Moving The Goalposts With Haley Barbour

Robert Reich looks at the far-right Republicans, citing Christine O'Donnell in Delaware, Rand Paul in Kentucky, Ken Buck in Colorado, and Sharron Angle in Nevada who have won state primaries. He argues

Some Democrats think all this is wonderful because it boosts the odds of Democratic wins, not only in the midterms but also in 2012 when the Republicans put up Palin, Gingrich, or someone equally bizarre. Even voters who are are unenthusiastic about Democrats will be motivated to turn out if they fear that crackpots will otherwise take over our government.

I’m not as sanguine about what’s happening. Political discourse in America is important. What candidates say can legitimize hateful or divisive views that would otherwise never see the light of day.

A further problem is that these are merely a few of the wingers who are outside of the political mainstream but which the GOP is attempting to foist (as U.S. Senators) on the country. Reich even omits Joe Miller (video, from Crooks and Liars, below) in Alaska, who believes unemployment compensation, Medicare, and Social Security are unconstitutional. (For good measure, he lies about the latter, claiming "its trust fund is empty.")

But there is an even bigger problem. These characters drag the conversation to the right, wherein viewpoints slightly to the left of theirs are considered the norm. Sometimes, opinions of the far right are considered the norm, if uttered by individuals who seem to be sane and sober.

Lamenting the takeover of the GOP by extremists, Samuel Jacobs in The Daily Beast writes

If Sarah Palin and Jim DeMint are the patron saints of hard-right anti-establishment types, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour is their counterpart in the center. The wily head of the Republican Governors Association, a possible contender for president in 2012, preaches a big-tent philosophy that contrasts sharply with the ideological purification drive on the right.

To which Digby notes

Things have moved so far to the right that Haley Barbour is a centrist now.

It's true that he's a "Big Tent" Republican, at least to extent that he can get away with it. But it's not because he wants a bunch of lily-livered moderates in the party, but because he knows there aren't enough hardcore nuts in the country (yet) to sustain a far right majority. But that doesn't make someone a "centrist." It makes him a practical power broker.

Haley Barbour is hardcore conservative and a corporate whore. Unless you define Joe Lieberman as the far left, he most certainly is not a centrist.

This is the same Governor Barbour who, in a recent interview (video of part 1, here) with the conservative magazine and website Human Events, tried to lay the blame for Southern segregation on the Democratic Party and the credit for its elimination on "my generation," which led the South to embrace the Republican Party. His faulty recollection (oh, sure) was eviscerated by syndicated columnist Eugene Robinson, who explained

Not a word of this is true.

Barbour did not attend “integrated schools,” if he’s referring to his primary and secondary education. Mississippi ignored the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision that was meant to end separate-but-unequal school systems. Eventually, officials implemented a “freedom of choice” desegregation plan—but black parents who tried to send their children to white schools were threatened and intimidated, including by cross-burnings. Finally, in 1969, the Supreme Court ordered Mississippi to integrate its schools immediately. The long-stalled change took place in 1970.

That was long after Barbour had graduated from high school in Yazoo City and gone on to attend the University of Mississippi—the “integrated college” he mentioned in the interview. The federal government had forced Ole Miss to admit its first black student, James Meredith, in 1962; he had to be escorted onto the campus by U.S. marshals as white students rioted in protest.

The following year, a second black student was admitted. In the mid-1960s, when Barbour was attending Ole Miss, it’s no wonder that he “never thought twice” about integration. There were only a handful of black students, and by all accounts—except Barbour’s—they were isolated and ostracized by their white peers.

The governor’s assertion that segregation was a relic of the past “by my time” is ludicrous. He was 16, certainly old enough to pay attention, during the Freedom Summer of 1964, when civil rights activists James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were murdered by the Ku Klux Klan near Philadelphia, Miss. He was a young adult, on his way to becoming a lawyer, when the public schools were forced to integrate. I’ll bet Barbour could remember those days if he tried a little harder.

Equally wrong—and perhaps deliberately disingenuous—is his made-up narrative of how the South turned Republican. Let me correct the record.

As he signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act into law, Lyndon Johnson is supposed to have said that the Democratic Party had “lost the South for a generation.” Among those who voted against the landmark legislation was Sen. Barry Goldwater, who became Johnson’s opponent in the presidential race that fall.

Johnson scored a landslide victory. Goldwater took his home state of Arizona and just five others: Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina. It was the first time those Deep South states had voted for a Republican presidential candidate since Reconstruction—and marked the moment when, for many Southern voters, the GOP became the party of white racial grievance. It wasn’t “a different generation from those who fought integration” that made the switch. Integration was the whole reason for the switch.

