About Beck, Palin and Saturday’s Gathering in D.C.

By Thomas Wark

Two score and seven years ago, a black preacher brought forth upon this continent  the profound  dream of a new and better nation conceived in Liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are riven with great civil strife, testing whether that dream, or any dream so conceived and so dedicated, can become real and endure.  Some will meet at a great symbol of that dream, there to personify the very antithesis of the dreamer and the man the symbol honors. They and the speakers they honor seek to inter in a final resting place the  ideals that Martin Luther King Jr. and Abraham Lincoln championed for this nation. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should denounce such hateful  views, even as we defend forever their First Amendment right to express them.

But in a larger sense, they cannot desecrate, they cannot dishonor, this ground.  Those who fought to preserve the union and free its slaves have consecrated it far beyond the haters’ poor power to subtract or demean.

The rest of the world will little note, nor long remember, what the haters say here, but Americans should never forget the sacrilege they commit here.

It is for us the rational Americans to be dedicated to the unfinished work which he who spoke here, and he who is honored here, so nobly advanced.  It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored men we take increased devotion to the cause for which they stood — that we here highly resolve that they shall not have spoken in vain — that this nation shall one day have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

That one day, the sons of slaves and the sons of free men, shall sit down together at the table of brotherhood. . . .

Save the Dream.  Honor the Dream.  Heed the Dreamer.

Read more blogs by Thomas Wark at http://www.bordellopianist.blogspot.com

By Thomas Wark
The American electoral process has become a triumph of tactics over substance.

Those two facets of politics have warred throughout our history.  Tactics gave us  a B movie actor, Ronald Reagan, as president and changed our political landscape as if it were a Hollywood back lot movie set.

Here, as The Economist once noted, was a president who never had to think.  He simply had to recite his lines and play the role of president.  No wonder he could take long daily naps; the government didn’t really need a wakeful Ronnie to function just as it would when he wasn’t sleeping. His advisors’  “government is the problem, not the solution” tactic blinded enough voters to win him two terms and the slavish devotion of generations of right-wingers.

Tactics rose to  utterly dominate our politics, and substance became invisible, when Karl Rove, a tactical genius, created George W. Bush.  As “Shrub,” the addled black sheep son of a powerful politician, Bush was the laughing stock of Texas.  Rove turned him into the the simple Christian warrior, pure of soul if utterly thoughtless. He remade Bush as the lovable alternative to those scary libruls who would have government take over our lives and so weaken the military that we’d have to take up our own arms to fight the ragheads on our streets and in our very neighborhoods.

And so rather than standing on and fighting for the principles that made the Democratic party the force that improved the lives of working -class Americans, the party of FDR and JFK went AWOL and remade itself as GOP LITE.  Go for what works, not what matters.

The ragheads are the best enemy to run against in America since the great Red Menace of the Soviet Union and Commie Ratfink China.  And so the issue of an Islamic center in a vacant building in lower Manhattan pervades political discourse.  When Dr. Kidglove actually became presidential for a fleeting moment and pointed out that Muslims have a perfect constitutional right to do this, the fruitcakes on TV and in the Republican Party went berserk. Tea Party candidates in Nevada, Colorado and Louisiana took up the cry as if the occupancy of a shabby building in Manhattan somehow had relevance to their constituencies. Alleged Democrats like Harry Reid hastened to take the Tactically Correct position.

It defies logic and the laws of chance that an administration could be in office for two years and not propose a single initiative that would be good for the people of the country.  And yet not a single Republican has broken ranks to support legislative efforts to fix things that are obviously wrong with this country; substantive things, like too many unnecessary deaths for want of adequate medical care; an economy that nearly plunged into a second Great Depression; millions of Americans without jobs or even the hope of finding one because there aren’t any to be had. And yet even some Democrats have taken the Tactically Correct position to help obstruct attempts to deal with these substantive problems. This entitles them to be called “moderate Democrats” by the media.

