Where battlefield sometimes means “Criticizes the US publicly and vehemently for having imprisoned them for years with no cause.” Which is so unreasonable.
Sure, if you're willing to handwave the murder, kidnapping, blowing things up, and rejoining Al-Qaeda, then they're innocent little lambs.
The question is why is it a good idea to handwave that part of the situation?
They all need to be fired and the entire division dismantled and rebuilt from the ground up.
Agreed. Interesting that they weren't thrown under the bus when this blew up.
The only real reasons why they wouldn't be are "management failure" and "plot"... and to be fair my inclination is to go with incompetence where possible.
The important part is we are killing people who are not engaged in any active hostilities against anyone....
Being a member of Al-Qaeda, by definition, means you're "engaged in active hostilities". We can shoot soldiers, even if they're not at that moment shooting at us. We can also shoot at the other members of their army who are not soldiers, just like they get to shoot at anyone wearing a uniform.
‘Kill that guy’ is not a normal military objective.
Bin-Laden appears to have changed that.
The example I gave is a perfectly reasonable generalized example of what the CIA program is doing.
Source? Better yet, examples?
And the reason our military can’t work *with* their military to regain control of that area is… …that that would be massively unpopular in that country. So much so there would be backlash.
So we can't do it, they can't or won't do it, and anyone trying to becomes unpopular. That means whatever we want to do is going to be ugly, and we're into cost effective damage control. The expensive way to do this is invade the country, like after 911.
Pretending all their dislikes are unreasonable, while at the same time arguing it’s perfectly fine to bomb their country, is a bit absurd.
We're bombing their country because their dislikes are unreasonable. All of the behavior I described predates us bombing them. We're fighting them in their home because 911 proved they're going to knock down buildings here if we don't.
We are exporting a lack of democracy.
So if their version of "democracy" means homosexuals and heretics are put to death, women have no rights, and 911 attackers are celebrated and shown to the population and what they should do, you're good with all of that? You view that as the least evil thing we can do in an imperfect world? After 911 we should have just turned the other cheek because invading them would be unpopular?
a lot of pro-Democracy Arab Spring movements rapidly turned into Islam-based anti-American movements, which seems a bit odd, Islamic rule is no fan of democracies...
Hardly "odd". Islamists believe their religion should be running the government and it doesn't matter how they gain power. They're just fine being voted in, they're not fine being voted out. After they were voted in they take steps to make sure they'll never leave, and that's a big problem. So they're Islamists first and Democrats only as long as they win.
If there is a reason the people of a country have no say in what is happening in their country, the US government is probably to blame for that in some manner
The US government's ability to get other countries to play nice with their people is overstated.
No. Torture is not legal, and no investigation has found it to be.
True, but this raises the "what is torture" issue and the legal definition may differ from the practical and/or common sense one. The Administration did a review to see where the lines were drawn, and what were clear lines after 911 became grayer years after it.
You want to argue we’re at *war* with them, that’s something else entirely... I have no problem with holding them indefinitely *as POWs*. (POWs from a non-signatory, but POWs none-the-less.)
Agreed, and Good.
Of course, a rather large problem is that a lot of the people in Gitmo weren’t even that. They were people handed over for money (Which we shouldn’t have held at all),
I assume Bush (and if not him, Obama) have already released people like that. Bush released hundreds of people, Obama entered office thinking Gitmo was as you say with a few serious criminals who could be tried. Some of the people he released ended up on the battlefield again and what we have left is the 'too dangerous to release but who can't be taken to court'.
it functionally didn’t exist…and then, eventually, it *did* end up having to let almost everyone go!
Numbers? I haven't found anything which is very user friendly on this. I can't tell if the number let go via this process was small or large.
All true, but if there's no time to cross every "T" and dot every "I", then there will be T's and I's which aren't done... which means a lawsuit going to the SC on whether or not their new member is legit (although disenfranchising a third of the population should also do that).
At that point the "fairest" result would be Garland reclusing himself and the SC ruling 8-0 that you can't pull this sort of nonsense any more than you can have Poll Taxes or Jim Crow laws... which gives the Dems all the negative rep without the benefit.
