Senate Wants The Military To Lock You Up Without Trial

Note that almost all Republicans voted for this piece of shit, while only some Democrats did (and Obama will veto it), which is why I always say we need more and better Democrats.--SS

Senate Wants The Military To Lock You Up Without Trial:

Here’s the best thing that can be said about the new detention powers the Senate has tucked into next year’s defense bill: they don’t force the military to detain American citizens indefinitely without a trial. They just let the military do that. And even though the leaders of the military and the spy community have said they want no such power, the Senate is posed to pass its bill as early as tonight.

There are still changes swirling around the Senate, but this looks like the basic shape of the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act. Someone the government says is “a member of, or part of, al-Qaida or an associated force” can be held in military custody “without trial until the end of the hostilities authorized by the Authorization for Use of Military Force.” Those hostilities are currently scheduled to end the Wednesday after never. The move would shut down criminal trials for terror suspects.

But far more dramatically, the detention mandate to use indefinite military detention in terrorism cases isn’t limited to foreigners. It’s confusing, because two different sections of the bill seem to contradict each other, but in the judgment of the University of Texas’ Robert Chesney — a nonpartisan authority on military detention — “U.S. citizens are included in the grant of detention authority.”

An amendment that would limit military detentions to people captured overseas failed on Thursday afternoon. The Senate soundly defeated a measure to strip out all the detention provisions on Tuesday.

So despite the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee of a right to trial, the Senate bill would let the government lock up any citizen it swears is a terrorist, without the burden of proving its case to an independent judge, and for the lifespan of an amorphous war that conceivably will never end. And because the Senate is using the bill that authorizes funding for the military as its vehicle for this dramatic constitutional claim, it’s pretty likely to pass.

It would be one thing if the military was clamoring for the authority to become the nation’s jailer. But to the contrary: Defense Secretary Leon Panetta opposes the maneuver. So does CIA Director David Petraeus, who usually commands deference from senators in both parties. Pretty much every security official has lined up against the Senate detention provisions, from Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to FBI Director Robert Mueller, who worry that they’ll get in the way of FBI investigations of domestic terrorists. President Obama has promised to veto the bill.

Which is ironic. After all, Obama approved of the execution without trial of Anwar al-Awlaki, al-Qaida’s YouTube preacher, based entirely on the unproven assertion that Awlaki was dangerous. Awlaki was an American citizen. So Obama thinks he has the right to kill Americans the government says are terrorists; but he doesn’t want the military to lock them up forever without trial. OK then.

Weirder still, the bill’s chief architect, Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), tried to persuade skeptics that the bill wasn’t so bad. His pitch? “The requirement to detain a person in military custody under this section does not extend to citizens of the United States,” he said on the Senate floor on Monday. The bill would just let the government detain a citizen in military custody, not force it to do that. Reassured yet?

Civil libertarians aren’t. Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) said it “denigrates the very foundations of this country.” Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), added, “it puts every single American citizen at risk.”

But there’s a reason this measure goes into the defense bill: voting against the defense bill is usually considered political suicide. That’s why the bill almost certainly pass tonight. If Obama backs down from his veto threat, get ready to see Americans at Guantanamo Bay.

Photo: U.S. Army

Oh, for Fuck’s Sake, Millbank

Barney Frank tells the truth. That's why Republicans hate him.--SS

Oh, for Fuck’s Sake, Millbank:

Twelve years of primary education at the hands of the Dominican sisterhood left me with a permanent tic against explicit vulgarity, but sometimes the truth can only be expressed rudely. Only an arsehole Media Village Idiot could have written “Barney the Bully“:

... The amiable [Savannah] Guthrie tried again. How does he feel about the worsening tone in Washington?

“Well, you exemplify what I think is a change in the tone,” Frank said. “You’ve managed to ask all sort of negative questions. . . . It’s ‘gotcha’ journalism. It’s ‘gotcha’ politics. And it does lessen our chances to get things done.”

The interviewer gave it a final attempt. Does Frank “feel any responsibility for your own role in, kind of, that tone that we do see in Washington?”

“Well, congratulations,” Frank said with derision. “You’re four-for-four in managing to find the negative approach.”

It was a chance for the nation to see what so many in the Capitol had seen up close over the years: That Barney Frank, liberal lion, gay pioneer and respected legislator, is also one mean and ornery S.O.B….

