Mainstreaming extremism

Sonia Sotomayor is now a Supreme Court Justice, which is a good thing.

There's a cloud in the silver lining, though. Only nine Republicans could bring themselves to support her, despite these facts:

1. She's obviously a moderate, both temperamentally and judicially.
2. She won't change the balance of the Court at all.
3. She's diabetic and thus sadly unlikely to stay on the Court into her eighties.
4. She represents now the aspirations of the fastest growing large ethnic demographic.

We are a deeply divided nation, and the Republican Party is committed to deepening those divisions. Had they simply acquiesced to the craven logic of Sotomayor being the very best option for them, they could have pointed toward greater political unity. Instead, they chose to trash her for, in essence, one decision and one comment.

Update (8/8): Now it's official.

McCain, more Bushist every day

McCain flip-flops on the surveillance state. It turns out that he loves Big Brother after all.

It's especially amusing when a politician does a 180 and then sends out a message that gratuitously and dishonestly insults people who hold the position he himself used to hold:

Mr. McCain believes that “neither the administration nor the telecoms need apologize for actions that most people, except for the A.C.L.U. and trial lawyers, understand were constitutional and appropriate in the wake of the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001,” Mr. Holtz-Eakin wrote.

Four more years! Who needs the Fourth Amendment? Who needs Congress?

More Bushist depredations of the Constitution.

Oversight? We don't need no stinkin' oversight.

It's unambiguously within Duhbya's power (for once) to reverse Gerald Ford's executive order, but it perfectly illustrates his preference for spying without restraint or transparency.

Even when the board had teeth, they were just dentures in a glass by the bed. It's not as if they restrained the Bushist surveillance state in the slightest.

The Globe's illustration for the story is perfect:

• Gerald Ford, who pardoned Nixon and affirmed the evasion of culpability for Republican criminals
• James Baker, who ran the first stage of the Bushist coup, in Florida
• Dick Cheney, emissary of the dark side, who pushed the Bushists toward unfettered imperial power
  

Orwellian bullshit

Mukasey says he can't investigate something that John Yoo and Alberto Gonzales excused in memos that transparently excused criminal behavior because they were written on Department of Justice letterhead.

I mean, seriously, I'm reading The Count of Monte Cristo, and there's nothing in its persecution of Edmond Dantès that is so abusively unjust.

Chuck Schumer must be sooo proud.

L'etat c'est moi

Duhbya does not recognize any restriction on his power. He's the very elected king that the Founders rejected.

Nothing to see here. The coup has happened. Move along. You have no rights.

Oh, the Minuteman Memorial? That's now a gravestone for the Constitution.



By the way, the single most important and non-negotiable aim of the Bushist invasion of Iraq was always to establish permanent bases there.

No power too great

The Bushists will go to any length to accrete power to themselves. Wherever dissent occurs in the executive branch, they will move to crush it. It's the kind of people they are.

Of course, they will dress it up in legalese and apply the wrong legal principle to cover their power grab. Here, they claim they are pursuing civilian control of the military, which is clearly not at issue, when in fact they seek to destroy two things that vex them politically:

• Real defense advocacy for soldiers - oops, another civil right gone
• The independence of the JAG corps to question the legality of little Bushist niceties such as torture

Two conclusions:

• No one who has worked for or in concert with Dick Cheney should ever be permitted to hold a responsible government post again.
• John Yoo is a war criminal. I look forward to his prosecution. Let his attorney advocate for him; the written record is already completely damning.

Thank goodness for Charlie Savage. We need more real journalists.

Zell Miller not available

The typical Bushist tinkering with the make-up of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission is exceptional mainly for its bald-faced evasion of the spirit of the law. The Bushists are happy with the thinnest rationalization if it permits them to make an unprecedented evasion of the law's obvious intent. I mean, for chrissake, Abigail Thernstrom on the commission as a Republican is bad enough, when she has long stood for dismantling any civil rights protections that recognize the power asymmetry of historical discrimination. Flying a flag of convenience as an independent? Retch.

Of course, if the letter of the law is too clear and detailed to evade by pretext, the Bushists are willing to redefine the words. This is, after all, how they achieved power in the 2000 election debacle.

The dismal legacy of Bushism that I (idiosyncratically) rank worse than Iraq and Katrina is a thoroughgoing assault on the Constitutional rule of law, which otherwise might be a means to repair America and to prevent further Iraqs and Katrinas. But Duhbya's entire presidency has been a Tory coup d'etat in slow motion, and I refuse to ignore that fact.