And then there is the case of Verna Ann Bailey, the first black female to attend the University of Mississippi and who sat next to Barbour, who describes having established a rapport with her. McClatchy picks up the story:

Bailey, reached by phone, reacted to Barbour's story with surprise that bordered on confusion.

"I don't remember him at all, no, because during that time that certainly wasn't a pleasant experience for me," she said. "My interactions with white people were very, very limited. Very, very few reached out at all."

Bailey is now the principal of an elementary school in Beaverton, Ore. While she may have seemed like just another student to Barbour, history hasn't viewed her that way. For her role in the civil rights movement, she was inducted into the Ole Miss Alumni Hall of Fame and has a scholarship named after her.

She's sometimes asked to speak to groups about her experience. Her recollections are filled with details of pain, humiliation, isolation and courage.

She left Mississippi at 24, following her brother to the more liberal Pacific Northwest. It seemed beautiful and welcoming. She worked in Seattle, and eventually was recruited to Oregon. She got a master's degree, began a doctoral program.

She'd go back to Mississippi to visit her parents. Her father was a prominent local civil rights leader who didn't share Barbour's view of Republicans as enlightened on the issue. Both her parents are deceased.

Barbour left Ole Miss before he finished his bachelor's degree to work for the Nixon campaign, then came back to earn his law degree. Bailey said she finished her undergraduate degree in three years, not because she was a great student, but because she wanted to get out of Oxford, Miss., as fast as she could.

She recalled dancing in Oxford Square once with another black student at a school celebration when a crowd of whites began pelting them with coins and beer. "It was just an awful experience. I just saw this mass of anger; anger and hostility. I thought my life was going to end."

A campus minister, one of the only whites she remembers showing her kindness, took her by the hand and led her to safety. She said the minister was ostracized.

During her undergraduate days, she was inundated with intimidating phone calls to her dorm from white men. "The calls were so constant," she said. "Vulgar, all sexual connotations, saying nigger bitches needed to go back to the cotton field and things of that nature." She'd complain, have the phone number changed. Then the calls would start again. Funeral wreaths with what appeared to be animal blood on them were found outside her dorm.

In one science class in a lecture hall, no one would sit near her. The only class in which she remembers alphabetized seating was a Spanish class where the teacher seemed empathetic to her. Bailey figured that was because the teacher was from South America, not Mississippi.

Barbour said they had a literature class together. Bailey remembers taking a literature class, but nothing about it. "It wouldn't surprise me if I allowed someone to copy my notes because that's just someone I am," she said. "I did that as an undergraduate student, as a graduate student."

Robinson believes Barbour is trying "to shake its image as hostile to African-Americans and other minorities. It would be consistent with this attempted makeover to pretend that the party never sought, and won, the votes of die-hard segregationists." Barbour's is a severely dishonest account, one intended to appeal to moderates and mainstream journalists, but merely putting a different package on the same product Palin, Angle, O'Donnell and the less discreet radicals are pushing.

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Wouldn't Want To Question Obama

There really is a good reason cable news programs frequently feature someone from the left and someone from the right or a Democrat and a Republican. When an unsubstantiated and counter-intuitive (much more polite than saying "idiotic") statement is made, it usually is rebutted.

Otherwise, Chuck Todd can play the role of a bobble head doll and nod as he did Thursday evenig on Hardball with journalist E. Steven Collins and former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown discussing the Breitbart/Sherrod affair (while Andrew Breitbart's role is completely ignored). One portion of the exchange (transcript here, video below, from Firedoglake)):

BROWN: She sued them. And, believe me, I think it`s worth at least President Barack Obama checking his Agriculture Department to see whether or not they are frankly responding to getting rid of her as requested by the bureaucrats and as advocated by the bureaucrats because she`s such an effective person on behalf of the downtrodden and the have-nots.

I think that`s the real story.

COLLINS: Mayor Brown is right, I mean, if you consider, Chuck, the fact that her father was killed by a Caucasian and was never prosecuted --

TODD: Right.

Willie Brown makes a charge against federal employees- pardon me, "bureaucrats"- fails to provide any evidence, and Collins agrees with him while Todd fails to follow up. (Presumably, Todd's "right" comment referred to Mr. Sherrod's murder by a white man which resulted in no prosecution.)

Collins and Sherrod couldn't praise Sherrod enough, but

the former Georgia director of Rural Development said she received a phone call from the USDA's deputy undersecretary Cheryl Cook on Monday while she was in a car. Cook told her that the White House wanted her to call it quits.

"They called me twice," Sherrod told the Associated Press. "The last time they asked me to pull over the side of the road and submit my resignation on my Blackberry, and that's what I did."

This hardly sounds like the Agriculture Department "responding to getting rid of her as requested by the bureaucrats and as advocated by the bureaucrats because she`s such an effective person on behalf of the downtrodden and the have-nots." It sounds a lot more like a political appointee acting in the manner her boss expected, and thereby asking for a bureaucrat's resignation. And it seems like a department undersecretary and a department secretary understanding if not the will, at least the sensibilities, of the department secretary's boss. That would be the President of the United States.

