At Random, 3/19/06

I realize there have been a lot of "At Random" posts the past few days. I haven't been writing well recently and I have a horrible backlog of reviews to catch up on (oh, the words come, but it's sheer torture, and they don't seem to hang together very well). There's also the fact that the news is so disgusting lately that I can't bring myself to make any in-depth comments -- the stories seem to speak for themselves. (I do have some links and stuff on SSM that I will try to develop into a substantial piece before it gets too stale.)

That said:

Honor Among Thieves:

From NYT:

Meanwhile, cable news commentators Tucker Carlson and Lou Dobbs have questioned whether the church should maintain its tax-exempt status, given its political activism on immigration. And in an interview, Mr. King accused church leaders of "committing the sin of hypocrisy" in their campaign to sway Congress and Catholic voters.

Of course, it's OK if the churches engage in political activity as long as their agenda matches the wildmons'. As for the "hypocrisy" charge -- well, if you want to know what a theocon is doing, listen to what he's saying while he's pointing at someone else.

The Courts of Chaos:

Also from NYT:

This month, former Justice Sandra Day O'Connor told an audience at Georgetown University that a judiciary afraid to stand up to elected officials can lead to dictatorship. Last month, speaking in South Africa, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that the courts were a safeguard "against oppressive government and stirred-up majorities."

Of course, I agree with them. The worst thing we could do is to put the courts under the control of either the executive or legislative branches, both of which have proven themselves corrupt and incompetent. (Not that the courts are perfect, but we're dealing with basic principles here. It's because the Founders realized the capacity for abuse of any system inherent in the human psyche that they set up checks and balances to begin with. Duh.)

The Times, of course, is all a-twitter because these remarks seem (gasp) political!

However, on the other side of the coin, Digby notes this story:

Today, I have been catching up on some things and started reading in depth about the decision of Federal District Judge Trager's heinous decision to dismiss Maher Arar's case against the US for kidnapping him at Kennedy Airport and rendering him to Syria to be tortured for almost a year.

He quotes from Nat Hentoff's article in the Village Voice about the decision.

Now let us hear how Judge Trager justifies his dismissal of Maher Arar's suit for the atrocities he endured in Syria because of the CIA. In his decision, Trager said that if a judge decided, on his or her own, that the CIA's "extraordinary renditions" were always unconstitutional, "such a ruling can have the most serious consequences to our foreign relations or national security or both."

A judge must be silent, even if our own statutes and treaties are violated! What about the separation of powers? Ah, said Trager, "the coordinate branches of our government [executive and legislative] are those in whom the Constitution imposes responsibility for our foreign affairs and national security. Those branches have the responsibility to determine whether judicial oversight is appropriate."

This is really a horrible decision, and fundamentally troubling not only in regard to the use of torture and rendition, but indicative also of a trend toward judical abdication I've noticed in several recent cases. The one that sticks most in my mind before this is the Third Circuit's refusal to hear a case challenging the Florida anti-gay adoption law on the basis that it is up to the legislature to change the law.

Well, yes, but it is up to the courts to direct the legislature to change laws that conflict with the constitution. Again, Duh!

These sorts of decisions seem to be coming from the more conservative courts (no real surprise), which often follow the official Republican doctrine of craven subservience to the preznit. (Not always -- it was a Bush appointee who threw ID out of the Dover, PA, school curriculum.)

Not a good trend.

Cut and Run:

Digby also has a lot to say about the Democrats' reaction to Feingold's censure bill. I pretty much agree with him.

Ditto another post from Digby:

*sigh* How many more years are we going to hear this tired nonsense from establishment pundits before people wake up and realize that ever since the Democrats took on this appeasment strategy they have been losing.

When Chamberlain did it in the 1930s, they called it "appeasement." Didn't work then, ain't workin' now.

And this is all the good news.