The Kitty Genovese Effect: How The Regime Endures (Updated)

By mid-April [1965], the Kitty Genovese story had taken hold and the nation began a lengthy period of analysis and self-deprecation. Why would civilized people turn away from another human being in dire need of assistance? As the details of the killing emerged, it became plain that if any one of the 38 witnesses had simply called the police at the first sign of trouble, the victim could have survived.

From Court TV's account of the 1964 murder of Catherine "Kitty" Genovese

Thirty-eight residents of Kew Gardens, a residential area in Queens, New York, saw or heard at least part of the assault in which 28-year-old Kitty Genovese was stabbed to death. The assailant had time to inflict, seventeen stab wounds in the 5'1", 105 lb. body of the victim.


The attack included a five-minute intermission during which Kitty was able to cry out, "Help me, I'm being murdered! I'm dying! I'm dying!" Mortally wounded, she was still able to drag herself to the rear entrance to her apartment building and attempt to enter before the murderer returned to complete the chore.

The intervention of one armed man -- perhaps even one unarmed man -- may have been enough to save Kitty's life. In fact, it was still possible to save her life after the initial assault, had someone simply let her in the apartment, rendered basic first aid, and called the police. But nobody could be bothered to do even that much on the morning of March 13, 1964, and an innocent woman bled to death because of the torpid indifference of her neighbors.

Why would dozens of people permit an atrocity of this sort to take place? That question was asked repeatedly during the months following Kitty's murder, and embedded in various textbooks on psychology and sociology. What's unfortunate, if predictable, is that most studies of what we could call the "Kitty Genovese Effect" ignore its most common manifestation: The nearly universal acquiescence of the population in routine displays of armed violence against innocent people by agents of the State.

Take, for instance, the beating of Roseland, Indiana City Councilman David Snyder by a uniformed skinhead after Snyder was ejected from a September 14 Council meeting.

What appeared to be a long-standing feud of some kind (Synder, who for all I know is a world-class jerk, has been accused of racketeering, which is just another way of saying he works for government) reached critical mass, and Synder was ejected from the room by Council President Charley Shields.

After collecting the video camera he had brought to document the meeting, Synder walked placidly from the chamber. Synder is tall and very thin; he looks like a cross between NBA immortal Larry Bird and Oscar-winning actor James Cromwell); Town Marshal Jack Tiller, the tonsured thug with a history of excessive force who ushered Synder from the room, looks like Baby Huey with a less impressive physique.

As he left, Snyder hurled an insult over his shoulder at Shields, and then was seen muttering something at Tiller. The officer responds by shoving Snyder in the back; a loud noise indicates that the Councilman had been shoved face-first into the glass doors leading out of the building.

The cameraman, along with more than a dozen people, rushed into the next room. The lens captures the sight of Snyder, sprawled face-first in the parking lot with Snyder's flaccid form splayed across his back and at least two other uniformed heroes prepared to assist.

Tiller, in keeping with what must be the new standard police protocol for conducting beat-downs of unresisting, helpless civilians, is bellowing "Don't resist! Don't resist!" as he repeatedly slugs Synder in the upper body and, apparently, his head.


Nobody moved to prevent or mitigate this assault, which -- thankfully -- proved to be much milder than it could have been (owing, I believe, to the presence of a video camera). In fact, several dutiful citizens are recorded urging others to "let the police handle it." One beefy female vulgarian who had some kind of grudge against Synder can be heard urging Tiller to hit the prone Councilman even harder; she is permitted to come within a few feet of Synder to spit insults in his face as he is hauled away to jail in handcuffs.

Interviewed moments after he had assaulted Snyder, Jack Tiller did what most police do in situations of this kind: He lied.

















Jack Tiller, master of Donut-kwon-Do, waits for the aftershocks to subside in his tremulous form following his heroic blind-side assault on skinny, unresisting, middle-aged City Councilman Dave Snyder.


"It was a fight, and he's going to jail," boasted Tiller, trying to catch his breath after the unfamiliar exertion. The officer claimed that Synder had "hit" him, a charge not validated by the videotape, which shows the cooperative Councilman with his back to the gelatinous gendarme. (An eyewitness claims Snyder threw an elbow, but once again this account doesn't comport with the available video record and what was seen could simply be Snyder jerking his arm away from Tiller.)

For the supposed offense of leaving the Council meeting and receiving an unwarranted beating, Synder was originally charged with a felony.

The "felon" in question, following his release from police custody.

The only happy news to emerge from all of this is that the fiscally challenged Roseland municipal government will apparently begin laying off police officers, despite Tough-guy Tiller's promise that his department won't leave the town "without police protection."

Tiller appears to be as much a stranger to irony as he is to pumping iron. Roseland appears to have fewer than 2,000 residents. Why can't the town rely on the County Sheriff for police "protection"? And given that the Town Marshal feels entitled to throw a City Councilman to the pavement face-first and beat him on camera for no reason, the key question is: Who will protect Roseland residents from the police?

Certainly not the cream of the town's civic culture, who stood inert as a criminal assault took place right in front of them. Any one of them could have intervened, if only to remind Tiller that he was on camera and was liable for administrative or criminal charges. A couple of generations ago, it wouldn't have been unusual for one or more men in such circumstances to attempt a citizen's arrest, which was certainly justified here.

Of course, Tiller had police on hand to "assist" -- and from this fact we can extract a clue as to the real meaning behind the familiar motto, "To Protect and Serve": The other police on the scene were there to "assist" by deterring law-abiding citizens from intervening to prevent Tiller from beating Synder.

















Those silly Iraqis! They can't even have a City Council meeting without it degenerating into armed violence! Why can't they learn to conduct business the way we do in Indiana... Oh, wait....


How does this common police tactic differ from similar tactics employed by other armed gangs?

It should be said that Roseland's municipal politics are exceptionally colorful, and Snyder has plausibly been accused of heavy-handed and corrupt tactics in seeking control of the Council -- including, ironically enough, using the police to punish his political critics. If this is true there may be some ironic symmetry in the fact that it was Snyder who ended up with a boot on his neck, and it might explain why people weren't eager to intervene.

But this doesn't make right what happened to Synder, something principled, freedom-focused people understand. There weren't any to be found at the Roseland City Council meeting last Friday. And that incident, which took place in a small town in middle America, helps illustrate why our society is descending inexorably into the morass of police state tyranny.

(Thanks to Strike The Root for bringing this story to my attention.)

AS IF TO ILLUSTRATE MY POINT....