The least fair result would be the SC ruling 5-4 that it was fine but aka Bush-Gore that it was a one off, seriously damaging the legitimacy of the SC itself.
I very much doubt the 8 Supremes would want their own legitimacy tarnished so harshly, so my expectation is we'd see something close to the former rather than the later. However it'd be interesting... it'd probably also hand the GOP+Trump a super majority and I'd really rather not see that.
Roberts' nomination was withdrawn and resubmitted because of paperwork issues after Rehnquist died. If memory serves, just that part of it, with everything "expedited", took days, not the minutes they have and certainly not seconds.
It isn’t an accurate description of who the *CIA* is killing with drone strikes.
So we transfer the program to the Pentagon.
The CIA, for a made-up example...
If we're going to make things up then we might as well claim they're always targeting nuclear terrorists or the next 911.
Now, if you want to claim the people in Al-Qaeda that were shooting at American forces in Afghanistan were soldiers (Despite not representing a country), I can see that justification.
I do claim that. They have a command structure, take orders, are not motivated by money, have ranks, promotions, act to enforce politics, etc. They're a non-state army.
ISIS soldiers *are* soldiers, period.
Agreed. But they were also soldiers before they managed to take territory, and they'll be soldiers after they lose their territory.
Us putting drones in their air *also* raises sovereignty issues... America should be exporting the *rule-of-law*, not we-can-kill-anyone-we-want.
This is a last resort, not a first. If the states in question had the ability to exercise sovereignty over these areas we'd have them do so or go to war. Rule-of-law isn't something we can simply give them, they don't have a police force which can arrest potential mass murderers.
Thus building resentment against a) the US
True. The US does lots of things which are deeply unpopular in that part of the world. They disliked our killing Bin Laden, our letting women have rights, our letting people have the freedom to leave their religion, our tolerating Jews&Gays, and so forth.
In reality, if a country cannot control its own territory, a better solution would be for it to ask for help from US or some multi-national forces to fix that.
Their government viewed this as a problem, but not a priority. Getting control would be painful enough that they've just ignored the problem until we got dragged into this mess.
So now it's a huge embarrassment that we are repeatedly pointing out their total lack of sovereignty by blowing up people they should be arresting. We'll stop when the war is over or they get control. If we weren't doing this our expectation is they'd be doing at best nothing and at worst making the situation worse.
No. Gitmo was nothing like a proper POW camp. For one thing, we tortured people there, which is illegal under Geneva *even if* the country is not a signatory. As is humiliating people.
Gitmo tried to go right up to the line on what was legal, they might have stepped over it (although every investigation has shown not technically), but in any case everything you're pointing out can be (and has been) fixed with the stroke of a pen. It's a POW camp where the people are going to be held until the war with Al Qaeda... which might be a century.
Al Qaeda in Iraq barely existed before 9/11, and for several years after it. Additionally Al Qaeda in Iraq didn’t (and really never had) any real connection to Al Qaeda in the first place, and certainly wasn’t let in on their 9/11 plan. The odds of anyone at all in current ISIS even *knowing* about 9/11 in advance, much less having anything to do with planning it, is almost nill.
This is a bunch of meaningless quibbles. Legally we're at war with Al Qaeda and it's affiliates. When you join an army (such as Al Qaeda) then you're on the hook for the war. Wars can go on for decades or centuries. If a war goes on long enough then everyone involved in the openly will be dead.
And as for them committing genocide…yes, and they could be charged with that war crime. However *we* are not a signatory to the ICC, so us trying to prosecute war crimes is a bit dubious.
The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide became effective in 1951, we signed in 1948 and fully ratified it 1988. In 1994 the Clinton administration did legal, ethical, and linguistic back-flips to avoid calling the Rwandan situation "genocide" because they thought the US would then be obligated to go to war.
Prosecuting them for "war crimes" may or may not be useful (even in Nazi Germany we prosecuted very few people), but that's a side note.
We need to hold them until hostilities are over...
True, but hostilities aren't over simply because ISIS loses its land. Hostilities are over when the other side surrenders and/or there is no army that POWs can return to. This probably won't be true in our lifetime.
As Geneva put it, "...no repatriated person may be utilized in active military service."
