freaktown,
I'll explain it to you.

Your premise--that "[SCOTUS] erased 13 words from the Constitution"--plainly misrepresents the recent decision.

You, on the other hand, would enthusiastically erase 10 words you dislike, namely "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms."

As a liberal pacifist and Constitutional conservative, I have a problem with that.

Those two reciprocal clauses do not justify the pretense that you or I or any lawyer can somehow erase or ignore any 10 words of your personal choosing.

The idea that the Second Amendment can be picked apart letter by letter, clause by clause, or even by misreading punctuation, all to eviscerate its intent and meaning, has done great damage to the liberal cause and to the country. Again, I say this as a liberal pacifist.

The varied ploys to do in the Second Amendment's explicit right to keep and bear arms depend on badly framed and fallacious reasoning.

Neither eliminating a well-regulated Militia, nor maintaining a well-regulated Militia (or Army or National Guard), can justify eliminating or effectively eliminate the right to keep and bear arms.

If we deviate from the prescribed Militia, or presume incorrectly that a National Guard or Army is sufficient or like substitute, that in no way justifies stabbing the right to keep and bear arms in the back. I'll suggest that neither the police, national guard nor the army are well-regulated.

Restoring the intended relationship between gun rights and armed forces would be an improvement. But pretending our history didn't happen, or that the plain language of the Constitution doesn't mean what it says, is a recipe for disaster---and an eager capitulation to the right-wingers amongst us. Ceding ground to gun nuts and right-wingers may be your bag, but then, that attitude brought us George W. Bush, didn't it?

Posted at June 27, 2008 6:38 AM in response to The Supreme Court Erased 13 words from the Constitution...and nobody seems to care that much.

Publbicola Hussein @ 6:18:

As a lawyer, I've never quite understood why the netroots get so upset about this immunity issue.

It's as though you've never heard of the Nuremberg Defense. The telecoms are actually saying, in America, that "I was only following orders" is a valid defense.

That's what the leaders leaders of the Third Reich, the Rumsfelds and Feiths and Wolfowitzes of their day, said to excuse their participation war crimes during WWII. It was a pathetic unworkable excuse then---America executed German and Japanese soldiers who used it---and it won't work now, either. The difference is one of degree, not kind.

The irony is a soldier is obligated not to obey unlawful orders, but telecoms may eagerly and enthusiastically embrace tyranny---by definition, tyranny---and use that selfsame tyranny as a defense?

The phone companies were acting at the request of the national government. If there was harm done in the process of complying with the national government's request, the phone company wouldn't have direct liability . . . --the national government would . . . My guess is that AT&T and others only agreed to take action if they were FULLY indemnified by the national government.

No government engaging in un-Constitutional acts, war crimes or impeachable offenses has ANY legal authority to indemnify any of the people it persuades to follow orders. By definition. The willingness to torture, to mislead, to evade Constitutional obligations, to wiretap clearly amputates any and all authority, as the power to govern is seated in and derives from, the people.

These are inalienable rights, an intrinsic characteristic species, in us bodily, endowed by our Creator---and nothing on earth can suspend those rights and liberties. Not legally.

Not only does the nature of these crimes eliminates all legal obligation on the part of citizens, our very form of government requires that any lawful persons recoil from obedience of orders given unlawfully. How the legal profession fancies itself to be reasoning or well-reasoned defies general gumption as well as any semblance of intellectual rigor.

Heres the analogy: this is like saying a cop who steals $1 million can't be touched---and neither can his criminal friend who got a $100,000 cut of the loot---because he was only following orders. And since the cop told him 'it was ok' because 'I said it was ok'---since he was only doing what he was told to do, he must not be guilty!

The real problem is that the federal government will never, under GWB, agree to be sued on this issue. (And whether that suit would get anywhere is a whole other matter (not sure how a plaintiff would prove harm and thus have standing to sue)).

I disagree Bush has any choice in whether he gets sued or not. We not elect Kings. We do not elect dictators. Redress of grievance, in your view, simply does not exist in any form.

