Psychopolitik 2.0

Shorter Daniel Koffler: “Scalia is full of shit in a way even deeper & more dangerous than any of us previously realized.”

Read the whole thing. Trust me.

Out of curiosity checked out what Kevin Drum had to say about the Heller ruling. He doesn’t really elaborate much on his own view, except to doubt that the threat of confiscation swayed anyone outside of an “extremist fringe” (whatever that means: chances are, your fringe ain’t my fringe…). As is usual with blogs of the more tolerable “progressives”, the comments got overrun by walking statist-liberal stereotypes, one of whom sneered the following in response to a comment by a proud “armed socialist”:

Dr. Morpheus: “I’m still a socialist, but I’m an armed socialist.“

That worked out real well for the Black Panther Party.

I guess on a superficial level you can say his sarcasm was correct — the Panthers dissolved, and no longer exist except as a stolen name slapped on a group that has nothing to do with them. But considering the reaction to the Black Panthers and their enthusiastic embrace of the right to bear arms, wouldn’t it be more accurate to say that the image of armed left-wingers — and armed BLACK left-wingers at that — struck a nerve, revealing what the real fear of the political elite was?

Call it tinfoil-hattery if you wish, but I don’t think it’s far-fetched to consider whether the mainstream “liberal” embrace of gun control rose from the tender sensibilities of the political elite being offended by the above scene. Ironic, when you find out who first agreed with them on preventing that from happening again, and realize that before then the precedent for disarmament in the U.S. was set in the Jim-Crow era south…

To put it another, simpler way: if the “latte-sipping limousine liberal” slur were not a right-wing tool for portraying themselves as populists, but a comment by the anti-state Left that amounted to shorthand for questioning their “people power” bonafides in light of crap like this, I’d actually agree with its use.

While reading Radley Balko’s guest column on the Chicago Tribune website (about why Chicago came in dead last on a “freedom in big US cities” index done for Reason Magazine), I noticed in a sidebar of links to other articles on the site the following headline: “Motorcyclist dies in LSD crash“.

My first thought prior to clicking on that article: “…Now why the hell would someone do acid and then get on a motorcycle?  How’d they have the presence of mind to even get on it, as opposed to seeing it sprout tentacles and levitate while singing old heavy metal songs backwards in Korean?”

I’m not kidding.

So…wanna travel outside of the US this summer, but frustrated about higher prices & crappier service with air travel? Google Maps has the solution for you!

Check out turn #15 in the screencap above. Took that in case they realized the quirk & changed it.  Props to Sullivan.

As you know by now, the Supreme Court struck down D.C.’s ridiculous handgun ban & clarified what shouldn’t have needed clarification in the first place. Op-ed columnists are laying fingers to keys all over the place, doin’ their job. Spotted a pair on the Washington Post website that say a lot in their contrasts.

First, Eugene Robinson:

I’d like to be able to thunder about the injustice committed by an activist, archconservative Supreme Court that seeks to return our jurisprudence to the 18th century. I will, almost certainly, about some future outrage. But this time, I can’t.

The big problem, for me, is the clarity of the Second Amendment’s guarantee of the “right of the people to keep and bear arms.” The traditional argument in favor of gun control has been that this is a collective right, accorded to state militias. This has always struck me as a real stretch, if not a total dodge.

I’ve never been able to understand why the Founders would stick a collective right into the middle of the greatest charter of individual rights and freedoms ever written — and give it such pride of place — the No. 2 position, right behind such bedrock freedoms as speech and religion.

Eugene, being generally in favor of “gun control”, worries about the impact of the ruling. Yet, he’s intellectually honest enough to admit that just because he disagrees with it doesn’t make it wrong. He even suggests to anti-2nd-amendment types that if they seriously think it is outdated then they should attempt a constitutional amendment, abandoning their previous tactic of just lying about the meaning. I never thought I’d see a successful public avoidance of screaming “judicial activism!” at a decision simply because it doesn’t go your way ANYWHERE, let alone in the pages of a mainstream newspaper, props to Eugene for maintaining seriousness on this issue.

