November 10, 2010, Still crazy after all these years
Marcy Wheeler gives us this report on events in a D.C. federal court before U.S. District Judge John Bates re: ACLU's "next friend" suit viz Emmanuel Goldstein Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen targeted for death because he's an extremely conveninet poster child for pushing the envelope he's a bad man and evil incarnate should be wiped off the planet the President says so. Marcy notes that even the Government's usual shamelessness on matters like this seems less enthusiastic, as "state secrets" was offered to the Court as "only a last resort"... and otherwise, more transparent lies were offered as a justificaion for the unconstitutional, illegal, immoral, and otherwise not-nice hit placed on an American citizen by his own government.
As a bonus, Marcy throws in a link to this Grey Lady piece documenting the Justice Department decision not to prosecute the poor bastard at CIA who was designated to take the fall for the White House's decision (and btw, that's both the current and former Administrations) to destroy interrogation tapes that would have shown torture and abuse enhanced interrogation of prisoners in American custody, tapes, which (as revealed on this very blog) were the subject of court orders not to destroy them.
We are now, officially at least, assuming we accept the Justice Department's legal briefs and actual policies and actions, a dictatorship. Yes, our dictator is up for plebicite every four years or so... but one can think of some German guy with a funny moustache who was first elected via a democratic process... or if you'd like a current and English speaking example, so was Robert Mugabe. The liberal/progressive belief that having "our guy" as the dictator is in any sense meaningful should be recognized for the idiocy, if not outright lunacy, that it is. What matters, boys and girls, is the system and the rules, and the robustness of the checks and balances to make sure the rules are followed. Maybe it's an "ever thus" that the powerful are above the law... but maybe it isn't.
But until enough people wake up and realize that it matters not one microscopic jot that the President spying on us, torturing (and if not outright engaging in torture, condoning it and covering it up and thereby facilitating future torture), and ordering hits on our fellow citizens is George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Barack Obama, or Sarah Palin for that matter... let's just say... this has been "Still crazy after all these years."