January 19, 2009

1/19: Pelosi Makes Waves

Liberal bloggers are buzzing about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's appearance on Fox News Sunday, in which she said that she is open to pursuing investigations of abuses by George W. Bush's DoJ. The netroots see Pelosi's remarks as further evidence that "progressives are more likely to see the House leadership take up our causes than the White House." As we've noted before, lefty bloggers have been putting a lot of pressure on the incoming Barack Obama admin. to investigate and prosecute crimes committed by Bush officials.

Conservative bloggers, meanwhile, are blasting Pelosi's comments, calling them "exactly the sort of partisan hyperventilation that candidate Obama denounced." Some righty bloggers are even warning that investigations of Bush officials "could legitimately begin the breakdown of the American republic."

What else is happening in the blogosphere?

• Liberal bloggers (Sirota, Drum, Yglesias) were pleased to learn that Obama plans to meet with the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Wed. in order "to discuss the Iraq war, a conflict he has vowed to end after six years of fighting."
• Conservative bloggers (Mirengoff, Liebau, Erickson) are criticizing the "pornographic" media coverage of Obama's inauguration, whereas liberal bloggers (MissLaura, digby) are excited about the events in DC.

PELOSI: Bravo, Nancy!

Liberal bloggers were pleased to learn that Pelosi is open to investigating possible abuses by the Bush DoJ:

"'I think that we have to learn from the past and we cannot let the politicizing, for example, of the Justice Department, to go unreviewed,' Pelosi said on 'Fox News Sunday.' 'Past is prologue. We learn from it.'"

• AMERICAblog's Joe Sudbay: "Letting high ranking officials get away with crimes is what happens in dictatorships. It cannot and should not happen in the United States. That is un-American at its core. [...] Pelosi's words today are a step in the right direction."
• Think Progress' Matthew Yglesias: "Presidential leadership is obviously a very important part of getting things done in the United States, but on a variety of issues progressives are more likely to see the House leadership take up our causes than the White House."
• Open Left's Chris Bowers: "The pre-season prediction of the House being more progressive than the Senate appears to be holding true to form."

PELOSI II: Them's Fightin' Words

Conservative bloggers are slamming Pelosi for her remarks:

• RedState's Erick Erickson: "Nancy Pelosi's political threat could legitimately begin the breakdown of the American republic. And that's no exaggeration. The true reason that the American Republic has endured...is because of a very simple rule: political defeats do not end the game. Nancy Pelosi could end the game."
• Townhall's Hugh Hewitt: "This is exactly the sort of partisan hyperventilation that candidate Obama denounced, and if he doesn't separate himself from it, it undermines all of his appeals to the country to support a period of bipartisan legislation. The Speaker wants payback to satisfy her hard left base, but the president-elect must know that there is zero political advantage to pressing an attack on the already left-town Bush officials."
• Michelle Malkin: "The nutroots roasted Nancy Pelosi for refusing the join the Bush impeachment bandwagon last summer. She argued it would be 'divisive' and a 'distraction' from the liberal Democrat legislative agenda -- incensing the Joy Behar wing of the party. Remember? [...] Well, now that we're in dire economic straights and Obama is about to ascend the throne, Pelosi has apparently decided that the timing is right for the division and distraction she condemned six months ago."
• Ace of Spades: "They will not be satisfied until they completely trash Bush, and the war. And conservatism. Honestly, I don't think even that will satisfy them. It'll keep them sedated for a bit. That's all."

Power Line's Paul Mirengoff doesn't think the Obama admin. will pursue investigations: "It seems unlikely...that the Obama Justice Department will want to devote its resources to litigating over its own employment practices, where employees affected by the decisions in question (both favorably and unfavorably) are still among its workforce. Obama is probably even less inclined to prosecute Bush administration officials over actions taken in connection with conducting the war on terror. Such prosecutions would likely demoralize govenment employees still engaged in fighting terrorism, produce division where Obama seeks unity, and create a precedent that might later be used against Obama's people."

BUSH: We Want The Truth!

Several liberal bloggers are suggesting that Obama is legally obligated to investigate possible crimes committed by the Bush admin.:

• Salon's Glenn Greenwald: "The Bush administration authorized, ordered and practiced torture. The U.S., under Ronald Reagan, legally obligated itself to investigate and prosecute any acts of torture committed by Americans [...] Once Eric Holder stated unequivocally that waterboarding is torture, and once a top Bush official used the word 'torture' to describe what the U.S. did at Guantanamo using authorized techniques other than waterboarding, the 'discretion' to investigate and prosecute disappeared -- at least for people who believe in the most basic precepts of the rule of law and equality under it, Western principles of justice established at Nuremberg, and the notion that the U.S. is bound by the treaties it signs. There simply is no way to argue against investigations and prosecutions (and no way to argue that we should use torture-obtained evidence against Guantanamo detainees) without fully rejecting all of those principles."
• The Nation's Christopher Hayes: "It's a been a while since I was a practicing logician in college, but let me see if I can lay this out. (1) Yesterday, AG designee Eric Holder said, without hesitation that water-boarding is torture. (2) Dick Cheney has admitted authorizing water-boarding. (3) Dick Cheney has admitted authorizing torture. (4) Torture is a felony under US law punishable by up to 20 years of prison. (5) Dick Cheney authorized a felony. QED, right? Is there any other way to reason through these premises and deductions?"
• Yglesias: "[Hayes] raises the question of how, exactly, the Obama administration can possibly move forward with a 'let bygones by bygones' approach to Bush-era violations of the laws of war. Prosecutors have a lot of discretion, so I believe AG Holder would be within his rights to simply decline to investigate [Cheney's] public admission that he's committed what Holder claims to believe are serious crimes. But surely Holder should be asked about this and expected to give some kind of reasons for turning a blind eye."

