Some time ago I changed the theme of this blog. The change altered typefaces and some code as well as the general look of the pages. As a result, some of the earlier posts have needed to be edited in order to correct errors that were introduced by changed typefaces and tags. I thought I had finished that editing a while ago but have since discovered that I had not. I’ll get around to editing those early pieces eventually. In the meantime please accept my apology for any inconvenience you may encounter in reading those early posts.
My nephew has a very cool and funny post on his blog today, must have been yesterday he posted it. Check it out. Happy dinking, Marv.
Banks win again: The banks have beaten us all in the senate yet another time, having succeeded in gutting legislation to ease bankruptcy of its central measure that would have allowed judges to lower the amounts owed on home mortgages. It would appear that the administration, in failing to push for the provision, has concluded that its economic strategy is succeeding on a macro level and is willing to sacrifice the interest of individual homeowners in order to keep the bankers, and their lobbyists, happy. Yesterday’s New York Times had the story.
Grieving for Dr. Tiller: Not all Christians and Christian groups are opposed to abortion — not all even to late term abortion. Last Monday my church hosted a local memorial for Dr. George Tiller sponsored by Faith Aloud. Well over 200 attended, and we learned later that many more did not attend because they were fearful about security. The Rev. Rebecca Turner, Faith Aloud Executive Director, remarked truly, I thought, that the presentation of Randall Terry’s statement by CBS News, was like asking the head of the Ku Klux Klan to comment on a lynching. Media Matters comments on the Randall Terry polemic by remembering a Leslie Stahl piece that links Terry directly to violence. Judith Warner’s column in yesterday’s New York Times is moving indeed.
Answered: A question I asked a couple of posts back has now been answered. The Obama administration is considering proposing legislation to allow five Guantanamo detainees to plead guilty to capital crimes. These five were allegedly involved in the 9/11 plot and have been extensively tortured and held without trial for many years. Today’s New York Times quotes David Glazier, who has written critically about the commission system in the past as saying: “This unfortunately strikes me as an effort to get rid of the problem in the easiest way possible, which is to have those people plead guilty and presumably be executed. But I think it’s going to lack international credibility.” But according to Maj. David J. R. Frakt of the Air Force, a Guantanamo defense lawyer, the government is “trying to give the 9/11 guys what they want: let them plead guilty and get the death penalty and not have to have a trial.” These five detainees “have seemed to be daring the United States to put them to death,” according to New York Times reporter, William Glaberson.
Here’s the most interesting paragraph in Glaberson’s piece about this.
The proposal, in a draft of legislation that would be submitted to Congress, has not been publicly disclosed. It was circulated to officials under restrictions requiring secrecy. People who have read or been briefed on it said it had been presented to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates by an administration task force on detention.
Interesting, because it suggests a program of leaks designed to contextualize whatever decision the administration finally takes about the Guantanamo detainees. There seem to be no good choices open. The matter of Guantanamo and the fates of the prisoners there is so seriously compromised by the depredations of the former administration that no actions remain that are simple, legal, or just.
I’ve beeen reading reactions to the murder of Dr. George Tiller. Reports that characterize Dr. Tiller as an “abortion doc” are bad enough. At last count, Politico presented 460 comments to its lead story posted by citizens who applaud Dr. Tiller’s death, or not; and they are mostly worse. I like New York governor David Paterson’s statement the best among those I have seen from Public figures.
Dr. Tiller was targeted for his belief in the right of women to make their own health decisions. He protected that right and sought to ensure that his patients were provided with the medical, emotional and spiritual counsel they needed to make the right choice for themselves and their families. He continued this work despite the threat of harmful retaliation, physical attacks and the destruction of his clinic.
I’m also distressed tonight that someone I know was severely beaten last Friday outside a gay bar here in St. Louis as he took a breather from a birthday party he was attending there. The events are similar and also radically different. And it’s ironic that my friend’s beating qualifies as a hate crime, but the murder of Dr. Tiller doesn’t.
