This is just great. Antonin Scalia’s grenade-tossing editorializing in the Gitmo decision contained wingnut nonsense and urban legends.
Government By Four Year Olds (alternate title: “Thank Goodness the Adults Are in Charge”)
This is cute:
The White House in December refused to accept the Environmental Protection Agency’s conclusion that greenhouse gases are pollutants that must be controlled, telling agency officials that an e-mail message containing the document would not be opened, senior E.P.A. officials said last week.
The document, which ended up in e-mail limbo, without official status, was the E.P.A.’s answer to a 2007 Supreme Court ruling that required it to determine whether greenhouse gases represent a danger to health or the environment, the officials said.
Other well known strategies that could dovetail nicely with this include holding your breath until you are blue, stating the check is in the mail, the tantrum, claiming the dog ate your homework, running away from home, or putting your fingers in your ears and yelling “LALALALALALALA.” Seriously, I would love to see someone try this shit with the IRS. “Sorry, guys, I never opened the email so as far as I am concerned, I don’t owe you a damned thing.” I hear prisons for white collar crimes have an almost resort like atmosphere.
Parents all over the country now have to be aware that the statement that “If you study hard, you can grow up and be President” is now a damned lie. As the Bush administration has shown, you don’t have to grow up.
Joe Klein And I Use Different Dictionaries
Joe Klein, discussing the David Brooks column we talked about earlier:
Another bit of “luck” was the ethnic cleansing that took place in Baghdad in 2005-2006 that lessened the potential for internecine violence in many of the neighborhoods. That plus the constant troop presence in the neighborhoods gave residents the confidence to tell the troops where the bad guys–as often as not criminal gangs who were taking advantage of the anarchy–were hiding.
Even with quotes o’ sarcasm around luck, Joe, you are an asshole.
Joe Klein And I Use Different DictionariesPost + Comments (69)
Well, We Called That
Me, last week, discussing the Larry Sinclair arrest at the National Press Club:
Question: Who will be the first to claim that if you speak out against Obamessiah, you get arrested? The Free Republic or No Quarter?
Via Sullivan, this from NoQuarter (I refuse to link them):
Tonight political prisoner Larry Sinclair is spending his fourth night in the DC Jail, the victim of a Gestapo-style enemies’ list operation carried out just three blocks from the White House last Wednesday afternoon.
Like shooting fish in a barrel. And just because it is so awesome, let’s revisit the Reason recap:
It had been a difficult morning for Sinclair. The Politico’s Ben Smith published a short feature on Sinclair’s 27-year criminal record of fraud and petty crimes; Greta Van Susteren linked the story, and told viewers/readers why she has ignored him. “While the internet is a great communication and educational tool, it is also viral when it comes to smearing people,” she wrote, prompting commenters to call her a cover-up artist and an agent of Barack Obama. It got worse when Sinclair’s lawyer Montgomery Sibley—whose license is currently suspended in D.C. and Florida—showed up in a kilt and told reporters that his above-average endowment made slacks tight and uncomfortable. The Rev. James David Manning, who gained web celebrity in April for a YouTube’d sermon in which he called Obama a “long-legged mack daddy,” sat in the crowd of 50 or so with his family. He didn’t take questions.
That, much like Hunter S. Thompson’s Nixon Obit, never gets old.
FISA Update
Greenwald has the rundown on how Hoyer pushed the deal, Hamsher has numbers for you to call.
All of it is in vain, at this point, I am afraid.
Same Shit, Different Day
From the Things We Already Knew Department:
Justice Department officials over the last six years illegally used “political or ideological” factors to hire new lawyers into an elite recruitment program, tapping law school graduates with conservative credentials over those with liberal-sounding resumes, a new report found Tuesday.
The blistering report, prepared by the Justice Department’s inspector general, is the first in what will be a series of investigations growing out of last year’s scandal over the firings of nine United States attorneys. It appeared to confirm for the first time in an official examination many of the allegations from critics who charged that the Justice Department had become overly politicized during the Bush administration.
“Many qualified candidates” were rejected for the department’s honors program because of what was perceived as a liberal bias, the report found. Those practices, the report concluded, “constituted misconduct and also violated the department’s policies and civil service law that prohibit discrimination in hiring based on political or ideological affiliations.”
Expect a few limp defenses from the usual suspects, but this will be difficult to spin away. More here.