And that is the same President about whom Obamaphile Eugene Robinson yesterday wrote

The Sherrod case has fully exposed the right-wing campaign to use racial fear to destroy Obama's presidency, and I hope the effect is to finally stiffen some spines in the administration. The way to deal with bullies is to confront them, not run away. Yet Sherrod was fired before even being allowed to tell her side of the story. She said the official who carried out the execution explained that she had to resign immediately because the story was going to be on Glenn Beck's show that evening. Ironically, Beck was the only Fox host who, upon hearing the rest of Sherrod's speech, promptly called for her to be reinstated. On Wednesday, Vilsack offered to rehire her.

Shirley Sherrod stuck to her principles and stood her ground. I hope the White House learns a lesson.

Then, perhaps, Collins, Brown, and others can stop making excuses for this president's acquiescence to his enemies on the right.

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The Republican Media- No. 24

If one is to believe E.J. Dionne- and one usually should- it was inevitable. In his recent column "Two Cheers for Harry Reid," the Washington Post syndicated columnist noted

Such assaults are rarely about ideology, though I have found that liberals or Democrats are often the object of these sustained attacks, perhaps because journalists are overly sensitive to charges of liberal bias. There's nothing like hitting a Democrat hard to "prove" impartiality.

As if to confirm Dionne's suspicion, the Post's syndicated columnist Eugene Robinson snarked

Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano's initial assessment of the Christmas Day airliner attack -- that "the system worked" -- doesn't quite match the absurdity of "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job." But only because she quickly took it back.

On the December 28 edition of MSNBC's Hardball, host Chris Matthews took this attack to absurd lengths (video below)

Earlier in the show we brought you Homeland Security Janet Napolitano's initial reaction to the thwarted terrorist attack of Christmas Day. She said, quote, "the system worked." Well, that's like "you're doing a helluva job, Brownie." Well, how many Americans disagree with that assesment? According to an online, unscientific poll by Politioco.com, ninety-six per cent. Just three per cent agree with the Homeland Security Secretary, who said everything's working great. I wonder who the three per cent are. Well, anyway, 96% say the attempt showed the security in place didn't work.

Perhaps the 3% are the few who actually heard everything the Homeland Security Chief said when she explained on ABC's This Week (from which the video of Napolitano was taken for this segment)

Number two, I think the important thing to recognize here is that once this incident occurred, everything happened that should have. The passengers reacted correctly, the crew reacted correctly, within an hour to 90 minutes, all 128 flights in the air had been notified. And those flights already had taken mitigation measures on the off-chance that there was somebody else also flying with some sort of destructive intent....

Now once this incident occurred, everything went according to clockwork. Not only sharing throughout the air industry, but also sharing with state and local law enforcement, products were going out on Christmas Day, they went out yesterday, and also to the industry to make sure that the traveling public remains safe.

Once this incident occurred. Once this incident occurred. (She repeated herself; I thought I would.) Napolitano's reference to "the system working" clearly was to what transpired once the suspect/terrorist was subdued. Is that really so hard for Robinson and Matthews to understand?

The answer: no, it's not; and no, they did not misunderstand.

To give Matthews his due: the "earlier in the show" video to which he referred came from Napolitano's appearance on CNN's State of the Union Sunday. There, the Secretary stated

And one thing I’d like to point out is that the system worked. Everybody played an important role here. The passengers and crew of the flight took appropriate action. Within literally an hour to 90 minutes of the incident occurring, all 128 flights in the air had been notified to take some special measures in light of what had occurred on the Northwest Airlines flight. We instituted new measures on the ground and at screening areas, both here in the United States and in Europe, where this flight originated.

But even there she was referring to what transpired after the thwarted attack, given references to: the passengers and crew took appropriate action; within literally an hour to 90 minutes of the incident occurring; we instituted new measures.... where this flight originated.

Again: is that really so hard for Matthews and Robinson to understand? And again, they did not misunderstand.

What is going on here? A hypothesis, supported by this and other remarks by these two gentlemen: as Stepford Wives to Barack Obama, Matthews and Robinson are anxious to distance themselves from Democrats whenever afforded an opportunity. If they fail to do so, they may appear to their colleagues, "overly sensitive to charges of liberal bias," in Dionne's words, to be slightly biased. To viewers whose worldview is already perverted by listening to the likes of Limbaugh, Beck, and Hannity, they may appear part of the "liberal media." Suitably intimidated, they rush to ridicule any Democrat without the initials B.O. in order "to 'prove' their impartiality,"

Conveniently, such journalists can continue to idolize and/or excuse President Obama, while the right can continue to imagine a leftist bias in the mainstream media. A win-win, of a sort.


