Framed

More Speech

Fred Phelps and his "church" have utterly repugnant beliefs and commit utterly cruel acts in celebrating the deaths of American service men and women at their funerals.  I can think of few more hateful individuals.  They have the crackpot belief that American soldiers are being killed in Iraq and Afghanistan because of our country's attitude toward homosexuals.  They demonstrate at the funerals of the fallen, holding up signs saying that they died because they fought for a homosexually-tolerant nation.

(By the way, I wish I lived in the homophile nation that Phelps is so convinced America has become.)

But the news that the family of a dead serviceman won a sizable lawsuit against Phelps and his church is not good news.  Hideous and hateful as Phelps is, he has the right to his opinions.  He has the right to publicly assemble his crackpot flock and to say horrible things without fear of liability.  To contend otherwise is to ignore the freedoms of religion and speech guaranteed in the First Amendment.  As much as I hate to write this, I hope the verdict against him is overturned on appeal.

The remedy for hateful speech is not lawsuits.  I do not want judges or juries deciding what kinds of signs I can hold up, or where and when I can espouse my beliefs.  No, the remedy is more speech:  people surrounding soldiers' funerals and demonstrating their respect for the dead and the ultimate sacrifice their families have made.

Speechless

Since the perspicacious and loquatious Melissa McEwan is uncharacteristically speechless, I'll provide some words of my own in reaction to this:

The Zogby International survey shows 52 percent of Americans would support a strike on Iran . . . .

Just 29 percent of Americans think the US should not attack Iran, with one in five people unsure about military action.

I would love to see the results of a survey asking these basic questions:

1. Please locate Iran on an unlabeled map of the world.

2.  Most Iranians are adherents of what sect of what religion?

3.  How many of the 9/11 terrorists were Iranian?

4.  What language is spoken in Iran?

5.  What is the capital of Iran?

I would bet that fewer than 15% of the American people could answer any of those questions correctly.  And that is why Bush & Co. have been able to bamboozle the people yet again.  Without even the most basic factual knowledge of Iran, "Iran" becomes whatever the President says it is.  This tactic got Bush elected twice; he was able to define Al Gore and John Kerry before those men were able to define themselves in the public consciousness.  In the Bush administration, pre-emptive definition has become an effective substitute for real debate and discussion. 

Wolf

Kudos to BlondeSense Liz for posting this talk by Naomi Wolf.  It's long, but well worth it.   I share BlondeSense Liz's view that this is a time for patriots to act.

Impunity

Why should I pretend to be surprised?

WASHINGTON - The State Department promised Blackwater USA bodyguards immunity from prosecution in its investigation of last month's deadly shooting of 17 Iraqi civilians, The Associated Press has learned.
*  *  *
Three senior law enforcement officials said all the Blackwater bodyguards involved — both in the vehicle convoy and in at least two helicopters above — were given the legal protections as investigators from the Bureau of Diplomatic Security sought to find out what happened. The bureau is an arm of the State Department.

'Cause those 17 people who were killed were just, you know, A-rabs.

Thought experiment for you: suppose there had been a similar incident in New Orleans after Katrina where Blackwater mercenaries shot 17 Americans.  Can you imagine what would happen if the government announced that it was giving all the Blackwater folks immunity from prosecution in such a case?

This isn't just immunity.  It's impunity.

UPDATE: I'm stupid.  When I wrote this yesterday, it never occurred to me to question the notion that the State Department had the power to confer legal immunity:

The State Department investigators from the agency’s investigative arm, the Bureau of Diplomatic Security, offered the immunity grants even though they did not have the authority to do so, the officials said. Prosecutors at the Justice Department, who do have such authority, had no advance knowledge of the arrangement, they added.

Considering that the Justice Department is currently being run by political temps,  it's doubtful that it will firmly repudiate the State Department's attempted usurpation of its prosecutorial discretion, much less commence an obstruction of justice investigation targeting State Department personnel.

These issues should be taken up with AG-Designate Mulkasey before a vote is taken to confirm him.  I'd ask him questions like, Does the State Department have the legal authority to confer immunity on suspects in criminal investigations?  Has a government official who without such authority tells a suspect he has immunity broken the law?  Can a suspect who makes statements to investigators while he believes he is operating under a grant of immunity fairly be prosecuted at all?

