May all the buddhas and bodhisattvas bless Paul Krugman, and may his moral clarity reach out to the ten directions. Y'all will enjoy today's column. ("Hypocrites, cranks and scoundrels have always been with us, on both sides of the aisle. But 9/11 created an environment some liberals summarize with the acronym Iokiyar: it's O.K. if you're a Republican.") And when you've finished the Krugman column, read today's column by Bob Herbert.

Americans have tended to view the U.S. as the guardian of the highest ideals of justice and fairness. But that is a belief that's getting more and more difficult to sustain. If the Justice Department can be the fiefdom of John Ashcroft or Alberto Gonzales, those in search of the highest standards of justice have no choice but to look elsewhere.

It's more fruitful now to look overseas. Last month Britain's highest court ruled that the government could not continue to indefinitely detain foreigners suspected of terrorism without charging or trying them. One of the justices wrote that such detentions "call into question the very existence of an ancient liberty of which this country has until now been very proud: freedom from arbitrary arrest and detention."

That's a sentiment completely lost on an Alberto Gonzales or George W. Bush.

I didn't follow the hearings yesterday, but by all accounts I've seen it was an exercise in evasion by Gonzales and futility by the Dems. An opinion sampler:

 

Washington Post:

The message Mr. Gonzales left with senators was unmistakable: As attorney general, he will seek no change in practices that have led to the torture and killing of scores of detainees and to the blackening of U.S. moral authority around the world. Instead, the Bush administration will continue to issue public declarations such as those Mr. Gonzales repeated yesterday -- "that torture and abuse will not be tolerated by this administration" -- while in practice sanctioning procedures that the International Red Cross and many lawyers inside the government consider to be illegal and improper.

New York Times:

Mr. Gonzales is said to face a sure confirmation. But thanks to the members of the committee, including some Republicans, who met their duty to question Mr. Gonzales aggressively, the hearing served to confirm that Mr. Bush had made the wrong choice when he rewarded Mr. Gonzales for his loyalty. The nation deserves an attorney general who is not the public face for inhumane, illegal and clearly un-American policies.

Tim Grieve, Salon

Democratic Sen. Joe Biden sat quietly, listening to it all. On another day, in another political reality, he might have been watching a presidential nominee self-destruct. The man who would be attorney general was coming off as evasive, as ill-prepared, as unwilling to accept responsibility for anything that happened on his watch as George W. Bush's White House counsel. But when Biden finally had his chance to put a question to Gonzales, he delivered this clear message instead: "You're going to be confirmed."

Jeff Dubner, TAP

Gonzales has said over and over that President George W. Bush never decided to abrogate the Geneva Conventions and, solely on executive prerogative, allow our military to do whatever it likes with suspected al-Qaeda terrorists or Iraqi insurgents. But this administration’s belief that it could, without so much as giving notice to Congress and on no greater legal authority than the contrived judgment of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, break any convention on how we conduct a war is shocking and unconstitutional. If the Pentagon did indeed advise that "authority to set aside the laws is 'inherent in the president,'" as The Wall Street Journal reported, then the administration -- our next attorney general included -- apparently believes that there are no "applicable laws" in this country, not for those who work in the executive branch of the government.

(Remember when the Republicans took Al Gore apart for his "no controlling authority" remark? Iokiyar.)

Josh Marshall, Talking Points Memo:

It defies comment.

Update: Here's another comment, from Dick Meyer at CBS News:

When John Ashcroft was up for confirmation as attorney general, the Democrat on the job, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., cautioned that the Constitutional role for the Senate was to “advise and consent” not “advise and rubber stamp.” Four years later comes the nomination of Alberto Gonzales and the cowed Democrats are poised for a policy of "advise, snarl, bombast and then rubber stamp."

I am shocked (not “shocked, shocked” but sincerely shocked) that Gonzales will get a single Democratic vote, much a relatively less easy confirmation. And I would have expected that some Republicans -- the ones who profess deep belief in the American mission of fostering Arab democracy, the ones who have renounced Secretary Rumsfeld, like McCain, Hagel, Lugar – would be struggling with their votes, too. But no.

Isn't this something like what happened to the Roman Senate during the Empire?

