It's unbelievable that the White House would just release this under the guise of a dispassionate news analysis, claiming their boss did such a wonderful job.

In soaring rhetoric, Barack Obama ran through his logic for closing the Guantanamo Bay prison, deliberately planting himself on the middle ground between his conservative critics — led by Dick Cheney — and those to the left who accuse the new president of failing to restore American justice for all.

Obama slid easily back into his role as constitutional scholar, gliding through a long, carefully reasoned brief in the rotunda of the storied National Archives on Thursday. One of his aims appeared to be diminishing Cheney's message across town in a cramped-by-comparisonconference hall at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

In the company of original copies of the Constitution, Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights, Obama stood firm behind his decision — announced on the second day of his presidency — to close Guantanamo prison, a lockup reviled in the Muslim world and a drag on U.S. relations with many of its oldest allies.

...

There is a noisy backlash — mainly fueled by Republicans' relentless criticism of Obama's plans — against putting what are seen as dangerous terrorists in U.S. prisons.

But that did not seem to be Obama's top concern. He seemed more intent on placing himself between the Cheneyites and his critics on the left who are bitterly complaining the president is not strongly defending American legal protections.

Ahhh... right in the middle, huh?

Well, as over-the-top as that is, what do you expect? They're on Obama's payroll, after all.

Wait -- did I say that was a White House press release? My bad.

That's the AP's official "analysis."

Both tip and cutting remark thanks to flenser.

Posted by: Ace at 02:48 PM | Comments (106)
Post contains 310 words, total size 2 kb.

Vid here. (Link Fixed.)

An outrageously outraged palate cleanser for your amusement. “Sleazy” and “slanderous” and “disgraceful” and “an abomination”: It’s precisely the reaction you’d expect, with O’D in particular straining for adjectives to express his limitless contempt.

Since Larry's run out of adjectives, may I suggest he begin cribbing the antiquated descriptors favored by Cthulhu writer HP Lovecraft in describing Cheney?

Like so:

Dick Cheney is a vile disgrace of eldritch omen. He lies broken in Cyclopean ruins, a jumble of weird translucent standing-stones suggesting, simultaneously, both filthy glass and twisted iron, violating the senses in a dread suggestion of non-Euclidean geometry; his very shape a crazed blasphemy to the laws of cold nature itself. His speech is a lunatic gibbering, both no language and all languages at the same time, snatches of Aramaic and Old Hebrew gurgling over dark whispers of Latin and Ancient Greek and strange heresies of some insane ur-language unknown to man; and beneath them all a weeping not of sadness but of corrupt hungers yet unsatisfied. Slithering from his gaping, mishapen maw are hideous tentacles, slimy and pustulant and chalk-white like the seawater-softened fingers of drowned men...

Friggin' pansy. Man up and grow a pair, you effete liberal dandycake. We're talking about national security and he's shrieking like a dissed Holloback Girl.

Here's Dick "Great Old One" Cheney's speech in four parts, starting here.

Caution: Witnessing this vile blasphemy may result in a loss of sanity for some.

Vid tip thanks to Stan W.

Cheneyku: Treacher's Cheney haikus.

Been a while since we did those, huh?

Cheney haiku thread!

Posted by: Ace at 02:19 PM | Comments (90)
Post contains 289 words, total size 2 kb.

Dude's throat makes him look like a mutant bullfrog fellating an RV Roadmaster.

I need this mastodonian bastard explaining the global financial meltdown to me like I need him explaining the glycemic index and "good carbs."

Gee, I wonder who will turn out to be the bad guys.

Thinking cap on. Ponder ponder ponder.

Posted by: Ace at 02:03 PM | Comments (91)
Post contains 74 words, total size 1 kb.

In the previous post, I stated that for all of human history, the right of a sovereign to hold captured enemy fighters indefinitely -- or at least until war's end -- was unchallenged. I made up the number "for 50,000+ years." As a guess.

Now, the thing is, for a good chunk of human history -- the biggest part of human history -- captured enemies weren't "detained." They were executed. They were killed, the older boys were killed (next season's fighters, after all), the young boys were made into slaves and the women and girls were pressed into rape-slavery.

At some point -- I have no idea when -- rules of war began emerging.

And the rules of war were, inextricably, connected to the code of martial honor that emerged among professional fighters.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 01:15 PM | Comments (68)
Post contains 1791 words, total size 11 kb.

Hm! Why didn't we think of that?

President Obama told human rights advocates at the White House on Wednesday that he was mulling the need for a "preventive detention" system that would establish a legal basis for the United States to incarcerate terrorism suspects who are deemed a threat to national security but cannot be tried, two participants in the private session said.

***

The two participants, outsiders who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the session was intended to be off the record, said they left the meeting dismayed.

***

"He was almost ruminating over the need for statutory change to the laws so that we can deal with individuals who we can't charge and detain," one participant said. "We've known this is on the horizon for many years, but we were able to hold it off with George Bush. The idea that we might find ourselves fighting with the Obama administration over these powers is really stunning."