There was a time, back when this country was relatively free, that a loudmouth (even one asking some pertinent questions in an impertinent fashion) would be given the bum's rush without being swarmed, assaulted, and subjected to electro-shock torture by rented thugs.

Obviously, we live in a different country now:



Notice that, at the time the Taser was used, the agitated student was lying on the ground, immobilized, and surrounded by at least six armed goons -- well, five goons and one goon-ette. Yes, that's right: The less-than-commanding soprano voice demanding that the student stop resisting belongs to a She-Police. (Notice as well how the announcer obliquely frames the incident in a way that makes the victim responsible for being tortured.)

There's no reason why the Kampus Kops couldn't have simply dragged this kid from the auditorium (the right to freedom of speech doesn't extend to hijacking a public event) and barred him from re-entering the event, rather than putting him under arrest. He may have been obnoxious, but he was entirely correct to resist arrest through peaceful, if assertive, non-cooperation.

Ah, but this would have deprived the heroes in blue from asserting their authoritah, and denied at least one of them the sensual thrill of subjecting another human being to a Taser shock.


I hear tell from a hero in the Multnomah Sheriff's Department -- some impotent windsock in a government-issued costume -- that giving someone a blast from a Taser is better than Viagra.


Boys and Girls, it's this simple: Officer Friendly is no more. I mourn his passing for many reasons, not the least of which is the fact that his place has been usurped by over-armed (and generally over-fed) sadists who love to hurt helpless human beings and can do so with impunity.

Terrible as it is to say so, we've reached the point where we'd better start learning how to hurt back.

State-authorized violence has become a lethal threat both palpable and capricious. We've reached the point described by Solzhenitsyn, a critical juncture at which decent people either actively resist lawless State violence or resign ourselves to living under the rule of a Terror State, knowing that we deserve everything that will be inflicted on us.


Obviously, I'm not talking about active violence against anybody. I am unconditionally committed to the non-aggression principle. But we must put an end to passive acceptance of State brutality. The incidents described above may have been prevented by just a handful of people willing to interpose themselves between the assailants and the victims, at the potential cost of physical injury and "criminal" charges.

Sometimes in circumstances like this, courage can be contagious.

Will this approach work? I don't know. But it's worth a try. And I promise that I will not permit this kind of thing ever to happen in my presence without doing whatever I can to stop it.


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I Can't Stand Bullies, Revisited*

Don't you just love it when a soft-handed, soft-bodied, lisping, chinless neo-con nebbish like Thomas Friedman gets all butch?





"We hit Iraq because we could," concludes the Stone Cold Steve Austin of the New York Times op-ed page, who establishes his bad-ass bona fides by exclaiming, "Well, suck on this!"

That defiant challenge to the Iraqi insurgency and the Muslim world at large was issued from the comfort of a soundstage on the Eastern Seaboard. It's of a piece with the faux machismo of the Imperial Dim-Wit in the Oval Office, whose most notable pronouncements regarding Iraq are "Bring it on!" and "We're kicking ass."

Not for the likes of Thomas Friedman are the actual terrors of the battlefield; such chores are not assigned to members of the Cognitive Elite. Instead, he gets to prance around the world on a bottomless expense account, collecting anecdotes to feed into whatever mechanism he possesses that extrudes the banalities he ends up publishing between book covers.

Meanwhile, as Friedman himself put it, "boys and girls [are] going house-to-house from Basra to Baghdad" carrying out the needless, pointless, useless war Friedman now justifies by displaying his dubious and implausible grasp of streetfighter patois. (By the way, what kind of macho man sends girls out to fight wars?)

So the whole point of invading Iraq was to show we could do it -- to "burst the bubble" of post-9/11 Arab confidence. The occupation would over-awe the Muslim world and leave it pliant, tranquil, subservient to Washington's whims, from Friedman's perspective.

And how's that workin' out for ya?

Make no mistake: Friedman is a bully -- albeit one who outsources the actual bullying to more physically accomplished people -- and the foreign policy he supports as a "public intellectual" is bullying writ large.

In fact, all the Establishment Right has left is the desperate, erratic bellicosity of a bully in irreversible decline. And that trait has come to define how most of the world sees our nation.

Wilt Chamberlain -- whose plentiful allotment of flaws did not include a bullying disposition --once lamented that nobody roots for Goliath. The Bard captured another facet of the same truth: "'Tis excellent to have a giant's strength, but it's tyrannous to use it like a giant."

Six years ago, the United States learned that, despite decades of quasi-imperialist global meddling, we were still respected and even loved in much of the world. The day after Black Tuesday Queen Elizabeth instructed the Coldstream Guards to play "The Star-Spangled Banner," a gesture the memory of which even now brings tears to my eyes.

"We Are All Americans," proclaimed a banner headline in France's leading newspaper. That headline expressed an outpouring of sympathy soon to be repaid by snide, untutored digs at French valor and national pride from the likes of Jonah "The Pantload" Goldberg, who also dissed Canada as a girly-man country. A large and expanding carbohydrate sculpture whose gelatinous form threatens to become a quantum singularity, Goldberg would load his pants with used food were he to find himself in a fist-fight, let alone a fire-fight.

In the wake of 9-11, expressions of support and sympathy for America were found on the streets of Tehran. And the regime ruling the unfortunate Iranians actually offered to sit down with the Bush administration and hold open-ended discussions on all of the long-standing disputes and conflicts between our nations. The Bu'ushists didn't deign to reply to that initiative. And now the Regime in Washington is working frantically to concoct an excuse to attack Iran, with a nuclear strike conspicuously left "on the table" as an option.

Around the world, people who once admired and respected the United States are now disgusted with us because we have permitted our government to launch and prolong an unjust, aggressive, bullying war against a country that never threatened us and couldn't defend itself.

"Well, it's better to be feared than loved," retort the mock-macho pundits on the GOP-dominated Right.

We're neither loved nor feared, as much as our government understandably alarms much of the world. The preponderant sentiment is one of contempt, particularly among most of the Muslim population whose "bubble" Friedman seems to think we've burst.

Nobody likes, let alone admires, a bully. Those who cower behind a bully -- the Friedmans and Goldbergs of the world, along with the Sean Hannitys, Bill O'Reillys, and countless lesser specimens of the same despicable breed -- seek vicarious vindication as Men Not To Be Messed With. And when one bully is defeated, those who followed in his wake will simply attach themselves to another.


Poised to make a comeback: A post-WWI German propaganda poster depicts the "stab-in-the-back" myth, a version of which will likely become a political fixture in the post-George W. Bush era (see below).



