For a long time, I’ve been arguing that the Republican Party has painted itself into a corner with regard to Obamacare. The linchpin of the law is the individual mandate and it is what was put forth by the Heritage Foundation and enacted in Romneycare. It was the great conservative healthcare idea that would save us from the dreaded single payer health insurance that liberals wanted. Now that conservatives have defined their very own healthcare plan as a Stalinist plot to rid America of freedom, they really don’t have anything to offer.

Ezra Klein wrote an excellent article last week on the history of this, Newt Gingrich Explains How the GOP’s Obamacare Tactics Backfired. He noted that when the Democrats proposed conservative healthcare reform, the Republicans could have gone before the TV cameras and laughed and said, “At long last, they agree that the conservative policy is the best!” Instead, they redefined the political center so that their once conservative plan was an extreme left wing conspiracy.

So where does that leave the Republican Party? Aaron Carroll at The Incidental Economist wrote a series of articles that answer exactly this question. The first one is aptly named, Backed Into a Corner. It is about the conservative fascination with the healthcare systems in Switzerland and Singapore. This all comes out of ignorance of these systems and the conservatives’ desperate desire to find some system—Any system!—that works and is more conservative than Obamacare. He wrote:

But it gets more bizarre. Just two days later, Carroll was back with the news that, “Singapore announced that however much government is involved, it’s not nearly enough.” And then he listed all the ways that Singapore is making their system more like Obamacare, even with all the other socialist aspects of their system that we do not have.

So what are the conservatives to do? Well, it isn’t like anything has really changed. It’s just the supposed conservative wonks who keep looking to other countries for systems that might work and be conservative. But let’s not forget that even among these people, we know from experience that if the Democrats went along with a new plan, these supposed policy thinkers would turn against these ideas. So Avik Roy can enjoy his reputation as a Reasonable Republican and be booked on All In, but anyone who is paying attention knows that he and those like him are at best apologists for whatever crazy idea the Republicans are currently focused on.

The week before last, I went after Lanhee Chen who claimed at Republicans had all kinds of great ideas for healthcare reform. Of course, none of his ideas would address the healthcare crisis in this county. In fact, they were mostly just a laundry list of conservative wishes that have only minor relationship to healthcare. Then, just 5 days later, Karl Rove wrote his big OpEd in the Wall Street Journal that listed the same exact policies, Republicans Do Have Ideas for Health Care. It had the offensive subtitle, “But liberals don’t like to admit it because the GOP would put patients, not government, in charge.”

Aaron Carroll again went to work and destroyed Rove’s list point by point, Karl Rove’s Health Care “Ideas.” The truth is that some of the ideas would actually make the problem worse. But whether or not the ideas work is beside the point. The point for Rove, Chen, Roy, and the whole Republican establishment is to counter the widely held opinion that the Republican Party just doesn’t care. But the truth is that if you push even these establishment types (Not to mention the extremists!) you will soon learn that they think we don’t need to worry about the uninsured because they can just go to the emergency room.

The modern conservative movement puts liberals in a very difficult position. We can’t just let their baseless claims go unchecked. But by attacking them, we provide the movement with a certain level of legitimacy. And it is wholly unearned. With healthcare, the situation outside of politics is clear: there is a big problem and something must be done. But Republicans don’t want to do anything. So what should be their strategy? Clearly: obstruct and claim that they have great ideas that the opposition won’t listen to. This is exactly what the Republican Party is doing. I think that demonstrates that they don’t want different policies from the Democrats; they want no policies.

All Americans know this story: World War II ended as a result of us dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Some argue that the bombing of Nagasaki was not necessary, but pretty much everyone thinks that if it weren’t for Hiroshima, an American invasion of Japan would have killed hundreds of thousands on both sides. We humans do love our myths. And that is all that “Hiroshima defeated Japan” is: a myth.

Ward Wilson wrote an amazing article over at Foreign Policy, The Bomb Didn’t Beat Japan… Stalin Did. Even before reading the article, I figured it had important things to say. Because here’s the thing: the one mistake that Americans compulsively make regarding World War II is to dismiss the enormous contributions that the Soviet Union made to winning. And look: I’m not exactly a fan of the Soviet Union. In particular, Stalin was—in an absolute sense—a greater villain than Hitler. But it is plain wrong to continue to apply Cold War mentality to the heroic sacrifice that the Soviet people performed for all of us.

