Pruning Shears

No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post

The neocons may finally gone too far (via). There seems to be an actual backlash building against this latest smear. It’s kind of funny to observe what counts as “over the line” in Washington. Right wing lunatics have been casually impugning the patriotism of anyone who question their sadistic, authoritarian agenda for years. Why is this the straw that broke the camel’s back? Anyway, I won’t look a gift horse in the mouth. If it looks like people in the capital are finally figuring it out, better late than never.

Backlash is relative, of course. It isn’t hard to find voices on the right that approve of not just McCarthyite tactics but McCarthy himself. If you’ve only taken to heart one thing I’ve ever written, make it this: Some people are beyond the bounds of civilized discourse and their opinions need not be consulted. I don’t care about Dick Cheney’s opinions on anything unless they are expressed as part of a war crimes trial. His supporters don’t deserve space to provide to “balance” those opposed to war crimes. They should not be appearing on any respectable outlet, and in fact at this point any outlet that provides a forum to them is by definition not respectable.

Right wing extremism is sharply on the rise. Guess the Department of Homeland Security was right.

Kathryn Jean Lopez has the latest example of why it is impossible to parody the modern right. See this too. It’s as though they expect us to have complete amnesia about the Bush years. I just…really?

There’s always seemed to be tension between our military and our mercenaries, but this takes it to a whole new level. A few more incidents like that and even the fans of Pentagon socialism might have trouble justifying fat contracts.

Your tax dollars at work, brainwashing you.

Cynthia Kouril’s best stuff gets right to the heart of an issue and bristles with righteous indignation; this is a great example. She’s my favorite new blogger of the last year or so (I don’t know how long she’s been at it, but it seems relatively recent). She’s written about this before, and funny enough my take on it was “If Holder gets kneecapped on the KSM trial I hope he considers ‘resign in protest’ one of his options.”

Capone ended up getting nailed not for the crimes but for not paying the taxes on them. Maybe such secondary pitfalls will ensnare the banksters too (via). Also this from Yves:

the ability to get the markets to fall on cue when regulators are threatening to do things that are inconvenient has now become a critical source of power for the financial services industry.

Jack Balkin writes “we have developed polarized parliamentary-style parties in a constitutional system not designed for parliamentary government.” The implications are enormous.

Ben Smith is an asshole. He lavished attention on the ACORN story and wrote know-nothing pieces of anti-journalism like “The videos proved a rallying point for conservatives who had long accused the group of fomenting voting fraud.” Whether they were rallying around something legitimate is irrelevant; the fact of their rallying is politically interesting and therefore worthy of coverage. Then he wrote that this criticism was “more or less right”: “reporters, being used to tuning out charges against ACORN, were slow to realize that this was a time when the group’s opponents had the goods.” They had the goods! And when that same intrepid investigator was charged with a felony by rushing to his defense with “If true, that’s substantially less nefarious than trying to bug phones.” (“If true” I will christen the Smith Hedge, because the Asshole Hedge would be impolite.) He basically passes along wingnut talking points with a few weasel words thrown in for cover. And when it all blows up he passes along a block quote from another outlet with no additional commentary. Considering the unabashed cheerleading for O’Keefe, and the ACORN story in particular, you might think this would be a cause for a moment’s reflection. Not in the manic, ahistorical world of Ben Smith!

Another example of Smith’s deplorable work is how he rushed to give cover to the DOJ smear campaign by writing “the Justice Department’s choice right now to disclose a number, but not the name, of former detainee lawyers is a tempting target for the right.” Who cares if it’s a legitimate, or even ethical, tactic? Its temptingness renders it worthy of uncritically reporting on. God what a jerk.

Athenae had more on the ACORN story:

Maybe at this point we can finally start saying to ourselves that these Young Republican Activist Hotnesses live to engage in cheap douchebaggery and gotcha nonsense about nothing that will ever hurt a single soul. Maybe after they’ve been wrong about everything, over and over and over again, maybe after it’s been demonstrated that not a single one of their explosive iTeam reports has led to anything but their supporters having egg all over their faces, maybe after the benefit of the doubt has been extended time after time after time to these rich assholes and never to the people who are the targets of their frat-house antics, we can start to say you know, let’s try something else this time. Something fresh. Something new.

Let’s try assuming that the kind of people who would do this shit are full of crap from the start, and save ourselves the embarrassment later.

Great moments in journalism. This too, though it’s par for the course on Rupert Media (US edition). Here’s the latest on Rupert Media (UK edition).

Spencer Ackerman:

We tend to speak of torture and indefinite detention as two different things. And it’s true that they’re notionally distinct. But imagine yourself placed into a cell for months or for years and abused, without anyone listening to your pleas to be brought before a judge and read the evidence against you, without any ability to contest or challenge what the interrogators tell you that you’ve done. And it drags on for years and years — just you and the guards and maybe the others imprisoned near you, the days counting down without anything changing. To have to find within you the remainder of your faith in something that will at least allow you to make sense of what has happened to you, if not actually set you free. That is, itself, torture.

It made me wonder, hearing these accounts: what if Jay Bybee or John Yoo or David Addington or John Rizzo or Jim Haynes or Alberto Gonzales or George Tenet or Donald Rumsfeld or Dick Cheney or George Bush had to taste what this was like? The weight of the apparatus they created, bearing down upon them? It should, of course, never happen, because the most important thing in this world is justice, and justice is no less necessary for the iniquitous than it is for the good. But would any American experience this for himself or herself and not immediately see how plainly evil — evil — it is to subject someone to this treatment, no matter who they are or what they’ve done?

Pretty much any story with a headline starting “McCain, Lieberman team up” is guaranteed to make me feel queasy.

Surveillance state expands. Oh, and that war we’re in? No, the other one. Yeah. You don’t need to know what’s happening.

Blogger Mickey Kaus is an abysmal reporter whose idea of journalism is grounded in passing along gossip, rumors and allegations based on their deliciousness and not their credibility. A couple years ago Matt Yglesias noted this method as it was practiced with the John Edwards affair story. (Yglesias’ archives on The Atlantic appear to be gone, but there is a cross post here.) Using the Kaus standard of rigor, one commenter wrote (still in Google cache as of today here) “Hey, you know what I hear, Mickey Kaus likes to fuck goats.” Thus an Internet meme was born, and Kaus’ rumored proclivities became the stuff of legend.

The fact that the story that spawned the goat rumor turned out to be true is irrelevant for reasons Kathy elaborated on here. Kaus traffics in rumors, which means not that he will never be right, just that he typically will not be - to destructive effect. A detailed list can be found here.

Anyway, this week Avedon alerted me that he took out papers for a possible Senate run, and recommended the comment section. It included gems such as “It’s interesting that Mickey hasn’t knocked down the goat-blowing allegations yet. Not that I believe them. But the fact that he’s been silent for so long on this issue is very curious.” and (this one made me laugh till I had tears in my eyes) “Kaus has a massive Get Out The Goat operation.” Oh Internet how I love you so.

I WISH I COULD WRITE LIKE Jon Swift, may he rest in peace. Via.

Though it is very magnanimous of Vitter to accept responsibility for his transgressions, is he really to blame? After the Hollywood left redefined marriage, it must have been a very difficult and confusing time for him. The failure of the passage of the Federal Marriage Amendment must have taken a severe toll on him as he struggled to figure out what marriage really is if even gays can do it. As he grappled with the issue, is it any surprise that he found solace in the embrace of a disinterested paid companion?