My current book documents the two-tiered system of law and justice that has emerged in America.  The most powerful political and financial elites are virtually immunized from the rule of law, empowered to violate those laws with full-scale impunity and to act without any constraints, while the politically powerless are imprisoned with far greater ease and in far greater numbers than any other country on the planet.  Even the most egregious elite transgressions -- the pilfering and plundering that led to the 2008 financial crisis; the illegal surveillance, war and torture regime of the last decade; corporate crimes in virtually every realm -- are shielded from accountability with demands for immunity and leniency, while ordinary Americans have the full weight of the criminal justice system mercilessly crashing down upon them for even petty offenses which are rarely punished in most of the civilized world.  The book examines the implications for this development (what happens when two different sets of rules apply for the powerful and the powerless?), documents why the current system is fundamentally different than even the serious, well-known violations of "equality under the law" which have plagued American history, and describes how "law" and the justice system are used to entrench and bolster inequality rather than subvert it.

Please leave title suggestions in comments or send them to me via email.  The winner will receive something or other -- at the very least a free, signed book once it's released and, if desired, credit in the Acknowledgment section.

 

(2) I periodically hear complaints -- especially now that an election is approaching -- that I devote insufficient time and attention to criticizing the American Right.  I actually do write a fair amount of criticism of that faction, but the fact that it's not my primary focus at this point is due to two factors:  (1) I spent several years writing on a daily basis about the conservative movement, and during that time even wrote three books about them; my views on how pernicious that group is are not exactly hidden; and, more important, (2) it is the Democratic Party, not the GOP, which controls the White House and both houses of Congress.  Since my interest is primarily in how political officials use, and abuse, their power -- and in the establishment media's relationship to those in power -- the people in power are the ones about whom I write the most.  Right now, that happens to be Democrats.  Beyond that, there are literally thousands of Democratic websites and groups devoted on a daily basis to dissecting every utterance of Sarah Palin, right-wing polemicists and the like, and I just have little interest in replicating that.

That does not mean, however, that I find the American Right any less loathsome and dangerous than I did when I wrote about them on a virtually daily basis (i.e., when they were in power).  A recently released paperback book by John Amato (founder of Crooks & Liars) and Dave Neiwert, with a Foreword by Digby -- Over the Cliff: How Obama's Election Drove the American Right Insane -- does a very good job of examining how the GOP has become even more primitive, warped and extremist than it was during the Bush years.  I don't actually agree with all of the views in this book; there is more legitimacy to some of the grievances spawning this development than the book allows.  And, as I wrote the other day, I think much of the blame for why this populist anger has been exploited by the Right is because the Democratic Party and the Obama presidency have failed to address its anxieties.  But none of that changes the fact that the American Right essentially embraces the full panoply of Bush-Cheney horrors, except in even more radical form, and Over the Cliff is an excellent book for understanding how and why that happened.

 

(3) Markos Moulitsas' new book, also in paperback, examines the similarities between Islamic extremists and the American Right, and has spawned a fair amount of controversy, including in progressive circles.  Numerous liberal critics have vehemently condemned the book -- American Taliban:  How War, Sex, Sin and Power Bind Jihadists and the Radical Right -- on the ground that it is deeply offensive and misguided to suggest that American conservatives are comparable to Muslim Terrorists (by which they mean, among others, the Taliban).  I find some of these objections both absurd and quite revealing.

Obviously, some of this book is deliberately polemical.  Moulitsas is well-aware that the mainstream American Right is not remotely as extreme as the Taliban even in some areas where they share common premises.  Even the most hardened American social conservatives (at least the ones with any influence) don't advocate the stoning of adulterers or throwing acid on the faces of girls who attend school.  The difference between executing gays and wanting to deny them legal equality is obviously one of kind, not merely degree.  In those areas where one finds such fundamental differences, the point of the book is clearly a rhetorical strategy, not a literal equation.  The American Right has benefited politically by constantly suggesting a liberal sympathy, if not an outright alliance, with Islamic Terrorists, and Moulitsas' argument seeks to subvert that tactic by linking conservative fanatics with their Islamic counterparts based on common views and impulses.  It's perfectly reasonable to debate whether that tactic is effective or constructive -- I'm ambivalent about those questions -- but it's simply silly to impose on the book a literalism it plainly does not intend and then righteously rail against it on that basis (Digby has more on that issue here and here).

That said, there are areas -- significant ones -- where the actions of the American Right (and, for that matter, many Democrats who supported them) are literally comparable to the Taliban and Muslim extremists generally.  In that regard, objections from progressive writers to Moulitsas' book seem grounded in obnoxious jingoism and nationalistic exceptionalism: to wit,  no matter how bad the American Right is, they are still Americans, and thus should never be compared to primitive, evil foreign Muslim jihadists.  Illustrative of that mentality is this passage from Jamelle Bouie's extremely negative and widely-cited review in The American Prospect:

Like Liberal Fascism, American Taliban is another entry in the tired genre of "my political opponents are monsters" . . . . Yes, progressives are depressed and despondent about the future, but that's no reason for dishonesty and scaremongering, and it doesn't excuse the obscenity of comparing our political opponents to killers and terrorists. As reality-based members of the American community, we have an obligation toward the truth, even when it isn't particularly convenient. 

