Speaking of Race

Speaking of race relations in contemporary America, Frank Rich writes:

The essence of Palinism is emotional, not ideological. Yes, she is of the religious right, even if she winks literally and figuratively at her own daughter’s flagrant disregard of abstinence and marriage. But family-values politics, now more devalued than the dollar by the philandering of ostentatiously Christian Republican politicians, can only take her so far. The real wave she’s riding is a loud, resonant surge of resentment and victimization that’s larger than issues like abortion and gay civil rights.

That resentment is in part about race, of course. When Palin referred to Alaska as “a microcosm of America” during the 2008 campaign, it was in defiance of the statistical reality that her state’s tiny black and Hispanic populations are unrepresentative of her nation. She stood for the “real America,” she insisted, and the identity of the unreal America didn’t have to be stated explicitly for audiences to catch her drift. Her convention speech’s signature line was a deftly coded putdown of her presumably shiftless big-city opponent: “I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities.” (Funny how this wisdom has been forgotten by her supporters now that she has abandoned her own actual responsibilities in public office.)

The Palinist “real America” is demographically doomed to keep shrinking. But the emotion it represents is disproportionately powerful for its numbers. It’s an anger that Palin enjoyed stoking during her “palling around with terrorists” crusade against Obama on the campaign trail. It’s an anger that’s curdled into self-martyrdom since Inauguration Day.

Its voice can be found in the postings at a Web site maintained by the fans of Mark Levin, the Obama hater who is, at this writing, the No.2 best-selling hardcover nonfiction writer in America. (Glenn Beck is No.1 in paperback nonfiction.) Politico surveyed them last week. “Bottomline, do you know of any way we can remove these idiots before this country goes down the crapper?” wrote one Levin fan. “I WILL HELP!!! Should I buy a gun?” Another called for a new American revolution, promising “there will be blood.”

[Click to continue reading Frank Rich – She Broke the G.O.P. and Now She Owns It – NYTimes.com]

Palin is the hero to those same reactionary bilious few who celebrated George Wallace a scant few decades ago.

Vegas Thrills Chills and hopefully no Onanistic Spills

Yet another Republican family values freaky-deac(on).

One of Ensign’s roommates, Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, was described by Hampton as being particularly vocal about the importance of cash contributions to “make these folks whole.” Coburn denies this, although he won’t say exactly what advice he gave to his erring colleague. Coburn told Roll Call that he talked to Ensign as a “physician and as an ordained deacon” and that he will therefore have the right to keep mum even if he’s dragged into court or a Senate committee hearing.

This makes me sort of hope that some kind of investigation takes place just so Coburn, who’s an obstetrician, can explain how exactly doctor-patient confidentiality figures into this.

We hardly need to point out that Ensign was one of the people who demanded that President Bill Clinton resign over the Lewinsky affair, that he votes against financing for education and contraception services to combat teenage pregnancy and that he supports a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. In the world of politics, hypocrisy is a hard market to corner, but lately the Republicans have been making a Microsoft-like effort to do it.

Both of the Hamptons lost their jobs, and Doug was shuttled off to a Las Vegas-based airline, run by a friend of Ensign’s, where he is now vice president of government affairs. Unappeased, he hired a lawyer to demand that Ensign make financial amends for “evil and completely unjustifiable acts by one of our country’s top leaders.” He also tried to leak the story of the affair to Fox News, apparently under the theory that out of all the media, Fox would be most excited by the opportunity to humiliate a powerful conservative Republican senator.

[Click to continue reading Gail Collins – What Happened in Vegas – NYTimes.com]

AIG and you

Also, the payoff was a very precise number of dollars: $96,000, or as The Washington Monthly puts it:

$96,000 is a lot of money. Interestingly, it is precisely the amount you can give as a gift without having to report it to the IRS, multiplied by eight: one gift of $12,000 from each parent to Ensign’s lover, her husband, and two of their children. I wonder what the IRS will make of that? I certainly hope that neither of the parents has made use of their children’s money, or done anything else to suggest that this was all one big gift split up to avoid paying gift tax, or (more likely) having to report the gift. It’s bad enough asking your parents to cough up $96,000 to cover up your indiscretions; asking them to violate the tax code and risk prison is a whole lot worse.

