Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

For The Sake Of The Constitution

by digby

Al Gore has become the conscience of the Democratic Party. Following the lead of the new media, and the blogosphere in particular, he just laid out the case as to how the invertebrate Republican congress has sold out its constitutional duty to a president who sees himself as above the law and why this poses an unprecedented threat to our constitution.

There are reasons for concern this time around that conditions may be changing and that the cycle [of presidential overreach during wartime] may not repeat itself. For one thing, we have for decades been witnessing the slow and steady accumulation of presidential power. In a global environment of nuclear weapons and cold war tensions, Congress and the American people accepted ever enlarging spheres of presidential initiative to conduct intelligence and counter intelligence activities and to allocate our military forces on the global stage. When military force has been used as an instrument of foreign policy or in response to humanitarian demands, it has almost always been as the result of presidential initiative and leadership. As Justice Frankfurter wrote in the Steel Seizure Case, “The accretion of dangerous power does not come in a day. It does come, however slowly, from the generative force of unchecked disregard of the restrictions that fence in even the most disinterested assertion of authority.”

A second reason to believe we may be experiencing something new is that we are told by the Administration that the war footing upon which he has tried to place the country is going to “last for the rest of our lives.” So we are told that the conditions of national threat that have been used by other Presidents to justify arrogations of power will persist in near perpetuity.

Third, we need to be aware of the advances in eavesdropping and surveillance technologies with their capacity to sweep up and analyze enormous quantities of information and to mine it for intelligence. This adds significant vulnerability to the privacy and freedom of enormous numbers of innocent people at the same time as the potential power of those technologies. These techologies have the potential for shifting the balance of power between the apparatus of the state and the freedom of the individual in ways both subtle and profound.

Don’t misunderstand me: the threat of additional terror strikes is all too real and their concerted efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction does create a real imperative to exercise the powers of the Executive Branch with swiftness and agility. Moreover, there is in fact an inherent power that is conferred by the Constitution to the President to take unilateral action to protect the nation from a sudden and immediate threat, but it is simply not possible to precisely define in legalistic terms exactly when that power is appropriate and when it is not.

But the existence of that inherent power cannot be used to justify a gross and excessive power grab lasting for years that produces a serious imbalance in the relationship between the executive and the other two branches of government.

There is a final reason to worry that we may be experiencing something more than just another cycle of overreach and regret. This Administration has come to power in the thrall of a legal theory that aims to convince us that this excessive concentration of presidential authority is exactly what our Constitution intended.

This legal theory, which its proponents call the theory of the unitary executive but which is more accurately described as the unilateral executive, threatens to expand the president’s powers until the contours of the constitution that the Framers actually gave us become obliterated beyond all recognition. Under this theory, the President’s authority when acting as Commander-in-Chief or when making foreign policy cannot be reviewed by the judiciary or checked by Congress. President Bush has pushed the implications of this idea to its maximum by continually stressing his role as Commander-in-Chief, invoking it has frequently as he can, conflating it with his other roles, domestic and foreign. When added to the idea that we have entered a perpetual state of war, the implications of this theory stretch quite literally as far into the future as we can imagine.

This effort to rework America’s carefully balanced constitutional design into a lopsided structure dominated by an all powerful Executive Branch with a subservient Congress and judiciary is-ironically-accompanied by an effort by the same administration to rework America’s foreign policy from one that is based primarily on U.S. moral authority into one that is based on a misguided and self-defeating effort to establish dominance in the world.

The common denominator seems to be based on an instinct to intimidate and control.

Yes. A president who can so easily toss aside international law, treaties and decades of mutual understanding is now showing that he looks upon the rule of law within our own country much the same way. We should not be surprised. It’s clear that this particular political faction has an instinct to dominate and control. It’s a facet of human nature and those whose personalities feature it strongly tend to gather together under the banner of authoritarianism.

The Enlightenment was in many ways a study of human nature and those who were educated in its ideas, like the founders of this country, used those observations to understand how power works. Knowing that some leaders will seek ever expanding power is exactly why the constitution was designed with its careful system of checks and balances and why the Bill of Rights was written. It’s a flaw in our species which, if recognized, can be held at bay by systemic roadblocks. That’s what’s being fiddled with here and it’s dangerous.

