Reconstructing Afghanistan

U. of Texas Law Professor Sandy Levinson:

"Anyone who believes in the fantasy of nation building in Afghanistan should, at the very least, read about the failure of Reconstruction in the South, where the local insurgency, led by the Ku Klux Klan, prevailed over the Union forces led by now-President Ulysses Grant."

Here in Northwest Florida, we know something about that. There are days when it seems Civil War never ended.

Pensacola Beach Tax Omens

WEAR-TV in Pensacola admittedly is far from the most reliable news source. For what it's worth, however, it has been reporting this past news cycle that Escambia County Circuit Court Judge Michael Jones "began working" on his long-overdue Pensacola Beach ruling "this week."

Very odd, that. We can't recall the last time a judge at any level in the common law world publicly disclosed to a TV personality his library research and writing schedule. Here's the Tee-Vee news script:

PENSACOLA BEACH, FL - A ruling on whether Pensacola Beach residents will have to pay property taxes is now imminent.

That's according to the Assistant to First Circuit Court Judge Michael Jones, who began working on his ruling this week.

The lawsuit was filed by Pensacola Beach residents in 2004 to challenge Escambia Property Appraiser Chris Jones' decision to put beach properties on the county tax rolls.

Beach residents argued that when they bought property, they were told they would only have to pay lease fees and not taxes.

But [Chris] Jones argued that guarantee was never in any of type of legal contract.

A similar lawsuit filed by owners at Portofino Condominiums was rejected by the First Circuit Court Of Appeals last August.

There's another oddity, with dark portents for beach leaseholders. The station's web site links to its news video with this headline: "Pensacola Beach Residents Will Pay Property Tax." Here's the screenshot (click to enlarge):

Frankly, we doubt either the reporter or the headline writer know what they're broadcasting about. Even so, if you engage in magical thinking you might see these as bad omens.

The thing is, with the Florida courts now having ruled against beach condo owners and businesses, who needs magical thinking to know what Judge Jones' ruling about leasehold residents likely will be? The law of Florida is well established: when Escambia County lies to you, you have absolutely no remedy at law.

Torture in Brief Form

Arar vs. Ashcroft

"This is precisely how the character of a country becomes fundamentally degraded when it becomes a state in permanent war."

-- Glenn Greenwald

Facts (HT Amy Goodman):

Arar’s life-altering odyssey is one of the best known and best investigated of those victimized by U.S. extraordinary rendition. After vacationing with his family in Tunisia, Arar attempted to fly home to Canada. On Sept. 26, 2002, while changing planes at JFK Airport, Arar was pulled aside for questioning. He was fingerprinted and searched by the FBI and the New York Police Department. He asked for a lawyer and was told he had no rights. He was then taken to another location and subjected to two days of aggressive interrogations, with no access to phone, food or a lawyer. He was asked about his membership with various terrorist groups, about Osama bin Laden, Iraq, Palestine and more. Shackled, he was then moved to a maximum-security federal detention center in Brooklyn, strip-searched and threatened with deportation to Syria.
* * *
For nearly two weeks, the U.S. authorities held the Syria threat over his head. Still, he denied any involvement with terrorism. So in the middle of the night, over a weekend, without normal immigration proceedings—without telling his lawyer or the Canadian Consulate—he was dragged in chains to a private jet contracted by the CIA and flown to Jordan, where he was then handed over to the Syrians.

For 10 months and 10 days, Maher was held in a dark, damp, cold cell, measuring 6 feet by 3 feet by 7 feet high, the size of a grave. He was beaten repeatedly with a thick electrical cable all over his body, punched, made to listen to the torture of others, denied food and threatened with electrical shock and an array of more horrors. To stop the torture, he falsely confessed to attending terrorist training in Afghanistan. Then, after nearly a year, he was abruptly released to Canada, 40 pounds lighter and emotionally destroyed.

Procedure (HT Scott Horton):

The United States tenaciously refused to acknowledge ever having made any mistakes—even after its own sources did so. It stonewalled Congressional probes and issued a travel ban to stop Arar from testifying before Congress. The Bush Justice Department made aggressive representations to the courts in response to Arar’s suit that strained credulity at almost every step. As in other cases, their trump card was simple: when caught with pants down, shout “state secrets!”