[Click to continue reading: The Washington Monthly – O, What A Tangled Web We Weave]

Strange concept that, neatly avoiding investigation by the IRS by having your parents pay off your mistress, and her family. Hope there wasn’t any money laundering going on.

Reading Around on July 9th through July 10th

A few interesting links collected July 9th through July 10th:

Papa Hemingway as a KGB dilettante


Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB

Last week, however, saw the publication of Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America (Yale University Press), which reveals the Nobel prize-winning novelist was for a while on the KGB’s list of its agents in America. Co-written by John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr and Alexander Vassiliev, the book is based on notes that Vassiliev, a former KGB officer, made when he was given access in the 1990s to Stalin-era intelligence archives in Moscow.

Its section on the author’s secret life as a “dilettante spy” draws on his KGB file in saying he was recruited in 1941 before making a trip to China, given the cover name “Argo”, and “repeatedly expressed his desire and willingness to help us” when he met Soviet agents in Havana and London in the 40s. However, he failed to “give us any political information” and was never “verified in practical work”, so contacts with Argo had ceased by the end of the decade. Was he only ever a pseudo-spook, possibly seeing his clandestine dealings as potential literary material, or a genuine but hopelessly ineffective one?

[Click to continue reading Hemingway revealed as failed KGB spy – guardian.co.uk ]

So the inventor of the Papa Doble was a dilettante spy? What exactly does that mean? Curious. And of course, The Soviet Union was an ally against Hitler in this era. But I expect more will be made of this in upcoming months.

Reading Around on July 6th

Some additional reading July 6th from 08:35 to 14:46:

  • Boston to debut ‘killer app’ for municipal complaints – The Boston Globe – “they think they’ve hit on something big: a “killer app’’ that marries 21st-century technology with Mayor Thomas M. Menino’s old-school devotion to pothole politics.

    City officials will soon debut Boston’s first official iPhone application, which will allow residents to snap photos of neighborhood nuisances – nasty potholes, graffiti-stained walls, blown street lights – and e-mail them to City Hall to be fixed.”

  • President Obama’s first 167 days – The Big Picture – Boston.com – “U.S. President Barack Obama has now been in office for 167 days, and it’s time for a look back. Why 167 days? Why not – it’s just as arbitrary a number as the usual “100 days”. In that time, President Obama has contended with stimulating the U.S. economy, reshaping U.S. policy abroad, and starting work on domestic issues such as health care reform. As he and his family arrive in Moscow today for an official visit, find here a look back at some of the first 167 days of the Obama administration. (38 photos total)”

    Barack Obama is the centrist Democrat we thought he was, and I have several policy disagreements with his administration already, that said, still am charmed by the man. So many of these photos make me smile.

  • The Brick Testament – “Ever performed a magic trick for your friends? Committed adultery? Worshipped an idol? Are you cowardly? How about filthy? Have you ever told a lie? If so, bad news. You are going to be ceaselessly tortured for all eternity.Good news, though, if you are a male Jewish virgin. A lucky 144,000 of you are going to get to live on the New Improved Earth with Yahweh”

These are The Liars On Drugs

In a manner of speaking

Cut Rate Liquors and Real Drugs
[Rothschild’s Cut Rate Liquors and Real Drugs, on Chicago and Ashland, or nearby]

AMONG OUR LEADERS in Washington, who’s been the biggest liar? There are all too many contenders, yet one is so floridly surreal that he deserves special attention. Nope, it’s not Dick Cheney or Alberto Gonzales or John Yoo. It’s a trusted authority figure who’s lied for 11 years now, no matter which party held sway. (Nope, it’s not Alan Greenspan.) This liar didn’t end-run Congress, or bully it, or have its surreptitious blessing at the time only to face its indignation later. No, this liar was ordered by Congress to lie—as a prerequisite for holding the job.

