RIP John Murtha

Agree with Digby. His was a strong voice very much needed at the time. I admired his courage.

America's "terrorism derangement syndrome"

Two must-reads this morning:

Glenn Greenwald and

Dahlia Lithwick

Republicans are stupid

Proof. As if you needed it.

Seriously, how else to explain the popularity of Rusty Not-So-Sharpe? Here's a guy who not only dropped out of college because he "flunked everything" but also spent eight years propping up the bonafides of the most rock-stupid POTUS in the history of ever, telling his audience that Obama - yeah, uh huh, Obama - is too dumb to write his own papers.

You know, I generally don't go around calling people stupid. I don't have all that much confidence in my own intelligence to feel comfortable deriding someone else for being stupid. But rightwingers push the boundaries of gall so far it becomes just impossible not to point out the glaringly obvious. When they're not jeering at Obama for being an "elitist" (which is rightwing code for "smartypants"), here they are calling him stupid. I guess they don't care WHAT insults they sling as him - be it "Socialist!", "Racist!" "Elitist!" - whatever, so long as it's...insulting.

"Mr. America"

Rush Limbaugh, feminist. You betcha.

Bin Laden must be quite proud of himself

As I floated into work this morning (it's raining, and I do mean RAINING, here)I heard on NPR that our CIA director, Leon Panetta, is kept awake nights by his fears that Al Qaida is going to launch another terrorist attack on the United States homeland! Seriously, a quote of him saying exactly that before a Senate committee was included in the news broadcast and replayed every half hour.

And over at the Washington Post, Richard Cohen is soiling himself for all the world to witness as well. Isn't that special?

I especially liked this part of Scott's post (emphasis mine):

Yeah, here’s the thing, Richard. Just like you can’t teach to the slowest learner in your class without seriously short-changing the other students, the government can’t keep pruning the Bill of Rights in order to reassure the most tremulous bedwetters amongst us, because while there’s no ceiling to their panic attacks and night terrors, there’s definitely a floor beneath which the Constitution no longer functions.

I don’t want Khalid Sheik Mohammed or Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to face trial because I’m a fan of Law and Order, but because there’s no such thing as “security” if the government doesn’t feel constrained by the law. If the Justice Department and the FBI don’t feel obliged to follow the rules in high profile cases, what makes you think they’ll be any more scrupulous when they come to your house after the librarian tips them off to your subversive reading habits? Well, not you, of course; you’re immune to police misconduct because you’re white and you know Sally Quinn. But if we all squeal Havoc! and let loose the dogs of law enforcement, then sooner or later, a lot of innocent who don’t have the benefit of a Washington Post column will get scooped up and abused by a system that values enforcement over the law.

Blues for a rainy day

Values?

Those of us who felt that the first priority of the Obama administration should have been to investigate and prosecute the crimes of the Bush administration were told by other progressives that we were unrealistic and that Obama had to forego such things because Republican cooperation was necessary for Obama to advance his progressive agenda. That doesn't seem to be working out.

Nevertheless, as eloquent and intelligent as Obama obviously is, he is also not the leader we elected him to be, and Democrats are in dire need of a strong, principled and progressive leader. I don't know what it will take to develop a party with some backbone, but it needs a jumpstart, and soon. Though I really don't know if the progressive movement can recover from this setback:

Greenwald:

In sum, there is clearly a bipartisan and institutional craving for a revival (more accurately: ongoing preservation) of the core premise of Bush/Cheney radicalism: that because we're "at war" with Terrorists, our standard precepts of justice and due process do not apply and, indeed, must be violated. To relieve ourselves of guilt and of the bad lingering taste left from having such discredited and unpopular leadership for eight years, we collectively pretended for a little while to regret the excesses of the Bush/Cheney approach to such matters. But it's now crystal clear that the country, especially its ruling elite, is either too petrified of Terrorism and/or too enamored of the powers which that fear enables to accept any real changes from the policies that were supposedly such a profound violation "of our values." One can only marvel at the consensus outrage generated by the mere notion that we charge people with crimes and give them trials if we want to lock them in a cage for life. Indeed, what was once the most basic and defining American principle -- the State must charge someone with a crime and give them a fair trial in order to imprison them -- has been magically transformed into Leftist extremism.