OBAMA: See? We Told You He's Gonna End The War!

Liberal bloggers are pleased that Obama plans to "meet with high-ranking military officers [on Wed.] to discuss the Iraq war, a conflict he has vowed to end after six years of fighting." While many political analysts have suggested that Obama will keep troops in Iraq for longer than promised, lefty bloggers are pointing to this report as evidence that Obama will indeed follow through on his campaign vow to end the war:

• Yglesias: "This should hardly come as a surprise since if you ask me Barack Obama has always been pretty clear about it, but for the record he's still planning to end the war in Iraq."
• Open Left's David Sirota: "Despite Establishment pressure from the media and Pentagon for him to change his withdrawal plans, Obama has long been almost completely consistent in pledging to withdraw troops on a 16-month timetable (I say 'almost' because there was a one-day controversy on the campaign in which Obama said he might have to 'refine' his timetable -- but he then reiterated that he was committed to it). And now, according to the New York Times, one of his first orders as president will be to tell military commanders to start planning for withdrawal."
• Mother Jones' Kevin Drum: "[S]o far Obama has given every sign -- both for good and ill -- of taking campaign trail promises unusually seriously. I know it's premature to say that with any authority, but on taxes and stimulus and DADT and Iraq and a slew of other issues, I've been impressed with how seldom he's given any indication of either backing down from promises or adding in lots of stuff he once said he was against. Obviously Congress will force plenty of changes on him in the future, and so will events on the ground. But so far, despite the endless rounds of ungrounded rumors and speculation from the punditocracy, the betting man's line on Obama ought to be pretty simple: just take a look at what he said he was going to do during the campaign. More than likely, that's what he's going to do when the rubber meets the road in the Oval Office."

INAUGURATION: Too Much? Or Just Right?

Conservative bloggers are decrying what they perceive to be the adulatory media coverage of Obama's inauguration:

• Mirengoff: "One expects the mainstream media to wax poetic when a Democrat is about to become president. But the praise it is heaping on Barack Obama is surely unprecedented."
• Townhall's Carol Platt Liebau: "[O]ne would think that we are witnessing not just a presidential inauguration, but the canonization of a secular saint. The joyous faces of the anchors, the repeated invocation of the word 'historic' -- coupled, of course, with the images referenced above -- reflect a quasi-religious ecstasy, and do nothing if not suggest that a magnificent event of unrivaled proportion is about to unfold before us."
• Erickson: "Look, I get that it is historic, but it has become pornographic. All the reporters come back from breaks flushed and breathing heavy. Good grief."

Liberal bloggers, on the other hand, are excited about the inauguration:

• Daily Kos' MissLaura: "I feel cheeseball saying it, but holy shit. We are living history here, and it is beautiful."
• digby: "[A]t the risk of being sentimental again (I know how some of you hate that) I have to say once more just how much affection I feel for the Obama family and how verklempt I get at the thought of them being in the White House. I've been embarrassed and ashamed of a lot of things this country's done, especially in recent years. But the fact that in my lifetime we have gone from the horrors on the Edmund Pettus Bridge to inaugurating a black president gives me...well...hope."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: MLK And Nonviolence

Yglesias:

"...By the standards of today's discourse, [Martin Luther] King would be considered deeply unserious. Serious people understand that if you think something is important, the serious way to go about expressing that is by voicing support for having other people go kill other people. Doubts about the ethics of such action are loathesome moral equivalence and doubts about their wisdom demonstrate naïveté. King wouldn't qualify as a 'civil rights Democrat' -- not enough bloodshed.

The irony is that adherence to nonviolence is one of the main reasons King is such an admired and mainstream figure today. If he'd decided à la Tom Friedman that the white south needed a 'suck on this' moment, or followed the lead of Hamas or Shimon Peres in deciding the best way to teach the population a lesson was to terrorize them, he'd be a jailed or executed despised criminal. And the ethic of nonviolence that King appealed to has deep roots in the Christian tradition that unites the majority of black and white Americans. And yet even though this Christian nonviolence is in many ways the most mainstream aspect of this radical figure who's become a mainstream icon, it's something that none dare take seriously today."

LEST WE FORGET: Facebook Friend Apparently Dead Now

From The Onion:

"KANSAS CITY, MO -- While checking his news feed for updates on the 438 people in his extended network Monday night, Tom Allessandro, 24, noticed that Facebook friend David Bluvband has apparently died. 'Huh, I guess he's dead now,' said Allessandro, adding that it seemed like only yesterday when Bluvband, a former coworker of his ex-girlfriend, posted a link to the YouTube clip of 'Chocolate Rain.' 'Boy. That's a shame. Just goes to show you that you really have to enjoy every SuperPoke like it's your last.' After an appropriate two-minute mourning period spent reviewing Bluvband's tagged photos, Allessandro clicked 'Attending' for an event entitled 'Lost My Cell Phone! I Need Your Numbers!!@!.'"

Posted by Ian Faerstein at January 19, 2009 12:35 PM