brainiac conspiracy

It's Only Identity Politics if You Aren't a White Male GOP Political Operative Working toDisenfranchise Minority Voters on Election Dayand Lying About it Under Oath Years Later

From the Post today, a three-course fiesta of Latin Identity Politics, Puertoriquena style! First up, the front page:

A few months shy of her 10th anniversary on the federal bench, Sonia Sotomayor flew to a law conference across the country from her native New York to give a speech that explored her ethnic identity and her role as a judge in strikingly personal terms.

She evoked childhood memories: pigs' feet and beans, the sound of merengue at family parties, Saturday-night bingo games with her grandmother calling out the numbers while the children used chickpeas to mark their cards.

Then she pivoted to her view of the judiciary, bluntly rejecting the argument of conservative legal thinkers that judges should decide cases purely on close readings of facts and law, excluding their own frames of reference. "Our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging," Sotomayor told the audience at the University of California at Berkeley that day in October 2001. "Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see. . . . I wonder whether by ignoring our differences as women or men of color we do a disservice both to the law and society."

Pigs' feet and personal experiences! Caramba! Next up: The house polemicist who puts them together and leaps to the illogical conclusion:

Her ethnicity aside, Sotomayor is a conventional choice. The court will remain composed entirely of former appellate court judges. And like conventional liberals, she embraces identity politics, including the idea of categorical representation: A person is what his or her race, ethnicity, gender, or sexual preference is, and members of a particular category can be represented -- understood, empathized with -- only by persons of the same identity.

Then again, this is George Will we’re talking about. Surely the Post’s Editorial Board takes a more reasoned and measured approach to Sotomayor’s judicial record:

Senators could ask her, then, how, when deciding a case, she balances the quest for objectivity with her personal experiences. They might also ask her views on judicial activism . . .

Judge Sotomayor has spoken about how gender, ethnicity and race influence a judge's views, and that should be one subject for her confirmation hearings. In a 2001 speech, she said: "The aspiration to impartiality is just that -- it's an aspiration because it denies the fact that we are by our experiences making different choices than others. . . . Justice [Sandra Day] O'Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases . . . . I am not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, . . . there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."

And with that trifecta, the meme is etched in granite: That of the foreigner, raised in the Bronx a strange land on strange music and repulsive foods. An outsider, a woman of Latin-American ancestry who dares to think of herself as (gasp!) a woman of Latin-American ancestry. Who dares beyond that to think that the experiences that influenced her life may have had some residual affect on how she perceives and interprets the law, which is obviously cause for concern. Compare and contrast (via Greenwald) with the experiences of this respected strict constructionist:

I don't come from an affluent background or a privileged background. My parents were both quite poor when they were growing up.

And I know about their experiences and I didn't experience those things. I don't take credit for anything that they did or anything that they overcame.

But I think that children learn a lot from their parents and they learn from what the parents say. But I think they learn a lot more from what the parents do and from what they take from the stories of their parents lives.

And that's why I went into that in my opening statement. Because when a case comes before me involving, let's say, someone who is an immigrant -- and we get an awful lot of immigration cases and naturalization cases -- I can't help but think of my own ancestors, because it wasn't that long ago when they were in that position.

And so it's my job to apply the law. It's not my job to change the law or to bend the law to achieve any result.

But when I look at those cases, I have to say to myself, and I do say to myself, "You know, this could be your grandfather, this could be your grandmother. They were not citizens at one time, and they were people who came to this country."

When I have cases involving children, I can't help but think of my own children and think about my children being treated in the way that children may be treated in the case that's before me.

And that goes down the line. When I get a case about discrimination, I have to think about people in my own family who suffered discrimination because of their ethnic background or because of religion or because of gender. And I do take that into account. When I have a case involving someone who's been subjected to discrimination because of disability, I have to think of people who I've known and admire very greatly who've had disabilities, and I've watched them struggle to overcome the barriers that society puts up often just because it doesn't think of what it's doing -- the barriers that it puts up to them.

So those are some of the experiences that have shaped me as a person.

Ah well, de nada. The talking point has already been established. Sonia Sotomayor is not one of us, she doesn't identify as one of us, and therefore cannot be trusted to treat us fairly when ruling on matters of federal law. Why, all this narcissistic Identity Politicking® is enough for any great patriot to throw up his hands and tweet:

White man racist nominee would be forced to withdraw. Latina woman racist should also withdraw. 32 minutes ago from TwitterBerry

Actually, Newtie, white man racist would be confirmed as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court by Republican alpha-male President.

Lito Pena is sure of his memory. Thirty-six years ago he, then a Democratic Party poll watcher, got into a shoving match with a Republican who had spent the opening hours of the 1964 election doing his damnedest to keep people from voting in south Phoenix.

"He was holding up minority voters because he knew they were going to vote Democratic," said Pena.

The guy called himself Bill. He knew the law and applied it with the precision of a swordsman. He sat at the table at the Bethune School, a polling place brimming with black citizens, and quizzed voters ad nauseam about where they were from, how long they'd lived there -- every question in the book. A passage of the Constitution was read and people who spoke broken English were ordered to interpret it to prove they had the language skills to vote.

By the time Pena arrived at Bethune, he said, the line to vote was four abreast and a block long. People were giving up and going home.

Pena told the guy to leave. They got into an argument. Shoving followed. Arizona politics can be raw.

Finally, Pena said, the guy raised a fist as if he was fixing to throw a punch.

"I said 'If that's what you want, I'll get someone to take you out of here.'"

Party leaders told him not to get physical, but this was the second straight election in which Republicans had sent out people to intellectually rough up the voters. The project even had a name: Operation Eagle Eye.

Pena had a group of 20 iron workers holed up in a motel nearby. He dispatched one who grabbed Bill and hustled him out of the school.

"He was pushing him across a yard and backed him into the school building," Pena remembered.

Others in Phoenix remember Operation Eagle Eye, too.

Charlie Stevens, then the head of the local Young Republicans, said he got a phone call from the same lawyer Pena remembered throwing out of Bethune School. The guy wanted to know why Charlie hadn't joined Operation Eagle Eye.

"I think they called them flying squads," Stevens said. "It was perfectly legal. The law at the time was that you had to be able to read English and interpret what you read."

But he didn't like the idea and he told Bill this.

"My parents were immigrants," Stevens said. They'd settled in Cleveland, Ohio, a pair of Greeks driven out of Turkey who arrived in the United States with broken English and a desire to be American. After their son went to law school and settled in Phoenix, he even Americanized the name. Charlie Tsoukalas became Charlie Stevens. "I didn't think it was proper to challenge my dad or my mother to interpret the Constitution," Stevens said. "Even people who are born here have trouble interpreting the Constitution. Lawyers have trouble interpreting it" . . .

Operation Eagle Eye had a two-year run. Eventually, Arizona changed the laws that had allowed the kind of challenges that had devolved into bullying.

Pena went on to serve 30 years in the Arizona State Legislature. Stevens became a prosperous and well-regarded lawyer in Phoenix and helped Sandra Day O'Connor get her start in law.

The guy Pena remembers tossing out of Bethune School prospered, too. Bill Rehnquist, now better known as William H. Rehnquist, chief justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, presided yesterday over a case that centers on whether every vote for president was properly recorded in the state of Florida.

In his confirmation hearings for the court in 1971, Rehnquist denied personally intimidating voters and gave the explanation that he might have been called to polling places on Election Day to arbitrate disputes over voter qualifications. Fifteen years later, three more witnesses, including a deputy U.S. attorney, told of being called to polling places and having angry voters point to Rehnquist as their tormentor. His defenders suggested it was a case of mistaken identity. (Emphasis added.)

