Glenn Greenwald's Blog, page 163

The Joys of Pragmatism

The New Yorker, February 23, 2009:

"It's possible but hard to imagine Barack Obama as the first President of the United States to introduce a preventive-detention law," [White House counsel Greg:] Craig said. "Our presumption is that there is no need to create a whole new system."

The New York Times, May 21, 2009:

[In his speech at the National Archives, in front of the U.S. Constitution, President Obama:] proposed "prolonged detention" for terrorism suspects who cannot be tried

The all-powerful Lindsey Graham must not be displeased

Two weeks ago, The New Yorker's Jane Mayer, citing anonymous sources, reported that Rahm Emanuel vehemently opposed Eric Holder's decision to try the accused 9/11 defendants in a civilian court.  Mayer quoted her source explaining that Emanuel was particularly worried about angering GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham, who opposes civilian trials:  "Rahm said, 'If we don't have Graham, we can't close Guantánamo, and it's on Eric!'"  Today, The New York Times' Jodi Kantor and Charlie Savage have Emanuel...

Our human rights vs. The Others

(updated below - Update II)

Ten American Baptists were arrested two weeks ago in Haiti on charges that they exploited the chaos in that country by attempting to smuggle 33 young Haitian children across the border without permission -- either to bring them to a life of Christianity or (as some evidence suggests) to filter them into a child trafficking ring.  National Review's Kathryn Jean Lopez is deeply upset by the plight of at least one of the detained Americans, Jim Allen, whom s...

Our human rights v. The Others

Ten American Baptists were arrested two weeks ago in Haiti on charges that they exploited the chaos in that country by attempting to smuggle 33 young Haitian children across the border without permission -- either to bring them to a life of Christianity or (as some evidence suggests) to filter them into a child trafficking ring.  National Review's Kathyrn Jean Lopez is deeply upset by the plight of at least one of the detained Americans, Jim Allen, whom she contends (based exclusively on...

Religious faith in government accusations

The Washington Post, today:

The case against Saeed Mohammed Saleh Hatim seemed ironclad.
The Justice Department alleged that Hatim, a detainee at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, trained at an al-Qaeda military camp in Afghanistan, stayed at terrorist guesthouses and even fought in the battle of Tora Bora. . . .
But a federal judge reviewed the case and found the government's evidence too weak to justify Hatim's confinement. The judge ordered the detainee's release...

Michael Mukasey: Then and now

Former Bush Attorney General Michael Mukasey has become the leading spokesman for a Cheneyite national security attack, which relies on scaring Americans into believing that Obama is endangering their lives in those rare instances when he deviates from Bush's Terrorism approach.  Toward that end, Mukasey has yet another fear-mongering Op-Ed, this time on today's oh-so-liberal Washington Post Op-Ed Page (along side Michael Gerson's stirring tribute to the virtues of GITMO, Bill Kristol's...

Today in the "liberal media"

(updated below)

I was fairly certain that Washington Press Corps Dean David Broder's career would end with his last memorably humiliating moment (of many) being this February, 2007, column, when he giddily announced that "President Bush is poised for a political comeback," that "Bush now shows signs of renewed energy and is regaining the initiative on several fronts," and that "he is demonstrating political smarts that even his critics have to acknowledge" -- only for Bush's...

Today in The Liberal Media

I was fairly certain that Washington Press Corps Dean David Broder's career would end with his last memorably humiliating moment (of many) being this February, 2007, column, when he giddily announced that "President Bush is poised for a political comeback," that "Bush now shows signs of renewed energy and is regaining the initiative on several fronts," and that "he is demonstrating political smarts that even his critics have to acknowledge" -- only for Bush's approval ratings to continue to...

TNR's ugly and reckless anti-semitism games

Even by that magazine's lowly standards, The New Republic yesterday published an amazingly ugly, reckless, and at-times-deranged screed from its Literary Editor, Leon Wieseltier, devoting 4,300 words to accusing Andrew Sullivan of being an anti-semite, largely due to his critical (i.e., forbidden) comments about Israeli actions and American neoconservatives.  Particularly since the horrific Israeli assualt on Gaza, Sullivan has become more critical of Israeli actions and more dubious of...

The mythical potency of terrorism fear-mongering

The New York Times Editorial Page today asserts a commonly held belief among the political and media class: 

An election is coming, so the Republicans are trying to scare Americans by making it appear as if the Democrats don't care about catching or punishing terrorists.
It's nonsense, of course, but effective.  The be-very-afraid approach helped former President George W. Bush ram laws through Congress that chipped away at Americans' rights. He used it to get re-elected in 2004. Now...