The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Alex von Thorn:

1. What are the odds that it’s always been within the law that the President has the right to flat-out ignore the law, but we’ve just never noticed it before? Wouldn’t Richard Nixon have noticed it, at the very least? All things considered?

Unfortunately, the scary truth of any democracy is that the leadership can do anything if the people don't object. Laws may only be relevant when and if an issue comes to court.

Which makes democracy itself the ultimate check and balance. If a chief executive screws up, you can toss the bastard out.

2. When your local returns been tabulated on Election Day, what action can you take if you think the voting machines in your area have been rigged to give false results? Any suggestions?

One of the fundamental processes of any democratic system that actually works is that partisan scrutineers from all parties can directly observe all parts of the process except for the secrecy of the ballot itself. Political parties station people at polling places and watch everyone coming in and out, every identification of voters, the setup of the polling place and the ballot count afterwards. Because these people are not allowed to display any political affiliation, it is often not clear to voters that these people are partisan, and that is as it should be. Most voters do not realize this happens. I don't know exactly how this works in the US, but I do know that the parties have plenty of volunteers.

In fact this is exactly how the system works. A broad-based political party should have enough people that if the vote itself is interfered with, the scrutineers get the message to the parties and the parties get the message to the voters directly through volunteers known personally by individual voters, not through the media.

This is one of those meta-constitutional natural law issues. Having the process be visible to the parties ensures transparency. This doesn't guarantee that electoral irregularities won't happen, it only ensures that people will hear about it when it does. This is why international inspectors are needed in new democracies that don't have these traditions. As per your first question, it doesn't really matter how the law itself is written; this is not a process created in law (though election laws often regulate it), it is a process which must exist in advance in order for the entire political and legal structure
to function democratically.

3. Given that (a.) anyone who has any expertise in intensive interrogation knows that tortured prisoners will tell you anything they think will get you to stop hurting them; and (b.) given that it’s a disastrously stupid move to plan your operations and allocate your resources on the basis of such worse-than-nothing “intel”; and (c.) given that we have a fair number of experts who know all those things who are working in our government and military who know all those things in detail, what do you suppose was the actual point of getting advance permission to torture prisoners?

Obviously, this is not about military intellience. This is about political posturing. It doesn't matter if the military operations are based on sound information; the point is simply to have military operations.

On the first anniversary of 9/11/01, the Bush administration came under attack from the political right for "not taking action against terrorism". The Iraq invasion was the response to that criticism, they needed to find an enemy who (a) they could easily beat and (b) who could be linked to the terrorist attack (through propaganda). As there are no real military objectives in Iraq, even false intelligence is useful because it provides reasons for photo-op military actions. As the objective is purely domestic and political, even actions which have the result of bringing new recruits to the Iraqi resistance help the US cause by creating an enemy to fight. By this kind of propaganda logic, every American soldier that dies demonstrates how dangerous the Iraqis are, and this provides a justification for ongoing military action. The real objective is simply to keep the Bush regime in power; a "war president" has no value if there's no war.

This is one of those issues which makes an election a kind of national IQ test. The facts are available, the question is whether the people are smart enough to understand what they can see instead of trusting what they are told.

Paula Helm Murray> he reminds me way too much of the frat boys...


Funny story. I know a guy who went to Yale at the same time as Dubya. So we asked our friend if he knew the junior Bush. He told us, no, [our friend] was very politically active in the Young Republicans, while Bush was always off partying with the frat boys.

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