Fire Hydrant of Freedom

Let's try some less controversial examples.

Is Operation Rescue fascist?

Was Timothy McVeigh a fascist?

Rog

GM,

I also felt that the "birther" movement (heavily egged-on by the talk radio right-wingers) had a fairly racist component to it.  Again, they're not going to come right out and say "aren't you pissed off that a black guy is president?"  But if all you're doing is "simply asking the question" (over and over and very loudly) of whether the black president is *really* American, then you're appealing to racists without having to make any openly, blatantly racist statements.  Not all (or even most) conservatives are racist, but a significant chunk of them are and politicians and media personalities absolutely know it.

I take back my calling Lee Atwater "Republican god", since it would be incorrect to suggest most Republicans agree with him.  To his credit, near the end of his life he expressed deep regret for a lot of the nasty things he did as a political consultant.  It's unfortunate that his proteges who are still operating today haven't come to any such enlightenment.

But back to the subject of the thread, why are none of you willing to call the Hutarees "fascist"?  Or do you guys just want to call Obama and the Dems fascists and have tailored your definition of the term to apply solely to them (and Hitler, Mussolini, etc)?

Rog

Crafty,

You saying the Hutaree militia is not "fascist" because they are "quite contrary" to a strong state is BS.  Would they not be perfectly happy with a "strong state" that forced their brand of fundamentalist Christianity on everybody?  Even leaving the Muslisms aside, to call the Democrats "fascist" for passing a completely weak health care reform bill (when ALL other industrialized nations have a much stronger form of it) while consciously avoiding the term for the Hutarees says that you guys pretty much consider only liberals even capable of fascism.  It's difficult to take such a discussion of "fascism" seriously.

Rog

BBG, you seem rather quick to dismiss this.  Would you have the same attitude about "some asinine plan they didn't get around to executing" if we were talking about a group of Muslims instead?

I just assumed that people so concerned about fascism would have something to say about this.  Especially since their asinine plans apparently included deliberate targeting of LEOs.  Again, is this what you'd be saying if a group of Muslims were the alleged would-be terrorists?

"But I assume you agree that with a cop present, refusal to surrender the dog was not an option."

My question is why a policeman would be there at all? 

In case the hairdresser decided to pull a Crafty and refuse to give up the dog? 

ED broke her contract with the Agency

OK then.  So what right to ED or her hairdresser have to bitch about how unfairly they're being treated?  If I rent a car and just give it away to my friend, does the rental agency have no right to take it back because hey, my friend never signed any contract with them?  Your legal reasoning here is not sound IMO.

It's not like ED couldn't have simply gone to the pound and adopted a dog she could pretty much do whatever she wanted with, but she chose to go to this boutique adoption agency where they spend a lot of time trying to find the right homes for their dogs, and naturally they're going to object somebody just giving one of their dogs away to somebody they (the agency) knows nothing about.

That's not to say that all (or even many) adoption agencies are pleasant to deal with.  They can be annoyingly self-righteous and tyrannical, and turn away people who would provide a perfectly good home for a dog because they use the wrong kind of collar or their yard isn't big enough.

I'm not really following this Rog.  Are you saying that there should be a FD here so that the agency gets to respond to EG on her show?

Not necessarily, but IMO the adoption agency should sue Ellen's ass off for damages.  IMHO, Ellen airing this issue (a personal business dispute) on her show is completely inappropriate and defamatory.  Keep in mind that the woman from this adoption agency has received death threats over this, a boycott, etc.

Also, I'm not getting why the hairdresser and family gave up the dog.  Some third part comes to my door wanting my children's dog has got a serious problem.  What kind of parent coughs up their children's dog?  If the agency wants the dog, let them sue.

IIRC from the article, the agency woman had a cop escorting her, so I don't see what choice they had but to comply.

But the fact is that it wasn't that family's dog.  If anybody's to blame for making the kids sad, it's Ellen for making the mistake of giving them the dog in the first place.

Wasn't sure whether this belonged here or the in "Dogs, Wolves, & Canines" thread.

I know that neither Ellen or the Fairness Doctrine are very popular in this forum , but what are you guys' thoughts about Ellen using however much of her daily nationwide TV show to say whatever she wants about the dog adoption agency that's now receiving death threats?

