Miscellaneous Heathen

Arar is the innocent Canadian we kidnapped at JFK and sent to Syria for torture under the "extraordinary rendition" program. He sued, but his suit got quashed by the district court on state secrets grounds, and that dismissal was upheld by a subset of the 2nd Circuit.

Now the 2nd Circuit has decided, on its own, to rehear the case en banc.

Now here comes the unexpected part: the 2nd circuit has announced that it will reconsider the case en banc, which means all the judges on the appeals court will hear it and vote on it. What makes this truly surprising is that Arar’s attorney didn’t ask for it; the court granted the rehearing sua sponte, on its own. That is extraordinarily rare. It suggests that there were a number of judges on the circuit who agitated for the rehearing because they believe it was wrongly decided.

Sure would be nice if some folks actually met consequences for what they've done to Arar, and what they've done to our nation.

Update: Frank chimes in with a link to the actual order.

While not widely reported, this Obama speech may be the best one yet. Don't miss it.

Onion: Obama's Hillbilly Half-Brother Threatening To Derail Campaign.

Barack Obama's once-commanding lead in the polls slipped to two points Monday, continuing a month-long slide that many credit to the recent appearance of the Democratic candidate's heretofore unknown half-brother, Cooter Obama.

[...]

Nonetheless, political experts said Cooter's increased visibility in recent weeks has hurt Obama's polling among urban, upper-middle-class, non-straw-hat-wearing voters. The Obama camp has scrambled to control the damage caused by Cooter's penchants for loudly practicing his banjo during Obama's speeches, repeatedly referring to Barack by his childhood nickname, "Ol' Jelly Legs," and chasing his troublemaking pig, Mbogo, in the nude in the background of Obama's CNN interview on the importance of education.

Herein, he provides a nice twofer. Mostly, he's ripping into the conservitards in California who are upset that a state constitutional amendment to eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry will be listed on the ballot as a measure to "eliminate the right of same sex couples to marry."

Yeah, I had to read it twice, too. Apparently, they think it's "inflammatory." Go figure; it's a measure to nullify thousands of currently-legal marriages.

Secondarily, he takes Orson Card -- aka fandom's second-biggest buffoon, behind the inimitable Dave Sim -- to task for his singularly obtuse "OMG! TEH GAYS!" anti-gay-marriage editorial. Card's been a fucking hack for pretty much ever, but his fundie politics have only be public for the last decade or so. The way I see it, the more folks know what a freak he is, the better.

It was people working for him who encouraged and enabled illegal antics at Justice, wherein candidates for nonpolitical positions were subjected to party loyalty tests prior to hire. Net result: unqualified hacks in sensitive jobs while highly qualified candidates were blacklisted for bullshit reasons (e.g.: married to a Democrat; rumored to be gay; etc.).

[T]his is the moment when we must give hope to those left behind in a globalized world. We must remember that the Cold War born in this city was not a battle for land or treasure. Sixty years ago, the planes that flew over Berlin did not drop bombs; instead they delivered food, and coal, and candy to grateful children. And in that show of solidarity, those pilots won more than a military victory. They won hearts and minds; love and loyalty and trust - not just from the people in this city, but from all those who heard the story of what they did here.

Now the world will watch and remember what we do here - what we do with this moment. Will we extend our hand to the people in the forgotten corners of this world who yearn for lives marked by dignity and opportunity; by security and justice? Will we lift the child in Bangladesh from poverty, shelter the refugee in Chad, and banish the scourge of AIDS in our time?

Will we stand for the human rights of the dissident in Burma, the blogger in Iran, or the voter in Zimbabwe? Will we give meaning to the words "never again" in Darfur?

Will we acknowledge that there is no more powerful example than the one each of our nations projects to the world? Will we reject torture and stand for the rule of law? Will we welcome immigrants from different lands, and shun discrimination against those who don't look like us or worship like we do, and keep the promise of equality and opportunity for all of our people?

People of Berlin - people of the world - this is our moment. This is our time.

I know my country has not perfected itself. At times, we've struggled to keep the promise of liberty and equality for all of our people. We've made our share of mistakes, and there are times when our actions around the world have not lived up to our best intentions.