"

Representing The Left

Where do they get these guys? Where does the mainstream media find these "liberals," who, where it really counts, sound like Republicans?

Oh, yeah. In one case, it would be "a Clinton administration political appointee and an adviser to the Democratic National Committee and the Obama-Biden campaign in 2008," as Jamal Simmons' 3/30/09 article in Politico describes him. In this article, Simmons sympathetically recommends

banking executives should follow Obama’s lead by explaining the connection between the health of the banking system and the health of their employer. A Bank of America executive told me recently that the company’s leadership began creating in-house videos for associates in banking centers to explain the bank’s position and offer its perspective on the news. Put these videos on YouTube for the rest of us.

Finally, the financial sector as a whole has a lot of making up to do with its customers and its taxpaying investors, but not all executives behaved like Bernie Madoff. While avid readers of the business press may know that some bank CEOs — such as Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase and John Mack of Morgan Stanley — did not take bonuses this year, the rest of America does not. Highlighting responsible actions that contrast with the current narrative may not generate the kind of cheering that occurs in a Final Four game, but at least the crowd might stop throwing eggs at all the players on the court.

(By the way, how endearing to refer to the American people as a mob "throwing eggs at all the players on the court.")

The thrust of this Obama admirer seven months ago was a plea to the financial industry to manipulate its message more effectively. At least, though, Simmons does commend the executives in the financial industry who "did not take bonuses this year."

Apparently, not anymore. The Treasury Department next week will announce a plan to limit total compensation of top executives of the seven firms which received the amount of TARP money. In a characteristically brilliant post on Wednesday, Digby presents the transcript of tht day's Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer, in which Simmons and Repub strategist Mary Matalin warn against provoking the altruistic banking executives into leaving their current companies to work where they can make real money. Simmons claims

The thing is, I've talked to a lot of people in New York about this and people who are on Wall Street and what they will tell you is, if they can't work someplace and get rewarded, they'll go work someplace else.

Working on Wall Street in the financial service industry is neither brain surgery nor rocket science nor, for that matter, civil engineering. Memo to Simmons and Matalin: A lot of people can do the work they so admire, probably a few in your neighborhood or development alone. They, too, could drag the international banking stystem and world economy to virtual collapse. Or maybe not.

But if Simmons is nearly the most egregious example of the kind of liberal Democrat (chummy with people of wealth and power) the media brings on the air, the practice is fairly widespread.

Take Eugene Robinson. Please. Why, just last night Mr. Robinson and Mr. Matthews were on Hardball admiring the machismo demonstrated by President Reagan when he fired a bunch of middle class workers:

MATTHEWS: But presidents tend, if they are lucky, to get opportunities to show their strength and do it.

Ronald Reagan, whatever you think of union rights and collective bargaining, scored a big one when broke the PATCO strike, because it was a government employees union that broke its contract. It was a wildcat. And he fired them all.

ROBINSON: Mm-hmm.

MATTHEWS: And, in the Soviet Union, I understood they said, this guy is different.

ROBINSON: Right.

MATTHEWS: So, the word went out, this guy is somebody to deal with.

ROBINSON: Mm-hmm. No, that's true. It was-and it happened early in Reagan's administration, right at the beginning. And it did set a certain tone, like, we don't know what this guy is going to do.

Breaking the back of a union and tossing workers onto the unemployment line, the move started the spiral of declining wages and decline of the middle class in the U.S.A. From that point on, employers were emboldened to resist union organizing and wage hikes and encouraged to cut health and other benefits. However, that history is neglected by two of Barack Obama's greatest admirers, often identified as "liberals," who ignore the crushing burden of totalitarianism, the favorable impact of the Solidarity labor movement and of the Polish Pope John Paul II, and the policies of nine postwar presidents (including Reagan) in bringing down the Soviet Union and ending the Cold war.

We have heard this before from Eugene Robinson, who on January 30 pretended "The point isn't to revisit the merits of the strike or the wisdom of Reagan's hard-line stance" and then went on to praise it:

The point is that the controllers' union failed to realize that the dawn of the Reagan administration represented a rare fundamental shift in American politics. Under Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford or even Richard Nixon, the controllers might well have won their strike. Under Reagan, they had no chance -- not only because of his stubborn resolve but also because American voters had given him a broad mandate for change.

But posing as a Democrat, allowing the media to feign balance, goes back even further for Mr. Robinson (and Mr. Matthews). As Bob Somerby repeatedly has noted, Robinson stood by for years as Bill Clinton and Al Gore were savaged by the mainstream media, including Robinson's own Washington Post and Chris Matthews.

