I Can't Stand Bullies

Caveat lector:

The following entry contains no discernible traces of actual journalism, even by the admittedly unexacting standards that generally prevail in this space. It shouldn't be necessary to say so specifically, but the opinions expressed herein are mine alone, and I alone bear liability for them. And the most incendiary things said herein are not to be taken literally, any more than are most of the insults exchanged on the playground or in internet chatrooms. This entry is equal parts self-dramatizing memoir, self-aggrandizing puffery, pointless but hopefully diverting bloviation, and – quite frankly – an act of calling out the people who provoked what follows, if they're interested. And, in what I intend to be a unique departure from my rules of decorum, this essay will include a few examples of mild vulgarity.

Once again, reader discretion is advised.

Roughly a decade and a half ago, when my abortive career as a professional musician was winding down and my prospects as a journalist were firming up, I was briefly the lead guitarist for a band called “Antithesis,” based in Provo, Utah. (Yeah, the choice of name was my idea, and I fully take the blame for it.)

Our debut occurred at an international festival of some sort held on the campus of Brigham Young University.

We attracted a large and very receptive crowd, and with the consent of the people responsible for the room we'd converted into a concert hall (part of the main cafeteria), we played just a little longer than was customary. The audience was appreciative, and the faculty on hand seemed to approve, as well.

Then campus security showed up, led by a guy in his late 40s who was about 6'5” of petty authoritarianism. This guy seemed to think that playing past the established curfew was our idea, and that we had engaged in a minor act of defiance.

After we had shut off the power and started to strike the stage, this guy got in the face of the bass player, who as our frontman was somehow responsible for our supposed offense.

I busied myself with the task of wrapping mike cords and putting away my own gear, while listening to the unfolding verbal smack-down of our bass player. My friend was a mild-mannered, inoffensive sort, and he kept trying to explain that he had nothing to do with the decision to run a little long.

But Mr. Alpha Male Security Man wouldn't let my friend get a word in edgewise, cutting him off, shouting him down, and using his size advantage (more than half a foot in height) to intimidate a young kid who hadn't been looking for a confrontation.

Try as I did to stay aloof, I felt my mercury rising, which – in someone of Mexican-Irish ancestry – can be a dangerous development. “I'll just keep out of it,” I told myself. “Well, I'll stay out until and unless I hear the right word.”

Just then, I heard the “right word”:

“... you little smart-ass,” snarled the Security Chief.

That's the word, I thought, rising from my crouch and thrusting myself between my friend and his tormentor.

“Hey, Curly, why don't you just back the hell off?” I hissed, poking him in the chest. “We did what we were told, and you've got no right to treat my friend like this, you foul-mouthed, swaggering martinet!”

Or words to that effect. I specifically remember calling the guy a “swaggering martinet.”

The Security Chief (to whom I later apologized, and who wasn't really a bad guy ) snapped his head back and treated me to a look that was equal parts astonishment and evaluation, the former over the fact that he had been called out by a guy who called him a “martinet” (which isn't usually part of the ritual insults that are a necessary prelude to a fist-fight), the latter a natural male instinct when assessing whether you can take the other guy.

After the slightest moment's hesitation, the Chief shook his head and backed down, largely because he was in the wrong and he knew it – but also because he was pretty sure pushing the matter further would have immediate and disagreeable consequences. My bandmates had stopped what they were doing, gaping at me in amazement: I was the easy-going guy who spent our breaks with his nose in a book (at the time, I recall, I was reading George W. F. Hallgarten's Why Dictators?, an interesting if tendentious look at tyrants from Dionysius II of Syracuse through Mussolini).

Even though my right hand is permanently mangled from a street fight I had as a freshman with a guy two years older and twenty pounds heavier than myself (I put him down, but broke my hand in the effort), I've not been in many scrapes. Part of that is because I really hate fist-fights, as does any other rational man. Part of it is because as a believer I'm commanded: “If it is possible, as much as depends on you, live peaceably with all men” (Romans 12:18).

When possible I'll simply walk away, and for decades that option has been readily available to me. Frank Shamrock, who knows from fighting, likes to point out that true self-defense often involves nothing more than the wisdom to avoid bad situations, and the conditioning to run away if necessary.

But I can't stand bullies.

Which brings us to the point of all of this.



Last night (September 27), while running errands, I made the mistake of listening to Mark Levin's syndicated radio show. For the mercifully uninitiated, Mark Levin is a squalid little fleck of snot who pollutes print, cyber-space, and the airwaves with his bilious brand of neo-Trotskyite bloodlust. He has a face for radio, but a voice that sounds like Joe Pesci on helium.

Had he not attached himself to Sean Hannity, Levin – who I gather is an attorney of sorts – would be panting after ambulances, handing out business cards at funerals, selling his brackish blood for a few bucks, and otherwise doing what he had to in order to scrape together enough money to pay his monthly NAMBLA membership dues. (I'm kidding, of course. Levin isn't a member of NAMBLA, never has been, and never will be. Even despicable pederasts have standards, of course.)




