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No more than any other political method does democracy always produce the same results or promote the same interests or ideals. Rational allegiance to it thus presupposes not only a schema of hyper-rational values but also certain states of society in which democracy can be expected to work in ways we approve. Propositions about the working of democracy are meaningless without reference to given times, places and situations and so, of course, are anti-democratic arguments. . . .
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“The American people(1) voted to restore integrity(2) and honesty(3) in Washington, D.C.,(4) and the Democrats(5) intend to lead the most honest(6), most open(7) and most ethical(8) Congress(9) in history(10).” Nancy Pelosi, November 7, 2006 . . .
Consider this passage from today’s New York Times report on the rise and fall of Obama social secretary Desirée Rogers (my italics): . . .
From the Washington Post: . . .
From ABC News: . . .
As the recent attacks by Liz Cheney and her organization demonstrate, “lawfare” as a subject is not going to disappear anytime soon. Lawyers simply make too inviting targets–even when they’re working pro bono on projects that they believe are advancing the Rule of Law. A conference yesterday in New York showed just how the “lawfare” concept can be reshaped to address new situations and different facts. . . .
How did Bush-era torture policies affect our allies in the war on terror? Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, the former director of MI5, made stinging remarks yesterday suggesting that the torture dilemma in which British intelligence is now enmeshed is an American product. The Independent reports: . . .
From the New York Times: . . .
Chief Justice John Roberts embodies the values of the Court he heads. And public opinion polling shows that those values don’t sit well with most Americans. In Roberts’s world, law and morality have little in common. “What is morally just and right—that’s not my job,” he said to a youthful audience in Moscow, Idaho, about a year ago. The sentiment is reflected in Roberts’s rulings. Consider Citizens United, in which he found that corporations have human rights (more, indeed, than most humans) or Caperton v. Massey, in which Roberts concluded (in the minority this time) that there was nothing objectionable about a Supreme Court justice taking millions from the head of a mining company to secure his election and then throwing the case to benefit the mining company and its shareholders. . . .
David Cole, reviewing the Department of Justice ethics reports on the torture lawyers, says that the almost exclusive focus on John Yoo and Jay Bybee is inappropriate. The report lets Yoo’s and Bybee’s successors off the hook, concluding that even though they approved pretty much the same torture techniques, they approved them in a manner consistent with the ethics standards applicable at the Department of Justice. (Both the OPR memo and the Margolis review have a lot of trouble identifying any ethics standards that are applicable at the Department of Justice, but that’s another matter.) . . .
From the New York Times: . . .
Air Force Lieutenant Colonel David Frakt, a JAG defense counsel who has been representing Gitmo prisoners, having been outed by Liz Cheney, confesses at Salon that he’s working for Al Qaeda. “The chance to actually be a U.S. government-paid spokesperson for al-Qaida under the guise of ‘promoting fairness, justice and the rule of law,’” he says, “was just too delicious an opportunity to pass up. I figured the military commissions at Guantánamo would be the perfect soapbox for me to espouse my terrorist ideology.” . . .
It’s not surprising—indeed, it’s even somewhat admirable—that Karl Rove’s new book focuses on burnishing the reputation of his boss, George W. Bush. The 608-page book covers a lot of turf, including the 2000 primaries and election; Rove savors his hard-fought victories over John McCain and Al Gore. In Rove’s recounting, he’s innocent of any meaningful role in the South Carolina smears against McCain, and the cherished missiles launched against Gore (including his supposed claims to have invented the Internet and to be behind Love Story)—now long debunked—get a careful rehearsing. Rove shows a fairly casual regard for the truth—a sense, rather, that there is a new sort of political truth. The insider understands that these are political fibs in the service of a mission. If the larger audience is duped by them, well, that is the essence of politics. . . .
Former Bush Administration speechwriter Marc Thiessen used his space at the Washington Post to defend the McCarthyite smear campaign that Liz Cheney and Bill Kristol have launched against a group of Justice Department lawyers who did Guantánamo-related pro bono work: . . .
At Salon, Mark Benjamin reviews a cache of internal CIA documents giving directions on how to waterboard prisoners: . . .
From the Washington Post: . . .
Amid hundreds of rocket and mortar explosions that killed dozens of people throughout the country, Iraq held parliamentary elections. Large numbers of Sunnis, who had boycotted previous elections, voted. “We have experienced three wars before,” quipped one voter, “so it was just the play of children that we heard.” Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki's coalition failed to secure a majority of seats, leaving his political future uncertain; the U.S. military said its plans for withdrawal remained “on track.” New York Times A memoir by Karl Rove said that the Bush Administration would not have started the Iraq war without the threat of weapons of mass destruction. New York Times Rampaging Nigerian Muslims slaughtered 500 Christians with machetes, New York Times and a Nigerian member of the Vatican choir admitted to having procured male prostitutes for an Italian government official working as a papal usher. CNN Defense Secretary Robert Gates traveled to Afghanistan to meet with President Hamid Karzai as U.S.-led forces prepared for an offensive in Kandahar. “There won't be a D-Day that is climactic,” Gates said. “It will be a rising tide of security as it comes.” New York Times Hamas banned male hairdressers from styling women's hair in Gaza. BBC News . . .
Back in 2008, Michael Goldfarb and others on the right tried a typically McCarthyite tactic against candidate Barack Obama. Obama was assailed for a supposed relationship with Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi, described in the National Review as “a former mouthpiece for master terrorist Yasser Arafat” and the “founder” of the Arab-American Action Network. Most of their essential claims about Khalidi were false. In fact, Khalidi is well known as a critic of human rights abuses within the Palestinian community; he had nothing to do with AAAN, an organization that provides English language lessons to immigrants and other social services to the indigent; and Khalidi was more closely tied to John McCain than to Obama. Under McCain’s guidance, the International Republican Institute supported Khalidi’s Palestinian Center, an operation geared to raising civil consciousness and engagement among West Bank Palestinians. In short, the effort blew up in their faces. . . .
From ABC News: . . .
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From the Washington Post: . . .
Che fai tu, vita mia, che fai tu lontan da me? Che fai tu, chi ti desvia? Torna, ahi, volgi il piè, Toma mia com’eri pria! Che fai tu, vita mia? . . .
μ παθς μηδ ναισθτως χειν πρς τ κοινν, ν σφαλε θμενον τ οκεα κα τ μ συναλγεν μηδ συννοσεν τ πατρδι καλλωπιζμενον, λλ ατθεν τος τ βελτω κα δικαιτερα πρττουσι προσθμενον, συγκινδυνεειν κα βοηθεν, μλλον περιμνειν κινδνως τ τν κρατοντων. . . .
