Hangover Discurso

Supreme Sillyness Edition

The far-right outcry over the Supreme Court (narrowly) restoring habeas rights to the poor buggers the Bush regime has stuffed into cells at Guantanamo Bay has exceeded even my expectations - and I expected them to get really fucking irrational. They're outdoing themselves. Calling them the "rabid right" now seems a little... mild. I don't think there are words in the English language that can succinctly sum up just how paranoid, delusional, and sensationally stupid they are.

Exhibit A: Bill Kristol, neocon columnist and remarkable dumbshit:

Today on Fox News Sunday, Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol revealed that “very soon” — likely as early as next week — McCain and Graham will be introducing legislation to undermine the Supreme Court decision by setting up a “national security court”:

And I think you will see Senator Graham, accompanied by Senator McCain, come to the floor of the Senate very soon, like next week, and say, We cannot let chaos obtain here. We can’t let 200 different federal district judges on their own whim call this CIA agent here, say, ‘I don’t believe this soldier here who said this guy was doing this,’ you have to release someone,’ or, ‘Let’s build up — let’s compromise sources and methods with a bunch of trials. I mean, it’s ridiculous.

Yes, Billy, how dare a country founded on the ideals of law, justice and equality possibly allow such horrible things as trials. Where judges, of all horrible people, get to tell honest CIA agents to fuck off and stop torturing innocent people. The horror! It's totally ridiculous that we can't have a perfect little police state, wherein any atrocity can be ushered safely under a rug because, well, you know, the truth might come out and compromise brutal police-state tactics.

How he must pine for the good ol' days of Star Chambers and show trials. Good times, good times. Never mind that the Center for American Progress thinks a National Security Court is a dumbfuck idea:

Adopting a national security court system would send the United States down another unproven path prone to repeat the same mistakes. It would not further justice or American legitimacy. Rather, it would risk creating American courts that more resemble the tribunals of dictators than those of democracies. And that would be a strategic victory for Al Qaeda, not for Americans. […]

Because Billy wants nothing so much as he wants to live under a dictatorship. I don't imagine he'd be unhappy about a strategic victory for al Qaeda, either: after all, Public Enemy #1's been looking a little peaked lately. Can't keep the fear screwed to a fever-pitch, thus allowing conservatives to get away with any outrageous infringement on constitutional liberty they want, if the populace isn't quivering in terror over teh terrarists.

Exhibit B: Newt Gingrich returns to his own true self and demonstrates that, for all he wants to be seen as a rational, reasonable politician, he's still a frothing insane wingnut at heart:

On Face the Nation this morning, former House speaker Newt Gingrich echoed the extreme rhetoric of the right wing to decry the Supreme Court’s recent decision restoring the right of habeas corpus petitions to Guantanamo detainees, charging the decision would “cost us a city”:

This court decision is a disaster, which could cost us a city. And the debate ought to be about whether you’re prepared to lose an American city on behalf of five lawyers — it was a five to four decision. … That ought to be a principled argument between McCain and Obama, about whether or not you’re prepared to allow any random, nutcake district judge who has no knowledge of national security to set the rules for terrorists.

Oh, yes. Restore habeas corpus rights, and the next thing you know, BOOM! There goes Los Angeles. That's just what the terrorists have been waiting for. At least there's one grain of truth in Newt's screeching: he should know all about "random, nutcake district" judges, considering it's his hero Georgie who's stocked our nation's courts with random nutcakes.

And speaking of nutcake judges... you know how Justice Antonin Scalia is completely batshit insane? He doesn't disappoint: he's our Exhibit C - Extreme Fucktard Extaordinaire:

In his dissenting opinion, he devoted an entire section to “a description of the disastrous consequences of what the Court has done today,” a procedure “contrary to my usual practice,” he admitted. Scalia adopted extreme rhetoric about the impacts of the decision, calling it a “self-invited…incursion into military affairs” that would “almost certainly” kill Americans. Some lowlights:

– “America is at war with radical Islamists. … Our Armed Forces are now in the field against the enemy, in Afghanistan and Iraq.”

– “The game of bait-and-switch that today’s opinion plays upon the Nation’s Commander in Chief will make the war harder on us. It will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed.”

– “Today the Court warps our Constitution.”

– “The Nation will live to regret what the Court has done today.”

Please remember that John McCain thinks the world of this man and wants to pack our Supreme Court with many more like him. Look upon that vision of the future and consider what our country would be like, but I'd suggest you acquire yourself a bucket first. And lock up any sharp objects that might be used to put your own eyes out.

But what about it? Aren't these guys at Gitmo the worst of the worst? I mean, we're talking pure-D, explosive-vest wearing, "Death to America!" screaming, rabid fanatics with all kinds of super-dooper al Qaeda terrorist camp training here, right? Right?

An eight-month McClatchy investigation in 11 countries on three continents has found that Akhtiar was one of dozens of men — and,
according to several officials, perhaps hundreds — whom the U.S. has wrongfully imprisoned in Afghanistan, Cuba and elsewhere on the basis of flimsy or fabricated evidence, old personal scores or bounty payments.

McClatchy interviewed 66 released detainees, more than a dozen local officials — primarily in Afghanistan — and U.S. officials with intimate knowledge of the detention program. The investigation also reviewed thousands of pages of U.S. military tribunal documents and other records.

This unprecedented compilation shows that most of the 66 were low-level Taliban grunts, innocent Afghan villagers or ordinary criminals. At least seven had been working for the U.S.-backed Afghan government and had no ties to militants, according to Afghan local officials. In effect, many of the detainees posed no danger to the United States or its allies.

Heh heh heh whoops.

And here we have one of the premier reasons our right wing ravers don't want these poor, abused buggers to ever see the light of day: along with the fact that their precious house of cards will collapse like a burning straw man, there's the innate fear of the bully that the people he bullied might just break his nose if he ever lets go of 'em. Do you know how galling it will be for these warmongers to have to apologize to the people whose lives they've completely fucked over? I think that, more than the fear that some of these once-witless and now-radicalized prisoners might exit their military prison cells and head straight for an al Qaeda training facility, the right wing is terrified that they'll have to actually say "I'm sorry" to some Muslims.

The fragile yet outsized neocon male ego wasn't built to handle such horrific abuse. Expect a lot more hue, cry and hyperbole from these fucktards. It's all they've got left.

Ginormous tip o' the shot glass to Think Progress and Digby's Hullaballoo, which both kept me simultaneously entertained and horrified for hours. They need the drink.