torture works

arrested development

when we last saw daryn j. moran, he'd gotten himself discharged from the air force for various patriotic reasons, but he especially wanted everyone to know he wasn't interested in taking orders from a usurper any more.

turns out that was just the warm-up.

today mr. moran's geting serious:

hello everybody, my name is daryn john moran in omaha, nebraska. it's about 3pm on monday, september 26th and today's video, the purpose, is to let everybody know, uh, what needs to be done.

um, as a result of nobody fulfilling their responsibility to enforce the law and arrest the president for his crime of a forgery, which is proven fact, um, i've decided that i must do it myself.

what do i mean? i'll gas up the car, drive in my vehicle to washington, dc, knock on the president's door and tell him he's comin' with me.

now along the way, obviously, if you're still listening and not just laughing, somebody's gonna have something to say about that and that's what we need, we need a confrontation. not a violent one — i'm not comin' with a shotgun, i'm not comin' with a knife. i'm comin' with the constitution in my hand and the bible and the fact that he's a criminal and a known forger.

just like in the ol' wild west when men would walk into town with wanted posters hanging on the do— on the walls, ah, they only came with their cronies on their horses so they could escape in an' out ...

president obama gonna be on the run for the remainder of his days, until he gets right or til he leaves otherwise. but he's gonna be held accountable.

so, to the mayor's office in omaha, who has not responded to me, when i went and put in a request to see the mayor of omaha, jim suttle, no response, i'm gonna do your job. to the county sheriff

who i spoke to, captain torres, supposed to pass my flyer on. to tim dunning, the sheriff in omaha, nebraska, i'll do your job and arrest, ah, put out a warrant out for the arrest of obama, i'm gonna do your job. to the city council that was protected by your guardian warren weaver, who said "i dunno why you're actin' this way and you can send a letter to the city council", and took the receptionist's message, my name and phone number and gave it back to me, i'm doin' your job. this is not just a federal issue, this is a national issue, down to everybody everywhere.

so, there ya have it. i dunno what'll happen next, i dunno which americans will stand by me. i'm not the moron, i'm not the stupid person. my wife comes from mexico and she says what separates america from the third world countries? the third world countries don't have anybody enforcing the law. and here the constitution is being overthrown daily.

i just heard from a friend: walter fitzpatrick was arrested again. this poor man's been fighting by himself for three years against this illegal president. it's time the rest of us followed his example, the wisdom of the gray head of walter fitzpatrick, a retired navy officer.

and to the military out there, STOP HIDING OBAMA. STOP PROTECTING HIM. HE IS A CRIMINAL.

i was in the marine corps from '91 to '95. i was in the air force from 2002 to 2011. before gays were allowed in the military — now i'm not against a gay man or a woman: I'M AGAINST YOUR ACTIVITY. i'm against you pro-, promoting your lifestyle to families, and literature and education system. BEIN' A GAY IS A SIN IN THE BIBLE WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT. IT'S A SIN.

so, i was in the military BEFORE the gays were in. when we knew it was a sin. whu-when it was a shame to say that openly. and general mullen's comments that the military is stronger and has more tolerance? more tolerance for what, general mullen? more tolerance for sin? yeah, are you even a christian? do you know the bible? IT IS FOOLISH AND IGNORANT TO IGNORE GOD AND IGNORE THE SCRIPTURES IN THE BIBLE WHEN YOU'RE MADE AWARE OF IT.

now, the islam religion and muslims, who barack obama knows the prayers, knows the calls, knows the words and all his best buddies are muslims, they wanna chop off our heads if we claim we're a christian. i saw a video of the new director of transportation saying they're identifying christian identity people as the new terrorists. well, what in the world is he talkin' about, another czar of obama?

so the real americans out there are gonna hear me and when they come to your houses to arrest you too and ask you whether you support me or email me or walter fitzpatrick? we need to arrest you too? i dunno if you're gonna load your guns with weapons and defend yourself and your family or your children or not. like i said, today or tomorrow when i leave i'm not goin' with a shotgun, i'm not goin' with a knife ‐ it's not about threats. i'm just comin' to knock on obama's door, say you're comin' with me, your time is up. he's gonna spend the remainder of his days on the run like a common criminal. those of you that support him: that's your mistake and your foolishness. the majorty of americans DO NOT SUPPORT BARACK OBAMA. he has no proof of his birth, anywhere, any day, any time. and the proof that they've offered, it's a lie, it's a forgery; it's been proven so by multiple americans over and over and over again.

if i sound angry, it's because i am. it's because the military's had a coup. it's been taken over by a false commander-in-chief. and this flag ... it— what does it mean anymore? where's the constitution? where are our so-called leaders in the congress and supreme court? YOU'RE NEXT! first is the president. COMIN' FER YOU, BARACK OBAMA! COMIN' FER YOU! the supreme court and the congress is next. BUT I'M COMIN FER YOU BARACK OBAMA, SO CALL YOUR SECRET SERVICE — COWARD! you wouldn't even do an arm wrestlin' match with me if i asked ya. you probably wouldn't do a forty yard dash. WIMP! COWARD! ... COWARD!

and the supreme court and the congress is next. CALL YER FBI, CALL YER SECRET SERVICE, PUT ALL THE CUFFS ON ME THAT YOU WANT, GIVE ME A BLACK AND WHITE STRIPED SUIT AND THROW ME IN JAIL! COWARD! you have no proof of who you are. i mean it's time for americans to stand up a tell you the truth: WE DON'T WANT YOU HERE, WE WANT YOU OUT OF THE OFFICE, WE WANT YOUR CRIMES TO STOP. that's what i'm gonna do. this is public information. this is youtube. my address is [redacted]. my cellphone is [redacted]. i have a public email address as well. i'm here, but i'm leavin' and i'm gonna gas up the car and go to washington dc and arrest the president.

it's time for confrontation. ya, you think yer gonna win. ya, you do, you think so. you think all that money flowin' from all yer muslim buddies and social communist democratic buddies is gonna save you. IT'S NOT GONNA SAVE YOU. there's real americans out there who're gonna hear me and i'm not gonna go ta jail, you're not gonna throw away the key and have me in jail fer life, you're not gonna get away with it, it's not gonna happen. not gonna happen.

so first, barack obama, start runnin'. START RUNNIN'! yu-you're sand is comin'-drippin' out the hourglass. WE'RE COMIN' TA GETCHA! ya! laugh it up, too! laugh it up! you ain't gonna be laughin' when we're in yer face! when the cuffs are 'round yer hands, you ain't gonna be laughin'! ooh! threat! threat'nin' the president! woohoo! threat'nin' the president! send the congress! send the supreme court! us americans, we're so scared! ... [continues]