Levin makes a point of maintaining a discrete phone line for self-identified “liberal” callers, whom he invites on the air and immediately begins to insult in a way that calls to mind the proverbial nasty little kid who hides behind the playground bully. Almost without exception, the “liberal” callers are well-mannered, like the fellow from New York who called last night to offer a polite rebuke to Levin for calling people names.

“How big are you?” bellowed Levin to the caller, apropos of nothing. When the puzzled caller said he was about 5'11”, Levin – an audible smirk in his voice (yes, there is such a thing) replied, “Well, I'm six foot one! How much do you weigh? It doesn't matter – I could kick your ass all over the state.”

That's the word, I thought, wishing devoutly that I had about five minutes to administer a much-needed attitude correction to little Marky Levin.

Hey, Marky, you shiny-pated dweeb, you witless suck-up and Quisling, here's an official invitation:

I'm about 5'11”, too. I weigh about 275, and none of it jiggles. I can tear off 100 pushups in pretty strict form in roughly the amount of time it takes Sean Hannity to compose an intelligible sentence.

In a moderated debate forum in which you don't have your grubby little finger on the kill button, I would tear you apart like warm bread. If you wanted to take it to the ring or the mat, I'd beat your arrogant ass so hard it would make your queer lover die from a broken heart. (I'm kidding about the "queer lover" bit, of course, since no self-respecting queer would have Levin.)

You want to make this happen? Drop me an e-mail, bee-yatch.

The same offer is open for Sean Hannity, who's obviously too busy pruning his unibrow to crack the cover on a book, including the two he supposedly wrote.




Anybody who's seen the documentary “This Divided State” probably remembers the nauseating spectacle of Sean waddling across the stage at a speech in Orem, Utah, playing to a crowd of thousands of Republican partisans (the type of people who would have done “the wave” at a Nuremberg Rally), mockingly taunting the few liberals who had dared to attend the rally: “Here, little liberal; here, little liberal,” sneered Hannity as if calling a dog.

Such courage.

C'mon Sean – come out from behind the mike and throw down with a Bush administration critic in a forum neither you nor your buddies control. Or just come and throw down. I'd snap you like a dry twig.

The same deal is extended to self-designated “Culture Warrior” and supposed tough guy Bill O'Reilly, although I think Al Franken's got dibs. I don't respect Franken's political views, and his humor is hardly to my taste, but he's a former collegiate wrestler -- and that I respect. If O'Reilly were foolish enough to get in Al's face, Franken would ground and pound the splotchy-faced Prima Donna faster that you could say “loofah.”

I've had more than a belly-full of the preening, smirking, self-enraptured bullies who represent Bush-era, Fox-centered “conservatism,” and I'm sure that millions of others would say the same thing. They suppurate unearned, insufferable self-regard. And they've infected most of the Right with their arrogance. All of these guys are about two dozen stout ass-whippings shy of being civilized people, and I would gladly volunteer to help each of them catch up.

Abu Ghraib, U.S.A.

Senator Joe Lieberman, who lost the Connecticut Democratic primary to Ned Lamont but is running for re-election as an Independent, was the beneficiary of a September 20 fund raising dinner in Florida organized by shopping mall magnate Mel Sembler, the former chief fund raiser for the Republican National Committee.

Sembler is also the head of the Lewis “Scooter” Libby Legal Defense Trust, organized to raise money to pay the legal bills on behalf of Dick Cheney's former chief of staff. Libby is accused of playing a pivotal role in the Bush regime's outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame as a retaliatory strike against Plame's husband, Ambassador Joe Wilson. More significantly, Libby is believed to have played a similarly critical role in helping to devise the regime's policies regarding the detention and torture of terrorist suspects.

Lieberman has earned the gratitude and support of the regime and its mouthpieces (Sean Hannity being both the stupidest and most repulsive example) for the unqualified support he has offered Bush regarding the Iraq war and efforts to transform the presidency into a fully realized dictatorship.

Some doctrinaire neo-Trots, such as Bill Kristol's gang at the Weekly Standard, have suggested that Lieberman would make a suitable replacement for Donald Rumsfeld, should the incumbent Secretary of Aggression and Occupation be persuaded to step down. Others have gone so far as to suggest that Al Gore's 2000 running mate would make a good addition to the Republican Party's 2008 presidential ticket.

Lieberman may be among the most liberal members of the Senate regarding social and economic matters, but he is rock-solid on the two issues that dominate Bush-era Republican conservatism: Foreign war and domestic tyranny; he's unabashedly in favor of both.

