Right Wing Nut House

After weeks of speculation where war opponents were licking their chops and the administration was sweating bullets, Wikileaks has released 92,000 documents summarizing in detail the day to day operations on the ground in Afghanistan as well as pungent assessments of our Afghan allies and our supposed friends in Pakistan.

In truth, there are only mild surprises gleaned so far from the document dump. Three news outlets - The New York Times, the Guardian, and Der Speigel - were given access to the material weeks ago with the caveat that they not release anything until yesterday.

A few highlights courtesy of the New York Times:

• The Taliban have used portable heat-seeking missiles against allied aircraft, a fact that has not been publicly disclosed by the military. This type of weapon helped the Afghan mujahedeen defeat the Soviet occupation in the 1980s.

• Secret commando units like Task Force 373 - a classified group of Army and Navy special operatives - work from a “capture/kill list” of about 70 top insurgent commanders. These missions, which have been stepped up under the Obama administration, claim notable successes, but have sometimes gone wrong, killing civilians and stoking Afghan resentment.

• The military employs more and more drone aircraft to survey the battlefield and strike targets in Afghanistan, although their performance is less impressive than officially portrayed. Some crash or collide, forcing American troops to undertake risky retrieval missions before the Taliban can claim the drone’s weaponry.

• The Central Intelligence Agency has expanded paramilitary operations inside Afghanistan. The units launch ambushes, order airstrikes and conduct night raids. From 2001 to 2008, the C.I.A. paid the budget of Afghanistan’s spy agency and ran it as a virtual subsidiary.

There is also extensive documentation and speculation about the role of Pakistan’s wayward intelligence agency, the ISI, in cooperating with the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Again, this is not earth shattering news as the American government has been lodging complaint after complaint with both the former government headed by President Musharraff and the current government about a blind eye being cast by the military and civilian authorities in Pakistan toward activities by their own intelligence service.

In the New York Times report, a good point is made about the provenance of this intelligence:

Taken together, the reports indicate that American soldiers on the ground are inundated with accounts of a network of Pakistani assets and collaborators that runs from the Pakistani tribal belt along the Afghan border, through southern Afghanistan, and all the way to the capital, Kabul.

Much of the information - raw intelligence and threat assessments gathered from the field in Afghanistan- cannot be verified and likely comes from sources aligned with Afghan intelligence, which considers Pakistan an enemy, and paid informants. Some describe plots for attacks that do not appear to have taken place.

But many of the reports rely on sources that the military rated as reliable.

Thus, a critical reason why clueless idiots like Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, should be prevented from acting like idiot children in dumping this startling amount of information raw, unexpurgated, without context and without reason on the public. The fact is that Assange doesn’t care what effect his triumphal act of America-hate has on live troops, the debate over the war, the effect on policy where thousands of lives are at stake, or even on advancing understanding of what is happening in Afghanistan. This was a reckless, petulant, adolescent, tantrum thrown by a cold, calculating, glory hunting ignoramus. And that goes double for the individual who purloined these documents in the first place.

Clearly, too much information gathered by the government is being classified as “Secret” or “Top Secret.” Many times, that classification is used to hide perfidious deeds or even simple political misbehavior. The volume of classified documents grows astronomically every year with more and more government bureaucrats given the ability to classify what they are doing. This is not a prudent use of the necessary secrecy that attends some government functions and actions. And if Assange was a crusader to rectify that imbalance, he might receive a little more sympathy from me.

But he is not. His purposes are malevolent - to destroy the credibility of the United States government and deliberately undermine public confidence in the war. And his methods are unconscionable. He - a foreigner after all - has presumed to inject himself  into a domestic political debate. I don’t want to hear that crap about our actions affecting everyone else in the world and that therefore, foreigners have a perfect right to butt their noses into our domestic politics. That is so nonsensical as to be sky blue idiocy. The very same people who make that argument would scream bloody murder if we injected ourselves into their domestic arguments about policies that affected the United States. Assange doesn’t have a leg to stand on morally, or politically for that matter. That’s because for all the hype, for all the worry that this document dump engendered in government, this may be the most spectacularly banal scoop in history.

Certainly, these are no Pentagon Papers. The information that has been held back from the public appears to be reasonable and necessary to the war effort, including the idea that the war was not going as well as some in the military and White House were saying. Did people expect otherwise? Besides, it is impossible, given their nature,  for these reports to have documented the broad strategic efforts by the military since most of the documents appear to give a worm’s eye view of the conflict, reporting on purely local conditions rather than trying to judge the overall progress made by both the American military and the civilian rebuilding efforts.

The only revelations that might merit a page one story in the media were the news that the Taliban has gotten a hold of some relatively ineffective (old) ground to air shoulder fired missiles (probably Stingers) and the larger extent of civilian casualties that the Pentagon chose not to publicize. As for the latter, the Pentagon may have not been forthcoming, but regional media was not shy about reporting on Afghan civilians being killed in our drone and manned air strikes. Domestic media was not reluctant in picking up on those reports either.

As for the missiles, the incident reports show that while there have been some successful strikes, many more were failures. That would seem to indicate either the Taliban don’t know how to use the missiles or they are older ordnance with attendant problems as far as aged rocket fuel, bad electronics, and perhaps even dud war heads. Was it necessary to keep their existence secret?  Probably not. Then again, there may be tactical reasons for not revealing our knowledge of this. Perhaps we want the Taliban to think we don’t know they possess such weapons. It is a certainty that Mr. Assange doesn’t know and just as clearly, doesn’t care.

The civilian casualty cover up is more serious. The American people certainly have a right to know what their military is doing in their name. However, it should be obvious to anyone except the most willfully blind (Glenn Greenwald) that the extraordinary lengths to which our forces go not to kill civilians that comes through crystal clear in the incident reports gives the lie to contentions by Assange and others that war crimes are being committed. Even after General McChrystal altered the Rules of Engagement to reflect the most careful and prudent measures taken to not even carry out offensive operations if civilians were in the area - at the risk of the lives of our own men - civilians were wounded and killed. If you want to make an argument against causing any civilian casualties, you might as well go all the way and argue against the war. Anything less brands you as a hypocrite.

There were also domestic politics at play in Afghanistan in covering up civilian casualties. Do we know if the Afghan government was also reluctant to give the whole story about the deaths of ordinary people? Would it matter? It’s a tougher call than if you simply examine the surface of the story and not reflect on the broader implications involved in going out of our way to announce the deaths of Afghan civilians.

As for the question of should the documents have been published? Of course not. Anyone who gave that anti-American nutcase Julian Assange - an Australian by birth - access to those documents should be arrested, tried, convicted, and sent to jail for a very long time. Untold damage is being done simply because no one knows what use of this information will be made by the enemy. What intelligence can they glean from its contents? Certainly the Taliban can figure out some of our weaknesses by reading through these documents. For that reason alone, Assange himself should be relentlessly pursued and arrested.

It is highly likely that this irresponsible release will result in additional American casualties.

Christopher Orlet has struck a nerve among the internet addicts who are as compulsive in following politics and culture as a drunk reaching for the bottle on the night stand first thing in the morning:

I have lived most of my life with but one or two persons I would call good friends. My fiancée, who collects friends like a baleen whale collects plankton, finds my lack of friends odd. I don’t doubt that it is.

