And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake! – Sir Thomas More, A Man For All Seasons

There has been no shortage of writing about the video that Liz Cheney’s Keep America Safe group produced that criticizes Department of Justice lawyers for representing the “Al Qaeda 7″. I’m not convinced that I’m qualified to offer anything more of value on the specifics that have come out surrounding the not subtle charges of impropriety, failure of loyalty towards country in time of war, all the way to jihadist sympathies, so I won’t be trying. But the whole affair speaks to some of the deeper concerns with which I’ve been wrestling of late.

Not surprisingly, everyone’s favourite NRO zealot Andy McCarthy has added his two cents to the discussion, which has kicked up a brand new cloud of dust into which various parties have charged, blades drawn,

Here is the legal profession’s message for the American people: “We’re just more important than you are.” Members of any other profession or institution would be indicted for coming to the enemy’s aid during wartime. Lawyers not only demand immunity from the ordinary duties of citizenship, but they insist that you admire them, or, at the very least, regard them as above criticism for volunteering their services to those trying to kill Americans.

Orin Kerr at The Volokh Conspiracy seems to have penned the gold standard in response to McCarthy noting,

Finally, McCarthy strangely overlooks the basic fact that much of the litigation for the Guantanamo detainees concerns whether they are in fact the enemy. McCarthy presupposes that we all know that all the folks at Gitmo are terrorists, and the only issue is whether we feel like helping them knowing that it hurts America. But like the soldiers at the Boston Massacre, and like other criminal defendants, the Guantanamo detainees are “the accused.”

At True/Slant, Conor Friedersdorf dug out the real life case that makes Kerr’s final point,

Thus Mr. al-Rabiah. It isn’t just that he was an innocent man thrown into Gitmo, or that he was held even after a CIA analyst concluded that he was innocent, or that National Security Council Staffers were aware of his innocence and actively trying to bring about a review of his detention — Mr. al-Rabiah’s case is apt because after the CIA’s 2002 determination of his innocence, he spent another seven years wrongly imprisoned, regaining his freedom and seeing his children only after retaining the help of American attorneys.

Finally, Kevin Drum notes both Kerr and Friedersdorf’s objections to the Cheney/McCarthy line of reasoning and adds,

The Andy McCarthys of the world endlessly lecture us about how this war is different because it’s fought on one side by non-uniformed terrorists. And there’s some truth to that. It is different. But one of the ways it’s different is that it’s not always simple to know who’s a real enemy combatant and who’s not. And if that decision is left entirely up to the executive branch, you’re practically begging for the same kinds of abuses that you get if you let the executive branch operate without oversight in any other area. Thus, lawyers and judges have a role to play. They aren’t aiding the enemy during wartime, they’re trying to figure out who the enemy really is. Even Andy McCarthy ought to be interested in that.

I agree that Kerr’s point about utilizing the judiciary system to determine who, precisely, constitutes an enemy combatant and who does not is a vital point. But an equally vital point, at least to my mind, is summed by another portion of Kerr’s retaliation wherein he revisits the John Adams analogy that has been floating about (emphasis mine),

When Adams agreed to represent the English soldiers, he was not fulfilling some sort of obligation: No one had to represent the Englishmen. Adams acted — and was criticized then, but celebrated now, for it — because he agreed to represent the soldiers out of a personal conviction that no person should face a trial without counsel.

This is, I think, a point that hasn’t gotten enough attention and strikes, at least by my lights, to the much more central core of what is so disturbing about McCarthy and Cheney’s line of thought.

[Read more →]

Update: Commenter zic points me to this Brad DeLong post containing the C-SPAN coverage of Obama engaging Q&A with the House Republican Conference in Baltimore. Indeed, this event has been getting rave reviews for Obama and rightly so. This might just be what Obama ready to rumble but in his own way looks like.

As Marc Ambinder reports over at the Atlantic Politics Chanel,

The moment President Obama began his address to Republicans in Baltimore today, I began to receive e-mails from Democrats: Here’s an except from one of them: “I don’t know whether to laugh or cry that it took a f$$@&$* year for Obama to step into the ring and start throwing some verbal blows… I’m definitely praying at mass on Sunday morning that this Obama doesn’t take another 12 month vacation.”

