Lord Almighty, it looks like we got us a gen-you-wine Republican sex scandal. And it’s a doozy, isn’t it? Maybe people will notice that something is seriously rotten under GOP rule now.
If we lived in a nation that wasn’t completely dysfunctional, this scandal wouldn’t be at the top of the list of scandals that have been revealed just in the last week:
A new book by the official court scribe describes an administration so inept, unorganized and incoherent that if most people were aware of the details, the president’s fear campaign would blow back hard against him. If the terrorists really are coming to kill us in our beds any day now, then we are in deep shit with these guys in charge.
We have more news this week-end that Karl Rove and the white house were actively and personally involved in all the Jack Abramoff congressional corruption scandals which feature ripping off taxpayers of many millions of dollars.
It turns out that Bush fired Colin Powell.
The intelligence community agree that the invasion of Iraq super-charged the extremist jihadist moviement and is fuelling terrorism far more quickly and broadly than we would have had to deal with otherwise.
We have officially sanctioned torture and the repeal of habeas corpus — at the least competent president in history’s discretion.
I’m sure I’ve missed something.
But it looks like Mark Foley’s raunchy emails are going to be the scandal that may just bring it home for November. They made their puritanical, moralizing bed, now their going to have to roll around in the muck and the mire they made it with. Let’s let ‘er rip.
First of all, Mark Foley is clearly one exceptionally screwed up dude. A semi-closeted gay Republican whose signature issue is online sex predators and missing kids sending sexually explicit IM’s to congressional pages is one of the most blatant act of self-immolation I’ve ever seen.
But that’s not the real scandal, is it? While I’m sure the religious right will make the same charges about “gayness” they always do when their institutional leaders turn out to be hypocrites and chickenhawks (in all senses of the word), Foley’s unsavory habit of hitting on teen-agers who worked at the capital and the GOP leadership’s truly disgusting propensity to cover it up at all costs is the issue.
George Will mentioned “Elmer Gantry” this morning on This Week, a novel that I have discussed many times on this blog. There’s a great line from the book that I think perfectly describes the modern Republican moralists who’ve been kicking us in the teeth with their alleged family values for the past couple of decades:
“He had, in fact, got everything from the church and Sunday School, except, perhaps, any longing whatever for decency and kindness and reason.”
The politicians of the modern Republican party are a bunch of Elmer Gantrys who sold a lot of Americans a bill of goods for a long, long time. I don’t know if their supporters are ready to hear it, but I have to believe that if the leadership of the GOP congress allowing one of their own to sexually prey on 16 year old male pages doesn’t wake them up, nothing will. I am not sanguine.
Chalk up another win this week for the established order as they grind forward with a full and complete grip on power. The Hillary and Bill display of righteous indignation, which coincides not with the latest atrocity accomplished by the administration, but with the attack upon their ‘good’ name (a Rovian ploy, by the way), did little to assuage my contempt for mainstream Democrats. The Clintons, like most other Democrats (save the likes of Feingold and Conyers) are highly sublimated animals whose efforts are geared more toward social acceptance into the club, and not sufficiently toward political opposition, in my opinion. I’ve expressed before my belief that all the engineered politics of Billary are designed to cover her flawed judgment of having ever supported the war in Iraq. Karl Rove neutered the entire Democratic party when he forced them to anti-up on the war – in or out – and all those who registered high on the presidential ambition meter — John Edwards, Evan Bayh, Hillary Clinton — said, “Oh, count me in … I’m strong on defense too.” As the then twenty-two year old dylanesque song-writer, Conor Oberst, exclaimed at the time (in his song called “Let’s Not Shit Ourselves”) — “The approval rating’s high, so someone’s gonna die.”
The rest is history, as they say.
So once again I feel helpless as that amalgamation of the most powerful persons in industry, politics, religion, and military — I’m speaking of the Republican Party — commits ongoing tyranny against every citizen of the United States. Yesterday it was by misleading the nation into war, authorizing illegal wiretapping, bribing legislators for favorable votes in Congress, and exerting power and control over the now-corporatized press, and today it is by authorizing human torture without any due process whatsoever. It’s human tyranny, something so new and unusual (tongue firmly in cheek) that the opposition party has no idea how to deal with it. We must be very careful with the language we use so as not to offend the sensibilities of the American Idiots.