Ah, the media.  They are utterly complicit in the triumph of tactics over substance. Willing diseminator of falsehoods from on high whether in the “justification” of the invasion of Iraq or the myth that real health care reform would kill Grandma.  Remember the early “debates” in the Democratic presidential primary?  A candidate, Dennis Kucinich, bothered to actually prepare substantive proposals to solve actual problems in this country.  One of the performers masquerading as journalists in the TV debates asked him, not to explain one of these positions, but why the hell he didn’t drop out of the race because he had no damned chance of winning and he was just wasting valuable time on the podium.  Another genius asked him about flying saucers.

ACORN.  Shirley Sherrod.  Birthers.  Thank you, guardians of  freedom who perform what passes as “journalism” today.

Dr. Kidglove and his handlers would have us believe that if we elect Democrats in November, it will preserve Social Security from the depredations of the mad Republicans.  Never mind that the biggest threat to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and every other piece of the safety net for the poor and the luckless, comes from Dr. Kidglove’s own deficit reduction commission, loaded with known adversaries of social security in any form.

Tactics over substance.

Read more by Thomas Wark at http://www.bordellopianist.blogspot.com

By Thomas Wark

What does it take to make progressive Americans understand that they are unwanted in today’s Democratic party?

What does it take to persuade progressives to form their own party?

If the recent bleating of the official White House spokesman, Robert Gibbs, sitting in his office in the West Wing, hasn’t done so, what on earth will?

Gibbs berated the “professional left,” whatever that is.

“I hear these people saying he (Obama) is like George Bush,” Gibbs prattled.  “These people ought to be drug tested.  I mean, it’s crazy.”

Mr. Gibbs, when you come down from whatever you’re smoking, please tell us in precise detail how Obama’s Iraq and Afghanistan policies differ from Bush’s; how his position on executive secrecy, detention without trial and  suspension of habeas corpus  differ from Bush’s; how the appointments of Timothy Geithner and Robert Gates to cabinet posts differentiates him from Mr. Bush; how his justice department differs from Bush’s in failing to reinstate citizens’ rights; how his refusal to consider what he himself acknowledged is the only true health care reform, i.e. single payer, distinguishes him from Mr. Bush; how his authorization of assassination of American citizens differentiates him from Dick Cheney. Other than skin color and hair cuts, how do you tell the difference between the two presidents?

Gibbs said the “professional left,” whatever that is, is “not representative” of progressives  who organized, campaigned, raised money and voted for Mr. Obama.  As one progressive who did all of those things, I find Gibbs’s remarks insulting, arrogant and obscene.

“They,” he said, invoking Glenn Beck’s favorite pronoun, “will be satisfied when we have Canadian health care and we’ve eliminated the Pentagon.  That’s not reality.”

Sorry, Gibbs, but reality is the fact that Canadian health care is substantially iuperior to ours, and less costly.  Realty is an unchecked Pentagon  spending us into the poor house and running amok with decisions and policies that should be overruled by the Commander in Chief.

“They,” said Gibbsie, “wouldn’t be satisfied if Dennis Kucinich was president.”

Wrong again, Gibbsie.  I would be quite satisfied if Dennis Kucinich were president; I urged him to run nine years ago, campaigned for him, raised money for him and voted for him in the primaries.

The reason I join the “professional left,” whatever that is, in criticizing Dr. Kidglove’s performance in the White House is precisely that Dennis Kucinich is a friend of mine and, Gibbsie, Barack Obama is no Dennis Kucinich.

The United States is the only advanced democracy in the world that no longer has a political left.  Both parties in our two-party system are right of center — and drifting further to starboard with each passing day.

If Gibbs’s impertinence doesn’t trigger the formation of a new, Progressive Party in the United States, (headed, I hope, by Mr. Kucinich), there will never be a viable left in this country.

When liberal ideals are forever lost to a people, democracy is dead as well.

Read all of Thomas Wark’s blogs at www.bordellopianist.blogspot.com

By Thomas Wark

In college and for 50 years thereafter I didn’t have to go far to find a cogent argument against my political views: my roommate and lifelong friend, the late Jack Elliott, was always there with an articulate case from the  Republican point of view, tinged with a healthy dose of Libertarianism.

