Compare and Contrast

Iran: Moms’ Emotional Reunion With Detained American Hikers

More than nine months of desperate pleading finally paid off for the mothers of three American hikers detained in Iranas they embraced their children in an emotional reunion in Tehran today.

It was the first time the mothers have seen the hikers since the group was arrested in July for crossing the Iranian border and accused of spying by Iranian officials. The brother of one of the hikers was nearly overcome with emotion when he saw video of his mother hugging and kissing his brother on the cheek when they met at the Esteghlal Hotel in north Tehran.

[...]

In an interview earlier this month with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said it was up to a judge to decide whether the hikers were telling the truth when they claimed that they simply got lost.

“They have to provide proof and evidence to the judge in Iran that shows that they lost their way or made a mistake,” Ahmadinejad said. “When the time comes, they will have a lawyer.” 

Judges Rule Against Detainees Held at Afghan Air Base 

A federal appeals court ruled on Friday that prisoners being held without trial in Afghanistan by the military have no right to challenge their imprisonment in American civilian courts. The decision, overturning a lower court ruling in the detainees’ favor, was a victory for the Obama administration’s efforts to hold terrorism suspects overseas for extended periods without judicial oversight.

In a unanimous 26-page ruling, a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that detainees who were captured outside of Afghanistan and brought to a military prison at the Bagram air base have no right to a hearing in which a judge would review the evidence against them and could potentially order their release.

Such habeas corpus rights do “not extend to aliens held in executive detention in the Afghan theater of war,” wrote David B. Sentelle, the chief judge of the appeals court, who was appointed by former President Ronald Reagan. His opinion was joined by Judges Harry T. Edwards, a Carter appointee, and David S. Tatel, a Clinton appointee.

I am so ashamed.

Greenwald:

Can you smell the hypocrisy?  How could anyone miss its pungent, suffocating odor?  Apparently, what Obama called “a legal black hole at Guantanamo” is a heinous injustice, but “a legal black hole at Bagram” is the Embodiment of Hope.  And evidently, Obama would only feel “terror” if his child were abducted and taken to Guantanamo and imprisoned “without even getting one chance to ask why and prove their innocence.”  But if the very same child were instead taken to Bagram and treated exactly the same way, that would be called Justice — or, to use his jargon, Pragmatism.  And what kind of person hails a Supreme Court decision as “protecting our core values” — as Obama said of Boumediene — only to then turn around and make a complete mockery of that ruling by insisting that the Cherished, Sacred Rights it recognized are purely a function of where the President orders a detainee-carrying military plane to land?  

[...]

This is what Barack Obama has done to the habeas clause of the Constitution:  if you are in Thailand (as one of the petitioners in this case was) and the U.S. abducts you and flies you to Guantanamo, then you have the right to have a federal court determine if there is sufficient evidence to hold you.  If, however, President Obama orders that you be taken to from Thailand to Bagram rather than to Guantanamo, then you will have no rights of any kind, and he can order you detained there indefinitely without any right to a habeas review. 

Obama flunks Constitution 101

We heard echoes of this in the primaries, so I shouldn’t really be surprised that Barack Obama thinks that the Brennan and Burger courts “overreached.”  Greenwald: 

. . .  given that the defining rulings of those decades have long formed the bedrock of the progressive understanding of the Constitution and the judiciary, that the dominant Justices of that era (Brennan, Marshall, Douglas, Black) are the iconic liberal judges of the 20th century, and that those decades produced the most vital safeguards for core Constitutional guarantees and critical limits on executive power, Obama — as I said yesterday — should at least specify which decisions he finds “erroneous” and illegitimate.  But the imperial decree has been issued and that’s apparently all you need to know:

The White House declined to identify rulings that Mr. Obama believes relied on judicial activism. 

The absolute dumbest political platitude in the vast canon of right-wing idiocies has long been the premise that courts act improperly — are engaged in “judicial activism” — whenever they declare a democratically enacted law invalid on the ground that it is unconstitutional.  That’s one of the central functions of the courts, a linchpin of how our Constitutional Republic operates.  We’re not a pure democracy precisely because there are limits on what democratic majorities are permitted to do, and those limits are set forth in the Constitution, which courts have the responsibility to interpret and apply.  When judges strike down laws because they violate Constitutional guarantees, that’s not a subversion of our political system; it’s a vindication, a crucial safeguarding of it.