E.J. Dionne, however…

The political response to this decision from many liberals and Democrats was relief that the ruling still permits gun regulation, and quiet satisfaction that it will minimize the chances of the gun issue hurting Barack Obama in the presidential campaign. Some will rationalize this view by pointing to maverick liberal constitutional scholars who see a broad right to bear arms in the Second Amendment.

But these pragmatic judgments underestimate how radical this decision is in light of the operating precedents of the past 69 years. The United States and its gun owners have done perfectly well since 1939, when an earlier Supreme Court interpreted the Second Amendment as implying a collective right to bear arms, but not an individual right.

Here is what the Second Amendment says: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Yesterday’s narrow majority spent the first 54 pages of its decision, written by Scalia, trying to show that even though the Framers inserted 13 important words in front of the assertion of a right to bear arms, those words were essentially meaningless. Does that reflect an honest attempt to determine the “original” intention of the Constitution’s authors?

In fact, it was the court’s four more liberal justices who favored judicial modesty, deference to democratic decisions, empowerment of local officials and care in examining the Constitution’s actual text and the history behind it. Indeed, the same conservative majority ran roughshod over the work of an elected branch of government in its ruling yesterday on campaign finance law. (emphasis mine)

The slightest glance at what the founders were actually saying at the time, combined with how the original states themselves saw it and an honest note of how the two parts of that sentence modulate each other, show the “what about the first part!?!?” argument for gun control to be bullshit, plain and simple. But let’s humor E.J. for a moment: if the 2nd Amendment, contrary to Eugene Robinson’s admission, did solely refer to a collective right, and only for purpose of organizing a militia, what is the militia?

(a) The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.

(b) The classes of the militia are— (1) the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia; and

(2) the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia.

-US Code, 10-A, part One, Cpt. 13, 311

Gee, if the militia is that broadly encompassing, then doesn’t that contradict the supposed restrictive nature of militias as portrayed by gun control advocates anyway? The end result would still be private gun ownership, because the militia is defined such that citizens don’t have to be part of the National Guard to be included.

As for his throwaway remark about the right-wing of the court & “judicial restraint”, he makes the grave error of interpreting the Court based on what the justices say when not on the bench and not what they do when they are. The “conservative” wing only follows a policy of deference to legislators when those legislators & the plurality egging them on are attempting to fulfill conservative goals, and the opposite is true with regard to the rest of the Court & what are seen as “liberal” goals. This pattern holds so well that cases that don’t are anomalies like the Kelo v. New London ruling, where the right-wing opposed interpreting a naked big business favor land grab as a public use & the “liberals” supported it.

EJ’s point about deference is a curious one anyway, since if followed rigorously there’d be no point to the Supreme Court at all — quickest way to defer is to just not hear anything. Ideally, rather than going by these political constructs they’d simply do their jobs as described & go by intent, precedent & majoritarian idealism be damned. But anyone with even half a brain knows the Court is politicized and has been for a long time, so instead we just get a more haughty version of partisan sniping, & the portrayal of contests for who will next make judicial appointments as I’d imagine high-stakes poker would look in the deepest circle of hell as depicted in a modern-day Dante’s Inferno.

36.  44.

Those numbers are, respectively, the percentage of US citizens that when polled said they condoned torture in 2006 & this year.

Leaving aside the obvious moral implications of this, especially with regard to American Exceptionalism & our overall foreign policy, here’s the question: why has this number gone up?

The Suck, it burns…:

The Egyptian bureau of al-Hurra, an Arabic-language television network financed by the U.S. government, boasts a spectacular view of the Nile River and the capital’s bustling streets. But inside, all is quiet.

The bureau’s satellite link was unplugged with little explanation a few weeks ago by a local company, making it impossible to broadcast live. Since then, staffers have had to use a studio controlled by the Egyptian secret police, who have warned guests not to say anything controversial on the air.

Al-Hurra — “The Free One” in Arabic — is the centerpiece of a U.S. government campaign to spread democracy in the Middle East. Taxpayers have spent $350 million on the project. But more than four years after it began broadcasting, the station is widely regarded as a flop in the Arab world, where it has struggled to attract viewers and overcome skepticism about its mission.

Ironic name, considering its status. What’s Arabic for “The Imperialist Welfare Project”?