The story Wilson tells is really interesting and I recommend that you read the whole thing. I’ve often wondered why the United States decided to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki and not larger cities. The reason is very clear: there were basically no other cities left standing in Japan. The two atomic bombs came after months of city carpet bombing. This campaign was highly effective.

Although these conventional bombing attacks were somewhat less in total explosive capacity than the atomic bombs, they were about as effective. According to Wilson:

The Hiroshima bomb released a total of 16.5 kilotons. But that overstates the difference. Because the atomic bomb was a single explosion, it didn’t do as much damage as thousands of individual conventional bombs. To the Japanese leaders, the atomic bomb did not particularly stand out:

Clearly, I can’t go into the the whole story here, but there are lots of problems with the claim that the atomic bomb or bombs causes the Japanese to surrender. Another big point is that the timing is all wrong. After the Hiroshima bomb on 6 August 1945, the Japanese leaders didn’t even meet for three days. And although they surrendered on that day of the Nagasaki bombing, that wasn’t the reason.

One of the main things I never knew was that although the Japanese civilian population was being decimated, the Japanese army was doing pretty well. Up to that time, they thought they could do reasonably well against a United States invasion. At that point, they didn’t think they would win the war. They were more interested in getting decent terms for a surrender. There were two things they were concerned about. One was that the emperor would be eliminated. The other was that the military leadership would be tried for war crimes. Already at that point the Nazis were being tried. Their hope was that they could get the Soviet Union to broker a deal with the United States. The Soviets were not at war with the Japanese and it was thought that the antagonism between the two super powers would lead to more pleasant surrender terms.

That all changed on 9 August 1945, but not because Nagasaki was bombed. On that day, the Soviets declared war on Japan. That totally screwed the Japanese. To begin with, it meant that they couldn’t use Stalin and company to help broker a deal. Even more important, it meant that the Japanese could not counter an invasion because it would now be coming from all sides from two great armies. When Stalin announced the new war, the Japanese caved. It is as simple as that.

I think it is pretty clear why the United States tells itself that the bomb won the war. We don’t want to give the Soviets any credit. What’s more, the whole thing is part of a larger American myth: the rugged individualist who through his wit and ingenuity conquers all. From our perspective, the fact that the Japanese have latched onto this myth is harder to understand. But there isn’t any magic to it. The Japanese had been at war for 14 years at that point. All along, they’d been telling their people that the war was going great. And now they had lost. It is much easier to say that the country lost because of some amazing new war technology. That goes over a hell of a lot better than, “We totally blew it!”

The whole thing makes me feel even worse about this than I did before. I’ve always kind of thought that maybe Hiroshima could be justified. True, I thought that the bomb could have been demonstrated diplomatically without killing hundreds of thousands. But maybe that wasn’t reasonable. Regardless, the Nagasaki bombing was not necessary and was probably used to send a message to the Soviet Union. Now it looks like all of that is nonsense. We had already been on a relentless campaign to destroy the Japanese civilian population. What’s more, we had built two bombs and so we were going to drop two bombs. On the other side, the Japanese government really didn’t seem to care that their civilian population was being destroyed. So other than our self-righteousness, I don’t especially blame America. It is the whole species that I’m disappointed in. Reading history tends to do that to me.

I just read a Dylan Byers article about Jeffrey Toobin’s claim that David Miranda was acting like a “drug mule” for classified information that Greenwald had. I’m not going to go into that; Toobin is a typical government apologist. What he says in the article is more or less, “Of course I’m for freedom of the press. I’m just not in this particular case. Or this other one. Or that one over there.” I’m quite tired of these people who clog up the ranks of “journalism” without actually valuing journalism. The man is a villain like so many others in the profession.

The article got me thinking about that analogy though. As far as I understand it, what Toobin is saying is fundamentally correct: Miranda was transporting files from Laura Poitras to Glenn Greenwald. And that raises a really important point that goes entirely against Toobin and the other government apologists. Supposedly, the government wants those files so they don’t get into the wrong hands. But by stealing the files from couriers, it puts more pressure on journalists to send them electronically. That allows pretty much every spying agency in the world to get a chance to hack the files.

