John Yoo distorts Alexander Hamilton to fit his own warped view of the Constitution

Friday’s Wall Street Journal featured an Op-Ed by former George W. Bush Justice Department official and de facto war criminal John Yoo. Yoo is most famous for authoring a series of memos which advocated the torture of “War on Terror” detainees by doing an end-run around the Constitution and international conventions against torture.

For a summary of Yoo’s crimes, you can check out Glenn Greenwald’s piece at Salon or Jennifer Van Bergen’s at Counterpunch, but here I would like to take issue with his extremely deceitful quoting of Alexander Hamilton.

In making the Constitutional case for Obama’s missile strikes against Libya, Yoo cites Federalist 74, written by Hamilton, to support his argument. Here’s how he puts it:

“For once, Mr. Obama has the Constitution about right. As Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist 74, ‘The direction of war implies the direction of the common strength, and the power of directing and employing the common strength forms a usual and essential part in the definition of the executive authority.’ Presidents should conduct war, he wrote, because they could act with ‘decision, activity, secrecy, and dispatch.’ In perhaps his most famous words, Hamilton wrote that ‘Energy in the executive is a leading character in the definition of good government….It is essential to the protection of the community against foreign attacks.’”

Yoo’s presentation of Hamilton’s arguments about war powers is dishonest and/or incompetent, which is especially terrible because Yoo is a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley. What he’s implying here is that Hamilton advocated a unilateral Executive war-making authority. But let’s take a look at what Hamilton wrote in Federalist 74 in context.

“The President of the United States is to be ‘commander-in-chief of the army and navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several States when called into the actual service of the United States.’ [Emphasis Hamilton’s]…Of all the cares or concerns of government, the direction of war most peculiarly demands those qualities which distinguish the exercise of power by a single hand. The direction of war implies the direction of the common strength; and the power of directing and employing the common strength, forms a usual and essential part in the definition of the executive authority.”

As you can (but Yoo can’t) see, Hamilton is saying that the prosecution of war is best left to a single hand—the president—not the decision to wage war itself. And who calls the military “into the actual service of the United States”? To answer that, let’s see what Hamilton said earlier in Federalist 69:

“The President will have only the occasional command of such part of the militia of the nation as by legislative provision may be called into the actual service of the Union. [Emphasis mine]….The President is to be commander-in-chief of the army and navy of the United States. In this respect his authority would be nominally the same with that of the king of Great Britain, but in substance much inferior to it. It would amount to nothing more than the supreme command and direction of the military and naval forces, as first General and admiral of the Confederacy; while that of the British king extends to the declaring of war and to the raising and regulating of fleets and armies—all which, by the Constitution under consideration, would appertain to the legislature. [Emphasis mine]”

As if advocating torture weren’t bad enough, John Yoo also sees fit to drag the name of Alexander Hamilton into the mud where his own perverted views of the Constitution reside.

- Max

Atheism and morality (Part 2 of 3)

In my previous post I addressed the oft-repeated claim by believers that god/religion/holy books provide an objective moral benchmark by pointing out that this morality is hopelessly vulnerable to selective and flawed execution. I hasten to add that even when such principles are universally applied, the results are frequently ghastly. One need only think back to the time when the Catholic Church, with its absolute standards of morality, reigned supreme over Europe. This epoch is called the Dark Ages for a reason, and the presence of an objective system of morals was of no consolation to those who were persecuted in accordance with its precepts.

Rabbi Adam Jacobs claims that when Sam Harris and other atheists condemn the Taliban (or anyone else) for engaging in objectionable behavior, they are betraying the principles of atheism, which for Jacobs includes rampant moral relativism. This is because atheism is the rejection of deities, and for him deities are the only things capable of advancing objective moral guidelines. By implication, the theist is in a far better position to decry as immoral the acts of the Taliban. But does not the Taliban feel its actions are guided as much by their understanding of divine law than Rabbi Jacobs is of his? In this regard, the problem is not godless moral relativism, but competing religious moral absolutisms.

Not content with accusing atheists of nihilism, Jacobs hurls this insult:

“At the end of the day, the reason that I can agree with many of the moral assertions that these atheists make is because they are not truly outgrowths of their purported philosophies, but rather of mine. I would suspect that the great majority of the atheistic understanding of morality comes directly or indirectly from what is commonly referred to as the Judeo-Christian ethic. I have not yet found an atheist who is willing to follow his or her convictions through to their logical conclusions (outside of sociopaths like Jeffrey Dahmer who was at least honest enough to say, ‘I always believed the theory of evolution as truth that we all just came from the slime ... if a person doesn’t think there is a God to be accountable to then what’s the point of trying to modify your behavior to keep it within acceptable ranges?’ [sic, no closing parenthesis]”

There you have it. Neither Jeffrey Dahmer nor Rabbi Adam Jacobs can imagine a reason for behaving oneself in the absence of a supernatural entity that promulgates and monitors morality. I suppose what the rabbi is confessing here is that if he stopped believing in god today, he would turn into Mr. Hyde—or Jeffrey Dahmer—tomorrow.