Those eager to know who really runs the Republican Party could do a lot worse than study the career of Mel Sembler. He donated $100,000 to the 1988 Bush campaign, and his diligent and effective work as a GOP money-man was rewarded by an ambassadorship to Australia under King George the Elder, and one to Italy under King George the Dumber. He was given a presidential citation honoring him as a “Point of Light” by Bush I, and publicly described as “my buddy” by the inbred, mentally handicapped Bushling who currently infests the White House.



Prior to becoming one of the key players in the GOP fundraising apparat, Sembler operated a chain of drug “rehabilitation” centers called Straight, Inc., which was an outgrowth of an earlier federally funded program called The Seed. A 1974 investigation by the Senate Judiciary Committee found that The Seed employed methods similar to the “highly refined `brainwashing' techniques employed by the North Koreans” against US prisoners of war.

“`Treatment' at The Seed involved 12-hour days of brutal, confrontational group therapy, supplemented with beatings, and isolation if the teens did not comply,” observes investigative journalist Maia Szalavitz, author of Help At Any Cost, a terrifying expose of the contemporary Behavior Modification (BM) industry. “Food and sleep were also limited, kids were completely deprived of privacy, even in the bathroom and they were permitted no reading, music, TV or contact with the outside world. The Congressional investigation gave The Seed a bad name – but Sembler ... and a number of other participants in it believed it saved kids from the evils of drugs.”

At its peak, Sembler's Straight program ran nine “treatment” facilities in seven states. The program received funding from the same government agency that had underwritten The Seed. Straight built upon the Chinese/North Korean methods The Seed had employed by adding its own festive touches; for example, veterans of the program recall “kids being gagged with Kotex pads” and being fed a diet consisting entirely of peanut butter sandwiches.

Many – perhaps most – of the youngsters fed into the Straight program had no documentable problems with drugs or alcohol. Some of them were victims of sexual abuse who, once enrolled in Straight, were brow-beaten , or just beaten, into “admitting” a drug problem. The BM methods used in the program dictated that confessions had to be made in order for a detainee to receive certain privileges – including the power to inflict misery on newer inmates. In addition to being a mind-control cult and concentration camp, Straight was an academy designed to create sadists.

Straight closed down in 1993, but “its tactics live on in hundreds of similar programs holding thousands of teens, some even run by former Straight employees in former Straight buildings,” observes Szalavitz.

Private BM programs, some of which receive government funds, operate offshore in Mexico, Costa Rica, Jamaica, Samoa, and elsewhere. A popular variation on the same approach can be found in wilderness programs like the one featured in the short-lived ABC “reality” series “Brat Camp.” Tens of thousands of American teenagers are consigned to such programs, many of them literally kidnapped from their beds early in the morning by rented thugs who – with parental authorization – seized the teens, restraining them with handcuffs if necessary, and delivered them into the custody of the BM programs.

Many of those BM programs, observes Szalavitz , “utilize punishments banned for use on criminals and by the Geneva Conventions.” At facility examined in Szalavitz's book, “teens were found bound and gagged with nooses around their necks.” In 2001, Mexican authorities discovered a facility run by the Utah-based World-Wide Association of Specialty Programs (WWASP) in which teens had been locked in dog cages. At a WWASP camp in Samoa, teens were sentenced to lengthy confinement a three foot by three foot box similar to North Vietnamese “tiger cages.”

Amberly Knight, a WWASP whistleblower who administered a camp in Costa Rica, testifies that “children were imprisoned in deplorable conditions that we would not tolerate for adult death row inmates in America.” When the atrocities at Abu Ghraib were made public, Knight was “horrified,” because “that's what they do [at some WWASP facilities] every single day....”

These BM programs are an outgrowth of the murderous fraud called the War on Drugs, and they developed and employed many of the methods of physical and psychological abuse now being used in the even more murderous fraud called the War on Terror. Sembler – a perverted little lump of arrogant corruption – is a human bridge connecting those two enterprises. And he's one of the most powerful figures at the highest echelon of the Grand Old (Torture) Party.

This is what those people do. It is who those people are. It is why they are Just Plain Evil.

The Grand Old (Torture) Party

Politically conservative Mormons and Evangelical Christians are divided by serious disputes over doctrine, but presidential aspirant Mitt Romney has found a way to bridge that chasm: He stands “foursquare behind the president” regarding his supposed authority to order summary imprisonment and torture of anybody upon whom he chooses to visit such treatment.

“The people we are facing are individuals who have no interest in the Geneva Convention,” insisted Romney during a swing through South Carolina to court the Evangelical vote. “They slit the throats of our servicemen. They target civilian populations for terror and destruction.”

The crimes committed by Jihadists are manifold and mortifying, of course, but given that tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed in various ways – including decapitation – as a result of the illegal war waged by Washington, there's a moats-vs.--beams issue here that true Christians should recognize.

But “Theo-Cons” of the sort Romney is seeking to seduce would regard such sayings of Jesus as seditious talk – “moral equivalence” that would lead to “appeasement” of our “Islamo-Fascist” enemy.

