Abuse of the government contracting process is bad, and perpetrators of wrongdoing should in no way get off the hook. Nevertheless, the entire concept of farming government out work to private firms is a more-or-less open invitation to corruption. There are instances when contracting is the only reasonable solution. But for some years now — predating Bush, predating the DeLay era — all the pressure has always been to privatize more and more government functions. The theory is that the private sector is more efficient than the public sector, so contracting functions out to private firms should save money. The reality has had a lot more to do with union-busting, machine-building, and “honest graft” than money saved or improved efficiency.
I know it’s ridiculous to even ponder the idea that we might look to some of the endemic graft that’s grown into our new “free market” guvmint, but it’s there, nonetheless. The chances of reforming it are almost nil, of course. It’s the union buster, machine builders gift that just keeps on giving.
a) challenge the Republicans on the illegal NSA wiretapping scandal (and by extension the administration’s belief that the president has the power as both a unitary executive and commander in chief to ignore the laws) because the Republicans will wipe the floor with us just as they did over the Homeland Security issue in 2002.
and
b) get too excited about Abramoff because with Iran out there threatening, Bush will be able to use national security as effectively as he did in the past.
To all of that I say balderdash. Times have changed. There is no longer a single “boogeymahn” narrative. Not after Iraq.
The politics are very different now than they were in 2002. This country is no longer in thrall to a president with an 80% approval rating. Iraq is a huge drag, the Republicans’ credibility is in shreds because of it — and the Abramoff scandal just reinforces the whole ugly mess. The man with the bullhorn is now seen as the man with the bullshit to around 60% of voters.
“As you may know, the Bush Administration has been wiretapping telephone conversations between U.S. citizens living in the United States and suspected terrorists living in other countries without getting a court order allowing it to do so…Do you think the Bush Administration was right or wrong in wiretapping these conversations without obtaining a court order?”
Right Wrong Unsure 50 46 4
Even when its worded in the most administration friendly way possible(“between US citizens and suspected terrorists”) half the country is against it. What do you think will happen when most people understand that the conversations were not just with “suspected terrorists?” After all, all these thousands of Americans who have allegedly been chatting to suspected terrorists overseas are still walking free; the only thwarted plot they’ve mentioned was some bozo from Cleveland who wanted to dismantle the Brooklyn bridge with a blowtorch.
Here’s another polling question to ponder:
“Do you think the Republican Party or the Democratic Party can do a better job of writing laws which help the government find terrorists without violating the average person’s rights?”
As long as we are being crassly political, this is an important question:
“After 9/11, President Bush authorized government wiretaps on some phone calls in the U.S. without getting court warrants, saying this was necessary in order to reduce the threat of terrorism. Do you approve or disapprove of the President doing this?”
From an electoral standpoint, (unless you think that the 31% of Democrats who support this will vote for Republicans because of it) the number to look at there is the independent voter. That’s the swing vote and they don’t like it.
Finally, there’s this:
“During wartime, some presidents have either received or assumed special war powers, which give the president more authority to act independently when he feels it is necessary. In the current campaign against terrorism, is it a good idea or a bad idea for the president to have the authority to make changes in the rights usually guaranteed by the Constitution?”
To be fair there are a bunch of questions in this poll that indicate that people don’t care much about this or support the president. They are all over the map. Which means that this is one of those issues about which people are still open to persuasion.
I do not think this is the same country that it was in 2002 and we are finally able to look at these issues with a bit of reason and dispassion. It’s time to make the case for rational assessment of the risks. I do not bleieve that the public is nearly as willing to jump on any national security whim as they were four years ago. At least I think it’s time to find out. If we don’t, there may be no going back.
And while some are apparently willing to take Bush at his word that he has only used the illegal wiretapping for purely national security reasons, nobody can be sure of that because there is no oversight. Which is the problem. Nobody says that the president shouldn’t be able to monitor Americans who are talking to suspected terrorists. But at least half the country doesn’t see why he couldn’t find a way to do that legally. Certainly, the more than a dozen whisteleblowers who came forward to the NY Times think he could have and that is what raises suspicions about his motives.
I think a good part of his motive is a desire to institutionalize Presidential Infallibility Doctrine and that is bad. People are not aware of this yet, but hearings, if done properly, could serve to educate them a bit.
