What Is The Difference Between The Democratic Congress...

OK, what is the difference between the Democratic Congress and a cheap suitcase?  Too easy - a cheap suitcase only folds up once.

Currently a significant faction on the left wants to re-brand the Democrats as the Party of Civil Rights for Terrorists, but they have not fully persuaded all members of their party that this is a prudent, victory-oriented strategy.  Until they do so, this dynamic of pledge and retreat will continue.

Comments

[Toby Petzold]

Tom, the key to understanding the Dhimmicrats' fetish for talking about torture is in the realization that it isn't a moral objection with them, but a political tool. It is a shabby shibboleth for people like Pat Leahy to resort to for partisan gain. A sole criterion on which to base one's approval of a nominee for the Attorney General? Ridiculous.

The anti-American Left are a bunch of degenerates who've used waterboarding far more than any agents or servicemen of our country ever have.

[PeterUK]

"The anti-American Left are a bunch of degenerates who've used waterboarding far more than any agents or servicemen of our country ever have."

Yes,but only between consenting adults.

[Clarice]

So true.TM..and while wearing Che T-shirts no less.

[TM]

That would be the new Che t-shirt?

[TexasToast]

Nope - civil rights for all of us.

Wonder how long it will take some enterprising prosecutor to replace RICO with the Patriot Act as the new "charge of last resort"

[Clarice]

Not that shirt,TM , as you well know..

And then there are the preposterous demos like this one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgHXrfLz-jg

[Rick Ballard]

"Nope - civil rights for all of us."

Including invented "rights" for every damn one of your Copperhead party allies in al Queada.

[RD]

The Canadians who wanted to raid parliament, take hostages and behead the PM just got bail.

I was never worried about the guy in the minivan blowing up the old court house. Oh ya, they just called again.

Canada isn't a third world country worried about selling dope to the US with a weak US dollar.........

[A.L.]

Currently a significant faction on the left wants to re-brand the Democrats as the Party of Civil Rights for Terrorists

Tom, I've always had a lot of respect for you, so I've got to ask, do you really believe this?

Because I've got to tell you, I find nothing more obnoxious than this particular bit of cheap demagoguery. You're a smart enough guy to know you're assuming away the only real issue, i.e., whether the accused terrorist is in fact a terrorist. That's the whole point of due process.

No one would accuse someone who supports allowing accused criminals to have a trial and access to counsel of being in favor Civil Rights for Murders. This is no different.

The issue here is whether the president has the right to simply declare someone (even a U.S. citizen) a terrorist and lock them up forever, without process, without counsel. The Bush administration has claimed that power.

It's a shame that you would demagogue those who stand up for such a basic American value as due process.

[RichatUF]

We seemed to have lost our way somewhere along the line [link]

graf-

By the mid-60s this viewpoint had become formalized through the "procedural revolution", in which a number of landmark Supreme Court cases - Mapp v. Ohio, Miranda v. Arizona, and Escobedo v. Illinois - shifted the offender to the very center of the criminal justice system. All other claims, including those of society and the crime victims, took second place from that point on.

The argument was sharpened as the 60s progressed, with claims that the criminal was the "first line of defense of the Bill of Rights", a kind of revolutionary hero serving as a Marxian vanguard for the rest of the proletariat. Criminals "stood alone against the full power of the state", and deserved all the assistance they could get. What was a regular, law-abiding citizen, after all, but a criminal who hadn't been arrested yet?

[Jim Rockford]

No AL that is most assuredly NOT the issue.

The issue is foreign nationals, caught outside the US (often on the Iraq or Afghan battlefields, but also in Somalia and elsewhere), are due the civil and criminal rights that US citizens accuses of a crime are due?

In other words, can we waterboard Osama bin Laden, Ayman Al Zawahari, like we did KSM (the architect of 9/11) to find out what they know about plots to kill Americans.

You might argue, no we can't. That Osama is due full civil rights like any American criminal charged in a court of law in the US. That he should be Mirandized by Soldiers according to the Supreme Court decision, otherwise we MUST let him go.

Most Democrats hold this view. That US National Security is secondary to the Supreme Court Miranda decision which extends the protection AND jurisdiction of US Constitutional Law to the entire world. This is also the view of the transnational left which hates/loathes America and any effort to fight terror.

