Completely Unnecessary

…for not posting.

I mean, it does. I know that more than one of you check this blog regularly for new and (ahem) insightful content.

But I can’t control your poor life choices.

So I’ve been tempted this week to blog about the lovely and soul-inspiring weddings of biddies - because obviously that’s awesome.

I think if you can’t be happy for 80+-year-old women getting married you don’t really understand what life is about. There’s fundamental level at which you don’t understand happiness.

[Ed. note - Um, Firefox 3, vaguely appealing though it is, does not seem to have incorporated spellcheck in a timely manner. This is absolutely disastrous for your editor, who can't spell her way out of a very small shoebox.] [Oh thank crap, it kicked back in; I had spelled disastrous wrong. I'm more of a big picture kind of girl.]

Anyway, I’ve been sick and also working/marking/watching Angel, so it’s really a grab bag of reasons why I’ve lacked the wherewithal to fulfill the blogging duties that - I will remind you - come with little to no financial reward.

I had something to say. I think it was this:

I know the Administration only has a short number of months (yay!) left in office, but this doesn’t mean that they should drive down their game.

It will potentially frighten several of you to learn that my father is a Republican. Not of the truly alarming variety - he just believes in lower taxes, etc, etc. (whereas I believe in stealing from the rich, etc., etc.).

Anyway, he sends me an article last week in which George Will (displaying the youngest picture GenXers have ever seen of George Will) is all about drilling in ANWAR and everywhere offshore because the Chinese are already doing it.

Eh, they’re not.

But, if the story gets repeated enough times, it looks like good enough impetus for Bush to advocate drilling off all our coastlines a few days later. The NYT, however, is not so impressed with that, considering it won’t lower gas prices until 2030.

But hey - talking points trotted out in the press ten days before they become ‘policy’ is just typical. Could these guys try anymore? I mean, where are those bold policy suggestions of yore? Isn’t there a country we should think about invading?

Oh, or is it just that we’ve gotten lazy, considering the oil contracts with one that we’ve already invaded?

Personally, I’m happier thinking about old ladies getting married.

Congrats to them and everyone taking the plunge (especially to Elissa and Keith, who I love with all my heart… even though they’re not gay. It’s not, like, a definite criteria for my support of your union).

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I know I’m behind the times; on the upside, I know far more about Australian irrigation, catchment levels and the Murray-Darling scheme than I’d ever hoped to learn.

Anyway, onto Justice Kennedy, who reasserted himself as my favorite Supreme Court justice after a lengthly period on my shit list. Writing the Opinion (.pdf) in Boumediene v. Bush (the case that gave Gitmo detainees their rights back) he said:

Although the United States has maintained complete and uninterrupted control of Guantanamo for over 100 years, the Government’s view is that the Constitution has no effect there, at least as to noncitizens, because the United States disclaimed formal sovereignty in its 1903 lease with Cuba. The Nation’s basic charter cannot be contracted away like this. The Constitution grants Congress and the President the power to acquire, dispose of, and govern territory, not the power to decide when and where its terms apply. To hold that the political branches may switch the Constitution on or off at will would lead to a regime in which they, not this Court, say “what the law is.”

I feel that ‘Snap!’ doesn’t properly represent the the six years of illegality under which these detainees have been held.

Kennedy first won his way into my heart via his Opinion in 1993’s Church of the Lukumi Babalu-Aye v. City of Hialeah:

Our review confirms that the laws in question were enacted by officials who did not understand, failed to perceive, or chose to ignore the fact that their official actions violated the Nation’s essential commitment to religious freedom… No one suggests, and on this record it cannot be maintained, that city officials had in mind [as the target of their ordinances] a religion other than Santería.

I might not always agree with him, but the man does not mince words, which I respect more than most things. The Hialeah ruling is like series of uppercuts to the judge below him - awesome.

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There’s no better way to say this than has already been said:

On Tuesday the group Colorado for Equal Rights submitted 131,245 signatures to place an initiative on the November ballot that would define a fertilized embryo as a person. Voters will decide on the measure that would amend the state Constitution to extend a fertilized embryo equal rights and protections. It would define “any human being from the moment of fertilization” as a “person” for purposes of the state’s constitutional provisions “relating to inalienable rights, equality of justice and due process of law.”

Mother Jones notes that such an amendment might ‘trigger governmental investigations into miscarriages, restrict in-vitro fertilization by couples trying to conceive, and could limit birth-control methods.’

Aside from its glaring, rage-inducing absurdity and almost certain unconstitutionality, this initiative raises some amazing questions.

One of Andrew Sullivan’s readers, for instance, asks if she can move to CO and receive Social Security benefits sooner.

Could a woman be charged with manslaughter or reckless homicide for a miscarriage? Or, better yet, what if the family carries Accidental Death insurance? Given how many zygotes self-terminate, you could make a pretty penny just claiming based on statistics.

And what do we do if the fetus kills the mother, in childbirth or otherwise? Is it incumbent upon the state to try the infant for manslaughter? Can the father sue his newborn or fetus for loss of consortium, wages, etc?

