TPM has a couple of posts this morning on the fact that the Office of the Vice President won't even confirm who works for him or how many people are on his staff. The fact that someone works for the freaking Vice President gets treated as a state secret. That is so bizarre.
A piece on Blackwater by Scahill was the Sunday front page headline in the local paper.
1: It works better if you replace the words "Vice President" with "Prime Minister", as in most countries with an elected head of state.
It seems like at this point the White House is keeping secrets just for the sake of being able to say "nyah, nyah, I'm not telling you!"
Wow, check out Gonzales's reason for saying there is no right to habeas corpus in the constitution: "the Constitution doesn't say every individual in the United States or every citizen is hereby granted or assured the right to habeas corpus. Doesn't say that. It simply says the right of habeas corpus shall not be suspended except...."
It all makes sense now! The constitution doesn't give us the right to habeas corpus. It merely says that if we had that right, the government couldn't take it away. Since we don't have that right to begin with, there is no problem!
Can the AG be impeached?
Can we impeach Bush & Cheney now?
I am seriously considering calling my congressmen and asking why the Prez and VP get a private army.
The constitution doesn't give us the right to habeas corpus.
You see your name and Social Security number on the H.C. list attached to the Constitution? No? Then you don't have that right.
Y'now, I've seen (relatively) good and bad admins over the years but this is the first time I've seriously thought the top-most layer is mentally ill. Really delusional, not just stubborn or looking for some political advantage.
I'm hesitating calling for the moment because of this:
it must give uncommon assurance to have at his absolute command, as well, a private army whose reach is enormous and whose operations are secret.
I don't much doubt that they're secret, and that these guys are better paid and perhaps equipped than regular army and marine soldiers in Iraq, but I'm not sure of the Prez/Veep's control over them. Anyone have further info on this? I assume their loyalty is to who gets them the money, which is going to be Def/Homeland Security. How is that controlled? Nominally I suppse it's a Congressional committee, but I wouldn't count on that with this administration.
About 67 years ago, a bunch of us Europeans went to war after realising far too late that the appeasement of an aggressive regime prepared to suspend basic rights accruing to all people(s) on the whim of the top cat had achieved them nothing but the fuzzy end of the lollipop.
Now ,as then, it was the British who were the worst appeasers. So the question for me is; if Iraq is analogous to Czechoslovakia for GBW and the gang, what happens when he strikes for his analagous Poland?
10: That would be Mexico. Or maybe Canada. I don't see it; and frankly, comparisons with Europe in the 1930s are very, very tired and I'm surprised to see one on this blog. The European fascists believed their own rhetoric: by contrast, the US administrators are thoroughly cynical.
However, if there is something nastier in the pipeline than a confrontation with Iran, it's a confrontation with China. There's a whiff of 'great game' mentality on both sides. Jamie K is often good on this.
BTW, with respect to that other, kinda stinky thread about trolls, I will admit to having used a pseudonym on this blog. I've done that so as to comment on things that connect - even if only slightly - with my job.
You better hope that pseud was "George Washington". Anything else and you're about to be outed by Apo.
I'm glad to see that David Bromwich is finally posting at the TNR website. I had the privilege of being in a class he taught. He's an amazing man in a great many different ways.
Oh man, do they. His book on Hazlitt changed my life.
Has the Big Book on Burke finally come out yet?
Not that I know. Last I asked, he said that he was still working on it. (This was October 2005.) What have you heard? Is it taking so long because it's Big, or because Bromwich is a Brilliant Perfectionist? (I don't feel comfortable asking such familiar questions of him.)
Not yet, it looks like. Last I heard, it was scheduled to come out last spring. I think it's taken so long because Burke has been the indirect subject of almost all of Bromwich's books--and because Burke is so freaking difficult to discuss in any systematic way.
It's interesting. I see Burke's appeal, and certainly he was on the right side of every significant issue he spoke about at length. (We can debate about whether Burke was right about the French Revolution as it was in 1790, but I don't think there's a good argument that he was wrong about the Revolution's ultimate consequences.) But I don't see why he is the supremely important figure that Bromwich apparently believes he is. As a politician and political writer, yes, he is significant. As a thinker? I just don't see it. But perhaps my mind has been narrowed by my chosen profession. Burke never had great affection for lawyers.