But there is also ample reason to doubt the president’s word that this has not been used as he says it’s been used. And that’s because it has recently been revealed that the Pentagon has been monitoring protestors and political groups. The president’s most trusted advisor (who is possibly going to be indicted for perjury, I might add) along with a legion of his supporters, say publicly that “liberals” are unpatriotic. The president himself is going all over the country as we speak saying that anyone who questions his motives is giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
One can certainly see a scenario in which a president who thinks this way could also think that it is necessary to monitor American dissenters on national security grounds. And under his reading of the constitution, we have no right to inquire or demand that anyone review a decision like that. I continue to believe that most Americans would find that repugnant.
And that leads us to the Abramoff scandal. This issue of corruption and graft in the Republican party is hugely important and it is going to have a life of its own even if we do nothing. It plays directly into the idea that Republican leadership believes that they are above the law. Just like the president.
As for Iran, I have no idea what will happen politically. But I’m willing to bet big money that the president will not get the same benefit of the doubt he got on Iraq. And that is just sad because he blew his credibility on bullshit to the detriment of our country’s national security. Had he maintained the mystique of American power instead of proving to the world how incredibly fucked up we really are, we might have some clout to deal with Iran today. Iran with nukes is not good.
However, the consensus is that they cannot get one for another five years. So, I think we can afford to hold back any patriotic impulse to support this lying sack of shit until we can elect a new congress that can provide some oversight. This administration has damaged American credibility so badly that we are going to be lucky if we can persuade the world to believe us when we say the sun is coming up tomorrow. For the sake of national security I think it’s vitally important that we neuter him as much as possible. Every word he utters now makes this world a more dangerous place to live.
We cannot continue to worry about whether the Republicans are going to call us chickenshits on national security. They are. But I’m betting that the time is ripe to turn that back on them. There is an undercurrent of discontent with this administration and the Republican party in general, particularly on Iraq and public corruption. It’s all a matter of trust and they are losing it. We won’t benefit from that by playing it safe on matters of fundamental principle.
Right now the Democrats have a distinct advantage when it comes to the question of who “will write laws that will help the government find terrorists without violating the rights of the average American.” That is what we build upon. And if we lose in November, then we lose having at least begun to make a real case for progressive principles instead of losing because we tried to convince people that we weren’t quite as bad as they say we are.
MATTHEWS: We’re under attack on 9-11. A couple of days after that, if I were president of the United States and somebody said we had the ability to check on all the conversations going on between here and Hamburg, Germany, where all the Al Qaeda people are, or somewhere in Saudi [Arabia], where they came from and their parents are, and we could mine some of that information by just looking for some key words like “World Trade Center” or “Pentagon,” I’d do it.
TICE [a former NSA official]: Well, you’d be breaking the law.
MATTHEWS: Yeah. Well, maybe that’s part of the job.
Well, I’ll see Matthews and raise him. I think the president of the United States should have detained for questioning the relatives of anyone suspected of involvement in 9/11. I don’t care what anyone says about guilt by association, if you’re related to bin Laden, for example, then by God, nothing in the weeks after 9/11 should stop the US Government from keeping you around for some extended questioning.
The thing is… nothing did stop the the Bush administration from detaining bin Laden’s relatives and other Saudi nationals here in the US after 9/11 for as long as they wanted. Except, of course, the Bush administration itself.* Oh, and it would have been perfectly legal to detain them, but they didn’t bother. That’s right: no laws had to be broken. Bush just had to exercise some common sense and summon the patriotic will to disobey his Saudi masters… oops, I mean good friends.
A corollary question: Would an illegal wiretap have prevented 9/11? Well, if it takes breaking the law to gather that kind of information, then yeah, let’s Dirty Harry Cleans Up Frisco, fellas! Screw the law.
Before Sept. 11, U.S. agencies collected about 30 communications from suspected al Qaeda operatives or other militants referring to an imminent event, but many were false alarms, a U.S. intelligence official said on Monday.
“You can’t dismiss any of them, but it doesn’t tell you tomorrow is the day,” the official told Reuters on condition of anonymity. [Oh?? Shades of Austin Powers: “That’s not my Swedish Penis Pump.” Read on.]
Messages from members of Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda network included the phrases “Tomorrow is zero hour” and “The match begins tomorrow,” which government sources have said were picked up on Sept. 10 by National Security Agency eavesdropping on global communications.
