Your Lunchtime Wingnuts: They're Nuts Edition

Sully: Powerline: Conservatism Means Torture

And treating torture as a war crime along the lines of all previous domestic and international law is now an attack on the right. Well let's just say that if the right now means the moral bearings of the Communist Chinese, then let me join the leftist throng.

QOTD, via Daily Kos, Jon Stewart:

I think you might be confusing tyranny with losing. And I feel for you, because I've been there. A few times. In fact, one of them was a bit of a nail-biter. But see, when the guy that you disagree with gets elected, he's probably going to do things you disagree with. He could cut taxes on the wealthy, remove government's oversight capability, invade a country that you thought should not be invaded, but that's not tyranny. That's democracy. See, now you're in the minority. It's supposed to taste like a shit taco.

DougJ: The War On Independence Day

Newt’s organizing another tea party:

Then, we should make July 4, 2009 “American Freedom Day.” Tea Party activists across America should plan to go out and recruit supporters from every Fourth of July celebration in their community.

Don’t we already have a name for July 4th?

This seems lot worse than saying “Happy Holidays” at Target. This is like renaming Christmas “Happy Holiday Day.”

Kevin Drum: They're Nuts

I often feel like I should have more to say about the state of modern American conservatism than "They're nuts." We can do better than that, right?

But then I read something like this. And what can you say other than, "They're nuts"? What's more, it's getting worse. David Frum is trying valiantly, but there really needs to be more adult intervention than just him.

Exploiting Republican outrage April 21: Some Republicans seem to think President Obama is going to take over the Internet--and they want your cash so they can stop him! Rachel is joined by Ana Marie Cox, national correspondent for Air America, to shed some light on the questionable scheme.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Think Progress: Inhofe Will Filibuster Judicial Nominee For Ruling Against Sectarian Prayers In Indiana Legislature

Yesterday on the Senate floor, Sen. James Inhofe announced that he intended to filibuster Obama's nomination of U.S. District Judge David Hamilton to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals. Inhofe's announcement comes nearly three weeks after the Republican membership of the Senate Judiciary Committee boycotted Hamilton's hearing claiming that "they had not been given sufficient time to prepare for the hearing." Inhofe's filibuster is surprising given the fact that Hamilton is generally viewed as representing "some of [Indiana's] traditionally moderate strain."

Inhofe does not appear to have explained his decision to filibuster in front of his colleagues on the floor of the Senate. But in statements that he entered into the Congressional Record, Inhofe cited a 2005 ruling in Hinrichs v. Bosman in which Hamilton found that the Indiana House of Representatives may open proceedings with "non-sectarian prayers" only. Inhofe called it "insane" that the ruling would allow payers to invoke the name of "Allah" but not "Jesus":

INHOFE: Further, ruling on a postjudgment motion, Hamilton stated that invoking the name of “Allah” would not advance a particular religion or disparage another. So, praying to Allah would be perfectly acceptable. [...]

I find this line of reasoning to be insane. Who in this body would not identify the name of "Allah" with the religion of Islam any less than they would identify the name of Jesus with Christianity?

But as Overruled notes, Hamilton's ruling was not particularly novel. Rather, Hamilton was upholding the Supreme Court's ruling in Marsh v. Chambers, which "held that legislatures can open their session with a non-sectarian prayer, and that such a prayer could invoke 'God,'" as long as the prayer was not meant to "proselytize or advance any one, or to disparage any other, faith or belief."

Hamilton found that "sectarian content of the substantial majority of official prayers took the prayers outside the safe harbor the Supreme Court recognized for inclusive, non-sectarian legislative prayers in Marsh v. Chambers." As Hamilton explained in a post-judgment ruling, "'Allah' is used for 'God' in Arabic" and as such should be permitted:

The Arabic word "Allah" is used for "God" in Arabic translations of Jewish and Christian scriptures. If those offering prayers in the Indiana House of Representatives choose to use the Arabic Allah, the Spanish Dios, the German Gott, the French Dieu, the Swedish Gud, the Greek Theos, the Hebrew Elohim, the Italian Dio, or any other language’s terms in addressing the God who is the focus of the non-sectarian prayers contemplated in Marsh v. Chambers, the court sees little risk that the choice of language would advance a particular religion or disparage others.