Now that the Swaggering Fool is a spent force, the bully-boy right is taking a long look at Rudy Giuliani, the GOP's Count Orlov. But then the GOP might consider losing the White House next November as a strategic advantage, since the winner -- most likely Madame Hillary -- would have to deal with the unfolding debacle in the Middle East. This would give time for the "Stab-in-the-back" narrative to percolate through the ranks of the right, eventually creating a movement that would fall into ranks behind the Sainted One, the All-Knowing Pillar of Military Integrity and Strategic Genius David Petraeus. Let no one take his name in vain! (Except, of course, for CENTCOM C-in-C Adm. William Fallon, whose assessment of Petraeus strikes me as sound.)


Already, as Justin Raimondo points out, Saint Petraeus has started to hear "Hail To The Chief" in his head whenever he enters a room. He has gazed longingly into the mirror and seen a President staring back, perhaps one sitting astride the proverbial white horse.

What is "The Man on Horseback," after all, but the incarnation of bully-centric politics?

_______________
*This essay revisits themes touched on in an essay I published a year ago, shortly before losing my job at The New American.


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Briefly Considered: Scrimp and Save, Make Your Payments ... And Lose Your Home Anyway

We're going to see a lot more of this: Iraq War vet Shawn Howell worked two jobs but still couldn't keep up with his ARM payments and had to sell the house to avoid foreclosure. Thousands of families who made payments on time stand to lose their homes as their mortgage lenders go bankrupt.




Just for a minute imagine that you're a thrifty, responsible homeowner. Unlike many people, you've been conscientious in protecting your credit. Your mortgage payments have always been on time, and your property tax payments have been made through the mortgage company. With price inflation steadily worsening and your household income remaining stagnant, things are tight but manageable.

But then your mortgage lender goes bankrupt after being mortally wounded by the bursting housing bubble. As a result, the property tax checks issued by the lender start to bounce -- and now you stand to lose your home to tax foreclosure as a result.

This is the situation facing thousands of home "owners" whose mortgages were financed through American Home Mortgage Corporation Inc. (AHMC), which filed for bankruptcy in August. Like most mortgage companies, AHMC issued thousands of loans backed by Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae, which are "government-sponsored" lending agencies.

When the company filed for bankruptcy, AHMC's corporate leaders hoped to auction its loans to other private investors in order to raise money to pay its creditors. But just before the company went under on August 6, Freddie Mac obtained a judicial order permitting it to seize the files on some 4,547 mortgage loans, as well as $7 million in escrowed "custodial account funds" that had been sent by home "owners" for mortgage, insurance, and property tax payments. A subsequent agreement between AHMC and Freddie Mac allows the mortgage company to continue "servicing a crucial portfolio of $5.2 billion in government-backed mortgage loans," which is just fine for both parties in that arrangement.

Meanwhile, thousands of home "owners" face economic ruin. Late mortgage insurance payments will cause their premiums to skyrocket. Late tax payments will result in late fees and penalties. The Wall Street Journal (sub. required -- but see here) reports that "Thousands of homeowners face an `imminent risk' of losing their homes" because property taxes are going unpaid."

With the clinical detachment to human suffering that typifies the bureaucratic mind, Freddie Mac's commissars note that while the agency remains in control of the contested mortgage loans, it can't sort out the details to make the required insurance and tax payments. "Therefore, there is the imminent risk that borrowers' insurance policies may lapse for nonpayment, subjecting the borrowers to a risk of loss of their mortgaged properties," observed a statement from the agency. Likewise, the non-payment of property taxes will result "in increased tax liabilities and possible tax-foreclosure sales."

Some of the affected home "owners" are fortunate enough to live in counties with relatively accommodating treasurers. A dozen residents of Frederick County, Maryland, for instance, have been told that they can make partial tax payments until the checks arrive from AHMC. As if they would.

Freddie Mac's corporate motto asserts that the federally-created agency "makes home possible." The agency boasts of financing some 50 million homes since 1970. I have no idea how many American households today have been "helped" by Freddie: In my home state of Idaho, one of the more thinly populated states of the Union, Freddie has helped to finance over 160,000 homes over the last ten years. (.pdf)

Given the extent of Freddie's entanglement in the housing market, it's reasonable to believe that the predicament faced by the 4,547 households caught in the AHMC bankruptcy is just a foretaste of sorrows to come.

Make sure to drop by The Right Source and to check out the Liberty Minute archives.

The Untouchables (Updated)

Of course, what they don't tell you is that "combative or resistant behavior" can include a word, glance, or momentary hesitation that a State-employed thug doesn't like.


I know little about the political views of the Rev. Lennox Yearwood of the "Hip Hop Caucus," and I care even less. For all I know he is a devoted left-wing agitator who keeps a copy of Marx's 18th Brumaire, or perhaps Carlos Marighella's Mini-Manual for the Urban Guerrilla, concealed within the covers of his Bible.

If so, I don't care.

What I do know, from the video below and eyewitness testimony, is that Rev. Yearwood, a U.S. citizen, waited patiently and peacefully in line to be part of the audience at a public congressional hearing, and was denied access while others behind him in the queue were admitted. I know that this was done because a strict and patently unconstitutional quota was imposed by Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Missouri), the presiding chairman, on "peace people" in the audience.

And it's clear from the video below that Yearwood did nothing to justify his arrest, let alone being the victim of an act of gang violence by a pack of cowards in uniform who promptly charged him with "assault on a police officer":



Spectacles of this sort offer what I call a "shibboleth/sibbolet" bright-line test of one's principles and moral orientation: When you see a group of six large armed "men" swarming an unarmed, peaceful person, whose side do you take?

This wasn't the street arrest of Rodney King following a high-speed pursuit that put innocent lives at risk. Whatever one thinks of that notorious episode from a decade and a half ago, it was a manifestly different thing from what we see in the video above.

This incident brings to the forefront a point I have made before: "Resisting arrest" should not be a crime. Indeed, for much of our nation's history it was considered perfectly legal and appropriate for a citizen to resist arrest -- to the point of using lethal violence, if necessary -- where probable cause didn't exist.

