Everyday Patriots

 Posted by  2008 Election, Bill of Rights, The Media  4 Responses »
Apr 182008
 

What is real patriotism? What does it really meant to “love America”? The pundits and politicians love to ask these questions. But they never answer them directly. Instead, these questions are usually set ups for a classic “bait-and-switch”; they ask about patriotism, but answer about something completely different. So I thought it would be useful to look at what the media usually means by “patriotism”–and compare it with what real patriotism looks like.

When pundits ask about a candidate or celebrity “Do they love America”, usually they mean one of three things:
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A Change Will Do Us Good

 Posted by  Bill of Rights, Legal Reform  6 Responses »
Feb 282008
 

I am certainly against the “marriage” amendment to the Constitution, and I have some serious qualms with the anti-abortion amendments that get proposed. But the constitution does need to be amended. I believe that the second amendment ought to be rescinded, and that the gray area between presidential and congressional war powers ought to be clarified to account for a country with a standing army. But I recognize that those are tough issues that can’t be easily amended. But there is one change that can be made immediately, and ought to have been made a long time ago.

In particular, Article II, Section 1, Paragraph 5 currently reads:

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The Fallacy of Compromise in the War on Terror

 Posted by  2008 Election, Bill of Rights, Foreign Policy, Terrorism  2 Responses »
Nov 292007
 

One of the big issues in this primary season is how the War on Terror should be fought. On the one hand, you have the Democratic candidates, plus Senator McCain and Representative Paul, who believe that the War on Terror is fundamentally a public relations war that the United States can only win by seizing and holding the moral high ground. On the other extreme, you have Vice President Cheney and his neo-conservative advisers who argue that the only way to win the War on Terror is to capture and kill all the terrorists. It’s Thoreau vs. Machiavelli, Martin Luther King vs. the Black Panthers, Eliot Ness vs. Jim Malone, etc. It’s a tough, but important debate that ultimately reflects on debates like secrecy, torture, the Bill of Rights, the Iraq War, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and even our moderation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

My problem with the Bush Administration, not to mention the candidacies of Romney, Giuliani, and Thompson, is that they want to have it both ways. Cheney may be evil, but his “do whatever it takes” philosophy is at least logically consistent. What doesn’t make sense is trying to have it both ways. Either torture is wrong, in which case we ought to take the moral high ground and proclaim our position from largest mountain we can find, or torture is acceptable if it leads to the deaths of more terrorists in the future. A position of “it depends”, or of “it’s usually bad but I’m not going to tell you why or when” both sacrifices the moral high ground and fails to accomplish our goal through brute force. It hands the public relations war to our enemies without putting the fear of eminent destruction into them.

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Respect The Law

 Posted by  2008 Election, Abuse of Power, Bill of Rights, Bush Administration  No Responses »
Nov 062007
 

One of my biggest problems with the Bush presidency is his style. Once you get beyond the bad policies and the incompetent, politically motivated administration, he has the fundamental belief that the president ought to have the right to interpret the laws for himself; to charge forward with his policies and then to maybe work it out with Congress or the Courts after the fact if they complain too much. The current President hasn’t put himself above the law… just maybe on equal par with the law.

I find this incredibly troubling, in large part because it naturally leads to a dismissal of the law, even the most fundamental and precious laws of the land. Combined with our incredibly polarized political media coverage, I fear that this could be rapidly leading towards a breakdown in respect for the Constitution. After all, no matter what hair-brained theory the President concocts about the “true” meaning or scope of the Fourth Amendment or the right of habeus corpus or the President’s role as Commander-in-Chief, the media will always find a lineup of “conservative” analysts to agree with that interpretation. And the more you say it, the more people will start believing it.

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Confirmation Dilemma

 Posted by  Abuse of Power, Bill of Rights, Bush Administration, Nomination and Confirmation  4 Responses »
Nov 012007
 

In his press conference this afternoon, President Bush attacked Congress for not moving faster on the nomination of Judge Michael Mukasey for Attorney General. In a baffling statement, President Bush reportedly said that it was improper for Congress to ask the nominee how he feels about interrogation methods on which the nominee has not been fully briefed. And yes, we’re talking about torture here–that is the use of violence and/or intimidation to extract information from a prisoner. Apparently, the president expects the Senate to vote on a nominee without any knowledge about what that nominee thinks about the most pressing legal issue he will have to deal with as Attorney General. Someone needs to look up the phrase “advise and consent”.

Look, once and for all, let’s just make this clear. The President of the United States thinks that it is OK to torture people. He can dance around it all he wants, but at the end of the day, that’s what he has said and demonstrated on multiple occasions. It’s a cowardly, stupid, and morally abhorrent position to take, but hey, we knew about it when we reelected the guy in 2004, so the fault is ours. (To paraphrase something my brother said, “I’m not a big fan of Kerry, but I think I’ll vote for the guy who thinks that torture is a bad idea.”)

That being said, President Bush will NEVER nominate an Attorney General who disagrees with him on that issue. Therefore, Congress has three options:

1) They can confirm Mukasey, who besides this issue seems to be a reasonably competent guy. (Although there is an NY Times Op-Ed from today that disagrees with that assessment.)

2) They can not confirm Mukasey, and confirm the next pro-torture sycophant that Bush nominates.

3) They can refuse to confirm another Attorney General until Bush leaves office–which won’t actually stop the Bush Administration from torturing folks, of course.

Personally, I think Option #2 is probably the best move politically, and does at least send some message to the president and the American people that we think the issue is important. Option #3 sends the strongest message, but it doesn’t really change policy and I am afraid that it would leave the Democrats a little vulnerable on the issue in the 2008 elections. And Option #1 is reasonable, if and only if we think that the next guy Bush nominates will do a significantly worse job at all the other things that the Attorney General does.

None of them are good options, but again, that’s our fault. We’re getting exactly what we paid for.

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