Well hey, nothing racist about that---the fella was only trying to prevent Democrat voter fraud! Which in Arizona circa 1964 was some serious widespread problem, lemme tell ya. That alone doesn't prove any sorta racist sentiments, unless, you know . . .

Chief Justice Rehnquist served as a clerk to Justice Robert Jackson. The memo "A Random Thought on the Segregation Cases" advised Justice Jackson to affirm Plessy in future segregation cases, including Brown v. Board of Education. The memo stated, "I realize that it is an unpopular and unhumanitarian position, for which I have been excoriated by my 'liberal' colleagues, but I think Plessy v. Ferguson was right and should be reaffirmed." Plessy was later overturned in Brown v. Board of Education.

While under oath during his confirmation hearings, Justice Rehnquist denied that the memo reflected his beliefs at the time . . . Justice Rehnquist went so far as to attribute his statements to former Supreme Court Justice Jackson. Justice Jackson was deceased at the time and therefore unable to defend himself against these attacks. Elsie Douglas, Justice Jacksonís former secretary, defended her boss sharply and criticized Justice Rehnquist for smearing the name and reputation of Justice Jackson. Justice Rehnquist has been accused of perjury by several scholars for stating to Congress that the memo did not represent his beliefs.

Hmmm, do we see a pattern emerging here?

Justice Rehnquist while clerking for Justice Jackson wrote in a memo, "I take a dim view of this pathological search for discrimination. . . and as a result I now have a mental block against the case." In a second memo he wrote: "The Constitution does not prevent the majority from banding together, nor does it attaint success in the effort. It is about time the Court faced the fact that the white people of the south don't like the colored people: the constitution restrains them from effecting thru (sic) state action but it most assuredly did not appoint the Court as a sociological watchdog to rear up every time private discrimination raises its admittedly ugly head."

He tried to bully and intimidate native-born brownskins from exercising their constitutional voting rights. He argued repeatedly in favor of race segregation laws, and opposed any attempts by the federal government to intervene when black folk were, oh, like being lynched and stuff in the South. And when he was called to account for it it, he denied it all under oath. And we haven't even covered that deed to the house in Vermont with a restrictive covenant against "members of the Hebrew race." He didn't know about that one either . . .

But Sonia Sotomayor is a dangerous extremist, racist activist judge, because she . . . eats pigs' feet, and likes the merengue, and is a Latin female liberal. Like I said, it's only Identity Politics if you're not a lying Republican white guy.

(Update: Don't Santeria priestesses use pigs' feet for divination? You heard it here first, folks.)

---Vitelius

Monday Mondo-Judicial Thread

• Congratulations to Maria Tequila Sonia Sotomayor. Already we’ve been told that she hates America, and that’s good enough for the Baron already.

• On the subject, the Fox News GOP talking points on Sotomayor today contain this doozy:

Additional Talking Points

Justice Souter's retirement could move the Court to the left and provide a critical fifth vote for:

Further eroding the rights of the unborn and property owners;

Imposing a federal constitutional right to same-sex marriage;

And so on and so on etc . . .

Excuse me, but, er, hasn’t David Souter been one of the more reliably liberal justices on the Court for the last 20 years? I swear, it’s just like Ted Kennedy said about the Bush gang---these people don’t want to govern, they want to rule, and they will make up whatever shit they can in their increasingly futile attempts to marginalize anyone who isn't a loyal Drano drinker. Then again, it worked for them for awhile, but obviously, they're not quick studies when it comes to reading election results.

• And once more on the subject, wouldn't it be a nice change of pace to see a practicing atheist on the Supreme Court? Which I suspect is about as likely as a practicing Rastafarian on the court, I know, so I guess I won't hold my breath in anticipation.

• Not surprisingly, our state Supreme Court upheld Prop 8 today. Good to see that folks are already taking action instead of merely moping about it. And since we no longer have any functioning government in Sacramento, we might as well get used to a tidal wave of citizen legislation (i.e., ballot initiatives) in the coming election cycles. Unless we decide to call for a Constitutional Convention, which I frankly think is the only possible way to salvage the state at this point.

• And in case you wondered why we don’t have a functioning government anymore, how could we when Somali warlords leaders like this guy are running it?

"The voters sent a very clear message to Sacramento: Live within your means, cut spending, slash the size of government, get rid of the waste and the inefficiency and don't raise taxes," Schwarzenegger told a gathering of small business owners and their advocates in Sacramento.

Actually, Mensa Guy, 81 percent of the voters didn’t even bother to vote in your vaunted Special Election. And no spending cuts of any type were on the ballot either way.

Sigh. This is just the continuation of the seemingly-endless mainstreaming of right-wing economic principles that has metastasized throughout the entire apparatus of state government for the past 30 years, as this terrific post at Calitics reminds us. And the Democratic leadership in Sacramento seems as impotent as clueless as ever over it.

• Not to make excuses for wanna-be jailhouse jihadis, but what kind of cruel bastard do you have to be to work as an FBI informant these days?

• This excellent roundtable of economists, historians and businessmen on the State of the Financial Sector in the New York Review is stimulating reading, and while Krugman, Roubini, Soros et all make a plethora of pointed observations, leave it to an ex-basketball player to make the case for regulation, investigation, and (possibly) prosecution for fraud most succinctly:

It's not news that people are greedy. But we made conscious decisions not to put limits on that natural human impulse. What were the mistakes? In 1999, we allowed investment banks, banks, insurance companies to combine: we eliminated the Glass-Steagall Act, which prohibited commercial banks from operating as investment banks. Why was Glass-Steagall put into law? Because the last time we didn't limit greed we got into trouble, the Great Depression.

The second mistake was in 1999, the explicit decision by the Clinton administration and Congress not to regulate derivatives, in particular credit default swaps. In 2002 they were worth $1 trillion and today they're worth $33 trillion, and that decision not to regulate derivatives created the following sequence: you have mortgages; then a thousand mortgages are packaged and sold as a mortgage-backed security; a thousand mortgage-backed securities are packaged and sold as a collateral debt obligation [CDOs]; then a thousand collateral debt obligations are packaged and sold as a CDO squared; and insuring each one of those bundles are credit default swaps, which are a part of that $33 trillion. And our government deliberately decided not to regulate this chain of investments.

One result was that the 374 people in the London office of AIG who were responsible for AIG derivatives destroyed a company that had 116,000 employees in 120 countries. Why? Because there was no regulation at all.

The third decision was in 2004. The SEC allowed banks to go from 10 to 1 leverage to 30 to 1 leverage. And guess what? Once they were allowed to do it, they did it. So if we're going to look at the future, we might think of undoing those three mistakes.

Finally, we might want to remember that the chairman of the Federal Reserve is supposed to remove the punch bowl from the party when the party gets out of control. And that did not happen in the Greenspan years. The opposite happened.

So why didn’t we crack the books at AIGFP last fall, when we had the opportunity?

---Vitelius

Gotta-Read of the Week

Dan Abrams' interview with war criminals former AGs Ashcroft and Gonzales is so rich with buck-passing, excuse-making, scapegoating moments of moral relativism, it's almost impossible to know where to begin, so I'll just excerpt a typical passage. You can read the whole thing here, and it is well worth your time.

