Liz Cheney advocates torture and indefinite detention with no charges, and just launched a repulsive McCarthyite smear campaign equating all detainee lawyers with Al Qaeda.  The ACLU has steadfastly opposed Bush's torture policies as early as anyone, advocates due process for all, and ran a newspaper advertisement pointing out the indisputable fact that military commissions and indefinite detention were the crux of the Bush/Cheney Terrorism template and urging Obama not to embrace it.   But they're on opposite sides of these issues and thus are equivalent:  they're the extremists and purists who need to be rejected by those in the Glorious Middle (embodied by Lindsey Graham).  As long both of them are against what you're doing, it means you're right.  Could a false equivalency be any more trite or vapid than that? 

Far worse is the specific, Graham-endorsed policy which Milbank endorses -- not by making any substantive arguments in its favor, but simply by declaring it to be in between Liz Cheney and the ACLU, at the center of the two "purist" extremes (which, in Washington, means, by definition, that it's superior regardless of content):

Graham has provided Obama a way out of this standoff: Send KSM to a military tribunal in exchange for Congress abandoning legislation that would deny funding to close Gitmo. Next, the administration would work with Congress to create a "national security court," which would govern how other current and future terrorism suspects can be held in preventive detention.

This is the so-called "centrist compromise" -- the one Graham (along with the Brookings Institution) is pushing, Milbank is endorsing, and the administration may be heading towards adopting.  But just think about what it actually is.  According to its advocates, there is and will continue to be a group of people whom we deem Too Dangerous to allow to be free, yet who have committed no crime and/or against whom there is no evidence of actual wrongdoing.  Therefore, we want to imprison them even though we can't prove they did anything wrong.  Thus, we're going to create new, special courts -- and christen them with the Orwellian title "National Security Courts" -- and empower them to approve the President's decision to imprison human beings in cages even though they've committed no crime (not even the extremely broad criminal offense of "providing material support to Terrorist organizations," of which anyone who even gets near an actual Terrorist group is easily convicted). 

This new judicial system will be devoted to imprisoning people "preventively" -- for being Dangerous.  In other words, we're dispensing with the idea that the Government can only imprison those who we can prove have committed crimes, and are instead creating by statute a new category of human beings -- people who have committed no crimes but belong in prison anyway -- along with courts to keep them imprisoned (this idea was unveiled in Barack Obama's "civil liberties" speech last May when he described the so-called "fifth category" of people, and I wrote about everything wrong with that proposal here).  But why stop with accused Terrorists?  Why not dispense with this "due process" annoyance entirely, and imprison all people who we know deep down are guilty of something really bad, or at least will be in the future -- such as those we know murdered someone or raped children but can't find the evidence to prove it (or those we believe likely will in the future)?   What decent person would possibly allow such monsters to go free just because we can't convict them in court?

That's the "centrist compromise" which Graham and Milbank advocate, and which the ACLU -- by virtue of its opposition -- is deemed by Milbank guilty of being the "purist" equivalent of Liz Cheney.  Aside from how radical such a proposal is on its face, it's actually a more extreme version of what George Bush and Dick Cheney did.  As a result of the Supreme Court's Boumediene ruling, detainees imprisoned by Bush/Cheney with no charges are now are entitled to habeas review by federal courts, and the vast majority have won their cases and been ordered released on the ground of insufficient evidence.  Notably, it was the "centrist" Graham, to his eternal disgrace, who led the way in trying to deny those innocent detainees the right of habeas review -- and thus tried to keep innocent people imprisoned indefinitely with no judicial review -- by sponsoring the habeas-denying section of the Military Commissions Act which the Boumediene Court invalidated as unconstitutional. 