Even when he pulled out the overcooked chestnuts like “tax and spend,” “socialism” and “welfare state,” he did so with wit or at least wry asperity; his arguments were always to the point and well-researched.

I became accustomed to ignoring voices from the Other Side that didn’t meet or exceed Jack’s standards of civility, integrity and intelligence.  Republicans of the Dirksen, Eisenhower, Rockefeller, Warren ilk made the cut; so, earlier in his political career, did John McCain (one of Jack Elliott’s favorites).

My old roommate is dead, McCain has bartered away his last shred of credibility, and one searches in vain for a Republican voice like Jack’s.  The party has been taken over by such infantile hate-spouters as Limbaugh, Beck, Palin, Boehner and McConnell. Their execrative  spiels  are sustained by so-called think tanks, richly funded by right-wing capitalists, whose job is to grind out plausible lies.  The corporate media, their staffs decimated by greed-driven management, their ideologies dictated by the likes of Rupert Murdoch, gleefully render the right-wing think tanks’ propaganda as “journalism.” The political class of Republicans doesn’t even care if the lies are plausible.

Nor, it seems, do the masses of Americans — tea baggers, Christofascists, NRA wingnuts — who buy the lies.  For them, the more outlandish the lie, the greater the enthusiasm it generates.

It is an enthusiasm born of fear, loathing and racism.  Forty-three per cent of Republicans, a recent poll asserted, believe that President Obama is not a native-born citizen.  The vestigial fear of Nat Turner has not faded from the white American psyche.and manifests itself in  hatred of our first black president and his family — which, whether coded (as in the case of Beck’s despicable “Planet of the Apes” rant) — or blatant (as is th case with MalevoFreedom.org, and other right-wing websites).

McConnell’s latest contribution to blatant American racism is to attack the 14th Amendment, whose fundamental democratic ideal holds that anyone born on this soil qualifies for the rights and privileges constitutionally bestowed on all Americans.  We were, after all, a nation of immigrants when we ordained that Constitution, and we remain so today.

Why, then, this hostility to immigrants?  Why the new campaign against “birthright citizenship?”  Why the right-wing vitriol against “invasion by birth canal”? Why the rants about women who illegally cross the border “for the sole purpose of dropping anchor babies”?

Fear, loathing and racism.

Dred Scott.  Nat Turner.  Huey Newton.  Barack Obama.  Caesar Chavez.  Shirley Sherrod. The Black Panthers.  Sonia Sotomayor.  ACORN.

The relentless Dark Menace.

Fear, loathing and racism.

The political fuel of today’s GOP.

Read all of Thomas Wark’s blogs at http://www.bordellopianist.blogspot.com

By Steve Klinger

We logged over 6,000 miles this summer, most of it on the road, but also 2,000 nautical miles, sailing from Seattle to Glacier Bay and back again on an Inside Passage cruise. For me it was a trip both forward and backward in time, seeing people and places entirely new to me, but also reacquainting with friends and relatives, including two classmates I hadn’t seen in about 40 years.

One of the new acquaintances was my grandson, Henry, who was less than a month old when I looked into his wide and innocent eyes in Denver. Thinking back on it, I wondered whether, when he is old enough to follow the itinerary we took, there will still be glaciers calving in Alaska. Maybe so, but probably a lot deeper in the fjords.

As for the wildlife we saw – gray and humpback whales, sea otters and bald eagles in Alaska, elk and bison in Yellowstone – I’m betting the number and variety of such creatures will be greatly diminished in another generation, and that’s a best-case scenario.

The health of the oceans, vast and impervious to human negligence though they seem, has been dealt a new blow by BP’s disaster in the Gulf, a soiling of ecosystems whose true scope may not be known for years. Although the gushing oil has been stopped for now, unproven and untested chemical dispersants have scattered the evidence and left less predictable toxins in their place, and some scientists believe a buildup of methane gas in the area of the damaged well is more worrisome than the crude. To the fish and sea turtles and birds, it matters not the enemy who vanquished them.

