Quick hits on the Supreme Court travel ban decision

Wrapping up several things I've said about the ruling on Twitter.

First, Merrick Garland isn't on the Supreme Court. He could have been, had President Obama responded back to Mitch McConnell's obstinance with a recess appointment. But he did not.

Is there a "Biden rule" about SCOTUS nominations in an election year? Kind of sort of, but it really should be called the Thurmond rule.

Beyond that, we don't know how Merrick Garland would have voted.

Beyond THAT, I agree with Eric Levitz that naming Garland was bad Obama strategy.

It was, per my take on Dear Leader on other things, yet one more example of him compromising away a compromise in advance in public.

Update, June 27: Anthony Kennedy is no longer on the bench as of July 31, announcing his retirement after kicking centrism to the curb. If Kennedy was trying to cement something for future courts in his concurrence comments this term, he has surely failed. Ditto for whatever version of a legacy he might have thought he established a few years ago. Masterpiece Cakeshop, Janus and National Institutes of Family Life (California pro-life clinics) cases showed a turd-polishing level of hypocrisy, especially given that Kennedy had taken just the opposite stance in 1992 on Planned Parenthood vs Casey, requiring doctors to tell people about abortion alternatives, as Justice Breyer pointed out. SCOTUSBlog, among others, has more on Kennedy's career and legacy.

Update 2, June 27: I have expanded the paragraph above into a full blog post about Tony the Pony; go here.

Speaking of, I have a new "Oh, the SCOTUS" piece up for Hillbots, or Dems in general, thinking that will convince the likes of me to rejoin the duopoly.

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Now, to matters at hand on the travel ban.

The ban isn't racist, because religions aren't races.

Nor is it anti-religious, even if Trump has called it a "Muslim ban." It of course doesn't apply to every Muslim-majority country. In fact, Sudan was removed from the original version of the ban last September, which #TheResistance ignores.

And, this ignores that Venezuela and North Korea aren't Muslim-majority, in any case.

Why? Because the ban is actually a petro-geopolitical ban, at heart.

Per that link above, Sudan was removed at the behest of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council. Sudan's "help" in the war against alleged Iranian proxies in Yemen trumps all. The ban is oriented against Syria and Iran, ultimately.

As to Anthony Kennedy sending a message to Trump, yet concurring? Doing both are possible, and Kennedy faces constraints that a Jeff Flake or Bob Corker don't.

Also, this decision is nothing like the Korematsu case. Not all Muslims are being banned, and none of them that are being banned are American citizens.

On the idea that the travel ban should be judged by Trump's tweets, rather than its content? That's close to something analogous to two different First Amendment issues. One is speech vs acts; the other is prior restraint.

(If Ken White, aka Popehat, writes something on this from a quasi-First Amendment speech-vs-acts angle, I'll link it here. Until then, let's go with some Tweets of his:

/5 The rational basis test is the test your mother applies to determine whether you are a nice boy. Of course you are. The rational basis test asks only whether there is ANY plausible non-discriminatory basis whatsoever that could be articulated to support the law,

— ThisIsNotNormalHat (@Popehat) June 26, 2018

And then:

/6 Applied here, the majority finds that one could articulate legitimate non-discriminatory grounds for the law, so -- despite evidence of Trump's own words showing religious animus -- the law passes the rational basis test.

— ThisIsNotNormalHat (@Popehat) June 26, 2018

Followed by:

/8 But the upshot is this: the majority says that the President of the United states can revile Muslims and say he wants to ban them, but as long as his law is facially neutral and someone can make up a neutral argument for it, it survives. /end

— ThisIsNotNormalHat (@Popehat) June 26, 2018

I knew there was a good legal angle, and just couldn't think of the term.

Now, that said, North Korea and Venezuela may just be listed for show. But, with a better written ban than the Bannon-inked, more clearly Islamophobic first one, with both Trump and Bannon talking that way about it, the justices had a reasonable case to apply rational basis and so dodge the issue of trying to divine intent. And, in law, whether civil, criminal or constitutional, judges tend to shy away from divining intent if empirical evidence isn't highly corroborative.

Whether it truly is justifiable on national security issues? I say no. Venezuela is certainly not an exporter of terrorism, though both duopoly parties might try to have you believe otherwise. North Korea is, but Trump is undermining his own Nobel Peace Prize chances in this case. And, the court steered away from that issue.

