Wingnut Evolution

Interesting to watch things evolve. For example, a week ago I noted that since the distinction between wingnuts and repuglicans had vanished, that I would use the two words interchangeably. As of today, I'm adding "torture enabler" to the list. Because, clearly, they have made a general decision to align themselves with torturers.

Isn't evolution grand? One thing we learn from evolution is that animals and plants that become to specialized are especially prone to extinction.

Hmmmm.

digby: Go Al

When a flat earth Republican moron tried to refute Gore's assertion today that the scientific consensus supports global warming by pointing to the handful of scientific oddballs the Republicans dredged up to testify that it doesn't exist, Al blandly replied:

"There are people who still believe that the moon landing was staged on a movie lot in Arizona.”

One of the greatest achievements in modern politics is the PoMo "he said/she said" competing narratives perfected by the right, particularly when it comes to science. It comes from their big business owners after the consumer revolution, which learned early on to use this method in litigation. Now it's metastasized throughout the body politic.

Good for Gore for dismissing this nonsense.

Here Al takes Texas' fool Barton apart. (h/t sgw)





Josh: I'm So Proud It seems that the Republicans have brought forth Newt Gringrich as their counter-expert to Al Gore in today's committee hearing. He's now explaining how people don't really understand what's happening with the polar ice cap. Proud moment for America.

Sully: From The Cocoon

James Taranto who fully backed a president who claimed the right to suspend the First and Fourth Amendments, habeas corpus, the Geneva Conventions and domestic law against torture, and who seized an American citizen without charges on American soil and tortured him, now offers his view as to the small possibility of prosecuting the perpetrators of war crimes. Drum roll, please:

What Obama is offhandedly contemplating, then, amounts to a step toward authoritarian government.

No, you couldn't make this up.

Sully: Malkin Award Nominee

"For those most committed to the ridiculous crusade for terrorist rights, ‘enhanced interrogation’ is not only immoral and illegal, it’s ineffective. That argument, like Khalid Sheik Mohamed, doesn’t hold water,” - Michael Goldfarb, Weekly Standard.

Anonymous Liberal: Maybe It's Time to Reread Orwell

Over at The Corner, Cliff May offers another bureaucratic defense of the Bush administration's torture program:

Under a strict set of rules, every pour of water had to be counted — and the number of pours was limited.

Also: Waterboarding interrogation sessions were permitted on no more than five days within any 30-day period.

No more than two sessions were permitted in any 24-hour period.

A session could last no longer than two hours.

There could be at most six pours of water lasting ten seconds or longer — and never longer than 40 seconds — during any individual session.

Water could be poured on a subject for a combined total of no more than 12 minutes during any 24 hour period.

You do the math.

Actually, I think I'll let Marcy do the math. May then concludes:

I [don't] see how — except in an Orwellian universe — lawyers from the current administration can prosecute lawyers from the previous administration because they disagree with their legal opinions.

Yeah, that's the Orwellian universe. Not the place where lawyers draft "legal opinions" dictating exactly how many hours per day we can subject prisoners to simulated drowning or what kind of insects we can lock them in a tiny box with. Has May ever actually read Orwell? It might be time to reread 1984.

Is it possible to be less self-aware? What's the matter with these people?

Sully: Walking And Chewing Gum

John Judis doesn't have time to enforce the rule of law:

I have a nagging worry that the eagerness of some Democrats in Congress and some activist organizations to press for what would be months and even years of inquiries and investigations into Bush-era war crimes is due in part to an eagerness to divert themselves, and us, from the seemingly insoluble problems we face in the present, which require every minute of attention from the White House and Congress. The past can wait.

The rule of law is never a past issue. It is always present. But I see no reason why a mature democracy cannot both investigate its own failures while addressing its current problems.

Benen: REMEMBER FEBRUARY 2001?...

As part of their "Banana Republic" attacks, Republicans have argued that it's wrong to investigate a presidential administration after it's over. John McCain said, "In Banana Republics they prosecute people for actions they didn't agree with under previous administrations." Kit Bond said, "This whole thing about punishing people in past administrations reminds me more of a Banana Republic than the United States of America. We don't criminally prosecute people we disagree with when we change office."

And Karl Rove, of course, said it would be "very dangerous" to see one administration "threaten prosecutions against the previous administration, based on policy differences."

As we've talked about this week, this is ridiculous for any number of reasons, but Sam Stein notes the hypocrisy -- by pointing to February 2001.

In the early months of 2001, as the Bush administration was publicly urging people to "look forward," Republicans in Congress were consumed by two decidedly backward-looking investigations. The most prominent of these was the controversial pardon of [Marc] Rich, the fugitive financier whose ex-wife had donated heavily to Democratic causes.

This is "outrageous," said then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.), who called for a congressional investigation. "We should at least take a look at what happened and ask ourselves, should we take some action to try to prevent abuses that do occur?"

