“Us” Versus “Peace”

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Petra Marquardt-Bigman makes a good point:

Anyone in Israel who is unhappy with Barack Obama’s speech in Cairo will have a hard time to come up with a good reason. Indeed, the quick and completely undignified reaction of the settler movement only served to underline the fact that beyond racist ranting about “Hussein Obama”, there wasn’t really much to object to. Inadvertently, the settler movement’s reaction also illustrated what Obama had accomplished with the speech: he had set up a litmus test that greatly improved on his predecessor’s formula “you are either with us or against us in the fight against terror.” In the Obama era, the choice is a different one – you are either for or against peaceful co-existence – and the consequences of the choice are clear: “America will align our policies with those who pursue peace”.

With the Bush Administration, everything always was about them. I dimly remember a news story (if you can find this and link to it, I’d be grateful) in which Condi Rice was in the Mideast, meeting with representatives of several Mideastern countries. She dictated to them what the United States expected from them, adding something to the effect of “this is what we want for you.” Someone spoke up and countered, “What about what we want for ourselves?”

At Salon, Gary Kamiya provides a good analysis of the Cairo speech. And not everyone on the Right absolutely hated it. Captain Ed had some good things to say. Max Boot also found some points to admire in the speech, which must have killed him.

On the other hand, this is just sickening. Be sure to read the commentary that goes with the video. The far Right of Israel has launched an anti-Obama campaign. At the Weekly Standard, Caroline B. Glick explains why allowing Israeli settlers to build whatever they want on the West Bank is essential to peace with the Palestinians. Next: The Fiji Mermaid!

The Cairo Speech and Other Stuff

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I’m too swamped today to write an original analysis of the Cairo speech. (You can watch the video at Salon.) Reactions:

M.J. Rosenberg: Speech “fair and balanced.”

Alex Koppelman: Speech titled “A New Beginning.” As opposed to an old beginning, I suppose.

Peter Daou: Not impressed.

Steve Benen: A dramatic success.

Who hated it?

Other stuff: Today also is the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. The link is to a very good account of what went down that day written by the Guide to Asian History at About.com, Kallie Szczepanski.

Disagreeing With Turley?

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Interesting article by Daphne Eviatar in the Washington Independent, in which Eviatar reviews the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act and other law involving threats to abortion clinics and staff. Courts have ruled that “Nuremberg Files”-type expression, such as wanted posters and lists of abortion providers with the names of murdered doctors crossed out, constitute threats and are not protected speech. This is true even though the sick puppies who create the posters and the lists generally avoid making explicit, specific threats.

Under the FACE Act, doctors and clinic workers don’t have to wait for government to act against extremists making threats; they can sue those threatening them. However,

Some civil libertarians, however, have concerns. George Washington University Law Professor Jonathan Turley on the Rachel Maddow Show on Monday cautioned against prosecution or lawsuits against even those who promote violence. “We have this difficult line to walk between free speech and preventative law enforcement,” he said. “The Supreme Court has said that violent speech is protected . . . and it is in fact protected to say all abortion doctors should be killed.”

I found the transcript of the Monday Rachel Maddow program, and Turley doesn’t dismiss the FACE act entirely. He says that when speech amounts to “an imminent threat of violence” legal action can be taken.

To me — and I’m not a lawyer — FACE is akin to anti-stalking laws. Twenty years ago, a woman might be hounded by a stalker who obviously intended to harm her, but as a rule police could do nothing until an assault occurred. “Even when the suspect had followed his victim, sent her hate mail, or behaved in a threatening manner, the police were without legal recourse,” says this U.S. Justice Department document on stalking laws.

One such stalked woman was Rebecca Shaeffer, a young actress who was stalked for two years before her “fan” shot and killed her in 1989. After that, states began to provide stalked women some legal protection, although those laws also have been challenged on First Amendment grounds.

Florida anti-stalking law, for example, calls out “any person who willfully, maliciously, and repeatedly follows or harasses another … engaging in conduct directed at a specific person that causes substantial emotional distress.” This is harassment, the law says, and the target of the harassment can take legal action to stop it.

Anti-stalking laws aren’t perfect and don’t always stop the stalking. A lawyer quoted in Eviatar’s article speaks of the “delicate balance” between protected speech and incitement to violence. Reasonable people can disagree about whether a particular expression falls on one side of the line or another.

