Whenever You're Ready

Am I the only one (yes, facetious) sick of the idea that the most important (if not only) obligation of the newly-empowered Democrats is to implement a spirit of kumbaya bipartisanship and congeniality in Congress? Dramamine would not be sufficient to curb the nausea induced by the rightwing fruitcakes and rightwing-owned media (almost all now, thanks to media consolidation) threnody to the effect that the newcomers are not being Nice Enough.

Oh sweet Guinnivere, give me a break!

These invertebrates, who have been making a living off an administration based on an almost entirely fictional fact-less unreality of their own invention, all of a sudden apparently have some code of behavior they found under that stump in the back yard. It has apparently been a-okay until now for the dynasty and their hordes of brown-nosers to snear at, illegally wire-tap, imprison, and otherwise treat anyone with an opinion seemingly at odds with the swine in power as a criminal. All of a sudden it is incumbent on the incumbents to deviate from the past six years of Republican behavior and, eeek! act like evolved humans? Or at least vertebrates? (I invoke the term with some reluctance, wary of offending the many species and gazillion individual creatures lacking a spinal column who routinely exhibit more courage and character than (1) the Republicans who have been in power throughout this six-year destruction of civilization, (2) the media, including alas the big guys, NYT and WP, and (3) those vacuous vassals still trying ineffectively to pull fingers out of nose or butt who voted for the sorry little shrump even once.)

I believe Digby has hit nail quite squarely here:


The Wapo, yesterday:

As they prepare to take control of Congress this week and face up to campaign pledges to restore bipartisanship and openness, Democrats are planning to largely sideline Republicans from the first burst of lawmaking.

[...]

The episode illustrates the dilemma facing the new party in power. The Democrats must demonstrate that they can break legislative gridlock and govern after 12 years in the minority, while honoring their pledge to make the 110th Congress a civil era in which Democrats and Republicans work together to solve the nation's problems.

Really? I remember the Democrats' campaign pledges to restore openness, although I think they were mostly discussing the need to shed light on the most secretive administration in American history. But I honestly don't remember them running on restoring bipartisanship and working with Republicans to solve the nation's problems.

This is a nasty little trap and it reminds me of the way the press falsely characterized Clinton's campaign in 1992 as being something entirely different than it was and then accusing him of violating his promises. What I remember this time (just two months ago!) is a bunch of pro-forma happy horseshit after the election as everybody politely pretended that they didn't hate each others' guts as a matter of protocol. It was most assuredly not a campaign promise. The Democrats were being "polite" and "civil" in victory, which is apparently the only thing anyone cares about in Washington right now.

The Dems ran on a platform to stop the Republican insanity, not to "work with them" and I think those of us in the Democratic base might have noticed if they did that. The only person in the country who ran explicitly on his bipartisan credentials was Joe Lieberman and he was running against a Democrat.

The people who voted for the Dems are a little less concerned with that right now than ending the war in Iraq, overseeing the executive branch and restoring the constitution. Restoring civility is out of the Democrats' hands --- the Republicans are free to start behaving decently any time they choose. Meanwhile, somebody has to start thinking about the needs of the American people.

[subject credit: the inimitable muse Mary Chapin Carpenter]

Fundamental Democratic Principles - or Whimsy?

From what I gather, somewhere in the course of the past six years hypocrisy has passed from an objectionable if not actionable character malfunction to mainstream behavior, at least in the upper echelons of the federal government. What about all that "casting the first stone" stuff? Complaining about others' eye-motes despite one's own ocular presto-logs?

Fortunately there is still a stellar group out and about, calling out those inclined to set up different rules for themselves. Gleen Greenwald, an ace at this, identified a particularly spectacular example at Unclaimed Territory yesterday:

President Bush today hailed the critical importance of fair trials and the rule of law . . . . in Iraq:

Today, Saddam Hussein was executed after receiving a fair trial -- the kind of justice he denied the victims of his brutal regime.

Fair trials were unimaginable under Saddam Hussein's tyrannical rule. It is a testament to the Iraqi people's resolve to move forward after decades of oppression that, despite his terrible crimes against his own people, Saddam Hussein received a fair trial. This would not have been possible without the Iraqi people's determination to create a society governed by the rule of law.

The President is certainly right that it is is a good thing that Saddam Hussein was given a trial, represented by lawyers, with an opportunity to contest his guilt, before being deemed to be guilty. That is how civilized countries function, by definition. In fact, allowing people fair trials before treating them as Guilty is one of the handful of defining attributes -- one could even say (as the American Founders did) a prerequisite -- for countries to avoid tyranny.

That is why it is so reprehensible and inexpressibly tragic that the Bush administration continues to claim -- and aggressively exercise -- the power to imprison and punish people without even a pretense or fraction of the due process that Saddam Hussein enjoyed. The Bush administration believes that it has the power to imprison whomever it wants, for as long as it wants, without even giving them access to the outside world, let alone "a fair trial." The power which it claims -- which it has seized -- extends not only to foreign nationals but legal residents and even its own citizens.

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For the Bush apologists who require them, help yourselves to all the meaningless caveats you want. Saddam Hussein was far more brutal, more tyrannical, more liberty-abridging than George Bush. When it comes to internal repression, the two should not be compared.

Those who take comfort in comparisons like that, who think that these sorts of rationalizations constitute some kind of mitigating argument -- "hey, American behavioral standards still hover above those of Saddam's Baathist Iraq, so only deranged Bush-haters would object to America's treatment of its detainees!" -- are precisely the people who have no understanding of what kind of country America is supposed to be.

It is truly vile to listen to George Bush anoint himself the Arbiter of Due Process and Human Rights by praising the Iraqis for giving a "fair trial" to Saddam when we are currently holding 14,000 individuals (at least) around the world in our custody -- many of whom we have been holding for years and in the most inhumane conditions imaginable -- who have been desperately, and unsuccessfully, seeking some forum, any forum, in which to prove their innocence. This lawlessly imprisoned group includes journalists, political activists, and entirely innocent people.

The Bush administration has been steadfastly refusing to grant the very "fair trials" which served today as the basis for the President's pious, patronizing praise for the Iraqis (which, in reality, is intended as self-praise). The President and his followers -- including the majority of the 109th Congress, which just enacted the Military Commissions Act -- have made unmistakably clear that they do not actually believe in fair trials, literally.

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