Abrams: Let me follow this. The U.S. military prosecuted our own troops for using waterboarding in the Philippines, tried the Japanese for war crimes for using it against the Allies and the U.S. troops in WWII. And yet, we’re suggesting that it’s not torture. [Applause]

Ashcroft: First of all, the word waterboarding can be defined in a lot of ways.

Abrams: Let’s talk about the definition that was used in these memos—this is a legal document—of the definition of waterboarding. “Lying on a gurney that is inclined with an angle of 10-15 degrees from horizontal, with the detainee on his back. . . head toward the head end of the gurney, cloth pasted over the detainees’ face, and cold water poured on the cloth approximately 16-18 inches—this is the definition. The question is—--

Gonzales: Dan, the opinions have been withdrawn. There are no longer binding position of the department . . .

Abrams: I understand that, but that doesn’t mean, as lawyers, we can’t sit and discuss whether this was a correct legal assessment. Because it seems to me, in my opinion, that it is impossible to explain how this particular procedure would not be considered torture. [Applause]

Ashcroft: Members of the department went and underwent the procedure.

Abrams: Once or twice, not 266 times.

Ashcroft: Many members of our military in training undergo the procedure---

Abrams: Once or twice.

Ashcroft: Were you there?

Abrams: No, the memos explain it. It’s once or twice.

A commenter named civitas provides the proper context to all the rationalizations:

It's really hard to believe this [Gonzales] guy got any school to give him a degree or any state to put him on the bar with such poor basic logic. Look, the technique is either torture or its not---that doesn't change regardless of the threat level or the results. You can argue whether the U.S. is justified to use torture in certain conditions, but to try and make a legal distinction that it ceases to be torture under those conditions is just moronic to the core. It's akin to a bank robber saying it's not theft if he really needed the money. Or a guy who kills his wife in a fit of jealousy saying it's not homicide because he thought she was cheating.

I think it's safe to say the Gonzales knows this too, and that's why, like Cheney, he's attempting to mount a PR counteroffensive before any more momentum builds for Holder to appoint a special prosecutor.

And what did Abrams take away from the interview? Well, he doesn't exactly say, in s any words, that Al Gonzales has the look of a guilty man, but . . .

When AG Gonzales first shook my hand it felt like he saw swine flu secretions in my eyeballs.

--Vitelius

Inside Calvinball

Dear Nate:

As a lifelong baseball junkie, it dawned on me today after reading this post that we lack a more finely calibrated method for evaluating the performance of washed-out ballplayers: You know, guys who strike out a lot and who don't draw many walks, who don't hit for power and who have poor defensive skills. Sure, it's easy to ridicule the offensive ineptitude of, say, a Mario Mendoza, but what if we could devise a more precise metric to evaluate Mendoza's skill sets relative to those of similarly situated players? I would think that fans, baseball executives and sabermetricians alike would gain valuable insight from this knowledge.

Perhaps you and the gang at the Prospectus could be of help in this regard. Just a thought.

Have a nice weekend. (H/t DeLong.)

Your Ob'd'nt S'rv't,

---Vitelius

Newtered News at the Hiatt Hotel

Calling Brad DeLong: The Post done crashed and burned again . . .

Anyway, we had a special election in California the other day. It was a last-ditch, half-assed attempt by our incompetent Governor to stave off fiscal Armageddon for a few more months. It didn't work.

The election results inspired this missive from one of America's most Serious & Respected Political Thinkers:

Americans should look carefully at the anti-politician, anti-government mood exhibited in California this week. Just as Proposition 13 and the anti-tax movement of 1978 were the forerunners of the Reagan presidential victory, so the results of Tuesday's vote are a harbinger of things to come.

Sacramento politicians will now reject the voters' call for lower taxes and less spending and embrace the union-lobbyist-bureaucrat machine that is running California into the ground, crippling its economy and cheating residents. This model of high-tax, big-spending inefficiency has already driven thousands of successful Californians out of the state (taking with them an estimated $11 billion in annual tax revenue). The exodus will continue.

Meanwhile back at the polling place, Californians confirmed their hatred of higher taxes:

• 75% support increasing taxes on alcoholic beverages (62% support among 'No' voters)
• 74% support increasing taxes on tobacco (62% support among 'No' voters)
• 73% support imposing an oil extraction tax on oil companies just like every other oil producing state (60% support among 'No' voters)
• 63% support closing the loophole that allows corporations to avoid reassessment of the value of new property they purchase (58% support among 'No' voters)
• 63% support increasing the top bracket of the state income tax from nine point three percent to 10 percent for families with taxable income over $272,000 a year and to eleven percent for families with taxable incomes over $544,000 a year (51% support among 'No' voters)
• 62% support prohibiting corporations from using tax credits to offset more than fifty percent of the taxes they owe (55% support among 'No' voters)

The Serious Thinker:

Then look again at the 62 percent-plus majority in California in favor of smaller government and lower taxes.

The angry, small-government voters:

• 76% oppose cutting public school spending by $5.3 billion (58% oppose among 'No'voters)
• 73% oppose cutting funding for state colleges and universities by $1.2 billion (58% oppose among 'No' voters)
• 68% oppose cutting the state's funding for health care services by $1.1 billion (55% oppose among 'No voters)
” 62% oppose cutting the state's funding for homecare services by $494 million (54% oppose among 'No' voters

Can anyone, anyone tell me why this ignoramus continues to be a staple on the Sunday talk shows? (H/t Dday.)

---Vitelius

Beyond Gitmo: Mainstreaming Authoritarianism

The President gave his big security speech at the National Archives today. Here it is:

Now, obviously there is much that is laudable in this speech, and we don't need to wait long to hear it. Unfortunately, there is also much that is troubling, and no small dosage of double-speak, to wit:

I have opposed the creation of such a [Truth] Commission because I believe that our existing democratic institutions are strong enough to deliver accountability. The Congress can review abuses of our values, and there are ongoing inquiries by the Congress into matters like enhanced interrogation techniques. The Department of Justice and our courts can work through and punish any violations of our laws.

Good to know. The only problem is, there doesn't seem to be anyone lighting a fire beneath the Justice Department these days, least of all the President.

On at least one issue, though, Obama seems to have made up his mind. [Newsweek's Michael] Isikoff reports that Obama announced his opposition to torture prosecutions---an unsurprising admission, perhaps, but one that must have disappointed many in attendance. Previously he had said that the question of investigation and prosecuting Bush administration officials was one for Holder to answer. But with Holder sitting right beside him, there's no doubt he's feeling pressure to, as they say, look forward, not backward.

There's also this from the President:

National security requires a delicate balance. Our democracy depends upon transparency, but some information must be protected from public disclosure for the sake of our security; for instance, the movements of our troops; our intelligence-gathering; or the information we have about a terrorist organization and its affiliates. In these and other cases, lives are at stake.

Agreed. However:

On the other hand, I recently opposed the release of certain photographs that were taken of detainees by U.S. personnel between 2002 and 2004. Individuals who violated standards of behavior in these photos have been investigated and held accountable. There is no debate as to whether what is reflected in those photos is wrong, and nothing has been concealed to absolve perpetrators of crimes. However, it was my judgment; informed by my national security team; that releasing these photos would inflame anti-American opinion, and allow our enemies to paint U.S. troops with a broad, damning and inaccurate brush, endangering them in theaters of war.

Oh please. It is a good five years too late to be putting forth that argument. Besides, we thought Obama was pledged to remove our soldiers in Iraq from harm's way---by getting them the hell out of the country.