This being a terrible idea should’ve been obvious from day one, simply due to its contradiction of the stated purpose: seriously, promoting “democracy” via a foreign government financed network? That’s like showing the film “Dogma” in hopes that it’ll promote catholicism. Knowing that the real problem is a lack of Liberalism, since democracy in and of itself means zilch (imposed on a cultural context devoid of respect for the rights of differing groups, voting just formalizes the same tribal strife that was there already), what logically follows is acknowledgment that the road towards liberalism is paved with very difficult arguments. Them being part of a culture so different from ours, the discourse that would flow from such is inherently going to involve things that will offend us. Al-Hurra is rightly seen as an attempt by an outside party to control the discussion, which is why it is failing.

Arab journalists and viewers say al-Hurra has a basic problem: It is boring. Investigative pieces are rare, and critics say the channel generally doesn’t make waves.

Salameh Nematt, a Jordanian journalist based in Washington, said that al-Hurra, like many of its competitors, has ignored controversial issues such as financial corruption involving Arab leaders and the use of torture by security forces.

“Al-Hurra would have been the number one station in the Arab world had they done one-quarter of what they should have covered,” Nematt said. “People say if it’s an American station, nobody will watch it. That’s crap. If it’s an American station that does a good job, everybody will watch it.”

What Nematt is missing here is that doing a good job would involve acknowledging issues that are…inconvenient, to put it lightly, to the actual aim of US policy.  They can’t exactly air stories about torture when people can just throw Abu Ghraib in our faces in response, for example.

Al-Jazeera comes closer to the mark on promoting discussion of alternate viewpoints, yet we now treat it as enemy propaganda. What does that tell you?

Fuck death:

In one of his most famous routines, Carlin railed against euphemisms he said have become so widespread that no one can simply “die.”

“‘Older’ sounds a little better than ‘old,’ doesn’t it?,” he said. “Sounds like it might even last a little longer. … I’m getting old. And it’s OK. Because thanks to our fear of death in this country I won’t have to die � I’ll ‘pass away.’ Or I’ll ‘expire,’ like a magazine subscription. If it happens in the hospital they’ll call it a ‘terminal episode.’ The insurance company will refer to it as ‘negative patient care outcome.’ And if it’s the result of malpractice they’ll say it was a ‘therapeutic misadventure.’”

1) RIP.

2) Suck it AP, I’m quoting one of my lifelong heroes here.

Wolf Blitzer, a moment ago:

“Why shouldn’t Iraq, after all the US has done to try to install stability there, sell oil to the US at a discounted rate?”

WTF?!?!?  And he said this while interviewing an adviser for McCain!  He might as well be wearing a cowboy hat, a T-shirt with Reagan on it & a “pave the rain forest” button now far as I’m concerned.

Remember when some idiot Blackwater employees played X-Wing fighter w/ a cargo plane in Afghanistan & earned a Darwin Award? Well, it’s lawsuit time for the widows of the soldiers they took with them, and Blackwater is cheaping out even further than I thought they would:

To defend itself against a lawsuit by the widows of three American soldiers who died on one of its planes in Afghanistan, a sister company of the private military firm Blackwater has asked a federal court to decide the case using the Islamic law known as Shari’a.

The lawsuit “is governed by the law of Afghanistan,” Presidential Airways argued in a Florida federal court. “Afghan law is largely religion-based and evidences a strong concern for ensuring moral responsibility, and deterring violations of obligations within its borders.”

If the judge agrees, it would essentially end the lawsuit over a botched flight supporting the U.S. military. Shari’a law does not hold a company responsible for the actions of employees performed within the course of their work.

Erik Prince, who owns Blackwater and Presidential Airways, briefly discussed the lawsuit in a meeting today with editors and reporters at The News & Observer. Prince was asked to justify having a case involving an American company working for the U.S. government decided by Afghan law.

“Where did the crash occur?” Prince said. “Afghanistan.” (emphasis mine)

Yeah, you read that right. This pseudo-patriot war-profiteer scumbag, to keep away from the possibility of any of his millions compensating these women for the fatal results of his company waging war The Wal-Mart Way, is endorsing Islamic law.  Hilarious…

Props.