As to Jacobs’ contention that the morality of atheists is in fact the residual influence of the “Judeo-Christian ethic,” that is wishful thinking and spoken like a true arrogant religionist. Read the books of the Old Testament and see how much of the “Judeo-Christian ethic” you actually assent to or would deem fit to teach a child for that matter. These books are replete with god-sanctioned genocide and homicide, contain obscure commandments that not even the most ardent of the faithful follow or even know about, and prohibits certain sexual activity that only a truly neurotic deity could care anything about, among other abominations. It should also be added that of all the commandments found in the Old Testament, not one says anything like, “Thou shalt not rape.” I am quite certain that Sam Harris, other atheists, and Rabbi Jacobs himself think that rape is bad, but if that’s the case, then on whose authority do they form such an opinion?

If the bible contains any provisions which have been codified in the laws of our modern society, this is only a happenstance. Believers pick and choose which commandments they follow as evidenced by their following of rules not put forth by the deity, and their neglect of those that are. The implication here is clear: humans are capable of forming a set of morals independent from divine sanction.

Not only does Jacobs conveniently ignore the selective application of his beloved objective morality, he fundamentally misunderstands evolution:

“Is not [Christopher] Hitchens an ardent supporter of the tenets of Neo-Darwinism that necessitates the perpetual death struggle within all species at all times? Shouldn't he in fact believe the precise opposite of what he claims? Survival of the fittest does not suggest social harmony.”

A more fatuous point would be difficult to imagine. Anyone who has stopped often and long enough to observe wildlife will notice that a general peace exists among animals of a particular species, and often animals of different species. In my travels I find that squirrels are the most abundant mammal, and I see several of them each day. And yet, not once in my years of observing thousands of squirrels have I observed one squirrel attacking another. This is not to say this doesn’t happen or that squirrels do not kill one on another on occasion, because they surely do. However, squirrels have no sense of divine morality, and so according to Jacobs’ logic, there could be no expectation of social harmony among these creatures. And yet there is. Take any species. No doubt it happens that rams or giraffes or sharks, etc. attack each other (especially when females are involved), but these are rare occasions. No population of species whose members are engaged in a “perpetual death struggle” with each another would last very long. Without question living things are engaged in a competitive struggle, but rarely must the survival of a member of one species involve the demise of another member of same. In many cases, it is quite the opposite.

- Max

Part One

Atheism and morality (Part 1 of 3)

Consult a preacher about morality and he will tell you that like everything else, it is a gift from god. Without this divinely imparted sense of right and wrong, you will be told, all would be lost. There would be no standard for human behavior other than for each person to act as his own conscience dictates. Without this god-given morality, the world would be marred by chaos, uncertainty, and unspeakable acts. A true Hobbesian jungle in which there is no “objective” way to view human behavior.

Such is the critique by Rabbi Adam Jacobs on Huffington Post, which seems to have an endless supply of rabbis and other unimaginative clergymen whose thinking is limited by a belief in celestial magic. I am not very much interested in specifically critiquing Rabbi Jacobs since he makes a charge against atheists that so many others have made and will continue to make. I will however, quote one relevant paragraph because it typifies this kind of accusation:

“What I do not yet understand is why [Sam Harris] (or any atheist for that matter) makes so many moral proclamations. The average atheist makes certain basic assumptions about reality: that we all exist as a result of blind and purposeless happenstance, that free will is illusory, that there is no conscious ‘self’ and that there is no objective right or wrong. As Dr. Will Provine has said, ‘[as an atheist] you give up hope that there is an imminent morality…you can’t hope for there being any free will [and there is]…no ultimate foundation for ethics.’”

He goes on to say that to be an atheist is to be amoral because atheism does not allow for an objective standard of morality. According to Jacobs, only theism can provide this much needed behavioral benchmark. And so any pretense on the part of atheists to be able to judge right from wrong is actually a subjective exercise because, well, on whose authority are such judgments being made?

This is the reasoning of a slave. The notion that a divine engineer is necessary to provide universal norms of behavior is one that recurs everywhere—among Jewish populations, Christian populations, Muslim populations, and so on. Such is the purpose of religion, to provide an explanation for life—its nature and meaning, as well as how it ought to be lived. This is morality by revealed wisdom. No thinking necessary.

One immediate problem with Jacobs’ view is the sheer of volume of disagreement on moral questions that believers in god have amongst each other. Take for example, the Ten Commandments, the most famous and perhaps the most important divine moral instructions for those in the Judeo-Christian tradition

The Sixth Commandment admonishes, “Thou shalt not kill.” This seems a straightforward dictum. And yet believers of all kinds cannot seem to agree on a whole range of issues in which this commandment is a central concern. Ask a group of Catholics, or Protestants, or Jews about the death penalty, or if and when it is ever morally acceptable to use lethal self-defense, or if it is ever right to kill in war. See if you can find a uniformity of opinion with respect to any of these questions, even among members of the same faith.

