Andrew Sullivan stitches together a brief history of chilling partisanship from someone who was once a universally adored politician, John McCain, as he discusses executive power, the rule of law, and a subject much too close to his own psyche, torture:
“But we are not asked to judge the President’s character flaws. We are asked to judge whether the President, who swore an oath to faithfully execute his office, deliberately subverted–for whatever purpose–the rule of law,” – John McCain arguing for the impeachment of Bill Clinton for perjury in a civil suit, February 1999.
“Anyone who knows what waterboarding is could not be unsure. It is a horrible torture technique used by Pol Pot,” – John McCain, October 2007.
“We’ve got to move on,” – John McCain, April 26, 2009, reacting to incontrovertible proof that George W. Bush ordered the waterboarding of a prisoner 183 times, as well as broader treatment that the Red Cross has called “unequivocally torture.”
For the past eight years, there have so many intrusions to the civil liberties that Americans are promised by the Constitution that it’s hard to recount them all. Amongst the most significant are the Patriot Act, the removal of Habeas Corpus protections, and Wireless Wiretapping.
[...]
Here’s the funny part: James Osborne of Fox News has written an article that takes the [new] administration and the Congress to task for stepping on the privacy rights of citizens.
Ana Marie Cox had a great tribute to independent thought in the Washington Post the other day. I’m just getting around to linking to it, but it is a great piece, succinctly demonstrating what many of us have always known: you don’t think critically about something that is your “privilege” to be in on.
Intense interest in the Obama administration has swelled the ranks of the White House press corps. Outlets such as Politico have thrown a basketball team’s worth of bodies at the project, and outlets that didn’t even exist until recently — Fivethirtyeight.com, the Huffington Post — have created their own White House correspondent positions.
Yet too often, the White House briefing room is where news goes to die.
Shep Smith is my all-time favorite FoxNews employee, and he is increasingly becoming a viral video star thanks to his flippant disregard for his own networks “Message of the Day” memos.
Here’s one of his greatest hits, known popularly as “We are the United States of America, we do not f*ing torture:”
Hard-Right blog “Little Green Footballs” has long been known for its pro-war, anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim stances, but even they are a bit miffed at the goofy infotainment being churned out by the likes of Fox News these days. As much as it pains me to link to a blog that I find largely distasteful, there is nothing I respect more than independent though, and I will give LGF credit where it is due — way to point out that Glenn Beck is not a serious person, LGF:
This turn toward the extreme right on the part of Fox News is troubling, and will achieve nothing in the long run except further marginalization of the GOP—unless people start behaving like adults instead of angry kids throwing tantrums and ranting about conspiracies and revolution.
As a freelance writer, it’s hard to think of someone who hates Tax Day (read: today!) more than I do. Even though I’m morally, politically, and generally in favor of paying taxes, and even though I’d gladly pay more taxes than I am currently, it’s still a terrible day full of headaches and animosity about the day I’ll probably be audited just because I’m a business owner who writes things like video games off as tax deductions (That’s a legitimate write off for me, by the way).
But this teabagging/tea party thing just doesn’t make sense to me. We have a brand new president who has set in motion a whole raft of policy changes and programs that are worthy of protest, if you disagree, but why are taxes suddenly the problem? Obama reduced taxes, so they can’t protest high taxes — are these people are just now realizing that they pay them annually?
I know, I know, the answer is “they’re just complaining about Obama in whatever way they can” — but that’s the whole problem. Until the American right-wing becomes more serious about itself (and what it stands for), they’re going to be the butt of teabagging jokes for a long time to come. Visit www.AndrewSullivan.com today for a play-by-play of “WTF?”
More stunning analysis from Peggy Noonan via Morning Joe, in reference to Obama’s performance at the G-20 summit vs. his campaign events in Europe over the summer:
“The difference is, that was presumptuous, this is appropriate.”
Good to know that showing up for an international summit with every significant leader on the planet can be deemed ‘appropriate.’ Can’t win them all, I suppose.
At this point, it’s become both redundant and tedious to point out all the ways in which CNN represents the ultimate source of spineless lapdog journalism — more afraid of offending their audience than they are in reporting ugly truths. After all, they practically invented the style.
But when they start misquoting public figures to make them look better for readers who might be fans of theirs, they’ve crossed that important line between timidity and servitude.
Remember when Sarah Palin told Katie Couric that she read “all” the newspapers? One of the most well-documented moments of the campaign? Well, CNN, and particularly Political Ticker producer Alexander Mooney conveniently forgets what she said. Instead they’re quoting her as saying “Um of them” rather than “all of them.”
In a new Political Ticker post where they farm Palin’s powderpuff interview complaining about the media with a conservative host, they don’t just misquote her, but also pull one of my favorite tricks. They say her now-infamous interview with Katie Couric “appeared to go poorly.” No, not that it went poorly, which the entire planet knows it did, but it merely “appeared” to go poorly — the implication being, the interview actually went quite well… but appearance and perception threw it all out of whack.
But hey, I guess printing that something “appeared” such a way is one step above printing that “some people said” it was that way, which used to be the industry’s standard dead-fish-code for not taking a stand. Check out this double whammy:
Palin also faulted the McCain campaign for agreeing to a series of sit-downs with Couric after the first one appeared to go so poorly.
During one of those follow-up interviews, Palin took heat for appearing to be unable to name the newspapers or magazines she reads: “Um of them, any of them that have been in front of me all these years,” was the Alaska governor’s response.
No, it wasn’t.
What’s that? Maybe they didn’t misquote her? Maybe there is some sort of debate about whether she said “All of them” or “Um of them”? Well, aside from the fact that doing a google search for her name and that quote brings up only a single page — CNN’s ticker post with the misquote — there also happens to be this pesky viral video, which doesn’t lie to soften its impact for an audience:
Via Andrew Sullivan, in between mildly entertaining posts suspicious of John Travolta’s son’s death:
After decriminalization of possession of small amounts of marijuana, some police are refusing even to enforce the new civil law, because it’s too much hassle for too little reward and, in their view, unenforceable. There’s a certain whininess involved here, and perhaps a desire by the police to undermine a democratically-backed law. At the same time, a collapse in enforcement might simply reveal this was hammer in search of a nail and a government in search of a problem.
Mark Casey is a syndicated columnist, freelance writer, and web designer. Please feel free to contact him here, or view some of his past Featured Columns here.
Recent Comments