---

update via ohforgoodnesssakes.com:

daryn moran tells [birther seditionist online rag] the post & email that "two secret service men came at 3:00 or 3:30 this morning. they were escorted by a county sheriff." [would-be birther torchbearer] dean haskins at obama release your records had a phone conversation in which moran said the authorities had first visited his parents; and "he is not, presently, driving to dc to arrest obama."

from what i gathered from our conversation, they explained to him that he can go to DC, he can have meetings about his beliefs, he can state what he believes, but he cannot threaten the "president." they also explained that stating that one is going to arrest the president is a form of threat, so he is not allowed to do that.

since moran's tirade was about his being prepared to gas up the car and, come what may, pursue obama "for the remainder of his days" ... will a simple dressing-down by the usurper's protectors take the tiger out of his tank?

no true scotsman

if conservative republicans worry that they may have come out smelling less like roses and more like cavemen after three closely-watched debates in the national spotlight, they shouldn't be: those weren't real republicans™ we were watching after all:

i don't know what small group in the crowd did it — but conservatives DON'T boo soldiers. booing soldiers is a progressive thing, not ours. i don't give a damn what sexual orientation he is. it was a horrible demonstration, that will be used against our side in worse ways than the cheering at ron pauls "let him die" reply from the 2nd debate or the jerry springer audience that snuck in and loudly cheered executions ...

by navyCanDo

for all we know the booing could have been done by [democratic national committee] plants because the leftmedia is using it to validate their vicious lie that 'republicans hate gays' (and, as they often add, anyone not white, heterosexual and christian). since i doubt the election will turn on who gets the homosexual vote this is not terribly important but it demonstrates the abject fear the left has of the tea party. they are pulling out all the stops to defame the tea party folks and convince americans they are a bunch of KKK-style haters that want to shove christianity down the throats of americans. that is insane and a palpable lie but the left is getting desperate as they see the nation slowly turning on obama and threatening to dismantle the socialist structure the left has carefully built over the past 70 years. look for lots of this 'republicans hate...(fill in the minority group) rhetoric in the weeks to come.

by jim scott

maybe so ... maybe real republicans™ don't really hate anybody (at least not "KKK-style") ... but unfortunately "navyCanDo" and "jim scott" seem to be two of the few true scotsmen on that page:

i was booing the policy and the question.

by buddhaBrown

he is doing [nothing?] but causing problems for the real Men that are serving My Country.

by easternsky

he didn't need to say he was gay,
he sure didn't.

it was quite obvious that he was a poofer.

by retired greyhound

the soldier had to make the point that he was a fag. why?
i wish there had been a candidate who told him off for wearing his perversion on his sleeve.

by buccaneer81

... he didn't have to mention that he was gay. he could have just asked the question. if you want the audience to shut up and not react, perhaps he should have shut up and not announced it. that works both ways ...

by netizen

... the question had no purpose other than to be another homosexual "in your face" moment. the boo was justified.

by throwback

"throwback" ... heh.

gays in the military is an incremental step in destroying the family, and implementing state control of how children are raised. read the communist manifesto ...

by clock king

"the soldier had to make the point that he was a fag. why?"

because exhibitionism and recruiting and brainwashing the youngsters are the top goal of all homosexuals.

by geronL

persoanlly, i could care less if people want to boo an activist faggot soldier.

by lancey howard

kind of a dilemma, a soldier defending america who is hellbent on destroying it.

by upsdriver

a dilemma for morons, yes.

it's irrelevant what the fag said. let him throw out his san [fran] lib BS and let the candidate handle it. i don't see the need for the audience to react like we are all in harlem watching a movie in the theater ...

by lazlo in PA

hmm ... i can't tell if that last one was a scotsman.

---

bonus quote, via talkingpointsmemo:

back in orlando, TPM asked gary johnson — who scored his first slot on a debate stage in quite a while thursday — if the crowds at the GOP debates were meaner than he's seen before. past audiences have given raucous applause to the concept of 234 executions and praised the idea of letting the uninsured die.

johnson, who is not a social conservative, opposes the death penalty and supports the repeal of don't ask, don't tell, said that the angrier members of the audiences at the debates are not the whole of the GOP.

"in my opinion, when you have booing this is not indicative of republicans," he said. "this is not the republican party that i belong to."

(h/t john cole @ balloon juice)

jonah and the beast

jonah escapes the belly of the beast, with a message for cap'n ahab ...

goodbye to all that:
reflections of a GOP operative who left the cult
by mike lofgren, retired GOP congressional staffer

barbara stanwyck:		we're both rotten!
fred macmurray:		yeah — only you're a little more rotten.
"double indemnity" (1944)

those lines of dialogue from a classic film noir sum up the state of the two political parties in contemporary america. both parties are rotten — how could they not be, given the complete infestation of the political system by corporate money on a scale that now requires a presidential candidate to raise upwards of a billion dollars to be competitive in the general election? both parties are captives to corporate loot. the main reason the democrats' health care bill will be a budget buster once it fully phases in is the democrats' rank capitulation to corporate interests — no single-payer system, in order to mollify the insurers; and no negotiation of drug prices, a craven surrender to big pharma.

but both parties are not rotten in quite the same way. the democrats have their share of machine politicians, careerists, corporate bagmen, egomaniacs and kooks. nothing, however, quite matches the modern GOP.

to those millions of americans who have finally begun paying attention to politics and watched with exasperation the tragicomedy of the debt ceiling extension, it may have come as a shock that the republican party is so full of lunatics. to be sure, the party, like any political party on earth, has always had its share of crackpots, like robert k. dornan or william e. dannemeyer. but the crackpot outliers of two decades ago have become the vital center today: steve king, michele bachman (now a leading presidential candidate as well), paul broun, patrick mchenry, virginia foxx, louie gohmert, allen west. the congressional directory now reads like a casebook of lunacy.

it was this cast of characters and the pernicious ideas they represent that impelled me to end a nearly 30-year career as a professional staff member on capitol hill. a couple of months ago, i retired; but i could see as early as last november that the republican party would use the debt limit vote, an otherwise routine legislative procedure that has been used 87 times since the end of world war II, in order to concoct an entirely artificial fiscal crisis. then, they would use that fiscal crisis to get what they wanted, by literally holding the US and global economies as hostages.

the debt ceiling extension is not the only example of this sort of political terrorism. republicans were willing to lay off 4,000 federal aviation administration (FAA) employees, 70,000 private construction workers and let FAA safety inspectors work without pay, in fact, forcing them to pay for their own work-related travel — how prudent is that? — in order to strong arm some union-busting provisions into the FAA reauthorization.