The list of liberals, including Thomas Frank, Robert Reich, David Sirota, and Dean Baker, who are willing and able to support progressive economic ideals is long. Resorting to pundits who have gotten too cozy with the corporate elite is damaging. But maybe that's the idea.

Sifting Through Race- Jimmy Carter On Racism (Or Not), Part 3

At first read, it's somewhat of a case of dueling columns. Pulitzer Prize-winning Eugene Robinson of The Washington Post in "The Favor Jimmy Carter Did Us All" on September 18 writes

....there's a particularly nasty edge to the most vitriolic attacks -- a rejection not of Obama's programs but of his legitimacy as president. This denial of legitimacy is more pernicious than the abuse heaped upon George W. Bush by his critics (including me), and I can't find any explanation for it other than race.

I'm not talking about the majority of the citizens who went to town hall meetings to criticize Obama's plans for health-care reform or the majority of the "tea bag" demonstrators who complain that Obama is ushering in an era of big government. Those are, of course, legitimate points of view. Protest is part of our system. It's as American as apple pie.

I'm talking about the crazy "birthers." I'm talking about the nitwits who arrive at protest rallies bearing racially offensive caricatures -- Obama as a witch doctor, for example. I'm talking about the idiots who toss around words like "socialism" to make Obama seem alien and even dangerous -- who deny the fact that he, too, is as American as apple pie.

This whole discussion was kicked off by Rep. Joe Wilson's "You lie!" outburst during Obama's address to a joint session of Congress. As the House members who voted to rebuke Wilson -- including seven fellow Republicans -- understand, calling the head of state a liar in such an official setting is way out of bounds. Grumbling and even booing come with the territory, but a flat accusation of mendacity is an impermissible sign of disrespect. Nobody ever called Bush a liar when he was speaking in the House chamber.

Why would Wilson think he was entitled to insult the president this way? Why would he refuse to offer a formal apology on the House floor, which would have ended the matter? I have no idea. Friends and colleagues say he is no racist, and they know the man a lot better than I do. But he does have a history.

Though not denying the role of race, in salon.com on September 17 Gene Lyons emphasizes economic insecurity and historic animus toward national Democrats. In "Obama gets the Clinton treatment," he deemphasizes the impact of race, explaining

From a political standpoint, the worst thing about blaming President Obama's perceived difficulties on racism is that there's not a damn thing anybody can do about it. Determined bigots can't be shamed, while many see invoking race as more an excuse than an explanation.
Democrats who cry racism risk looking like whiners fearful they're losing the argument....

Criticizing Colbert I. King of The Washington Post and referring to the proprietor of dailyhowler.com, Lyons notes

So where was King when Bill and Hillary Clinton were accused of murder by Rush Limbaugh and in videotapes peddled by the Rev. Jerry Falwell? The latter's sanctimonious mug nevertheless continued to appear constantly on network TV talk shows as an honored representative of America's devout Christians....

How about when Democratic nominee Al Gore was depicted as a fraud and serial liar through the use of phony allegations ("invented the Internet") and manufactured quotes on the front page of, yes, the Washington Post? Where was King then? Studiously polishing his fingernails, evidently.

The same is true of establishment pundits such as the New York Times' Maureen Dowd and Frank Rich, who participated gleefully in sliming the previous several Democratic candidates. (Dowd and Rich invented the myth that Gore falsely claimed to be the inspiration for the novel and movie "Love Story.") So now they don the shining armor of multiculti(sic) liberalism? Please.

"King and the rest of his cohorts drank the Kool-Aid during (the 90s)," writes Somerby. "Now, they pretend that the era never occurred -- and they express their vast surprise when the same lunacy is aimed at Obama. They are amazed to see what's being said about this new Democratic president. And they diddle their cowardly brains: It must be his race, they proclaim."

But in a more fundamental sense, Robinson and Lyons both view things similarly, and accurately. While the former salutes the former president for raising the issue of race, the latter notes "Rep. Joe Wilson's, R-S.C., rude outburst during the president's speech to Congress.... along with his longtime support for flying the Rebel flag over South Carolina's capitol," and the futility of Democratic presidential nominees in the old confederacy.

And how has the conservative community responded? Not whether whether prominent Repubs or conservatives agree with Carter that race is the biggest factor in the most extreme attacks upon Obama (they apparently don't)- Carter probably was wrong and, anyway, it's never wise political strategy to label your base as racists.

But another theme has been developing. A few conservatives, including the African-American Derrell Bradford, and the second-generation Jamaican-American Michelle Bernard, have been vigorously trying to rewrite history. They claim, as Bernard put it, "White people put Barack Obama into office."