But I also know how much I love America. I know that for more than two centuries, we have strived - at great cost and great sacrifice - to form a more perfect union; to seek, with other nations, a more hopeful world. Our allegiance has never been to any particular tribe or kingdom - indeed, every language is spoken in our country; every culture has left its imprint on ours; every point of view is expressed in our public squares. What has always united us - what has always driven our people; what drew my father to America's shores - is a set of ideals that speak to aspirations shared by all people: that we can live free from fear and free from want; that we can speak our minds and assemble with whomever we choose and worship as we please.

These are the aspirations that joined the fates of all nations in this city. These aspirations are bigger than anything that drives us apart. It is because of these aspirations that the airlift began. It is because of these aspirations that all free people - everywhere - became citizens of Berlin. It is in pursuit of these aspirations that a new generation - our generation - must make our mark on the world.

People of Berlin - and people of the world - the scale of our challenge is great. The road ahead will be long. But I come before you to say that we are heirs to a struggle for freedom. We are a people of improbable hope. With an eye toward the future, with resolve in our hearts, let us remember this history, and answer our destiny, and remake the world once again.

Give this guy ten bucks. He's running for the state house against a regressive fundie idiot, and so far he's managed to pull within a few points of the incumbent in local polls. I gave him his $10; you should, too. Skip a latte or two. By the way, he's currently got 2,326 donations. No candidate for state rep in Kansas has ever had more than 644 donors. Netroots isn't just about Obama.

(Via BoingBoing.)

I just had occasion to re-read Hunter S. Thompson's post-9/11 column, and holy shit was he ever on top of things:

The towers are gone now, reduced to bloody rubble, along with all hopes for Peace in Our Time, in the United States or any other country. Make no mistake about it: We are At War now -- with somebody -- and we will stay At War with that mysterious Enemy for the rest of our lives.

It will be a Religious War, a sort of Christian Jihad, fueled by religious hatred and led by merciless fanatics on both sides. It will be guerilla warfare on a global scale, with no front lines and no identifiable enemy. Osama bin Laden may be a primitive "figurehead" -- or even dead, for all we know -- but whoever put those All-American jet planes loaded with All-American fuel into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon did it with chilling precision and accuracy. The second one was a dead-on bullseye. Straight into the middle of the skyscraper.

Nothing -- even George Bush's $350 billion "Star Wars" missile defense system -- could have prevented Tuesday's attack, and it cost next to nothing to pull off. Fewer than 20 unarmed Suicide soldiers from some apparently primitive country somewhere on the other side of the world took out the World Trade Center and half the Pentagon with three quick and costless strikes on one day. The efficiency of it was terrifying.

We are going to punish somebody for this attack, but just who or what will be blown to smithereens for it is hard to say. Maybe Afghanistan, maybe Pakistan or Iraq, or possibly all three at once. Who knows? Not even the Generals in what remains of the Pentagon or the New York papers calling for WAR seem to know who did it or where to look for them.

This is going to be a very expensive war, and Victory is not guaranteed -- for anyone, and certainly not for anyone as baffled as George W. Bush. All he knows is that his father started the war a long time ago, and that he, the goofy child-President, has been chosen by Fate and the global Oil industry to finish it Now. He will declare a National Security Emergency and clamp down Hard on Everybody, no matter where they live or why. If the guilty won't hold up their hands and confess, he and the Generals will ferret them out by force.

I'd give an awful lot to read what he'd have written during this campaign.

From the News &Observer:

RALEIGH - L.F. Eason III gave up the only job he'd ever had rather than lower a flag to honor former U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms.

Eason, a 29-year veteran of the state Department of Agriculture, instructed his staff at a small Raleigh lab not to fly the U.S. or North Carolina flags at half-staff Monday, as called for in a directive to all state agencies by Gov. Mike Easley.

When a superior ordered the lab to follow the directive, Eason decided to retire rather than pay tribute to Helms. After several hours' delay, one of Eason's employees hung the flags at half-staff.