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A small group of Democrats transformed the traditionally routine ritual of certifying presidential election results into a tart partisan protest today, forcing both the House and Senate to debate Election Day voting problems in Ohio, the state that gave President Bush the crucial electoral votes needed for his re-election.

With both houses under Republican control, the move, only the second of its kind since 1877, did not threaten Bush's victory over Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts. Indeed, some Democrats opposed it and the White House spokesman likened it to a pursuit of "conspiracy theories."

But its rarity underscored a lingering sensitivity to election irregularities like those that overshadowed the 2000 election. Democrats complained this time that Ohio election officials, headed by a Republican who led the Bush campaign in the state, had provided too few voting machines in some Democratic precincts and allowed other irregularities.

The challenge also demonstrated a readiness among some Democrats, even with the party's diminished presence in the new Congress, to draw a line against a Republican Party that appears determined to make maximum use of its reinforced majority. [Link]

If you find a list of names of Senators who spoke up, as well as any Democrats who OPPOSED speaking up, let me know.

Speaking of moral clarity -- self-annointed morals guru William Bennet wrote a book called Why We Fight: Moral Clarity and the War on Terrorism. Based on the pages available for browsing on Amazon (Chapter 1: The Morality of Anger) the book amounts to an elaborate rationalization of why the invasion of Iraq was "moral." But then a fellow who pisses away $8 million in casinos but remains in denial over his own compulsive gambling can rationalize anything. It's clarity born of delusion, but it's clarity.

 

On the other hand, Sydney Blumenthal writes in today's Guardian (also in Salon) that Bush policy in Indonesia is neither clear nor moral.

The coastline of south Asia has been radically altered, but the political landscape in Washington remains familiar. Behind the stentorian rhetoric about the battle between good and evil lies the neoconservative struggle to remove human rights sanctions against the Indonesian military, which is waging a vicious war against the popular separatist movement on Banda Aceh, the province hardest hit by the tsunami.

The war between the Indonesian military and the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) has raged for more than two decades. A ceasefire negotiated in 2002, with the involvement of former general Anthony Zinni as US representative, was brutally broken by the military in May 2003. The Indonesian military is a virtual state within a state and is unaccountable for its human rights violations and criminal activities. After its war of ethnic cleansing against East Timor concluded with independence following diplomatic intervention, the military was determined not to lose Banda Aceh.

In its war there, the military has mimicked the language of the war on terrorism and the Iraq war, calling its operation "shock and awe", targeting the population as terrorist supporters, and expelling all international observers, including the UN, from the region. Human Rights Watch documented extensive torture and abuse.

Bush administration policy has been conflicted, confused and negligent. The leading neoconservative at the Pentagon, Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defence, has tried to overthrow US restrictions on aid to, and relations with, the Indonesian military. The neoconservative thrust is undeterred by the military's obstruction of the FBI investigation into the murder of two US businessmen in 2002, killings that appear to implicate the military. When the state department issued a human rights report on Indonesia's abysmal record, its spokesman replied: "The US government does not have the moral authority to assess or act as a judge of other countries, including Indonesia, on human rights, especially after the abuse scandal at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison."

On his tour of Banda Aceh, Powell made no determined effort to restore the cease-fire. Meanwhile, GAM reports that the Indonesia military is using the catastrophe to launch a new offensive. "The Indonesians get the message when you have no high-level condemnation of what they're doing," Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch told me. A renewed effort by Wolfowitz against sanctions is expected soon.

In the name of the war on terrorism, neoconservatives attempt to bolster the repressive military, which flings the Bush administration's sins back in its face. In the "march of freedom", human rights are cast aside. The absence of moral clarity is matched by the absence of strategic clarity.

If Bush policy is guided by moral clarity, how can the Bush Administration condone genocide? Where's the "clarity" in that? Exactly which "emanating principles" are involved?

 

Update: File Andrea Yates in the messy moral questions column. Her conviction has been overturned. Unfortunately, the prosecuting attorney wants to retry.

 

I wrote in 2003 why I thought the conviction was a travesty. In a compassionate world, she and her family would not have been put through a trial at all. It should have been obvious even to a Texan that the woman did what she did because she was massively psychotic.