Come to think of it, wasn't it the Theo-Con faction of Jesus' era who connived in his illegal arrest, detention, torture, trial before a Kangaroo Court, and execution? As I recall, their rallying cry was essentially identical to chief tenet of Bush-era American conservatism: “We have no king but Caesar.”

Jesus was neither a terrorist nor an insurgent, of course, unlike many others who had been imprisoned, tortured, and crucified by Rome. He was just One among many innocent people who got fed into the brutal but necessary machinery of imperial “justice.” The Empire had enemies, of course, and as Pilate understood, sometimes it's tragically necessary for innocent people to suffer in order for civilization to endure.

But I digress ... sort of.

During his most recent visit to South Carolina, Romney's embrace of the totalitarian concept of President-as-torturer-in-chief won the admiring support of the Theo-Cons.
“From his outspoken defense of President Bush on interrogating terrorism suspects to an appeal to Christian conservatives here Friday, Gov. Mitt Romney is increasingly trying to position himself as the leading conservative alternative to Sen. John S. McCain, R-Ariz., in the 2008 presidential race,” reported the Boston Globe.

“He's maximized his window of opportunity very well in South Carolina," observed Scott Malyerck, executive director of South Carolina's state Republican Party. ``He's hitting those conservative buttons that folks are concerned about."

Granted, Romney's positions on abortion and homosexuality have, as they say, evolved since his senate candidacy in 1994, during which he attempted to flank Ted Kennedy to the left. He was elected Governor of Massachusetts as one of those dreaded “moderate” Republicans, and more than a few local critics believe that his enlistment as a conservative footsoldier in the kulturkampf was inspired by simple opportunism.

But Romney put such concerns to rest, as far as South Carolina's Republican leadership is concerned, by publicly pledging his support for the Imperial Executive (a gesture serious Christians also refer to as “bending the kneel to Baal”).

John McCain has made similar efforts to court the Theo-Cons, and he probably would have earned their unqualified support were it not for the fact that he seemed to cavil over the question of torture. This would be understandable, since, as an “illegal combatant” in the war against Vietnam (the causus belli was fraudulent, and war was not declared by Congress – two reasons invoked by the bestial Vietnamese Communists to justify their horrific treatment of our POWs), McCain was subject to many of the same forms of “coercive interrogation” the Theo-Cons consider just and proper.

McCain's opposition as part of a dialectical charade, of course, but even pantomimed opposition to the Divine Leader is considered a severe heresy by the Theo-Cons. It is possible that McCain will find forgiveness before the primaries begin, and if he gets the nomination I could see Romney ending up at the bottom of the ticket.

In any event, Romney's presidential aspirations will inevitably provoke detailed media scrutiny of his religious background, including some elements of Mormon history, doctrine, and practice that will make for lurid copy.

For this reason, while in South Carolina Romney was confronted by Cindy Mosteller, a supporter of John McCain, who has concerns about how the historic Mormon practice of polygamy and the church's teachings about people of African and American ancestry would play with the voting public.

Another brief digression is necessary here.



The practice of polygamy was officially disavowed in 1890, although it continued sub rosa until the early decades of the 20th Century, and remains enshrined in Mormon scriptures as a godly ideal (and, in a theoretical sense, it is still practiced by Mormon men who are “sealed” to both a living wife and a deceased spouse; Mormon Apostle Russell M. Nelson, the LDS Church's point man of the defense of traditional marriage, meets that description).

For nearly 150 years, Mormon doctrine prohibited the ordination of black men to the church's lay priesthood and depicted black skin as the mark of a divine curse.
That policy was changed when LDS President Spencer W. Kimball announced a revelation in June 1978 lifting the ban on ordination. However, that announcement was coupled with a statement from the Mormon hierarchy reiterating its opposition to intermarriage between white and black people.

Exogamy had previously been treated as a problem because it would transmit the “curse” supposedly inherited by black people. Yet once the “curse” was lifted, the official opposition to “race-mixing” remained.

(Furthermore, according to Mormon teachings, dark-skinned people of American Indian ancestry, Latinos, and Polynesians also display in their complexion the mark of divine disfavor; God, as defined in Mormonism, is oddly preoccupied with melanin content as a form of color-coding for righteousness.)

Also likely to be of some concern to the voting public would be the largely ignored, but still authoritative, Mormon teaching that the Constitutional Republic created by America's Founders was merely a precursor to the advent of a Mormon theocracy. Shortly before being murdered in June 1844, Mormon Church founder Joseph Smith organized a secretive group called the Council of Fifty that was intended to be the foundation for a Mormon theocracy.

At the time, Smith was campaigning for the U.S. Presidency , an office to which he considered himself entitled by divine appointment. After the Council of Fifty was created, Smith was anointed “Prophet, Priest and King over Israel on Earth,” which meant (in the words of his loyal disciple Heber C. Kimball) that Smith was “the president pro tem of the world.”

