The front door is closed

This week, the Supreme Court closed its front door. Over the door is engraved in Vermont marble one of the fundamental aspirations of America, EQUAL JUSTICE UNDER LAW.

The court took this step because it fears terror. Never mind the symbolism.

This week, evidence led to the arrest of a Pakistani, naturalized to be an American citizen, for what was, by all appearances, his plot to blow up Times Square. Front door, back door, side door, it didn't matter to him.

But he understood how attacking a symbol instills fear, the strategic purpose of the tactic of terror attacks.

Republicans, true to form, think that this alleged citizen terrorist, arrested for a crime on American soil, should not have been read his Miranda rights, as our law demands. Instead, they want to exploit the fear of Americans to score the cheapest political points. Never mind that the feds used a public safety exception to Miranda initially to interrogate the suspect.

Republicans in Washington - and a substantial proportion of their voters - do not believe in law. They believe in summary vigilantism. They are dismayed that the defendant has apparently confessed and is cooperating. They were eager to flay the Obama administration for not torturing this man, but now they're all dressed up in leather like a sadist with nowhere to go but home to the missus.

The Republicans are happy to risk the validity of the suspect's confession, happy to let him off the hook under our law. That would give them more political wedge issues to divide the country. Perfect!

It's scary that one of the major political parties in the United States couldn't give the slightest crap about the legal foundation of our country. They are in fact not the literal definition of conservatives. They are radicals. Their promise is coup d'etat in slow motion.

And yet they're not a marginal splinter group. They're the second largest political grouping in America.

Orchestration

Orchestrating political protest and expression is not the problem. My side is orchestrating a response too. The problem is orchestration of groups to shout down dialog. That's what the conservatives are doing.

Wingnuts understand that shouting down one's opponent is bad when their people are being shouted down, just not when they're shouting.

Face it, if the Republicans keep this up, eventually someone is going to bring a gun to one of these forums.

Update (8/11): Yep, a conservative showed up with a gun. With a sign advocating bloodshed, though he didn't start that bloodshed. Oh, you thought he wanted to water the tree of liberty with water? He should have been arrested.

Ends justify the means

... for the unprincipled Republicans.

Here's what's clear: The Republicans in the Senate believe they need only 51 votes to pass their program, while the Democrats need 60.

Not only is it time to confirm Sonia Sotomayor, it's time to seat Al Franken. Enough bowing to threats from the likes of John Cornyn.

(h/t Atrios)

Fighting the consequences of elections

Republicans oppose democracy:

NRSC Chairman John Cornyn has said Coleman's challenge could go through federal courts and take "years" to resolve. He also threatened "World War III" if Democrats try to seat Franken prematurely.

Yet there's no hue and cry from the big media, who continue to think bipartisanship is even possible with these anti-election extremists.

Go nuclear on Cornyn. He's asking for it. Do it in such a way as to preserve the traditional prerogatives of the minority - so long as they don't abuse it.

But let Cornyn not make the mistake of believing there's any comity left in the Senate.

Disinfectant

If the Republicans are still protecting Duhbya from full revelation of the lawlessness of his regime (h/t Tom at Inverse Square), if John Cornyn and other authoritarians still favor torture, if the Senate might hold up confirmation to the OLC of lawyers who don't believe in electing kings, make them filibuster under klieg lights while cameras record them.

As yet, Obama has not restored the Constitution as the fundamental law of the land. Instead, we have a patchwork of law and the naked power that the Bushists were so fond of rationalizing like power-corrupted rulers from the Nazis to the Soviets to Saddam Hussein. (No, I'm not saying that Duhbya was as bad as these guys, just that he used one universal technique of despots - the legalistic rationalization of crimes.)

Now that we've stopped torturing, it's time to end tortured logic in support of torture. A strategic leak would be welcome and an act of true patriotism.

Why bullshit permeates our politics

The New York Times ballyhoos baldly hypocritical Republican threats to filibuster Obama nominees as "storm clouds."

Reporter Neil Lewis then tiptoes ever so gingerly around the hypocrisy with this bit of indirection: "These are certainly different times."

Office of Legal Counsel nominee Dawn Johnsen's language was harsh, the story says, but the strongest Lewis can find is "outlandish" and "shockingly flawed." Anyone following the OLC torture memo controversy and its companion pimping dictatorial Presidential power ("unitary executive") might be forgiven for finding her language too mild. If she had called a festering stew of lies, bullshit, and the will to fascism, she would not have been out of line.

For her language, now the consensus of non-wingnut legal observers, John Cornyn (R-Bushism) terms her not serious. This is well-known Beltway-speak for "unwilling to go along with the arrogant stupidity of the king in his new clothes."

Then the wingnut blogs weigh in, accusing Johnsen of equating pregnancy with slavery. Any moron who tries can see plainly that the comparison she made was between involuntary pregnancy and involuntary servitude. But this is a common rhetorical technique of the Republican noise machine. (Remember: If you're against Petraeus, you're against the military.) The fact that it's arrant bullshit is beneath the Times's willingness to observe. That wouldn't sustain the false equivalence between Republican crap and reality.

Last, Lewis grants Republican Senators anonymity to float their "strategy." He's either in on the game or contemptibly naive enough to think that his story is not part of their strategy.

Why does bullshit permeate our politics? Because the media makes no effort whatsoever to filter it out.