P.S: Just so it’s clear, there is no proof this is actually Anthony Weiner’s Twitter account. I just thought the screencap was funny. And hey — maybe it is him! On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.
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Anthony Weiner’s Rehab Continues!
Ewe , a photo from NOLA.com, posted by S Maley on Flickr. On Friday, former Louisiana Governor and ex-con Edwin W. Edwards (D) escorted his new wife Trina through New Orleans’ French Quarter after their Friday wedding at the Hotel Monteleone, on their way to a post-wedding feast at historic Galatoire’s. At a $250-a-plate roast on Saturday night , a gang of former and current politicians and cronies cracked wise at the ex-governor’s expense. Most of the humor centered on the 52 year age difference between Edwards and his bride. Roasters trod lightly on Edwards’ eight years in prison, referring to his time behind bars as his “sabbatical leave,” his “vacation” and his “public service engagement.”… Referring to earlier references to the idea that oysters are aphrodisiacs, Edwards said, “I had a dozen last night, and only 10 of them worked.” Edwards also took aim at Gov, Bobby Jindal, mocking the fact that Jindal participated in an exorcism of a young woman while he was in college. Edwards feigned amazement and said that if he saw a girl lying on the floor, seemingly under a spell, “I wouldn’t waste any time trying to take the devil out of her.” Har-har. The Viagra-enhanced honeymoon exploits of the octogentian ex-con were undoubtedly impressive, but certainly no match for the screw job Edwin put on Louisiana during his four terms in Baton Rouge. In my mind, Fast Eddie always looked best in prison khaki: The crime that earned Edwin eight years in a Federal pen was extortion related to the state’s awarding of riverboat casino licenses back in the early ’90s. During that process, each of Edwin’s four children ended up with a single-digit percentage ownership in a state-licensed casino. ( Disclaimer: Edwards is the only state or national Democratic politician I have ever voted for. In the choice between the Crook and the Klansman, the Crook won. ) During one of his terms, the state stepped up its enforcement of radioactive oilfield waste. It was shown that the level of natural radiation on the granite steps of the State Capitol were higher than was allowable in oilfield waste. All radioactive waste required disposal in a state-certified deep injection well. Oddly, the only well with the proper certification was owned by the Governor’s brother. Perhaps Gov. Edwards’ most enduring legacy has been the 1972 State Constitution. Edwin thought he could permanently cement the marginal status of the Louisiana Republican Party by introducing the jungle primary system. Under that scheme, candidates with any (or no) party affiliation run in a single primary election. Absent a primary majority for one candidate, the top two primary vote-recipients meet in the general election. As it turned out, the Republican Party in Louisiana is anything but marginalized. Sen. Mary Landrieu is the sole Dem holding statewide office. The only Dem Representative in the Washington delegation is Cedric Richmond in Bill Jefferson’s old New Orleans district. The leading Democratic candidate for this fall’s gubernatorial election is an obscure schoolteacher from North Louisiana with a $1,000 war chest. Add to that a Democratic Administration in D.C. that seems hell-bent on maximizing the BP spill’s damage to the state’s economy, the Party of Jackson has never seen a lower ebb. President Obama’s quarterly financial report disclosed less than $55,000 in campaign contributions. The once-mighty Democratic Party brand has never been less popular. Ironically, the state’s electorate is still 50% Democrat, with Dems outnumbering registered Republicans almost 2:1. And the most popular Democrat is a priapic 84 year-old scalawag, fresh out of stir, with a taste for young blondes. Isn’t life interesting. Cross-posted at Stevemaley.com .
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The Silver Zipper Rides Again!
