September 2007

From LeftWingConspiracy:

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(Hat tip: The People’s Republic of Seabrook)

In a 2005 report, the Southern Poverty Law center issued a report outlining the frightening number of domestic terrorists being spawned by right-wing ideologies:

In the 10 years since the April 19, 1995, bombing in Oklahoma City, in fact, the radical right has produced some 60 terrorist plots. These have included plans to bomb or burn government buildings, banks, refineries, utilities, clinics, synagogues, mosques, memorials and bridges; to assassinate police officers, judges, politicians, civil rights figures and others; to rob banks, armored cars and other criminals; and to amass illegal machine guns, missiles, explosives, and biological and chemical weapons. What follows is a list of key right-wing plots of the last 10 years.

There can be little doubt that right now, more terrorist plots are being hatched by right-wing crazies. Let us hope that our law enforcement agencies are hot on their trail, for the home-grown variety of terrorist is a far more immediate threat to the safety of the average American citizen than any insurgents in Iraq.

(hat tip: Orcinus)

Ariana Huffington calls it spot on — the hissy fit that the wingnuts are having over the MoveOn.org “Betrayus” ad is nothing more than a clumsy attempt at distraction:

Does anybody really believe the problem with the war in Iraq is too much questioning of those in authority, too much bluntness, and not enough deference to those who have been in charge of the war for the last four years?

That’s apparently the feeling of all the conservative talk-show hosts and GOP presidential candidates who came down with the vapors over the MoveOn ad that had the temerity to question Gen. David Petraeus. Tens of thousands of dead civilians, nearly 4,000 dead American soldiers, half a trillion dollars spent, and the squandering of America’s moral authority — none of that seems to have ruffled their feathers very much. But the ad? Now that has got them royally steamed.

Rudy Giuliani is up in arms, railing against “character assassination on an American general who is putting his life at risk.” John McCain thinks “MoveOn.org ought to be thrown out of this country.” Even Don Rumsfeld popped his head out of his spider hole to blast the ad.

It’s the political version of the old lawyer’s axiom: When the law is against you, argue the facts. When the facts are against you, argue the law. When both are against you, attack the plaintiff. And when the war is an unmitigated disaster, the facts on the ground are against you, and your only plan for the future is ‘more of the same,’ go crazy over a newspaper ad.

Read it all.

The USA “Patriot” Act — perhaps the all-time prizewinner for Most Inappropriately Named US Law Ever — is slowly being taken apart, odious bit by odious bit:

Two provisions of the USA Patriot Act are unconstitutional because they allow search warrants to be issued without a showing of probable cause, a federal judge ruled Wednesday.

U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken ruled that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, as amended by the Patriot Act, “now permits the executive branch of government to conduct surveillance and searches of American citizens without satisfying the probable cause requirements of the Fourth Amendment.”

…

“For over 200 years, this Nation has adhered to the rule of law _ with unparalleled success. A shift to a Nation based on extra-constitutional authority is prohibited, as well as ill-advised,” she wrote.

By asking her to dismiss Mayfield’s lawsuit, the judge said, the U.S. attorney general’s office was “asking this court to, in essence, amend the Bill of Rights, by giving it an interpretation that would deprive it of any real meaning. This court declines to do so.”

Judge Ann Aiken understands our legal heritage far better than the vast majority of the terror junkies on the right. It simply is not necessary to gut the Constitution to ensure this country’s security.

UPDATE 09/27/07 6:26 AM EDT: The text of the decision [PDF] is available online. (hat tip: Xeni Jardin)

Rick Perlstein, reflecting on the hysterical reaction of the wingnuts to the Iranian president’s recent visit to the US, has it exactly right: we’ve become a nation of bedwetters:

But look now what we have lost. Now when a bad guy crosses our threshhold, America becomes a pants-piddling mess.

Iran’s president speaks at a great American university. That university’s president, in the act of introducing his lecture, whines like a baby bereft of his pacifier that his guest is a big meany poopy-head. City Council members, too, and a rabbi, make like ten-year-olds, giving their press conference in front of a sign with his face struck through and the legend “Go To Hell.” Up in Albany, Democratic leader Sheldon Silver treat the students of this great university like ten years olds, threatening to defund Columbia University lest censors like himself prove unable to shut the poor children’s ears to difficult speech. (What, was he worried they’d be convinced, join the jihad?) Then a Republican presidential candidate chimes in — bye, bye, federalism! — saying Washington should starve the school of funds, too. American diplomats used to have the gumption to spar face to face with dreaded foreign leaders. Now they go on cable TV and whine about what a “travesty” it would have been to visit a site which properly should belong to the world. Hundreds of foreign nationals died in the World Trade Center on 9/11 (maybe even some of the Iranian!). Yet we have to systematically repress that — as if our national ego would crack like fine crystal if we were forced to acknowledge the mingling of American blood with that of mere foreigners.

But — they sputter — Ahmadinejad has has promised to wipe Israel off the map!

Well, Khrushchev had promised to wipe the U.S. off the map. (“We will bury you.”) And, unlike Mr. A, who has but some possible stores of fissile material, Mr. K very much had the means, motive, and opportunity to do it — thousands of nuclear-tipped rockets aimed at every city in the land.

How cowardly our conservative Republic of Fear has made us.

Go… read the whole thing.

Don’t forget to point and laugh cruelly at the next hand-wringing, bed-wetting, right-wing Nervous Nellie you meet.

(hat tip to Shakespeare’s Sister)

Meanwhile, back in reality…

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And in other news…

Apparent contradictions are relatively easy to find in the flood of bar charts and trend lines the military produces. Civilian casualty numbers in the Pentagon’s latest quarterly report on Iraq last week, for example, differ significantly from those presented by the top commander in Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus, in his recent congressional testimony. Petraeus’s chart was limited to numbers of dead, while the Pentagon combined the numbers of dead and wounded—a figure that should be greater. Yet Petraeus’s numbers were higher than the Pentagon’s for the months preceding this year’s increase of U.S. troops to Iraq, and lower since U.S. operations escalated this summer.

The charts are difficult to compare: Petraeus used monthly figures on a line graph, while the Pentagon computed “Average Daily Casualties” on a bar chart, and neither included actual numbers. But the numerical differences are still stark, and the reasons offered can be hard to parse. The Pentagon, in a written clarification, said that “Gen. Petraeus reported civilian deaths based on incidents reported by Coalition forces plus Iraqi government data. The [Pentagon] report only includes incidents reported by Coalition forces for civilian causality data.”

Read that last carefully. Petraeus supposedly uses multiple data sources that report more incidents than included in the Pentagon report, yet he still conveeeeeeniently comes up with fewer casualties during the surge.

Yet the wingnuts got their knickers in a twist because MoveOn.org dared to question Petraeus’ veracity.

It is to laugh.

(hat tips: Atrios and ThinkProgress)

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(hat tip: Crooks and Liars)