision will likely be made beforehand. Only a few resolutions get out of committee and to the floor of the convention, and the others are tabled, or combined, or referred to a separate committee. We CANNOT let this happen. The ledership of the California Democratic Party needs to hear from constituents on this issue.

Sacramento Office
(916) 442-5707 phone
(916) 442-5715 fax

Los Angeles Office
(310) 407-0980 phone
(310) 407-0981 fax

email contact form

I’ve also created a petition at Petition Online urging the CDP to pass this.

Petition

We have an opportunity to use the party apparatus to push for accountability and send it up to leaders in Washington. I urge everyone to get on board with this. Thanks.

Military Injustice

by digby

General Taguba, one of the top officers who was drummed out of the corps by the Bush adminstration for telling the truth, has been spending his retirement trying to bring together human rights groups and the army, under the belief that the army cannot function without a strong moral code. He believes that members of the armed services who were involved in these crimes should be prosecuted.

This article describes his work and philosophy and brings up a very good point with which those who argue against prosecution should be confronted:

Even when soldiers are not in combat, and are instead serving the American public and the many peoples of the world abroad via merchant shipping protection and humanitarian aid, they are obliged, Taguba stated, to abide by this strict moral code, since their very presence has a profound effect on the American image. Despite the horrors of combat, Taguba stated unequivocally that troops “are not immune or exempt from criminal acts, bad behavior, or tragedy in their operations.”

Just as troops are not immune from prosecution-indeed, they must be held accountable for their actions-so must senior civilian officials be held accountable for policies that systematized and legitimized torture and other abuses of power by U.S. troops in the War on Terror, Taguba stated. If the “torture memos” penned by John Yoo, Alberto Gonzales, and David Addington, among others, were catalysts for the soldiers to engage in criminal acts, as Taguba surmised, these officials need to be held accountable.

“Abu Ghraib emerged from a structure developed by senior officials in the Bush White House and by those who thought it was necessary to blindly advance the Bush administration’s goals,” the General declared. “Abu Ghraib was not just happenstance. It was a morbid consequence of a policy that emanated from the Office of Legal Counsel and the Justice Department.”

According to Taguba, these failures not only constitute war crimes, but also have emboldened America’s enemies abroad, leading to greater numbers of American deaths in Iraq.

However, far from being held accountable, senior administration officials have quietly ridden off into the sunset. Indeed, after seventeen high level investigations, army soldiers were signaled out for punishment despite presence of evidence regarding upper level officials’ awareness and support. “Over 200 soldiers and officers were punished…unfortunately no civilian officials or contractors have been punished for their involvement,” Taguba stated

Some legal hack writing a CYA memo that isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on cannot cannot excuse the fact that grunts paid a price for their cruel mistreatment of prisoners and CIA operatives and civilian contractors will not. Why the disparity?

h/t to bb

Norm Loserman

by digby

I am always hostile to those who say that candidates must concede elections before they have been decided. (I’m especially hostile to those who say that candidates should concede elections before people have even voted, but that’s another story.)I believe in democracy and I think people should vote, that all their votes should be counted and that if there is a dispute it should be decided in a fair and dispassionate way. I don’t believe that these things should be decided by media spin or political pressure.

But this is getting ridiculous. Norm Coleman has lost his election. Everyone knows it. It’s been six months. He’s just dragging things out to keep the seat empty and in the vague hope that somewhere along the line he’ll get a favorable ruling from a partisan court or muddle public opinion enough that the voters will call for a re-vote. None of it is democratic, mature or responsible. But that’s nothing new. That’s how they roll.

Poor Norm, the former Democrat, cast his lot with the Republicans at their peak and now he’s paying the price. He and Dennis Miller can go on the road together and play tea parties when all this is done. But enough is enough:

Republicans in DC know Al Franken won.Give a dollar a day to make Norm go away.

But they are bankrolling Norm Coleman’s continued court challenges in Minnesota and are encouraging him to drag this thing out forever. For them, it’s worth it to keep shelling out money to block the seating of Senator Franken.

Put simply, the incentives are all wrong. So let’s set the incentives right.

Today, we’re teaming up with Howard Dean’s Democracy for America to launch the “Dollar a Day to Make Norm Go Away” campaign. We’re asking people across the country to donate $1 to help progressives defeat Republicans in 2010 for every day that Norm Coleman refuses to concede.