To me, if the inflammatory speech is directed at a particular person, it’s crossed that line. It’s one thing to say that “all abortion providers should be killed.” It’s another to make a “wanted” poster of a particular physician and provide directions to his home. Even if the latter expression doesn’t explicitly direct people to shoot and kill the doctor, the implication is clear.

(If you think about it, what is the point of protesting outside abortion clinics except to harass and intimidate patients and staff? The clinics don’t make law and policy. If you want to change the law, don’t protest the clinics; protest Congress. And I feel the same way about anti-war protests at recruitment offices and other military facilities, btw; it’s misdirected and potentially dangerous. If you don’t like war policy, protest Congress and the White House, not the troops.)

This leaves us with the problem of people in national media who whip up enmity against specific abortion providers, as Bill O’Reilly did against Dr. Tiller. O’Reilly pretty explicitly told his viewers and radio audience that Dr. Tiller was wantonly murdering healthy, viable fetuses for frivolous reasons, which all evidence says is a lie. O’Reilly’s audiences didn’t hear the stories behind the decision to terminate a third-trimester pregnancy, nearly always heartbreaking, nearly always made by women who genuinely wanted the baby.

Surely reckless speech such as O’Reilly’s contributes to sense among extremists that they are entitled to murder abortion doctors. I still cannot think of a remedy other than civil suits filed by people who have been injured by anti-abortion extremists, or their survivors. I’m not sure if there are legal grounds for such a suit, but if there were, a couple of successful prosecutions would make the O’Reilly’s of the world tone down their rhetoric, I suspect.

So-So and the Oxy-boy

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This story has been public for several days, but somehow it got by me until Michael Tomasky pointed it out —

Some years ago a New York City cop named Thomas Pappas was circulating racist literature from his home. The NYPD found out about it and fired him. The case worked its way up to the federal appeals court, which upheld the NYPD’s right to fire Pappas.

But guess who dissented? Yep. Judge Sotomayor held that the firing violated Pappas’ free speech rights.

Tomasky cited SCOTUSblog.

Tomasky also referred to Rush Limbaugh as “Fatface Oxy-boy.” Sounds like a winner.

The “So-So” is from the genuinely depraved Debbie Shlussel, via DougJ at Balloon Juice and Wonkette. Don’t worry; I’m not linking directly to Schlussel. Wonkette quotes Shlussel —

“I can’t help but notice that the sole reason So-So (my very appropriate name for Sonia Sotomayor) was chosen as Barack Obama’s nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court is that she shares the life story of J-Lo, Jennifer Lopez.”

J-Lo graduated summa cum laude from Princeton and then from Yale Law? Who knew? Seriously, I think the nickname “So-So” is kinda cute. I’d hate to think what nickname we’d have to give Shlussel, however. I don’t think it would be G-rated. Perhaps it would be better not to go there.

There are several reports today that conservatives are demanding a Senate filibuster of the Sotomayor nomination. One of these is Mark Levin, a radio talk-show host who once said that a filibuster against a judicial nomination was unconstitutional. Of course, in that case the nominee was Sam Alito.

The leader of the “get tough” movement is Manuel Miranda, and if that name sounds familiar, Greg Sargent explains why.

There’s a decent editorial in the Washington Post today about how absurd the Right’s arguments against Sotomayor actually are. Sotomayor’s resume is remarkably similar to that of Sam Alito — Princeton, Yale Law, years on the bench, etc. But weirdly, some on the Right are calling Sotomayor “the Left’s Harriet Miers.” About the only things Miers and Sotomayor have in common is that they’re both women with law degrees.

Suspect Is A Wingnut

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By last night a number of rightie bloggers were bristling with outrage that anyone would assume Dr. Tiller’s murderer was an anti-abortion activist.

This morning I see that the person who has been accused of the murder — let’s not forget the presumption of innocence — was an anti-abortion activist.

Peter Slevin and Robert Barnes write for the Washington Post that the accused man, Scott Roeder, “is known in anti-abortion circles as a man who believes that killing an abortion doctor is justifiable.”

As news of Roeder’s arrest traveled, Kansas City activist Regina Dinwiddie remembered the day a dozen years ago when Roeder hugged her in glee after trying to frighten an abortion provider by staring him down inside a Planned Parenthood clinic.

