Murder as a By-Product of Rightwing Fearmongering

Josh Marshall writes that the BS storm surrounding Obamacare right now has become a "white noise of derp and mendacity" -- i.e., there's so much spin and propaganda here that it all sort of cancels itself out, at least in terms of specificity. There's a lot of criticism out there, but there isn't any single line of attack. Apparently, piling on over the rocky rollout hasn't seemed to have been enough to do much of anything. More is needed. The volume mut be increase. The anger must be red-hot. The rightwing herd must be driven to  panic.The derp must peg the stupidometer.

And that's just what Republicans are planning to do -- if they can manage to settle on one single messaging strategy. Marshall warns us of one narrative that seems to be forming on the right: "Top Republicans are now making a concerted effort to convince the public that Obamacare 'navigators', people trained to help people navigate the new system, will steal their identities and private personal information."

They're diving on testimony from Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and -- surprise! -- taking it out of context to induce hysteria. On Nov. 6, Sebelius was asked whether it was a requirement that the Obamacare "navigators" undergo a criminal background check. She said there wasn't a federal requirement, but that they were farming the job out to private contractors. Those entities have "the responsibility to screen their individual navigators and make sure that they are sufficiently trained for the job."

Who are these fly-by-night organizations filled with unchecked felons? According to the report, "local United Way chapters, higher education institutions and the like."

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Terrorism is Not the Greatest Threat to Liberty

Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare. -James Madison, fourth US president, known as "Father of the Constitution" for drafting the that document and authoring the Bill of Rights.

When the Bush administration declared a "Global War on Terror," Madison's words should've echoed from every corner of Washington and from every voice in the media. If there was ever a case of Madison's "continual warfare," the GWoT was it. Other Presidents had declared wars on concepts -- a war on crime, war on poverty, war on drugs, etc. -- and those wars did not go (or have not gone) well. When the goal is the complete eradication of a problem, failure becomes extremely easy. The goal should always be to mitigate the problem to as close to nonexistence as reality will allow. This is not the definition of war.

Of course, these other "wars" launched by other presidents were mostly metaphorical. They weren't actually launching a war, but announcing an increased focus on a problem and an increased effort to eliminate it. Bush's War on Terror was quite different. He meant it as a literal war. "Americans are asking, how will we fight and win this war?" Bush explained to a joint session of congress. "We will direct every resource at our command, every means of diplomacy, every tool of intelligence, every instrument of law enforcement, every financial influence, and every necessary weapon of war, to the disruption and to the defeat of the global terror network."

This wasn't "war" as a rhetorical device, this was actual, people-are-going-to-die war.

And Madison's warning has proven true through every stage of this thing. The forces of liberty don't torture, they don't build concentration camps. The debt and deficits created by this War on Terror have been tremendous and bog us down to this day. To make things worse, Bush decided to cut taxes during a time of increased wartime spending -- an unprecedented and tremendously irresponsible act of fiscal malpractice.

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When Gun Nuts Abandon Guns as Their Method of 'Tyrant-Killing'

For a while now, I've been arguing that the gun lobby's and Tea Party's interpretation of the Second Amendment amounts to advocating terrorism. There's no small amount of bullying thuggishness in the threat to start shooting "tyrants" if you don't get your way. They would have us believe that the founders intended that constitutionality be tested not by the courts, but by wild-eyed, poorly-informed loons who believe that "unconstitutional" means "something I don't agree with." And that the remedy for an unconstitutional law or act isn't to reverse it in the judiciary, but to start blasting. Luckily, people who feel the need to hide behind piles of guns and ammo aren't exactly paragons of courage, so the threat had remained a threat.

Until now.

New York Times: Two letters that contained threats to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg — one addressed to him, the other to a lobbyist who works on his gun control campaign — have tested positive for the deadly poison ricin, the authorities said on Wednesday.

The first letter was opened at a New York City mail center in Lower Manhattan on Friday, the police said. Although staff members at the mail center do not appear to have become ill, several police officers who came into contact with the letter’s contents “indicated some mild symptoms the next day, including diarrhea,” and they are being treated in hospitals, the New York Police Department’s spokesman, Paul J. Browne, said on Wednesday afternoon. “They’re being checked out as a precaution.”

The second letter, which was opened on Sunday in Washington, was addressed to Mark Glaze, the director of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a group Mr. Bloomberg helps run and finances, officials said. Mr. Glaze opened the letter, an official said. No injuries were reported, Mr. Browne said.

"Both letters were identical in content, bore references to the debate over gun regulation and contained written threats to Mayor Bloomberg," the report tells us.

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If the Right Doesn't Like Being Suspected of Terrorism, They Should Stop Talking Like Terrorists

I’m not sure how to start this one, but I know where I want to go with it. So let’s just jump right in.

Associated Press: FBI officials said Monday they foiled a terrorist attack being planned in a small western Minnesota town, but they offered no details about the exact targets of the attack _ or the motive of the man accused of having a cache of explosives and weapons in a mobile home.

The FBI said "the lives of several local residents were potentially saved" with the arrest of Buford Rogers, 24, who made his first appearance Monday in U.S. District Court in St. Paul on one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm.

Rogers, of Montevideo, was arrested Friday after authorities searched a mobile home he’s associated with and found Molotov cocktails, suspected pipe bombs and firearms, according to a court affidavit.

ABC News’ Matthew Jaffe reports via Twitter that the FBI told him Buford is a "militia type" -- meaning one of those rightwing extremist domestic terrorists we’ve all been assured are imaginary. And that’s enough to trigger a whine from the right. The wingnut blog Jammie Wearing Fool would like to inform you that the real victim here is the Tea Party.

