Wingnut Saturday: center-right nation Edition

DougJ: It’s a gentleman’s sport, you know

CBS golf analyst David Feherty (via Glenn Thrush):

From my own experience visiting the troops in the Middle East, I can tell you this, though: despite how the conflict has been portrayed by our glorious media, if you gave any U.S. soldier a gun with two bullets in it, and he found himself in an elevator with Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Osama bin Laden, there’s a good chance that Nancy Pelosi would get shot twice, and Harry Reid and bin Laden would be strangled to death.

• Atrios adds: I'm sure there are plenty in the military who hate Democrats. I bet plenty don't! I don't really know how it breaks down and it doesn't really matter. I'm not going to play mindreader, but if I were in the military I wouldn't be too thrilled if someone assumed that we were all just waiting for an opportunity to assassinate leading politicians.
• VoteVets had an item: "Evidently, Feherty believes that we are mindless machines of death, who would without hesitation accept a loaded weapon from a stranger in civilian society, and then use that weapon to assassinate political leaders of the country we have sworn to defend.... Feherty, who to my knowledge has never served his country or ours in uniform, makes the assumption that he knows Soldiers and Veterans, and that 'any U.S. soldier' has such hatred for (again) the political leaders of the country we have sworn to defend, that we could not be professional enough to help ourselves from committing murder on the spot. What Mr. Feherty might not understand is that there are few Americans who have been as loyal to Veterans and Soldiers as Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. If I found myself in that proverbial elevator, the first thing I would do is thank them both profusely."

Richard Clarke:

"This video and the recent Republican attacks on Guantanamo are more desperate attempts from a demoralized party to politicize national security and the safety of the American people. But what is more disturbing is their brazen use of imagery and the memory of 9/11 to score political points. Thousands of Americans tragically died that day, and for the GOP to think it can win elections by denigrating their memory is disgraceful.

"The difference between these Republican videos and the very terrorist propaganda that seeks to damage our society is negligible. Each attempt to stoke the embers of fear in order to disrupt American life. Just as al Qaeda videos should be viewed as misguided rants from a small group of marginalized radicals, so too should these Republican videos be equally dismissed. As opposed to what the GOP thinks, the American people are not that naive."

The Empire strikes back May 8: Former Vice President Dick Cheney continues to grant interviews in which he criticizes the Obama administration and defends waterboarding. Is it right for Cheney to keep speaking out? Rachel Maddow is joined by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ron Suskind,

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Josh Marshall: Some Things Never Fail to Surprise

Can it really be true that the list of Americans who will appear on the Sunday shows this weekend is David Petraeus, Dick Cheney, Newt Gingrich and John McCain?

I guess it really is a center-right nation.

Sully: Saving The GOP

Jon Henke makes a start:

The Republican brand does not merely need a little tinkering. The Republican brand is not the victim of Democratic rhetoric and framing. The Republican brand is so bad because people accurately perceive the state of the Republican Party. Rhetorical contrition and promises are insufficient. Fixing that problem requires actual, painful, reform.

Right turn only May 8: Rachel Maddow talks to former DNC chairman Howard Dean about what's been going on with the Republican Party lately.

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FRUM MUSTARD-GATE

What kind of a man eats his hamburger without ketchup? That was the big question yesterday on talk radio, after President Obama visited an Arlington, Virginia, hamburger place on Tuesday and ordered his burger with spicy mustard.

First answer: Texans.

Texans traditionally eat hamburgers with mustard or with mayonnaise (or with both), but without ketchup. This is simply called a “hamburger” in Texas, but is sometimes called a “Cowboy Burger” or a “Texas Burger” outside of Texas.

A hamburger with ketchup is sometimes called a “Yankee Burger.” A hamburger with mayonnaise is sometimes called a “Sissy Burger.”

Dirty Martin’s (in Austin since 1926) serves hamburgers with mustard, pickles, onions, and tomatoes, but it is not known when this combination began. The popular Texas “Whataburger” hamburger chain has served hamburgers with mustard from its founding (1950). The hamburger-with-mustard combination in Texas is attested at least from the 1950s, but the pre-1950s hamburger condiments cannot be firmly established.

Second answer: Republicans. A 2000 survey of members of Congress by the National Hot Dog Council found that 73% of Republican lawmakers preferred mustard to ketchup, as opposed to 47% of Democratic lawmakers.

Final answer: traditionalists. Louis' Lunch in New Haven, Connecticut, the restaurant widely believed to have served the first hamburgers ever made in the United States, absolutely forbids ketchup.

Next question?

Benen: BUILDING A BRIDGE TO THE 19TH CENTURY....