“We express no view on the soundness of the policy,” Roberts wrote.

That's typical executive branch deference. Read into it what you will.

And, not only is it not sound, contra wingnuts, there are lies by omission as big as Mack trucks within it.

First, there are still terrorists in Saudi Arabia, even if no "training camps" exist. Second, as late as 2016, the government, the kingdom, still supported fomenters of radicalism.

I argue that Saudi Arabia has made considerable progress on counterterrorism in the last 15 years but still has a long way to go. 

In the end, policymakers would do well to remember that Saudi Arabia is a key partner but not a friend: the United States and Saudi Arabia share many common interests, but they do not share common values or a common worldview.

Though that link is 2016, the problems are still current.

Considerable problems remain. As former senior CIA official Bruce Riedel contends, “Saudi sources remain major funders of groups like the Afghan Taliban and Lashkar­e Taiba in Pakistan. Some accounts suggest Saudi money has gone to al­Qaida’s affiliate in Syria, the al­Nusra Front.” Although Riyadh opposes the Islamic State, it sees the Syrian regime, with its close ties to Iran, as a far greater danger and has focused its energies accordingly. Despite greater regime efforts to reduce the flow of fighters abroad, Saudis still have found it easy to travel and fight on behalf of the Islamic State – they are perhaps the largest source of foreign fighters for the group. ... 

Saudi Arabia considers Al Qaeda to be a mortal enemy, yet its military campaign in Yemen has indirectly assisted the group. 

There you go. Syria and Yemen.

But, the Saudis know how to massage both Trump's greed and Bibi Netanyahu.

Oh, that name.

Basically, this is what Bibi would have written.

(As for a G+ commenter telling me to "get with reality" because I didn't explicitly spell out Trump's Saudi business interests? I think that making clear the Riyadh-Tel Aviv axis speaks loudly enough. Besides, Trump didn't write this himself. It was written by neocons wanting another anti-Iran quiver in the arrow, and it wasn't primarily about Trump's business interests.)

And, if Al Jazeera spiked a video because of Qatari GCC member power, well, there you go.

At the same time, on geopolitics, though the travel ban is directed against Syria and Iran, Robert Fisk says on-the-ground signs indicate a US pullback of some sort, if not completely, in Syria. That leads to another question — whence the Islamic State, if Syria gets too hot? Would it really, per Daniel Bynum, slip back into Turkey? Try to regroup in Iraq?

Otherwise, I find the ruling against California's anti-abortion clinics' "script law" more problematic, especially since in Planned Parenthood v Casey, the Court majority, including Kennedy, voted that states COULD require doctors and PP-type clinics to provide information about alternatives.

Oh, and case it's not clear, this is one of those issues where my desire to be deliberately contrarian has easy fodder. The ban is ... ugly. But it's theoretically constitutional —

That said, if the Court had followed its own lead of a month ago in Masterpiece Cakeshop, it arguably would have rejected the travel ban based on the bias of Trump's Tweets.

Volokh thinks the court is justifying using religion as a screening element. I would disagree if that's true, but I think Volokh is misreading — badly. Plenary power may have been involved, but with caveats. It's also interesting that Volokh appears to consider this a "Muslim ban" when it's not (including Volokh ignoring the listing of Iran and North Korea) that Volokh ignored the Korematsu overturning entirely, and in general, cited relatively old case law.

Per my Kennedy retirement link, and Ken White aka Popehat, clearly and consciously blowing part of his analysis, it just shows that constitutional law lawyers are as capable of motivated reasoning as anybody else.

Marjorie Cohn at TruthOut thinks the ruling violates international law, specifically the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Not even close. First, it is applicable to nations regarding people "within its territory and under its jurisdiction." In other words, it prohibits (theoretically) the US (and other countries) from other people inside its borders, whether citizens or resident aliens. It's not about immigration.

Second, Cohn makes the elementary mistake, committed much more often by Islamophobes than others, of considering Islam a race. Uhh, even given that race as currently understood is culturally defined, religious affiliation has never been understood to be a race or even a marker thereof.

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Finally, the "Oh the SCOTUS" and Merrick Garland, with a full post about that coming up.

As for low turnout in 2014 leading to the GOP retaking the Senate? Well, that goes back to 2010. Sure, you can blame the ruling against Holder on the Voting Rights Act for 2014 stuff. But in 2010 as well as 2014, or even more so, Obama did a piss-poor job of campaigning for Senators, Congresscritters, and also governors and state legiscritters.