In what universe is it "obscene" to compare the architects of the Iraq War, the torture regime, and endless War with Muslims "to killers and terrorists"?  The comparison is true by definition.  The people who launched the attack on Iraq are guilty of an aggressive war -- what the Nuremberg prosecutors condemned as the "kingpin crime" that "holds together" all other war crimes -- which killed hundreds of thousands of innocent human beings, turned millions more into refugees, and destroyed an entire nation.  The aptly named "Shock and Awe" was designed to terrify an entire civilian population into submission.  John Podhoretz criticized the brutal assault on Fallujah for failing to exterminate all "Sunni men between the ages of 15 and 35," while his father has spent years agitating for a devastating military attack on Iran.  At least 100 War on Terror detainees in American custody died as a result of their treatment, tens of thousands more (including clearly innocent ones) were put in cages for years with no due process (where many remain), and as recent mosque-related controversies reveal, a substantial portion of the American population craves a religious war with Islam.  And that's to say nothing of the acts of other countries which this faction supports:  from mauling an imprisoned population in Gaza and attacking a harmless, civilian ship in international waters to propping up some of the most oppressive tyrannies on the planet, including many in the Muslim world.

Sometimes, one's political opponents are "monsters" -- or at least engage in genuinely monstrous acts -- and what's morally offensive is not those who point this out, but rather those who insist that the comparison not be uttered on the jingoistic ground of shared nationality.  Moulitsas' second chapter -- entitled "War" -- highlights this obvious though under-appreciated truth (emphasis in original):

Rather than marginalize and isolate the Islamic extremists, the American Taliban actively seek out that clash of civilizations.  It's no different than Osama bin Laden and his ideological ilk. 

There are countless examples of America's political leaders espousing a core mentality indistinguishable from those of the Islamic villains who are endlessly paraded before us.  And Americans who crave endless war policies for whatever reasons -- ideological and religious fervor or a self-interested desire to maximize power and profit -- are just as addicted to perpetuating this conflict as the most radical Islamic leaders are.  That the two sides in a protracted, violent conflict end up (or even begin) with more similarities than differences is hardly a new phenomenon.  Historian Richard Hofstadter, in his influential 1964 Harper's essay entitled "The Paranoid Style in American Politics," described this dynamic perfectly, in his section entitled "Emulating the Enemy."  Perpetual enemies often end up warring not because of their differences, but because their Manichean righteousness and paranoia of Others are identical, and drive them to extinguish one another.

Moulitsas is a self-described Democratic activist who wants to secure Democratic power, so the one deficiency of the book is that it fails to acknowledge the multiple policies he condemns which have been supported and enabled by his own party.  But the similarity between the American Right's aggression, tribalism, and violence and those of the Islamic extremists who are endlessly demonized in American political culture is an important one, and Moulitsas' book is very worthwhile for that discussion alone.  The reason these similarities are so rarely discussed is reflected by the angry reaction his book has generated even among his political allies in the progressive world:  the one premise that never should be challenged is that Americans -- even when they engage in violent, destructive and inhumane acts -- are intrinsically good, well-intentioned, and even superior, and thus no comparison should be tolerated between them and those foreign Others who embody Pure Evil.  Hence we find all sorts of angry and self-righteous recriminations against Moulitsas' book for daring to compare crimes of the American Right to identical crimes committed by a bunch of primitive foreigners.

The endless, destructive War on Terror depends -- like most wars do -- on a cartoonish demonization of the Enemy as something utterly foreign, inhuman, and subject to entirely different drives than Us.  Moulitsas' book, at its best, destroys that rotted premise by highlighting the many similarities between Them and Us.  Because that similarity is a great taboo -- perhaps the greatest taboo -- it has triggered all sorts of outrage:  outrage that is actually a testament to the value of the argument he makes.

Your proceedings are clouded by illegitimacy. . . . First, most of your meetings are secret, apart from two open sessions before this one, which were plainly for show. There is no justification for secret meetings on deficit reduction. No secrets of any kind are involved. . . .

Second, that some members of the commission are proceeding from fixed, predetermined agendas. Third, that the purpose of the secrecy is to defer public discussion of cuts in Social Security and Medicare until after the 2010 elections. You could easily dispel these suspicions by publishing video transcripts of all of your meetings on the Internet, and by holding all future meetings in public . . .

Conflicts of interest constitute the fourth major problem. The fact that the Commission has accepted support from Peter G. Peterson, a man who has for decades conducted a relentless campaign to cut Social Security and Medicare, raises the most serious questions.

That's why Commission co-chair Alan Simpson -- with his blunt contempt for Social Security and and other benefit programs (such as aid to disabled veterans) and his acknowledged eagerness to slash them -- has done the country a serious favor.  His recent outbursts have unmasked this Commission and shed light on its true character.  Unlike his fellow Commission members, who imperiously dismiss public inquiries into what they're doing as though they're annoying and inappropriate, Simpson -- to his genuine credit -- has been aggressively engaging critics, making it impossible to ignore what the Commission is really up to.   

In June, he walked out of a Commission meeting and proceeded to engage in an amazingly informative, 8-minute colloquy streaming in real time on the front page of FDL, making unambiguously clear that the Commission is working to cut Social Security benefits.  And over the last several weeks, he has used increasingly flamboyant rhetoric to attack both defenders of Social Security and the program itself, as well as even attacking wounded veterans for failing to sacrifice enough by giving up some of their benefits.  Whatever one thinks of Simpson's remarks, I prefer his public, engaged candor to the extreme, arrogant secrecy of his fellow Members.