These "sovereignty" resolutions in "red" states are generating a little too much support for our modern democracy. Hendrik Hertzberg takes a closer look at a stark-raving mad resolution out of Georgia.

[Georgia] has passed a resolution that mixes three parts inanity and one part prospective treason into a Kompletely Krazy Kocktail of militia-minded moonshine and wacko white lightning -- a resolution that not only endorses defiance of federal law but also threatens anarchy and revolution.

Really, you can't make this stuff up. You have to read it in full to believe it. Even then you can't believe it. You thought that "nullification" had been rendered inoperative by the Civil War? Well, think again. You considered secession a pre-Appomattox kind of thing? Well, reconsider. You assumed that John C. Calhoun was a dead parrot? Well, turns out he was only resting.

The resolution is written in a mock eighteenth-century style, ornate and pompous.... But the substance is even nuttier than the style.

The substance, if you want to call it that, delves into "nullification" theory (Georgia can nullify federal laws it doesn't like), and suggests federal gun-control laws can lead to the disbandment of the United States.

The measure passed the Georgia state Senate 43 to 1. Similar measures have been embraced by lawmakers in other states, primarily in the South, and all of this comes after the governor of Texas spoke publicly about secession. Other governors, including South Carolina's Mark Sanford, are reportedly warming up to Civil War-era ideas.

Ed Kilgore explained:

As someone just old enough to remember the last time when politicians in my home southern region made speeches rejecting the Supremacy Clause and the 14th amendment, I may take this sort of activity more seriously than some. But any way you slice it, Republicans are playing with some crazy fire. For all the efforts of its sponsors to sell the "sovereignty resolution" idea as a grassroots development flowing out of the so-called Tea Party Movement, its most avid supporters appear to be the John Birch Society and the Council of Conservative Citizens, the successor to the White Citizens Councils of ill-fame. And given the incredibly unsavory provenance of this "idea," it's no surprise that these extremist groups are viewing the "movement" as an enormous vindication of their twisted points of view.

If John C. Calhoun offered the definitive articulation of the nullification theory, his nemesis, President Andrew Jackson, offered the definitive response, which holds true today. He said the doctrine was "incompatible with the existence of the Union, contradicted expressly by the letter of the Constitution, unauthorized by its spirit, inconsistent with every principle on which it was founded, and destructive of the great object for which it was formed."

For Vitter or worse May 8: Sen. David Vitter, R-LA, is blocking President Obama's nominee to head FEMA. Why does he keep delaying this nomination when there's only one month until hurricane season starts? Rachel Maddow is joined by Louisiana Weekly reporter Christopher Tidmore.

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sgw: Like A Hot Knife Through Butter

Lawrence O'Donnell guest hosted "The Ed Show" tonight and this guy was choke slamming right wing idjuts left and right. In the first clip he peeled the skin off of both Frank Gaffney's and David Rivkin's hide on the issue of torture. They will be licking those wounds for some time.

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And then he took aim at Scott Wheeler over his planned opposition to Judge Sonia Sotomayor should she be President Obama's Supreme Court nominee and blew his ass right out of the water. They may just have to find a place for Larry in the line-up over there at MSNBC.

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• hilzoy: "I Don't Believe I've Ever Met A Homosexual"
  

  James Kirchick writes:
  

  "I oppose using a person's sexual orientation as a job qualification for the same reasons that I oppose the privileging of a candidate based upon their race or sex: It boils individuals down to their immutable traits. The only aspect that Obama should consider as he weighs his options over the next few days is the candidates' jurisprudence."

  Matt Yglesias responds:
  

  "The nature of the Supreme Court is that a great many of its most important cases concern the rights of women and various kinds of minority groups. It's absurd to think that a forum of nine white, male, heterosexual Christians could possibly compose the best possible forum for deciding these kinds of issues. The reality is that a nine-person group can't possibly fully represent the diversity -- in terms of religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, etc. -- that exists in the country at large. But one can do better or worse on this regard and it makes perfect sense to aspire to do better. That's not an alternative to caring about the quality of the jurisprudence, it's part of trying to get good jurisprudence."

  This is absolutely right, and I think it's why Obama was right to say that he wanted to nominate a justice who is not just "dedicated to the rule of law, who honors our constitutional traditions, who respects the integrity of the judicial process and the appropriate limits of the judicial role", but who has the "quality of empathy, of understanding and identifying with people's hopes and struggles". This is not opposed to caring about getting the law right; it's about understanding what is at stake in various cases well enough to see how the law, as it is written, actually applies.

  To see why this matters, consider an anecdote about Justice Powell's deliberations in Bowers v. Hardwick.