Give up? It’s the head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), a.k.a. the drug czar, who in 1998 was mandated by Congress to oppose legislation that would legalize, decriminalize, or medicalize marijuana, or redirect anti-trafficking funding into treatment. And the drug czar has also—here’s where the lying comes in—been prohibited from funding research that might give credence to any of the above. These provisions were crafted by Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and Bob Barr (R-Ga.) and pushed for by then-czar Barry McCaffrey, best remembered for being somewhat comically obsessed with the evils of medical marijuana. A few Dems complained that the bill, which set “hard targets” of an 80 percent drop in the availability of drugs, a 60 percent decrease in street purity, and a 50 percent reduction in drug-related crime and ER visits, all by 2004—whoops!—was “simplistic” and “designed to achieve political advantage.” Though the vote count was not recorded for history, it got enough bipartisan support to be signed into law by Bill “Didn’t Inhale” Clinton.

If this tale strikes you as the kind of paranoid fantasy you’d expect from someone who’s taken one too many hits off the joint, consider that it isn’t the most bizarre, hypocritical, counterproductive moment in our nation’s history with drugs. Not by a long shot. Consider that Prohibition came about when progressives got into bed with the Ku Klux Klan, but was rolled back once they’d had enough of the Mob. Or that the precursor to today’s drug czar supplied morphine to Sen. Joe McCarthy because he worried about the national security consequences—not of the red-baiter’s habit, but of its potential exposure. Or that drug war progenitor Richard Nixon ordered a comprehensive study on the perils of marijuana, and then ignored the study once he learned it recommended decriminalization.

[Click to continue reading This Is Your War on Drugs | Mother Jones]

Any legislation that bears the imprint of the three stooges, Hastert, Barr and McCaffrey is bound to be ridiculous and objectionable. Drug policy in the United States is in serious need of reform, and that’s no joke. Will it happen in our lifetime? The jury is still loaded up in chambers…

Reading Around on July 4th through July 5th

A few interesting links collected July 4th through July 5th:

  • Can I Get a Witness? | TPM – yet more evidence that the Washington Post is in a death spiral”But it is bizarre to say that Palin is uncomfortable in the role of the victim. In fact I’m not sure I’ve ever found a better use for this much over-used word. As Noam Scheiber explained in one of the earliest and perhaps most insightful profiles of Palin, victimhood and resentment are Palin’s twin touchstones. They define who she is.”
  • Cat M.D.s prevent heart attack fatalities | The Daily Blank – Image by swanksalot via Flickr “Owning a cat could mean the difference between life and death. The University of Minnesota recently released a study that the risk of dying from a heart attack is 40% higher among people who have never owned a cat, compared to people who have.”
  • Confirmed: God is slightly gay – “Behold, the ongoing, increasingly startling research: homosexual and bisexual behavior, it turns out, is rampant in the animal kingdom. And by rampant, I mean proving to be damn near universal, commonplace across all species everywhere, existing for myriad reasons ranging from pure survival and procreative influence, right on over to pure pleasure, co-parenting, giddy screeching multiple monkey orgasm, even love, and a few dozen other potential explanations science hasn’t quite figured out yet. Imagine.

    Are you thinking, why sure, everyone knows about those sex-crazed dolphins and those superslut bonobo monkeys and the few other godless creatures like them, the sea turtles and the weird sheep and such, creatures who obviously haven’t read Leviticus. But that’s about it, right? Most animals are devoutly hetero and straight and damn happy about it, right?

    Wrong.”