In Sitka, Ketchikan, Juneau and then in Victoria, B.C. we saw remarkably beautiful creations of First Peoples, from the totem poles of the Tlingit to intricate, bright-hued rugs, wood carvings and articles of clothing (Tlingit, Inuit) that describe an utterly different relationship between these “primitive” civilizations and their sustaining planet than that of our own culture, whose main byproduct befouled Prince William Sound in 1989 and now the more southerly waters where the Deepwater Horizon exploded and sank.

On our trip we used the marvelous gadgetry of 21st century America, including laptop computers and iPhones, to find lodgings, and restaurants and stay in touch with that part of the world we’d left behind, and we sailed in a modern floating city 11 stories high that contained a world unto itself, including a casino, numerous lounges and about four restaurants to feed our various addictions. We experienced the endangered wonders of just a corner of our planet as only modern travelers can, yet it was hard to forget that the same technology that put the world at our doorstep is also damaging the interconnected web of life systems on a vast scale, at a relentless pace.

We covered the great expanse of the Rockies and the Intermountain West in a few days’ time, thanks to the internal combustion engine and the fossil fuels that still power it, and we spent a month on the road, trying to find cuisine less poisonous than the standard restaurant fare of endless refined carbohydrates. We met a number of fellow travelers, mostly on the ship, who shared our frustration at the poorly concealed racism and mean-spirited rightwing backlash to the few diluted initiatives coming from the Party of Change. We met a lot of ordinary folks who obviously are having to make do with less than they used to have, but still have not connected the dots to see that belt-tightening won’t avoid the end-of-empire tsunami that will be washing their way in a year or ten or a hundred.

We gaped at the magnificence of Yosemite Falls as the bountiful snowmelt cascaded uproariously to the valley floor and Half Dome looked on impassively in shifting light and shadow. We smiled at the hordes with their digital cameras who had to position their loved ones in front of every natural wonder to prove for posterity and less fortunate relatives that they had established their own indelible bond of proximity with each landmark.

We stopped to read the signs that described the Native American settlements overrun by the white intruders who had the power to seize the beautiful territory they coveted, and how they attacked and banished these First Peoples (Paiute, Miwok, Chauchila, etc.) to inferior lands and bestowed their vices and diseases upon them, not to mention their places of worship, never seeing the irony of having unceremoniously evicted the native inhabitants from their own places of worship which were the lands they had settled.

When we finally made it home it was with wonder, weariness and some relief to discover our own home, still standing in the verdant shade of a hot July afternoon, a comforting oasis after leagues of open sea, after half a continent of forest and mountain, mesa and desert. Still standing but not removed from the contradictions of the world and the grand irony of human resourcefulness and genius, which has made nearly all things possible except the most important one: that harmonious, mindful oneness we lost in conquering those who lived it, lost in extracting minerals for economic gain, lost in disturbing the sacred rhythms of the greater order from which we arose – and now are losing ourselves in the process. For our collective journey of conquest and self-interest is rapidly taking us to that scenic overlook in the evolutionary road where the sign ahead can’t be missed: Dead End.

By Thomas Wark

We are a nation of killers.  “Killer” is often a term of approval in our culture: “That’s a killer app!” “Ooooh, he’s a lady killer!” Etc.

We are the only nation to have used atomic power to annihilate fellow humans.

We have malamorphosed from euphemistically “patriotic” wars like the one we ended with the A-bomb, to endless wars of invasion at the whim of our elected leader.

We have interpreted our Constitution to guarantee every citizen the right to possess the means to kill.

We kill with greed.  One of the richest fossil fuel companies in the world, for months now, has been killing every form of marine life in the Gulf of Mexico. The perpetrators of the lethal oil gush have not been penalized in any significant way.  Tacit approval.

We kill with arrogant glee.  See the pictures of the former governor of Alaska giddily displaying the bodies of wolves killed by machine-gunners in helicopters.

We kill with hate.  “Pro-life” fanatics slay abortion providers on orders from whatever hideous god-voices they hear.

We kill without compunction or compassion.  Our missiles, bombs and drones routinely miss their targets, slaying batches of innocent civilian men, women and children.  We say “oops” and call the victims “collateral damage,” refusing to be bothered counting numbers.

