His Own Petard

Okay, Raw Story has posted an article about tea baggers planning a protest at a southern California mosque. In that article Raw Story quotes part of an email from the protest planner:

One of the emails, obtained by CAIR, declared: "Islam is not a religion. It is a worldwide political movement meant [sic] on domination of the world. And it is meant to subjugate all people under Islamic law...."

Hasn't he just defined religion in general?

Beck's CPAC Innuendo

Okay, so Brad at Sadly, No! quotes this from Dana Milbank's WaPo article about Glenn Beck at CPAC:

In an apparent reference to John McCain, Beck condemned a "guy in the Republican Party who says his favorite president is Theodore Roosevelt." He then read disapprovingly the Roosevelt quote that "we grudge no man a fortune in civil life if it is honorably obtained and well used . . . so long as the gaining represents benefit to the community."

"Is this what the Republican Party stands for?" Beck demanded. He was answered with boos and cries of "no!" "It's big government, it's a socialist utopia and we need to address it as if it is a cancer."

Brad then goes on to question the wisdom of Republicans attacking Teddy Roosevelt when they've already been attacking FDR for decades. Subsequently, he wonders if Abe Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson are next on the hit list. An amusing post, certainly, but one which ignores the more fundamental question: What exactly is Beck saying the republican party should stand for?

Roosevelt was simply saying: Nothing wrong with trying to get rich, just don't shit where you eat. Glenn Beck and his audience at CPAC seem to think this is heretical nonsense. They want no part of such blasphemy. Instead Beck implies that the Republican party should stand for the accumulation of wealth at the expense of the common good. That it should explicitly be the party of "Fuck you, I got mine."

The real problem is that such a slogan would probably fly these days. People shouldn't be concerned with Iran getting nukes, they should be concerned about Republicans getting them.

How Joe Stack Has Served The Republicans

Homeland security says that when Joe Stack flew a plane into the IRS offices in Austin, TX it was not an act of terrorism. First, let's look at the merits of that assertion.

This is how the DOD defines terrorism:

The calculated use of unlawful violence or threat of unlawful violence to inculcate fear; intended to coerce or to intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological.

This is the definition of terrorism under U.S. law:

(2) the term “terrorism” means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents;

This is an excerpt from Ted (the Unabomber) Kaczynski's manifesto:

We therefore advocate a revolution against the industrial system. This revolution may or may not make use of violence: it may be sudden or it may be a relatively gradual process spanning a few decades. We can't predict any of that. But we do outline in a very general way the measures that those who hate the industrial system should take in order to prepare the way for a revolution against that form of society. This is not to be a POLITICAL revolution. Its object will be to overthrow not governments but the economic and technological basis of the present society.

This is from the Al Qaeda manifesto titled "Why We Fight America":

What happened to America [on 9/11] is something natural, an expected event for a country that uses terror, arrogant policy, and suppression against the nations and the peoples . . . America is the head of heresy in our modern world, and it leads an infidel democratic regime that is based upon separation of religion and state and on ruling the people by . . . laws that contradict the way of Allah. . . . [Therefore], we have the right to kill 4 million Americans - 2 million of them children - and to exile twice as many and wound and cripple hundreds of thousands. Furthermore, it is our right to fight them with chemical and biological weapons . . .

This is (in part) Joe Stack's justification of his actions of February 18th, 2010:

I know I’m hardly the first one to decide I have had all I can stand . . . I know there have been countless before me and there are sure to be as many after. But I also know that by not adding my body to the count, I insure nothing will change . . . I would only hope that by striking a nerve that stimulates the inevitable double standard, knee-jerk government reaction that results in more stupid draconian restrictions people wake up and begin to see the pompous political thugs and their mindless minions for what they are. Sadly, though I spent my entire life trying to believe it wasn’t so, but violence not only is the answer, it is the only answer.

Each of these excerpts represents the mindset of an individual or group of individuals who carefully thought out what they were doing and why they were doing it (premeditated, calculated). In each case they advocated and/or perpetrated and/or threatened unlawful acts of violence to intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological.

Clearly the Dept. of Homeland Security is full of beans.