Gore went on to point out the obvious — that this (oft repeated on the right) aphorism “the constitution isn’t a suicide pact” in terms of islamic fundamentalism is absurd considering the threats we’ve faced in the past:

One of the other ways the Administration has tried to control the flow of information is by consistently resorting to the language and politics of fear in order to short-circuit the debate and drive its agenda forward without regard to the evidence or the public interest. As President Eisenhower said, “Any who act as if freedom’s defenses are to be found in suppression and suspicion and fear confess a doctrine that is alien to America.”

Fear drives out reason. Fear suppresses the politics of discourse and opens the door to the politics of destruction. Justice Brandeis once wrote: “Men feared witches and burnt women.”

The founders of our country faced dire threats. If they failed in their endeavors, they would have been hung as traitors. The very existence of our country was at risk.

Yet, in the teeth of those dangers, they insisted on establishing the Bill of Rights.

Is our Congress today in more danger than were their predecessors when the British army was marching on the Capitol? Is the world more dangerous than when we faced an ideological enemy with tens of thousands of missiles poised to be launched against us and annihilate our country at a moment’s notice? Is America in more danger now than when we faced worldwide fascism on the march-when our fathers fought and won two World Wars simultaneously?

It is simply an insult to those who came before us and sacrificed so much on our behalf to imply that we have more to be fearful of than they. Yet they faithfully protected our freedoms and now it is up to us to do the same.

He goes on to say that we must do four specific things:

1) demand a special counsel to investigate the wiretapping leaks. This is exactly the kind of investigation that should not be left in the hands of an executive branch appointee who approved the measures in question.

2) demand comprehensive hearings and go where the facts lead. I and others in the blogosphere have been calling for a select committee to invetigate the wiretap leaks so that we can have legal counsel rather than elected bloviators lead the questioning. This is absolutely necessary.

3) we must not rubber stamp the Patriot Act

4) demand that telecommunications companies cease and desist in their illegal invasion of Americans’ privacy.

The Liberty Coalition sponsored this speech today and it looks like they are a non-partisan group working on privacy issues. I’m all for that. Here’s their mission statement:

The Liberty Coalition works to help organize, support, and coordinate transpartisan public policy activities related to civil liberties and basic human rights. We work in conjunction with groups of partner organizations that are interested in preserving the Bill of Rights, personal autonomy and individual privacy.

The Liberty Coalition is concerned about the threat to Americans’ fundamental and inalienable rights. The Coalition is dedicated to upholding and protecting our basic rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. In order to accomplish our task, we seek to protect those freedoms as articulated in the Bill of Rights. We base our concerns on the fundamental values and principles of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, particularly the separation of powers and federalism, and Bill of Rights. These are also embodied in the 14th amendment, especially the due process and privileges and immunities clauses.

To accomplish this mission, the Liberty Coalition seeks to restore, maintain, and improve individuals’ right through developing a networked forum for information and policy education and advocacy. The Coalition examines and expresses opinions on legislation and other government actions that would, on the one hand, limit the rights of citizens that would, on the other, advance efforts to enhance citizens’ rights.

Our primary focus is on restrictions on privacy, autonomy and liberty related issue such as the Patriot Act, National Identification Cards/National Drivers License and government databanks. We are also concerned with medical and financial privacy and confidentiality, and work more broadly as appropriate The Liberty Coalition seeks politically and judicially to retain our liberty while increasing our safety.

When it comes to this issue of presidential overreach and government spying, the most effective action will be bi-partisan. (Townhall is ostensibly part of the coalition which I’ll believe it when they pull their noses out of Bush’s spidey hole.) But any conservative or libertarian with intellectual integrity should be on board with this. I can guarantee you that if a Democrat tried what Bus has done I would feel exactly the same way about it. These are not transitory partisan issues, they are fundamental American values.

If you didn’t get a chance to see Al Gore give his speech, at least read the transcript (via Raw Story.) He’s singing our song today. If he’s crazy then so am I and I’m proud of it.

.

True Believer (kind of)

by digby

Julia has the skinny on Shadegg and the rest of his class of 94 “reformers.” What an inspiring group. Shadegg, the self-styled “clean” and principled candidate seeking to replace Tom Delay ran pretty much specifically on the idea of term limits. He strongly believed that politicians shouldn’t make a career out of politics. Now, not so much.

.