At the moment, our expectation is that the POWs we let go will try to rejoin their war. Ergo we shouldn't be letting them go, even if they haven't committed any war crimes. You don't need an excuse for holding hostile soldiers POW for as long as the war goes on.
There nothing in Geneva that treats soldiers differently if they break the rules.
... the concept of an unlawful combatant is included in the Third Geneva Convention...
...Article 5 of the Third Geneva Convention states ...After... determined that an individual detainee is an unlawful combatant, the "detaining power" may choose to accord the detained unlawful combatant the rights and privileges of a prisoner of war as described in the Third Geneva Convention, but is not required to do so....
...The Geneva Conventions do not recognize any lawful status for combatants in conflicts not involving two or more nation states. A state in such a conflict is legally bound only to observe Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions and may ignore all the other Articles.
It continues to infuriate me that we’ve all mostly accepted the BS notion that this was in any way illegitimate.
Kennedy's seat going to the GOP speaks for itself, as does needing to put tremendous pressure on Roberts so he'd rewrite the ACA to pass Constitutional muster.
Because when I read about incidents like Rosewood, extrajudicial white mob action seems to be how people died. That *backed up with full military force* thing seems more a description of Nazi Germany than the Old South.
white mob action frequently occurred in towns throughout north and central Florida and went unchecked by local law enforcement. Extrajudicial violence against blacks was so common that it seldom was covered by newspapers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosewood_massacre
Unfortunately, instead of enforcing the *clear letter of the law*, the IRS has, *for decades*, tried to invent dumbass guidelines about what these groups can and cannot do.
Ignoring that we shouldn't want the gov regulating political speech, what you're pointing out is that for decades the actual policy has been that these groups can do what they've been doing.
There are plenty of actually *established and powerful* groups that the IRS could have targeted, like the NRA, instead of a random smattering of brand-new Tea Party groups...
The IRS targeted soft groups that didn't have lawyers. Targeting the weak and vulnerable with new interpretations of policy doesn't imply that the IRS believed what they were doing was fine.
Maybe…if they sound like they’re political, let’s ask them some stupid shit to find out if they’re political?’
Like ask for donor lists which, if supplied, will somehow end up in the hands of groups which abuse the people on those lists? Further the statement that liberal and conservative groups were treated the same seems to be wrong.
November 2010 version of the IRS's BOLO list indicates that liberal and conservative groups were in fact treated differently because liberal groups could be approved for tax-exempt status by line agents, while tea party groups could not... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRS_targeting_controversy#Controversial_intensive_scrutiny_of_political_groups
But supposedly these were misjudgements by front line people? And we're supposed to think the groups being targeted weren't chosen because of the political leanings of the higher level people who then pled the 5th? And all this in the context of evidence repeatedly "disappearing".
If we're looking at gross incompetence (as opposed to an Obama loyalist misusing the machinery of government), why wasn't anyone fired? Could it be that if they fired someone, he'd say he was acting under orders?
We've got two problems here. The first was the IRS targeting people inappropriately and making people spin for years. The 2nd was a total lack of accountability. Who made the choices to target these groups? I'd be fine with giving everyone involved immunity from legal judgements if they'd come clean, but so far that doesn't seem to have happened. We've got finger pointing at the nameless and assurances that there's nothing to see and we should just trust that.
I don’t know what campaign you were watching, but Trump ran, in effectively no part, on who he’d appoint.
Here is the NYT on Trump's SC list. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/19/us/politics/donald-trump-supreme-court-nominees.html
The WSJ was thrilled with the list. Trump apparently copied it from some right wing think tank. Intelligent, serious people spent years figuring out a list of the best conservative jurists; Trump spent a few minutes copying and re-branding it as his own.
Stealing other people's ideas, repackaging them, and then claiming credit is a professional skill for a politician. I thought it was brilliant, an attempt to get everyone who cares about the SC being conservative to look past Trump's many flaws and join his coalition.
NBC talks about the impact of the list here (at 6:47:20): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pf_DZlaY2sc
Among other things it got him the backing of Mitch McConnell.
Because there’s a rule that once he’s lost he can’t be renominated?