Now what effect does the DHS's statement have in broad terms? Well, if joe Stack is not a terrorist, it becomes less of a political liability for Republicans to (while deploring the act itself) sympathize with his frustration toward the tax code and assert that the Democrats and their big government schemes are driving the people to extreme measures. Furthermore, it seems unlikely that the Democrats will offer much pushback on the topic of Stack's status as a terrorist since if people start seeing him as a terrorist it means that the Obama administration has allowed a terrorist attack on American soil and is therefore an ineffectual protector. The real bummer is that this will probably work very well for the Repubs.

This also illustrates why humans in general are idiots and don't really deserve a future.

Update: As usual, Glenn Greenwald has a bunch of very intersting things to say on the topic.
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/02/19/terrorism/index.html

Little Brother Will Be Watching

More bad news:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8366255.stm

"This plan won't stop copyright infringement and with a simple accusation could see you and your family disconnected from the internet - unable to engage in everyday activities like shopping and socialising," it [Lobby organisation The Open Rights Group] said.

Not to mention working, banking, studying, job searching, etc.

If you can punish an entire household for the illegal file-sharing activities of one of its members, then why wouldn't the households of all types of felons also be punished? The brother of the murderer, the sister of the rapist, the mother of the armed robber, the room-mate of the embezzler, they all deserve the same punishment, right?

The underlying idea behind this is to encourage us to spy on each other because there's just too many of us for Big Brother to keep track of.

Dear Mr. President

Congratulations on winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Perhaps now would be a good time to try and fucking earn it!

PS - And I mean that in the most optimistic and hopeful way possible, sir. Please don't let this prize be one for empty rhetoric with no follow through. As much as I hate to resort to Rik Emmett quotes: "Fight the good fight every moment."

PPS - Sorry about the cheezy 80s pop-metal, but occasionally those ridiculous Mickey Mouse platitudes actually are correct (a broken clock gives the right time twice a day, and all that).

More Fodder for Nutjobbery

Qaddafi's not doing Obama any favors with this (from the NY Times):

Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the Libyan leader, took the lectern at the United Nations on Wednesday morning for his first address at the General Assembly, and delivered a long and rambling diatribe — far exceeding the 15-minute limit on speeches — against the United Nations Security Council and a host of other perceived enemies, while urging the world to welcome President Obama, referring to him as “our son.”

That's a dickhead maneuver to give matches to the birthers like that. And then:

“We are content and happy if Obama can stay forever as the president of America,” he [Qaddafi] said, saying he feared America would return to its old ways after the end of his [Obama's] term.

Great. So how long before we can expect the secret-monarchist accusations to start flying.

Free Speech, But Only To Those That Can Afford It

This doesn't sound encouraging:

...Citizens United is arguing that the McCain-Feingold law is unconstitutional.

But the court has already ruled otherwise. In 2003, In McConnell v. FEC, the court ruled on a challenge to the McCain-Feingold Act brought by Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), among others. The justices voted 5-4 to uphold the law. Normally, that would answer the question and put an end to the broader constitutional argument.

Since 2003, however, the composition of the court has changed. Justice O’Connor, who provided the critical fifth vote in favor of the law, has been replaced by Justice Samuel Alito, who’s made clear his skepticism of campaign finance restrictions. (Three of his colleagues — Justices Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas — have previously signed minority opinions advocating striking down campaign finance restrictions.) Chief Justice Roberts has also expressed concern about the campaign finance laws.

As a result, instead of deciding the case, the court announced in June that it would convene a special session to consider specifically whether it should reverse McConnell and another ruling from 1990, Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, which upheld a state’s right to limit direct corporate spending in elections. And the cases all build upon a long history of case law defining corporations and their role.

Just keep giving it away, people.

PS - According to this, The court's basic stance with respect to this issue is resting on some pretty thin, 100+ year old ice. But that hardly matters as long as you have a solid majority of uptighty righties on the bench. We'll see what happens. In the mean time here's some further reading on the topic:

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/09/05/corporate_free_speech_since_when/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/04/AR2009090402276.html
http://www.ultimatecivics.com/?p=19