Mutual Friends

by digby

So I was loooking over the Abramoff e-mails trying to see if there’s any evidence in them that Jack directed his Native American clients to give to Democrats and that Democrats knew it (there isn’t) when I came upon this notorious note from Ralphie Reed:

From: ralphreed@
Sent: Thursday, November 12, 1998 12:19 AM
To: Abramoff, jack (DC)
Subject: RE: Hi Rlaph

Hey, now that I’m done with electoral politics, I need to start humping in corporate accounts. I counting on you to help me with some contacts. Have you talked to Grover since the Newt development. I’m afraid he took a hit on the consulting side with that since so much of it was Newt maintenance but I hope I’m wrong. I’m getting ready to do some work with mutual friends that we probably ought to discuss. Let’s chat.

Hmmm. Remember this?

WASHINGTON, Jan. 24, 2002 – Karl Rove, President Bush’s top political adviser, recommended the Republican strategist Ralph Reed to the Enron Corporation for a lucrative consulting contract as Mr. Bush was weighing whether to run for president, close associates of Mr. Rove say.

The Rove associates say the recommendation, which Enron accepted, was intended to keep Mr. Reed’s allegiance to the Bush campaign without putting him on the Bush payroll. Mr. Bush, they say, was then developing his “compassionate conservativism” message and did not want to be linked too closely to Mr. Reed, who had just stepped down as executive director of the Christian Coalition, an organization of committed religious conservatives.

At the same time, they say, the contract discouraged Mr. Reed, a prominent operative who was being courted by several other campaigns, from backing anyone other than Mr. Bush.

Enron paid Mr. Reed $10,000 to $20,000 a month, the amount varying by year and the particular work, people familiar with the arrangement say. He was hired in September 1997 and worked intermittently for Enron until the company collapsed.

In interviews today, both Mr. Rove and Mr. Reed said the contract with Enron had had nothing to do with the Bush campaign. But Mr. Rove said he had praised Mr. Reed’s qualifications in a conversation about the job with an Enron lobbyist in Texas.

“I think I talked to someone before Ralph got hired,” Mr. Rove said. “But I may have talked to him afterward.”

“I’m a big fan of Ralph’s,” Mr. Rove said, “so I’m constantly saying positive things.”

[…]

Around the time that Mr. Reed worked out his deal with Enron, he made clear to the Bush team that he was supporting Mr. Bush for president. Mr. Reed once recalled that at a meeting in 1997, he told Mr. Bush, then the governor of Texas: “I hope you go. I hope you run. And if you run, I’ll do everything I can to help get you elected.”

From then on, Mr. Reed was an unpaid consultant to the Bush organization, though after the race was well under way his firm was paid by the campaign for direct mail and phone banks.

[…]

Mr. Rove, who sold roughly $100,000 in Enron stock last year, months before the company’s collapse, said Mr. Reed was clearly on Mr. Bush’s team prior to taking the Enron job.

“Ralph Reed made it clear right from the beginning,” Mr. Rove said, “that he wanted to be for him, and gave sound and solid advice in the years running up to the president’s decision to be a candidate.”

Now, I would never dream of jumping to any conclusions about the “mutual friends” Ralphie wanted to chat with his good friend Jack about just as the 98 elections were over and the presidential campaign was lurching into gear. But it was certainly nice of Ralph to be so careful about mentioning the name of whoever it was in that e-mail, wasn’t it?

Update: Poor Ralphie

The controversy has confronted Reed with a fierce headwind here. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has published 48 articles and editorials on the Reed-Abramoff connection. The paper’s main circulation area includes the suburban and exurban areas surrounding Atlanta, which provide more than half the votes cast in statewide Republican primaries.

[…]

Random interviews on Main Street in heavily Republican Alpharetta — a rapidly growing town of 37,850 on the far northern suburbs of Atlanta — suggested that even many people who follow politics casually are aware of the linkage between Reed and Abramoff.

“Ralph Reed? He’s a politician,” said David Loudenflager, a Republican who retired after working 32 years for the Arrow Shirt Company. “He was involved with Jack Abramoff and the Indians and all those.”

Loudenflager does not like the Democratic Party — “they give away everything” — but he puts no stock in the Christian Coalition: “All these people running around telling you how good they are, and how right they are. You better be careful and hold on to your wallet.”

Todd Guy, owner of Trader Golf, said succinctly in response to an inquiry: “Ralph Reed of the Christian Coalition? My God! Abramoff.”