As attorney Roger Roots points out in an essay published by the Seton Hall Constitutional Law Journal:

"Under the common law, there was no difference whatsoever between the privileges, immunities, and powers of constables and those of private citizens. Constables were literally and figuratively clothed in the same garments as everyone else and faced the same liabilities — civil and criminal — as everyone else under identical circumstances.... Nothing illustrates the modern disparity between the rights and powers of police and citizen as much as the modern law of resisting arrest. At the time of the nation's founding, any citizen was privileged to resist arrest if, for example, probable cause for arrest did not exist or the arresting person could not produce a valid arrest warrant where one was needed. As recently as one hundred years ago, but with a tone that seems as if from some other, more distant age, the United States Supreme Court held that it was permissible (or at least defensible) to shoot an officer who displays a gun with intent to commit a warrantless arrest based on insufficient cause. Officers who executed an arrest without proper warrant were themselves considered trespassers, and any trespassee had a right to violently resist (or even assault and batter) an officer to evade such arrest."

This is exactly how it should be.

If resistance is put up by a legitimate criminal suspect, he's doing pretty much what we expect him to. If it is offered by a genuinely innocent person, it's not a crime of any sort, merely the understandable and quite commendable act of a free person exercising his God-given right to self-defense against the single biggest threat to life and individual liberty we confront: The State's armed agents of coercion.

Yet it's not uncommon for people to be arrested for resisting arrest; this reminds me of the East German government's practice of suppressing the speech of those who accused that regime of suppressing free speech.

And we've reached a point in our descent into despotism where the mere act of "resistant" physical contact between a civilian and a State-employed thug wearing a gun and body armor is prosecuted as felony assault.

As agents of the State, the police are literally untouchable -- licensed to dispense violence at whim, and empowered to treat any resistance by word or gesture as an attack.


These guys can kick in your door, kill your pets, trash your home, throw you to the floor and put a boot on your neck, and kill you with impunity -- but if you utter a syllable of protest you can be prosecuted for "assaulting an officer."


In the incident displayed above, it was the "assailant" who ended up, however briefly, beneath a crushing, suffocating scrum of armed goons (reportedly suffering a broken leg ). The only contact that occurred took place when the armed hirelings grabbed Rev. Yearwood, tackled him to the floor, and then piled on top of him, thus displaying the sacrificial courage for which our constabulary is famous in the era of the Homeland Security State.

Note as well how at least one of the heroes did what he could to impede the view of the witness who was recording the assault.

The District of Columbia ordinance under which Rev. Yearwood has been charged offers five elements of the offense of "assault on [a] police officer," the second of which is that the defendant "assaulted" -- well, duh; a tautology is always so helpful -- "resisted, opposed, impeded, intimidated, or interfered with" an officer.

Under that language, Rev. Yearwood was liable to be charged with "assault" merely for demanding an explanation from the police who denied him access to the committee room, or for exclaiming "I won't be arrested today!" as the officers moved to take him into custody.

Some might contend that this kind of treatment is exceptional, given that the assailants were the Capitol Police and that security standards are necessarily higher on Capitol Hill. But Rev. Yearwood's exclusion was apparently not based on security concerns; it was dictated entirely by his political views.

And it's worth noting that one of the assailants told Yearwood he was being arrested for "defying an officer's order" -- the kind of spurious charge routinely used to justify arrests not only in Mordor-on-the-Potomac, but elsewhere across this once-relatively-free land.

What could be a better illustration of the reality that we live in a regimented, militarized police state -- patrolled by armed enforcers, rather than peace officers -- than the fact that any citizen can be arrested anytime for refusing to follow "an officer's order"?

UPDATE

Assault victim Lennox Yearwood gives an account of the crime committed against him by rented thugs at the U.S. Capitol:



(h/t Scott Watson)

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UPDATED -- Briefly Considered: Gen. Petraeus -- US Security Not An "Objective" in Iraq

[The following transcribed excerpts have been updated and corrected from the first version, thanks to a suggestion from a reader -- WNG.]

Senator John Warner: "[I]f we continue what you have laid before the Congress here as a strategy [to continue the war in Iraq], do you feel that that is making America safer?"

General David Petraeus: "Sir, I believe this is indeed the best course of action to achieve our objectives in Iraq."

Warner: "Does that make America safer?"

Petraeus: "Sir, I, I don't know, actually. I have not sat down and sorted in my own mind. What I have focused on, and been riveted on, is how to accomplish the mission...."

Notes David Corn of The Nation: "Warner did not press the general any further on this point. The senator's time was up. That was quite a statement from the fellow who is supposed to save Bush's war. He advocates pursuing Bush's course of action in Iraq but he cannot attest that this effort is crucial for America's safety. Is that being a good soldier?"

Bear in mind that David Petraeus -- the Bush Regime's military messiah du jour -- wasn't in danger of a perjury charge, since the Regime refused to permit the General to testify under oath. (This is standard operating procedure for the Bu'ushists, incidentally.) Yet even under those conditions, Petraeus wasn't willing to claim that the continuing "war of choice" in Iraq is making the United States safer and more secure.

The unalloyed truth is that the war is radically undermining our national security:

*It has abetted the growth of Jihadist radicalism;
*It has provided Jihadis-in-training with an invaluable training ground;
*It is rapidly depleting our wealth (the plunder of domestic wealth through taxes and inflation is the chief war aim of any regime, of course);
*The Regime's ineptly disguised grab for Middle East energy resources has provoked the creation of new and potentially dangerous anti-US coalitions -- something that may lead to a painful illustration of how subjects inevitably get the worst of fights their rulers pick on their behalf;
*It has left the military depleted and over-committed -- a good thing, in the sense that an overtaxed military is less suitable as an instrument of domestic tyranny, a bad thing in the event the coalitions referred to above decide they want a piece of us.


Custom poster courtesy of William Wallace Grigg, age 9.


Outside of the ranks of those who have succumbed to the self-inflicted handicap called "Hannitization" -- you know, mouth-breathing neo-Brownshirts of the sort gathered today for the last of this year's Cornpone Nuremberg Rallies -- nobody believes that the Iraq war is anything other than a world-historic strategic catastrophe. Only a few have the honesty and character to admit as much, and urge an end to the needless bloodshed. The rest are willing to abide additional thousands of deaths in order to save the prestige of the Regime that led our nation into this disaster.

Well, thanks to Gen. Petraeus, we now have a perfect argument to throw in the face of anyone who's willing to listen:

By the tacit admission of the general in command, the war has nothing to do with the safety and security of the United States.

So ending the war is not a defeat.

Q.E.D.


UPDATE, 9/12

Four years ago, as noted in this story from the utterly indispensable McClatchy Newspapers service (the only wire service that specializes in journalism, rather than stenography, where the Iraq war is concerned), Gen. Petraeus was willing to express open skepticism regarding the wisdom of, and strategy behind, the invasion of Iraq. Today, as our military desperately tries to tread quicksand, Petraeus is choking down the key questions he was willing to ask back then, if only in rhetorical fashion.

