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post-mortem coming, I want to post this already.
I'm writing a short FISA post-mortem - and that was the post of opening this window to write a post, even - but I'm not getting to it quickly enough, so here, have this for the moment instead:
Glenn Greenwald analysies a new decision on indefinite detentions from the 4th circuit appellate court, ruling that "the President can order anyone in the U.S. imprisoned in a military brig as an 'enemy combatant' — even if they have never fought on a battlefield or with a foreign power against the U.S. Rather, mere accusations by the President of 'terrorism' are sufficient to justify the indefinite incarceration of such an individual as an 'enemy combatant,' who is then denied basic Constitutional guarantees." The decision states that such detentions can be indefinite in length (including, specifically, decades). It also states that US citizens are not exempt from this in any way:
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brazilrascal has posted a longish article ("Event Horizon") you should read here, about the near-ritual reversing of roles now underway in the 2008 campaign:
I'm going to be walking away somewhat from most of this for the rest of the year. Everything remaining is going to be election noise, and I frankly can't stand it. I'm not going away; I'll still post if there's some particular new horror, and there certainly will be. I do think that the only election that matters very much at this point is the Chief Executive race, because if you're going to have a king, you're better off having the least bad one, and Senator McCain seems to be doing his best to prepare to be as bad a one as possible. Congress has written itself out of the government, so I don't exactly expect any resistance to any of a Chief Executive McCain's court nominees no matter who is in charge, and that's most of what's left to fight for in the wreckage. I'll have more on this, I suspect but do not promise, in my FISA wrapup post later.
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Glenn Greenwald analysies a new decision on indefinite detentions from the 4th circuit appellate court, ruling that "the President can order anyone in the U.S. imprisoned in a military brig as an 'enemy combatant' — even if they have never fought on a battlefield or with a foreign power against the U.S. Rather, mere accusations by the President of 'terrorism' are sufficient to justify the indefinite incarceration of such an individual as an 'enemy combatant,' who is then denied basic Constitutional guarantees." The decision states that such detentions can be indefinite in length (including, specifically, decades). It also states that US citizens are not exempt from this in any way:
...it is likely that the constitutional rights our court determines exist, or do not exist, for al-Marri [the defendant] will apply equally to our own citizens under like circumstances... the protections we declare to be unavailable under the Constitution to al-Marri might likewise be unavailable to American citizens...He also comments on the politisation of the Justice Department into a personal enforcement and protection arm of the Chief Executive here.
brazilrascal has posted a longish article ("Event Horizon") you should read here, about the near-ritual reversing of roles now underway in the 2008 campaign:It’s already started. Conservative blogs like Ace of Spades and Michelle Malkin are testing the waters, warning of the impending Obama Socialist-Islamo Negrocracy and its rampant abuse of executive power. Such an unprepared, unstable president might even ingulge in massive wiretap programs free of oversight, or add little notes to laws basically stating that "this holds as the law of the land, unless I disagree at some point in the future" ...And everyone, I think, has already heard about the Bush administration's torture regime was taken directly from 1950s Chinese Communist torture systems designed to elicit confessions, true and false. So yeah, it was on purpose.
I don’t think it’ll get to a full reversal, however, because liberals and conservatives currently have very different views of what it means to be an opposition party. In fact, it can be safely asserted that the only thing that is more conservative-friendly than a democrat minority is, oddly enough, a democrat majority in legislative affairs. On the other hand, the GOP perfected brinkmanship to a T, blowing up even minor issues to levels of conflict and media attention that put the Cuban Missile Crisis to shame.
I'm going to be walking away somewhat from most of this for the rest of the year. Everything remaining is going to be election noise, and I frankly can't stand it. I'm not going away; I'll still post if there's some particular new horror, and there certainly will be. I do think that the only election that matters very much at this point is the Chief Executive race, because if you're going to have a king, you're better off having the least bad one, and Senator McCain seems to be doing his best to prepare to be as bad a one as possible. Congress has written itself out of the government, so I don't exactly expect any resistance to any of a Chief Executive McCain's court nominees no matter who is in charge, and that's most of what's left to fight for in the wreckage. I'll have more on this, I suspect but do not promise, in my FISA wrapup post later.
Pledge Now
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It's been great having you give the regular scoop on what was happening. Go forth now, and do creative things!
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I wrote a FISA post touching on Greenwald entitled "No 4th Amendment. Still." if you're interested (the one before the most recent).
Careful about supporting Obama even in the interests of lesser-evilism. This article discusses the problems with that philosophy pretty exhaustively: http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=697&Itemid=1
Cheers.
