The lead plaintiff in the case is Binyam Mohamed, an Ethopian citizen and legal resident of the United Kingdom who was arrested in Pakistan on immigration charges. He claimed he was turned over to the C.I.A., which flew him to Morocco and turned him over to the Moroccan security service, who held him for 18 months and subjected him to an array of tortures, including beatings, 24-hour subjection to loud music, and cutting his penis and other body parts with a scalpel and then pouring stinging liquid on the wounds…

…Judge Fisher took the unusual step of urging the executive branch and Congress at length to consider granting reparations to torture victims if secret records indicated that their allegations were true – even if they had no ability to seek redress in courts. He cited the example of payments the government made to Japanese Latin Americans who had been abducted and brought to United States internment camps during World War II.

via Court Sides With C.I.A. on ‘Extraordinary Rendition’ – NYTimes.com.

The court says as much as the allegations are probably true but bars a plaintive from a day in court on the basis of a judicially created “state secrets privilege” doctrine.  This is bullshit.

Sadly, it’s unlikely the Robert’s court will overturn this ruling. They’ve yet to see an executive privilege they didn’t like.  A government that has the power to order the extra-judicial murder of American citizens and jealously protects the right to torture in secret IS a tyranny.  The part that saddens me the most is that Obama was a constitutional law professor.  I hold him personally responsible for upholding the worst excesses of the Bush administration. Is this what he meant by bipartisan? It’s nauseating. You’ve officially lost me.

Obama Plays Hardball | Mother Jones.

This is pretty fascinating. Years ago, after Republicans filibustered a Carter nominee to the NLRB, the two parties made a deal: the board would have three appointees from the president’s party and two from the other party. So after he took office Obama nominated two Democrats and one Republican to fill the NLRB’s three vacant seats and got support from a couple of Republicans on the HELP committee for the entire slate. But when it got to the Senate floor John McCain put a hold on Becker, and his nomination — along with the others — died.

Fast forward to today and Obama finally decides to fill the board using recess appointments. But what does he do? He only appoints the two Democrats. This is not what you do if you’re trying to make nice. It’s what you do if you’re playing hardball and you want to send a pointed message to the GOP caucus. You won’t act on my nominees? Fine. I’ll appoint my guys and then leave it up to you to round up 50 votes in the Senate for yours. Have fun.

Does this mean the postpartisan Obama is finally dying away, overtaken by a newly muscular president willing to duke it out with a Republican Party that he finally realizes has been utterly consumed by its hardcore obstructionist wing? Maybe! Stay tuned.

The rest seem dead on, as sad as they may be. In particular 3, 5, 6, 7 don’t bode well for our system of government. click through to the original piece to get the explanation for each.

FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right: What We Learned.

Putting the policy and its implications aside, what political lessons can we takeaway from the past year? Plenty, some of them rather disconcerting.

1. Non-incremental policy change is never easy.

2. The presidential pulpit doesn’t bully by itself.

3. Misinformation is more easily disseminated than debunked.

4. Have an Administration bill.

5. Proxying process for policy works.

6. It pays to hold out.

7. Bipartisanship is a waste of time—except as a tactical feint.

I’m not sure that it will have the intended effect. I suppose that bankers will just pass along the costs where possible, but that in itself may move some money out of the financial sector and into other areas. After all, much of what the financial sector does these days produces nothing and may well be harmful. Things like exotic derivative instruments and high speed trading based on micro moves in asset prices. If money and talent are moved away from gaming the system and selling derivatives that only seem to exist to add complexity and obfuscate what’s actually being sold, I see that as a positive development. Maybe that money and talent might actually be directed into something that helps the public instead of enriching overpaid, self-righteous pricks, who then use that money to further skew the rules in their favor and eliminate regulations that cramp their style.

If they want to restore sanity the federal government needs to force banks to separate commercial banking and investment banking in the way it was under the Glass-Stegall Act before both Republicans and Democrats slowly killed it. A small transaction tax on financial instrument trades would eliminate the high speed trading and cause investors to look at longer term returns. I’d also suggest a capital gains tax that starts higher and declines by 20% for each year, down to zero after 5 years. Perhaps an exemption for retirees below some level of income would help keep it from impacting people who need the money.  A hardship exemption could also be added for those who find they really need access to their investments. It should be applied in a revenue neutral way that will encourage a longer term perspective in investing instead of simply chasing the next quarter’s results or a short term price move.

*BTW, I’ve always thought that the name TARP (troubled asset relief program) was a bad choice. It should have been called “bad asset relief fund” or BARF. That’s much closer to how it made most people feel, isn’t it?