Throughout last year, a few lone, progressive voices were sounding the alarm that the core goal of the President's Commission was to enable cuts in Social Security, but the Commission was operating in such stealth, and the idea was so inconceivable that Obama would lead cuts in Social Security, that few believed it.  The Democrats' plan was clearly to try to win the midterm election by telling people that the GOP wanted to attack Social Security and the Democrats would protect it, only to turn around once the election was over and then enact the Commission's Social Security reductions.  Simpson's comments have changed all that.  Now, even the hardest-core Democratic loyalists are objecting to the Party's plan; here is lifelong Party operative Bob Shrum, of all people, blowing the whistle on what the Democrats are trying to do with this Commission:

So why not campaign all-out, in [Tip] O'Neill’s plainspoken way, against a GOP that is disloyal to the most successful -- and most popular -- social program in American history?

Because Democrats have been disarmed by the president's deficit reduction commission, which plainly intends to propose Social Security cuts.

Rather than allow such cuts to be greased through the lame duck session of a decimated Democratic Congress, or passed under cover of "bipartisanship" in a decidedly more Republican one next year, shouldn't the case be stated and debated before the election? (Right now, Social Security is treated as the issue that dare not speak its name.) There is also the question of Democratic identity: What does the party stand for if not Social Security? And then there is the question of Democratic stupidity: Qualified and muted comments by Democrats in effect suggesting that Democrats won't endanger Social Security as much as the other guys will can only further pave the road to defeat.

The president's deficit reduction commission was a response to a series of popular myths -- that the federal deficit is a root cause of our economic distress and that Social Security is a root cause of the deficit. . . . So the deficit commission has targeted Social Security, which has nothing to do with the deficit.

Simpson's comments have triggered a parade of similar evidence.  Key Democratic House member Chris Van Hollen pointedly refused to vow that Democrats would vote against Social Security cuts when pressed by MSNBC's Cenk Uygur, and several progressive pundits -- including TPM's Brian Beutler and Ezra Klein -- this week documented what has been clear for some time:  that the Commission is stacked with ideologically conservative and corporatist appointments from both parties likely to recommend cuts in Social Security.

But perhaps the most significant result of Simpson's candor is that Obama loyalists and Beltway media voices are now forced to publicly defend Social Security cuts, because Simpson's comments have prematurely dragged out into the open what has been an open secret in Washington but was supposed to be a secret plot for everyone else until the election was over.  The New Republic's Jonathan Chait recently decreed, in response to the Simpson controversy, that "liberals should be open to Social Security cuts as part of a balanced package of deficit reduction."  And in The Washington Post today, both the Editorial Page and Dana Milbank defend Simpson and call for cuts in Social Security (Milbank even defends cuts in aid to wounded veterans).  That Social Security must be cut is not only a bipartisan consensus among the GOP and "centrist" Democratic wing, but at least as much, among the Beltway media establishment.

This last point is the critical one for me, and most illustrative of why I find the effort to cut Social Security so appalling.  For the moment, leave to the side abstract debates over the propriety of social programs, or even debates over specific proposals such as raising the retirement age or means-testing.  Instead, let's look at what is happening more broadly:

One of the most significant developments in the U.S. is the rapidly and severely increasing rich-poor gap.  A middle class standard of living is being suffocated and even slowly eliminated, as budget cuts cause an elimination of services that are hallmarks of first-world living.  Because the wealthiest Americans continue to consolidate both their monopoly on wealth and, more important, their control of Congress and the government generally, we respond to all of this by enacting even more policies which exacerbate that gap and favor even more the wealthiest factions while taking more from the poorest and most powerless.  And now, the very people responsible for the vulernable financial state of the U.S. want to address that problem by targeting one of the very few guarantors in American life of a humane standard of living:  Social Security.

Advocates of cutting Social Security -- like Jonathan Chait and the Post's Fred Hiatt -- are the same people who cheered on the attack on Iraq and other policies of endless American War, which have drained America's budget and turned it into a debtor nation.  Millions of other human beings -- but not, of course, them -- suffered and sacrificed for those policies.  And now that it's time to address the economic carnage caused by all of this, to what do they turn for savings?  The handful of social programs which provide at least some small guarantee of a minimally decent standard of living in old age.  

Even those who are ideologically opposed to "social programs" as confiscatory or "socialist" should find this glaring disparity in treatment highly objectionable.  The government policies which most benefit the wealthiest -- the owners of the Government -- continue unabated:  endless war, private Surveillance State explosions, Wall Street bailouts, too-big-to-fail banks, perhaps even extending Bush tax cuts, while the programs on which the most vulnernable depend are targeted to pay for all that.  There have been some gestures during the Obama presidency to work against this trend -- most notably the increase of health care subsidies for millions of poor people -- but targeting Social Security in order to pay for wars, to feed the private Surveillance State, and to extend Bush tax cuts or the suspension of the estate tax is pernicious no matter one's economic ideology.  This isn't about free market capitalism; it's crony capitalism -- oligarchy -- where government policies are constructed to transfer wealth to the same small faction at the top.

In the Post today, Milbank justifies the targeting of Social Security recipients and wounded veterans on the ground that nothing should be "sacrosanct" when considering how to solve America's deficit problem.  Leaving aside the fact that Social Security is not really a deficit issue, the true causes of America's debt and deficits are absolutely sacrosanct and will never be attacked by this Commission.  Does anyone believe it's even remotely possible that meaningful cuts in America's war and military spending, surveillance and intelligence networks, or even corporate-plundering of America's health care system will be enacted as a result of this Commission process?  Of course not.  Those genuine debt-causing policies are "sacrosanct" because the people who profit from them own and control Washington (and share common socio-economic interests with the millionaire Commission members targeting social programs and the billionaires who are behind this).  It's the people who don't control Washington -- ordinary Americans who need Social Security -- who are being targeted in order to feed even further the fattest, most piggish factions actually in control.  That's what makes this process so ugly and odious.