Genarlow

Genarlow Wilson is free at last.  Good.  I only hope that his two years in stir didn't make him into the predator that the prosecutor said he was.

It's Friday . . .

. . . and the streets are ours.  But not the streets of Baghdad.

Light

Atrios's headline to the contrary ("Torturing the Shit Out of Innocent People"), the plaintiff in Higazy v. Templeton doesn't seem to have been truly tortured.  But the case does shed light on our government's methods, our courts' undue deference to the executive branch, and the reliability of information procured under duress.

Higazy, an Egyptian national, arrived in New York in late August, 2001, where he was about to begin a course of study in computer science sponsored by AID and IIE.  Those organizations put him up in the Millenium Hotel, right across the street from the World Trade Center.  He was picked up for questioning shortly after the 9/11 atacks and falsely accused of having in his possession a two-way radio capable of communicating with planes.  It later turned out that the radio in question actually belonged to an airline pilot who was also staying at the hotel.

During interrogation by the FBI, Higazy made various statements about the radio, first denying any knowledge of it at all, then saying he had stolen it, and then saying he had found it.  As a consequence of these conflicting stories, he was charged with making false statements.

After the airline pilot who owned the radio came forward and the charges against him were dropped, Higazy filed suit against the FBI, claiming that he had been coerced into making the conflicting statements about the radio.

What did the FBI allegedly do to coerce Higazy's "confession"?  The U.S. government doesn't want you to know.  After the Second Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a District Court's dismissal of the case, clearing the way for it to go to trial, the court (presumably upon request of the feds) redacted part of its own opinion--the part that contained Higazy's allegations of mistreatment by the FBI.  The redacted version contains this statement at the bottom of Page 7: "This opinion has been redacted because portions of the record are under seal."

Fortunately, some bloggers captured the unredacted version and have posted it.  From that version, here is that was alleged:

Higazy alleges that during the polygraph, [FBI Agent] Templeton told him that he should cooperate, and explained that if Higazy did not cooperate, the FBI would make his brother “live in scrutiny” and would “make sure that Egyptian security gives [his] family hell.” Templeton later admitted that he knew how the Egyptian security forces operated: “that they had a security service, that their laws are different than ours, that they are probably allowed to do things in that country where they don’t advise people of their rights, they don’t – yeah, probably about torture, sure.”

Higazy later said, "I knew that I couldn't prove my innocence, and I knew that my family was in danger." He explained that "[t]he only thing that went through my head was oh, my God, I am screwed and my family's in danger. If I say this device is mine, I'm screwed and my family is going to be safe. If I say this device is not mine, I’m screwed and my family’s in danger. And Agent Templeton made it quite clear that cooperate had to mean saying something else other than this device is not mine.”

Higazy explained why he feared for his family:

The Egyptian government has very little tolerance for anybody who is —they’re suspicious of being a terrorist. To give you an idea, Saddam’s security force—as they later on were called his henchmen—a lot of them learned their methods and techniques in Egypt; torture, rape, some stuff would be even too sick to . . . . My father is 67. My mother is 61. I have a brother who developed arthritis at 19. He still has it today. When the word ‘torture’ comes at least for my brother, I mean, all they have to do is really just press on one of these knuckles. I couldn’t imagine them doing anything to my sister.

And Higazy added:

[L]et’s just say a lot of people in Egypt would stay away from a family that they know or they believe or even rumored to have anything to do with terrorists and by the same token, some people who actually could be —might try to get to them and somebody might actually make a connection. I wasn’t going to risk that. I wasn’t going to risk that, so I thought to myself what could I say that he would believe. What could I say that’s convincing? And I said okay.

There are at least four things to say about this. 

First, while the FBI agent did threaten Higazy--or, more precisely, threaten his family--I see nothing here that amounts to torture.

Second, it's interesting (if I may use so clinical a word to describe what must have been a nightmarish experience for Higazy) that in this case, the coercive threat of violence against a detainee's family was enough to make him "confess" to whatever the interrogator wanted.  This surely casts doubt on the reliability of confessions obtained under more physical types of duress.