[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here . Or by Twitter @AaronWorthing.] Update: Hot Air has very similar thoughts, here . From the very first reactions to the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizen United a certain irony permeated the debate. As I wrote back then : On January 23, the New York Times denounced the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United v. F.E.C. , stating that “the court[] … has paved the way for corporations to use their vast treasuries to overwhelm elections and intimidate elected officials.” In a twist worthy of Monty Python and the Life of Brian , this editorial was unsigned, representing the voice of the New York Times Co., itself a corporation. It amounted to “this corporation says that no corporation has a right to free expression.” Next I suppose the entire staff will gather together and chant, in unison, “we are all individuals.” And that irony was repeated months ago when Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert held dueling rallies in Washington D.C. as I noted in a post entitled This Rally is Brought to You By Citizens United : Anyway, watching it, and seeing that Comedy Central is running it live—indeed, according to my TIVO, there will be no commercial interruptions, and there haven’t been so far—I realized that none of this would have been possible without the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizen’s United. This is corporate speech. Comedy Central is a corporation, a subsidiary (most likely through multiple shells) of Viacom, another company, donating it’s on air time to this political rally. But according to Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, the government should have the power to ban this kind of thing. Mind you, of course, that is only my reading of Colbert’s satiric remarks ; I believe what he is trying to do is say the Supreme Court is wrong to say a corporation deserves any first amendment protection at all, but since his satire is so thick rational minds can disagree. Stewart’s mockery , meanwhile, is a little more straightforward and it’s easier to discern his point. Well, he managed to prove my point again on his own show, when talking about whether he could promote his PAC on his show: The Colbert Report Tags: Colbert Report Full Episodes , Political Humor & Satire Blog , Video Archive Seriously, does he not understand that he has managed to prove that, if anything, Citizens United didn’t go far enough? Here he is talking about asking for an advisory opinion about whether he should be free to speak without giving up all of Viacom’s corporate secrets. Here he is talking about having to wait sixty days to find out if he is allowed. Here he is telling us that he wouldn’t be able to speak if the ruling came out against him. He is asking the government for permission to speak and if he has any understanding of how appalling that is in a free society, he gives no indication of it. The man is clever and, in small doses, funny, but he’s not particularly smart. Hat tip : This WSJ editorial which has much more on the subject. Really, read the whole thing. [Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]
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Is Colbert Smart Enough to Know He Just Proved That Citizens United Was Correctly Decided?
[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here . Or by Twitter @AaronWorthing.] The title of this post is a PG version of a joke Stewart makes at the very end of this clip: The Daily Show – Define and Conquer Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes , Political Humor & Satire Blog , The Daily Show on Facebook And he is in turn borrowing from this longer clip, where they are explaining that the President is calling Libya a “turd sandwich,” although she was not certain whether Obama personally felt this way or was merely repeating what an advisor called it. Visit msnbc.com for breaking news , world news , and news about the economy And of course the man most eager to bite into it was Fast Eddie Schultz. Seriously, I have come to believe Schultz is performance art, creating a leftward parody of what the left believes Rush Limbaugh does. In the latest example of this idiot’s dishonesty , he asserts that if we are opposed to the war in Libya, we are standing with the terrorists and are generally unpatriotic. Yes, really : (Via: Mediaite .) Now, while I have said this war is unlawful because it has not received congressional approval ( here , here , here , here and here ), I have always believed that Congress should approve of the mission and we should go kick Gdaffy’s ass. But I don’t think anyone is being unpatriotic to say, “no, we shouldn’t.” For one thing, we are already in two wars. And for another Obama has blown a hole in our deficit, which is another change from 2003. I mean Bush was bad on the deficit, but comparing Bush’s suckitude on the deficit to Obama’s is like comparing a dog that barks all night to a zombie apocalypse . Not to mention the fact that the President himself called it a Turd Sandwich. I mean its hard to call it unpatriotic to criticize a war that the President himself personally called that, even if he was merely repeating the words of his advisor. Oh, and there is the little matter of the fact that we might be helping terrorists : Eastern Libya, where the rebels are based, has long been suspected of supplying recruits for terrorist organizations. “Al Qaeda in that part of the country is obviously an issue,” a senior official told the New York Times . At a Senate hearing on Tuesday, NATO military commander Admiral James Stavridis said intelligence reports showed “flickers” of Al Qaeda’s and Hezbollah’s presence among rebel forces. Eastern Libya was the center of Islamist protests in the late nineties, but it’s unclear