A Bad Month
The last month (30-31 days) has been very bad. Not for me, personally. But for the United States of America.
Why?
The NSA story broke in the last month. Is that story really that bad? Well, the bad--worst--part there is that so many supporters of the president instantly leapt to defense of the policy, without even stopping to ask details before arguing that the policy is 100% legal. I don't know what the ultimate outcome of this story will be, but that G.O.P. forces are willing to defend, well, almost anything, sight unseen, without details, strikes me as an ominous development.
The Abramoff story is largely the same. G.O.P. identifiers and supporters are, well, not outraged. "Politics as usual." But this scandal, and all of the related scandals, suggest a much larger scandal than "politics as usual."
The key fact is not the scandal, but the completely partisan, completely polarized reaction. Today, the truth no longer matters. The law no longer matters. All that matters is which side wins, which side loses. I don't think that democracy can work under these terms.
But to continue with the bad month theme . . .
The Alito hearings were a complete disaster. I don't mean that from a partisan point of view. I think that Alito should be confirmed, and I believe that he will be. I will be surprised if there's a filibuster. Really, really surprised. But the problem was that the opposition party senators made a mockery of themselves, and most of the majority party senators asked nothing like real questions. The worst offenders on the Democratic side, Kennedy and Biden. I won't go into details--too gory. Biden is a complete ass, and Kennedy is past his prime . . . by like twenty years. Btw, I'm not a big Mike DeWine fan, but he actually asked Alito real questions. But DeWine was actually an exception among the Rubber-Stamp, er, I mean, the Republican senators. I sat in on a session today in which a reporter suggested that we should just do away with confirmation hearings, at least the hearings where the nominee testifies. Is that really the right solution?
The problem is also, of course, that the nominees don't answer any questions. But that's a whole discussion in its own right.
On Dec. 30, the president signed the Detainee Treatment Act (DTA), which the government now argues strips the federal courts of jurisdiction over even pending cases involving the rights of detainees in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. In sum, the government's position is that the detainees have no rights, except the rights that the government wishes to give them. Now, if these guys were terrorists, maybe that wouldn't be a problem. But it's well past the time when it was possible to believe that the U.S. is only holding hard-core al-Qaeda terrorists in Gitmo.
Jurisdiction-stripping is happening. Right. Now. And. It's. Not. Even. Newsworthy.
I won't even get into the ridiculous coverage of the C.I.A. missile strike on a remote village in Pakistan. None of the readers of this blog know whether we really hit "anyone important." And none of us will ever really know, certainly not for years. The problem, again, is that the fact that the Central Intelligence Agency is carrying out military missions, apparently on its own is completely non-controversial. Is this the way that the United States of America does things?
This is not the country that we teach students about in civics classes. Not anymore, it isn't. Period.
This has been a bad month. And things aren't likely to get better soon.
posted by Number Three @ 7:02 PM
7 Comments:
Wow, I don't know Emery: perhaps if your posts weren't so soul-suckingly depressing you'd get more comments. I'm not sure what to say, except, yeah, when you put it all together like that...not a good month.
I hadn't even heard about the DTA! But I did listen to some of the Alito testimony and was shocked by the lack of actual questions, from both sides.
Also, maybe you'll throw in a post one day that explains to me how on earth the NSA spying can be anything but illegal. I mean, it clearly violates the law that would seek to regulate it. Um, doesn't that make it illegal? My understanding of the administration's defense is that their logic boils down to, 'in the war on terror, we can do anything we want' but there must be a more intelligent position there somehwere. Can you show it to us?
Emery,
It hasn't just been a month, but it's been a bad 5 years. The only thing heartening is that some of it is actually making it into the mainstream US press, muted and ignored though most of it be. The amazing thing is that Bush, Cheney and the Republicans can still get away with saying things like, "Everyone thought Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. The French, the British and all our other allies." O yeah? Well, in Italy they were running story after story about how it all didn't add up -- I fondly remember one US claim just prior to the launch of the war of some satellite photo showing new construction that proved Iraq was building weapons of mass destruction at the site, so a team of Italian journalists went out there and proved no such activity was going on -- and it was mostly ignored by the US press. An overwhelming majority of Italians believes that Berlusconi only sent troops to Iraq to kiss Bush's ass and most don't like it. Chirac refused to go along with George and the boys because he thought there was no such evidence (and he said so to 60 Minutes), while Blair and his government got caught sexing up their dossier, but somehow it can still be claimed in the US that "Everyone thought Saddam had weapons of mass destruction."
Less than two months ago when one of my classes was reading about contradictory propaganda during the Peloponnesian War, I asked the students if they thought that Saddam really had WMDs, but he scuttled them out of the country just before the invasion, or the US just tried to cover up their existence for some other nobler purpose of espionage. Half the class thought they really had them just prior to the invasion. I then asked the class if they thought that Saddam had a "SIGNIFICANT AND IMPORTANT working relationship with Al Qaeda" and again, about half thought so. Half. And these are college students and some vigorously thought they were fully informed of the various arguments. It doesn't matter that David Kaye, that other guy after Kaye quit (can't remember his name), and a Congressional committee all concluded that there was no evidence to support either claim. It is depressing, because it is clear that a significant number of Americans cannot seem to take a bit of rhetorical dust thrown in their eyes, clear their eyes and see what's going on. It's not a matter of apathy, and if it is partisanship, it's a partisanship that is able to persuade the base through an appeal to emotions, fears, tribalism... that interfere with the ability to make good reflective judgements. The only thing that can change this is education, and the only school that will do it, is that of hard knocks. I keep hoping that next fall there will be a change, but when over half of the country thinks it's OK for the NSA to spy on Americans without a warrant, then the Republicans need not fear on that issue. Probably the only thing that could unseat them is higher gas prices.