Bravo. His email message to co-workers is also worth reading:

"This is in no way a political decision. I simply do not feel it is appropriate to honor a person whose epitaph of government service was to have voted against or blocked every civil rights issue that came before the US Congress. His doctrine of negativity, hate, and prejudice cost North Carolina and our Nation much that we may never regain."

Excerpts from an e-mail message that Eason sent later that same day to Gov. Mike Easley and state Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler:

"I made a decision to refuse to lower our flags at the NC Standards Laboratory to half mast in honor of Jesse Helms as soon as I heard of his death. I cannot in good conscience honor such a man who fought so hard against Civil and Human Rights throughout his life. Even to his death bed, he refused to apologize for the damage he caused. Now, I stand by this decision. It is a personal decision, but obviously affects my job at the lab. It has been over ruled by Division and Departmental Management and as I look out my window, I'm ashamed to see the flags lowered.

North Carolina and the US cannot escape that, at the end of the day, Jesse Helms stood for evil. It made me angry to see local flags at half mast after his death, Senator or no. I'm glad at least one person was willing to stand up to that madness.

(Hat tip to Rob.)

Anti-civil-rights senator Jesse Helms has finally gone to his eternal reward. Good riddance.

Betty Bowers has a fine list of quotes from the late Senator.

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. -- That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

This isn't just what we believe. It's what is TRUE. People have rights, period. Governments do not grant them; governments are created to secure them.

Somewhere along the way, this administration forgot -- or abandoned -- these ideals.

Annoyed at a perceived slight by some NYT reporters, Fox News ran photos of the men that had been edited to make them ugly -- receding hairlines, yellow teeth, exaggerated features, etc. Click the link for Media Matters' coverage, which includes side-by-side comparisons of the original photos and the Fox versions.

From Scalzi:

With some derision for the Bush administration’s arguments, a three-judge panel said the government contended that its accusations against the detainee should be accepted as true because they had been repeated in at least three secret documents.

The court compared that to the absurd declaration of a character in the Lewis Carroll poem “The Hunting of the Snark”: “I have said it thrice: What I tell you three times is true.”

“This comes perilously close to suggesting that whatever the government says must be treated as true,” said the panel of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Check out this post over at the Agitator, especially if you still think of the GOP as the party of fiscal responsibility and limited government.

TPM:

The Bush Administration's newest tactic for policymaking is to ignore emails.

The New York Times reports today that White House officials simply refused to open an email from the EPA last year because they knew it contained a policy recommendation they didn't like -- part of the Administration's on-going battle with scientists at the EPA over global warming issues.

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.

These clowns can't be out of office soon enough. The damage they've done to our country will take a generation to repair.

Vice President Chet? It could happen.

Rightwing fruitcake fundie James Dobson is upset that Obama knows the Bible is a poor choice for a governing document.

In comments aired on his radio show Tuesday, Focus on the Family founder James Dobson criticized the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee for comments he made in a June 2006 speech to the liberal Christian group Call to Renewal.

In the speech, Obama suggested that it would be impractical to govern based solely on the word of the Bible, noting that some passages suggest slavery is permissible and eating shellfish is disgraceful.

"Which passages of scripture should guide our public policy?" Obama asked in the speech. "Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is OK and that eating shellfish is an abomination? Or we could go with Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount?

"So before we get carried away, let's read our Bible now," Obama said, to cheers. "Folks haven't been reading their Bible."

and

Dobson also takes aim at Obama for suggesting in the speech that those motivated by religion should attempt to appeal to broader segments of the population by not just framing their arguments around religious precepts.

"Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal rather than religion-specific values," Obama said. "It requires their proposals be subject to argument and amenable to reason."

Keep digging, Jimmy. Keep digging.

Someone at the Texas state GOP convention on Saturday was selling buttons saying "If Obama is President . . . will we still call it the White House?"

(Thanks, Triple-F.)

This is nice. Also, it means McCain's lost Will.

WASHINGTON -- The day after the Supreme Court ruled that detainees imprisoned at Guantanamo are entitled to seek habeas corpus hearings, John McCain called it "one of the worst decisions in the history of this country." Well.

