Linda Hirshman joins the TPMCafe Coffee House, and kicks things off with the first of a three part series on liberal principles:
In the next six months, yet more liberal journalists are going to avow their liberal consciences and show how history is on their side. As others have said, neither tactics nor avowals are likely to revive political movements. Only philosophy â principles about what it means to be human and how people should live together â can ultimately do that.
Take a look.
How much did Sen. Domenici’s (R-NM) dirty hands in the firing of US Atty David Iglesias have to do with today’s retirement announcement?
William Hartung: The new North Korea deal doesn’t even get us back to where things were before the Administration abandoned the Agreed Framework.
A new ABC-WaPo poll out tonight shows that by strong margins Americans believe Bill Clinton is an asset to Sen. Clinton’s presidential candidacy and they give high ratings to his eight years in office.
To which I would say, no kidding.
As many luminaries of the liberal blogosphere have noted many times, the pundit class, official Washington, whatever, has never managed to get its collective head around the fact that Bill Clinton was a very popular president, certainly from late 1995 on. And he also didn’t wreck the country, like the current guy, which is saying something. So why shouldn’t people give his tenure high ratings? As big of a fan as I was of Bill Clinton’s presidency (and I was a really big one), it’s stunning to me how different a world it is from the 1990s. It seems like a different era. So many of our key problems today hardly existed. Or at least we didn’t recognize them. But why shouldn’t people think of him as an asset? Look at who we have now.
Twenty-four minutes after he began speaking in a small restaurant the other day, Fred Thompson brought his remarks to a close with a nod of his head and an expression of thanks to Iowans for allowing him to âgive my thoughts about some things.â
Then he stood face to a face with a silent audience.
âCan I have a round of applause?â Mr. Thompson said, drawing a rustle of clapping and some laughter.
âWell, I had to drag that out of you,â he said.
Really never a good sign when you have to do a shout out for your own round of applause. And this guy’s neck and neck for the lead.
It seems, from an article in tomorrow’s Times, that there’s still much we are yet to learn about how far the Gonzales Justice Department took us into the darkness of state-sponsored torture and lawlessness. Not just the euphemism-laced quasi-torture we’ve already been numbed to. But everything. From Cheney’s lips to Gonzales’ pen, you might say. From the Times …
A lengthy excerpt is merited (the full article runs several pages) …
When the Justice Department publicly declared torture âabhorrentâ in a legal opinion in December 2004, the Bush administration appeared to have abandoned its assertion of nearly unlimited presidential authority to order brutal interrogations.
But soon after Alberto R. Gonzalesâs arrival as attorney general in February 2005, the Justice Department issued another opinion, this one in secret. It was a very different document, according to officials briefed on it, an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency.
The new opinion, the officials said, for the first time provided explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures.
Mr. Gonzales approved the legal memorandum on âcombined effectsâ over the objections of James B. Comey, the deputy attorney general, who was leaving his job after bruising clashes with the White House. Disagreeing with what he viewed as the opinionâs overreaching legal reasoning, Mr. Comey told colleagues at the department that they would all be âashamedâ when the world eventually learned of it.
Later that year, as Congress moved toward outlawing âcruel, inhuman and degradingâ treatment, the Justice Department issued another secret opinion, one most lawmakers did not know existed, current and former officials said. The Justice Department document declared that none of the C.I.A. interrogation methods violated that standard.
‘Shame’ hardly does it justice. But it is a start. How does the country, the state, cleanse itself of the pollution of Cheneyism?
The State Department relents and agrees the FBI team in Iraq investigating Blackwater should not be guarded by Blackwater. That and more in Spencer Ackerman’s wrap-up of all things Blackwater.
Leading social conservatives decide to back a third party pro-life candidate over any pro-choice GOP nominee.