Third, I perceive nothing in the redacted portion that sounds like some super-secret sure-fire interrogation technique.  Threatening a subject's family is one of the oldest tricks in the book.  Thus it seems that the real reason why the opinion was redacted was not to prevent disclosure of interrogation techniques, but to cover up the government's improper conduct.

Four, the fact that the Second Circuit agreed to redact the opinion anyway speaks volumes about how out of balance the relationship between the executive and judicial branches is.  Here we have a federal court of appeals conducting itself like some secret star chamber at the request of the government--and not doing so to protect state secrets, but to perpetuate the government's cover-up.

89 days . . .

. . . until the New Hampshire primary.

I don't read Red State or peruse GOP blogs and message boards much--but news that any discussion of Ron Paul has been summarily banned from Red State got my attention.  It says much about the state of the Republican party today.

Here's the word from Red State:

Effective immediately, new users may *not* shill for Ron Paul in any way shape, form or fashion. Not in comments, not in diaries, nada. If your account is less than 6 months old, you can talk about something else, you can participate in the other threads and be your zany libertarian self all you want, but you cannot pimp Ron Paul. Those with accounts more than six months old may proceed as normal.

Now, I could offer a long-winded explanation for *why* this new policy is being instituted, but I'm guessing that most of you can probably guess. Unless you lack the self-awareness to understand just how annoying, time-consuming, and bandwidth-wasting responding to the same idiotic arguments from a bunch of liberals pretending to be Republicans can be.

This kind of thing suggests to me that the GOP I once knew and reviled is no more, and has been replaced by something far scarier.  It is no longer the conservative party, the party of small government, cautious foreign policy, fiscal responsibility and individual liberty.  It is now the party of expanding and intrusive government, reckless foreign adventurism, fiscal foolhardiness, and, above all,  fealty to The Leader.

It would be tempting to say good, fine, let the GOP implode.  I'm not a Republican, and I take a certain amount of schadenfreude in watching its machinations as it tries to hold onto its increasingly fractious coalition of classic conservatives, Christian evangelicals, and big business boosters.  But as Gary Kamiya notes,

The Bush presidency has damaged American civil society in many ways, but one of the most lasting may be its destructive effect on conservatism. Even those who do not call themselves conservatives must acknowledge the power and enduring value of core conservative beliefs: belief in individual agency and responsibility, respect for American institutions and traditions, a resolute commitment to freedom, a willingness to take principled moral stands. It is a movement that draws its inspiration from towering figures: Adam Smith, Thomas Jefferson, Edmund Burke. It stands for caution in foreign adventures, fiscal sobriety and a profound respect for tradition.

Or at least it used to stand for those things. Today's conservatism is a caricature of that movement: It embraces pointless wars, runs up a vast debt, and trashes the Constitution. Selling out their principles for power, abandoning deeply seated American values and traditions simply because someone on "their side" demanded that they do so, conservatives have made a deal with the devil that has reduced their movement to an empty, ends-obsessed shell. How did the party of Lincoln end up marching under the banner of Tom DeLay and Rush Limbaugh, Dick Cheney and Ann Coulter?

This state of affairs is not just bad for the GOP; it's bad for the country and the democratic principles on which it was founded.   As I've noted before, civil liberties don't have much of a constituency right now.  The Democrats are too comfortable with abrogating them in the name of protecting minority rights (e.g., speech codes and hate crimes legislation) while the Republicans are OK with trashing them in the name of national security (e.g., warrantless wiretapping and the denial of habeas corpus rights).  Without a healthy dose of skepticism about the desirability of turning the government into Big Brother, the GOP no longer counterbalances the Democrats on these issues.  An important, though unwritten, system of checks and balances is being destroyed.

Which brings me back to Ron Paul.  He takes classical Republicanism to the nth degree.  He doesn't just want to cut the government's size--he wants to abolish whole swaths of it.  He doesn't just want a careful foreign policy--he wants us to withdraw from the world community.  He doesn't just want to cut taxes--he wants to eliminate the IRS.  These positions are extreme, but they are logical extensions of conservative philosophy.

Ron Paul is not going to be President.  He's not going to get the Republican nomination, or even come close.  But Paul's contributions to the debate over what our country is supposed to be about are important--just as those of Mike Gravel and Dennis Kucinich are. Through his forceful articulation of conservative principles, he forces his more moderate opponents to justify each deviation they make from them.  I'm no libertarian; I believe that many of those deviations are justified.  Libertarianism, in my view, has the virtue of being simple and the vice of being simplistic.  It's important, though, for both parties to keep their fundamental principles in mind, lest they become committed to no principle other than Power Is Good.