.

Buy This Man A Drink

by digby

BLITZER: Should there be a change in attitude after 9/11?

BERGEN: I think the short answer is no. I mean, the nation has faced much more serious crises than 9/11.

We faced an existential crisis in the Cold War and with the Nazis; 9/11, obviously, was a very big deal, but I think we need to have some perspective.

We’re not in a situation where our enemies can simply annihilate us as the Soviets could. Certainly, they can do us a lot of damage. But we have to, sort of, weigh that against the fact that we also want to live in a society where constitutional — the Constitution is paid attention to.

Thank You!

Blitzer looked a little non-plussed because, you know, Bergen was being extremely un-PC. Very few people have been willing to publicly challenge the conventional wisdom that we are facing an evil enemy more threatening than anything ever experienced in human history.

Obviously, he will have to be dealt with. If this keeps up, somebody might just notice that there’s no such thing as a war on terrorism either.

.

Breaking The Machine

by digby

TIME magazine has posted an essential article about the effect of the Abramoff scandal on the house Republicans.

Meet the “reform” candidates who would like to replace Tom DeLay:

Boehner is no babe in the woods. He was one of Newt Gingrich’s closest allies in bringing Republicans to power in 1994. When they took control of the House in 1995 after 40 years of Democratic rule, Boehner, as the House conference chairman, the No. 4 leadership position, was put in charge of building coalitions with business groups. He ran a meeting every Thursday of more than a dozen top business lobbyists in Washington. The relationship was mutually beneficial: House Republicans pushed through pro-business legislation, while the business groups provided campaign cash and grass-roots support to get bills passed. Boehner, who was part of the so-called Gang of Seven that had attacked Democrats for overdrafts from the House bank in the early 1990s, quickly became less known for his reform actions than for his closeness to lobbyists. He famously handed out campaign donations in the form of checks from tobacco lobbyists to members on the floor of the House in 1995.

[…]

The battle between Boehner and Blunt got ugly quickly. Blunt allies called Boehner a “joy boy” more concerned about partying than about the party. Boehner allies distributed a Rube Goldberg- like diagram, intentionally drawn to resemble opponents’ depiction of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s failed health-care plan, headlined Rep. Roy Blunt’s efforts on behalf of Jack Abramoff and his indian gaming clients.

[…]

Shadegg has the strongest reform credentials of the three contenders. He entered Congress in the famous class of 1994, which campaigned on a pledge to reform Washington after years of Democratic rule. He once headed the caucus of the House’s most conservative members of Congress

There you have it, two crooks and a fanatical wingnut. Excellent choices all.

The TIME article from which I excerpted the above has a great lede that should be sent around to everyone you know. It encapsulates the whole ugly business:

The spreadsheet, bristling with million-dollar totals, jumped from flat screen to flat screen last winter in the Washington underground of fund-raising consultants and political-action committees. It had been created by allies of Congressman John Boehner, an Ohio Republican known for massive, raucous late-night parties. A window into the science of the shakedown, the spreadsheet calculated the “efficiency” of fund-raising committees headed by various leaders of the House, showing which were most generous to other Republicans. Boehner’s backers were thrilled when the widely forwarded spreadsheet produced a front-page headline in The Hill, a newspaper focused on Congress, saying boehner boasts of big bucks. Eight months later, his team smiled again when the paper ran a list of Boehner’s “K Street Cabinet,” loyal lobbyists and other power brokers who would help run the show if he achieved his longtime ambition of becoming House Speaker or majority leader. With Tom DeLay’s machine still in charge of the Capitol, those were the credentials that would get an aspiring lawmaker taken seriously.

They didn’t even try to hide it.

Haven’t you ever wondered why it is that we are told constantly that it’s nearly impossible for the Democrats to take back the house because they’ve been safely gerrymandered and yet Republicans spend almost all their time fundraising? If their seats are safe, what do they need all this campaign cash for?

It’s a money laundering operation. The lobbyists give money to the GOP as campaign cash, the recipients gain power and influence in the party by spreading that campaign cash around. The Republican leadership allows the lobbyists to write their own legislation and the members earmark large sums of money to their own personal special interests. The taxpayers then pay back the lobbyists at a very nice profit.

The taxpayers are thereby funding the Republican party. Nice racket isn’t it? And anybody who doesn’t understand that this is a distinctly Republican problem (like the inexplicable Deborah Howell who refuses to see the forest for a couple of twigs on the side of the road) is willfully blind.

