The Supreme Court in a 5 to 4 vote said Monday that U.S. presidents are not yet kings and that those imprisoned by the state are still protected by habeas corpus.
The Bush-appointed dissenting justices went apoplectic and rehashed the favorite White House line (crafted and perfected by the now semi-repentant Scott McClellan) that the decision will ‘lead to more deaths of Americans.’
What an argument. Yes, my dear wackos, protecting human rights and judicial procedure sometimes lets people off the hook when they’re guilty as hell. Some of those people then commit new crimes. So what? Should we just hang anyone who looks guilty of something and be done with it? Plenty of people would applaud if we did—that’s why we have laws, to frustrate the revenge of the comfortable.
It’s amazing that not just average folks worried about their safety but black-robed jurists with law degrees can toss the whole structure of protections built up over centuries into the trash bin without blinking an eye. And please don’t make the mistake of thinking that only the bad old Republicans are conniving at this process. I don’t recall any particularly tough questions about detainee rights being put to Justices Roberts and Alito by our Democratic brethren, who could have blocked the confirmation process of these royalist lapdogs but feared above all else looking like bin Laden-symps.
Despite the political impopularity of protecting the rights of the accused, our judiciary has triumphed over the political winds of the moment. When the nation recovers its mental equilibrium and considers how close it came to voting itself into a police state, it will recall with pride the day its top court—NOT it’s legislative ‘opposition’—restored it to sanity.
Meanwhile, do notice the complete reversal of roles across the pond where the Conservatives (yes, the Tory party of Margaret Thatcher) is digging in its heels against Labor’s attempt to allow ‘terrorist suspects’ to be jailed for 42 days without a hearing. One right-wing parliamentarian, David Davis, even resigned his seat to force a by-election precisely on this issue, saying Gordon Brown’s new rule threatened Britons’ cherished freedom. (It passed anyway by a narrow margin.)
Just listen to the ringing denunciation of the Labor move from this fox-hunting toff and ask yourself if you’ve heard anything comparable from the party of Obama and Clinton:
This Sunday is the anniversary of Magna Carta, a document that guarantees the fundamental element of British freedom, habeas corpus. The right not to be imprisoned by the state without charge or reason. But yesterday this house allowed the state to lock up potentially innocent citizens for up to six weeks without charge.
This cannot go on, it must be stopped, and for that reason today I feel it is incumbent on me to take a stand.
I will be resigning my membership of this House, and I intend to force a by-election in Haltemprice and Howden. I will not fight it on the Government’s general record.
I won’t fight it on my personal record.
I will fight it, and I will argue this by-election against the slow strangulation of fundamental British freedoms by this Government.
Sounds just like Jim Webb or Amy Klobuchar, doesn’t it?
Friday, 13 June 2008
Thursday, 12 June 2008
Kerplunk
Another construction crane collapsed here in Manhattan the other day, the second in two months, adding two more deaths to the roster of construction workers felled by the corrupt building business in this still-smells-like-a-mob-town town. A few days later the chief crane inspector was busted for taking bribes, timing reminiscent of the Chinese Communist way of commerce in which you just burrow along producing and palm-greasing away until some shit happens. Then someone gets hauled up for corruption and shot in the town square. Since everyone’s on the take as a condition of being in the game, finding a goose is effortless.
Hard to say if that’s the case in the Big Apple, and it will be fun to watch the reported anti-corruption campaign in the building trades proceed. The winningly nerdy acting commissioner—elevated after his successor took the fall for Accident No. 1—strikes me as too goofy to be actively venial, but of course that’s not necessarily true.
Meanwhile, Mayor Bloomberg can rend his garment in shock and awe over the repeated toppling of these steel pterodactyls, but one suspects that in the halls of power they know exactly who cuts what corners to enable the construction boom to proceed apace and which of the established goon squads gets what piece of the trickling-down juice.
We have the advantage, for now, of a fairly active news media ready to pounce on misconduct and incompetence, which provides a modicum of civil monitoring over these guys in which the abused Chinese populace would probably take delight. Instead, their kids get buried in shoddy schools that can’t stand up to an earthquake, and anyone who complains is guilty of anti-socialist agitation, previously a.k.a. capitalist-roading.
But I wonder if any biped system can really stamp out this sort of thing once the amounts of wealth involved grow to such skyscraping heights, especially since half the public will snigger in complicity when the smart guy beats the system and manages not to kill anyone too overtly in the process. We reserve our righteous fury for the one who gets caught and prepare to cast not just the first but many subsequent stones at his exposed noggin.