 

Texas law would have allowed a judge to order her to be hospitalized, not to be released without another court order. Probably that would be for the rest of her life. I understand she is still so sick she only occasionallly realizes her children are dead.

 

The only thing to be gained by a trial would be publicity for the prosecutor. And in these days of "moral clarity" a second jury is unlikely to be any more enlightened than the first one was.

For there is nothing mysterious about the foundations of a healthy and strong democracy. The basic things expected by our people of their political and economic systems are simple. They are:

Equality of opportunity for youth and for others.
Jobs for those who can work.
Security for those who need it.
The ending of special privilege for the few.
The preservation of civil liberties for all.

The enjoyment of the fruits of scientific progress in a wider and constantly rising standard of living.

These are the simple, basic things that must never be lost sight of in the turmoil and unbelievable complexity of our modern world. The inner and abiding strength of our economic and political systems is dependent upon the degree to which they fulfill these expectations.

I'm happy the DLC and others in the Democratic Party want to save Social Security. If they'd rededicate themselves to Roosevelt's "basic things," I think I'd be even happier.

The very first post attacking the memos — nineteen minutes into the 60 Minutes II program — was on the right-wing Web site FreeRepublic.com by an active Air Force officer, Paul Boley of Montgomery, Alabama, who went by the handle “TankerKC.” Nearly four hours later it was followed by postings from “Buckhead,” whom the Los Angeles Times later identified as Harry MacDougald, a Republican lawyer in Atlanta. (MacDougald refused to tell the Times how he was able to mount a case against the documents so quickly.) Other blogs quickly picked up the charges. One of the story’s top blogs, Rathergate.com, is registered to a firm run by Richard Viguerie, the legendary conservative fund-raiser. Some were fed by the conservative Media Research Center and by Creative Response Concepts, the same p.r. firm that promoted the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. CRC’s executives bragged to PR Week that they helped legitimize the documents-are-fake story by supplying quotes from document experts as early as the day after the report, September 9. The goal, said president Greg Mueller, was to create a buzz online while at the same time showing journalists “it isn’t just Rush Limbaugh and Matt Drudge who are raising questions.”

There are many good reasons to be anti-leftist, but let us revisit what Mises said in 1956 concerning the anti-socialists of his day. He pointed out that many of these people had a purely negative agenda, to crush the leftists and their bohemian ways and their intellectual pretension. He warned that this is not a program for freedom. It was a program of hatred that can only degenerate into statism.

(I'm not sure what "bohemian ways" were such a concern to von Mises. When I put together "bohemian" with the 1950s I think of Jack Kerouac, who doesn't seem all that dangerous now. But let's go on ...) Later in the article:

The vigor and determination of the Bush administration has brought about a profound cultural change, so that the very people who once proclaimed hated of government now advocate its use against dissidents of all sorts, especially against those who would dare call for curbs in the totalitarian bureaucracy of the military, or suggest that Bush is something less than infallible in his foreign-policy decisions. The lesson here is that it is always a mistake to advocate government action, for there is no way you can fully anticipate how government will be used. Nor can you ever count on a slice of the population to be moral in its advocacy of the uses of the police power.

Editor & Publisher, for example, posted a small note the other day about a column written by Al Neuharth, the founder of USA Today, in which he mildly suggested that the troops be brought home from Iraq "sooner rather than later." The editor of E&P was just blown away by the letters that poured in, filled with venom and hate and calling for Neuharth to be tried and locked away as a traitor. The letters compared him with pro-Hitler journalists, and suggested that he was objectively pro-terrorist, choosing to support the Muslim jihad over the US military. Other letters called for Neuharth to get the death penalty for daring to take issue with the Christian leaders of this great Christian nation.

I'm actually not surprised at this. It has been building for some time. If you follow hate-filled sites such as Free Republic, you know that the populist right in this country has been advocating nuclear holocaust and mass bloodshed for more than a year now. The militarism and nationalism dwarfs anything I saw at any point during the Cold War. It celebrates the shedding of blood, and exhibits a maniacal love of the state. The new ideology of the red-state bourgeoisie seems to actually believe that the US is God marching on earth – not just godlike, but really serving as a proxy for God himself.