Prove harm? That is the obscenity that is the legal profession. There is harm, provable harm, collectively and individually. There's harm to every individual when any one person, citizen or alien, is imprisoned without cause or tortured when innocent. There's harm to the nation when any foreign person is so abused in dignity or in their person. Substantive harm. The whole point of our Rights and Liberties is to define a bright line beyond which government may not go, without causing the only substantive harm that matters.

A goverment that crosses that line becomes an intolerable burden, renouncing by its action of seizing power and wielding coercion anlawy legal authority. If there's no standing in the then there is no redress of grievance at all. If we have no standing in our own courts when it comes to the matter of the very laws that define us as a nation---as a nation of rights and liberties---then why have courts or a system of law at all?

Posted at June 26, 2008 12:34 AM in response to Obama On FISA: Telecom Immunity Issue Doesn't Override National Security

DanK,

I disagree with your premise and conclusion.

Are you saying the American Presidential election is less important? Should take a backseat to earthquakes and typhoons?

I don't buy it.

Who becomes President will have an enormous impact on each and every one of the issues you've just asserted 'should' be privileged.

Asking the American electorate to take their eye off the ball now, just when things get interesting, does us all a disservice.

Telling us we're shallow for being interested enough to follow closely is, well, pretty perverse. I imagine if fewer of us followed politics you'd be smackin' us for being dolts and peasants, right?

Posted at May 26, 2008 2:54 AM in response to TPM Café: Now Part of the Problem

Ellen!
That's the first Dear John Letter I've ever received. If you don't mind I think I'll I wear it on my sleeve.

International affairs are, but of course, too important to be the exclusive domain of anyone BUT the American people. The endemic, circular logic and solipsistic world-view of self-assigned insiders---

---who're largely defined not by the power of their ideas and never by the integrity of their decisions, but by a set of incestuous relationships designed to keep D.C.'s revolving door spinning at warp speed---

---continues to inflict a great deal of damage to this country. And allowing the 'it'd be irresponsible to leave Iraq line' to live beyond its allotted 24 hours is Exhibit A.

Todays' think tankers ("We are the Best and the Brightest! We can win the War in Vietnam!") aren't in the business of solving problems. They're in the business of feeding thin justifications to those harvesting massive profits as simply and as blatantly as shearing sheep.

Worse, the kabuki conversation here between Fareed! dear Fareed and Slaughter comes off as a peacock-like display put on for the benefit of the unwashed. See? We're included because we get to watch--and even comment! But there's no authentic public in that two-way conversation, or in the wider 'public debate.' Both are "made men"; Zarkari & Slaughter are charter members of the insiders' insiders' insiders' clubs---so where's the fresh perspective? Where's intrinsically American inclusionary impulse? Where's the debate? the desire to listen & learn from fellow citizens? Slaughter's concerned with Zakaria.

What we've got is Groupthink reinforced by twinned congenital Groupthink. What won't see is Slaughter engaging with posters on this forum, with the public, with new ideas, with the absolute imperative to repair the rupture in the social contract & legal fabric of America.

Belonging to the very same clubs as the neocons who muscled America into a wrongheaded and unjustifiable war and Occupation isnt' in and of itself wrong. Saying nothing, though, is indefensible. Going-along to get-along compounds the error. And the pretense that 'fixing Iraq' is somehow our responsiblity, when our job is fixing our own body politic and the dysfunctional process which took us to war by betraying our plain law & core principles, abets the continuation of a crime---not just against Iraq's sovereignty, but against America's sovereignty. That betrayal, and that pretense, is a form of treason.

Posted at May 6, 2008 9:21 AM in response to Looking Beyond The State

My question for Slaughter is what's the justification and where is the shared principle in presenting one's self as "centrist"?

Point being, it can't be used to justify any policy one wishes, nor an excuse for the anything-goes mentality we've seen in D.C. the last eight years. (or forty-eight).

Centrism cannot be a rhetorical fillip or some sort of balm that releases poor policy ideas from the obligation to undergo a legitimate public vetting.

I say this b/c several years back, Slaughter held a confab/conference at Woodrow Wilson ostensibly to bring a common-sense corrective to the Iraq debacle and subsequent quagmire (h/t Steve Clemons). Turns out, though, Slaughter's conference was entirely funded by David Rubinstein of the Carlyle Group--major defense contractor.