This is a very interesting topic I will have to explore at greater length on another occasion. But back to Mitt Romney and the GOP Theo-Cons....

Cindy Mosteller, a devout Evangelical Christian aware of at least some of these issues, says that she's concerned about their political impact on the Republican Party should Romney become the front-runner.

According to an account in The State, Mosteller “had planned to ask the questions in an open committee session, but Romney nixed that idea by ending his short address with a final `thank you.' The governor then proceeded to meet with the media for about 15 minutes.

Enter Mosteller.

Sensing trouble, Romney aides hurriedly ushered reporters out the door.
Afterward, Mosteller said the governor did not answer any of her questions. She described the meeting as `very tense.'”

“This makes me sick,” complained Republican activist Cindi Costa, who had “pleaded with Mosteller not to confront Romney.” “Your personal faith is not game in politics. It’s a private matter.... [confronting Romney] besmirches her character. It makes her look hateful. This is not what we’re about. The party does not give religious tests.”
Mosteller's action was “awful,” complained said Spartanburg GOP chairman Rick Beltram. “She acted in bad taste,” insisted Katon Dawson, the state GOP chairman.

So here's where we stand: “Coercive interrogation” of prisoners, employing methods similar to those employed by the KGB, is a moral and proper policy with which no patriotic Christian can take issue, and asking polite – albeit – forceful questions about the religious convictions of a man auditioning for the most powerful office in human history is “in bad taste.”

If Mitt Romney were exactly the same candidate – the same vaguely Ted Dansoneque looks, the same privileged upbringing, spewing the same Osterized rhetoric – but was a Muslim rather than a Mormon, the Theo-Cons would hardly be as eager to denounce the use of “religious tests.”

The doctrinal differences that separate Mormon beliefs from mainline Christianity are as numerous and as significant as those dividing Dar al-Islam from the Christian world. In some ways Mormonism is closer kindred to Islam than it is to conventional Christianity.(.pdf)

Indeed, during the 19th century – particularly in the aftermath of the 1857 Mountain Meadows Massacre, the original September 11 terrorist attack – the desert-dwelling, polygamist Mormon theocracy under Brigham Young was often described in terms quite similar to those used in excoriating “Islamo-Fascists” today.

It's also worth pointing out that Mormons were on the receiving end of some of the most abominable abuses of government power in our nation's history, including an “extermination order” issued by Governor Lilburn Boggs of Missouri in 1838. A lot of this follows the familiar and tragic script of innocent people getting the worst of fights their leaders had picked on their behalf, but be that as it may, one would expect that Mormons, of all people, would be reflexively suspicious of unaccountable government power.

Just as we would expect that Christians, who worship as God Incarnate an innocent Man who was treated to every form of torment the perverse ingenuity of professional torturers could devise before giving His Life on our behalf, would have moral compunctions against authorizing any government to engage in torture.

Tomorrow: How a key fundraiser for the Grand Old (Torture) Party profited from illegally imprisoning and brainwashing American youth.

The Republicans: Just Plain Evil

KGB Headquarters Lubyanka Square; in the foreground is a statue of KGB founder Feliks Dzherzhinsky.

At the risk of intruding into the one area in which Jonah Goldberg enjoys unchallenged expertise, I begin today with a reference to The Simpsons -- specifically the episode entitled “Bart Gets an Elephant.”

Through a series of utterly random and implausible events that appear quite rational and predictable in the “Simpsons” universe, elementary school troublemaker Bart Simpson acquires an elephant named Stampy. At some point Stampy escaped and went on a rampage. En route to the Springfield Tar Pits (described by Time magazine as offering “the best in tar entertainment”) the terrified pachyderm barges through the local Republican Party convention. Among the signs displayed at the event to rally the faithful are two reading “We want what's worst for everyone!” and “We're just plain evil!”

Just so.

After chasing Stampy to the tar pits, Homer somehow became mired in them and began to sink into their bituminous depths.

“I'm pretty sure I can struggle my way out,” Homer assured his horrified family. “First” -- he said, reaching down to grab his ankles -- “ I'll just reach in and pull my legs out. Then, I'll pull my arms out with my teeth.”

On the evidence of recent headlines, Homer's approach to freeing himself from the tar pits is pretty much identical to the Bush regime's strategy for getting the US out of the Iraq-mire: The way “out” is to bury ourselves completely in the Mesopotamian morass.

But the critical insight provided by that Simpsons episode was its revelation of the GOP's secret motto.

On more than one occasion I have adverted to the following piece of political folk wisdom:

In Washington, there are two parties: The Stupid Party (the GOP) and The Evil Party (the Democrats). Occasionally they will collaborate to do something that is both stupid and evil. We call this “bipartisanship.”

