The first thing we do . . .

"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers," said Dick the Butcher, a follower of the rebellious Jack Cade, in Shakespeare's Henry VI, as they sought to overthrow the established order.*

This week, federal district judge James Robertson ruled that a Guantanamo prisoner could not be tried by military commission until "a competent tribunal determines that [he] is not entitled to protections afforded prisoners of war under Article 4 of the Geneva Convention ... of Aug. 12, 1949." And the President--who has declared all Guantanamo detainees "enemy combatants" exempt from the Geneva Conventions--"is not a 'tribunal,'" Judge Robertson wrote.

For every action, there is a swift and opposite reaction. At a gleeful meeting of the Federalist Society on Thursday and Friday, John Ashcroft minced no words:

Mr. Ashcroft had many in the crowd rapturous when he criticized judges who, he said, refused to recognize that they did not have the power to limit the president's authority to conduct a war against terrorists.

"The danger I see here," he said, "is that intrusive judicial oversight and second-guessing of presidential determinations in these critical areas can put at risk the very security of our nation in a time of war."

The hostility to judicial review that Ashcroft shares with the Bush Administration was echoed even more plainly at this meeting by Justice Scalia:

"It is blindingly clear,'' he said, "that judges have no greater aptitude than the average person to determine moral issues."

The first thing to be done by the new Bush Administration is to take care of all the judges. Lawyers with dissenting readings of the Constitution are put on notice.

*I'm using this tired old line in a lawyerly way, but I can't help it.

UPDATE: Eric Muller is on the case, and Jack Balkin has some advice.

Best bet on Bush's baffling bulge

It makes perfect sense for the Leader of the Free World to wear a bullet-proof vest. So why is it OK to tell us now and not before?

Faint praise

It's an open question how much newspaper endorsements matter, but in case they do, it isn't enough just to keep score. Some of the Bush endorsements are downright tortured. Like this one from the Denver Post, which should be read in full to be believed, but here's a small sample:

Our support for Bush is tempered by unease over the poor choices and results of his first term. To succeed in his second-term, Bush must begin by taking responsibility for U.S. failures in Iraq, admit his mistakes and adjust U.S. strategy. Big time, as his running mate might say.

It generated more than 700 responses, all of them critical, like this one:

The Post's endorsement of George W. Bush is one of the best condemnations of his administration that I've seen. It's a grand litany of failures, all of which you acknowledge. Rereading the article carefully, I found one positive word about Bush: "decisiveness."
Decisiveness? This man decided to invade Iraq, cut taxes, loosen environmental laws, suppress stem-cell research, etc., long before he became president, and never changed his mind nor admitted any mistake in face of manifest evidence, and never will. And in face of this stubbornness, you offer suggestions that he should do all things differently in his second term, expecting, I suppose, that he will, and therefore you endorse him.
Incomprehensible.

Then there's the wobbly Salt Lake Tribune:

Tribune readers know that this newspaper has been consistently critical of a number of the president's policies, particularly his war in Iraq, his tax cuts for the rich and his abysmal environmental record.

A careful reader at the American Prospect notes that both papers are owned by Republican media mogul Dean Singleton, thus raising the interesting issue of the publisher's control over the editor's voice. How many editors in how many chains have had to hold their noses with one hand while pecking out this particular endorsement with the other? As the American Prospect blogger points out, at least one newspaper is straightforward about it.
At the National Newspaper Association Convention in Denver last month, where the future of journalism was much on our minds, I singled out Mr. Singleton for having a clue. Yet I soon realized that his version of media interactivity was pretty top-down. There's much food for thought here, and not all of it favors the triumphalist narrative.
UPDATE: The Cleveland Plain Dealer couldn't reach a deal.

Taking the Latex gloves off

A powerful salvo in one of the year's most-underreported stories, the Bush administration's manipulation of scientific research, is launched in today's New York Times.

[P]olitical action by scientists has not been so forceful since 1964, when Barry Goldwater's statements promoting the deployment of battlefield nuclear weapons spawned the creation of the 100,000-member group Scientists and Engineers for Johnson.

This year, 48 Nobel laureates dropped all pretense of nonpartisanship as they signed a letter endorsing Senator John Kerry. "Unlike previous administrations, Republican and Democratic alike, the Bush administration has ignored unbiased scientific advice in the policy making that is so important to our collective welfare," they wrote. The critics include members of past Republican administrations.

Dr. James Hansen, a NASA climate expert who has been cited by the Bush administration in support of its policies, is now one of the critics.

Under the Bush administration, he said, "they're picking and choosing information according to the answer that they want to get, and they've appointed so many people who are just focused on this that they really are having an impact on the day-to-day flow of information."