When the two inspectors general, Richard L. Skinner and Clark Kent Ervin, appeared before the House Judiciary Committee to testify on the matter * * * [b]oth inspectors general concurred that a criminal investigation was now warranted. Their own report produced ample evidence of gross departures from established procedures, as well as evidence that the entire case was being politically micromanaged by political figures in the attorney general’s office and in the White House, who repeatedly overrode the decisions of the professional staff. Attorney General Mukasey, however, subsequently declined to direct the investigation. It’s noteworthy that the investigation would have focused on the attorney general’s own office, which raises fair questions about why the attorney general would be the person making this decision.

Decision (HT Glenn Greenwald):

Yesterday, the Second Circuit -- by a vote of 7-4 -- agreed with the government and dismissed Arar's case in its entirety. It held that even if the government violated Arar's Constitutional rights as well as statutes banning participation in torture, he still has no right to sue for what was done to him. Why? Because "providing a damages remedy against senior officials who implement an extraordinary rendition policy would enmesh the courts ineluctably in an assessment of the validity of the rationale of that policy and its implementation in this particular case, matters that directly affect significant diplomatic and national security concerns" (p. 39). In other words, government officials are free to do anything they want in the national security context -- even violate the law and purposely cause someone to be tortured -- and courts should honor and defer to their actions by refusing to scrutinize them.

Dissent (HT Scott Horton):

[S]tate secrecy claims are preposterous because the diplomatic and intelligence relationship that would supposedly have been compromised was that with Canada, and the Canadians had already come clean about what had happened and confessed to their own part in it, publishing a report as thick as two Manhattan telephone books. In this process, the Canadians behaved just like a modern democracy should. So it is not damage to relations with our neighbor to the North that is a concern. Rather, it is embarrassment of political figures in Washington.

Calabresi generously accepts the suggestion that the Second Circuit acted out of concern for national security. Still, he delivers an appropriate lashing. The majority, Calabresi charges, “engaged in extraordinary judicial activism.” Its activism was aimed at extricating political actors from a precarious predicament and keeping the door firmly shut on what may well be the darkest chapter in the entire history of the Justice Department. In so doing, the court’s majority delivered an example of timidity in the face of government misconduct the likes of which have not been seen since the darkest days of the Cold War.

When the history of the Second Circuit is written, the Arar decision will have a prominent place. It offers all the historical foresight of Dred Scott, in which the Court rallied to the cause of slavery, and all the commitment to constitutional principle of the Slaughter-House Cases, in which the Fourteenth Amendment was eviscerated. The Court that once affirmed that those who torture are the “enemies of all mankind” now tells us that U.S. government officials can torture without worry, because the security of our state might some day depend upon it. [emphasis added]

The author of the majority opinion is Dennis Jacobs, who spent a lifetime as a complete nonentity before being appointed chief justice of the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals by George W. Bush in 2006. He now joins Roger Taney (1777-1864) as one of the absolute worst judges in United States history.

Comment (HT Glenn Greenwald):

This is precisely how the character of a country becomes fundamentally degraded when it becomes a state in permanent war. So continuous are the inhumane and brutal acts of government leaders that the citizens completely lose the capacity for moral outrage and horror.

A Book By its Cover

Yes, yes, we know. Don't judge a book by its cover... it's not the beauty outside, but the beauty inside... there's no such thing as an ugly male... all of that.

But, seriously, take a look at any photo of the defeated "Conservative Party" candidate for congress, Douglas Hoffman. Bad smile, lousy teeth, crooked witch's nose, dead eyes. And underneath the makeup, the sallow pallor of someone taking stelazine.

It's a face no mother could love. Only Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, Tim Pawlenty, and the pharmaceutical industry.

The Tricare Lie Crawls Out of Its Grave

Like a lot of other blogs, we've been spammed today by an anti-Health Care Reform prevarication. We offer no opinion on whether it was posted by an uneducated fool or a deliberate liar. Both kinds of people disgrace democracy. What you are seeing here and here and here is a very old (Bush era) lie, updated. See for yourself by clicking on this:

Pensacola Political Logic

Pensacola Beach people can have no more than the idle curiosity of friendly neighbors about today's referendum inside the limits of the City of Pensacola itself. We don't even get to vote for a majority to govern us on the beach, much less do we have a voice on the mainland.

Nevertheless, if you want to know more about the proposed switcheroo from a Council-City Manager form of government to a "strong mayor" system, Progressive Pensacola has the low-down. Or, you could bone up on the city's history, which shows the "strong mayor" system has been tried several times before, and never lasted.

