Habeas Corpus Est Mortuus?
(Latin freaks: Is that right?)
I blogged about this last night when I first read Jeralyn’s shocking post but Blogger ate it. Anyway, the attack on habeas corpus is extremely serious in more ways than I can count, so go read TalkLeft’s latest and it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to write your congresscritters and point out that habeas corpus is, you know, kind of a bedrock principle for civilized jurisprudence.
Author of Upcoming “Hillary Equals Hitler” Book Hired By LA Times
Robert Scheer replaced by ignorant slimeball:
The Los Angeles Times announced a major shake-up of its op-ed page today. Gone are cartoonist Michael Ramirez and liberal columnist Robert Scheer.
In their place, you won’t find any committed progressives like Scheer. Instead, L.A. Times editors chose National Review contributing editor and “Liberal Fascism” author Jonah Goldberg. Below, some of our favorite Jonah jems, coming to a “liberal media” near you:
On McCarthy’s wisdom:
What makes McCarthyism so hard to discuss is that McCarthy behaved like a jerk, but he was also right. [False: McCarthyism is easy to discuss: It’s bad. False: McCarthy behaved far worse than a jerk knows how to behave. False: he was also wrong. ]
Banning books:
Now, I’m not in favor of pulling Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn from libraries, but let’s at least give a small nod to the fact that some material actually can be banned from libraries without the sky falling. [Note to librarians: Mr. Goldberg is not suggesting you ban his own book. That would be…censorship.]
[SNIP]
In praise of “The Bell Curve”:
[Charles Murray crunches] the numbers with the sort of élan and sophistication we’ve come to expect from the author of “Losing Ground” and coauthor of “The Bell Curve.” [Ah yes, I can see Dr. Murray right now, elegantly crunching those numbers with one hand, swirling a snifter of rare brandy in the other, all the while his colored valet anxiously hovers over the great man, ready to light a superb Cuban cigar for him when his master so signals. The height of sophisticated élan.]
[SNIP]
And, of course, Goldberg’s explanation for why he can’t be troubled with serving in Iraq:
As for why my sorry a** isn’t in the kill zone, lots of people think this is a searingly pertinent question. No answer I could give — I’m 35 years old, my family couldn’t afford the lost income, I have a baby daughter, my a** is, er, sorry, are a few — ever seem to suffice. [“I’m a hypocrite” would, in fact, cover it, Jonah]
Slanted Much?
The new Fox poll has Bush down to 36%. They can’t lie about the numbers. But you have to read the story they’ve written about them to get the full flavor of how difficult it is for them to grapple with the fact that their hero is a big, fat failure:
Another way to assess if Iraq has been worthwhile is whether it has prevented attacks in the United States. One quarter of Americans (24 percent) think homeland security measures have prevented new Al Qaeda attacks from happening since Sept. 11, and about one in seven (16 percent) think the military action in Iraq has prevented them. Another 19 percent think it is because no new attacks were planned and 26 percent think it is a combination of factors.
I suspect that the 16 percent of people who believe that the war in Iraq has prevented attacks by Al Qaeda are all regular FOX viewers. Nobody else has bought that line in some time.
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Open Letter To Pat Robertson’s Mescaline Supplier
To Whom It May Concern,
It’s time to stop supplying Reverend Pat Robertson with hallucinogens. He clearly has tripped out once too often and it’s kind of giving the phrase “zonked totally out of your mind” a bad rap:
On today’s 700 Club, Rev. Pat Robertson took the opportunity to strongly rebuke voters in Dover, PA who removed from office school board members who supported teaching faith-based “intelligent design” and instead elected Democrats who opposed bringing up the possibility of a Creator in the school system’s science curriculum.
Rev. Robertson warned the people of Dover that God might forsake the town because of the vote.
“I’d like to say to the good citizens of Dover. If there is a disaster in your area, don’t turn to God, you just rejected Him from your city. And don’t wonder why He hasn’t helped you when problems begin, if they begin. I’m not saying they will, but if they do, just remember, you just voted God out of your city. And if that’s the case, don’t ask for His help because he might not be there.”
via Pharyngula
The Final Throes
Suicide Bomber Kills at Least 29 in Crowded Baghdad Restaurant
A man wearing a suicide bomb belt walked into a bustling breakfast restaurant in the heart of the capital this morning and blew himself up, killing at least 29 people and wounding 30, many of them police officers, officials said.
Al Qaeda in Iraq claimed responsibility for the attack, according to a group that tracks Islamic militant postings. The attack was the most lethal in the capital in two months, and came a day after three suicide bombings killed 57 people in Amman, Jordan, in a coordinated attack also claimed by Al Qaeda.
It was the worst strike in a day of violence in Iraq that left at least 35 dead and more than 50 people wounded. Police officials also found 27 corpses in the southern city of Kut.
All American Suckers
Unbelievable. Thirty-eight percent of this country still approves of Bush. Man, that’s a lot of rubes.
Y’know, a halfway intelligent and utterly unscrupulous con artist could do very well for himself here.
“Al Qaeda Is Having A Field Day”
There has been a lot of hand wringing amongst the liberal hawks these days regarding Iraq. And this has overlapped with an extremely abstract, prolonged -and frankly idiotic- argument over “the future of liberal interventionism” in the wake of the Iraq disaster.