 

UPDATE:  The 8-minute Simpson video I linked above is apparently difficult to hear unless you use headphones.  That's recommended, but for those who don't do that, the transcript of that colloquy is here.

We were then treated to grainy video of the khaki-dressed Engel "rolling out" with the Brigade, interviews with American soldiers describing what a historic event this was, all while the "NBC NEWS EXCLUSIVE" logo was plastered on the screen -- quite reminiscent of the embedded media coverage that glorified the invasion itself.  Even Williams noted the similarity:  "We watched the invasion happen on live television thanks to, at the time, some brand new and exclusive technology.  Well, tonight again we have watched the pullout of combat troops the same way."  At the end of the 7-minute segment, Williams heaped praise on Engel, whom he hailed as "our own young veteran of this conflict," for this "astounding bit of reporting."

Meanwhile, over at MSNBC, hours of continuous melodramatic coverage were devoted to this story, and the cable network's various personalities treated the event at least as reverentially as Williams did.   Keith Olbermann donned his most solemn baritone to begin his program this way:  

Two thousand six hundred and sixty-six days since President Bush declared "mission accomplished" in Iraq.

Two thousand seven hundred and eight days since American forces invaded Iraq.

At this hour, American combat forces are leaving Iraq.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RICHARD ENGEL, NBC NEWS CHIEF FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT: I think we‘re coming right up to the Kuwaiti border now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

OLBERMANN: This is a special edition of COUNTDOWN.

Chief foreign correspondent, Richard Engel, in a world exclusive, embedded with, reporting live from the last convoy of American combat troops as it leaves Iraq via the Kuwait border.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You're watching the end of an era of the American military.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

OLBERMANN: With Rachel Maddow inside the Green Zone in Baghdad, and Chris Matthews, Lawrence O‘Donnell, Eugene Robinson, Howard Fineman, Jim Miklaszewski at the Pentagon, retired General Paul Eaton, retired Colonel Jack Jacobs, Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon and former weapons inspector Charles Duelfer.

From Baghdad, from the Iraq-Kuwait border, from Washington, from New York -- this is COUNTDOWN's special continuing live coverage of the end of America's Iraq combat mission.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

As Olbermann indicated, Maddow was in Baghdad's "Green Zone," and she explained:  "it is really, really hot right now. But yet, seeing what we just saw, right here live with that gate closing, the last U.S. combat troop, I'm totally covered in goose bumps. It is an important moment."

It's not difficult to understand why NBC and MSNBC hyped the event the way they did.  The reason they had what Olbermann touted as a "worldwide exclusive" is because -- in response to NBC embed requests -- the Pentagon contacted them and offered exclusivity, knowing that the arrangement would incentivize NBC to treat the event as something of monumental historic importance.  By selecting NBC as the only broadcast network to be told in advance, swearing them to secrecy, but arranging for them to cover it exclusively with video, it became their story, and they thus, predictably, were eager to tout its importance.  That's the natural inclination when someone is given exclusive access by the Government.  Maddow explained how the Pentagon arranged in secret for this exclusive coverage of the "momentous" event to be given to NBC and MSNBC:

By offering it exclusively to both NBC and MSNBC, the Pentagon ensured that this narrative would be given the Seriousness imprimatur from NBC, and would produce base-pleasing, Obama-favorable praise from MSNBC personalities.  Having Engel embedded in a Stryker vehicles as it "rolled out" of Iraq, and Maddow stationed in the Green Zone, added to the historic tone of the evening.  As The New York Times' Brian Stelter reported:  "David Verdi, an NBC News vice president, added, 'The military had said, 'You are the ones who are going to broadcast it first'."  About that, Mediaite's Steve Kraukauer wrote:  "That’s a stunning admission, and shows a degree of coziness between both sides here."  With this cooperative venture, the White House got exactly the coverage it wanted:  the repeatedly hyped claim that under Barack Obama, "American combat forces are leaving Iraq," as Olbermann intoned at the start.

One of the few sour notes in this coverage came when Olbermann briefly interviewed McClatchy's Jonathan Landay, and asked him what the 50,000 remaining soldiers would be doing.  Landay explained:

This is the great irony for me, Keith. The fact is that under the delusional plans that former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had approved for the invasion of Iraq, they had intended to come down to 50,000 troops within three or four months of that invasion. . . . .That, for me, is the ultimate irony, is the fact that more than seven years later, we‘ve now gotten down to the 50,000 troops that they thought they could get down to within three months of the invasion. . . . . [T]hose 50,000 men and women include special forces who will be going out on counter-terrorism missions with Iraqi forces. That, to me, is combat.  They're armed. They're going into combat.  There will be American, quote/unquote, advisers going out with Iraqi forces on regular patrols. That to me opens the door to combat.

So I don‘t think we‘re going to see the end of -- we are not going to see the end of combat for American forces I don‘t think in Iraq.

The 50,000 troops staying in Iraq were noted several times by the various MSNBC commentators, especially Maddow, but, other than the Landay interview, it did not detract from the repetitious claim that -- to use Brian Williams' formulation -- "U.S. combat troops have pulled out of Iraq."  This, of course, was the same message touted in Barack Obama's Oval Office address to the nation on Wednesday night:  

So tonight, I am announcing that the American combat mission in Iraq has ended. Operation Iraqi Freedom is over, and the Iraqi people now have lead responsibility for the security of their country.