So instead of the slow and careful examination of the files and a standard journalistic (and safe) approach to their release, the data is much more likely to go feral. Is that what our government wants? I think that our government doesn’t particularly care. At this point, their actions are all about controlling this leak and stopping the next. Their interest in the current data is only to find out more of what people like Greenwald and Bart Gellman know. As we’ve seen throughout this process, the White House and the DHS have been spinning the news like crazy.

It is getting harder and harder to accept the claims of the government and its apologists who claim that all of this spying is for our own good. Anyone paying attention must at this point know that the government’s actions are all for its own good. And when spying on the nation is not enough, propaganda and intimidation will be used. And journalists like Jeffrey Toobin will be there to explain how right and necessary it all it.

Today, the Guardian had a live feed of information about yesterday’s detainment of Glenn Greenwald’s husband David Miranda. When I reported on it yesterday, I was a bit concerned that as the facts came out, the situation might get a bit more cloudy. After all, why would the United Kingdom government detain a person with such a high profile defender as Glenn Greenwald? It seems like a move designed to provoke a reexamination and rollback of the government’s police powers. But I guess you really can’t underestimate just how stupid the police are wherever you go, because the only indication that this action was anything but a vulgar abuse of power is a statement by Scotland Yard claiming that the detention was “legally and procedurally sound.”

Meanwhile, just about everyone is enraged by what has happened. I was very taken by a letter written by Keith Vaz, the Labor chair of the Commons home affairs committee, to Bernard Hogan-Howe, the Metropolitan police commissioner. He asked ten questions. Most interesting are, “Why this decision was taken, and upon what grounds it was deemed justified?” And, “Whether any foreign authorities asked us to take this decision?” And, “Why Mr Miranda: (a) had his personal effects confiscated? (b) Was detained for the full 9 hours?”

On these issues, Miranda has no doubt. He gave the Guardian an interview earlier today. He said that he believed this all came from the United States. Josh Earnest, White House deputy press secretary, claimed that the United States had nothing to do with it. (He said they were given a “heads up.”) But I suspect this is either an outright lie, or just a legal truth. For example, if the NSA was working with Scotland Yard, I doubt the press secretary would see it was the “United States.”

Miranda also said that during the interrogation he was asked random questions—none of which had anything to do with terrorism. Most important though, he was intimidated into providing the password to his computer and phone. He was apparently told he would be arrested and jailed throughout the 9 hours of detention. That strikes me as a hollow threat, but for a young man who has no experience with such matters, I’m sure it sounded very serious. This is one of the reasons that the police should not be given the wide latitude they have to lie: it most harms the young and innocent and does not further the cause of justice.

We’ll see where this goes from here. The story is getting surprisingly little coverage in mainstream American press. I couldn’t even find it on Fox News, although Fox News Latino is covering it, probably because Miranda is Brazilian. That’s not just to pick on Fox. Normally, it has the most relentless coverage of any outlet, regardless of the story. However that may be, it is a very important story that relates directly and indirectly to this country. Stay tuned.

I doubt that in 1945 anyone said, “In 1944, the Nazis wanted to kill all the Jews, but this year actually takes us into new territory because they want to kill all the Jews this year.” You see, it’s pretty much the same thing; it is just a slightly different business plan: kill all the Jews in the next couple of years or kill all the Jews this year. Thus, I am having a difficult time with all the recent hysteria about the business community suddenly being unhappy with the Republican Party. Is it really true, as Greg Sargent said this morning, “The crusade to shut down the government to defund Obamacare actually takes us into new territory“? (Emphasis, mine, of course.)

Who would believe such a thing? After all, it is only two years since the Republicans forced a debt ceiling crisis for less concrete, but no less ridiculous reasons. Now I understand: the business community should care. The 2011 debt ceiling crisis led to the Sequester and that has led to slow economic growth that is very bad for the American business community. But they didn’t care then; why would they care now? As Matt Yglesias just pointed out:

But Yglesias is an iconoclast who almost defines the #SlatePitch: “What’s the giraffe’s most distinctive feature? Hint: It’s not the neck!” Regardless, he stands out here. Everyone else seems to think that the business community is very upset with the GOP. Two Huffington Post reporters similarly wrote, Lawmakers Backed By Chamber Of Commerce Spending Stall Business Lobby’s Legislative Priorities. They claimed, “Nonetheless, the question remains whether chamber-supported candidates have yielded an ample return on investment. Despite a few successes, the chamber has enjoyed few major legislative victories from its lobbying and campaign muscle in the Obama era. If anything, the lobbying group has incurred major setbacks in its mission to boost business by electing lawmakers who have been counterproductive to that cause.”