And perhaps the most obvious question - how on Earth can anyone know when the moment of fertilization is? Outside of a science lab, it’s pretty darn unprovable. And even if a test was developed, I’m pretty sure it would involve the government asking a woman to put her feet in the stirrups. So let’s hope Colorado for Equal Rights has something to nix the Fourteenth, as well.

As recent years have shown, however, this initiative is perhaps just crazy enough to pass.

I mean, a veterinarian was selected by the Bush Administration to head up the Office of Women’s Health in 2005. (Alderson was quickly removed after a number of groups justifiably lost their minds.) Minnesota’s Right to Know laws required doctors to provide state-scripted information on abortion that defied medical science. Missouri lawmakers are trying to get Plan B regulated as an abortifacient.

Anyway ladies, I suggest looking into Accidental Death insurance, just in case. If we move to Colorado, natural self-termination might be the new sugardaddie.

H/T: Andrew Sullivan via Mother Jones

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What a sad state of affairs when it’s preferable to be imprisoned in the jail of a desperate dictator than fall into the hands of the United States:

The legal interpretation, outlined in recent letters, sheds new light on the still-secret rules for interrogations by the Central Intelligence Agency. It shows that the administration is arguing that the boundaries for interrogations should be subject to some latitude, even under an executive order issued last summer that President Bush said meant that the C.I.A. would comply with international strictures against harsh treatment of detainees.

No word on whether ‘latitude’ means going back using the definition that ‘nothing short of the pain associated with organ failure constituted illegal torture.’

Ah, the halcyon days of 2002-2004.

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Sara wrote a great post yesterday about Iran’s (lack of a) nuclear weapons program and the Bush Admin’s continued rhetoric. Saved me a lot of time, which I promptly spent checking the reference list of a right-wing scientist. Let me do the heavy lifting today, LMB; I’m just going shopping afterwards…

Long story short - Released yesterday, a National Intelligence Estimate found that Iran gave up its nuclear ambitions four years ago. The WH has known the ‘basic parameters’ of this report for quite some time, but has continued its Tehran-baiting and aggro rhetoric.

But, you’ll be pleased to know that President Bush has seen this report for what it really is:

”I view this report as a warning signal that they had the program, they halted the program,” Bush said [in a press conference Tuesday]. ”The reason why it’s a warning signal is they could restart it.”

Bush also stated that the report demonstrating that Iran didn’t have the ability to make a nuclear weapon (or even recent movements in that direction) indicates that, ‘Iran needs to be taken seriously as a threat to peace.’

Gotta give the man some credit. A lot of leaders would hang their heads after being caught in a war-mongering lie for the last year, but not Bush. Well-played, sir.

But is it a year? National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley said yesterday that the president has only known for sure for weeks, possibly months. Yet, Bush claimed this morning that he only learned about the report last week, contradicting his own NSA. Someone mush have looked at the transcripts and seen that the WH has been trumpeting their rhetoric well into the period that Hadley described.

Doesn’t really matter if the year estimate is wrong. By Hadley’s own admission, the US has been continuing along the warpath despite knowledge by the President himself that the assessment of Iran’s capabilities and intent was false.

Our one remaining troop is probably breathing a sigh of relief.

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ThinkProgress is reporting that it looks as though President Bush (see: biggest disappointment) plans to recess appoint Dr. James Holsinger as Surgeon General.

Holsinger is anti-gay, to the point of setting up a church to minister ‘to people who no longer wish to be gay or lesbian”. As Surgeon General, Dr. Holsinger would have the power to cure all the homos. Amen.

His nomination hasn’t gotten a vote in the Senate yet because he refuses to fill out a follow-up questionnaire put to him by the health committee; he’s over two months late in responding.

Yet, the good doctor resigned from his the board of trustees of Asbury Seminary in Wilmore, Ky and is ‘telling people the president plans to appoint him to the post anyway once the Congress goes into its holiday recess, a well-connected Wilmore source says.’

If he were appointed by Bush, he could serve until the end of the next Congress, after the election and just before Bush’s term ends. Two weeks ago, Peter Pitts, president of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest, a nonprofit think tank based in Washington and New York, said he thought that a recess appointment would be ‘too divisive’, rendering it unlikely.

Not only to I think it’s likely, I think it’s exactly what he would have done with Mukasey (or someone worse).

Links:
Homophobic Surgeon General Nominee Reveals Bush Plans To Recess Appoint Him [Think Progress]
Surgeon general nominee resigns from seminary board [Bible Belt Blogger]
Surgeon general nominee in limbo [Courier-Journal]

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I started responding to Sara’s link to Slate in the comments, but it was getting a bit long there, so I’m moving it to its own post (I found internet at AO).

I understand the complaints, and it would have been smart for the Democrats to secure some kind of concessions (re: waterboarding) from the WH before agreeing - as Olberman noted in his Special Comment on the issue.

Here’s the thing, though - why don’t they pass a waterboarding law? Hell, set it to expire 22 Jan, 2009 when we can expect the rule of law to return.

The problem is that Bush isn’t going to nominate Comey, Goldsmith or Levin, and has shown a consistent willingness - nay, preference - for interim and recess appointments.