A long time Newsmax.com columnist, possibly suffering from and acute case of Obama Derangement Syndrome, wrote a piece describing the reasons why a domestic “military intervention” would be a good idea. He tosses about “gems” like this:

Military intervention is what Obama’s exponentially accelerating agenda for “fundamental change” toward a Marxist state is inviting upon America. A coup is not an ideal option, but Obama’s radical ideal is not acceptable or reversible. (The column was removed from newsmax.com, but the full text can still be found here)

He waxes eloquent about how great it would be to have the military running things, you know like a true banana republican would. That may need a quick definition:

banana republican: A republican who’d like to see the US become more authoritarian like a Central American banana republic. They are generally fans of wars, wire tapping, torture and chest thumping military adventurism.

After a perfectly predictable tsunami of criticism erupted over what amounts to a call for a military coup, Newmax then attempts to distance themselves from John L. Perry by claiming he really doesn’t have anything to do with them. This is despite the fact that he’s been writing a weekly column for them since at least 1999. Nice try. I thought that I had become jaded and no extreme of virulent wingnuttery could surprise me. I was wrong. It’s getting weirder out there…

In a late-afternoon telephone call with religious leaders on Wednesday, Mr. Obama cast the difficulty of the health care debate in terms larger than his presidency, comparing it to the creation of Social Security and Medicare.

“These struggles always boil down to a contest between hope and fear,” he said. “That was true in the debate over Social Security, when F.D.R. was accused of being a socialist. That was true when J.F.K. and Lyndon Johnson tried to pass Medicare. And it’s true in this debate today.”

via Obama Calls Health Plan a ‘Moral Obligation’ – NYTimes.com.

The question buzzing around Washington’s chattering classes is the following: is the actual historical moment that Obama inherited — unforeseen in its scope and danger this time last year — the right moment for these instincts? Are his caution and delegation a liability in a period of a dysfunctional Congress, a near-psychotic Republican party and a potentially lethal global depression?

After a period in which the American executive claimed vast powers and institutionalised torture and abuse of suspected terrorists, is it enough simply to forget and forgive the past and try to glue onto the existing system more checks and balances and decency? Is the conservatism we sought, in other words, adequate to the radicalism that may now be required?

And is the president being too deferential to Congress in seizing the reins?

This critique is echoed on both left and right. The right, in its dominant neoconservative vein, is frustrated with his disdain for classic American moralising and sabre-rattling at a moment such as Iran’s stymied green revolution. The left wishes he had been more radical in taking on Wall Street, insisting on a single-payer healthcare reform and a full-bore carbon tax. Harper’s Magazine has even labelled him Barack Hoover Obama: personally brilliant, humane and pragmatic but simply not daring enough for the moment he is facing.

via Barack Obama keeps his cool in hothead Washington – Times Online.

I’ve always seen Obama as a careful centrist and wonder why people are startled that he governs like one. The stimulus debate left little question he’d sacrifice effectiveness for political cover and “bipartisanship” whatever that is. Seems like the GOP defines bipartisan as capitulation to their goals.

Obama has to change the policy in Pakistan, either flat out declare war on Pakistan or give up on Afghanistan. This half-assed shit isn’t cutting it. We ARE turning more and more of the Muslim world against us. It only gets worse from there.  Let’s see what was the last foreign power to subdue and remain in control in Afghanistan? Oh right, NO ONE!

I don’t think it’s time to break out the champagne just yet. The country’s economy is in a massive hole that took years to dig. It will take more time to get us out of it. When employment numbers start to rebound and the larger economy shows positive growth numbers for a couple of quarters, then we can pop the bubbly. Taken together it does show some signs of life in what has thus far been an economically bleak year.

Despite the side-show provided by the AIG bonus kerfuffle, it shows that the Obama administration is doing the right things to guide the economy to recovery. I fail to understand why people are so pissed about $165 million in bonuses, when that represents less than 1% of the money we gave AIG essentially without strings so they could in turn hand it to counter parties (mostly big banks) in the credit default swaps AIG backed who had already gotten billions from the government. Where was the outrage over that?

Is Obama’s Tax Cut the Biggest in History? – Steven Waldman.

The Democrats have been so busy defending federal spending, and denigrating the stimulative power of tax cuts, that they apparently either forgot — or felt they couldn’t — point out something rather dramatic: the tax cuts in this stimulus plan appear to be the biggest in history.

The compromise stimulus plan includes $282 billion in tax cuts over two years.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Bush’s first two years of tax cuts amounted to $174 billion. A second batch in 2004 and 2005 cost $231. And those were thought to be bigger than the tax cuts offered by Reagan, Kennedy or others.

Now, perhaps some new analysis will show that the tax cuts end up not quite being the largest in history by this measure or that. But it’s clear they’re massive.

Administration Invokes State Secret Argument – NYTimes.com.