  • Daily Kos: State of the Nation – Palins Poetry – Awesome.
    “The following is the complete text, directly transcribed, of the portion of Sarah Palin’s resignation speech available on video. The text is accurate and unaltered; a portion of the speech is missing from the beginning because the video does not start until then.The lines have been transcribed, however, in the form of vers libre poetry, which seemed appropriate under the circumstances.”
  • War: Retreat of the 20,000 — Printout — TIME – “Retreat, hell!” snapped Major General Oliver Prince Smith, commander of the 1st Marine Division, with which he had fought on Guadalcanal, New Britain, Peleliu, Okinawa (TIME, Sept. 25). “We’re not retreating, we’re just advancing in a different direction”

    Wait, you mean Sarah Barracuda Palin flubbed a quotation, again? She needs to stop letting Trig vet her speeches

Possible Palin problem – the iceberg scandal?

It would be unsporting not to speculate what caused Sarah Barracuda Palin to become a quitter.

Where Did I put that damn rock?
[People, maybe journalists, looking for stuff, Mendenhall Glacier, Alaska, 2007]

The Village Voice’s Wayne Barrett wrote about a very questionable construction project back in October of 2008:

THE $12.5 MILLION sports complex and hockey rink that is the lasting monument to Palin’s two terms as Wasilla mayor is also a monument to the kind of insider politics that dismays Americans of both parties. Six months before Palin stepped down as mayor in October 2002, the city awarded nearly a half-million-dollar contract to design the biggest project in Wasilla history to Kumin Associates. Blase Burkhart was the Kumin architect on the job—the son of Roy Burkhart, who is frequently described as a “mentor” of Palin and was head of the local Republican Party (his wife, June, who also advised Palin, is the national committeewoman). Asked if the contract was a favor, Roy Burkhart, who contributed to her campaign in the same time frame that his son got the contract, said: “I really don’t know.” Palin then named Blase Burkhart to a seven-member builder-selection committee that picked Howdie Inc., a mostly residential contractor owned at the time by Howard Nugent. Formally awarded the contract a couple of weeks after Palin left office, Nugent has donated $4,000 to Palin campaigns. Two competitors protested the process that led to Nugent’s contract. Burkhart and Nugent had done at least one project together before the complex—and have done several since.

A list of subcontractors on the job, obtained by the Voice, includes many with Palin ties. One was Spenard Builders Supply, the state’s leading supplier of wood, floor, roof, and other “pre-engineered components.” In addition to being a sponsor of Todd Palin’s snow-machine team that has earned tens of thousands for the Palin family, Spenard hired Sarah Palin to do a statewide television commercial in 2004. When the Palins began building a new family home off Lake Lucille in 2002—at the same time that Palin was running for lieutenant governor and in her final months as mayor—Spenard supplied the materials, according to Antoine Bricks, who works in its Wasilla office. Spenard actually filed a notice “of its right to assert a lien” on the deed for the Palin property after contracting for labor and materials for the site. Spenard’s name has popped up in the trial of Senator Stevens—it worked on the house that is at the center of the VECO scandal as well.

Todd Palin told Fox News that he built the two-story, 3,450-square-foot, four-bedroom, four-bath, wood house himself, with the help of contractors he described as “buddies.” As mayor, Sarah Palin blocked an effort to require the filing of building permits in the wide-open city, and there is no public record of who the “buddies” were. The house was built very near the complex, on a site whose city purchase led to years of unsuccessful litigation and, now, $1.3 million in additional costs, with a law firm that’s also donated to Palin collecting costly fees from the city.

[Click to continue reading New York News – The Book of Sarah (Palin) – page 5]

Perhaps some very damning evidence has recently emerged to bolster the ethics imbroglio Mr. Barrett describes? Whatever will we do without Ms. Palin to ridicule? Her understudy / loonie-in-waiting Michele Bachmann is nowhere near ready to assume the mantle, yet, until she either gets carted away to an interment camp, or gets selected by Mitt Romney in 2012. Maybe Palin’s scandal is even worse than this one, I suspect we’ll know pretty soon.

Straight Talk From Sarah

Gail Collins laughs, as so many of us are this weekend, at Sarah Barracuda Palin and her quitter’s mentality.1

Truly, Sarah Palin has come a long way. When she ran for vice president, she frequently became disjointed and garbled when she departed from her prepared remarks. Now the prepared remarks are incoherent, too.

