Ah,so now that there are "pretty" anti-government demonstrators wearing headscarves, we are longer required to condemn these headcoverings as signs of female oppression. Hilarious.

Although I think Clark-Flory's analysis is more nuanced than we've read from the left (or right) since at least 9/11 (if not centuries), we can't really avoid oversimplification until we understand why our own culture is so vocally obsessed with what Muslim women wear on their heads.

It's interesting that it's fair game on the left to dissect and condemn the symbolism of the chador, but not OK to discuss Orthodox Jewish women wearing wigs, Mennonite women wearing the covering, or even African American women wearing hats in church (a custom, btw, most white women followed well into the sixties). And that doesn't get into why it's mostly Muslim women's headgear that draws attention, and not men's. Why is women's headgear "oppression" and men's headgear "menace." Why isn't the left interested in "liberating" Sikh men from their long hair and turbans? By god, shouldn't those sardarjis shave their heads and don a p.c. cadet cap?

Here's a better question: why have American women AND men's choices in headgear narrowed so much over the years? Why can't Americans wear a nice functional straw summer hat without being mocked? Why are we all bareheaded in the sun? Why organic sunscreen and not a boater? But I digress.

The West's obsession with the chador is a sort of unconscious reflex, part age-old anti-Muslim bigotry, part re-fighting of Christian/Jewish internal battles (see Corinthians),part hippie headband residue, part corporate-fashion xenophobism, part neo-conservative apologetics for American expansionism, and only a small portion feminism. Headgames. I think there's considerably less concern for the plight of Muslim women than posing.

Put a lid on the posing. I'd recommend a vintage resistol.

And if you want to posture, try a pork pie.

The tendency in American political debate is two-sided dialectic, and the danger of dialectic is when the two sides basically agree, leaving out other viewpoints. In this case, Obama and Cheney disagree on particulars but not substantively on the powers of the imperial presidency, the trashing of human and constitutional rights, and the immunity of elites. In this two-sided context, Cheney makes Obama look reasonable and the voice of anti-torture, though Obama in effect proposes institutionalizing the unConstitutional regime of Cheney.

We need someone to be the third, reasonable voice who can supplant Cheney's frankly fascist viewpoint, but instead represent American Constiutional values. Someone who can paint Obama's proposed gulag as the anti-American, anti-democratic notion that it really is.

Although we of course need a movement of many voices, and we don't have to all agree, we do need one person as the face of constitutionalism, because that is how our media works.

Any suggestions? I'd suggest Russ Feingold, but looks like he's checked his brain and conscience in favor of party disclipine.

How fitting, and sad, that Obama should announce the end of American democracy in the presence of these documents.

Indefinite detention without habeus corpus.

The divine right of president-kings, and no punishment for the elites.

The whole nation, and world, turned into nothing but a Gitmo, all of us, Muslim or not, servants to the whims of the wealthy and powerful aristocracy.

Me? I still hold these truths to be self-evident, that (as Dr. King intoned) allllllllll people are created equal, and endowed with certain inalienable rights.

That Dick Cheney does not agree with Jefferson and King, I am not surprised.

I only wish that our brother Barack Obama agreed with the American creed. I only wish we had elected an American like King or Jefferson or any non-elite-on-the-street as President, is that too much to ask? It has been too long since we've had an American in the Oval Office, or in Congress, or the high court. Too long. We worked too hard to be so betrayed.

How wonderful to visit a city that takes surveillance seriously and shoots first and asks questions later. But, I don't imagine that Garrison is following the newspaper coverage of the attempt to find justice for Jean Charles de Menezes. Naw, Gary's interested in peccadillos involving trousers and kazoos up skirts.

But came back, Garrison! Obama is trying his best to run the new empire along British lines. Here's a recent quote, "You've got a situation where, in some cases, indivdiduals should not have been detained, but after having been detained for six years may not have a very friendly view toward the United States."

The PMs of the Empire would have understand that logic perfectly. If you treat a colonial badly, you had bloody well better keep him locked up without any rights, ESPECIALLY if you locked him up in error. Or execute him after a military show trial.

Unless of course the prisoner has learned to LOVE his captors after they mistakenly detained and tortured him, and until he learns to describe his torturers as heroes.

General Odierno's suppression of the torture photos this past week is Exhibit A that the military cannot police itself, and will pervert any process to cover brass ass.

Better rules look fine on paper, but they are meaningless without credible judges to enforce them. The military has already shown it will pressure tribunal processes to its own ends.

What's the old saying from Frost? The best way out is through. Obama is just setting America up to be beaten over and over again with this issue. Deal with it, deal with it once. Dealing with our sordid past IS moving forward.