Speaking of Scandals

Why is the Republican Party leadership not up in arms about the way Blackwater was managed under the Bush Administration? Forget Benghazi. The White House not only enabled the private firm to behave badly, it deliberately undermined the functioning of legitimate government operations -- like a State Department investigation -- in order to give the group free rein.

Here's the answer: Republicans believe that when government acts, it is wrong, but when private companies act, all is good. (This is not unrelated to the Hobby Lobby decision today -- more on that after I have read the full decision.) Republicans want to contract out functions that ought to be kept within the powers of the government, and that includes military action.

My complaint with that position is that it undermines the accountability that is fundamental to the rule of law. It's dangerous.

What Does it Mean to be an Ally?

The State if Iraq in Syria (ISIS) is a nasty outfit, and if you don't believe me, ask Bashar al-Assad and Ayman al-Zawahiri. Assad has made himself as infamous as his father by defending his right to gas his own people; Zawahiri is the current head of al-Qaeda, an organization not known for its squeamishness in the face of violence. These men have condemned both the methods and the bloody objectives of ISIS, and, along with the government of Iran, has agreed to share intelligence and personnel in the effort to kick ISIS out of Iraq.

All of these people, as well as the state of Israel and the government of the United States, are banding together to defend the map, as it is constructed below. The status quo, with all of its economic and political implications, reflects a secret process of map drawing conducted by French and English diplomats in the first years of the 20th century. That is still exists is a testament to the extraordinary quantities of blood and treasure governments have been willing to expend in its defense.

http://www.oilempire.us/new-map.html

What ISIS wants to do is erase all these lines and consolidate the entire region under one, repressive Islamic state based on its blatant misreading of the Koran and in conflict with most modes of fundamental morality. ISIS is mean and ought to be eradicated.

stratfor.com

On one level, therefore, it is not at all surprising that so many states would get together to eliminate ISIS. These entities have been at war themselves, however, in nasty ways of their own. For Iran and the US to acknowledge publicly that they are sharing information, therefore, is stunning. It goes to show that we may have more in common that is often recognized.

The GOP and X-gate

Ever since Watergate, Republicans have been keen to demonstrate that they are not the only ones guilty of official malfeasance. Although they were unmoved by the obviously illegal behavior of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush as they traded arms for hostages with a country identified as a state sponsor of terrorism, and as they deliberately violated a law passes by Congress to prevent interactions with a corrupt and violent insurgent group, they have since scrounged up all kinds of scandal.

Thus, the bizarre behavior of Kenneth Starr, the investigator in search of a crime; birther fanatics insisting that Barack Obama is not American; the weirdly hysterical outcry about the Benghazi attacks; and now the "investigation" of the IRS for targeting conservative groups.

The problem with all of these protests is that the behavior they decry is hardly in line with the wildly unconstitutional acts of the Republican versions. Bill Clinton was a lech, but he did not abuse his office in a serious way. Obama has a birth certificate, and his only "crime" seems to be that he is black and Harvard-educated. If the State Department did want to portray the Benghazi attacks as protests, and succeeded in doing so for two days, so what? And the "targeting" of the Tea Party by the IRS has more to do with campaign organizations masquerading as tax-exempt non-profits (and therefore robbing the government) as it does with official malfeasance.

It's just another indication of the fact that the Republican Party has become unhinged, to the detriment of us all. We need at least two sane parties, the GOP is not holding up its end.

"Politics," the Supreme Court and the Rule of Law

A flurry of media attention has been directed lately at the Supreme Court, which scholars have argued has drifted from its responsibility to serve as neutral arbiter of the law. In early May, Thomas Edsall wrote a piece for the New York Times summarizing a lot of this commentary, and concluded that the Court's polarization comes from the four justices who consider themselves most "conservative."

The core scholarship behind Edsall's op-ed came from a study done by Geoffrey Stone of the University of Chicago, which found that in cases generally considered most "important," these four justices -- Scalia, Alito, Thomas and Roberts -- departed from the "judicial conservativism" they espouse at public speaking engagements, and engaged in an "activist" approach to evaluating legislation.

To be judicially conservative is to refrain from overturning the actions of the political branches unless there is a compelling constitutional reason to do so. Such a reason usually comes from a list articulated in a famous footnote to the Court's decision in United States v. Carolene Products. The principle behind the list is that if a statute infringes on a specific constitutional right or interferes with the basic functioning of democratic processes, the government must prove the necessity of the law; otherwise, the Court ought to assume that any reasonable law is constitutional. The point of such an approach to is prevent judges sitting "on high" from imposing their fundamentally undemocratic judgment on the creation of law. It calls for a careful -- not to say narrow -- reading of the words of the Constitution and a restrained application of judicial power.

Stone argues, however, that in the most important cases Scalia, Alito, Thomas, and Roberts tend to vote not according to these principles but according to their own personal political preferences and tastes -- exactly the thing judicial conservatives say it is wrong to do.

Just as referees and umpires ought not be remembered -- because it's always their worst decisions people recall -- the Supreme Court is ill served by its recent notoriety. Justice Scalia, who writes intentionally inflammatory dissents and makes more public speeches (and earns more money for them) than any other justice, is primarily responsible for all this public attention. In my view, this behavior is unconscionably selfish and destructive.

This problem goes beyond the mere reputation of the Supreme Court. It undermines the very foundations of reasoned public discourse in this country. By design, Congress and the executive branch are intended to pursue self-interested agendas, if not in the personal sense, at least in the political sense. But the judiciary is supposed to be dispassionate and neutral. Its  traditions, its methods, its selection, all are designed to insulate judges from the ephemeral demands of re-elections and other political contradictions. I am not naive enough to believe that judges never are influenced by public opinion or electoral competitions, and I am not even arguing that such influences always are bad. The Court at the moment, however, has lost its moorings, and we all are suffering as a result.