It's disturbing testimony from the reality-based community.

Magical surrealism

Jeff Sharlet asks, "is George W. Bush the first magical president of the United States?"

Believing, it seems, is more important to the President than the substance of his belief. Jesus Christ's particular teachings--well, those are good, too. But what really matters is that if you believe you can do something, you can.

No Finnish in sight

A report from a far-flung correspondent.

UPDATE: Confirmation closer to home. Counterspin points to John McCain's introduction to the TNT Classic version of Paths of Glory: "Tell me if you don't see a strong, yet veiled criticism of the war in Iraq and President Bush.

Flicker of sanity

The sanest remark of the campaign so far was when Kerry said we need to get to a point where "terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they're a nuisance." It would have been really sane if our government (I almost wrote "we"--hold that thought for a minute) had reacted to Sept. 11 with a "state of emergency" combined with a police action aimed at finding and punishing al Qaida. Can anyone imagine that that could have happened, even under President Gore? Probably not.

But as Tom Friedman agrees, Kerry is right to put it like this now.

Now about that "we": it's how we Americans refer to our government and its actions, and logically so, because our government begins in us: "we, the people." We are a democracy. The state speaks through us. This seems natural enough, although lately for me it's a stretch. I stumble over it. Where am I in the "we" who invaided Iraq? and tolerates torture in prisons?

In a discussion once with Catherine Lutz about her wonderful book Homefront, she or someone pointed out that in other countries whose democratic roots are more problematic, including any country that has ever had a monarchy--France, for example--the citizens don't necessarily have this conception. In France today, long after the Sun King, people refer to "the state." Despite their voting privileges, for the French their government is a separate thing, with a life and a will of its own.

I recommend Homefront to anyone who wants to understand why, in reality, "we" could not have done anything but declare war after Sept. 11. Describing how far (though how insidiously) the militarization of our country has gone, she asks, "Are we all military dependents?"

Kerry's remark was sane--and brave.

God help us

Last night's fascinating Frontline show on Bush and Kerry put me in mind of a stunning story in the New York Times that came out just days after Sept. 11. On Sept. 22, 2001, Frank Bruni reported in a "White House Memo" that the terrorist acts had "wholly transformed" Bush's "sense of himself and his presidency."

One of the president's close acquaintances outside the White House said Mr. Bush clearly feels he has encountered his reason for being, a conviction informed and shaped by the president's own strain of Christianity.

"I think, in his frame, this is what God has asked him to do," the acquaintance said. "It offers him enormous clarity."

. . .

People who have visited the White House in recent days said there was a changed, charged atmosphere there. One of them, Mark McKinnon, a senior adviser to Mr. Bush's presidential campaign, said that the president obviously feels that the business at hand "is the country's destiny--and his destiny."

Others who are close to the president said there was a discernible spiritual dimension to his thinking. A senior administration official recalled Mr. Bush's response on Thursday when one of the religious leaders said that Mr. Bush's leadership was part of God's plan.

"I accept the responsibility," the president said.

In his Frontline interview, Dallas News reporter Wayne Slater puts it like this:

In George Bush's world, he believes--as many evangelicals do--that we are engaged in a great drama, and this drama is one in which good is battling evil.

This war gave him a fundamental opportunity to live out something that is very real inside him theologically, and that is "They are the enemy." When he uses the word, "evildoers," he does so in way that resonates beyond rhetoric. It is theological. It is fundamental. It is black-and-white.
He does not give a second thought about the idea that they might have a point of view that ought to be considered. The radicals are the radicals. They are evil. They are the force, in effect, of Satan on Earth. He believes this.
So when he engaged in this conversation with the American people on how to deal in the early hours and the early days of 9/11, he was absolutely in his own element, because he knew he had to ultimately trust God, the fundamental force. He's said so since then--that you ask God what to do in these cases; not that you're following exactly what God says, but you believe that God will lead you. George Bush believed in this moment that he was God's man at a moment of crisis in a battle between good and evil on Earth.

The Revealer points out just how seriously Bush's "prophetic" understanding of his role differs from the way other presidents have engaged with their religious faith:

The key difference is this: Presidents since Franklin Roosevelt have spoken as petitioners of God, seeking blessing and guidance; this president positions himself as a prophet, issuing declarations of divine desires for the nation and world. Most fundamentally, Bush's language suggests that he speaks not only of God and to God, but also for God.

UPDATE and antidote: "Mr. Derrida reminded us that religion does not always give clear meaning, purpose and certainty by providing secure foundations. To the contrary, the great religious traditions are profoundly disturbing because they all call certainty and security into question. Belief not tempered by doubt poses a mortal danger."