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Graham and McCain Exploit Boston Tragedy

After the arrest of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in connection with the Boston bomb attacks, the nation's top unrepentant neocons --  John McCain and Lindsey Graham -- are currently engaged in a high-profile demonstration of grandstanding. The purpose of this posturing seems to be to showcase how Very Important and Serious they are, why you should have them on Meet the Press, and why you should vote for Graham instead of whatever random Tea Party nutjob the far right base will try to primary him with.

Graham and McCain would very much like Tsarnaev to be charged as an enemy combatant. Slate's Emily Bazelon spells out exactly why this is all pretense -- Graham knows this can't happen because "he helped write the 2009 law [pdf] that says Tsarnaev may not be tried as an enemy combatant and thus points away from holding him as one. But that’s not stopping Graham and the others from trying to score terror points—and, of course, trying to make the president appear weak. This isn’t about actually fighting terrorists. It’s about running for election."

So far, the rightwing blogosphere is following along like a brainless puppy. Mostly because they too are more interested in embarrassing Obama than rights or justice. After all, it was just weeks ago that half of them where defending the right of suspects like Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to due process in the case of drone attacks on American citizens. But that was because the Obama administration held the opposite view, not because they gave a damn. Now that an American citizen is not in the sights of a drone hitman, they're all wondering why anyone would be at all concerned about due process for terrorists. As always, consistency is not their strong point.

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Tea Party Bloggers, the Boston Bombing, and the Cult of Perpetual Victimhood

It's a shocking and terrible crime. A blast that was almost certainly terrorism (run of the mill mass murder can't be ruled out yet) rocked the finish line at the Boston Marathon, followed quickly by another. The brutal carnage has resulted in the death of three, with the real possibility of that number rising still -- many of the injuries were horrific.

The smoke had barely cleared before the speculation began -- and with it, the idiocy. Reports were confused, unclear, sometimes contradictory. But one group of Americans felt they had a firm grasp one the true story in Boston. And that story was that they -- the rightwing, Tea Party, wingnut bloggers -- were the real victims in the day's tragedy.

Leading the charge was the blog "Fire Andrea Mitchell," claiming that CNN's Wolf Blitzer had blamed the Tea Party for the bombing. The right went insane on Twitter, which is where the right goes to go insane these days, and the story spread like widlfire. "CNN's Wolf Blitzer just speculated if anti-tax groups were behind the bombing WITH ZERO EVIDENCE," one tweeted -- which turned out to be a massively hypocritical statement.

Blitzer's supposed "blaming" of the Tea Party right consisted of one sentence, "It is a state holiday in Massachusetts today called Patriots' Day and, uh, who knows if that had anything at all to do with these explosions." The only way you to take that as an attack on the right is if you wanted so badly to wear the mantle of victimhood that you'd twist anything anyone said in order to take offense. If you were so self-absorbed as to be able to do that, then the victims weren't those people bleeding on the streets of Boston, the real victims were the wingnut bloggers and their audience.

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Making it Easy for Terrorists to Arm Themselves

Most times, sweeping efforts at change have unintended consequences. When a thread is deeply woven into our society, pulling it out will almost inevitably unravel parts of the tapestry we didn't intend to. But rarely does that unintended consequence demonstrate the need for the change that caused it in the first place. A new report demonstrates this phenomenon.

The Guardian:

The number of anti-government, far-right extremist groups has soared to record levels since 2008 and they are becoming increasingly militant, according to a report by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

It says the number of groups in the “Patriot” movement stood at 1,360 in 2012, up from 149 in 2008 when Barack Obama was first elected president, an increase of 813%. The report said the rise was driven by opposition to Obama and the “spluttering rage” over federal attempts at gun control.

Those who were identified as “militia” groups or the paramilitary wing of the Patriot movement, numbered 321, up from 42 in 2008, the SPLC said in its report.

Concern over a “truly explosive growth” of groups on the radical right, along with a rise in domestic terrorist plots, has prompted the SPLC to write to US attorney general Eric Holder and Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano, warning of the potential for domestic terrorism and urging them create a new, inter-agency task force to assess whether it has adequate resources to deal with it.

So here's the thing: because of our insanely loose gun laws, we're pretty much arming the very terrorists who want to kill us. If that strikes you as flabbergastingly stupid, that's because it is.

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The NRA's Pro-Assassination Argument

According to George Mason University Historian Christopher Hamner, John Wilkes Booth was very clear on his reason for assassinating President Abraham Lincoln. Booth, considering himself a southern patriot, had plotted elaborate plans to kidnap the president, most of which were completely unrealistic fantasies; one "involved capturing Lincoln in his box at Ford’s Theater and lowering the president to the stage with ropes," Hamner writes. But it wasn't until he'd heard a speech by Lincoln that he settled on the easier and more realistic scheme of killing the president. The war was all but over, the confederacy had clearly lost, and Lincoln was looking ahead toward the future.

...Lincoln’s speech that evening outlined some of his ideas about reconstructing the nation and bringing the defeated Confederate states back into the Union. Lincoln also indicated a wish to extend the franchise to some African-Americans—at the very least, those who had fought in the Union ranks during the war—and expressed a desire that the southern states would extend the vote to literate blacks, as well. Booth stood in the audience for the speech, and this notion seems to have amplified his rage at Lincoln. “That means nigger citizenship,” he told Lewis Powell, one of his band of conspirators. “Now, by God, I’ll put him through. That is the last speech he will ever make.”

