At Random, 7/1/06, Part II

Lots of juicy news today.

Top Secret

Excellent piece by Michael Tomasky at American Prospect on the Times/SWIFT bullshit.

I needn’t retail all the ways in which the charge against the Times is phony. That’s been done elsewhere. Keith Olbermann demolished the argument on his June 28 program, showing a series of clips of Bush saying several times after 9-11 in public forums that we were tracking terrorists’ banking activities. The terrorist who didn’t assume this was happening after September 11 is a terrorist with an IQ of roughly 65, and thus more likely to blow himself up than us.

Instead, what’s important here is modern conservatism’s jihad against the very existence of disinterested (not the same as un-interested) arbiters of public discourse and civil society, of which the Times, for all its faults, continues to be among the most important.


OK -- which is the real right wingnut screed?

Jon Swift

In a victory for terrorists and their liberal sympathizers, five members of the United States Supreme Court have ruled in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld that enemy combatants detained at Guantanamo deserve trials just like American citizens. I don't know how anyone can argue that this does not "aid and abet" our enemies, which is the very definition of treason. Some people are arguing that President Bush should simply ignore the decision and tell the Supreme Court as Andrew Jackson once did that now that they have made their decision they should try to enforce it. Others are suggesting Congress pass a law negating the Court's decision. No doubt, the Bush Administration is already at work thinking up other ways to get around the decision. But I think the best plan would be to declare these five Supreme Court justices themselves enemy combatants.

Adam Yoshida:

It may not be a popular or politically correct thing to say – though I’ve never courted popularity or embraced political correctness – but the editors and reporters at the New York Times ought to go to be put to death for their crimes against this country. The reporting of classified information about covert operations against terrorism – including the CIA’s secret prisons, the NSA’s Terrorist Surveillance Program, and the effort to monitor terrorist banking transactions through SWIFT are crimes against this nation at least as great as those of Aldrich Ames or the Rosenbergs. In reporting these vital national secrets, the media – and it’s not just the Times, I’ll add, they’re merely the worst offenders – are virtually acting as spies on behalf of our enemies.

Remember, please, that Yoshida is Canadian, and I think would have a great future ahead of him writing for either The Onion or Comedy Central, but he's serious.


Riposte:

The exchange between Jim Webb and Sen. George Felix Allen, Jr. has gotten a lot of coverage. I like the comments at Sadly, No! best:

Only two weeks after earning the Democratic nomination in a mostly civil primary election, Jim Webb dialed up the rhetoric Tuesday, verbally carpet-bombing Sen. George Allen over differences the two have on flag burning.

Allen campaign manager Dick Wadhams had accused Webb of being “beholden to liberal Washington senators” because he was against the Allen-supported flag-burning amendment to the Constitution that died in the Senate on Tuesday.

Webb considered the comments to be an attack on his patriotism because he objects to tinkering with the First Amendment.

“George Felix Allen Jr. and his bush-league lapdog, Dick Wadhams, have not earned the right to challenge Jim Webb’s position on free speech and flag burning,” Webb spokesman Steve Jarding said in a press release. “Jim Webb served and fought for our flag and what it stands for, while George Felix Allen Jr. chose to cut and run.

“When he and his disrespectful campaign puppets attack Jim Webb, they are attacking every man and woman who served. Their comments are nothing more than weak-kneed attacks by cowards.”

Brad R at Sadly, No! comments:

At last! This is how you deal with bullies, children: you sock it right back at ‘em. Watch how quickly they back off once you show them you’ll fight back.

Think the Democrats will take the hint? I doubt it.

(And, as someone notes in the Comments: Dick Wadhams? Puh-leeze! I wonder if he ever thought of a career as an . . . er . . . actor.)