Rational Review » PND Commentary

Forgetting Bradley Manning

Steve Trinward — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 05:21:22 +0000

“Julian Assange of WikiLeaks is out on bail — apparently headed for the 10-bedroom home of British former army officer Vaughan Smith, described by the Guardian as a rightwing libertarian. Assange’s lawyer joked that it would not be so much ‘house arrest as manor arrest’ while he fights extradition to Sweden on sexual assault charges. There’s no manor for Bradey Manning. As Glenn Greenwald noted yesterday, the alleged leaker of much of the WikiLeaks information … has been sitting in solitary confinement for seven months under torture conditions.” (12/16/10)

Health law ruling a setback for new absolutism

Steve Trinward — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 05:17:45 +0000

“It’s possible that Judge Henry Hudson has done something big to help save the day from a destructively overreaching government. Maybe, possibly, conceivably, the age’s new absolutism had a setback with a judge’s ruling. He saw the absurdity of thinking the Commerce Clause somehow lets the government tell you what private products you have to buy. Open that door and ‘unbridled police powers’ rush in. The judge is right, of course.” (12/16/10)

Dismantling the filibuster

Steve Trinward — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 05:07:51 +0000

“Use of the filibuster — debating indefinitely as a means of preventing a vote or other action — has skyrocketed, slowing business to a crawl. Were it not for the Democrats’ decisive majorities in both houses, it’s hard to see how anything would have been accomplished. That advantage will disappear when Republicans take over the House in January. A trio of young Democratic senators is hoping to limit this chronic power to obstruct by reforming Senate rules.” (12/16/10)

Trapped in Bank of America hell

Steve Trinward — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 05:06:45 +0000

“George Mahoney worked and saved and built his cozy, colonial-style home in Lynnfield, Massachusetts, in 1981. … For many years, the Mahoneys paid down their relatively small mortgage with their local bank — a division of Bank of America (BofA). In 2007, they took out a second mortgage to help a daughter start a small business…. About a year after getting the second mortgage, BofA started notifying George that his payments were late. Soon they jacked his credit card interest rates from 7 percent to 28 percent. Next, they ruined his credit record…. Then one day in the fall of 2009, BofA initiated foreclosure on the house he had built and owned for 28 years. The only problem? The Mahoneys had never missed a single payment on either their first or second mortgage.” (12/16/10)

Beware the military-religious complex

Steve Trinward — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 05:05:24 +0000

“Lt. Gen. Ashkenazi stood at a lectern last week wearing the kind of size XXL skullcap that is the social marker of Orthodox settlers, praising an army program that is the pride of Israel’s religious right. He looked slightly bashful. Ashkenazi, Israel’s military chief of staff, lives in a rather boring suburb of Tel Aviv, not a West Bank settlement. He’s not an Orthodox Jew, so he usually doesn’t wear a hat or skullcap, except for formal occasions when he puts on his military beret. As a military man, he’s officially not a politician. Then again, you don’t get appointed to head the Israel Defense Forces without a sharp sense of which way the political winds are blowing.” (12/16/10)

Honor Holbrooke: End war in Afghanistan

Steve Trinward — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 05:03:18 +0000

“When a member of Congress dies, sometimes other members name a bill after him or her that advances some cause with which he or she identified. So, for example, we had the ‘Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act’ — Kennedy was a champion of volunteer service. This tradition has multiple effects. Of course, it honors the departed. But, like the Spanish hero El Cid, whose companions suited him up and placed him on his horse to drive off their foes, it also gives the departed one last ride into battle.” (12/16/10)

America’s dirty secret: AfPak war not winnable

Thomas L. Knapp — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 21:09:57 +0000

“AfPak increasingly looks like an unwinnable quagmire, draining America’s resources. Staying the course, committing larger force levels, applying more pressure, and escalating war aren’t solutions. They’ve made conditions worse, not better. ” (12/17/10)

Unplugged

Thomas L. Knapp — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 19:32:25 +0000

“When do Supreme Court justices need to just sit down and be quiet?” (12/14/10)

Swedish state on trial in Assange case?

Steve Trinward — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 05:09:35 +0000

“The feeling is growing among WikiLeaks watchers that ’someone is pushing Sweden,’ as one attorney says. … the original rape case against Assange was announced by a prosecutor in Stockholm in August, then immediately dropped by a higher Stockholm prosecutor, then reinstated in Gothenburg, after an enterprising lawyer apparently shopped for a friendlier jurisdiction. Bottom line: the Stockholm prosecutors, where the alleged sex offense occurred, have no apparent interest in the case. It would be as if a New York prosecutor declined a case in New York and the prosecutors sought a friendlier court in Mississippi.” (12/15/10)

Five things that change everything

Steve Trinward — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 04:04:56 +0000

“Wikileaks is one unprecedented, stunningly detailed explanation of just how the global diplomatic sausage gets made. And lo, it is vile sausage indeed. … What we’re learning is, this meat is more rancid, disrespectful, abusive, cruel, barbarian and childish than anyone wanted to imagine. No wonder world governments and whimpering doltbuckets like Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee want this Assange guy dead. It’s because Wikileaks is just terrifically embarrassing, humiliating to the bone …” (12/15/10)

Your holiday guide to deficit reduction

Steve Trinward — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 03:54:43 +0000