It’s not that I am unable to play well with others. It is rather that I have a hard time finding persons who interest me enough to want to be friends. This is, I suppose, what attracted me to books and magazines so many years ago — the opportunity to be in the company of interesting people with engaging stories to tell.

All but one of the friends of my youth has long since disappeared from my radar screen, which is a common enough occurrence after high school. The thing is, I never felt particularly close to any of them. Other than the fact that we were going through the same teenage crises, we had little in common. What brought us together wasn’t not mutual values and interests — they liked cars and girls, I liked guitars and girls — but that we had grown up in close proximity to each another. It was friendship based on location, coincidence, and social class.

Pathetic? Or a description of many of us who have eschewed the superficiality of most relationships outside of marriage and settled on gleaning human contact via the flickering monitor on our desktop?

Before the internet became as ubiquitous as it is today, it was burying oneself in books, magazines, and periodicals that substituted for connecting with flesh and blood. While Orlet claims there is no one as interesting in the world as himself and therefore, finds homo sapiens rather boring, that was only part of the reason I walled myself off from most of humanity. The truth is, I am a bore myself in social situations. Small talk drives me nuts. Inanities make me homicidal. I would much prefer someone walking up to me at a party and asking if I ever read In Praise of Folly than a half-soused reveler asking me about the weather (hot chicks excluded).

I have found that I get along swimmingly without this kind of connection to the species. I’m sure most of those whose company and friendship I reject are lovely people, no doubt willing to give the shirt off their backs and the last coin from their pocket if you asked. I know because some have asked me. It has always amazed me that people you have met perhaps 3 or 4 times in your life feel able to not only involve you in the intimate soap operas of their lives, but also think nothing of showing up at your door at 3:00 AM sheepishly explaining that the wife booted them off the couch they were already sentenced to sleep upon and could they please spend a night or two with you (eating you out of house and home in the process) while the old lady calmed down?

The internet is a perfect vehicle for someone like me. No one expects you to get too close so you can be as funky, as snarky, as haughty and ill-mannered as you please with the only price you pay being removed from someone’s email list. I treasure those emails from readers who, due to my apostasy - real or imagined - would solemnly announce that they would never visit my blog again. My response to these drama queens was always the same; so be it. And to help you keep your promise, I will ban your ISP number, keeping you from ever seeing my blog again.

But looking at this solitary lifestyle in a different light, it personifies Thoreau’s observation of a life lived in “quiet desperation.” The lack of real friendships in my life - save my lovely Zsu-Zsu who doubles as lover and nursemaid - leaves a hole in the soul that is the largest price one pays for shunning the kind of superficial relationships that pass as friendships. For by shunning all it shuts off the possibility that you will find that diamond in the rough - that “true” friend that brings intimacy without sex and closeness without the kind of cloying stickiness many sexual relationships embody. I stopped looking for that mythical beast long ago and have settled for meeting the greatest minds who ever lived in books, while playing with the ignorant savages who inhabit the more fascinating parts of the internet.

Orlet quotes Poe:

A real friend may be, as the musician Chuck Prophet said, someone who will pick you up at the airport. But I think Edgar Allen Poe was nearer the truth when on his deathbed he cried: “My best friend would be the man who would blow my brains out with a pistol.”

EAP obviously never imagined the internet where many who aren’t even your friend would gladly blow your brains out -even without you asking.

Makes life worth living even without friends, eh?

It is an article of faith for many on the right that government regulation of anything is inherently wasteful and inefficient; that government’s role as a watchdog or arbiter can only lead to less freedom, more restriction of the free market, and a less vibrant economy.

More learned people than I make that argument so I will not dispute it. The question then; is there a case to be made for government regulation anyway?

We’re getting into slippery territory by weighing the bad against the good; a loss of freedom in the market in exchange for some semblance of order. The notion that this is a bad trade off in every case is mistaken, in my opinion. Certainly there are compelling reasons why the only entity large enough to ride herd on the gigantic corporations who run our financial industry upon which we all ultimately depend is the federal government. Trusting these mega-banks to do the right thing without careful, and calibrated adult supervision contradicts the conservative principle that you can’t change human nature (Russell Kirk’s principle of the “imperfectability”) - that given the means and opportunity, the financial giants will act in ways that would be detrimental to the promotion of necessary fairness and transparency, thus damaging the free market anyway.

Kirk’s “well ordered society” and “prudent restraints upon power” should inform any regulatory scheme that seeks to balance the needs of society to protect itself and the necessity of the free market to operate. In this way, there is a conservative case for financial regulatory reform to be made. It’s just too bad that GOP lawmakers are so terrified of their right wing base that they didn’t dare work with Democrats to come up with a bi-partisan FinReg bill that would have been a more prudent, less intrusive, and more effective than the one that passed the senate yesterday. Working with the enemy is verboten and that goes double for anything that smacks of using the government to regulate Wall Street.

It is a legitimate question to ask whether Democrats would have listened to Republicans - any Republican - on a FinReg bill in the first place. Not even trying to work with the opposition on such significant legislation is irresponsible governance. Those few Republicans who exposed themselves to the fury of the base by trying to work with Democrats will get precious little thanks for their efforts. What meager concessions that senators like Scott Brown, Susan Collins, and Olympia Snowe were able to wangle from the majority will do little to alleviate the impression that this is a Democratic bill through and through, passed once again in the dead of night, with little understanding of what the senate has wrought, and will place an inordinate amount of power in the hands of regulators to make sense of the bill’s 2000+ pages.

Prudence is a lost civic virtue.

The tragedy is that there are indeed, some aspects of this bill that any conservative could have gotten behind. For the first time, a light will shine on the shadowy world of derivatives and credit default swaps - the abuse of which became a primary cause of the downfall of Bear Stearns and AIG. The NY Times Steven Davidoff:

Shadow Banking. The bill establishes record-keeping and reporting requirements for most derivatives (Section 727 and 729). It also establishes a registered derivatives exchange and requires all of these derivatives to be submitted for clearance on an exchange (Section 723). The Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission can regulate and ban abusive derivatives as well as decide which derivatives are required to be cleared (Section 714). Nonfinancial companies do not need to clear derivatives if there is a commercial reason for the transaction and they notify the S.E.C. of their ability to financially meet the obligation (Section 723). These provisions as a whole ensure that there is a more open process for derivatives and the ability of regulators to assess their systemic risk.

Treating the derivatives market in a similar fashion that we regulate the stock exchange is a reform long overdue. Previously, we were treated to the spectacle of derivative traders actually betting against the plays of their clients - a grossly unethical practice. At least regulators will get a heads up if there are the kinds of abuses in the system that led to the meltdown.

What about bailouts?

The bill establishes an intricate series of provisions to place ailing financial institutions and systemically significant nonbank financial companies into receivership (Title II). The bill also has provisions allowing the government to deal with systemically significant foreign firms and foreign financial subsidiaries of American companies (Sections 113 and 210). Had these provisions existed, the government could have dealt effectively with the disastrous problems at the American International Group, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers.

The bill requires that in any resolution, senior management is placed farther down the line of creditors of the firm than they would in a normal bankruptcy (they are placed after the unsecured creditors and just before shareholders) (Section 210). The bill also allows the government to break financial contracts, like credit default swaps, in the resolution process (Section 210). These two provisions allow the government to avoid an A.I.G.-type situation where it is forced to hand over collateral under these derivatives contracts or otherwise pay out money to undeserving management.

