The Boot's On the Other Foot Now

From The Volokh Conspiracy:

Just A Reminder, for the folks who thought that President Bush had the power to arrest anyone in the United States and detain them as "enemy combatants" without any hearing as part of his Commander-in-Chief power, that this power is now enjoyed by Barack Hussein Obama. That's right: A liberal with the middle name "Hussein" who pals around with terrorists and is adored in Paris now has all that Commander-in-Chief power. And if he decides that you're a threat to the nation, he can order you seized and locked up indefinitely. Congress can't get in B. Hussein Obama's way: As the FISA Court of Review emphasized back in 2002, Congress "could not encroach on the President’s constitutional power." And that meddling Supreme Court can't stop "The One," either. Or at least that's your view of things.

Heh. I've been saying something similar  for years to the Bushistas who loudly insist that the Commander in Chief's powers in time of war are unlimited, and that he can lock up, torture, or "render"anyone he wants, just by taking the Magic Wand of Presidentness out of his flight suit, waving it about, and shouting "I declare thee an Enemy Combatant! BOOGA BOOGA BOOGA!" 

Well, wingnuts, having pissed away your support  and screwed a whole kennel full of pooches so badly that your white-haired boy and his egregious sidekick got thier asses kicked worse than the bastard son at a family reunion, what's your position on "plenary authority" and the "Unitary Executive" now? 

Of course, late conversions into believers of checks and balances are more than welcome.

Only if they stand in the corner with the dunce cap on their heads for a while. 

Oh, Happy Day.

Goodbye to this:



And hello to this:



Okay, maybe not as many laughs when Obama speaks, but I'll deal with it.

Racist Much?

Michell Malkin on the Obama Inauguration:

Pomp and circumstance have been replaced with pimp and self-aggrandizement — all topped with a heapful of double standards.

....Getting ready for the countdown.

3, 2, 1…RAAAAAAAACIST!

Let me clue you in on something, Ms. Malkin: saying, in effect, "I bet someone will call me a racist for that" doesn't make what you're saying any less racist.

You know, I'm trying really hard to follow Obama's message of "we're all one country, we need to work together to solve our problems, etc." But racist bullshit like this, where someone refers to the incoming President as a "pimp", makes it really difficult to do that.

George Dubbya Bush has perpetrated many gross offenses against this country that I love. He's overextended our military, committed the greatest strategic blunder since Hitler invaded Russia, pissed away the international goodwill and support we had after 9/11, tried to turn the Department of Justice into the Holy Office of the Republican Inquisition, put political cronies into important positions for which they weren't qualified, with disatrous results, allowed torture to become offical policy...the list goes on and on.

But to me, George W. Bush's greatest failure of leadership was this: he failed to even try to unify America. In fact, his entire political career was built around dividing it. Since the days of Bush's father, the Republican message has been that only Republicans are "real Americans" and that they need to hate and fear and demonize any American who was different from them. Anyone black was a "pimp"or a "thug", anyone gay was a "potential pedophile", anyone more liberal than they are was a "traitor" who wanted to bring on another 9/11. He and his people divided us into "red" and "blue", and told us that one color was in a "culture war" with the other. We're going to be a long time recovering from that. But I'm hoping that tomorrow is the beginning of that recovery.

Because here's the thing: I'm as weary of the liberal dividers as I am of the faux-conservative ones. don't get me wrong, I think Keith Olbermann, for example, has served a useful purpose; he was one of the first ones to point out that the Republican's Dear Leader was a small, shallow, intellectually incurious man who would have been out of his depth managing a 7/11, much less the United States. But I sometimes feel about Olbermann the way Jon Stewart once described Moveon.org: he has the talent to make even people who agree with him cringe.

Hopefully, the inauguration of Barack Obama is the sign that someday we'll be able to toss people like Michelle Malkin on the ash-heap of history. And then toss Olbermann on there too.

And then this blog can go back to being all about me.

Word of the Day

Snarge (snarj): the bird goo that is wiped off an aircraft after it hits a bird.

As it turns out, there are scientists that study snarge, with the idea being that once you figure out what the hell it was you hit, you can take steps to keep it from happening again. Story from NPR at the link.