Those two messages were not translated from Arabic until Sept. 12.
But let’s cut the crap. Matthews’ little conversation was about quite a serious topic, but the topic wasn’t the security of the United States which is adequately served by its security laws (the competence of its agencies under Bush is a different story). You don’t gotta be a cowboy to be president. Or a torturer, or a murderer of prisoners. And Matthews knows this. And he also knows what his real topic is:
Is it ok for George W. Bush to continue to violate the laws of the people and the government of the US? Is it ok for Bush to insist he is answerable only to the Voice of God in his head but not to any court of law?
Chris Matthews thinks that’s just fine. And y’know something? I don’t think Bush even has to pay him to say so. Kinda gives you the creeps, doesn’t it?
*Now, you may have noticed, if you clicked the link to Snopes, that they make a point of debunking the claims that the flights of bin Laden relatives and Saudi nationals occurred immediately after 9/11 and before the FBI questioned them. No argument with that: I’m not claiming Jim Garrison-style conspiracy, just incredible incompetence mixed with political pressure from on high (and no one believes permission for those flights didn’t come straight from Crawford’s Answer To Churchill himself).
Now the flights to evacuate the Saudis started a mere five hours after airspace opened up on 9/13. Most of the fugitives… I mean passengers, were not interviewed. Then, on Sept. 20, only nine days after the attacks, a flight with 26 passengers, mostly related to the terrorist mastermind left the US. Now twenty two of these people were interviewed and swore they knew nothing. Wouldn’t you? And they scrammed out of the country.
I would like second Glenn Greenwald’s call for a special Select Committee to investigate the illegal NSA wiretapping scandal. This issue is obviously too complex and difficult to be handled by Arlen Specter’s Judiciary Committee. I realize that the nation can’t get enough of Blowhard Biden and Huckleberry Graham after their riveting Kabuki star turns over the past week but I would hate to see them get over exposed. Trying to stay awake while boring senators get turned inside out by much more nimble witnesses is thrilling TV, I know, but we don’t want to overdo it.
Glenn points out that the House has a select bi-partisan committee up and running right now to investigate the federal response to hurricane Katrina so it’s not as if this is unusual. It is commonly used for hearings of national importance like the Katrina response, the Clinton impeachment hearings, Iran Contra, Watergate and others. This is that important and it should be treated that way. If it’s left up to Huckleberry’s cornpone lectures and Tom Coburn’s insane ramblings the hearings will be quickly made irrelevant by the incompetent questioning and bored media reaction alone.
These hearings are going to be about a fundamental constitutional understanding of how our system of government works. The stakes are very high. We could be setting a precedent for a unitary executive that completely abrogates the system of checks and balances. The committee will interview legal experts who are going to make arguments that the president has a right under the constitution to ignore the laws and I don’t want Dianne Feinstein being the one to challenge them.
The other side is going to question opposing views with a simple bullshit rationale about saving the babies from the boogeyman. We cannot leave the much more complicated opposing argument to gasbag senators questioning much more agile legal minds than theirs. We need real, practising lawyers who know the issues and know how to question a witness.
After watching the soporific Alito sideshow this week, it’s quite clear to me that the judiciary committee is not a venue in which to get to the bottom of this.
Today, I’m calling a moratorium on calling Democrats spineless losers. This op-ed column by Harry Reid is one of the most in-your-face challenges I’ve seen in quite some time and it gets right to the heart of the matter:
In 1977, I was appointed chairman of the Nevada Gaming Commission. It was a difficult time for the gaming industry and Las Vegas, which were being overrun by organized crime. To that point in my life, I had served in the Nevada Assembly and even as lieutenant governor, but nothing prepared me for my fight with the mob.
Over the next few years, there would be threats on my life, bribes, FBI stings and even a car bomb placed in my family’s station wagon. It was a terrifying experience, but at the end of the day, we cleaned up Las Vegas and ushered in a new era of responsibility.
My term on the gaming commission came to an end in 1981, and when it did, I thought I had seen such corruption for the last time. Unfortunately, that has not been the case. It is not quite the mafia of Las Vegas in the 1970s, but what is happening today in Washington is every bit as corrupt and the consequences for our country have been severe.
Our nation’s capital has been overrun by organized crime — Tom DeLay-style.