“And a problem in our country today is apathy,” she said on Friday as she announced that she would resign as governor of Alaska at the end of the month. “It would be apathetic to just hunker down and ‘go with the flow.’ Nah, only dead fish ‘go with the flow.’ No. Productive, fulfilled people determine where to put their efforts, choosing to wisely utilize precious time … to BUILD UP.”

Basically, the point was that Palin is quitting as governor because she’s not a quitter. Or a deceased salmon.

Sarah Barracuda made her big announcement Friday afternoon on the lawn of her home to an audience that appeared to include only Todd, the kids and the next-door neighbors. Smiling manically, she looked like a parody of the woman who knocked the Republicans dead at their convention. She babbled about her parents’ refrigerator magnet, which apparently had a lot of wise advice. And she recalled her visit with the troops in Kosovo, whose dedication and determination inspired her to … resign.

“Life is about choices!” declared the nation’s most anti-choice politician.

[Click to read more of Gail Collins – Sarah’s Straight Talk – NYTimes.com]

house, Ketchikan Alaska
[House and Car, Ketchikan, Alaska]

So far my favorite Palin resignation piece is the Daily Kos diarist who turned portions of Palin’s speech into free verse:

and im not gonna put alaskans through that

i promised efficiency

and effectiveness

thats not how im wired

im not wired to operate

under the same old politics as usual

i promised that four years ago

and i meant it

it thats not what is best for alaska at this time

im determined to take the right path for alaska

even though it is unconventional

and its not so comfortable

with this announcement

that im not seeking reelection

ive determined its best to

transfer the authority of governor

to lieutenant governor parnell

and i am willing to do this

so that this administration

with its positive agenda

and its accomplishments

and its successful road to

an incredible future for alaska

so that it can continue without interruption

and with great administrative and legislative success

There’s more if you’re interested. It almost makes Palin’s babbling readable, actually. Continue reading “Straight Talk From Sarah”

Footnotes:
  1. sorry for the poor grammar, but I need more coffee still. First draft is the version that makes it onto this blog anyway. []

Reading Around on July 2nd through July 3rd

A few interesting links collected July 2nd through July 3rd:

  • Dovecote Records Limewire is a bunch of hypocrites Gets mad at Us for stealing

    Woman: “Who the FUCK are you? And why are you eating our pizza?”

    Kosuke: Well our friend came in and told us there was free pizza at the bar. We are. So. Sorry. It was a misunderstanding.

    Woman: (with unbridled entitlement) This is a company party our CEO is here and you STOLE our pizza. Are you from out of town? Because let me tell you, NOTHING is free in New York City. Nothing is free… well maybe except for the condoms in Times Square.

    Paul and Kosuke continue apologizing. They offer to pay for the two slices.

    Woman: (didactically snobbish) We don’t want your money. No. Enjoy the pizza, but you can’t steal other people’s things. You can’t take what’s not yours

    Kosuke: What company do you guys work for?

    Woman: We work for Limewire.

    <Long pause> Kosuke’s eyes go wide. Anger festers in his pupils.

    Kosuke: Oh ok. Well I work at a record label so fuck you. You’ve stolen from us enough. (Bites pizza. Begins to walk away.)

  • That’s Right! I Said It’s Caipirinha Time! on Flickr – Photo Sharing! – Every time I look at Friendly Joe’s awesome caipirinha making instructional Flickr page, I get a mighty, mighty thirst.

    “Caipirinhas are the Brazilian national drink. That said, we won’t conject on the overall condition of the Brazilian populace at large. No worries- They’re refreshing and the weather’s warmin’ up –
    Follow these simple guidelines and you’ll be ready to samba in your neighbor’s flower beds in no time… “

  • Tour № 2 – Ogden Avenue Extension | Forgotten Chicago

    “Left: A brief aside, in case you forgot who built this damn city!

    Right: Remnants of Ogden’s bridge supports are still visible south of Division Street.”