We kill out of fear.  Here in the southwest, everything from javelinas and rattlesnakes to dark-skinned humans who might be “illegal aliens” are fair game.

Blessed by the Second Amendment, sanctified by Patriotism and inspired by the movies of the great John Wayne, we shoot first and ask questions later. If we ask questions at all.

With all of the humans on the face of the earth, and all other living things on the planet, we share an infinitesimal sliver of universe capable of sustaining life as we know it.  Within the cosmos, our tiny planet is a mere pebble; the portion of it that sustains life is like the veneer of varnish on a desktop globe of Earth.  The interdependency of the millions upon millions of life forms is complex beyond our complete understanding, at least for the present.  But we know it’s there.

Years ago, here in New Mexico, an avid hunter, roaming what is now the Aldo Leopold Wilderness, shot a wolf.  When he reached it, the animal had not yet expired.  He watched “a fierce green fire” die in the wolf’s eyes.  Aldo Leopold — for he was the hunter –  introduced the land ethic to American public discourse and pioneered the concept of setting aside natural areas, and all of their wildlife, as protected oases for the benefit of all.

Others, however, continued to hunt the Mexican gray wolf almost to extinction. Finally,  using wolves bred in captivity, land management officials began a program to re-introduce the wolves to the wild.  Today, poachers are busy killing them off — especially the alpha males, whose deaths virtually assure the ultimate destruction of entire packs. Even on the state regulatory boards, there are those who quietly approve the actions of the poachers.

Killers.

Last June a female sea otter was frolicking just offshore in Morro Bay, CA.  A Second Amendment Patriot killed her with a single bullet to the head. Like the Mexican gray wolf, the sea otter had been hunted nearly to extinction.  Even with protected status, it has returned to but a fraction of its former numbers.

Killers.

Law? Philosophy? Consilience of life? Endangered species?

Liberal elitist nonsense.

Fire when ready, boys! It’s the American Way.

Read more by Thomas Wark at www.bordellopianist.blogspot.com

By Thomas Wark

Read more by Thomas Wark at www.bordellopianist.blogspot.com

(The following is a revised version of an article posted a few days ago.)\

This is the bitter reality of the American present, a period in which big business has cemented an unholy alliance with big government against the interests of ordinary Americans, who, of course, are the great majority of Americans. The great majority of Americans no longer matter.

–Bob Herbert

By Steve Klinger

One month after the Deepwater Horizon explosion and environmental catastrophe in the Gulf, the new Tea Party hero, Rand Paul, fresh off his foray into rewriting the Civil Rights Act, thinks the Obama administration is being too tough on BP. After all, accidents happen, he said on Good Morning America last week after his upset win in the Kentucky GOP senatorial primary. Here’s the full quote:

“What I don’t like from the president’s administration is this sort of ‘I’ll put my boot heel on the throat of BP.’ I think that sounds really un-American in his criticism of business,” he said. “I’ve heard nothing from BP about not paying for the spill. And I think it’s part of this sort of blame game society in the sense that it’s always got to be someone’s fault instead of the fact that sometimes accidents happen.”

It sure is “un-American” to blame, let alone regulate, private enterprise, especially if it’s willing to pay for its screw-ups. Trouble is, there may be hell to pay, not just Louisiana fishermen. The latest very cautious and reluctant estimates are that some 70,000 barrels of oil (plus additional gas) are hemorrhaging every day into the Gulf ecosystem, not the 5,000 BP had the audacity to claim. Some estimates run as high as 100,000. The oil is accumulating in huge underwater pools; some is entering the “loop current” and oceanographers say it could reach the Gulf Stream, there to be carried up the East Coast and perhaps eventually to Europe. Worse yet, scientists fear the methane gas shows signs of choking off oxygen supplies and could create oceanic dead zones. You don’t need to be a marine biologist to figure out the potential consequences of major disruptions to the aquatic food chain.

Let’s hope that Paul, an ophthalmologist and Lasik surgeon, is better at correcting myopia in his patients than detecting it in his political vision. Then again, as Bill Maher noted, does anyone even want an eye surgeon who says casually that “accidents happen”?