And this is why one more time I find myself hearkening back to the pre-Revolutionary period when a group of New England liberals took opposition to a previous established order, one that also got too big for its britches, and one that also began committing acts of tyranny in order to preserve its power. I’m referring, of course, to the British parliament. Note the similarity of the setting: At the time, Great Britain was the wealthiest nation on earth, and the foundation for free institutions; the people of England had a Bill of Rights, and an unwritten constitution based on the natural law; the constitution had been confirmed more than fifty times by Parliament, according to John Adams. In short, the English people were — free.
So when Great Britain used coercive measures to bring her subjects into compliance on matters of taxation and trade, things that seem almost trivial by comparison to today, many American intellectuals became obsessed with the threat of tyranny. So much so that they actually used the word “tyranny” to describe the party in power. That word, in fact, appeared thousands of times in print throughout the Revolutionary period. It was used in private letters written by and to the delegates of the Continental Congress and appeared in such derivative forms and creative spellings as: tyrany, tyrrany, tyranni, tyranic, tyrannic, tyranical, tyrannical, tyrannically, tyrannies, tyranys, tyrannize, tyrannized, tyrannous, tyrant, and tyrant’s. And how ironic that the letters were directed at an earlier tyrant George, this one the King of England. The delegates’ letters (culled from this CD ) were peppered with colorful phrases:
inexorable Tyrant the artful Wiles of an infatuated and tyrannical Ministry the impious War of Tyranny the severest extremities of tyranny deep lay’d Schemes of Tyranny instruments of tyranny mercenary Soldiers of a Tyrant the Ministerial Sons of Tyranny the infernal hand of Tyranny outrages of Tyranny Threats of a Tyrant barbarous Tyranny the rapacious Hand of a Tyrant the Pillars of Tyranny merciless Tyrant Torrent of Tyranny Slaves of Tyranny bloody Standard of Tyranny Infringements of a Tyrant Altar of Tyranny absolute despotic Tyrant Encroachments of Tyranny System of Tyranny
Particularly colorful, and my personal favorite was one by Oliver Wolcott of Connecticut, who asked: “When will Tyrant Worms cease to disturb human Happiness?”
Clearly, in the interest of preserving their hold on power, Parliament had stepped on someone’s liberties.
In spite of the inflammatory language, the early leaders in America were not mere propagandists. They actively sought knowledge of human behavior and understood the threat posed by institutional tyranny. One source of knowledge (please note here that I’m paraphrasing and borrowing heavily from the source by Delbert Cress referenced below) was a book written by James Harrington in 1656 called Commonwealth of Oceana. Harrington tracked the themes of tyranny and corruption, and set forth theories about political degeneration, the decline of freedom, and the need for a constitutional balance. In pre-Revolutionary America, Oceana could be found in the Harvard College Library, the New York Society Library, and the Charleston Library in South Carolina. The contents of Oceana and theories of how political institutions always devolve into tyranny had become part of a pre-Revolutionary mindset.
Another source of knowledge for the revolutionaries was John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon who had written behind the pseudonym of Cato. In the early 1720s, in London, Trenchard and Gordon published a set of works called Cato’s Letters. The letters conjured up images of tyranny, and explored the threat to society posed by institutional corruption. From Cato’s Letters emerged a view that power itself corrupts men, leading eventually to political intrigue, unfair influence, and patronage. By 1776, Cato’s Letters were known to exist in 40% of the colonial libraries and they, along with Harrington’s Oceana, were known to have been studied by Thomas Jefferson, John Dickinson, John Adams, Henry Knox, and Benjamin Rush. These same men also studied the works of Sidney, Molesworth, Fletcher, Hutcheson, and Blackstone. So too did Benjamin Franklin, James Otis, Josiah Quincy, Jr., John Hancock, Samuel Adams, George Mason, James Wilson, and scores of lesser known citizens. The American intellectuals also studied the Greek and Roman republics, the ancient Goths and Germans, the success of the Swiss, and the writings of Machiavelli. James Burgh brought many of the earlier theories forward and added to them when he published Political Disquisitions in 1775. John Adams, George Washington, Samuel Chase, John Dickinson, Silas Deane, John Hancock, Thomas Mifflin, James Wilson, and Thomas Jefferson all were known to have received copies of Burgh’s work when it was first published in America in 1776.