#DemDebate sour note: Bernie the #warhawk in the #WarOnTerror

I blogged last week how Bernie Sanders could expand the range of his 1-note trumpet and talk about a variety of foreign policy issues that relate directly to economic justice, or, per his history of marching with Martin Luther King Jr., to other issues of social justice.

Unfortunately, to the degree he has extended his 1-note trumpet beyond the shores of the United States, he's hit some sour notes so far.

Last week Sunday's Democratic debate, per the photo-poster at left, is a perfect example.

On ISIS, this thinks in terms of old-fashioned wars with definite ending points. Even if one buys into establishmentarian ideas about the "War on Terror," the idea that it has a definite finish line is a false note. One contains and controls ISIS, like the Red Brigades or Provisional IRA, while hoping and waiting for internal quarrels and factionalism to help.

To me, this is in part a carry-over from the wrongheadedness of the War on Drugs, preceded by a few years by the War on Cancer, and the War on Poverty.

In traditional views of wars, with winners and losers, NONE of these things are "wars." None of them should have been called such.

It was scientific hubris over the War on Cancer; the others were all political grandstanding, as is the War on Terror. (And yes, liberals and even left-liberals can grandstand just like rightists.)

In other words, this isn't about "beating" ISIS. It's about not investing too much political, or military, energy into dealing with ISIS at all.

Sadly, though, one Sanders follower, with the name of Bernie Press but purely unofficial (I don't know if Sanders' staff has grounds to pursue a Twitter account issue) buys into the same, in spades:

.@SocraticGadfly @rebleber Am I the only one seeing Obama using int'l coalition like #Bernie2016 said, and is kicking ISIS ass big time?

— Bernie Press (@BernPress) January 20, 2016

I hope such ideas aren't held by a large number of ardent Sanders supporters, let alone dyed-in-the-wool Berniebros. I also hope they're not held as ardently by Sanders himself as by some of his followers. But, I know they are held to some degree.

And, I'll venture they are strongly held by a fair number of "Berniebros."

To put it bluntly: Sarah Palin's also talking about "kicking ISIS ass." If that's what you want, I want no part of you.

(Sidebar, with note that I'm thinking about a full blog post just on stuff like this now. We now have, as of late last week, a new Sanders campaign ad. Nice, but not "astounding," contra the Upworthy-style breathlessness of a site that calls itself the Bernie Post, and says, as when showing that campaign ad:

The Bernie Post is the only media outlet dedicated to covering Bernie Sanders’ presidential election campaign. Please consider making a donation so we are able to continue our efforts.

Bullshit. As I said back, Burlington, Vermont's alt-weekly has a 'vertical," as the Kool Kids say, devoted to Sanders, as one example. Another issue is, what is a "media outlet" and what is "covering"? Some Berniebro starts a blog and claims he's a "media outlet" who is "covering" Sanders on a dedicated basis. This looks like a huckster shilling for money. Maybe that Bernie Press, on Twitter, will be looking to sell swag. 

Anyway, Sanders-themed charlatanry will be that blog post's theme, if I write it.) 

A recent extensive interview by 2012 Green Party presidential nominee Dr. Jill Stein, in the section on the Paris terrorist attack and following, explain more about why I'm not interested in "kicking ISIS ass" and certainly not interested in the mindset behind it.

I've talked elsewhere in this blog about the difference between stereotypes and generalizations. I think what that portmanteau says about younger male Sanders supporters is a generalization, not a stereotype. I suspect that in some degree they're like a hipster version of "rugged Christianity" young male backers of Teddy Roosevelt.

Also, per Mondoweiss, we're reminded that Sanders lived on a kibbutz and may well have a romanticized view of the creation of Israel.

On Assad, I am once again reminded of Abraham Lincoln's comment when told he had to get rid of Gen. George McClellan.

He asked who he should replace McClellan with and was told "Anybody!"

Lincoln responded that he had to have "somebody," not "anybody."

But for the man who lusts for the F-35s for the Vermont National Guard and other warhawkery, this is nothing new. Yes, the ISIS issue, we might call throwaway. Even there, though, you're not going to outrhetoric Hillary Clinton; she's already made that clear. But, the Assad issue is pandering to establishmentarian foreign policy. Sy Hersch has shown that Dear Leader may have cherry-picked anti-Assad info on chemical warfare. Since then, he's shown that the Defense Intelligence Agency, during the period Gen. Martin Dempsey was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, undercut Obama's own stance on Syria, worried about its fallout.