everyone knows that in a hostage situation, the reckless and amoral actor has the negotiating upper hand over the cautious and responsible actor because the latter is actually concerned about the life of the hostage, while the former does not care. this fact, which ought to be obvious, has nevertheless caused confusion among the professional pundit class, which is mostly still stuck in the bob dole era in terms of its orientation. for instance, ezra klein wrote of his puzzlement over the fact that while house republicans essentially won the debt ceiling fight, enough of them were sufficiently dissatisfied that they might still scuttle the deal. of course they might — the attitude of many freshman republicans to national default was "bring it on!"

it should have been evident to clear-eyed observers that the republican party is becoming less and less like a traditional political party in a representative democracy and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th century europe. this trend has several implications, none of them pleasant.

in his "manual of parliamentary practice," thomas jefferson wrote that it is less important that every rule and custom of a legislature be absolutely justifiable in a theoretical sense, than that they should be generally acknowledged and honored by all parties. these include unwritten rules, customs and courtesies that lubricate the legislative machinery and keep governance a relatively civilized procedure. the US senate has more complex procedural rules than any other legislative body in the world; many of these rules are contradictory, and on any given day, the senate parliamentarian may issue a ruling that contradicts earlier rulings on analogous cases.

the only thing that can keep the senate functioning is collegiality and good faith. during periods of political consensus, for instance, the world war II and early post-war eras, the senate was a "high functioning" institution: filibusters were rare and the body was legislatively productive. now, one can no more picture the current senate producing the original medicare act than the old supreme soviet having legislated the bill of rights.

far from being a rarity, virtually every bill, every nominee for senate confirmation and every routine procedural motion is now subject to a republican filibuster. under the circumstances, it is no wonder that washington is gridlocked: legislating has now become war minus the shooting, something one could have observed 80 years ago in the reichstag of the weimar republic. as hannah arendt observed, a disciplined minority of totalitarians can use the instruments of democratic government to undermine democracy itself.

john p. judis sums up the modern GOP this way:

over the last four decades, the republican party has transformed from a loyal opposition into an insurrectionary party that flouts the law when it is in the majority and threatens disorder when it is the minority. it is the party of watergate and iran-contra, but also of the government shutdown in 1995 and the impeachment trial of 1999. if there is an earlier american precedent for today's republican party, it is the antebellum southern democrats of john calhoun who threatened to nullify, or disregard, federal legislation they objected to and who later led the fight to secede from the union over slavery.

a couple of years ago, a republican committee staff director told me candidly (and proudly) what the method was to all this obstruction and disruption. should republicans succeed in obstructing the senate from doing its job, it would further lower congress's generic favorability rating among the american people. by sabotaging the reputation of an institution of government, the party that is programmatically against government would come out the relative winner.

a deeply cynical tactic, to be sure, but a psychologically insightful one that plays on the weaknesses both of the voting public and the news media. there are tens of millions of low-information voters who hardly know which party controls which branch of government, let alone which party is pursuing a particular legislative tactic. these voters' confusion over who did what allows them to form the conclusion that "they are all crooks," and that "government is no good," further leading them to think, "a plague on both your houses" and "the parties are like two kids in a school yard." this ill-informed public cynicism, in its turn, further intensifies the long-term decline in public trust in government that has been taking place since the early 1960s — a distrust that has been stoked by republican rhetoric at every turn ("government is the problem," declared ronald reagan in 1980).

the media are also complicit in this phenomenon. ever since the bifurcation of electronic media into a more or less respectable "hard news" segment and a rabidly ideological talk radio and cable TV political propaganda arm, the "respectable" media have been terrified of any criticism for perceived bias. hence, they hew to the practice of false evenhandedness. paul krugman has skewered this tactic as being the "centrist cop-out." "i joked long ago," he says, "that if one party declared that the earth was flat, the headlines would read 'views differ on shape of planet.'"

inside-the-beltway wise guy chris cillizza merely proves krugman right in his washington post analysis of "winners and losers" in the debt ceiling impasse. he wrote that the institution of congress was a big loser in the fracas, which is, of course, correct, but then he opined: "lawmakers — bless their hearts — seem entirely unaware of just how bad they looked during this fight and will almost certainly spend the next few weeks (or months) congratulating themselves on their tremendous magnanimity." note how the pundit's ironic deprecation falls like the rain on the just and unjust alike, on those who precipitated the needless crisis and those who despaired of it. he seems oblivious that one side — or a sizable faction of one side — has deliberately attempted to damage the reputation of congress to achieve its political objectives.

this constant drizzle of "there the two parties go again!" stories out of the news bureaus, combined with the hazy confusion of low-information voters, means that the long-term republican strategy of undermining confidence in our democratic institutions has reaped electoral dividends. the united states has nearly the lowest voter participation among western democracies; this, again, is a consequence of the decline of trust in government institutions — if government is a racket and both parties are the same, why vote? and if the uninvolved middle declines to vote, it increases the electoral clout of a minority that is constantly being whipped into a lather by three hours daily of rush limbaugh or fox news. there were only 44 million republican voters in the 2010 mid-term elections, but they effectively canceled the political results of the election of president obama by 69 million voters.

this tactic of inducing public distrust of government is not only cynical, it is schizophrenic. for people who profess to revere the constitution, it is strange that they so caustically denigrate the very federal government that is the material expression of the principles embodied in that document. this is not to say that there is not some theoretical limit to the size or intrusiveness of government; i would be the first to say there are such limits, both fiscal and constitutional. but most republican officeholders seem strangely uninterested in the effective repeal of fourth amendment protections by the patriot act, the weakening of habeas corpus and self-incrimination protections in the public hysteria following 9/11 or the unpalatable fact that the united states has the largest incarcerated population of any country on earth. if anything, they would probably opt for more incarcerated persons, as imprisonment is a profit center for the prison privatization industry, which is itself a growth center for political contributions to these same politicians.[1] instead, they prefer to rail against those government programs that actually help people. and when a program is too popular to attack directly, like medicare or social security, they prefer to undermine it by feigning an agonized concern about the deficit. that concern, as we shall see, is largely fictitious.

undermining americans' belief in their own institutions of self-government remains a prime GOP electoral strategy. but if this technique falls short of producing karl rove's dream of 30 years of unchallengeable one-party rule (as all such techniques always fall short of achieving the angry and embittered true believer's new jerusalem), there are other even less savory techniques upon which to fall back. ever since republicans captured the majority in a number of state legislatures last november, they have systematically attempted to make it more difficult to vote: by onerous voter ID requirements (in wisconsin, republicans have legislated photo IDs while simultaneously shutting department of motor vehicles (DMV) offices in democratic constituencies while at the same time lengthening the hours of operation of DMV offices in GOP constituencies); by narrowing registration periods; and by residency requirements that may disenfranchise university students.