Those early American politicians were profound in their enlightened thoughts on institutional behavior and the workings of government and society. Many of the contemporary views on the inevitability of political corruption were formed as a result. Josiah Quincy was exceptionally marked in his prose, suggesting that the powerful institution was “a monster” birthed by “human follies and vices” where “depravity and cowardice” can thrive. He called the professional soldier an unwitting “slave” hired by men of “ambition and power” who could then manipulate the soldier for self-serving ends. Quincy believed the military’s awesome power made “wicked ministers more audacious” and saw them advancing “schemes inconsistent with … liberty” and “destructive of the trade.” According to Quincy, the military/political institution was the place where “a will and a power to tyrannize are united.” He called the impacts inevitable and fatal in both the political and the moral world.
The learned nature and the observations made by men such as Samuel Adams, Josiah Quincy, Simeon Howard, and others, reflected their wisdom and the studied reality which they came to know about human nature. The inclination to increase personal power is simply a part of the natural human makeup. Inclination toward power leads to the unfair advancement of self-interest, personal gratification, and exploitation. And powerful people, facing any perceived threat to their power, large or small, are inclined to use coercion to protect their standing. Tyranny, therefore, was a natural ingredient that could eventually be found in any institution. As the institution devolves, it always seeks to increase its power.
People also morph into unrecognizable characters as their institutions become corrupt. Samuel Adams, writing after the shots were fired at Lexington, but before Independence had been declared wrote in elegant prose to his friend James Warren about the threat posed by ambitious men and the institutional military:
A standing army, however necessary it may be at some times, is always dangerous to the liberties of the people. Soldiers are apt to consider themselves as a body distinct from the rest of the citizens. They have their arms always in their hands. Their rules and their discipline is severe. They soon become attached to their officers and disposed to yield implicit obedience to their commands. Such a power should be watched with a jealous eye…. Men who have been long subject to military laws, and inured to military customs and habits, may lose the spirit and feeling of citizens. And even citizens, having been used to admiring the heroism which the Commanders of their own Army have displayed, and to look upon them as their saviors, may be prevailed upon to surrender to them those rights for the protection of which against invaders they had employed and paid them. We have seen too much of this disposition among some of our countrymen.
The anonymous essayist Caractacus earlier expressed the same sentiment when his essay “On Standing Armies” appeared in a colonial Philadelphia newspaper:
History is dyed in blood when it speaks of the ravages which standing armies have committed upon the liberties of mankind: officers and soldiers of the best principles and character have been converted into instruments of tyranny by the arts of wicked politicians.
America was once a vibrant and vocal enterprise where prominent people spoke with courage and conviction. We are now a muted and sublimated culture where the opposition is cowardly, and too afraid they will be ostracized if they speak out. A once participatory and opposition-minded mainstream press is now preponderantly part and parcel of the largest institution, that amalgamation of powerful forces referred to earlier. The most influential reporters (Russert, Brokaw and their ilk) are millionaire staffers, corporate automatons, and vanity authors who have become inured to the ways and customs of their employers. The elite way of living that goes along with their wealth and social status make them less likely to question the actions of government tyrants. Yet they are the very people with the responsibility to do so, and they are the people who are in a position to do so.
I want to ask how did we get here, but I think the answer is obvious. We are still in the dark ages politically and if we are lucky enough survive the current phase of the human journey, it will be a long, long time, I think, until society advances beyond this sorry state.
Sources: As noted above, the references to tyranny are from Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1774-1789, Paul H. Smith, editor. The background on sources of study for the early American leadership comes from Citizens in Arms, Lawrence Delbert Cress, Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, 1982.
3 GEORGE and SUSAN ALLEN SENATOR & WIFE The former Virginia governor and son of a legendary Redskins coach wears cowboy boots and is all over the news of late – could it be his attempt to win the 2008 Presidential Superbowl of Politics, or is that just a bunch of “macaca?” She’s lovely, bright and known to loosen him up.
What with all the soul searching lately and discussion of where we draw the line as we attempt to traverse the minefield of current electoral politics, I think this is a good time to link up to this very interesting meta-blog piece by political scientist and blogger Henry Farrell of Crooked Timber in this month’s Boston Review.
Farrell does a thorough analysis of the netroots and then homes in on our common self-description as non-ideological partisans out to change a corrupt and inept party structure:
Their experiences have deepened the netroots’ conviction that there’s something rotten in the Democratic Party. Quasi-corrupt relationships hamper the ability of Democrats to win elections; candidates for office are expected to hire certain well-connected consultants if they want to receive party funding. Party leaders try to eke out narrow wins, focusing their attention only on the most competitive races instead of campaigning aggressively across the country. Elected officials prefer stroking the egos of major donors to grass-roots organizing. Senators mug to pundits’ and newspaper editors’ penchant for bipartisanship by denouncing fellow Democrats as extremists, giving cover to Republicans, and dragging the political center ever further toward the right. These problems cripple the party’s ability to compete successfully, guaranteeing continued Republican hegemony. In response, netroots bloggers want to reform the party’s organizational structures and punish elected officials who weaken the party in pursuit of their personal agendas.
