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“Cheapening The Legacy Of 9/11 On 9/11”: Grossly Inappropriate Joy Over Hatred And Destruction

I try not to dip my brain too much into the toxic waste of anti-Islamic bigotry. But occasionally its purveyors profane the very memories they claim inspire them, as in this nasty piece of work from Carol Brown of The American Thinker, who manages to cheapen the legacy of 9/11 on 9/11:

It is now official. On Thursday the Senate let the Iran deal go through – a deal that will forever change the landscape of the world in terrifying and unthinkable ways. I need not enumerate how this collaboration with Iran (and it is a collaboration) will affect Israel, the Middle East, the United States, and indeed the entire world.

Readers know all too well.

And yet, you’d hardly know how our fate was sealed on Thursday. America’s alignment with the Nazis of the 21st century hardly made a dent in media coverage. Headlines appeared as they do on any other day.

Imagine that.

[O]n Thursday, after Republican leaders spent months colluding with the Democrats, the Washington cartel ensured that our children and grandchildren will live in a world with a nuclear Iran.

In between profound sorrow, incredible dread, and blind rage, I find myself asking: Why?

Perhaps many elected officials don’t care about America, their oath of office, or our children. Apparently their allegiance to party and power trump concern for even their own children.

If reading this annoys you, be glad I left out the long, long quote from Mark Levin. But here’s the coda:

And so we now not only have a 9/11, but a 9/10 – when our leaders sold us down the river. Yet again. But this time the stakes are as high as they get.

People like Brown and Levin want, welcome, demand constant global war with Islam, and will accept nothing less (Brown has been singled out by the Anti-Defamation League for her “ugly rhetoric” about Musims). They should stay the hell away from the memorials to 9/11, since their joy over hatred and destruction is grossly inappropriate to the commemoration of innocents and those who died to in an effort to save them.

 

By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, September 11, 2015

September 14, 2015 Posted by | 911, Conservatives, Iran Nuclear Agreement | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

“Waiting For Their Nixon”: Reformicons Horrified To Look In The Political Mirror And See The Scary Clown Face Of Trump Leering Back

A small but influential group of conservative intellectuals hoped that this presidential cycle could produce a ice-breaking debate in the GOP ranks over the party’s iron commitment to certain economic and fiscal orthodoxies that had proved impolitic to middle class voters, including the white working class voters (remember “Sam’s Club Republicans”?) who had recently become a key segment of the party base.

Well, the “reformicons” got more than they bargained for. As Josh Barro’s New York Times op-ed over the weekend archly pointed out, the current GOP presidential front-runner shares their disdain for the old-time religion of tax cuts for the wealthy financed by “entitlement reform,” and the hostility many of them have for comprehensive immigration reform as well. But your typical urbane reformicon is horrified to look into the political mirror and see the scary clown face of Donald Trump leering back at him or her.

It’s an awkward thing: The reform conservative movement, to the extent it exists, is pointy-headed, technocratic and soft-spoken. Mr. Trump is none of those things. But his campaign has helped bolster a key argument from the reformocons: that many Republican voters are not devotees of supply-side economics and are more interested in the right kind of government than in a simply smaller one.

“There were a lot of people who wanted to think the Tea Party is a straightforward libertarian movement,” said Reihan Salam, the executive editor of National Review. But he said Mr. Trump’s ability to lead the polls while attacking Republicans for wanting to cut entitlement programs showed that conservative voters are open to “government programs that help the right people.”

Indeed, so long as “the right people” means their own selves and “the wrong people” are those people. It’s always been a bit ironic that the reformicons claim a sort of kinship to the Tea Party, but prefer pols like Marco Rubio even as the Tea Folk themselves gravitate to the Sarah Palins and the Donald Trumps. And so they are torn between the impulse to declare Trump-o-mania a vindication of their prophecies and the healthy desire to distance themselves from racist demagoguery. One very prominent reformicon Barro talked with, David Frum, has the obvious if unappealing analogy in mind:

In an analogy that won’t make anyone very comfortable, [Frum] said Mr. Trump could be useful in the same way George Wallace was in 1968: “Wallace talked about a lot of issues, many of them pretty dismaying, but he also seized on the crime issue. Crime was rising fast, and it was not an issue that respectable politicians wanted to talk about. The result was that Richard Nixon stole his issue and deracialized it.”

Well, not exactly. Pressed on whether Nixon’s anticrime language could really be considered deracialized, Mr. Frum argued Nixon “diminished its racialism and incorporated it into something like a workable policy agenda.”

If Mr. Trump is Wallace in this analogy, then the reform conservatives are still waiting for their Nixon. Whether that’s a hopeful prospect or an alarming one is up to you.

So reformicons are joining the ever-swelling ranks–right there next to an awful lot of Democrats–of those who view Trump the way some fifth century Christians viewed Attila the Hun–as a Scourge of God sent to rebuke arrogant and decadent imperial elites. But I’d advise they avoid mirrors.