“This is not change,” he said in a statement. “This is definitely more of the same. Candidate Obama ran on a platform that would reform the abuse of state secrets, but President Obama’s Justice Department has disappointingly reneged on that important civil liberties issue. If this is a harbinger of things to come, it will be a long and arduous road to give us back an America we can be proud of again.”

A Justice Department spokesman, Matt Miller, said the government did not comment on pending litigation, but he seemed to suggest the Obama administration would invoke the privilege more sparingly than its predecessor.

That was quick! This is one of the main reasons why I voted for him. Gitmo will be remembered as a national shame, much like the WWII era imprisonment of Americans of Japanese descent. Gitmo has only enabled the recruitment of more sucide bombers and encouraged further hatred for the US.

I know it’s asking a lot I’d like to see the mainstream media actually report the truth when they show McCain mocking Obama for suggesting conservation and developing new sources of energy like solar and wind. The Energy Dept. reports that expanding drilling will on the continental shelf add a whopping 0.2% to world oil production in twenty years.  The impact to oil prices will be insignificant.

EIA – Impacts of Increased Access to Oil and Natural Gas Resources in the Lower 48 Federal Outer Continental Shelf

The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan
Gallup still shows no change. Im beginning to suspect that the only segment left in America that genuinely feels that elitism is a problem for Obama are … the elites. How funny is that?

Clinton and Obama Split Over Florida and Michigan – New York Times
“The results of those primaries were fair and should be honored,” she told the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce here.

Ferraro defends controversial comments on Barack Obama – The Daily Breeze
“Any time anybody does anything that in any way pulls this campaign down and says let’s address reality and the problems we’re facing in this world, you’re accused of being racist, so you have to shut up,” Ferraro said. “Racism works in two different directions. I really think they’re attacking me because I’m white. How’s that?”

She should probably gone with the ever popular “no comment” until after the election. Gerry, you probably ought to shut up now, you ain’t helping!!!

So will Hillary embrace this narrative and become the campaign of down trodden white people? Remember kids, we’re on 231 year streak of white people running the country. I’m going to get physically ill if the Hilldog embraces her “victimhood”.

Mutual Contempt
Though they differ in many ways, John McCain and Barack Obama have one thing in common: Each sees the other as a posturing phony. When McCain talks about Obama on the stump, he trades his typical graciousness for sarcasm and contempt. When McCain lectured Obama about the future of Iraq last week, he did so with what The New York Times called “a tone of belittlement in his voice.” McCain has also called Obamamania a swindle. “America is not deceived by an eloquent but empty call for change that promises no more than a holiday from history,” he said in Wisconsin last month. And he has huffed that “I don’t seek the presidency on the presumption that I am blessed with personal greatness.” After Obama issued a press release last May noting that conditions were still dangerous enough in Iraq that McCain had been forced to wear a “flack jacket” during a public tour of a Baghdad market, a McCain release taunted Obama for his inexperience, adding, “By the way, Senator Obama, it’s a ‘flak’ jacket, not a ‘flack’ jacket.” For good measure, an unnamed McCain aide drove home the point to the Politico, saying that “Obama wouldn’t know the difference between an RPG and a bong.”

Obama has swung back in similar, if somewhat milder, fashion. Noting that McCain had changed his position on the Bush tax cuts, Obama joked last month that “the Straight Talk Express lost its wheels.” Later, he cracked in a Democratic debate that McCain “traded his principles for his party’s nomination.” Snickering at the idea that McCain is a scourge of lobbyists, Obama recently said that “he takes their money and has put them in charge of his campaign.”

I agree with the argument that it benefits Clinton more to have Obama at the bottom of the ticket, than it does Obama to have Clinton as his running mate. He brings new voters in that may stay home without him. Her strength is with democratic insiders and rank and file that would vote for either nominee. At some point the party leadership needs to tell her to back down and put Obama at the top of the ticket. It is what best for the party. Sadly, it seems like Clinton thinks it’s more about what’s best for her.

Clinton targets pledged delegates – Roger Simon – Politico.com
Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign intends to go after delegates whom Barack Obama has already won in the caucuses and primaries if she needs them to win the nomination.

This strategy was confirmed to me by a high-ranking Clinton official on Monday. And I am not talking about superdelegates, those 795 party big shots who are not pledged to anybody. I am talking about getting pledged delegates to switch sides.

What? Isn’t that impossible? A pledged delegate is pledged to a particular candidate and cannot switch, right?

Wrong.

Pledged delegates are not really pledged at all, not even on the first ballot. This has been an open secret in the party for years, but it has never really mattered because there has almost always been a clear victor by the time the convention convened.

But not this time.

UPDATE: Ezra brings it all together here

Jon Chait points out that Obama has made very specific policy recommendations and that it’s Sen. McCain who’s been all fuzzy and non-specific. Voicing a criticism of an opponents positions is certainly valid, but pretending that they don’t exist is just stupid.