I'd normally say this demonstrates how clueless the MSM is, but here there is no other possible explanation except a deliberate lie. Everyone who has heard the rumor knows precisely where it came from, and everyone knows that that is hyperliberal Hillary supporter Larry Johnson, and everyone further knows that the conservative blogosphere has (as far as I know, though of course I don't read every blog) debunked the rumor and stated, with 99% confidence, it's flat-out false.

We couldn't say, with Andrea Mitchell here, that it's 100% not true and we know that for a fact, for the simple reason one can't prove a negative, one can only say how unlikely the positive is. Andrea trumps us, of course, by testifying to facts of which she knows not. I guess we should be rapped for not claiming, as she does, that we know based upon personal information it is definitely false.

There are undoubtedly some conservative bloggers who pushed this as true. However, most said it wasn't true, pretty emphatically, considering, again, it's beyond our actual ability to say it's untrue with personal eyewitness authority.

But even allowing for the conservative bloggers who did suggest it's true, how come Larry Johnson's seminal role -- he is the first and most zealous peddler of the claim; he's the one whom everyone, including those in the MSM, got the rumor from in the first plalce -- is so conveniently overlooked in Jay Carney's precis?

If he says he didn't know that Larry Johnson is the first, best, and last proponent of this rumor, then I say he's a goddamned deliberate liar.

And if he says he didn't know that conservatives greeted the rumor, in the main, with skepticism verging on dismissiveness, I say he's a goddamned deliberate liar again.

He should retract and confess his deliberate lie or be fired. A reporter gets away with a lot of shading and bias, but he is not allowed to report "facts" he knows with 100% certainty are 100% demonstrably false.

Liberals like to claim to be nuanced and that their greatest failing is their overemphasis on fairness and integrity, but of course that's horseshit. The simplest, most idiotic, most false claim to make here is that conserevative bloggers pushed the rumor -- a simplistic line that has the virtue of fitting well with The Narrative and not injecting doubt or complexity into the storyline: Conservatives can't be trusted, conservatives push false rumors, conservatives engage in deception character assassination in order to advance their dubious cause -- all these things are a given -- so of course it is conservatives behind this rumor.

Nice and simple. Not nuanced, of course, because the "nuance" here -- it was actually pushed by a hyperliberal rabid Hillary supporter -- would complicate the nice, neat storyline.

It's also completely false, of course. But again, the neatness and simplicity (and political usefulness) of Jay Carney's lie is more important than the messy and inconvenient truth of the matter.

So he just deliberately lied to an audience of millions. Wait, this seems to be MSNBC. He deliberately lied to an audience of several dozen thousands.

Because he's so concerned about accuracy, fairness, and nuance, you understand.

Posted by: Ace at 12:39 PM | Comments (58)
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The students were horrified, and then angered when they learned it was just a "Scared Straight" type hoax.

Administrators were happy the students were traumatized. "That's how they get the message," one said.

Yes, that message being that adults in positions of authority routinely lie to you and intentionally mind-fuck you in order to get you to comply with their preferences of behavior.

They got that message.

But I don't see how that's helpful.

If they're lying about this, who knows what else they're lying about?

Hell, maybe alcohol really doesn't impair your driving skills all that much. Maybe drugs aren't that dangerous, and maybe unprotected sex is a pretty sweet idea.

Deliberate liars can't "teach lessons" because they have no credibility.

I can't believe how stupid people can be.

On the Other Hand... All that PC anti-American bullshit these assholes teach?

I guess their credibility is lowered quite a bit there, too.

So maybe they taught them the most important lesson of all: Don't trust group-think arrogant liberal social-engineering three-credits-in-behavioral-psychology douchebags, no matter how presumptuous and condescending they might be about their imagined moral and intellectual authority.

I can live with that.

More such lessons, please! We need these kind of teachable moments throughout the country.

Posted by: Ace at 11:59 AM | Comments (53)
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He sounds so much better when he says it.

The wealthier and better-educated seem less concerned about gas prices.

From my informal conversations, I'd go even further: The wealthy, especially political liberals, also like that high-priced gas translates into less burning of fossil fuels by others and will help accelerate research into alternative energies.