Voting him down rips away all of the "process" issues people are complaining about, and I doubt there's enough time to renominate him.
Personally I can't think of a better way to resolve the tilt of the court than an election. And I can't think of a worse way to resolve it than disenfranchising a third of the electorate.
Given that the Garland blockade didn’t seem to have any effect upon the fortunes of GOP incumbent Senators at all, it may well be the case that the public doesn’t care about this stuff.
Don't care? More likely they actively approved of what the Senate did. The Senate isn't subject to Gerrymandering, a large the number of Senators were elected with the expressed purpose of opposing Obama.
The Dem's problems haven't been with the GOP, it's been with the voters. It was the evil voters who gave +9 Senate seats to the GOP in 2014 to prevent Obama from doing his thing. It was the evil voters who gave the Presidency to Trump, in no small part because of the SC (it certainly wasn't because of Trump's winning personality).
Disenfranchising very large numbers of voters might get what you want, but ignoring the voters is how the Dems ended up in this situation and I doubt doubling down leads to popularity.
Or any appointment at all, depending on which party is holds the White House and the Senate.
This is the 10th time the Senate has refused to take action on the Prez's choice. http://www.senate.gov/pagelayout/reference/nominations/Nominations.htm
We've also had Senate reject the choice (12), and the Prez withdrawn the choice because of filibuster and/or because he knew it'd fail (another 12).
The Senate is well within its Constitutional authority to do this, and they're even within their Constitutional authority to do it this way.
The GOP has already poisoned the well by playing shenanigans with procedure.
The Constitution says one of the Senate's jobs is to prevent the President from making SC picks of which they disapprove. That's a world of difference from a minority of the Senate taking control for a few minutes.
So, again, I’m not sure why you think Dems doing the same thing might make our institutions collapse...
You don't see a problem with a third of the Senate overturning the recently expressed will of the voters? Trump ran, in large part, on who he'd put on the SC.
These Senators would need to run on this vote, and giving a big middle finger to the electorate, in the next election, which is going to be pretty brutal for the Dems anyway. This kind of stunt might hand the GOP a super-majority.
Asking those questions retrospectively to GWB and Obama makes them look pretty bad, and they both still won.
Further a lot of the going-over-a-cliff problems they had were ideological in nature. For ideological reasons, even though it was unpopular, Bush tried to reform SS and Obama did pass Obamacare. Trump probably doesn't have an ideology.
Trump won't privatize Medicare unless there's public support, he might prove better (or worse) at getting support than either GWB or Obama but that's a different issue. In 4 years our clown in chief will have a track record, and if he's shown that he's sane and a great manager, that's probably enough.
Also imagine how much of a blow out the election would have been if Trump hadn't done his top 20 most insane stunts, i.e. if he'd started with the same team he ended with.
Well, that mixed with the economy doing fairly well and Trump being fairly well-liked in the buildup to November 2018. What are the odds of that last part, though?
Probably pretty high. Insane-Trump-the-racist won the election, but he lost 4% of the GOP in the process (from the NYT's polling).
If we assume Trump is actually pretty sane, not a racist, and it was a show; Then after 4 years of not blowing up the world or the economy he'll be still-vulgar-but-the-less-risky-choice. So he'd get that 4% back. He'll also have all the advantages of incumbency.
But it’s not scorched earth. “We think that the last election’s voters should decide who fills the current SC opening and while we admit that the Senate has a roll to play in advice and consent we also believe that they’ve spoken regarding their views. Those in favor? They “ayes” have it!”
They'd be going back two elections, to 2012.
In 2014 the GOP picked up 9 Senate seats by running against letting Obama do his thing.
In 2016 the GOP picked up the Presidency, effectively ruling out a 3rd term for Obama.
Giving a big middle finger to the results of the last 2 election cycles is unlikely to result in good things, and speaks well to the narrative of the Dems being corrupt, smug, elitists who don't listen to the voters. To that you'd add power hungry, not respecting rules, and untrustworthy.
This might play well with their base but claiming 33 Senate votes is "enough" would not play well with the independents for years... that "might" not matter if Trump screws up bad enough, but in a 50/50 country you probably don't want this kind of rep.