In 1995, DeLay famously compiled a list of the 400 largest PACs, along with the amounts and percentages of money they had recently given to each party. Lobbyists were invited into DeLay’s office and shown their place in “friendly” or “unfriendly” columns. (“If you want to play in our revolution,” DeLay told The Washington Post, “you have to live by our rules.”) Another was to oust Democrats from trade associations, what DeLay and Norquist dubbed “the K Street Strategy.”

[…]

It took the 2000 elections, which gave Republicans the White House and Congress, to completely change the climate. In the months after, Santorum became the Senate’s point man on K Street and launched his Tuesday meetings. Working on the outside, Norquist accelerated what he calls the “K Street Project,” a database intended to track the party affiliation, Hill experience, and political giving of every lobbyist in town. With Democrats out of power, these efforts are bearing fruit. Slowly, the GOP is marginalizing Democratic lobbyists and populating K Street with loyal Republicans. (DeLay alone has placed a dozen of his aides at key lobbying and trade association jobs in the last few years–“graduates of the DeLay school,” as they are known.) Already, the GOP and some of its key private-sector allies, such as PhRMA, have become indistinguishable.

The piece in TIME ends with this:

…in the warrens of the Capitol, Republicans debate how they can project change while keeping things much the same. The big totals on future spreadsheets depend on it.

It is hard to overemphasize how important this Abramoff scandal is. It’s not just “gotcha” politics. This Republican political machine is one of the most corrosive forces this country has ever seen. They are literally stealing huge sums of money from the taxpayers, sometimes blatantly for personal financial gain, as with the Dukestir. But in a larger sense they are blatently using our money, the people’s money, as the primary way to fund their party and keep it in power. The exposure of this scam has shaken the foundation of their long term strategy.

The combination of their proven undemocratic impulses with their propensity for thuggishness and corruption has made the modern GOP one of the most pernicious political factions in our history. Putting an end to their shakedown racket is a necessary first step to breaking up their coalition and restoring some sanity to our two party system.

.

Nattering Nabobs of Negativism

by digby

My good friend William Henders has written in to help me understand the errors of my leftist ways.

Dear Digby,

Once again it falls to me the thankless task of instructing you and your rabid base of liberal mouth-foamers on a few realities of public life in America.

It is true that in recent times the current administration and the GOP as a whole has proven sporadically incompetent, sleazy and downright mendacious in dealing with a host of matters of grave national importance. The list of such transgressions has been ably chronicled by you and your ilk in the partisan hack brigade. There is little need for me to run through it – WMDs, Katrina, Abramoff, Plame, FISA violations, torture, etc. etc., blah blah blah, yada yada yada.

Yes, you folks have had all these and more little “gotcha” moments, upon the discovery of which the Left has regularly shown itself to be basely thrilled to toot its own horn as “speakers of Truth to Power.”

What your side fails to appreciate is that as terrible as any crimes by Republicans in leadership positions might be, it is in fact the whole concept of “speaking Truth to Power” that is the real cancer destroying our country from the inside out. The British of the Raj had a word for it: “Croaking.”

The American polity understands this. It’s why few on our side fear that the Democrats will regain any semblance of power in 2006, 2008 or beyond. But because you, Digby, and others like you so clearly have a tin ear to the concerns of real Americans, allow me to explain.

We are at war. When President Bush concedes that there exist “responsible ways” to debate our progress in the War on Terror, he is being overly generous (to his credit). But there is simply no “responsible way” to undermine through criticism of any stripe our leadership’s actions to protect us, no matter how plainly mistaken, inadequate or served by ulterior motives those actions may be. There may be time for future historians to do so, though the nature of this particular war means that the proper time for such revisionism will be at least decades from now.

An analogy: The “facts on the ground” are that we Americans have, through the democratic process, lined ourselves up behind a lead dog in a sled race against Islamofacism. Even though we may at times think that this lead dog is dragging us towards thin ice, or miring us in soft snow, or hurtling us over a cliff, the only purpose served by “fouling the traces” through criticism of the leader is to lessen our resolve to compete in this Global Iditarod against Terror at all.