And, I don't agree a lot with the scrambled eggs and braids folks, but on this, they were right. Half the anti-Assad opposition was pro-ISIS or close. And, otherwise, getting rid of Hafez Assad is a repeat for the clusterfuck of what happened after we got rid of Saddam Hussein.

Plus, Bernie, the only way we're getting rid of Assad is "boots on the ground."

How many do you want to kill?

For me, the No. 1 foreign policy issue is killing the TPP.

No. 2 is coming to some sort of accord — with necessary Russian buy-in — on Assad, if possible. Unlike some Green-leaning types, I will practice Realpolitik in foreign policy.

No. 3 is devising the best reasonable ISIS containment policy.

No. 4 is restarting the Palestine-Israel talks in a meaningful way, including expanding BDS to the degree it has teeth, and also following on the EU on labeling products made in Israeli factories in occupied Palestine

See how different that is? (Ted Rall has vaguely and broadly similar critiques in a shorter, broader overall critique.)

How many people have to get killed for flags to lower to half-staff? And for what reason?

This is a question that deserves a good mix of both seriousness and serious sarcasm.

And, it's linked to Dear Leader's actions on Thursday, ordering flags lowered to half-staff in wake of the San Bernardino mass shooting, through Sunday.

However, no such proclamation was made after the Colorado Springs mass shooting.

Was it the 14 killed in San Bernardino vs. 3 in Colorado Springs?

Syed Rizwan Farook

In that case, our beloved Dear Leader, as the nation's "elected pastor," as the president is sometimes called, should give us a number.

Is 5 enough? Or is it 7? Or do we need double digits?

This will also help Muslims, or leftover Tamil Tigers, or other suicide attackers, to know how many to be sure to kill for extra publicity if they're going to do suicide attacks. (Which wasn't the case in San Bernardino.)

Or was it because the type of killers? Even before the possibility of San Bernardino being a "terrorist attack" was considered, we knew, at the time of Obama's proclamation, that the suspects had "funny sounding" names. Kind of Mooslim names. And, soon learned that they didn't have the purest of ethnic tones.

Robert Louis Dear Jr.

Names not like Robert Louis Dear, with his whiteness of skin, Christianist background, and good, Christian-based heart.

Who, of course, is not a terrorist. The FBI apparently isn't investigating his action as a terrorist act, since he was just following the video commands of the Center for Medical Progress, he's obviously not a terrorist.

Right?

Our president with less than pure skin and a funny-sounding name isn't afraid of calling a right-wing Christianist a terrorist, is he? He's not afraid of having Dear's act denoted as a terrorism-level action, is he?

I think the president needs to straighten this out, too. What type of purpose behind a mass shooting gets a flag lowered to half staff? Does anti-abortionism or other Christian right terrorism (since that's what it is) not count? Or is this again only a body count issue?

I mean, since we're averaging a mass shooting a day this year, we could just fly the flag at half staff all the time. Just let us know what to do.

And, Dear Leader, as you prosecute the War on Terra via the War with Drones, this would surely help civilians in Yemen. Or the staff of Doctors without Borders.

I presume that when the U.S. kills the "innocent," the U.S. flag never flies at half staff. But, what about the Yemeni flag? Or the UN flag for Doctors without Borders?

#FeelTheBern on #socialism, #BlackLivesMatter, even foreign policy

Bernie Sanders knocked it out of the park, at least in terms of Democrats, in his "socialism" speech at Georgetown today.



Several brief points, mainly taking from stuff I tweeted during the speech.

First, he hearkened back to Franklin D. Roosevelt, not just 1933 or 1937, but the FDR in the middle of war, who still looked to greater economic equality (if but haltingly for minorities) in his 1944 State of the Union address.

He then transitioned to Lyndon Baines Johnson and Medicare. This was good, which then led to a pivot to calling for a "Medicare for all" single-payer national health care system.

However, if Bernie wants to really go for the long bomb, he could have thrown deeper.

First, I still contend that the only good way to control costs in American health care, a single payer system isn't enough. Medicare being tight on reimbursement rates might help, but it might not be enough. I still say we need to look at nationalizing chunks of the hospital/clinic/doctor health care provider system.

