Monthly Archives: March 2007

Cut Out His Tongue

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From the NT Times article on David Hicks, the Australian dropout, former kangaroo skinner, former Jesus-freak, & dangerous Al-Qaeda  terrorist recently sentenced by the kangaroo court at Guantanamo Bay:

The deal included a statement by Mr. Hicks that he “has never been illegally treated” while a captive, despite claims of beatings he had made in the past. It also included a promise not to pursue suits over the treatment he received while in detention and “not to communicate in any way with the media” for a year.

Critics said those requirements were a continuation of what they say has been a pattern of illegal detention policies. “It is a modern cutting out of his tongue,” said Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, a legal advocacy group, based in New York, that is coordinating the representation of detainees in many suits challenging Guantánamo detention.

Are these the provisions of an institution that has acted morally? No, they are a desperate attempt to make this whole dispicable episode go away. Disgusting.

Wish I’d Said That

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Fred Clark at Slacktivist:

My new theory is that President Bush really does hear the voice of God directly. Unfortunately, he’s also dyslexic. So when God says what God is always saying — that politics must be shaped by justice — Bush gets this mixed up and decides that the Department of Justice must be shaped by politics.

Southern California

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After reading this post at Hulabaloo about the radical right-wing’s cultural center of gravity, I was moved to leave the following comment. (The quoted sentence is from a previous comment to the post.)

“Whenever I visit my cousins in Chula Vista, the paranoia, verging on outright fear, is palpable.”

That’s why I haven’t visited my cousins in Chula Vista for 20 years. I grew up there, went away, then taught at SDSU for five years before escaping to NY. SoCal is the cultural & political birthplace of modern right-wing extremism, so these developments aren’t surprising. There is an ugly combination of smug self-satisfaction & class anxiety, of Jesus-gnosticism & racism, of body-worship & anti-intellectualism, of wealth-worship & stark raving economic huxterism, that defines the soul of the modern Republican Party. Texas only wishes it could be as fucked-up as San Diego.

I guess the consolation is that all that low-lying coastal plane will be inundated when Al Gore’s forecasts, based on actual science rather than right-wing hallucinations,  prove correct & ocean levels rise by three to six meters. The Pacific Ocean will be lapping at the foothills of the Cuyamaca Mountains. Archaeologists in scuba gear will explore the inundated HQ of the California Republican Party looking for clues to what went so terribly wrong. Maybe they will find spores of a fungus that eats the brain. Or maybe just evidence of a nasty cultural dead end. Glad I got out of there in time.

Appeared to Contradict

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What is the purpose of the word “appeared” in the following paragraph from the NY Times?

The previously undisclosed meeting appeared to contradict Mr. Gonzales’s previous statements about his knowledge of the dismissals. He said at a news conference on March 13 that he had not participated in any discussions about the removals, but knew in general that his aides were working on personnel changes involving United States attorneys.

It is there to keep the sensibilities of the reporters & editors at the Times pure by allowing the to avoid saying the obvious, theat the Atorney General of the United States lied. Lied about his attempt to turn the Justice Department into a Soviet-style arm of the political apparatus:

Now we know with crystal clear proof what we really already knew a week ago: that Alberto Gonzales was lying about his role in the US Attorney Purge. So add that to the list of all the other things he’s lied about.

But don’t get distracted by the lying or even the cover-up.

Right-wing shills want to chalk the blundering administration response to US Attorney Purge scandal to incompetence. But just as we can infer the force of gravity from the descent of the falling apple, the panicked succession of lies and dodges out of the administration implies not incompetence but guilty knowledge of underlying bad acts.

This isn’t about the AG’s lies. It’s not about the attempted cover-up. It’s not about executive privilege and investigative process mumbojumbo.

This is about using US Attorneys to damage Democrats and protect Republicans, using the Department of Justice as a partisan cudgel in the war for national political dominance. All the secrecy and lies, the blundering and covering-up stems from this one central fact. [Josh Marshall / Talking Points Memo]