And so, on the night of April 14, 1865, a shot rang out in Ford's Theater, accompanied by the slogan, "Sic semper tyrannus!" -- "Thus always to tyrants."

The reason I bring this up is because the word "tyranny" is being thrown around a lot by demagogues and the gullible types who hang on their every word. Most recently, it's come up in the debate over limits on guns. Gun nuts argue that the Second Amendment is some sort of inoculation against tyranny, so it pays to ask: who gets to decide who's a tyrant?

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Four Years of Hatred and Lies Bear Fruit

Given the news, you have to wonder what terrorists, if any, are at this year's Republican National Convention. Gawker is reporting that a certain Isaac Aguigui attended the 2008 Republican Convention as a page. So who's Isaac Aguigui?

He's one of the leaders of this:

The Atlantic:

In a disturbing report out of Georgia, prosecutors say four U.S. soldiers plotted to overthrow the government and assassinate President Obama. Details remain slim about the case, but the AP's Russ Bynum says the soldiers allegedly bought $87,000 worth of "guns and bomb-making materials and plotted to take over Fort Stewart, bomb targets in nearby Savannah and Washington state, as well as assassinate the president." The plot was apparently uncovered in relation to a murder case surrounding the killing of former soldier Michael Roark and his girlfriend Tiffany York in December. On Monday, Pfc. Michael Burnett, one of the accused soldiers, plead guilty to manslaughter and gang charges in the murder case. "Burnett told a Long County judge that Roark, who had just left the Army, knew of the militia group's plans and was killed because he was 'a loose end,'" reports Bynum.

...In Washington state... the group plotted to bomb a dam and poison the state’s apple crop. Ultimately, prosecutors said, the militia’s goal was to overthrow the government and assassinate the president.

We remember what the 2008 campaign was like, right? A respectful but vigorous debate of the virtues of two competing plans for America, put forward in rational terms that treated Americans like adults capable of... Oh, who am I kidding? It was like this:

Frank Rich, 2008:

If you think way back to the start of this marathon campaign, back when it seemed preposterous that any black man could be a serious presidential contender, then you remember the biggest fear about Barack Obama: a crazy person might take a shot at him.

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Republicans and Homegrown Terrorism

This is terrorism, right?

Wisconsin State Journal:

A Marshfield man who drove to Madison to kill an abortion doctor faces federal charges after he was arrested Wednesday night when his gun went off in his motel room not far from the Planned Parenthood clinic that he planned to attack Thursday.

Ralph Lang, 63, told a Madison police officer at the Motel 6, 1754 Thierer Road, that he had a gun "to lay out abortionists because they are killing babies," according to a criminal complaint filed Thursday in U.S. District Court.

Lang said he planned on shooting the clinic's doctor "right in the head," according to the complaint. Asked if he planned to shoot just the doctor or nurses, too, Lang replied he wished he "could line them up all in a row, get a machine gun, and mow them all down," the complaint said.

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Bin Laden Photos Probably Less Consequential Than Most Believe

If the White House decision not to release photos of Osama bin Laden's body splits pundits, talking heads, and other media types, there isn't a lot of controversy among the general public. An NBC poll finds a solid majority -- 64% -- agreeing with the decision. Of that percentage, 52% reportedly "strongly" agree. And with even al Qaeda admitting that bin Laden is dead, it's difficult to see what purpose the photos would serve.

Still, the Associated Press is on the case:

The Atlantic:

President Obama's decision to withhold the visual evidence of Osama bin Laden's death has created a fundamental disagreement between the White House and one of the largest journalism organizations in the world. "This information is important for the historical record," said Michael Oreskes, senior managing editor at The Associated Press. "That's our view."

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Fighting Terrorism the Right Way, Not the Easy Way

I often say that there are two ways of doing anything; the easy way and the right way. Sometimes, the easy way is good enough. In others, the details are as important as the central job. The more important the job, the more important it is to do it the right way -- zip through mowing the lawn, but take your time seeding it.

In taking down Osama bin Laden, President Obama avoided doing things the easy way.

The Telegraph:

At first, a drone attack was considered, but President Obama decided against it, partly to avoid civilian casualties and partly because: "He wanted proof. He didn't want to just leave a pile of rubble." Between March 14 and April 28 Mr. Obama chaired five National Security Council meetings to discuss the raid.

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Birth of a Conspiracy Theory

Monday, a pipe bomb was discovered in a backpack left along the route of a Martin Luther King Day unity march in Spokane, Washington. The bomb was described by the FBI as a case of "domestic terrorism."

MSNBC:

In an interview on MSNBC cable's The Rachel Maddow Show, Spokesman-Review reporter Thomas Clouse said confidential sources told him that the device was equipped with a remote control detonator and contained shrapnel.

A bomb disposal unit was called in and neutralized the device with a robot. The FBI said in a statement on Tuesday that "the backpack contained a potentially deadly destructive device, likely capable of inflicting multiple casualties."

"You could describe it as an improvised destructive device... or improvised explosive device," Frank Harrill of the Spokane FBI office said. "...the timing and placement of the backpack [along the march route] is inescapable."

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GOP Ties to Terrorism, FOX's Hypocrisy, and The Daily Show

It's tempting to use it as an example of just how blowful our media has become. I've said for some time that Comedy Central's The Daily Show offers some of the best media criticism out there. Sure, there's Media Matters for America and Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (where I'm sure TDS gets a lot of their ideas), but no one seems able to explain the problems quite so neatly and understandably.