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Further, I'm fairly certain the Democratic Party's actions will be to embrace and extend Mr. Bush's legacy, just in language more comfortable to their base. However, I'm also fairly certain electing Senator McCain as Chief Executive would do the same, only with added emphasis, so that's kind of a wash. Key is the fact that I also hope there is still room to think that Mr. Obama's next supreme court appointment will be substantially less bad than Mr. McCain's. The GOP is one vote away from a court that would strike down the plain language of the Constitution and 900 years of Anglo-Saxon legal tradition in favour of a fascist theory of absolute Leader executive power. As bad as the lesser-evil voting theory might be in this situation, this is one part of this vote which could possibly still matter.
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On the courts, from the link I posted above:
"And then there's the issue of the courts, the big joker the liberals wave when all other arguments seem shaky. But hasn't Obama already aligned himself with the right wing of the current Court, three times in the current session, and on three pretty show-stopping issues? I know, the response would be that he's just posturing and on balance he'd appoint more "centrist" -- as even his running dogs put it - judges. (This is the "I know he's always out with her in public and looks like he's enjoying himself, but he told me he really loves me and is just sticking around for the kids" argument.)
...
I'm increasingly convinced that the courts issue looms so large because the liberals have given away everything else. It feels ever more the property of Dem hacks who have to strain to find any basis for plausible product differentiation during election season."
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I agree the odds are very bad. But we're one vote away from losing habeas corpus, and we have to take the best chance we have of keeping that, whatever that is.
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I don't want either appointing the judges. Maybe McKinney can win a small state and together w/an improved McCain campaign throw it into the house? That will wind up being an Obama victory, but on that might scare the dems enough to show some semblance of non-authoritarianism, at least . . .
Beware of convoluted sentences ahead . . .
Anyway, you guys have covered some of the bases, but w/out reading that particular article because I'm tired and I wanna go to bed, just thought I would add, that, if I was looking only at who would be a *slightly* better bet for the next four years and wasn't looking at all beyond that, I *might* go with Obama, tho it is very, very close to a wash (because I have some hopes for a democratic opposition congress putting up a fight w/McCain on some things, and expect them to be rubber stamp central for Obama--solarbird is probably laughing bitterly that I still think there is some hope for the majority of elected dems to do the right thing at least when it doesn't require some measure of political courage or even put up a fight for fighting's sake, as they *have* recently demonstrated both that they have no interest in fighting even when majority public opinion is solidly in their favor and they have the #'s on their side, or any particular concern w/doing the right thing, and for that matter I'm wondering if they even think there is a right thing beyond, well, I have no idea, since they don't even seem primarily concerned w/electoral prospects for themselves), but that is NOT my only consideration.
I don't want to see the democratic party become as bad as the republican party (imagining solarbird's mocking laughter again) and if Obama wins, they will be. They just let his campaign get away w/painting the Clintons as racists who are willing to murder opponents to win. That is textbook Republican campaign tactics. They even went beyond anything the republicans have done by basically rigging the primary outcome--republicans only rig elections against non-republicans.
And I think a vast horde of the Obamabots are as authoritarian and fundie-nutjobby and truth-twisting/ignoring as anything the Bush-lovers or Huckabee supporters have come up with, well, ever. Seriously, these people have caused me to give up on the dems as much as Reid, Hoyer, Pelosi,
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And electing Obama would be validating *all* of this, imo.
Also, quite honestly, I just can't stomach voting for someone who did/supported these things.
Period.
So McKinney it is. Even though for reasons stated, I view McCain as the lesser evil, long term (and I'm not even sure he isn't for the short term; this election is harder to call than most as to what either candidate will actually do once in office, since both seem to be trying to convince every possible group that they are just winking at side x while *Really* they're gonna come down on the side of y; and if I had to pick one guy to actually do what they thought was the right thing in a pinch, I'd go by the "would trust McCain more at my back in fight" principle), I just can't stand his current positions so much that I can't stomach voting for him, either.
(as an aside, I at several points wondered if both McCain and Obama wanted to lose to avoid having to deal w/the impending economic disasters. Then I realized the McCain campaign was just incompetent, and Obama is so certain he's going to win that he figures he can say or do nearly anything he wants and get away w/it, so long as he says something backtracky enough to give his supporters room to "hope")
I'm hoping McKinney and Barr between them pick up more than 10% of the electorate, and this scares the winner (almost certainly Obama, tho quite seriously I'd prefer the other guy) into doing the right thing.
That's my realistic best case scenario right now.