Letters to the Editor
Amity
Published Letters: 1153 Editor's Choice: 107
-
wychwood on how Romney governed
[Read the article: This is not Romney's Kennedy moment]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Whatever weird stuff Romney believes (or pretends to believe) as a Mormon, what did he DO as governor?
As governor of Massachussets Romney was a moderate Republican in outlook and a technocrat in practice. He made a splash attacking the entrenched state Democratic machine and trying to push a soft-core Reaganite agenda of tax cuts offset by cuts in social spending. He did some damage that way but his worst excesses were curbed by the legislature — a conclusion so foregone, given the Democrats' power, that it's hard to tell if Romney was sincere in his efforts or just trying to score Republican Points.
At his best he knew how to get together the brightest people in a given area of policy and let them do their thing, which led to some innovative, progressive, and undeniably "big government" policies coming out of his administration — in education and technology, among other areas. He also served the extremely valuable purpose of holding a fire to the feet of the Democratic machine — I guess the idea was to try to forge a lasting place for Republicans at the table but the result was merely to shake the cruft off of the state Democratic party and thus revitalize it in a way that Democrats themselves would probably have not been able to for another generation.
I don't recall that he ever discussed religion.
Since the discussion here I've thought more about Romney as a cipher — maybe it was inevitable that in a blue state he would serve as an agent of liberal renaissance rather than conservative uprising. If that's the case — that Romney inevitably serves the greater good of whatever political culture he's currently marinading in — then his present direction is disturbingly indicative of how he'd govern as president.
-
bamage on Posner on September 11
[Read the article: "Missing" evidence is familiar Bush pattern]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]And accused two of them – the King’s nephew and the Pakistani air force chief – of having advance knowledge of the 9/11 attacks.
The scenario seems plausible, though as bamage points out the cited material from Posner contains no substantiation aside from "I reported on this in my book, too."
The thing I have a hard time believing is that Posner's scenario would lead the CIA to hide the tapes from Congress. There were a bunch of Qaeda symps in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan? And some of them were in government? This is a surprise that needs to be hidden from Congressional Democrats?
As for knowing about the September 11th attacks in advance, look, I hate to say this but anyone who did not know that al Qaeda was, in general, trying to fly fuel-laden airplanes into the World Trade Center was willfully ignorant, and it didn't take special knowledge or genius intelligence to observe that by 2001 it had been longer than usual since the last time al Qaeda had been caught.
And by "anyone" I don't mean anyone in the Bush administration, or people with top-secret security clearances. I mean anyone — you, me, everyone in America who could read the New York Times, which quietly covered enough of the covert war against al Qaeda to convey everything one needed to know except the names and dates of the next attack.
So why should "so and so knew about 9/11 in advance" be such a damning crime? Why would the CIA need to protect itself from Congressional knowledge of that fact? Many Americans who knew nearly as precisely about al Qaeda's plans, and said so at the highest levels of government, are alive and well — if somewhat demoralized at having been proven so tragically prescient.
I agree with Posner's general point as cited by bamage, but the specific conclusion in the case of missing evidence doesn't add up. Means, yes. Opportunity, yes. Motive? I don't see it.
-
Glenn Greenwald on mechanisms
[Read the article: "Missing" evidence is familiar Bush pattern]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]There are countless mechanisms available to a U.S. Senator or Representative to do something about illegal behavior they discover. Anyone -- not just someone in such a position -- has mechanisms available to them under whistleblower laws to intiate proceedings to investigate illegal government conduct.
I hope they aren't literally countless! I would love to see "Unclaimed Territory" cover a more thorough examination of what these mechanisms are. What power does Congress possess in these sorts of situations — to compel, to investigate, to file suit, to do things in Latin that I've never even heard of? And practically speaking what are the ramifications of such actions from a tactical perspective — that is, if a case against the Bush administration appeared before a Bush-friendly Supreme Court, how would things play out, what opportunities would there be and what ones would be lost, and so on?
And are there really powers that anyone can invoke? Could a grassroots organization introduce Congressional motions to investigate? How would that work?
I ask because I have a sense that there's much more that Congress could do but don't know exactly what, and that makes it hard to evaluate the various claims of the form "all Senate Democrats need to do is X" or "if they did Y it would never get anywhere."
-
bystander on Rockefeller
[Read the article: "Missing" evidence is familiar Bush pattern]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]ROCKEFELLER: I'm not—I don't comment on allegations. I can't. I can't afford to.
I don't know Rockefeller very well but this strikes me as a sincere expression, and as such it would seem to support ondolette's (and many others') "access whore" theory of Senatorial motivation.
Of course it raises the same question that access whoring always does — if they're not giving you anything anyway, then what do you have to lose by fighting?
Whatever is going on, he's clearly making himself a target for elimination in the next episode of "Progressive Survivor". And hey, that's coming up!
http://www.jay08.com/index.php