Paul
Em, I was shocked to see you write that Alito "should be confirmed." Huh? The guy is completely and totally unacceptable.
I know you don't support the guy's politics or jurisprudence, so I'm guessing you've accepted one or more of three common arguments: (a) professional competence is the only relevant consideration in a confirmation hearing, and ideology/legal theory should be avoided as a disqualifier; (b) presidents are due deference on appointees and if you want to influence the court you've got to win the elections; i.e., it's all "political" and the Dems lost their chance to stop Alito in November; (c) letting Alito through is prudent given norms of collegiality and reciprocity; if the Dems stop Alito, the GOP will feel empowered to go after future Dem nominees.
I don't think any of these arguments really hold up. Let's take them in order. (A) Professionalism over ideology. There is a kernel of truth here. Obviously, if you only accepted nominees whose legal/political views you agreed with fully, you'd never support candidates of the other party, and this would create an impossible gridlock. But that doesn't mean you have to accept EVERY set of legal/political views. Did you support the Bork nomination? Would you support Roy Moore? Although there should be a wide reange of acceptable positions, there must be a limit, and by any measure I can think of, Alito is over that line. Take just one: he's an avowed royalist who believes Bush is a mortal God. Game over.
(B) The "deference" argument is also problematic. Sure these things are "political" and elections matter. But politics doesn't stop when the election is over. Do Bush and Rove stop playing politics? Politics is partly a matter of what you get away with and then justify publicly. Did the GOP defer to Clinton over court nominees? Not if you look at the federal courts generally. And on the SCt they only deferred b/c they essentially got the Dems they had asked Clinton to nominate in the first place. Currently, the Dems have some non-neglible power in the Senate; they have ample reasons to defend their votes against Alito (and even a filibuster). They need to be less fearful and more bold about their power. It's not like Bush actually got a "mandate." He won a second term by the smallest margin in history, and the GOP actually got fewer voted for Senate in the last 6 years than the Dems did--the state-size malapportionment of the Senate explains the entire partisan gap.
(C) Prudence and reciprocity. Ha! The Republicans certainly don't believe in these things. Have they shown ANY consideration for the Dem minority, which they have treated far worse in Congress than they were ever treated when the roles were reversed? The GOP is going to do what it's going to do, institutional norms be damned. They're nihilists. What the Dems do now has absolutely no impact on what the Pubies will do later. Unilateral disarmament is for wussies.
So, why support the nomination?
TMcD takes me to task for saying Alito "should be confirmed." I'm not sure why that statement is so outrageous. The 2004 election determined that (1) GWB would get four more years of judicial nominations, including SCt nominations, and (2) he would have fifty Republican senators to vote those nominations through. So, sure, politics does matter.
I should add here that I don't think there's anything inappropriate about a Democratic filibuster of the nomination; if the Dems want to play politics on this, then they should. But they can't defeat the nomination at this point, so they would have to be willing to go down in a blaze of glory. I even hope that they do filibuster and then the GOP pulls the nuclear option, which would be a good first step to eliminating the un-democratic filibuster altogether.
Alito's qualifications clearly matter. There's no argument that he's not qualified.
His views matter, too. If I had a vote on the nomination, I would take that into account. But I don't have a vote, and the people who do, at least a majority of them, agree enough with his views that he will be confirmed. And when a majority of the senators support your nomination, "you should get confirmed."
Just like tomorrow in the AFC Championship Game, the team with most points "should win," even if it's the pure evil Pittsburgh Steelers.
That last comments should say "fifty-five Republican senators." Ooops.
Just one more point--I'm not sure that my previous posts have "supported" the nomination. I'm pretty sure that I have no official position on that.
OK, but I think you're backing off your original wording, which was: "I think that Alito should be confirmed, and I believe that he will be." That certainly sounds like an endorsement of his fitness, not merely a prediction of a political eventuality, which you offer in the second half of the sentence.
Substantively, however, I agree with much of the follow-up. The Dems can't prevent this if the "moderate" Pubies hang tough on the nuclear option, although there is always the possibility that they're bluffing. After all, going nuclear ups the pressure on them in any future confirmation battles because once Dems are completely neutralized the mods become the only possible barrier to extremist judges, something that media coverage may finally recognize. There's also the little issue of how much those moderates want to be seen jumping on the anti-"rule of law" bandwagon that Bush, Rove, and the GOP congressional leadership appear at the moment to be driving over a cliff.
I'm also somewhat sympathetic to the "blaze of glory" idea, but it is a risky move. I have no sentimental attachment to the filibuster, which often causes mischief, and I think that if the Dems can't use it successfully against an angry, far-right crank like Alito, they may never be able to use it. The risk pays of if Dems retake the Prez and/or Senate, but it's a loser if the Dems narrow their Senate margin but remain a minority.
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