 

By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, September 8, 2015

September 9, 2015 Posted by | Conservatives, Donald Trump, Reformicons | , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

“Conservatives Wrapping Noxious Notions In Code”: ‘Religious Liberty’ Looks A Lot Like Intolerance From Here

To me,” she said in a statement, “this has never been a gay or lesbian issue. It is about marriage and God’s word. It is a matter of religious liberty.”

It’s telling that Kim Davis chose those words to defend herself last week. Davis, the clerk of Rowan County, a rural, impoverished, and previously obscure patch of northeastern Kentucky, made international headlines for her refusal to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. She had, should it need saying, not a legal leg to stand on, the Supreme Court having ruled in June that states may not bar such couples from marrying. On Thursday, Davis was jailed for contempt. The thrice-divorced clerk had said she was acting upon “God’s authority” and fighting for “religious liberty.”

The political right has long had a genius for wrapping noxious notions in code that sounds benign and even noble. The “Patriot Act,” “family values,” and “right to work.” are fruits of that genius. “Religious liberty” is poised to become their latest masterpiece, the “states’ rights” of the battle for a more homophobic America.

A few months ago, you will recall, “religious liberty” was claimed as the rationale for failed laws in Indiana and Arkansas that would have empowered businesses to refuse service to gay people. The Atlanta Journal Constitution reports that Georgia lawmakers will introduce a new “religious liberty” bill there next year. Last week, Mike Huckabee praised Davis for “standing strong for religious liberty.” Chris Christie, while conceding the need to obey the law, spoke of the need to “protect religious liberty,” as if religious liberty were seriously in danger in one of the most religiously tolerant nations on Earth.

Of course, like all good code, this one hides its true meaning in the banality of its words. Most of us would likely support the right of Native Americans to ingest peyote in their religious rituals, or Jewish or Muslim inmates to grow beards. Some of us even believe no religious order can be required to ordain a woman, admit a congregant of a proscribed race or, yes, perform a same-sex marriage. We understand a core American principle that, within certain broad parameters, one’s right to practice one’s faith as one pleases is inviolable.

But “religious liberty” as defined by Davis and her supporters is about what happens in the wide world beyond those parameters, about whether there exists a right to deny ordinary, customary service and claim a religious basis for doing so. And there does not.

Davis is wrong for the same reasons Muslim cabbies in Minneapolis-St. Paul were wrong some years ago when they claimed a right to not carry passengers who had alcohol on them and Christian pharmacists were wrong when they claimed a right not to fill birth control prescriptions. You have a right to your religious conscience. You do not have a right to impose your conscience upon other people.

And if conscience impinges that heavily upon your business or your job, the solution is simple: Sell the business or quit the job. Otherwise, serve your customers and keep your conscience out of their affairs.

Taken to its logical conclusion, it is not just gay men and lesbians who are threatened by the “religious liberty” movement, but all of us. Is it too much of a stretch to suggest that most of us probably run afoul of somebody’s reading of their religion in some way or another? Who would welcome a future where you couldn’t just enter a place and expect service but, rather, must read the signs to determine if it caters to people of your sexual orientation, marital status, religion or race?

We tried something like that once. It didn’t work.

Sadly, if people like Kim Davis have their way, we may be required to try it again. They call it “religious liberty.”

It looks like intolerance from here.

 

By: Leonard Pitts, Jr., Columnist for The Miami Herald; The National Memo, September 7, 2015

 

September 8, 2015 Posted by | Conservatives, Kim Davis, Religious Liberty | , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

“A Counterrevolutionary Supreme Court Litmus Test In The Making”: Prospective Justices Must Have Willingness To Ignore Both Other Branches Of Government

I really do appreciate the efforts of Constitutional Conservative legal beagles Randy Barnett of Georgetown and Josh Blackman of South Texas College of Law in laying out in some detail–and not in a legal journal but in the Weekly Standard–rules for examining future Republican Supreme Court appointments. It’s not just a litmus test in the making–which presidential candidates in both parties typically say they do not want to administer–but a rationale for a litmus test. And their piece has the advantage of being very clear on the key points.

To Barnett and Blackman, who first discuss the notorious history of Republican SCOTUS appointments they view as betrayals, the big thing is that prospective Justices have a clearly documented willingness to ignore both other branches of government–the principle behind the receding Republican doctrine of “judicial restraint”–and stare decisis–the principle against overturning well-settled Court precedent–in pursuit of the “original” meaning of the Constitution. That means treating SCOTUS as an all-powerful institution communing with eighteenth century Founders–or worse yet, Con Con mythologies about those Founders–and empowered to kill many decades of decisions by all three branches of government, precedent and democracy be damned. No wonder they talk repeatedly about needing Justices–and presidents–with courage! And the dividing line between good and bad “conservative” Justices could not be made much clearer: Alito goooood! Roberts baaaaaad! Barnett and Blackman even suggest their rules should be made clear to and then demanded by presidential primary voters!