Meanwhile, back in the US most US citizens would happily apply a blowtorch to Osama's privates if it would save one American life. They'd probably also favor Courts Martial and executions of people like Adam Gadahn ("Azzam the American" Osama's Tokyo Rose) or John Walker Lindh (the "American Taliban") or Zaccharias Mousiaoui (sp?) the "20th Hijacker" who would get what they deserve.

While wanting ordinary criminal trials for the run of the mill Jihadis caught here in the US trying to kill Americans -- the Miami, JFK Airport, Lackawanna, Norther VA, Seattle, and other groups would fit that mode.

IF ANYTHING the Administration has been too deferential to the frankly insane view that US Constitutional Protections apply to foreign terrorists on foreign soil. Akin to the frankly insane musings of Justice Stevens who wanted Constitutional Protections applied to Admiral Yamamoto in WWII. Presumably Justice Stevens will press for murder charges to be brought up against those who helped shoot down and kill the architect of Pearl Harbor.

Constitutional protections applied willy-nilly to foreign terrorists in foreign countries debase all meaning of the protections and make the Constitution a meaningless document.

This is a serious and horrific flaw for Democrats because they are NEEDED as a check and overseer of the Admin and Republicans in National Security. Insane applications of Civil Rights for Terrorists abroad is not it, and insures that the Admin unwillingness to take hard steps to curb the threat of in particular nuclear terrorism will never be taken to account.

At the Time when America NEEDED Dems the most to provide oversight, they catered to their insane 9/11 "Truther" base.

[Clarice]

One can make much the same argument about FISA passed in 1978 when visions of Viet Nam still danced in Dems' heads--an act which sharply reduced the Executive's power to intercept communications vital to national security (and probably within his Constitutional purview despite the law), a law woefully inadequate for the present situation and which the Dems have over and again expressed reluctance to scrap altogehter. When they aren't leaking details of its workings to the NYT.

[Clarice]

North Korea finally kept its word--starving them of aid and six country talks beat getting any empty promise, dancing with Kim and giving him everything he wanted.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,2205737,00.html>Ronery no more?

[MayBee]

Amazing, isn't it clarice, how very little attention it gets. It was only a year ago that they tested their first nuclear weapon.
Has N Korea even been a question in the debates so far?

[Clarice]

Not that I recall.
Interesting to see what page this diplomatic triumph will appear on in tomorrow's papers.
And how quickly they'll eradicate all traces of Mad Albright's sneers that this would never work or Kerry's insistence they return to the (failed) two party talks.

[bgates]

AL - that is not at all the only issue. If Osama were captured, signed a confession, and offered videotape evidence of his role in the plot, the Democratic party as a whole would reject the idea of waterboarding him to find out what else he had in mind. In an attempt to safeguard civil rights for all, Democrats are indeed fighting to preserve civil rights for terrorists. You find nothing more obnoxious than that? 30% of Democrats think the guy my dad and I voted for planned the murder of 3000 innocents in New York. Mike Moore wished the attack had killed more Republicans and got the full Democratic caucus in his movie and a seat of...I was going to say 'honor' at the Dem Convention. Ward Churchill winks and nods at the idea of fragging officers in front of packed houses of people who sure as hell aren't voting for my party.

Six years of "chickens coming home to roost", "this war was cooked up on a ranch in Texas", "no blood for oil", "a million Mogadishus", why won't his daughters enlist", "screw 'em", "this war is lost", "Bush lied, people died", "fake - but accurate!", "George Bush hates black people", "Loose Change", "they killed innocent civilians in cold blood", "they are the Minutemen", "coalition of the bribed", "warmonger", "what's wrong with Kansas", and "Worst Person in the World" -

and none of it is more obnoxious to you than this post? Really?

[M. Simon]

I do not believe the Democrats want to sell out to the terrorists.

It is just that no one has made them a better offer.

==

Cheap demagoguery with plenty of snark.

A Twofer.

[M. Simon]

RichatUF,

It is all about the rights of the accused.

Innocent until proven guilty is a very good standard.

[Topsecretk9]

I truly am so tired of the liberal's slippery slope canard. That is the honest liberals at least.

I can not get excised about KSM being waterboarded for about a minute, while liberals on DU and CNN are outlasting him by a half an hour or more and liberals are spray painting swastika's to manufacture hate, crime and worse.