Not to mention that Ellen gave up on socializing the dog with her cats after *10 days*!?  What a softcore.

http://www.eonline.com/news/article/index.jsp?uuid=c528d860-95a0-46bd-a2b8-58f19367d2e8&sid=fd-news

Ellen DeGeneres' dogfight continues to intensify.

Marina Baktis, who runs the nonprofit rescue agency Mutts and Moms with business partner Vanessa Chekroun, filed a police report Tuesday night, after receiving death threats in the wake of DeGeneres' tearful on-air plea for the return of her adopted pooch to her hairdresser's family.

The Pasadena Police Department said it was investigating the source of "several threats [made to Baktis'] cell phone and work phone from several angry persons who threatened her life and her property."

"This is horrible. I rescue dogs. I can't believe this," Baktis told Access Hollywood.

"I haven't eaten, I'm sick and I've had heart palpitations."

Mutts and Moms has also been targeted by an Internet-powered call for a boycott, launched by dog-loving DeGeneres fans via Craigslist.

Batkis said DeGeneres' A-list status does not make her exempt from the agency's rules.

"Celebrities, you know, they get preferential treatment. They have lots of money. They go into a restaurant, they get a table. And so you know, this contract was breached. It was breached. So, people need to understand when you enter a binding legal agreement that you can't just go, 'And here you go, I don't want you,' " Batkis told Access Hollywood.

In an exclusive phone conversation with E! News' Ryan Seacrest Wednesday, DeGeneres reiterated her dismay over the dog being taken away and denied she had been deliberately trying to disregard the agency's policies, saying, "The whole situation is surreal."  (Get the full audio of Ryan and Ellen.)

"I will say this: We never filled out an application. We never had a home evaluation," she told Seacrest, indicating the agency was somewhat unpredictable about adhering to its own rules.

Her celebrity status, she said, had nothing to do with it.

"I didn't say you can't come to my home, I didn't say I won't fill out a form. She didn't ask me to," DeGeneres said.

"We're not trying to be anything other than a regular person trying to adopt a dog."

DeGeneres first took to the airwaves sobbing Tuesday, as she recounted the tale of her four-month-old adopted Brussels Griffon mix, Iggy, whom she passed off to her hairdresser after he wasn't getting along with her cats.

Upon learning DeGeneres had relocated the pet without permission—a violation of the agency's adoption policy—a Mutts and Moms representative went to the hairdresser's home with a police escort and seized the dog.

DeGeneres, 49, who admitted on her show she had not read through the adoption paperwork carefully enough, suggested to Seacrest that the owners of the agency had a vendetta against her. She said she pleaded with them not to take out her mistake on the dog and the family and begged them to just go to the home to evaluate Iggy's new living situation. Instead, she said, the representative entered the house and snatched the dog away.

She said her hairdresser's 11- and 12-year-old daughters were devastated by the loss of the dog, after begging with the agency for three hours to let them keep their pet.

"I thought I did a good thing," an emotional DeGeneres said Tuesday during her show. "I tried to find a loving home for the dog, because I couldn't keep it.

"I feel totally responsible for it, and I'm so sorry. I'm begging them to give that dog back to that family. It's not their fault. It's my fault. I shouldn't have given the dog away. Just please give the dog back to those little girls."

However, Mutts and Moms, which has a policy of not working with families with children under 14, has declined to do so.

"[Batkis] doesn't think this is the type of family that should have the dog," attorney Keith A. Fink, who does not represent the owners but was authorized to speak on their behalf, told the Associated Press. "She is adamant that she is not going to be bullied around by the Ellen DeGenereses of the world…They are using their power, position and wealth to try to get what it is they want."

DeGeneres' publicist, Kelly Bush, said her client was simply interested in ensuring the dog was in a good and loving home.

"It's very upsetting to hear that someone is getting those kinds of calls," Bush told the AP about the threats directed at Mutts and Moms. "Ellen just wants the dog reunited with the family."

A more composed DeGeneres said as much on her show Wednesday, while renewing her plea for Iggy to be given back to her hairdresser.

"It's become so insane," she said. "The dog just needs to go to the family."

Point taken.  But surely you'll agree that some breeds are more prone to excessive aggression than others.  Some of the sweetest dogs I've ever met were pit bulls or rotties, but I have no doubt that they came from experienced, reputable breeders and received proper training as puppies.  That and their owner made sure his lifestyle allowed for meeting the dog's exercise needs before deciding to have him.