Or take, “Remember the Sabbath; to keep it holy.” Jews and Christians do not even agree on which day the Shabbat falls. Nor do they agree on what kinds of activities can be performed on that day. And while we’re at it, why is it that Christians and kosher Jews do not see eye to eye on the matter of pig consumption? They are after all praying to the same Yahweh.

How about, “Honor thy father and thy mother”? What form shall this honoring take? Is the honor to be bestowed even on those parents who are negligent or abusive? What exactly is so “objective” about this or any of the aforementioned instructions? One could go on in this fashion for days, but I’m sure you can think of your own examples of Biblical or Koranic ambiguity. Clearly, even when morality is assumed to emanate from divine wisdom, these rules still lend themselves to subjective interpretation.

Granted, Jacobs and his ilk might very well concede the above points without agreeing that they have damaged the contention that atheists must necessarily be amoral or that divine sanction is a prerequisite for moral objectivity. One of the more interesting (and wrong) arguments I’ve heard that defend this position admits that religion is flawed because it is a “human endeavor,” which is to say it’s as corruptible as anything else. In which case, what is religion for?

- Max

Part Two

Bill Kristol is a fucking maniac

Weekly Standard editor and Fox News pundit William Kristol has never seen an American-led war he didn’t like. His latest column for the Standard begins,

“And so, despite his doubts and dithering, President Obama is taking us to war in another Muslim country. Good for him.”

It is truly amazing to me that a neoconservative like Kristol can show his face at the grocery store without a trace of embarrassment, let alone offer his opinions—the exact same ones that helped lead America into a bloodbath in the Middle East—on the pressing foreign policy questions of the day. That he and other neoconservatives, such as John Bolton and Charles Krauthammer, are asked to impart their wisdom to national audiences is a true testament to the total absence of any form of meritocracy in the world of television punditry.

Kristol of course was a founder of the now defunct Project for a New American Century, which blatantly advocated unchallenged US global hegemony. Its statement of principles was signed by some familiar names: Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Elliott Abrams, Jeb Bush, Dan Quayle, Steve Forbes, and other fanatical jingoists who never bothered to learn the time-tested lesson that maintaining a global military presence leaves a bad taste in a lot of mouths. In 1998, these geniuses sent a letter to President Clinton advocating that the US take out Saddam Hussein. With the arrival of George W. Bush in the White House and some planes at the World Trade Center, the stage was set for the longtime wetdream of invading a country with the second largest oil reserves in the world to become a reality. And it was made easier by the fact that several PNAC poltroons were top officials in the Bush administration.

But “invading” isn’t the right word here, says Kristol. Rather,

“Our ‘invasions’ have in fact been liberations. We have shed blood and expended treasure in Kuwait in 1991, in the Balkans later in the 1990s, and in Afghanistan and Iraq—in our own national interest, of course, but also to protect Muslim peoples and help them free themselves. Libya will be America’s fifth war of Muslim liberation.”

By “we have shed blood,” Kristol means people other than him have done that. Despite being of prime military age at the height of the Vietnam war, Kristol never served. Apparently regretful of missing that party, he now lives out his schoolboy fantasies of world domination by penning Op-Eds and journal articles explaining the necessity of taking out countries that pose no threat to the US. Undeterred by the disastrous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Kristol has even set his sights on Iran.

It’s one thing to have the foreign policy views of a pubescent manchild with raging hormones, but you have to be seriously fucked in the head to say with any sincerity that the current bombing of Libya is “America’s fifth war of Muslim liberation.” Who but a middle schooler or maybe Sean Hannity would put it in those terms?

I say this because Kristol knows damn well what US foreign policy is and that it’s driven by realpolitik. He isn’t some mustachioed, NASCAR-watching, Bud-swilling trailer donkey who’s as ignorant about international relations as his mullet is long. He knows, for example, that the US is right now backing dictators who are oppressing Muslims in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Bahrain, Pakistan, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, and elsewhere. And in the past, the US supported despots in Iraq, Iran, Indonesia, Egypt, Tunisia, etc.

If the perseverance of Bill Kristol’s pundit career illustrates anything, it’s that it doesn’t matter how wrong you’ve been or how badly your policy prescriptions have been discredited. What’s important is that you fit neatly into the Left/Right paradigm of American political discourse. And if you’re more hawkish on foreign policy than most, all the better. No one ever lost his job advocating war in America.

I leave you with a clip of Bill Maher tearing into the neocons.

- Max

“You are under attack.”

Apropos to my earlier post today about the Maine governor’s decision to remove pro-labor artwork from the lobby of the state’s Department of Labor of all places, Paul Farrell of MarketWatch knocks it out of the park talking about the class warfare being waged on American workers. It’s worth reading in full, but here are some excerpts.

Wake up America. You are under attack. Stop kidding yourself. We are at war. In fact, we have been fighting this Civil War for a generation, since Ronald Reagan was elected in 1981. Recently [Warren] Buffett renewed the battle cry: The “rich class” is winning this war. Except most Americans still don’t realize they’re losing, don’t see the prize at stake[….]