Meanwhile, the oil and gas continue to gush, the hurricane season is around the corner, and a nation that has sent probes to Mars and put men on the moon waits for an oil company with a history of incompetence and environmental abuse to figure out how to cap a broken pipe. Their main answer so far has been to saturate the area of the spill with chemical dispersants that add new poisons to the lethal cocktail churning in our coastal waters.

And no, Rand, the Obama administration is not putting its boot heel, or even a bare toe to BP’s throat. Those whose compassion is for the oil giants may fret, but we might better ask why the White House is allowing BP to conduct the cleanup while the Department of Energy “investigates”? Is Obama afraid that if he takes charge of the cleanup he will own Deepwater Horizon? Or is it more that the 11 who died and the countless thousands whose way of life has been ruined are just collateral damage in the new world order?

Not only should BP pay for all reasonable claims and should its executives face criminal charges, they should be operating under strict federal direction because Obama should have declared a national state of emergency and enlisted the full resources of our military and scientific communities to send submarines and robotic devices to the ocean floor to stop the leaks.

I acknowledge the scientific and mechanical challenges of such an enterprise – but isn’t that exactly the problem? Private enterprise (the oil industry) seems to be the only entity with the expertise and technology (and of course the capital) to conduct operations a mile under water. Obviously these guys are better at drilling holes than capping them – an excellent reason why they shouldn’t be allowed to engineer blowouts that their “blowout protectors” can’t protect us from. Yet in a world where corporations rule they not only get to rape the planet but wind up in charge of the “cleanup.” And they get to do it on their own timetable.

If this massive and continuing spill doesn’t prove globally catastrophic, who’s to say the next one won’t? Would the Feds even tell us if the current spill does threaten the ecology of the entire planet? Wouldn’t want to create a panic, now, would we?

Call me an alarmist, but I think this event needs to be treated just like an asteroid heading for Earth: it needs a total mobilization of resources, assuming that the worst is possible. Maybe such discussions are being held behind closed doors. If they are, you can bet the powers that be are more concerned about Big Oil than the oystermen and the sea fowl.

The world needs to know the scope of this catastrophe, and America needs action now to protect the silenced majority we have become. It’s time for Washington to quit posturing about getting tough with corporate criminals and address the urgent situation in the Gulf like the emergency it is. And it’s time for Rand Paul to shut up.

By Steve Klinger

One month after the oil well explosion and environmental catastrophe in the Gulf , the new Tea Party hero, Rand Paul, fresh off his foray into rewriting the Civil Rights Act, thinks the Obama administration is being too tough on BP. After all, accidents happen, he said on Good Morning America today. Here’s the full quote:

“What I don’t like from the president’s administration is this sort of ‘I’ll put my boot heel on the throat of BP.’ I think that sounds really un-American in his criticism of business,” he said. “I’ve heard nothing from BP about not paying for the spill. And I think it’s part of this sort of blame game society in the sense that it’s always got to be someone’s fault instead of the fact that sometimes accidents happen.”

It sure is “un-American” to blame, let alone regulate, private enterprise, especially if it’s willing to pay for its screw-ups. Trouble is, there may be hell to pay, not just Louisiana fishermen. The latest very cautious and reluctant estimates are that some 70,000 barrels of oil (plus additional gas) are hemorrhaging every day into the Gulf ecosystem, not the 5,000 BP recently claimed. Some estimates run as high as 95,000. The oil is accumulating in huge underwater pools; some is entering the “Loop” current and could reach the Gulf Stream, there to be carried up the East Coast and perhaps eventually to Europe. Worse yet, scientists say the methane gas shows signs of choking off oxygen supplies and could create oceanic dead zones. You don’t need to be a marine biologist to figure out the potential consequences of major disruptions to the marine food chain.

Of course, not everyone is a player in our “blame game society”: Britt Hume on Fox News wants to know, “Oil slicks, what oil slicks?”  And that’s just the part of this crowd that isn’t fixated on denying global warming.

Meanwhile, the oil and gas continue to gush, the hurricane season is around the corner, and a nation that has sent probes to Mars and put men on the moon waits for an oil company with a history of incompetence and environmental abuse to figure out how to cap a broken pipe.