Now, Graham (echoing Obama's May speech) wants to statutorily institutionalize this power of indefinite detention -- making it a permanent fixture of our political system and solidifying it as the bipartisan policy of all three branches.  As demonstrated by the truly dangerous, extremist bill just introduced by John McCain and Joe Lieberman (the "Enemy Belligerent, Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2010") -- which, among other atrocities, would allow the President to indefinitely imprison even American citizens arrested on U.S. soil -- it's almost certain that having this fear-mongering Congress write an indefinite detention bill would result in a much broader and farther-reaching detention scheme than even what we've had under Bush/Cheney and now Obama.  But hey:  Liz Cheney and the ACLU (with whom I consult) are both against it (Cheney's opposition is due only to the fact that the "compromise" would lead to the re-location of Guantanamo to Illinois) -- and one can find some Democrats and some Republicans who favor it -- and, therefore, it is, by definition, the sensible "centrist" solution which all non-purist-extremists favor.  That's the warped, childish, substance-free definition of "centrism" which Washington media drones like Dana Milbank constantly embrace, and nothing has led to more damaging policies than that.

* * * * *

The Washington Post Op-Ed page deserves some credit for publishing this excellent Op-Ed yesterday by Georgetown Professor Gary Solis, who points out that, under international law, CIA agents who operate lethal drone attacks are every bit as much "unlawful combatants" as the Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters we have imprisoned, rendered, tortured and killed, because "they are fighters without uniforms or insignia, directly participating in hostilities, employing armed force contrary to the laws and customs of war."  He also points out that CIA officials involved in such activities are legitimate military targets of the enemy.  The same is true, of course, for the vast number of private mercenaries the U.S. uses to engage in war-fighting and related activities.  By the warped reasoning that has prevailed in our country, it would be perfectly legal and proper for these unlawful American combatants to be imprisoned indefinitely with no charges and even tortured.  If you advocate and practice lawlessness, it's only a matter of time before you're subjected to your own deranged standards.

UPDATE:  Just to clarify the rules of Washington centrism:  if you believe in this and insist on its adherence, then you're a purist-extremist who is the equivalent of Liz Cheney:

"I consider [trial by jury] as the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution." --Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Paine, 1789. ME 7:408, Papers 15:269.

You're also a non-centrist extremist who must be rejected if you believe in this and don't want to "compromise" on it:

No person shall be . . . deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law . . . . In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense. -- Fifth and Sixth Amendments, U.S. Constitution.

I hope those purity rules are clear, because in Washington they definitely are.

But all those claims were put to the test -- all those bluffs were called -- once the White House decided that it had to use reconciliation to pass a final health care reform bill.  That meant that any changes to the Senate bill (which had passed with 60 votes) -- including the addition of the public option -- would only require 50 votes, which Democrats assured progressives all year long that they had.  Great news for the public option, right?  Wrong.  As soon as it actually became possible to pass it, the 50 votes magically vanished.  Senate Democrats (and the White House) were willing to pretend they supported a public option only as long as it was impossible to pass it.  Once reconciliation gave them the opportunity they claimed all year long they needed -- a "majority rule" system -- they began concocting ways to ensure that it lacked 50 votes.

All of that was bad enough, but now the scam is getting even more extreme, more transparent.  Faced with the dilemma of how they could possibly justify their year-long claimed support for the public option only now to fail to enact it, more and more Democratic Senators were pressured into signing a letter supporting the enactment of the public option through reconciliation; that number is now above 40, and is rapidly approaching 50.  In other words, there is a serious possibility that the Senate might enact a public option if there is a vote on it, because it's very difficult for these Senators to vote "No" after pretending all year long -- on the record -- that they supported it.  In fact, The Huffington Post's Ryan Grim yesterday wrote:  "the votes appear to exist to include a public option. It's only a matter of will."

The one last hope for Senate Democratic leaders was to avoid a vote altogether on the public option, thereby relieving Senators of having to take a position and being exposed.  But that trick would require the cooperation of all Senators -- any one Senator can introduce a public option amendment during the reconciliation and force a vote -- and it now seems that Bernie Sanders, to his great credit, is refusing to go along with the Democrats' sham and will do exactly that:  ignore the wishes of the Senate leadership and force a roll call vote on the public option.