Trump is without shame, but he's got Billions of dollars and decades of practice. If his kids can't/don't/won't copy his act then odds are good that no one else can either.
I can think of some PC branches which could use trimming, but the normal things which are illegal or banned are still illegal or banned.
Because you can’t have everything. But sometimes, you can have some of the things you want if you’re willing to let others have some of the things that they want.
Provided they're actually winning to let Islam, the Atheists, and the Church of Satan be up there too I think it's fine.... but I don't think they are willing to share.
To be fair, something Trump is doing is stating that jobs are important, and bringing jobs into the list of things gov policy effects is a non-trivial thing too.
Trump goes "rah, rah, look at the jobs I'm saving".
Obama goes "no pipeline for you, jobs don't matter".
If this is a deliberate, think about jobs thing, then it's probably fine. If it's just a distraction, then it's not.
The U.S. Census Bureau reported that in 2006 minorities make up 60% of the prison population with African-Americans at 41 percent of the 2 million prison and jail inmates, Hispanics 19 percent and whites 37 percent. According to a 2006 survey of 45 correctional systems in the United States, the racial breakdown of correctional staffs ranges from 0.4% black (in Utah) to 84.4% black (in Mississippi). The nationwide average of minority correctional staff members is approximately 29%.[1] In some organizations or locations, the large representation of minorities among correctional staffs is a reflection of the regional population pool of employees.
On “Confession of a Liberal Gun Owner”
Sure, if you're willing to handwave the murder, kidnapping, blowing things up, and rejoining Al-Qaeda, then they're innocent little lambs.
The question is why is it a good idea to handwave that part of the situation?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_former_Guantanamo_Bay_detainees_alleged_to_have_returned_to_terrorism
"
Agreed. Interesting that they weren't thrown under the bus when this blew up.
The only real reasons why they wouldn't be are "management failure" and "plot"... and to be fair my inclination is to go with incompetence where possible.
"
Being a member of Al-Qaeda, by definition, means you're "engaged in active hostilities". We can shoot soldiers, even if they're not at that moment shooting at us. We can also shoot at the other members of their army who are not soldiers, just like they get to shoot at anyone wearing a uniform.
Bin-Laden appears to have changed that.
Source? Better yet, examples?
So we can't do it, they can't or won't do it, and anyone trying to becomes unpopular. That means whatever we want to do is going to be ugly, and we're into cost effective damage control. The expensive way to do this is invade the country, like after 911.
We're bombing their country because their dislikes are unreasonable. All of the behavior I described predates us bombing them. We're fighting them in their home because 911 proved they're going to knock down buildings here if we don't.
So if their version of "democracy" means homosexuals and heretics are put to death, women have no rights, and 911 attackers are celebrated and shown to the population and what they should do, you're good with all of that? You view that as the least evil thing we can do in an imperfect world? After 911 we should have just turned the other cheek because invading them would be unpopular?
Hardly "odd". Islamists believe their religion should be running the government and it doesn't matter how they gain power. They're just fine being voted in, they're not fine being voted out. After they were voted in they take steps to make sure they'll never leave, and that's a big problem. So they're Islamists first and Democrats only as long as they win.
The US government's ability to get other countries to play nice with their people is overstated.
True, but this raises the "what is torture" issue and the legal definition may differ from the practical and/or common sense one. The Administration did a review to see where the lines were drawn, and what were clear lines after 911 became grayer years after it.
Agreed, and Good.
I assume Bush (and if not him, Obama) have already released people like that. Bush released hundreds of people, Obama entered office thinking Gitmo was as you say with a few serious criminals who could be tried. Some of the people he released ended up on the battlefield again and what we have left is the 'too dangerous to release but who can't be taken to court'.
Numbers? I haven't found anything which is very user friendly on this. I can't tell if the number let go via this process was small or large.
On “The Backup QB Could Try A Hail Mary As The Clock Runs Out”
All true, but if there's no time to cross every "T" and dot every "I", then there will be T's and I's which aren't done... which means a lawsuit going to the SC on whether or not their new member is legit (although disenfranchising a third of the population should also do that).