At yesterday's Capitol Hill hearing, "there was one question that Army Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador in Baghdad, couldn't, or wouldn't, answer. It was the question that Petraeus himself posed rhetorically back in 2003 when he led the Army's 101st Airborne Division into Iraq: `Tell me how this ends.'"

As noted above, that wasn't the only question Petraeus (and Crocker, who may as well have been an animatronic mannequin) refused to answer. The combination of the two ducked questions leaves us with this: The military in Iraq is pursuing a course unrelated to our national security, under civilian and military leadership with no idea of how to end the war.


Obiter Dicta

This time I mean it! My new book, Liberty In Eclipse: The War on Terror and the Rise of the Homeland Security State, is about to go to press. I'll let you know as soon as it's available.

Meanwhile, I'm about three chapters into my contribution to another book project (I just finished the draft of a chapter today), about which I'll have more to say later.

Please stay abreast of critical stories at The Right Source, and check out the Liberty Minute archives.

Power vs. Authority (UPDATED, 9/11)

“Power is the ability to force compliance with one’s demands; authority is the ability to command voluntary obedience.” -- Hannah Arendt


Hannah Arendt was a diligent and widely respected student of totalitarianism. It is not necessary to agree with all, or even most, of her assumptions and conclusions to appreciate the critical distinction she draws between power -- "the capacity to transform a living person into a corpse, which is to say, a thing," as Simone Weil put it -- and authority.

In a free society, power is used only to protect the persons, property, and rights of the innocent, and then only as a last resort after an appeal to authority fails.

The aspirational premise of the republic we have lost was that power would be transmuted into authority through the "consent of the governed," and that the authority thus conferred on governing institutions was revocable -- to the extent that the government itself could be altered or even abolished when necessary to protect individual rights.

It didn't work out that way. Given the history of the singular plague called government, this outcome was hardly surprising. The entire project begun by the Founders was based on the right to revoke consent -- a right they exercised in withdrawing from the British Empire. The exercise of that right is also known as "secession," and the entire point of the event commonly called the Civil War was to abolish that right through the exercise of State power in its most elemental sense: More than a half-million human beings were turned into the things called "corpses" not to free slaves from bondage, but rather to reconquer communities that had chosen to leave a supposedly free union.

Since 1865, as historian Jeffrey Rogers Hummel has pointed out, there have been no permanent victories for individual liberty over power.

Today, the malign influence of the Regime ruling us contaminates practically every social institution, through “laws” regulating behavior, speech, and even individual attitudes.
And the behavior of the Regime's armed enforcers -- still called "Police," even though their behavior is now indistinguishable from that of an army of occupation -- is increasingly defined by Lenin's totalitarian formula of exercising "power without limit, resting directly on force.


Back in the Good Old Days, many law-and-order conservatives insisted that the chief domestic threat to liberty came from the efforts of Communist and other subversive groups to undermine the police. In the era of the federalized, militarized, monolithic Homeland Security State, the police themselves are the single most potent threat to individual liberty.

This is not necessarily because their ranks have been filled with degenerates, although the decline in recruiting and performance standards certainly plays a role in our predicament. Rather, it is because law enforcement at every level has embraced the power-centered worldview, in which the role of police is to ensure that people submit to the State.

A spectacular example of this has been captured by 20-year-old Brett Darrow. Last Friday, Darrow captured, on video, an arrogant, abusive, foul-mouthed, illiterate, cretinous, power-intoxicated simian by the name of Sgt. Kenline [actually, Kuehnlein -- see update and correction below] threatening to perjure himself to justify arresting the motorist -- simply because Darrow wasn't properly submissive to somebody wearing a State-issued costume.

"Try and talk back ... to me again," snarled Kenline, who took offense when Darrow politely and compliantly asked what violation justified his detention: Merely asking an agent of the State to justify such an action, you see, is grounds for arrest. And Kenline understands that he has the power -- not the authority, mind you, the power -- to commit acts of violence against Darrow to deprive him of his freedom, and then lie about the circumstances afterward.

"I bet I could say you resisted arrest or something," boasted the officer. "You want to come up with something? I come up with nine things.... You already start your f*****g problems with your attitude. Did we have a bad night boy? Huh? Answer me or I'll lock you up for failure to imply [sic] with a police officer's commands.... You want me to show you? You want me to lock you up to show you I'm right and you're wrong?.... You want me to show you the f*****g law."

Kenline's contrived objection was that Darrow failed to use a turn signal. As Darrow's video record documents, this was a lie: The driver had signaled properly. Kenline also claimed that Darrow had been "swerving back and forth within the roadway" -- another documented lie. Without the video record, Kenline's lies would have held up in court, since -- in defiance of Common Law principles and common sense -- the uncorroborated word of a police officer is considered self-ratifying in court.

Darrow behaved with commendable composure during this entire ordeal, and was released after a few minutes -- and following a nauseatingly paternalistic lecture from a uniformed goon who badly needs to get his back dirty. As Darrow comments, "Looking into this guy's eyes, he was crazy. I was really scared he was going to assault me. I just wonder how many other people have been arrested on these charges

In what passes for Sgt. Kenline's mind, he doesn't need the authority of the law, because as someone exercising power, he is the law. (Go here for a video and transcript of the encounter.)

This isn't the first time Darrow (who is a hero in the cause of civil liberties, but who needs to be a bit more judicious if he wants to avoid becoming a martyr) has experienced and documented the totalitarian mindset that increasingly typifies the police.

The power to treat others as objects inevitably gives rise to sadism. Those who work in law enforcement are hardly immune to this tendency; indeed, there's reason to believe that this profession selects for that personality type.

Witness the comments of a Multnomah, Oregon Sheriff's Deputy (brought to my attention by Radley Balko) who described the sensual thrill he experiences when killing a suspect, or subjecting him to electric torture through the use of a Taser: “Seeing someone get Tasered is second only to pulling the trigger. That is money – puts a smile on your face.”

There are other perks to be enjoyed, apart from sending hot lead or 50,000 volts into a human body.

Didn't like your hamburger? If you're wearing a State-issued costume, you can arrest the short-order cook on a fabricated charge of "reckless conduct."

That's what happened to 20-year-old Kendra Bull of Union City, Georgia, who spent a night in jail and was bailed out on $1,000 bond because an officious pr*ck in uniform wasn't smart enough to complain about his hamburger after the first bite.

(Thanks to The Smoking Gun, we know that the soon-to-be-changed home phone number of Wendell Adams, the aforementioned officious pr*ck in a uniform, is 770-964-1333. Why don't you give the guy a call. Be polite, if that suits you.)

