Friday, May 20, 2005Top 100 Web Sites
You’re going to get a nice bonus with today’s Favorite review. Instead of only supplying one Web site for you to check out, you’ll get two hundred. PC Magazine has compiled a list of the Top 100 Web Sites, and while you may be familiar with some of them, others will be completely new to you. It even gets a little retro by featuring the Top 100 Classics. Just because it isn’t new doesn’t mean…
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- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 3:32:31 PM -
Ricky In Paris I think it's fairly predictable th...
Ricky In Paris
I think it's fairly predictable that we are going to see the 101st keyboarders go into high gear tomorrow in response to the blogstorm
developing over Little Ricky Santorum's Hitler remarks. They are going
to bring up Robert Byrd's previous statements and say that it's even
steven. And the press will probably see it that way as well. Overheated
rhetoric, he-said-she-said and all that.
While I agree that it's probably not a good idea to evoke Hitler on
the floor of the senate, I do think it's fair to take a look at the
substance of the two statements by Byrd and Santorum and see if there
is any actual merit in either of them.
The audacity of some members to stand up and say, "how dare you break this rule." It's the equivalent of Adolph Hitler in 1942 "I'm in Paris. How dare you invade me. How dare you bomb my city? It's mine." This is no more the rule of the senate that it was the rule of the senate not to filibuster. It was an understanding and agreement. And it has been abused.
So, Santorum is clumsily blabbering that the Democrats are trying
to stop the change of a rule that they're abusing. Or something. His
point is that there was no rule to begin with --- it's an agreement, an understanding --- and even if there had been, the Democrats violated it by abusing it.
Santorum, of course, is speaking out of his ass. Norm Ornstein has definitively written about this. The Republicans are breaking the rules.
To make this happen, the Senate will have to get around the clear rules and precedents, set and regularly reaffirmed over 200 years, that allow debate on questions of constitutional interpretation–debate which itself can be filibustered. It will have to do this in a peremptory fashion, ignoring or overruling the Parliamentarian. And it will establish, beyond question, a new precedent. Namely, that whatever the Senate rules say–regardless of the view held since the Senate’s beginnings that it is a continuing body with continuing rules and precedents–they can be ignored or reversed at any given moment on the whim of the current majority.
Santorum is full of shit and everybody but the theocrats and the
press knows it. Even Ricky. His analogy is wrong. The correct analogy
to this situation would be if the French said to Hitler, "We have a
treaty, you can't bomb our cities. You can't invade Paris!" Which they
did. And he invaded anyway. I think you can figure out who represents
the French and who represents Hitler in our little senate passion play.
Which brings us to Byrd:
But witness how men with motives and a majority can manipulate law to cruel and unjust ends. Historian Alan Bullock writes that Hitler’s dictatorship rested on the constitutional foundation of a single law, the Enabling Law. Hitler needed a two-thirds vote to pass that law, and he cajoled his opposition in the Reichstag to support it. Bullock writes that “Hitler was prepared to promise anything to get his bill through, with the appearances of legality preserved intact.” And he succeeded.
"Hitler’s originality lay in his realization that effective revolutions, in modern conditions, are carried out with, and not against, the power of the State: the correct order of events was first to secure access to that power and then begin his revolution. Hitler never abandoned the cloak of legality; he recognized the enormous psychological value of having the law on his side. Instead, he turned the law inside out and made illegality legal."
And that is what the nuclear option seeks to do to Rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate.
That is correct. Hitler didn't defy the rules or the law. That's
one of the hallmarks of the totalitarian state. They always operate
within the law. They just make sure the law confers upon them absolute
power, that's all.
So, we have both Byrd and Santorum making references to Hitler as
regards this rules change. One is barely comprehensible and posits an
absurd analogy to Democrats being Hitler in Paris. The other quite
astutely points out that these arbitrary rules changes to advance the
power of one party are not without precedent. Indeed, Hitler was a
master at it.
I suppose that Hitler references are always going to cause a stir.
But, aside from the sheer glory of Byrd's rhetoric compared to
Santorum's incomprehensible blubbering, there is a serious point to be
made. When one party is acting in ways that seriously draw the
comparison, maybe it's fair to look at the substance of the charge. The
fact is that while this rule change may not be the end of the world, it
is another in a long line of pure power plays on the part of the
Republicans who show no signs of having any limits. I know it's not
nice to bring up the H-word, but if the shoe fits...
.
- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 3:30:04 PM -
Catherine Crier: Be afraid. Be very afraid.
The Senate filibuster fight between Republicans and Democrats is not over the majority’s attempt to put more conservative judges on the bench. Contrary to their mantra--that liberal ‘activist’ judges have taken over the courts--the nation has had a majority of Republican appointees on the federal bench and Supreme Court for generations. No, this is a fight over a very specific judicial ideology that the far right wing of the Republican Party wants ensconced in our courts.
This reality was clearly expressed Wednesday night on my Court TV program, Catherine Crier Live. Note the following exchange:
Crier: “The Republicans, the conservatives, have dominated the courts now for thirty years in this country, and certainly the Supreme Court, so we know we have Conservatives—but that doesn’t seem to be enough.”Buchanan: “No, that is not enough.”
Crier: “Yeah, the Terri Shiavo case--those were conservative judges, and all of a sudden, we’re saying we want strict constructionists?”