The GOP is anti-democracy: With the GOP, “this whole democracy thing” is “very inefficient,” warned Klein. Republican governors are using “a fiscal crisis as a pretext to do stuff they otherwise want to do … Republicans in Michigan want to be able to unilaterally abolish your town. And how do you know when you’re in a financial emergency? Because the governor tells you … or a company he hires.”

Yes the GOP, the party of big business and billionaires, secretly hates democracy, it’s too inefficient for the rich class.

In the interview, Klein reiterated: The GOP governors’ strategy is a clear example of “disaster capitalism,” the Reaganomics war strategy that has dominated, obsessed and driven the GOP for a generation. Klein warns, “these guys have been at this for 30 years,” it is “an ideological movement…they believe in a whole bunch of stuff that’s not very popular,” like “privatizing the local water system, busting unions, privatizing entire towns. If they said all this in an election they’d lose.”

And that’s why crises are so crucial to the GOP war strategies to take over America: Crises “are very, very handy, because you can say we have no choice. …the sky is falling in.” Then the GOP governors “can consolidate power. We remember this from the Bush administration. They did this at the federal level. After 9/11, they said, we have a crisis, and we have to essentially rule by fiat.”

Workers of the world, disunite!

At the behest of new governor Paul LePage, Maine’s Department of Labor has removed murals from its lobby that portray events from the state’s labor history, and will also rename conference rooms named after important figures in organized labor. As the Acting Commissioner of the Labor Dept. wrote in an email,

“We have received feedback that the administration building is not perceived as equally receptive to both businesses and workers—primarily because of the nature of the mural in the lobby and the names of our conference rooms. Whether or not the perception is valid is not really at issue and therefore, not open to debate. If either of our two constituencies perceives that they are not welcome in our administration building and this translates to a belief that their needs will not be heard or met by this department, then it presents a barrier to achieving our mission.

“I will be seeking a new home for the mural and we will be renaming the conference rooms in our administrative office at Commerce Drive in Augusta.”

These murals sure sound intense. Obviously they must show some kind of violent worker revolt to elicit such “feedback.” Let’s have a look:

Dear god! I see workers organizing, voting, and striking! The horror! The horror!

But fear not, workers of Maine; according to Governor LePage’s press secretary,

“We’re not going to put an ‘Open for Business’ sign in the lobby either…It’s going to be neutral.”

That’s because we already put that sign on the highway, motherfuckers!

Big bizness is in the hizzouse! Note Governor LePage (left) holding a giant green trash bag in which to place any remaining vestiges of worker solidarity or dignity.

- Max

max.canning@gmail.com

The faitheism of S.E. Cupp

The underrated Cambridge philosopher G.E. Moore once mused on the absurdity of stating a fact, but then claiming to believe its opposite. For example, the sentence, “S.E. Cupp is attractive, but I don’t believe she is,” while not a contradictory statement in and of itself, nonetheless conveys contradictory ideas. A statement like this is an absurd declaration that no rational person could utter with any sincerity. To assert A is to believe A (unless one is lying). Notice that what matters is not whether A is actually true or false, but whether A is being asserted or not. In a similar fashion, it is equally absurd to assert not-A, but believe A, e.g., “I didn‘t get an email from John, but I believe I did.”

Thankfully, real-world instances of Moore’s Paradox are few and far between, if they exist at all. But Cupp, the popular conservative columnist, author, and self-proclaimed atheist dangerously straddles the line demarcated by Moore’s Paradox that separates the world of rational thought from the world of total incoherence. There may not be another creature like her on the planet. Whether she truly holds wildly contradictory beliefs about faith and atheism, or, by calculated contrivance is carving out a profitable niche for herself as a nonbelieving defender of the faithful, we cannot know for sure. All we have are her words on the subject, and they make no sense at all.

Everything you need to know about atheist Cupp, author of Losing Our Religion—an attack on atheists (you heard right)—and her brand of nonbelief can be gleaned from this portion of an interview she gave to C-SPAN in 2009. Explaining her rejection of religion, she told interviewer Brian Lamb:

“I didn’t buy it. It wasn’t for me. But I’m envious. I’m envious of the faithful. So I defend the faithful, especially the Christian Right in America at every opportunity I get….I haven’t closed the door on faith. It just hasn’t found me yet.”

Yet?

“I don’t believe in a higher power of any kind. No deity whatsoever. I really believe that when I die I go in the ground like every other animal and that’s that.”

That’s good.

“I aspire to be a person of faith one day.”

What? What does that even mean? Becoming a person of faith isn’t like becoming a CPA. There’s no training or certification process. To say you aspire to be a person of faith one day makes as much sense as saying at some point you hope to be a postmodern feminist. Here’s a person who’s basically saying that she sees no good reason for believing in a deity, but that one day she hopes to believe in a deity that presently she does not think exists. In other words, “God doesn’t exist, but I hope I will believe he does.” Cupp hasn’t contradicted herself here, but this view is nevertheless bizarre.