If and when the prayer practices in the Indiana House of Representatives ever seem to be advancing Islam, an appropriate party can bring the problem to the attention of this or another court.

Additionally, Inhofe's vow to filibuster is surprising given his previous insistence that filibustering judicial nominees is "not only an illegitimate use of a senator's power, but is also literally unconstitutional." As Steve Benen notes, in 2003, "Inhofe went so far as to say any senator who would dare filibuster a judicial nominee would necessarily be violating their oath to 'support and defend the Constitution.'"

Benen: ABOUT THAT LIBRARY TOWER PLOT....

Yesterday, former Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen offered a defense of torture in the Washington Post, arguing, among other things, that it's the appropriate way to help Muslim detainees.

But there was another point he raised that's also worth noting, because it's a common canard among Republicans.

[I]nterrogation with enhanced techniques "led to the discovery of a KSM plot, the 'Second Wave,' 'to use East Asian operatives to crash a hijacked airliner into' a building in Los Angeles." KSM later acknowledged before a military commission at Guantanamo Bay that the target was the Library Tower, the tallest building on the West Coast. The memo explains that "information obtained from KSM also led to the capture of Riduan bin Isomuddin, better known as Hambali, and the discovery of the Guraba Cell, a 17-member Jemmah Islamiyah cell tasked with executing the 'Second Wave.' " In other words, without enhanced interrogations, there could be a hole in the ground in Los Angeles to match the one in New York.

The terrorist plot against the Library Tower is the loyal Bushies' favorite. Indeed, Thiessen has used it in more than one Washington Post op-ed, and it's been repeated by Bush administration officials many, many times over the years. Both George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have even told the story on several occasions, citing it as proof that their abusive tactics were a success (the former president would often call the Library Tower the "Liberty Tower").

The entire claim has been exposed as dubious over the years, but as long as torture apologists are going to keep bringing it up, it's probably worth taking a moment to periodically set the record straight. Tim Noah had this piece late yesterday:

The first reason to be skeptical that this planned attack could have been carried out successfully is that, as I've noted before, attacking buildings by flying planes into them didn't remain a viable al-Qaida strategy even through Sept. 11, 2001. Thanks to cell phones, passengers on United Flight 93 were able to learn that al-Qaida was using planes as missiles and crashed the plane before it could hit its target. There was no way future passengers on any flight would let a terrorist who killed the pilot and took the controls fly wherever he pleased.

What clinches the falsity of Thiessen's claim, however (and that of the memo he cites, and that of an unnamed Central Intelligence Agency spokesman who today seconded Thessen's argument) is chronology. In a White House press briefing, Bush's counterterrorism chief, Frances Fragos Townsend, told reporters that the cell leader was arrested in February 2002, and "at that point, the other members of the cell" (later arrested) "believed that the West Coast plot has been canceled, was not going forward" [italics mine]. A subsequent fact sheet released by the Bush White House states, "In 2002, we broke up [italics mine] a plot by KSM to hijack an airplane and fly it into the tallest building on the West Coast." These two statements make clear that however far the plot to attack the Library Tower ever got -- an unnamed senior FBI official would later tell the Los Angeles Times that Bush's characterization of it as a "disrupted plot" was "ludicrous" -- that plot was foiled in 2002. But Sheikh Mohammed wasn't captured until March 2003.

How could Sheikh Mohammed's water-boarded confession have prevented the Library Tower attack if the Bush administration "broke up" that attack during the previous year? It couldn't, of course. Conceivably the Bush administration, or at least parts of the Bush administration, didn't realize until Sheikh Mohammed confessed under torture that it had already broken up a plot to blow up the Library Tower about which it knew nothing. Stranger things have happened. But the plot was already a dead letter.

Remember, according to Bush, Cheney, and their most ardent supporters, the thwarted "plot" against the Library Tower is the single best piece of evidence that torture -- waterboarding, in specific -- saved American lives.

Demagogic hyperbole notwithstanding -- "a hole in the ground in Los Angeles to match the one in New York" -- the claim is bogus.

Update: Apparently, CNSNews, a right-wing website, had its own report yesterday about waterboarding preventing an attack on the Library Tower. Conservative blogs are all excited about it. They shouldn't be.