My issue with this criticism is… and then what? We say no to Mukasey and who does Bush nominate in his place? Anyone? Someone worse? I just don’t see them being like, “Oh well the Dems are clearly serious about this. Let’s nominate someone who wants to nail us for all the illegal shit we’ve been doing.”

A CNN poll found that 69% of Americans think waterboarding is torture, and 58% think that the government should be banned from using it. That’s going to be pretty hard for Republicans to argue against should a bill come to the floor. Those who claim its weak of the Democrats to bail on the Mukasey equally seem to believe that they’re incapable of pushing a law through banning the practice. So, where does that leave us?

Lithwick at Slate may be right - that Schumer’s trust in Mukasey may be like that of ‘a battered wife’ - and we may all rue the day. But I think it makes much more sense for the Democrats to get serious - pass a anti-waterboarding law, make it retroactive (since it’s just enforcing the Geneva Convention) and make it clear that everyone in the Administration who was involved in this gross misappropriation of power is culpable. And make it clear to Mukasey that if he doesn’t investigate he’ll be held culpable as well.

Look, people much smarter and informed than I all seem to be lining up on the opposite side of this issue, so I’m happy to admit that you probably shouldn’t agree with a word I say (and, just for the record, you should always assume that’s the case). But doesn’t it make more sense to have strong laws so that it doesn’t matter who the AG is? So that we don’t have to play this game again should another ruthless, lawless administration take over?

That may be overly idealistic, but, damn! Public opinion isn’t going to get stronger on any issue - if the Democrats want to hold the feet of the Administration to the fire, make the stand on the issue, not on a lawyer’s calculated ambivalence.

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Heh, House Republicans tried to turn the tables on the ol’ Democrats today. House Dem, presidential candidate and elfin scamp*, Dennis Kucinich, introduced a measure to impeach Cheney, and the Democrats were barely able to avoid discussing it.

What did the White House have to say about the possible impeachment of someone who isn’t part of the executive branch?

The White House, in a statement, said Democrats were shirking responsibilities on issues such as childrens’ [sic] health insurance “and yet they find time to waste an afternoon on an impeachment vote against the vice president. … This is why Americans shake their head in wonder about the priorities of this Congress.”

Someday, the people are going to come for you, my friends.

* - in uncute scamp-like behavior - did you know that until a week after announcing his 2004 presidential bid Dennis Kucinich was anti-choice? This includes voting to ban late term abortions without health of the mother stipulations and supporting the global gag rule. Far left indeed.

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There’s another story in the ‘oh crap’ news that General Musharraf has declared a ’state of emergency’ (read: ‘martial law’) in Pakistan. It’s how he’s putting it:

The general, dressed in civilian clothes, quoted Lincoln, citing the former president’s suspension of some rights during the American Civil War as justification for his own state of emergency.

He accused the country’s Supreme Court of releasing 61 men who he said were under investigation for terrorist activities. “Judicial activism,” he said, had demoralized the security forces, hurt the fight against terrorism and slowed the spread of democracy. “Obstacles are being created in the way of democratic process,” he said, “I think for vested, personal interests, against the interest of the country.”

Just as the Bush Administration made sure that the public knew that Lincoln suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War, so here is Musharraf using our own trumped up rhetoric. It’s against his own people, to be sure, but couched in this sort of language, what else can it be an attempt to tie the hands of the US against intervention?

And again we see ‘activist judges’, a phrase used so often by the administration come back to haunt in the shape of martial law.

Not to mention that once again we seem to have backed the wrong pony. Or should I say, the most aggressively dictatorial pony.

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Being the knee-jerk liberal that I am, a small “what?!” escaped my lips this morning when I read that Schumer (D-NY) and Feinstein (D-CA) would support Bush’s nominee for Attorney General, virually assuring success in both the Judiciary Committee and the full Senate.

Reading Schumer’s rationale, however, I have to agree with him. And it’s not just because he doesn’t make his bed.

If the Senate refuses Mukasey, Bush could appoint yet another interim Attorney General without Senate approval. He could appoint someone horrible and coast to the finish line, waterboarding everyone in sight. Schumer said:

When an administration, so political, so out of touch with the realities of governing and so contemptuous of the rule of law is in charge, we are never left with an ideal choice. Judge Mukasey is not my ideal choice. However, Judge Mukasey, whose integrity and independence is respected even by those who oppose him, is far better than anyone could expect from this administration.

They’re expecting something like a 70-30 split in the Senate if Mukasey’s nomination gets there. I don’t think there’s much profit to be had should Reid attempt to block it.

Schumer’s right - the devil you know’s better than the devil you never approved and have no control over.

The job of these Democrats I’ve been saying since before the midterm elections is to protect us from the Administration. They’re not doing that amazingly, to be sure, but this is a situation of least bad. If they can prevent anything utterly ridiculous from happening - say, oh I don’t know, invading Iran - I think we have to view this Congress as a success. Imagine what’d be going on with a Republican majority.

Also, Schumer blatantly steals George Miller’s cereal, and that’s adorable.

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