There is no guarantee that a company will be “too big to fail” but it makes a taxpayer bailout a matter of last resort rather than panicked action by government. The point being, even if we allow a failing giant to go out of business, it must be managed very carefully so as not to spook the rest of the market and guarantee an orderly exit for the business.

Not perfect but probably the best that could be achieved under the circumstances.

The bank capital requirements are mostly sensible to me, although there is the risk that too stringent requirements will lessen the competitiveness of our financial institutions. As a prime example of unintended consequences, a regulatory regime that is too restrictive in how much cash and assets a bank should have on hand is a probable outcome. Regulators, by nature, are overly cautious and this area of the bill would seem to lend itself to overregulation.

There’s plenty not to like in the bill. A fairly thorough and intelligent take on this comes from Conn Carroll over at Heritage blog. No doubt there are other unknown consequences that will emerge over the next few years. All we can do is hope that Congress will ride herd on the bureaucrats and mitigate the worst of what they can do.

Could the GOP have done any better - that is, if they were of a mind to regulate Wall Street to begin with? I really don’t know. Would a GOP bill have incorporated more suggestions from the industry? Would it have been as tough on derivatives as the current bill appears to be?

What is certain is that we have another imprudent example of how not to govern an industrialized democracy in the 21st century. These gigantic “comprehensive” reform measures hand too much power to unelected bureaucrats by Congress abdicating its responsibilities to carefully weigh the consequences of their proposals before greenlighting them. The most disheartening aspect of Obama’s agenda is not that little thought is given in this area, but that no thought at all is invested in figuring out the downside to these legislative initiatives. It is beyond irresponsiblity that the Democratic Congress has placed us in thrall to government apparatchiks who care more about aggrandizing power and elevating their position than in promulgating intelligent regulation. That is the nature of bureaucracy - something that the Democrats have forgotten, or simply about which the Democrats don’t care.

Reason enough to boot them from power in November.

It is an article of faith among most conservatives that the growth of government under the presidency of Barack Obama has resulted in a loss of individual liberty. This is an extremely serious criticism of any president and the manner in which the charge is so casually tossed about by my friends on the right makes me uneasy. A deeper examination of the subject is necessary in order to ascertain the truth of the criticism as well as catalog any specific freedoms, or rights, we have lost - if any.

Let’s start with the obvious; the Bill of Rights. As far as freedom of expression, I can report that I still publish exactly what I want, when I want, without so much as a by your leave from government. It’s true that the DISCLOSE Act will curtail free speech for corporations. But let’s stick to individual liberties because that seems to be the nub of the matter for tea partiers and conservatives. Being an atheist, I am free to practice no religion at all, or if a sudden conversion were to occur, I could go back to being a Druid. The tea partiers mass in the thousands so it would seem that freedom of assembly is still intact. And have you counted how many lobbyists are in Washington? The right of redress is alive and well, thank you.

Gun rights (2nd amendment) have expanded substantially (no thanks to Obama). I haven’t been ordered to put up any troops (3rd amendment). I have not personally been subject to unreasonable search and seizure (4th amendment), although that particular right has been eroding long before Obama came to office. Since I haven’t committed any crimes, I haven’t had my 5th amendment rights tested. Ditto the 6th and 7th amendments. And aside from Zsu-Zsu making me watch Dancing with the Stars, I have not been subjected to any cruel or unusual punishment (8th amendment).

The 9th and 10th amendments deal with federalism. It is here that Obama has transgressed against the Constitution most egregiously, although as far as personal liberty is concerned, it is difficult to connect the president’s federal overreach with individual rights being violated. Our collective rights as citizens might be at risk but what president in the last 50 years hasn’t claimed powers “reserved to the States respectively, or to the people?” True, Obama may be the presidential Gold Medalist when it comes to trashing the 10th amendment. But how does that translate into a loss of personal liberty?

It seems clear to me, that as far as our personal, constitutionally guaranteed liberty is concerned, Obama has done very little to attack our rights head on. But there is more to American freedom than those liberties codified in the Bill of Rights. And it is here that the president and the Democrats have done the most damage. I am talking about the limiting of choices in the economic sphere and our personal lives that threatens to undermine the foundations of freedom in America expressed in the clear intent of the framers 222 years ago.

These freedoms are not necessarily written down in the Constitution, but rather form the intent of the framers as far as their effort to define a free society. Ask yourself if losing the freedom of choice to carry health insurance is a loss of personal freedom? It may be stupid, but it is clearly a personal matter where government - at least no government that purports to represent a free people - has any business dictating to the people what or how they should spend their money.

It may be that you can’t afford insurance, or that a pre-existing medical condition makes you too big of a risk for an insurance company to carry you. Some on the right argue otherwise, but subsidizing people who want to buy insurance and covering others who are refused is a legitimate function of the national government in this, the early 21st century. (Fixing the reasons for why insurance is so expensive would mean eliminating most government intervention in the health insurance field - a politically impossible goal at this point.)

In this case, it is government dictating a choice that is an attack on personal liberty. It is possible that the Supreme Court will see it that way, in which case Obamacare will die because there would be no way to pay for it. Indeed, the administration is now arguing that the mandate is a “tax,” which reveals the true reason for it in the first place; they need everyone signed up on the dotted line in order for the plan to work. They can claim it’s in my best interest to have insurance, or that it is in the best interest of America (a dubious and unprovable argument) until they are blue in the face but they can’t get around the fact that a personal insurance mandate represents a loss of personal freedom. They may even make the argument that this loss of freedom is a necessary trade-off in order to relieve suffering or give other Americans peace of mind. Is that a legitimate argument?

We have made trade offs of this nature before. When states refused to grant equal rights to its citizens, the federal government took it upon itself to intrude on previously sacrosanct ground - local elections - in order to insure equality before the law. In this respect, the ability of government to reach down and interfere in matters that had never been contemplated previously resulted in a growth in federal power with unintended consequences we are still trying to deal with today. Few would argue that this growth in the size and scope of government was unnecessary. But did expanding freedom for some limit freedom for others?

The answer is yes. But when that freedom was abused to oppress others, the government had a moral duty to intervene. In this, the vast majority of Americans now agree, and in this case, the massive increase in the size of government engendered by the necessity to enforce civil rights laws appears to have been a positive good.

(What has happened to civil rights law subsequent to the 1960’s is another article altogether, and a good argument can be made that even here, the good inherent in enforcing equality has been used as an excuse to expand the size and scope of government unnecessarily with a consequent loss of individual liberty.)

But beyond national health care, just where have Obama and the Democrats limited choices? Their proposed financial regulation overhaul will limit choices for those of us who hold stock, mutual funds, mortgages, credit cards, and other financial instruments. But that bill has not been passed yet and it is not clear what will be in the final package. The assault on businesses that Democrats don’t care for might be construed, in a roundabout way, of limiting consumer choices, but that may be something of a stretch. The takeovers of banks, auto companies, and others limits economic freedom but how relevant is it to you and I? Are you planning to start a Fortune 500 oil company or bank anytime soon?

The courts are doing their part to limit our freedom but the current make up of the Supreme Court is a 5-4 conservative majority. So why the anger? Why the fear that the Democrats are “taking away” our freedoms?

