Say It Ain't So, Joe

Joe Scarborough, one of my favorite conservative pundits, has disappointed me. I like Joe because, even when we disagree, he is a plain dealer, and he is not a shouter. He gets his point across, and does it with respect.

But today on his morning show on MSNBC he was spouting the same fear mongering, and, to be truthful, cowardly baloney that has been bouncing all over both aisles of Congress, and around the punditry.

In a debate with Ed Schultz, he took the position that if one of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, like Khalid Sheik Mohammed, was moved to a prison in, for example, Pensacola, it would make Pensacola a target for Muslim extremists.

Are you @#$%ing kidding me, Joe?

That is one of the lamest, yellow bellied, as well as unreasoned, hokey, and fallacious claims I have ever heard in my life. What, are these extremists going to somehow pull another 9/11 just so they can bust him out of jail, now that KSM is wide open in the Continental USA?

Have any of the people thinking this way actually said the words out loud to themselves before saying it on national TV? The reasoning is childish, sorry to say.

Not to mention that we have already jailed many "Muslim Extremists," most importantly, but not limited to the perpetrators of the original bombing of the World Trade Center!!!!

As of this writing, about a decade and a half after the guilty verdicts, a half dozen men are still incarcerated in the Federal Prison system, convicted in the very competent Federal Courts after prosecution from a very professional Justice Department. So far, no extremist attacks.

Also, until 9/11, there was a very peculiar fact about terrorism in the USA: the vast bulk of terrorist acts, as well as terrorist related deaths, were the result of good old, made in the USA domestic terrorists. Like Tim McVeigh. And there are tons of these guys, most of them from the KKK, White Power or such related fringe right wing movements.

Still, no extremists.

How about this: we use the very competent, very fair, very tried and true legal system we have, that is also very Constitutional. That way there is no second guessing the results, and we look like the good guys we think we are by actually living up to our ideals.

Good enough for ya?

...To Defend The Constitution...

...against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

This is the oath of office that the President of the United States of America takes.  Not to protect the citizens, or defend the "homeland" [as unwittingly insidious a word that ever existed], or keep us safe.

You wanna feel safer?  Buy a 12 gauge, or subscribe to Slomin's.

And the Constitution, the overarching uniting force of the country [as opposed to such emotive items, like the flag or apple pie], extends its protections to everyone on American soil, citizen or no, whether that soil is in the lower forty-eight, a consulate in a far flung land, and even to "enemy combatants" in custody at Guantanamo Bay.  Sorry, but that's the breaks.  Hey, being an Enlightenment Document means you have to live up to the ideals of the Enlightenment.

Lousy Founding Fathers and their lousy ideals.

Oh, and THIS is what the phrase "Freedom isn't free" really means.  It means you have to abide by the law, and respect the rights of the lowest of the low, even when it makes you wretch.

So, suffice it to say that I am distressed to have learned that President Obama has decided for the second time this week to reverse himself and go W.  If you recall, earlier this week he decided to NOT release photos of abuse of "detainees" [as odious a euphemism as there is in our doublethink world], and now he has decided to go forward with military tribunals in trying certain suspects of terrorist acts, including the plotting of the attacks of September 11, 2001.  Happily, he has decided to permit some basic, Constitutionally mandated protections, like choice of counsel, limiting hearsay evidence, and prohibiting the use of evidence obtained through that tried and failed method of torture. 

Sorry, Mr. Obama, that's not good enough.  I believe that our Federal Judiciary and the Justice Department are more than up to the task of trying these suspected criminals, even if they are terrible people.

And if the Bush Administration fornicated with the proverbial canine by torturing confessions, or by just torturing, and thereby violating the Eighth Amendment's mandate that "Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines be imposed, NOR CRUEL AND UNUSUAL PUNISHMENT INFLICTED," making prosecution difficult or impossible, then so be it.

There must be some comeuppance for our failure to abide by our own law, nay, our organizing principles.  This is not a matter of hating America first, as I am sure the Faux News crowd would clamor, but a matter of loving the ideals of my country more than my last President.

This is what "We are a country of laws and not men" means.  We are not subject to the whims of our leadership, and rather, are commonly bounded by the law, and the ultimate law is enshrined in the Constitution.  And by extension of that logic the Constitution IS the country, not the dirt under your feet.  Without it we may as well be barbarians.

And the Constitution demands of us something better than political convenience, or reacting out of fear.  It demands we live up to it, so that we might be that City on a Hill, that last best hope for the world.

Otherwise, we are just another country out of hundreds now, and thousands in history.  And our self aggrandizing rhetoric is nothing.  Nothing but words.  And if so, then so is that sacred piece of paper.