Yesterday, however, the Associated Press' Standards Editor, Tom Kent, issued a memorandum to AP editors and reporters instructing them not to use this White-House-created formulation that "combat operations in Iraq are over," on the simple ground of inaccuracy:

Whatever the subject, we should be correct and consistent in our description of what the situation in Iraq is. This guidance summarizes the situation and suggests wording to use and avoid.

To begin with, combat in Iraq is not over, and we should not uncritically repeat suggestions that it is, even if they come from senior officials. The situation on the ground in Iraq is no different today than it has been for some months. Iraqi security forces are still fighting Sunni and al-Qaida insurgents.  . . . .

As for U.S. involvement, it also goes too far to say that the U.S. part in the conflict in Iraq is over. President Obama said Monday night that "the American combat mission in Iraq has ended. Operation Iraqi Freedom is over, and the Iraqi people now have lead responsibility for the security of their country."

However, 50,000 American troops remain in country. Our own reporting on the ground confirms that some of these troops, especially some 4,500 special operations forces, continue to be directly engaged in military operations. These troops are accompanying Iraqi soldiers into battle with militant groups and may well fire and be fired on.

In addition, although administration spokesmen say we are now at the tail end of American involvement and all troops will be gone by the end of 2011, there is no guarantee that this will be the case.

Our stories about Iraq should make clear that U.S. troops remain involved in combat operations alongside Iraqi forces, although U.S. officials say the American combat mission has formally ended. We can also say the United States has ended its major combat role in Iraq, or that it has transferred military authority to Iraqi forces. We can add that beyond U.S. boots on the ground, Iraq is expected to need U.S. air power and other military support for years to control its own air space and to deter possible attack from abroad.

The ability of the Pentagon to shape coverage through controlling access, offering embedding, and doling out exclusives is too well-known and well-documented by now to require much discussion.  The problem, however, is that it remains irresistibly enticing for many media outlets to submit to it.  The fact that NBC/MSNBC was the only television news outlet with video of the "last combat brigade rolling out of Iraq" was a major coup.  The only way that coup matters -- the only way the journalists covering this event "exclusively" can feel as though they're doing something important -- is if they vest the event with historic significance, accomplished by touting it as "the end of America‘s Iraq combat mission," exactly the message the administration wanted disseminated.

The fact that this phrase -- "the end of America‘s Iraq combat mission" -- is more propagandistic than anything gave no pause.  The withdrawal of 100,000 troops from that country since Obama's inauguration is not insignificant, and it's a good thing that he's adhered to the withdrawal schedule.  But, as Landay explained, 50,000 troops is a huge number -- it's what Rumsfeld originally envisioned as the occupying force to be used three months after the invasion -- and it's inevitable that they will be in combat.  And that's to say nothing of the large number of private-militias which remain -- paid for by American citizens -- as well as the so-called "private army" which the State Department is currently assembling, to be deployed in that country.  That's why AP refuses to use these misleading terms "even if they come from senior officials."  That, and because they weren't the ones gifted with the "worldwide exclusive" coverage by the Obama administration and its Pentagon.

(2) In November, California voters will vote on Proposition 19, which would legalize marijuana in that state (I'm on the Board of Advisers of Just Say Now, an organization working for its passage).  It was announced today that Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein -- Iraq War supporter, champion of Bush appointees Michael Hayden and Michael Mukasey, Surveillance State cheerleader, and beneficiary of her husband's vast, defense contracting wealth -- will take the lead in working to defeat Prop 19 and thus keep marijuana criminalized, in turn keeping Mexican cartels empowered and adult American citizens prosecuted for using this substance which is far less harmful and dangerous than alcohol, if it is even "harmful" or "dangerous" at all.

(3) Substantial polling data makes clear that Latinos are among the most disenchanted Democratic voting bloc, as they are furious at the White House for repeatedly violating promises on immigration reform.  Large numbers of Latino voters now blame both parties almost equally for failures in immigration policy.

(4) At Daily Kos, Joan McCarter documents that progressive and even Democratic Party journalists are now openly acknowledging what has long been clear:  President Obama's Deficit Commission was structured so as to ensure recommendations for, among other things, cuts in Social Security benefits, to be voted on right after the election is nice and over with (an election the Democrats are trying to win by parading around as the protectors of Social Security).  Also at Daily Kos, Laurence Lewis describes how similar this dynamic is to prior political controversies, where Democrats held themselves out publicly as believing one thing while privately working for the opposite.

(5) Following Robert Gibbs' announcement that liberal Obama critics should be drug tested, and before that, Rahm Emanuel's declaration that the same group is "fucking retarded," a new book by former Obama "car czar" Steven Rattner describes how Emanuel worked to thwart union interests and declared, in the midst of the auto bailouts:  "Fuck the UAW."

(6) Daphne Eviatar of Human Rights First argues that the military commission prosecution of child soldier Omar Khadr is itself a war crime.

(7) Several people emailed me links to comments and diaries over the last couple days viciously complaining about my observation of a worsening economy since Obama became President.  I suppose it all depends on what metric you use and whose economic interests you care about.  While it's true that the crisis of a full-scale collapse was temporarily averted, I was actually referring to this:

And, of course, the only reason for the recent, slight "decline" is because so many people have stopped looking for work altogether that they are no longer even counted.  Robert Reich has more today on the attempt to seize on largely unimportant data to proclaim an improving economy.

Assembling all of these facts together, one is left with this befuddling mystery:  why is there such a huge and growing "enthusiasm gap," where so many Democrats and progressives are unmotivated even to bother to vote in November, notwithstanding all the fear-mongering (much of it legitimate) over the GOP extremists?  Is it really hard to see?