At that point the "fairest" result would be Garland reclusing himself and the SC ruling 8-0 that you can't pull this sort of nonsense any more than you can have Poll Taxes or Jim Crow laws... which gives the Dems all the negative rep without the benefit.
The least fair result would be the SC ruling 5-4 that it was fine but aka Bush-Gore that it was a one off, seriously damaging the legitimacy of the SC itself.
I very much doubt the 8 Supremes would want their own legitimacy tarnished so harshly, so my expectation is we'd see something close to the former rather than the later. However it'd be interesting... it'd probably also hand the GOP+Trump a super majority and I'd really rather not see that.
"
Roberts' nomination was withdrawn and resubmitted because of paperwork issues after Rehnquist died. If memory serves, just that part of it, with everything "expedited", took days, not the minutes they have and certainly not seconds.
On “Confession of a Liberal Gun Owner”
So we transfer the program to the Pentagon.
If we're going to make things up then we might as well claim they're always targeting nuclear terrorists or the next 911.
I do claim that. They have a command structure, take orders, are not motivated by money, have ranks, promotions, act to enforce politics, etc. They're a non-state army.
Agreed. But they were also soldiers before they managed to take territory, and they'll be soldiers after they lose their territory.
This is a last resort, not a first. If the states in question had the ability to exercise sovereignty over these areas we'd have them do so or go to war. Rule-of-law isn't something we can simply give them, they don't have a police force which can arrest potential mass murderers.
True. The US does lots of things which are deeply unpopular in that part of the world. They disliked our killing Bin Laden, our letting women have rights, our letting people have the freedom to leave their religion, our tolerating Jews&Gays, and so forth.
Their government viewed this as a problem, but not a priority. Getting control would be painful enough that they've just ignored the problem until we got dragged into this mess.
So now it's a huge embarrassment that we are repeatedly pointing out their total lack of sovereignty by blowing up people they should be arresting. We'll stop when the war is over or they get control. If we weren't doing this our expectation is they'd be doing at best nothing and at worst making the situation worse.
Gitmo tried to go right up to the line on what was legal, they might have stepped over it (although every investigation has shown not technically), but in any case everything you're pointing out can be (and has been) fixed with the stroke of a pen. It's a POW camp where the people are going to be held until the war with Al Qaeda... which might be a century.
This is a bunch of meaningless quibbles. Legally we're at war with Al Qaeda and it's affiliates. When you join an army (such as Al Qaeda) then you're on the hook for the war. Wars can go on for decades or centuries. If a war goes on long enough then everyone involved in the openly will be dead.
The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide became effective in 1951, we signed in 1948 and fully ratified it 1988. In 1994 the Clinton administration did legal, ethical, and linguistic back-flips to avoid calling the Rwandan situation "genocide" because they thought the US would then be obligated to go to war.
Prosecuting them for "war crimes" may or may not be useful (even in Nazi Germany we prosecuted very few people), but that's a side note.
True, but hostilities aren't over simply because ISIS loses its land. Hostilities are over when the other side surrenders and/or there is no army that POWs can return to. This probably won't be true in our lifetime.
As Geneva put it, "...no repatriated person may be utilized in active military service."
At the moment, our expectation is that the POWs we let go will try to rejoin their war. Ergo we shouldn't be letting them go, even if they haven't committed any war crimes. You don't need an excuse for holding hostile soldiers POW for as long as the war goes on.
... the concept of an unlawful combatant is included in the Third Geneva Convention...
...Article 5 of the Third Geneva Convention states ...After... determined that an individual detainee is an unlawful combatant, the "detaining power" may choose to accord the detained unlawful combatant the rights and privileges of a prisoner of war as described in the Third Geneva Convention, but is not required to do so....
...The Geneva Conventions do not recognize any lawful status for combatants in conflicts not involving two or more nation states. A state in such a conflict is legally bound only to observe Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions and may ignore all the other Articles.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unlawful_combatant
On “The Backup QB Could Try A Hail Mary As The Clock Runs Out”
Kennedy's seat going to the GOP speaks for itself, as does needing to put tremendous pressure on Roberts so he'd rewrite the ACA to pass Constitutional muster.
