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Bob McDonnell's Appalling GOP Response
by noteworthy at 11:54 pm EST, Jan 27, 2010

Bob McDonnell:

Americans were shocked on Christmas Day to learn of the attempted bombing of a flight to Detroit. This foreign terror suspect was given the same legal rights as a U.S. citizen, and immediately stopped providing critical intelligence.
As Senator-elect Scott Brown says, we should be spending taxpayer dollars to defeat terrorists, not to protect them.

I am frankly appalled that candidates and officials continue to score points with this rhetoric. Back in the heat of the 2008 campaign, Palin got cheers for making a quip of it, and Obama responded:

"The reason that you have this principle is not to be soft on terrorism. It's because that's who we are. That's what we're protecting."

Here we are some 16 months later, and they've elevated this dangerous ignorance to their party platform statement following the State of the Union. And again it draws cheers. This time, though, the event was not just a local rally, but a nationally televised event "which cost about $30,000 and was paid for by the Republican Governors Association and the political action committees of McDonnell and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell." According to Ben Smith of Politico:

Scott Brown's aides believed this was a key wedge issue, and its inclusion here suggests that the campaign to keep terror suspects, even ones arrested in America, out of civilian courts, will be central to Republican campaigns this year.

As Decius wrote that same day in 2008:

If McCain's VP pick were just as boring as Obama's I might not care at all about this election, but Palin is an existential threat that demands an awakening from apathy. I don't know what's more fearsome, the fact that she was selected, or the fact that the American people have bought it and she has given McCain a huge boost in the polls.
I feel like I'm living in an insane asylum.
Whether it's the open attacks on ancient principles such as Habeas Corpus or the fact that we are in the midst of a nearly unprecedented economic cataclysm one cannot escape the conclusion that the people in charge have absolutely no idea what the fuck they are doing and that the people who do know what ought to be done have been totally marginalized by our corruption. Palin personifies all of this. She is the slick corporate VP who is all image and no substance, and they love that about her because they have convinced themselves that if they do away with substance it will free them from the problems that substantial people attempt to address.
This is the road to despotism. T... [ Read More (0.1k in body) ]

RE: Bob McDonnell's Appalling GOP Response
by Decius at 2:30 pm EST, Jan 28, 2010

noteworthy wrote:
Bob McDonnell:
Americans were shocked on Christmas Day to learn of the attempted bombing of a flight to Detroit. This foreign terror suspect was given the same legal rights as a U.S. citizen, and immediately stopped providing critical intelligence.
As Senator-elect Scott Brown says, we should be spending taxpayer dollars to defeat terrorists, not to protect them.
I am frankly appalled that candidates and officials continue to score points with this rhetoric. Back in the heat of the 2008 campaign, Palin got cheers for making a quip of it, and Obama responded:
"The reason that you have this principle is not to be soft on terrorism. It's because that's who we are. That's what we're protecting."

I was bothered by this too - Palindrome and I discussed it last night, it bothered her even more.

Whats odd is that as far I know there has been relatively little political hay made of the recent criminal conviction of a Georgia Tech student for providing material support for foreign terrorism. If the Republicans truly believe that all terrorism suspects should be denied trials, why aren't they speaking out about that conviction. I see two possibilities:

1. Its not politically expedient because the prosecutions where started by the Bush administration and their goal is more about scoring political points against the other party than actually articulating a substantive policy position.

2. They are drawing some kind of line. They see the two situations as being different, possibly because the Tech student was a "U.S. Person" and not a foreign national or because the nature of the offenses is different? (While people are often stalwart in the defense of their own civil liberties, the civil liberties of others are more rarely defended.)

Last night I was leaning toward 2 but now I'm leaning toward 1.

Its also worth pointing out that while the Obama administration might have better sounding political rhetoric, its not clear what their actual position is. They have decided to hold 50 detainees forever because any potential trial has been tainted by the use of torture, they've engaged in an effort to shut down Gitmo, which is both ill considered and phony, and they seem to have picked up the Bush Administration's line everywhere regarding the use of state secrets to absolve themselves of responsibility for illegal acts.

If there is some sort of substantive difference between Obama and Bush on civil liberties and the treatment of detainees its not clear to me what it is. It seems to me that both parties are offering us the exact same operational policies and the real difference is just the spin they put on what they are doing - what color bottle the sugar water comes in.