The Pensacola Newsletter last Sunday came out in mealy-mouth fashion for trying something -- anything -- to shake up the city. Its editorial argument for a new charter essentially comes down to this: Pensacola voters can do better than the city manager and council we have now:

It's a profoundly pessimistic view that essentially argues that Pensacola dare not dream bigger, because the city and its people are not capable of it. * * * What we like most about the new charter is that creates a true leadership position accountable to voters."

Not to be pessimistic or anything, but who was it who elected the council they have now? And, what kind of 'accountability to voters' is it when you embed term limits for city officials in a proposed organic city charter?

Pensacola logic apparently goes something like this:

• Pensacola city voters are perfectly capable of electing intelligent, dedicated, honest leaders.
• Pensacola city voters are not capable of voting stupid, crooked, or ineffectual officials out of office, so we have to make sure they can't run for reelection too many times.

It seems to us the root problem in Pensacola, if there is one, is not the form of government. It's the abundance of stupid voters. Apparently, the writers of the proposed new city charter agree, or they wouldn't have provided for term limits in language that amounts to, 'Stop us before we reelect you again.'

Pensacola Beach Tax Lawsuit Update

Pensacola lawyer Danny Kepner gave beach residents an update last week on the still-pending residents' tax lawsuit. In short:

The law suit involving most of the residential leases on the Pensacola Beach (approximately 2400 parcels) was argued by Danny Kepner on May 2, 2008 before Judge Michael Jones. It has been nearly 18 months and the judge has not yet issued a ruling on this case.

Attorney Kepner is very much alive. As for Judge Jones, who knows? Has anyone checked his pulse?

Lieberman Goes All-In

President-in-His-Own-Mind, Joe Lieberman, Sunday, Nov. 1, on the Tee-Vee: "The government going into the health insurance business -- I think it's such a mistake that I would use the power I have as a single senator to stop a final vote."

Steven Benen, before Lieberman went all-in: "Some of these center-right skeptics are excessively concerned about shielding insurance companies from competition; some are worried about public misperceptions; and some just aren't committed to reform. But as much as I'd love to believe a presentation of facts and reason will turn them around, it's likely to take a lot more than a compelling sales pitch."

In Lieberman's case, nothing will satisfy his permanently-bruised ego except the death of many children.

Standard Warning

Let 'Em Eat Candy

"Lack of health care led to 17,000 US child deaths"

"If you are a child without insurance, if you're seriously ill and end up in the hospital, you are 60 percent more likely to die than the sick child in the next town who has insurance," said Fizan Abdullah, lead writer of the study and a pediatric surgeon at Hopkins.

"Let 'em eat candy," responded Joe Lieberman, the obstructionist senator from Connecticut. "It's Halloween. I'm feelin' generous."

Genoese Democrats

One of the lowest circles of Dante's hell is reserved for corrupt traitors to country and family; the kind of politicians who would eat their own children for a slight advantage.

Ah Genoese! men perverse in every way,
With every foulness stain’d, why from the earth
Are ye not cancel’d? Such an one of yours
I with Romagna’s darkest spirit found,
As for his doings even now in soul
Is in Cocytus plung’d, and yet doth seem
In body still alive upon the earth.

Their souls already are in torment while, like zombies, their bodies still stalk the earth. That would include Joe Lieberman (former D-CN) and Evan Bayh (D-IN).

Pensacola Beach Deja Voodoo

UPDATE BELOW

"We want to still have a view of the Gulf and great public access."

--Beverly Boswell, Pensacola Beach

Every ten or fifteen years the Santa Rosa Island Authority or its hireling manager gets the urge to re-make Pensacola Beach. They claim the beach is falling behind the "competition" and something needs to be done. Then they throw out age-old, never-resolved questions and issues for the public to chew over--

• "Does the beach look modern enough?"
• "Shouldn't we remain quaint and old fashioned?"
• "Is there enough parking?"
  
• "We need to be more pedestrian-friendly."
  
• "We don't have enough entertainment."
• "The rock music is too loud at night."
  
• "Do we have enough booze joints."
• "Shouldn't we ban alcohol on the beach?"
• "How can we attract more free-spending, oversexed college kids?"
• "We need to be more family friendly."

Invariably, an expensive consulting firm is hired, a couple of meetings on the island are staged, and a plan is produced which -- Joila! -- calls for throwing up a shopping mall on Casino Beach. It's the answer to all those vexing questions.