Does it rank with Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857), which concocted a constitutional right, unmentioned in the document, to own slaves and held that black people have no rights that white people are bound to respect? With Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which affirmed the constitutionality of legally enforced racial segregation? With Korematsu v. United States (1944), which affirmed the wartime right to sweep American citizens of Japanese ancestry into concentration camps?

And then:

McCain, co-author of the McCain-Feingold law that abridges the right of free political speech, has referred disparagingly to, as he puts it, "quote 'First Amendment rights.'" Now he dismissively speaks of "so-called, quote 'habeas corpus suits.'" He who wants to reassure constitutionalist conservatives that he understands the importance of limited government should be reminded why the habeas right has long been known as "the great writ of liberty."

No state power is more fearsome than the power to imprison. Hence the habeas right has been at the heart of the centuries-long struggle to constrain governments, a struggle in which the greatest event was the writing of America's Constitution, which limits Congress' power to revoke habeas corpus to periods of rebellion or invasion. Is it, as McCain suggests, indefensible to conclude that Congress exceeded its authority when, with the Military Commissions Act (2006), it withdrew any federal court jurisdiction over the detainees' habeas claims?

As the conservative and libertarian Cato Institute argued in its amicus brief in support of the petitioning detainees, habeas, in the context of U.S. constitutional law, "is a separation of powers principle" involving the judicial and executive branches. The latter cannot be the only judge of its own judgment.

In Marbury v. Madison (1803), which launched and validated judicial supervision of America's democratic government, Chief Justice John Marshall asked: "To what purpose are powers limited, and to what purpose is that limitation committed to writing, if these limits may, at any time, be passed by those intended to be restrained?" Those are pertinent questions for McCain, who aspires to take the presidential oath to defend the Constitution.

The Rude Pundit on the decision:

...[I]f you think yesterday's Supreme Court decision was a pile of shit, then you believe that the United States has the right to hold foreign nationals without allowing them to challenge their imprisonment in fair, open courts. You believe that a special court with special rules of evidence and special procedures is the only means through which a presidentially-designated "alien enemy combatant" held at a United States-run facility can even say, "Umm, do you have any proof I'm anything more than a fuckin' goat herder who was wandering in the right field at the wrong time?" You believe that the Constitution and the Geneva Conventions (except in the narrowest possible interpretation) do not apply to prisoners held at Gitmo. And you're absolutely hysterical, batshit insane over the idea that a human being held without ever being told why might get to ask.

That's it. Every right-winger's rant about "terra! terra! moooslims!! terra!" really boils down to wanting Big Daddy Gummit to be able to snatch anyone from anywhere and hold them for as long as they want, with no recourse for the victim. That's 100% antithetical to everything our government is supposed to stand for (and let's just set aside for a moment that the GOP is supposed to be the government-hostile, drown-it-in-a-bathtub party); the right of habeas corpus was enshrined as natural law hundreds of years before our noble experiment took off, and our own Constitution notes in no uncertain terms that the right cannot be revoked except under extraordinary circumstances.

It's significant, by the way, that the Constitution phrases it that way: the right cannot be taken away by the state. It says nothing about the State granting us such rights because the rights are ours, period. The State is not the source of our rights and liberties. It's an institution we the people have created to ensure the safety of those rights while entering into a social contract to provide other services impractical to handle absent a construct like the State. Unlike apologists for the current Administration, our founders did not view the Bill of Rights, or Habeas, as legal technicalities to be subverted to serve some short-term gain. They viewed them as the natural order of things, a codification of the rights of man endowed by the Creator, whomever you believe that may be, and as truths that should not and cannot be legitimately abrogated.

True patriots still understand this, and behave accordingly. Believing an imprisoned man ought to be able to challenge his captivity in a fair court doesn't make us weak, and doesn't give aid and comfort to the enemy. It just means we truly believe in the principles of liberty and equality. Doing otherwise means we don't. To abandon that core belief is to hate what this country should stand for, and must stand for again.

Or, at least, he's upset that he won't have the right to detain you forever on his say-so. Make no mistake about this: McCain will be a continuation of Bush's regime in every way that matters.

This Word segment from the Colbert Report is absolutely spot on in re: Southern Confederate Battle-Flag fetishism. Watch.

