My Internet Is Broken — Is Yours?
If senators don’t know what they’re talking about, they shouldn’t be talking at all.
Here’s Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) talking about the Net Neutrality bill, and why he opposes it:
I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o’clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why?
No, it wasn’t a slip of the tongue. He made similar mistakes during his whole speech.
Framing the Religion Debate
The relevant argument, then, is not about whether there will be prayer in public schools. It’s about whether there will be government-mandated prayer in public schools. The argument is not whether religion can do good things in people’s lives. It’s whether the government should fund religion. The argument is not even whether religious groups should contract with the government to provide social services — Catholic Charities, the Salvation Army and others have been doing that for decades. It’s whether religious groups that do receive taxpayer funds should be permitted to proselytize on the public dime, and to refuse to hire those of the wrong faith. The relevant debate is about government-financed religious discrimination. The rest is just a smokescreen to make it seem like defenders of the First Amendment are the ones on the offensive.
Yup.
China Is The U.S. Role Model
It’s ironic. Conservatives are still clamoring for prosecution and punishment of the New York Times for reporting a story largely known to terrorists — i.e., that we’re following the money trail. They want the NYT to be penalized for bucking the government.
And that’s where this story comes in:
Chinese media outlets will be fined up to $12,500 each time they report on "sudden events" without prior authorization from government officials, according to a draft law under review by the Communist Party-controlled legislature.
The law, revealed today in most state-run newspapers, would give government officials a powerful new tool to restrict coverage of mass outbreaks of disease, riots, strikes, accidents and other events that the authorities prefer to keep secret. Officials in charge of propaganda already exercise considerable sway over the Chinese media, but their power tends to be informal, not codified in law.
So here we have neo-con emulating the press-barring tactics of Communist China. Stalin, if he were alive today, would be a Republican.
Right Wing Readership Going Down
At U.S. Politics Today, we thought it might be interesting to see how the right-wing media machine was doing. Not well, it turns out.
During the past three months, for instance, http://rushlimbaugh.com traffic ranking has declined 18 percent. He still huffs and puffs away daily on radio, but advertisers might want to double check the size of his audience. If the bottom has dropped out on him online, it likely has had a similar trend line with his radio show.
Even Fox News, that gold standard of right-wing media, is down 13 percent. Here are the numbers: http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?q=&url=www.foxnews.com
Ann Coulter is coining money by attacking widows and orphans — a new game for her since she’s run out of Democrats, living and dead, to defame and verbally pillage. You would think with all of the attention the promotion of her new book has given her would raise visitor numbers at her Web site, http://anncoulter.com. Nope. Traffic there is down 10 percent.
The audience chart reversal seems to be common across the entire right-wing side of the Internet viewing board. Billoreilly.com — http://billoreilly.com — has dropped 40 percent in the past three months. Townhall.com — http://townhall.com — that once popular center for right-wing news and commentary, has fallen by 24 percent. The Washington Times Web site is down by 27 percent. And Matt Drudge, once the hottest right-wing name in Internet sites? Alexa.com says http://drudgereport.com is down 21 percent.
Shakes’ Sis did some own research on her own, focussing on the blog world. She noted the same results — an across-the-board decline in conservative blog readership:
Focus on the Family down 18%. Free Republic down 19%. Hugh Hewitt down 21%. World Net Daily down 23%. Michelle Malkin down 30%. The Weekly Standard down 37%. Pajamas Media down 39%.
And for liberal sites? Some went down, but most went up.
Raw Story up 6%. Center for American Progress up 12%. Crooks and Liars up 17%. Think Progress up 41%.
Lookee What I Found…
From the Geneva Convention Commentaries:
In short, all the particular cases we have just been considering confirm a general principle which is embodied in all four Geneva Conventions of 1949. Every person in enemy hands must have some status under international law: he is either a prisoner of war and, as such, covered by the Third Convention, a civilian covered by the Fourth Convention, or again, a member of the medical personnel of the armed forces who is covered by the First Convention. ‘ There is no ‘ intermediate status; nobody in enemy hands can be outside the law. We feel that that is a satisfactory solution — not only satisfying to the mind, but also, and above all, satisfactory from the humanitarian point of view.
The Winger Response To Hamdan
Entirely predictable.
They’re getting all outraged and pulling the "activist judges" crap. Here, for example, is the editorial at NRO:
As yesterday’s decision again demonstrates, this Court would rather impose its preferences on us than simply follow the law. We should find this unacceptable in any case. But when the consequences of the Court’s arrogance rise to the level of life and death, there is only one word to describe what it is: an outrage.
And again at Real Clear Politics:
Justice Breyer’s concurrence says that Congress didn’t give the President a blank check to fight the war on terror. But the Constitution also doesn’t give the justices a blank check to write the law.
Unfortunately, the "courts gone wild" knee-jerk reaction doesn’t make any sense with respect to Hamdan. The Supreme Court did not write any law or expand its own power. The decision acknowledges the role of Congress in regulating military tribunals. The President, the court said, has to comply with Congress.
But, as I said, this sort of "judicial activism" parroting is to be expected. Greenwald opines:
For all their talk of judicial activism, Bush followers reveal themselves as the ultimate judicial activists whenever they discuss judicial decisions. The crux of the decision yesterday turned on relatively obscure and legalistic questions involving the legal effects of Congressional enactment of the UCMJ, rules of statutory construction as applied to Common Article 3, and the retroactivity of jurisdiction-stripping statutes. Among most Bush followers purporting to condemn this decision as an act of judicial tyranny, you won’t find any discussion of those legal issues, because they know nothing about them and don’t care about them.