But now, here is Obama giving credence to that idiocy with his sweeping, unspecified condemnation of the Warren and Burger Courts as “judicial activists.”  If, as Obama argues, some (or many) of the decisions of that era are “errors” of activist overreaching, wouldn’t the current Court be justified in reversing them?  And won’t Republican Senators be justified in demanding that Obama refrain from nominating to the Court anyone whose records seems compatible with the defining judicial approach of those courts (since, after all, even Obama acknowledges they were in “error”)?  Why is Barack Obama walking around echoing the right-wing/Limbaughian view that the Supreme Court’s decisions of the 1960s and 1970s were illegitimate, anti-democratic power grabs?  

It’s one thing to argue, as Obama has previously, that it sometimes makes more sense to accomplish political goals democratically rather than through the courts, and that liberals in the past have been too reliant on judicial victories in lieu of persuasion and organizing.  As a general strategic proposition, I don’t disagree with that view.  But that has nothing to do with the proper role of judges, which is to strike down any and all laws brought before them which violate the Constitution.  That core principle is the one Obama is disparaging.  

Just when, in a moment of weakness or wishing that it were so, I think, well, maybe . . . Obama does or says something that confirms to me all over again just exactly who he is. And it isn’t a liberal, or a progressive, or a Democrat. And to all you “progressives” who screamed at me and told me I “had” to support Obama because, “The Supreme Court!”  Go fuck yourselves.  Because your actions have surely done it to the rest of us.

We now have a “constitutional scholar” inhabiting the Oval Office who appears to have no understanding of the concept of checks and balances or the separation of powers, and who, though he has a D after his name, is nothing more than a ringer. In other words, Republican rule continues unabated, in the person of Barack Obama.

It was once the case, not all that long ago, that those who pointed out the extreme similarities between the Obama and Bush administrations in these areas were accused of being hysterical, impetuous purists.  It’s now the case that those who do so are guilty of nothing more than stating the obvious.

Word, Glenn. Word.

Edited to add this comment by kovie at Greenwald’s post.

Obama is neither a liberal nor a conservative

Rather, he is a patronizing and fatuous gasbag who stands for nothing other than whatever his political needs require on that particular day. I suspect that he no more believes that the Warren and Burger courts were actually improperly activist than he believes that financial firms acted improperly. He says things for effect, not because he actually believes in them, and he does this both because he’s a political opportunist, and because I believe that he doesn’t actually believe in anything, not deeply at least. He believes in what works, not in any core principles.

Obama is, always was and always will be a cipher, not only to us but to himself. This is a game to him, and I don’t believe that he has any control over that. There is something broken in his soul. To say what he said about the courts that gave us Brown, Griswold and even Roe tells us all that we need to know about his character. He’s not on our side, and cannot be trusted. At most, he can be a vehicle for some progressive change, but only through pressure, not good faith.

There’s a special place in hell for people who diss their own side to score cheap points with the other side. People like that end up being despised by both sides alike, as standing for nothing and being completely disloyal and untrustworthy. He has major character issues, that one.

—kovie

Living in fear

Everyone needs to read Greenwald’s latest: The degrading effects of terrorism fears 

The money quote:

Ever since I began writing in late 2005 about this fear-addicted dynamic, the point on which Brooks focused yesterday is the one I’ve thought most important.  What matters most about this blinding fear of Terrorism is not the specific policies that are implemented as a result.  Policies can always be changed.  What matters most is the radical transformation of the national character of the United States.  Reducing the citizenry to a frightened puddle of passivity, hysteria and a child-like expectation of Absolute Safety is irrevocable and far more consequential than any specific new laws.  Fear is always the enabling force of authoritarianism:  the desire to vest unlimited power in political authority in exchange for promises of protection.  

Word. Our founders would not recognize the people we have become.

Accountability is for the other guy

Must read. Greenwald’s disgust shines through his latest.

But anyway, enough about all that divisive partisan unpleasantness –  back to this brutal, criminal UAE prince:  let’s watch more of those videotapes, express our outrage on behalf of international human rights standards, and threaten the UAE that their relationship with us will suffer severely unless there is a real investigation — not the whitewash they tried to get away with — along with real accountability.  We simply cannot, in good conscience, maintain productive relations with a country that fails to take “torture” seriously.  We are, after all, the United States.

Saucy!

Poor baby – hasn’t she heard that what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander?

Greenwald:

Blue Dog Rep. Jane Harman — once the most vigorous Democratic cheerleader of Bush’s NSA warrantless eavesdropping program — is rip-roarin’ angry today.  Apparently, her private conversations were eavesdropped on by the U.S. Government!  This is a grave outrage that, as she told Andrea Mitchell just moments ago, demands a probing investigation:

I lurves me some Greenwald snark:

But I’m really wondering:  as serious as it is when a member of Congress is the target of government eavesdropping, can we really afford to investigate this?  After all, we have so many very important things to do.  It really seems like we need to be looking forward, not backwards.  The Bush administration is gone.  This all happened in 2005 — years ago.  Is this really a time to be pursuing grudges, to be re-litigating old disputes?  What kind of partisan witch hunt is Harman after?

Must read. Glenn has outdone himself.

Jane Harman can Kiss My Ass.

The Dirty F*%king Hippies

Joeyess:

Then go read Glenn Greenwald’s latest

This anti-anger consensus among our political elites is exactly wrong.  The public rage we’re finally seeing is long, long overdue, and appears to be the only force with both the ability and will to impose meaningful checks on continued kleptocratic pillaging and deep-seated corruption in virtually every branch of our establishment institutions.  The worst possible thing that could happen now is for this collective rage to subside and for the public to return to its long-standing state of blissful ignorance over what the establishment is actually doing.

It makes perfect sense that those who are satisfied with the prevailing order — because it rewards them in numerous ways — are desperate to pacify public fury.  Thus we find unanimous decrees that public calm (i.e., quiet) be restored.  It’s a universal dynamic that elites want to keep the masses in a state of silent, disengaged submission, all the better if the masses stay convinced that the elites have their best interests at heart and their welfare is therefore advanced by allowing elites — the Experts — to work in peace on our pressing problems, undisrupted and “undistracted” by the need to placate primitive public sentiments.

Seriously Shrill

Greenwald does it again in his take-down of David Brooks as Exhibit A of what is wrong with the Washington D.C. press elite.  Update II especially caught my eye:

“Shrillness” – the first cousin of “Unseriousness” – is the conceptual instrument used to deter and (when that fails) demonize those who view the political and media establishment as corrupt at its core. It’s a way of demanding that everyone just calm down, avoid impetuous and inflammatory language, and stop acting as though there’s anything seriously wrong with our political and media elites:

Sure, they’ve made some mistakes; nobody’s perfect. But it’s not as though there’s anything to get excited or angry about.  And fine:  there are some narrow disagreements among people of good faith and some small problems here and there that require some modifications — little things like torture, chronic high-level lawbreaking, immunity for the political class (juxtaposed with the sprawling prison industry for ordinary Americans), rampant domestic spying, sky-high walls of government secrecy, full-scale economic meltdown, massive and growing inequities in wealth, endless wars, sleaze and corruption oozing from every Beltway pore, complete media complicity with all of it — but there’s no reason to get all indignant or agitated by it or act as though crimes are being committed or radical changes are needed or anything.

By definition, only people who are “shrill” would do that.  

Be sure to click on Greenwald’s link to Bill Moyers’ interview with Simon Johnson (just another couple of ’shrill’ guys).

BILL MOYERS: So here’s the trillion dollar question that I take from your blog, that I read at the beginning, quote, “Can this person,” your new economic strategist, in this case Geithner, “really break with the vested elite that got you into this much trouble?” Have you seen any evidence this week that he’s going to be tough with these guys?

SIMON JOHNSON: I’m trying to be positive. I’m trying to be supportive. I like the administration. I voted for the president. The answer to your question is, no, I haven’t seen anything. But you know, perhaps next week I will. But right now, as we speak, I have a bad feeling in my stomach.

My intuition, from crises, from situations that have improved, the situations that got worse, my intuition is that this is going to get a lot worse. It’s going to cost us a lot more money. And we are going down a long, dark, blind alley.