The other participant said Mr. Obama did not seem to be thinking about preventive detention for terrorism suspects now held at Guantanamo Bay, but rather for those captured in the future, in settings other than a legitimate battlefield like AfghanistanÂ…

Karl writes that Obama's big, nuanced, terrorist-mollifying new plan is to go beyond George W. Bush in detaining terrorists without trial. That's true, in a certain way.

What Obama is talking about is not exactly new, but it is new-ish, and it remains very controversial. Beginning sometime around the early nineties, when the public became distressed about repeat sexual offenders being released into the public after having served their sentences only to, of course, rape or molest someone else, legal theorists began adopting the notion of "civil incarceration" to keep them locked away, long after the expiration of their actual criminal sentences.
more...

Posted by: Ace at 12:16 PM | Comments (83)
Post contains 1927 words, total size 13 kb.

It's a corker, worth reading in full.

To add some small amount of value here, I've cut it down to the best parts. But really, it's all good, and even trying to cut just the best parts resulted in a text that was only slimmed down by about half. Still -- twice as fast to read.

Video: In four parts, starting here. Thanks to StanW. more...

Posted by: Ace at 11:13 AM | Comments (89)
Post contains 3057 words, total size 19 kb.

Liz Cheney this time.

At about 2:30 minutes in she just destroys Obama's whole idea of a middle ground when it comes to fighting terrorism. About 5:30 in, Chuck Todd ignores the fact it was the left in this country (including Obama) who demonized Guantanamo in the first place. Sadly, Cheney didn't point that out either.

If she wasn't already married with 5 kids and the daughter of a man who could have me killed by one of his hit squads, I'd say something crass like, "I'd hit it". All that's left is, God, I hope she runs for office.

More: Mitt Romney weighs in with some good points including...

Barack Obama is having a hard time going from politician to president. His speech and his policies have one foot in campaign mode and another in presidential mode. He struggles to explain how he is keeping faith with the liberal advocates who promoted his campaign but in doing so, he breaks faith with the interests of the American people. When it comes to protecting the nation, we have a conflicted president. And his address today was more tortured than the enhanced interrogation techniques he decries.

Being The Messiah isn't as easy as you think.

Posted by: DrewM at 10:15 AM | Comments (88)
Post contains 238 words, total size 2 kb.

Once again they demonstrate their inability to weigh the costs associated with government interference in private matters. The thought process goes like this:

A week (and phased-in two week) paid vacation sounds like a nice thing. We should have that. The end.

It never even occurs to them that paid vacations cost money. Money that businesses don't have to spare. It also never even crosses their mind that individuals and companies should be free to set pretty much whatever terms they like on employment contracts.

So let's be clear about the results of this proposed law: higher prices for goods and services and fewer jobs available. Also, less freedom as the government will intrude even further into the workplace. And yet the dinguses keep blabbing that they are the party of the "working class." *puke*

Discuss: Would any of the amendments in Barnett's Bill of Federalism make this proposed law unconstitional?

Added: Let's count up the ways the Democrats have proposed to hurt businesses and employees so far. I'll start:

1. Proposed mandatory vacation benefits.
2. Proposed mandatory healthcare benies or penalties.
3. Proposed cap & tax.

The result of all these policies: higher prices, lost jobs, hurting economy.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 09:24 AM | Comments (104)
Post contains 209 words, total size 1 kb.

They seem strangely incurious about such a damning accusation. It's almost as if Democrats are covering for someone who is lying to save her own stretched and botoxed skin.

The House voted 252-172 to block the measure that would have created a bipartisan congressional panel. Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, sponsored the resolution.

"This is partisan politics and an attempt by the Republicans to distract from the real issue of creating jobs and making progress on health care, energy and education," said Pelosi spokesman Nadeam Elshami.

..."To have this charge out there and not have it resolved I think is damaging to our intelligence efforts, and certainly will have a chilling effect on our intelligence professionals around the world," said House Republican Leader John Boehner of Ohio.

Silly Republicans, thinking national security is more important than the Democrat's agenda.

Posted by: DrewM at 09:08 AM | Comments (43)
Post contains 164 words, total size 1 kb.

According to the President (according to an upcoming book): "It's not funny."

President Obama is so "distracted by his vice president's indiscipline" that he has been forced to rebuke privately Vice President Joe Biden, according to a new book by Newsweek journalist Richard Wolffe, who interviewed Obama a dozen times.

"He can't keep his mouth shut," Wolffe quotes a "senior Obama aide" as saying of the gaffe-prone Biden in "Renegade: The Making of a President," set for release June 2.

No one, however, says that this is unexpected. I'm sure the rest of you (like me) were picking your jaws up off the floor when we found out that Joe Biden was picked to be the President's running mate. As just about everyone has quipped: "Thank God we didn't get stuck with that idiot Palin."

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 09:07 AM | Comments (50)
Post contains 147 words, total size 1 kb.