this legislative assault is moving in a diametrically opposed direction to 200 years of american history, when the arrow of progress pointed toward more political participation by more citizens. republicans are among the most shrill in self-righteously lecturing other countries about the wonders of democracy; exporting democracy (albeit at the barrel of a gun) to the middle east was a signature policy of the bush administration. but domestically, they don't want those people voting.

you can probably guess who those people are. above all, anyone not likely to vote republican. as sarah palin would imply, the people who are not real americans. racial minorities. immigrants. muslims. gays. intellectuals. basically, anyone who doesn't look, think, or talk like the GOP base. this must account, at least to some degree, for their extraordinarily vitriolic hatred of president obama. i have joked in the past that the main administration policy that republicans object to is obama's policy of being black.[2] among the GOP base, there is constant harping about somebody else, some "other," who is deliberately, assiduously and with malice aforethought subverting the good, the true and the beautiful: subversives. commies. socialists. ragheads. secular humanists. blacks. fags. feminazis. the list may change with the political needs of the moment, but they always seem to need a scapegoat to hate and fear.

it is not clear to me how many GOP officeholders believe this reactionary and paranoid claptrap. i would bet that most do not. but they cynically feed the worst instincts of their fearful and angry low-information political base with a nod and a wink. during the disgraceful circus of the "birther" issue, republican politicians subtly stoked the fires of paranoia by being suggestively equivocal — "i take the president at his word" — while never unambiguously slapping down the myth. john huntsman was the first major GOP figure forthrightly to refute the birther calumny — albeit after release of the birth certificate.

i do not mean to place too much emphasis on racial animus in the GOP. while it surely exists, it is also a fact that republicans think that no democratic president could conceivably be legitimate. republicans also regarded bill clinton as somehow, in some manner, twice fraudulently elected (well do i remember the elaborate conspiracy theories that republicans traded among themselves). had it been hillary clinton, rather than barack obama, who had been elected in 2008, i am certain we would now be hearing, in lieu of the birther myths, conspiracy theories about vince foster's alleged murder.

the reader may think that i am attributing svengali-like powers to GOP operatives able to manipulate a zombie base to do their bidding. it is more complicated than that. historical circumstances produced the raw material: the deindustrialization and financialization of america since about 1970 has spawned an increasingly downscale white middle class — without job security (or even without jobs), with pensions and health benefits evaporating and with their principal asset deflating in the collapse of the housing bubble. their fears are not imaginary; their standard of living is shrinking.

what do the democrats offer these people? essentially nothing. democratic leadership council-style "centrist" democrats were among the biggest promoters of disastrous trade deals in the 1990s that outsourced jobs abroad: NAFTA, world trade organization, permanent most-favored-nation status for china. at the same time, the identity politics/lifestyle wing of the democratic party was seen as a too illegal immigrant-friendly by downscaled and outsourced whites.[3]

while democrats temporized, or even dismissed the fears of the white working class as racist or nativist, republicans went to work. to be sure, the business wing of the republican party consists of the most energetic outsourcers, wage cutters and hirers of sub-minimum wage immigrant labor to be found anywhere on the globe. but the faux-populist wing of the party, knowing the mental compartmentalization that occurs in most low-information voters, played on the fears of that same white working class to focus their anger on scapegoats that do no damage to corporations' bottom lines: instead of raising the minimum wage, let's build a wall on the southern border (then hire a defense contractor to incompetently manage it). instead of predatory bankers, it's evil muslims. or evil gays. or evil abortionists.

how do they manage to do this? because democrats ceded the field. above all, they do not understand language. their initiatives are posed in impenetrable policy-speak: the patient protection and affordable care act. the what? — can anyone even remember it? no wonder the pejorative "obamacare" won out. contrast that with the republicans' patriot act. you're a patriot, aren't you? does anyone at the GED level have a clue what a stimulus bill is supposed to be? why didn't the white house call it the jobs bill and keep pounding on that theme?

you know that social security and medicare are in jeopardy when even democrats refer to them as entitlements. "entitlement" has a negative sound in colloquial english: somebody who is "entitled" selfishly claims something he doesn't really deserve. why not call them "earned benefits," which is what they are because we all contribute payroll taxes to fund them? that would never occur to the democrats. republicans don't make that mistake; they are relentlessly on message: it is never the "estate tax," it is the "death tax." heaven forbid that the walton family should give up one penny of its $86-billion fortune. all of that lucre is necessary to ensure that unions be kept out of wal-mart, that women employees not be promoted and that politicians be kept on a short leash.

it was not always thus. it would have been hard to find an uneducated farmer during the depression of the 1890s who did not have a very accurate idea about exactly which economic interests were shafting him. an unemployed worker in a breadline in 1932 would have felt little gratitude to the rockefellers or the mellons. but that is not the case in the present economic crisis. after a riot of unbridled greed such as the world has not seen since the conquistadors' looting expeditions and after an unprecedented broad and rapid transfer of wealth upward by wall street and its corporate satellites, where is the popular anger directed, at least as depicted in the media? at "washington spending" — which has increased primarily to provide unemployment compensation, food stamps and medicaid to those economically damaged by the previous decade's corporate saturnalia. or the popular rage is harmlessly diverted against pseudo-issues: death panels, birtherism, gay marriage, abortion, and so on, none of which stands to dent the corporate bottom line in the slightest.

thus far, i have concentrated on republican tactics, rather than republican beliefs, but the tactics themselves are important indicators of an absolutist, authoritarian mindset that is increasingly hostile to the democratic values of reason, compromise and conciliation. rather, this mindset seeks polarizing division (karl rove has been very explicit that this is his principal campaign strategy), conflict and the crushing of opposition.

as for what they really believe, the republican party of 2011 believes in three principal tenets i have laid out below. the rest of their platform one may safely dismiss as window dressing:

1. the GOP cares solely and exclusively about its rich contributors. the party has built a whole catechism on the protection and further enrichment of america's plutocracy. their caterwauling about deficit and debt is so much eyewash to con the public. whatever else president obama has accomplished (and many of his purported accomplishments are highly suspect), his $4-trillion deficit reduction package did perform the useful service of smoking out republican hypocrisy. the GOP refused, because it could not abide so much as a one-tenth of one percent increase on the tax rates of the walton family or the koch brothers, much less a repeal of the carried interest rule that permits billionaire hedge fund managers to pay income tax at a lower effective rate than cops or nurses. republicans finally settled on a deal that had far less deficit reduction — and even less spending reduction! — than obama's offer, because of their iron resolution to protect at all costs our society's overclass.