Hard to say if that’s the case in the Big Apple, and it will be fun to watch the reported anti-corruption campaign in the building trades proceed. The winningly nerdy acting commissioner—elevated after his successor took the fall for Accident No. 1—strikes me as too goofy to be actively venial, but of course that’s not necessarily true.
Meanwhile, Mayor Bloomberg can rend his garment in shock and awe over the repeated toppling of these steel pterodactyls, but one suspects that in the halls of power they know exactly who cuts what corners to enable the construction boom to proceed apace and which of the established goon squads gets what piece of the trickling-down juice.
We have the advantage, for now, of a fairly active news media ready to pounce on misconduct and incompetence, which provides a modicum of civil monitoring over these guys in which the abused Chinese populace would probably take delight. Instead, their kids get buried in shoddy schools that can’t stand up to an earthquake, and anyone who complains is guilty of anti-socialist agitation, previously a.k.a. capitalist-roading.
But I wonder if any biped system can really stamp out this sort of thing once the amounts of wealth involved grow to such skyscraping heights, especially since half the public will snigger in complicity when the smart guy beats the system and manages not to kill anyone too overtly in the process. We reserve our righteous fury for the one who gets caught and prepare to cast not just the first but many subsequent stones at his exposed noggin.
Tuesday, 10 June 2008
Imitating Hillary
Obama’s performance in front of the most reactionary sector of the Israeli lobby last week was a disappointment and may come back to haunt him if Bush decides to close out his historic disaster of a presidency with an attack on Iran. The fresh guy sounded as ancient as last month’s salad with his tired pandering to the zionist fruitcakes, edging close to supporting the Israelis’ public suggestion of a preemptive strike on supposed nuclear facilities.
What a lost opportunity to keep one’s mouth shut. Now if the attack occurs, he’s going to look a tad opportunistic in denouncing it as the price of petroleum shoots to $300 a barrel.
What a lost opportunity to keep one’s mouth shut. Now if the attack occurs, he’s going to look a tad opportunistic in denouncing it as the price of petroleum shoots to $300 a barrel.
Sunday, 8 June 2008
The End
Hillary Clinton was dragged kicking and screaming from the nomination fight and now gets points for her generous exit lines. From my seat that’s what they sounded like—a prepared script delivered with far less conviction than her June 3 refusal to step aside. She did the right thing at last although it would have meant more had she figured it out herself before being pushed off the cliff by her closest backers telling her, Enough.
Now the post-mortems have begun, and a lot of the analyses take the position that this or that mid-course adjustment would have reversed the outcome. Maybe so, and we’ll never know for sure. But a lot of the incidents called ‘errors’ are really just examples of who the Clintons are and what they do. It’s like saying Clint Eastwood made the mistake of acting in cowboy movies.
Take the Bill Clinton line about Obama’s opposition to the Iraq war being a ‘fairy tale’, widely considered a gaffe. That looked stupid but only because people actually knew the candidates’ positions on that topic, meaning that one’s actual stance couldn’t be fobbed off as something else, like on 85 other issues. Her failure even to take a clear position on warmaking illustrated how the Clintons operate—opportunistically, covering all bases and keeping everyone happy. In another epoch that might have been comforting for voters, but in 2008 it didn’t fly.
Hillary Clinton also made a decision to run as Clinton II after the disastrous reiteration of the first Bush presidency. Fine, but then you have to accept the baggage, too. Few commentators mentioned it, but it did somewhat undermine Hillary as feminist icon to have the notorious first husband back on the scene.
She also turned out to be a lousy manager, hardly consistent with her image as ‘ready to go on Day One.’ Her campaign was a viper’s nest of intrigue and backstabbing among rivals, less than reassuring for people eager to see professional management of the nation’s affairs.
I suspect that the scale of the current disastrous administration has sharpened the country’s collective sense that we’re not playing around here and that a repeat of the baby-boomer self-absorption that characterized Clinton’s scamper through the Oval Office isn’t what we need. Barack Obama is an unknown quantity and could still turn out to be a big disappointment. But Hillary Clinton lost because we knew exactly what she offered.
Now the post-mortems have begun, and a lot of the analyses take the position that this or that mid-course adjustment would have reversed the outcome. Maybe so, and we’ll never know for sure. But a lot of the incidents called ‘errors’ are really just examples of who the Clintons are and what they do. It’s like saying Clint Eastwood made the mistake of acting in cowboy movies.