There's just no way brilliant solutions that are in the national interest are going to come from the same intellects that got us into Iraq in the first place. If I can read in the papers that the 'evidence' for war/WMDs was manufactured---so can 'centrist' Ann-Marie Slaughter.

Yet the servicemen on their seventh tour to Iraq didn't here Slaughter's voice raised in protest; Slaughter never demanded the Constitutional requirement that Congress Declare War be adequately fulfilled.

Departing from America's standards and principles is an egregious rupture in the Constitutional legal & social contract. Using "centrism" as a shield of reasonableness for grossly unreasonable behavior is precisely what's gotten us into this quagmire and put our national security at grave risk.

When you realize that Slaughter and Fareed Zakaria are members of the same groups as Kissinger and Cheney and Richard Perle and Robert Kagan . ..

. . . you can only conclude that Slaughter is not remotely viable as the Voice of Reason.

The tightly knit and exclusionary social and professional circles she runs in ARE The Problem. They got us into this mess because they were too arrogant to stick to the American legal processes that made this country great and admirable in the first place.

Those processes were designed to select politically viable and just causes that were possible and conferred some net benefit in terms of power and security, not ensnare us further in "entangling alliances" and losing battles that openly contradict the fealty to self-rule this country was founded upon.

Slaughter's colleagues got us into this mess, and Slaughter hasn't the courage or the insight to come up with just or workable solutions to lead us out of the Occupation of Iraq. (Charlie Rose has the same problem, which is why he keeps murmuring ineffectually about 'our responsibility' when we've long since failed miserably on that score. The Pottery Barn makes you leave the store when you keep breaking the entire inventory.)

It's the SAME GROUP of people who keep arguing for staying in Iraq as the ones who got us into this Occupation, and Ann-Marie Slaughter is one of those people.

It's just not in the national interest to allow the same interlocking set of think tanks, nominal intelletuals, defense contractors, consultants (the Albright Group) and corporations to define and run the public agenda.

Any diary farmer from de Pere or Des Moines could keep America safer and out of the kind of trouble George W. Bush has instigated. I kid you not.

It's the disengagement of Slaughter's professional circles---from the rest of the country---that is the number one problem this country faces. It is the cause of the mess we're in. The arrangement from which Slaughter so heavily benefits has sanctioned a departure from the rule of law, torn out our Constitutional foundations, and tossed aside our national security as recklessly as they've misused our soldiers and blown our honor.

Turning over the CPA to Paul Bremer---Kissinger's right-hand-man---so he could auction off Iraq, is a case in point. Yanking Jay Garner outta there because he wanted to hold elections amply demonstrates that shattering Iraq as a nation was the core objective.

Unless she can speak frankly, Slaughter's affirmative role in these arrangements does more harm than good.

Only by returning this country to legitimate decision-making processes and inclusive policy discussion can the rupture in the national fabric be repaired. The exclusion of American voices who KNOW BETTER than Slaughter and 'Fareed'--dear Fareed! had better come to a quick end. Or the chickens will come home to roost, as George Washington so ably taught the British Crown.

Presuming to put on the same error-prone raiments as King George III has obviously ill-served American national security, not to mention its moral standing. Without adherence to core American principles, 'centrism' is entirely unmoored.

Without engaging the American people directly and in good faith, without following their lead rather than studiously ignoring it, without ending this exclusionary process, our current ugly situation will get much, much worse before it even hints at getting better.

Posted at May 6, 2008 6:10 AM in response to Looking Beyond The State

Stephanopolous "strongly defended" his questions?

That merits a strong response. I wont' do chapter and verse on that now.

But Gibson and Stephanopolous carried out a coordinated tabloid-style hatchet job last night.

And NONE of his excuses can account for his decision to a) dwell on baseless 'gotcha' smear tactics, which were b) posed at the expense of legitimate issues, which were never addressed.

Of course candidates must be able to withstand criticism. But Sen. Obama already did that, as voters recognized the Rev. Wright smear was just that---a smear, and one Obama handled effectively, no less.