We are also treated, regrettably, to a transparent straw-man thesis:

We see that, above all, in how the recent debate has been obscured by two opposite and absolutist ends. On one side of the spectrum, there are those who make little allowance for the unique challenges posed by terrorism, and who would almost never put national security over transparency. On the other end of the spectrum, there are those who embrace a view that can be summarized in two words: "anything goes." (Emphasis added.)

I am sorry, but this is patent horseshit. One can advocate for a prudent national-security agenda, for classification of information and for a limited State Secrets privilege where necessary, and insist on transparency in government when laws of the state are serially broken. To claim otherwise, as Obama does, is to give a green light to further lawbreaking-in-secret in the name of Keeping Us Safe™. Obama may be an ethical man who won't countenance such behavior from members of his administration, but his successor may not subscribe to such lofty values; that's another reason why a line in the sand eventually needs to be drawn, one that clearly delineates what any member of the executive branch can or cannot legally get away with. Actually, the line has already been drawn, decisively, by the Supreme Court in the Hamdan and Boumedienne decisions, but Obama can't seem to decide on which side he wants to stand. His overall message seems to be: We'll keep you safe, and we'll obey the law as much as we possibly can, but if we do break the law, it won't be on purpose, and we'll be sure to tell you all about it---unless it makes us look bad, or pisses off the Arabs.

Perhaps Obama secretly knows how legally untenable a great deal of this extra-judicial crap is, and he'll be content to let the courts eventually toss out the tribunals, the detentions, and all the rest on legitimate Constitutional grounds. But if that's the case, it doesn't speak highly of his willingness to accept responsibility for his decision to don the mantle of authoritarianism. And make no mistake: by affirming most of the Bush-era secrecy doctrines today, and by his refusal to demand accountability from those who created the "mess" he inherited, the War on Terror---and all of the Constitutional quagmires and abuses of power that accompany it---is his responsibility now. No more "inherited" national-security excuses from now on.

And that's what's most troubling of all in the end---Obama's overall embrace of much of the Bush security regime: the semi-secret tribunals, the indefinite detentions, the warrantless wiretapping, telcom immunity, etc. (Much of which went unmentioned today, and which seems to have been all but forgotten of late.) Obama uses powerful rhetoric to defend his policies---and at least he acknowledges the difficulty of maintaining an indefinite detention program in light of accepted Constitutional restrictions; and, one supposes, he will only pursue said extra-judicial policies after devoting much due and nuanced thought to the process---but in the end, what he's essentially arguing for is a kinder, gentler form of authoritarianism in the name of Fighting Terrorists---a fight which, obviously, can never be said to be definitively concluded; which is to say, the acceptance of a permanent War Presidency bestowed with permanent and irrevocable extra-judicial authority. In the end, we are all basically asked to trust his judgment to use these powers wisely---which might only be remotely acceptable, as I mentioned, if Obama had been elected President-for Life. But he wasn't, so it isn't.

Perhaps Obama's studied and measured "anti-cowboy" approach to the New Authoritarian Presidency® will assuage the fears of moderate Republicans (if there are any left around), and improve the electoral prospects of Blue Dog Democrats in the next election cycle, but for the rest of us, this is real cause for disappointment---and no small amount of dismay. Greenwald makes the cogent point about the "mainstreaming" of what once would have been considered such a dangerous and extremist view of the executive branch:

So now, we're going to have huge numbers of people who spent the last eight years vehemently opposing such ideas running around arguing that we're waging a War against Terrorism, a "War President" must have the power to indefinitely lock people away who allegedly pose a "threat to Americans" but haven't violated any laws, our normal court system can't be trusted to decide who is guilty, Terrorists don't deserve the same rights as Americans, the primary obligation of the President is to "keep us safe," and -- most of all -- anyone who objects to or disagrees with any of that is a leftist purist ideologue who doesn't really care about national security. In other words, arguments and rhetoric that were once confined to Fox News/Bush-following precincts will now become mainstream Democratic argumentation in service of defending what Obama is doing. That's the most harmful part of this -- it trains the other half of the citizenry to now become fervent admirers and defenders of some rather extreme presidential "war powers."

And to think this all took place in the building that houses the original draft of the Constitution. My Notre Dame optimism is fading today.

---Vitelius

What Would Australopithecus Do?

Well, there goes the "no common descent" argument. What'll they try next?

---Vitelius

Contra CAFE: A Taxing Solution

Well, the big news today, of course, is Obama's big rollout of new and more stringent fuel-efficiency standards, in which the President's energy policy team managed the seemingly impossible task of brokering an agreement that members of the auto industry, the environmental movement, and the respective state governments could all live with. And while we shouldn’t minimize the importance of today’s announcement---for it is a big step in the right direction—--I have to admit I’ve never been a big fan of CAFE per se, primarily because it is, for lack of a better term, a supply-side solution. After all, as the automakers have repeatedly noted in recent years, why should we be forced to build smaller, more energy-efficient cars when consumers prefer big, wasteful SUVs and pickup trucks? These guys are in the business of making money, after all, which is a good thing since their success provides us with valuable exports and plenty of good-paying jobs. This was the rationale throughout the 1990s, and while we can say in hindsight that it was short-sighted, can we really blame the automakers for behaving that way? The fact is, American consumers have notoriously short memories: over the last 12 months, pickup truck sales have actually trended upward, and hybrid sales downward, reflecting the relative drop in fuel prices. And simply mandating more fuel-efficient vehicles from the manufacturers doesn’t do anything to address the fickle and capricious changes in consumer demand. Let's face it: The number-one driver of America's CO2 greenhouse-gas emissions has been our insatiable demand for cheap fuel, as the graph above illustrates.

A better solution, to me, would be to take a demand-side approach. And that means making vehicle fuel a more expensive and less attractive commodity. How to do it? Simple. Raise the federal gas tax. A lot.

Yes, I know the usual liberal arguments against it---it’s a regressive tax which hurts poor and low-income people disproportionately, not to mention small businesses and companies that rely on long-haul transport. But in the big scheme of things, our fuel taxes, compared to those of most other countries’, are a bad joke: 18 cents a gallon. In Europe, it’s ten times that amount on average, and that’s the main reason why fuel on the Continent is so much more expensive than gas in the US. It’s also the likely reason why European cars average 60-percent better fuel economy than their American counterparts (and yes, I know, the preponderance of diesel fuel in Europe also plays a significant role in this). The way things are now, people can still buy all the big wasteful SUVs they want, and the automakers can continue to crank them out by the million to meet consumer demand and maximize profits. And the chances are, if fuel costs remain relatively low, this scenario will play out all over again----but raise the gas tax a significant amount, and you'll just have to pay the piper if you want to drive an inefficient rig.

The benefits? Well, for starters, a $1 increase in the federal gas tax would bring in an estimated $100 billion in revenue per year, which could be used for all sorts of worthy causes---deficit reduction, infrastructure improvements, or more urban bus and mass-transit projects, or for tax credits targeted at those poor and low-income workers who are hurt most by high pump prices, or tax rebates for the trucking industry and other gas-reliant business sectors to help offset their higher costs.

Another side benefit we can absolutely quantify: when the price of gas goes up, Americans drive less. A lot less.

Just check out those peaks and valleys. There are some big dips in this chart, and they all reflect the most abrupt spikes in energy prices we've experienced since the early 1970s. In other words, big increases in fuel costs invariably result, whether by correlation or causation, in reduced consumption of fuel, and with it, reduced pollution and CO2 emissions.