 

UPDATE:  Public Policy Polling's Tom Jensen compiles data on exactly this question today, and explains:

This year isn't getting away from the Democrats because voters are moving toward the Republicans en masse. But the enthusiasm gap is turning races that would otherwise be lean Democratic into toss ups, turning toss ups into leaning Republican, and turning leaning Republican into solid Republican.

What's most amazing about this is that Democrats generally and the White House specifically seem completely uninterested in doing anything about this -- other than exacerbating it.  The need to do something is what leads me to believe (without knowing) that Obama will nominate (without necessarily causing to be confirmed) liberal favorite Elizabeth Warren to head the new Consumer Protection Agency created by the Financial Regulation bill.  If they do that and are serious about it, that would definitely be a good thing, but at this point, Democratic malaise and apathy are so entrenched that it's hard to imagine a single nomination doing much to change it.

Because the political class is treating today as some sort of melodramatic milestone in the Iraq War, there is a tidal wave of those self-defending claims crashing down around us.  The New York Times' John Burns -- who bravely covered that war for years -- presents a classic case of this mentality today in a solemn retrospective entitled "The Long-Awaited Day."  I realize we're all supposed to genuflect to Burns' skills as a war journalist -- I've personally found him far more overtly supportive of the war than most others covering it and certainly more than his claimed objectivity would permit, even when his reporting was illuminating -- but if he's right about what he says today, it's a rather enormous (albeit unintentional) indictment of himself and his colleagues covering the war:

Hindsight is a powerful thing, and there have been plenty of voices amid the tragedy that has unfolded since the invasion to say, in effect, "I told you so." But among that band of reporters --  men and women who thought we knew something about Iraq, and for the most part sympathized with the joy Iraqis felt at what many were unashamed then to call their "liberation" -- there were few, if any, who foresaw the extent of the violence that would follow or the political convulsion it would cause in Iraq, America and elsewhere.

We could not know then, though if we had been wiser we might have guessed, the scale of the toll the invasion would unleash: the tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians who would die; the nearly 4,500 American soldiers who would be killed; the nearly 35,000 soldiers who would return home wounded; the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who would flee abroad as refugees; the $750 billion in direct war costs that would burden the United States; the bitterness that would seep into American politics; the anti-Americanism that would become a commonplace around the world.

If Burns wants to claim that he and his American media colleagues in Baghdad were unaware that any of this was likely, I can't and won't dispute that.  In fact, it's probably true that they were unaware of it -- blissfully so -- which is why media coverage in the lead-up to the war was so inexcusably one-sided in its war cheerleading, as even Howard Kurtz documented.  But Burns' claim that they "could not know then" that the invasion could unleash all of the tragedy, violence and anti-Americanism it spawned is absolutely ludicrous, a patent attempt to justify his severe errors in judgment as being unavoidable.

Aside from the obvious, intrinsic risks of invading a country smack in the middle of the Muslim world, with much of the world vehemently opposed, there were countless people warning of exactly these possibilities from invading.  If Burns and his friends were unaware of those risks, it was only because they decided to ignore those voices, not because they could not have known.  Here, as but one example, is Jim Webb in 2002, arguing against an attack on Iraq in The Washington Post:

Meanwhile, American military leaders have been trying to bring a wider focus to the band of neoconservatives that began beating the war drums on Iraq before the dust had even settled on the World Trade Center. Despite the efforts of the neocons to shut them up or to dismiss them as unqualified to deal in policy issues, these leaders, both active-duty and retired, have been nearly unanimous in their concerns. Is there an absolutely vital national interest that should lead us from containment to unilateral war and a long-term occupation of Iraq? . . . .

With respect to the situation in Iraq, they are conscious of two realities that seem to have been lost in the narrow debate about Saddam Hussein himself. The first reality is that wars often have unintended consequences -- ask the Germans, who in World War I were convinced that they would defeat the French in exactly 42 days. . . . .

The issue before us is not simply whether the United States should end the regime of Saddam Hussein, but whether we as a nation are prepared to physically occupy territory in the Middle East for the next 30 to 50 years. Those who are pushing for a unilateral war in Iraq know full well that there is no exit strategy if we invade and stay. . . . .

The Iraqis are a multiethnic people filled with competing factions who in many cases would view a U.S. occupation as infidels invading the cradle of Islam. Indeed, this very bitterness provided Osama bin Laden the grist for his recruitment efforts in Saudi Arabia when the United States kept bases on Saudi soil after the Gulf War.

In Japan, American occupation forces quickly became 50,000 friends. In Iraq, they would quickly become 50,000 terrorist targets. . . . It is true that Saddam Hussein might try to assist international terrorist organizations in their desire to attack America. It is also true that if we invade and occupy Iraq without broad-based international support, others in the Muslim world might be encouraged to intensify the same sort of efforts.

And here's Howard Dean, in one of the more prescient political speeches of the last decade, speaking at Drake University, roughly one month before the war began:

We have been told over and over again what the risks will be if we do not go to war.

We have been told little about what the risks will be if we do go to war.

If we go to war, I certainly hope the Administration's assumptions are realized, and the conflict is swift, successful and clean. . . .

It is possible, however, that events could go differently, and that the Iraqi Republican Guard will not sit out in the desert where they can be destroyed easily from the air.

It is possible that Iraq will try to force our troops to fight house to house in the middle of cities -- on its turf, not ours -- where precision-guided missiles are of little use.

It is possible that women and children will be used as shields and our efforts to minimize civilian casualties will be far less successful than we hope.

