Breaking: Specter Becomes a Democrat

4/28/09, 12:35 pm EST

Hello 60-vote, filibuster-proof majority:

From the WaPo:

“I have decided to run for re-election in 2010 in the Democratic primary,” said Specter in a statement. “I am ready, willing and anxious to take on all comers and have my candidacy for re-election determined in a general election.”

He added: “Since my election in 1980, as part of the Reagan Big Tent, the Republican Party has moved far to the right. Last year, more than 200,000 Republicans in Pennsylvania changed their registration to become Democrats. I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans.”

UPDATE: Specter’s full statement below the jump. (more…)

Steve Schmidt Endorses Gay Marriage

4/21/09, 6:49 pm EST

Top McCain adviser Steve Schmidt made a surprisingly ringing endorsement of same-sex marriage in a speech to the Log Cabin Republicans:

It seems to me that denying two consenting adults of the same sex the right to form a lawful union that is protected and respected by the state denies them two of the most basic natural rights affirmed in the preamble of our Declaration of Independence – liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, I believe, gives the argument of same sex marriage proponents its moral force.

I know mine is a minority view among Republicans, and I don’t honestly expect our party will reverse in the very near term its opposition to same sex marriage. Nor do I yet see support for it from a strong majority of the general public. And, I do believe that such a highly charged political question such as this should be settled by the freely expressed will of the people, and not by the courts. That doesn’t relieve advocates of the responsibility to make their case urgently. I understand how tired many Americans are of being admonished to be patient to right what they believe is an injustice. But I’m confident American public opinion will continue to move on the question toward majority support, and sooner or later the Republican Party will catch up to it.

Twitterview in Progress

4/21/09, 4:34 pm EST

In advance of the Valentine’s Day of environmentalism, I’m going to be conducting a Twitterview with Chip Giller, editor in chief of Grist.org, to talk about the magazine’s “Screw Earth Day” campaign.

You can follow the live action on Twitter starting now. I’m @7im. Chip is @cgiller. The hashtag is #screwearthday.

Marc Thiessen: Torture Works!

4/21/09, 3:57 pm EST

Bush’s defenders are defending the indefensible.

If he hadn’t been Bush’s speechwriter Marc Thiessen could have ably practiced in Jay Bybee’s Office of Legal Counsel.

Critics claim that enhanced techniques do not produce good intelligence because people will say anything to get the techniques to stop. But the memos note that, “as Abu Zubaydah himself explained with respect to enhanced techniques, ‘brothers who are captured and interrogated are permitted by Allah to provide information when they believe they have reached the limit of their ability to withhold it in the face of psychological and physical hardship.” In other words, the terrorists are called by their faith to resist as far as they can — and once they have done so, they are free to tell everything they know. This is because of their belief that “Islam will ultimately dominate the world and that this victory is inevitable.” The job of the interrogator is to safely help the terrorist do his duty to Allah, so he then feels liberated to speak freely.

This is the secret to the program’s success.

Bybee and Yoo’s 264 Hour Rule

4/16/09, 5:40 pm EST

The eagle eyes at TPMMuckraker picked up on a detail I missed over in Bybee’s memo: As Long As You Don’t Keep The Guy Awake For More Than 11 Days, It’s Fine

The Banality of Evil

4/16/09, 5:16 pm EST

I’m reading through one of the Office of Legal Counsel memos by Jay Bybee, giving the greenlight to torture Abu Zubayda.

News to me: in the finest legalese, Bybee authorized the CIA to throw the guy in a coffin-like-box… with insects.

But the grotesque, lawyerly logic Bybee uses to justify waterboarding is what really gets to me:

Thus, although the subject may experience fear or panic associated with the feeling of drowning, the waterboard does not inflict physical pain. As we explained in Section 2340A Memorandum, “pain and suffering” as used in Section 2340 is best understood as a single concept, not distinct concepts of “pain” as distinguished from “suffering.”… Even if one were to parse the statute more finely to treat “suffering” as a distinct concept, the waterboard could not be said to inflict severe suffering. The waterboard is simply a controlled acute episode, lacking the connotation of a protracted period of time generally given to suffering.

Note: This guy is now a 9th Circuit Judge.

UPDATE: The New York Times is reporting that like many examples of grotesque OLC lawyering, this memo was the brainchild of John Yoo, signed by Bybee.

Obama on the Release of the Torture Memos

4/16/09, 3:01 pm EST

…My Administration will always act in accordance with those laws, and with an unshakeable commitment to our ideals. That is why we have released these memos, and that is why we have taken steps to ensure that the actions described within them never take place again….
(more…)

Tea Bags By the Bay

4/15/09, 7:17 pm EST

With Tazo tea bags taped to protest placards, and sacks of Lipton looped around pearl necklaces, they came by the hundreds, gathering first in front of San Francisco City Hall before marching to the Federal Building, the local home of the dread “Princess Pelosi.”

San Francisco’s Tax-Day protest made for odd tea fellows. There was the patrician Joan Leone, president of the “Nob Hill Republican Womens Club, Federated” standing next to a guy with a hand-lettered sign (typeface, Unibomber) who sought to repeal the 14th amendment to spite illegal immigrants and their “anchor babies.”

Across the way stood Barnaby Conrad III — author of a noted book about Martinis — himself implausibly decked out in a tweed sports jacket and a coonskin cap, holding aloft a sign with a hand-painted revolver reading “Reload for the Revolution.”

The specter of armed rebellion was hard to take seriously. I met landlords and lawyers, corporate real estate types and a guy in high finance wearing a beige “Welcome Back Carter” T-Shirt over his white starched, button-down shirt and tie. Well-heeled retirees from the city’s tonier heights abounded — with their bejeweled flag pins and sportswear from from the St. Francis Yacht Club. The few babies at the rally seemed cozied against the wind in their $700 bugaboo strollers. (Joan Walsh of Salon.com Twittered anonymously from the sidelines.)

The libertarians were in full effect, with one pretty Polish immigrant wearing a Ron Paul hat struggling to march with a giant poster of a Soviet Flag adorned with the letters “USSA.” As were the Bay Area Minutemen, amply embodied by a bearded, angry white Vietnam Vet waving a Don’t-Tread-on-Me flag. And then there were the Ayn Rand acolytes who inveighed against the evils of altruism and the joys of “Going Galt.”

So here, at last, were the objectivists. But what was the objective?

A tax day protest of a president who has given 95 percent of working American families a tax cut. [Insert interrobang here.]

Facts didn’t seem to matter. Folks I asked about Obama’s tax cuts simply denied they were real. They bemoaned the impending socialist takeover of our health system. The fascist banking system. The “Spread the Poverty” ethos of Obamanomics. The most reasonable man I met — an avuncular figure in a straw hat and an LL Bean shirt — said he’d simply rather America “take its lumps now” than attempt to stimulate the economy with debts to be paid off by future generations.

Reasonable enough.

But such reasonable sentiments didn’t fit on today’s protests signs. Many of those that did were not even those of the grassroots activists, rather their astroturf organizers. A silver-haired socialite — decked out in a pink visor and her tennis warmups — was leaving early. She pointed to her hand-painted sign — “Overtaxation is Tyranny” on one side, “No Porkulus Bills” on the other — and asked, “Anyone want to hold this? You can turn it in at the end.”

What did she mean, “turn it in,” I asked. “It’s not yours?”

She pointed to the megaphone toting organizers on the stage with a shrug and said of her prop: “They furnished it.”


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