Take the Bill Clinton line about Obama’s opposition to the Iraq war being a ‘fairy tale’, widely considered a gaffe. That looked stupid but only because people actually knew the candidates’ positions on that topic, meaning that one’s actual stance couldn’t be fobbed off as something else, like on 85 other issues. Her failure even to take a clear position on warmaking illustrated how the Clintons operate—opportunistically, covering all bases and keeping everyone happy. In another epoch that might have been comforting for voters, but in 2008 it didn’t fly.
Hillary Clinton also made a decision to run as Clinton II after the disastrous reiteration of the first Bush presidency. Fine, but then you have to accept the baggage, too. Few commentators mentioned it, but it did somewhat undermine Hillary as feminist icon to have the notorious first husband back on the scene.
She also turned out to be a lousy manager, hardly consistent with her image as ‘ready to go on Day One.’ Her campaign was a viper’s nest of intrigue and backstabbing among rivals, less than reassuring for people eager to see professional management of the nation’s affairs.
I suspect that the scale of the current disastrous administration has sharpened the country’s collective sense that we’re not playing around here and that a repeat of the baby-boomer self-absorption that characterized Clinton’s scamper through the Oval Office isn’t what we need. Barack Obama is an unknown quantity and could still turn out to be a big disappointment. But Hillary Clinton lost because we knew exactly what she offered.
Saturday, 7 June 2008
Ho-hum
We’ve been treated in the last few days to a series of women supporters of Hillary Clinton talking about how disappointed and angry they are that she didn’t win. I overheard a conversation in a restaurant this week from a woman furious over the way she was ‘shafted,’ presumably by Obama, and seriously contemplating sitting out the vote in November.
Still, I recall the Clinton ad campaign, ‘If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen’. Part of Hillary’s pre-Ohio comeback was painting her opponent as not tough enough to take the rough-and-tumble of national and world politics—in fact, she turned him into the ‘woman’. She was the Type A macho wagging a finger in the other guy’s face with her ‘Shame on you, Barack Obama’ outburst and her feisty-fighter image.
So if she’s winning, it’s good to be a slash-and-burn warrior. But when the fight’s over and she lost, the other side are meanies.
Jon Stewart aired a hilarious edit of Clinton’s Tuesday night non-concession acrobatics, which accentuated the number of times her sentences began with the word ‘I’. Her inability to recognize that she had lost morphed into a creepily narcissistic spectacle.
Self-absorption that mows down anything in its path in the name of feminine emancipation and equality certainly has its appeal, as does any form of whipping up the troops in the name of one’s shared ethnic, racial, national or religious identity. In that regard Hillary is actually closer to Rev. Jeremiah Wright than to Gloria Steinam.
Obama has studiously avoided making himself into the ‘race’ candidate, and except for the post-Wright speech on race in America, he hasn’t had that much to say about it. His appeal is more cerebral, but he treats us as adults, whether we like it or not. It’s a reminder that just belonging to a mistreated group doesn’t make one’s ideas correct or one’s behavior noble.
Still, I recall the Clinton ad campaign, ‘If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen’. Part of Hillary’s pre-Ohio comeback was painting her opponent as not tough enough to take the rough-and-tumble of national and world politics—in fact, she turned him into the ‘woman’. She was the Type A macho wagging a finger in the other guy’s face with her ‘Shame on you, Barack Obama’ outburst and her feisty-fighter image.
So if she’s winning, it’s good to be a slash-and-burn warrior. But when the fight’s over and she lost, the other side are meanies.
Jon Stewart aired a hilarious edit of Clinton’s Tuesday night non-concession acrobatics, which accentuated the number of times her sentences began with the word ‘I’. Her inability to recognize that she had lost morphed into a creepily narcissistic spectacle.
Self-absorption that mows down anything in its path in the name of feminine emancipation and equality certainly has its appeal, as does any form of whipping up the troops in the name of one’s shared ethnic, racial, national or religious identity. In that regard Hillary is actually closer to Rev. Jeremiah Wright than to Gloria Steinam.
Obama has studiously avoided making himself into the ‘race’ candidate, and except for the post-Wright speech on race in America, he hasn’t had that much to say about it. His appeal is more cerebral, but he treats us as adults, whether we like it or not. It’s a reminder that just belonging to a mistreated group doesn’t make one’s ideas correct or one’s behavior noble.
Tuesday, 3 June 2008
Psycho
George Bush and Hillary Clinton have one thing in common: they decide what reality is and function based on the assumptions contained therein. It’s not merely communicational sleight-of-hand in which one puts the best face on things to win points, but rather chronic political autism.