“He grabbed me and said, ‘I’ve read the Defensive Action Statement and I love what you’re doing,’ ” Dinwiddie said in a telephone interview. She was a signer of the 1990s statement, which declares that the use of force is justified.

“I said, ‘You need to get out of here. You can get in a lot of trouble,’ ” Dinwiddie recalled.

Dinwiddie said she does not consider death of Tiller, the nation’s most prominent provider of controversial late-term abortions, to be a homicide.

Another anti-reproductive rights activist, described Roeder as “anti-government” and recalls Roeder had visited Rachelle “Shelley” Shannon, convicted of shooting Dr. Tiller several years ago, in prison.

Also, in May 2007 Tiller’s place of worship was identified on the Operation Rescue website, with the suggestion that people go there and “ask questions” (i.e., harass) the pastor and church members. Dr. Tiller was killed while handing out bulletins in the church’s lobby.

Today rightie bloggers are bristling with outrage at the suggestion that hate speech they and others have flung at Dr. Tiller over the years had anything whatsoever to do with his murder. Little Lulu:

Every mainstream pro-life organization has unequivocally condemned the killing.

I repeat: Every mainstream pro-life organization has unequivocally condemned the killing.

To me, this is akin to giving a known pyromaniac a can of gasoline and a book of matches and then denying you meant for him to start a fire. Condemning the act after it has occurred does not whitewash one’s complicity in it.

Malkin also is amused that so many of us are calling the murder of Dr. Tiller an act of terrorism. “Interesting how the t-word has been rediscovered,” she says. Malkin, you might recall, was at the forefront of the right-wing hysteria campaign against the recent Department of Homeland Security report to federal, state and local law enforcement regarding the threat of terrorism from right-wing extremists groups.

Malkin bristled with outrage at the suggestion that people such as, for example, anti-abortion activists might be capable of violence, and called the report a “hit job” on conservatives. Seems that it’s Lulu who needed to rediscover the “t-word.”

Today many people are focusing on Bill O’Reilly’s long and highly visible crusade against Dr. Tiller. It’s one thing to declare that one is opposed to third trimester abortions; it’s another thing to lie about them. O’Reilly said this on his radio program last year:

Now, a guy in Kansas, George Tiller, OK, can kill a baby — kill a baby — a half-hour before the baby’s supposed to be birthed for no reason whatsoever other than the mother has a pain in her foot. OK? Mother’s health: pain in the foot, migraine headache, whatever it may be.

That’s an outright lie. Kansas law allows no such thing. O’Reilly can tell one lie after another on radio and television, and call it “journalism,” and there appears to be no way to stop him from doing so as long as his employer, Rupert Murdoch, approves of it.

However, I sincerely hope Dr. Tiller’s heirs take O’Reilly and Murdoch to court and sue their socks off.

This nation has a deep commitment to free speech without government censorship. One of the few values Left and Right hold in common is the right of someone to say any damnfool thing he likes without penalty of law. About the only exception is where personal injury is involved. Many other western democracies place some limits on what people can say when it might incite violence, or sometimes just because — literature denying the Holocaust is banned in some places. I don’t want to go that way.

However, maybe it’s time we revisited libel laws. As a rule journalists — including faux journalists like O’Reilly — have little to fear from libel lawsuits, because the plaintiff has to prove “actual malice.” Publishing or broadcasting an untruth, even when it causes harm, is not necessarily libelous if the defendant can claim it was an innocent mistake. Of course, O’Reilly’s been in “reckless disregard for the truth” territory for some time. Perhaps we need to clarify exactly how far a public mouthpiece can go before he wanders into the litigation zone.

Update: See also “O’Reilly’s campaign against murdered doctor” at Salon.

But there’s no other person who bears as much responsibility for the characterization of Tiller as a savage on the loose, killing babies willy-nilly thanks to the collusion of would-be sophisticated cultural elites, a bought-and-paid-for governor and scofflaw secular journalists. Tiller’s name first appeared on “The Factor” on Feb. 25, 2005. Since then, O’Reilly and his guest hosts have brought up the doctor on 28 more episodes, including as recently as April 27 of this year. Almost invariably, Tiller is described as “Tiller the Baby Killer.”