This is just silly. For one thing, what the Chamber of Commerce cares most about is stopping change. The Republicans have been damned good at that. But if you look at what it really cares about, it is not minor changes to immigration law. Again, Matt Yglesias laid it out:

What I think is going on with these liberalish reporters is the usual happy horseshit. They really want to believe that finally the business community is doing what the mainstream press won’t: calling out the Republican Party for its nonsense. But this is not happening. And it won’t happen. Since Clinton at least (and really as far back as Carter), the Democratic Party has been totally in the pocket of the business community. The Democrats are, I believe, more pro-business than the Republicans when it comes to results. (For example, Obamacare will, in the end, be great for business, even if the community now doesn’t think so.) So if the Chamber of Commerce hasn’t noticed this yet, they never will. And no number of reporters hoping will make it so.

Welcome to your new police state! There isn’t a lot of information at this point, but Glenn Greenwald’s boyfriend was detained at the Heathrow airport for no apparent reason other than that Greenwald has been investigating the surveillance state. The man, David Miranda, was detained under schedule 7 of the United Kingdom’s Terrorism Act 2000. This law “allows officers to stop, search, question and detain individuals” for up to 9 hours without charge. Miranda was released after 8 hours and 55 minutes. According to the Guardian, only one out of 2,000 people detained are held by more than 6 hours.

By the provisions in this law, the person detained is not allowed a lawyer. What’s more, it is illegal for him to not “cooperate,” which basically means that the supposed right to remain silent is practically if not theoretically gone. Greenwald himself was contacted after Miranda had been held for 3 hours. As a result of this, lawyers from the Guardian and officials from Brazil (Miranda is Brazilian)—including the Brazilian Ambassador to the UK—could get no information until Miranda was released.

The purpose of the law is to detain people who are suspected of terrorism. That most clearly was not the case with Miranda. Instead, the officials spent the whole 9 hours questioning him about the work of Greenwald and his colleague documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras, who Miranda had spent the last week visiting. The officials also confiscated various electronic devices that Miranda was carrying—including his laptop, cell phone, and game consoles. They did not say when or even if these would be returned.

Greenwald noted, “They completely abused their own terrorism law for reasons having nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism: a potent reminder of how often governments lie when they claim that they need powers to stop ‘the terrorists,’ and how dangerous it is to vest unchecked power with political officials in its name.”

Greenwald remains defiant and determined. But I don’t think the point of this flagrant abuse of police powers is about stopping him. It is about stopping any other reporters who might want to follow in his footsteps. This is how empires fall: by desperately clinging to power. Welcome to your new police state.

Update (18 August 2013 6:55 pm)

The Brazilian government has released a statement. This is my modified Google Translate version in English:

The United States and the United Kingdom are totally out of control. I hope this causes change, but I’m not hopeful.

To me, “Reince Priebus” sounds like a vegetable that I don’t like. But in fact, he is just the head of the RNC. And although I don’t like him, he is entertaining. But I only say that because I’m not a Republican. If I were, I would feel the same way toward him as I did when Joe Lieberman said, “The Constitution guarantees freedom of religion, not freedom from religion.”

After weeks of whining about a couple of Hillary Clinton biopics, Priebus and his RNC voted unanimously to not allow NBC or CNN to host any Presidential primary debates in 2016. This is just silly. It is likely that Clinton herself is none too unhappy about these biopics that, regardless of how positive they are toward her, will bring up all kinds of negative history. So I would think that the RNC would wait to see what kind of portrait the networks produce before it goes nuts.

Just this morning, I wrote about how the Republican establishment is concerned about what is happening to the party. But if the RNC isn’t part of the establishment, I don’t know what is. And this behavior is over the top. Priebus sounds like a petulant school boy. NBC News reported this morning:

In other words, “We’re grabbing our toys and taking them home!”