More than what Obama and the Democrats have done specifically, there is a feeling, grounded in reality, that the federal government is closing in - that all of these takeovers, power grabs, thumbing of the nose at the 10th amendment, and crony capitalism has resulted in the palpable feeling of a boa constrictor tightening its coils around the throat of individual Americans. It is the rapidity of growth that the behemoth is enjoying under this administration and Congress that has most Americans worried and some conservatives consumed with fear about the future.

Growth of government does not necessarily translate directly into a loss of freedom. There is a difference between scale and scope and this distinction is made by Robert Higgs in his masterful Crisis and Leviathan.

The real damage to freedom comes not necessarily from government growing bigger but rather from Big Government. The former is about scale, the latter about scope. So much of the Tea Party talk seems to be about scale: how much government spends, taxes, and borrows. Little of it has been about scope: the powers that government has to interfere with the rights of individuals.

Even most on the left would have to agree that while big government is not, in and of itself, a threat to personal liberty, it becomes one when it gathers unto itself powers and responsibilities best left to individuals or the several states. The left is big on “trade off” scenarios where we lose a little personal freedom so that “social justice” is served, or some nebulous social progress yardstick is achieved. That’s no way to run a free society - as any of the Founders could have told them.

In summary, I don’t think there’s any doubt that, fueled by hysterical jack asses on talk radio, many on the right have turned into 13-year old drama queens when it comes to their portentous declamations about Obama stealing our liberties, or the Democrats deliberately destroying America. The reality is bad enough without exaggerating. What the Democrats have tried to do to this point has been to put themselves in charge of parts of the economy - a loss of collective liberty to be sure with the potential, as in Obamacare, to detrimentally impact our personal freedoms.

Toying with our freedoms as the Democrats are doing is irresponsible governance. But then, what else do you expect from people who have eschewed prudence and enacted legislation that no one knows yet how it will impact our personal liberties?

It’s too bad America’s best ally in the Middle East has to deal with this empty suit in the White House. With the entire rest of the world in full throated outrage over the terrorist ambush - and it has been for more than 24 hours - we have yet to hear from the man who is ostensibly the Commander in Chief and has been constitutionally delegated to make our foreign policy.

Where the hell is the President of the United States?

Sure, he’s on vacation and all - must recharge the batteries after all those exertions on behalf of - well - some of the people anyway. But you would think that even Barack Obama could find the time between pick up basketball games and pleasant naps on the holiday weekend to personally issue a statement on a matter of war and peace - especially one involving an ally he swears he supports.

Ominously, the reason for this dearth of presidential interest may, in fact, be a not so subtle message that the US is about to turn on its beleaguered ally and join most of the rest of the world in ignoring the facts and pretending that Hamas has any legitimate claim to being an aggrieved party, and that the organization that funded these “peace” activists was a designated terrorist outfit.

Meanwhile, our State Department didn’t take the holiday off - although judging by the pablum they put out on the incident, perhaps they should have:

The United States deeply regrets the tragic loss of life and injuries suffered among those involved in the incident today aboard the Gaza-bound ships. We are working to ascertain the facts, and expect that the Israeli government will conduct a full and credible investigation.

The United States remains deeply concerned by the suffering of civilians in Gaza. We will continue to engage the Israelis on a daily basis to expand the scope and type of goods allowed into Gaza to address the full range of the population’s humanitarian and recovery needs. We will continue to work closely with the Government of Israel and the Palestinian Authority, along with international NGOs and the UN, to provide adequate access for humanitarian goods, including reconstruction materials, through the border crossings, while bearing in mind the Government of Israel’s legitimate security concerns. However, Hamas’ interference with international assistance shipments and work of nongovernmental organizations, and its use and endorsement of violence, complicates efforts in Gaza. Mechanisms exist for the transfer of humanitarian assistance to Gaza by governments and groups that wish to do so. These mechanisms should be used for the benefit of all those in Gaza.

Ultimately, this incident underscores the need to move ahead quickly with negotiations that can lead to a comprehensive peace in the region.

But on the White House website ? Not a whisper. Not a blog post. Nothing. This is to be expected. It takes time to craft a statement that stabs your best ally in the back without making it appear that you are doing so.

UPDATE

Jake Tapper is reporting that “there won’t be any daylight between the US and Israel in the aftermath of the incident on the flotilla yesterday…”

I will believe that when I see it. In fact, the administration is hanging their hat on the Security Council statement released late last night. Sources are bragging to Tapper how they diluted the statement so that blame for the incident is vague. But the statement still makes no mention of the reason for the blockade - that, what the Council demands as far as the “unimpeded provision and distribution of humanitarian assistance throughout Gaza…” would result in Hamas receiving an avalanche of arms from their friends in Tehran and Damascus. One need only look at the Hezballah resupply following their war with the Jewish state under the noses of UNIFIL to understand the Israeli’s concern.

And the statement makes it clear that it is setting Israel up for another “Goldstone Moment” where Tel Aviv’s own investigation of the incident will be declared invalid and another, “impartial” investigation undertaken by the UN will no doubt finger the real culprits in the incident.

Who do you think that might be?

This blog post originally appears on The American Thinker.

This article originally appears on The Moderate Voice

Something remarkable has been happening in America since even before President Obama took office. There has been a dedicated effort on both sides of the political divide to reconnect with our founding document and its principles in an effort to understand, and counteract what they see as dangerous unconstitutional actions by our government.

It is more widespread today than it was in the Bush years, but even then there were many on the left who worried about the increase in executive power the Bush administration was accumulating and we witnessed many ordinary citizens earnestly studying the Constitution in their efforts to place the actions of Bush in a constitutional framework. The resulting criticism was, at least in some part, reasonable and rational while being based on sound constitutional arguments.

But this effort was but a prologue to the tsunami of interest in the Constitution evinced by the tea party movement and conservatives generally once the massive spending and power grabs of the Obama administration began. Probably millions of ordinary citizens are reading and trying to understand the Ur document of America’s founding given that the pocket sized edition of the Constitution is passed out at every tea party meeting across the country. I commented on this phenomenon following my visit to the Southern Republican Leadership Conference:

It may seem to some a quaint exercise in good citizenship for these millions to wrestle with such convoluted and complex questions as the meaning and reach of the commerce clause or the constitutionality of the individual mandate to buy health insurance. The condescension is misplaced — and totally unwarranted.

The Constitution was not written in legalese despite the presence of so many lawyers at the Constitutional Convention. It was written in plain, accessible English so that the document could be read and understood by ordinary Americans. It was printed in newspapers, slapped on the walls near the village commons, and mailed far and wide. It was discussed in churches, in public houses, at family dinners, and between neighbors from New England to Georgia.

Never before in history had a country thought and debated itself into existence. When that generation of Americans looked at our founding document, could they have imagined that one day a congressman would say that the Constitution doesn’t matter? Or that congressmen could not answer the question of where in the Constitution did it authorize the federal government to force citizens to buy health insurance?

What does it matter today that ordinary people are reading and interpreting the Constitution in their own way, without reference to precedent or knowledge of specific court cases that have laid out the grid work upon which the powers and responsibilities of government have been constructed? After all, they can interpret the Constitution from here to doomsday and it won’t matter a fig to the Supreme Court. Those nine robed magistrates will work their will regardless of popular sentiment and, sometimes, common sense.