Nor is the profound problem of the Left’s counterproductive harping limited to the affairs of war. What did incessant criticism of the President’s handling of the Katrina disaster do but promote more despair amongst the victims, who clearly needed a reason for hope as much as they needed relief supplies and an evacuation plan? Who amongst the survivors will find the inner spirit to rebuild, when the Digbys of the world are constantly reminding them of promises unkept by their leaders?

In an economy that is increasingly stratified and underserving of a growing underclass mired in debt and with vanishingly few options for entry into positions of financial health, the Left would only add to the problem by putting the brakes on any optimism that may naturally, if fitfully, arise under such conditions. How? By relentlessly picking apart every failed initiative by our leadership, by doggedly bringing to light every omission of relevant data in the administration’s projections … when instead of such micro-criticism of details, a macro-optimism towards Bush economic strategy is called for, nay incumbent upon any who would call himself a
patriot.

To put it bluntly, the problem is not the efficacy of any particular plan for war, disaster relief or economic growth put forward by our leaders, but rather the real threat that under the assault of liberals like you, we may have no leaders and no plans at all.

Cordially, etc.

William G. Henders

He’s right, of course. It’s no secret that the left has perversely signed on to the independent feline political style. (Check out that evil look in their eyes.)We will not foolishly expend our energy waging a useless, marathon Iditarod Against Terror. (We like to sleep a lot.)

However, like the lethal lion pride we are, we will encircle the Republican dogs, chained to their lead dog Balto Bush and his driver Karl “over the cliff” Rove as they optimistically yip and bark around their campfire. And then we will go in for the kill. On the veldt of American politics, the predators always win in the long run. (Why do you think the Chairman of the DNC is known for his leonine roar?)

To Mr Henders’ larger point that we endanger our country’s physical and economic security when we criticize the president, I can only hang my head in shame. I understand now that if you aren’t willing to unquestioningly support your president you don’t believe in freedom. QED.

.

Grover’s Eunuchs

by digby

Wolcott says:

I was traveling the cable dial this afternoon where I came upon a panel on CNBC’s Kudlow & Company just as Lanny Davis, his insipid, ingratiating grin firmly in place, was saying that he hoped Democrats wouldn’t “politicize” the Jack Abramoff situation but simply let the facts of the case emerge.

[…]

Beltway Dems like Davis and the DLC crowd don’t want to politicize the Iraq war, or the Alito hearings, or the Katrina clusterfuck, or the NSA spying scandal; they shy away from every prospective fight and prevent any ongoing debate or controversy from gaining traction. Just as Jack Murtha’s bombshell was gaining momentum, in droops Joe Lieberman to back up the president with a gift-wrapped testimonial. Yes, I know Lanny Davis is not an elected official but he was representing the Democratic side along with Harold Ford against John Fund of WSJ and Arizona congressman Jeff Flake (R). Given how Davis was fawning over Flake (who was making mild reformist noises about the need to clean house)–saying that he wished he could vote for someone so bright and sensible–and how Ford was prudently urging us to stay the course in Iraq and Afghanistan, it was more of a barbershop quartet than a doubles match. Kudlow, of course, couldn’t have been more pleased by the civility and consensus shown by the fab four. Lanny Davis and Harold Ford were his kind of Democrats–reasonable, moderate, mainstream, and completely housebroken. They were good little guests.

Sadly, that brings to mind Grover Norquist’s observation after the last election:

“Once the minority of House and Senate are comfortable in their minority status, they will have no problem socializing with Republicans. Any farmer will tell you that certain animals run around and are very unpleasant, but when they’ve been fixed, then they are happy and sedate. They are contented and cheerful. They don’t go around peeing on the furniture and such.”

To be fair, this does not apply to all Democrats. The leadership of Reid, Pelosi and Dean have been very aggressive. And the old dogs like Kennedy have been unafraid to raise a challenge. The problem lies with the alleged moderates like Ford and the gasbags like Biden who don’t know the difference between partisan rhetoric and action (and fail to publicly play the game with any finesse.) But the biggest problem is the “liberal” pundits like Davis who should all be shunned. They don’t speak for me and I don’t think they speak for the Democratic party. They seem to speak for the conventional wisdom of the beltway which places a premium on obedient, neutered Democrats.

Again, it’s the the old joke:

“Harry and Lanny are facing the firing squad. The executioner comes forward to place the blindfold on them. Harry disdainfully and proudly refuses, tearing the thing from his face. Lanny turns to him and pleads: “Please Harry, don’t make trouble!”

