If you still think you need a reason to elect a Democrat for President, not just in 2008, but for the next 20 years or so, here's a good one for you.
An interview with "Justice" Antonin Scalia* wherein he displays his Republican credentials by taking the side of those who support torture:
"You can't come in smugly and with great self satisfaction and say 'Oh it's torture, and therefore it's no good'," he said in a rare interview.
Yes, yes I can say it's no good. One of the defining points of "civilization" is that it refrains from violence as a matter of course, that it attempts to spare others pain and death, sometimes even at a cost to itself. It's called "morality" and it is one of the things that the Republican Party claims for itself, even as it tortures prisoners, invades nations and denies healthcare for it's own citizens. As for smug, can you get much smugger than the current administration? George Bush et al have the mien of spoiled children who know that whatever they do, the punishment (if any) will be nowhere near as great as the rewards
to themselves, and forget the cost to any others.
No, it is not the anti-torture crowd that is smug, but
Antonin Scalia. This man is not fit to serve on a court of men who are supposed to be "objective". He has often expressed opinions about issues which may potentially appear before him in court, and there have been occassions upon which he should have
recused himself, and has not. Can a Supreme Court Justice be
impeached? Or maybe the next President should do as
FDR thought of doing. Maybe not. Whatever, the lasting legacy of the Bush Administration will be our Supreme Court and it's Authoritarian Activism, and we will be stuck with that legacy for decades.
I'd heard warnings about the stacking of the Courts for years, and frankly I have no problem with a rather conservative court - that's the function of judges, really, to step back and say. "whoa". But these judges that have been put into place by the Republican Party under the guise of "stopping an activist judiciary" are themselves at least as radical (the other way) as those they are proposed to be stopping. The function of the Supreme Court should not be to dismantle decades of
their own decisions, yet that is what the SCOTUS appears poised to do.
We cannot reverse this trend (not without radical leadership on the left, which it is quite clear that the Democratic Party is not going to provide), but we can at least halt it, by the simple act of electing Democrats to office (and, if necessary, throwing them out in favor of
different Democrats for the next term). I really dont like the Democrats, their passive enablement of the Republican party is almost as much to blame for this mess as the GOP itself. But however unpleasant chemotherapy may be, it's usually better than cancer.
The decades since the election of Ronald Reagan, even during the Clinton Administration, has seen a shift in government priority from providing for the general welfare of the People, to providing for the general welfare of the Corporation, in the theory that what's good for Business is good for the People. This is nothing more than another form of trickle-down economics, voodoo theory the bankrupcy of which has been expressed even by its one-time proponents. The Courts have played their part in this shift, as much as Congress or the regulatory arms of the various Administrations.
As for Antonin Scalia, if you want further proof of his radicalism, read these words:
Justice Scalia is often described as the most conservative member of the court - but it's a charge he denies.
Instead, he says he's an "originalist," which means he interprets the text of the US Constitution as it was written.
He both attacks and mocks the idea that the Constitution is a "living document" which needs reinterpreting in the light of social change.
Can I just say, "What the fuck"???
As it was written? Was he there?
Do we really need a Supreme Court justice who thinks that the Founding Fathers deliberately wrote their Constitution in sweeping and rather vague terms because they intended for it to be rigidly followed based on the events of their times? What's the point of having a judge; in this case, why not stack the court with Historians instead? Or, Authoritarian Assholes...
Oh wait, we did that.
* of the Supreme Court, I know I dont really have to tell you that, but I'm not feeling very hopeful today.
First of all, read this official FBI site, "all about" something called Infragard. Then read this report from Agitprop. Oh, come on, you're saying, that's just some left-wing nut job. Okay, how about this one from Alternet? Again, maybe it is all paranoia. But we have the most secretive, Authoritarian, power-hungry administration, perhaps ever in the history of the United States. They've had Halliburton build them detention camps, they've made habeas corpus dependent upon their own say-so, they've declared thier word to be all that they need for proof, they've essentially dismantled the just-passed congressionally-mandated FOIA law revisions, and throughout their reign they have shown nothing but contempt for the constitution and its many checks on Presidential power. I wouldnt normally be worried about just one of these things happening, but all of them together should worry anyone but the 25-percenters who think that George Bush and God are practically one and the same.
So, now that McCain has all but clinched the Republican nomination, the conservative base is all upset because he's not "conservative" enough for them. Join the club, you crybabies. Do you think that there have been any Democratic candidates that have made it all the way to the ticket that have been everything that the liberal base has wanted? Hell no! But we suck it up anyway, because however much we may not have liked Kerry, or like Hillary (or whoever, whenever), they'll do far less damage to the People and their rights and liberties than whoever the Republican party chooses will... well, hopefully. Sweet Jeebus in a Tantrum, will this "controversy" not finally make it perfectly clear what a bunch of controlling, self-involved assholes the "base" of the Republican Party really are? No wonder they cant play nice.
Skippy the Bush Kangaroo and Jon Swift have both launched a Blogroll Amnesty Day. The idea is to encourage links to smaller blogs. Being a smaller blog myself, and woefully short of apparent readers these days (Sitemeter is depressing the hell out of me), I'm all for that. I also personally have little use for the Big Boys. My own sidebar blogroll consists pretty much entirely of blogs I read on a regular basis, while other blogs, equally worthy but less read, go in the blogrolls shown on the sidebar.
