Mark my words: as soon as Obama is elected the same Republicans who have been yelling and screaming about the need for a strong, unitary (dictatorial) executive will be the biggest supporters of the need for checks and balances, and in particular the need to give congressional minority parties the right to stop anything they want to any time without any consequences to them.

Recognizing the fraility of men, the founding fathers counted on such factionalism producing good results (check on the power of government) for ignoble reasons (desire for power for themselves). The Republican opposition is in accord with the Constitution.

What the founding fathers had not anticipated is a bunch of supposedly principled but weak-kneed, keel-over, kowtowing, gutless Democrats. It is not just the Republicans that have a authoritarian-worshipping streak. Reid,Rockefeller,Hoyer have it in abundance.

In fact, the comment above suggests that the Republicans don't worship authoritarians at any deep level, their current stand is simply part of their unprincipled quest for power, and will reverse itself when they have a Democratic President

The comment above suggests that the Democrats who have no reason to be a compliant opposition right now, but are, will be even more worshipful of the authority of the President when the President is a Democrat.

From a purely historical perspective, I think, all violent culture clashes lead to healthy societies in the longer term. Both cultures are invigorated, and juxtaposed, becoming one, eventually. Everything we find beautiful about colonized cultures--and even European cultures from the days of Rome--is to some extent, a product of violence and oppression.

-- omooex

The usual suspects being absent, omooex is trying to fill in. Omooex probably thinks so, being on the "winning" side of historical equation (or so he thinks). The knowledge of what has been lost in the clashes and "becoming one eventually" he has never had, or forgotten. And there is precious little to "find beautiful about colonized cultures" - except perhaps if the colonizer was your ancestor, perhaps, and you are morally blind.

GG can be heard on the new WNYC news program, The Takeaway,

link

http://www.thetakeaway.org/

From McClatchy, via Atrios, my emphasis added.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/detainees/story/38773.html

Akhtiar was among the more than 770 terrorism suspects imprisoned at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. They are the men the Bush administration described as "the worst of the worst."

But Akhtiar was no terrorist. American troops had dragged him out of his Afghanistan home in 2003 and held him in Guantanamo for three years in the belief that he was an insurgent involved in rocket attacks on U.S. forces. The Islamic radicals in Guantanamo's Camp Four who hissed "infidel" and spat at Akhtiar, however, knew something his captors didn't: The U.S. government had the wrong guy.

"He was not an enemy of the government, he was a friend of the government," a senior Afghan intelligence officer told McClatchy. Akhtiar was imprisoned at Guantanamo on the basis of false information that local anti-government insurgents fed to U.S. troops, he said.

An eight-month McClatchy investigation in 11 countries on three continents has found that Akhtiar was one of dozens of men — and, according to several officials, perhaps hundreds — whom the U.S. has wrongfully imprisoned in Afghanistan, Cuba and elsewhere on the basis of flimsy or fabricated evidence, old personal scores or bounty payments.

...

This unprecedented compilation shows that most of the 66 were low-level Taliban grunts, innocent Afghan villagers or ordinary criminals. At least seven had been working for the U.S.-backed Afghan government and had no ties to militants, according to Afghan local officials. In effect, many of the detainees posed no danger to the United States or its allies.

The investigation also found that despite the uncertainty about whom they were holding, U.S. soldiers beat and abused many prisoners.

Arthur Silber

http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/2008/06/cant-you-at-least-not-be-so-goddamned.html

The Old FISA:

We can already spy on everyone. Everyone! Got that, you schmucks? And we don't even need a warrant a lot of the time! Every once in a while, we kinda think we should get a warrant. No reason for that actually. But it looks better, you know? Keeps the stupidly annoying civil liberties crowd happy. But those idiots at the FISA court will give us one nearly every time! [See here again.] And since FISA is a secret court, none of those peons (otherwise known as "citizens") will ever know a damned thing about what's actually going on anyway. It's good to be an Empire!

As I discussed yesterday, I'm not aware that any progressive has suggested that the FISA regime should be eliminated completely. Now the reasons are clearer. As Atrios's approving post setting forth Reyes's letter makes obvious: It is absolutely fine with the Democrats and with the progressive online community that the government has these fully comprehensive -- indeed, omnipotent -- spying powers.

It's fine with them. Ponder the fact. Ponder my argument that both parties have long desired and worked toward the complete, unchallengeable establishment of an authoritarian-corporatist state. If we have both a Democratic president and Congress next year, you will never hear another word about this subject -- except possibly for calls to expand the government's powers still more. I can't imagine exactly how they could be further expanded, but I'm certain the Democrats will find a way -- just as the Republicans do at every opportunity. (Similarly, you will rarely hear from the Democrats or progressives now or in the future about the InfraGard program, which was so helpfully begun under the Clinton Administration.)