Tiller, O’Reilly likes to say, “destroys fetuses for just about any reason right up until the birth date for $5,000.” He’s guilty of “Nazi stuff,” said O’Reilly on June 8, 2005; a moral equivalent to NAMBLA and al-Qaida, he suggested on March 15, 2006. “This is the kind of stuff happened in Mao’s China, Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Soviet Union,” said O’Reilly on Nov. 9, 2006.

This Is Terrorism

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I’ve been out all day and just heard the news that Dr. George Tiller was murdered outside his church. Matt Yglesias says,

Every time you murder a doctor, you create a disincentive for other medical professionals to provide these services. What’s more, you create a need for additional security at facilities around the country. In addition, the anti-abortion protestors who frequently gather near clinics are made to seem much more intimidating by the fact that the occurrence of these sorts of acts of violence.

In general, I think people tend to overestimate the efficacy of violence as a political tactic. But in this particular case, I think people tend to understate it.

It’s not just violence; the harassment of patients, family members and children takes its toll and really do frighten doctors from working at abortion clinics.

Update: Courtesy of Google cache, a website that has disappeared for some reason.

Joan Walsh:

A suspect is in custody, but even though we don’t yet know his identity, it seems safe to assume that Wichita Dr. George Tiller is the latest victim of right-wing American terrorism against abortion providers and supporters. To underscore the hypocrisy of Christian right terrorists who wrap themselves in Jesus, Tiller was murdered in the lobby of his church Sunday morning, just after 10 a.m.

I don’t have time to hunt them down and post quotes, but some rightie bloggers today lack the sense and grace to pretend to be sorry.

Obama Derangement Syndrome

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The President and Mrs. Obama went to New York City for a “date night,” dinner and a Broadway show. And the wingnuts are having a fit about it.

The Republican National Committee slammed the outing in an “RNC Research Piece”: “As President Obama prepares to wing into Manhattan’s theater district on Air Force One to take in a Broadway show, GM is preparing to file bankruptcy and families across America continue to struggle to pay their bills. … Have a great Saturday evening – even if you’re not jetting off somewhere at taxpayer expense. … PUTTING ON A SHOW: Obamas Wing Into The City For An Evening Out While Another Iconic American Company Prepares For Bankruptcy.”

Tbogg has a survey of Right Blogosphere reaction. My favorite is this one:

Obama also promised a middle class tax cut and healthcare reform, but obviously those can wait.

It wasn’t even an overnight trip, mind you. They flew back to Washington (which is a half hour trip, by air) after the show. They didn’t take Air Force One but instead flew in a smaller jet.

Let’s review:

George W. Bush took more vacations than any other President in U.S. history.

That’s 487 days at Camp David and 77 trips to Crawford, Texas, where he spent all or part of 490 days. I calculate that to be about two years and eight months.

I don’t know what the travel time is from the White House to Camp David — I assume just a few minutes — but I figure Crawford must be at least three hours one way by air, and I assume there’s no Crawford International Airport, so there’s motorcade time to figure in, also. Assuming a 6 hour two-way trip, times 77 trips, equals 462 hours, or more than 19 days days spent just flying back and forth to Crawford.

Bush was in Crawford when he blew off the memo “Bin Laden determined to attack inside the U.S.” as being too trivial for his attention. As I remember it, he was in Crawford during the great electricity blackout of 2003, and it was several hours before he addressed it. He was in Crawford while two wars were going on in the Mideast.

And need I say … Hurricane Katrina?

For a collection of outraged snark at the Endless Vacation that was the Bush Administration, see Source Watch. I think the only reason there wasn’t more outrage is that Bush was such a bad POTUS, most of the time it didn’t matter whether he was on vacation or not.

Even when he wasn’t officially on vacation, Bush wasn’t famous for staying put in the White House. Especially in his first term, when the War on Terror was still new and sparkly, as I remember he spent about half of his not-vacation time traveling to Republican Party fundraisers. The pattern was to schedule some “official” event like a ribbon-cutting or a speech in a particular city, where by some coincidence there happened to be a GOP fund-raider going on that very evening, so he could take Air Force One on Republican Party business without reimbursing taxpayers. (See, for example, “Taxpayer Mugging for Political Fundraising.”)

But that was not a problem, because, you know, IOKIYAR — It’s OK If You’re A Republican.