On “Confession of a Liberal Gun Owner”
Because when I read about incidents like Rosewood, extrajudicial white mob action seems to be how people died. That *backed up with full military force* thing seems more a description of Nazi Germany than the Old South.
white mob action frequently occurred in towns throughout north and central Florida and went unchecked by local law enforcement. Extrajudicial violence against blacks was so common that it seldom was covered by newspapers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosewood_massacre
Ignoring that we shouldn't want the gov regulating political speech, what you're pointing out is that for decades the actual policy has been that these groups can do what they've been doing.
The IRS targeted soft groups that didn't have lawyers. Targeting the weak and vulnerable with new interpretations of policy doesn't imply that the IRS believed what they were doing was fine.
Like ask for donor lists which, if supplied, will somehow end up in the hands of groups which abuse the people on those lists? Further the statement that liberal and conservative groups were treated the same seems to be wrong.
November 2010 version of the IRS's BOLO list indicates that liberal and conservative groups were in fact treated differently because liberal groups could be approved for tax-exempt status by line agents, while tea party groups could not...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRS_targeting_controversy#Controversial_intensive_scrutiny_of_political_groups
But supposedly these were misjudgements by front line people? And we're supposed to think the groups being targeted weren't chosen because of the political leanings of the higher level people who then pled the 5th? And all this in the context of evidence repeatedly "disappearing".
If we're looking at gross incompetence (as opposed to an Obama loyalist misusing the machinery of government), why wasn't anyone fired? Could it be that if they fired someone, he'd say he was acting under orders?
We've got two problems here. The first was the IRS targeting people inappropriately and making people spin for years. The 2nd was a total lack of accountability. Who made the choices to target these groups? I'd be fine with giving everyone involved immunity from legal judgements if they'd come clean, but so far that doesn't seem to have happened. We've got finger pointing at the nameless and assurances that there's nothing to see and we should just trust that.
On “The Backup QB Could Try A Hail Mary As The Clock Runs Out”
Here is the NYT on Trump's SC list. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/19/us/politics/donald-trump-supreme-court-nominees.html
The WSJ was thrilled with the list. Trump apparently copied it from some right wing think tank. Intelligent, serious people spent years figuring out a list of the best conservative jurists; Trump spent a few minutes copying and re-branding it as his own.
Stealing other people's ideas, repackaging them, and then claiming credit is a professional skill for a politician. I thought it was brilliant, an attempt to get everyone who cares about the SC being conservative to look past Trump's many flaws and join his coalition.
NBC talks about the impact of the list here (at 6:47:20): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pf_DZlaY2sc
Among other things it got him the backing of Mitch McConnell.
"
Voting him down rips away all of the "process" issues people are complaining about, and I doubt there's enough time to renominate him.
Personally I can't think of a better way to resolve the tilt of the court than an election. And I can't think of a worse way to resolve it than disenfranchising a third of the electorate.
"
Don't care? More likely they actively approved of what the Senate did. The Senate isn't subject to Gerrymandering, a large the number of Senators were elected with the expressed purpose of opposing Obama.
The Dem's problems haven't been with the GOP, it's been with the voters. It was the evil voters who gave +9 Senate seats to the GOP in 2014 to prevent Obama from doing his thing. It was the evil voters who gave the Presidency to Trump, in no small part because of the SC (it certainly wasn't because of Trump's winning personality).
Disenfranchising very large numbers of voters might get what you want, but ignoring the voters is how the Dems ended up in this situation and I doubt doubling down leads to popularity.
"
This is the 10th time the Senate has refused to take action on the Prez's choice. http://www.senate.gov/pagelayout/reference/nominations/Nominations.htm
We've also had Senate reject the choice (12), and the Prez withdrawn the choice because of filibuster and/or because he knew it'd fail (another 12).
The Senate is well within its Constitutional authority to do this, and they're even within their Constitutional authority to do it this way.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/05/senate-obama-merrick-garland-supreme-court-nominee/482733/
IMHO it's Constitutionally suspect to deliberately disenfranchise a third of the electorate.
"
If he's good enough to sell the elderly something like that, then maybe it'd be good policy. It'd certainly be how Democracy is supposed to work.
