Pruning Shears

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

Remember the Cato institute’s “I have little to worry about, of course, because I’m not an illegal immigrant”? I wonder if Eduardo Caraballo has the same placid view of the situation. This is an era of nativism, and supposedly respectable institutions are giving intellectual cover for a new generation of racists, much like William F. Buckley did with his “[whites are] the advanced race” vileness in the 50’s.

If there was no violence or threat of violence, this is outrageous - police state activity attempting to intimidate political dissent.

Deepwater Horizon is a whole different category of environmental catastrophe, but keep in mind Don Blankenship has a bigger body count.

The persecution of the ACLU’s John Adams Project proceeds apace.

I’ve only become acquainted with Adam Serwer in the last few months (I believe his instant classic “the only way Congress would stop giving Blackwater money is if it started registering black people to vote” was the first time I took note of his name) but I really enjoy his writing and keep an eye out for it now. Here’s another keeper:

Once a celebrated prosecutor, McCarthy has been reduced to a boiling stew of the worst kinds of right-wing paranoia, Bircherism, McCarthyism, and Birtherism all churned together with a teeth-chattering Islamophobia. But it’s important to understand that it’s not the terrorists who are the real focus of McCarthy’s wrath; it’s anyone who disagrees that the executive branch should have limitless, unchecked power to fight Islamist terrorism. These people, to McCarthy, are indistinguishable from someone who steps onto a plane with a bomb in their shoes.

The military has begun a broad expansion of clandestine activities in both hostile and friendly countries. I don’t believe there is a degree of sarcasm or cynicism sufficient to do justice to this news.

There has been some lazy commentary, from usually reliable voices, on the response to the environmental catastrophe unfolding in the Gulf. Steve Benen went with his second strawman argument this month (see here for the first) when he suggested the main criticism of the president was from people “complaining that the president doesn’t ‘seem’ to be ‘sufficiently enraged.’”

Yes, such people exist - but there has been a steady stream of critiques about concrete steps he could be taking to address the issue. I linked to several of them on Thursday, and if Steve is at least skimming HuffPo, FDL and other liberal sites he would have seen them. And if he’s not, that means he’s probably getting most of his news from Village outlets, in which case shame on him.

Then Glenn Greenwald wrote “Most complaints about the Obama administration’s handling of the BP oil spill are glaringly bereft of specifics,” about which see above. There are plenty of specifics out there.

In the same article Greenwald wrote:

As more and more Americans come to understand the true magnitude of the oil spill disaster, it will matter little that President Obama was not at fault. Far more significant will be the perception that he failed to “protect” us from this threat, a potentially devastating belief in a society where “protecting us from harm” has come to be seen as the president’s overarching responsibility

Theoretically, this is the kind of situation I should love. The president sits back and does nothing, leaving it for Congress to take the lead. While I think we fetishize the president, see him as literally the personification of the country, and are all too eager to beg him to act more like a king than a president in times of stress, there is a legitimate need for the government to act quickly in an emergency.

While Congress ought to be a much more substantial driver of policy than it has been, lawmaking is ultimately a slow process (and the few times it has acted quickly - like the PATRIOT act - only prove the necessity of it acting deliberately). It is not well equipped to respond to the urgency of, say, an Exxon Valdez pouring into the Gulf every five days for months.

The president could act vigorously here, even to the point of potentially breaking the law. On Thursday it looked like Chuck Todd had a White House official pointing a gun to his head from just off camera because he just kept repeating the same talking point: “these guys actually feel handcuffed by this 1990 law,” “they actually do feel handcuffed by this 1990 law,” “They feel handcuffed by this 1990 law.” That was all in about a 90 second exchange.

Listen, the government didn’t feel handcuffed when the Geneva Conventions and the CAT criminalized torture, because somehow it still happened. Government officials have a very flexible view of the law - when it prohibits them from doing what they want, it is optional; when it prevents them from having to take action they do not wish to take, it handcuffs them.

I’ve written this before, and I’ll write it again: If the situation is dire enough, break the law - and then let the courts handle it once it passes. Laws aren’t meant to cover everything, just the vast majority of ordinary situations (hard cases make bad law, remember?) Did you torture someone? Go to court and let a jury handle it. If your torture extracted information that directly led to the disarming of a ticking nuclear bomb in the middle of Manhattan, I suspect the jury will take that into account. If you were just inflicting gratuitous cruelty on some poor schmuck who was in the wrong place at the wrong time, you may have some trouble persuading people.

Same thing now: The law says BP can’t be kicked off the scene? Then break the law and force their asses from the scene - with battleships if necessary. Let BP take you to court. Under the circumstances I suspect they’d have their work cut out for them - but by all means let the courts process the case. This is like all the talk about the sanctity of contracts when it came to high flyers during the bailout fever, followed shortly by the demand that the UAW tear up its contracts.

The judicial branch is making the Gulf problems substantially worse. It did so before the first drop of oil escaped the doomed platform by reducing by 80% the judgment against Exxon for the Valdez spill. Unsurprisingly, this created the incentive for companies to fight, fight, fight unfavorable judgments all the way to the highest court in the land - where a sympathetic hearing awaits.

And because the Supreme Court has granted personhood to private corporations, these lawsuits - unlike the actual physical human beings who file them - can go on until the end of time if need be. There are lots of villains to keep track of in the current mess, but as you watch BP tie this up forever in court with the goal of getting damages ultimately reduced to the “acceptable” range of its cost/benefit analysis, try to spare some ire for David Souter, John Roberts, Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy and Clarence Thomas.

By the way, Obama’s press conference was about as nauseating display of narcissistic self indulgence as I’ve seen. I really don’t care how the oil spill makes him feel, or how greatly troubled he is about it, or what his daughter thinks about it. I want to hear about what actions are being taken.

I WISH I COULD WRITE LIKE Amanda Marcotte:

folks like Dan Riehl honest-to-god think that those who support legal racial discrimination have a god-given right not to have their views aired while running for office. His reasoning is that the public is too stupid to distinguish the right kind of racists—-folks like him who’ve created elaborate ideological arguments based on “states’ rights” and “libertarianism” to promote their racism—-from ignorant rednecks screaming “white power”. However, I’d argue that not distinguishing between the two is evidence of how smart the audience is.