By common convention, beginning with John Stuart Mill, conservatives have been known as “the Stupid party,” and with the ascendancy of Bush the Dumber, and GOP spokesmen like Sean Hannity, the Republican Party does seem to be the natural habitat of the synapse-challenged among us.

But during the Bush administration, a type of amalgamation has taken place. The Republicans, while losing none of their stupidity, have added to that trait an apparently limitless capacity for pure, unabashed, vindictive evil, while the Democrats, while retaining their penchant for political evil, have apparently come down with a terminal case of the “stupids.”

This is displayed to good effect in the recent “compromise” over the question of torture. From the very beginning it was clear that the Bush-led Republican Party would settle for nothing less than some formula that would enrich presidential powers and put the US government on record – the first in modern history, if I'm not mistaken – as claiming the legal right to engage in torture. Not that Washington would be the first to practice torture, mind you, but rather the first to make a public assertion that it is legal, proper, and moral to commit that crime.

The Bush regime demanded that Congress enshrine that policy into law, and House Republicans eagerly approved the White House version of the proposed law. After a brief but transparently dishonest display of resistance from three Senate Republicans, a slightly modified version of the same basic legislation is now ready for passage. Although it bans nine forms of torture as violations of the War Crimes Act, the key element of the legislation is found in the provision authorizing the president to determine what “grey area” torture methods would be permitted, and how violations would be punished.

Which means, in effect, that in the matter of torture, as in so much else, George W. Bush would be a law unto himself.

And that is how the measure would read before His Imperial Stupidness nullified whatever restrictions it contains by revising it, after the fact, by way of a “signing statement.”

As the irreplaceable James Bovard points out, the “compromise” measure “will de facto permit the CIA to continue torturing people around the world. And the deal will prevent anyone — including Bush administration officials — from being held liable for the torture.”

Eric Margolis of the Toronto Sun, who was the first journalist permitted to visit the KGB dungeon at Lubyanka Square, believes that the torture “compromise” is one of the final steps in the process he calls the “Sovietizing” of the United States:

“We have seen America’s president and vice president, sworn to uphold the Constitution, advocating some of the same interrogation techniques the KGB used at the Lubyanka. They apparently believe beating, freezing, sleep deprivation and near-drowning are necessary to prevent terrorist attacks. So did Stalin. The White House insisted that anyone — including Americans — could be kidnapped and tried in camera using `evidence' obtained by torturing other suspects. Bush & Co. deny the U.S. uses torture but reject the basic law of habeas corpus and U.S. laws against the evil practice. The UN says Bush’s plans violate international law and the Geneva Conventions.”

What may be even worse is the arrogant triumphalism displayed by the Republicans in demanding that the Democrats simply shut up and play along.

“I don't think sitting on the sidelines in the war on terrorism is a good idea,” taunted Kentucky Republican Senator Mitch McConnell. “My advice to the Democrats would be to support us – that would be a great way to take that issue off the table.”
As if that weren't bad enough, consider how the “Christian” Right has dealt with the prospect of America's transformation into a terror and torture regime.

Lou Sheldon is the head of a group calling itself the Traditional Values Coalition, which for the most part has focused on cultural issues, such as abortion, homosexual “rights,” and the like. He recently ventured out of that field to endorse the White House's demand that our laws and policies be radically revised in a neo-Soviet direction.

"Our rules for interrogation need to catch-up with this awful new form of war that is being fought against all of us and the free world,” insists Sheldon. “The post -World War II standards do not apply to this new war. We must redefine how our lawful society treats those who have nothing but contempt for the law and rely on terrorizing the innocent to accomplish their objectives. The lines must be redrawn and then we must pursue these criminals as quickly and as aggressively as the law permits.”

Rev. Sheldon, it appears, has spent too much time communing with the GOP and too little time in the word, which is why he appears to have forgotten God's admonition against moving the “ancient landmark that our fathers have set” (Proverbs 22:28).

Unless Sheldon's idea of “traditional” values pre-dates both the Constitution and the Magna Carta – or perhaps even Law of Moses and the Code of Hammurabi – there's nothing “traditional” in his desire to “redefine” our constitutional and legal standards, or in his demands that legal and ethical standards be “redrawn.”
And pray tell me, what Christian would urge that we “catch-up” with terrorist barbarians?

That question assumes, of course, that it is the terrorists who are in the lead in the race to nihilistic oblivion. Bush and his junta manifestly have “nothing but contempt for the law,” and they – like the Clintonoids before them, who screwed down an embargo on Iraq that killed hundreds of thousands of children – have no compunctions against killing or terrorizing innocent women and children.

I'll have some additional thoughts on this subject in my next installment....

Will The Regime Murder Cory Maye?

Courtesy of the indefatigable (and Pulitzer-worthy) Radney Balko comes a useful glimpse into the inner life of a footsolider in the War on Drugs.