If that actually starts happening, it will be as or even more important to watch as any other discussions of any other issues. As Brian Beutler recently noted in an important piece at TNR, Barnett and Blackman are among other things leading advocates for a return to the Lochner era of jurisprudence, whereby most regulations of private economic activity by the executive or legislative branches would be declared unconstitutional as an abridgement of “natural law” concepts in the original Constitution and an exotic understanding of the due process clauses in the 5th and 14th amendments. These are dangerous people to let anywhere near a Supreme Court nomination. But they and many others like them, who now play a dominant role in the very powerful conservative legal fraternity the Federalist Society, are likely to be right there with their litmus test in hand.

Anyone who thinks it doesn’t matter who wins the 2016 presidential election because the two parties are both loaded with corporate stooges needs to pay attention to this issue. Barnett and Blackman are very clearly pointing the way to abolition of the entire New Deal/Great Society legacy via rulings by judges serving lifetime terms. If that doesn’t matter to you, I’m not sure what does.

 

By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, September 4, 2015

September 6, 2015 Posted by | Conservatives, U. S. Constitution, U. S. Supreme Court | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

“The Battle For Voting Rights Continues”: A Non-Problem Invoked To Create A Massive New Problem Of Obstructing Legitimate Votes

Many find politics frustrating because problems that seemed to be solved in one generation crop up again years or decades later. The good thing about democracy is that there are no permanent defeats. The hard part is that some victories have to be won over and over.

And so it is with the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a monument to what can be achieved when grass-roots activism is harnessed to presidential and legislative leadership. Ending discrimination at the ballot box was a way of underwriting the achievements of the Civil Rights Act passed a year earlier by granting African Americans new and real power to which they had always been constitutionally entitled.

“The results were almost unimaginable in 1965,” writes Ari Berman in “Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America,” his timely book published this month. “In subsequent decades, the number of black registered voters in the South increased from 31 percent to 73 percent; the number of black elected officials increased from fewer than 500 to 10,500 nationwide; the number of black members of Congress increased from five to 44.”

And, yes, an African American was elected president of the United States in 2008 and reelected in 2012. He was powered by the ballots of Americans of color who would not let anything turn them around from their polling places.

President Obama’s victory has been routinely cited by those who were already insisting that the Voting Rights Act was outdated. They turned out to have a powerful ally in Chief Justice John Roberts, whose record on the issue Berman analyzes closely. If the United States could elect a black president, wasn’t that a sign that there was no longer a need for a strong Voting Rights Act?

Berman quotes Ed Blum, a tireless activist in the effort to weaken the Voting Rights Act. Before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Blum referred to Birmingham, Ala.’s, legendary commissioner of public safety as a figure of the past: “‘Bull Connor is dead.’ And so is every Jim Crow-era segregationist intent on keeping blacks from the polls.”

In fact, Obama’s election called forth a far more sophisticated approach to restricting voting. Republicans closely examined how Obama’s political organization had turned out large numbers of young African Americans who had not voted before. Their participation was facilitated by early voting, and particularly Sunday voting.

So legislatures in many states where Republicans had full political control went to work to make it harder for African Americans, Latinos and young people to vote. Of course, that is not what they said they were doing. They invented a scarecrow, “voter fraud,” to justify voter ID laws. These laws disadvantage inner-city residents and favor suburbanites who get driver’s licenses as a matter of routine. They also used all kinds of excuses to roll back early voting.

“No matter how much evidence emerged to the contrary, the voter-fraud myth would never die,” Berman writes. Indeed. The fraud specter is so useful to those who want to restrict voting that the facts don’t trouble them. As a result, a non-problem is invoked to create a massive new problem of obstructing legitimate votes.

This month, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit ruled that Texas’s voter ID law “has a discriminatory effect” and amounted to a poll tax. But it also sent the case back to a lower-court judge asking her to meet a high standard of showing that the law was passed with an explicitly discriminatory intent. You can bet that the Texas voting case or another in North Carolina, or both, will make their way to a Supreme Court that has already gutted the Voting Rights Act once in a 2013 decision written by Roberts.

Will he do it again? And will voters in 2016 realize just how important a president’s power to name future Supreme Court justices is to the very right they will be exercising on Election Day?

It would have been lovely if Berman’s book could simply have celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act. Instead, it is even more useful as a guide to what still needs to be done. He tells the story of the charismatic leader of the North Carolina NAACP, the Rev. William Barber II, who led the state’s innovative Moral Monday protests.

“What do we do when they try to take away voting rights?” Barber asked at a rally.

The crowd responded: “We fight, we fight, we fight.”

There is no alternative.

 

By: E. J. Dionne, Jr., Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, August 19, 2015

August 28, 2015 Posted by | Conservatives, Democracy, Voting Rights Act | , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

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