.

“Intelligent Design” Creationism Is So 2005

by tristero

Now, it’s “intelligent evolution” creationism. Same lousy ideas. Same lack of peer-reviewed scientific evidence.

As PZ says, let’s remember exactly what Dembski wrote when they claim that they’ve got an entirley new product that’s not creationism:

I therefore offer the following proposal if ID gets outlawed from our public schools: retitle it Intelligent Evolution (IE). … [H]ey, it would still be evolution, and evolution can be taught in schools. In fact, I think I’ll title my next book Intelligent Evolution: The Mindful Deviation of Evolutionary Pathways. Perhaps this book has already been written.

Note to anyone who wants to argue against science and for “intelligent design” creationism: As always, first please go to Pharyngula and convince PZ Meyers that you’re right. When he’s satisfied, come on back here and I’ll be happy to discuss the subject with you. Until then, any attempt to “engage” will be answered by a boilerplate response to convince PZ first before wasting our time.

Message From Beyond The Fourth Dimension

by tristero

In tomorrow’s NY Times Magazine (no link yet), Yale Law professor Kenji Yoshino has a fascinating, provocative and nevertheless profoundly weird article about changes in discriminatory behavior.

The law, Professor Yoshino argues, has effectively eliminated discrimination by group membership; it is illegal to fire someone simply because she is black, for example. However, discrimination continues through the legal suppression (“covering”) of any expression of minority group membership. So an African-American flight attendant can be fired simply for wearing cornrows, as a company regulation prohibits all braided hairdos. Professor Yoshino argues that while the law can address a small part of this kind of discrimination, the best way to fight against this obsession with minimizing differences is in other cultural arenas. After all, even two seconds of thought makes it quite clear that an important question to ask about the flight attendant case is why there is a company regulation prohibiting cornrows in the first place. And the more one thinks about it, the more it seems like something that couldn’t possibly matter at all in the flight attendant’s workplace except to prohibit any hint of diverse cultural expression. And that is discrimination, argues Professor Yoshino.

Now, I got some problems with the details of his argumentation here, but I am on the good Professor’s side; he’s got a point. A very important point. He’s identified quite clearly an important, little noticed pattern of unfair discrimination. So the next step is for those of us who care about discriminatory practices to argue out the problems in Yoshino’s thesis and find ways, both little and small, to bring them to bear on American culture.

And it is at this point, it becomes distressingly clear how truly weird Professor Yoshino’s article was.

Although he says he teaches at Yale, which is in New Haven, Connecticut in the United States, I honestly don’t know what country Professor Yoshino is living in. As it happens, I too live in a country called the United States, where coinicidentally there also is a New Haven and a Yale Law School about 2 hours or so away from where I live. But in the country in which I live, initiatives to broaden and extend the cultural definition of discrimination are unimaginable. In my country right now, we are trying to find a way to rebuild an entire city that was predominantly African American until they were flooded out of their homes and whose awful plight has been met with foot-dragging, racist indifference by the national government. “Extend” civil liberties? How about, you know, simply making sure that one’s skin color doesn’t determine the speed with which one’s home is cleaned of raw sewage?

In my country, we are seeing, as David Neiwert documents so painfully over at Orcinus, a resurgence in the crudest form of elimationism rhetoric, “mainstream” think tanks and “respected” pundits rationalizing the internment of Japanese citizens during World War II as well as the murder, torture, and rape of prisoners today. Non-whites buying cellphones in bulk is deemed reasonable cause for fear of terrorism. To make matters worse, the very same people obsessed with excusing this kind of behavior seem all but indifferent to the crimes and terrorism being planned and committed by all white militia gorups.

In Professor Yoshino’s America, the citizens care about eliminating racism and discrimination because, apparently, they believe that by doing so they will develop a stronger America whose diversity will give it the flexibility and mental suppleness needed to confront 21st century problems. But here in my America, we’re arguing whether the Ku Klux Klan really was a racist organization or a legitimate expression of an aggrieved ethnic group.

Now the latest, hippest theories in physics tell us that there very well may be parallel universes, identical to ours but with different values for the natural laws. If that is so and Professor Yoshino’s paper is a communique from an alternate reality, does anyone know how that paper could have ended up in THIS universe? And more importantly, does anyone know how I can leave this reality and enter his? Like today?

