Category: Politics

Even though I’ve lived in the US for the last 26 years, I’ve never gone through the process of acquiring US citizenship; I’m still a “resident alien”. When I’m filling out application forms, or checking in at hotels, I enter “United Kingdom” for the country that issues my passport. And for the most part I think of myself as British, not English. But according to this article in the Expat Telegraph, my position seems to be increasingly unfashionable. It’s unclear whether the Union between England and Scotland will survive – or whether it should.
It would be nice to think that this is the kind of issue that is clarified by a little distance. From over here in Seattle, undisturbed by the day-to-day bustle of British politics and media, surely I should be able to view the matter more clearly, more dispassionately. Unfortunately not. “On the one hand… on the other hand…”, and I rapidly run out of hands. For example: what do the Scots really want? The author makes a good point: “The dilemma for many Scots is that because the Conservatives are so weak there, those who want to get rid of Labour have nowhere to go but the SNP. The protest vote, by default, becomes an expression of nationalism.”
His conclusion: put the whole thing to a vote. If the majority of Scots really believe that they’d be better off on their own, so be it. But hopefully they won’t.

Andrew Sullivan just posted about “the terrible abuse of power and the constitution in the Padilla case, one of the most important cases in the history of American liberty”. He links to Dahlia Lithwick, who concludes that:

The destruction of Al Dossari, Jose Padilla, Zacarias Moussaoui, and some of our most basic civil liberties was never a purpose or a goal—it was a mere byproduct. The true purpose is more abstract and more tragic: To establish a clunky post-Watergate dream of an imperial presidency, whatever the human cost may be.

And I found myself wondering whether the deliberately inflicted mental breakdown of Padilla was simply a distraction: a way of getting people arguing whether sensory deprivation and isolation deserves the label “torture”, and thereby overlooking the far more far-reaching constitutional question. I ask myself whether this administration is capable of such a deeply cynical and amoral move – torture as a PR ploy – and it’s hard to resist an affirmative answer.

Olbermann skewers Bush:

(Hat tip to Jesus’ General.)

From the Baltimore Sun, via Daily Kos, via Majikthise

Better armor lacking for new troops in Iraq
By David Wood
Sun reporter
January 10, 2007
WASHINGTON — The thousands of troops that President Bush is expected to order to Iraq will join the fight largely without the protection of the latest armored vehicles that withstand bomb blasts far better than the Humvees in wide use, military officers said.

And why was that? Simple:

“At each step along the way for the past four years, the key policymakers have assumed we were just months away from beginning to withdraw.”

Up until recently, I felt that there was no point in impeaching the organ-grinder’s monkey instead of the organ-grinder. However since Cheney appears to have left the building, it’s time to nail the monkey.

As a relatively successful product of the old, selective system of British secondary schooling, I used to toe the Labour party line on the virtues of comprehensive education. I wised up after I arrived in the USA. After seeing the practical results (including the mess that US public education has become), I can’t say I’m surprised to read that “More than three-quarters of people believe bright children would do better if taught separately, a poll suggests.” I don’t think anyone – even the most devout social democrats – ever believed that this idea was false; the difference is that now people seem willing to admit that bright kids ought to have the opportunity to do better. Elitist? Maybe so – but meritocracy certainly seems preferable to plutocracy….

Must-read: Terry, on Torture, and what it is. Remember: Terry knows what he’s talking about. He understands interrogation in the way that no politician or pundit can. He’s a professional.

Padilla’s treatment is an outrage. Not just that it happened (secret prisons aren’t really that hard to make, nor even to keep secret) but that when the details come out, no one seems to care.

On the eve of the US mid-term elections, Michael Kinsley diagnoses the problem at the heart of American (and, sadly,British) politics. Money quote:

The biggest flaw in our democracy is, as I say, the enormous tolerance for intellectual dishonesty. Politicians are held to account for outright lies, but there seems to be no sanction against saying things you obviously don’t believe. There is no reward for logical consistency, and no punishment for changing your story depending on the circumstances. […] And it seems to me, though I can’t prove it, that this problem is getting worse and worse.
A few days before the 2000 election, the Bush team started assembling people to deal with a possible problem: what if Bush won the popular vote but Gore carried the Electoral College. They decided on, and were prepared to begin, a big campaign to convince the citizenry that it would be wrong for Gore to take office under those circumstances. And they intended to create a tidal wave of pressure on Gore’s electors to vote for Bush, which arguably the electors as free agents have the authority to do. In the event, of course, the result was precisely the opposite, and immediately the Bushies launched into precisely the opposite argument: the Electoral College is a vital part of our Constitution, electors are not free agents, threatening the Electoral College result would be thumbing your nose at the founding fathers, and so on. Gore, by the way, never did challenge the Electoral College, although some advisers urged him to do so.
Of all the things Bush did and said during the 2000 election crisis, this having-it-both-ways is the most corrupt. It was reported before the election and is uncontested, but no one seems to care, because so much of our politics is like that. […] The only way it can be brought under control is if people start voting against it. If they did, the problem would go away. That’s democracy.

In other words, there are no consequences for exhibiting a lack of principles, for saying things that you don’t mean. The whole thing is like a high school debating club in which the arguments you advance have nothing to do with what you believe, or what the facts are, and everything to do with winning.

Olbermann tells it like it is. 10 minutes of straight talk about the politics of fear.

I’ve been getting a bit behind with my blog-reading (and blogging) for the last few days, mostly because Chris has been visiting. This evening I spent an hour or two catching up on my regular feeds, and then wandered over to Samizdata.net. Buried among a piece on the return of the Transport blog and a rant about Kettering town planning, I encountered a story that provoked a classic double-take. It seems that an increasing number of British pubs and clubs are being required to fingerprint their patrons. Incredulously, I read the background material from the Guardian and the Register, then Guy Herbert’s analysis:

The fingerprinting is epiphenomenon. What’s deeply disturbing here is the construction of new regimes of official control out of powers granted nominally in the spirit of “liberalisation”. The Licensing Act 2003 passed licensing the sale of alcohol and permits for music and dancing – yes, you need a permit to let your customers dance in England and Wales – from magistrates to local authorities. And it provided for local authorities to set conditions on licenses as they saw fit.
Though local authorities are notionally elected bodies, and magistrates appointees, this looked like democratic reform. But all the powers of local authorities are actually exercised by permanent officials – who also tell elected councillors what their duties are. And there are an awful lot of them.
Magistrates used to hear licensing applications quickly. They had other things to do. And they exercised their power judicially: deciding, but not seeking to control. Ms Bradburn and her staff have time to work with the police and the Home Office on innovative schemes. I’ve noted before how simple-sounding powers can be pooled by otherwise separate agencies to common purpose, gaining leverage over the citizen. I call it The Power Wedge.
They are entirely dedicated to making us safer. How terrifying.

I’ve always hung on to my British passport, secure in the knowledge that if things turned pear-shaped in the USA I could always scamper back across the Atlantic to an oasis of relative calm and sanity. Time for Plan B, I think….

Via Sully, a scathing piece by Olberman on the demise of Habeas Corpus.