I’ve just listened on CSPAN to the president’s May 21st speech about national security and the planned closing of the prison at Guantanamo Bay. I’m struck, upon hearing the speech entire, by its substance and seriousness. I’m now listening to Richard Cheney’s outrageous attack delivered immediately following the speech last Thursday. It seems clear that Republicans have made here the same sort of cynical political calculation they made about the stimulus package — oppose it and hope it fails.
But that calculation is less interesting than what seems to be the media determination to give the Republican search for a successful wedge issue equal time. The president has characterized the Republican attack as fear mongering. I think it goes far beyond that; it’s a mixture of fear mongering, hate mongering, nativism, and naked self-interest — I’m listening to Mitch McConnell smile his way through it now — and I don’t understand giving it the play it’s now being given on CSPAN, not to mention the sensational treatment it has been given by CNN and the other cable news outlets.
David D. Kirkpatrick and David M. Herszenhorn report in today’s New York Times that Republicans had planned the present concerted attack before the president’s inauguration. That’s useful knowledge. But these reporters’ conclusion that “Republicans have now beaten the Democrats twice on this issue in the last two years with overwhelming votes against transferring detainees to the United States,” says more about media cynicism than about anything else.
And there seems a constant stream of media “scrutiny” directed against the president’s popularity, such as the piece in this morning’s New York Times bearing the headline: Some Obama Enemies are Made Totally of Straw, presumably a news piece but remarkably long on assertion and short on evidence. The CSPAN piece I just listened to, the one that included Mitch McConnell’s enlightened critique, came down solidly on the side of “protecting the American people.” The moral argument about Guantanamo is now dismissed as a public relations argument designed to court favor in Europe. And the critique of the Bush administration’s lawless pursuit of presidential power is now obscured by the charge of phony moralism.
Of course the Clintons wrote the book on this strategy and gave it to the Republicans. Amongst the ranks of congressional Democrats, brave souls, who voted en masse to deprive the president of funds to close Guantanamo, there must be some who view the president’s popularity askance and would willingly see it diminished.
“President Obama will attempt today to answer critics of his dismantling of Bush-era policies on detention and interrogation,” says Karen DeYoung of the Washington Post in a piece that sets today’s expected speech in the context of a meeting at The White House in which the president discussed the potentially explosive issue of closing the Guantanamo Bay prison.
Obama yesterday invited to the White House leaders of about a dozen human and civil rights organizations as well as law professors. Administration participants in the 90-minute session included Holder, White House Counsel Gregory B. Craig and Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.
Several participants discussed the meeting on the condition of anonymity. One said Obama argued that there was no trade-off between American values and national security, but that GOP demagoguery in Congress was dominating the issue. Another said Obama seemed irritated that some of those who attended the meeting had recently compared his policies to those of Bush.
Of course Republicans are demagoguing this issue for all they’re worth, led by Richard Cheney, the ghost of administrations past. And the democrats are running for cover as fast as their little legs can carry them.
It’s not clear to me why the Guantanamo detainees are so much more dangerous than ordinary American criminals that they can’t be housed in ordinary American prisons. But the potential presence of these allegedly dangerous individuals within the borders of the United States is being hyped with all the usual scare talk designed to spread fear of aliens running amuck in the country, blowing up our houses and raping our daughters.
And now we’re given a newly released report, previously held back by fears at the Pentqagon that it’s release “could further inflame the debate over closing the facility [at Guantanamo] and upset the White House.” This report alleges that “27 Guantanamo detainees released to other countries since 2002 had been confirmed as subsequently engaging in terrorist activities and another 47 are strongly suspected of doing so.”
I strongly suspect that this report was leaked for political effect and that like other Pentagon claims designed to alarm the electorate it won’t stand serious scrutiny. Still in the theater of Guantanamo hype, one has only to shout “fire!”
