Stealing Coretta

Conservatives are going batshit crazy because of this statement at the funeral for Coretta Scott King by Rev. Dr. Joseph Lowery :

We know now there were no weapons of mass destruction over there. [Standing Ovation] But Coretta knew and we know that there are weapons of misdirection right down here. Millions without health insurance. Poverty abounds. For war billions more but no more for the poor.

Pity the poor conservatives who hate being reminded that they’ve been on the wrong side of every civil rights struggle in our nation’s history. And in case there’s any doubt about whether these sentiments were in line with the beliefs of Mrs. King, here’s part of an interview she gave shortly before the Iraq war began :

BLITZER: Mrs. King, thank you so much for joining us. Let’s talk a little bit about the legacy of your husband. How much has the racial situation in our country improved since his death, if you believe, indeed, it has?

KING: Yes, I think it certainly has improved tremendously, but we still have much more to be done. Martin defined the evils and the injustices in our society in three areas — poverty, racism and war. And he said that we cannot solve one problem without solving the other, working to solve the other one. And I think we have remnants of all of those. We’ve made some small progress in some areas more than others, but we still very much have poverty. We still very much have racism. And we still very much have a threat of war.
. . .
BLITZER: You raised the issue earlier of war. Where do you think [your husband] would come down on the whole issue of possibly going to war with Iraq?

KING: You know, my husband always believed that there should be peaceful negotiations, and he believed in nonviolence. He was committed to it totally, and he believed that conflict should be handled through the United Nations, so strength in the United Nations, and let the United Nations take the leadership. And I believe that Martin would, if he were [alive] today — although I don’t normally speak for him, but I know what he was saying at the time of his death — is that war cannot serve any lasting good toward bringing about peace. If you use weapons of war to bring about peace, you’re going to have more war and destruction. You cannot have peaceful means — peaceful means will have to be used to bring about peaceful ends. If you use destructive means, you’re going to bring about destructive ends.

Face it conservatives, Coretta Scott King was a liberal. While civil rights heroes like the Kings were leading a non-violent struggle for equality, your political heroes were finding new ways to court southern racists away from the Democratic party. The Republican journey to victory was fueled by the votes of bigots, so it’s a little late in the game to start acting like you have the right to speak for the leaders of a movement you fought against.

Are They Listening To Your Phonecalls?

“The middle part of the country – the great red zone that voted for Bush – is clearly ready for war. The decadent Left in its enclaves on the coasts is not dead – and may well mount what amounts to a fifth column.”

Andrew Sullivan, September 16, 2001

“The FISA statute, in a time of war, is a check and balance. But here’s where I think I’m your biggest fan. During the time of war, the administration has the inherent power, in my opinion, to surveil the enemy and to map the battlefield electronically — not just physical, but to electronically map what the enemy is up to by seizing information and putting that puzzle together.

And the administration has not only the right, but the duty, in my opinion, to pursue fifth column movements.
. . .
So my friends on the other side, I stand by this president’s ability, inherent to being commander in chief, to find out about fifth column movements, and I don’t think you need a warrant to do that.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham, yesterday

Meaningless Rhetorical Trickery

This bit from today’s NSA spy hearing would be clever if it weren’t so stupid :

SESSIONS: With regard to history — you made reference to history — isn’t it true, of course, President Washington instructed his army to find ways to intercept letters from British operatives, that President Lincoln issued warrantless tapping of telegraph communications during the Civil War to try to identify troop movements of the enemy? Is it true that President Wilson authorized the military to intercept all telephone and telegraph traffic going into and out of the United States?

GONZALES: That is correct.

SESSIONS: And that President Roosevelt instructed the government to use listening devices to learn the plans of spies in the United States, and that he gave the military the authority to access, without review, without warrant, all telecommunications, quote, “passing between the United States and any foreign country”?

GONZALES: That is correct, sir.

SESSIONS: What I would say to my colleagues and to the American people is, under FISA and other standards that we are using today, we have far more restraints on our military and the executive branch than history has demonstrated.