But in one of the more remarkable aspects of this revival of interest among the citizenry of the meaning and purpose of the Constitution, it doesn’t matter what the Supremes think, or the elites, or the sickeningly condescending left who sneer at talk of the Tenth Amendment or strict constructionism. What matters is the effort itself — that people are becoming more engaged in what their government is up to than they have been in a very long time.

What does this mean? The Hill reports a run on the Constitution booklet at the Government Printing Office:

Since September 2009, the GPO has sold more than 8,700 copies of the pocket Constitution to the public, according to GPO spokesman Gary Somerset. That is a higher sell rate than in recent years.

Those sales are in addition to the thousands of copies given to members of Congress each year. Congress authorized a resolution in 2009 to print 441,000 copies for the use of the House (1,000 for each member) and 100,000 copies for the Senate (1,000 for each senator).

The Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute, which keep statistics on the Constitution, also say that requests for the historical document are on the rise.

GPO sells copies for $2.75, but constituents can request a free one from their lawmaker.

Congressional offices are burning through theirs stacks of pocket Constitutions.

In a recent “Dear Colleague” letter titled “Order More Pocket Constitutions!” House Administration Committee Chairman Robert Brady (D-Pa.) advised members to take advantage of a special rate.

The letter stated, “Many Members have lately experienced a large increase in constituent requests for the Pocket Constitution. Members who may need more are invited to take advantage of a special, pre-publication ‘rider-rate’ of $390 per 1,000 copies. This rider rate of 39¢ each represents a substantial savings over the post-publication price of $2.75 each ($2,750 per 1,000) available later through the GPO Sales Program.”

There’s been nothing like it in my lifetime and no similar wave of interest in the Constitution that I can fathom from my own reading of history. Perhaps not since the debate on ratification itself have so many ordinary Americans struggled with trying to interpret and understand what Madison, Mason and their compatriots wrought 222 years ago this summer.

Ed Meese from Heritage’s Constitution Center:

“I think there is more interest now than I’ve seen in the last many years, and I think it’s because people are really worried about whether the federal government is getting so large, so expansive, so intrusive and so powerful that the Constitution is in jeopardy.”

Can the naysayers who pooh-pooh American exceptionalism explain this phenomenon in the context of other nations’ citizens carrying on this way? I doubt it. We Americans have always had a reverence for our founding document that transcends the words on the page and becomes sublime veneration - almost a civic bible.

In this, there is danger. There are many in the tea party movement as well as in some boisterous conservative circles who posit the notion that if something is not in the Constitution, then it is, quite simply unconstitutional. Nothing in there about health insurance so of course, it’s not legal. We don’t see the words “Cap and Trade” so we have to oppose it as a measure not authorized in our founding document.

These are people who actually think of the Constitution the same way they think of the Bible; immutable, unchanging, and holy writ. There is no “interpreting” the document because the words are themselves good enough to cover any eventuality that may arise.

This is wrongheaded, of course, but there are many of us who wish government erred more toward that interpretation than toward the present “anything goes” free for all where the Constitution is stretched beyond recognition to cover one scheme or another that seeks to separate Americans from their liberty.

It is here where the debate cleaves the sharpest; is the Constitution a guidebook that government is to follow or is it a suggestion box whose codicils are used to justify power grabs? It seems at times that we use the Constitution to absolve and exonerate rather than trying to grapple with connecting what is being adjudicated to the intent of the Founders.

I know that intentionalism is in pretty bad odor on the left and indeed, carried to extremes it is a pernicious doctrine. But if you are going to respect what’s in the Constitution, it seems like simple common sense to respect the intent of those who wrote it. Obviously, the framers didn’t have a clue about our modern world. They designed a government to cover the exigencies of a 18th century coastal republic of 7 million freemen. But neither could they envision a day when their basic intent of creating a nation of limited government, expansive individual rights, and the protection of property was tossed aside in the name of modernity.

Will all of this interest in the Constitution make a practical difference in our politics and culture? I am anxious to see the answer to that question play out over the next few years.

This blurb by Dave Neiwert at Crooks and Liars is fascinating. It is so blithely ignorant of its own irony that it could easily be construed as a child sticking its tongue out at a playmate and sneering, “So there, nyeah.”

The next time you hear some right-winger (most notably Dick Cheney) sneer at the Obama administration’s “law enforcement approach to terrorism,” remember this.

Remember what? How incredibly lucky we are because twice now since Christmas we failed to interdict a terrorist attack because the essence of the “law enforcement approach” is to wait until the terrorists have killed a lot of Americans before acting? The “law enforcement approach” did not stop Shahzad from trying to incinerate New Yorkers in Times Square, nor did it stop Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab from trying to bring down an airplane filled with people on Christmas day.

If Mr. Shahdaz was sitting in jail right after a successful attack, how sneeringly juvenile would Neiwert be about that? If Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab had been able to bring down the plane on Christmas day, how much crowing would Neiwert be doing about the “law enforcement approach” to terrorism?

The police have an important role to play in the War on Terror. No one disputes this except people like Neiwert trying to set up strawman arguments to shadow box with his political opponents. International cooperation to break up terror cells already in place is a vital component to keep us safe. Cheney should know. He headed a Bush administration effort that, for all its faults, worked closely with our allies, and even those nations who don’t like us very much (Pakistan) in a proactive attempt to foil terrorist plots before they occurred.

Those of us who believe that we are at war with Islamic extremists (they certainly believe they are at war with us) want to go beyond this common sense approach and, using special forces, drones, and even assassins, attack terrorists where they are hiding to prevent them from planning attacks on us in the first place. Also, if necessary, attack nations that harbor and succor terrorists who have successfully attacked America.

Don’t look now, but President Obama is doing all of that (I have no doubt he would respond with military force if it could be shown a major attack on America originated in a country that allowed terrorists safe haven). He’s just not calling it a “War on Terror” and has liberals like Neiwert bamboozled into thinking he has altered President Bush’s policies much at all. He hasn’t. He has stepped up the use of drones on our enemies while special forces are assisting Yemenis, Pakistanis, and probably other nations in going after and killing terrorists. His emphasis on law enforcement is cosmetic. In order not to offend the sensibilities of moderate Muslims (and to fool his own domestic political base), the president is downplaying the military aspect of the War on Terror in his public pronouncements. What goes on behind the scenes is a different story.

Cheney is upset that Obama isn’t acting like a cowboy and broadcasting our efforts to fight a war against the terrorists where they live and plot their attacks. And liberals like Neiwert are deluding themselves if they think that because the atmospherics have changed, the policy has been altered. Nothing could be further from the truth.

CIA paramilitaries, SEALS, Green Berets, and special forces units from every branch of the service are engaged in a “hot” war with those who would do us harm. They are working with the military and intelligence services of other nations to track, expose, and kill terrorists. By any definition you want to use, this is war. And Neiwert’s arrogant posturing notwithstanding, it is a vitally important adjunct to efforts by police around the world to carry out their own anti-terrorism functions that not only look to capture terrorists before they can harm us, but also take away their sources of finance, cut off their communications with their overseas masters, and relentlessly pursue them, never giving them a moment’s rest.