In Bush’s case, he’s the star of his own war movie, and no actual events on the ground in Iraq will budge him from playing out every last reel of it. The rest of us are trapped in this Warholian art-house nightmare of his mind, which lasts forever and has about as much plot as ‘Blow Job’ (while managing to be less entertaining).
Hillary could almost be pardoned for her bogus, last-ditch play for the Michigan delegation if it were just a political game that she didn’t really take seriously, but her non-concession speech Tuesday night shows that the Clintons live in a air-tight basement with the windows blacked out. She rehashed all her arguments and refused to glance over at the evening news crawl giving her opponent an absolute majority of the delegate votes.
David Gergen on CNN compared Hillary’s performance to the Nixon Checkers speech, down to the appeal to her supporters to flood her campaign office with pleas for her to stay on. He stuck around too, even after being booted out of the presidency.
What a missed chance for Clinton to show some graciousness in defeat, support the ticket and give a powerful boost to the compelling speech Obama went on to deliver in Minneapolis to 18,000 supporters. That would have contributed to a Democratic victory and to the causes Clinton says are her only motive for going forward. Instead, she did her best to undermine him still insisting that she actually won and now has to claim her triumph.
It’s true because Hillary Clinton says it is. And American troops are bringing peace and democracy to Iraq.
In Bush’s case, he’s the star of his own war movie, and no actual events on the ground in Iraq will budge him from playing out every last reel of it. The rest of us are trapped in this Warholian art-house nightmare of his mind, which lasts forever and has about as much plot as ‘Blow Job’ (while managing to be less entertaining).
Hillary could almost be pardoned for her bogus, last-ditch play for the Michigan delegation if it were just a political game that she didn’t really take seriously, but her non-concession speech Tuesday night shows that the Clintons live in a air-tight basement with the windows blacked out. She rehashed all her arguments and refused to glance over at the evening news crawl giving her opponent an absolute majority of the delegate votes.
David Gergen on CNN compared Hillary’s performance to the Nixon Checkers speech, down to the appeal to her supporters to flood her campaign office with pleas for her to stay on. He stuck around too, even after being booted out of the presidency.
What a missed chance for Clinton to show some graciousness in defeat, support the ticket and give a powerful boost to the compelling speech Obama went on to deliver in Minneapolis to 18,000 supporters. That would have contributed to a Democratic victory and to the causes Clinton says are her only motive for going forward. Instead, she did her best to undermine him still insisting that she actually won and now has to claim her triumph.
It’s true because Hillary Clinton says it is. And American troops are bringing peace and democracy to Iraq.
Sunday, 1 June 2008
Wishful thinking
The Puerto Rico victory speech by Madame Hillary didn’t sound like it was coming from someone ready to throw in the towel next Tuesday. She rehashed the lie that she’s leading in the popular vote (by assuming Obama got zero votes in Michigan while she was breaking the candidates’ agreement by leaving her name on the ballot). She also keeps hammering away like Chuckie the Killer Doll on the theme of ‘the people have spoken,’ threatens to challenge the weekend compromise over Michigan and Florida, casting herself as the Fanny Lou Hamer of 2008 fighting the segregationists, and insists that no winner will emerge from the final two primaries on June 3.
Pretty much everyone projects onto Senator Clinton their assumptions about what a dignified second-place finish would require from a normal politician and studiously ignores the concrete signals emanating from her. Perhaps the punditocracy knows something we don’t, but if we listen to the actual words spoken and the clear sentiments and worldview lurking behind them, there is no reason to believe that she will permit the party to start to concentrate on November any time soon—if ever.
Clinton is still capable of ripping the Democratic Party apart and everything she says and does suggests that that’s where she’s headed. The superdelegates and the party poobahs can frustrate her nomination, but they can’t stop her from strapping on a suicide belt and heading to the convention with it. Don’t say you weren’t warned—by her.
Pretty much everyone projects onto Senator Clinton their assumptions about what a dignified second-place finish would require from a normal politician and studiously ignores the concrete signals emanating from her. Perhaps the punditocracy knows something we don’t, but if we listen to the actual words spoken and the clear sentiments and worldview lurking behind them, there is no reason to believe that she will permit the party to start to concentrate on November any time soon—if ever.
Clinton is still capable of ripping the Democratic Party apart and everything she says and does suggests that that’s where she’s headed. The superdelegates and the party poobahs can frustrate her nomination, but they can’t stop her from strapping on a suicide belt and heading to the convention with it. Don’t say you weren’t warned—by her.
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