And while all these great minds have been discussing ever so “reasonably” how best to adjust the “calculus” of America’s Manifest Destiny so “we” will continue to be a force of good in the world, they have, almost to a person, demonstrated their profound inability merely to look outside their own goddamn windows and respond with simple human decency and commonsense to the real world. And once again, they’ve demonstrated how alarmingly limited American foreign policy discourse has become. Why? Because, regarding the recent catastrophe in Kashmir, most of the pseudo-intellectual liberal interventionists have joined the Bush administration once again in failing to pay attention to the patently obvious:
The poor response of the international community to the victims of Kashmir was underscored by the United Nations saying that it had received only 27% of the $312 million of its flash appeal for quake relief – compared with 80% pledged within 10 days of a similar appeal to international donors after the tsunami of December 26.
The government of Pakistan’s own response to this massive human tragedy has also been described as slow and inadequate. One leader of Pakistan-administered Kashmir stated, “It’s a shame as the government on the other side [Indian-administered Kashmir] acted promptly and provided relief and rescue in all the affected areas … People are angry here as they think Islamabad has double standards, even in handling natural disasters.”
What about the Islamist organizations of Pakistan; how did they respond? The same Kashmir leader told Reuters, “The jihadi groups are more sincerely taking part in relief operations. Those groups, which were branded bad by the government, are no doubt doing well and will influence people’s sympathy in the future.”
A number of earthquake victims attested to this reality by stating that the only prompt help they have gotten has been from Islamist groups. (See Asia Times Online Waging jihad against disaster, October 20.) Even Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf agreed with the performance of the Islamist groups related to post-earthquake assistance.
Examine the above realities from the perspective of al-Qaeda’s version of public diplomacy. Considering the publicity given by the Western media to all statements that al-Qaeda issues, Zawahiri’s appeal for aid for Pakistani victims was heard all over the world.
The immediate danger that this appeal poses is to Musharraf’s own regime.
And given that Pakistan has nukes, well? But let’s read on:
Al-Qaeda is having a field day watching the community of nations perform so deplorably in regard to the human tragedy in Pakistan. It can, quite effectively, underscore three perspectives. First, that the illegitimacy of current Muslim governments in the wake of their failure to come to the rescue of a Muslim tragedy of epic proportions does not require any further debate, from the perspectives of al-Qaeda.
Second, the seeming lack of Western concern only underscores al-Qaeda’s claim that the West does not really care about what happens to Muslims, as long as the compliant and sycophant Muslim regimes continue to preside over the political status that ensures the dominance of the West. Third, given the preceding two reasons, al-Qaeda’s own unrelenting insistence on the violent overthrow of all extant Muslim regimes is further established, at least in the minds of everyone who is mildly sympathetic to that organization’s criticisms.
What emerges from the preceding is a transnational pan-jihadi entity carefully studying the twists and turns of the US and Western responses to countering terrorism and coming up with its own countermeasures.
Despite the dismantlement of the Taliban regime, al-Qaeda knows that the battle for control of Afghanistan has barely begun. It will continue its guerrilla-type skirmishes with US-led and Afghan forces. But the most important concomitant battle is to influence the hearts and minds of the Muslims of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
A weak Afghanistan remains under constant threat of major political turbulence. At the same time, an unstable Pakistan serves as an even more significant target than Afghanistan. The centers of gravity to win its war against the “enemies of Islam” – a phrase that al-Qaeda uses to depict all forces that oppose it and its objectives – are located in those two countries.
All it must do is keep the focus of rhetorical barrages on all Muslim tragedies and grievances and persistently highlight the sustained ineptness of the governments of Pakistan and Afghanistan. A highly charged environment thus created would be vastly conducive to even greater instability in the region. That is the essence of al-Qaeda’s battle to win the hearts and minds of Muslims, not only in South Asia, but also in the rest of the world of Islam.
I hate to say it again, but I told you so.
Again, boys and girls: The American mainstream media must make room for those of us in the reality-based community. I’m talking about those people who realized on 9/11/01 the Bush administration had to have been asleep at the switch; those people who understood after bin Laden escaped from Tora Bora that the Afghanistan war was a catastrophic military failure; those of us who heard of Bush/Iraq in spring, 2002 and were utterly appalled anyone would take seriously an idea so plainly bonkers; and those of us who immediately grasped that a catastrophic earthquake in a land that just happened to be at the center of several overlapping nuclear confrontations was an emergency – both human and political- that those nations committed to defeating al Qaeda simply had no choice but to pay serious attention to.
I mean, why can’t we hear from experts who are right on a regular basis? Where the hell are they? Does Richard Clarke have an op-ed column? Is he provided the same access to tubed eyeballs -and the same courtesy- that the Swift Boaters and the crazy generals Digby described yesterday? Anyone recently see Rand Beers in the news two days in a row?
I Almost Feel Sorry For Him
I’M A GENIUS [Jonah Goldberg]
I scored 100% my first time out on this timewaster.
Posted at 09:22 AM
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Very Good News
Expanding on tristero’s good news below, may I just say how pleased I am that California voted down every single initiative yesterday, thereby shoving Schwarzenegger’s useless 70 million dollar special election down his throat. Even the parental notification for minors seeking abortion went down.
Schwarzenegger is toast. After watching Bush and him in action maybe people are finally beginning to move beyond the “dumbshit guy I’d like to hang out with” and “movie stars are, like, awesome” methods of choosing our leaders.
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