republicans have attempted to camouflage their amorous solicitude for billionaires with a fog of misleading rhetoric. john boehner is fond of saying, "we won't raise anyone's taxes," as if the take-home pay of an olive garden waitress were inextricably bound up with whether warren buffett pays his capital gains as ordinary income or at a lower rate. another chestnut is that millionaires and billionaires are "job creators." US corporations have just had their most profitable quarters in history; apple, for one, is sitting on $76 billion in cash, more than the GDP of most countries. so, where are the jobs?

another smokescreen is the "small business" meme, since standing up for mom's and pop's corner store is politically more attractive than to be seen shilling for a megacorporation. raising taxes on the wealthy will kill small business' ability to hire; that is the GOP dirge every time bernie sanders or some democrat offers an amendment to increase taxes on incomes above $1 million. but the number of small businesses that have a net annual income over a million dollars is de minimis, if not by definition impossible (as they would no longer be small businesses). and as data from the center for economic and policy research have shown, small businesses account for only 7.2 percent of total US employment, a significantly smaller share of total employment than in most organisation for economic co-operation and development (OECD) countries.

likewise, republicans have assiduously spread the myth that americans are conspicuously overtaxed. but compared to other OECD countries, the effective rates of US taxation are among the lowest. in particular, they point to the top corporate income rate of 35 percent as being confiscatory bolshevism. but again, the effective rate is much lower. did GE pay 35 percent on 2010 profits of $14 billion? no, it paid zero.

when pressed, republicans make up misleading statistics to "prove" that the america's fiscal burden is being borne by the rich and the rest of us are just freeloaders who don't appreciate that fact. "half of americans don't pay taxes" is a perennial meme. but what they leave out is that that statement refers to federal income taxes. there are millions of people who don't pay income taxes, but do contribute payroll taxes — among the most regressive forms of taxation. but according to GOP fiscal theology, payroll taxes don't count. somehow, they have convinced themselves that since payroll taxes go into trust funds, they're not real taxes. likewise, state and local sales taxes apparently don't count, although their effect on a poor person buying necessities like foodstuffs is far more regressive than on a millionaire.

all of these half truths and outright lies have seeped into popular culture via the corporate-owned business press. just listen to CNBC for a few hours and you will hear most of them in one form or another. more important politically, republicans' myths about taxation have been internalized by millions of economically downscale "values voters," who may have been attracted to the GOP for other reasons (which i will explain later), but who now accept this misinformation as dogma.

and when misinformation isn't enough to sustain popular support for the GOP's agenda, concealment is needed. one fairly innocuous provision in the dodd-frank financial reform bill requires public companies to make a more transparent disclosure of CEO compensation, including bonuses. note that it would not limit the compensation, only require full disclosure. republicans are hell-bent on repealing this provision. of course; it would not serve wall street interests if the public took an unhealthy interest in the disparity of their own incomes as against that of a bank CEO. as spencer bachus, the republican chairman of the house financial services committee, says, "in washington, the view is that the banks are to be regulated and my view is that washington and the regulators are there to serve the banks."

2. they worship at the altar of mars. while the me-too democrats have set a horrible example of keeping up with the joneses with respect to waging wars, they can never match GOP stalwarts such as john mccain or lindsey graham in their sheer, libidinous enthusiasm for invading other countries. mccain wanted to mix it up with russia — a nuclear-armed state — during the latter's conflict with georgia in 2008 (remember? — "we are all georgians now," a slogan that did not, fortunately, catch on), while graham has been persistently agitating for attacks on iran and intervention in syria. and these are not fringe elements of the party; they are the leading "defense experts," who always get tapped for the sunday talk shows. about a month before republicans began holding a gun to the head of the credit markets to get trillions of dollars of cuts, these same republicans passed a defense appropriations bill that increased spending by $17 billion over the prior year's defense appropriation. to borrow chris hedges' formulation, war is the force that gives meaning to their lives.

a cynic might conclude that this militaristic enthusiasm is no more complicated than the fact that pentagon contractors spread a lot of bribery money around capitol hill. that is true, but there is more to it than that. it is not necessarily even the fact that members of congress feel they are protecting constituents' jobs. the wildly uneven concentration of defense contracts and military bases nationally means that some areas, like washington, DC, and san diego, are heavily dependent on department of defense (DOD) spending. but there are many more areas of the country whose net balance is negative: the citizenry pays more in taxes to support the pentagon than it receives back in local contracts.

and the economic justification for pentagon spending is even more fallacious when one considers that the $700 billion annual DOD budget creates comparatively few jobs. the days of rosie the riveter are long gone; most weapons projects now require very little touch labor. instead, a disproportionate share is siphoned off into high-cost research and development (from which the civilian economy benefits little); exorbitant management expenditures, overhead and out-and-out padding; and, of course, the money that flows back into the coffers of political campaigns. a million dollars appropriated for highway construction would create two to three times as many jobs as a million dollars appropriated for pentagon weapons procurement, so the jobs argument is ultimately specious.

take away the cash nexus and there still remains a psychological predisposition toward war and militarism on the part of the GOP. this undoubtedly arises from a neurotic need to demonstrate toughness and dovetails perfectly with the belligerent tough-guy pose one constantly hears on right-wing talk radio. militarism springs from the same psychological deficit that requires an endless series of enemies, both foreign and domestic.

the results of the last decade of unbridled militarism and the democrats' cowardly refusal to reverse it[4], have been disastrous both strategically and fiscally. it has made the united states less prosperous, less secure and less free. unfortunately, the militarism and the promiscuous intervention it gives rise to are only likely to abate when the treasury is exhausted, just as it happened to the dutch republic and the british empire.

3. give me that old time religion. pandering to fundamentalism is a full-time vocation in the GOP. beginning in the 1970s, religious cranks ceased simply to be a minor public nuisance in this country and grew into the major element of the republican rank and file. pat robertson's strong showing in the 1988 iowa caucus signaled the gradual merger of politics and religion in the party. the results are all around us: if the american people poll more like iranians or nigerians than europeans or canadians on questions of evolution versus creationism, scriptural inerrancy, the existence of angels and demons, and so forth, that result is due to the rise of the religious right, its insertion into the public sphere by the republican party and the consequent normalizing of formerly reactionary or quaint beliefs. also around us is a prevailing anti-intellectualism and hostility to science; it is this group that defines "low-information voter" — or, perhaps, "misinformation voter."

the constitution to the contrary notwithstanding, there is now a de facto religious test for the presidency: major candidates are encouraged (or coerced) to "share their feelings" about their "faith" in a revelatory speech; or, some televangelist like rick warren dragoons the candidates (as he did with obama and mccain in 2008) to debate the finer points of christology, with warren himself, of course, as the arbiter. politicized religion is also the sheet anchor of the culture wars. but how did the whole toxic stew of GOP beliefs — economic royalism, militarism and culture wars cum fundamentalism — come completely to displace an erstwhile civilized eisenhower republicanism?