Can't keep track of your money or count your change correctly? If you're a cop, you can throw a conniption fit, assault and pepper-spray the young woman working at the register, and drag her away to jail on fraudulent charges:




The assailant in this video, a rented thug from Dayton Ohio named Michael McDonald (no, not that Michael McDonald), "was cleared of all wrongdoing." Although the city touched up the taxpayers to buy off McDonald's victim, the officer apparently behaved according to department policy.

Don't they all?

UPDATE

Sgt. James Kuehnlein, the foul-mouthed bully in uniform whose demented rant was captured on video by Brett Darrow, has been put on unpaid suspension after Police Chief Scott Uhrig received hundreds of outraged phone calls.

After reviewing the video, Chief Uhrig said "the officer acted inappropriately when he threatened to make up charges, and used a disrespectful tone and inappropriate language," reported STLtoday.com.

"We don't do that," Uhrig said. "Someone either violated the law or they didn't. You don't say, I'll lock you up and then come up with why afterward."

Chief Uhrig is describing the proper conduct and demeanor of a peace officer, as understood a generation ago. Sgt. Kuehnlein modeled the tactics and behavior of the contemporary Homeland Security thug. It is Kuehnlein, not Uhrig (who -- despite his criticism of the abusive cop -- still made a point of questioning Darrow's motives) who represents the wave of the future.


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Huckabee Hound: The Face of the GOP "Honor-Killing" Cult

Christian statesman Ron Paul confronts Mike Huckabee, the War Party's Elmer Gantry.


"The word `honor' in the mouth of Daniel Webster is like the word `love' in the mouth of a whore." -- John Randolph

Despite the commendable achievement of losing roughly one hundred pounds of bodyfat, Mike Huckabee retains enough butter in his veins to ooze out oleaginous platitudes at will. Perhaps this trait, which he shares with another former Governor of Arkansas, is a prerequisite for holding that, ahem, august office. It certainly endears him to the sort of people who perceive high-viscosity insincerity as a form of charisma.

Huckabee Hound displayed this dubious skill to memorable effect the other night when he unwisely confronted Ron Paul about the Texas statesman's principled opposition to the war in Iraq.

However svelte he's become, Huckabee -- in an intellectual sense -- resembles a can of Spam, which is mostly fat. The whippet-thin Ron Paul, by way of contrast, is sharper than a Ginsu knife. The result of Huckabee's imprudent decision to take on Dr. Paul was as predictable as a clash between a ring bologna and a freshly sharpened slicer.



















Want Herr Huckabee to address your Bund meeting, but he's over-booked? This potted "meat" product will make a suitable substitute.

The Huckster got off to a bad start by committing an act of rhetorical larceny -- trying to steal some of the prestige John McCain enjoys because of his war wounds (which he received, I hasten to point out, in the course of an earlier illegal, immoral, undeclared and useless war).

Figuratively wrapping himself in the robes of McCain the Martyr, Huckabee insisted that we can't leave Iraq "until we've left with honor.... [W]hether or not we should have gone to Iraq is a discussion that historians can have, but we're there. We bought it because we broke it. We've got a responsibility to the honor of this country and to the honor of every man and woman who has served in Iraq and ever served in our military to not leave them with anything less than the honor that they deserve."

Rep. Paul -- who, unlike Huckabee, has served honorably in the military -- correctly pointed out that the "honor" of our nation would not be injured by withdrawal, since American people never committed themselves to the war in the only constitutionally legitimate fashion: A formal congressional declaration of war. With scalpel-like incisiveness, Dr. Paul likewise laid bare the fundamental obscenity at the heart of Huckabee's bromide-laden pronouncement:

"How many more [lives] do you want to lose? How long are we going to be there? How long -- what do we have to pay to save face? That's all we're doing is saving face. It's time we came home!"

Like Bill Clinton, the original "Man from Hope" -- who was actually born in Hot Springs, which Mafia defector Joe Valachi identified as a key spot in the Mob's southern network-- Huckabee is adept at disguising a huge, malodorous lie inside a bouquet of pleasant-smelling platitudes. (Once again I find myself wondering if such a facility is a mandatory prerequisite for those seeking to occupy the large, tacky building at 1800 Center Street in Little Rock.) The lie in this instance was that Huckabee is zealous to uphold our nation's "honor," when he is clearly and obviously concerned about the prestige of the ruling elite.

When one has been caught committing a crime, honor requires that he desist and pay the appropriate penalty.

The invasion of Iraq was essentially an act of armed robbery carried out by a rogue regime.

That crime is compounded by mass murder -- the death through state-sanctioned violence of American troops, Iraqi soldiers, Iraqi civilian non-combatants, and those legitimate resistance fighters who have taken up arms against the foreign invaders illegally occupying their country.

Honor requires, at the very least, an immediate U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. It may also require that Washington pay reparations to the people of that nation, although this would pose some serious constitutional problems. Rehabilitating our national honor definitely requires the prosecution of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and their neo-Trotskyite retinue, for crimes against our Constitution and what that document refers to (see Article I, sec. 8, clause 10) as the "law of nations."

But Herr Huckabee, like nearly everyone in the political caste, is a stranger in the house of honor. Rather than confronting the unyielding moral realities of the Iraq war, Huckabee takes refuge in the notion that the acquiescence of a deceived public in an illegal war constitutes a morally binding act of consent, while insisting that neither the public nor its elected representatives can withdraw their consent once the deception becomes unambiguous.

We are "one nation," presumably under one quasi-divine Decider, maintains Huckabee. The subtext here is that the Grand and Glorious Decider (peace be upon him) had his "accountability moment" in 2004, and thus can be said to embody the common will. And he has decided to let the killing continue in Iraq for the cynical, self-serving purpose of avoiding an injury to his personal prestige: He wants his successor to deal with the mess Iraq has become, and preside over the withdrawal that inevitably must come. And Bush is supported by like-minded people from across the narrow partisan divide who wish to preserve the grotesquely bloated powers of the imperial presidency.

This is "honor" in the lexicon of the fascist cult that runs the Republican Party.

Apologists for the envisioned "Long War" against the Islamic world occasionally invoke the genuinely repellent spectacle of "honor killings" sometimes carried out by Muslim males against female relatives accused of disgracing the family name.

















Above, below: Iraqi civilians confront the threat from the Bush-bot "honor-killing" cult.

