CP:

You watch. Scalia's dissent will become (has already become) the motor for further congressional/Autocracy collaboration in the interest of Saving Us All from the Terrorists. Habeus? Quaint. "An Old Law desperately in need of Updating."

It is also his gift to the younger members of his party. A sort of blueprint for success. On the previous thread WT wrote:

Elect McCain, and you elect a corpse. It's not his age, it's his decayed nature, which shriveled long before it ever had a chance to mature. His whole party is like that, from the Reagans and Doles to Cheney and the wastrel Bush, not to mention that whole panoply of lesser weasels who've fastened themselves irrevocably to what they perceive as the main chance. Should they cling successfully to their bliss for another four years, the United States will continue on into history as sclerotic, unprincipled, and ultimately as unsuccessful as Brezhnev's Soviet Union.

I think the decayed and shriveled husk the the Republican party has become covers up some very ambitious worms. And Scalia is attempting to provide them with a better diet.

...increased nastiness isn't a measure of success. These folks, for all their ambition, have no idea how to govern. In the end, corruption and propaganda will be all they'll have left.

I agree, but add one more thing that they will have: a giant military machine. The degree of their desperation will be a measure of the loss to everyone.

I think that they believe that any potential democratic president would be too wimpy to really use those powers to their harm. Have the democrats done anything in the last eight years to convince them otherwise?

Yes, I think looking at the USSR for an indication of where the US is headed is not so useful. The US has far more power than the USSR ever did, and some of its leaders and ruling class have a kind of arrogance never seen on earth before.

The European "dark age" lasted quite some time. And what followed was not all renaissance. Current conflicts come from past ones. The goal is to stop conflict, not justify it.

That McCain quote sounds stupid even for him. Does anyone have a link to the entire speech? (When I discuss it, I want an actual reference to the text.)

Of course, he will be saying something different next week.

Off topic, but by the way, why do you think McCain wants ten debates against someone who actually can think and talk much better than the average guy? McCain certainly cannot.

This is what they do. He is smart, and he speaks and writes well, far better than the average pol. He is capable of leading the US in the world; the current guy maxed out as a fraternity president. All politicians require pressure, all the time. Be prepared to give it to him.

I think he made a mistake on this endorsement, plenty of votes for the lady in that district. But we do not know how many levels that deal has.

It is hard for me to believe that Obama's condemnation of this bill would have cost him votes to McCain. Yes, he would have losed some on the "weak on national security issue", but I think he will lose more because potential voters will stay home. Obviously the campaign called it differently from me. But if it is close, it is better to err on the side of liberty and the rule of law meeting constitutional requirements.

When Bush was elected and reelected, millions of people voted against their own self-interests, and that of their families, communities, and country. Most people do not think things through very well. The republican management has been on a forty year publicity campaign that includes buying the media and telling people what their own thoughts are. How can this be countered? I agree that impeachment hearings would have offered a vast amount of essentially free publicity that the democrats had within their reach with some careful planning in 2007. There are very few who wanted that, though. There are a few possible reasons why, but selecting a dominant one would just be speculation on my part. I think it is too late for such hearings to be of any use now.

... sort of like Chauncy Gardner's evil twin. Obama is smart and speaks and writes well, I guess. That means he can really be in charge and do a lot more harm. Or does anyone want to convince me he can do a lot of good? Maybe the floundering McSame would do less harm. Or maybe I need to rethink "smart". It seems incredibly stupid of Obama to say what he did and then sort of back off a little bit. Looks like the same disease that every other dem. cand. has. Is it something in the water, and the repubs have all been inoculated? No, they have it, too, but a strong authoritarian reacts in a very different way.

Yes, I agree. But Obama needs some pretty intense pressure, because this is a terrible slide rightward.

As for KO, surely it is not surprising that he is doing some niche shifting. The times are changing.

If you are so alienated, why not just leave?

So Obama says responsibility does not end at conception, and Perkins misinterprets that to mean that Obama is saying that fatherhood begins at conception, and then Perkins concludes that the few cells involved are a human life. He should have to do better.