Being the Change I Wish to See

Liz Cheney is at it again. Her new web ad about the Obama justice department and attorneys who have represented or advocated for Guantanamo detainees questions their values and loyalty to the U.S. Are they really al-Qaeda sympathizers? No, they are not. They are just doing their jobs.

Ms. Cheney is playing the “guilt-by-association” card. There is a really big problem once you go down that path, extremely twisted logic. The following clip from The Rachel Maddow Show demonstrates taking guilt-by-association to its full conclusion (7 min.). The question is where do you stop? How far down the rabbit hole do you go?

Queue the scary music:

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Be afraid!!! Are you scared?

Using Liz Cheney’s logic, aren’t all defense attorneys criminals if they defend guilty people in court? No. Our Constitution guarantees presumption of innocence until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, and the accused are entitled to a vigorous defense. What about the attorney who defended Timothy McVeigh? Is he a terrorist sympathizer, too? No.

Defending the guilty is an integral part of our justice system. It’s the American way. It’s one of our founding principals. We can’t abandon those principals because we are dealing with foreign detainees whose arrests were botched. Botched arrests happen regularly, not quite like these, but they are not new. We have the processes to deal with it.

Let’s allow the DOJ to go forward and prosecute the detainees against whom we have reasonable evidence. We know our court system is far more effective than military tribunals. Here’s the score: Federal court system: 300 convictions of terrorist suspects since 2001; military tribunal system: 2 convictions.

Even Republicans and Conservatives are saying Cheney’s ad goes too far. It steps way over the line of reason when Bill O’Reilly of Fox News won’t even agree with her. The following clip from Countdown explores the legal and moral outrage over this web ad (7 min.):

I have to hope Liz Cheney keeps up her conspiracy witch hunts in public for as long as she wants. When it makes Conservatives back away from her, it’s possible for the moderates to move left just a bit and get back to the middle where moderates like to be.

When fear-mongers start to sound like loons to those who are already ideologically extreme, they are finally being seen in the correct light.

Do you buy Liz Cheney and Keep America Safe’s bullpucky on this? If not, what other fear-mongering crap do you now question about what they have said?

If it’s a Cheney talking, I must admit I won’t believe a word of it because whatever “it” is that any of them are saying comes out of irrational fear of another terrorist attack on the U.S. Future terrorist attacks are possible, but so was nuclear war during the entire cold war. You can’t live your life in constant fear of what might happen. If we cower in fear, the terrorists win.

I wonder if the Cheney home is equipped with a fully stocked bomb shelter and survival gear…

BTW, Rachel posted bail with Kent Jones in the amount of slices of pizza, and borrowed the handcuffs from Jimmy Fallon. She was back on her show the next night.

Technorati Tags: al-Qaeda, Countdown, David Corn, Guantanamo Bay prison, guilt by association, Lawrence O'Donnell, Liz Cheney, MSNBC, Obama Administration, Rachel Maddow, The Rachel Maddow Show, U.S. department of justice

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This article is part 14 in a multi-part series about the Ugandan anti-homosexuality bill of 2009, better known as the Ugandan kill-the-gays bill. The Rachel Maddow Show named this series Uganda Be Kidding Me, and they won a GLAAD award this year for it. The first 13 articles can be accessed at the following links:

• Part 1: Born in the USA
• Part 2: Horrific Details
• Part 3: American Silence is Deafening
• Part 4: HIV-AIDS Statistics in Uganda
• Part 5: State Dept Must Make US Policy Clear
• Part 6: Richard Cohen and debunking gay cure
• Part 7: Evangelicals were for it before they were against it
• Part 8: Rick Warren forced to oppose Ugandan bill
• Part 9: Condemn the bill to Uganda’s President
• Part 10: The Family finally condemns bill
• Part 11: Not to become law
• Part 12: Family leader Bob Hunter interview
• Part 13: Now it’s the imprison-the-gays-for-life bill

Thu Feb 4, 2010
President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke at the Family’s U.S. National Prayer Breakfast. The President spoke about Uganda and gay marriage amongst other topics. Sec. Clinton openly denounced the Ugandan Anti-Homosexuality Bill of 2009.

Bishop Eugene Robinson held an alternative American Prayer Hour. A gay Ugandan addresses the ecumenical American Prayer Hour with a bag over his head because of fear he might be extradited back to Uganda for trial.

Posted by Laura Conaway on Feb. 4, 2010
MaddowBlog.msnbc.com

MaddowBlog writer Laura Conaway has some interesting analysis of some of the President’s remarks:

Whew. Let’s roll forward just a bit, with this from President Obama’s as-prepared remarks:

We may disagree about gay marriage, but surely we can agree that it is unconscionable to target gays and lesbians for who they are — whether it’s here in the United States or, as Hillary mentioned, more extremely in odious laws that are being proposed most recently in Uganda.

Wait, did you catch that? The president of the United States just said “gay marriage” — like it was a thing. And he suggested, maybe, that this thing called “gay marriage” might be something “we disagree on.” Obama has been on the record as opposing gay marriage since he got famous, though he seems to have supported it back when no one much knew who he was.

And what’s he saying now, to an audience that leans toward being socially conservative and fundamentalist Christian? That crowd has opposed marriage equality, as has Obama. So what disagreement is Obama talking about?

Reverse Obama’s formulation, and you get: We can all agree the Uganda kill-the-gays bill is wrong, even if we disagree about gay marriage.

That disagreement could be on Obama’s move to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act — which would grant full equality at the federal level to married gay couples in states like Massachusetts, and is thus inherently pro-equality. Or the disagreement could be about whether same-sex couples should be allowed to have civil unions. In which case, President Obama just substituted the words “gay marriage” for the civil unions he has been willing to favor since running for president.

It may be that Obama really does oppose gay civil marriage and support civil unions, in each case because of his Christian beliefs. Certainly, he has argued from that position in recent years. But heard another way, his remarks at the Prayer Breakfast suggest that he finds himself on one side of the question of marriage equality, and the social conservatives he’s addressing on the other. If you’re for marriage equality, that’s worth something. — by Laura Conaway

I can’t say it any better than that. Maybe the president does consider gay marriage a thing, that it is something worth debating, and maybe he’s less against it than he’s professed since the campaign. I hope he is just waiting to repeal DOMA until his second term and help grant equal marriage rights to same-sex couples then. Hey, I can dream, right?

Part 15 can be found at this link.

Technorati Tags: 2010, American Prayer Hour, Bishop Eugene Robinson, Rachel Maddow, The Family, The Rachel Maddow Show, U.S. National Prayer Breakfast

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