(Update, Nov. 24: I have now written a broader blog post specifically defending corporate socialism, which Sanders did himself back in his salad days.)

Second, he didn't touch all of LBJ's Great Society. That's despite quoting Martin Luther King Jr.:

"This country has socialism for the rich and rugged individualism for the poor."

Let's remember that LBJ riffed on this in relation to African-Americans.

More, far more, than the New Deal, the Great Society was focused on racial as well as socioeconomic issues. Hence LBJ at Howard University’s 1965 commencement:

You do not wipe away the scars of centuries by saying: 'now, you are free to go where you want, do as you desire, and choose the leaders you please.' You do not take a man who for years has been hobbled by chains, liberate him, bring him to the starting line of a race, saying, "you are free to compete with all the others," and still justly believe you have been completely fair... This is the next and more profound stage of the battle for civil rights. We seek not just freedom but opportunity—not just legal equity but human ability—not just equality as a right and a theory, but equality as a fact and as a result.

Exactly.

Heck, LBJ might even had said #BlackLivesMatter today, per this from 1968 and riots:

When you put your foot on a man's neck and hold him down for three hundred years, and then you let him up, what's he going to do? He's going to knock your block off.

More of his Great Society and other quotes are at Wikiquote.

But, this must be balanced with socioeconomic concerns, too, both in the ivied towers of the Ivy League and the crumbling curbs of Main Street.

Speaking of, while he did make more than one allusion to unionism, I wish he had spoken more directly about the issue. Unfortunately, many unions, like the oily SEIU, have already lined up to endorse Clinton. And, per Sanders and social democracy, the American non-parliamentary two-party system is part of why Democrats co-opt unions without having a Labor or Social Democratic party.

On the other hand, organized labor could withhold endorsements before we get further into the primary system. And, just one — a truly liberal one like the Longshoremen — maybe could do a Greens endorsement in the general.

But, Sanders did touch on other issues today, even if family and maternity leave doesn't help the underclass if it's not paid leave.

He did note that climate change is a moral issue.

And, he did touch on foreign policy. Including calling a racist spade a spade, from Donald Trump or whomever.

No, he did more than that.

He covered foreign policy in far more depth than at the second Democratic debate, and did well.

Arbenz. Mossadegh. And many others the CIA overthrew all got mentioned. Vis-a-vis the GOP's Benghazi fixation, let's remember what Benghazi was — a spook shack.

He then called out Gulf oil states for not accepting refugees from their own corner of the world. Saudi Arabia has a tent city that can hold up to 1 million people and is only used for pilgrims at the hajj. It sits empty as I type. He also said the Gulf states need to join in the fight against Daesh. Related to that, he forswore an endless "War on Terror."

And, wingnuts will call him "earnest" or whatever while doing their own pontificating, but he focused on the moral angle of many of these issues.

Finally, in a lighter vein, and throwing Hillary Clinton under the bus, he said he wasn't running because it was his "turn." More seriously, besides the bright lines he continues to draw with her over things like Wall Street regulation, he threw her under the bus on the War on Drugs, calling for a lot less incarceration, especially on things like minor drug crimes. Given that Clinton gets significant campaign funds from private prison companies, this is important.

For a few more text pullouts, see Mother Jones. And, the NYT gave him a respectable read — on its First Draft blog. Let's see how the main page plays it. And, a Paul Krugman. Or others.

"Others" including a "real socialist" like Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant, who is not yet highly impressed by Sanders.

And, per PDiddle in comments below, I'm at least some sort of semi-pacifist myself. And, I have blogged extensively about Bernie sucking too much at the military teat. PD's got more on his take at his blog. And, Sanders' website has full speech text.

Too bad he already co-opted himself by (on paper, at least) forswearing a third-party run.

Feds tell #wingnuts: Worry about your own, not #Muslims

Very interesting news analysis piece from the New York Times.

It's still anti-government extremists (who are far more likely to come from the far right than the far left) who are the biggest worry, according to a national database of police departments:

In a survey we conducted with the Police Executive Research Forum last year of 382 law enforcement agencies, 74 percent reported anti-government extremism as one of the top three terrorist threats in their jurisdiction; 39 percent listed extremism connected with Al Qaeda or like-minded terrorist organizations. And only 3 percent identified the threat from Muslim extremists as severe, compared with 7 percent for anti-government and other forms of extremism.