Steven Benen’s analysis is exactly correct, “In case this isn’t already obvious, excluding major news organizations and replacing journalists with right-wing media personalities at debates is a great idea if Republicans intend to have a nice conversation with themselves.” The concern of the RNC is not entirely (or even primarily) about the sin of news agencies doing things they don’t countenance. There is a real concern that having the mainstream press involved in the primaries causes the candidates to pander to much to the middle and not enough to the conservative base of the party.

Look, I understand this idea. People in a political party should have the chance to vote for candidates who really represent their views and not just people who are considered viable in a general election. And this has been a problem for the Democratic Party for decades. But it isn’t a problem for the Republican Party. During the 2012 primaries, the debates became a bidding war to see who could be the most “severe” conservative.

What this whole circus illustrates is that the Republican Party has come full circle. After it lost the 2008 election, the most extreme elements in the party started pushing the idea that the party had lost because it was not conservative enough. This led to ridiculous statements like, “I think conservatism is a great idea; we ought to try it!” But after the pounding in 2012, even Reince Priebus was talking about change. In the RNC’s Growth and Opportunity Project report that he commissioned, it said, “The Republican Party needs to stop talking to itself.” That was last December. So that idea lasted for 8 months and now he thinks it is best that the party go back to just talking to itself.

Step right up, ladies and gentlemen! Get your tickets for a once in two century event. Not since the start of the 1800s has anyone gotten to see the disintegration of a major American political party. Even the Civil War couldn’t do it! But now is the time. Watch as the Republican Party purges its apostates! Experience the Republicans turning inward and becoming the pure old white people’s party! Thrill to the GOP’s plummeting vote totals! But don’t wait. This rare event will be over before you know it and you won’t want to miss it. You’ll tell your grandchildren, “I was there when the Republican Party disintegrated!” And you’ll be right, if you step right up, ladies and gentlemen! Get your tickets…

I am often annoyed at the thought that in two decades no one will be able to deny global warming. All the oil companies will be fully diversified in renewable energy and we will finally be doing something about the problem. Better late than never. That doesn’t bother me. What bothers me is that all of the people who have made a living by claiming that global warming is a myth will just say, “Oops!” And that will be the end of it. If George Will is still alive, no one will think the less of him because of his cynical and relentless misinformation campaign. But at least we will move forward. The same cannot be said for many other things.

One of those things is the economy. Keynes famously said, “In the long run, we are all dead.” This was in response to economists who claimed that we didn’t need to worry about recessions because in the long run it would all work itself out. But there is a more pernicious aspect to this. It is absolutely true that if the government does nothing, a recession will eventually work itself out. In fact, if a government does everything it can to make things worse, a recession will still eventually work itself out. And in the end, the people in the government who made everything worse can say, “See! We were right!”

Dean Baker wrote a very brief article this morning with one of the best headlines I’ve ever seen, Doctors Report Assault Victim Feeling Better, Attribute Improvement to Vicious Beating. The article is in reference to a Financial Times report, Berlin and Brussels Credit Fiscal Discipline and Reform for Eurozone Recovery. So after years of the Eurozone harming its own economy, that economy is slowly on the mend. Where is the champagne?

And note that the news is not that great. In the second quarter of this year, the Eurozone grew by 1.2%—mostly on the backs of stronger growth in Germany and France. Regardless 1.2% is hardly a great growth rate. For example, the United States has been seeing a better growth rate and no one around here is cheering. What’s more, many people in Germany are cautioning that the future does not look so great as exports are slowing down.

I found one bit of news from the article very telling: “[Federation of German Industry chief executive Markus Kerber] said the greatest concern of the business lobby was the low level of investment in the German economy, with the share of investment in GDP falling from 20 per cent in 1999 to just 17 per cent in 2012.” The reason for all the government cut backs and raising of taxes is supposed to be to give the business community the “confidence” to invest. Clearly, the economy is recovering in other ways, despite not because of government policies.

