Wingnuts: absolutely stark raving mad Edition

QOTD1, friend of Bybee: “I’ve heard him express regret that the memo was misused.”

Response of the Day, Tim F. Memo To Jay Bybee: We Don’t Remember George Wallace For Recanting :

Every interrogator in the US government looked to Bybee’s memo for guidance on what they could and couldn’t do to helpless prisoners. It is not clear how such a document could be misused. If the US grabbed an innocent muslim off the street, locked him in a box with spiders, starved him, froze him, beat his head against walls, shackled him to the ceiling and left him standing for more than a week without sleep then Bybee’s little note would serve exactly the purpose for which it was written.

Nobody with the brains to earn a law degree* could possibly believe that a binding legal opinion authorizing torture by government interrogators would not lead to torture by government interrogators.

...

If Jay Bybee regrets what he authorized then he can cooperate with the investigations to come. Until then I will cry a little tear for how uncomfortable he must feel at cocktail parties. I bet it feels like torture.

Benen: BYBEE'S 'REGRET'...

Unlike the other Bush administration officials who provided the justification for torture policies, Jay Bybee currently enjoys a lifetime appointment on a federal appeals court. The nomination was an insult, his confirmation was absurd, and as amn NYT recently noted, "These memos make it clear that Mr. Bybee is unfit for a job that requires legal judgment and a respect for the Constitution. Congress should impeach him."

As the jurist comes under closer scrutiny, Bybee's friends want the political world to know that the poor guy just feels awful about the whole mess. The Washington Post was kind enough to publish a lengthy piece today on Bybee's "regret."

"I've heard him express regret at the contents of the memo," said a fellow legal scholar and longtime friend, who spoke on the condition of anonymity while offering remarks that might appear as "piling on." "I've heard him express regret that the memo was misused. I've heard him express regret at the lack of context -- of the enormous pressure and the enormous time pressure that he was under. And anyone would have regrets simply because of the notoriety."

This probably isn't the right way to pushback against the criticism. The usual line from Bush administration officials is that the torture really was legally justified, and really did save lives. They're wrong, of course, but that's not really the point. For conservatives, there's nothing to "regret" at all. Indeed, the torture is to be applauded. Bybee, for the right, is a "hero."

But if Bybee feels bad about all of this, it suggests maybe the infamous Bybee Memo was a mistake. If he's filled with regret, maybe he realizes his legal guidance was wrong. Indeed, Bybee's anonymous friend said the torture memo "got away from him," and ended up in a place Bybee "never intended." Another source said Bybee "was not pleased" with the memo that bore his name.

I'd find it a lot easier to believe this if Bybee were to say something publicly, and perhaps explain his conduct.

The Post piece added that Bybee didn't even want to work in the OLC in the first place.

Bybee's friends said he never sought the job at the Office of Legal Counsel. The reason he went back to Washington, [Randall] Guynn said, was to interview with then-White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales for a slot that would be opening on the 9th Circuit when a judge retired. The opening was not yet there, however, so Gonzales asked, "Would you be willing to take a position at the OLC first?" Guynn said.

Being unable to answer for what followed is "very frustrating," said Guynn, who spoke to Bybee before agreeing to be interviewed.

But that's hardly helpful. As Adam Serwer explained, "So Bybee knew he was breaking the law in allowing the use of torture, but you have to understand, he only did it because he really wanted to be a federal judge."

Yglesias: Grassroots Activists Pushing GOP to the Right

There’s been a lot of talk lately about the Republican Party moderating its message, especially on social issues, but Ben Smith and Jonathan Martin points out that among the party’s grassroots the only appetite is for change in the other direction:

But outside Washington, the reality is very different. Rank-and-file Republicans remain, by all indications, staunchly conservative, and they appear to have no desire to moderate their views. GOP activists and operatives say they hear intense anger at the White House and at the party’s own leaders on familiar issues – taxes, homosexuality, and immigration. Within the party, conservative groups have grown stronger absent the emergence of any organized moderate faction.