The interview takes an even stranger turn when she starts heaping praise on George W. Bush:

"I’m a fan of George Bush…I think he had a conviction, personal principles that required him to answer to someone else when he went to bed at night. Not to the state and not to himself. I don’t see the same kind of reverence in some of our other recent presidents. Barack Obama included. Bill Clinton included. That gives me comfort as a citizen, knowing that my president is going to bed answering to a higher power. So he’s thinking about the decisions he’s making, not just because they’re going to affect him and his legacy, but because he has someone or something to answer to. I really respect that. And I think that whether you liked his policies or not, he really did what he thought was best for the country. And I think that’s really really rare."

At this point, Lamb asks what is no doubt on just about every viewer’s mind. Here is the rest of the exchange:

Lamb: If you don’t believe at all, why would you then follow somebody that has that as their way of life?

Cupp: As an atheist, I could never imagine electing, voting for an atheist president for exactly those reasons. I mean, religion keeps a person who is endowed with so much power honest. This is a person who is answering to a higher power every night. And not to the state. He doesn’t think that the state has all the power and he doesn’t think he himself has all the power. That’s important to me. I mean, I represent two percent of the world. Why would I, why would I want someone who thinks that 98% of the world is crazy running the country?

Lamb: [Composed but incredulous] But you don’t think that that higher power exists.

Cupp: I don’t. But I don’t think people are crazy. I understand the allure of religion. I really do. I’m just not going to be dishonest and say I believe in something I don’t yet.

Lamb: But what if he’s hearing voices all the time and taking advice from a higher power that doesn’t exist in your opinion, and makes decisions based on the higher power that doesn’t exist in your opinion?

Cupp: Well, I mean, people’s faith—it’s very personal, and I don’t judge the way that people use their faith to inform their decisions. I really don’t. We can judge him on his policies, whether he heard it from a voice in his head, he got it from the bible, he had a conversation with Laura one night over dinner. I mean, it doesn’t really matter to me. I’d like to judge the policies on face value.

Sensing an impasse, the interviewer moves away from Cupp’s whirlwind opinions on religion to spare the audience from further decreases in IQ.

Several statements stand out here. Let’s start with,

“That gives me comfort as a citizen, knowing that my president is going to bed answering to a higher power.”

Now, it’s one thing for Christians or Muslims or other theists to say this. After all, they believe in said higher power. But what about Cupp, who doesn’t? What are we to make of the person who essentially says, “I don’t believe in a higher power, but I’m glad the president answers to it”? As Lamb pointed out, she doesn’t believe in that higher power, so how could that possibly give her comfort? If anything, it should concern her that her president is getting guidance from a nonexistent entity. One has to seriously wonder whether Cupp thinks that a schizophrenic who receives instruction from benevolent voices is better qualified for the presidency than an atheist.

Her response is full of specious generalizations and tacit self-deprecation:

“As an atheist, I could never imagine electing, voting for an atheist president for exactly those reasons. I mean, religion keeps a person who is endowed with so much power honest. This is a person who is answering to a higher power every night. And not to the state.”

First of all, Cupp says she is an atheist, which is to say she believes that religion is false and deities are nonexistent. Yet simultaneously she insists that believers in such falsehoods are the only ones qualified to be president precisely because they believe in god. Ok?

Second, Cupp is claiming that the religious are made more honest because they believe in what she herself thinks is a false doctrine.

Third, the idea that god kept Bush honest is betrayed by his administration’s penchant for mendacity and deception. Also, how honest and decent are the ruling mullahs in Iran being kept by their higher power? Or the 9/11 hijackers? Or the people who blow up abortion clinics and murder doctors in the name of their higher power? And what about the fact that Bush’s former top advisor, Karl Rove, is an atheist? Rove was arguably the most influential man in the life of Bush the candidate and the Bush president, and yet he answered to no higher power.

Fourth, implicit in Cupp’s assessment is an admission that she would not vote for herself for president because she presumably would not be kept honest by a higher power since she does not believe in one. In which case, how could we trust anything she says?

But Lamb hits a home run with his question, “But what if he’s hearing voices all the time?”

Realizing she can’t reason her way out, she backtracks somewhat, now saying she judges the president based on his policies. She’s a conservative, and so if a president has conservative policies that match up with her political beliefs, she’s going to view him favorably. As she just said, she takes a policy at face value, and said it doesn’t matter how he arrives at it, whether “he got it from the bible [or] he had a conversation with Laura one night over dinner.”

So Cupp goes from saying that only believers should be president, to admitting it doesn’t matter how the president makes the decisions he does, just as long as they make for good policies, which for her means “conservative,” while seemingly maintaining her position that atheists like herself shouldn’t be president.

What do we call this position, where a person believes that what she believes to be false must be believed as true by another as a prerequisite for being awarded a special privilege, in this case the presidency? (I suppose this take would be fine if Cupp viewed holding the presidency as some sort of detriment or punishment.) Boiled down to its bare bones, Cupp’s view is,

“Atheism is true, and atheists should not be elected because they believe atheism is true.”

Or

“Faith is false, and only the faithful should be elected because they believe faith is true.”

Nonsense? Absurdity. Craziness? Cupp’s Conundrum?