Uh, no. According to exit polls, among non-Hispanic whites, John McCain garnered 55% of the vote last November, Barack Obama only 33%- a bulge of 12%. If only white votes were counted, John McCain would have shellacked Barack Obama, both in the popular vote and in the electoral vote. John McCain would have been President, and Sarah Palin, Vice-President. And this is what individuals in exit polls reported. Human nature (learned, in this case) not having been abolished, whites still like to say they voted for the black candidate, especially in an election termed "historic."

But there is method behind the madness- no, behind the dishonesty. They are saying (albeit fallaciously), if a majority of Caucasians voted for the black candidate, well, the election put race behind us. And if it, if we have transcended race, why are Jimmy Carter and all those mean liberals bringing it up? Surely, the critics of the Democratic Party are right!

But in the midst of a serious recession, a very unpopular war, and a nominee who couldn't get out of his own way, Barack Obama, the nominee of the nation's majority party, won 43% of the white vote. So the real question is not, or should not be, whether former President Carter or his GOP critics are right- the truth lies somewhere in between the two extreme positions. It is a matter of passing, of transient concern, and as Robinson and probably Lyons both understand, one that should be secondary to the largely unexamined impact of race in American politics.

Torture, (ill)Legally

On Hardball recently (and practically always), 2009 Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Eugene Robinson explained that there are three components to the torture debate: moral, effectual, and legal. Not surprisingly, little attention has been given to the last facet, given that legal analysis does not yield effectively to video or any visuals whatever.

The issue of morality and effectiveness of torture are intimately intertwined. If, say, sleep deprivation is immoral in most instances, is it so if a detainee is supposed to have information relating to a terrorist plot about to be executed? And is morality affected by the degree of certitude that the detainee has the information? And what about waterboarding or having a detainee stand naked? Are they more or less immoral than sleep deprivation, and to what extend does the nature of the information to be gleaned affect the acceptability of that form of torture?

The legal angle, however, stands alone. "Enhanced interrogation methods" conducted by an agency administrator, CIA or FBI employee administering it, private contractor administering it, high government official, or lawyer submitting the brief setting out its alleged justification can be evaluated apart from the morality or effectiveness of the action.

The Geneva Convention Convention (III) relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, Geneva, 12 August 1949 proscribes enhanced interrogation, or whatever the behavior may be called, when in Part III, Section 1, Article 17 it declares "no physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion, may be initiated on prisoners of war to secure from them information of any kind whatsoever" (emphasis mine). Common Article 3 prohibits "cruel treatment and torture" and "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatments." In a rebuke to the Bush Administration, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that it applies to terrorism suspects.

The Army Field Manual, which proscribed "humiliating and degrading treatment" and other tactics from the Convention,

expressly prohibit(s) acts of violence or intimidation, icluding physicial or mental torture, threats, insults, exposure to inhume treatment as a means of or aid to interrogations....(such acts) are criminal acts punishable under the USMJ.

And though not directly addressing the legal issue, the Manual interestingly goes on to observe

Experience indicates that the use of prohibited techniques is not necessary to gain the cooperation of interrogation sources. Use of torture and other illegal methods is a poor technique that yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, and can induce the source to say what he thinks the interrogator wants to hear.

This manual, dating from 1992, apparently was superceded in 2005 by FM 2-22.3 Human Intelligence Collector Operations, which made some of those methods available for interrogation- but also notes "in contrast to the previous version of the manual, this edition states that the Geneva Conventions are to be applied to all detainees in US military facilities."

The United States Code Title 18,2340A demands

Whoever outside the United States commits or attempts to commit torture shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both, and if death results to any person from conduct prohibited by this subsection, shall be punished by death or imprisoned for any term of years or for life.

The alleged offender need only be a national of the U.S.A. or present in the U.S.A.

The United States Code Title 18.2441 in turn prescribes the penalty for a war crime, explains that the alleged offender can be either a member of the Armed Forces or a U.S. national, and asserts a war crime may include "a grave breach of common Article 3 (as defined in subsection (d)) when committed in the context of and in association with an armed conflict not of an international character." Among the "grave breaches" of Article 3 is

Torture.- The act.... specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering... upon another person.

According to United States criminal code, then, torture was committed by individuals subject to the law and is punishable by incarceration or, in the extreme, execution.

More comprehensive is the (United Nations) CONVENTION AGAINST TORTURE
and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. In Article 1, torture is defined as

any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity.

Article 2 specifies:

1. Each State Party shall take effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent acts of torture in any territory under its jurisdiction.
2. No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.
3. An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture.

Article 4 specifies:

1. Each State Party shall ensure that all acts of torture are offences under its criminal law. The same shall apply to an attempt to commit torture and to an act by any person which constitutes complicity or participation in torture.
3. Each State Party shall make these offences punishable by appropriate penalties which take into account their grave nature.

And Article 12:

Each State Party shall ensure that its competent authorities proceed to a prompt and impartial investigation, wherever there is reasonable ground to believe that an act of torture has been committed in any territory under its jurisdiction.