So how were Washington, Lincoln, Wilson, and Roosevelt bound by a law passed in 1978? Oh wait, they weren’t , but Bush is. Perhaps someone should ask Gonzales about the legal weight that our constitution affords to a clever historical analogy and whether said analogy is ever sufficient enough to overrule an act of Congress. Then again, that line of questioning might tip people off to the fact that these hearings are mostly a charade orchestrated for the cameras and that this GOP-run Judiciary Committee won’t do anything to stop the President’s criminal behavior beyond having a couple token Republicans seethe with faux-outrage.

The Enemy of My Enemy…

Lemme just start by saying I respect Cindy Sheehan. I think her activism has given voice to hundreds of grieving military families who are enraged at the Bush Administration. My mom even went to visit Camp Casey over the summer and i printed the photos on the site. So it’s with a heavy heart that I’ve got to ask this question :

What the hell are you thinking?!


cindychavez.jpg

Getting cuddly with Hugo Chavez and thanking him for “supporting life and peace”? Do you know anything about Hugo Chavez other than the fact that he hates George Bush? Here’s an eye-opener from Human Rights Watch :

Amendments to Venezuela’s Criminal Code that entered into force last week may stifle press criticism of government authorities and restrict the public’s ability to monitor government actions, Human Rights Watch said today.

“By broadening laws that punish disrespect for government authorities, the Venezuelan government has flouted international human rights principles that protect free expression,” said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. “While countries across Latin America are moving to repeal such laws, Venezuela has enacted further restrictions on the press that will shield officials from public scrutiny.”

The amendments extend the scope of existing provisions that make it a criminal offense to insult or show disrespect for the president and other government authorities. Venezuela’s measures run counter to a continent-wide trend to repeal such “disrespect” (or “desacato”) laws. In recent years, Argentina, Costa Rica, Paraguay, and Peru have already repealed such laws, and other countries like Chile and Panama are currently considering legislation that would do so.
. . .
Anyone convicted of offending these authorities could go to prison for up to 20 months. Anyone who gravely offends the president, on the other hand, can incur a penalty of up to 40 months in prison.

In other words, if you went to Caracas and tried to do the exact same thing you did in Crawford, you’d be in jail right now.

And though I wouldn’t use the word “dictator” to describe Chavez, I can see why people would jump to that conclusion after power grabs like this :

The Venezuelan Congress dealt a severe blow to judicial independence by packing the country’s Supreme Court with 12 new justices, Human Rights Watch said today. A majority of the ruling coalition, dominated by President Hugo Chávez’s party, named the justices late yesterday, filling seats created by a law passed in May that expanded the court’s size by more than half.
. . .
The law passed in May expanded the court from 20 to 32 members. In addition to the justices named to the 12 new seats, five justices were named to fill vacancies that had opened in recent months, and 32 more were named as reserve justices for the court. Members and allies of President Chávez’s Fifth Republic Movement (Movimiento V República, or MVR) form a majority in Congress.
. . .
The court-packing law signed in May also gave the governing coalition the power to remove judges from the Court without the two-thirds majority vote required under the constitution. In June, two justices retired after facing possible suspension from the Supreme Court as a result of these new provisions.

The political takeover of the Supreme Court will compound the damage already done to judicial independence by policies pursued by the court itself. The Supreme Court, which has administrative control over the judiciary, has failed to provide security of tenure to 80 percent of the country’s judges. In March, the court summarily fired three judges after they had decided politically controversial cases.

For those of you who have the knee-jerk reaction of defending anyone described as “leftist”, just because Chavez helps the poor by providing cheap petroleum, sending doctors into the barrios, and setting up a market to provide partially-subsidized food, doesn’t change the fact that he’s acting like a despot. Harassment of political opponents and the slow crawl toward a one-party state are things I hate about George W. Bush and the Republican party, so I don’t see why Chavez should get a free pass.

Yay! We Got Second Place

Since my more optimistic friends in the blogosphere are taking the opportunity to thank the 25 Dems who supported the filibuster (at least, since late last week after getting harassed by their base), here’s the list of the Democrats who didn’t support the filibuster.