Call it whatever you want, but I know what I’m calling S.E. Cupp: a faitheist.

- Max

max.canning@gmail.com

Doesn't anyone care that Obama is bombing Libya without Congressional authorization?

Bye bye, Constitution. It’s been real.

The very first article of the United States Constitution enumerates the powers of Congress. Among these is the power

“To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water…”

Nowhere in the Constitution is the president given the authority to make war unilaterally. It is true that the president is the Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, but that clause comes with an important qualifier:

“The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States…”

As specified by Article I, calling the military into service falls under the expressed powers granted to Congress. Several presidents have ignored the Constitution in this regard, with Barack Obama becoming just the latest example with his initiation of military action against Libya (not to mention his predator drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen, but we’ll leave this aside for the time being.) For his part, George W. Bush waged war in Afghanistan and Iraq, but in each case had congressional authorization to carry out military action, however vague that permission was in the case of Iraq. Indeed, many gutless Democrats who in 2002 gave Bush wide-ranging discretion to handle Iraq’s WMD compliance/noncompliance as he saw fit, later claimed that they did not intend to give him the authority to order an invasion.

Establishment liberals can always be counted on to support a war if the justification for it is rife with enough fear-mongering or is couched in lofty rhetoric about human rights. Time magazine’s Joe Klein, for example, never tires of suckling at the teat of executive power. And when a president, whether Bush or Obama or whoever, says we need to send warships to wherever and fire up the fighter jets to bomb another race of brown people, the worst Klein can say about such an operation is that he’s “skeptical” about the mission’s potential for success, despite the occurrence of some “amazing diplomacy.”

Which brings me to my next point: after a unilateral decision has been made by a US president to bomb somewhere, the media has the awful tendency of examining the action’s efficacy, and not its legality or its morality for that matter. Talking heads on television delve into whether the war is worth the cost in terms of blood and treasure. Even decades later wars are discussed in such terms, as the case of Vietnam illustrates. The problem with that war, so Establishment wisdom goes, that the war simply was not worth the American lives and money. Never mind the fact that two million East Asians were mercilessly subjected to a holocaust of indiscriminate bombing by three successive presidential administrations, or the fact that the US essentially had to wage war on the South Vietnamese people so it could “defend” them from their own National Liberation Front. No, the problem with Vietnam was that policymakers didn’t have the foresight to know that half a million US soldiers and all the munitions tonnage the US could drop would not be sufficient for victory. Meanwhile the legality and altruistic intentions of US foreign policy are always taken for granted. And if someone like a Kucinich or a Paul gets out of line—as one surely will—pundits from the Right and the Left will be happy to impugn his patriotism and accusing him of not “supporting the troops.”

But what about the War Powers Resolution of 1973? That gives the president the authority to deploy the military as he sees fit, so long as he notifies Congress within 48 hours, and doesn’t keep forces committed for more than 60 days, 90 days counting the troop drawdown process. I’m no ConLaw expert, but I fail to see how Congress can just abdicate its constitutional war-making responsibilities. Every person who’s taken AP Government or History is familiar with the 1803 case Marbury v. Madison, in which the Marshall Court struck down a provision in the 1789 Judiciary Act that expanded the Supreme Court’s original jurisdiction beyond the scope of its constitutional authority. In providing a precedent for the vital concept of judicial review, Marshall wrote,

“Certainly all those who have framed written Constitutions contemplate them as forming the fundamental and paramount law of the nation, and consequently the theory of every such government must be that an act of the Legislature repugnant to the Constitution is void.”

Congress’ war-making powers have been usurped by the executive with such frequency that most people seem desensitized to the phenomenon. Indeed, some Obama apologists on Huffington Post (scroll down to the comments for attacks on Kucinich from Obama worshipers) and elsewhere have cited as evidence of the Libya operation’s legitimacy, United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973, passed 10-0 (with five abstentions), that authorized the implementation of a no-fly zone if Moammar Gaddafi did not agree to cease military operations against the rebels. No doubt the UNSC resolution has the force of international law, but the question here isn’t whether Obama’s/Sarkozy’s/Cameron’s war on Libya is legal under international law, but whether Obama’s decision to enter into the agreement and carry out its provisions is allowable under US law. Be advised that this has nothing to do with international law trumping domestic law, since international law is often a product of decisions made with domestic considerations, such as public opinion, and checks and balances in mind. Before ordering his ambassador, Susan Rice, to vote “yes” at the UN, and indeed, before he decided to commit American military resources to a bombing campaign in Libya, he could have, and should have, sought authorization from Congress. Besides, there was nothing preventing the Obama administration from approving UNSC Resolution 1973, while telling its allies that for the US to take part in instituting a no-fly zone, that Congress would first have to give its blessing.