The gangsters are the lobbyists, cronies and lawmakers who have banded together and abused their power to serve their own self-interest. The casinos are the Capitol, which has had its doors thrown open for special interests to waltz in and help themselves, and the victims, of course, are the American people.
There is a price to pay for the culture of corruption, and we can see it in the state of our union.
Consider the state of our economy. On one side is Big Oil, which reaped $100 billion in profits in 2005. On the other side are middle-class families. Their wages are declining at the same time they are paying more for gas, heat, education and other needs.
Take the state of health care. On one side are the HMOs that benefited greatly from a $10 billion slush fund in the Medicare bill. On the other side are seniors who face gaps in their coverage and the high cost of prescription drugs.
And then there is our national debt. On one side are the special interests and the multimillionaires who have received tremendous tax breaks over the last five years. On the other side are our children and grandchildren who will pay for these tax cuts when they inherit billions in debt.
In our country today, we are seeing what happens when lawmakers and lobbyists conspire to put the needs of special interests before the needs of the American people. We have a country that grows more dependent on foreign oil each day. We have cronyism like that exposed by Hurricane Katrina, and we have a national security policy that does a good job of protecting Halliburton’s bottom-line but not a good enough job protecting the American people.
Damn!
This is exactly how this should be framed. They are a criminal mob. Democrats should not shy away from using that exact language because it’s absolutely true.
“I AM the federal government.”
– Comment uttered by Tom DeLay to the owner of Ruth’s Chris Steak House, after being told to put out his cigar because of federal government regulations banning smoking in the building, May 14, 200
George W. Bush is Churchill’s heir in our century.
He explains:
Regular readers of this site know that we admire, above all others, Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill. President Bush’s reference to “victory” as the mandate he gives to his commanders recalls, intentionally, I am sure, Churchill’s great speech upon becoming Prime Minister in May 1940–the speech in which he said, “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.”
This is what brought the comparison to mind. First, here’s Junior:
So that was a good question. Thank you. (Applause.)
Let’s see, yes, ma’am. I’m running out of time here. You’re paying me a lot of money, and I’ve got to get back to work. (Laughter.)
First of all, I expect there to be an honest debate about Iraq, and welcome it. People can help, however, by making sure the tone of this debate is respectful and is mindful about what messages out of the country can do to the morale of our troops. (Applause.)
I fully expect in a democracy — I expect and, frankly, welcome the voices of people saying, you know, Mr. President, you shouldn’t have made that decision, or, you know, you should have done it a better way. I understand that. What I don’t like is when somebody said, he lied. Or, they’re in there for oil. Or they’re doing it because of Israel. That’s the kind of debate that basically says the mission and the sacrifice were based on false premise. It’s one thing to have a philosophical difference — and I can understand people being abhorrent about war. War is terrible. But one way people can help as we’re coming down the pike in the 2006 elections, is remember the effect that rhetoric can have on our troops in harm’s way, and the effect that rhetoric can have in emboldening or weakening an enemy.
That “I can understand people being abhorrant about war” passage really sings, doesn’t it? You can easily see why it would bring to mind this passage from Churchill:
You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.
Bush is complaining about his political opponents pointing out that he’s a lying sack of shit. Churchill is bucking up the British people as they are being bombed mercilessly by the Germans duiring the blitz. Who could fail to be moved by the comparison?
Now that I look at it, I can see another analogy. Bush begging his kool-aid drinkers to come out and vote is necessary to ensure his party’s survival. When we win, it’s going to be a nasty few years for Republican politicians as they face the consequences of their criminal reign.
And they’re all green. See, with a 50 million buck Israeli real estate scam deal on the line, Pat now thinks it was “clearly insensitve at the time” to say Sharon’s stroke was divine retribution for the Gaza withdrawal.
It never ceases to amaze me how clearly phony, how greedy, and how cynically irreligious America’s “spiritual leaders” are. And how many people are willing not only to respect their whacked ideas, but actually send them oodles of their hard-earned money. What a racket.
And that is why every day I wake up and pray for The Rapture to come., “Please God, take all these self-righteous clown up to their Final Reward and leave me down here.” I mean, is that too much to ask from a truly merciful Divinity?