"
The GOP could do a lot worse than have a President which protects them from their worst instincts.
"
A minor quibble. Harriett Miers didn't end up on the SC. Obama needs the approval of the Senate, he doesn't have it.
"
The Constitution says one of the Senate's jobs is to prevent the President from making SC picks of which they disapprove. That's a world of difference from a minority of the Senate taking control for a few minutes.
You don't see a problem with a third of the Senate overturning the recently expressed will of the voters? Trump ran, in large part, on who he'd put on the SC.
These Senators would need to run on this vote, and giving a big middle finger to the electorate, in the next election, which is going to be pretty brutal for the Dems anyway. This kind of stunt might hand the GOP a super-majority.
"
Asking those questions retrospectively to GWB and Obama makes them look pretty bad, and they both still won.
Further a lot of the going-over-a-cliff problems they had were ideological in nature. For ideological reasons, even though it was unpopular, Bush tried to reform SS and Obama did pass Obamacare. Trump probably doesn't have an ideology.
Trump won't privatize Medicare unless there's public support, he might prove better (or worse) at getting support than either GWB or Obama but that's a different issue. In 4 years our clown in chief will have a track record, and if he's shown that he's sane and a great manager, that's probably enough.
Also imagine how much of a blow out the election would have been if Trump hadn't done his top 20 most insane stunts, i.e. if he'd started with the same team he ended with.
"
Probably pretty high. Insane-Trump-the-racist won the election, but he lost 4% of the GOP in the process (from the NYT's polling).
If we assume Trump is actually pretty sane, not a racist, and it was a show; Then after 4 years of not blowing up the world or the economy he'll be still-vulgar-but-the-less-risky-choice. So he'd get that 4% back. He'll also have all the advantages of incumbency.
"
They'd be going back two elections, to 2012.
In 2014 the GOP picked up 9 Senate seats by running against letting Obama do his thing.
In 2016 the GOP picked up the Presidency, effectively ruling out a 3rd term for Obama.
Giving a big middle finger to the results of the last 2 election cycles is unlikely to result in good things, and speaks well to the narrative of the Dems being corrupt, smug, elitists who don't listen to the voters. To that you'd add power hungry, not respecting rules, and untrustworthy.
This might play well with their base but claiming 33 Senate votes is "enough" would not play well with the independents for years... that "might" not matter if Trump screws up bad enough, but in a 50/50 country you probably don't want this kind of rep.
"
:Shrug: If the Dems get serious about it, then the GOP can vote down Garland a day before they leave.
There, everyone would be happy because Garland got his vote and so forth.
On “Linky Friday #195: Pillars of Sand”
Trump is without shame, but he's got Billions of dollars and decades of practice. If his kids can't/don't/won't copy his act then odds are good that no one else can either.
I can think of some PC branches which could use trimming, but the normal things which are illegal or banned are still illegal or banned.
"
Provided they're actually winning to let Islam, the Atheists, and the Church of Satan be up there too I think it's fine.... but I don't think they are willing to share.
"
4% growth and all these issues go away.
To be fair, something Trump is doing is stating that jobs are important, and bringing jobs into the list of things gov policy effects is a non-trivial thing too.
Trump goes "rah, rah, look at the jobs I'm saving".
Obama goes "no pipeline for you, jobs don't matter".
If this is a deliberate, think about jobs thing, then it's probably fine. If it's just a distraction, then it's not.
On “How White Working Class Culture Shaped American Politics”
This might be helpful.
The U.S. Census Bureau reported that in 2006 minorities make up 60% of the prison population with African-Americans at 41 percent of the 2 million prison and jail inmates, Hispanics 19 percent and whites 37 percent. According to a 2006 survey of 45 correctional systems in the United States, the racial breakdown of correctional staffs ranges from 0.4% black (in Utah) to 84.4% black (in Mississippi). The nationwide average of minority correctional staff members is approximately 29%.[1] In some organizations or locations, the large representation of minorities among correctional staffs is a reflection of the regional population pool of employees.
http://www.corrections.com/articles/21076-recruiting-minority-employees-in-corrections
On “Linky Friday #195: Pillars of Sand”
Very much Agreed.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.