Absolutely. As I watched the torture debate unfold this week, I was acutely aware of exactly those deficiencies in the party and saw the whole ugly mess as a result of terrible partisan tactics and non-existent strategy. But something else niggled at the back of my mind. There was something tremendously meaningful happening about which Democrats of good faith were deeply concerned and it had nothing to do with partisanship and everything to do with citizenship.
I was reminded one of one the previous times such an outrageous, hurried, ill conceived machination was presented as a fait accomplis by the Bush administration and it brought millions of people into the streets — the Iraq war. I recall pragmatic voices saying at the time that protesting was a bad move, that it hurt our image, that we should concentrate on gaining institutional power. And I wrote at the time that I understood why people said that, but you have to give people something more than dry tactics and strategy in politics:
People need to feel part of something in order to get involved in politics. And as someone who has volunteered in many a campaign I can tell you that for the last decade it has had all the uplifting inspiration of the Bataan death march. It is work with no satisfaction in the soul or spirit and without that politics becomes nothing more than a duty.
The Republicans have a base of committed true believers and we desperately need some of that too. Telling these newly galvanized Democrats that the only way they can legitimately express themselves is through the ballot box — particularly in this day of manufactured, pre-fab campaigning — is a very self-defeating idea.
I thought about that this week. Most people don’t commit themselves to politics simply because they want to win or even because they want to stop someone else from winning (although when dealing with these modern Republicans that is a huge factor.) Most of us are interested and involved because we believe in certain things and we care about our country and our government. We band together with others who share our ideology and our values.
Farrell writes:
Netroots activists often compare themselves to the Goldwater supporters who took over the Republican Party in the 1960s and 1970s. But a close reading of Rick Perlstein’s book Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus (which enjoys near-canonical status among netroots bloggers), suggests that the differences between Goldwaterites and the netroots are as important as the similarities. Goldwater’s followers succeeded not only because of their organizational skills but because of their commitment to a set of long-term ideological goals. Over two decades, they relentlessly sought to undermine the ideological foundations of the existing American political consensus, rebuilding it over time so that it came to favor conservative and Republican political positions rather than liberal or Democratic ones. The result is a skewed political system in which Republicans enjoy a persistent political advantage. The issue space that American politics plays out on has been reconstructed so that its center of gravity quietly but insistently pulls politicians to the right. So it isn’t any accident that bipartisanship in the modern era mostly consists of hewing to the Republican agenda.
As Perlstein argued in these pages two years ago, it isn’t impossible to remould this conventional wisdom, although it is difficult and risky. And the netroots can surely play an important role. Their comparative advantage is exactly in framing political issues and controversies so that they resonate widely. Prominent netroots bloggers recognize in principle the importance of the battle over ideas. Kos and Armstrong devote a substantial portion of Crashing the Gate, to discussing the need for a Democratic apparatus of think tanks and foundations that parallels the conservative intellectual machine. Kos writes regularly about how the Democrats need “big ideas� if they are to win. However, because the netroots conceive of themselves as a non-ideological movement, they aren’t delivering on their potential to help provide and refine these big ideas themselves and thus reshape the ideological underpinnings of the political consensus. If the netroots truly want to tilt the playing ground of American politics back again so that it favors the Democrats, they will need to embrace a more vigorous and coherent ideological program.
I want to win, don’t get me wrong. And I’m a pragmatist by nature so I have little patience with purity pledges or tilting at windmills. But I am explicitly liberal in orientation and I want to see this country tilt back to a more liberal politics. If I was afraid to make a point of that before this week I no longer am. I learned that even upholding the constitution is now a matter of liberal political ideology instead of simple mainstream patriotism.
Farrell makes many interesting observations about our nascent movement and comes to some conclusions that I think we all need to at least begin to think about. We care about changing the party and we’re practical people who aren’t operating on a rigid agenda. But is that really enough? Farrell makes a compelling case that it isn’t.
Update: For more bloggy goodness, if you haven’t seen this video interview with our man Atrios, you’re missing out. My only complaint is that he rudely failed to introduce the famous Eschacats. What was he thinking?