  • Saddam And Goldman Sachs: Who Is The Student, And Who Is The Master?

    The funniest part is, you could legitimately argue that Goldman Sachs has killed more people than Saddam.

The Washington Post – Turning Tricks to Pay Bills

Whoa, talk about good timing for Dan Froomkin. Who would want to be employed by such a corrupt and venal organization as the Washington Post?

The Washington Post died today. It was five months short of its 132nd birthday.

News of the demise of the once-great news gathering organization came in a story by Mike Allen at Politico.com, which reported that Post publisher Katharine Weymouth has decided to solicit payoffs of between $25,000 and $250,000 from Washington lobbyists, in return for one or more private dinners in her home, where lucky lobbyists will receive a chance for “your organization’s CEO” to interact with “Health-care reporting and editorial staff members of The Washington Post” and “key Obama administration and congressional leaders …”

The decision by the Post’s publisher to sell access to government officials was the latest–and by far, the most horrific–in a series of disastrous decisions in the last two weeks which, taken together, have destroyed what was once one of the proudest finest brands in American journalism.

As news of the Politico story raced across the Internet this morning, former and present news executives inside and outside The Washington Post Company reacted with stunned horror. As Allen put it in his Politico story, “The offer which essentially turns a news organization into a facilitator for private lobbyist-official encounters is a new sign of the lengths to which news organizations will go to find revenue at a time when most newspapers are struggling for survival.”

[From The Washington Post: RIP | The Hillman Foundation]

800 crunches

The Washington Post has been running on NeoCon fumes for quite a while, but this is perhaps a final blow. Hopefully, anyway.

Idiots running Washington Post fires its best columnist

Sorry to hear that Dan Froomkin (a frequent source of material for this blog, and many others) has been fired.

Glenn Greenwald speculates it might be because of the whiny-titty-ass-baby, Charlie Krauthammer complaining.

Charles Krauthammer last night said that Obama critics on Fox News are “a lot like [Hugo Chavez’] Caracas where all the media, except one, are state run.” But right-wing polemicists like Krauthammer are all over the media.

In addition to his Rupert Murdoch perch at Fox, Krauthammer remains as a regular columnist at the Post, alongside fellow right-wing Obama haters such as Bill Kristol, George Will, Jim Hoagland, Michael Gerson and Robert Kagan — as well as a whole bevy of typical, banal establishment spokespeople who are highly supportive of whatever the permanent Washington establishment favors (David Ignatius, Fred Hiatt, Ruth Marcus, David Broder, Richard Cohen, Howie Kurtz, etc. etc.). And that’s to say nothing of the regular Op-Ed appearances by typical Krauthammer-mimicking neoconservative voices such as John Bolton, Joe Lieberman, and Douglas Feith — and the Post Editorial Page itself. “Caracas” indeed.

Notably, Froomkin just recently had a somewhat acrimonious exchange with the oh-so-oppressed Krauthammer over torture, after Froomkin criticized Krauthammer’s explicit endorsement of torture and Krauthammer responded by calling Froomkin’s criticisms “stupid.” And now — weeks later — Froomkin is fired by the Post while the persecuted Krauthammer, comparing himself to endangered journalists in Venezuela, remains at the Post, along with countless others there who think and write just like he does:  i.e., standard neoconservative pablum. Froomkin was previously criticized for being “highly opinionated and liberal” by Post ombudsman Deborah Howell (even as she refused to criticize blatant right-wing journalists).

All of this underscores a critical and oft-overlooked point:  what one finds virtually nowhere in the establishment press are those who criticize Obama not in order to advance their tawdry right-wing agenda but because the principles that led them to criticize Bush compel similar criticism of Obama.

[Click to continue reading The Washington Post fires its best columnist. Why? – Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com]

Nothing Can Go Wrong in Blue

From my humble experience, the only reason I ever (and I mean ever) visited the Washington Post was to read Dan Froomkin’s column, then to read his blog. I guess I’m the wrong demographic for Washington Post, I’m unabashedly liberal, educated, technologically savvy, and even (shudder) bourgeois, by income if not by mentality. The Washington Post is happy competing for conservative readers, and following the Washington Times Fox News model of all Republican news all the time. I trust Mr. Froomkin will land somewhere soon, and continue his responsible journalistic approach.