Weak
This continued snub of American Muslims is a pathetic performance from Obama and his campaign:
As Senator Barack Obama courted voters in Iowa last December, Representative Keith Ellison, the country’s first Muslim congressman, stepped forward eagerly to help.
Mr. Ellison believed that Mr. Obama’s message of unity resonated deeply with American Muslims. He volunteered to speak on Mr. Obama’s behalf at a mosque in Cedar Rapids, one of the nation’s oldest Muslim enclaves. But before the rally could take place, aides to Mr. Obama asked Mr. Ellison to cancel the trip because it might stir controversy. Another aide appeared at Mr. Ellison’s Washington office to explain.
“I will never forget the quote,” Mr. Ellison said, leaning forward in his chair as he recalled the aide’s words. “He said, ‘We have a very tightly wrapped message.’ ”
***While the senator has visited churches and synagogues, he has yet to appear at a single mosque. Muslim and Arab-American organizations have tried repeatedly to arrange meetings with Mr. Obama, but officials with those groups say their invitations — unlike those of their Jewish and Christian counterparts — have been ignored. Last week, two Muslim women wearing head scarves were barred by campaign volunteers from appearing behind Mr. Obama at a rally in Detroit.
In interviews, Muslim political and civic leaders said they understood that their support for Mr. Obama could be a problem for him at a time when some Americans are deeply suspicious of Muslims. Yet those leaders nonetheless expressed disappointment and even anger at the distance that Mr. Obama has kept from them.
“This is the ‘hope campaign,’ this is the ‘change campaign,’ ” said Mr. Ellison, Democrat of Minnesota. Muslims are frustrated, he added, that “they have not been fully engaged in it.”
This is utter bullshit, and it is the first time I remember having hot flashes of anger when discussing the Obama campaign. I understand the desire to maintain message discipline, and I understand that the email campaigns have been damaging to the Obama campaign and that many Americans still believe Obama is muslim, and I understand that every campaign needs to tack to the right for the general, but this is just pathetic. It is weak, it is timid, and it is cowardice, and I am extremely disappointed. It is the antithesis of how his campaign has run and everything I like about Barack Obama.
Meet this shit head on, don’t run around avoiding groups because the opposition is filled with sleazy opportunists who will use any smear they can to win the election- they are going to do it anyway. To give you an example of how truly spineless this is, I present you with this flash from the past:
I also want to speak tonight directly to Muslims throughout the world. We respect your faith. It’s practiced freely by many millions of Americans, and by millions more in countries that America counts as friends. Its teachings are good and peaceful, and those who commit evil in the name of Allah blaspheme the name of Allah. (Applause.) The terrorists are traitors to their own faith, trying, in effect, to hijack Islam itself. The enemy of America is not our many Muslim friends; it is not our many Arab friends. Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists, and every government that supports them.
That is the flightsuit in chief, a little over a week after 9/11 in his infmaous “they hate us for our freedom” address, defending Islam and showing more courage than Obama is right now. The message being sent by Obama when he overtly avoids these groups is that there is somehow something wrong with them, a fraudulent and offensive notion if ever there was one. If the Islamic community in the United States were filled with terrorists, or if there was something incompatible with Islam and Democracy, we would have a lot of evidence to prove it, as surely one of the millions of Muslim-Americans would have committed acts of terrorism in the past few years.
That is the message Obama is sending. They may think it is just pragmatism and an attempt to insulate themselves from the “Obama is a Muslim” smears, but it is not just the optics that suck, it is the actual message. The message is there is something wrong with these groups of Americans, that there is something in and of itself wrong with practicing Islam as an American, and you will not find a more craven bit of political calculation than what the Obama campaign is engaging in right now. These are Americans. They pay taxes. They go to work. They care about their kids and their country and they fight in the military and are one of us, and they deserve better from the Obama campaign. Representative Ellison is an elected member of Congress, a member of your party, and you should gladly stand next to him at a rally.
This is sickening. I am embarrassed and disgusted right now, and this type of cowardice needs to stop. Assholes.
*** Update ***
Most of you think I am dead wrong about this and the Obama campaign is right. I think it sucks. I understand what he is dealing with regarding the smears, but I disagree with how he is handling it. I see no reason why he can not easily incorporate the two notions that he does not practice Islam with the belief there is nothing wrong with Islam. Those who believe he is Islamic believe it even though they have been told repeatedly he is not.
Who knows. Maybe this thing just struck a nerve when I read it and I am over-reacting. That is the problem with being a heater.