Before sharing the insights of this public-minded paladin of justice, it's necessary to sketch a brief portrait of that pillar of rectitude, and describe the role he played in an incident five years ago that has cost one man his life, and may eventually take the life of another.



Prentiss, Mississippi resident Randy Gentry is described by Balko as “a 51-year-old guy with white hair pulled back into a ponytail [and] a long, white beard....” He also wears glasses, but not for reading, because he's illiterate, which is a tragedy.
There are many decent and generous people from the Deep South who meet that description. Gentry is not among them. He appears to be a professional parasite, a drug user who occasionally works as a “confidential informant” when the local branch of the Leviathan State's police apparatus wants to conduct a no-knock drug raid. Gentry has performed that service on many occasions.

Gentry was the informant whose anonymous tip led to a December 26, 2001 paramilitary raid on a duplex in Prentiss during which officer Ron Jones, the son of the local Police Chief, was killed by then-21-year-old Cory Maye in a case of double mistaken identity. The officers had gotten the wrong address, and illegally raided Maye's side of the duplex. Maye, seeing his home invaded by eleven unidentified armed men wearing black, got his gun and shot one of the intruders.

As I have written before,under the constitution and laws of Mississippi, as well as applicable judicial precedents, Maye is guilty of no crime, let alone capital murder. Yet in 2004 Maye was found guilty of first degree murder and sentenced to die by lethal injection.

Prior to December 2001, Maye had no criminal record. His first unpleasant encounter with the police came when they illegally invaded his home. He had no criminal record. His reaction is more or less what one would expect from any citizen with a sleeping 18-month-old girl (my youngest daughter is about that age) who awoke to find the sanctity of his home violated by a pack of armed thugs.

Maye's case has attracted nowhere near the amount of publicity one would expect (given that it's practically a John Grisham novel brought to life). A new defense team has come to his aid and is petitioning Circuit Judge Michael Eubanks for a new trial.

Gentry testified on Tuesday that he had bought drugs from Jamie Smith, who had been Maye's next-door neighbor, on two occasions. According to a Clarion Ledger account of the hearing, Gentry claims that “Smith told him he got the drugs from Maye,” and on the second occasion, “Smith left to get the drugs from Maye.... Earlier today, Gentry testified that he bought two rocks of cocaine from Smith and said he saw Smith go into Maye's house. He said he saw the drug transaction between the two through a thin window curtain in Maye's house. But he acknowledged it wasn't `as plain as day.'”

Smith, who was the target of the warrant, was charged in the drug raid “but never prosecuted,” notes the Clarion Ledger. “He skipped bail and has never been found.”
Unless we (or at least some jurisdictions in Mississippi) are already operating under Gitmo-ized rules of evidence, Gentry's testimony should have been laughed out of court, since it is predicated on hearsay – that is, the only connection between his dealer, Smith, and Maye is what Gentry says that Smith told him.

Furthermore, Gentry's own brother Sherman (good grief, what self-respecting Southerner would have a “Sherman” as a given name?) has impeached the testimony, “saying there was only one drug purchase and that he drove Randy Gentry to the duplex to make it. He also said his brother left the duplex with a young man who looked about 16 or 17 and was not Maye.”

Most damaging of all to Randy Gentry's credibility is his admission that he had left an incredibly foul and bigoted message on the answering machine of Bob Evans, Maye's defense attorney, after being told that he would be compelled to testify in court.
With the local affiliate of the Leviathan state unwilling to cooperate, Evans tracked down Gentry using a private investigator. The informant was willing to meet with the investigator until he learned that the PI worked for Maye's defense team. He promptly shut up and refused to meet with Evans, who called to tell the informant that if he didn't cooperate voluntarily, he would be forced to through a subpoena.

By way of reply, Gentry – who had “turned himself in” to the Sheriff, rather than cooperate with Maye's defense team – left the following message, which glistens with the subtle, ironic wit we would expect from someone who works as a part-time collaborator with the Regime (I have sanitized it somewhat for your protection):

“Yeah, this is Mr. Randy Gentry. Hey, I got to thinkin' about my friend. I got yo' message this morning, Bob. Y'all -- y'all threaten me all you want to and everything. I don't like f**kin' ni**ers from jump street but call me or whatever and I'll -- but the day I burn five cents on gas to help that f**kin' c**sucker Cory Maye get out of jail is going to be a hell of a damn day. But -- uh -- if you want to talk to me like a f**kin' white man, you talk. But don't threaten me on bullsh**t. Get your NAACP mother***kers -- I don't give a f**k -- ni**ers, bro, f**k ni**ers! But I'll tell you what. That's a good friend of mine they killed, buddy. I'll -- I'll tell you anything. I'll -- I'll be honest with you as f**kin' gum (?) street. But I don't like no motherf**ker talkin' s**t to me or about my friends. Alright, well look here. Call me today and look here. Y'all buy my f**kin' gas, the NAACP buy my f**kin' gas I'll come talk to y'all or whatever. But look here. I'm -- I'm a poor-a** motherf**r too, bro. Call me. You got my f**kin' number. Don't piss me f**kin' off.”