The Bush regime and its supporters, however, are engaged in an immeasurably larger and bloodier version of the same depraved exercise. They claim the right -- nay, the duty -- to kill thousands, or tens of thousands, of Americans and Iraqis simply to "save face."


Preserving the Regime's prestige an objective not worth so much as a papercut's worth of human blood, let alone the life of a single human being. One would expect that an individual like Mike Huckabee who professes to be "pro-life" would understand and act on that professed conviction by ending a useless war in order to save innocent lives.

If he did, however, he wouldn't be Mike Huckabee. He'd be Ron Paul.


Please visit The Right Source for frequent updates on the unfolding "Economic Armageddon," and the Liberty Minute archive for audio commentaries about the Larry Craig scandal, the recent anniversary of the massacre at Ruby Ridge, and other important topics.

Ron Paul: This Is A Man. Take Notes.

Courtesy of the indispensable Scott Horton, here are the key excerpts from Ron Paul's performance at the New Hampshire Republican "debate":



By now it should be obvious even to the most insensate observer that the Republican Party -- with the heroic exception of Ron Paul and a few over whom he's had a healthy influence -- is a fascist cult. Witness Herr Huckabee's invocation of "ein Reich, ein Volk, ein Fuhrer" as a riposte to Paul's irrefutable logic. (The same purported Christian, incidentally, is down with the Mark of the Beast, calling for a human inventory control system to track people like packages.)

Here's the Fox "News" account of the key exchange between Paul and Huckabee:

"Texas Rep. Ron Paul stirred much of the excitement of the evening, repeating his anti-war stance and getting into a sparring match with Huckabee over whether it's time for the United States to leave Iraq.

`Going into Iraq and Afghanistan and threatening Iran is the worst thing we can do for our national security. I am less safe, the American people are less safe for this. It's the policy that is wrong,' Paul said, adding that he disagrees with war supporters who warn against leaving prematurely.

`The people who say there will be a bloodbath are the ones who said it will be a cakewalk or it will be a slam dunk, and that it will be paid for by oil. Why believe them?' he asked.

In response, Huckabee said that the United States agreed before the war started that if they break Iraq, it must buy it.

`Congressman, whether or not we should have gone to Iraq is a discussion the historians can have, but we're there. We bought it because we broke it. We've got a responsibility to the honor of this country and to the honor of every man and woman who has served in Iraq and ever served in our military to not leave them with anything less than the honor that they deserve,' Huckabee said.

Paul then responded: `The American people didn't go in. A few people advising this administration, a small number of people called the neoconservatives hijacked our foreign policy. They're responsible, not the American people.'

Huckabee retorted that the United States is one nation. `We can't be divided. We have to be one nation, under God. That means if we make a mistake, we make it as a single country: the United States of America, not the divided states of America,' he said.

`No, when we make a mistake — when we make a mistake, it is the obligation of the people, through their representatives, to correct the mistake, not to continue the mistake,' Paul replied."

Think of it: Herr Huckabee's position is that Americans literally have a moral obligation to kill and die on behalf of a mistake: "Honor" requires no less. As an anti-Vietnam War activist in the early 1970s, John Kerry once asked: Who will be the last to die for a mistake? Huckabee's position, shared by the Red State Fascists in the audience and the GOP leadership, is essentially that it is the duty of Americans to kill and die for as long as their rulers decree -- even after the foolishness, corruption, and dishonesty of the policy is obvious.

This is pure, unfiltered cultism of an authentically fascist variety. Clearly, Ron Paul was the only sane man on the stage, which is why his statements were greeted with nervous laughter -- as demented as it was derisive -- by one of the cretinous fiends sharing that platform with him.

He's on the wrong side of the biblical threescore-and-ten, his demeanor is as mild as buttermilk, and his physique is wraith-like, but Ron Paul is a steel-spined ass-kicker with dangling anatomy made of solid brass. He is a man in full.

In his honor, I offer the following Tom Petty video featuring my unofficial Ron Paul theme song:



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Jury Rights Day

“How does it become a man to behave toward this American government today?" wrote Henry David Thoreau in 1849. "I answer that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it.”

Thoreau's assessment was inspired by his disgust over Washington's war of aggression against Mexico, and -- what was much the same thing -- the entrenchment and expansion of chattel slavery.

He would almost certainly reach the same conclusion regarding the proper relationship between people who cherish justice and the ever-growing malignancy we could call the Homeland Security State. Thoreau's comments about the servility on which the State depends have likewise been vindicated by time.

"The mass of men serve the state ... not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies," he lamented. "In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well."

Thoreau allowed that there are a handful of people --"heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men" -- who distinguish themselves by serving the government "with their consciences," which unavoidably means that they "necessarily resist it for the most part; and they are commonly treated as enemies by it."

Although he declared "war with the State, after my fashion," Thoreau was not a pure anarchist, explaining that where it was possible and compatible with his principles he would "still make use and get what advantages of her I can...."

One form of association with the State that liberty activists should embrace and should exploit -- without fear of disgrace -- is jury duty.

"Under a government which imprisons unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison," insisted Thoreau in one of the numerous radiant epigrams adorning his masterful essay. As a matter of lamentable history, he's right. But as a matter of principle, the true place for just people in such circumstances is the jury box, where they will interpose themselves between the State and its innocent victims. This principle was elucidated in compelling detail by Thoreau's fellow abolitionist Lysander Spooner.

The fact that juries possess plenary power to judge both facts and law -- the latter giving a jury the power to nullify the enforcement of bad laws -- is perhaps the most carefully guarded secret of our current legal system. For the first century of our existence, it was commonplace for juries to be informed of that fact before being sent to deliberate. Today, a defense attorney who mentions that fact in open court can often expect to be censured by the presiding judge or even hit with a contempt-of-court charge.

Rescuing this fundamental check on government power is the mission of the Fully Informed Jury Association, which commemorates this date (September 5) as "Jury Rights Day." This observance is held in remembrance of the 1670 acquittal -- through jury nullification -- of Quaker leader William Penn on the charge of preaching an "illegal" sermon in London. The heroic holdout jurors, led by Edward Bushell, were imprisoned and tortured by the presiding judge (through what today's practitioners would call a "restricted diet" -- others call it deliberate starvation and dehydration), and set free when England's highest court upheld the right of jury nullification.

"Trials are too important to be left to juries," insisted high-octane jury consultant Rankin Fitch (Gene Hackman) in the legal potboiler The Runaway Jury. In fact, in many cases the only worthwhile jury is a "runaway" jury.