Buchanan: “Exactly. Look, ten of the last twelve justices have been appointed by Republicans. Nixon gave us Blackmon, Gerry Ford gave us John Paul Stevens, Reagan gave us Kennedy and O’Conner, and (Bush Sr.) gave us David Sutter…”
Crier: “Those aren’t good enough?”
Buchanan: “They have been failures. The battle is over the Supreme Court. (It) has become a judicial dictatorship in this country. It dictates racial policy on quotas, affirmative action. It tells us we must have abortion on demand. It’s now into gay rights. It has become a super legislature. Control of it is more important tin the social culture war in America than control of Congress in the United States. That ultimately is what this is all about. The President has got to get those Supreme Court justices…and if that means breaking these ridiculous obstructionist filibusters, he ought to do it.”
Thank you, Pat, for your honesty. What the far right wants is a ‘super legislature’ of their own. Their mission is clear; to reverse case law involving civil rights, abortion rights, the ban on execution of juveniles, and even the application of the federal Bill of Rights to our state governments, to name but a few areas under attack. The federal court nomination of Justice Janice Rogers Brown of the California Supreme Court is now before the Senate. She has clearly expressed her feelings about the ‘socialist’ policies enacted during FDR’s administration, and in a recent speech, she made it clear that religious values in America are threatened by “an increasingly secular culture”. She went on the say that “these are perilous times for people of faith”. Good Lord, how?
The Christian right has portrayed themselves as victims long enough. Every Sunday morning, I have several national networks offering me salvation. Of course, I can always join Pat Robertson on the 700 Club. This fundamentalist voice dominates talk radio, and cable talk shows have elevated dramatically their agenda in the public eye. Christian music is rockin’ and the Left Behind series outsells every other fiction book on the market. A new megachurch (defined as one attracting more than 2,000 members weekly) spring up every two days in this country according to the founder of Church Growth Today. Just how much do they want? They want it all.
The real fight is not over the lower courts in the federal system, but instead, the ultimate prize--the highest court in the land. There is no question that President Bush will have the opportunity to appoint several justices to that Court during his second term. He has made his ideological preferences clear. Conservative justices aren’t enough. He wants jurists of a particular persuasion. They must satisfy the requirements of fundamentalist Christians, with a willingness to roll back the clock to a time where children prayed to Jesus in public school, gays were back in the closet and women were forced into back alleys.
Those with different religious beliefs, (forget those with none at all), are dismissed entirely. Those who assert they are moral without believing in the Scriptures, verbatim, go straight to Hell.
If we want a Theocracy in this country, then ignore the assault on our nation’s judges. If you believe in the Republic that our Founding Fathers bequeathed, then prepare to battle for the one remaining branch of the government that has not yet been co-opted -- the federal Judiciary.
- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 3:28:02 PM -
Looks Like the Fourth Turning After All
| The Idea: Is the US predestined to slide into totalitarianism? I haven't written much about US politics lately, but that doesn't mean I haven't been paying attention. As distraught as I am about the extremist ideology of the party in power in the US, I am far more concerned about the means they are using to try to subvert the will of the moderate majority. These are the means of people with totalitarian aspirations, megalomanic personalities, and undemocratic agendas:
The techniques above work -- they have been used by anti-democratic forces that believe they know better than people for centuries. And these techniques are working in America -- whether you believe the 2004 election was stolen or not (and it is a tactic of anti-democratic groups to show the electoral process as suspect in order to undermine support for it), a lot of moderate Americans chose to vote for a bloc of decidedly non-moderate candidates at every level in the 2004 elections. Everything is going exactly according to plan. Everything is being done to manufacture the next crisis -- an economic collapse due to deliberate mismanagement of the national finances, by racking up the largest debt in the history of the planet, or a military crisis due to deliberate mismanagement of international diplomacy, on the pretext, this time, of dealing with the Iranian or North Korean 'nuclear threat'. This has been in the planning stages for a decade -- the plan to bankrupt the federal government and the names of the chosen 'axis of evil', three countries whose governments everyone loathes and which are convenient targets for whipped up nationalistic frenzy and fear, were decided upon long ago. With the next crisis, look to see the government 'test the waters' by suspending civil liberties more broadly than in the first trial balloon, the Patriot Act. Look to see the government ask for permanent powers in the interest of 'security' that will wrench power from an unreliable Congress and an even less reliable electorate -- powers that will include the right to launch 'limited nuclear strikes' (there is simply no money left for conventional warfare against Iran or North Korea, as it has all been given away as paybacks to the large corporations that bankrolled the right-wing coup). And powers that will include the right to permanently dismantle every part of the federal government except the military and 'homeland security' in the interest of restoring government solvency. It is a shame that in this century where real, long-term global crises are looming, we seem so incapable of learning the lessons of history, and so we keep repeating the same mistakes. America's slide into totalitarianism is the last thing we need now -- it could well distract the world for decades from dealing with global warming, the dangers of bioterrorism, and the acceleration of epidemic diseases, all of which will be much harder to solve than an American dictatorship. What is most telling, and most frightening, is the silence of the media, the ignorance of the population, and the denial by all but a tiny minority that anything is seriously wrong. Take a look at any country that has fallen from democracy to totalitarianism and you will see the same signs. This is the calm before the storm. Is there anything that can be done about it? Probably not. Impeaching Bush might work, but I wouldn't count on that happening. America's democracy has always been fragile -- since it was established it has never been seriously threatened so there's been no need to pay attention to keeping it robust. It will be a useful object lesson for the rest of the world. And it will make the authors of The Fourth Turning look prophetic indeed. |
- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 3:27:24 PM -