There are other risks.

Iraq is a divided country, with Sunni, Shia and Kurdish factions that share both bitter rivalries and access to large quantities of arms.

Iran and Turkey each have interests in Iraq they will be tempted to protect with or without our approval.

If the war lasts more than a few weeks, the danger of humanitarian disaster is high, because many Iraqis depend on their government for food, and during war it would be difficult for us to get all the necessary aid to the Iraqi people.

There is a risk of environmental disaster, caused by damage to Iraq's oil fields.

And, perhaps most importantly, there is a very real danger that war in Iraq will fuel the fires of international terror.

Anti-American feelings will surely be inflamed among the misguided who choose to see an assault on Iraq as an attack on Islam, or as a means of controlling Iraqi oil.

And last week's tape by Osama bin Laden tells us that our enemies will seek relentlessly to transform a war into a tool for inspiring and recruiting more terrorists.

We should remember how our military presence in Saudi Arabia has been exploited by radicals to stir resentment and hatred against the United States, leading to the murder of American citizens and soldiers.

We need to consider what the effect will be of a U.S. invasion and occupation of Baghdad, a city that served for centuries as a capital of the Islamic world.  

I could literally spend the rest of the day quoting those who were issuing similar or even more strident warnings.  Anyone who claims they didn't realize that an attack on Iraq could spawn mammoth civilian casualties, pervasive displacement, endless occupation and intense anti-American hatred is indicting themselves more powerfully than it's possible for anyone else to do.  And anyone who claims, as Burns did, that they "could not know then" that these things might very well happen is simply not telling the truth.  They could have known.  And should have known.  They chose not to.

 

UPDATE:  Perhaps even worse than the strain of "nobody-could-have-known" excuse-making invoked by Burns is the claim that "nobody could have known" that Iraq did not really have WMDs.  Contrary to the pervasive self-justifying myth that "everyone" believed that Saddam possessed these weapons -- and thus nobody can be blamed for failing to realize the truth -- the evidence to the contrary was both public and overwhelming.  Consider the March 17, 2003, Der Spiegel Editorial warning that "for months now, Bush and Blair have been busy blowing up, exaggerating and deliberately over-interpreting intelligence information and rumours to justify war on Iraq," or a September 30, 2002 McClatchy article -- headlined: "War talk fogged by lingering questions; Threat Hussein poses is unclear to experts" -- which detailed the reasons for serious skepticism about the pro-war case.

Or simply recall the various pre-war statements by the ex-Marine and U.N. weapons inspector for Iraq, Scott Ritter ("The truth of the matter is that Iraq has not been shown to possess weapons of mass destruction, either in terms of having retained prohibited capability from the past, or by seeking to re-acquire such capability today"), or Howard Dean in his Drake speech ("Secretary Powell's recent presentation at the UN showed the extent to which we have Iraq under an audio and visual microscope. Given that, I was impressed not by the vastness of evidence presented by the Secretary, but rather by its sketchiness").  All of that, too, was brushed aside by government officials and suppressed and even mocked by most of the  American media, all of whom were determined to allow nothing to impede the march to war.  Rather than take responsibility for their failings, they instead insist -- as Burns did today -- that they could not have known.

 

UPDATE II:  Every retrospective from supporters of the attack on Iraq, if they're to be honest and worthwhile, should read more or less like John Cole's, from 2008.

 

UPDATE III:  After Obama's Iraq speech last night, I was on CBC -- Canada's broadcasting network -- discussing that speech.  It can be seen here.  As you can see, Skype video technology is improving rapidly and enabling acceptance of more TV offers.

 

UPDATE IV:  For sheer factual inaccuracy in John Burns' observations, see here.

 

UPDATE V:  Speaking of accountability for those responsible for the Iraq War, Simon Owens has a very good article on the criticisms provoked by Jeffrey Goldberg's Iran article in The Atlantic -- featuring my criticisms of him -- and what that dynamic reflects about the new media landscape.

 

UPDATE VI:  Here's someone who, back in 1994, definitely understood what invading Iraq would unleash (and note the sociopathic, though quite typical, refusal to factor in "deaths of Iraqi civilians" as one of the "costs"):

With the license now issued, the ACLU and CCR this afternoon filed a lawsuit on behalf of Anwar Awlaki, with Awlaki's father as the named plaintiff, to prevent the Obama administration from proceeding with Awlaki's due-process-free assassination.  Awlaki is unable to file the lawsuit on his own because the U.S. government's threats to kill him, as well as its prior unsuccessful attempts, cause him to be in hiding and thus make it infeasible for him to assert his legal rights directly. 

The lawsuit -- captioned Al-Aulaqi v. Obama -- was filed in federal court in the District of Columbia, and names Barack Obama, Leon Panetta and Robert Gates as defendants.  Among other relief, the Complaint asks the court to (a) "declare that the Constitution [along with 'treaty and customary international law'] prohibits Defendants from carrying out the targeted killing of U.S. citizens, including Plaintiff’s son, except in circumstances in which they present concrete, specific, and imminent threats to life or physical safety, and there are no means other than lethal force that could reasonably be employed to neutralize the threats"; (b) "enjoin Defendants from intentionally killing U.S. citizen Anwar Al-Aulaqi" unless they demonstrate the applicability of those narrow circumstances; and (c) "order Defendants to disclose the criteria that are used in determining whether the government will carry out the targeted killing of a U.S. citizen" (emphasis added).

