Things in Nutshells

The Obama administration has decided in the very same week that they will be prosecuting absolutely none of the assholes who ordered, OK'd and carried out the tortured helpless human beings until many (like 100) of them died, except for like three low-level scapegoats who apparently did those things extra bad AND that people who sell marijuana for medicinal use in jurisdictions where the law says that's OK will be cracked down upon because they are still breaking federal law.

Words really can't capture how insulting and infuriating this is - seriously, if I actually get to thinking about this, my heartbeat literally starts to increase and my eyes water a little bit - or how cartoonishly, absurdly unrecognizable the Obama Adminsitration has gone astray from the Obama Campaign that sired it.

If one were to write a novel with a magnanimous and principled main character caught up in a world based entirely on the actual facts and goings-on of this adminsitration, it would read like a slightly more subtle mash-up of the Lord of the Rings and 1984 with the allegorical narrative more tightly focused on the silly charade that is our electoral politics, and not as heavy on the corrupting influence of power or secrecy and information control.

I just have no idea how we got here. How did things go so wrong? When does Ashton Kutcher come out? What's a word that means soul-crushing disappointment mixed with stab-your-eye-with-a-fork anger?

Damn!

Glenn Greenwald absolutely slaughters the Obama administration and Harold Koh on its absurd positions on Libya and the War Powers Act. The only appropriate analogies that spring to mind are one-sided rap battles (like that scene at the end of 8 Mile) or ferocious basketball rejections (Koh went awfully weak to the hole). "Open and shut" doesn't do it justice. Damn.

And how exactly did Greenwald dismantle the absurd bullshit spewing from Obama and his minions? Did it involve some primer course on an obscure Constitutional Law concept and citations to 60 year old case law? Nope. It simply involved taking things government officials said in the very recent past, and comparing it to what they say and do now - including and especially things they said on the campaign trail. Though you've probably forgot, this is a practice usually referred to as "journalism."

Indeed, it wasn't so much Greenwald and his amazing, unique skill as much as it was Obama and Koh saying and doing things that were so radically inconsistent with the principles and views they had previously expressed. That's what makes the dismantling of their flip-floppity bullshit so thorough and so easy: All one has to do is put "before and after" statements by these clowns side-by-side on a page and let the reader do the math. Of course nearly every major voice in the media, even when taking critical approaches towards this issue, fails to do this.

Don't be a Partisan Dick

Here's an interesting interview with Senator John Kerry about Libya (go to about the 7:30 mark) and the War Powers Act. Let's set aside the stupidity of Kerry and Dean's statements, about how the WPA only applies when there are troops on the ground, and/or 50k men are dead and/or when a certain definition of "introducing into" is met. (Like Kerry would have gone along with not authorizing Iraq beecause initial projections made it seem brief and non-costly. Please.)

Instead, I'd just want to focus on the cost partisn loyalty has on our national discussion as exemplified in that clip. On this issue, the Republicans are being partisan or "playing politics", as Kerry astutely observes, and... they are also totally correct. Moreover, they are bringing up an important issue that should (must) be debated by the Congress: The United states is using force in a foreign country and causing the deaths of people, including women and children and this has been going on for 3 months. Our directly elected representatives need to weigh in, regardless of whether a statute and the Constitution require their authorization.

So really, Kerry's position amounts to essentially opposing democracy, and not for any legitimate reasons. (Indeed Kerry seems to place the burden on those opposing foreign interventions with having to prove their costly and violent enough to even be debated by our Congress.) But relies mainly on the fact that the Republicans are just acting all partisan and shit, and then Howard Dean (who made his name critizing the War in Iraq and apparently loves irony) says something stupid like "you don't play politics with American troops." And all that crap sorta flies as an actual argument.

So there you have it. When you (in this case the Republicans) come down in favor of debate, representation and democracy when it comes to major issues of life and death, your naked partisanship will be your undoing, and provide the best ammunition for your opponents, who otherwise couldn't formulate real arguments. This is the cost of being a blatantly partisan douche bag and doing things like supported shit you don't like because you like the politician doing it. You fuck up democracy. Way to go!

Jon Stewart/Chris Wallace: My Thoughts

There's not a word Stewart spokes in that much-discussed conversation with Chris Wallace that I would disagree with, when it comes to bias in the media. Wallace, and really anyone else who tries to make the "Liberal Media Bias" argument, seems desperate in pointing to a Diane Sawyer lead-in to a controversial story, or some request to go through Palin's emails. Really?

To be fair, if you gave him all day, Wallace could probably come up with 100 decent examples, and then he would argue that, together, they paint an overall picture that supports his thesis. But that still wouldn't fly. It's a high burden to prove that every major media outlet is biased in one direction, across the board, nearly all the time. And, the evidence against this position is significant and substantial. So much so that Wallace's best 5,000 examples still wouldn't put the preponderence of the evidence on his side.