A neutral look at the United Nations Convention Against Torture, then, would convice an objective reader that our nation has committed torture and must take steps (as President Obama has) to prevent torture. Note also that the Convention precludes any rationale ("no exceptional circumstances whatsoever"), and extends the prohibition to anyone complicit in torture.

The U.N. Convention Against Torture has been codified in U.S. law by enactment by Congress under 2340-2340A. It thus, unequivocally, legally, applies to the United States.

The preceeding is not meant to minimize the importance of analyzing the efficacy or morality of torture. But we know that the behavior which has been committed: a) constitutes torture, according to the Geneva Convention, the Army Field Manual (even as adapted during the Bush 42 Administration), United States Code, and the United Nations Convention Against Torture; b) is required to be punished, according to the Army Field Manual, U.S. Code, and the U.N. Convention Against Torture; c) cannot, according to the Convention and made applicable to the nation by statute, be legally justified on the basis of circumstance.... or because of an order from "a superior officer or public authority"....or because the individual was merely complicit in, rather than having committed, the act.

The least demanded of a civilized nation is a "prompt and impartial investigation," as the Convention requires. Anything less constitutes a surrender of what should be our commitment to the rule of law and to being a nation of laws, not of men. And if a thorough, impartial investigation is frightening to Obamaphiles and appalling to conservatives, they can be comforted that the most inclusive and compelling document, the United Nations Convention Against Torture, was signed by the United States in 1988. By President Ronald Wilson Reagan.

Steele And GOP Priorities

First, it was over whether the three GOP senators who voted for the stimulus package might be denied campaign funds by the national party. On February 3, Michael Steele stated "Oh, yes, I'm always open to everything, baby, absolutely." The next day, he backtracked, saying "it's totally up to the state parties."

Then it was Rush Limbaugh. On March 1, Steele pointed out on the since-cancelled D.L. Hughley show on CNN, "Rush Limbaugh is an entertainer. His whole thing is entertainment. Yes, it's incendiary. Yes, it's ugly" (video below). After Limbaugh blasted him on his program two days later, Steele waited almost an hour to grovel (in a statement) "I respect Rush Limbaugh, he is a national conservative leader, and in no way do I want to diminish his voice....To the extent that my remarks helped the Democrats in Washington to take the focus, even for one minute, off of their irresponsible expansion of government, I truly apologize."

Then we learned that a few days earlier (March 24) in an interview with Lisa DePaulo of GQ Magazine, the head of the Republican National Committee argued of homosexuality that one cannot "turn it off and on like a water tap" and that he approved of such relationships up to marriage:

I have been, um, supportive of a lot of my friends who are gay in some of the core things that they believe are important to them. You know, the ability to be able to share in the information of your partner, to have the ability to—particularly in times of crisis—to manage their affairs and to help them through that as others—you know, as family members or others—would be able to do. I just draw the line at the gay marriage. And that’s not antigay, no. Heck no! It’s just that, you know, from my faith tradition and upbringing, I believe that marriage—that institution, the sanctity of it—is reserved for a man and a woman.

That same day, however, Steele assured syndicated conservative radio talk-show host Mike Gallagher that he finds civil unions as distasteful as gay marriage:

GALLAGHER: Is this a time when Republicans ought to consider some sort of alternative to redefining marriage and maybe in the road, down the road to civil unions. Do you favor civil unions?

STEELE: No, no no. What would we do that for? What are you, crazy? No. Why would we backslide on a core, founding value of this country? I mean this isn't something that you just kind of like, "Oh well, today I feel, you know, loosey-goosey on marriage." [...]

GALLAGHER: So no room even for a conversation about civil unions in your mind?

STEELE: What's the difference?

In the same interview with GQ, Mr. Steele, asked whether he believes "women have the right to choose an abortion," responded "Yeah. I mean, again, I think that’s an individual choice." Promptly recognizing a tactical error, Steele issued a statment which included "I am pro-life, always have been, always will be.... In my view Roe vs. Wade was wrongly decided and should be repealed."

If the chairman of the Republican National Committee seems a little confused, it's with good reason. On Hardball on March 13, the usually insightful Eugene Robinson remarked "I think fundamentally he‘s a moderate Republican. And those are the views that he is expressing. But he doesn‘t have a moderate party that he‘s supposed to lead. It‘s a very conservative party."

But here Robinson, and others who also suspect that Steele made his initial, later retracted or "clarified," remarked because he is a "moderate Republican," are wrong. When a Repub suggests a liberal or moderate position on abortion or gay rights (apparently, gun control and some other cultural issues are completely off limits), he or she is exalted in the mainstream media as a "moderate."