Dan Froomkin comments:

I’m terribly disappointed. I was told that it had been determined that my White House Watch blog wasn’t “working” anymore. But from what I could tell, it was still working very well. I also thought White House Watch was a great fit with The Washington Post brand, and what its readers reasonably expect from the Post online.

As I’ve written elsewhere, I think that the future success of our business depends on journalists enthusiastically pursuing accountability and calling it like they see it. That’s what I tried to do every day. Now I guess I’ll have to try to do it someplace else.

Krauthammer might have burst into tears when he read this article:

Charles Krauthammer, in his Washington Post opinion column this morning, tries to find loopholes for impermissible evil.

“Torture is an impermissible evil. Except under two circumstances,” he writes.

“The first is the ticking time bomb. An innocent’s life is at stake. The bad guy you have captured possesses information that could save this life. He refuses to divulge. In such a case, the choice is easy.”

Actually, no. The ticking time bomb scenario only exists in two places: On TV and in the dark fantasies of power-crazed and morally deficient authoritarians. In real life, things are never that certain. And trained interrogators say that even in the most extreme circumstances, traditional methods are the most effective.

Krauthammer continues: “Some people, however, believe you never torture. Ever. They are akin to conscientious objectors who will never fight in any war under any circumstances, and for whom we correctly show respect by exempting them from war duty. But we would never make one of them Centcom commander.”

Actually, no. They are normal people who share the post-World War II international consensus that “recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.” Indeed, the idea of putting someone without a healthy respect for human rights at Centcom is abhorrent — unless of course you believe that human rights don’t matter.

[Click to continue reading White House Watch – Krauthammer’s Asterisks ]

After flaying Krauthammer a bit more, Mr. Froomkin concludes:

Precisely what members of Congress were told and how they responded should absolutely be a part of any thorough official investigation into the abuses of the Bush years. The enablers must be exposed as surely as the complicit. And members of Congress who knew what was happening and remained silent must be held to public account for their moral cowardice.

But their failure to speak out does not change the fundamental moral equation.

If the United States is to live up to its core values, if it is to once again be a beacon of human rights to the world and a champion of human dignity, then when it comes to torture — to impermissible evil, as Krauthammer himself puts it — there can be no asterisks.

Reading Around on June 15th

Some additional reading June 15th from 18:15 to 19:26:

  • Iran’s Disputed Election – The Big Picture – Boston.com – re Iran’s Presidential Election, Tehran and other cities have seen the largest street protests and rioting since the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Supporters of reform candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, upset at their announced loss and suspicions of voter fraud, took to the streets both peacefully and, in some cases, violently to vent their frustrations. Iranian security forces and hardline volunteer militia members responded with force and arrests, attempting to stamp out the protests – meanwhile, thousands of Iranians who were happy with the election outcome staged their own victory demonstrations. Mousavi himself has been encouraging peaceful demonstrations, and called for calm at a large demonstration today (held in defiance of an official ban), as Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has just called for an official inquiry into accusations of election irregularities. (Update: several photos of injuries from gunshots at today’s rally added below)
  • The Fiery Judge | Mother Jones – comparing the substance and tone of her questions with those of his male colleagues and his own questions.

    “And I must say I found no difference at all. So I concluded that all that was going on was that there were some male lawyers who couldn’t stand being questioned toughly by a woman,” Calabresi says. “It was sexism in its most obvious form.”

    And what if such criticism came from a woman lawyer? Well, says Calabresi, women can be just as sexist as men in their expectations of how a woman judge should act.

    NPR played a couple of snippets of Sotomayor in its piece so listeners could judge for themselves. Ann did: “Listening to the clips, Sotomayor sounds an awful lot like John Roberts — who did not face any concerns about his ‘fiery temperament’ during his confirmation hearings. Totenberg exposes this talking point for what it is: straight-up sexism, with some racism mixed in for good measure.”