Our military constantly feeds intelligence gleaned from their efforts to our allies in the War on Terror who pass the information along to local and national police authorities. It is a symbiotic relationship that has proven very successful - for the most part. But as former DHS Secretary Tom Ridge pointed out years ago, we have to be successful in interdicting the terrorist’s plans 100% of the time where they only have to be successful once in order to kill a lot of Americans.

The recent attacks in Detroit on Christmas day and in Times Square over the weekend highlight that truism. It is worrisome in both instances that our own government dropped the ball; a failure in airport security measures that failed to stop Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab from attempting his murder, and several red flags that should have made Faisal Shahzad a person of interest to domestic law enforcement. This calls into question the basic competence of this administration and whether President Obama is protecting the homeland adequately.

Only by the grace of God and the incompetence of the attackers has a major domestic terrorist incident been avoided over the last few months. I hardly think that calls for the kind of childishness offered up by Dave Neiwert or any other lefty who is stupidly celebrating their “victory” over their political foes.

A few more victories like that and we’re going to have a lot of dead Americans to mourn.

This article originally appears on The Moderate Voice.

John McCain is saying we shouldn’t mirandize an American citizen who has been arrested for his participation in the Times Square bomb plot:

It would have been a serious mistake to have read the suspect in the attempted Times Square car bombing his Miranda rights, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said Tuesday.

McCain, the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and a longtime leading Republican on national security issues, said he expected the suspect in the case could face charges that might warrant a death sentence if convicted.

“Obviously that would be a serious mistake…at least until we find out as much information we have,” McCain said during an appearance on “Imus in the Morning” when asked whether the suspect, 30-year-old Faisal Shahzad, a naturalized American citizen from Pakistan.

“Don’t give this guy his Miranda rights until we find out what it’s all about,” McCain added.

First of all, it is never a “mistake” to follow the law. Mr Shahzad is an American citizen, and even if he had murdered thousands, he would still be entitled to the protections guaranteed under our Constitution.

And yet, this is one instance where the “ticking bomb” scenario might very well be a reality. Newsweek reports there may be a connection between Shahzad and the Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud:

A prominent expert on Jihadist media says there is an apparent link between the new video message in which Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud, once thought to have been killed, proclaims he is still alive, and a message posted overnight Saturday in which the Pakistani Taliban appears to claim credit for the failed Times Square car bomb attack.

Rita Katz, founder of the Site Intelligence Group, a private organization that monitors and translates extremist Web postings, late on Monday outlined a timeline her organization put together that suggests that the Hakimullah video and the U.S. attack claim were both posted, at least on some sites, by the same person or persons.

Terrorists are notoriously full of bombast but just for the record, Meshud made some bloodthirsty threats toward America in his latest video:

In the videos, Hakimullah Mehsud vows attacks on U.S. cities, which he says his suicide bombers have penetrated. The videos provide the first solid evidence that he survived the missile strike, and they come after the Pakistani Taliban’s widely dismissed claim of responsibility for the failed attack in New York’s Times Square. In that case, authorities were zeroing in on a naturalized U.S. citizen from Pakistan. A suspect was arrested late Monday, though reports of his ties to extremist groups in Pakistan could not be substantiated.

Might there be other terrorists in other major American cities waiting to strike as I write this? And would that be a good enough excuse for the government to arbitrarily waive Mr. Shahzad’s Constitutional rights, designate him an “enemy combatant,” and interrogate him using all legal means at our disposal (I take it as a given that President Obama has rejected “enhanced interrogation” as an option)?

For some on both sides of the argument, this is an easy question to answer in the affirmative or negative. However, knee jerk ideological reactions from civil liberties absolutists or bloodthirsty right wingers are just not good enough in this situation.

The threat is real and immediate. Hundreds - perhaps thousands - of American lives may be at stake. Wouldn’t it be easier just to forget the Constitution in this one instance and treat this terrorist as the enemy he himself claims to be?

It would be easier. But would it be the right thing to do? I daresay if there is another terrorist attack - this one successful - and we followed the law to the letter by allowing the suspect to remain silent despite the fact that it is later revealed he could have given us information that would have stopped the attack, the political ramifications would be severe. And the fact that our police obeyed the Constitution would give cold comfort to the families of those who lost a loved on in a preventable attack.

It’s an easy choice - unless you lose someone because of that choice. Then it becomes a little more complicated, yes? Or, on the other side of the coin, if Mr. Shahzad knows nothing of any other attacks and precious little about his overseas connections, violating his constitutional rights would be seen as dramatic overkill. The law would have been violated for, what in retrospect, would be seen as no good reason.

You might argue that postulating outcomes is a fool’s game and that holding fast to Constitutional principles or making the exception in Shahzad’s case is a decision for the moment and no thought should be given to relative consequences. I disagree. This decision would be all about “relevant consequences.” If we violate the suspect’s Constitutional rights and the information we are able to wean out of him prevents an attack, is that justification for tossing the Constitution aside? Or if he has no information relevant to accomplices or other plots, must we automatically assume that what was done was a travesty?

Herein lies the conundrum over Mirandizing Shahzad. Whether we do or don’t, our actions will have profound consequences.  Even if no other terrorist attacks are being planned, finding that out is almost as important as discovering another plot to kill Americans. And as with any other decisions made by policymakers, the potential harm must be weighed against any positive outcome to their actions.

In a perfect world, we wouldn’t be confronted with choices like this. But in the real world where lives may be at stake and the responsibility weighs heavily on our national leaders, the simplified view of the ideologues is a luxury not vouchsafed those who are charged with protecting American citizens.

UPDATE

As is his wont - and the wont of other excessively ideological dimwits on both sides - John Cole exaggerates, takes out of context, and generally makes a hash of my writing.

As far as torture, Cole knows full well I oppose it as strenuously as he does. As for the “ticking bomb scenario,” I have written extensively about how the professionals do not believe it could ever happen.

The point of this post was to theorize that there may arise a situation in the future where - ticking bomb or not - American lives would be placed at risk by mirandizing a terrorist. It doesn’t take much imagination to visualize such a scenario. My purpose was to outline the arguments for and against such action. I tried to present both sides fairly. Cole, being the partisan, ideological hack that he is, only saw one side.

James Joyner is also dubious about my reasoning here and corrects me about any American citizen able to be designated an “enemy combatant.” I don’t believe I came down on either side in Shahzad’s case in the article but just for the record, I support mirandizing him.

I am one of the few who still see Andrew Sullivan as a conservative, albeit one whose philosophy is made wildly inconsistent by his misreading of President Obama. The reason is evident if you bother to read a lot of what he writes instead of cherry picking his paeans to the president, or react to his potshots at movement conservatives.

Sullivan appears to believe in a modified Burkean conservatism that, at its most essential, preserves what is best about society while embracing change that is logical and acts as a spur to rescue tradition from becoming too hidebound. His is not a conservatism that believes government can improve society so much as intelligent, non-ideological government can create conditions where society can improve itself.

But always, Sullivan tries to convince us that his is a pragmatic conservatism that is completed by supporting the “centrist” Obama and his supposedly non-ideological approach to government. Quite simply, this is a crock.

The reasons for Sullivan’s fanciful portrayals of Obama as a politician who is capable of rising above all the grubby little wars between liberals and conservative partisans are probably complicated. Part of it, I’m sure, is the amount of prestige and personal energy he has put into supporting the president. Beyond that, perhaps Sullivan simply sees what he wants to see in the Barack Obama - a selective and not very astute analysis of who and what this cipher of a man purports to be.

