BECAUSE THEY CAN

I haven't quite known how to react to this:

Barack Obama has abandoned a commitment to veto a new security law that allows the military to indefinitely detain without trial American terrorism suspects arrested on US soil who could then be shipped to Guantanamo Bay....

The law, contained in the defence authorisation bill that funds the US military, effectively extends the battlefield in the "war on terror" to the US and applies the established principle that combatants in any war are subject to military detention....

Now, see, I expect Republicans to want to run the country in a way that's different from the way I'd want to run it, or the way moderates want to run it. But I just don't believe that Republicans actually give a crap whether the president has these powers. I don't think they give a crap whether a future Republicans president has these powers.

I'm convinced that Republicans didn't push this for either of those reasons. They did so for one reason: to grind Democrats' faces in it. It's a wedge issue, Republicans know they're taking the popular position -- and so they do this simply because it lets them make Democrats eat dirt.

One of our major political parties uses the political equivalent of mob violence as a routine, everyday tool. And the majority of the political culture is still in denial about that fact.