To bring it up again, after it's blown over, isn't just irresponsible---it's a hatchet job.

The tone and bias of the questions made that crystal clear. Stephanopolous was really asking:
> 'How long has your pastor hated America?'
> 'How long have you been consorting with known terrorists? [get it? They're blurring Obama's identity---funny name, is he from here really, and now, pssst! he knows terrorists!

Knowing Will Ayers means absolutely ZERO. A hundred thousand UW students have bought juice or smoothies from Karleton Armstrong's juice stand on Madison's Library Mall---does that make them known associates of a convicted bomber???

This is absurd.

Stephanopolous never nails right-wing pastors for damning America. He NEVER damns George Bush's lack of patriotism. Or asks why he wears the flag but perverts and betrays the Constitution.

We spent 50 minutes without a single policy question, endured cheap smears about lapel flags---and Stephanopolous wants to maintain he was "just doing his job?" Sounds like a "good German" to me; they said the same thing. I was only following orders.

This was clearly coordinated. The questions were clearly strongly biased to smear Dems as ridiculous and unrealistic. And it was clearly designed to avoid critical substantive issues like the economy and the Occupation of Iraq.

Worse, they were designed to revive previous baseless 'gotcha' attacks that had failed miserably, and drag them out as long as possible on national television.

Why else would ABC black-out/limit use by other broadcasters? Duh. Not bright.

George Stephanopolous has a lot to apologize for. He's a political operative. That's been obvious for years. But nothing can repair what's left of his reputation.

Posted at April 17, 2008 4:30 PM in response to George Stephanopoulos Responds To Obama, Defends Handling Of Debate

Did they really just spend 10 or 12 question "bitter" and Rev. Wright?

Gibson and Stephanopolous tag-teaming to revisit and dwell on those two so-called issues and just drag it out?

Now William Ayers? As though knowing Ayers indicates anything at all about Obama?

This is a calculated, drawn-out assassination of Obama's candidacy. Full stop.

And it looks coordinated.

Givson ends with the lie that Clinton's been "shortchanged" on time??

This is an outrage. I'm wondering if this won't cost Hillary Clinton.

Posted at April 16, 2008 8:48 PM in response to Asked If Obama Can Beat McCain, Hillary Says: "Yes. Yes. Yes."

Lewinsky, Bill Clinton and the legacy of right-wing Hillary hatred may be a weakness---but that doesn't have anything to do with Chelsea Clinton, who doesn't deserve to be harrassed over the fallibility of her father and the pain inflicted on her mother.

Nothing will be gained by Democrats going after Chelsea on that issue.

However, BOTH Senator Hillary Clinton AND Chelsea Clinton are vulnerable on the key Constitutional issue of our time--and of the last 60+ years.

Chelsea Clinton fielded a question in Madison, Wisconsin about the lack of evidence for invading Iraq, Bush's lies about WMD, and Senator Hillary Clinton's behavior as measured against the Constitutional job description mandated to Senators as members of the Legislative Branch.

Chelsea retorted that "I'm glad you had clairvoyance; not everyone had that luxury."

I submit this attitude goes straight to the heart of everything that's wrong with this country, from its emasculated military to its eviscerated rule of law to its disemboweled economic power.

Chelsea was fundamentally unresponsive to an on-point question, relevant to the one major issue of the day, and dismissive to the valid concern of a fellow American citizen, in this case a college student. Whether it was snide or sarcastic, I couldn't say. But I can say it was offensive, irresponsible, enormously insulting, and wholly dishonest.

Why? All Hillary Clinton had to do was pick up a newspaper to know George Bush was lying to Congress and to the American people. Article after article after article discredited and debunked, in real time, Bush's manufactured assertions about aluminum tubes, bioweapons, WMD, and nukes. In real time. Newsweek. Multiple newspapers. On and on and on.

Greg Thielmann and Houghton Woods, State Dept. analysts, came right out and publicly stated, pre-war, that the aluminum tubes could not have been intended for or used for enriching uranium.

In Newsweek.

So which rubes does Chelsea Clinton think she was addressing? Madison is a politically hyper-aware city, with multiple thousands of people tracking those lies, debunking evidence and media narratives on a minute-to-minute basis.