The most hyperpartisan of liberal organizations - Americans for Democratic Action - do not give 100% ratings to a centrist. Neither does NARAL (100%), nor the Citizens for Tax Justice (100%), NEA - Grade “A”, and ACORN (100%).

The flip side is also revealing. If Obama were any kind of a centrist he wouldn’t get a 4.5 conservative rating from the non-ideological National Journal A “0″ on economic policy), an 8% from the ACU,, or another “0″ from the National Right to Life Committee.

Lest there be any doubt, I would recommend that Sullivan apply “the prudence test” to Obama’s legislative agenda. Is the kind of massive dislocation involved in the health care reform bill a prudent way to improve American health care? In any way whatsoever? Any definition of prudence I have ever seen would make what Obama is doing with reform incredibly imprudent. Ditto his cap and trade proposals, card check, and massive, out of control spending. This is not a prudent man and the Democrats are not a prudent party. Prudence being the rock upon which conservatism finds its most pragmatic, and realistic outlet, it begs the question how anyone who lays claim to the “pragmatic conservative” title as Sullivan does can do so with a straight face.

It is intellectually dishonest to make any claim that Obama is non-ideological or centrist based on his votes. Anyone who prefers to judge a politician by what they say rather than how they vote is either too naive to make a living commenting on politics or deviously disingenuous in the extreme. And yet, here’s Sullivan telling us that Obama is what this country needs:

I believe that although Obama is indeed a liberal in the sense that he believes government really can and must improve the lives of its citizens, he is much much more like a real conservative than his detractors on right and left. The change he still represents at home is an abandonment of this ideological, red-blue abstract form of politics toward a realistic, pragmatic, reasonable center. Abroad, he represents an attempt to defuse the dangerously polarizing religious and cultural warfare that is fomenting terrorism, and further fusing religion and politics in so many places across the world. In this sense, I regard him as a vital, indispensable figure standing against the forces of ideology and religious warfare, whose failure could lead to catastrophic consequences for our future.

Is Sullivan paying attention to what is going on in the world? The Israeli-Palestinian divide is worse today than when Obama took office directly as a result of his ill considered lurch toward the Palestinians and his incomprehensible policy of placing pressure on our best ally in the Middle East to make concessions it doesn’t feel it can do safely. Is religious fervor any less in Pakistan today than it was before he took office? Has the progress being made by Islamists in Turkey been blunted by any rhetoric or policy of this administration?

At some point, Sullivan has to wake up and smell the rancid coffee being brewed by the Obama administration overseas. Our president may be personally popular with ordinary people, but his relationships with other leaders leaves a lot to be desired. Good arguments can be made for his outreach to Iran, Syria, and other dangerous regimes (arguments I reject), but there too, we see nothing but abject failure from the president.

Domestically, can Sullivan see no vicious partisanship, no ideological fervor in Obama’s obsession with pushing the imprudent and destructive health care reform initiative through Congress? His insults, belittling, and arrogance toward the opposition is not the mark of someone very interested in non-partisanship. Apparently Sullivan is only listening when Obama makes his claims regarding bi-partisanship and closes his ears to the president’s haughty dismissiveness when those admittedly few ideas emanating from the other side are presented.

His maddening blindness when it comes to the true nature of Barack Obama notwithstanding, Sullivan is still one of the best at getting to the heart of what is wrong with conservatism today. But his decidedly un-pragmatic view of the president taints his otherwise outstanding analysis of the problems of the right. It’s almost as if he has compartmentalized his feelings for Obama so that he can freely dissect conservatism without being burdened with the reality that Obama represents a true anti-conservatism replete with an overly developed ideological worldview that is dangerously augmented by an arrogant belief in his own superiority, going so far as to totally reject the advice of his generals, his cabinet secretaries, and many wise old heads in the foreign policy arena.

I happen to agree with Sullivan that most criticism of Obama from the right is wildly off base, excessively ideological and partisan, while maintaining a curious detachment from the essential conservatism of Burke, Kirk, Oakeshott, and Buckley among others.

Here Sullivan remarks on a point I made last week; that conservatism has changed little, if at all, and that simply because the right’s electoral prospects have improved thanks to the the mismanagement of Obama and the Democrats, doesn’t mean that “victory” will have any meaning beyond the shallow, short term political gains that will probably be realized:

This narrative is a reflexive and easy one; it echoes the inanity of “Who Won The Day?” Politico-style analysis; it has turned political journalism into sports journalism; it avoids historical context in favor of constant cultural and political amnesia. It takes the mind of the American people as an etch-a-sketch, shaken anew every electoral cycle. It infects left and right.

Just look at Frank Rich’s column today, which like MSNBC to FNC, which is the same dynamic, and the same understanding of politics, and its purposes. In this worldview - which is now the worldview in American political analysis - ideology has infiltrated everything, it has saturated public and private, it has invaded even something sacred like religious faith, in which the mysteries of existence have been distilled in writing or even understanding the churches into a battle between “liberals” and “conservatives.”

The right may celebrate in 2010, but what of 2012 and beyond? Without a realistic agenda to challenge the Democrats, conservatives will be dead in the water.

This goes back to my points about conservative governance. A utilitarian, pragmatic approach to government is desperately needed. Only real conservatism can supply that commodity. It is an approach solidly grounded on First Principles without treating the Constitution as the revealed word of God. Flexibility, deftness, a firm handle on the rightful functions of government and the determination to fund those functions - as well as having sense enough to leave the rest to the private sector or individuals - could be a very popular way for conservatives to achieve and hang on to power.

As it stands now, conservatives have boxed themselves into an ideological corner by opposing anything and everything that smacks of a government solution to health care, energy dependence, and the changing role of America in a rapidly changing world. Clinging to a treasured past at the expense of marching boldly into the future is not very conservative. But that is the current state of the right and Sullivan is at his best in articulating those problems.

I don’t know what demon has possessed Sullivan to blind him to President Obama’s obvious and painful shortcomings. But I think more people on the right would listen to him if he could see his way clear to being slightly less enamored of the president’s rhetoric and see this cynical poseur for who and what he truly is.

There are times that I want to take some of my fellow conservatives by the scruff of their neck and shake some sense into them. Or at least kick their behinds until some semblance of reason penetrates their thick skulls.

The blow up over the 7 Department of Justice lawyers who represented terrorists at Gitmo and elsewhere is mostly idiotic - especially the name given to them; the Al-Qaeda 7. I say mostly idiotic because AG Holder might have avoided any controversy at all if he had simply responded to a simple request from a senator and released the names of the detainee advocates and listed what actions they took in that capacity.

But Holder, who has continually stiffed Senator Charles Grassley over requests for information on the IG scandals and the New Black Panther party mystery, really screwed the pooch here. Any neophyte political hack could have told him that trying to hide their identities by refusing a reasonable request for information from a senator would lead to the kind of hysteria on the right that Holder was covering for “terrorist sympathizers” in his department.

As it turns out, the activities of the 7 DoJ lawyers on behalf of their clients (with perhaps one exception) didn’t even rise to the level of eye-brow cocking. And despite the fact that it is now clear that none of the 7 are a national security threat, the exaggeration and hyperbole about the “terrorist sympathizers” continues.

