Steven Clemons, who managed almost single-handedly to block the Bolton nomination in the Senate without ever getting shrill, has been pushed over the edge into shrillness by the GOP's latest evil, ham-handed, maneuvering:
Republican Majority Leader Bill Frist and House Speaker Dennis Hastert have asked House Intel Committee Chairman Peter Hoekstra and Senate Intel Committee Chairman Pat Roberts NOT to look into the subject of the hidden sites America has for secretly holding prisoners and detainees -- but to look into who LEAKED that information to Dana Priest at the Washington Post....
This just makes me sick. Frist still has not learned that the White House has burned him over and over again. And now he is playing their shill once more.
But though I have opposed Frist's general take on the war and these issues for some time -- it's still very difficult for me, just as an American citizen -- to watch any leader, Republican or Democrat, implicitly endorse the notion that America has the right to indefinitely hold without due process any prisoners or detainees in some systemized fashion.
This is what the Soviet Union did. This is what Maoist China did. This is what America fought the Cold War against! Yes, we are fighting and dealing with horribly dangerous people in the world -- but they must be brought to justice in courts of law before American and global peers.
Frist and Hastert have both blighted their careers with this letter. It's outrageous -- and they should immediately retract this effort to lynch leakers rather than holding the Executive Branch accountable for serious infractions of human rights and our legal norms.
I need a new category for this post. Like 'Sickening Irony' or 'Total Lack of Shame' or something.
Swing State Project: Day Begins With Vote Machines Problems.
Lovely. Just lovely.
An astute reader emailed me the link:
Voters report problems with voting machines in Roanoke Co.: News 7 has received calls from several voters in at least four different precincts who say their votes for Tim Kaine were not recorded or took several attempts to go through.They contend the electronic touch screens repeatedly indicated they were voting for Republican candidate Jerry Kilgore instead of registering their intended vote for his Democratic opponent Tim Kaine.
The questions are 1) is this story accurate; 2) is this a more widespread problem in the state; 3) when are we going to junk these machines?
In this corner, someone who deeply doesn't get it.
In this corner, Marty Lederman and 120 blog posts.
Read 'em and take your pick.
My friend David Howarth, MP for Cambridge City, is getting a good press:
Sofa, so good for MP who is winning battles large and small:THE best moment of David Howarth's six months as Cambridge MP came on Wednesday when the opposition parties and Labour rebels came within one vote of defeating the Government over their Anti Terror Bill.Only David Blunkett marching through the "aye" lobby just hours after quitting the Cabinet saved Tony Blair's bacon over a new offence of glorifying terrorism.
Mr Howarth told me: "That was undoubtedly the best moment of my time at Westminster. I was very surprised.
"When I came here I thought voting would just be a way of registering a protest and a challenge to the Government. I never thought we could get the majority down to one.
"In the previous two parliaments the lowest it got was three, over tuition fees.
"But now we appear to have got the Government to change its mind about aspects of the Terrorism Bill. We've got to keep up the pressure."
The strangest thing that has happened is the attempts of the House of Commons' authorities to claim back the sofa in his office. Perhaps they think that the offending pieces of furniture encourage unwanted intimacy in Westminster offices.
But Mr Howarth is having none of it: "I share an office with Cheltenham MP Martin Hallwood. We have a desk at either end and two armchairs and a sofa in the middle.
"They keep coming round to try to get the sofa but we just sit on it until they go away. They're not having our sofa."