If I can pick up a newspaper as America is muscled into an illegal war, then so can the Honorable Senator Clinton, (D?-NY).

Even more to the point: Hillary Clinton is a Yale Law School graduate, and the Constitution explictly mandates that Congress weigh the evidence, debate the justness of the cause, and Declare War--if circumstances call for war. And if that's not required for an offensive war for which there is no provocation and no evidence, then when SHALL Congress stop living in a T.S. Eliot poem ("shall I eat a peach?"), get up off its coddled and self-entitled collective assets, adn do its job?

If Hillary Clinton had done her job as a Senator, instead of chasing after George Bush with a rubber stamp, she would've been the Democratic nominee this year---instead of a historical footnote.

Adopting the Establishment's stance---100% anti-thetitical to the foundational core that defines America---that the Constitution is irrelevant and no one need live up to it in practice, is precisely what's wrong with Hillary Clinton's candidacy. I guess they teach sophistry in Yale Law School, and with it the active subversion of the Cosntitution.

It's really the only conclusion. But it is 180-degrees in error, for it allows the U.S. to commit all the same "entangling alliances" Washington and Jefferson warned us against, and repeat all the same mistakes that cost King George III the Colonies and jump-started the Revolution in 1776 in the first place.

>But Hillary's mistaken if she thinks D.C.'s hemophiliac aristocracy will let her in just because she buddies up to BOTH Rupert Murdoch and Richard Mellon Scaife (who financed Bill Clinton's downfall)---

--because Sally Quinn, self-appointed defender of D.C.'s politesse and etiquette---and yes, the whole country choked on Quinn's blatant hypocrisy--just went after Chelsea Clinton on Harry Smith's TV show. Said she was fair game--specifically, even when it came to Bill's adultery.

So to the original poster--if YOU want to join Sally Quinn and David Broder and John Harris and Doyle McManus, be my guest.

But never let it be said a Constitutional Restoration wasn't in order---nor that you, or Chelsea or Hillary, were ever part of the solution.

Posted at April 1, 2008 6:04 PM in response to Chelsea Clinton & the Monica Question, I smell a weakness here

Geraldine Ferraro is openly using the race-baiting gripe that Clarence Thomas always complained affirmative action made him vulnerable to.

In Ferraro's antiquated view, Barack Obama must not be qualified, because after all, he's black and so couldn't have have earned it.

So, Clarence Thomas was right? Ferraro gets to go right-wing on the electorate with these openly false, and racist statements? Just like that?

Last I heard the Constitution required Presidents to be over thirty-five and native-born. Right now the American People are vetting Sen. Obama the old-fashioned way--and that's the only pass he needs. Those votes are earned, and I don't see anybody taking 'em away from Senator Obama. Without, that is, having to break every rule in the book along the way.

But consider the naked hypocrisy on display here.

As the only token woman Vice Presidential nominee in American history, Geraldine Ferraro is actually presuming to lecture voters, the media and anyone who'll listen about what other people haven't earned.

And before anybody objects or gags on that just-coughedup hairball of truth, tell us what exactly Ferraro brought to the Mondale ticket. She didn't have Reagan's charisma, and she didn't have HW Bush's resume.

Where was Geraldine Ferraro the past 8 (or 16) years? While George Bush & Co. was lying 985 times in the run-up to Iraq? Nowhere. This 'elder statesman' said nothing.

Yet an Illinois State Senator named Barack Obama could see what was happening, and he spoke out against the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Yeah he's qualified.

But think about this. Ferraro violated the twinned ethics of feminist practice and race-&-gender neutral opportunity she originally ran on. With the stakes sky-high and the Democrats running strong into the homestretch, she just stuck a shiv in the frontrunner's back. And she used a vicious racist canard that's absolutely cherished by Reaganite bigots to do it.

Time to call a halt. The standard metric for measuring qualifications for Prznt are history. Pull 'em from the ranks of the people--not the has-beens.

Posted at March 11, 2008 11:15 PM in response to Clinton Campaign Manager Suggests Obama Campaign Is Playing Race Card With Ferraro Comments