Scalia: Just be Glad he’s not a fan of Itchy and Scratchy



Marge: Do you want your son to become Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, or a sleazy male stripper?
Homer: Can't he be both, like the late Earl Warren?
Marge: Earl Warren wasn't a stripper!
Homer: Now who's being naive?



Ah, Nino, if only you watched the Simpsons instead of that other Fox show, 24. You’d see a much truer version of America.
And maybe you’d have an easier time distinguishing fact from fiction.

As you’ve probably read by now, it seems our Justice Scalia, long revered by conservatives for his intellect, has been pointing to the exploits of TV’s own Jack Bauer, to justify torture. “Jack Bauer saved hundreds of thousands of lives,” he exclaimed to a group of judges discussing the issue of torture in Canada.

Actually, I doubt Scalia really is watching 24. If he were, he would know that the anti-terrorist agency CTU, where Jack Bauer works when he isn’t being fired, imprisoned, hunted, or tortured by Chinese/Arab/Russian thugs is:

A. run by incompetent but well meaning nincompoops who can’t even secure their own building from terrorist infiltration through sewer lines and probably the front door,
B. Staffed by computer geniuses who can’t tell when their system is breached, and don’t notice when the terrorists they desperately seek have set up shop just blocks away from them, and
C. constantly letting terrorists escape when the bad guys use techniques like the old, they-got-in-their-SUVs-and-drove-away trick

In short, CTU is a pretty good approximation of FEMA, or the TSA. Or, the Department of Homeland Security.

On the other hand, the people at CTU can be captured and tortured with a power drill in the shoulder one minute, and be back at their work stations the next, without so much as a whimper. Government employees, and no doubt unionized. Also, their cellphones work absolutely everywhere, even in the cargo hold of a jet at 20 thousand feet.

By the way, Judge, Jack Bauer (and by that I mean the fictional character) knows when he’s breaking the law—it’s just that he does it anyway. He’s always willing to face the legal consequences.

It’s shocking to hear a Supreme Court justice utter statements like,
“Jack Bauer saved Los Angeles!. …Are you going to convict Jack Bauer?” but you have to admit it is consistent with his world view.

I wonder if he is planning to support Fred Thompson because he’s been such a good district attorney.

On the other hand, it could be worse. We should be grateful that Scalia’s apparently not a fan of the Itchy and Scratchy Show. Imagine:

“Are you going to convict Itchy? He wrapped a lit bomb up with Scratchy’s tongue. Sure he blew Scratchy’s head off just for fun, but Itchy saved Springfield.”

Antonin Scalia gave us George W. Bush as our president in 2001. Maybe, if we’re very, very good, he’ll help Jack Bauer become president in 2008. Although, personally, I’d like to see Chloe get a chance.

Things I learned from the Republican Debate


Clearly, the candidates are as eager for the end of the Bush/Cheney era as the rest of us, and there was some hating on Bush from time to time. Tancredo, Huckabee and McCain all took direct shots at Their President, and almost everybody took indirect shots when they talked about global warming and energy policy.


Nothing scares Americans more than cancer.
--Sam “Snowflake” Brownback

The islamodemocrats will socialize our medicine and are fighting the Cold War which Ronald Reagan won singlehandedly.
---Guiliani


America is about to turn into the Balkans, or at least is about to be “split apart into a lot of balkanized pieces” so never mind learning Spanish, better brush up on your Croatian or Serbian idioms.
---Tom Tancredo

Tom Tancredo is bat shit crazy
--everybody else

But at least he said George Bush can never darken the doorstep of a Tancredo White House, unless he’s holding a leaf blower and ready to do the yard work that the deported Mexicans are no longer around to do.

Probably a lot of people died needlessly in Iraq because Bush and Rumsfeld and Cheney are total fuck ups. (“Americans have made great sacrifices, some of which were unnecessary because of this management of the war -- mismanagement of this conflict.
---McCain


Mitt Romney believes in God and Jesus Christ is his savior. Sam Brownback knows that God knows and loves him. But no one believes in God more than Mike Huckabee. Still, he is forced to admit he “wasn’t there” when God created the Heavens and the Earth. Also, he doesn’t know that humans actually are primates (“If anybody wants to believe that they are the descendants of a primate, they are certainly welcome to do it.")

John McCain believes that “God loves us,” except Rudy Guiliani, whom He tried to smite with a lightning bolt, but missed

Tuesday was the birthday of Ronald Reagan, the One True God of republicans. Shouldn’t we all have had the day off or something?
--Huckabee

Duncan Hunter hates immigrants, but he loves the cheap Mexican Lipitor for “Grampy.”

Guiliani Time is suspended for poor, overly harshly sentenced Scooter Libby

The reason that Republicans got their asses kicked in 2006 was they spent too much money on prescription drug plans.

The only way the Republican debates could bring more funny is if Curly Sue co-star and fake red pick up driver Fred Thompson gets into the race.

