Politics

Yeah, I’m feeling flamingly political this week. So: the Guardian claims that some of the Guantanamo Bay defense team was fired. If the report is accurate, and it might not be, a few of the selected defense lawyers objected to the rule that says the government can listen in on conversations between the lawyer and the defendant. They were fired immediately. The question is obviously not whether the government can fire lawyers who aren’t willing to work under the procedures outlined. The question is whether or not the procedures are reasonable. When you pick a team of lawyers who know in advance that they’re working as part of a military tribunal, and they still object to the procedures once they see them, there is perhaps something wrong with the way you want to do things. ...

Ginger pointed out that I didn’t mention the violence committed by the anti-abortion crowd. She’s right; it’s another example of extremist right-wing violence that at the very least verges on terrorism. So let’s talk about that some. Start out at Abortion Violence, a site run by anti-abortionists. (Brant, this is one of those links. You’ve been warned.) About five seconds into reading it, I realized that the tactics were incredibly familiar. It’s the same stuff I talked about in my previous post on right-wing terrorism. ...

Last week, Lawrence Haws wrote me to point out this post (original), which is — well, it’s what it is. As best I can untangle the logic, Lynxx Pherrett thinks that right wing talk radio isn’t creating a culture of violence because Andrew McCrae was a leftist. There’s also a lot of really flawed rhetoric about how our colleges are producing left-wing assassins by the boatload… OK, I’m going to digress here for a moment. I experienced Harvard’s General Education program, as it happens, and not only did I not become a brainwashed leftist cop-killer, I remember what General Education courses I took. One of these, which was and is the largest course at Harvard, was Michael Sandel’s Justice. Michael Sandel teaches an unrepentantly communitarianist theory of justice; a large portion of the course is dedicated to refuting the theories of John Rawls, patron saint of modern liberalism. It is difficult, to say the least, to reconcile the popularity of a course which preaches the importance of society with claims that Harvard’s General Education curriculum is a breeding ground for dangerous loners. ...

I kept the cynical from my door for about, oh, 24 hours. Going to a warzone and cheering up the troops is a pretty good thing to do, even if the motives are impure. So, sure, I gave him points for that. But then I stopped and asked myself why he brought the press corps along. I gotta say. If I’m the President, and I’m worried about my security, and the purpose of my visit is to rally the troops — why do I need Fox News on that plane? Why am I taking the risk of letting reporters in on the story a few days early? I could just, you know, get on the plane and go and come back without bringing along a bunch of cameramen and reporters. If I gotta have pictures, I’m sure there are a couple of Army guys whose job it is to take pictures of things. ...

Tom Kratman responded to my recent discussion of his Posleen book over on my LiveJournal. Since that post is about a month old, I figured I’d be fair and provide a pointer to the discussion. If I’ve given people a negative impression of him, which I imagine I have, he deserves to have his defense seen.

Australia and the US have agreed that Australian detainees at Guantanamo Bay will be tried by US military tribunals (original). There are a number of points in the agreement, including a promise that the US will not seek the death penalty for any Australians. Also, the media will be allowed to observe the tribunal and the accused may have a cleared attorney as an advisor to his defense team. The press release makes it really clear that these are case specific assurances which do not apply to Guantanamo Bay detainees in general. Pity.

The North Korean crisis has been pretty quiet lately, at least until KEDO decided to halt the North Korean reactor project. This is pressure on North Korea to come back to the negotiating table. We’re betting that North Korea won’t escalate as a result. The only levers we have are power, food, and military action. We’re not going to starve people, and even if we were so inclined, the UN is working on food aid. We’re not going to invade a nuclear power. That leaves cutting the nuclear power plant construction, which has the advantage of not making the North Korean situation any worse. It just blocks one method of making things better, so it’s about the most palatable pressure possible. ...

Because I know I’m going to want to refer to this later. The Weekly Standard story (original) on the DoD memo about Al Qaeda/Iraq connections The DoD press release (original) explaining that the “memo” was a list of reports, some of which hadn’t been vetted, and that the memo is meaningless Glenn Reynolds being an idiot Let’s be clear on this. The reports discussed in the memo are simply the reports Doug Feith used to make the case for an imminent threat from Iraq. Doug Feith is guilty of politicizing intelligence (original) in the worst way. He has been, in the past, cozened by Ahmed Chalabi. He was in charge of post-war planning — the same planning that has been faulty to the degree that Bush is adopting the French plan. ...

The Massachusetts Supreme Court just ruled that bans on same-sex marriages are unconstitutional. That’s the Massachusetts Constitution, not the US Constitution. There’s some pro-same-sex marriage background about the case here (original), and some fairly frothing anti-same-sex marriage background here (original). Or just get the fairly unbiased coverage from Howard Bashman, who knows his stuff. The actual ruling has been mirrored here (original).

For quite some time, England has lived with the reality of IRA terrorists who would like to see various important Brits dead. London knows a lot more about living under that sort of threat than we do. That’s a simple statement of fact; 9/11 was of much larger magnitude, but England’s been dealing with this sort of thing for decades. In all those years, they have somehow managed to keep the Prime Minister and the Queen safe without shutting down the London Underground. One wonders what sort of a cowboy is afraid of risks the Queen of England takes on a regular basis. ...