So now what is to be done?  They only need 50 votes, so they can't use the filibuster excuse.  They don't seem able to prevent a vote, as they tried to do, because Sanders will force one.  And it seems there aren't enough Senate Democrats willing to vote against the public option after publicly saying all year long they supported it, which means it might get 50 votes if a roll call vote is held.  So what is the Senate Democratic leadership now doing?  They're whipping against the public option, which they pretended all year along to so vigorously support:

Senate Democratic leaders are concerned about the amount of mischief their own Members could create if or when a health care reconciliation bill comes up for debate. And sources said some supporters of creating a public insurance option are privately worried that they will be asked to vote against the idea during debate on the bill, which could occur before March 26.

Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) acknowledged Wednesday that liberals may be asked to oppose any amendment, including one creating a public option, to ensure a smooth ride for the bill. "We have to tell people, 'You just have to swallow hard' and say that putting an amendment on this is either going to stop it or slow it down, and we just can’t let it happen," Durbin, who supports a public option, told reporters.

If -- as they claimed all year long -- a majority of Congressional Democrats and the White House all support a public option, why would they possibly whip against it, and ensure its rejection, at exactly the moment when it finally became possible to pass it?   If majorities of the House and Senate support it, as does the White House, how could the inclusion of a public option possibly jeopardize passage of the bill?

I've argued since August that the evidence was clear that the White House had privately negotiated away the public option and didn't want it, even as the President claimed publicly (and repeatedly) that he did.  And while I support the concept of "filibuster reform" in theory, it's long seemed clear that it would actually accomplish little, because the 60-vote rule does not actually impede anything.  Rather, it is the excuse Democrats fraudulently invoke, using what I called the Rotating Villain tactic (it's now Durbin's turn), to refuse to pass what they claim they support but are politically afraid to pass, or which they actually oppose (sorry, we'd so love to do this, but gosh darn it, we just can't get 60 votes).  If only 50 votes were required, they'd just find ways to ensure they lacked 50.  Both of those are merely theories insusceptible to conclusive proof, but if I had the power to create the most compelling evidence for those theories that I could dream up, it would be hard to surpass what Democrats are doing now with regard to the public option.  They're actually whipping against the public option.  Could this sham be any more transparent?

UPDATE: One related point:  when I was on Morning Joe several weeks ago, I argued this point -- why aren't Democrats including the public option in the reconciliation package given that they have the 50 votes in favor of the public option? -- and, in response, Chuck Todd recited White House spin and DC conventional wisdom (needless to say) by insisting that they do not have the votes to pass the public option.  If that's true -- if they lack the votes to pass the public option through reconciliation -- why is Dick Durbin now whipping against it, telling Senators -- in his own words -- "You just have to swallow hard' and say that putting an amendment on this is either going to stop it or slow it down, and we just can’t let it happen"?

No discussion of the public option is complete without noting how much the private health insurance industry despises it; the last thing they want, of course, is the beginning of real competition and choice.

UPDATE II: Here's Chris Hayes, Friday night with Rachel Maddow, explaining who really killed the public option (while pretending, vociferously, to favor it): 

As I've noted before, the column I've written which has produced the highest level of hate mail over the past year (in terms of volume and intensity) was when I compiled the evidence back in August that the White House was working to ensure there'd be no public option in the final bill at exactly the same time Obama was publicly insisting he favored it. The very idea that the President might be saying one thing in public and doing the opposite in private was outrageous and conspiratorial; a politician (or, at least, Barack Obama) would never do such a thing.  Yet all along, that's exactly what the White House was doing, and it continues to do exactly that even though there is, at least, a significant chance that there are sufficient votes to enact the public option.  That's the reason their explanations and excuses make no sense:  because the real reason there's no public option -- they don't want one -- is the one they can't or won't admit.

Today, Jeremy Rosner of GQR wrote an email strenuously objecting to Sullivan's claims ("I have never, ever believed or advised that Democrats should 'cede national security' to the Republicans, and neither has my partner Stan Greenberg, or my friends James Carville and Rahm Emanuel").  He quotes from several memos issued by that faction -- mostly from 2006-2009 -- urging Democrats to exploit various national security weaknesses of Bush and the GOP, along with one from late 2003.  Obviously -- as support for the Iraq War crumbled and the public began doubting the GOP 's national security approach -- these strategists advised Democrats to exploit that change in public opinion (November, 2007:  "For the first time in decades, national security has become a potentially winning issue for Democrats").  A child would have known to do that; that oh-so-bold advice proves nothing.