There is little appetite for compromise on what many see as core issues, and the road to the presidential nomination lies – as always – through a series of states where the conservative base holds sway, and where the anger appears to be, if anything, particularly intense.

Meanwhile, the latest Washington Post poll gives little indication that this is about to work:

I think you have to be sympathetic to grassroots conservatives who don’t like hearing from Steve Schmitt and Megan McCain and others that the right should give way on gay marriage, at a time when the correct, pro-equality position is still sufficiently unpopular that most leading Democrats won’t adopt it. But in general if you don’t moderate on anything, then you’re basically leaving the fate of the Republican Party entirely in Barack Obama’s hands. If he screws up in an utterly spectacular way (see Bush, George W.) then there’s no telling what kind of agenda can win. But if not, then this’ll let Democrats win by default.

Aravosis: Teabagger arrested for threatening to turn the Oklahoma City capitol steps into a bloodbath

A number of us have been saying for a while now that the Republicans' extremist, anti-American rhetoric was going to push someone to violence. And it almost just did. From WIRED:

Daniel Knight Hayden, 52, was arrested by FBI agents who identified him as the Twitter user CitizenQuasar. In a series of tweets beginning April 11, CitizenQuasar vowed to start a "war" against the government on the steps of the Oklahoma City Capitol building, the site of that city's version of the national "Tea Party" protests promoted by the conservative-leaning Fox News.

"START THE KILLING NOW! I am willing to be the FIRST DEATH!," read a tweet at 8:01 PM that day. "After I am killed on the Capitol Steps, like a REAL man, the rest of you will REMEMBER ME!!!," he added five minutes later. Then: "Send the cops around. I will cut their heads off the heads and throw the[m] on the State Capitol steps."

Hayden's MySpace page is a breathtaking gallery of right wing memes about the "New World Order," gun control as Nazi fascism, and Barack Obama's covert use of television hypnosis, among many others.

Wow, you mean a potential domestic terrorist was associated with gun issues. Funny, but that's exactly what the Homeland Security report said - the one the Republicans and the religious right wanted us to ignore.

Think Progress: Secessionist Gov. Rick Perry asks for federal help to deal with swine flu.

Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX), who was last making headlines for suggesting that Texas may consider seceding from the Union, is requesting help from the federal government to deal with a possible swine flu pandemic:

Gov. Rick Perry today in a precautionary measure requested the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) provide 37,430 courses of antiviral medications from the Strategic National Stockpile to Texas to prevent the spread of swine flu. Currently, three cases of swine flu have been confirmed in Texas.

According to a recent DailyKos/Research 2000 poll, "37% of Texans and 51% of Lone Star Republicans agree with Gov. Rick Perry’s recent suggestion that Texas may need to leave the United States. ... Imagine the outcries of patriotism (or lack thereof) if Massachusetts or New York hinted at secession during the Bush years," writes NBC's Mark Murray. And imagine how Texas would deal with the swine flu without federal assistance.

Anonymous Liberal: A Banana Republic

The talking point de jour among Republicans is that only in a banana republic would an administration investigate and prosecute the conduct of a prior administration (even if that conduct includes war crimes!). Just so I have this straight, though, I want make a list of what banana republics do and don't do:

Banana republics do:

-investigate and prosecute potential war crimes committed by a prior administration.

Banana republics do not:

-capture people from all over the world and put them in secret blacksite prisons for the purposes of torturing them

-capture their own citizens off the street and hold them incommunicado for years on end without filing any charges against them

-instruct their government lawyers to draft eleborate legal opinions detailing how many hours per day they can subject people to simulated drowning or lock them in a tiny box with insects

-set up kangaroo tribunal systems for trying alleged terrorists in which the defendants are not allowed to see the evidence against them and coerced confessions are admissible

-authorize secret warrantless surveillance programs that violates longstanding criminal laws

-use trumped up intelligence (including statements obtained via torture) to justify unprovoked military invasions of another country

Good to know.