Woof Roger:

My I suggest a reread?  The question presented was not "Why are they coming here?".  The question presented was "Why do the conditions that push them here exist?". 

This seems to me an excellent question.

OK, so why is Mexico poor?  For that matter, why is any country poor?

We (The US) are not hated by much of the muslim world because of Israel, Israel is hated because it's a part of us (western civilization). Israel is hated because they dare to be free of islamic domination. They are hated because of their success. They are hated because of their strength.

You don't think their treatment of the Palestinians has at least something to do with it?

Damn, now that's a good-looking dog!

My wife and I went to the Berkeley animal shelter to see about adopting a dog (we already have a shih tzu, see my avatar), and 90% of the dogs they had were Pit Bulls or Staffordshire Bull Terriers.  I wouldn't be against getting one of these if we had a bigger house and the dog was not bred for aggression.  Unfortunately though, the latter doesn't seem to be the case most of the ones at the shelter.  It really sucks that there are so many people out there breeding dogs that either don't know what the hell they're doing or are specifically breeding for undesirable qualities (like aggression).

Too much in that article to give a full response to, but I'll pick a couple of parts.

In his dissent from the court's approval of the use of race in law-school admissions, he quoted Frederick Douglass: "If the negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone!" Justice Thomas observed: "Like Douglass, I believe blacks can achieve in every avenue of American life without the meddling of university administrators."

A reasonable person might take those statements to mean that if a black person gets a chance to achieve and fails, then it's his own damn fault.  Clarence's (pretty cynical) interpretation is that blacks shouldn't consider themselves entitled to even a chance.

Mr. Yoo is a professor at the Law School of the University of California at Berkeley, and a former Supreme Court clerk for Justice Thomas

Mr. Yoo is also the author of several memos defending torture and arguing for essentially un-checked power of the executive branch while working for the Justice Department under George W. Bush.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/andrew_sullivan/article2602564.ece

October 7, 2007
Bush’s torturers follow where the Nazis led
Andrew Sullivan

I remember that my first response to the reports of abuse and torture at Guantanamo Bay was to accuse the accusers of exaggeration or deliberate deception. I didn’t believe America would ever do those things. I’d also supported George W Bush in 2000, believed it necessary to give the president the benefit of the doubt in wartime, and knew Donald Rumsfeld as a friend.

It struck me as a no-brainer that this stuff was being invented by the far left or was part of Al-Qaeda propaganda. After all, they train captives to lie about this stuff, don’t they? Bottom line: I trusted the president in a time of war to obey the rule of law that we were and are defending. And then I was forced to confront the evidence.

From almost the beginning of the war, it is now indisputable, the Bush administration made a strong and formative decision: in the absence of good intelligence on the Islamist terror threat after 9/11, it would do what no American administration had done before. It would torture detainees to get information.

This decision was and is illegal, and violates America’s treaty obligations, the military code of justice, the United Nations convention against torture, and US law. Although America has allied itself over the decades with some unsavoury regimes around the world and has come close to acquiescing to torture, it has never itself tortured. It has also, in liberating the world from the evils of Nazism and communism, and in crafting the Geneva conventions, done more than any other nation to banish torture from the world. George Washington himself vowed that it would be a defining mark of the new nation that such tactics, used by the British in his day, would be anathema to Americans.

But Bush decided that 9/11 changed all that. Islamists were apparently more dangerous than the Nazis or the Soviets, whom Americans fought and defeated without resorting to torture. The decision to enter what Dick Cheney called “the dark side” was made, moreover, in secret; interrogators who had no idea how to do these things were asked to replicate some of the methods US soldiers had been trained to resist if captured by the Soviets or Vietcong.

Classic torture techniques, such as waterboarding, hypothermia, beatings, excruciating stress positions, days and days of sleep deprivation, and threats to family members (even the children of terror suspects), were approved by Bush and inflicted on an unknown number of terror suspects by American officials, CIA agents and, in the chaos of Iraq, incompetents and sadists at Abu Ghraib. And when the horror came to light, they denied all of it and prosecuted a few grunts at the lowest level. The official reports were barred from investigating fully up the chain of command.