But, in this case at least, it's not that most of the media is so bad, but that Stewart and his writers are so good. Comedy is the perfect outlet to deal with subjects like hypocrisy or corruption, since these subjects lead to outrage. The outrageous is the absurd is the funny. People can suffer from outrage fatigue, but no one ever gets tired of laughing at morons. As a result, the staff at The Daily Show can keep our attention when other media outlets have us reaching for the remote. At the same time, they can draw revealing parallels that are not only instructive, but are the payoff to the setup -- the lede becomes the punchline.

For example, earlier this week, TDS looked at FOX News' coverage of the US Chamber of Commerce's foreign funding scandal and compared it to their coverage of funding for the proposed Muslim community center in Manhattan.

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The Terrorists Among Us

America is under attack from violent religious extremists with no respect for human life. They hate our freedoms and stand against liberty. They do not respect our laws and would dismantle our Constitution. They commit crimes against Americans regularly, speak out against our system of law daily, and spread their hatred through internet chatter every minute of every day. They seek nothing less than the takeover of our nation, so they can force us all the live under the oppression of their religious laws.

Damned Christians.

Look, I'm willing to accept that there are moderate Christians. Good people who just want to live their lives the way they want. But it's hard to believe that the extremists don't speak for them when they're all so silent on their brethren's crimes. Our wake-up call actually came back in May, when a mosque in Jacksonville, Florida was firebombed by radical Christian extremists. It was overlooked -- called an isolated incident -- and we all moved on, foolishly believing that it wouldn't happen again. We aren't some backwater third world nation, we thought, surely our Christian population is civilized.

Then came the cowardly attack on a Muslim cabbie, the desecration of a mosque with urine, a suspected case of arson, and shots fired near those picking through the wreckage of that arson. Not enough? David Gibson has more:

A brick was thrown through the window of a California mosque last week and a few days earlier signs were left at the mosque that read, "No temple for the god of terrorism at Ground Zero." Earlier this month, a plastic pig inscribed with messages such as "Remember 9-11" and "MO HAM MED the Pig" was stuffed into the mailbox of another Islamic center in California. (Like Jews, Muslims have a prohibition on eating pork.)

Clearly, they hate our First Amendment freedoms. So far, I've come across one prominent Christian leader willing to speak out against this hate-wave, but even then, the condemnation was conditional.

"The First Amendment guarantees people the right to worship where they live," [Southern Baptist leader Richard Land] said. "I am calling for all people of faith and good will to stand up for the rights of our Muslim fellow citizens."

Land has criticized plans to build a mosque near the site of the World Trade Center in New York City, saying it was too close to the site of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

"This is different," he said. "There's no Ground Zero in Murfreesboro."

The message is clear. The jihad against the mosque in Murfreesboro is getting too much attention, so cool it off for a bit. But the fatwa against a Muslim community center in Manhattan still stands. Incredibly, this terrorist leader was allowed to go free and remains at large. Already, fellow Christians openly discuss carrying out terrorist attacks on their extremist websites.

Some Christians may find being tied to the extremists in their midst offensive, but I'd just point out that I'm only applying the unassailable logic of the Christian right to the Christian right. For example, toward the middle of August, jihadi talk show host Bill O'Reilly ran with the familiar theme. In defense of building Christian and Jewish houses of worship, Bill said, "Nobody would be complaining because Christians and Jews weren't involved in the 9/11 attack. Radical Muslims were. And you may remember the Muslim world largely did not condemn the al Qaeda action, while most Christians and Jews did."

But the Muslim world did condemn the 9/11 attacks. They did it right away. So I can only assume that the condemnation must either be universal or come from the leaders of his choosing before O'Reilly would accept it. We must also assume that these leaders have to actively seek out O'Reilly to make those condemnations in person, since it's clear that he couldn't be bothered to actually look for them in news stories. So I'm just holding O'Reilly to the same standard; I've chosen you, Bill. Come over to my house and condemn Christian terrorism or I'll be forced to assume you're a jihadist yourself. Really, it's the only safe assumption I could make. We can't be too careful in these dangerous times. The only wise thing to do is assume a Christian is terrorist until it's proven otherwise.

Think I'm overreacting? Consider this chilling passage from their holy book, "The Bible":

Suppose you hear in one of the towns the LORD your God is giving you that some worthless rabble among you have led their fellow citizens astray by encouraging them to worship foreign gods. In such cases, you must examine the facts carefully. If you find it is true and can prove that such a detestable act has occurred among you, you must attack that town and completely destroy all its inhabitants, as well as all the livestock. Then you must pile all the plunder in the middle of the street and burn it. Put the entire town to the torch as a burnt offering to the LORD your God. That town must remain a ruin forever; it may never be rebuilt. Keep none of the plunder that has been set apart for destruction. Then the LORD will turn from his fierce anger and be merciful to you. He will have compassion on you and make you a great nation, just as he solemnly promised your ancestors. "The LORD your God will be merciful only if you obey him and keep all the commands I am giving you today, doing what is pleasing to him."

Obviously, their holy book calls for the destruction of all infidels, as well as their cities and buildings. The arsonist in Murfreesboro was only obeying his insane god's edict. Unless people like Bill O'Reilly renounce this passage, we can only assume he supports it as well -- as all observant Christians must. Again, it's right there in their holy writings. They cannot deny it.

We mustn't let down our guard, even for a moment. Because if we do, the Christian jihadists will surely see it as a sign of weakness. We are at war with terror, no matter what form that terror takes. If we ignore the fact that we're the target of Christian terrorism, Christians will take advantage of it. It's the logic their leaders apply to the War on Terror, so it only makes sense that we apply it to them as well.