JedL: Another loony Republican threat from Texas

Texas Republican Congressman John Culberson apparently hasn’t read the U.S. Constitution, because he thinks Texas can split into five separate states whenever it wants, changing the political balance in the U.S. Senate "overnight."

The First Amendment may guarantee Culberson the right to say whatever he pleases, but Article IV, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution pretty much negates every aspect of his loony threat:

New states may be admitted by the Congress into this union; but no new states shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other state; nor any state be formed by the junction of two or more states, or parts of states, without the consent of the legislatures of the states concerned as well as of the Congress.

So unless Culberson somehow thinks that Texas is above the U.S. Constitution (which he probably does), then he’s spouting nonsense on the level of Rick Perry.

:::

Partial transcript of Culberson’s remarks:

CULBERSON: As you and I mentioned once before when I saw you at Ford’s Theater, Texas reserved the right to split into as many as five states. Now, no Texan wants to see Texas divide up into smaller states. But Chris, we are — we could, if Texas chose to do so, add six new rock-ribbed conservative Senators to the Senate overnight by dividing into five states.

Benen: THE GIFT THAT KEEPS ON GIVING....

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) probably has reason to feel a little sensitive. She's called for her supporters to be "armed and dangerous." She's also talked publicly about the need for conservatives to "rise up" as part of a "revolution" against the elected leadership of the United States. Indeed, she's even rationalized this kind of talk by suggesting that the president intends to create a Marxist dictatorship, do away with American currency, and send children to re-education camps.

So, when the Department of Homeland Security reports to law-enforcement officials about potentially-violent radicals on the fringes of American society, Rep. Bachmann might be inclined to think, "Wait, they're talking about me!"

With this in mind, I found it rather ... what's the word ... amusing when Bachmann took to the floor of the House this week to ask whether Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has gone "absolutely stark raving mad."

Seriously, sometimes these clowns make it a little too easy.

Bachmann then jumped into the paranoid waters, head first. "What's going to happen now?" she asked. "Will the federal government start IDing returning veterans? Start IDing gun owners? Start IDing prolifers -- and then pull us out of the line for special searches at the airports before we're allowed to get on the plane because we could be considered a rightwing domestic terrorist while we would see Osama bin Laden and his friends skate by because they're not...?"

I also loved this line: "It is intriguing to me, we have a report now that says ... 80 percent of the American people would be classified as 'right-wing extremists' under this report. Couple that with a statement made by President Obama during the campaign that we need to have a federal police force the size of the military. Add it up."

"Add it up," as in, there's a conspiracy afoot that Bachmann sees and the rest of us don't. Indeed, in the next breath, Bachmann added that it's "no wonder" people are stockpiling weapons and ammunition, since they see "the handwriting on the wall," and need to be prepared for the Obama administration, which is "looking at weapon bans."

Remember, she thinks others have gone "absolutely stark raving mad."

Benen: THE CREW NOTICED...

When the recent hostage standoff with Somali pirates and Captain Richard Phillips was resolved, most Americans were obviously pleased with the results. A small handful weren't, and it appears at least some of the crew of the Maersk Alabama noticed.

Shane Murphy, second-in-command aboard the ship seized by Somali pirates this month, is happy to be home. But he's not happy to be sharing turf with land-lubber Rush Limbaugh, who politicized the pirate affair by referring to the pirates as "black teenagers."

"It feels great to be home," said Murphy in an interview with WCBV in Boston. "It feels like everyone around here has my back, with the exception of Rush Limbaugh, who is trying to make this into a race issue ... that's disgusting."

Limbaugh, questioning the president's leadership and priorities, said Obama "was worried about the order he had given to wipe out three teenagers on the high seas -- black Muslim teenagers."

"You gotta get with us or against us here, Rush," Murphy said. "The president did the right thing ... It's a war.... It's about good versus evil. And what you said is evil. It's hate speech. I won't tolerate it."