In explaining why he banned discussion of Ron Paul's candidacy from a popular Republican blog, the publisher of Red State resorted to sarcasm:

[W]e are a bunch of fascists and we're upset that you've discovered where we keep the black helicopters, so we're silencing you in an attempt to keep you from warning the rest of your brethren so we can round you all up and send you to re-education camps all at once.

The trouble is that the GOP is edging closer toward positions that eliminate all irony from that statement.

UPDATE: Lest my sense of visual irony go undetected, the cheesy image above of Dr. Paul electroshocking the Constitution was not intended as flattery.  Being a staunch supporter of civil liberties does NOT make one a Libertarian.  For the record, if by some horrible twist of fortune Ron Paul was elected President, I would move to Peru.  I can and do admire Paul's defense of civil liberties; in most other respects, however, I think he's a kook.

90 days . . .

. . . until the New Hampshire primary.

Dodder, His Doddness, or El Dodderino (if you're not into the whole brevity thing) on his opposition to immunity for telecoms that violate their customers' privacy at the request of a lawless government:

(Unfortunately, the best headline--The Dodd Abides--was already written by the peerless Melissa McEwan.)

He is very, very good.  Why aren't more candidates--including Republicans who are not named Ron Paul--speaking out on this?  Isn't protection from the invasive powes of big government a conservative principle anymore?

Burqa

Call me insensitive, but I find pictures like this troubling.  No, more than troubling--infuriating might be a better word.

Say what you will about Laura Bush.  Call her as plastic as Pat Nixon or as genuine as Betty Ford.  The point is that I can see her, make deductions about her, and in an admittedly attenuated way, come to know her through her photographs.  If I met her, I could look her in the eyes, make judgments about her character, and feel something of a real connection with her. 

I can't do those things with the woman in the burqa.  She is a cipher, an interchangeable part.  She could be anybody.  She is depersonalized.  Her very humanity has been blotted out by black cloth.

Michael Shaw of BAGNews Notes (from which I filched this pic) gives this photo a "tight" reading, which is to say that he leaves commentary on the broader semiotics of the burqa to others.  In his view,

Next to Laura, the face of this Administration, Mrs. Hussein al-Zaabi is an abstract, de-individualized representation of Islam, a stage prop symbolic of how the Cheney/Bush mindset refuses to honor (let alone, make out) the unique people, states and identities in the region. Sitting next to a perfect lady, Hussein al-Zaabi offers the quality the Administration likes most to see in its regional allies, which is barely an outline.

Notable, along those lines, is the one Occidental marker of individuality here -- the ribbon.  In light of the noise lately about the conservative-issue lapel pin, the fact Hussein al-Zaabi sports such an object well known to the breast cancer community, but as akin (from a distance) to the widely-identified "Support Our Troops" ribbon gives still another reading of her -- and, by association, the region -- as an Administration client.

Shaw's analysis is spot-on, but I'd like to take it further. 

Fairly or unfairly, the President's wife comes to be seen by many, consciously or not, as a national model for women.  The First Lady is an American symbol of normality. By appearing in this photo, she is normalizing the degradation of women.  Those who doubt this might consider a little thought experiment.  Imagine the First Lady posing for a photo showing a slave owner and a manacled slave.  Wouldn't we see that such a photo legitimizes slavery?

The photo normalizes the idea that some women are neither to be heard nor seen, an idea that seems to fit with Laura Bush's remarkably low profile.  We viewers are to accept this as the way things are.  Memo to women (especially the majority of women who voted Democratic in the last few elections): shut up and disappear.  See?  It's normal.

One of the many ironies about this message is that for all its failings, the Bush administration has appointed many, many women to positions of real power and influence: Karen Hughes, Condi Rice, Harriet Miers, Lynne Cheney, and Dana Perino come to mind immediately.  Bush does not appear at all reticent about seeking out the counsel of women.  They, however, are the elect.  Women like Nancy Pelosi, Cindy Sheehan and Hillary Clinton should stay under a burqa.