But you can tell it's a fake-- there's no way you two are spending time together on Fire Island-- you're just too pale Glenn.

Oh BTW, when did you switch over to Gay Advocacy? I always thought you were more a 'rule of law' and 'equal protection' kind of Advocate?

The American Right Wing has always had a schitzoid approach to its foreign-affairs propaganda.

Labor unions, liberals, intellectuals, women's rights, gay rights, etc., these are all "good" and worthy of American support -- but only in foreign countries in which the US finds itself in conflict with.

Apparently, it's the "conservative" regimes that are the most difficult to deal with. What a shock.

It seems to me that Democrats should be insisting on two points as a bare minimum in discussing the FISA renewal:

1) No immunity, whatsoever, should apply to members of the executive branch or to the intelligence community within the government. There simply is no excuse for breaking the law by a group that was actively involved in lobbying for changes in the existing law. Since they were pushing for changes in the law, that means they understood the law as it stood and had a responsibility to abide by it while they were working to effect changes.

2) Telecoms should be considered for immunity only on a case-by-case basis. Those who objected initially to requests from the government, but co-operated after being subjected to coercion should be able to apply for immunity by providing documentation of undue pressure being applied. Of course, for "national security reasons", there should be a system for conducting these hearings in closed session, perhaps even within the FISA court itself.

Unrelated to FISA: Glenn, I think the war-mongers spent more time opining on women's rights in Afghanistan than Iraq.

Why can't we junk ours? Seriously, this crappy compromise of 230 years ago sucks, bicameral legislatures are a joke, but we keep ours.

Our precious constitution is full of holes and needs a lot of fixing too, hell, we even fail at counting votes!

It may sound a little loony but it's not, the House of Lords is effectively no more. Our Senators are horrible dangerous animals, get rid of them!

"Oh BTW, when did you switch over to Gay Advocacy? I always thought you were more a 'rule of law' and 'equal protection' kind of Advocate?"

There is no difference here, advocacy for the rule of law and gay rights are the same thing. So is equal protection, even more so.

I don't like your tone, home. Since when do you possess the stupidity and arrogance to comment on what Mr. Greenwald does?

Mind your own fucking business. Trust me, your soul needs the attention.

"There really is this child-like need in American mainstream political discourse constantly to believe that we are fault-free..... The idea that we are the source of all Good in the world...predominates in virtually all political discussions."

True, and to some extent it's the belief on which America is founded. However, as I explain in more detail in "Why Conservatives are Always Wrong" (link via my name below), while this belief is one of the essential props of modern American conservatives, who like to ask why the left "hates" and "blames" America, in fact it's conservatives who hate America, at least in anything like the form in which it actually exists (as evidenced by a number of things my essay discusses, including the Falwell / Robertson comments that Glenn references later in this post).

GG:

Our warrior tough guys are so desperate for more war, for greater feelings of vicarious strength from sending other people off to fight, that they will say and do anything to justify those wars. They'll even parade around as gay rights crusaders if that is what it takes.

They'll do anything except, you know, actually let gays do the fighting.

Wonderful, as usual, Glenn. I hope the pressure we put on the Party and our individual Representatives does some good.

Oh BTW, when did you switch over to Gay Advocacy? I always thought you were more a 'rule of law' and 'equal protection' kind of Advocate?

Not that Paradox's response wasn't comprehensive; it was. But could you elaborate on what this means?

The Iranians are completely messed up: they hang homosexuals.

Whereas the Bible tells us that the proper punishment for homosexuality is death by stoning.

Bomb the heretics!

Educational, it was, in a painful sort of way. I guess I've never given a whole lot of thought to the volume of shite that gets directed your way. I didn't know, f'rinstance, that you were a traitor.

You display a far cooler head than I believe myself to be capable of. You do important work, (even though you neglect to provide marching orders, and have yet to don your beret and lead La Revolucion).

And I can't believe you missed it. Just like Larry Craig, Ted Haggard, etc., there are no gay conservatives. At worst, worst mind you, these are upstanding (wide stancing, really), no doubt about it, 100% hetero guys and gals that are susceptible to the machinations of the devil.

But let's be clear. There are no gay conservatives.

From retroactive immunity (what the hell is the Democrat's motivation behind that anyway) to the need to 'defend' gay Iranians while criminalizing gay Americans. I'm forever amazed Glenn can swallow his bile at these legal and moral atrocities every day and present such cogent analysis.

A pity hypocracy on this scale isn't fatal to those holding it. The universe, not to mention Sunday telly, would be a much cleaner place if it were.

And the accompanying cartoon-like belief is that anyone who has hostility towards the U.S. is some demented, crazed, Hitler-like monster.

One of the more fascinating aspects of the process of denial, is that the closer to the surface the truth comes the louder and more cartoon-like the necessary reaction.

I said a few days ago, one of the most hard-and-fast rules of human nature is that I'm good and you're not but the less true the "I'm good" part is, the more comical and ridiculous the resulting gymnastics.