But what these elites don't seem to realize is that the energy policies they advocate are paralyzing almost everyone else - and that the truly ethical and environmental solution would require embracing positions long considered anathema to traditional liberalism.

The debate in Congress over more refineries and nuclear-power plants; drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and off our coasts; and developing oil shale, tar sands and liquid coal has been a predictable soap opera: Grasping Republicans supposedly wish to enrich energy companies, while idealistic Democrats want only to protect the environment. But those stances, hatched in the days of $1.50-a-gallon gas, should be revisited in light of different moral considerations.

One is fairness to the poor and middle class. Like it or not, radical environmentalism appeals to an elite not all that worried when gas prices rise or electricity rates go up - since fossil-energy use goes down.

But a paradox is that most environmentalists think of themselves as egalitarians. So, instead of objecting to the view of a derrick from the California hills above the Santa Barbara coast, shouldn't a liberal estate owner instead console himself that the offshore pumping will help a nearby farm worker or carpenter get to work without going broke?

Obviously.

But that argument will cut no ice. The liberal mindset has difficulty dealing in anything other than gauzy feel-good abstractions. As has been snarked, liberals love "the masses," but tend to hate actual people.

In this case, they love "the masses" and will demonstrate their love by saving the earth for them, despite the fact that actual people are hurting.

Hey, maybe all those poor and working class people will one day take a trip to the scenic wasteland of ANRW's shit-ice coastal plain, and they'll thank liberals for keeping the eyesore of a single 2000 acre (out of 19 million acres) oil field out of their eyeline.

And besides, they have a vested interest in the economy grinding to a violent halt in time for the 2008 elections. They know they can only benefit from a full-blown recession, and that no one will ever question them about engineering just that.

Via Hot Air's headlines.

Posted by: Ace at 11:53 AM | Comments (62)
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No cite as Jenjhis saw it on TV.

I don't get this. Or rather, I do "get it," but I'm having trouble understanding how the guys currently in charge justify their refusal.

These guys like being in charge of a big company. They have fanciful ideas that they'll be able to make it bigger than Google. So they keep saying no to the buyout.

But they have a duty to their other shareholders. What they egotistically think they might do one day with Yahoo has to be balanced against reality. And the reality is that the shareholders can get rich off this deal, and not nearly as rich without it.

Bud Too? A Belgian brewer has made an unsolicited takeover bid for Budweiser.

Employees in St. Louis are worried about losing their jobs in the consolidation, should Anheuser-Busch sell. Some people are strongly opposed to Anheuser-Busch being owned by a foreign company, and are opposed to making the deal on those grounds.

Governor Matt Blunt is also opposed to the deal, and has told the Missouri Department of Economic Development to find a way to stop it from happening.

Would they lay off the workers? Who would buy the beer if they did that? They're not exactly selling taste or quality.

Posted by: Ace at 11:17 AM | Comments (50)
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Seems... unduly generous.

A guy who does this sort of thing, and therefore makes himself incapable of performing his duties as a Marine, should at least get some incarceration.

Otherwise, every dickbag malcontent needs merely to throw a puppy to get out of the service.

Some questions about this, and some sketchy answers, at Hot Air.

Surely this guy isn't getting an honorable discharge on top of all this, is he?

Thanks to Jenjhis.

Sorry, I'm reading this damn case. Awful.

Posted by: Ace at 11:10 AM | Comments (48)
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I'm going to say right away that I only knew habeas stuff for the exam and quickly forgot it after. But here's my take anyway. Hopefully lawyers will help me clean up my errors before they do any real damage.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 09:56 AM | Comments (46)
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Before I duck out to get some real work done, here's an open thread.

There are several interesting news items being handed around right now, including the release of Obama's birth certificate (rumors about which I wrote about the day before yesterday). Mugabe just burned his opponent's wife alive. The Chinese are hacking into Congress' computers. Tomatoes are the new bird flu.

Discussion is free.

/atrios.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 08:43 AM | Comments (56)
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5-4 split, with the usual suspects. Kennedy wrote the majority opinion, which holds that alien unlawful combatants have constitutional habeas rights (as opposed to just a statutory habeas right) at Guantanamo Bay.