Slippery slope and and liberals are out MAKING up the crimes? So slippery America, we afford liberals the ability to FAKE the civil rights abuse, but liberals care about truth and civil rights.

Get real.

[Topsecretk9]

And on fakes...how come liberals are OK with FAKE everything?

Code Pink? Fake Press releases? Fake PHOTO'S exploiting people asking for freedom

http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2007/11/women-on-islam-glenn-beck-interviews.html

Scott Beachamp's claims? Fake.

African American's easting corpse's only 4 days after Katrina? Fake

Karl Rove indicted, sealed vs Sealed? Fake

The Kos dude who had an inside in the military and reportd imminent Iran bombing? Fake. This was a 2fer, his details? Fake

Rather's fake memo's? Fake

Reuters photoshopped photography? Fake.

Jesse McBeth? Fake

Poor Katrina victim profiled in NYT's as victim of GWB? Super fake, fraud

Joe "neo Cons are parasites", anti-semitic Wilson, king of literary flair, when it comes to accuracy, writing to liberals about Hillary? Fake, but DUH!

Please add to this list, it's the cursory micro version..BUT cut and paste the original list and add to it just so we can see it grow faster than a Chia pet!

[PeterUK]

"No one would accuse someone who supports allowing accused criminals to have a trial and access to counsel of being in favor Civil Rights for Murders. This is no different."

Yes it is.Endowing those who regard your Nation,Constitution,Rule of Law,culture and philosophical heritage as illegitimate,with the very civil rights emanating from these things is insane.
Secondly,the terrorists do not regard themselves as criminals but as having a God given mandate to subjugate or destroy those very things you wish to bestow upon them.
This isn't criminals cheating the system,this is the bow wave of a culture that does not believe it can coexist with yours.Those motivated by belief are in no way similar to those motivated by belief.The prison system can not cope with fanatics,those who will go to any lengths,even death to achieve their ends.

[PeterUK]

errata,
"hose motivated by belief are in no way similar to those motivated by money".

[kim]

Oh, God. Mukasey reminds Schumer of Comey.
===========================================

[kim]

WaPo and WaJo have a nice pair of apposite editorials on waterboarding. As usual, the WaPo chooses to believe that a choice of evils need not be made.
================================

[GMax]

OT

Muster up for another round of votes please. Two weeks is all that is left of the marathon:

http://soccer.seniorclassaward.com/public/women/vote.aspx>Jmax for Lowe's Award!

[cathyf]

Innocent until proven guilty is a very good standard.

The little children of Dresden who died tortured deaths from massive burns after a Democratic president firebombed the place -- what were they guilty of?

The little children of Hiroshima who died tortured deaths from radiation poisoning after another Democratic president dropped a bomb on them -- what were they guilty of?

The sailers on the USS Arizona, sleeping in their bunks in Pearl Harbor, serving in the navy of a country that no other country had declared war on -- what were they guilty of?

The busboys and waitresses of Windows on the World who died from real actual suffocation from the choking black smoke after the group that declared war on the US 3 years before rammed a WMD into the building underneath where they worked -- what were they guilty of?

What, exactly, does guilt or innocence have to do with suffering and/or dying in wartime?

[boris]

By all means let them be honest and upfront about how they would defend the country.

Innocent until proven guilty indeed.

Obviously there is no such thing as "self defense" under that standard.

[hit and run]

TM:
OK, what is the difference between the Democratic Congress and a cheap suitcase? Too easy - a cheap suitcase only folds up once.

Filed under "Can't go without being said"...

Democratic Congress: A Cheap Accordion

[M. Simon]

cathyf,

I don't know who hit your hysteria button but RichatUF was discussing the rights of the accused. However, he referred to such persons as criminals, sans trial.

Where Dresden came in is a mystery.

[M. Simon]

boris,

What exactly does innocent until proven guilty with respect to common criminals have to do with self defense?

Innocent until proven guilty is the standard for law and news reporting.

Reaction to circumstances is in the nature of self defense.

What is it with people that can't even make coarse distinctions? Let alone subtle ones?

I propose a new rule. If you are unable to discern the difference between street judgment and court judgment you should not be allowed to frequent either without competent assistance.