But when it actually matters -- back in 2002, as Bush was pushing for the invasion of Iraq, and now -- James Carville and Stan Greenberg (along with chronic loser Bob Shrum), as part of Democracy Corps, did exactly what Sullivan described (and what Rosner astoundingly denies they ever did).  Contrary to Rosner's claim that Democracy Corps' memos are available online, all memos prior to 2007 are archived on a site that appears to be not publicly accessible, but no matter:  for years, Digby has been chronicling the central (and quite effective) role played by Carville/Greenberg in urging Democrats to capitulate to Republicans on national security. 

In 2002, shortly before the Congressional vote on Iraq, Carville/Greenberg/Shrum distributed a memo to Democrats advising them that the most politically productive course would be to support the AUMF so that Iraq was off the table for the midterm elections, and the focus would instead be on domestic issues, where Democrats were stronger -- exactly the fear-driven, profoundly immoral and excruciatingly stupid advice which Congressional Democrats followed.  From their 2002 memo:

This decision [the Iraq vote] will take place in a setting where voters, by 10 points, prefer to vote for a Member who supports a resolution to authorize force (50 to 40 percent).2 In addition, we found that a Democrat supporting a resolution runs stronger than one opposing it.  For half the respondents, we presented a Democratic candidate supporting the resolution. Among these voters, the generic congressional vote remained stable, with the Democrats still ahead by 2 points at the end of the survey. In the other half of the sample, we presented a Democrat opposed to the resolution. In this group, the Democratic congressional advantage slipped by 6 points at the end of the survey.

[...]

The debate and vote on the resolution will bring closure on the extended Iraq debate that has crowded out the country’s domestic agenda as Congress concludes.  But there is substantial evidence, as we indicated at the outset, that voters are very ready to turn to domestic issues. It is important that Democrats make this turn and provide a compelling reason to vote Democratic and turn down the Republicans.

In this survey, we tested two message frameworks – one offers a transition to the domestic agenda ("We need independent people in Washington who will be a check on what is going on and pay attention to our needs at home") and one focuses on corporate influence ("Washington should be more responsive to the people and less to big corporate interests").  Both frameworks defeat the Republican alternative that begins with support for the President’s efforts on security.

The memo did say that the Iraq vote was one of conscience and provided some strategic advice for those who intended to vote against it, but most key Democrats (including Carville's patron, Hillary Clinton, 2004 presidential nominee John Kerry and vice presidential nominee John Edwards) followed their advice perfectly -- they "supported the President's efforts on security" by voting for the invasion of Iraq.  In fact, it is clear that both Edwards as well as John Kerry -- guided by Shrum as his campaign manager -- voted for the Iraq War at least in part due to this strategic advice:

 The 2004 election proved that the Democratic Party needs leaders -- not poll-driven consultants, who too often sacrifice principle for what appears expedient.

For example, Kerry voted for Bush's Iraq war resolution, following the "guidance" offered by Democracy Corps, a non-profit "dedicated to making the government of the United States more responsive to the American people."

On October 3, 2002, prior to the Iraq war resolution votes, Democracy Corps (founded in 1999 by James Carville, Stan Greenberg and Bob Shrum) advised Capitol Hill Democrats: "This decision [to support or oppose an Iraq war resolution] will take place in a setting where voters, by 10 points, prefer to vote for a member who supports a resolution to authorize force (50 to 40 percent)."