I'm trying to find a way to express to you how much I disagree with your opinion that Burke isn't important without writing a disquisition on the subject.
The impact of Burke's "Enquiry...Sublime and Beautiful" on the fields of literature and aesthetics, for one thing: he was the first to pair them together, and Kant acknowledged Burke's work as provoking some of his. The 1950s rehabilitation of Burke as a conservative touchstone for the Cold Warriors, for another thing: Burke's defence, in the face of rational change, on even irrational habit and custom has been of continual comfort to reactionaries--and has challenged would-be revolutionaries to think more progressively. The fascinating pamphlet-wars on human rights his "Reflections" provoked: these arguments were the context for our constitution, after all. Hell, just the tension between his various styles has made for great historical analysis.
it's a confrontation with China.
According to an old buddy who used to work for an Air Force think-tank, the military has been planning that one for at least thirty years now. They need energy, we need energy, the Russians, et al. have the energy, the Chinese have numbers and we have tech, and we all have nukes. Nice.
Jackmormon: I don't disagree with your view that Burke was profoundly significant in the sense of "influential." My post was trying to express two things.
(1) When reading him I'm not struck by his brilliance in the way that his contemporaries so clearly were, whereas (to give an 18th cent. example) I'm constantly impressed by Johnson's sagacity in a way that seems similar to the reaction of Johnson's contemporaries. This is a point about subjective experience only, so take it for what it's worth.
(2) More importantly, though, influence is not the same as power to persuade. I mean, is there much in the Reflections that persuades you? And let me add, I don't think it's simply that I want Burke to be an analytical philosopher. There is very little in the Reflections, for example, that strikes me as an argument, either by the standards of Burke's time or ours. This is in contrast to his speech on Conciliation with America or his speech at the Bristol Guildhall; but the amount of reasoning in those two speeches is precisely disproportional to the applicable scope of the arguments.
I don't like the tone of what I've written, because it makes it sound as if I don't value Burke at all. Not so! I just don't understand the level of respect that one can discern in Bromwich's tone when he discusses Burke -- the same kind of tone in which one would expect to hear someone speak about Shakespeare.
I'm going to have to delay a proper response until tomorrow, but I notice that you don't address the importance of Burke's "Enquiry."
I wish I had an argument, but Jackmormon's right, as far as I know, regarding the influence of the his work in aesthetics leading up to Kant. If I try to remember more, it all goes fuzzy and handwavier than usual, but what wasn't important was the strength of his arguments, but the idea that he put the sublime and the beautiful together. You get points for being original, sometimes even if your argument doesn't work. (cf. nearly everyone in the early Modern period.)
I'm yawning my way to bed, but, seriously, BBG, when dozens of English novels are written and tens of English gardens are laid out according to Burke's proscriptions, AND Immanuel Kant gives props---the influence of the "Enquiry" is not to be ignored.
Anyway, Burke is standard reading for concentrations in the 18th and 19th century--literature, poli-sci, philosophy, history, and perhaps anthropology.
I have no clue about Cheney's "private army" but how exactly can Cheney have a "top secret" staff in D.C. when I can name half a dozen of them off the top of my head?
Even better, TPM Muckraker finally found the (public, not classified) White House Phone Directory, including the Office of the Vice President staff.
27: Perhaps there are other people on his staff who you do not know.
28: Perhaps there are other people on his staff who are not in that directory.
Dude, that's so Charlie/Thomas/Jake/Al from another IP.
Yes, a home IP from the same city. It has been added to the banned list as well.
it must give uncommon assurance to have at his absolute command, as well, a private army whose reach is enormous and whose operations are secret.
I don't much doubt that they're secret, and that these guys are better paid and perhaps equipped than regular army and marine soldiers in Iraq, but I'm not sure of the Prez/Veep's control over them. Anyone have further info on this? I assume their loyalty is to who gets them the money, which is going to be Def/Homeland Security. How is that controlled? Nominally I suppse it's a Congressional committee, but I wouldn't count on that with this administration.
I don't know where Blackwater (and others) get their soopersekr1t reputation, but their chief military role appears to be 1) protective security details, 2) barrier technicians, and 3) guarding supply trucks.
I'll grant they're expensive.