All they know is that the Court reached a result they don’t like, and worse, it is a result that contradicted the President’s will, so it is, by definition, the by-product of pro-terrorist judicial activism. Within hours — and certainly without even having the time to read the opinions — Bush followers who never thought about the UCMJ or statutory construction issues concerning Article 3 were able instantaneously to condemn this decision as the by-product of judicial overreach. As always, "judicial activism" has no meaning other than "the reaching of a result by a court which those who wield the term dislike."
Bad Apples
Good lord:
BEIJI, Iraq – Five U.S. Army soldiers are being investigated for allegedly raping a young woman, then killing her and three members of her family in Iraq, a U.S. military official told The Associated Press on Friday.
The soldiers also allegedly burned the body of the woman they are accused of raping.
***
There is no indication what led soldiers to this home. The investigation just cracked open. We’re just beginning to dig into the details."
However, a U.S. official close to the investigation said at least one of the soldiers, all assigned to the 502nd Infantry Regiment, has admitted his role and has been arrested. Two soldiers from the same regiment were slain this month when they were kidnapped at a checkpoint near Youssifiyah.
Now, here’s what makes an unsettling story worse. Instead of condemning these soldiers (assuming the allegations to be true), the wingnuts will blame the media for reporting this story.
Go figure.
Mark Levin Is A Moron
Publius beat me to it. I was going to post the exact same thing:
Mark Levin, NRO:
Congress and the Court are systematically stripping the presidency of war-making powers. Congress demands that the president get court approval before intercepting enemy communications (we call that intelligence gathering) and the Court demands that the president get statutory support from Congress before he can use military tribunals to try terrorists.
And yet, neither Congress nor the Supreme Court have any explicit constitutional authority to make these decisions.
United States Constitution, Article I, Section 8:
The Congress shall have power . . .
To constitute tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court;
To define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and offenses against the law of nations;To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water;
To make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces;
How About “Scissors, Rock, Paper”?
The Holy Trinity is getting a makeover:
When referring to the Trinity, most Christians are likely to say “Father, Son and the Holy Spirit.”
But leaders of the Presbyterian Church (USA) are suggesting some additional designations: “Compassionate Mother, Beloved Child and Life-giving Womb,” or perhaps “Overflowing Font, Living Water, Flowing River.”
Then there’s “Rock, Cornerstone and Temple” and “Rainbow of Promise, Ark of Salvation and Dove of Peace.”
The phrases are among 12 suggested but not mandatory wordings essentially endorsed this month by delegates to the church’s policy-making body to describe a “triune God,” the Christian doctrine of God in three persons.
The Rev. Mark Brewer, senior pastor of Bel Air Presbyterian Church, is among those in the 2.3-million-member denomination unhappy with the additions.
“You might as well put in Huey, Dewey and Louie,” he said.
Bin Laden Hearts Bush
Remember back in the 2004 election, when the GOP talking point was that bin Laden was rooting for a Democrat to win? It was repeated over and over again, and parroted by the media.
Of course, that was just a talking point. The truth is, Bush has been berry berry good to bin Laden. Al Qaeda, once a fringe radical group, is now the cause celebre of every Islamic malcontent. Iraq, for example, has done little to decrase the ranks of al Qaeda and much to increase its ranks throughout the world and the Middle East.
But what we didn’t know back in 2004, we know now: The U.S. intelligence community believed that bin Laden wanted a Bush victory. Read more here.
No No No No No….
It astounds me how stupid some law enforcement people can be about, you know, the law:
NASHUA – A city man is charged with violating state wiretap laws by recording a detective on his home security camera, while the detective was investigating the man’s sons.
Michael Gannon, 49, of 26 Morgan St., was arrested Tuesday night, after he brought a video to the police station to try to file a complaint against Detective Andrew Karlis, according to Gannon’s wife, Janet Gannon, and police reports filed in Nashua District Court.
Police instead arrested Gannon, charging him with two felony counts of violating state eavesdropping and wiretap law by using an electronic device to record Karlis without the detective’s consent.
This should be patently obvious, but I’ll say it quite simply.
(1) It is not against the law to videoptape or record a public officer performing public duties. A police officer works for the people, and when he is performing his duties in that capacity, he does not have any "rights".
(2) This is especially so when the recording is done in the citizen’s own home!
Jeez.
Hamdan Perspectives
What Hamdan means — and doesn’t mean: There’s plenty of good analysis at OrinKerr.com and of course SCOTUSBlog.
Orin Kerr also cites an interesting New Yorker piece about David Addington, Bush’s "legal mind behind the war on terror" It’s pretty clear from the Hamdan decision that Addington, among others, were simply barking up the wrong tree. The article quotes an Addington colleague:
[A] former high-ranking lawyer for the Administration, who worked closely with Addington, and who shares his political conservatism, said that, in the aftermath of September 11th, “Addington was more like Cheney’s agent than like a lawyer. A lawyer sometimes says no.” He noted, “Addington never said, ‘There is a line you can’t cross.’” Although the lawyer supported the President, he felt that his Administration had been led astray. “George W. Bush has been damaged by incredibly bad legal advice,” he said.
Well, that’s true, although let’s be real — this Administration isn’t interested in good and objective legal advice — the just want legal advice which supports the Administration’s pre-determined position.