-Wisco


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Lieberman Tries, Fails to Save McCain from Himself

53 hours after Faisal Shahzad tried to set off a bomb in Times Square, he found himself in custody. This was on May third. On May fourth, The Hill ran the headline, "McCain: 'Serious mistake' if car bombing suspect was Mirandized." Neither the arrest nor the over-the-top reaction from the right took very long. At this point, it's pretty clear that -- no matter how successful an investigation into terrorism is -- some rightwinger is going to have a problem with it, because President Obama can't do anything right. The president could've sent a team back in time to take out Shahzad before he committed his crime and John McCain would complain that he was allowed to be born. The Republican Party's strategy has been to oppose everything and anything this president does and none have taken this strategy more to heart than John Sidney McCain. A man of irrational temper, McCain holds a grudge the way Gollum held his Precious. So, if Obama does anything, it's automatically the wrong thing. And it's John McCain who knows what's the right thing.

Except, as is so often the case, McCain's idea of "the right thing" is stupid beyond words. "Obviously that would be a serious mistake... at least until we find out as much information we have," McCain told Don Imus of Mirandizing Shahzad. "Don't give this guy his Miranda rights until we find out what it's all about."

See, here's the problem: being read your rights doesn't actually give you any rights you don't already have. Reciting the Miranda text -- "You have the right to remain silent..." -- merely informs you of your rights. So McCain's argument about "giving this guy his Miranda rights" is just plain dumb. Or is McCain arguing that there's no way for Shahzad to know his rights without being informed of them by the arresting officer? Because that would require us to believe that an American citizen never watched TV. Everyone knows their Miranda rights. Except, apparently, John McCain. Withholding the Miranda text would accomplish exactly nothing... Well, other than make sure that any confessions Shahzad gave would be inadmissible in court. I'm pretty sure that's a bad thing.





So, if McCain -- in the middle of a tough reelection fight -- said something dumb, that would be bad. McCain has a tightrope to walk here; he has to be just crazy enough and seem just ignorant enough to win the wingnut purity test of the Arizona Republican primary, but not so crazy or ignorant that he winds up spending most of his time in the general distancing himself from it all. Even in Arizona, the voters in the general election aren't as goofy as the voters in the primary.

To the rescue rides McCain's best campaign buddy, Joe Lieberman. John McCain makes a valid point, Joe says, people have way too many rights. The Supreme Court ruled in the Miranda case that not informing people of their rights was akin to denying them. And, since the Fifth Amendment protects you against having to incriminate yourself, clearly this is the problem. Maybe we ought to take away terrorist suspects' citizenship -- then they wouldn't have all these rights.


Which, of course, is wrong. Here's the text of the Fifth:

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

So, unless you want to argue that only American citizens (and corporations) are "persons," Lieberman's idea solves absolutely none of the problems Joe and John want fixed. And never mind that, Mirandized or not, Shahzad's been singing like a bird, a problem doesn't have to actually exist in order to be fixed.

That fix comes in the form of legislation that would allow the US government to strip citizens of their citizenship. This way, they won't get those pesky rights -- which they have regardless -- and we don't have to worry about trying them in court -- which we would still have do. According to Greg Sargent, "You would still have the right to contest this in court. And if you did, the burden of proof would be on State -- not on you -- to persuade the court that your involvement with a terror organization is sufficient to justify taking away your citizen status."

"Bottom line: Lieberman's law can't keep you out of court against your will if you want to contest efforts to strip your citizenship," Sargent continues. "And chances are that if you were already facing other charges -- plotting or executing a terrorist act -- you would be simultaneously tried for that in civilian court, too, even as State continued to try to revoke your citizen status."

So there's your solution, a big pile of nuthin'. It wouldn't take away any rights, it wouldn't keep anyone out of court, it wouldn't even solve the made-up problems identified by Lieberman and McCain. The only problem it solves it solves by putting a fig leaf over McCain's kneejerk idiocy. But at least the wingnuts in the Republican primary will be mollified.

Or not. Lieberman's legislation gives the power to the State Department to do all this citizenship-stripping; i.e., the executive branch. John McCain and Joe Lieberman will be giving Obama -- who the Republican base thinks is a  Communist/Fascist Kenyan/Indonesian Pretender to the Throne intent on destroying America and is maybe even the Antichrist -- the power to strip people of their citizenship because someone says they're a terrorist. The teabaggers have convinced themselves that Obama thinks they're all terrorists, so you can imagine all the lunacy this would unleash. This doesn't seem to have occurred to the teabaggers yet, but they're slow on the uptake. Give them a minute. It'll come to them eventually. Someone like Sarah Palin won't catch it, but someone like Michelle Malkin will.

And how will this play in the Arizona Republican primary? You don't have to be a genius to figure that one out. You just have to be smarter than Joe Lieberman and John McCain.

-Wisco


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Lady Gaga and the Right's Calls for Terrorist Appeasement

If there's one tactic Republicans have down pat, it's fearmongering. We see it in the "death panels" in the healthcare reform debate, we saw it in nonexistent WMD in preparing the public to invade Iraq, we see it as a "slippery slope" argument against same sex marriage, where people will inevitably begin having sex with their dogs. They know who their base is and, when they want to whip up hysteria, they turn to the most gullible and cowardly of Americans. Despite the fact that history reflects poorly on it, McCarthyism has never died, it's just been perfected. Don't like something? Well, just make some crap up, make sure it's extra scary, then present it as if it's both sensible and true.

Case in point:

Bret Stephens, Wall Street Journal:

Pop quiz -- What does more to galvanize radical anti-American sentiment in the Muslim world: (a) Israeli settlements on the West Bank; or (b) a Lady Gaga music video?