Just how perverse is the Obama administration's assassination program is reflected in the rights Awlaki is forced to assert.  He alleges -- as the Complaint puts it -- that the Government is violating his "Fifth Amendment Right Not to be Deprived of Life Without Due Process."  Just re-read that and contemplate that in Barack Obama's America, that right even needs to be contested.  The Complaint also alleges that using lethal force against a U.S. citizen in these circumstances violates the Fourth Amendment's guarantee against unreasonable searches and seizure, and also violates the Alien Tort Statute, which bars "extrajudicial killings."  Reading Awlaki's Brief in support of his request for injunctive relief is almost surreal, as one witnesses an American citizen try to convince a federal court to stop the Government from trying -- far away from a battlefield and without any violence used to resist apprehension -- to murder him without due process:

The right to life is the most fundamental of all rights protected by the Constitution and by international law.  Outside the context of armed conflict, the intentional killing of a civilian without prior judicial process is unlawful except in the narrowest and most extraordinary circumstances.

The United States is not at war with Yemen, or within it. Nonetheless, U.S. government officials have disclosed the government’s intention to kill U.S. citizen Anwar Al-Aulaqi, who is believed to be located there, without charge, trial, or conviction. . . .

Outside of armed conflict, both the Constitution and international law prohibit the use of lethal force against civilians except as a last resort to prevent concrete, specific, and imminent threats that are likely to cause death or serious physical injury.  An extrajudicial killing policy under which individuals are added to "kill lists" after secret bureaucratic processes and remain on the lists even in the absence of any reason to believe that they pose a threat of imminent harm goes far beyond what the Constitution and international law permit.

That the government has kept secret the standards under which it targets U.S. citizens for death independently violates the Constitution: U.S. citizens have a right to know what conduct may subject them to execution at the hands of their own government. Due process requires, at a minimum, that citizens be put on notice of what may cause them to be put to death by the state.  

Periodically, I hear some people assert that American citizens have no Constitutional rights once they physically leave the country.  Just as is true for the ludicrous claim that the Constitution only applies to American citizens -- a proposition which has been squarely rejected by the Supreme Court for more than a century, which has held that it applies equally to non-citizens on American soil -- this notion that the Constitution extends only to America's borders is rooted in pure ignorance of the law:

It is "well settled that the Bill of Rights has extraterritorial application to the conduct abroad of federal agents directed against United States citizens." In re Terrorist Bombings of U.S. Embassies in E. Africa, 552 F.3d 157, 167 (2d Cir. 2008) (discussing the applicability of the Fourth Amendment to citizens abroad [emphasis added]); see also Reid v. Covert, 354 U.S. 1, 5-6 (1957) (plurality opinion) ("[W]e reject the idea that when the United States acts against citizens abroad it can do so free of the Bill of Rights. The United States is entirely a creature of the Constitution. Its power and authority have no other source. It can only act in accordance with all the limitations imposed by the Constitution."); United States v. Verdugo-Urquidez, 494 U.S. 259, 270 (1990) ("[Reid v. Covert] decided that United States citizens stationed abroad could invoke the protection of the Fifth and Sixth Amendments").

What I've found most disturbing about this controversy from the start is how many Americans are willing to blindly believe the Government's accusations of Terrorism against their fellow citizens -- provided they're Muslims with foreign-sounding names -- without needing to see any evidence at all.  All government officials have to do is anonymously leak to the media extremely vague accusations against someone without any evidence presented (Awlaki is involved in multiple plots!!), and a substantial number of people will then immediately run around yelling:  Kill that Terrorist!!  

It's an authoritarian scene out of some near-future dystopian novel, yet it's exactly what is happening.  This is precisely the reaction of a substantial portion of the population which has been trained to believe every unproven government accusation of Terrorism.  The mere utterance of the accusation -- Terrorist -- sends them into mindless, fear-driven submission, so extreme that they're willing even to endorse a Presidential-imposed death penalty on American citizens with no due process:  about the most tyrannical power that can be imagined, literally.  The fact that this very same Government is continuously and repeatedly wrong when it makes those accusations does not seem to be even a cause for hesitation among this faction.  They just keep dutifully reciting the ultimate authoritarian anthem:  if my Government says it, it must be true, and I don't need to see any evidence or indulge any of this bothersome process stuff -- trials and courts or whatever -- before punishment is meted out, including the death penalty. 

So now Barack Obama is being sued by an American citizen who is forced to plead with a court to protect him from due-process-free, state-sanctioned murder.  There are multiple reasons why this lawsuit may not succeed, beginning with the demonstrated reluctance of federal judges to "interfere with" war-related decisions of the President, particularly when the specter of Terrorism is raised.  The power-revering factions on the Right have joined with some Democratic loyalists who are comfortable with any power now that their Party controls the White House.  But if the Obama administration succeeds in vesting itself with the power to order American citizens killed far from any battlefield, with no evidence of violent resistance to arrest and no due process whatsoever to contest the accusations, that is a power that will endure with future Presidents as well.

* * * * * 

The New York City cab driver who was stabbed in the throat last week for being Muslim, Ahmed Sharif, is unable to work due to his injuries and is struggling to be able to support his family.  Those interested in donating to help him can do so here.

 

UPDATE:  As always with this topic, it's worthwhile to recap the worldview of many Democrats (including Barack Obama) on such matters: 

It was an extreme outrage of the highest order -- a shredding of the Constitution -- when George Bush imprisoned or even just eavesdropped on American citizens without any due process.  But it's perfectly acceptable -- even noble -- for Barack Obama to kill them without any due process.

 

UPDATE II:  The ACLU has produced this excellent 4-minute video about Obama's assassination program and this lawsuit: