Right Wing Nut House

I suppose it is suicidal to pick a fight with a lawyer over the legality of waterboarding but I think John Hinderaker is just plain off base here:

But if waterboarding is “torture,” then it’s illegal. So why is the U.S. military still using it as a training device, last we knew? If we’re going to start prosecuting people, don’t we have to prosecute the many civilian and military leaders who have for decades inflicted waterboarding, or condoned the use of waterboarding, on our servicemen? Just a thought. Actually, of course, no one has any interest in such prosecutions (which would be absurd in any event) since there is no political advantage to be gained.

John is referring to the use of waterboarding in the military’s SERE program - “Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape.” Some of the program is apparently classified but enough details have leaked out to confirm that the trainees who volunteer for the program go through some pretty horrendous treatment. In fact, according to this Slate piece by William Saletan, there are some who wish to alter some of the program’s training methods, believing them too harsh. Many others disagree.

Hinderaker’s argument has some merit - if one were to forget that the trainees are not being held by the US government as prisoners and therefore, not offered protections under international agreements we have signed that clearly make waterboarding a form of “torture” under the letter and spirit of the definition as outlined in those treaties.

This is the strawman that many who are defending torture are throwing up to distract from a fundamental truth; that regardless of whether waterboarding was experienced by American military personnel, and regardless of whether it was legal or illegal under US law at the time, the fact remains that prisoners being held by our government and who were waterboarded, were illegally tortured according to, at the very least, the United Nations Convention Against Torture and, some would argue, the Geneva Conventions.

The UN Convention Against Torture has a very straightforward definition:

For the purposes of this Convention, torture means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.

Was waterboarding “intentionally inflicted” in order to obtain “information or a confession?” Of course it was. A better question is was that the intent of waterboarding SERE volunteers? Of course not.

The catch most often used by defenders of the practice is that waterboarding does not constitute “severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental” because our own guys go through it and come out of the experience no worse for wear.

Slate’s William Saletan destroys that argument against waterboarding and also punches holes in other arguments that use SERE as a crutch:

The first difference, Ogrisseg noted, is that SERE trains soldiers to defeat interrogation, whereas “the real world interrogator wants to win.” This is a moral difference, as Hitchens observed. But it’s also a practical difference: An interrogator whose job is to extract information will behave more harshly than an interrogator who’s teaching resistance.

Second, SERE pits American interrogators against American trainees. “When dealing with non-country personnel, as in the case of detainee handling, there is greater risk of dehumanization of these personnel, and thus a greater likelihood of worse treatment,” Ogrisseg warned.

Third, SERE offers interventions that relieve stress and reinforce the unreality of the exercise. Instructors and psychologists are available “to watch the students for indications that they are not coping well with training tasks, provide corrective interventions with them long before they become overwhelmed, and if need be, remotivate students who have become overwhelmed to enable them to succeed,” Ogrisseg noted.

Fourth, SERE has “defined starting and ending points. … [T]rainees arrive on a certain date and know that they will depart on a specified date.”

Fifth and most important, SERE is voluntary. “Students can withdraw from training,” Ogrisseg noted. In a report issued four months ago, the Armed Services Committee added that in SERE, “students are even given a special phrase they can use to immediately stop” any ordeal.

Also, the UN treaty doesn’t even try and define who might or might not be protected under its strictures. It simply refers to persons in the custody of the state that is party to the agreement, anywhere the authority of the state is exercised:

Each State Party shall take such measures as may be necessary to establish its jurisdiction over the offences referred to in article 4 in the following cases:

1. When the offences are committed in any territory under its jurisdiction or on board a ship or aircraft registered in that State;
2. When the alleged offender is a national of that State;
3. When the victim was a national of that State if that State considers it appropriate.

Each State Party shall likewise take such measures as may be necessary to establish its jurisdiction over such offences in cases where the alleged offender is present in any territory under its jurisdiction and it does not extradite him pursuant to article 8 to any of the States mentioned in Paragraph 1 of this article.

This Convention does not exclude any criminal jurisdiction exercised in accordance with internal law.

Clearly, this covers Guantanamo, Bagram, and anywhere in Iraq where we were in charge of detainees. And then there’s this stricture against rendition:

1. No State Party shall expel, return (”refouler”) or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.
2. For the purpose of determining whether there are such grounds, the competent authorities shall take into account all relevant considerations including, where applicable, the existence in the State concerned of a consistent pattern of gross, flagrant or mass violations of human rights.

Did we have “substantial grounds for believing” that Egypt, Yemen, and a few other venues where we transferred custody of prisoners were havens for torture and mistreatment? I would say that’s a “yes” wouldn’t you?

And what about American law? The notion being advanced by torture apologists is that waterboarding wasn’t against American law at the time flies in the face of the definition of torture under Title 18, Part I, Chapter 113C, S. 2340 passed in 1994 (minor amendments in 2007) to fulfill our treaty obligations under the UN Convention Against Torture:

As used in this chapter—

(1) “torture” means an act committed by a person acting under the color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical control;
(2) “severe mental pain or suffering” means the prolonged mental harm caused by or resulting from—
(A) the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering;
(B) the administration or application, or threatened administration or application, of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality;
(C) the threat of imminent death; or
(D) the threat that another person will imminently be subjected to death, severe physical pain or suffering, or the administration or application of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or personality; and

(3) “United States” means the several States of the United States, the District of Columbia, and the commonwealths, territories, and possessions of the United States.

I am no lawyer but my reading of this statute is pretty simple; waterboarding easily meets the definition of torture in that it intentionally inflicted “severe mental pain or suffering,” that it carried with it the “threat of imminent death,” and that it occurred in the defined jurisdiction - which holds true for most of the other enhanced interrogation techniques.

I will repeat something I’ve written previously; the law is not a straitjacket and liberals who want to throw the book at everyone but the cook at Guantanamo are perfectly willing to rip this country apart in search of vengance. Torture was not carried out to satisfy the sadistic cravings of Bush, Cheney, the CIA interrogators, or anyone else involved. The fact is, I fully grant these officials and intelligence experts the benefit of their beliefs that what they were doing was protecting the country. That has to be a mitigating factor when determining what to do with the perpetrators.

But trying to keep us safe is not an excuse or justification for torture as the UN Convention makes clear:

Article 2

1. Each State Party shall take effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent acts of torture in any territory under its jurisdiction.
2. No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.
3. An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture.

Guilty, yes. But I am not at all certain that torture trials of the kind envisioned by many on the left would accomplish anything. Would it “prove” that we are a nation of laws? If that is the goal then one might ask whether there is not also justice under the law and whether throwing the book at those who were trying to act in good faith is really the route to redemption. I think not. Some reckoning must take place but must it involve criminal proceedings? I envy they who possess certainty in this matter.

Imagine being a homosexual who, for whatever reason - family, business, or personal - chooses not to publicly divulge their sexuality?

For some, it is a question of politics. And after 8 years of hearing the left say that a person’s sexual life is not the business of the public and what someone does when they are not doing the people’s business should be their own affair, it takes a lot of sand to suddenly become interested in such matters when they involve a member of the opposite party.

There exists a small homosexual clique that has taken it upon themselves to “out” gay Republicans. These vicious slime merchants inhabit “alternative” media including websites, newspapers, and now, Hollywood. Their stated goal; to expose “hypocrisy” by outing conservative politicians, and even more incredibly, those who work as aides for the lawmaker.

I will let “Andy” of the lefty gay blog Towelroad, give you an inkling of the kind of tactics used as he touts the opening of a film entitled (with exquisite, unintentional irony) “Outrage,” that will expose several gay Republicans who have chosen to keep their sexual preference to themselves:

Dick’s deft layering of audio tapes, interviews, and sexual confessions against the anti-gay votes these politicians have made reveals how journalists and the mainstream media, which the film ultimately damns for its refusal to expose hypocrisy, have been complicit in keeping public figures in the closet.

And the tragic and horrific effect the closet has had on LGBT rights and public policy is made all the more clear.

I debated whether I should actually link to the site and in the end, decided against it. I am not in the business of outing anyone which would be the practical effect of linking them. Google it if you are curious.

Why commit this heinous crime against privacy? They don’t agree politically with the targets of their slimey attacks, that’s why. And basically, it comes down to the issue of gay marriage and their notions of “gay rights.” Because their targets don’t promote their idea of a political agenda, this is “hypocrisy” in their book and must be “exposed” by divulging the most personal and private matters that anyone possesses; their sexual orientation.

In other words, despite the fact that their disagreement is political, they have chosen to respond by personally attacking the objects of their rage and in the process, attempting to ruin their lives. 

There is more than one political ”agenda” for gays as just about any gay Republican or conservative can tell you. The fact that the pond scum who are outing these Republicans refuse to acknowledge this fact of political life shows them to be nothing more than partisan hacks who, in a gentler age, would have been consigned to the absolute fringes of American politics where even some of the whackos wouldn’t have come near them with a ten foot pole.

Now, they make big money and receive the kudo’s of their ideological soul mates for sticking it to the opposition in the most rank, unjustified, and irrefutably base way imaginable.  

“Outrage” indeed. This kind of thing used to be done by hiring private investigators and handing off the damaging information in some dark alley. No one would dream of openly congratulating themselves for their shocking breach of ethics and common decency.

Now they make films that celebrate their sleazey political gambits.

I wrote this a couple of years ago when Mike Rogers (who used to partner with Americablog’s John Avarosis in outing people against their will) was outing Republican Congressmen and staff. It is appropos of what is happening today:

How any decent Democrat can stomach this worthless specimen of humanity is one reason I will never switch parties. I may be very angry with the Republican party at the moment, despise parts of its agenda, and have nothing but contempt for a broad swath of its leaders. But the GOP has nothing comparable to the Rogers operation.

Oh, they have their oppo researchers and underhanded tactics. But that’s politics boys and girls, get used to it or get out. What Rogers does has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with personal aggrandizement and the accumulation of power. And the fact that the Democratic left latches on to this lickspittle of a man and gives him encouragement puts them beyond the pale in my book.

There are many gay Republicans who oppose much of what Rogers considers “gay rights” including gay marriage. Conservative gays have wide ranging opinions on what constitutes gay rights. For Rogers to set himself up as an arbiter of opinion among conservatives - gay or not - about what people should believe is an astonishing demonstration of arrogance.

Quite simply, it’s none of his business. This is especially true of Congressional staffers who are not responsible to the voters but rather to the Member of Congress they work for. To “out” a staffer just because Rogers hears rumors about him is beyond belief. What possible difference can it make to Rogers except by outing the aide, he can put another notch on his gun. One more victim of his one man pogrom against gay Republicans who won’t slavishly think as he does.

This man is a blight on American politics and should be banished from public life forever. Instead, like his partner in “exposing Republican hypocrisy” porn magnate Larry Flynt, they receive the plaudits and adoration of the left for their efforts.

The Democratic party won’t do anything about these radical smear artists. Why should they? It is the Democrats who will benefit when some of the targets of these attacks are defeated for re-election. The press won’t do anything either. They have abandoned their role of referree to take an active part in destroying those who disagree with them politically. They would never dream of covering a film produced by Stormfront or neo-Nazi skinheads. But watch as they feel themselves “compelled” to report on what these political hatchetmen have produced.

Everyone knows that politics is a rough game and not for those with weak stomachs or too many skeletons in their closet.

But there used to be lines that just weren’t crossed regardless of the provocation. Letting it be known that a candidate’s wife was a drunk or a floozy was one such barrier although what earthly difference it would make to voters was never quite made clear. Regardless, the press was usually pretty good about refereeing the political playing field, coming down hard on anyone that crossed the boundaries of taste and what passes for “fair play” in such a cutthroat world.

Where’s the line now?

This post originally appears in The American Thinker

Greg Gutfeld wonders (parenthetically) if Jack Bauer is dead because the Obama Administration released the memos concocted by Bush era lawyers to justify the use of torture.

Earlier today President Obama said charges might be brought against those evil Bush lawyers behind the just-released memos justifying the harsh interrogation techniques used against folks who wanted to blow up our country. Or more specifically, blow up Los Angeles.

Which is why I brought up “24.” Not only is it about this sort of thing, it’s made in Los Angeles, a place that might have been totally screwed, if it weren’t for those evil lawyers. Writing in the Washington Post, Marc A. Thiessen refers to a memo noting that “enhanced techniques” led to the discovery of a Second Wave attack determined to crash an airliner into the Library Tower, the tallest building on the west coast. Thiessen writes that the info culled using these interrogations led to the arrest of those in charge of attempting this attack.

Now, Thiessen was once a Bush speechwriter, but that doesn’t take away from his point: that although Obama released memos revealing the interrogation techniques, what those actions actually achieved is blacked out.

And that’s the scary part. Usually what goes on behind the scenes is what keeps us alive. Now we know, however, that not only does our President find that sort of thing distasteful – as a consequence, he’s open to sharing this info with everyone.

Except the part where it says it works.

Jack Bauer is officially dead.

I too am troubled that the Obama Administration decided to play politics with this issue by not placing before the American people all the facts. If releasing information on how torture was justified while detailing the specifics and not worry about the national security implications then it stands to reason Obama could have released the information that showed what breaking the law had accomplished as far as actionable intelligence. Needless to say, any actions taken against the lawbreakers by the Obama justice department would be extremely suspect at this point. And given that Congress knew about this lawbreaking all along (at least the leadership of both parties and the intel committees) and didn’t object, it makes any kind of “truth commission” as proposed by Pelosi an absolute joke.

Her hypocrisy should make her first in the dock.

The entire bleeding government of the United States appears to have lost its collective head and engaged in practices that are both abhorrent to our traditions and a violation of national and international law. The idea that Los Angeles was “saved” by torturing people misses the point. What certainty is there that other, legal means used on the prisoner(s) might not have yielded the same information? This piece by Heather McDonald in City Journal a few years ago that goes into detail about our early attempts to get information from battlefield detainees clearly shows that the real professional interrogators didn’t have to break the law in order to glean excellent, actionable intelligence from al-Qaeda prisoners. They skated quite close to the edge but never went over, according to McDonald. And these interrogations were taking place at the same time the whole torture issue was roiling the Bush Administration - a bureaucratic battle of which the interrogators were unaware.

In short, we’ll never know if using legal methods would have gotten the same results. And that’s one of the things that bugs the hell out of me. Even the Los Angeles plot was not a ticking time bomb scenario for the simple reason we didn’t know about it until the “enhanced interrogation techniques” had already been used. Hence, retroactive justification for their use is a non-starter.

I made my feelings known about the release of the memos here. But it is apparent that Gutfeld, who claims to be a fan of 24, hasn’t been watching very carefully recently because if he had, he would have known that Bauer had come to grips with his guilt in breaking the law and wanted America to know why he did it. He wasn’t evading responsibility. But he questioned whether anyone who didn’t have the full story could judge him without standing in his shoes.

This is the latest attempt to whitewash history on the part of torture advocates; it worked so why get all bent out of shape? I will be the first to make the case that we cannot judge what went on in a vacuum, employing the premise that the law is the end all and be all - a force into and of itself - and that any slight deviation from the spirit and the letter of the law must be punished severely. This is the absolutist position and I am not comfortable with it. The law was never meant to be a straitjacket. Otherwise, the entire population would be walking on eggshells.

In Bauer’s case, the routine, almost casual use of torture (with the knowledge and approval of his immediate superiors), was, at first, portrayed as a moral good. Even Jack’s more extreme uses of torture like kneecapping a subject or breaking their fingers one at a time (or his famous zapping of his rival for Audrey’s affections, using a cut off lamp cord as electrodes) was seen as right and necessary to save America from terrorists. But the last few years as Americans became aware of what the government was doing in their name and people became more skeptical of the war in Iraq, the situations where Bauer tortured to get information played out in a much more morally ambiguous universe. There were even attempts to give both sides of the issue a hearing. Bauer himself never really questioned his tactics but it was made clear that he was cognizant that what he was doing was against the law. This culminated in his kidnapping by the Chinese during the season finale two years ago and torture was applied liberally to him while a prisoner. Needless to say, the experience gave Bauer a whole new outlook on torture and made him, if not more reluctant to employ it, more cognizant of the moral framework he was operating under.

This season, Jack’s reputation for torture has been widely derided in the government with some scenes actually casting aspersions on his willingness to break the law. “The FBI doesn’t torture,” said Special Agent Larry Moss whose girlfriend Renee Walker adopted some of Jack’s tactics and felt miserable about it. Gutfeld fails to appreciate the yin and yang of Bauer and Agent Walker who both employ interrogation techniques that are far outside the law but the sympathetic nature of Walker’s character shows the audience the psychic cost involved in torture and that those who practice it are wrong. Bauer is able to deal with his moral ambiguity by seeing the world in black and white - a consequence of his job where friends are few and enemies are as ruthless as they come. Torture is wrong but so is blowing up innocent Americans and whatever means are employed to prevent the latter takes priority over any moral judgments that are inherent in the former.

This new appreciation for the diameters of Bauer’s moral universe, rather than killing Bauer off has instead imbued him with more humanity. His contempt for people who have no clue what his methods have cost personally does not override the fact that he is fully aware that torture is illegal and that, as he said at the senate hearing in this year’s first episode, he will gladly take the consequences of his actions as long as the people get the full story. That story includes the machinations of people very high in government who turned the other way and didn’t care how the job got done as long as Bauer kept Americans from being killed in large numbers. Each president Bauer served under was fully aware of what Bauer was doing to prisoners in order to glean actionable intelligence and never once remonstrated against him for it. His bitterness is partly fed by the fact that some of those same people are now trying to put him behind bars for what he believes, in essence, following orders.

I said this two years ago:

The moral choices made by characters on 24 do not necessarily shed light on contemporary America so much as they illustrate time-honored thematic constructs from great literature and drama of the past. By definition, these themes are “conservative” in that they reflect a traditional approach to drama while offering a point of view regarding the threat of terrorism that more conservatives seem to be comfortable with than liberals. But at the same time, the show seeks to redefine the moral universe inhabited by the characters who are asked to sacrifice traditional values for the greater good of saving the country.

But we don’t live in Jack’s world. The world we live in is a many layered, textured nightmare of progressively darker shades of grey. What is torture? Is it right to make someone stand for 12 hours straight? Can you “waterboard” someone? Beyond the moral choices regarding torture, does it work? Is it necessary? The rest of the world is appalled at some of our answers. Shouldn’t we be?

I would argue with Gutfeld that rather than killing him off, the release of the torture memos places Jack Bauer in a much more human light. They allow us to understand that Bauer’s actions cannot be considered “rogue” in the sense that he was going off half cocked. Jack’s torturing was not a reflection of anything necessarily wrong with him as it was a reflection of the times in which he lived and the moral choices made by his superiors. It humanizes Bauer to have functioned in this atmosphere and rather than announcing his death, one might argue that he has been reborn and while still willing to use torture in the process of saving lives, is much more aware of the moral dimensions to his actions.

In case you haven’t heard, “right wing” blogs are engaged in a bitter civil war pitting former friends and colleagues against one another in a bloody battle for conservatism’s soul.

Or something.

David Weigel, a generally fair reporter who has also written some entertaining stuff for Reason Magazine, writes a story in the Washington Independent (Well, they say they are) that gives the lowdown on the current food fight between LGF’s Charles Johnson and a trio of anti-jihad bloggers including of Pam Geller (Atlas Shrugs), Robert Spencer (Jihad Watch), and my old friend Dymphna at Gates of Vienna.

Charles, who I always thought of as more of a political independent than anything, was interviewed by Weigel for the piece and had some rather churlish things to say about his enemies; namely that they are either kooks or bigots — and perhaps worse:

“I don’t think there is an anti-jihadist movement anymore,” Johnson said. “It’s all a bunch of kooks. I’ve watch some people who I thought were reputable, and who I trusted, hook up with racists and Nazis. I see a lot of them promoting stories and causes that I think are completely nuts.”

Johnson’s disgust with the terrorism-focused conservative blogosphere has had a traumatic effect on a dogged and dogmatic community of bloggers and scholars. When Johnson began blogging about Islam and terrorism after 9/11, he inspired untold other supporters of an aggressive war on terror to start their own Websites, link up, and push back against “Dhimmitude” - organizations and foreign policy decision makers that were “soft” on terrorism. Now, some of his followers have started blogs that track Johnson’s “madness,” while a video that portrays Johnson as Adolf Hitler going mad in his bunker makes the rounds.

“He’s the reason I started blogging,” said Atlas Shrugs editor Pamela Geller, a New Yorker who says she was “mugged by Sept. 11? and started reading LGF for news and fellowship. “I wrote birthday messages to him. I respected and admired him.”

Robert Spencer, the director of JihadWatch and the author of the bestselling, “Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam,” had an established career as a critic of militant Islam before he met Johnson. “But right after 9/11, he was the only one out there reporting on this,” Spencer said. “He built my Website. I learned how to blog from reading his stuff.”

Johnson has turned hard against Spencer and Geller, attacking the former for joining a “genocidal Facebook group,” while referring to the latter as a “shrieking lunatic,” and labeling both of them “hatebloggers.” Johnson now points to Geller’s posts about Barack Obama’s heritage and her quest to fund a headstone for the victim of a Muslim honor killing as proof that “the woman is deranged.” Other bloggers in the movement have been purged from Johnson’s blogroll or pilloried on the site, never to be mentioned again. The most successful sites that arose in LGF’s wake, including Gateway Pundit, Gates of Vienna, and Brussels Journal, are also on the outs.

Read the rest of the article for background on the tussle.

I would find it hard to take sides in this dispute. It seems a cop out to say that both sides are wrong and right but that is sincerely how I judge it. I know most of the principles, have met and spoken with some of them, and admire much of the work they have done in the past. I frankly don’t know who is exaggerating but at this point, both sides are talking past each other so it really doesn’t matter. I think Charles has some legitimate concerns about some bloggers and commenters in the anti-jihad blogosphere (one can see them stinking up any post about Muslims just about anywhere) but calling Pam a “shrieking lunatic” is ridiculous. Perhaps she was “shrieking” at being lumped together with Nazis. I know I would be.

The same goes for Charles’s other targets. Dymphna and the Baron are two very thoughtful writers who I don’t always agree with but are hardly bigots. Pamela, bless her, is more excitable (if you met her, you’d be charmed by her enthusiasm for everything in life), and I disagreed with her emphasis on Obama’s origins. But she is far more passionate than she is “kooky” and that kind of criticism is subjective anyway (I should know). Spencer is a genuine scholar - but uses sources sometimes I find problematic, as do the others.

The problem as I see it is that Charles used a blunderbuss when he should have employed a scalpel in his criticism. The anti-jihad sites mentioned above as well as a few others have spawned dozens of blogs that employ a riotously misguided and uncomprehending view of the Islamic faith and Muslims in general when discussing the very real threat coming from extremists. Not quite “The only good Muslim, is a dead Muslim” but close. It is pathetic to read some of these sites as writers attempt to “explain” jihad by taking quotes from the Koran out of context as “proof” that all Muslims are at war with us. No doubt, a few of them will make an appearance in the comments section of this post. I will be branded a “dhimmi” or, as Pam unfairly characterized Charles, “a leftist blogger.”

Combatting worldwide jihad is important. As I’ve written before, the left refuses to engage in this war to defend the west, partly because they do not believe much in “western values” anymore (or at least their superiority to what the jihadists want to replace them with), but also out of fear that they will offend people who practice the Muslim faith. What European liberals and our own left fail to comprehend is that while the number of extremists who want to kill us is small, their actions are cheered (and supported financially) by millions of others. This attitude, especially on the part of the European left, has led to compromises on free speech, freedom of religion, and other cherished values that the left seems willing to make in the name of establishing comity with Muslims.

I can understand Johnson’s reluctance to endorse the lunatic fringe of the anti-jihadist movement and one should always be careful with whom they associate. But both sides in this dust up are blinded by the personal insults and fail to see they are both still fighting the same war. The bloggers mentioned above are not always as circumspect in their language and writing as perhaps they should be with regard to Muslims and the Islamic faith but they are hardly bigots nor have they ever advocated genocide against Muslims or, as far as I know, forcing American Muslims to emigrate. I have seen those views expressed on fringe blogs, however, and Johnson’s complaint should be heard by all.

Charles Johnson is not a leftist. He may not be a “right winger” but he is hardly a liberal. His views on some fringe conservatives who believe in creationism match my own as did his take on Glenn Beck (don’t go there). One of my primary tormentors, Stacey McCain, sees apostasy in Johnson’s critique, however, and is ready to strip him of his membership in the Conservative Book Club and take away his key to the Haliburton Executive Washroom:

I’d like to explain to Charles Johnson why he’s wrong, but if he won’t listen to Robert Spencer, there’s no reason to expect he’d listen to me. Johnson supported the GWOT, which ended the day Bush left the White House, and thus ended Johnson’s only real interest in politics.

Johnson is not “political” in the sense of trying to calculate ways to build a broad, enduring coalition that amounts to at least 50-percent-plus-one. He cares nothing about, say, figuring out how to elect Lt. Col. Allen West in FL-22 or how to defeat Bud Cramer in AL-5. And since he’s never looked at politics in that way, he doesn’t grasp the connection between defeating the Left on foreign policy and defeating the Left on domestic issues like “card check” and health care.

You know who does see those connections? The Left. And they’ve won, because Bush and the Republicans never really understood the real enemy they were fighting. Charles Johnson is just collateral damage in this conflict, incidental to the Left’s triumph.

If he had thought about it (and thank the lord he didn’t), Stacey would no doubt have lumped me in with Johnson because of some of my views. But I question Mr. McCain’s definition of who or what is “political.” In the larger scheme of things, there is little difference between what Johnson or Moran does and “trying to calculate ways to build a broad, enduring coalition” of conservatives by writing happy days are here again blog posts or even making concrete recommendations about how to accomplish that worthy goal.

I write about how I believe conservatives can regain power just as Stacey does. I recommend strategies just as Mr. McCain does. The problem is that Stacey doesn’t agree with me (or Johnson) and hence, we are discredited because, having set himself up as an arbiter of “true conservatism” (And why not? Many agree with him.), he can justifiably drum me and anyone else out of his ever devolving clique of “real” conservatives.

Is his definition of who is a legitimate “conservative” getting narrower or is it just my imagination?

I like Stacey despite his picking on me. He is a fine southern gentleman and smart as a whip. But I would caution him not to slam the door in the face of those who, regardless of their stands on some issues, are still his natural allies. I doubt whether Johnson voted for Obama nor do I think he would vote for many Democrats as the party is currently constituted. But a stay at home is as bad as a no vote as the November election showed.

What profit a man that he win the conservatives but lose the election?

You won’t want to miss tonight’s Rick Moran Show, one of the most popular conservative talk shows on Blog Talk Radio.

Tonight, I welcome Fausta Wertz of Fausta’s Blog, and Val Prieto and Henry Gomez of Babalu Blog. We’ll discuss Obama’s recent trip to the Latin American summit as well as future US policy in the region.

The show will air from 7:00 - 8:00 PM Central time. You can access the live stream here. A podcast will be available for streaming or download shortly after the end of the broadcast.

Click on the stream below and join in on what one wag called a “Wayne’s World for adults.”

The Chat Room will open around 15 minutes before the show opens,

Also, if you’d like to call in and put your two cents in, you can dial (718) 664-9764.

UPDATE: SHOW CANCELED

A thousand pardons, my friends. Due to technical problems, I was forced to cancel the show last night.

Massive, massive computer problems - took me a while to figure out because even the diagnostic tools weren’t working — but the camera I hooked up to my laptop (which I am now using as a platform for my monitor mouse and keyboard) disabled every single process and program! Have to call HP to get it straightened out.

To make matters worse, I only scheduled the show for 15 min!

Unbelievable.

I used to be as much of a frothing at the mouth, anti-EPA, anti-environmental regulation ideologue as the next fellow. Back in the early 1980’s when I was but a young buckaroo, I could rail against the anti-business, anti-free market bureaucrats at the Environmental Protection Agency and the anti-people environmentalists with the best of them.

But at that time, one must recall that the Reagan administration represented the first push-back against some of the really silly and stupid — not to mention draconian and illiberal — regulations that had contributed to the decline of the steel and other industries as well as placing an unnecessary burden on farmers, ranchers, loggers, and other small businessmen who became targets of the regulators.

So what happened? I’d like to say I grew up and opened my eyes but that would presuppose that somewhere in my conservative soul I wasn’t concerned about the environment all along. Rather it was the gradual realization brought about by my own life experiences that the industrial age and free market capitalism had brought us wondrous riches and allowed for a lifestyle unknown anywhere else on the planet but that it had come at a cost. We have always known of this cost to the environment. Even in my dotage I can recall Lake Michigan beaches in Chicago being closed due to excess pollution, and a small stream near where I grew up becoming a frothing, foamy cesspool of smelly brown sludge from some business or other dumping waste upstream. Driving through Gary, Indiana in the 1960’s after spending 4 weeks in the pristine wilderness of northern Michigan made us all gag from the stench of the belching steel mills running 24 hours a day, turning white laundry a soft shade of brown on backyard clotheslines.

Knowing all this, I still resisted the idea that government could tell business what to do. I just never made the connection between pollution and the polluters until I had traveled enough and lived long enough to see the impact on ordinary people’s lives.

Later, it was concern about suburban sprawl that affected me directly and all the attendant environmental problems and quality of life issues that came with it. Eventually, I came to the conclusion that environmental protection was necessary and even desirable, and that only the federal government was a big enough entity to take on giant corporations and powerful interests who were acting in an irresponsible manner toward the natural world.

And therein lies the conservative dilemma about the environment and why, to this day, conservatives are uneasy about getting too excited about going “green.”

In a perfect world where the free market was truly “free,” environmental protection would be fairly easy. “You break it, you pay for it,” would be the sentence for polluters who damaged the air and water that Americans breathe and drink. There might even be incentives for business to be good stewards of the land. But that notion supposes that all businesses will act with some degree of responsibility toward the environment. History has proved otherwise which made federal intervention a necessity.

In the early days of the federal environmental movement, there was much support from more moderate Republicans for measures like the creation of the EPA, the Clean Air and Clean Water acts, and the original efforts to cut down on lead in gasoline emissions.

But when EPA regulations began to cut into profits and pose a burden on businesses large and small, conservatives saw an agency out of control and uncaring about economic growth. The fervent beliefs and self-righteousness of environmentalists didn’t help matters either. In the end, it was enough to simply oppose anything the EPA tried to do, branding it as government overreach and injurious to wealth creation.

This view became even more pronounced during the 1990’s as the Global Warming debate heated up. As climate change advocates became more and more accusatory of skeptics, conservatives recoiled from what they saw as the almost religious nature of AGW beliefs. Kyoto, a treaty so obviously flawed that the senate wouldn’t even consider it, proved to conservatives that the global warming argument was less about climate change and more about massive transfers of wealth from rich nations to poor.

But why should conservatives look upon environmental issues in such a way? Environmentalism was invented by a “progressive” conservative, Teddy Roosevelt. TR was in love with nature — especially that part of which he could shoot — but he also realized that unless action was taken, some future generation of Americans would lose the legacy of our wilderness. The almost incomprehensible vastness of the land is one of the things that makes us an exceptional nation and TR saw a day when almost all the empty spaces would be filled up. Thus was born the conservation movement by government (it had existed for 50 years previous to that as private citizens bought up more than 20 million acres to save the wilderness).

What happened to that legacy? Post World War II conservatism became entranced and then captured by the idea that untrammeled growth and unregulated free markets was the ticket to paradise. Somehow, the notion that bigger was better married with a semi-religious belief in corporatism to unbalance the traditional conservative belief in “conserving” the past. When the reality of choking smog and filthy rivers became an issue, conservatives balked, believing it was a “cost of economic growth” or more incoherently, a question of “keeping the government out of the business of business.”

That view held by many conservatives has matured since the 1960’s but not by much. Conservatives are still apt to make fun of “tree huggers” and others who go overboard in professing their love of nature while believing that global warming is a “hoax”. In this, the right has been content to allow the left to claim the mantle of “Protectors of the Earth” despite the fact that there are few issues that are more conservative than conservation.

Conservative thinkers for the last century have embraced conservation and environmentalism as a natural outgrowth of one of conservatism’s most cherished principles. Political theorist Russell Kirk:

“True conformity to the dictates of nature requires reverence for the past and solicitude for the future. ‘Nature’ is not simply the sensation of the passing moment; it is eternal, though we evanescent men experience only a fragment of it. We have no right to imperil the happiness of posterity by impudently tinkering with the heritage of humanity.”

The “heritage of humanity, or as he put it later in life, the “concept of society as joined in perpetuity by a moral bond among the dead, the living, and those yet to be born—the community of souls. . . .”

Prudence, piety, a regard for the world around us and the people in it; you can’t get much more conservative than that. We see this ideal slowly being resurrected among younger conservatives especially. Perhaps the last two decades of materialism and the celebration of capitalism has affected younger conservatives who seek more meaning in their lives. This is part of the crunchy-con beliefs of Ron Dreher and embodied politically by Mike Huckabee. Environmentalism to some younger righties is very much a concern that is tied into an overall critique of American capitalism.

Kirk decisively rejects the “practical conservatism [which has] degenerated into mere laudation of ‘private enterprise,’ economic policy almost wholly surrendered to special interests.”28 He “Indignantly denie[s] . . . that his conservatism could or should be identified with businessmen.”29 Other leading traditionalists concur. Peter Viereck admonishes conservatives to “conserve the humane and ethical values of the West rather than the economic privileges of a fraction of the West.”30 Stephen Tonsor contends that the traditionalist conservatives “are not now, nor will they be, identified with the American business community. They are clearly identified with natural law philosophy and revealed religion.”

From a traditionalist perspective, just as we have inherited our culture and must preserve it for future generations, so have we inherited this earth, and we have to take proper care of it as good stewards. As Margaret Thatcher stated when she announced her conversion to environmentalism, “No generation has a freehold on this earth. All we have is a life tenancy—with a full repairing lease.” The principle of stewardship, and consequently of “sustainable development,” should lead conservatives to accept their duty to design our economy so that we produce our goods in a way that does not impair the planet’s ability to provide for future generations.

The question, then, of why conservatives have abandoned environmentalism and ceded the issue to the left is more political than philosophical. The rationale has always been there. It’s just that in the heat of political combat — and thanks to a Republican party that would rather be in bed with the polluters than regulate them — conservatives have ultimately taken the position that whatever the liberals want to do with regard to the environment is wrong and must be opposed as a matter of principle.

I would say to my friends on the right that we’re missing the boat when it comes to the environment. President Obama’s top down solutions will be costly, inefficient, and in the end, won’t work very well. The liberals have left a huge political hole that conservatives could drive a truck through if they would begin to think more than superficially about how to protect the earth. Obama wishes to mandate which technologies will win out in the competition to develop alternative energies, reduce carbon emissions, and develop clean coal plants. One wonders what kind of mandates the government will force on auto manufacturers to develop “green” cars now that they have The Big Three by the short hairs. And cap and trade may prove to be one of the biggest boondoggles in the history of government - without reducing carbon emissions by one molecule.

But does that mean that these goals are unworthy? Or is it that the “solutions” are wrongheaded? Being dismissive of global warming is one thing; not promoting the idea of reducing carbon emissions is quite another. There are good reasons beyond “saving the earth” from what may be catastrophic climate change to reduce our carbon output. First of all, there’s a chance that ruinous changes in climate might actually occur unless we do something. The problem is that global warming has partnered so many odious ideologies and movements that the “solutions” being offered are thinly disguised power and wealth grabs by the United Nations, anti-globalists, anti-capitalists, radical environmentalists who put nature above human beings, and “sustainable development” freaks who actually wish to rid the world of 80% of its human population.

Making the reduction in carbon emissions a goal in and of itself would make more sense. Lessening our carbon footprint saves energy and helps us along the road to energy independence - a worthy goal all by itself. And devising laws and regulations that maximize market input into what kind of technologies will win out to help with the development of new, cleaner systems (and old ones like fast-tracking new nuclear power plants).

Resistance by conservatives to the idea of “going green” is, in the end, self defeating. Issues such as what is happening to our forests and national parks where over logging has denuded the land of millions of acres of trees (at bargain basement prices), as well as the systematic plunder of western lands where companies have purchased mineral rights for a song while reaming the taxpayer thanks to the stupidity of Congress and bureaucrats should be cause for reproachment of the Democrats by conservatives and not a reason to brand those who advocate protecting these resouces as kooks.

This state of affairs should rend the soul of any good conservative who agrees with Kirk that we are not leaving a decent “heritage to humanity” by our silence and non-engagement on environmental issues. If we continue to allow Democrats the run of the house and not challenge them with good, solid, conservative alternatives to their collectivist notions of paternalism and government control, we will be missing a huge opportunity.

If this were April 1, I might be inclined to think it a media joke. Or that the White House press office is pulling our leg.

But it is not and it makes me worry for the sanity of President Obama that he could actually believe that cutting  1/3,700 of the federal budget will make a dent in the $1.75 (at least) TRILLION debt he’s running up this year.

And the way the Obamapress is reporting this is hysterically funny - as if he is actually trying to cut the deficit. Here’s one of the major Obama rags in the country, the LA Times:

President Obama, whose healthcare and economic stimulus initiatives threaten to dramatically inflate the federal budget deficit, heralded a new push Saturday to cut wasteful spending in Washington.The president said that in coming weeks he would announce the elimination of “dozens of government programs.” And he said he would ask his Cabinet secretaries on Monday for specific proposals to slash their departments’ budgets, promising there would be “no sacred cows and no pet projects.”

The president singled out a move by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to end consulting contracts to create seals and logos that he said had cost the department $3 million since 2003.

In case you are unaware, it wouldn’t surprise me if DHS spends $3 million on exercise bikes for higher grade bureaucrats. They may spend that much on Kleenex for DHS offices. Hell, they might spend $3 mill on Napolitano’s dog biscuits - for her dog, of course.

And by the way, just what the hell was DHS doing spending millions of dollars on logos anyway? I know everyone in America wants a DHS T-shirt ’cause they’re so kewl but can’t they settle for a coffee mug with the Homeland Security seal on it?

Economist Greg Mankiw can’t believe it either:

To put those numbers in perspective, imagine that the head of a household with annual spending of $100,000 called everyone in the family together to deal with a $34,000 budget shortfall. How much would he or she announce that spending had be cut? By $3 over the course of the year–approximately the cost of one latte at Starbucks. The other $33,997? We can put that on the family credit card and worry about it next year.

Is the president that out of touch that he doesn’t know there are far riper trees to prune if he wants to go after government waste? The Pentagon always has a lot of bloat as do entitlement programs. Don’t need a pair of pruning shears there, an ax will do just fine. Just keep hacking away until someone starts screaming - and then hack some more.

And aren’t you proud of our president who is seeking to eliminate “dozens of programs” from the budget?  There may be thousands of programs that could safely be eliminated from corporate welfare to to some of the grants that are going to groups like ACORN, Operation PUSH, and other stick-up operations. Either Obama doesn’t have much of an imagination or he is making all the jokes about liberals never being able to cut the budget for fear of offending an interest group. To be sure, the American Society of Logo and Seal Designers will no doubt be up in arms over the DHS cuts. But then, they didn’t contribute to his campaign so Obama could care less what they think.

Energy, Transportation, HHS, Commerce, Education - the whole jiggling, fat laden, porky pig of a budget could stand a once over by those Department secretaries. Instead, what will be cut won’t even count as being superficial. More like a bad PR joke or Obama’s idea of responsible government - which, when you think about it, is pretty much the same thing.

Talking trillions and cutting billions would at least be in the ballpark. But saving $100 million dollars out of a budget of $3.6 trillion is a slap in the face to the taxpayer - a cynical public relations blitz. I hope it is not indicative of the way the president will approach deficit cutting in the future.

At the rate he’s going, the sun will burn out before the deficit is reduced to a manageable level.

Our founders were very suspicious of the presidency. There were many who believed - Thomas Jefferson among them - that all that was needed to govern a free country was a Congress elected by the people at suitably short intervals so that if a representative proved untrustworthy or unresponsive, the people could put someone else in his stead. Many of Jefferson’s ilk saw the presidency as an invitation to monarchy. And the very idea of a Supreme Court who might be able to overturn laws passed by Congress gave the Jeffersonians the vapors.

Thankfully for history’s sake, a more realistic and hard-headed approach to designing a system of government for the United States prevailed in Philadelphia during that God-awful hot summer of 1787. As the delegates sweated through the debates over big state-small state issues, it became clear that there should be some kind of federal office charged with making sure the laws were “faithfully executed.” Not a king or emperor supreme to Congress but an executive who would enforce the laws passed by the legislature as well as act as a representative of American sovereignty as Head of State and Commander in Chief of the military.

Several plans regarding the executive were presented and tossed aside including an idea to make the president little more than errand boy for Congress. Clearly, there were grave misgivings about granting a single individual so much power in a republic.

What turned the tide toward a strong executive branch was the certainty that George Washington would be our first president. While debating the limits and scope of the presidency, delegates would glance at Washington and be reassured that the office would start out in good hands at least. They knew that Washington would defend the United States with honor - something he did several times during his two terms when he responded to various calumnies advanced by the French who accused the US of favoring Great Britain in their war against Napoleon.

The Founders imbued the office of President with a dignity that few presidents have besmirched in our history. We have endured fools, knaves, stumblebums, party hacks, and political generals. But each of them tried honestly to defend the United States when she was attacked.

The president is ultimately responsible for the maintenance of American honor. And defending that honor is perhaps the greatest privilege - and challenge - of the office.

President Barack Obama either doesn’t understand this aspect of the presidency or, just as likely, doesn’t believe that safeguarding American honor is his job. Or even that it is worth his time.This became apparent as a result of what happened at the Summit of the Americas that the president is attending along with the heads of state from most of Latin America.

Daniel Ortega, the Sandinista Marxist thug who is currently President of Nicaragua, used his opening remarks at the summit to skewer the United States in a rant that lasted more than 50 minutes. The dripping irony of this communist lout decrying the actions of America over the last century (and longer) is a titanic joke. Ortega’s actions in support of the Communist guerrillas in El Salvador as well as his attempts to undermine governments elsewhere in Latin America during his first term as “president” back in the 1980’s makes anything he says regarding American interference ring hollow.

Ortega and the Sandinistas, along with a coalition of middle class and small businessmen deposed Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza in 1979. The first thing the Sandinistas did - as any good little Communist would do - was to kick out the more moderate political partners who played a big role in the largely bloodless revolution, jailing some, and establishing a Marxist dictatorship. No other political parties were allowed to operate freely. Their rallies were broken up by black shirted thugs. They were denied air time on government controlled TV. Opposition leaders were routinely arrested, harassed, and beaten.

Almost immediately, he was opposed by former National Guard members who began an armed revolution that eventually - with the help of the US - forced Ortega to hold elections in 1990. Every lefty in America worth their salt traveled to Nicaragua to help Danny Ortega defeat the evil designs of the Americans. Ortega did his part by trying even harder to suppress the opposition, using his bully boys to intimidate and beat down - literally and figuratively - his opponents, led by Violetta Chamorro, publisher of La Prensa and leader of the National Opposition Union.

In the end, when given the choice between freedom and Communist tyranny, the people chose Chamorro. But before Ortega left office, he had his Sandanista legislature pass a law granting he and several of his cronies deeds to vast estates that were confiscated during his presidency. The theft made him fabulously wealthy.

In the intervening years he ran for the presidency twice and lost badly. Then, in 1998, his daughter shocked the world when she accused her father of sexually abusing her from the time she was 11 until 1990. Denied the opportunity to prove her case in Nicaragua, she took it to the Inter American Human Rights Commission which ruled the charges admissible. A settlement was reached with the government but Ortega’s daughter has never recanted the charges.

This is the man who stood in front of our president and railed against American interference in Latin America. Fond of pointing out American hypocrisy, our friends on the left are silent about both the Ortega diatribe and Obama’s “Grip and Grin” with that other paragon of democratic virtue and non-interference, Hugo Chavez. Instead, they have chosen to attack conservatives who are criticizing Obama for his being a bump on a log while Ortega skewers the country he supposedly leads and Chavez presents him with a book that is such a laughably, over the top, exaggerated, Marxist critique of American policy in the region that one wonders what planet it fell from. The author himself, Eduardo Galeano, admits he is not an historian nor does he write history but rather a combination of “fiction, journalism, political analysis, and history.”

I will be the first to admit that the United States has behaved very badly in Latin America over the years; there has been resource grabbing, commercial exploitation, support for thugs like Somoza, and CIA shenanigans in countries too numerous to count. Most of our military interventions were to keep pro-American governments in power or help stamp out leftist guerrillas. Some of our interventions were to prevent the expropriation of American companies so that commercial monopolies could be maintained. There’s worse and it’s all true.

What is also true is that for the last few decades, no nation has done more for Latin American democracy than the United States - and that includes leftists in Latin America who prove that when they get a chance to lead are as brutal and thuggish as any right wing dictator who ever ruled in the region. Galeano apparently has the honesty at least to point out that Latin America’s problems are largely the result of their own making - their own view of themselves.

Of course, he also makes it clear that Euro-American “colonialism” is the major cause of this but there is something more fundamental at work. Very few Latin American countries have established the rule of law as a basis for governance. This is not the fault of colonialism, or America, or the CIA but rather the fault of the people themselves. It is not blaming the victim to point out the numerous opportunities that Latin American nations have had to rectify this situation and have chosen instead the path of corruption, oppression, and tyranny. The ruling class in most Latin American countries is besotted with crony capitalists, confiscatory leftists, and ambitious generals. And it’s time to stop blaming America, colonialism, the CIA, United Fruit, and all the other scapegoats presented to their long suffering citizens as excuses for their poverty and hopelessness and place the blame where it belongs; in the face looking back at them in the mirror.

Ortega presented the classic Latin American leftist case for why when they get in power, they muck things up so badly and continue the cycle of extreme poverty; it’s America’s fault:

Ortega, meanwhile, droned on about the offenses of the past, dredging up U.S. support of the Somoza regime and the “illegal” war against the Sandinista regime he once led by U.S.-backed Contra rebels in the 1980s. Ortega was a member of the revolutionary junta that drove Anastasio Somoza from power in 1979 and was elected president in 1985. He was defeated in 1990 by Violeta Chamorro and ran unsuccessfully twice for the presidency before winning in 2006.

Of the 19th and 20th centuries, Ortega said: “Nicaragua central America, we haven’t been shaken since the past century by what have been the expansionist policies, war policies, that even led us in the 1850s, 1855, 1856 to bring Central American people together. We united, with Costa Ricans, with people from Honduras, the people from Guatemala, El Salvador. We all got together, united so we could defeat the expansionist policy of the United States. And after that, after interventions that extended since 1912, all the way up to 1932 and that left, as a result the imposition of that tyranny of the Samoas. Armed, funded, defended by the American leaders.”

Ortega denounced the U.S.-backed attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro’s new Communist government in Cuba in 1961, a history of US racism and what he called suffocating U.S. economic policies in the region.

Ortega droned on for the better part of an hour and what was our president doing while a tin pot thug was running down his country, spreading exaggerated claims and outright lies?

Obama sat mostly unmoved during the speech but at times jotted notes.

He could have gotten up and walked out. That would have been the headline for the day as well as being the right thing to do. There should be a limit in the international arena of how much calumny can be heaped upon your country before honor requires a president to remove himself in protest. We can take a little intelligent criticism. But when the United States is savagely attacked, its honor impugned by a lying, child molesting, thieving, hypocritical Marxist gangster, I question the president’s judgment in sitting there and calmly “taking notes.”

Later, the president failed again to defend the United States when he gave a milquetoast response:

“To move forward, we cannot let ourselves be prisoners of past disagreements. I’m grateful that President Ortega did not blame me for things that happened when I was three months old. Too often, an opportunity to build a fresh partnership of the Americas has been undermined by stale debates. We’ve all heard these arguments before.”

Has a president ever tried to distance themselves from the history of their own country in such a shocking and narcissistic way? Obama makes absolutely no attempt to answer Ortega or call him the liar that he is. Instead, he shows incredible weakness by, in effect, validating Ortega’s critique while attempting to wash his hands of the history of his own country.