Whether Steele actually is a "moderate" is difficult to detemine. What is clear, however, is that he is a man without firm attachment to any view on policy- someone far more opportunistic than principled. Michael Steele has veered from GOP orthodoxy on support for experienced incumbents, gay rights and abortion, and attacked powerful Republican Rush Limbaugh. But as of this writing, he is still chairman of the party. Suppose, instead, Steele had made comments similar to these rather obvious and moderate comments:

- Congress should give due consideration to passing the Employee Free Choice Act because it would lead to higher wages, which have been stagnating in our country;
- The rush to deregulate the financial market helped spur the economic crisis we have today;
- Greed in the private sector has contributed significantly to our economic collapse;
- The Social Security system is relatively stable and the party should attempt to strengthen it rather than weaken it with a privatization scheme, reducing benefits, or increasing the retirement age;
- Given the increasing debt caused by the stimulus package, increasing taxes modestly on the wealthy is reasonable.

If he had made any of these statements- with or without retraction or apology- instead of those he did make,M Michael Steele would be out of his position as chairman of the Republican National Committee. Not today. Yesterday.

The Apology Issue- Ferraro And Iraq

One of the most interesting comments, I think, about the controversial statements of former U.S. Representative and now-former Clinton finance committee member Geraldine Ferraro came tonight, March 12, 2008, from Chicago Tribune columnist and MSNBC political analyst Eugene Robinson. Robinson, recognizing in the wake of Ferraro's resignation that Mrs. Clinton had criticized the comment(s) but not dismissed Ferraro, noted "I guess the Clinton campaign has decided that apologies are for wimps."

That it has. And in so doing, this controversy is analogous to that over Senator Clinton's vote for the Iraq war resolution in 2002. The following exchange took place toward the end of the Obama-Clinton debate on February 26. 2008 at Cleveland State University:

RUSSERT: Before you go, each of you have talked about your
careers in public service. Looking back through them, is there any
words or vote that you'd like to take back?

Senator Clinton?

CLINTON: Well, obviously, I've said many times that, although my vote on the 2002 authorization regarding Iraq was a sincere vote, I would not have voted that way again.

(a few moments later)

RUSSERT: But to be clear, you'd like to have your vote back?

CLINTON: Absolutely. I've said that many times.

But surely she had not said that many times. It was the first time that Hillary Clinton had acknowledged that she should have voted against, rather than for, the resolution. Still, even at this time she did not apologize for her vote and, in fact, if it was a sincere vote, any regret would not appropriately take the form of an apology. And I think that she has calculated all through this campaign that the American people would interpret an apology, and generally interprets apologies, as for "wimps." She is right- except, of course, that she did not realize that she might not even get through the nominating process, where Democratic voters look more kindly than the electorate at large on acknowledgement, even apologies, for serious mistakes.

Some reflections on comments made by MSNBC (on their bi-weekly Super Tuesday) pertaining to the July 20, 2007 Democratic debate at the Citadel:

Charlie Cook of Cook Political Report said that it's easy to overrate the importance of any of these debates, that one way of viewing a debate is whether it upset the order of the race. It did not, as he pointed out. And as to the importance of the debates: the most searing memory I have of the GOP debates thus far is Senator McCain, more than once, forcefully defending the war in Iraq. He's wrong on the issue, of course, but he appeared confident, committed, and principled. And he has sunk like a rock.

Patrick Buchanan argued that the fellow from Michigan who brandished his rifle and referred to it as his "baby" represented real Americans that Democrats have to appeal to. No, Pat. Democrats have to appeal to gun owners and to those NRA members (not synonymous)for whom gun control is not their primary concern. But most of these would refer to a gun as their "baby," and they will not vote Democratic anyway. For the vast majority of Americans, some other issue such as national security, fear of terrorism, high taxation, immigration/illegal immigration, mediocre education, inadequate health care, or Social Security ranks higher. If registering your weapon, or not being able to obtain one if you're mentally ill (well, in some states), is your primary concern in life, you either should be congratulated for living a blessed, secure and sheltered life- or you're a criminal.

Host for the hour Andrea Mitchell and journalist Eugene Robinson agreed that John Edwards should not have criticized Hillary Clinton's jacket when, toward the end of the debate, each candidate was asked to say something he/she liked and disliked about the candidate to his/her left. They disapproved of a male candidate being negative about the clothing as, Mitchell put it, the only female candidate. But the former North Carolina Senator was obviously merely trying not to take too seriously a question which should not have been taken seriously. (In fact, Joe Biden would term it a "ridiculous exercise.") And Edwards was not asked to comment on anyone else. We may be on the verge of "making history" (as Senator Clinton and her supporters are not shy in emphasizing), but we still must be condescending toward women, treating them differently, more deferentially, than men. Or at least that's the way Andrea Mitchell and some who consider others to be sexist would have it.