Absolution

It's official.

I am officially absolved for comparing the Republicans to the Soviets.

None other than the Shooter himself, Darth Cheney, said so in a recent speech.

As time passed, the terrorists believed they'd exposed a certain weakness and lack of confidence in the West, particularly in America. Dr. Bernard Lewis explained the terrorists' reasoning this way: "During the Cold War," Dr. Lewis wrote, "two things came to be known and generally recognized in the Middle East concerning the two rival superpowers. If you did anything to annoy the Russians, punishment would be swift and dire. If you said or did anything against the Americans, not only would there be no punishment; there might even be some possibility of reward, as the usual anxious procession of diplomats and politicians, journalists and scholars and miscellaneous others came with their usual pleading inquiries: 'What have we done to offend you? What can we do to put it right?'"

So, apparently we were not fighting the Soviets in the Cold War to protect the world from Soviet totalitarianism. Apparently, we were fighting them because they got to be totalitarian and we couldn't.

The Rule of Law Died Again Today.

Kagro X over at Big Orange says it better than I can:

So what we're saying here is that secret memos can now be drafted (retroactively and be backdated if necessary?) that purport to be "legal directives" upon which the telecom companies can claim to have relied in "good faith." Or worse, they may even be able to say they received nothing but oral assurances that their activities were "legal." And if you want to see these "legal directives," it just so happens that since they've been prepared by the Office of Legal Counsel or some other close advisors to the president, executive privilege may just prevent you from doing so.

Or "national security."

Or "I just don't feel like it, and you can't make me."

And that's the real problem here. How is anyone to tell the difference between law that meets the commonly accepted definition we all work with every day on the one hand, and "whatever the hell the president says" on the other?

What is "law," anyway? Is it the stuff that Congress passes in public and that you can read in order to be able to obey it? Or is it just anything that can in practice frighten you into obeying? If you can be sent to jail, or immunized from suit, or whatever, based on a secret showing that you relied in "good faith" on a memo an "administration" official gives you (and literally nothing more -- and perhaps even a lot less), you really have to ask yourself that question. What. Is. Law?

I Finally Figured it Out

Who Attorney General Alberto "Abu Ghraib" Gonzales reminds me of:



I mean, habeas corpus isn't just Constitutional Law 101 - it's Schoolhouse Rock. Federalist 84? Tenth Amendment? Apparently, neither of these exist in Torturin' Al's Bizarro World - or, like all to many, he considers the Constitution clause by clause and not as a whole, just like anyone trying to get out of a contract does. I mean, the concept that the Constitution doesn't enumerate individual rights but rather limits the Federal government's infringement of them is grade-school civics.