Anyone who thinks that the Framers intended for the President to have sole discretion to engage the military in hostilities with no authorization is free to attempt to find evidence for this in Madison’s Notes on the Debates of the Federal Convention, the Federalist Papers, or other correspondence from the Framers. The truth, however, is that here the preponderance of evidence shows a disdain for unilateral executive war-making authority—a prospect that calls to mind the worst facets of monarchy. Via Glenn Greenwald at Salon, then future Supreme Court Justice John Jay made the case against such a scheme in Federalist No. 4:

“It is too true, however disgraceful it may be to human nature, that nations in general will make war whenever they have a prospect of getting anything by it; nay, absolute monarchs will often make war when their nations are to get nothing by it, but for the purposes and objects merely personal, such as thirst for military glory, revenge for personal affronts, ambition, or private compacts to aggrandize or support their particular families or partisans. These and a variety of other motives, which affect only the mind of the sovereign, often lead him to engage in wars not sanctified by justice or the voice and interests of his people.”

Barack Obama cares no more for the Constitution or rule of law than George W. Bush did. And the longer his administration goes on, the more I become convinced of a near-seamless continuity between the two.

- Max

max.canning@gmail.com

Larry Kudlow takes his douchebaggery to a new level

Larry Kudlow always looks like he’s pushing out a turtle head.

Previously I have documented what a depraved bankster-humping shill CNBC’s Larry Kudlow is, even more so than his coworkers. I even wrote a sample opinion about this specimen for my ill-fated application to Matt Taibbi’s Supreme Court of Assholedom. Kudlow is a guy who spoke out in favor of government bailouts for Wall Street while advocating cuts in programs for anyone whose job doesn’t including working with a trading platform.

It’s one thing to gleefully espouse the cause of the ruling class oligarchs on television on a daily basis; in fact, it’s almost a requirement for being a mainstream market analyst. But it’s quite another to throw down this gauntlet on national television, as Kudlow did Friday on CNBC. Speaking about the giant earthquake in Japan, where the death toll is expected to exceed 10,000, the plutocratic douche had this to say:

“The human toll here looks to be much worse than the economic toll, and we can be grateful for that. And the human toll is a tragedy. We know that. But these markets are—all these markets, right—stocks, commodities, gold, there is no breakout or breakdown. And I have to look at that as positive.”

Yes, thank god this earthquake didn’t spook the commodities speculators and day traders, who apparently didn’t see much opportunity in trying to exploit this particular catastrophe. And thank god we have Larry Kudlow to remind us that is what really counts in all this. Thousands of Jap workers can be replaced, but markets take a while to recover. We really dodged a bullet.

Now, since taking flak for his comments, Kudlow has issued a mea culpa via Twitter:

“I did not mean to say human toll in Japan less important than economic toll.Talking about markets.I flubbed the line. Sincere apology.”

Does anyone honestly think this guy didn’t mean to say what he said? Watch the clip again and tell me that’s not a man who believes with every fiber of his poltroonish being everything he’s saying. As for his tweet, it’s a typed apology consisting of three sentence fragments and one actual sentence in less than 140 characters. Larry, you didn’t have to go to all that trouble.

- Max

max.canning@gmail.com

If the Jews killed Jesus, where's their medal?

This week Joseph Ratzinger, stage name Pope Benedict XVI, made headlines by making a sweeping exoneration of the Jewish people for the death of Jesus of Nazareth in his upcoming book, The Audacity of Aiding and Abetting Pedophiles.

So I made the last part up, but the rest is true. No doubt Ratzinger’s gesture is one of goodwill, but the fact that he felt compelled to convey such a message is evidence of an unfortunate and befuddling reality.

For 2,000 years, Jews have been scapegoated, targeted, and persecuted because, according to the largely apocryphal New Testament, a handful of Jewish priests asked Roman governor Pontius Pilate to have Jesus executed. So Pilate did. And after a weekend power nap, Jesus rose from the dead and ascended into heaven to be reunited with his estranged father. This wondrous event proved that Jesus was indeed the son of god, as he had said before, and that humans were thus saved from their iniquitous ways, so long as they gave Jesus his proper props as savior of mankind.

A more ridiculous and incoherent narrative would be difficult to conceive. Nonetheless, this is the Word for hundreds of millions of misguided individuals who think, (a) they needed to be saved from damnation, and (b) a vicious child sacrifice conducted in 1^st century Palestine has redeemed them.

I need not apprise you, dear reader, of the craziness and implausibility of such a situation. To even mount a counterargument to this hokum is to elevate it to something worthy of a rebuttal. Besides, I have already made counterpoints against this tripe before, so I need not repeat myself.

But if we accept the Anti-Semitic position that “the Jews are responsible for the murder of Jesus,” this begs a most obvious question: Why should Jews be persecuted for this killing and not praised? Indeed, the entire basis of Christianity is premised on the idea that Jesus of Nazareth had to die in order to absolve humanity of its inherently sinful and wicked ways. He had to be sacrificed, like a lamb in the Old Testament as an offering to his father who had sent him earthward for the purpose of being brutalized and victimized in a most unholy fashion. The whole sorry episode was a kind of sequel to the tale of Abraham and Isaac, except in this case the dirty deed was carried out to the awful end in a torturous filicide that finally quenched the bloodlust of the heavenly patriarch.