It always ends that way, like magic. Raise a bunch of doubts about the economic viability of Pensacola Beach, then propose the solution of an expensive, snazzy commercial development. It's how commercial beach consultants roll. There's no money for them in leaving Mother Nature alone.

The last time this happened was in 1994-1998, when the Island Authority embraced a plan that called for breaking lease contracts with a string of tent merchants who once flanked Tiffany's- On- The- Beach. Once they were gone (Tiffany's being the one successful holdout) the SRIA went so far as to install below-ground utility lines in anticipation of ... Yep, you guessed it.

The consulting firm they'd hired back then produced a slick booklet graced with an "artist's conception" of a two-story mall sitting squarely on Casino Beach. While it would have blocked all views of the beach and the Gulf of Mexico until visitors had passed through the mall itself, the development did include a handsome water fountain -- exactly like the kind you might find in a suburban mall in Peoria or Topeka.

In a rare victory for beach residents, that plan eventually was halted by opposition from three county commissioners who hadn't yet been paid off, aided by a series of distracting hurricanes and tropical storms. The old commissioners are gone by now, although some of them still may be reporting to their parole officers. We haven't had a devastating storm since 2005. So, Hey! Let's double the toll bridge fee (to attract more visitors, don'cha know) and use the money to build a multi-million Parking Garage/Mall Combo!

If history is any guide, that's where this is headed. And that's probably why Beverly Boswell is worried.

UPDATE
Oct. 29 amAt last night's informal meeting, barely 75 island residents attended. They would be, for the most part, only the more naive, newer residents or a few consciously willing to be stage props.

The words "natural beauty" popped up a number of times with the beach planning consultants. So, too, did "parking garage."

No, Virginia, There Never Was a Santa Claus

Hard on the news of plunging circulation numbers around the nation, Megan McCardle for The Atlantic says the party's over:

I think we're witnessing the end of the newspaper business, full stop, not the end of the newspaper business as we know it. The economics just aren't there. At some point, industries enter a death spiral: too few consumers raises their average costs, meaning they eventually have to pass price increases onto their customers. That drives more customers away. Rinse and repeat . . .

One commentator follows that with a provocative perspective that makes the imminent death of newspapers seem, in a way, less calamitous:

The average schmuck buys a paper and sees it as a product designed to inform him, the customer, about the world around him/her.

But in any financial transaction the customer is identified as the person who pays the money, and since newspapers only get 20% of revenue from subscribers this means the subscriber is not the “real” customer.

Newspapers get 80% of revenue from corporate advertisers, so they are the “real” customers. And since the corporate advertisers don’t take delivery of the newspapers it means the newspaper is not the real product.

The real product is the reader, and the newspaper is just a medium (like radio waves or tv signals) that is used to “deliver” the real product (our eyeballs) to the real customers (corporate advertisers). That’s why writing a letter to the editor is about as useful as shouting at the tv.

People are important in the newspaper financial model, just not in the way that they thought they were.

There is an undeniable strain of truth there, one most of us who love to read newspapers -- and a lot of journalists who like to write for them -- don't enjoy contemplating. It's somewhat analogous to telling a child, "There is not now, and never was, a Santa Clause" -- and then adding, "By the way, mom and dad can't afford to put presents under the tree, anymore. So, get your own or do without."

Joe Lieberman: Icon of the Obama Administration?

“I have long supported the goal of universal health care.”
-- Joe Lieberman, 2006 (on the campaign trail)
* * *
"I will not be able to support a cloture motion before final passage. Therefore I will try to stop the passage of the bill."
-- Joe Lieberman, Oct. 27, 2009

It's looking very much as if the health care reform will come down to whether President Obama has the will to fulfill the promises of Candidate Obama, or whether he chooses, instead, to adopt as his mascot -- the very embodiment of his administration -- the sniveling unprincipled liar, Joe Lieberman.

Regardless of what you may hear, as Jane says, it all comes down to whether Obama is willing to twist Lieberman's arm.

The New Revival

"Meanwhile the two priests continued to walk among them; they repeatedly mounted on the benches, and trumpet-mouthed proclaimed to the whole congregation, 'the tidings of salvation,' and then from every corner of the building arose in reply, short sharp cries of 'Amen!' 'Glory !' 'Amen!'"

-- Frances Trollope, Domestic Manners of the Americans

Cable TV News in America more and more is looking like another evangelical religion. Just when the insane Excitement hits, they start squabbling among themselves.