Click here to sign up at NormDollar.com!

Donations will go to the Progressive Change Campaign Committee — our new group (formed by former MoveOn.org and labor organizers, Democratic campaigners, and the co-inventor of RSS & Reddit) to help bold progressive candidates run effective campaigns and win.

You can choose to limit the number of weeks you donate, in case you worry Norm is completely delusional. 🙂

Think about how this Dollar A Day will change the game. If thousands of people sign up, and Republicans up for re-election in 2010 see the progressives who are out to defeat them get an infusion of donations each day that Coleman is obstinate, what do you think will happen?

First, they may be in denial. But after a couple days, and as more and more progressives encourage their friends to hop on board, you’ll have Republican Senators, House members, strategists, lobbyists, and funders all calling Coleman saying, “Your time is up. Concede!”

Rep. Tom Perriello, the progressive Virginia Democrat who won an upset victory in 2008 over right-wing bigot Rep. Virgil Goode, said that if the PCCC had been around in 2008 more progressives like him would have been elected.

We need Al Franken — and more bold progressives like Al Franken — in Congress. You can help achieve both goals today.

Click here to join our “A Dollar a Day to Make Norm Go Away” campaign.

Then, please tell your friends. Thanks for being a bold progressive.

You can donate a dollar a day for a week and put the price of two lattes toward sticking it to Norm Loserman for the good of progressive candidates, thus indulging your loathing for Republican election tactics and fighting the good fight at the same time. It’s a win win.

Update: HuffPo has more.

The Problem With Torture Part XXXIV

by digby

Blowback:

Abu Zubaydah had provided much valuable information under less severe treatment, and the harsher handling produced no breakthroughs, according to one former intelligence official with direct knowledge of the case. Instead, watching his torment caused great distress to his captors, the official said.

Even for those who believed that brutal treatment could produce results, the official said, “seeing these depths of human misery and degradation has a traumatic effect.”

Imagine what these depths of human misery and degradation did to the prisoner? Of course, legal wing nut hacks like David Rifkin are out there saying those memos show awesome legal reasoning and prove that these actions were not torture. So perhaps it was actually much harder on the torturers because they erroneously thought it was torture, in which case it actually was torture — for them.

Apparently, this all came about because there were those in the field who felt they had extracted all useful information but were pressured by Washington to step it up.

And why was that do you suppose? It couldn’t be this:

“I said he was important,” Bush reportedly told Tenet at one of their daily meetings. “You’re not going to let me lose face on this, are you?” “No sir, Mr. President,” Tenet replied. Bush “was fixated on how to get Zubaydah to tell us the truth,” Suskind writes, and he asked one briefer, “Do some of these harsh methods really work?” Interrogators did their best to find out, Suskind reports.

I shouldn’t be flippant about this because the truth is that those who torture do suffer. I wrote about this a long time ago, worried about what our government was doing to their own people, and discussed this article by Jason Vest on the subject at length:

“If you talk to people who have been tortured, that gives you a pretty good idea not only as to what it does to them, but what it does to the people who do it,” he said. “One of my main objections to torture is what it does to the guys who actually inflict the torture. It does bad things. I have talked to a bunch of people who had been tortured who, when they talked to me, would tell me things they had not told their torturers, and I would ask, ‘Why didn’t you tell that to the guys who were torturing you?’ They said that their torturers got so involved that they didn’t even bother to ask questions.” Ultimately, he said — echoing Gerber’s comments — “torture becomes an end unto itself.”

[…]

According to a 30-year CIA veteran currently working for the agency on contract, there is, in fact, some precedent showing that the “gloves-off” approach works — but it was hotly debated at the time by those who knew about it, and shouldn’t be emulated today. “I have been privy to some of what’s going on now, but when I saw the Post story, I said to myself, ‘The agency deserves every bad thing that’s going to happen to it if it is doing this again,'” he said. “In the early 1980s, we did something like this in Lebanon — technically, the facilities were run by our Christian Maronite allies, but they were really ours, and we had personnel doing the interrogations,” he said. “I don’t know how much violence was used — it was really more putting people in underground rooms with a bare bulb for a long time, and for a certain kind of privileged person not used to that, that and some slapping around can be effective.