My quick glimpse says that the justices are engaged in the same "almost is good enough" analysis that they applied in Rasul in which they decided that Guantanamo Bay, though not technically U.S. territory, is close enough so that constitutional protections must apply.

The court goes on to rule on a question not considered by the lower courts, in a departure from the usual procedure, that Congress may only curtail the Guantanamo Bay detainees' constitutional habeas rights by properly using the Suspension Clause or providing an adequate substitute. It goes on to say that the Detainee Treatment Act and the Military Commissions Act did not provide adequate substitutes for habeas.

Opinions are here, I'm skimming now.

Keep in mind that though this will be trumpeted as a "crushing blow" to the Bush Administration, so too were other War on Terror cases like Hamdi and Hamdan that turned out to not be as bad as the president's detractors claimed. I don't know if that is the case here, but it is something to keep in mind.

What is the immediate impact? Off the top of my head, the Supreme Court just did both presidential candidates a favor by mooting the question of closing Guantanamo Bay. If the detainees have access to U.S. courts, there's no reason to close the base and transfer them to the mainland U.S.

More coming...

More: On my first read-through of Kennedy's opinion, I'm struck by the facial invalidation of the DTA and MCA. The lower courts didn't have an opportunity to examine the question of whether the laws provide an adequate substitute for habeas corpus which means the government has had no chance to litigate their side of the story. Instead, the court accepts the detainees argument that there is no possible way that the laws could be interpreted to provide an adequate substitute. The facial invalidation makes this an extraordinary opinion from Kennedy.

A refresher on the core issue: just which habeas rights (constitutional or statutory) are overseas, alien detainees entitled? I just pulled that together from some older material.

I have to run down to school, back in a few...

And yet more: If you're going to read just one of the opinions, skip down to Chief Justice Roberts'. I suspect that his intro will seriously resonate with Drew, who as you know has a particular dislike for courts which do more legislating than adjudicating:

The political branches crafted these procedures amidst an ongoing military conflict, after much careful investigation and thorough debate. The Court rejects them today out of hand, without bothering to say what due process rights the detainees possess, without explaining how the statute fails to vindicate those rights, and before a single petitioner has even attempted to avail himself of the lawÂ’s operation. And to what effect? The majority merely replaces a review system designed by the peopleÂ’s representatives with a set of shapeless procedures to be defined by federal courts at some future date.

There are some good questions in the comments here and in Drew's post. I'll see if I can answer some of them next.
more...

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 06:42 AM | Comments (77)
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Unfreaking believable.

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that foreign terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay have rights under the Constitution to challenge their detention in U.S. civilian courts.

The justices handed the Bush administration its third setback at the high court since 2004 over its treatment of prisoners who are being held indefinitely and without charges at the U.S. naval base in Cuba. The vote was 5-4, with the court's liberal justices in the majority.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the court, said, "The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times."

It was not immediately clear whether this ruling, unlike the first two, would lead to prompt hearings for the detainees, some who have been held more than 6 years. Roughly 270 men remain at the island prison, classified as enemy combatants and held on suspicion of terrorism or links to al-Qaida and the Taliban.

Stand by for more.

UPDATE: Gabe (an actual law school grad) has analysis and updates. Please use that as the main thread. It's a big enough story for a breaking and secondary post.

Just keep in mind...our enemies are laughing at us.

One last thought...will the US Military now have to read everyone they capture their Miranda rights? Will they have to collect and preserve evidence the same way cops do? How can they not if the people they capture will now be going to regular US criminal courts? The bottom line...it will be impossible to get convictions but that's just a minor inconvenience if you are an exalted justice of the US Supreme Court.

Posted by: DrewM at 06:35 AM | Comments (32)
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I took a break from bar quiz prep this evening to go to the well-attended early screening of Revelations at the Arclight in Hollywood. This is the last Galactica episode that we'll be seeing for a while---probably for this year. They're still filming the final episodes, which Mary McDonnell described as giving her goosebumps. more...

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 11:13 PM | Comments (22)
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