Update: A blogger who claims not to be a “sheeple” — I beg to differ — writes (emphasis original),

With the problems we’re facing with the recession and North Korea testing nuclear missiles you would think he would keep it a little on the down low and I don’t want to hear a peep from the loony left that Ron and Nancy Reagan were extravagant. Not a peep!

This blogger was pissed because yesterday the White House couldn’t yet provide expense account of the trip to New York. I don’t believe the Bush Administration ever presented an accounting of all the political trips George and Dick took at taxpayers’ expense. I could be wrong about that, but I googled for it and couldn’t find it. In the first Bush term they were not providing that information, and the Veep’s travel itinerary was something of a state secret at times. We don’t even know how much Dick traveled, never mind the cost.

Update: You’ll like this one — the Broadway show the first couple saw was “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone.” It’s a play about African-American life. So this blogger writes,

By the way, note that the Obamas went to a ‘black’ show.

When does he ever pay homage to his white side?

I swear, it’s something like a moth-and-flame thing; they can’t help themselves.

Update: Steve Benen —

Rumor has it, Obama occasionally eats and sleeps, too. The nerve. Doesn’t the president realize he has things to do?

Answers and Questions

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Tom Goldstein of SCOTUSblog has analyzed Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s court cases that involve race, and his analysis shows no racial bias whatsoever. Go to SCOTUSblog for the numbers.

What interests me more is what Hilzoy wrote:

I honestly don’t know why so many people focus so much attention on their somewhat overwrought interpretations of one line in a speech and so little attention on ascertaining what kind of judge Sonia Sotomayor has been. Her decisions are not classified documents. They are public, and anyone can read them. Moreover, they plainly provide the best evidence of the kind of judge she will be.

Oh, c’mon, Hilzoy, you know good and well why so many people focus on a few words of a speech and not her record. They’ve latched on to whatever they can use to demonize her. They don’t give a bleep about her record, or what kind of judge she might be. They want to hate her. It’s what the live for.

Next question:

I cannot imagine why more journalists have not done the kind of analysis that Tom Goldstein has.

Yep, that’s a good question.

Just Like Old Times

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G. Gordon Liddy used the “M” word. It’s like the past 40 years of feminist activism never happened. Of course, for Pat “that woman” Buchanan, they really didn’t happen.

You’d think there’d never been a woman on the Supreme Court before. The reactions to the nominations of Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg were genteel compared to what’s being thrown at Sonia Sotomayor. As I remember it, Ginsburg’s judicial record at the time of her nomination was, arguably, more “liberal” than Sotomayor’s is now. Certainly when Ginsburg was nominated plenty of conservatives spoke against her confirmation. But (as I remember it) most of those objections were about Ginsburg’s support of Roe v. Wade, not her potentially fluctuating female hormones.

And the way the wingnuts continue to call Sotomayor an “affirmative action” pick is downright hallucinatory. Get this bit of dialog between Bill Bennett and Fred Barnes:

BARNES: I think you can make the case that she’s one of those who has benefited from affirmative action over the years tremendously.

BENNETT: Yeah, well, maybe so. Did she get into Princeton on affirmative action, one wonders.

BARNES: One wonders.

Sotomayor was valedictorian of her high school class and went to Princeton on scholarship.

I doubt any of these same people called Clarence Thomas an “affirmative action pick,” although I found a biography of Thomas that says “Yale University Law School accepted Thomas through its affirmative action program.” To be fair, Thomas’s academic record was respectable enough that he would have been considered for admission regardless of race, I suspect. His academic record is less impressive than Sotomayor’s, however.

O’Connor’s nomination was a long time ago, and my memory of it is hazy. Being nominated by Ronald Reagan rather than a Democrat probably shielded her from the worst of what might have been thrown at the first woman nominee to the SCOTUS.

However, reactions from the Right to Sotomayor are so much more over the top than than they were to the nomination of Ginsburg, who is at least as liberal as Sotomayor, and I do wonder why. Tossing out some ideas —

  • Ginsburg is Jewish. Antisemitism really is a big no-no on much of the Right. Gotta support the state of Israel, you know.
  • Sotomayor is Latina. I think these days the Right is twitchier about Hispanics than they are about any other racial minority.
  • No leadership. There’s no authority on the Right who can order the worst of the hotheads to tone it down.
  • They’re out of power. Nothing fights harder than a wounded, cornered animal.

Anything else you can think of?