Akaka (D-HI)
Baucus (D-MT)
Bingaman (D-NM)
Byrd (D-WV)
Cantwell (D-WA)
Carper (D-DE)
Conrad (D-ND)
Dorgan (D-ND)
Inouye (D-HI)
Johnson (D-SD)
Kohl (D-WI)
Landrieu (D-LA)
Lieberman (D-CT)
Lincoln (D-AR)
Nelson (D-FL)
Nelson (D-NE)
Pryor (D-AR)
Rockefeller (D-WV)
Salazar (D-CO)

What’s the point of having a Democratic Senate when almost half of the caucus (like the 19 listed above) is too afraid of their constituents to do the right thing? Is there any issue these men and women are willing to ignore the polls and fight for? Based on what we’ve seen, we know they aren’t willing to fight to protect freedom of privacy, due process, or checks and balances. These men and women (most of whom voted against Alito, btw) care more about their job security than protecting your personal freedoms. This is the worst form of pandering and the Democratic leadership should keep this list handy if the Democrats accidentally regain the Senate any time soon. Don’t support the party? No committee chairmanship for you.

Speaking of pandering, as much as I love Digby, I’m gonna have to disagree with him on this one :

I keep hearing that it’s bad that these Senators “pandered” to the blogosphere and I don’t understand it. We want them to pander to the blogosphere. In their book Politicians Don’t Pander; Political Manipulation and the Loss of Democratic Responsiveness Lawrence R. Jacobs and Robert Y. Shapiro argue:

Politicians respond to public opinion, then, but in two quite different ways. In one, politicians assemble information on public opinion to design government policy. This is usually equated with “pandering,” and this is most evident during the relatively short period when presidential elections are imminent. The use of public opinion research here, however, raises a troubling question: why has the derogatory term “pander” been pinned on politicians who respond to public opinion? The answer is revealing: the term is deliberately deployed by politicians, pundits, and other elites to belittle government responsiveness to public opinion and reflects a long-standing fear, uneasiness, and hostility among elites toward popular consent and influence over the affairs of government

Bingo. It isn’t actually pandering. It’s responsiveness.

The difference between pandering and responsiveness is that legitimate responsiveness isn’t patronizing. If Kerry was legitimately moved by the extremity of Alito’s views, he wouldn’t have announced his plan to filibuster at the last minute while he was in Europe. He would have stayed home and tried to gain the support of his fellow Democrats. At the very least, he would have given Harry Reid a phone call. If the red state Dems who voted against cloture really didn’t think Alito was extreme enough to filibuster, they wouldn’t have voted “No” on his confirmation. These weren’t decisions based on conviction, they were attempts to kiss the asses of various segments of the electorate. It’s the sincerity, stupid.

Now I know this next part is going to sound hopelessly naive, but I don’t want a party that’s only able to act in reaction to events on the ground. I want a proactive Democratic party that doesn’t need to be harassed in order to see that Justice Alito is a wingnut. While other bloggers find it refreshing that netroots activists were able to convince 25 Senators to support a filibuster, I’m saddened that trying to block Alito’s confirmation didn’t come as second nature. I thought we had similar values, but if it still takes a massive effort on our part to get this far, then we’re probably just better off pretending to be evangelicals and calling the Republicans. If we’re going to have to get on our knees and beg our Representatives to do the right thing, we might as well beg the people who have the power.

For years now, the Democrats have been promising us that their flip-flopping and brown-nosing was no big deal because they wouldn’t buckle when it came to the big fights. Yet we’ve been tricked into excusing this sort of behavior time and again. You guys supported the Patriot Act, the Iraq War resolution, the Medicare Drug Bill, the President’s tax cuts, the promotion of torture advocate Alberto Gonzales, and now the appointment of two conservative ideologues to the Supreme Court. Sure, a plurality of Dems are usually in the opposition, but when you’ve got Obama supporting “tort reform”, Feinstein supporting the prescription drug debacle, Kerry and Clinton supporting the Iraq war resolution, Feingold voting to confirm John Roberts and almost everybody supporting the Patriot Act, this isn’t something that can just be laid at the feet of the usual suspects like Joe Lieberman. Over and over again we see Democrats support the President’s agenda and we’re supposed to believe everything will magically get better once you guys get into power? If the Democratic-controlled the Senate from mid-2001 to the end of 2002 is any indication, the Dem weakness on the Alito confirmation, the President’s unconstitutional spying program, and the Republican bribery scandal is just business as usual.