“But here’s the important thing: When orders were given for that operation to stand down, some of the people involved wouldn’t [emphasis mine –ed]. Disciplinary action was taken, but it brought us back to an argument in the agency that’s never been settled, one that crops up and goes away — do you fight the enemy in the gutter, the same way, or maintain some kind of moral high ground?

In light of the OLC memos Vest’s article is worth reading in its entirety. Retired CIA agents were sounding the alarms about these practices throughout the Bush administration, not that anyone paid attention. (I have to wonder if one of the real stories here is the fight within the agency — or perhaps more importantly, the fight between the agency and the pressure from the administration.)

At the time I commented on Vest’s story, we were still a little bit incredulous about all this. But after four more years of revelations, culminating in those sickening legal memos, I can see that most people have become adjusted to this new reality of an America that tortures (even as the president ridiculously claims “America doesn’t torture” without adding the obvious disclaimer — “anymore.”) The news media didn’t seem particularly exercised, except to the extent that it proclaims worry about how this will empower the boogeyman. With the exception of Russ Feingold and a couple of others there was no outcry from congress. It’s not “news” so it’s not news. We torture. Live with it.

When I originally commented on that Vest piece back in 2005, I concluded with the following:

To some extent civilization is nothing more than leashing the beast within. When you go to the dark side, no matter what the motives, you run a terrible risk of destroying yourself in the process. I worry about the men and women who are engaging in this torture regime. This is dangerous to their psyches. But this is true on a larger sociological scale as well. For many, many moons, torture has been a simple taboo — you didn’t question its immorality any more than you would question the immorality of pedophilia. You know that it’s wrong on a visceral, gut level. Now we are debating it as if there really is a question as to whether it’s immoral — and, more shockingly, whether it’s a positive good. Our country is now openly discussing the efficacy of torture as a method for extracting information.

When Daniel Patrick Moynihan coined the phrase “defining deviancy down” he couldn’t ever have dreamed that we would in a few short decades be at a place where torture is no longer considered a taboo. It certainly makes all of his concerns about changes to the nuclear family (and oral sex) seem trivial by comparison. We are now a society that on some official levels has decided that torture is no longer a deviant, unspeakable behavior, but rather a useful tool. It’s not hidden. People publicly discuss whether torture is really torture if it features less than “pain equivalent to organ failure.” People no longer instinctively recoil at the word — it has become a launching pad for vigorous debate about whether people are deserving of certain universal human rights. It spirals down from there.

When the smoke finally clears, and we can see past that dramatic day on 9/11 and put the threat of Islamic fundamentalism into its proper perspective, I wonder if we’ll be able to go back to our old ethical framework? I’m not so sure we will even want to. It’s not that it changed us so much as it revealed us, I think. A society that can so easily discard it’s legal and ethical taboos against cruelty and barbarism, is an unstable society to begin with.

At this rather late stage in life, I’m realizing that the solid America I thought I knew may never have existed. Running very close, under the surface, was a frightened, somewhat hysterical culture that could lose its civilized moorings all at once. I had naively thought that there were some things that Americans would find unthinkable — torture was one of them.

The old Lebanon hand that Vest quotes above concludes by saying this:

I think as late as a decade ago, there were enough of us around who had enough experience to constitute the majority view, which was that this was simply not the way we did business, and for good reasons of practicality or morality. It’s not just about what it does or doesn’t do, but about who, and where, we as a country want to be.”

Now that we’ve let the torture genie out of the bottle, I wonder if we can put that beast back in. He looks and sounds an awful lot like an American.

I hope it is enough that Obama simply says that we won’t do this anymore. But I doubt it.

The Line Of Secession

by dday

With all the talk of torture memos recently, we’ve skipped over the return of secession talk to the national forefront. Seeing Rick Perry mocked on late-night show and cable-chattering show alike, I do think his comments flipped the light switch on for some people. You can’t escape this – for eight years, George Bush broke the economy, rang up massive debt, started unnecessary wars, wiretapped American citizens and committed torture in our name, and crickets from these folks. In under 100 days, Obama has inspired cries of secession. I guess the tax cut wasn’t big enough.