This e-mail comes from a very influential Democrat.

Let me just add that as much as I like seeing this showing from Obama, what I would really like to see is him do the same thing with his own Blue Dog/Reagan Democrat Caucus.

It was watching the healthcare reform debate and Obama’s lack of presence in it that really started me worrying about the administration. And while I will whole-heartedly agree that Republican obstrucionism didn’t help having a healthy debate and legislative process, it was really a pocket full of Democrats who, to my mind, tarnished the procees and weighed it down to the sinking point.

Republicans need to have some of the assumptions challenged in a vigorous way, for sure (and vice versa as the President noted). But Democrats also need to have an out in the open and up front debate about the philosophical differences and challenges facing the Party. And perhaps Obama could be the right person to initiate that process — someone has to.

It seems that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has had second thoughts on the idea of holding the KSM trial in Lower Manhattan with the help of some heavy-weight lobbying and has successfully petitioned the White House to look at moving the trial,

“It would be an inconvenience at the least, and probably that’s too mild a word for people that live in the neighborhood and businesses in the neighborhood,” Bloomberg told reporters.
“There are places that would be less expensive for the taxpayers and less disruptive for New York City.”

Obviously you can’t go ahead with an extraordinarily high profile trial in a location where the once supportive Mayor is now arguing in opposition along side a sizeable chunk of the business community, so this move makes a lot of sense. I had previously expressed my own skepticism about the likely outcome of symbolically holding the trial in New York. I think that skepticism is only more applicable now. If the SOTU and responses to it showed us anything, it is, I think, that people are generally disenchanted with the notion of doing things in a symbolic fashion and are looking for concrete and specific action to get things done.

Nose to the grind stone is the order of the day for the foreseeable future.

Noting Bruce Bartlett’s recent Forbes article on Obama v. Reagan, Kevin Drum talks about what he sees as Obama’s big blind spot,

I’m a fan of Obama’s, but this has always been his big blind spot. He came to office convinced — sincerely, it seems — that he could change the tone of Washington DC. That was always a fantasy. The way to get things done is to make a case for them, build public support for them, blast your enemies for opposing them, and just generally fight like hell for them. It can be done with a smile, but it has to be done. Obama seems to have a hard time getting that.

That is, in my estimation, exactly right. I have been mounting an increasing pile of “Obama, you suck” posts, or at least they could seem to read that way. That is not how they are intended. People I admire the most tend to come in for the sharpest criticism (see: Andrew Sullivan) precisely because of how much I admire them and how much I consaciously and explicitly raise expectations for them.

I’m disappointed in Obama of late, but I too remain a fan. I think that if the President isn’t prodded on shortcomings by his supporters — preferably those who were capable of voting for him — then it is unlikely that he is going to address and overcome those deficiencies. I’m not totally convinced that chanigng the tone of Washington was a fantasy, pace Kevin, but I do think that there needs to be a recknoning about what the practice of politics is and how one wants to go about doing it. Politics is a fight, on that front I’m with Kevin. But how one goes about fighting remains a decision facing the individual participants.

Obama wasn’t handed the Democratic nomination, he had to fight tooth and nail for it — and he did so in what seemed to be his own way, in a fashion that was different and that inspired people and seemed to set a different tone. It just doesn’t feel like Obama is willing to apply that lesson to an in-office context. Or maybe he’s still figuring out what that means, I don’t know.

At the end of the day, though, the practice of politics is what it is and it is Obama’s choice to find a way of engaging that practice in a fashion that strikes a pose of integrity and intelligence with which he is comfortable (“with a smile” as Kevin suggests). But the tone of Washington is going to be changed by the act of engaging in the practice that goes on there, not by virtue of simply showing up and recoiling in horror.

I remain fascinated by the idea of the political process pace Obama, but part of my doubts also revolve around the idea that, congentially speaking, I’m waiting for something that isn’t coming. If it isn’t in Obama to be the guy who gets down in the trenches, but finds a way of doing so that changes the way the trenches work, then it seems kind of silly to continue pointing out ways he might do so.