This is a core sample of what passes for the soul of the individual on whose word the State's killing machinery was set in motion, resulting in the death of one young man, and the likely death of a second.

This is the kind of individual – the word “man” may have once applied, but it manifestly doesn't at present – without whom the War on Drugs couldn't proceed: A petty criminal apparently joined at the hip with law enforcement (he refers to Officer Jones as “a good friend of mine” and apparently regards the Pearl River Basin Narcotics Task Force – the federally funded regional agency that conducted the lethal raid – as “my friends” about whom he will countenance no “sh*t”-talking.

Sherman was a trusted and valuable collaborator until he became a source of controversy; now the prosecution is trying to discredit its key witness, even as it insists that the raid, and subsequent prosecution of Maye, were entirely righteous.
This is rather like the way that the Bush regime relied on “intelligence” from the likes of Ahmed Chalabi to justify the invasion of Iraq, and then turned on Chalabi once he was exposed as a crook and a fraud – while insisting, simultaneously, that the war was a good and worthy undertaking and that there really is no point in “re-litigating” the whole issue.

The nature and operations of the regime remain consistent, from the Oval Office down to its tiniest and most obscure local affiliates (Prentiss, Mississippi has a population of about 1,200).

It used to be said that federal intervention was necessary because tiny communities like Prentiss with stagnant puddles of congealed prejudice. Yet in the case of Cory Maye, an innocent young black man (whether he is a saint or sinner, the only “crime” of which he's been convicted was an act that meets the legal definition of justifiable homicide) is likely to die because of a combination of racial bigotry and local corruption that were catalyzed through federal intervention.

[Note: Please ignore the badly mangled version of this essay appearing below.]

A Quick Note

Blogger -- which is a wonderful service -- appears to be having a fit of dyspepsia, which is why my post on the Cory Maye case looks, um, partially digested.

As soon as things settle down, I'll go back and tidy up the post.

Will The Regime Murder Cory Maye?

Courtesy of the indefatigable (and Pulitzer-worthy) Radney Balko comes a useful glimpse into the inner life of a footsolider in the War on Drugs.

Before sharing the insights of this public-minded paladin of justice, it's necessary to sketch a brief portrait of that pillar of rectitude, and describe the role he played in an incident five years ago that has cost one man his life, and may eventually take the life of another.

Prentiss, Mississippi resident Randy Gentry is described by Balko as “a 51-year-old guy with white hair pulled back into a ponytail [and] a long, white beard....” He also wears glasses, but not for reading, because he's illiterate, which is a tragedy.

There are many decent and generous people from the Deep South who meet that general description. Gentry is not among them.

He appears to be a professional parasite, a drug user who occasionally works as a “confidential informant” when the local branch of the Leviathan State's police apparatus wants to conduct a no-knock drug raid. Gentry has performed that service on many occasions.

Gentry was the informant whose anonymous tip led to a December 26, 2001 paramilitary raid on a duplex in Prentiss during which officer Ron Jones, the son of the local Police Chief, was killed by then-21-year-old Cory Maye in a case of double mistaken identity. The officers had gotten the wrong address, and illegally raided Maye's side of the duplex. Maye, seeing his home invaded by eleven unidentified armed men wearing black, got his gun and shot one of the intruders.




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Will The Regime Murder Cory Maye?

Courtesy of the indefatigable (and Pulitzer-worthy) Radney Balko comes a useful glimpse into the inner life of a footsolider in the War on Drugs.

Before sharing the insights of this public-minded paladin of justice, it's necessary to sketch a brief portrait of that pillar of rectitude, and describe the role he played in an incident five years ago that has cost one man his life, and may eventually take the life of another.

Prentiss, Mississippi resident Randy Gentry is described by Balko as “a 51-year-old guy with white hair pulled back into a ponytail [and] a long, white beard....” He also wears glasses, but not for reading, because he's illiterate, which is a tragedy.

There are many decent and generous people from the Deep South who meet that general description. Gentry is not among them.

He appears to be a professional parasite, a drug user who occasionally works as a “confidential informant” when the local branch of the Leviathan State's police apparatus wants to conduct a no-knock drug raid. Gentry has performed that service on many occasions.

Gentry was the informant whose anonymous tip led to a December 26, 2001 paramilitary raid on a duplex in Prentiss during which officer Ron Jones, the son of the local Police Chief, was killed by then-21-year-old Cory Maye in a case of double mistaken identity. The officers had gotten the wrong address, and illegally raided Maye's side of the duplex. Maye, seeing his home invaded by eleven unidentified armed men wearing black, got his gun and shot one of the intruders.




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