Douglas Kmiec, an otherwise Republican law prof at Pepperdine has been denied communion by his priest because he expressed an endorsement for the pro-choice Barack Obama rather than the (presumably) pro-life McCain. Kmiec remains pro-life; he's just done the math this time around and believes that on the whole, Obama is the better candidate for our country in spite of his disagreement on the subject of abortion. In other words, like most voters, he knows he can't get everything he wants, and he's happier with the set of values promoted by the Democrat this time around.

And for that, his priest and church are punishing him. They are of course free to do so, since the church is a private entity, but it is very, very difficult to see how this should not result in an immediate re-examination of this diocese's 501(c)(3) status. Churches pay no taxes on their income, but to keep it that way they must stay out of politics; from IRS.gov:

Currently, the law prohibits political campaign activity by charities and churches by defining a 501(c)(3) organization as one "which does not participate in, or intervene in (including the publishing or distributing of statements), any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office."

And more from [here](), also at IRS.gov:

...[V]oter education or registration activities with evidence of bias that (a) would favor one candidate over another; (b) oppose a candidate in some manner; or (c) have the effect of favoring a candidate or group of candidates, will constitute prohibited participation or intervention.

Let them, and any church, behave any way they want -- but they shouldn't get a free ride if they decide to ignore the rules under which they operate.

Young Hillary Clinton.

Dear Baby Boomers: Please go away now, kthxbi.

McCain sees nothing wrong with warrantless wiretapping of American citizens.

Via Rob and in light of candidate Clinton's ongoing behavior, we bring you A Sports Parable.

Months before 9/11, those in Congress knew well what sort of president the newly-sworn-in Bush would be in how he handled his irresponsible and absurd $1.65 trillion dollar tax cuts; former Republican senator (and Obama endorser) Lincoln Chafee tells the story:

But even back in June, before we knew the president would soon lead our response to the murder of nearly 3,000 American civilians, something very disturbing came through for me in his demeanor and attitude in the Oval Office. I want to describe it as insecurity, but even that is not the right word.

Several times, the president went out of his way to remind me that he was the commander in chief. You don't have to keep telling me that, I thought. I know who you are. Like others, I have been around people who are good at wielding power. They never have to tell you they are in charge. They just are, and you know it. What I saw and heard that day really unsettled me. I'm the commander in chief... I'm the president... I'm the commander in chief... It was unpresidential.

That September, as I watched the Twin Towers collapse in smoke and dust, I had a sinking feeling about the president's capacity to respond wisely.

What Every American Should Know About the Middle East. Some highlights:

• It's not a homogeneous region; sectarian and ethnic divisions abound. Sunni are not Shia; Arabs are not Persians.
• Iraq is predominately Arab and Shia, but Saddam and his ruling party were from the Sunni minority.
• Iran is NOT Arab and is almost exclusively Shia.
• Palestine, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Jordan are Sunni and Arab

Special bonus fact that makes the invasion of Iraq even more obviously stupid: Al Qaeda is a Sunni group.

Rafe Colburn says it best: Tobacco companies more evil than you thought:

Tobacco companies found themselves facing the need to argue that some of the scientific evidence used to support laws banning smoking in public places is “junk science“, but quickly realized that a campaign focused on tobacco-related research would be dismissed as transparently self-serving. So they instead spent their money to a create propaganda campaign that attacked scientific research on many fronts, including research that supported smoking bans. The end result? The execrable Web site JunkScience.com. I’m sure John Stossel fits in here somewhere as well.

Check this out; Chris Matthews lays a serious ass-whuppin' on right-wingnut radio goon Kevin James. At issue? James was all about calling Obama an appeaser in the tradition of Chamberlain, but it turns out James really has no idea what ol' Neville actually did. Chris notices this, and does not let up. It's beautiful.

The WaPo notes the racist attacks Obama campaign workers have encountered among the absurdly stupid, inbred, goatfucking, useless tools who inhabit far too much of our national corpus.

We just got a push-poll call from Health & Human Services clearly intended to scare us into supporting abstinence-based sex education. "We want to know what you think about teens having SEX!"