Well, this is tiresome: The talk of the blogosphere right now is an Instapundit rant titled Why Barack Obama Should Resign." I'll save you a click: Obama should resign because a repeat felon who was in violation of the terms of his parole was brought in for questioning, then released, on those parole violations. Oh, and because of the color of the uniforms:
Just for the record, this is what it looked like for a man who made a film that made the Obama Administration uncomfortable:
... By sending -- literally -- brownshirted enforcers to engage in --literally -- a midnight knock at the door of a man for the non-crime of embarrassing the President of the United States and his administration, President Obama violated [his] oath [of office]....Brown? Funny, those shirts look to me to be olive drab.
But seriously: I seem to recall Swedish authorities indicting Julian Assange on rape charges, and the Brits making efforts to extradite him. I don't seem to recall Glenn Reynolds calling for any governmental resignations in response.
But why am I taking seriously any blog post that quotes, utterly without skepticism, a blogger who poses this hypothetical:
Say that the murders in Libya lead us to pass a law banning some kinds of speech that Muslims find offensive or blasphemous...It used to be that the principal pocket of mainstreamed paranoia in America was the gun-nut belief that every Democratic president would eventually go door to door and round up all the firearms; now the belief in creeping sharia is utterly mainstream as well. Wingnuts to America: We are all Ted Nugent and Pam Geller.
So what I want someone in the campaign press to ask Mitt Romney is this: One of the people alleged to be involved in the making of that anti-Muslim has been brought in for question on a possible parole violation. What are your thought about that? He denounced the film in an ABC interview on Thursday, but his base has made the filmmakers into martyrs. I want him to be asked to take a stand: Does he think the government has the right to question a man who's living under a parole agreement, or does he stand with the wingnuts and the hatemongers? Choose, Mitt.
The MITT2012 Cyborg will explode if asked that question.
ReplyDeleteOr, implode, like it did when confronted with its comments on the situations in Egypt and Libya.
The NUANCE software is still in the developmental stage.
Right now, all it has installed is the BOLOTON/NEOCON STOMP program.
Torture, indefinite detention, surveillance: all constitutional.
ReplyDeleteProbation violation check: unconstitutional.
This guy's a fucking law professor (okay, it's Tennessee, but still)?
Having had 3 years of experience with law professors many moons ago, and having run into a few since (from various parts of the country), I'd just observe that holding a professorship in a law school is no guarantee that the holder thereof is a mental giant, or is possessed of much common sense or intellectual decency.
ReplyDeleteOne other thing worth pointing out to the crackpot Prof, not that it would do a bit of good: the visible shoulder patch on the cop nearest the camera says ".... County Sheriff's Office". These were not federal personnel in the first place, and if I'm right in understanding that this idiot was on parole for state - not federal - charges, then of course the Prez had zip to do with this. But try telling that to Prof Instadummy.
When Nixon was pissed at any particular reporter he'd sick the FBI on him to do their best to find something illegal he'd done so they could punish him.
ReplyDeleteOne of the reasons liberals despised him.
Not an illegal abuse of power, but an abuse of power all the same.
And no of course I am not happy with the pursuit of Julian Assange.
ReplyDeleteTo tell you the truth, I don't have much use for Julian Assange. His notion seems to be that anything the government keeps secret warrants exposure just because it's secret. That strikes me as lazy and indiscriminate. He seems less interested in righting wrongs than in wielding the same sort of God-power he sees governments as wielding. I don't share his categorical objection to government secrecy, especially in diplomacy -- I don't want diplomats to use secrecy for evil ends, but I expect them to keep secrets. So he's not one of my heroes. He hasn't engaged in civil disobedience in a way that's made the arc of history bend toward justice, as far as I'm concerned.
ReplyDelete