We know the media isn't biased toward liberalism because we saw the coverage in the lead up to the War in Iraq, we watched the glossing over of Bush's illegal spying program, we saw the supposedly liberal media swallow whole on newly-minted, orwellianian lingo to describe what had always plainly been known as torture to protect the legacy of a conservative President committing rather un-liberal acts. Interestingly, the penultimate "liberal rag" the New York Times was centrally involved in all of those instances and was a huge help to Bush and Cheney. Those are arguably the most significant news stories of the decade (the War in Iraq and torture will surely be included in any and every history book 50-100 years from now, with footnotes about the abject media failure in each case) and should be weighted as such in this argument. But, even Stewart pulls a good example out of the salacious tabloid pile in pointing to Anthony Weiner.

Doubtless, had the media taken the high road and not put this story front and center for one week citing "more pressing issues" (or whatever), Wallace would complain that this was a conspiracy to let Weiner off the hook. Weiner is a bona fide liberal, after all. Of course, the media was relentless and ruthless towards Weiner, and the story seemed to have a life and energy that was greater than stories involving Republican legislators actually having sex with other not-their-wife people.

The media is sensational, and very lazy, and this makes them inaccurate, misleading and highly prone to over-simplification. They are anything but consistent. On the whole, the media is devastatingly shitty and it's a completely open question as to whether or not they even perform the proper function of a free press in a democratic society. All of this, as Stewart points out, is the true media bias. Any example of media shittiness that appears to help liberals and/or harm conservatives, can always - every single time - be explained, not as ideological bias, but as vapid, point-missing, sensationalistic incompetence.

And You Thought the 4th Amendment was a Law!?

Unelected Government officials are re-writing their own rules to give themselves more power and "leeway" and the losers, of course, are, by definition, innocent Americans.

See, the FBI has just gone ahead and decided that they can search databases and people's trash even without any "firm suspicion" that they have done anything wrong. Why? Because, ya know, 9/11 or something... Oh and they don't have to make a record of it because, hell, who likes paperwork, amirite?

Don't worry though, just because the FBI was found abusing its powers in the very recent past, this article axplains that they fixed that problem by, just like basically, fixing it, or "taking steps" or some such bullshit... Oh and that's according to the FBI. Doesn't that make you feel better?

If it doesn't (pussy), you also shouldn't worry because, as the article explains, the government might go through your trash even though they're investigating someone else entirely.

Agents have asked for that power in part because they want the ability to use information found in a subject’s trash to put pressure on that person to assist the government in the investigation of others.

Yes, ok, that sounds exactly (and by "exactly" I mean only in that "classic-textbook-definition" sort of way) like blackmail, but, look... uh... TERRORISTS! Ok? Do you get that?!

If wasting resources, avoiding any records and thus accountability, harassing and spying on millions of Americans and the obvious, inevitable abuse that follows, helps us to lock up 10 people, and then one of those guys was probably, almost highly likely to have one day hurt a little girl and her puppy, then it was worth it!

Got that, pinko? Let's just not even have an open discussion about this either, ok? Why do you hate freedom?

Federal Prosecutions: Pillars of Consistency or Our Favorite Vehicle for Punishing Douchebags?

Reading up on the Julian Assange press conference and one paragraph stands out to me:

..prosecuting Assange for publishing the War Logs or Cablegate documents is a challenge for the government, which has nevertheless convened a grand jury to look into the matter. Countless news organizations similarly published entire WikiLeaks documents or relied on their contents for reports. So the federal government may instead try and prove that Assange worked with Manning in leaking the documents.

Why does it matter that Assange did something extra? Of course, the simple answer is that this way the government isn't logically required to also prosecute, say, the New York Times. But that begs the question: so what if they were? The government obviously engages in highly selective applications of the law all the time. Just compare the treatment of baseball players who lie before Congress or to federal investigators, to that of FBI or CIA agents who lie before Congress, or even destroy evidence sought by federal investigators. Prosecutions of Bush Administration torturers? Non-existent! And our government is now blatantly violating the War Powers Act, and not even pretending otherwise.

So, the idea that our government and its prosecutors are bound by logic and fidelity to a fair application of the law is surprisingly and exceptionally heartening in this (apparent) case, but is not all that reassuring. I think it's just as likely to come down to whether or not they think Julian Assange is an even bigger dick (somehow) than Barry Bonds or Roger Clemens. (And, he just might be so he's probably fucked.)

Which is to say, if you believe the lack of connection or conspiracy between Manning and Assange is ultimately going to make the feds call off the dogs because god-forbid they treat one arrogant prick differently than other folks who did the exact same thing (gasp!) then you're simply not paying attention.

So Many Pretty Words...

"As Winston Churchill said, the '…Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights, Habeas Corpus, trial by jury, and English common law find their most famous expression in the American Declaration of Independence.' "

-Barack Obama. Seriously. What an asshole.