If your answer is (b) it means you probably have a grasp of the historical roots of modern jihadism. If, however, you answered (a), then congratulations: You are perfectly in synch with the new Beltway conventional wisdom, now jointly defined by Pat Buchanan and his strange bedfellows within the Obama administration.

That's right, it's all Lady Gaga's fault -- along with "Madonna, Farrah Fawcett, Marilyn Monroe, Josephine Baker or any other American woman who has, at one time or another, personified what the Egyptian Islamist writer Sayyid Qutb once called 'the American Temptress.'"





A few points here: First, this is insane beyond words. So insane that even people on his side of the fence are mocking it. "That must be why America was beset by jihadist attacks since at least 1948," writes Daniel Larison for The American Conservative. "Oh, wait, this never happened? How strange. That might mean that the decadence-as-cause-of-terrorism argument grossly exaggerates the importance of such cultural factors in explaining jihadist violence as a way of distracting us from remediable political grievances. In fact, attacks on Americans and American installations began after we inserted ourselves into the region’s conflicts and began establishing a military presence there."

Second, in taking credit for 9/11, al Qaeda cited Bosnia and Chechnya, not "American temptresses." In fact, I gave up looking for some example of al Qaeda complaining about western women's unchaste ways. Bin Laden himself is said to be someone who's obsessed with Whitney Houston and reads Playboy. The men who carried off the 9/11 attacks frequented strip clubs, slept with prostitutes, and bought porn.

Third and finally, why are we supposed to give a crap what terrorists think? Stephens is trying to downplay the importance of settlements in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but the argument that terrorism is all our fault for being so decadent and secular isn't a new one on the right. In his book The Enemy at Home, conservative icon Dinesh D'Souza writes, "In this book I make a claim that will seem startling at the outset. The cultural left in this country is responsible for causing 9/11... In faulting the cultural left, I am not making the absurd accusation that this group blew up the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. I am saying that the cultural left and its allies in Congress, the media, Hollywood, the nonprofit sector, and the universities are the primary cause of the volcano of anger toward America that is erupting from the Islamic world. The Muslims who carried out the 9/11 attacks were the product of this visceral rage -- some of it based on legitimate concerns, some of it based on wrongful prejudice, but all of it fueled and encouraged by the cultural left. Thus without the cultural left, 9/11 would not have happened."

D'Souza argues that terrorists don't hate us for inserting ourselves in local politics around the world, they hate us for Hollywood and gay rights and host of other "cultural left" issues that conservatives don't like and terrorists have failed to mention -- he also argues that this terrorist reasoning of his own invention has some validity. It's an "eat your peas or the boogeyman will get you" argument; live the way conservatives want you to live or terrorists will kill you.

Earlier this month, Jeff Walton of The Institute on Religion and Democracy warned that an openly lesbian Anglican bishop would get people in Africa killed. "When a Muslim sees the newspaper headline, 'Anglican elects partnered lesbian bishop,' they don't draw a distinction between African Christians and European or American Christians," he wrote. A Republican running for Roy Blunt's Missouri senate seat, Gary Nodler, argued that repealing "don't ask, don't tell" would anger terrorists and put military personnel at risk. And we all remember the national freak-out over trying terrorist suspects in New York City. The argument there was that it would anger terrorists and make NYC a target. This always struck me as an especially stupid argument; 9/11 happened there, it's already a target.

What so often jumps out at me when I write about conservatives is the hypocrisy. Republicans love to accuse Democrats and liberals of "appeasing terrorists" -- even though nothing could be further from the truth. Then, they turn around and argue that we have to literally appease terrorists; albeit appeasement of demands that terrorists have never actually made. Call it terrorism by proxy. It's not "make your culture more Godly or I'll kill you," it's "make your culture more Godly or they'll kill you." These aren't arguments, these are hollow threats.

If we do get hit again by terrorists, I will bet any amount of money you like that the video al Qaeda releases following the attack won't include the words, "...and put some clothes on Lady Gaga."

-Wisco


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Sen. Grassley's McCarthyism

In 2008, Michael Gabelman successfully ran a campaign to unseat judge Louis Butler from the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Gabelman's campaign was so slimy, so dishonest, that it gained national attention. That campaign can be summed up with one ad:

The ad was compared to the infamous "Willie Horton" ad run by then Vice President George HW Bush against Michael Dukakis. But this was actually worse -- it misrepresented Butler's role in the case of Reuben Lee Mitchell, a child molester.

FactCheck.org:

Some of the ad's statements are true. But the conclusion a viewer would naturally draw from the construction of the ad – that Mitchell was freed as a result of Butler's legal finagling (or maybe a decision he made since he became a judge), and used that freedom to commit more crimes – is not.

Butler was a public defender for part of his career. His job as a defense lawyer was to protect the rights of the accused. His job now as a judge is different. To say he "worked to put criminals on the street" while showing him in a judge's robes hoodwinks the viewer on two counts.

So Butler was being faulted for doing what he was constitutionally required to do as a public defender. In my opinion, anyone who would so mischaracterize the way the criminal justice system is supposed to -- hell, designed to -- work has no business in any courtroom, let alone a state's highest court. Any judge who would portray public defenders as inherently evil can't possibly be a good one. And, so long as Michael Gableman sits on Wisconsin's Supreme Court, any rational observer should question every finding that court hands down. It is now a court without credibility.

So what do you care about some Wisconsin election some slimeball won? Pretty much the same thing is happening again, on a national scale:

Washington Post:

Conservatives who are unhappy with the decision to close the prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have trained their fire on an unusual target: political appointees in the Obama Justice Department who represented detainees earlier in their careers.

Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) has been demanding for months the names of nine appointees who previously advocated for or represented detainees in their private law practices. Grassley has argued that the lawyers' backgrounds could pose "conflicts of interest" and complained that the department had been "nonresponsive" to his requests.

The rhetoric reached new levels this week when Keep America Safe, a group affiliated with Elizabeth Cheney, the daughter of former vice president Richard B. Cheney, released a YouTube video that featured the headline "DOJ: Department of Jihad?" and asked, "Who are these government officials? . . . Whose values do they share?"

Here's that video:

So, to make a long story short, Chuck Grassley and Liz Cheney are slime on the scale of Michael Gableman. People in Gitmo are entitled attorneys -- even the Bush administration agreed with that -- but Cheney would have you believe that the right to an attorney is some legal loophole only criminal sympathizers would fill. The charge is not only plain wrong, but immoral and contrary to the Constitution. Constitutional lawyer Glenn Greenwald:

This slander encompasses scores of American military lawyers, who have vigorously, passionately and often successfully defended numerous Guantanamo detainees, including those accused of being Al Qaeda operatives. Adam Serwer and Spencer Ackerman both have excellent pieces on this ad, featuring quotes from several military officers who have defended accused Terrorists, including retired Col. Morris Davis, who was once a lead prosecutor in Guantanamo's military commissions only to became a vocal critic of that system. Watching as their integrity and character are smeared by the likes of Dick Cheney's daughter and Bill Kristol is really revolting.

This is McCarthyism, pure and simple. There is no other word for it. And it's the lowest, most useless, most despicable form of politics. That Bill Kristol and Liz Cheney would engage in this is no surprise -- they're both worthless pieces of crap, fearmongers and cowards of the very worst kind. But that a sitting senator would join in should give us pause. We've been down this road before and we know where it leads.

At long last, Senator Grassley, have you no decency?

-Wisco


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Democrats' Nonexistent Security Message

I wrote Monday that Democrats suck at messaging. My evidence was a poll showing that 88% of respondents believed that President Obama had raised their taxes, when in truth taxes had been cut for 95% of Americans. My conclusion; Democrats never talk about those tax cuts.

How could so many people be so wrong? Because no one ever tells them otherwise. In a similar situation in the Bush White House, the answer to almost every question would've begun, "As you know, we cut taxes for 95% of Americans..." It wouldn't make any difference what the question was. The administration that began every other sentence with "On 9/11..." would never have allowed 88% of Americans to believe they didn't get a tax cut.

I'm not sure what it is about Democrats -- it's like they refuse to educate. Maybe they think it's beneath them or something. So Republicans go out and fill the void by telling outrageous lies, leaving Democrats wasting their time on crap like "death panels" and arguments over whether or not Obama's a citizen. By failing -- or refusing -- to get out in front and trumpet their achievements, Democrats wind up cleaning up the trivial crap Republicans drop all over our national dialogue and no one is the better for it.





The reason I bring all of this back up again is that Greg Sargent has found yet another area where Democrats suck at explaining how good they are -- terrorism.

...Republicans are framing the debate on these issues, and more and more Congressional Dems are breaking with the White House on them. In other words, the Dems are following the GOP script.

Worse, this is happening even as the White House is, in fact, mounting a major effort to engage the GOP on these issues. Obama counter-terror chief John Brennan and Joe Biden have aggressively engaged Dick Cheney and other Republicans in recent days, arguing that Obama’s counter-terror policies are succeeding and are superior to GOP policies.

But on this message, the White House has no meaningful support from Congressional Dems to speak of, and it’s waging this fight virtually alone.

What's especially aggravating is that Republicans are awful on security. 9/11 happened on Bush's watch and Iraq, torture, Gitmo, and warrantless wiretapping have done absolutely nothing to make us any safer. But somehow, the face of this record of failure -- Dick Cheney -- has become a thorn in the White House's side. Democrats, cowed by Republicans empty "tough talk," have given up on a fight the Obama administration is actually winning.

At the risk of being accused of cutting and pasting a lot of this post, here's Spencer Ackerman on the Obama administration's record on national security and terrorism:

So over the past several weeks the Obama administration has successfully interrogated Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab without torturing him — something Dick Cheney simply can’t contemplate — and will try him in a federal court, where he’s sure to be convicted. Then it continued to launch missile strikes in Yemen (not that that’s such a good thing!) on Abdulmutallab’s overlords in al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula that caused a former Bushie to whine that there was too much terrorist-killing and not enough terrorist-capturing. So then the administration worked with Pakistan to capture the deputy commander of the Taliban and that was just for starters. Obama’s approval rating on national security has increased since Abdulmutallab.

Yet congressional Democrats are running scared from any discussion of national security. It's maddening. All Republicans have are empty-headed talking points and failed policies. They're as wrong on terrorism as they have been on the economy. In fact, Barack Obama won big after taking on those very hollow talking points and policies -- yet Democrats are acting as if the Republicans won in 2008.

Idiocy.

Lunacy.

[Insert especially foul curse word here]

No wonder Democrats are in trouble in this cycle -- they refuse to defend themselves. They're so afraid of losing that they won't fight any fight at all -- even when it's a gimme. Which, in turn makes every fight a gimme... For the GOP, anyway.

"The Republican leadership even sent House GOPers back to their districts this week with a very specific set of talking points, sent over by a source, telling them precisely what to say to constituents about [national security and terrorism]," Sargent writes. "There’s no sign whatsoever that Congressional Dems were given anything similar, or even that Dem leaders have spent any time developing a strategy of their own. Are you hearing any concerted pushback, or any message at all, on these issues from Dems?"