"Congress has an obligation to find out if this was appropriate," said House Government Reform Committee Chair Dan Burton (R-IN) on January 26. "[My] panel will obtain 'subpoenas if necessary'"

"It needs to be investigated," said then New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani. "I think it is worthy of investigation. The facts cry out for an answer to be given for why is it that this man was pardoned. Because the pardon process is an important thing. ... Until we get the answers to this question, that whole process is put in some jeopardy of being misunderstood by the public."

"While the president alone possesses the power to pardon," said Sen. Mitch McConnell. "it's important to remember that he is not personally exempt from federal laws that prohibit the corrupt actions of all government officials."

And that was just the Marc Rich issue. In 2001, Congress also demanded and received a lengthy investigation into White House "vandalism" caused by Clinton staffers, which ended up lasting nearly nine months.

Now, I suspect the response to this from Republicans is that this was different. The Rich pardon and alleged "vandalism" might have involved high-ranking White House officials engaging in illegal acts. Under those circumstances, GOP lawmakers in 2001 had no choice but to investigate and uphold the law.

Do you suppose it would matter to these same Republican lawmakers that torture is illegal? And systematic abuse is at least as serious a controversial presidential pardon?

• Kurtz (TPM) Past as Predicate
  

  More on torture, from TPM Reader PB:

  I think something else tends to get lost in the current arguments about torture. The whole issue has been framed as "moving forward" and looking to the future (good) versus doling out "retribution" and dwelling on the past (bad). This is not merely the Republican framing of the issue, as Obama and many Democrats seem to have accepted this framework.

  But this framing is entirely wrong. A better way to look at is that we can either choose to do something about the fact people were tortured by the United States government, or we can choose to ignore it. Either outcome will have a profound effect on what happens in this country "moving forward."

  Choosing to ignore profound and systematic violations of international law creates a bad precedent that can (and no doubt will) be followed by future administrations. The current administration might be inclined to have a "no torture" policy, but the next one might think more like the Bush Administration. What expectation would members of future administrations have of being prosecuted for violating the law if we don't hold the past one accountable?

  In many ways the decision to "move forward" and pardon Nixon set the stage for Iran-Contra and the Bush administration's myriad law breaking. What future horrors will ignoring the fact that the Bush administration codified torture as a "legal" interrogation technique set the stage for? This is not a can that can be kicked down the road because we have other problems we have to deal with. But no matter what we do now, this is about what might happen in the future as much as it is about what did happen in the past.

Proving that not all wingers are raving lunatics, John Cole offers: Choking On the Ashes of Her Enemy

A perceptive piece by Daniel Larison (via his blog):

Critics have been belittling President Obama’s recent visit with Latin American leaders as a “contrition” and “apology” tour. But a more accurate tag would be “accountability” tour, and it’s long overdue.

***

What is interesting about Obama’s non-confrontational approach to both leaders is that it suggests Obama has learned not to feed the proverbial trolls. On the one hand, Obama has shown a willingness to engage hostile or critical foreign leaders in discussion. But he has also shown no desire to participate in international polemics, perhaps because he has come to see that the U.S. gains nothing from such confrontations. Better still, by largely ignoring the rantings of anti-American zealots, Obama may be able to split persuadable critics of America from those who are reflexively and genuinely anti-American. In an amusing irony, Obama, who is often accused of being an insubstantial rhetorician, has refrained from the long-winded, idealistic bluster on the international stage that his predecessor frequently indulged in. And it may already be paying dividends.

Well worth a read.

Kos: Questions to that half of Texas' Republicans

So we now know that half of Texas' Republicans want to secede from the United States. So I have some questions for that crowd:

• Are you flying an American flag? Because you don't get to do that when you cry and take your ball home.
• Do you have a bumper sticker that says, "These colors don't run"? Because it sure looks like you're running.
• Do you still pretend that your party is the "Party of Lincoln"? If so, what part of Lincoln exactly, would that be?
• Since you've spent the last eight years saying "America, love it or leave it", is that an admission that you don't love America? Because we liberals? We loved it and stayed, even when your idiot of a president was trashing the place.
• Was your patriotism (My country, right or wrong) so skin-deep, that it depended 100 percent on the guy in the White House?
• That $200 billion Texas got in defense contracts between 2000 and 2007? No more of that. No more Ft. Hood. No more NASA. No more federal largesse. You okay with that?
• You do realize that the Cowboys will no longer be "America's Team", right? Though they'd dominate the two-team Texas Football League (TFL).

Think Progress: Bachmann: CO2 ‘is a natural byproduct of nature.’

On the House floor on Earth Day, April 22, 2009, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) argued that threat of manmade global warming doesn't make any sense because "carbon dioxide is a natural byproduct of nature":

Carbon dioxide, Mister Speaker, is a natural byproduct of nature. Carbon dioxide is natural. It occurs in Earth. It is a part of the regular lifecycle of Earth. In fact, life on planet Earth can't even exist without carbon dioxide. So necessary is it to human life, to animal life, to plant life, to the oceans, to the vegetation that's on the Earth, to the, to the fowl that -- that flies in the air, we need to have carbon dioxide as part of the fundamental lifecycle of Earth.

Watch it:

Rep. Blumenauer (D-OR), later in the evening, demolished Bachmann for "making things up on the floor of the House."