It’s been a tough week for all of us. But it’s been a tough week for the Republicans too. From John Hulse in the comments:
We have Mark Foley a republican congressman from Florida’s 16th Congressional District, a 52 year old man, sexually harassing a 16 year old (boy) congressional page, resigning from congress immediately. The congressman was even asking the young boy for photos of himself. Sexually explicit computer messages. Something like “Would you please slip your tighty-whities off for me.” and “Are you turned on?” Creepy times 10.
We have snippets of Bob Woodward’s new book, where Laura Bush is walking around the White House hallways calling for Don Rumsfeld’s resignation.
Then a CIA report that says that the invasion and occupation has made the United States LESS SAFE and recruited 1 million new crazed terrorists who are willing to kill themselves and all of us.
Reports are now saying that American troops are coming under attack 100 times EVERY SINGLE DAY. That�s an attack about every 13 minutes. Give or take a roadside bomb.
Crooked republican lobbyist, Jack Abramoff now is being reported to have had hundreds of meetings inside the White House. Offering gifts to the richest men in the White House. Free concert tickets, free dinners to nice restaurants, free trips, free travel. FREE FREE FREE.
Quite ironic how the poor of Katrina were left to starve and die, but Bush’s friends get concert tickets and a free meal. The average American can’t afford to take a vacation and these corrupt pieces of human garbage get free trips to Scotland to play golf. All they had to do was agree to screw over the Indians. It seems from the evidence that it was an easy call for them to make.
The question one wonders is how much more harm to America could George Bush and the republicans do to America if they were with the other side?
And finally Bill Clinton’s slam dunking of poor Chris Wallace. Mr. Wallace ended up peeing all over himself and lying about all the tough questions he asked the Bushies.
All this and we left out, TORTURE. George W. Bush will be known forever to history as the torture president. Both al Qaeda and the United States, I’m afraid.
Oh yeah�.I almost forgot. MA-KA-KA!
Let’s just say this is going to be a helluva campaign. Fasten your seatbelts.
Update: This Republican Boytoy scandal must really have the leadership freaked out:
House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) told The Washington Post last night that he had learned this spring of some “contact” between Foley and a 16-year-old page. Boehner said he told House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), and that Hastert assured him “we’re taking care of it.”
ooops
Boehner later contacted The Post and said he could not remember whether he talked to Hastert.
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who is defending President Bush’s anti-terrorism tactics in multiple court battles, said Friday that federal judges should not substitute their personal views for the president’s judgments in wartime.
He said the Constitution makes the president commander in chief and the Supreme Court has long recognized the president’s pre-eminent role in foreign affairs. “The Constitution, by contrast, provides the courts with relatively few tools to superintend military and foreign policy decisions, especially during wartime,” the attorney general told a conference on the judiciary at Georgetown University Law Center.
Right. The Empty Codpiece and his federalist society drones are the ones the constitution anticipated should be interpreting the constitution when the US engaged in an unending, undeclared “war” on a tactic.
If these Republicans manage to hold on to the presidency, which they very well may since we’ve anointed St McCain of Guantanamo, I guess we’d better get used to the idea that we are living in an All American form of military dictatorship. There really is no other way to interpret Gonzales’ statement.
Funny how we managed to get through the cold war and WWII without stripping the courts of authority, but then the Commies and the Nazis were nothing (nothing, I tell you!) to the existential threat posed by Osama bin Laden and his henchmen. It’ll be a miracle if the country survives.
I read today that one of the biggest corporations in the world has taken sides in the election and has chosen to explicitly identify themselves with a right wing shill. General Motors has actually hired Sean Hannity for a “patriotic” campaign to sell their cars. (This is a man who asks his guests “Is it that you hate this president or that you hate America?” )
Hannity is an unusual choice, to say the least. Apparently GM no longer cares if Democrats buy their cars. Good to know.
As I was casting about today for various Hannity quotes, I came across this beauty from his book “Deliver Us From Evil.” The events of this week made it particularly striking, I thought:
Uncomfortable with the idea of God-given natural rights, [liberals] seek to substitute their own concepts of liberty and justice — whatever they may be at the moment. The prefer the idea of a “living and breathing” constitution, one that can change with the times. Yet what they fail to see is exactly what Madison warned against: that a government with unchecked power — whose authority is not grounded in a more fundamental source of morality — leaves its people unprotected from evil.