The Republican strategist Karl Rove, writing on FoxNews.com, welcomed the retirement of the “petulant, abrasive and downright nasty” Frank. Rove, who knows something about nastiness, wrote: “Brilliant, but acid tongued and generally unpleasant, Mr. Frank ruled with an iron gavel, ran over critics with delight and treated committee members and especially Republican colleagues as lesser forms of life.”

Congressman Frank is a smart, skillful legislator who’s spent his life working to pass the best laws possible, even when it meant compromising with proudly ignorant know-nothings, most of them registered as Republicans. Savannah Guthrie is a professional blonde talking head paid for her talents at mouthing partisan right-wing talking points while always remaining “amiable“. Karl Rove is a highly-paid thug who’s done his considerable best to degrade his own party’s standards—such as they ever were—during a career of lying, back-biting, ratfucking, theft, and every other form of white-collar criminality going back to his college days as a Young Republican at the end of the 1960s. Pretending that Frank’s inability to suffer fools gladly has been worse for public civility than Rove’s long campaign against honesty in politics, or embracing our major media’s craven pretense that calling someone a liar in front of a recording device is worse than being a liar, is gutless, dishonest, and behavior unworthy of a well-paid, well-educated individual with the distribution and readership of one of the national papers of record, Mr. Millbank.

The Myth of Profligate Euro Zone Countries

Lying about the cause of problems in Europe helps forward the trickle-down theory of austerity and supply-side crap the 1% wants to keep dumping on us.--SS

The Myth of Profligate Euro Zone Countries:

Spain had a budget surplus before the economic collapse. Spain had a budget surplus before the economic collapse. Spain had a budget surplus before the economic collapse.

Perhaps repeating this line three times will help the type of people who have columns in the Washington Post on the euro zone crisis get some understanding of the issue. Today we get a lecture on southern country profligacy from Daniel M. Price. Yesterday, Post columnist Matt Miller told us how he misleads his daughter about the nature of the euro zone crisis and suggested that the rest of us be equally misleading with our own children.

The reality is that most of the countries currently facing debt troubles were not profligate prior to the crisis. While it may be reasonable to describe Greece as being profligate, the only euro zone country that looks much like Greece is Greece. The other euro zone crisis countries had hugely better finances in the years leading up to the crisis.

Italy, the closest Greece competitor among euro zone crisis countries, had relatively small budget deficits in the years before the crisis. Its debt to GDP ratio fell from 93.7 percent of GDP in 2001 to 87.3 percent of GDP in 2007. In other words, the deficits of these years were completely sustainable.

Spain ran budget surpluses in the years from 2005-2007. Its debt to GDP ratio fell from 50.3 percent in 2000 to 26.5 percent of GDP in 2007. There is no remotely plausibly story of government profligacy here.

In short, people who describe the euro zone crisis as a story of excessive government deficits are pushing an ideological agenda that has nothing to do with reality. The story of the current deficits of the non-Greece countries is the story of the collapse of housing bubbles that threw the euro zone economies into a severe downturn. The European Central Bank (ECB) has magnified the problem by maintaining relatively tight monetary policy in order to maintain very low inflation and also explicitly asserting that it would not act as a lender of last resort to the heavily indebted countries.

Blaming government profligacy may be useful to those who want to see cuts in social spending, but it is not a story that is based in reality. It conceals the incompetence/greed of the private sector bankers who fueled the bubble. It also ignores the recklessness of the ECB of clinging to its inflation obsession even in the midst of a crisis that threatens the survival of the euro and could cause millions of additional workers to lose their job.

Ignoring the Obama Presidency

From Jamelle Bouie of the American Prospect.--SS

Ignoring the Obama Presidency:

Among liberals, and most political observers, it’s widely acknowledged that President Obama took a major political hit when he pushed for health-care reform against Republican intransigence and public opposition. The cost of winning comprehensive health-care reform—a longtime liberal dream—was a resurgent and powerful Republican Party. If political courage is defined by the willingness to suffer politically for the sake of good public policy, then Affordable Care Act stands as a testament to the president’s political courage.

Which is why I also have no idea what National Journal’s Josh Kraushaar is talking about when he writes the following:

One of President Obama’s political weaknesses in his first term has been that he’s all-too-willing to avoid making tough decisions, hesitant to expend political capital for potential long-term gain. Throughout his first term in office, he’s had a cautious governing style, and has avoided taking on some of his party’s core constituencies…when it comes to political bravery, Obama isn’t going to win any profiles in courage, either.