One very telling measure of the Regime's fear of jury nullification is found in the efforts expended by prosecutors -- who have become a veritable human pestilence -- to prevent cases from going to trial.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, who masterfully dissected the contemporary "justice" system in his 1998 book (co-written with Lawrence M. Stratton) The Tyranny of Good Intentions, points out that "the vast majority of felony cases are settled with a plea bargain...."

Most conservatives made aware of this would react with a snort and complain about excessive leniency, ignorant of another important fact: Many, perhaps most, "felonies" today involve no offenses against persons or property, no criminal intent, and are usually a product of an opportunistic prosecutor's malicious creativity in confecting a criminal offense.

It is common for prosecutors to multiply charges as a way of terrorizing an innocent defendant into accepting a plea. Very rarely do we see a defendant with the means to defend himself in such circumstances. An exception that proves the rule is the wealthy Republican Senator Larry Craig, who was manipulated into a guilty plea on a ridiculous charge, and has tardily decided to put up a fight.

But for the average citizen who finds himself targeted by an ambitious prosecutor, a plea bargain usually seems like the only relatively palatable alternative to the expense of a trial and the possibility of a long time in prison. At the bargaining table, "I'm all in" for the prosecutor means that, should he lose, he would sacrifice a little prestige, with the taxpayers absorbing all of the expenses; the defendant stands to lose everything and faces the prospect of utter ruin.

This is why so many innocent people are willing to deal. For the State, the most attractive feature of such arrangements is the fact that it keeps such cases away from juries. And we're left with a "justice" apparatus that functions, in the words of legal scholar John Langbein, like "the ancient system of judicial torture," which relied on self-incrimination through duress, rather than conviction on the basis of sound evidence.

The ardent desire of our rulers to minimize the jury system -- with the ultimate objective of abolishing it -- underscores the importance of rehabilitating the only government institution worthy of unqualified support: The fully-informed citizen jury.

Video bonus

The following three-part program, produced roughly two decades ago, offers additional background and insights regarding the need for, and critical importance of, jury nullification as a check on government power:

Part One:



Part Two:



Part Three




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Treason

Behold the face of a traitor: David Addington, Chief of Staff to Dick Cheney, who spoke of collaborating with terrorists in an assault on the United States Constitution. He deserves the long, lonely drop to the end of a hangman's rope* -- along with several others we should compel him to name.


"Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court."

U.S. Constitution, Article III, Sec. 3.

"We're one bomb away from getting rid of that obnoxious [FISA] court." --

David Addington, chief of staff to "vice" President Dick Cheney.


Absent a congressional declaration of war, it is extremely difficult for private citizens to commit acts that meet the statutory and constitutional definition of treason. The same cannot be said of executive branch officials, however -- as the statement from David Addington quoted above illustrates.

Clearly, Addington -- like lesser figures among the Bushcisti -- lusted for a dramatic terrorist attack that would vindicate the administration's accumulation of dictatorial powers. Unlike such reprobates as Rick Santorum, Dennis Milligan, and Dana Rohrabacher, however, Addington clearly believed that the administration was covertly collaborating with terrorists in an assault on the other constitutionally designated branches of the federal government -- the Congress and the judiciary.

How else are reasonable people supposed to interpret Addington's use of the collective pronoun "we" when referring to a terrorist attack that would upend the balance of power?

This is, simply and unambiguously, treason. Were we still living in a republic, Addington would be arraigned on the charge, assuming that a second witness can be found to his quasi-confession.


Jack Goldsmith, who briefly served as head of the Justice (sic) Department's Office of Legal Counsel, testifies that Addington made that remark to him in January 2004 during a debate over the merits of Bush's illegal warrantless wiretapping program. (As conservative legal analyst Bruce Fein points out, by authorizing and carrying out that program, Bush committed numerous federal felonies as well as impeachable offenses.)

As documented in a New York Times Magazine interview, Goldsmith supports the aggrandizement of presidential power. "I'm not a civil libertarian," he told the Times' Jeffrey Rosen, a remark that is difficult to construe as a revelation. He offered no principled objection to the creation of a presidential dictatorship, complete with proto-totalitarian powers of surveillance, detention, and interrogation. But he parted company with his comrades -- Addington, Alberto Gonzalez, Jay Bybee, John Yoo, and the others -- over matters of "means, not ends," seeking political support and institutional security by winning congressional support for the revolution. It was his Goldsmith's belief that a Republican-dominated Congress would enact the administration's entire program if asked to, and that this "wartime" legislative ratification would protect the new presidential powers from the Supreme Court's scrutiny.

Goldsmith professes to be alarmed to learn that his comrades were "highly contemptuous of Congress and the courts." And there was none so expansively contemptuous of the constitutional separation of powers than Addington, who ascribed to the president a nearly messianic status.

In October 2003, Goldsmith, at the request of the White House, examined the terms of the Fourth Geneva Convention to see if they applied to Iraqi civilians accused of "terrorist" attacks on US occupation forces. Reading the text and history of the agreement honestly, Goldsmith concluded that civilian insurgents were covered by the Convention, and reported as much to Gonzalez and Addington.

The latter became "livid" at Goldsmith's report. "The president has already decided that terrorists do not receive Geneva Convention protections," proclaimed Addington. "You cannot question his decision."

As with so many other Bush Regime pronouncements, that statement should be rendered in the original German in order for us to savor its totalitarian tang.

A few months later, Goldsmith again committed the unpardonable sin of questioning a presidential decision, thereby prompting Adddington to warn that a lack of faith in the Grand and Glorious Decider's omniscience undermines his ability to hold the Evil-Doers at bay: "If you rule that way, the blood of the hundred thousand people who die in the next attack will be on your hands."

Of course, as Addington admitted on another occasion, the death of innocent Americans would be a good and useful thing, provided that they die ad majorem gloria Bush.


"Treason," as defined by the Bushcisti, captured in an uncannily perceptive satire.


Decorum prevents me from using suitable language to limn the utter depravity of David Addington and people of his ilk. As a key architect of the aggressive war in Iraq, Addington -- as well as Cheney, the ambulatory wad of unfiltered evil whose servant he is -- could properly be put on trial as a war criminal.

And for cheerfully predicting the death of Americans in the expectation that their innocent blood would baptize a presidential dictatorship, he deserves to be put on trial for treason.

He won't, of course, because the republic is as dead as the surface of Mars.




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*I hasten to point out that while Addington may be deserving of capital punishment, as an opponent of the death penalty I don't support inflicting it upon him, should he be found guilty by a jury of his peers -- y'know, people like you and me, whose lives he considers disposable. Life imprisonment would be a suitable alternative.