This blind spot has left liberals far less suspicious of totalitarian regimes than they should be. Monarchism, national socialism, fascism, communism — all these forms of authoritarianism are illegitimate and inherently unjust. They enable a relative handful of people to hold the state’s levers of power, and use them to impose their will on an entire population. And inevitably they lead to abuse, oppression, even mass murder.
…We believe that American is a superior society not because Americans are superior human beings, but because our culture was founded on a recognition of our God-given natural rights — the “unalienable rights'” referred to in the Declaration of Independence. From that awareness flows a basic, shared respect for humanity, individual liberty, limited government and the rule of law.
Well, there’s unalienable and then there’s unalienable.
They (the detainees) do not deserve the full panoply of rights reserved for Americans. Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas) 9/28/06
“It’s hard for Americans, all of us, including me, to understand what’s wrong with these people,” he said. “Why do they kill people of other religions because of religion? Why do they hate the Israeli’s and despise their right to exist? Why do they hate each other? Why do Sunnis kill Shiites? How do they tell the difference? They all look the same to me.”
Do they all look like macacas Trent? because animals don’t qualify for those unalienable rights that are reserved for Americans. Well, some the Americans. The good ones. You know which ones.
Oh, yes, it’s disturbing. But let’s not not over-react. In reality, it’s just election-season politicking, the torture bill, I’m talking about, the limitations on habeas corpus. They really don’t mean it to stick ’cause they know full well it’s unconstitutional and the Supreme Court will overrule it. And that will be that.
Supreme Court decisions that are “so clearly at variance with the national will” should be overridden by the other branches of government, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich says.
“What I reject, out of hand, is the idea that by five to four, judges can rewrite the Constitution, but it takes two-thirds of the House, two-thirds of the Senate and three-fourths of the states to equal five judges,” Gingrich said during a Georgetown University Law Center conference on the judiciary.
It takes approval by two-thirds of Congress and three-fourths of the 50 states to adopt an amendment to the Constitution, the government’s bedrock document.
Gingrich, a Republican who represented a district in Georgia, noted that overwhelming majorities in Congress had reaffirmed the Pledge of Allegiance, and most of the public believes in its right to recite it.
As such, he said, “It would be a violation of the social compact of this country for the Supreme Court to decide otherwise and would lead, I hope, the two other branches to correct the court.”
In 2002, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in California ruled that the pledge was unconstitutional when recited in public schools because of the reference to God. The Supreme Court in 2004 reversed that decision on a technicality, but the case has been revived.
Gingrich said “the other two branches have an absolute obligation to render independent judgment” in cases that are “at variance with the national will.”
He spoke at Thursday’s panel discussion on relations between the executive, judicial and legislative branches of government.
And I can just hear the rationalizations. Look, it’s well known Newt isn’t in the Bush inner circle, even other Republicans think Newt is crazy.
Keep going…
Besides the country wouldn’t stand for it. If George W. Bush chooses to ignore Supreme Court decisions he doesn’t like, why, there would be…well, no there wouldn’t be riots in the streets, but a lot of very irate people would write letters to the editor!
Riiiiiight.
And don’t you just love Daschle’s charmingly naive riposte? What if Gore ignored the Supremes? The Republicans wouldn’t have liked that one bit! ROTFLMAO!
My dear Daschle, you really don’t get it. This isn’t a game where the rules are “I play fair so you play fair.” This is about the reality of asymmetrical power and that’s no game. For a Republican in 2006 to worry that a Democrat would ever be in a position, let alone dare, to override a Supreme Court decision is like worrying that Noam Chomsky might have his own talk show on Fox News.
Now, for those of you clinging on to the delusion that what is happening isn’t what actually is happening, let me spell it out. Gingrich is floating out there the very real possibility that Bush will not abide by any Supreme Court judgment he doesn’t like. Suddenly the idea that the Supremes aren’t the final arbiter on constitutionality is something that “merits discussion” and if you don’t think this notion is going to dominate the discourse if the Supremes strike down the torture bill, well, I hate to be so blunt about it, but you are completely, totally wrong.
Rogue presidency. Fascism.
I’m not joking, I’m not being shrill, and I’m not being alarmist.
Susie informs me that today was Michaelmas, the feast of St. Michael the Archangel, the protector of light against the forces of darkness. Apparently St. Mike is honored by all the people of the book, which is news to her — and me too.
Susie nominates him for our patron saint and I’ll second that nomination. We need all the help we can get.