whether groups here are still tied to Al Qaeda. Now the truth is we don’t know very much about these rebels, but that didn’t stop Obama from providing covert aid to them : Sources tells ABC News that President Obama has signed a secret presidential finding authorizing covert operations to “aid the effort” in Libya, where the US is working with NATO, and Arab partners to enforce a no-fly zone, protect civilians, and encourage Col. Moammar Gadhafi to step down from power. The finding discusses a number of ways to help the opposition in Libya, authorizing some assistance now and setting up a legal framework for more robust activities in the future. The finding does NOT direct covert operatives to provide arms to the rebels right now, though it does prepare for such a contingency and other contingencies should the president decide to go down that road in the future. So, um, it’s a secret order authorizing a covert mission, reported all around the world on ABC News. Great. So, let me ask a few questions. First, is this really supposed to be secret, or are they just pretending it is supposed to be? Second, is the secrecy really important? I mean I assume that the actual locations and nature of the covert ops needs to be secret, but is the fact they even exist supposed to be secret? I am frankly skeptical of that, because I had in fact assumed we were already doing that as would anyone with a few years of experience and more than two brain cells to rub together. But at the same time if it was really supposed to be secret, and it really prejudices our efforts to have it outted, will there be any investigation into this leak? And for that matter, should Jake Tapper have reported it in the first place? I tweeted him a question on the subject, but he has yet to reply, and probably won’t. But then again, if this was a disclosure that he believed to be authorized by the White House, that exonerates him in my book. Meanwhile, Matt Lauer thinks it is just dandy to intervene in Libya, even if it results in helping al Qaeda, because we will show AQ how compassionate we are: ( Via Newsbusters .) Remember folks, Michele Bachmann is the stupid one. Update: As if that isn’t fun enough we have recently seen the defection of Moussa Kousa, the Libyan Foreign Minister, to the British. There is a positive side to this in that he is very likely to be able to tell our forces where to drop the bombs. But there is a downside , too: He was expelled from London in 1980 after giving an extraordinary newspaper interview when he was the head of the embassy in which he said two Libyan dissidents living in London would be killed. Speaking outside the Libyan embassy in St James’s Square, Mr Koussa told The Times: “The revolutionary committees have decided last night to kill two more people in the United Kingdom. I approve of this.” He returned to Libya after being given 48 hours to leave the UK, where he was accused of funding terrorist groups. Mr Kousa was named by intelligence sources in the mid-1990s as the possible architect of the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103, which killed 270 people, and the blowing up the following year of a French airliner in central Africa in which 170 people died So it looks like neither side in this fight will be terrorist-free. And look, grown-ups understand that sometimes you have to ally with Stalin to defeat Hitler, without liking either man. But contrary to what Fast Eddie thinks, or pretends to think, it is not an inherently unpatriotic to say, “yes, sometimes you have to ally with Stalin to defeat Hitler, but not this time.” [Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]
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More Bites From the Bread-Based Waste Containment Operation… (Update: A Defection)
[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here . Or by Twitter @AaronWorthing.] Why do people do this? Why do they have to come up with ever more ridiculous euphemisms designed to take the color completely out of our language, to render it all a dull beige? Well here, we know why they are doing this: to avoid admitting the obvious fact that we are at war. In the last few days, Obama administration officials have frequently faced the question: Is the fighting in Libya a war? From military officers to White House spokesmen up to the president himself, the answer is no. But that leaves the question: What is it? In a briefing on board Air Force One Wednesday, deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes took a crack at an answer. “I think what we are doing is enforcing a resolution that has a very clear set of goals, which is protecting the Libyan people, averting a humanitarian crisis, and setting up a no-fly zone,” Rhodes said. “Obviously that involves kinetic military action, particularly on the front end.” Rhodes’ words echoed a description by national security adviser Tom Donilon in a briefing with reporters two weeks ago as the administration contemplated action in Libya. “Military steps — and they can be kinetic and non-kinetic, obviously the full range — are not the only method by which we and the international community are pressuring Gadhafi,” Donilon said. Read the whole thing , if you think you can resist the urge to beat your head on something while reading it. You know over a year ago I started a blog that I am badly neglecting these days, called, um… let’s call it Allergic to B.S. Or as I jokingly call it, the blog that can’t be named.