Mr. Rockwell and I have come to similar conclusions, although we got their by different routes. One point I think Rockwell misses is that many people who badmouthed Big Gubmint in the 1980s and 1990s were the famous Angry White Males (and some of their wives and girlfriends) who resented government for downgrading their once-privileged status. If you tried to tie them down and explain exactly what they didn't like about Big Gubmint, the answers, sooner or later, always came back to anger at having to compete with women and minorites for jobs, or resentment of school busing to desegregate schools, or seeing their tax money spent on the famous welfare Cadillac Queens. 

In other words, they were never against Big Gubmint because of some libertarian ideal, but because they felt that government was taking something away from them. A lot of this simmering resentment can be traced to desegregation and other civil rights goals of the 1950s and 1960s, but it's probable it goes all the way back to Reconstruction.

(I aknowledge there are legitimate arguments to be made against many welfare programs. But it's a fact that for many years rhetoric against welfare has been nearly always aimed at blacks, when in fact most welfare recipients are white.  Also, I well remember that during the Vietnam era it was us lefties who were suspicious of Big Gubmint. But that's another blog post.)

Anyway, much of what Rockwell calls the "populist right" has for many years been fueled by resentment and hate. He shouldn't be surprised that, given power, these people drop their libertarian pretenses and try to use Big Gubmint to get payback.     

I disagree that it is always a mistake to advocate government action, because government, properly used, is a means for effecting the will of the people. If you can't use it to take action when action is needed, what's the point? But I agree with Rockwell when he says we must never "count on a slice of the population to be moral in its advocacy of the uses of the police power."

I'd put it this way -- don't give government a power that you wouldn't want it to have if the people wielding that power were the other guys. And don't give one part of government a power that can't be checked and balanced by another part.

Near the end of the article, Rockwell says,

What is the most pressing and urgent threat to freedom that we face in our time? It is not from the left. If anything, the left has been solid on civil liberties and has been crucial in drawing attention to the lies and abuses of the Bush administration. No, today, the clear and present danger to freedom comes from the right side of the ideological spectrum, those people who are pleased to preserve most of free enterprise but favor top-down management of society, culture, family, and school, and seek to use a messianic and belligerent nationalism to impose their vision of politics on the world.

Amen, Bro' Llewellyn.

The other writer, John Paul Roberts, is a former Wall Street Journal editor and a former National Review editor. His conservative credentials would seem impeccable. Yet he's become persona non grata on the right since expressing disagreement with the Bush Administration and the Iraq War in particular.

Scales have fallen from his eyes. He's even noticed the "liberal media" doesn't exist. He still writes things that are, IMO, inaccurate; like "Conservatives have been won around to the old liberal view that as long as government power is in their hands, there is no reason to fear it or to limit it." That was never a liberal view, IMO. There are some on the left who think that way, but liberals don't make up the entire left any more than libertarians make up the entire right.   

But, bottom line, this may be a good time for liberal/libertarian dialogue. We'll still disagree on many things, but we have a big goal in common -- preserving America.

So why does Bush want to create a crisis that doesn't exist and provide a solution that doesn't fix it? Because he is an economic Darwinist. In Bush's view, the financially strong should be helped to prosper. The weak should pay the bill.

The program wasn't meant to harness the power of capital. It was created to shield us against capitalism's sharp edges.

It was born in the Great Depression, which had wiped out Americans' savings. More than half the elderly lived in poverty.

And so the New Deal gave us Social Security. It would ensure that capitalism's failures would not include the mass impoverishment of the very people needed to make capitalism succeed.

This is the social part. As a society, we have said that if a worker toils long enough he will not be consigned to the poorhouse in retirement. Even today, more than half of older Americans would fall into poverty without Social Security.

And even today, some 38 percent of beneficiaries aren't retirees at all. They are disabled workers, their spouses and their children. Or they are the surviving spouses and children of workers who've died.

...the Bush administration's scaremongering over Social Security is in large part an effort to distract the public from the real fiscal danger.

There are two serious threats to the federal government's solvency over the next couple of decades. One is the fact that the general fund has already plunged deeply into deficit, largely because of President Bush's unprecedented insistence on cutting taxes in the face of a war. The other is the rising cost of Medicare and Medicaid.