And, we have specific examples:

Last year, for example, a man who identified with the sovereign citizen movement — which claims not to recognize the authority of federal or local government — attacked a courthouse in Forsyth County, Ga., firing an assault rifle at police officers and trying to cover his approach with tear gas and smoke grenades. The suspect was killed by the police, who returned fire. In Nevada, anti-government militants reportedly walked up to andshot two police officers at a restaurant, then placed a “Don’t tread on me” flag on their bodies. An anti-government extremist in Pennsylvania was arrested on suspicion of shooting two state troopers, killing one of them, before leading authorities on a 48-day manhunt. A right-wing militant in Texas declared a “revolution” and was arrested on suspicion of attempting to rob an armored car in order to buy weapons and explosives and attack law enforcement. These individuals on the fringes of right-wing politics increasingly worry law enforcement officials.

We didn’t even mention Cliven Bundy, among Nevada’s anti-government militants, either.

That’s why, although not agreeing with everything related to bonding amounts on the Twin Peaks Shooting in Waco, I don’t blame police for having some serious concerns.

The bottom line comes elsewhere in the piece, though, and it’s the admonition to have appropriate risk proportionality knowledge:

(T)errorism of all forms has accounted for a tiny proportion of violence in America. There have been more than 215,000 murders in the United States since 9/11. For every person killed by Muslim extremists, there have been 4,300 homicides from other threats.

Exactly.

In fact, cigarettes kills as many people in two days or so as were killed on 9/11. Yet, you have people applauding the TSA kabuki and worse while still puffing away.

Update, June 19: Dylann Roof is the latest proof of how true this all is.

Lower courts almost overshadow SCOTUS on #gaymarriage and #WarOnTerror

Two big rulings today, from two different appellate courts, each almost as big, relative to the level of the court, as the Supreme Court's cellphone privacy ruling.

First, a federal district court judge in Oregon said the no-fly list is unconstitutional because it violates due process of the Fifth Amendment:

Previously the government has argued that because other modes of travel on land and sea are available, there is no right to travel by air and no need to change the no-fly list procedures.

“Such an argument ignores the numerous reasons that an individual may have for wanting or needing to travel overseas quickly, such as the birth of a child, the death of a loved one, a business opportunity or a religious obligation,” District Judge Anna J. Brown wrote. “A prohibition on flying turns routine international travel into an odyssey that imposes significant logistical, economic and physical demands on travelers.”

Bingo.

Now, Team Obama's likely response, if it loses this case at both appellate and Supreme Court level? Expand this to a no-train, no-bus zone, I'm sure. Given that Dear Leader is a Bushie or worse on privacy rights and the War on Terra, what else would you expect?

More seriously, given that an appellate court remanded this back to district court after saying it was improperly dismissed, I'm sure the Justice Department is working up a tweaked version of the no-fly list, so that The Most Transparent Administration in History™ will make it easy to get their names removed if they are there inadvertently.

Oh, was that not serious enough, either?

And, the first appellate court to rule on the matter says that Utah's gay marriage ban is unconstitutional. The 10th Circuit, in Denver, upheld the district court's ruling.

This is what I'm sure Anthony Kennedy, in his hair-splitting ruling on California's Proposition 8 and the feds' Defense of Marriage Act all of a year ago was hoping to avoid ... a stampede toward gay marriage bans being tossed.

But, it's happening.

#BokoHaram: A possible actual scandal of sorts for Hillary Clinton?

No, it's not the Benghazi embassy stuff, even though the House has, pretty much on party-line vote, created a special investigative panel there that's sure to be stacked with wingnuts.

Rather, it's the fact that the Department of State that Clinton ran for more than four years did not officially "certify" the Nigerian terrorist group Boko Haram as being a terrorist group until November 2013. Here's the crux of the issue:

The letter asks “Under federal statute, militant groups must meet three standards to be classified as a foreign terrorist organization. For designation as an FTO, a group must be a terrorist organization, it must engage terrorist activity (or retain the intent and capability to do so), and it must threaten the security of American nationals or the national security of the United States. Why, when it was clear as early as 2011 that Boko Haram met all of these conditions, was the FTO designation not made until November 2013?”

King and Meehan go on to raise further questions about the government’s response to the Nigerian terrorist group and state “it is critical that we address the threat posed by Boko Haram before it has the ability to export its violence and harm American interests and potentially Americans themselves.”