  Bowers was a case in which Matthew Hardwick, who had been arrested for engaging in consensual homosexual sex in his own home, challenged the Georgia sodomy statute under which he had been charged. One of the crucial questions on which the case turned was: are sexual activities between consenting adults, carried out in their own homes, protected under either the ninth or the fourteenth amendments?

  Given previous cases involving the right to privacy, it was crucial to decide whether such acts involved what Justice Blackmun, in his dissent, called "the fundamental interest all individuals have in controlling the nature of their intimate associations with others", or just a right to engage in homosexual sodomy, as the majority claimed. Is the right to decide which consenting adult to have sex with, and how, one of those fundamental interests that we take the ninth and fourteenth amendments to protect, or is it not?

  In their arguments (1, 2, 3), the majority discussed only gay sex, even though the Georgia statute also criminalized heterosexual sodomy. They also described their findings in terms of their application to homosexuals, saying things like: "The Constitution does not confer a fundamental right upon homosexuals to engage in sodomy."

  One might therefore ask: did the various Justices have any clear conception of the importance, to gay men and lesbians, of being able to have sex with the people they love? One might think that anyone would understand that, but that is only true if one accepts the idea that gay men and lesbians are people, rather than members of some strange alien species. So: how did the Justices think about gay men and lesbians?

  Here's some evidence from Jeffrey Toobin's The Nine, pp. 218-219 (note that Justice Powell was the swing vote in this case, and came down in favor of upholding Georgia's sodomy statute):
  

  "One Saturday in the spring of 1986, Justice Lewis Powell struck up a conversation with one of his law clerks, Cabell Chinnis Jr., about Bowers v. Hardwick. As Chinnis recounted the exchange to Joyce Murdoch and Deb Price, authors of a history of gay rights at the Supreme Court, Powell asked about the prevalence of homosexuality, which one friend-of-the-court brief estimated at 10%. Chinnis said that sounded right to him. "I don't believe I've ever met a homosexual", Powell replied. Chinnis said that seemed unlikely. Later the same day, Powell came back to Chinnis and asked, "Why don't homosexuals have sex with women?" "Justice Powell," he replied, "a gay man cannot have an erection to perform intercourse with a woman." The conversation was especially bizarre not just because of its explicit nature but because Chinnis himself was gay (as were several of Powell's previous law clerks.)"

  You have to feel for the poor clerk: there he is, a closeted gay man, being quizzed by his boss about why homosexuals don't have sex with women. (Apparently, Justice Powell wasn't thinking of lesbians at all.) I think that a good working definition of empathy would be: that quality that allows a straight man or woman to know the answer to that question without having to ask his or her law clerks. And I would think that the fact that Justice Powell had to ask that question might explain why he believed, falsely, that he had never met a homosexual: if you were gay, would you tell him?

  Justice Powell was, as I said, the swing vote in a case that upheld criminalizing consensual gay sex carried out in the privacy of one's own home. It seems pretty clear that he had no conception of what it was like to be gay, and was therefore in no position to decide on the importance of the rights that he was deciding on. That is not a good way to interpret the law when, as in this case, the importance of a right is central to the question whether or not it is protected.

  Consider how different things might have been had there been an openly gay man or woman on the Supreme Court, one who might have explained his or her take on this to Justice Powell.

  I do not believe that we ought to try to represent every group in existence on the Supreme Court. Most importantly, representation obviously matters less than things like wisdom, devotion to the law and to its faithful interpretation, depth of understanding, and so forth. For another, there are only nine justices, and many more groups whom it would, other things equal, be good to represent. (This is one reason why empathy matters: it's obviously impossible to represent everyone, so there's no substitute for Justices being able to understand the impact of their decisions on people unlike themselves.) And the groups people normally think of are not all the relevant ones: in terms of understanding the importance of laws to those they affect, I think that Sonia Sotomayer's having grown up in the projects is as important as the fact that Kathleen Sullivan and Pam Karlan are openly gay.

  (Side note: some conservatives seem to think that empathy necessarily favors criminals. I don't think this is true at all. Growing up in the projects might give someone a particularly clear understanding of just how much damage crime does to inner city communities. I think that it's the understanding that matters, not which side it turns out to favor in a given case.)

  But Kirchick is not objecting to the idea that we should care only about getting representatives of various groups on the Court, which I agree is absurd. He says that sexual orientation should not be "a job qualification", which I take to mean that it should not be a consideration at all, even when one is choosing between several highly qualified candidates. For the reasons given above, I think this is wrong. And it's not wrong because representing groups matters more than good jurisprudence, but because, as Bowers v. Hardwick makes clear, ignorance can lead to bad law.