But this is patriotic, of course as I have written about before. Recognizing the faults of America, trying to outdo our foreign critics in trashing one’s own country is leftist dogma. I don’t doubt the president’s patriotism (according to his lights) nor do I mind Obama going around the world apologizing for what he perceives are our mistakes. I expect no better from a liberal. But this is different. The honor of the United States demanded a ringing defense of the many good things we have done and are doing for Latin America. The scales may not balance but to quit the ring without throwing a punch smacks of either cowardice or ignorance.

Obama is no longer a leftist senator projecting his ideological slant and accepting criticism of the US from foreigners as just and necessary. He is now head of state and thus charged with defending the US from attacks like Ortega’s. Someone has to stand up for the United States in forums like the summit. In this, the president has failed his first big test as chief executive. The State Department can’t be counted on to defend America from such attacks (Secretary Clinton wouldn’t even talk about the Ortega rant.) Only one person is charged by history and tradition to call out the lying thugs who besmirch the name of the US and thus, deliver a slap in the face not just to the government but the people of America as well.

The president’s meek acceptance of Ortega’s largely unjustified criticism may play well among his ideological soul mates but for the rest of us, it causes one to wonder if there is any calumny, any lie, any exaggerated falsehood that Obama would balk at accepting.

Judging by what happened at the summit, I wouldn’t get my hopes up if I were you.

UPDATE

Most of my critics so far think it childish or just not a good idea for Obama to have walked out on Ortega when he was railing against America.

Here are some folks who walked out on Ahmadinejad at Durban II in Geneva when he went into his anti-Israeli speil.

And it wasn’t even their country the Evil Elf was ranting against.

I don’t care about gay marriage as a political issue. If I had my druthers, it would have the same importance as one’s position on whether to make tomorrow “National Convenience Store Clerk Day.” No doubt Hallmark will have a card for it if it comes to pass.

It may have been efficacious to defend “traditional marriage” 40 years ago but I don’t see the point today. You see, I live in sin with my Zsu-Zsu and neither one of us cares who knows it or what they think about it. Cohabitation destroyed “traditional marriage” long before gay marriage even became an issue. There is no stigma attached to living together in an unmarried state. Indeed, very few people care — and if you do, go to hell. To make it your business — to judge me on how I live my life is about as intrusive as anyone can get. Needless to say, the thought of government having a say in whether we can cohabitate should be as abhorrent to a conservative as any other government intervention in our private lives.

Given that my lover and I have been together longer than many marriages last, one is tempted to ask if marriage as the “foundation of community and society” can even claim that mantle any longer. And don’t talk to me about “the children.” The number of divorces every year of marriages with children (more than a million kids a year) speaks to the seriousness American adults take the important task of raising children in a stable, loving home. “Blended families” are the norm not the exception. More than half the kids born today will grow up in a home where the parents get at least one divorce.

Of course, there are legal issues regarding marriage vs. cohabitation but even those are fast disappearing. Partner rights have been granted for everything from hospital visits to legal wills in most states. Many states extend those legal benefits to gay couples. American society is changing and the question confronting conservatives is do we live in the past, hoping that the Ozzie and Harriet marriage template makes a comeback or do we face the future and try and “conserve” the good that comes from the traditional family structure while trying to protect children from the often deleterious effects of marital strife and break ups?

A tall order, that. But first things first and that means accepting the fact that American society has moved on — culturally as well as legally — from traditionally defined “marriage” and has embraced different ways people choose to live and love. If you choose marriage as a life long commitment, more power to you. That is your choice and in all sincerity, I wish you the best of luck and a long, loving partnership. I, and most others, envy you your commitment and desire to beat the odds.

That’s because at bottom, when you take away all the legalisms, the moral quotient, the religious implications, and the needs of society, what we are left with is nothing more than how people choose to define their relationships where they feel love for another human being. To many, it is important to them in a religious sense that this relationship be a lifelong marriage/partnership with children as a symbol of their love and commitment to one another. This is one legitimate choice. It will always be a choice and it is hard to see how anything - even allowing gay marriage - will take that choice away from you or even invalidate that choice in the eyes of society.

I have heard no argument compelling enough or logical enough that would cause me to fear for the future of “traditional marriage” if that is what people choose as a way to express their love and commitment to one another. The secular conservative case against gay marriage is sometimes based on the notion that marriage as a civil compact is an expression of the importance that society places on the nuclear family and as a practical matter, encourages procreation so that society can survive. Introducing gay marriage undermines this goal and places society’s imprimatur on unions that have no hope of conception and therefore, can actually be considered a threat.

This case is buttressed by statistics that show that children who grow up in a family with two parents - male and female - are better adjusted, are better able to form stable relationships, and are less likely to get divorced as adults among other findings. No one can ever make the argument that children are not better off living in stable, loving families.

A hundred years ago when traditional marriage and child bearing was vital to the continuation of society due to shorter life spans and much higher rates of infant mortality, such an argument made sense. But since this is no longer the case, most objections to gay marriage today center on religious strictures against it - and gays as human beings. Without seeking to alter anyone’s religious beliefs, it needs to be said that the noxious, unconservative idea that religion should be a determining factor in whether American society accepts gay marriage must be abandoned while, at the same time, recognizing that traditional marriage be celebrated and even promoted as the best option. The two goals are not at all incompatible if you believe the only important thing is that two people love each other.

There is no delegitimizing love be it between a man and a woman or two members of the same sex. The same electro-chemical reactions in the brain that cause sparks to fly between a man and a woman also affect same sex couples. The same stages of love experienced by heterosexual couples are also felt by gay partners. Love is love in any context and only man in his ignorance defines the emotion felt by gay couples as “illegitimate.” Why that has been accepted by conservatives as a reason to oppose the idea that two members of the same sex who love each other should be legally kept apart is beyond me. You can disapprove of gays and gay marriage out of religious conviction or personal prejudice but it is decidedly unconservative to force the rest of us to agree with you by preventing the union of gay couples.

Approving gay marriage will not mean that evangelical ministers will be forced to perform gay weddings. Nor will it mean that government will “promote” gay marriage any more than it “promotes” something by allowing it. Many Christian denominations as well as most other creeds will most likely not change their views on marrying gays. Some will, but then, that would be their choice, wouldn’t it?

And that’s what this debate is all about — and why conservatives should continue to fight liberal efforts to short circuit the legislative process and win the gay marriage fight in the courts. If ever there was an issue to be decided by the people, a fundamental change in society like allowing gay marriage is it. If the people choose to allow gay marriage or gay civil unions, they can speak through their elected state representatives. This is an issue that all of us - gay and straight - should have a voice in deciding.

I haven’t mentioned the political aspects of gay marriage and how it has somehow been tied to conservative attitudes toward gays in general. I know many conservatives who could care less about the personal life choices of someone else but are strongly opposed to gay marriage for religious reasons. Is there a way to separate the idea that one can be tolerant of another’s lifestyle while opposing what I admit is a radical change in the concept of marriage? Not as long as it is politically convenient for the opposition to paint gay marriage opponents as anti-gay bigots. As Marc Ambinder reminds us, this is a huge problem for Republicans despite a growing intraparty split on the issue:

I don’t think the modern Republican Party, which relies heavily on the foundational force of Christian conservatism, can shift its position on gay rights without severe penalties. I know that there are many Republicans who support gay rights, and that most members of the Republican elite are pro-gay, and that the business wing of the party could care less about the issue. I know that suburbanites are turned off by conservative intolerance of homosexuality and gay rights. I know that younger Republicans tend to be pro-gay and are alienated from the rest of the party. But I also know that the possibility that the Republican coalition will find some way to organize itself without social conservatives is a ways of a way off.

I am not recommending that social cons be drummed out of the party nor am I saying that the GOP should change its position on the issue. I don’t see the harm in de-emphasizing all social issues and bringing to the fore economic and foreign policy issues where our differrences with Obama and the Democrats are just as broad and just as deep. But opposing gay marriage on religious grounds is a loser both philosophically in that it is a non-conservative position to hold and politically. Believing that you are defending “traditional marriage” doesn’t pass muster either — not when half the country ends up in non-traditional relationships which, by definition, normalizes those practices. In effect, by arguing that it is “saving” traditional marriage by railing against alternative lifestyles, you are only marginalizing yourself, isolating the movement and the party from the rest of the country.