It may be true that State, as claimed by reliable Democratic flaks, was doing some behind-the-scenes work, but, given the kidnapping of some 350 schoolchildren this week, it obviously wasn't enough. Hayes Brown may be halfway right. Steve Benen's just a hack trying to disguise himself as a journalist, no less so than wingnuts.

That said, Nigeria, like the Middle East, is awash with oil, though that oil is in the largely non-Muslim south. And, oil complicates everything, or we let it complicate everything.

Here's the Beast's original story, which could also show Clinton as a bit of a hypocrite for now worrying about women and girls:

(H)er own State Department refused to place Boko Haram on the list of foreign terrorist organizations in 2011, after the group bombed the U.N. headquarters in Abuja. The refusal came despite the urging of the Justice Department, the FBI, the CIA, and over a dozen senators and congressmen.

While the angst since then has been primarily Republican, it's had enough Democratic involvement to be at least semi-bipartisan.

The Beast gives fair space to the anti-designation argument, which isn't one that's all wet. Nonetheless, when coupled with still-lingering aroma over Benghazi (some, CIA-related, will remain deeply buried by both mainstream parties), this isn't good "optics" for Clinton. She's just lucky it's May 2014 and not, say, October 2015. Somehow, if this were then, somebody would be resurrecting her old "3 a.m. phone call" ad she ran against then-Senator Barack Obama.

Anyway, even with giving the anti-designation folks a tip of the hat, if Nigeria wasn't reaching out beyond its borders for a regional initiative, why weren't we? Especially given that the kidnappings are revealing more and more a government of dysfunctionality there.

To be sure, the GOP is already exploiting this issue. To also be sure, contra the hackish Benen in particular, and the quasi-tribalist Think Progress in general, that still doesn't mean there aren't legitimate issues involved. And, it doesn't mean that these issues only seem legitimate with hindsight.

Beyond that, the rise of Boko Haram ties with other things identified as "Westernizing," like oil-based corruption, which has tendrils with some connection to Dick Cheney, and more. If both Clinton and Obama wanted to address Boko Haram, we'd push to further develop solar energy in both the US and Nigeria as part of that.

And, that bipartisan foreign policy establishment issue, scolding Hillary Clinton for fundraising or other political points aside, may make things worse. Among the "worse" could be more cries to increase US military presence in Africa. Add on other Westernizing ideas that only feed Boko Haram's contempt, like the calls for moar "social media" and "hastags — including you, Ms. First Lady Dear Leader, and it only gets worse. Is there such a thing as "social media imperialism"?

GOP nuttery on Fort Hood shoting starts

Yes, I know the specter of Maj. Hidal Hasan hovers over the April 2, 2014, Fort Hood shooting.

But, no, Rep. Mike McCaul, Fort Hood is not likely becoming a jihadi hot spot for terrorists.

Rather, as the war in Iraq winds up (we think) and the one in Afghanistan lessens, but continues, Fort Hood will instead become a hot spot for more veterans like Ivan Lopez, suffering PTSD, possibly linked to a traumatic brain injury, and shoddily, cheaply treated by our government because of largely GOP rah-rah Congressional warmongers like you.

Yes, per the NYT's story, there was also a foiled 2011 attack, but that was three years ago.

Let's focus on the actualities we know. And they are that Lopez was treated for PTSD and may have had a TBI. And, instead of foaming over something unlikely, let's ask how we can prevent more Ivan Lopezes by:
A. Getting better treatment for the ones now;
B. Not going into more stupid wars with "the army we have now."

Perry joins Abbott as hypocrites on big goverment

Rick Perry opposes reductions in force in the Texas National Guard. Because! Because, so much, that he made up a laundry list of reasons.

As for those natural disasters, if you'd concentrate on not overpumping groundwater and reducing what Texas is doing to cause climate change and global warming, you'd mitigate disasters and save a whole bunch of money right there.

As for "War on Terror," please, Rick. Go back to your video cameras to catch the bazillions of illegals you said they would. Maybe you should have taken a page from Kinky Friedman and pasted money on each camera or something?

Four dead in air-drone-strikes

It's not quite as catchy as "Four dead in O-hi-o," but, there's a parallel.

Eric "Hitler" Holder

The New York Times informs us that President Barack Obama, aka Dear Leader, had drone strikes of the US kill not only American-born Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, but three other American citizens. Without due process. Without even close to a semi-declared "War on Terror" involving Yemen. Just vague names like "Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula."