Legally, the White House knew from the start that it was on extremely shaky ground. And so officials told pliant in-house lawyers to concoct memos to make what was illegal legal. Their irritation with the rule of law, and their belief that the president had the constitutional authority to waive it, became a hallmark of their work.

They redefined torture solely as something that would be equivalent to the loss of major organs or leading to imminent death. Everything else was what was first called “coercive interrogation”, subsequently amended to “enhanced interrogation”. These terms were deployed in order for the president to be able to say that he didn’t support “torture”. We were through the looking glass.

After Abu Ghraib, some progress was made in restraining these torture policies. The memo defining torture out of existence was rescinded. The Military Commissions Act was crafted to prevent the military itself from being forced to violate its own code of justice. But the administration clung to its torture policies, and tried every legal manoeuvre to keep it going and keep it secret. Much of this stemmed from the vice-president’s office.

Last week The New York Times revealed more. We now know that long after Abu Ghraib was exposed, the administration issued internal legal memos that asserted the legality of many of the techniques exposed there. The memos not only gave legal cover to waterboarding, hypothermia and beating but allowed them in combination to intensify the effect.

The argument was that stripping a chained detainee naked, pouring water over him while keeping room temperatures cold enough to induce repeated episodes of dangerous hypothermia, was not “cruel, inhuman or degrading”. We have a log of such a technique being used at Guantanamo. The victim had to be rushed to hospital, brought back from death, then submitted once again to “enhanced interrogation”.

George Orwell would have been impressed by the phrase “enhanced interrogation technique”. By relying on it, the White House spokesman last week was able to say with a straight face that the administration strongly opposed torture and that “any procedures they use are tough, safe, necessary and lawful”.

So is “enhanced interrogation” torture? One way to answer this question is to examine history. The phrase has a lineage. Versch�rfte Verneh-mung, enhanced or intensified interrogation, was the exact term innovated by the Gestapo to describe what became known as the “third degree”. It left no marks. It included hypothermia, stress positions and long-time sleep deprivation.

The United States prosecuted it as a war crime in Norway in 1948. The victims were not in uniform – they were part of the Norwegian insurgency against the German occupation – and the Nazis argued, just as Cheney has done, that this put them outside base-line protections (subsequently formalised by the Geneva conventions).

The Nazis even argued that “the acts of torture in no case resulted in death. Most of the injuries inflicted were slight and did not result in permanent disablement”. This argument is almost verbatim that made by John Yoo, the Bush administration’s house lawyer, who now sits comfortably at the Washington think tank, the American Enterprise Institute.

The US-run court at the time clearly rejected Cheney’s arguments. Base-line protections against torture applied, the court argued, to all detainees, including those out of uniform. They didn’t qualify for full PoW status, but they couldn’t be abused either. The court also relied on the plain meaning of torture as defined under US and international law: “The court found it decisive that the defendants had inflicted serious physical and mental suffering on their victims, and did not find sufficient reason for a mitigation of the punishment . . .”

The definition of torture remains the infliction of “severe mental or physical pain or suffering” with the intent of procuring intelligence. In 1948, in other words, America rejected the semantics of the current president and his aides. The penalty for those who were found guilty was death. This is how far we’ve come. And this fateful, profound decision to change what America stands for was made in secret. The president kept it from Congress and from many parts of his own administration.

Ever since, the United States has been struggling to figure out what to do about this, if anything. So far Congress has been extremely passive, although last week’s leaks about the secret pro-torture memos after Abu Ghraib forced Arlen Specter, a Republican senator, to proclaim that the memos “are more than surprising. I think they are shocking”. Yet the public, by and large, remains indifferent; and all the Republican candidates, bar John McCain and Ron Paul, endorse continuing the use of torture.

One day America will come back– the America that defends human rights, the America that would never torture detainees, the America that leads the world in barring the inhuman and barbaric. But not until this president leaves office. And maybe not even then.

With all due respect Marc, don't give me that crap.

As far as I can see, you guys are the ones who want to keep the troops in harm's way (thus guaranteeing that some will be killed).  Why don't you explain to me how this is "supporting" them?

If this country had as many gays, S&M fetishists, etc. as it has Christians and these people were trying to impose their views on everybody the way a lot of Christians are (i.e the equivalents of school prayer, banning abortion, forbidding gays from marrying, etc.) , I'd have just as much of a problem with it. 