it is my view that the rise of politicized religious fundamentalism (which is a subset of the decline of rational problem solving in america) may have been the key ingredient of the takeover of the republican party. for politicized religion provides a substrate of beliefs that rationalizes — at least in the minds of followers — all three of the GOP's main tenets.

televangelists have long espoused the health-and-wealth/name-it-and-claim it gospel. if you are wealthy, it is a sign of god's favor. if not, too bad! but don't forget to tithe in any case. this rationale may explain why some economically downscale whites defend the prerogatives of billionaires.

the GOP's fascination with war is also connected with the fundamentalist mindset. the old testament abounds in tales of slaughter — god ordering the killing of the midianite male infants and enslavement of the balance of the population, the divinely-inspired genocide of the canaanites, the slaying of various miscreants with the jawbone of an ass — and since american religious fundamentalist seem to prefer the old testament to the new (particularly that portion of the new testament known as the sermon on the mount), it is but a short step to approving war as a divinely inspired mission. this sort of thinking has led, inexorably, to such phenomena as jerry falwell once writing that god is pro-war.

it is the apocalyptic frame of reference of fundamentalists, their belief in an imminent armageddon, that psychologically conditions them to steer this country into conflict, not only on foreign fields (some evangelicals thought saddam was the antichrist and therefore a suitable target for cruise missiles), but also in the realm of domestic political controversy. it is hardly surprising that the most adamant proponent of the view that there was no debt ceiling problem was michele bachmann, the darling of the fundamentalist right. what does it matter, anyway, if the country defaults? — we shall presently abide in the bosom of the lord.

some liberal writers have opined that the different socio-economic perspectives separating the "business" wing of the GOP and the religious right make it an unstable coalition that could crack. i am not so sure. there is no fundamental disagreement on which direction the two factions want to take the country, merely how far in that direction they want to take it. the plutocrats would drag us back to the gilded age, the theocrats to the salem witch trials. in any case, those consummate plutocrats, the koch brothers, are pumping large sums of money into michele bachman's presidential campaign, so one ought not make too much of a potential plutocrat-theocrat split.

thus, the modern GOP; it hardly seems conceivable that a republican could have written the following:

should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. there is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. among them are h.l. hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other texas oil millionaires and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. their number is negligible and they are stupid.

(that was president eisenhower, writing to his brother edgar in 1954.)

it is this broad and ever-widening gulf between the traditional republicanism of an eisenhower and the quasi-totalitarian cult of a michele bachmann that impelled my departure from capitol hill. it is not in my pragmatic nature to make a heroic gesture of self-immolation, or to make lurid revelations of personal martyrdom in the manner of david brock. and i will leave a more detailed dissection of failed republican economic policies to my fellow apostate bruce bartlett.

i left because i was appalled at the headlong rush of republicans, like gadarene swine, to embrace policies that are deeply damaging to this country's future; and contemptuous of the feckless, craven incompetence of democrats in their half-hearted attempts to stop them. and, in truth, i left as an act of rational self-interest. having gutted private-sector pensions and health benefits as a result of their embrace of outsourcing, union busting and "shareholder value," the GOP now thinks it is only fair that public-sector workers give up their pensions and benefits, too. hence the intensification of the GOP's decades-long campaign of scorn against government workers. under the circumstances, it is simply safer to be a current retiree rather than a prospective one.

if you think paul ryan and his ayn rand-worshipping colleagues aren't after your social security and medicare, i am here to disabuse you of your naiveté.[5] they will move heaven and earth to force through tax cuts that will so starve the government of revenue that they will be "forced" to make "hard choices" — and that doesn't mean repealing those very same tax cuts, it means cutting the benefits for which you worked.

during the week that this piece was written, the debt ceiling fiasco reached its conclusion. the economy was already weak, but the GOP's disgraceful game of chicken roiled the markets even further. foreigners could hardly believe it: americans' own crazy political actions were destabilizing the safe-haven status of the dollar. accordingly, during that same week, over one trillion dollars worth of assets evaporated on financial markets. russia and china have stepped up their advocating that the dollar be replaced as the global reserve currency — a move as consequential and disastrous for US interests as any that can be imagined.

if republicans have perfected a new form of politics that is successful electorally at the same time that it unleashes major policy disasters, it means twilight both for the democratic process and america's status as the world's leading power.

---

[1] i am not exaggerating for effect. a law passed in 2010 by the arizona legislature mandating arrest and incarceration of suspected illegal aliens was actually drafted by the american legislative exchange council, a conservative business front group that drafts "model" legislation on behalf of its corporate sponsors. the draft legislation in question was written for the private prison lobby, which sensed a growth opportunity in imprisoning more people.

[2] i am not a supporter of obama and object to a number of his foreign and domestic policies. but when he took office amid the greatest financial collapse in 80 years, i wanted him to succeed, so that the country i served did not fail. but already in 2009, mitch mcconnell, the senate republican leader, declared that his greatest legislative priority was — jobs for americans? rescuing the financial system? solving the housing collapse? — no, none of those things. his top priority was to ensure that obama should be a one-term president. evidently senator mcconnell hates obama more than he loves his country. note that the mainstream media have lately been hailing mcconnell as "the adult in the room," presumably because he is less visibly unstable than the tea party freshmen

[3] this is not a venue for immigrant bashing. it remains a fact that outsourcing jobs overseas, while insourcing sub-minimum wage immigrant labor, will exert downward pressure on US wages. the consequence will be popular anger, and failure to address that anger will result in a downward wage spiral and a breech of the social compact, not to mention a rise in nativism and other reactionary impulses. it does no good to claim that these economic consequences are an inevitable result of globalization; germany has somehow managed to maintain a high-wage economy and a vigorous industrial base.

[4] the cowardice is not merely political. during the past ten years, i have observed that democrats are actually growing afraid of republicans. in a quirky and flawed, but insightful, little book, "democracy and populism: fear and hatred," john lukacs concludes that the left fears, the right hates.