“Budget deficit mania grips the nation’s political elite. Never mind that many people are more worried about finding a job, stagnant wages, home foreclosures and the state of the Main Street economy. Pundits and politicians from moderate centrists to the Tea Party right-wingers are frantically warning that if nothing changes, federal debt in 2050 will be three times the size of annual economic output — supposed proof that the end of America as we know it is at hand if we don’t make ‘tough choices.’” (12/15/10)

The last statesman

Steve Trinward — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 03:53:19 +0000

“Richard Holbrooke, who died unexpectedly this week after suffering a tear in his aorta, was a celebrity diplomat whose name was known to everyone who followed politics and foreign policy. He was unique. … He was deeply involved with every Democratic president and in every presidential campaign since Jimmy Carter’s … his involvement in Barack Obama’s administration was taken as a given, the only question being the exact nature of the role. The line in Hillary Clinton’s official statement after his passing — that he was ‘one of a kind — a true statesman’ — has the distinct virtue of being true.” (12/15/10)

Flooding the world with truth

R. Lee Wrights — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 03:27:49 +0000

“Ten years ago, this article would have been amazing. Today it is a blip on the screen. But someone out there will read it and get curious. He or she will look for more and find Mises.org. Then the change happens — that most important change in the world: the mind begins to grasp the idea of liberty. Here is an event that is more important than anything in the physical world. Repeat that experience millions and billions of times and history will conform.” (12/15/10)

The envy and covetousness of progressives

R. Lee Wrights — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 03:24:25 +0000

“Referring to the estate tax, Madoff writes: ‘This tax, first enacted in 1916, was never intended to be simply a device for raising revenue. Rather, it was meant to address the phenomenon of a small number of Americans controlling large amounts of the country’s wealth — which was considered a national problem.’ Considered a national problem? By whom?” (12/15/10)

Crisis junkies

Thomas L. Knapp — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 23:14:44 +0000

“There’s nothing new about hyping a potential crisis to get political allies to sign on to your agenda. It’s just happening more frequently now, and with higher stakes, for two big reasons. The first is that Americans are growing gloomier about the future. Polls on whether the country’s on the right or wrong track have leaned toward ‘wrong track’ for roughly five years. … The second reason is that liberals and conservatives believe that the other team is trying to provoke a crisis.” (12/14/10)

The inhumane conditions of Bradley Manning’s detention

Thomas L. Knapp — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 22:56:00 +0000

“Bradley Manning, the 22-year-old U.S. Army Private accused of leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks, has never been convicted of that crime, nor of any other crime. Despite that, he has been detained at the U.S. Marine brig in Quantico, Virginia for five months — and for two months before that in a military jail in Kuwait — under conditions that constitute cruel and inhumane treatment and, by the standards of many nations, even torture.” (12/15/10)

Make sure to celebrate Bill of Rights Day

Mary Lou Seymour — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 07:23:29 +0000

“It’s the holiday that got away. Wednesday is the 219th anniversary of the ratification of the Bill of Rights, a critical turning point in the history of this country and one that transformed this nation forever. Still, you won’t find any Bill of Rights greeting cards in local stores. It’s not that Americans are short on patriotism. In fact, we celebrate Veterans Day, Constitution Day, Flag Day, Memorial Day, Washington’s Birthday, Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Independence Day.” (12/14/10)

WikiLeaks’ real victim: Old-school code of trust

Steve Trinward — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 05:08:15 +0000

“The WikiLeaks dump of US embassy cables last month was a reckless act. It is a far cry from the responsible reporting on foreign affairs with which I am familiar. When I was the State Department spokesman in the Reagan administration, Bernard Kalb, then diplomatic correspondent for NBC, called me about a tip that the bad guys in Beirut, Lebanon, had captured and were holding an American CIA officer. ‘Bernie,’ I said, ‘I’ll only talk off the record about that.’ ‘No way,’ Bernie replied, ‘If it’s off the record I can’t use it.’ ‘Well, that’s the deal,’ I said. ‘See what your network says.’ The network agreed to the deal.” (12/14/10)

Can we stop pretending conservatives want to cut deficit?

Steve Trinward — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 05:06:32 +0000

“In the past year, conservative congresspeople have claimed to oppose nearly everything on the grounds that it would increase the deficit — even when legislation was formally estimated to either cut the deficit (health care reform), have no impact on the deficit (preventing teacher layoffs) or amount to a rounding error on the deficit (unemployment insurance). And while conservatives were in charge, they launched two wars, established a prescription drug benefit run by the drug companies and slashed taxes for millionaires — all without offsetting the costs. In other words, for conservatives, it’s never been about the deficit.” (12/14/10)

Good profits and “the Good War”

Steve Trinward — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 05:05:14 +0000

“Now in its tenth year, the war in Afghanistan is the longest in U.S. history. And as the war drags on, the situation goes from bad to worse: 2010 is the most violent year on record. The Taliban, who were largely defeated in December 2001, now control about 80 percent of the country. In the meantime, we are propping up a government in Kabul that is predatory and corrupt. We are spending about $100 billion a year to wage war in one of the poorest countries on earth. Yet our president, who assured us during the campaign that he was opposed to ‘dumb wars,’ has re-committed America to this fight for at least four more years.” (12/14/10)