Tom, you know I respect you and your beliefs (even if I don't share them), but your statement about my "intolerance" towards Christianity is a little silly.  Christianity is by far the dominant religion in this country.  When you're the group that's basically in charge, you don't really need tolerance, do you?

Same as any other prisoner captured on a battlefield. 

This idea that AQ prisoners are "enemy combatants" (and therefore not entitled to GC protections) was 100% made up by the Bush administration and has no standing under international law.  Even our own Supreme Court has ruled that all prisoners in US custody fall under the GC and are entitled to those protections against torture and abusive treatment.

If you feel the war is wrong and is actually hurting your country, absolutely.

Come on GM.  Consider that every public statement Bush (or any US president) makes is going to be heard all over the world.  Given the current political climate (especially around the issue of torture), the exact wording of any statement he makes is critical. No way Bush's speechwriters just didn't see a meaningful difference between "international obligation" and "international law".

y SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
Published: October 6, 2007
WASHINGTON, Oct. 5 — President Bush, reacting to a Congressional uproar over the disclosure of secret Justice Department legal opinions permitting the harsh interrogation of terrorism suspects, defended the methods on Friday, declaring, “This government does not torture people.”

This article left out the very next line of Bush's announcement, which was "We stick to US law and our international obligations."

The choice of the words "international obligations" instead of "international law" is significant.

What were the exact reasons given for why the Marines weren't allowed to film?

Couldn't open that link, but I am proud to say I was actually there on Sunday.  Not everybody's cup of tea to be sure, but let's just say that people who like to hit and be hit with big sticks would not exactly feel uncomfortable there.   

Oh, now I could open the link.  The idea that "gay leaders" (whoever that is) should prevent kids from attending is pretty silly.  For one, there is no "admission" to the fair per se, as anybody can pretty much walk into the blocked-off area anytime they want.  If parents want to bring kids though, then clearly they're responsible for explaining to them what exactly they're seeing.  Despite all the kinky sex stuff going on there, I think a kid by himself has more to fear at a typical baseball game than at the Folsom Street Fair.

GM, maybe you ought come check it out yourself sometime!

Read the guy's blog posts, and all I can say is if that's all CBS went on, they don't stand a chance in court.

Did any known authorities on document forgery agree with his conclusions and state so publicly?  Did the Bush administration itself officially make this claim?

Who here thinks the founding fathers would be OK with blacks not being slaves? 

Woof GM,

I certainly won't defend FDR's internment of Japanese Americans, but how do you suppose you would have felt about it had you been around back then?  Are you saying you would've opposed it?  Or would you have been one of the people accusing it's opponents of risking our security for "political correctness" (or whatever term they would have used back then)?  It's likely that our previous experience with internment is the only reason Bush hasn't ordered something like it today.

There are a few things Bush has done that are pretty well beyond what any other wartime president has ordered, but above all I would argue that establishing secret (and not-so-secret) prisons outside the jurisdiction of US laws solely for the purpose of torturing "suspects" (who have no means of challenging their detention or even letting anybody know they're there) is worse than our internment of Japanese Americans.

Rog

The difference I see between W and Lincoln/Roosevelt is here:

The American people know better today than during the Civil War and World War II that Lincoln and Roosevelt, in [Arthur] Schlesinger's words, regarded 'executive aggrandizement as but a means to a great end, the survival of liberty and law, of government by, for, and of the people,' and that 'they used emergency power, on the whole, with discrimination and restraint. . . .' We are unlikely to come to think of President Bush in this way, for he has not embraced Lincoln's and Roosevelt's tenets of democratic leadership in crisis."

Would you honestly characterize Bush's exercise of emergency war powers as "with discrimination and restraint"?

From what I understand, BW is not operating under "diplomatic immunity" as the term is understood under international law, but under this "Order 17" that was adopted by the Coalition Provisional Authority back in the early days of our occupation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_17

"CPA Order 17 granted all foreign contractors operating in Iraq immunity from "Iraqi legal process," effectively granting immunity from any kind of suit, civil or criminal, for actions the contractors engaged in within Iraq."

So it's not clear what (if any) legal recourse the Iraqi government has if Bush decides that BW should stay there. 

The Iraqi government still wouldn't be able to criminally charge any members of BW if they were operating under diplomatic immunity, but they would at least be able to order them expelled from the country.