Perry has since tried to walk this back, simply suggesting that he was asserting the sovereignty of the state of Texas under the 10th Amendment. This is classic Overton window stuff, putting secession at the extreme while making this assertion of sovereignty – and by extension the belief that the President is violating the Constitution – seem banal and reasonable. But of course, this is ridiculous. The President in the stimulus package offered states the ability to accept federal funds, with certain qualifying guidelines, the way, you know, highway funds are contingent on the national speed limit. States can comply to the guidelines and accept the funds, or refuse the funds. That actually is the very definition of the 10th Amendment. It’s not the President’s fault that, during a recession, it would be deeply unpopular not to change the guidelines. Indeed, Secessionist Perry’s own legislature in Texas voted to accept stimulus money for unemployment benefits by changing their guidelines. Which I guess makes King Richard want to secede from the Texas legislature.

It’s worth watching indicted former Congressman Tom DeLay make up a bunch of gobbledygook to try and defend this.

Q: You can’t secede from the Union!

DeLAY: Texas was a republic. It joined the Union by treaty. There’s a process in the treaty by which Texas could divide into five states. If we invoke that, and the last time it was voted on was 1985, the United States Senate would kick us out and nullify the treaty because they’re not going to allow 10 new Texas senators into the Senate. That’s how you secede.

About 4% of that is true.

It goes without saying that if any Democratic elected official ever even dipped their toe in the secession water, they’d be the second coming of Ward Churchill and forced to resign. When a Republican Governor does it, Rasmussen runs a poll. They found that 31% of Texans thought that ” individual states have the right to leave the United States and form an independent country,” and 18% answered yes to “If you could vote on the issue, would you vote for Texas to remain in the United States or to secede from the United States and form an independent country of Texas?”

To borrow a Tristero-like construction, roughly one out of every five people in the state of Texas think they should go ahead and form an independent country. If you’re in line at the bank with five people, one of them believes this.

18% of the voting public from the last election would be around 20 million people. Which puts the 250,000 or so teabaggers in perspective, doesn’t it? Maybe they should poll how many of them think Obama is Hitler.

.

Why A Climate Cap Will Happen

by dday

The EPA today took a major step by declaring greenhouse gas pollution a danger to the public welfare, making it eligible for regulation under the Clean Air Act.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson is officially confirming today that greenhouse gas pollution endangers the health and welfare of the American public, finally obeying the mandate set down by the U.S. Supreme Court on April 2, 2007. Following a review from the White House and agencies across the administration, Jackson is announcing this morning that she has signed the Clean Air Act endangerment finding for six greenhouse gases. By the time the decision is finalized after two months of public comment, it will have been nearly two years since the EPA was blocked by the Bush White House from issuing such a finding.

The implications of this ruling loom large over proposed climate and energy legislation under consideration in the Congress. I agree with Barbara Boxer that this finding will provide a serious boost to those efforts, because now the EPA is obligated under the Clean Air Act to regulate carbon emissions.

The EPA’s endangerment finding will open the door for the Obama administration to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions under the 1970 Clean Air Act.

Although the president would prefer not to tackle this issue through his administration’s regulatory power, the threat of EPA regulation could be used as a hammer to persuade moderate senators of both parties to get behind cap-and-trade legislation.

“What it says to the senators on the fence is that it’s not really a question of whether regulation is happening. It’s a question of how it will happen,” a senior aide to Boxer told ABC News.

Call it “blackmail,” as the corporate lobbyists do in this piece, or call it what it is, a requirement under the law mandated by the Supreme Court. So the obstructionists can block legislation in Congress and watch the EPA enact strict mandates, or they can have a say in the regulation. Their choice. We’re not accustomed to this sharp a legislative move coming from the Democrats, but that appears to be exactly what’s happening. As Ed Markey (D-MA) put it, “Do you want the EPA to make the decision or would you like your congressman or senator to be in the room and drafting legislation? … Industries across the country will just have to gauge for themselves how lucky they feel if they kill legislation.”

This is happening, so we’d better pay attention to the debate. As it happens, I had the opportunity to sit down with my Congressman, Henry Waxman, to discuss his draft climate and energy bill in the House, which he plans to clear the Energy and Commerce Committee by Memorial Day. You can read about that meeting here.

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