Cindy Sheehan Calls it Quits

In a Dailykos diary entitled “Good Riddance Attention Whore” Cindy Sheehan announces that she is going home, resigning, as she puts it, from the role of “the face of the American anti-war movement.”

She is obviously exhausted, embittered, frustrated, and angry, saying that being called “an attention whore” is one of the milder rebukes she’s faced. The Iraq funding bill was the last straw for her. Like so many other anti-war activists, she felt betrayed by the Democrats who supported the bill; after the vote she publicly quit the party.

On Memorial Day, (her dead son Casey was born on Memorial day in 1979), she wrote:

I am demonized because I don’t see party affiliation or nationality when I look at a person, I see that person’s heart. If someone looks, dresses, acts, talks and votes like a Republican, then why do they deserve support just because he/she calls him/herself a Democrat?
And this:

The most devastating conclusion that I reached this morning, however, was that Casey did indeed die for nothing. His precious lifeblood drained out in a country far away from his family who loves him, killed by his own country which is beholden to and run by a war machine that even controls what we think. I have tried every since he died to make his sacrifice meaningful. Casey died for a country which cares more about who will be the next American Idol than how many people will be killed in the next few months while Democrats and Republicans play politics with human lives. It is so painful to me to know that I bought into this system for so many years and Casey paid the price for that allegiance. I failed my boy and that hurts the most.


For what it’s worth, Cindy, you didn’t fail Casey. We all did—his fellow citizens who didn’t do enough to prevent a shameful, needless war, and the politicians who won’t do what it takes now to stop it.

We owe a huge debt to Cindy Sheehan, who was as brave in her own way as her son Casey was. Even now, as she leaves the fray, she’s demonized by the right wing nutblogs.

Meanwhile, the best way to make certain we Americans get the full story about how well things are going in Iraq is to decree that we don’t see its failures. No photos of bombings, no photos of the wounded (without their prior consent in writing) and, of course, no photos of flag draped coffins.


The war grinds on, and grinds up the lives of so many good people.

Learning about Gun Control From the Anti-Abortion Advocates

Today was supposed to be OneDayBlogSilence day, in honor of the memories of the 32 students and teachers killed at Virginia Tech two weeks ago. I didn't favor silence when it was announced, and I don't now. We don't talk enough about guns and mental illness in this country. So here's a suggestion. Democrats should go back at gun control, instead of cravenly avoiding any discussion of it to stay away from the wrath of the NRA. But they should go back at it the way the anti-abortion forces have fought against Roe v. Wade. One step at a time. Pick an extreme example, the way anti-abortion activists brought the late term abortion case to the Supreme Court. For gun control advocates there are at least two obvious ones. One is, don't let people with known mental illness, who are declared to be a danger to themselves and/or others, get guns. Period. This is controversial, not because the NRA opposes it--they don't--but because mental health advocates see it as an invasion of the privacy and rights of the mentally ill. Sorry, but nobody has an absolute right to a gun, just as nobody has an absolute right to a driver's license (or, in the case of gay couples, a marriage license).

The second example is an absolute no brainer; people on terrorist watch lists can buy guns. And they do. Why? Why is it I can't get on an airplane with a bottle of Prell, but terrorists can buy guns. This is the kind of crazy gun law that can be overcome.

Of course, it's only a start. Reinstating the assault weapons ban would be the next logical step. But at least it's something.

Spare Us All Your “Suffering”, Laura




Gosh, it just has to suck to be Laura Bush. Imagine holidays with her mother-in-law, for starters. And then, of course, there’s her husband, the master of disaster himself. I picture her secretly wearing an “I’m with Stupid” t-shirt under her knit suits, just to compensate.

And now it turns out she’s really bummed out about the war in Iraq, way more than you or I, or anybody else except the Fortunate Son himself. She told Ann Curry on the Today Show (h/t americablog):

“No one suffers more than the President and I,” watching the television reports of endless death and misery from Iraq. If only.

Of course, had she thought for just a moment before emitting Stepford wife-speak, she would have realized how clueless, and how arrogant a statement that was, and how it would sound to the families of the thousands of soldiers killed, wounded, or currently in harm’s way in the endless war in Iraq. But no. Arrogance is the default mode for the entire family. They are entitled to your sympathy and support, because they have feelings, just like regular people, only more so.

No good ever comes of the Bushes trying to demonstrate they’re just like the rest of us, from the robotically delivered “Message: I care,” by GHW Bush in an unguarded moment, to Barbara Bush’s “things are working out very well for them,” as she surveyed Katrina victims in Houston, to The Decider himself, who doesn’t go to soldiers’ funerals, and waited six weeks after the scandal broke to go to Walter Reed (to name just two examples).

Laura Bush wants you to know the burden is heavy on her husband.
Well here’s the deal, Laura: no one should suffer more than he does.
There’s a simple solution—end the damned war.