It looks like General Geoffrey D. Ripper might finally be coming into the crosshairs. It is long overdue. This sadistic piece of rubbish is largely responsible for instituting the war crimes that have contributed to our becoming a pariah state. Junior and the Nixon Retreads loved the guy.
Not that I’m holding my breath, but this article in the WaPo this morning indicates that he’s suddenly taking the fifth now that the notorious Col. Pappas has been granted immunity in return for his testimony:
Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, a central figure in the U.S. detainee-abuse scandal, this week invoked his right not to incriminate himself in court-martial proceedings against two soldiers accused of using dogs to intimidate captives at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, according to lawyers involved in the case.
The move by Miller — who once supervised the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and helped set up operations at Abu Ghraib — is the first time the general has given an indication that he might have information that could implicate him in wrongdoing, according to military lawyers.
Harvey Volzer, an attorney for one of the dog handlers, has been seeking to question Miller to determine whether Miller ordered the use of military working dogs to frighten detainees during interrogations at Abu Ghraib. Volzer has argued that the dog handlers were following orders when the animals were used against detainees.
[…]
Miller’s decision came shortly after Col. Thomas M. Pappas, the commanding officer at Abu Ghraib, accepted immunity from prosecution this week and was ordered to testify at upcoming courts-martial. Pappas, a military intelligence officer, could be asked to detail high-level policies relating to the treatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib.
He also could shed light on how abusive tactics emerged, who ordered their use and their possible connection to officials in Washington, according to lawyers and human rights advocates who have closely followed the case. Pappas has never spoken publicly. Crawford said Miller was unaware of Pappas’s grant of immunity. “This could be a big break if Pappas testifies as to why those dogs were used and who ordered the dogs to be used,” said Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights. “It’s a steppingstone going up the chain of command, and that’s positive. It might demonstrate that it wasn’t just a few rotten apples.”
[…]
Eugene R. Fidell, a Washington expert in military law, said that Miller’s decision is “consistent with his being concerned that he may have some exposure to worry about.” Fidell added: “It’s very unusual for senior officers to invoke their Article 31 rights. The culture in the military tends to encourage cooperation rather than the opposite.”
Miller has long been in the spotlight of the Abu Ghraib abuse investigations, largely because he was sent to the Iraq prison in August and September 2003 with the goal of streamlining its intelligence-gathering operations, using Guantanamo Bay, commonly called “Gitmo,” as a model. Officers at Abu Ghraib have said that Miller wanted to “Gitmo-ize” the facility, and that harsh tactics migrated from the Cuba facility via “Tiger Teams” that Miller sent to Iraq as trainers.
[…]
In an interview with defense attorneys for those MPs in August 2004, Miller said he never told Pappas to use dogs in questioning detainees. Photos of the dog handlers scaring detainees at Abu Ghraib were among the most notorious to emerge from the prison. Dogs were also used at Guantanamo Bay.
“At no time did we discuss the use of dogs in interrogations,” Miller said, according to a transcript.
Volzer, who represents Sgt. Santos A. Cardona, one of the military dog handlers charged with abuse, said he believes the grant of immunity to Pappas will essentially clear his client, because Pappas already has admitted in administrative hearings that he improperly ordered the use of dogs. Volzer said he believes that Pappas was taking direction from Miller, and that Miller was acting on instructions from Defense Department officials. Cardona and Sgt. Michael J. Smith are scheduled to be tried in separate courts-martial in February and March.
“I think the command is hiding something, and I think what they’re hiding is material that is exculpatory that says the interrogation techniques were approved by powers above General Miller,” Volzer said. “Having Pappas available to testify may have given Miller the impression that he is next to be accused of doing something inappropriate or giving inappropriate orders.”
No kidding. Miller was an artillery officer who replaced the original Gitmo Commandant who was accused of being too soft on the prisoners and not getting enough intelligence. Miller fixed that. He got reams and reams of “intelligence” with his methods. The only problem was that it was all bullshit. But they liked his bullshit so much they sent him to Iraq to torture even more bullshit out of the Iraqis.
This was during the period when Cambone, Rumsfeld and Rice were leaning heavily on the military to provide them with piles of paper to prove how well we were doing — “in-box metrics.” No bin Laden, no WMD. But lots and lots of reports.
Miller was the best brown-nosing sadist they could find to generate a flurry of paperwork based on coercive techniques virtually designed to gain false intelligence. Sadly, as a result of these ineffective and immoral methods bin Laden is still at large and we managed to create a violent anti-American opposition in Iraq. Oh yes, and we have also lost all the moral authority we built up over the course of our history. Excellent work all around.
I know everybody loves a Nixonian Republican named Martha who cries, but would it be too much for the press to actually report the backround on this little kabuki today?
The always-alert Creative Response Concepts, a conservative public relations firm, sent this bulletin: “Former Alito clerk Gary Rubman witnessed Mrs. Alito leaving her husband’s confirmation in tears and is available for interviews, along with other former Alito clerks who know her personally and are very upset about this development.”
In case that was too much trouble for the journalists, the firm also e-mailed out a statement from the Judicial Confirmation Network calling “for the abuse to stop.”
This was all spontaneous, of course. Any resemblance to Clarence Thomas’ “high tech lynchings” or Lynn Cheney’s “this is not a gooood man” is purely coincidental.
I think it’s time for Ted Kennedy to haul some little girls who were strip searched in to testify. You wanna play? Bring it.
And it’s also time for Democrats to see this as the gift it is. For once the snivellers are the Republicans, playing against type. But that means we’re playing against type also. It’s not often that the country sees us as “too tough.” We should play like Pat Fitzgerald and say “we’re just doing our jobs, ma’am. This is important business.” Let Huckleberry and the boys whimper like little old ladies.
Via Talk Left’s fine analysis of yesterday’s hearings
Update: Rending his garments and speaking in tongues, Roger L. Simon hits a new low.
Update II: Uncomfortable with being seen as the delicate Ashley and Melanie’s they are, there’s this:
And I think Mrs. Alito was crying because she couldn’t jump out of her seat and beat the living hell out of those arrogant condescending bastards who were making those false and scurrilous implications about her husband.
David Neiwert’s got a must read piece up on immigration, the Minutemen and the Australian race riots. Nobody does this difficult subject better than he does. Get ready. it’s going to be one of the big topcis coming up in this next year whether we like it or not.
It’s happening everywhere — in the Northwest, in California, in the Midwest, in the South, even in pockets in the Northeast. What’s important to understand is that much of this agitation is taking place under the radar, by well-financed organizations who operate through focus groups and “think tanks.” Minneapolis Star-Tribune columnist Nick Coleman described just such an operation taking place recently in Minnesota under less-than-upfront circumstances:
The woman moderator, who said she was from Maryland, wanted very much to talk about immigrants. The participants already had discussed any issues they were concerned about, except the war in Iraq. There would be no talk about Iraq, the woman said. But up to that point, no one had mentioned immigration, much to the annoyance of the moderator. So she prodded the group to complain about immigrants.
“I haven’t heard anybody talk about immigration,” Peoples, an independent, recalls her saying. “Anybody have a problem with the illegal aliens coming in?”
The group’s response to the question was “a deafening silence,” Peoples says. But the woman pushed harder, listing some of the complaints she said she had heard in other states where she had conducted focus groups. Still, no one obliged her. Instead, Peoples mentioned the immigrant workers in a nearby town, praising them for how hard they seem to work.
Not the correct answer. Someone was paying money for this. They wanted problems.
“She shut me off,” Peoples recalls. “Then she said, ‘Aren’t you having problems here?’ “
The state Republican and DFL parties each deny having sponsored the mystery focus group, as does the Republican congressman for the area, Gil Gutknecht, and his DFL challenger, Tim Walz. Also in denial mode was the office of Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who recently poured gasoline on the immigrant issue with the release of a crudely overstated report designed to inflame opinion and make immigration into a wedge issue.
That last bit was opinion. But this is fact: Anti-immigration forces are working hard to raise resentment and to exploit immigration for political gain, cozying up to politicians who will help them fence the borders.
Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of all this is the big picture: the anti-immigrant push really represents a significant incursion of right-wing extremism into mainstream conservatism. Each is busy empowering the other, with the end result being an American right pushed even farther to the right.
I’m not looking forward to fighting this battle. Some fair minded good people are getting caught up in it because they don’t understand that it is a manufactured political wedge issue. It’s going to be unpleasant.
If Democrats can muster the self discipline keep our poweder dry on this, it will work as a much deeper wedge into the GOP. If we don’t, we’ll be split by it too.