In a letter to Congressional leaders obtained by The New York Times, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. disclosed that the administration had deliberately killed Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical Muslim cleric who was killed in a drone strike in September 2011 in Yemen.

The letter also said that the United States had killed three other Americans: Samir Khan, who was killed in the same strike; Mr. Awlaki’s son Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, who was also killed in Yemen; and Jude Mohammed, who was killed in a strike in Pakistan. 

And, given how much Attorney General Eric Holder Hitler has obfuscated in the past, why should we believe this:

“These individuals were not specifically targeted by the United States,” Mr. Holder wrote.  

I don't.

Anyway, here's justification Hitler and his boss, Dear Leader, offer:

Holder, in a speech at Northwestern University Law School last year, laid out the administration’s basic legal thinking that American citizens who are deemed to be operational terrorists, who pose an “imminent threat of violent attack” and whose capture is infeasible may be targeted. ...

But Holder’s letter went further in discussing the death of Mr. Awlaki in particular, an operation the administration had previously refused to publicly acknowledge. He said it was not Mr. Awlaki’s words urging violent attacks against Americans that led the United States to target him, but direct actions in planning attacks. ...

Holder alleged that Mr. Awlaki not only “planned” the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner on Dec. 25, 2009, a claim that has been widely discussed in court documents and elsewhere, but also “played a key role” in an October 2010 plot to bomb cargo planes bound for the United States, including taking “part in the development and testing” of the bombs. 

Fine. Present the information in a court of law. (We know that, in reality, that will never happen.)

This is probably part of what is behind Holder's snooping on the Associated Press. They either have reason to believe, or fear, that something about these other targeted killings were being, or going to be, leaked by somebody.

To refresh, that snooping was about:

Officials have previously said in public testimony that the U.S. attorney in Washington is conducting a criminal investigation into who may have provided information contained in a May 7, 2012, AP story about a foiled terror plot. The story disclosed details of a CIA operation in Yemen that stopped an al-Qaida plot in the spring of 2012 to detonate a bomb on an airplane bound for the United States.

The Times' story about the four killings doesn't have dates on the third and fourth killings. So, it's not guaranteed this is part of what the snooping was about, but it stands to reason.

And, of course, these are just the four we know about.

What other American citizens, whether targeted or not, have been killed in drone attacks? And, not just in Yemen or Pakistan in the War on Terror, but, say, in Mexico in the War on Drugs?

Terrorists - white and well right here in Texas, #Islamophobia #SamHarris

Sam Harris irks me for many reasons.

First, he's a shallow thinker in general who got lucky to hit the initial surge of Gnu Atheist fandom with "The End of Faith."

Second, he's either ignorant of philosophy of religion, psychology of religion and sociology of religion, or else he's a liar. In that book, he claimed Buddhism was just a psychology. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Even atheistic Buddhists still almost to a man or woman believe in two metaphysical principles — karma and reincarnation — and conduct social practices geared toward how they stand in relation to those two principles.

Third is his Islamophobia.

A: Contra fellow Ig-Gnu-rant Atheist Jerry Coyne, Islamophobia exists. It's the Gnu Atheist Christianophobia taken to a further level of stereotyping.

B. Contra Coyne at the same link, Harris has advocated torture in the "War on Terror."
B1: He's done so in cases beyond Alan Dershowitz's stereotypical "ticking time bomb."
B2: Even Dershowitz's stereotypical case doesn't make torture right morally.
B3: Torture doesn't work.
B4: Harris has also discussed the possibility of using nuclear weapons in the "War on Terror."

Now it's true that, contra Al-Jazeera, Islam is not a "race."

But, by wanting to use race along with allegedly Islamic looks in clothing, Sam Harris has touted airport security profiling of Mooslims, even when he's been shown that it won't work.

Why doesn't Sam Harris want to profile theoretically Christian white extremists as much as Moooslims?

After all, in the last couple of years, they've probably killed more Americans than Moooslim terrorists.

A federal assistant DA has withdrawn himself from a case in Houston against Aryan Brotherhood, based on the shooting last week of the Kaufman County state DA, and the ADA for the county earlier this year, confirming, it appears, that Aryan Brotherhood is a prime suspect. More backstory here.

I know that the Aryan Brotherhood doesn't dip into the bible to try to help justify its white supremacist claims, but other militant groups and individuals do.

Tim McVeigh ring a bell?