And on that note, the President deserves praise for the DADT announcement, even though there are some who would suggest it comes too late. I also think that the idea of taking monies repaid by the banks to create loand for small businesses and increase liquidity for Main Street was a great feature of the SOTU. I’m also heartened to see Obama seeming to get tough on the banks themselves in terms of modest repayment fees despite (because of?) the wailing from Wall Street. The market dropped after the announcement of the Volker-rule… shocking. It’ll rebound, trust me. Meanwhile, average indivisuals deserve some indication that they aren’t the only ones paying for past indiscretions.

And speaking of the SOTU, you should check our Dan Summers’ own parsing of Obama’s speech at Bleakonomy.

Kyle at Voegue Republic looks at Lawrence Lessig’s response to Glenn Greenwald on Citizens United and offers his own thorughts.

And Ken at Popehate talks about censorship and Anne Frank’s.. well, just go read it for yourself.

For those of you observing/participating in the “Pass The Damn Bill” movement there is now a Facebook group you can join that was apparently inspired by Kevin Drum’s posts on the matter — a fact that, after this past Saturday’s rallies here in Canada which were themselves largely initiated by a Facebook group (and about which I’ll blog when I’m not clearing a 48 hour migraine at work), I am much less cynical about posting on.

There are a few bloggers who have become household names in the blogosphere over the years: Andrew Sullivan, Glenn Reynolds, Matt Drudge, Markos Moulitsas, Mickey Kaus. Over the past two weeks, I’ve had the opportunity to exchange emails with a blogger of the same ilk who’s been around and writing since the very early days of the medium and has seen blogging evolve and change a great deal in that time: Kevin Drum.

Drum began blogging independently back in 2002, was then picked up by the Washington Monthly, and eventually found his current home at Mother Jones. A respected liberal blogger, Drum is considered by many to be a go to person for an insightful, intelligent, and grounded take on a host of issues. [Read more →]

Back in late July, Kevin Drum had a smart post up talking about the process behind successfully driving legislative initiatives like health care reform that dovetails in some fashion with Mark’s post about Democrats losing control of the debate,

But underneath that, it’s all about how it’s sold.  Everything has to have a constituency if it’s going to get passed.  For ag subsidies it’s farmers.  For lax financial regulation, it’s banks.  For tax cuts it’s rich people.

For healthcare it’s…..I dunno.  Who?  But that’s the point.  Everyone has been so hung up on congressional process that they seem to have forgotten that Congress responds to the public.  If constituents are mad as hell that their healthcare isn’t as good as France’s, they’ll flood congressional offices with phone calls.  But if they think America has the best healthcare in the world, while the rest of the world is a socialist dystopia of ramshackle hospitals, yearlong waits for hip replacements, and harried doctors who can’t see you for months and treat you like a postal customer when you finally get in — well, who’s going to get pissed off about the occasional scuffle with their insurance company?  And if the public isn’t worked up, then Congress won’t get worked up either.

This has always been about public opinion.  Everything is about public opinion.  It’s about public opinion being strong enough to overcome the resistance of whatever corporate interests are on the other side.  For some reason, though, liberals don’t seem to get that anymore, and because of that we don’t spend enough time on either side of the basic vox populi equation: (a) hammering home why individuals, personally, should be unhappy with the status quo, and (b) promising them, personally, lots of cool new stuff if they buy into change.

You don’t have to lie to accomplish this.  But you do have to sell, the same way any salesman anywhere sells stuff.

Certainly Kevin’s formula has accurately predicted the state of the health care debate. It is Republicans and (some) conservatives who have gotten their base riled up and have; therefore, come to take control over the contours of the debate. And insofar as Kevin’s analysis is descriptive, I think he makes a lot of sense.

But I think that said analysis also contains within it many of the explanations about why it seems to many people as though the health care debate has gone so far off the tracks. [Read more →]

Matt Yglesias points us to this chart, which is depressing enough on its own:

Then, both he and Kevin Drum, go on to point out that job losses are likely going to be long-term.

Drum writes:

I don’t want to push this theme too far because I haven’t yet done the work to really get a reliable sense of what’s going on.  But I wonder, when this recession is finally over, if we’re going to find ourselves in a European-esque mode with a large and growing population that’s almost continually unemployed or, at best, underemployed.

I posed this question to some friends the other night over beers: If immigration restrictions between the U.S. and the E.U. were lifted entirely, what would happen? [Read more →]