The Obama administration, though the problem did not begin under its watch, is not doing a fraction of what it could to halt this disaster-in-the-making.  Why is the White House allowing BP to conduct the cleanup while the Department of Energy and Congress “investigate”? Not only should the company pay for it and should its executives face criminal charges, they should be operating under strict federal direction because Obama should have declared a national state of emergency and enlisted the full resources of our military and scientific communities to send submarines and robotic devices to the ocean floor to stop the leaks.

I understand the scientific and mechanical challenges of such an enterprise – but isn’t that exactly the problem? Private enterprise (the oil industry) seems to be the only entity with the expertise and technology to conduct operations a mile under water, and obviously these guys are better at drilling holes than capping them – an excellent reason why they shouldn’t be allowed to create situations that they can’t fix.

If this massive and continuing spill doesn’t prove catastrophic in the long term, who’s to say the next one won’t? Would the Feds even tell us if the current spill does threaten the ecology of the entire planet? Wouldn’t want to create a panic, now, would we?

Call me an alarmist, but I think this event needs to be treated just like an asteroid heading for Earth: it needs a total mobilization of resources, assuming that the worst is possible. Maybe such discussions are being held behind closed doors. The world needs to know, and America needs action. It’s time for Washington to quit posturing about getting tough with BP and address the urgent situation in the Gulf like the emergency it is. And it’s time for Rand Paul to shut up.

“Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.” Ben Franklin

By Steve Klinger

In the Obama administration’s latest capitulation to rightwing pressure, Attorney Gen. Eric Holder said this morning that Miranda rights should be “modified” for terror suspects. Modified as in reduced or eliminated because, as he described it, “We’re now dealing with international terrorism.”  P.S. Holder said that whatever is done, it also needs to be “constitutional.”

As HuffPost reported, “”The [Miranda] system we have in place has proven to be effective,’” Holder told host Jake Tapper. “”I think we also want to look and determine whether we have the necessary flexibility — whether we have a system that deals with situations that agents now confront. … We’re now dealing with international terrorism. … I think we have to give serious consideration to at least modifying that public-safety exception [to the Miranda protections]. And that’s one of the things that I think we’re going to be reaching out to Congress, to come up with a proposal that is both constitutional, but that is also relevant to our times and the threats that we now face.’”

Clearly, Holder’s remarks were in response to the attempted Times Square bombing last week, attributed to naturalized citizen Faisal Shahzad and the increasing likelihood the act was connected with the Pakistani Taliban.

First of all, Miranda rights are not the real issue here but rather Habeas corpus. It’s not the warning suspects receive from law enforcement officers that what they say may be used against them but the judicial process itself the administration is now broadly hinting needs to be changed. Whoa, Eric! Citizens, born or naturalized, who are suspected of a crime cannot justifiably have their rights curtailed or eliminated because that crime happens to be terrorism. We are then making a political distinction rather than a criminal one and in the process clearly violating Amendments 5 and 6 of the Bill of Rights.

It’s not at all that terrorists should be treated with kid gloves but simply that as citizens we are all threatened when some of us, as mere suspects, are deprived of any of our rights under the Constitution.  Especially during the Bush administration (43), dissent groups were targeted and their members arrested on suspicions of terrorism that were unfounded. At political conventions and elsewhere, the surveillance and apprehension (pre-emptively in many cases) was clearly an attempt to intimidate and stifle dissent.

With the imprimatur of a Congressional Act as Holder is now suggesting, law enforcement agencies will only be emboldened to trample more egregiously on our rights as the political climate dictates. And once Miranda rights are rationed, how long will it be before terrorism suspects, even those who are citizens, are paraded before military tribunals instead of civilian courts? Oh, wait a minute. We never quite got rid of military tribunals, did we?

While the White House appeared to turn a cold shoulder to Sen. Joe Lieberman’s hysterical proposal to strip terrorism suspects of their citizenship on the mere assertion of suspicion, are Holder’s comments this morning not tantamount to the same solution – a repugnant overreaction to a real threat, but one whose “cure” would be far worse than the disease?