Even if you don’t include the Affordable Care Act—and I don’t see why you wouldn’t—this is demonstably false. For the first eight months of this year, Obama did nothing else but “expend political capital for potential long-term gain.” Indeed, given the extent to which liberals are still angry over his willingness to compromise their interests, I’m not sure how else you would describe his approach vis a vis the debt-ceiling negotiations and everything preceding.

Whether you support the choice or not, it remains true that President Obama offered cuts to Medicare and Social Security in exchange for modest tax increases, the result of which was to destroy his standing with liberal activists. If political courage is defined by the willingness to stand against your party’s interests, as Kraushaar argues, then Obama is a courageous politician.

In fairness to Kraushaar, his critique is par for the course. One of the strangest things about the current poliical moment is the extent to which mainstream pundits routinely act as if crucial moments in the Obama presidency never happened. To wit, Tom Friedman complained that Obama hasn’t taken a stand on deficit reduction, despite the fact that he released a plan in September and has been touting it ever since. Likewise, David Brooks moaned that Obama is mired in liberal ortodoxy, despite the fact that — until recently — he has been eager to accomodate Republican demands. And Chris Matthews demands more ambition from Obama, despite the fact that he ran hard to pass a piece of social legislation that rivals the Great Society programs in size and scope.

It’s one thing for pundits to err in their judgment—it happens to the best of us—it’s something else entirely for them to ignore reality and blame the president for his failure to conform to their magical world.

Raise Taxes on Rich to Reward True Job Creators: Nick Hanauer - Bloomberg

Go read the whole thing.--SS

Raise Taxes on Rich to Reward True Job Creators: Nick Hanauer - Bloomberg:

"Even so, I’ve never been a “job creator.” I can start a business based on a great idea, and initially hire dozens or hundreds of people. But if no one can afford to buy what I have to sell, my business will soon fail and all those jobs will evaporate.

That’s why I can say with confidence that rich people don’t create jobs, nor do businesses, large or small. What does lead to more employment is the feedback loop between customers and businesses. And only consumers can set in motion a virtuous cycle that allows companies to survive and thrive and business owners to hire. An ordinary middle-class consumer is far more of a job creator than I ever have been or ever will be."

Bonus Quote of the Day

Hey, #OWS, if you're scaring Frank, you're doing something right.--SS

Bonus Quote of the Day: "I'm so scared of this anti-Wall Street effort. I'm frightened to
death."

-- GOP strategist Frank Luntz, quoted by Yahoo News, noting the Occupy Wall Street protests are "having an impact on what the American people think of
capitalism."

Boeing Makes Peace With Its Unions

Union members should never vote Republican.--SS

Boeing Makes Peace With Its Unions:

Republicans have been making hay for months over the NLRB's decision to consider a complaint from one of Boeing's unions about their decision to build the 787 Dreamliner in a shiny, new, non-union plant in South Carolina. The union believed this decision was made in retaliation for past strikes — something that would be illegal — and they believed this because Boeing CEO Jim Albaugh practically bragged about it in public interviews. Nonetheless, Republicans were apoplectic over the union's decision to challenge a move they believed was made illegally, and they were doubly apoplectic over the gall of the NLRB in allowing the challenge to go forward. Apparently they should have simply been told to pound sand instead of being given a hearing on the merits of the case. GOP leaders in the House introduced a bill in September to strip the NLRB of its authority in cases like this, and a few weeks later Rick Perry thundered that the NLRB had "undermined our free-market system." (In front of a South Carolina audience, of course.)

Yesterday, though, Boeing took away the GOP's lollipop:

The deal announced Wednesday between Chicago-based Boeing and the International Association of Machinists & Aerospace Workers, if ratified by union members, would help pave the way for a planned jump in production by the aerospace giant. It would alleviate the threat of strikes that could derail ambitious sales plans for a retooled version of Boeing's best-selling 737 aircraft, its new 787 Dreamliner and other jets.

Under the deal, Boeing said it will build the 737 Max, the retooled version, at a union plant in Renton, Wash. Boeing previously had said that work could go to another state, sparking anger from labor leaders and intense lobbying by politicians in Washington and elsewhere. In exchange, union leaders said that if their members approve the new deal, they will drop their opposition to Boeing's use of a new, nonunion plant in South Carolina to assemble some Dreamliners.

Hey, collective bargaining! I guess it works after all.