Needless to say, the Democrats' support for Bush's "security policies" hardly "brought closure" to the Iraq debate, nor did it move the focus to domestic issues.  Instead, the Republicans in 2002 and 2004 ran -- and resoundingly won -- by depicting as Weak on Terror even Democrats who voted for the Iraq War (such as Max Cleland), and even more effectively, by bashing the muddled, confused, contradictory and unprincipled national security position of leading Democrats (I voted for it before I voted against it -- yes, I voted for the invasion of Iraq but. . . .).  It was that deep-seated fear of taking a stand, which voters could easily smell, far more than any specific policy position, that made (and still makes) Democrats appear so pitifully "weak."  Indeed, that's why George Bush made this brilliant line the centerpiece of his 2004 GOP Convention acceptance speech when seeking re-election:

This election will also determine how America responds to the continuing danger of terrorism, and you know where I stand. . . . In the last four years -- in the last four years, you and I have come to know each other. Even when we don't agree, at least you know what I believe and where I stand.

By that point, the country had developed serious doubts about the Iraq War specifically and Bush's national security policies generally, but rather than back away because of polling weakness, Bush stood his ground and made that a selling point of Strength and Principle:  "Even when we don't agree, at least you know what I believe and where I stand." 

The reason that worked is because his two Democratic opponents -- Kerry and Edwards -- had (following Carville/Greenberg/Shrum) cast blatantly cynical and opportunistic votes on Iraq and related matters.  One minute they were national security hawks cheering for Bush's invasion (when that was popular) and the next minute they were anti-war candidates self-righteously criticizing the invasion (when the war became unpopular).  Whether one agreed with their original view or their election-year view mattered little; what was clear is that they were poll-driven opportunists with no core beliefs who were eager to shift with the slightest change in wind.  That -- far more than any specific position on war and Terrorism -- is what makes Democrats appear to be weak losers, and it's what they've been doing -- and what the Carville/Greenberg faction -- has been urging  for years and years.  

That's the same mindset that led Democrats to pretend to want to end the Iraq War so that they could win the 2006 mid-term election by exploiting anti-war sentiment, but then, once they won, continue to fund the war without limits or conditions because they were politically afraid to follow through on their alleged convictions (and like clockwork, there, in 2007, was Democracy Corps predictably warning Democrats not to equate opposition to the war with a desire for Congress to actually end the war).  Agree or disagree with whatever national security position Democrats happen to be espousing at the moment, what rational person would look at behavior like this and view such individuals as anything other than weak, mewling cowards?

* * * * *

Refusing to accept Jeremy Rosner's self-serving revisionist history on behalf of his good friends Rahm, James and Stan is particularly critical now because Democrats are poised to do this yet again, and this same tired faction is providing the "intellectual and strategic" ammunition.  When running for President, Barack Obama emphatically pledged again and again to overturn -- not continue -- the Bush/Cheney template on Terrorism and civil liberties.  He railed against the notion that we need to abandon our "values" (due process, the rule of law, civilian courts, habeas corpus, transparency) in order to stay safe.  And he won -- resoundingly.

Yet from the start, he takes a half-step forward in that direction followed by two fearful steps back.  He grants civilian trials to a handful of detainees while ordering military commissions and indefinite detention for most.  He trumpets new transparency guidelines while invoking "secrecy" to block courts from reviewing Bush crimes and re-writing FOIA to allow the suppression of torture photos.  He vows to close GITMO and then plans to re-locate its defining injustices to Illinois.  He praises habeas review for GITMO detainees while seeking to deny it to those shipped from around the world to Bagram.  He lauds the beauty of due process while compiling hit lists of American citizens to be murdered with no due process, far from any battlefield.  He hails the centrality of the Rule of Law while demanding that Bush crimes be suppressed in the name of Looking Forward, etc. etc.

As I detailed the other day, this muddled, inconsistent, completely unprincipled approach makes it impossible to offer any coherent defense of the few instances where Obama deviates from the Bush/Cheney template.  He's bound himself in exactly the same self-created knots as Democrats who tried to defend their ever-shifting, confused national security beliefs during the Bush era:

Well, yes, I am against the Iraq War even though I did vote for the Iraq War, but that's because I was tricked, or because I didn't read all the reports, or I didn't think he'd really invade, or I thought he would do it better, or I thought he'd try harder at the U.N. first, etc. etc. 

