Byrd on Torture

Senator Byrd has an essay on Huffington Post today:

In President Obama's inaugural address, he declared that "we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our founding fathers, faced with perils that we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake."
...
The rule of law is not just a lofty concept to which we should aspire only when convenient. It is a fundamental principal upon which our Republic was founded, and it is the foundation of our free society. I understand the desire to look forward and to forge a new path on high ground instead of on the low road of the past eight years. But to use the need to move on as a reason not to investigate basic human rights violations is unacceptable. Excusing individuals at the highest levels of government from adhering to the rule of law, whether in wartime or not, is a dangerous precedent, for it undercuts the principle of accountability which permeates representative democracy.
...
Whether it is through an independent investigation, a "Truth Commission," a Congressional investigation, or a criminal investigation by the Department of Justice, action must be taken. As long as those who condoned and approved these despicable acts are permitted to escape the consequences, we allow our moral standing in the world to be severely compromised. September 11 did not suddenly legalize torture, nor did it exonerate those who authorized such a heinous deviation from the rule of law. How we address these abuses will shape the image of the United States for decades. In order to truly clear our good name and put the past behind us, the United States must strive to be sure that this dark period of sick and secretive torture schemes receives the scrutiny it deserves.

Indeed.

In the Name of the People

This is what we've done.  I have nothing to add.

So You Say You Want a Revolution, Part 2

After a timely DHS memo on right-wing extremism was leaked earlier this week, Michelle Malkin had a two-day public tantrum as she insisted the report was talking about conservatives in general. Of course, it wasn't. (No really, read it.)  

Many elsewhere have suggested that this reaction, common in the right-wing blogosphere, is evidence of a guilty mind.  Maybe.  But the strong form of that inference would be a bit unfair.   I am certain Malkin et al would never join a militia group or bomb a federal building.   I am concerned, however, that the recent rhetoric on the right plays directly into the hands of the people and groups who are described in the memo.

David Frum, no friend of the left, describes the tone in a conversation with Spectator:

Yet to listen to Fox News and other conservative media, you’d think we were living in Czechoslovakia in the final hours before the 1948 communist coup. Anchors end interviews by solemnly pledging to defend liberty and oppose tyranny. The network’s rising star Glenn Beck has mused about the coming turn to totalitarianism — and warned his audience that he has not been able to ‘debunk’ fears that the Federal Emergency Management Agency is constructing an archipelago of concentration camps for political opponents of the Obama administration.

Meanwhile, members of Congress (other than Bachman) are calling for armed revolt:

It’s about our founding fathers who in 1773 threw a little party called the Boston tea party. And fought against tyranny and oppressive taxes, does that sound familiar? We’re continuing that revolution right here in Austin, TX today. Thomas Jefferson once said that the tree of liberty will be fed with the blood of tyrants and patriots. You are the patriots.

and political assassination:

“I think that the decision to raise taxes by 50 percent in Illinois is political suicide,” Kirk said of Quinn’s proposal to raise the tax rate to 4.5 percent from 3 percent, coupled with an increase in the personal deduction. “I think the people of Illinois are ready to shoot anyone who is going to raise taxes by that degree.” 

Georgia has voted to "disband" the union, and the Texas governor won't rule out secession.

John Aravosis at America Blog summarizes perfectly:

The Republican party has a serious problem with extremists, not just in its midst, but among its leadership and its key allies in the faux media (FOX News) and its grassroots (Limbaugh, the blogs, and the religious right). The GOP is quite literally pushing their most extreme followers to violence. And now that they're calling on the government to ignore known terrorist threats, it's only a matter of time before something violent happens, and then the Republican party will find itself out of power permanently. 

Thanks to the legacy of Karl Rove (attack your opponents with your own greatest weakness), the dominant form of political discourse on the right seems to be projection.  

Karl Rove on 2010

There are a lot of ifs in this plan, but Karl Rove has an Op-Ed in WSJ today laying out the first believable short-term GOP strategy. A revealing snippet:

One concern is the rise of state and local taxes. New York and California passed multibillion-dollar tax increases this year. Other states are considering significant tax hikes or have enacted tax increases in recent years. The many tax and fee increases enacted or under consideration is angering voters.

If that anger persists, it may give Republicans a leg up in the 38 gubernatorial elections over the next two years, as well as in key state legislative races that will determine which party redraws congressional and state legislative districts after the 2010 census. Expect voters to hear a lot about jobs being created in low-tax states in the coming years.

This will clearly be a tough sell, given the generational shift in politics (i.e. among people who don't remember Reagan and the Soviets). But the census gambit makes this strategy seem interesting, if far-fetched and desperate. Also interesting about that gambit is that it continues the tradition in politics (especially in GOP politics of late) of gaming the system. This may be an added liability in the context of the new pragmatic politics.

DHS Weighs in On Right-Wing Extremism

Expect loud cries of foul from the GOP echo chamber, but DHS has finally taken notice of the well-documented uptick in right-wing extremism.  Sadly, I think this is the kind of move that only encourages these movements ... who really, genuinely believe that the sun is setting on America and that Obama offers only a fast-track to statist totalitarianism.  That said, this report is incredibly timely and appropriate.  Here's hoping it has the intended effect on law-enforcement priorities and practices.

So You Say You Want a Revolution

The grassroots echo-chamber on the right continues to get scarier. Charles Blow has an extremely accurate summary of the goings-on in a NYT piece yesterday:

Lately I’ve been consuming as much conservative media as possible (interspersed with shots of Pepto-Bismol) to get a better sense of the mind and mood of the right. My read: They’re apocalyptic. They feel isolated, angry, betrayed and besieged. And some of their “leaders” seem to be trying to mold them into militias.

[...]

But, it’s not all just harmless talk. For some, their disaffection has hardened into something more dark and dangerous. They’re talking about a revolution.

This is no joke. A lot of these people are armed--many of those largely in anticipation of this "moment". Blow continues:

At the same time, the unrelenting meme being pushed by the right that Obama will mount an assault on the Second Amendment has helped fuel the panic buying of firearms. According to the F.B.I., there have been 1.2 million more requests for background checks of potential gun buyers from November to February than there were in the same four months last year. That’s 5.5 million requests altogether over that period; more than the number of people living in Bachmann’s Minnesota.

I'll follow up with examples as I see them in the next few days/weeks. The right-wing blogosphere is a confused place right now.

Update: Not exactly a revolution, but not unrelated either.  It'll be interesting to see if this version of the story bears out.

Update 2: Seems to be borne-out. 

Update 3: Apparently the right-wing blogosphere has no idea what we're talking about:

I just do not understand why the Left Wing Media and the Liberal Bloggers are using two major tragedies like these to try and further an anti-gun agenda and a Conservative Media hysteria agenda. It does sort of remind me of the Jewish hysteria agenda that Hitler started in Germany.

Priceless!  I wonder why so many wingnuts think we're on the verge of statist totalitarianism.