So merrily we roll along. And in a few years (Hopefully!) when things are better, people will forget the suffering, and just remember that things are now better. Thus: the austerity policies must have created the good economy. But it certainly doesn’t help to have reporting like that from the Financial Times. That article does not make a single mention of the fact that the recovery might be occurring despite the policies. So it is just more myth making.

I think I may understand why Karl Rove sounds like the voice of reason in the Republican Party these days. Unlike most of the Republicans in Congress, he’s practical. To him, it is very simple: blocking everything that Obama proposes does not lead to Republican policy. Nor is it the case that just standing around blocking all policy will lead to a Republican White House and Congress. In fact, on Monday, the Washington Examiner published, House at Risk in 2014 Unless GOP Offers Agenda. According to the article, Republicans are quietly worried that they really could lose control of the House, even if the public statements assure us that it would be, “Pert near impossible.” And that is the kind of thing that Karl Rove is worried about.

Rove was debating the issue with Mike Lee on the Sean Hannity Radio Show on Monday. Rove said, “This assumes that the Democrats are going to be scared of a shutdown. They’re aren’t; they want it! They know what happened to us in 1995.” Lee responded that Rove was being a coward, “You mean to suggest that we’re not going to fight and we shouldn’t fight simply because we’re so afraid of being blamed for it? This is how we get into this mess when we say we’re afraid that the other side’s not going to cave so we have to. So we cave and we cave and we cave.” Note the framing: normal legislation within the limits of your power is caving. “Ignorance is strength” much?

It only gets worse. Jonathan Chait wrote an article this morning that suggests that we won’t see a government shutdown because the Republican establishment “is pushing back aggressively and effectively.” But that even if this is the case, it will only be a temporary reprieve. He flags an amazing National Review article by Robert Costa, Shutting Down a Shutdown. In it, he wrote, “Sources tell me the House GOP will probably avoid using a shutdown as leverage and instead use the debt limit and sequester fights as areas for potential legislative trades.” So instead of something bad (government shutdown), the Republicans will do something really bad (government default). Brilliant!

The problem here is the politics of impotence. At least half of the Congressional Republicans feel they must do something but they must not compromise their ideology. This makes them impotent because they simply don’t have the power to do what they want. Normally, a party would do what it must do to get the power it needed. That is certainly what people like Karl Rove want to do. But among the true believers, there is (as I’ve written about many times before) a revolutionary fervor. They think that if they just stand firm and believe, then the Democrats will just crumble. This is a very dangerous situation.

I don’t think that Rove is right to say that the Democrats want a shutdown. I think most of us would rather just have a reasonable party that we could deal with. But he is most assuredly right that the Democrats don’t fear a shutdown. It would be bad for the Republican Party. It could be just what the Democrats need to take back the House in 2014. But here’s the interesting thing: even if that happened, I don’t think that the Republican Party is ready to change. Even if they lost, the remaining members of the House Republican Caucus would claim that the problem was that they compromised too much. They would redouble their efforts at obstruction. And we would have to wait until 2018 to see any real changes. And that is what Karl Rove is worried about and it is why he is the most prominent voice of reason in that very troubled party.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad that Eric Holder has decided that in the fifth year of our cocaine sniffing, cannabis smoking president’s term that he ought to make a policy decision to do less harm to people who are, if anything, victims of our current system. If you haven’t heard, he’s calling for federal prosecutors to not put drug quantities on indictments. This will circumvent the automatic mandatory minimum sentences, which Congress, through years of trying to prove what big dicked tough on crime guys they are, have pushed to levels that make the Salem Witch Trials seem reasonable. So now judges will have discretion. But will they really?

When Chris Hayes was covering this the other day, he noted that it isn’t that the mandatory minimums took away discretion; it is just that they took away discretion from judges and gave it to prosecutors. I don’t see how this new policy really changes anything. After all, Holder has dug out a number of big exceptions to the policy. It can’t be related to gang activity, for instance. The discretion is still all theirs. What I expect to see is the exact same behavior from federal prosecutors with the exception that they will now file paperwork to explain why this case had to be thrown into the mandatory minimum pile.

Another issue is that this is just federal law. Most people serving time for drug charges are not in for a federal crime. It is true that over half of all the inmates in federal prison are there for drug crimes and this is only 20% for state inmates. But there are so many people in state prisons that there are almost three times as many drug felons in the state system. And this says nothing of those in local jails, which amount to about three quarters of a million at any given time.