[5] the GOP cult of ayn rand is both revealing and mystifying. on the one hand, rand's tough guy, every-man-for-himself posturing is a natural fit because it puts a philosophical gloss on the latent sociopathy so prevalent among the hard right. on the other, rand exclaimed at every opportunity that she was a militant atheist who felt nothing but contempt for christianity. apparently, the ignorance of most fundamentalist "values voters" means that GOP candidates who enthuse over rand at the same time they thump their bibles never have to explain this stark contradiction. and i imagine a democratic officeholder would have a harder time explaining why he named his offspring "marx" than a GOP incumbent would in rationalizing naming his kid "rand."

for the record

via steve benen @ the washington monthly:

IF CANTOR REALLY WANTS TO GO THERE.... house majority leader eric cantor (r-va.), shortly after president obama's remarks on [the death of] osama bin laden, issued a related statement. it included this gem:

"i commend president obama who has followed the vigilance of president bush in bringing bin laden to justice."

there's a fair amount of this rhetoric bouncing around this morning, and it's not especially surprising — republicans aren't going to credit president obama, regardless of merit, so it stands to reason they'll try to bring george w. bush into the picture.

if this is going to be a new gop talking point, we might as well set the record straight.

in march 2002, just six months after 9/11, bush said of bin laden, "i truly am not that concerned about him.... you know, i just don't spend that much time on him, to be honest with you."

in july 2006, we learned that the bush administration closed its unit that had been hunting bin laden.

in september 2006, bush told fred barnes, one of his most sycophantic media allies, that an "emphasis on bin laden doesn't fit with the administration's strategy for combating terrorism."

and don't even get me started on bush's failed strategy that allowed bin laden to escape from tora bora.

i'm happy to extend plenty of credit to all kinds of officials throughout the government, but crediting bush's "vigilance" on bin laden is deeply silly.

update: donald rumsfeld added this morning that obama "wisely" followed bush's lead. he either has a very short memory, or he's lying and hopes you have a very short memory.

meanwhile, from every birther's favorite faux-wingnut talking hairpiece:

i want to personally congratulate president obama and the men and women of the armed forces for a job well done. ... i am so proud to see americans standing shoulder to shoulder, waving the american flag in celebration of this great victory.

we should spend the next several days not debating party politics, but in remembrance of those who lost their lives on 9/11 and those currently fighting for our freedom.

god bless america!

after months of flinging racist birther-poop at obama, the donald once again demonstrates, through well-timed magnanimity, that he knows how to separate himself from the crowd.

a message to you, rudy

it is a dog-bites-man story. the military justice system proceeded in a way that was not merely predictable but predicted. the case makes our top-10 list largely because the dog was barking-mad and there was a three-ring flea circus performing on its back.

— JAG dwight sullivan, CAAFlog

i'm not gonna mince words, rudy: we told you so.

we told you so from the very beginning and at key steps along the way, but you refused to listen and you continued to insist you were right, in the face of folks actually paid to know what they're talking about and in the face of your perfect 0-70+ record for being wrong — though if you were the type to listen, you'd never be a birther, now would you? and as a birther, you thought that this was the case that was somehow gonna be different.

well, rudy, as it turned out, you were right: terry lakin's court-martial was in fact different. your hero and would-be martyr pulled an about-face on you, chose not to carry your cross and entered a guilty plea. i know that had to hurt, rudy.

as you jeered from the sidelines of previous court thrashings you could always find yourself some space where you could pretend you'd won something. you could always find some rickety perch where you could self-righteously puff yourself up (often just over the effort of getting into a courtroom) in preparation for the usurper's demise, where you could ignore all your previous losses and crow and spin and dive feet-first down the throat of anyone rude enough to point that out.

but not this time, rudy. because this time you were up against the u.s. military and like an efficient, well-oiled machine, they took your nonsense and checked it at the door, leaving you nothing to salvage from this trial, nothing to take home and proudly show off to momma:

no obama, no birth certificate, a guilty plea, a lengthy, thorough and painful allocution by the accused rejecting birthers and everything you claim to stand for, real punishment, no throngs of supporters or admirers or protestors and no military rebellion as a consolation prize.

and last but not least of all, the knowledge that just about every turn of the case was predicted, weeks in advance, by everyone you love to hate. clearly that proved just a bit too much for your bloated ego to take:

... as my friends fall away, and as my social circle of friends gets smaller and smaller ...

i guess sacrificing friends and family is a small price to pay for your country and constitution, but on this trial you bankrupted yourself thinking that the outcome was ever in doubt or could be spun any other way.

an occurrence on owl creek

over the weekend birther soldier terry lakin, who invited his own court-martial by refusing to report to duty until the kenyan usurper in the white house shows him a birth certificate, seems to have decided on a change of strategy:

there’s been or is about to be a change of counsel in the lakin case with the highly experienced military justice practitioners from puckett & faraj, P.C. entering the case as LTC lakin’s counsel.

lakin's dog-bite attorney paul rolf jensen, whom we met on anderson cooper's show, appears to have been consigned to the dog house, along with lakin's birther cheerleading and fundraising squad:

"safeguardourconstitution.com" was the official lakinista website. it’s gone. go to that link now, and you are transferred to the american patriot foundation’s homepage. and paulrolfjensen.com was a website tied to mr. jensen’s representation of LTC lakin. in fact, it included what appeared to be pictures of mr. jensen assisting LTC lakin in making his youtube video announcing his intention to disobey all orders. that link now takes one to the jensen & associates APC homepage.

ever since he was first charged, LTC lakin must have been experiencing something like what occurred with larry in animal house. remeber the scene where larry was in bed with the mayor's daughter and the devil popped up and said — well, we all know what the devil said. and then the angel popped up and gave contrary advice. that must be what it's been like for LTC lakin with mr. jensen playing the role of the devil and MAJ kemkes, his detailed defense counsel, playing the role of the angel. the angel finally won the argument in animal house. maybe MAJ kemkes finally prevailed with LTC lakin. or maybe the realization that he was about to say bye bye to his military retirement and be shipped off to the USDB caused LTC lakin to flinch. whatever the reason, LTC lakin will now be represented by counsel who will see their duty as zealously representing their client's interests rather than advancing a dubious political cause. so we've probably seen the last of the guano crazy in the lakin case. the case is now likely to become an exercise in controlling the damage caused by LTC lakin's and his previous defense counsel's decision that it would be a really good idea to make a video of LTC lakin asserting his determination to disobey orders and placing that video on youtube, then carrying through on his promise (including by refusing an order to report to his medal of honor recipient brigade commander in arlington, virginia as ordered). it will still be interesting to see how the case unfolds and concludes, but it will now be much more of a dog-bites-man story than the man-bites-dog story it's been to this point.

it's of course possible that lakin actually thinks his highly competent new counsel will be able to get him what jensen could not — obama's birth certificate — but if he believes that for even a second, there's a bridge on owl creek that i'm sure i can sell him:

not all losers created equal

on phil cave's military law blog CAAFlog a birther smugly asks:

it would be interesting to see what most of the posters here would be saying if, say, the president in question were GWB. and the issue was whether he was legit based on the election fiasco of 2000. you guys would be crying just like the birthers over the MJ [military judge] denying discovery. i think this case is the only time i have ever seen any one on this blog attack a defense counsel.

