Politics
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What Will It Take to Wake Us Up?
Another comic book hero?
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Olive Branch to Some Libertarians
Despite all the negative things I said about Libertarians, I certainly share common ground with them when it comes to civil liberties vs. security and keeping the political sphere free of religious ideology. I think they have a mixed record on national security issues. Many Libertarians, like Andrew Sullivan, were early supporters of the Iraq
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More FISA Outrage (Updated)
After pointing out that even the security hawk Fred Hiatt thinks the new FISA law is over the top, Glenn Greenwald has this to say: While the premise of this behavior is that Democrats must avoid appearing "soft" and "weak," one article after the next describes their behavior as "surrendering," "capitulating," "bowing to pressure," "caving
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FISA Outrage Quote of the Day
From Jack Balkin Do not be mistaken: We are not hurtling toward the Gulag or anything that we have seen before. It will be nothing so dramatic as that. Rather, we are slowly inching, through each act of fear mongering and fecklessness, pandering and political compromise, toward a world in which Americans have increasingly little
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Turley on the FISA Outrage
Once again, for any of you who think the Democrats are in anyway presenting resistance to this drift toward authoritarianism, Jonathan Turley succinctly explains why not on Olbermann’s show. Since the program aired, the Senate voted down a bill "on a 45-43 vote, a Democratic alternative, which would have placed tighter controls on the spying
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Why Less Political Commentary
Because the situation has become unbearable: At its core, the history of the Iraq War has been authored by an indescribably deceitful and very intellectually limited political and media elite, perfectly symbolized by Kit Bond. These are people who spent four years hailing the Great Progress the Leader was making in Iraq, claiming we were
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Manichaeism
Greenwald’s new book A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency has been getting a lot of internet play in the last week. As the subtitle suggests, the problem is the Good vs. Evil mentality that is at the heart of Bush’s "Manichaean" vision of the world. We can debate
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If Sullivan Gets It, . . .
If someone as mainstream as former Bush cheerleader Andrew Sullivan gets it, there is no excuse for anyone else. The only explanation is willful blindness. Commenting on Glenn Greenwald’s new book he says: The genius of the American constitution, however, is that it provides the framework for such immoral moralism [Bush’s Manichean project to defeat
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Why We Embrace the Corporate State
A report from the Taming the Corporation conference by Alec Dubro tells us why the left has the correct analysis but not the power to do anything about it. Only 40% of Americans believe that corporations contribute the public good, so why do they submit to their rule? Because ordinary Americans don’t have the power
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The Cavin’, Craven Dems’ Meta-message
The problem for the Dems lies in their living down to the GOP’s stereotyping of them: Behind Rothenberg’s analysis — like the analysis of the risk-averse pollster-consultants who have been running Democratic candidates into the electoral ground for a decade — is the assumption that voters hear the words Democrats say but don’t pick up