However, if, by some slim chance, the latest theories of multiverses are wrong, and Professor Yoshino and I are in fact citizens of the same country on the same planet and are presumably experiencing the same reality, then one of us (at least) is talking pie-in-the-sky nonsense. Because nothing close to Professor Yoshino’s aspirations for increased civil liberties are conceivable in this America until Bushism collapses and the Enlightenment values which informed this country’s founders are once more affirmed and practiced. And frankly, I don’t see a chance of that happening anytime soon.

{Update: Added the Malkin Terrorist Cellphone Caper.}

Can’t Have It Both Ways

by digby

The Editors quote Pat Buchanan on the GOP’s hispanic problem:

Today, a Republican can sweep the white vote 55 percent to 45 percent, and still lose. And as President Clinton merrily predicted a few years ago, white folks will be just another minority in 2050, as they are already in California and Texas.

In short, Republicans need minority voters to survive as America’s Party. The Bush-Rove solution to the looming demographic disaster is to go all-out to court the nation’s fastest growing minority, Hispanics, who now number 40 million and 13 percent of the U.S. population. But, in seeking to win the Hispanic vote, the inherent defects of the Bush-Rove strategy have become manifestly clear.

First, Hispanics have never voted Republican in any presidential election. In his 49-state landslide in 1984, Reagan, despite a macho image that appealed to Hispanics, managed to win only 44 percent. In national elections, the Hispanic vote ranges between 56 percent and 75 percent Democratic. Thus, the more Hispanic America becomes, the more Democratic America becomes. […]

The question Bush and Rove face is this: Can the GOP be both the party that secures the border against Hispanic invaders and sanctions employers who hire them, and still be the party Hispanics will vote for? In the old imagery, if Bush reaches for the bird in the bush, the Hispanic vote, by favoring open borders and amnesty, he may lose the bird in the hand, the support of the white working and middle class that is the heart of the Republican coalition.

Bush and Rove think they can have both. They can’t. But if George Bush’s father, 15 years ago, had only sealed and secured the border and begun to deport illegals, his son and Rove would not be facing the seemingly insoluble problem the GOP is presented with today.

Either Bush and Rove secure the border now, or we can kiss the GOP goodbye.

The Editors, wise as always, add:

Pat’s got personal reasons for wanting to paint a bleak picture, of course, and there’s no fundamental reason why “God, gays and guns” wouldn’t work on socially conservative Latinos as well as it worked on socially conservative whites. Of course, there’s no fundamental reason why it wouldn’t work on socially conservative blacks, either, but it sure as shit doesn’t. That’s because – as Pat is at pains to avoid discussing – the reason the Nixon/Reagan strategy worked was not because conservative whites suddenly developed an interest in religion, marksmanship, and heterosexuality. The reason was race. The reason, as Pat more or less admits, is still race. It wouldn’t be impossible for the Republicans to appeal to Latinos, but it’s impossible to do that and hold on to the conservatarian whites who voted for Reagan, Nixon, and Bush. If the Republicans are still in trouble in November, a little media-driven race war could really help turn out that vote.

It might not be enough. Get this:

The Latino Coalition, a conservative group close to the GOP, has now provided just that: a new nationwide poll of Hispanics which, as it happens, confirms the trend away from the GOP shown in the June poll. Indeed, this poll shows the GOP in even worse shape among Hispanic voters than was suggested by that earlier poll. And, given who conducted it, you certainly couldn’t accuse this new poll of Democratic bias. Indeed, Latino Coalition Hispanic polls in the past have typically produced results substantially more favorable to the GOP than contemporaneous results of DCorps and other national polls of Hispanics. So it’s a real eye-opener to get these very, very unfavorable results from this particular organization at this point in time.

Let’s start with the generic Congressional contest. This poll finds Democrats with a stunning 61-21 lead over the GOP among Hispanic registered voters, which translates into a 50 point lead (75-25) among those who express a preference. The analogous figure among those who expressed a preference in the June DCorps poll was “only” 36 points. By way of comparison to the last two off-year elections, 2002 and 1998, Democrats carried the Congressional vote by 24 and 26 points, respectively.

The new poll also finds Democrats with a 35 point lead (58-23) in party identification among voters.

This issue buried the GOP in California for the last decade. So, let Pat (and Tom Tancredo) rant. The last time he got on this bandwagon he helped usher in a Democratic president.

.