* And that was because it really captured a big part of my personality, which is where I have little patience for B.S., even when I agree with it. And of course it grates twice as much when I don’t. And all of this is designed to avoid the obvious illegality of it—declared by no less than candidate Obama and Senator Joe Biden . You know, in my day job, I occasionally have had to deal with a certain word: “willfully.” You might have been told that “ignorance of the law is no excuse for breaking it.” Well, that’s not entirely true. In some federal laws, particularly criminal federal laws, it is actually necessary to prove the defendant knew that his conduct was illegal. From Bryan v. the United States : A person acts willfully if he acts intentionally and purposely and with the intent to do something the law forbids, that is, with the bad purpose to disobey or to disregard the law. Now, the person need not be aware of the specific law or rule that his conduct may be violating. But he must act with the intent to do something that the law forbids. And indeed, in some limited cases the courts have even required you to know which exact statute has been violated. [Warning: this is not legal advice. Consult with your own lawyer on how this rule might apply to your life.] My point is this, and maybe this will explain why I have written three posts on the legality of this war (counting this one). If you believe that Obama is breaking the law, then he is not just accidentally doing it. This is not a case where the President honestly disagrees about what the Constitution and other laws say and just got it wrong. He is willfully doing it, as that term is understood in that case law . He has said he cannot do this. His Vice President has concurred. And yet here he is today, doing precisely what they told you he could not legally do. And these hapless bureaucrats are forced to engage in this degrading euphemism to avoid telling us what we all know: we are at war. And you can’t deny it. Our military is attacking their military and not just once, but on a sustained basis. If you believe that the war with Japan started when they bombed Pearl Harbor, and not when Japanese officials declared war after the fact, or when Congress formally declared war shortly thereafter, then you have to believe we are at war with Libya.** This is not about whether we believe this war is wise or just. I believe it is both (although I am with McCain–this would have been a better idea weeks ago). But it is not the President’s call to make, or the U.N.’s. Absent an attack or at least an imminent threat of an attack on America, its territories, its forces, or even perhaps its civilians, the President can’t do this without Congressional approval. And what do we do if a member of the Air Force refuses an order to bomb Libya because the President didn’t have the authority? Do we jail him or her because they stood up for what the Constitution actually said? For agreeing with what the President and Vice President themselves have said, and having the courage of his or her convictions? I think that this might be the time for military civil disobedience. The Uniform Code of Military Justice repeatedly states our military is only obligated to obey lawful orders (see, e.g., here ). This is not a technicality, but an important bulwark in the protection of this republic. Free nations are overthrown by soldiers who blindly follow unconstitutional orders. When the President requires those of you in the military to act unconstitutionally, you have a positive duty to disobey. Now a complete stoppage could potentially endanger the lives of other members of the military. I am not contemplating that. But I am asking if perhaps one or two pilots in the military might decide to take a stand. I don’t believe two pilots would impact the efficiency of the operation, and I know it is a lot to ask of those individuals. And this disobedience should be done in the Martin Luther King way: openly and peacefully refusing to obey those orders and offering no resistance as they arrest you. Don’t hide what you are doing, just say it openly, “I refuse to follow this order because I believe that this engagement is unlawful under the United States Constitution. Only Congress can declare war and Congress has not authorized force against Libya in any way, shape or form. Therefore I refuse this order and will peacefully submit to incarceration if necessary.” And bluntly this would be a great test case. The courts might be reluctant to step in if it is merely seen as a fight between Congress and the President. But if a good and conscientious airman’s freedom is on the line, I believe the courts will be more inclined to take these constitutional issues more seriously. I am not quite ready to endorse this idea, it’s just something I am tossing around. But one way or the other, the rule of law has to be asserted over the willful lawlessness of this President. ———————————- As I wrote this, I found a Daily Show clip that made a very similar point, only they were like funny and stuff: The Daily Show – Odyssey Dawn – Unconstitutional War Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes , Political Humor & Satire Blog , The Daily Show on Facebook That’s gonna leave a mark. Also, astute readers will recognize that this is in direct contradiction of a post I wrote yesterday where I accused Jon Stewart of (1) unfairly attacking McCain and two other Republicans as hypocrites, while (2) ignoring Obama’s hypocrisy on the war. Of course Stewart’s attack on McCain et al is still unfair, but at least Stewart is attacking both sides and I have written my mea culpa and correction at the original post . ———————————– * Yes, that is a Harry Potter allusion. Deal with it. ** I am not saying that what we are doing in Libya is as vile as what the Japanese did at Pearl Harbor. I am just saying that one military attacking another is inherently war, especially when it is a sustained assault like we have here and not a one-off. [Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]
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The Newest Euphemism For This War and Obama’s “Willful” Violation of the Constitution