Identically, we now have Obama trying to explain why civilian trials and closing GITMO are so necessary and just at exactly the same time he sets up military commissions and systems of indefinite detention.  He tries to explain why transparency in releasing OLC memos is so vital at the same time he guts FOIA to allow the concealment of torture photos and blocks courts from adjudicating the lawsuits from torture and eavesdropping victims, etc. etc.  It's not nuanced, smart or "pragmatic"; it's craven, unprincipled, cynical and weak.  And it's not hard to see.  For that reason, aside from being loathsome on the merits, it doesn't work politically; quite the opposite.   How many times do Democrats need to learn that lesson before it seeps in?  On national security, civil liberties and Terrorism, could Barack Obama possibly deliver this line credibly:  "Even when we don't agree, at least you know what I believe and where I stand"?  Please.

At exactly the time when the Obama White House is clearly signaling its intent to move even further toward embracing the Bush/Cheney Terrorism/civil liberties template, up pops Carville/Greenberg to warn that they are appearing Weak on National Security, and simultaneously up pops a slew of articles warning that Obama's problems are due to his failures to follow Rahm Emanuel's Centrist advice, including on Terrorism.  Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it, which is why it's so crucial not to allow Jermey Rosner and his Democratic strategist friends to re-write it in order to glorify themselves.

Sure, the war that I helped sell and cheered on led to the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of innocent human beings (at least), the long-term displacement of millions more, and the complete destruction of another country that had done nothing to us.  But I'm not interested in clouding my mind with any of that.  I don't care about that.  That can be talked about once I'm dead.  After all, as the great humanitarian Joseph Stalin taught us, you can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs, and as the great scholar and torturer Condoleezza Rice explained, we should just gently shut our eyes and think about the massive slaughter and destruction we caused in that country as mere "birth pangs" on the road to something beautiful.

Back in 2003, I said -- with bloodthirsty sadism rabidly drooling from my mouth -- that the real purpose of the war, what made it the Right Thing to do, was that we needed to make large numbers of Muslims "suck. on. this" in order to show them we mean business, and we randomly picked Iraq because . . . . we could.  But now -- to justify the enormous amounts of blood I helped spill and the incalculable amounts of human suffering I helped spawn -- I'm going to pretend that I was motivated by a magnanimous, noble desire to Spread Freedom. 

It was only a matter of time before American elites abandoned their faux regret over Iraq.  For tribalists and nationalists, America can err in its execution but never in its motives.  There's no question -- as this glorifying, propagandistic Newsweek cover story reflects -- that it's now official dogma that this was the right thing to do, or at least that we produced something great and wonderful for that country, as was our intent all along (leaving aside the what is actually happening in Iraq).  It's nothing short of nauseating to watch those responsible glorify what they did without weighing -- or, in Friedman's case, affirmatively dismissing as irrelevant -- the extreme amounts of death and suffering that they caused, all based on false pretenses.  But this is why Tom Friedman is the favorite propagandist of "Washington insiders"-- because he feeds them the justifications they need to feel good about themselves.  Forget all those innocent dead people and destruction you caused; it all worked out in the end.

UPDATE:  Several people argue in Comments that this effort to portray the invasion of Iraq as a good thing is motivated not only by a desire for self-cleansing on the part of those responsible, but also to enable future, similar wars to take place.  I don't know whether that's the motive, but it's definitely the effect.  That the invasion of Iraq has been so widely perceived as a horrific debacle had the effect of minimizing the likelihood of future invasions.  Having it now depicted as something that worked out and produced Great Results necessarily makes it easier to justify future wars in that region.  After all, if attacking and invading Muslim countries we don't like in order to change their government is the good and right thing to do, shouldn't we keep doing it?

UPDATE II:  Freedom is on the March:  we shouldn't burden our minds worrying about this, though; just do what Tom Friedman does and leave it to the historians while patting ourselves on the back.