We have stuck with a low-tax, high-growth economic model. This gives us the resources and the flexibility to deal with the problems caused by an aging population without having to face, at least for now, the horrific choices that confront our friends across the Atlantic.

Dallas businesswoman Jeanne Johnson Phillips is proud of the work she is doing as chair of the 55th Presidential Inaugural Committee. “We know the world will be watching,” she said.

Yes, they will, and I suspect the world will be disgusted.

Usually, inaugurations for a second term are toned down a bit from the first term. But not for George W. Bush. The upcoming four-day celebration promises to be the most expensive inaugural in U.S. history.

Maureen Fan of the Washington Post interviewed the head concierge at the Hay-Adams Hotel. “We’re not calling it an inauguration,” he said. “Because the president’s supporters believe he has a mandate, there’s going to be, in effect, a coronation.”

“People are coming from all over the world for the world’s biggest prom,” said the concierge for the Ritz-Carlton. “It’s like a prom gone crazy.”

According to the events calendar, there will be nine official balls. There will be three official candlelight dinners. Plus a Chairman’s Breakfast, a Youth Concert the traditional parade, and a couple of “salutes” and “celebrations.”

I bet every ice sculpture artiste in America has been called upon to do his bit.

Today, the tsunami death toll approaches 150,000. Today, U.S. military fatalities in Iraq, a war most Americans now believe is a mistake, total 1,333. Today, a Staff Sargeant injured in Iraq in 2003 is still waiting for surgery. He has been waiting for 18 months. Yesterday, insurgents killed 17 Iraqi police and National Guards.

But a triumphant George W. Bush plans to party. And, contrary to what the Bushies tell their critics, historically presidential inaugurations held during times of war or disaster have been muted, solemn affairs.

Elisabeth Bumiller writes in today’s New York Times,

… last week two pockets of the capital were humming: the State Department, where officials were trying to coordinate aid to the tsunami victims in Asia, and the fifth floor of the old Department of Education building on C Street, headquarters of the inaugural committee, where 450 paid staff members and volunteers buzzed about concerts and balls.

The contrast between the two sites was not lost on inaugural organizers, who have already had to justify their plans to spend as much as $40 million on partying at a time of war. Last week they came under new questions when the United States initially offered only $15 million to aid the tsunami victims, although by Friday Mr. Bush announced that the American aid would be at least $350 million for what he termed an “epic disaster.”

In either case, the organizers were ready with an answer to critics who questioned the price tag on the merriment, which is similar to what was spent for the inaugural in 2001. A presidential inaugural, they said, has never been canceled, even during world wars. Mr. James, who has staged events for both President Bushes, went back and checked. “The celebrations went on, that’s the lesson we learned,” he said.

You can count on the Bushies to miss points. Yes, there were inaugurations during the world wars, but according to this New York Times article from 1989, “Franklin Roosevelt held no ball in 1937, 1941 and 1945 in recognition of the Depression and World War II.” Woodrow Wilson held no ball for either of his inaugurals, because he thought dancing inappropriate for a solemn occasion.

On the other hand, Richard Nixon’s Vietnam-era inaugurals were glittery and gaudy. Clearly, the Bushies prefer Nixon to Roosevelt as a role model. And what lessons, pray tell, were learned?

Bush likes to prance around in military costumes; he fancies himself to be a “war president.” He makes speeches about “resolve” and “service” and “sacrifice.” But for the Bushies, service and sacrifice are, like taxes, for the little people.

From an editorial in the Portsmouth Herald:

While our president hob-nobs with the rich and powerful, another round of genocide is taking place in the Sudan, where hundreds are dying each day from diseases that in America are easier to cure than the common cold.

And as the president prepares to greet the senators, lobbyists, generals and the CEOs of multinational corporations who will be the invited guests at his inaugural bash, U.S. soldiers are scavenging scrap metal in Iraq in an effort to armor vehicles that have no business being in a theater of war.

What a show of disrespect and arrogance, not only to people who suffer daily around the world for whom a few pennies would pay the cost of another day’s survival, but to our own honored servicemen and -women who are being told they are putting their lives on the line for freedom, not displays of opulence.

Clearly, the Bushies are utterly insensitive to the message their prom gone wild will be sending to the world. But Marie Antoinette would be proud.