The biggest problem, however, is that the “felon” label itself is what ruins lives. Being labeled a felon for the rest of your life is a much worse punishment than having to serve 5 years instead of 3 or 1. This is what most people don’t get about the system. There is no such thing as “paying your debt to society.” Our society has decided that a felon never pays his debt to society. That felon is reminded of this every time he fills out a job application or, in some areas, when he applies for food stamps. (And yes, I know that felons can, over time have their charges reduced and eliminated. But that takes time and money—two resources that are usually in short supply to the “ex”-felon.)

As of now, we’ve had three presidents in a row who committed drug felonies. (It doesn’t matter if Clinton inhaled or not.) Yet all of these men have continued the Drug War with great vigor. They’ve destroyed countless lives even as they were lucky enough to avoid prosecution. A felony conviction would have destroyed the lives of Clinton and Obama. Since Bush never needed to work a day in his life (and pretty much hasn’t), he never had anything to fear. But all of these men should have known better. They are all vile hypocrites and they deserve to rot in Hell for this reason alone.

As for the Holder announcement: time will tell. But I’m not too hopeful.

Glenn Greenwald wrote a very insightful article yesterday on the hypocrisy of the United States government and and media. It circled around this business of Obama calling off the summit with Vladimir Putin. The White House gave a number of reasons for this including the fact that Russia is persecuting homosexuals. But everyone accepts the fact that it is just that Russia was given Edward Snowden temporary asylum. Since when did the United States government give a flying fuck about the treatment of the powerless anywhere, even in the United States? After all, it was only last year that Obama “evolved” on the issue of gay marriage. As it is, Obama is perfectly fine with locking up cannabis and cocaine users for decades at a time—even though he has quite publicly admitting to doing the same thing himself. So it’s all about Snowden, because if there is one thing that the administration does care about, it is punishing whistleblowers, or as Obama calls them, “people involved in espionage.”

Greenwald noted that the United States and Russian do not have an extradition treaty. So Putin isn’t doing anything unusual, much less illegal. But guess who the United States does have an extradition treaty with? Italy. And yet, our great nation of laws broke its treaty when the Italian government asked for the extradition of Robert Lady and other CIA operatives who were convicted in absentia of kidnapping for the purpose of torture. And last year, the United States refused to extradite Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada to face genocide charges in Bolivia. And a couple of years before that, we wouldn’t extradite terrorist Luis Posada Carriles to Venezuela.

But we need to have our priorities. These three examples are only kidnapping for the purpose of torture, genocide, and terrorism. Snowden is accused to leaking potentially embarrassing documents. And let us not forget, these three men only harmed poor and weak people. Snowden annoyed some very powerful people. That’s the kind of crime that must be punished!

Meanwhile, the press is right there to stoke anger at Russia without providing any context. Even last night’s The Daily Show was on it. But more generally, the media have gone out of their way to attack Snowden and put what he’s done in the worst possible light. Check out this great argument between Greenwald and James Risen against the entirely typical mainstream apologetics of Jeffrey Toobin. Note how Toobin’s arguments devolve into, “You gotta be kidding me!” Because all right-thinking journalists know that the government is always right. And notice also that Piers Morgan is only one tiny step more reasonable than Toobin:

So we continue on with the United States government acting like the corrupt super power that it is. Meanwhile the media spew out their usual happy talk about how we are all good and the evil Russian government just won’t follow the law. I grew up during the Cold War. One of the things that we celebrated was that we had a free press whereas the Soviet Union had the government run Pravda. But even then, our press provided one-sided news that rarely came close to the truth. It is the same now—at least if you get your “news” from the television.

Afterword

Jeffrey Toobin’s claim is that it is great that we are talking about all of this stuff. Additionally, he admits that we are only discussing this stuff because of Edward Snowden. But he thinks that Snowden is a criminal who shouldn’t have leaked the documents. James Risen counted him (and most in the mainstream press), “That’s the thing I don’t understand about the climate in Washington these days. People want to have debates on television and elsewhere. But then you want to throw the people who start the debates in jail.” Morgan bails out Toobin by immediately pushing a straw man, “Is there no limit?!”