Reaction

Glenn Greenwald notes the 30 25% of Amerika that keeps the Faith by and for their Dear Leader is only growing in their agitation. Unfortunately, the DINOcratic "leadership" seems more inclined than ever to back down.

...Laura Ingraham was on Fox News last night interviewing Majorie Cohn about the Supreme Court's habeas corpus ruling in Boumediene, and advocated that the President should simply ignore the ruling of the Court...

Talk radio host (and sometimes Fox News guest anchor) Michael Reagan yesterday noted that a new group was sending letters to U.S. soldiers arguing that the U.S. Government had a role in the 9/11 attacks and then said this about people who argue that:

Take em out and shoot em. . . . They are traitors to this country, and shoot them. . . . Anybody who does that doesn't deserve to live. You shoot them. You call them traitors. That's what they are. And you shoot em dead. I'll pay for the bullets.

The rant went on like that for awhile. Reagan, the son of the canonized former President, previously said that "Howard Dean should be arrested and hung (sic) for treason or put in a hole until the end of the Iraq war."

Obviously, people like Laura Ingraham and Michael Reagan are crazed and absurd figures, but they have large audiences. There is a sizable portion of this country's population that has been fed a steady diet of ideas of this sort for years, a view of Government and political power that prevails in the worst tyrannies on the planet. The Leader has the right to break our laws. He should defy court rulings that enforce constitutional guarantees. The Government has the right to put people in cages for life with no process. People should be imprisoned or shot by virtue of the views they express.

As the Right comes to accept that their political movement lies in ruins -- as evidence of their rejection by the country becomes too compelling to ignore -- the desperation and frustration level increases and much of this rhetoric will become more extreme (note that Ingraham cited the President's low popularity ratings as a reason why he should ignore the Supreme Court's ruling; National Review's Andy McCarthy on Thursday suggested that in response to the Court's ruling, we should take all of the Guantanamo detainees and just slaughter them en masse). Having millions of citizens inculcated over many years with truly deranged, extremist tripe of this sort -- and Fox just announced that Ingraham would have her own show beginning next week -- obviously has consequences. We've seen just some of those over the last seven years, and the reaction is likely to intensify as that movement grows more impotent and marginalized.

I'm not so sure about that impotent and marginalized part. As Greenwald points out further on...

...Two articles -- one from Congressional Quarterly and one from The Hill -- yesterday reported what has appeared inevitable for some time. Specifically, Democratic Congressional leaders (i.e., Steny Hoyer, Nancy Pelosi and Silvestre Reyes) have now reached agreement with the White House and the GOP to pass a FISA bill that would give the President, in essence, everything he wants: guaranteed dismissal of the telecom lawsuits and vast new warrantless eavesdropping powers...

Suffice to say, the Democrats are about to reverse the only worthwhile act they've undertaken since being handed control of the Congress 18 months ago, and will endorse and authorize yet another aspect of the Bush lawbreaking regime. I ask this literally, not rhetorically: can someone identify even one meaningful event from the past 18 months that would have been different had the GOP retained control of both houses of Congress? Just one.

No can do, sir. But it seems pretty clear that the end result of placing a DINOcrat even in the Oval Office again will be a less confrontational but no less authoritarian continuation of the unofficial rewriting of the Constitution.

Look for an Obama presidency to greatly resemble a Carter presidency. While he's a relatively good man, he will be hedged in by a hysterical media and a recalcitricant Pentagon. To say nothing of the CIA and its Company of private contractors that now run much of what passes for government.

Don't forget: under Carter it was Zbiggy who had the CIA form Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

Under Carter the Rethuglicans managed to negotiate much of the Reagan arms-for-guns cooperation with the Iranians that turned into secret wars in Central America.

Don't forget that Clinton implemented the Free Market globalization that's devastating the world economy.

If the Democrats continue to play footsie with the Company- and if Reid, Hoyer, and Pelosi have anything to do with it they will