Secretly Abandoning A Two Year Old Strategy--When the Iraqis Stand Up, We’ll…Still be There.


When Defense Secretary Gates told the Iraqis last week that they had to get serious about reconciliation, who knew he meant reconciliation between al Maliki’s government and the Bush administration?

Yes, once again, in another painful demonstration of the futility of the American mission, al Maliki countermands the US military’s security plan, this time, for the 3 mile long Great Wall of Adhamiyah, meant to protect a Sunni neighborhood from Shiite thugs. You will recall he also ordered American troops last fall to pull down roadblocks around Sadr City when it pissed off Muqtada al-Sadr.

No matter the intention, it was kind of a no brainer that the Sunnis would feel that they were being caged in by a wall. It’s also a no brainer that al Maliki needs the support of other Arab nations, which are mostly led by Sunnis who want to see more Sunnis in his Shiite majority government.

Speaking of standing down, remember “when the Iraqi army stands up, we’ll stand down”? Sure you do. It was the strategy of the United States since 2005. Bush said it repeatedly. So did Rummy and the generals. They even gave us progress reports, none of them true, about the number of Iraqi divisions who were ready to stand up, as it were, and take over for American troops.

Yeah, well, never mind. The Pentagon’s policy has “shifted,” according to an under-noticed but important story by the McClatchy news service.

“Training Iraqi troops is no longer the focus of US policy,” it said. The Abizaid/Casey strategy of transitioning from American troops to Iraqis has been ditched in favor of American troops securing the country, defeating the insurgents and sectarian trouble makers.

In other words, getting in the middle of the civil war.

Gates didn’t even mention training Iraqi soldiers when he was in Iraq Thursday to warn al Maliki that the clock is ticking. You see, it’s ok for Gates to threaten the Iraqis that America’s patience is running out, and that he and Petraeus will be evaluating the situation this summer to see whether to end the surge or keep the soldiers there. It’s okay for Gates to strongly suggest that if they don’t make political progress by June 30, including a plan for sharing oil profits and allowing Saddam era Sunni politicians back into government, bad things could happen to the al Maliki government. Like, al Malilki could be out.

But it’s definitely not okay for Democrats to essentially prove Gates is correct by putting a withdrawal timetable in the Iraq funding bill. That would be failing to support the troops.

Proving that he approves of some of the ways the Bush government operates, al Maliki is denying that there is a civil war in Iraq. Maybe he gets his intelligence from Cheney.

If you can read this story, about the torture and murder of one of Iraq’s most prominent television news anchors, a Shiite who was killed because she refused to be pushed out of her home, and conclude that there isn’t a civil war in Iraq, there’s a press secretary job waiting for you.

OneDayBlogSilence--A Lovely Gesture, but...


There is a clearly heartfelt movement afoot to create a blogosphere memorial to the victims of the Virginia Tech shootings, on April 30, called OneDayBlogSilence.

The goal is to cause everybody who reads and/or writes blogs to stop and think. No words, and no comments, just silent reflection about the dead in Virginia, and, if you like, victims of violence everywhere.

It seems these days that the unexpressed thought has gone the way of the buggy whip, thanks to the web, 24/7 cable, blackberrys, etc. And yet, as much as I admire the OneDayBlogSilence gesture, I don’t think silence is the best way to share our heartbreak and support for the families of these victims.

Because of the Imus situation, there’s been a lot of talk about the “national conversation,” as it relates to race relations. That phrase always makes me roll my eyes. Far too often what passes for a national conversation is no more than we the people watching television as other people speak, presumably, but not necessarily, for us.

Invariably issues that deserve a national conversation are ignored until there’s a fresh incident. Then we watch people talk at each other, or yell at each other, for hours and hours, until the producers and the hosts and the home audience are exhausted, and move on to the next hot issue.

One day it’s race, another day it’s guns. There’s an event, an easily digestible moment, and if there’s video to go with it, yippee. Television coverage, however, does not equal a thoughtful “national conversation,” since it lacks participation by any of the actual people who are the “nation.”

The blogosphere, on the other hand, can do a better job of providing a forum for an honest dialogue. (It often doesn’t, for a variety of reasons, but it certainly can). And as the shootings this week remind us, we need to talk about our country’s fascination with both real and fictional violence. The second amendment and the availability of guns are only part of the equation. Any position you can reduce to a prefix, pro- or anti-, is easy to grasp. This issue isn’t that easy. Conversation is only a start, but it can at least lead to consensus. Democrats have been so afraid to even talk about guns that it’s hard to know exactly what the consensus opinion is.

Senator Harry Reid is quoted as saying that before tackling the issue we should all take a breath. Fair enough. But while we’re waiting to exhale, I would say devoting April 30 to wrestling with the national appetite for violence, that issue and no other, would be an equally fitting memorial to the horror that occurred at Virginia Tech. That’s what I’ll be doing on my blog.