Finally, there's a (perfectly rational) school of economic thought--mostly championed by conservative economists, ironically---which holds that some forms of taxation, such as a gas tax, are beneficial overall to a nation's economic growth to address the "negative externalities" associated with high fuel consumption. In theory, anyway, higher gas taxes = reduced gas consumption, which should = lower prices from oil producers who are forced into more intensive competition for consumer dollars. As a side benefit, the ability of nations such as Saudi Arabia, Iran and Venezuela to influence our foreign policy and energy policy would be diminished (impoverished nations typically don't wield as much clout on the world stage as do richer nations), and the lower per-barrel prices of crude which result from increased competition should ameliorate some of the financial discomfort felt by consumers at the gas pump as a result of the tax increase.

Now don't think that the Baron has Gone Greenspan on you. There's still a crucial role for government to play as a watchdog over the automotive industry, and the revenues that would accrue from an increase in the gas tax would naturally decrease over time as less fuel is consumed---unless, or course, we raise the tax even higher. Further, any tax increase would have to be phased in gradually over time, to avoid placing too great a shock on the economy at once, and raising the tax in a recession is likely not the most opportune time to do it. And any incentives or inducements that government can offer the market that will encourage the production of cleaner, more efficient vehicles, well hey, I'm all for them. The efficiency mandates that were rolled out in Washington today were far from draconian---fleet averages of 35 mpg by the year 2016 are perfectly attainable using existing technologies (and technologies-in-development), and the automakers know this. That's why they were happy to sign onto the agreement. But if we're ever going to get really serious about long-term reductions in CO2 emissions, we're going to have to do more than simply mandate 35, 45, or 55 mpg from the OE manufacturers since, after all, there's no guarantee that American consumers will actually want (or even be able) to buy these cars at any given point in future time. If we're ever going to solve our fuel addiction in the long term, Americans as individuals are also going to have make some serious work and lifestyle adaptations in the years and decades to come, and that will either mean driving less, or paying more for the privilege. Does this mean the eventual death of America's mythic Open Road? In a word, yes, and it's frankly about time.

---Vitelius

Monday Omnivore Mondo-Thread

• If I only knew what I read in the papers and on the wires, I might have begun to think by now that all the torture that took place at Gitmo and Abu Ghraib was Nancy Pelosi's fault. And these guys wonder why they're losing readers?

Oh, and here's another reason. And another. So there.

Then again, credit where due---richly---to Clark Hoyt for debunking at least one O'Reilly ACORN myth. More of this, please.

• Something tells me that GM CEO Fritz Henderson won't be appearing on any more Fox interview shows anytime soon.

• The wickedly talented Ezra Klein is settling into his new home quite nicely. One of his first posts at the Post introduces us to one of those pieces of why-didn't-we-think-of-this-one-before legislation. Send Rosa DeLauro a note and let her know why her MEAL bill is a great idea whose time has come.

On a related note, Michael Pollan reminds us why food policy and health-care reform are inextricably intertwined.

The CDC, Centers for Disease Control, estimates that of the $2 trillion we're spending on healthcare in this country, $1.5 trillion is for the treatment of preventable chronic disease. Now, that’s not all food, because you have smoking in there, too, and alcoholism. But the bulk of it is food. Food is implicated in heart disease, which we spend, you know, billions and billions on. It's implicated in type 2 diabetes. It’s implicated in about 40 percent of cancers. It's implicated in stroke, all sorts of cardiovascular problems.

And, you know, in a sense, the healthcare crisis is a euphemism for the food crisis, I mean, that they are identical. And I do think that President Obama recognizes this. And I think that you will see programs to address this, because that is how you could---you know, a better School Lunch Program would be a down payment on the healthcare reform, because you would reduce long-term the costs of the system. Treating a case of type 2 diabetes costs the City of New York, every new case, $500,000. It is bankrupting the system. And it's preventable . . .

The interesting thing is, why don't we have really powerful public interest ad campaigns to inform people about this? I mean, the way the government could save the most money the most easily would be having a public advertising campaign about the dangers of soda. There are a great many children that, simply by getting off soda, avert this whole course.

This, I predict, will mark the commencement of the GOP's next sensational Senate gambit, in which some Southerner will threaten to stage a filibuster of MEAL on behalf of Type 2 diabetes. In the name of states' rights, of course. Snark aside, it doesn't sound all that improbable, if you think about it.

• And speaking of commencements, did you see the Notre Dame speech yesterday? I swear, every time I am ready to throw up my hands and say I'm completely through with Obama---and if you read Greenwald regularly, you'll know my list of grievances, like those of many in the blogosphere, seems to grow with each passing week---he breaks out a speech that hits all the proper grace notes, that manages to be conciliatory without compromising principle, that really does entreat us all to heed our noblest instincts and to hearken to the better angels of our nature, that I am struck once again, as I've been time and again for the last eighteen months, with the realization of what a remarkably gifted speaker--and by implication, what a sublimely complex political thinker---he is. He may have disappointed many of us already with his tendencies towards incrementalism---and his policy prescriptions for the economy, for health care and for Pakistan, may all go up in flames eventually. But there's just so much potential in the man that even four months into his oft-times-frustrating administration, I'm choosing yet again to remain optimistic for the future. The man's ability to motivate and uplift a crowd with his oratory is unmatched by any public figure I can think of since the time of Martin King. And even if his legislative initiatives should falter and his political instincts fail him, any person who possesses the power to move and uplift people as Obama does should not, and must not, be easily dismissed. Whether he retires from the White House revered or reviled, I think he is destined to remain one of our most influential public figures for many years to come. And our public discourse, if not necessarily our public policy, will be the better for it. Of course, all of us must continue to relentlessly pressure, harangue and pester him if he backslides on matters of torture, secrecy, and lawlessness in government, but I still think he has the potential to transform our political landscape, and to re-shape our policies and priorities toward the common good, to an extent that we haven't seen in any US President since Franklin Roosevelt.

You can watch the whole speech here. It's worth the hour of your time.

---Vitelius

Utterly Irrelevant Rant of The Day

How does a former professor of Constitutional law make a Constitutional argument for the existence of secret tribunals? By only making them semi-secret?

---Vitelius

Massive Friday Mega-Thread

For all those things the Baron didn't attend to earlier:

• Your tax dollars at work: Bay Area Air Quality Management District pays $75 grand for increased CO₂ emissions.

• I'm starting to think it will take the Obama administration a year at least to clear the rot out of the bureaucracy left over by his predecessor.

• Does this observation ring true to you?

America's love affair with the mall is not coming back. Boomers headed into retirement dependent on the real estate bubble have now taken a massive hit on both their houses and their stock portfolios. Neither is coming back soon. Retirement plans will be scaled back to include less travel, fewer toys (boats and cars), and less shopping in general. Moreover, a new wave of frugality has hit the children of boomers.

Search this blog for the word "Frugality"and see what you find.

Hard for me to say, since I live in an urban neighborhood that isn't heavily reliant on mega-malls for conducting everyday commerce. But I live within walking distance of a couple of them, and it seems to me based on my occasional drive-bys that they're still just as popular as ever as hang-outs, particularly among teens. Maybe folks just aren't buying as much junk there as before. If so, that strikes me as a positive.

And I do agree, too, that the CRE time bomb has already gone off. Nobody's noticed it quite yet. The insurance meltdown beyond AIG, though, is already drawing scrutiny.

Ad if you've worked for the last 20 or 30 years as a government employee, and you've been counting down the days until you can retire on that state pension of yours, chances are good that you're hosed, too.

• Some good friends took me to task me over my previous post in which I excoriated Obama for wimping out on the release of the latest batch of torture photos, and for wimping out in general on the torture debate. The gist of my friends' opinions went along the lines of: (a) the release of photos would only be a distraction which would (b) give the wingnut talk-show hosts another week's worth of talking points, and (c) it wouldn't really tell us anything more about the atrocities than we already know; and besides, (d) torture trials would rip asunder the the country's political fabric and (e) Lord knows that Obama's got much bigger fish to fry than John Yoo and Al Gonzales these days. Which led me to reconsider my righteous indignation . . . until Steve Benen reminded me yesterday of the greater issue at stake:

I've been trying to think about this from Obama's perspective. Bush left him with a generational economic crisis, an abysmal job market, a budget mess, a war in Iraq, a deteriorating war in Afghanistan, an nuclear-armed and unstable Pakistan, a nuclear-armed and nutty North Korea, a warming planet, a collapsing U.S. auto industry, an ineffective health care system, a massive debt, an absurd national energy framework, and a nation that has lost much of its global prestige.

Ready to dive in and start getting the nation back on track, the president is then told, "Wait, we have to deal with the consequences of the previous administration's alleged war crimes, too" . . .

He's probably looking at all of this in cold, calculating terms, and has decided none of torture-related allegations and/or evidence advance the nation's interests. Except, there's a nagging problem -- that darn rule of law.

While I can easily understand the president's calculation, I still think some of Obama's recent calls are mistaken, not because they're inexplicable, but because expedience just isn't a good enough excuse. (Emphasis added.)

Especially when you consider this.

• Finally, this just in: Europe is still a socialist hellhole that we would never want to emulate.

---Vitelius

Tortured Logic

Somebody better print out a copy of this column by Greenwald today and staple it to Obama's head. The money quotes are here:

I will criticize President Obama on this level; it's a good thing I'm not president because I would prosecute every person that was involved in that torture. I would prosecute the people that did it. I would prosecute the people that ordered it. Because torture is against the law . . .

[Waterboarding is] drowning. It gives you the complete sensation that you are drowning. It is no good, because you -- I'll put it to you this way, you give me a waterboard, Dick Cheney and one hour, and I'll have him confess to the Sharon Tate murders.

Now, Glenn chooses to emphasize the first paragraph here as a means of re-stating what should be painfully obvious but which is so often ignored by our media elites: Namely, that the question of whether the authorization of torture by government officials should be prosecuted or not is a strictly legal issue, not a partisan one. But I think Jesse Ventura's aside at the end tells us quite a lot---specifically, it provides us with the reason why Dick Cheney himself is making so many self-serving public appearances of late, with handy rationales for the application of torture because it's effective and it works and it's prevented future Al' Qaeda attacks.

Which is another way of saying, he's trying to change the subject.

For as Jesse Ventura reminds us, the question is not whether torture works. Of course it does. It always has---if all you're looking for is junk information. What Cheney wants us to overlook in the torture debate---and sadly, he appears to be succeeding---is the issue that all his self-serving bloviations aim to distract us from: That is, the torture sponsors' hidden motives: were intelligence agents really looking to break Al' Qaeda, to track down Bin Laden and thwart future attacks against the US in service of national security? Or was torture simply another tool to be deployed in the P.R. campaign to gin up evidence to justify launching an unprovoked war?

A former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the interrogation issue said that Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld demanded that the interrogators find evidence of al Qaida-Iraq collaboration.

"There were two reasons why these interrogations were so persistent, and why extreme methods were used," the former senior intelligence official said on condition of anonymity because of the issue's sensitivity.

"The main one is that everyone was worried about some kind of follow-up attack (after 9/11). But for most of 2002 and into 2003, Cheney and Rumsfeld, especially, were also demanding proof of the links between al Qaida and Iraq that (former Iraqi exile leader Ahmed) Chalabi and others had told them were there."

It was during this period that CIA interrogators waterboarded two alleged top al Qaida detainees repeatedly---Abu Zubaydah at least 83 times in August 2002 and Khalid Sheik Muhammed 183 times in March 2003---according to a newly released Justice Department document.

"There was constant pressure on the intelligence agencies and the interrogators to do whatever it took to get that information out of the detainees, especially the few high-value ones we had, and when people kept coming up empty, they were told by Cheney's and Rumsfeld's people to push harder," he continued.

"Cheney's and Rumsfeld's people were told repeatedly, by CIA . . . and by others, that there wasn't any reliable intelligence that pointed to operational ties between bin Laden and Saddam, and that no such ties were likely because the two were fundamentally enemies, not allies."

Senior administration officials, however, "blew that off and kept insisting that we'd overlooked something, that the interrogators weren't pushing hard enough, that there had to be something more we could do to get that information," he said.

This is what makes Obama's defensive 180 today so maddening, beyond its moral and legal implications. Now is not the time to be giving ground or backpedaling, not when so many former Bush-era operatives are coming out of the woodwork now to reveal what they know about the torture program's sordid origins. Cheney and Yoo and Bybee are in trouble, big trouble, and they all know it---and that's why they're trying to change the subject and frame the debate over torture in terms of national security---an argument which most Americans are apparently inclined to respect, however begrudgingly---and not as the act of political expediency that it actually was, and for which there can be no possible justification.

But that's just what Obama bought into today, whether he realizes it or not.

And as far as his half-hearted attempt to link releasing the latest torture photos to endangering our troops, it's almost so lame as to be laugh-out-loudable. Digby:

The administration is now refusing to release the remaining Abu Ghraib pictures because they have the potential to cause harm to our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan? Really?

It seems to me that we should probably get them out of a war zone, then. Talk about dangerous. Why, last I heard they are getting shot at every day over there.

Waterboarding we can believe in. Let's hope Eric Holder stands up to his boss on this one.

---Vitelius

The Health-Care Whatchamacallit

Well, the new Obama-AHIP health care plan---er, letter---er, commitment---was rolled out today, and while it's not short on a certain type of ambition, it's painfully short on specifics. Krugman, guardedly, still sees the glass as at least half full, though I do believe he is on to something here:

What's presumably going on here is that key interest groups have realized that health care reform is going to happen no matter what they do, and that aligning themselves with the Party of No will just deny them a seat at the table. (Republicans, after all, still denounce research into which medical procedures are effective and which are not as a dastardly plot to deprive Americans of their freedom to choose.)

I would strongly urge the Obama administration to hang tough in the bargaining ahead. In particular, AHIP will surely try to use the good will created by its stance on cost control to kill an important part of health reform: giving Americans the choice of buying into a public insurance plan as an alternative to private insurers . . .

But let me not be too negative. The fact that the medical-industrial complex is trying to shape health care reform rather than block it is a tremendously good omen. It looks as if America may finally get what every other advanced country already has: a system that guarantees essential health care to all its citizens.

On the other other hand, as Krugman notes, there are plenty of grounds for skepticism as well. From the medical consortium's letter of intent:

We are committed to taking action in public-private partnership to create a more stable and sustainable health care system that will achieve billions in savings through:  

• Implementing proposals in all sectors of the health care system, focusing on administrative simplification, standardization, and transparency that supports effective markets;
• Reducing over-use and under-use of health care by aligning quality and efficiency incentives among providers across the continuum of care so that physicians, hospitals, and other health care providers are encouraged and enabled to work together towards the highest standards of quality and efficiency;
• Encouraging coordinated care, both in the public and private sectors, and adherence to evidence-based best practices and therapies that reduce hospitalization, manage chronic disease more efficiently and effectively, and implement proven clinical prevention strategies; and,
• Reducing the cost of doing business by addressing cost drivers in each sector and through common sense improvements in care delivery models, health information technology, workforce deployment and development, and regulatory reforms.

Now, I'm not an HMO executive, nor do I play one on TV, but I deal with a lot of executive types in my day job, and when I read or listen to corporate mission statements that are peppered with phrases such as as "effective markets," "cost drivers," "evidence-based best practices," and efficiency, efficiency, efficiency everywhere, you soon come to realize the words that are missing from the document---words such as "insurance," "comprehensive," "universal," "investment," and even "patients" (uttered only in passing in the letter's closing sentence). And then you wake up and realize the place and time in which you are actually living, and you arrive at the real-world translation of such jargon in the ethical argot of current-day corporate America: Cost-cutting by the corporation, price hikes for the consumer, and profit margins unmolested. Ezra cuts to the chase:

This is one of those moments when new words are being used to drown out ongoing actions. A major source of potential savings, at least in the administration's estimation, will come from comparative effectiveness review. But the pharmaceutical industry and the device industry -- both of which are represented here -- fought violently against CER when the Obama administration sought to include it in the stimulus. By the end, they had managed to win legislative language stating that comparative effectiveness studies wouldn't include cost-effectiveness and wouldn't be used to make coverage decisions. Another source of potential savings is the public plan, which can marry best practices with federal bargaining power to push down costs. The insurance industry has gone to war against this provision.

What we have, in other words, are promises of future cost containment that exist alongside concrete and continued opposition to the cost containment ideas that are actually on the table. And for good reason. A 1.5 percentage point decrease in health spending is a 1.5 percentage point decrease in medical industry profits. This commitment doesn't contain any examples of concessions that will reduce a participant's revenue streams. Conversely, every time legislators have proposed a reform that will actually cut industry profits -- and thus cut health spending -- the industry has howled in pain and anger. It's hard to sync that with promises to cut spending by $2 trillion over the next 10 years by implementing a set of unspecified reforms.

Krugman's right---at least it's a start in the right direction---but it is only a start. Obama needs to make sure that he, not the AHIP partners, continues to frame the debate over health-care reform. Otherwise, we'll all be reliving the travails of Harry and Louise a couple of years from now.

---Vitelius

Somebody Get These People a Calculator

For your drive-time commute, more context-free reporting from the AP today:

Earliest Road Aid Leaves Out Neediest

Counties suffering the most from job losses stand to receive the least help from President Barack Obama's plan to spend billions of stimulus dollars on roads and bridges, an Associated Press analysis has found.

Although the intent of the money is to put people back to work, AP's review of more than 5,500 planned transportation projects nationwide reveals that states are planning to spend the stimulus in communities where jobless rates are already lower.

Really. Proof?

In counties with the largest populations, the government is spending about $69 a person in areas with the lowest unemployment and $40 a person in places with the greatest job need.

The analysis also found that counties with the highest unemployment are most likely to have been passed over completely in the early spending.

Among them: Wheeler County, Ore.; Steuben County, Ind.; Macon County, Ga.; and Crowley County, Colo.

Many others are getting minimal help in this round: Vermillion County, Ind.; Lapeer County, Mich.; Presidio County, Texas; Tallahatchi County, Miss.

Out of curiosity I spent a few minutes at the Census Bureau's website and crunched some numbers. Total population of these nine counties: Approximately 211,900. Subtract Lapeer, and that figure drops to less than 130,000 people. Subtract the number of kids under 18 from that, and we are talking about 100,000 people. Not working-age people, but total people. In a nation of 300 million.

And this is supposed to be an indictment of the Obama stimulus plan?

This is is just foolishness. To say that a county of 35,000 people is "suffering more" with its 13.8 percent unemployment rate (which approximates to about 3,300 workers, going by 2000 Census data) than, oh, say, Los Angeles County, which has only an 11% jobless rate (or 627,000 workers) is to make no distinction whatever between total population, percentage of working-age population, or relative costs of living by county. Of course, it's tragic that a lot of rural counties are suffering from high unemployment. Most regions of the country are in the same boat. And of course, no jobs program will run perfectly---there will always be some inefficiencies and some measurable amount of waste. But to imply that workers in these counties are being neglected in some systematic fashion, as this article clearly does, is statistical dishonesty in the extreme.

Put bluntly: as a rule, more government money tends to get spent in cities and counties where lots of people live. Less government money gets spent in places where people don't live. And this is some sort of scandal? Apparently so:

"We cannot wait," Vice President Joe Biden said last week when announcing a $30 million transit project in his hometown of Wilmington, Del., where the 7.7 percent unemployment rate remains below the national average. "We're spending a lot of time and money. Why? It's about . . . jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs. That's why we cannot wait."

Yet residents of Perry County, Tenn., will have to wait. County Mayor John Carroll said he's disappointed his community, which suffers from 25.4 percent unemployment, won't receive a dime any time soon for its road needs.

Wilmington, Delaware, is located in New Castle County, with a population of 500,000 people. The total population of Perry County, Tennessee in 2000 was 7,600. And most likely, that number is even lower now since rural counties in America have been losing population for decades, as Nate Silver's recent essay in Esquire notes. But would you have known any of this by simply taking this "report" at face value?

Word to the AP: Better statisticians, please.

---Vitelius

TGIF Happy-Hour Thread

• Some people simply have a one-track mind:

Former Idaho Attorney General Larry EchoHawk pledged Thursday to focus on economic development, education and law enforcement if the Senate confirms him as the assistant interior secretary in charge of the Bureau of Indian Affairs . . .

His toughest questioner, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., told the nominee that he wasn't satisfied with his answers on Indian gaming issues and said he wanted a promise that EchoHawk would pay sufficient attention to gaming regulation as the head of the BIA.

As opposed to, y'know, poverty and crime and stuff like that. And when a dude like McCain starts lecturing a member in good standing of the Mormon Church on the virtues of gaming regulation, it's time to grab your wallet and get the hell outta the casino.

• Courtesy of Steve Benen today, the GOP's latest torture-hearings gambit: We'll drag Clinton and Pelosi into them, too.

Republican senators used a hearing Thursday with Attorney General Eric Holder to discourage an investigation into torture under the Bush administration. Both Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Richard Shelby of Alabama suggested that they would push hard to expand any probe of the CIA's "rendition" program and other legally and morally questionable tactics to include the Clinton administration, as well as members of Congress who were briefed on interrogation methods.

To which I can only say, Bring. It. On.

These buffoons are bluffing, of course. Or perhaps they're not, and they really intend to revisit the Clinton Wars and recount for the masses many tales of torture related to excessively harsh blowjobs. Whatever. But to me, it really doesn't matter, for greater Constitutional and moral issues are ultimately at stake here. If Pelosi, and Reid, and Jay Rockefeller really were fully briefed by the CIA on its interrogation methods of Al' Qaeda suspects, we need to know that, too. Anyone in Congress who knowingly acceded to the last eight years of serial lawlessness, whether Republican or Democrat, needs to have their sins confessed and ritually expunged in broad daylight. Josh Marshall thinks this is yet another perfect reason for a South Africa-style Truth & Reconciliation Commission, and frankly, I'm fine with that too. In fact it may be the only viable option in the short term if, in fact, leading Dems were as culpable in enabling torture as leading Republicans were, for then the question arises as to whether this Congress can be trusted to fully and honestly investigate itself.

But doing nothing is not an option.

• Some people haven't figured out that their side lost the Civil War:

Be it further resolved that any Act by the Congress of the United States, Executive Order of the President of the United States of America or Judicial Order by the Judicatories of the United States of America which assumes a power not delegated to the government of the United States of America by the Constitution for the United States of America and which serves to diminish the liberty of the any of the several States or their citizens shall constitute a nullification of the Constitution for the United States of America by the government of the United States of America.

If this rings a bell from your high-school civics class, you're right. It's the doctrine of nullification. As in, John C. Calhoun and Andy Jackson and Henry Clay and tariffs and slaves, and shit that was supposed to have been resolved with the Marbury decision. You would think that the people who authored this high-sounding nonsense had been asleep in a cave for the last 200 years---and what's crazier yet, a majority of the Georgia State Senate actually voted in favor of this resolution. Not in 1832, but just this week.

Well heck, there may be a good reason for the Georgia GOP to make a political play for the Sons & Daughters of Dead White Slaveowners vote, but beyond that, I can't envision any halfway-intelligent rationale for an absurd resolution like this. Other than the fact that the majority of GOP Senators in Georgia are simply insane, that is.

And, we should hasten to add, willfully and proudly ignorant. The estimable Hilzoy puts it in perspective:

Jefferson and Justice Marshall were confronting a similar problem: the need to keep the federal government within constitutional limits. They proposed different solutions: in Jefferson's case, state nullification, in Marshall's, judicial review. When Jefferson wrote, his views were not "militia-minded moonshine and wacko white lightning". They were an attempt to answer a serious problem that had not yet been answered. His solution was, in my view, not the best one, but it was a serious answer to a serious question.

It matters when you write something. The Articles of Confederation were not ideal, but when they were written, they were a real solution to a real problem. Proposing them now would be idiotic. Likewise, what makes the Georgia resolution a Kompletely Krazy Kocktail is that it parrots Jefferson's words as though we had not arrived at a solution to that problem nearly two centuries ago.

---Vitelius

Thursday Omnibus Thread

• The Geithner stress test results have finally been released. My bank failed. Surprise, surprise.

Then again, to be fair on a personal level, I can't diss Wells too much. They may have blown trillions on million-dollar mirages in Riverside County, but heck, I've had my money parked with them for 20 years in a variety of accounts, and they've never done anything underhanded or suspect with my dough. Good service at my branch, too. Maybe I'm just one of the lucky few. Or maybe it's because I never dreamed of owning my own McMansion in some desert hellhole like Norco, take your pick.

• Anything that helps to rid our political discourse of bilious religious crap, I'm all in favor of.

• And yes, the $17 billion in proposed budget cuts that Obama is touting today are more symbolic than substantive, but even so, some proposals that are destined for the axe will expire for the genuine benefit of the commonweal. Like this one.

• Today, proof yet again that the GOP is not only bereft of creative thought but that its political agenda is being driven by morons. Does the word "Supermax" mean anything to these people?

• Then again, just when you thought these people can't be any more moronic . . . remember, you really can't play this clip often enough.

• Yesterday, while driving across a long, lonely stretch of the Central Valley, I brainstormed the most perfect candidate for a Supreme Court appointment that President Obama could present to the US Senate: A female, an ethnic minority, and a distinguished legal scholar with a diverse background in the law beyond the cloistered confines of the federal bench. Oh, and she's shown a flair for mental toughness, and for speaking truth to power. And it looks as though I am not alone in my sentiments today.

• On the subject, I think we need to prepare ourselves for the obvious: Any serious candidate for The Court who's being vetted extensively by the Justice Department is going to be preemptively slimed in print and on the Internets. With a couple dozen loyal Bushies still embedded within the bureaucracy like termites in the woodwork, there are plenty of "anonymous sources" available to dish the dirt on prospective nominees to douchebags like Jeffrey Rosen. Whether any of it is actually true hardly seems to matter anymore to the Village Criers.

And since the Republicans on the Judiciary Committee are likely to vote unanimously against any Obama nominee, why the hell shouldn't he nominate Anita Hill?

• At the risk of descending into wankerhood, wouldn't you think it's about time for Major League Baseball--and, by implication, other sporting leagues--to reconsider its antidrug policies? "Performance enhancement" can have multiple meanings, after all.

---Vitelius

Monday Mini-Thread

• Gotta-Read of The Day: If you think your stomach can stand it, a brief essay and photos from the Mexican swine yard that's already been ID'd as Ground Zero of the current swine flu H1N1 pandemic.

• I can't get too worked up to compose any kind of tribute to Jack Kemp today. He was certainly a gentleman, as John Cole points out, which by itself places him head and shoulders above the birthers and paranoid conspiracy theorists currently running the GOP policy machine. But as Digby reminds us, the economics he advocated for his entire political life, and which defined him as a signature issue---tax cuts, tax cuts, and even more tax cuts---were foolish in theory and disastrous in practice, and have been proposed by Republicans from the 1960s to the present day to undermine the very same social safety-net programs that Kemp so often defended. Whether he was simply naive or merely stupid not to see through the contradiction, I couldn't say; he always struck me as sincere, so he's immune from any charge of cynicism in my eyes. But it's hard for me to see him through the prism of hindsight as anything more than a nice-guy Republican of the old school who was a bit of a lightweight on policy. If he hadn't already become a household name by virtue of his accomplishments in pro football, I suspect he'd have spent his Congressional career as an undistinguished back-bencher.

• Why We Fight v2.1: Democracy on The March.

President Hamid Karzai chose a powerful warlord accused of rights abuses as one of his vice presidential running mates today, hours before leaving for meetings in Washington with President Barack Obama and Pakistan's president.

The selection of Mohammad Qasim Fahim, a top commander in the militant group Jamiat-e-Islami during Afghanistan's 1990s civil war, drew immediate criticism from human rights groups.

A 2005 Human Rights Watch report, "Blood-Stained Hands," found "credible and consistent evidence of widespread and systematic human rights abuses and violations of international humanitarian law" were committed by Jamiat commanders, including Fahim.

He's also an upstanding member of the community in Kabul:

The recent bulldozing of houses in a Kabul neighborhood to build private homes for senior Afghan officials is growing into an embarrassing scandal for the UN-backed Afghan Transitional Authority.

About 20 families in the Sherpur District of the Afghan capital -- an exclusive neighborhood close to the city center -- have been forced to leave the mud-brick houses they had built in the area over the last two decades.

A critical report by a nongovernmental organization, the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, has named 29 senior officials and other powerful Afghan personalities who received plots of land in Sherpur for nominal fees. Included on the list are six cabinet ministers, the mayor of Kabul, the governor of the Afghan National Bank, and two former militia commanders.

Among the most prominent names on the list are Defense Minister Mohammad Qasim Fahim and Education Minister Yunis Qanooni. Both are leaders within Jamiat-i-Islami, the political wing of a former Northern Alliance faction. Jamiat-i-Islami seized de facto control of Kabul after the Taliban regime fled the city but before the International Security Assistance Force was deployed there.

• If loyal Democrat Arlen Specter really wants to serve another six years in the Senate as a member of the majority party, well, I think it's only fair that he earn the privilege the old-fashioned way: Like, by winning the approval of Pennsylvania Democrats in a contested primary election. I'm in for a Franklin if Sestak decides to go after him. Any takers?

• Oh, and Wall Street makes it official: Socialism Fascism Obamaism works.

---Vitelius