  • Daily Kos: Obama: Iranian people “should be heard and respected” – “What I would say to those people who put so much hope and energy and optimism into the political process, I would say to them that the world is watching and inspired by their participation, regardless of what the ultimate outcome of the election was. And they should know that the world is watching.And particularly to the youth of Iran, I want them to know that we in the United States do not want to make any decisions for the Iranians, but we do believe that the Iranian people and their voices should be heard and respected.”
  • Twitter Blog: Down Time Rescheduled – A critical network upgrade must be performed to ensure continued operation of Twitter. In coordination with Twitter, our network host had planned this upgrade for tonight. However, our network partners at NTT America recognize the role Twitter is currently playing as an important communication tool in Iran
  • Competition For Dummies by digby Just think. This… – “Sadly, this is the result of misguided American exceptionalism (and years of convenient Republican gibberish.) Even people who by all rights should be well informed about the issues of the day just simply can’t wrap their minds around the fact that our health care system is not only bad by our own measurements but that it is far worse than the systems in other industrialized countries. Foreigners cannot possibly have better health care than America. This is the greatest country the world has ever known or ever will know! It’s impossible!

    Except it’s true.”

Newt Gingrich Calls Reagan Speech “Intellectual Nonsense and Stunningly Dangerous”

Ooops, Newty meant to address his remarks at Obama, but since research and The Google are not part of Republican speechwriter’s toolbox, he just looks like a misinformed fool, again.

Who Is This Slimy Creature? It's Newt!

Ronald Reagan, addressing U.N. on June 19, 1982:

I speak today as both a citizen of the United States and of the world. … My people have sent me here today to speak for them as citizens of the world, which they truly are, for we Americans are drawn from every nationality represented in this chamber today.

Newt Gingrich addressing GOP on June 8, 2009:

Let me be clear. I am not a citizen of the world! I think the entire concept is intellectual nonsense and stunningly dangerous.

[From Daily Kos: Newt Gingrich Calls Reagan Concept “Intellectual Nonsense and Stunningly Dangerous”]

I thought the self-styled Reaganites like Gingrich made love to the corpse of Reagan at every opportunity?

Fitz Being Smeared by Murdoch

First I’d heard of this

Patrick Fitzgerald may be the most feared prosecutor in the country, but even as he’s racked up headlines for big-name convictions (Scooter Libby) and indictments (Rod Blagojevich), the hard-charging U.S. attorney from Chicago has been waging a private crusade: trying to kill a book he believes maligns his reputation. In the past year and a half, Fitzgerald has written four letters to HarperCollins—owned by Rupert Murdoch‘s News Corp.—demanding it “cease publication” and “withdraw” copies of Triple Cross, a 2006 book by ex–TV newsman Peter Lance that criticizes Fitzgerald’s handling of terror cases in New York in the 1990s. Fitzgerald raised the temperature even more last week, aiming to halt a paperback version. “To put it plain and simple,” he wrote in a June 2 letter obtained by NEWSWEEK, “if in fact you publish the book this month and it defames me or casts me in a false light, HarperCollins will be sued.”

Media experts say Fitzgerald’s letters, written on personal stationery and totaling 30 pages, are unusual for a top lawman. “We certainly find it highly offensive that a federal prosecutor would do something like this,” says Gregg Leslie of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. But Fitzgerald makes no apologies. The book’s claims, he wrote in an e-mail, are “outrageously dishonest.” He says that Lance “alleged that I deliberately misled courts and the public” in ways that led to the 9/11 attacks.

[Click to continue reading US Attorney Fitzgerald Fights a Book Publication | Newsweek Politics | Newsweek.com]

Claiming that Fiztgerald is responsible for 9/11? I could see why he would be offended. Is this payback for the Valerie Plame prosecution? or just another hatchet-job by News Corp?