No, I haven't. Democrats have conceded ground there was absolutely no reason to concede. Just as they've conceded taxes, healthcare, and are in the process of conceding the economy. If Democrats even come close to losing either chamber in November, it's because they didn't care enough about their ideas to fight for them.

Which kind of makes you wonder why the hell they thought they should run for office in the first place.

-Wisco


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Being Terrified is No Way to Fight Terrorism

When it comes to terrorism, the right has a narrative. Barack Obama is terrible at fighting it. If he were more like George W. Bush -- the president who saw the world's most deadly terrorist attack happen under his watch -- then he'd be doing things right. Never mind that, by their own arguments, Obama has been wildly successful in fighting terrorism. The rightwing line in defense of Bush's crimes of torture and wiretapping has always been that we haven't been attacked since 9/11 (which isn't at all true, by the way). Ignore the worst intelligence failure in the history of America -- Bush supposedly did a good job after that. I guess you get a do-over or something when you're a new president -- and a Republican.

But Obama's record is already better than Bush's. He hasn't needed that do-over. The big catastrophic attack we were warned about during the campaign still hasn't happened, meaning that President Obama has already beat Bush's record. Every day after 9/11/09 without a huge, flaming disaster is one more day that this president has kept us safe longer than the previous president managed. But those are facts and logic. We've already established that facts and logic don't fly in rightwing world.

Some, like the perpetually boobish Rep. Pete Hoekstra, argue that a failed attempt at terrorism under Obama counts as a bona fide "terrorist attack." This is proof that Obama's a huge failure. But these same people won't count failed attacks under Bush, which means Bush was a huge success. Yeah, it makes my head hurt too. I think I might be allergic to either stupid or ridiculous. It's hard to pin down which it is, since Bush apologists tend to give you both at once.





But the big proof for the right of President Obama's complete cluelessness about all things terrorist is that the failed underwear bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, was read his rights -- after which he clammed up.

Weekly Standard:

The Associated Press has a fascinating blow-by-blow account of the interrogation of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab that adds several new details to previous reports on his handling. Overall, however, this news does not change the disturbing picture of the reflexive, law-enforcement-first approach the Obama administration took with the al Qaeda operative. And with the new details come new troubling questions.

The story tells us that Abdulmutallab was Mirandized approximately 10 hours after he was taken into custody. Before then, he received medical attention and was interrogated twice. The first interrogation was conducted by local FBI agents and included a Customs and Border Protection official and an agent from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. The first interview lasted 50 minutes, and Abdulmutallab reportedly talked freely. The second interview, five hours later, the FBI used a "clean team" that included elements of local joint terrorism task force.  The second interrogation yielded nothing.  When Abdulmutallab was Mirandized, he stopped cooperating altogether.

You know what else is fascinating? The AP got it wrong.

L.A. Times:

The decision to advise the accused Christmas Day attacker of his right to remain silent was made after teleconferences involving at least four government agencies -- and only after Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab had stopped talking to authorities, according to knowledgeable law enforcement officials.

Among those involved in the hastily called teleconferences were representatives from the Justice Department and the FBI, along with officials from the State Department and the CIA.

So the "terrorist mirandized, terrorist shuts up" scenario is exactly bass ackward. In retrospect, this should've been obvious. I don't care where you're from, if TV exists there, you can recite your Miranda rights verbatim. No one's ever told that, in America, they have the right to remain silent and answers with, "I didn't know that."

But now that he's shut down, we have to torture him, right? That's also a rightwing meme -- it's the only way you can get a terrorist to talk, because they aren't criminals. If you treat them like criminals, you'll fail. These people are magic and torture is like crosses to vampires to them. You have to torture them or they'll never cooperate.

New YorkTimes:

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian man accused of trying to blow up a jetliner bound for Detroit on Dec. 25, started talking to investigators after two of his family members arrived in the United States and helped earn his cooperation, a senior administration official said Tuesday evening.

According to the paper, which spoke to officials in the case, Abdulmutallab "began speaking to FBI agents last week in Detroit and has not stopped."

"With the family, the FBI approached the suspect," said one official. "He has been cooperating for days."

Look at all the torture we didn't do. And look at all the success we had. And what else have we accomplished here?

Well, we've treated him like a common criminal. If you ask most people on the right, this is supposedly a terrible mistake. But this means he's not some hero to extremists, he's not a soldier in a "war on terror," he's just a nut. He's a failed murderer, not a captured soldier. In short, we've cut his propaganda value down considerably. He's not some monster we all have to be terrified of, he is what he is -- some would-be killer who's no better or worse than a common street thug. He's not the honorable enemy in a time of war, he's just the same sort of scum who kills people in a drive-by shooting.

And we've gotten him legally -- without torture. Someone needs to remind the world that we're the good guys here. It's a lot harder to do that when you're strapping people to boards and drowning them. That doesn't actually look like a good guy thing to do. Mostly because it's so obviously evil.

Don't expect the facts to sway anyone though. There will still be calls to try him in military court and, among the most sadistic and stupid, calls to torture him just for the hell of it. But the facts of the case show that the system of law that has protected this nation for more than two centuries miraculously manages to still protect it now. Imagine that.

Keep that in mind the next time some panicked moron argues we have to crap our pants, drop everything we've always believed in and stood for, and give up on the law because some cultists say they want to kill people. There are a lot of reasons why those people are wrong, not the least of which is their shameful cowardice.

-Wisco


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