Given the terms of this odious quid pro quo, the Jews—far from being villains in this sordid story—were crucially necessary players in god’s Divine Plan of human sacrifice and vicarious salvation. Without the Jewish elders’ entreaties to Pilate to persecute Jesus of Nazareth, the crucifixion does not happen, the sacrifice does not happen, and the salvation does not happen. Without this atrocious occurrence, there is no everlasting life, only darkness. The Jews are therefore heroes, deemed by god as such, who carried out this dastardly deed as foreordained by god himself. They were merely acting as the instruments of god, who knew damn well what was going to happen when he impregnated Mary, while poor Joseph was left to wonder whether his wife had been sleeping around on him.

- Max

max.canning@gmail.com

Haley Barbour's Mississippi Problem

I’m really intrigued all the buzz about a possible Haley Barbour candidacy for president in 2012. He’s the affable baby-faced Governor of Mississippi, former tobacco, pharmaceutical, and utility company lobbyist who was elected to the state’s highest office partly on a platform to preserve the Stars and Bars on the state flag. Barbour recently made waves by commenting that he didn’t remember racism in Mississippi in the 1960s “as being that bad.” During his campaign for governor in 2003, he spoke at a fundraiser held by an officially racist organization called the Council of Conservative Citizens, whose Statement of Principles reads in part, “We also oppose all efforts to mix the races of mankind.”

But as a lobbyist, Barbour also pushed causes which he will surely have to explain away if he is to have any hope of securing the GOP’s presidential nomination. In 2001, the Mexican government retained his firm, BGR Group, to lobby Congress and the White House to advocate for amnesty lite, whereby illegal immigrants could pay a fee for being undocumented, but be placed on a fast-tracked path to citizenship.

Based on what I know about Barbour, I’m pretty sure he’s not a racist. As with all politicians, he is first and foremost an opportunist. He spoke at a fundraiser held by a group that opposes “all efforts to mix the races” because he knows that there is not an insubstantial chunk of the Mississippi electorate that agrees with such sentiments. On the other hand, he lobbied for liberal immigration reforms because the Mexican government was paying him handsomely to do so. While it’s true that Barbour has previously taken a softer stance on illegal immigration than some in his party, that position is likely to harden out of necessity if he throws his hat in the presidential ring. During the race for the GOP nomination set to begin this year, we can expect the yet-to-be-determined candidates to try to out-Southern Strategy one another, as they jockey for the support of the party’s white base.

Nonetheless, Barbour has been learning the hard way that the national political scene is quite different from Mississippi politics. Praising the defunct White Citizens’ Councils of the 1960s might not ruffle any feathers in Yazoo City, but when you’re pondering a run for president, lauding pro-segregation groups can have consequences. But Barbour is an adept politician, so I’m sure he won’t have too much trouble making the transition to a national Republican figure from his origins in what Gallup just declared is the country’s most conservative state, which brings me to my next point about a possible Barbour run.

For more than seven years, Haley Barbour has been governor of a state that ranks at or near the very bottom in just about every single quality of life category humanly imaginable. No doubt Mississippi’s problems far predate Barbour’s governorship, but I’m having a difficult time fathoming just how it is that a man in charge of a state with such a low standard of living relative to the rest of the Union can be considered a serious contender for the nation’s highest office.

Let’s take a moment to review some rankings from various sources on Mississippi relative to other 49 states:

Median household income: Worst

Poverty rate: Worst

Internet access: Worst

Overall health: Worst

Obesity: Worst

Children’s Well Being: Worst

Infant mortality: Worst

K thru 12 education performance: 5th worst

Traffic fatalities: 5th worst

Percentage of population over 25 with a bachelor’s degree: 3rd worst

Convicted public officials per capita: 7th most

You get the idea, if one state had to be deemed the asscrack of America, it would be Mississippi. But there is one area that Mississippi—this most conservative of conservative states—ranks high in. That’s federal aid per capita, in which it ranks fourth, and rate of earmarks, where it comes in second. For a state filled with people who decry the big bad federal gubmint, they sure as shit have no qualms about receiving handouts from Uncle Sam.

Haley Barbour is not the reason Mississippi is in such bad shape relative to the rest of the country, but he hasn’t exactly done a whole lot in seven years to reverse his state’s fortunes. During his first year in office, Barbour succeeded in making medical malpractice reform—a frequent wet dream of Republicans—a reality. Barbour and a few other conservatives have touted Mississippi as a model in health care, even though as seen above, it is the unhealthiest state in the Union. Furthermore, health insurance premiums in the state have risen 89% since 2000, which is a common theme across the country. (I looked in vain for data on premiums since Barbour’s tort reform took effect.)

If it seems like I’m trashing Mississippi here, it’s because I am. But this is not my principal object, but rather to ask just how it is that a chief executive of state mired in a standard of living that is markedly lower than the rest of the country can be considered a serious contender in a race for president. Because I’ll be damned if I know the answer.

ps: Mississippi is also the most religious state in the country, and I must confess, I find the inverse correlation between the state’s conservatism/religiosity and it’s quality of life rankings endlessly amusing.

- Max

max.canning@gmail.com