It would be one thing if any of these lawyers while in private practice acted as Lynn Stewart, the convicted terrorist lawyer who assisted her client, the “Blind Sheikh” Omar Abdel-Rahman, in smuggling messages out of prison that could have incited violence in Egypt. This lefty, loony toons nutjob actually sided with the terrorists.

But the DoJ lawyers who have come under hostile fire from the right don’t come anywhere near that standard. A couple of examples:

An extensive review of court documents and media reports by Fox News suggests many of the seven lawyers in question played only minor or short-lived roles in advocating for detainees. However, it’s unclear what roles, if any, they have played in detainee-related matters since joining the Justice Department.

Before joining the Justice Department, Jonathan Cedarbaum, now an official with the Office of Legal Counsel, was part of a “firm-wide effort” to represent six Bosnian-Algerian detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, according to the web site of the firm WilmerHale.

That effort brought the case Boumediene v. Bush to the Supreme Court, which reaffirmed the right of detainees to challenge their detention.

But, according to a review by Fox News, Cedarbaum’s name appears only once in court records of detainee-related cases. Specifically, he’s named as part of the WilmerHale legal team in a 2007 filing with the Supreme Court, and he was joined in that filing by Eric Columbus, a former WilmerHale attorney who is now senior counsel in the Office of the Deputy Attorney General.

Alongside Cedarbaum in the Office of Legal Counsel now is Karl Thompson, who while working for the firm O’Melveny & Myers became one of seven attorneys to represent Omar Khadr, a Canadian citizen who was captured in Afghanistan in 2002 and transferred to Guantanamo Bay.

But, according to court documents, Thompson was only part of Khadr’s defense team for seven months, from October 2008 to May 2009.

These are not wild-eyed lefties who were looking to betray the United States. Call them naive perhaps, but they worked for solid, respected law firms and the minimal actions they performed on the behalf of their detainee clients hardly justifies the wild eyed righty hysteria that is surrounding these revelations. The exaggerated claims - that the 7 lawyers worked for “al-Qaeda terrorists” is, on its face, a crock:

More than five years before that, Joseph Guerra, now Principal Deputy Associate Attorney General at the Justice Department, was one of five lawyers from the firm Sidley Austin to help three civil liberties groups, including the self-described “conservative” Rutherford Institute, file a detainee-related brief with the Supreme Court.

The brief urged the justices to hear the case of Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen who was held as an “enemy combatant” before the Bush Administration decided in 2006 to prosecute him in a civilian court.

Does assisting civil liberties groups in the US make one an “al-Qaeda sympathizer?” The government couldn’t prove that Padilla was al-Qaeda, dropped charges against him for plotting to build a dirty bomb, and ended up with a shaky conviction of Padilla aiding terrorists that many who have followed the case closely believe could very well be overturned on appeal.

Many might believe that taking the axiom “everyone in America deserves a defense” to such an extreme to be wrong and immoral. But Padilla is an American citizen and if Jeffrey Dahmer deserved a decent defense under our rules, then certainly Padilla did as well. The other attorneys performed similar tasks for their clients - most of them acting in a more direct fashion in that they filed briefs directly on behalf of the detainees.

The principle at stake was not sympathy with al-Qaeda but the Constitution’s guarantees for those held in American custody. The fact that those rights were so ill-defined during the previous 8 years is the fault of Congress, who could have resolved the detainee rights issue, but chose instead to let the courts handle the matter. We might have had a system that gave the detainees certain rights like habeus corpus, the right to an attorney, and a limited ability to view evidence against the defendant, while fashioning the tribunals in such a way as to allow for some leeway given detainees, if Congress had done its job. Instead, the detainees have been in legal limbo for the most part, relying on the pro-bono efforts of civil liberties attorneys.

Not surprisingly, some of those same attorneys are now working at DoJ. To question their loyalty, or commitment to the law, is absurd. But what we can and should question, is their ability to perform their jobs in an unbiased manner.

Holder still won’t tell us if any of these lawyers are working on detainee cases, and if so, in what capacity. We have the right to demand the strictest adherence to ethical standards when it comes to prosecuting those in our custody who are bona fide terrorists and could do harm to the US or our friends. So why the secrecy?

In a recent letter to Grassley, Assistant Attorney General Ron Weich said nine Justice Department lawyers in total previously represented terror suspects, contributed to court briefs in detainee-related cases or otherwise helped advocate for detainees.

Weich acknowledged in the letter that Principal Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal previously represented a Guantanamo Bay detainee and that National Security Division Attorney Jennifer Daskal previously worked for Human Rights Watch, which advocates on behalf of detainees.

Weich declined to identify the other lawyers, but he insisted that no political appointee at the Justice Department “would permit or has permitted any prior affiliation to interfere with the vital task of protecting national security, and any suggestion to the contrary is absolutely false.”

He also said that any suggestions of a “conflict of interest” are “an apparent misapprehension” of legal standards, adding that all political appointees have taken pledges to meet ethical standards.

Asked whether any of the seven previously unidentified lawyers now work on detainee-related issues, Miller declined to comment.

It appears that, at least on one case, a DoJ lawyer sought advice from career prosecutors about conflict of interest:

As for the two lawyers who were named by Weich in his recent letter to Grassley, Daskal has “generally worked on policy issues related to detainees” while at the Justice Department, said Weich, adding that her detainee-related work “has been fully consistent with advice she received from career Department officials regarding her [ethical and legal] obligations.”

Weich said Katyal “has not worked on any Guantanamo detainee matters, but has participated in litigation involving detainees who continue to be detained” elsewhere.

It is asking an awful lot of even a good lawyer to set aside previous advocacy for a client and dispassionately carry out their duties at DoJ. In a well run department, one would think that even the appearance of ethical problems would be cause to reassign an attorney. Holder is either clueless, or arrogant in his dismissal of criticism. Judging by his actions in connection with requests for information from Senator Grassley, I’ll choose the latter.

It’s ridiculous to claim that the “al-Qaeda 7″ are a security risk. And the right does the cause no good by going off half cocked and calling DoJ “The Department of Jihad.” All conservatives are doing by employing these McCarthyite tactics is obscuring and taking attention away from the real issue at stake; whether attorneys who advocated for detainee rights have any business working on their cases at DoJ.

That, and Holder’s intransigence with Congress, arrogantly secretive manner in this and other cases, as well as the AG’s ultra-wrong call on the KSM trial are the real issues.

The rest is a crock.

UPDATE

At least one conservative has got their head on straight:

Finally, it is appropriate to criticize lawyers who defend terrorists and terrorist suspects. Contrary to what Walter Dellinger would like us to believe, these lawyers have no professional obligation to represent terrorists and terrorist suspects. They did so by choice and this choice, like all others, is fair game for criticism.

However, it is entirely inappropriate to suggest that these lawyers share the values of terrorists or to dub the seven DOJ lawyers “The al Qaeda Seven.” Unfortunately, this is what a video released by the organization Keep America Safe does.

I would rather give up my law license than represent Osama bin Laden’s driver, for example. And I take a very dim view of the decision by Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal to undertake that representation.

However, I would not deserve to have a law license if my personal views on this matter caused me to launch vicious, unfounded attacks on lawyers who exercise their right to represent despicable clients.