Question Time

The Pilot Newspaper: Opinion

Today’s column is a grab bag of questions which, for some strange reason, I can never seem to get a straight answer to:

If you think President Obama’s “weakness” in Syria is what led to Vladimir Putin’s annexation of Crimea, what do you think we should have done in Syria? Should we have bombed them for using chemical weapons even after they agreed to give up their chemical weapons stockpiles and production facilities? If so, do you also think police officers should be ordered to shoot criminals who’ve thrown down their weapons?

Do you think America should have intervened or should now intervene militarily in Syria? If so, which side should we come in on, the side backed by Hezbollah, or the one fighting alongside al-Qaida?

If you think our current response to the Russian annexation of Crimea is too weak, do you favor military intervention? If so, please locate Ukraine on a map and tell us where American troops should be based for such an intervention and where they’d be supplied from.

If you blame President Obama’s “weakness” for the Russian annexation of Crimea, do you also blame President George W. Bush for the 2008 war between Russia and Georgia? If not, why not?

If you think Obamacare needs to be repealed, are you also willing to repeal the popular parts of it, like the part protecting people with pre-existing conditions and the part allowing parents to insure their children to age 26? If not, how do you propose to keep the insurance system alive if everyone isn’t required to pay into it?

What do you propose to do with the millions of people already insured through the exchanges when the mandate goes away and insurance companies can go back to charging people exorbitant amounts or denying them insurance altogether if they have pre-existing conditions?

If you were one of the people who insisted in 2012 that the polls putting President Obama ahead of Mitt Romney were “skewed” and that Romney was going to win in a landslide, please tell us why we should believe you when you claim that the Obama administration is “cooking the books” on Affordable Care Act enrollment and that Obamacare is doomed to fail?

If you believe that a single-payer, taxpayer supported, medical insurance plan is “socialism” and that it will destroy America, do you plan to refuse a Medicare card when you become eligible or turn yours in if you have one now? If not, why not? If your reason is “I already paid into this,” isn’t that just an acknowledgement that it’s a taxpayer-funded system?

If you claim Obamacare is a “socialist takeover” of the American health care system, please explain how the terms “socialism” and “takeover” apply to a system of privately owned insurers paying privately employed doctors with support from privately paid premiums.

If you don’t think “enhanced interrogation” techniques such as waterboarding, sleep deprivation, being locked in small boxes and subjected to extended “stress positions” are not torture and therefore not legally actionable, would you say the same if those techniques were used by terrorist groups against American citizens?

Would you consider being strapped to a board, having a cloth put over your face, then having water poured on the cloth until you had the sensation of drowning to be torture if you had to undergo that yourself? If waterboarding isn’t torture, do we need to apologize and pay reparations to the families of the Japanese officers we prosecuted for war crimes for using similar techniques?

If you’re upset about government gathering of private data, were you as upset about it when the government’s ability to do so was greatly expanded by the Patriot Act? If not, why not? Do you support rolling back the Patriot Act? Do you think we should re-examine the principles set out in Smith vs. Maryland, the 1979 U.S. Supreme Court decision that ruled that getting “metadata” about American citizens’ phone calls (i.e., information about who called who when and for how long) was not a “search,” since that information was not “private” at all? If not, why not, if you claim to be angry about government spying on us?

Normally, when I pose these sorts of questions to my fellow Americans, I get attempts to change the subject or angry denunciations of President Obama and/or “libs,” “leftists,” “statists” or “Obama-bots,” none of which have any connection to the question asked.

Can you do any better?

(Author's note: if you follow the link to the paper's website and check out the comments, you'll see that the answer to that last question is "no").

In Which I Try To Bring Left And Right Together

Outrage Should Cut Both Ways | The Pilot: Southern Pines, NC

I agree that the seizure of the phone records of The Associated Press by the Department of Justice is outrageous.

I also agree that it's outrageous for the IRS to have singled out tea party groups for extra scrutiny regarding their petitions to get tax-exempt status as "social welfare," rather than "political" organizations.

But these scandals give all of us, on the left and the right and the big squishy middle, an unprecedented opportunity to work together. Let's start with the DOJ seizure of AP's phone information.

They're being typically close-mouthed about it at the time of this writing, but it appears that the information was gathered pursuant to investigatory powers that were greatly expanded as a major part of the 2001 Patriot Act, including the infamous "National Security Letters," which allow the government to legally demand information without judicial oversight or the knowledge of the person being investigated.

And, while the DOJ won't say what investigation the phone records were pertinent to, we do know they've been investigating who leaked information to AP about a CIA operation against a terrorist cell in Yemen, a leak which the DOJ claims threatened national security.

I hate to say "I told you so," but I can't help but mention how ironic it is that I was once called a traitor for writing columns against the act, by the same sort of people who claim to be outraged now.

I said at the time, "Do you want to turn that kind of power over to Hillary Clinton?" (Because back then, it looked like Clinton was a lock for the Dem nomination.) The right wing response? "YOU WANT US TO GET ATTACKED AGAIN!!! 9/11 WAS CAUSED BY YOU LIBERALS!!!!! AAAAAAAHHH!!!!"

But let's not dwell on the past. It's time to pull together.

As for the IRS: It was absolutely wrong for the IRS to give extra scrutiny to tea party groups to see if they were involved in partisan political activity inconsistent with their nonprofit status. I mean, of course they were. All you had to do was look at their signs and listen to their rhetoric. But it was unfair to single them out.

But does anyone remember the outrage over Bush-era IRS auditing of the NAACP? Remember the outrage over Bush-era IRS audits of Greenpeace? Remember the outrage when All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena was threatened with losing its tax exempt status for speaking out against the Iraq War before the 2004 election (while other churches in Ohio were openly campaigning for Republican candidates)?
Yeah, me neither. Because none of that outrage ever happened, even though the actual outrages did. 

But again, let's not dwell on the past.

So here's the plan. Even though there's no evidence that the extra scrutiny of the tea party groups was ordered by the White House, I am, for the sake of amity and bipartisanship, willing to join in the Republican call that the president apologize for it in addition to merely condemning it.

You folks on the right need to see if you can get ahold of Dubbya and get him to put down his paint brush long enough to retroactively do the same in regard to progressive groups that got the same treatment.

Going forward, I'm calling on the IRS to carefully scrutinize all organizations claiming tax exempt status under section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code, to see if they're actually partisan political rather than social welfare organizations. I expect my friends on the right to demand the same.

It should be noted, however, that conservative 501(c)(4) nonprofits like Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS spent more than $263 million during the 2012 campaign, while liberal counterparts like MoveOn.org spent "only" $35 million, according to a study performed by the Center for Responsive Politics and reported in the Washington Post. So it may look to the right as if they're being singled out again. But it's just the numbers. You do more than seven times the spending, you'll get more than seven times the investigations. I'm sure you won't mind.

As for the scandal over the phone records, I'm calling on the president and the Democrats in Congress to repeal the Patriot Act, or any provision of any law that allows the FBI to demand phone and other records they claim are "relevant to an investigation of terrorism or clandestine intelligence activity," without any judicial oversight.
I'm sure all of my friends on the right agree (now) that that kind of power shouldn't be given to anyone, even in investigations of national security leaks. If it is given, it's going to be used, because if it isn't, and something terrible happens, we know who'll get blamed, tarred and feathered. So best not to let the government have the option.

At long last, let us work together. I'm looking forward to it.