It's not actually a unique event of oppression or suffering to have to sit and listen to a speech where someone criticizes you and you can't respond that very moment (but are able, as Roberts just proved, to respond freely afterward).  Even in the State of the Union Address, it's completely customary for the President to criticize the Congress or the opposition party right to their faces, while members of his party stand and cheer vocally, and -- as the reaction to Joe Wilson's outburst demonstrated -- "decorum" dictates that the targets of the criticism sit silently and not respond until later, once the speech is done.  That's how speeches work.  Only Supreme Court Justices would depict their being subjected to such a mundane process as an act of grave unfairness (and, of course, Roberts' comrade, Sam Alito, could not even bring himself to abide by that decorum).

What makes Roberts' petty, self-absorbed grievance all the more striking is that this is what judges do all the time.  It's the essence of the judicial branch.  Federal judges are basically absolute tyrants who rule over their courtroom and those in it with virtually no restraints.  They can and do scold, criticize, berate, mock, humiliate and threaten anyone who appears before their little fiefdoms -- parties, defendants, lawyers, witnesses, audience members -- and not merely "decorum," but the force of law (in the form of contempt citations or other penalties), compels the target to sit silently and not respond.  In fact, lawyers can be, and have been, punished just for publicly criticizing a judge. 

As is true for any large group of people, the range of behavior varies greatly, from unfailingly polite judges to pathologically thuggish ones, but the core dynamic of the judicial process is that judges wield absolute power and everyone else is essentially captive to their whims.  That is why the overriding attribute of those who interact with them is one of extreme, royalty-like deference, both formally (standing when they enter, addressing them as "Your Honor," having them sit always on an elevated platform, decked in their flowing, magisterial robes) as well as informally (watch any court proceeding and see lawyers petrified of somehow offending the judge).  To say that, for many of them, this endless deference affects their expectations and sense of entitlements is to understate the case, as Roberts just proved.

Supreme Court Justices, in particular, have awesome, unrestrained power.  They are guaranteed life tenure, have no authorities who can sanction them except under the most extreme circumstances, and, with the mere sweep of a pen, can radically alter the lives of huge numbers of people or even transform our political system (as five of them, including Roberts, just did, to some degree, in Citizens United).  The very idea that it's terribly wrong, uncouth, and "very troubling" for the President to criticize one of their most significant judicial decisions in a speech while in their majestic presence -- not threaten them, or have them arrested, or incite violence against them, but disagree with their conclusions and call for Congressional remedies (as Art. II, Sec. 3 of the Constitution requires) -- approaches pathological levels of vanity and entitlement.  The particular Obama/Roberts/Alito drama is an unimportant distraction, but what this reflects about the mindset of many judges, including (perhaps especially) ones on the Supreme Court and obviously the Chief Justice of that court, is definitely worth considering.

At least 100 detainees died in U.S. custody, many as a result of interrogation practices and detention conditions.  Gen. Barry McCaffrey put it this way:  "We tortured people unmercifully. We probably murdered dozens of them during the course of that, both the armed forces and the C.I.A."  Other than a handful of very low-level scapegoats, none has been punished, or even investigated, but rather immunized in multiple ways, both formal and informal.  Army Gen. Antonio Taguba concluded that the abuse was the direct result of the orders of top-level Bush officials and said:  "there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account."  Most of the people subject to our lawless "war on Terror" detention system were completely innocent.

Iran is a horribly oppressive regime and many of these judicial processes may (or may not) be sham trials.  But they have a citizenry which effectively demanded accountability for torture, a government which relented to citizen demands, and a judiciary which compelled at least some judicial scrutiny and adjudication for these crimes.  One can only imagine what it must be like to be a citizen of a country that feels obligated -- even if just to placate populist anger -- to at least maintain the pretense of that the rule of law applies to all.

UPDATE:  And just by the way, Agence France-Presse's Olivier Knox reported today: "AIPAC writes every member of US Congress urging 'crippling' sanctions on Iran."  But remember:  any suggestion that belligerent U.S. actions towards Iran has anything at all to do with Israel would be deeply inappropriate, probably even anti-Semitic or, at the very best, an idea which all decent people would agree has a "revolting provenance."