Gay unions will eventually be established as legal in most of America — hopefully by state legislatures and not the courts. I believe conservatives can embrace this change as part of the natural evolution in society and the simple recognition that denying two people in love the legal and cultural benefits that come with being married simply because they are of the same sex is wrong.

I was a johnny-come-lately to the idea that the severe interrogation techniques being employed against some prisoners held by the US crossed the line of legality and constituted illegal torture. Chalk it up to excessive partisanship. Or ignorance. Or perhaps fear of going against the grain of conservative opinion in the blogosphere.

The fact is, for more than a year after I began blogging, I either excused or ignored evidence that proved the Bush Administration was guilty of sacrificing our most cherished values in order to protect us. It wasn’t until early November of 2005 that I offered a somewhat rambling discourse on why torturing prisoners besmirched our nation’s good name and made the Bush Administration complicit in violations of American and international law. Despite being troubled by the evidence previous to that, I said nothing, wrote nothing, except the usual talking points still found, it pains me to say, in most conservative and Republican internet salons today.

What changed my mind? I tried to reconstruct my thought process by going through my archives and it turns out that there were two people whose writing finally opened my eyes to the illegalities being practiced by the Bush Administration - two writers who I rarely read today for reasons not related to the torture issues but who I must give credit for forcing me to look at the horror and reach the same conclusion they had; John Cole and Andrew Sullivan.

To those who are now nodding their heads with a knowing smirk on their face I will only say this; outright dismissal of views based solely on a writer’s ideological or even political leanings is the mark of the incurious and the ignorant. A grain of salt or two is helpful to be sure. Skepticism, the philosopher/educator Thomas Dewey remarked, is “the mark and even the pose of the educated mind.” And I am no doubt as guilty as the next blogger of being too quick with the snark when it comes to evaluating the case being made by an ideological opponent rather than using reason and logic to demolish an odious point of view.

Be that as it may, those two gentlemen’s writings were seminal in changing my opinion about what the Bush Administration was doing in our name. The fact that they believed sincerely they were doing it to protect us is not a valid excuse or justification. The idea that American military trainees also are forced to endure some of the “enahanced interrogation techniques” is the reasoning of a sophist. The trainees are not in United States custody and therefore, the officers responsible for these exercises are not subject to the same laws that military and intelligence professionals were required to follow with detainees - as were all officals in the Bush Administration. And whether you believe the Geneva Convention applied in the case of “enemy combatants” is also beside the point; no one repealed American law under which the Bush Administration was required to operate. As the Bybee memo proves beyond any reasonable doubt, the Administration was seeking a legal fig leaf in order to skirt that law as well as international treaties of which we are a signatory that clearly defines torture.

Tom MaGuire:

IN OUR NAME: The newly released torture memos are cold-blooded and clearly client-driven - the lawyers knew the answers they wanted and reasoned backwards.

The same could be said of the Yoo memos when the Bush Administration was seeking legal justification for their torture. Yoo knew full well what the Administration wanted - a sort of “Get out of jail free” card that would cover their behinds if anyone ever found out what they were doing. While this is true, there is another dynamic at work that seems to get short shrift by Bush Administration critics -a dynamic that, in some ways, makes the lawbreaking even more chilling.

Sure, they wished above all else to protect America from another attack. The sincerity of their beliefs must be granted them else one wanders off into territory reserved for kooks who believe Bush was a sadist and enjoyed torturing people. That they displayed enormous hubris in giving the middle finger to the law and proceeding marks them as cynics of the highest order.

Again, Maguire:

The US concern about actually harming someone comes through on every page. In fact, at one point (p. 36 of .pdf) the legal team wonders whether it would be illegal for the interrogators to threaten or imply that conditions for the prisoner could get even worse unless they cooperate. I suppose these memos will provide welcome reassurance of our underlying civility to both the world community and the terrorists in it.

The same holds true when discussing the “insect war” being fought on the internet today. The news that the Administration considered using one detainee’s fear of insects to extract information by locking him in a small box and telling him a stinging bug was in there with him is being derided on the right and used as proof that Bush was inhuman on the left. Both sides are wrong on this one. Using the threat of a stinging insect on someone with a phobia knowing it will terrorize him is clearly psychological torture and violates both US law and the Geneva Convention. But please, let’s not exaggerate or use wild hyperbole to make this any more than it is; one more example of the law being tossed aside - and not a particularly egregious example at that. The technique was never used.

Andrew Sullivan, who ridiculously complained yesterday when, a couple of hours after the memos had been released, some conservative writers had not commented on them, nevertheless reaches into the past to get to the heart of what the airing of this chapter in American history means:

Perhaps you are reading these documents alongside me. I’ve only read the Bybee memo, as chilling an artefact as you are ever likely to read in a democratic society, the work clearly not of a lawyer assessing torture techniques in good faith, but of an administration official tasked with finding how torture techniques already decided upon can be parsed in exquisitely disingenuous ways to fit the law, even when they clearly do not. This is what Hannah Arendt wrote of when she talked of the banality of evil. To read a bureaucrat finding ways to describe and parse away the clear infliction of torture on a terror suspect well outside any “ticking time bomb” scenario is to realize what so many of us feared and sensed from the shards of information we have been piecing together for years. It is all true.

Sullivan and many on the left have raised the specter of the Gestapo and Nazi Germany when discussing the techniques used on detainees but I think that misses the point. As Maguire points out, the Administration seemed torn about actually injuring even the worst of the terrorists they wished to single out for this treatment. Rather, it is the chilling, cold blooded legalese used by Bybee and the others that Andrew correctly judges as “the banality of evil.” It is reminiscent of the minutes that were found after World War II from the Wannsee Conference - the meeting of high level SS officers and Nazi party officials that developed “The Final Solution to the Jewish Problem.” The bureaucratic language of murder far surpasses in evil what the Bybee memo reveals. But the tone is the same - a detatched, unemotional accounting of various torture regimes, whether they would hurt too much, whether the subject would be in any danger, how much psychological damage would be done by employing these techniques, and what kind of legal exposure interrogators would have. (Another, less apropos parallel but still relevant, would be some of the memos from I.G. Farban to the extermination camp commandants where the mass gassing of human beings using Zyklon-B was touted in language that must be read to be believed.)

No, Bush is not like Hitler nor is his Administration or Bybee fascist or Nazi. But when reading the Bybee memo (I have read only one of the Bradbury memos), you feel unclean - as if you were reading something that might be contagious. What in God’s name got into these people? You wonder what the hell the gentleman was thinking when he wrote it. Did he grasp the fact that he was in the process of justifying the deliberate infliction of pain on another human being? I suppose lawyers can do just about anything - defending Bin Laden in an American court if it comes to that - but Bybee, like a good little bureaucrat, followed orders issued by his superiors and what emerged from his mind and pen puts a terrible coda on Bush era policies that broke American and international law.

President Obama, required by law, released these memos and then appropriately gave a pass to the men and women who operated under their legal guidelines. Overall, he is showing a sensitivity to the issues that most of us on the right are not giving him much credit for. He has not recommended prosection of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and other high level Administration officials - yet. It could be he is waiting to see which way the political wind blows. It could be he is reluctant to distract the country from what he considers more important business. It could even be that he may wish to employ some of the same techniques against high value targets in the future and doesn’t want to close down any of his options. I believe, like myself, he really doesn’t know how to proceed. Will there be war crimes trials? A special prosecutor? A blue ribbon, “non-partisan” truth commission? I doubt whether he even wants to make that decision which means he will leave it to the Democratic Congress. If so, I have little hope that anything useful will emerge from anything the rabid Bush haters, who spent 8 years undermining the policies of a Republican president, can come up with.

I am done writing trying to convince conservatives that I am right by arguing nits. I came to the conclusion that despite what I see as clear evidence of lawbreaking, others on the right sincerely believe otherwise. But if there are any conservatives out there reading this who are continuing to defend these actions by President Bush and his people but nevertheless feel troubled and unsure, I urge you to take a fresh look at the issues - if only to buttress your own defense. There is no shame in changing your opinion if you expose yourself to new facts, new insights and look at the issue from a new perspective.