to which accusation phil effortlessly responds:

actually you have the answer to your question already. no-one who refused deployment orders while president bush was in office did so because they thought he was a usurper or illegal office holder. and clearly none of those on this blog did. the refusniks did refuse or go UA [unauthorized absence] did so on personal animosity to the wars and a belief the wars were illegal, not that the president was an illegal. so your question has been answered and refuted with fact, IMHO.

it seems that the differences between the losers of the 2000 and 2008 elections are invisible only to the losers of 2008. only one set of losers has filed and failed more than 70 eligibility lawsuits when in the same circumstances the other set filed none. only one set has flooded the coffers of gun dealers in every state when in the same circumstances the other set put gun dealers into a slump.

only one set has called for rewriting the constitution; only one set has called for military overthrow and violent revolution, whilst waving the long-discredited flags of long-dead seditious movements; only one set has obstructed all efforts to move forward and threatens to repeal all efforts they cannot obstruct; only one set is still throwing a tantrum two years running and childishly insists on holding the entire nation hostage until they "get their country back".

does it really need to be made any more clear that one set does not deserve to win?

birther on toast

u.s. army lieutenant colonel dr. terrence lakin is toast:

and he can't say i didn't warn him.

of course it's always possible that what looks, to both layfolk and seasoned practicioners, like a fatal drop kick to the groin, may be, to more astute eyes, a carefully orchestrated manuever in a larger overarching strategy:

if convicted, easy reversal and remand by SCOTUS [*].

this is a case where def[ense] adnits the alledged action but claims justicication in doing so, so pros[ecutor] must show "criminal intent." they are denying him the ability to show the lack of a "criminal state of mind," a "mens rea" in latin, a criminal intent.

[* supreme court of the united states]

umm, ok ... whatever.

or it's possible that he knows he's tilting at windmills and wants all the glitz and glory that comes with martyrdom — or at least as much as he can get from his cheerleading squad.

but whichever narrative is unfolding, everyone seems to agree that he's one step closer to his all-expense-paid vacation to fort leavenworth:

CNN — a judge on thursday denied a request for president barack obama to testify at a court martial for a U.S. army flight surgeon who refused to deploy to afghanistan until he saw proof that obama was born in the united states.

the judge, army col. denise lind, said any evidence or witnesses related to obama's citizenship is irrelevant to the charges against lt. col. terrence lakin, who has 17 years of service in the U.S. military.

after failing to deploy with his unit in april, lakin was charged with missing a movement, disobeying a lawful order and dereliction of duty.

the uniform code of military justice says the maximum punishment for both offenses -- missing his plane and disobeying lawful orders -- is a dishonorable discharge and up to two years in confinement. a guilty verdict could also result in forfeiture of lakin's pay, which totals $7,959 a month, according to a charge sheet provided by a group sponsoring his defense.

lakin's lawyers argued that all military orders stem from the commander-in-chief. without evidence that obama is eligible to be president, they say, the doctor's deployment order was illegal.

in addition to putting obama on their witness list, lakin's lawyers had asked lind to order obama's official birth records from hawaii be brought to court for trial.

"if the president is ineligible, you need to know that," lakin's civilian attorney, paul jensen, told lind. "col. lakin needs to know that, the government needs to know that, america needs to know that."

the prosecutors in the case argued that obama's eligibility is not relevant because the officers who ordered lakin to go to fort campbell and then ordered him to answer questions about why he didn't go were his proper superiors in the military chain of command, and they gave him legal orders. jensen later conceded that point.

the judge ruled that the matter of obama's eligibility is not relevant because he did not give any orders in the case. she pointed out that while the president is commander-in-chief of the military, it is congress that is constitutionally empowered to raise armies, pay them and equip them.

any contention that any orders are invalid if the president is ineligible "is erroneous," the judge said.

lind also said that military law says that a soldier's personal beliefs or convictions are not sufficient to allow that soldier to determine that an order is illegal. the soldier has to have "no rational doubt" that the order is illegal before he or she can ignore it.

finally she ruled that a military court martial is not the forum in which to determine a president's eligibility, because the constitution says only congress has the power to impeach and remove the president.

afterward, jensen said he respected the judge's ruling, but called it distressing.

"it completely deprives us of any opportunity to present a defense in this case," jensen said.

the court martial is set to begin in october, but jensen said he's not giving up on the matter of obama's eligibility.

"we will be giving the army court of criminal appeals in the next week or two the opportunity to take up the issue, and we are going to fight on for justice to be served in this case."

lakin is among 27 percent of americans who doubt or deny that obama is american-born, according to a recent CNN/opinion research corp. poll. they compose the birther movement, which demands that obama present a birth certificate signed by the doctor who delivered him in 1961.

CNN and other news organizations have thoroughly debunked the rumors about the president's birthplace. the obama campaign released a copy of a birth record issued by the state in 2007, called a "certification of live birth," and allowed reporters to examine the document in person in 2008.

last year, hawaiian state officials issued a statement that they had personally viewed the president's original hawaiian birth record, called a "certificate of live birth," and verified it to be authentic. state law bars the release of the original certificate. in addition, two hawaiian newspapers ran notices in 1961 announcing obama's birth in the state.

lakin's fate was sealed the moment he disobeyed his orders to report to duty. under military law all orders are presumed to be legal, which places the burden of contesting an order on the subordinate. there is only one perilous defense for disobedience:

an order requiring the performance of a military duty or act may be inferred to be lawful and it is disobeyed at the peril of the subordinate. this inference does not apply to a patently illegal order, such as one that directs the commission of a crime.

but lakin wants to argue that:

1. his orders come from the president.
2. barack obama might not really be president.
3. obeying obama's orders could therefore be a crime.

unfortunately for lakin, his argument fails on all three points.

first, while obama is certainly his commander-in-chief, lakin's april orders to report came from his immediate superiors, as reflected in the specific formal charges leveled against him:

CHARGE I, VIOLATION OF THE UCMJ. ARTICLE 87

THE SPECIFICATION: in that lieutenant colonel terrence l. lakin, US army, did. at or near arlington, virginia. on or about 12 april 2010, through design, miss the movement of US airways flight number 1123. departing from baltimore/washington international airport arriving in charlotte. north carolina. in order to deploy for a temporary change of station in support of operation enduring freedom with the 32nd calvary regiment, 101st airborne division (air assault), fort campbell, kentucky. with which he was required in the course of duty to move

CHARGE II, VIOLATION OF THE UCMJ. ARTICLE 92

SPECIFICATION 1: in that lieutenant colonel terrence l. lakin. US army. having knowledge of a lawful order issued by lieutenant colonel william judd. to report to the office of his brigade commander. colonel gordon r. roberts. at 1345 hours. or words to that effect. an order which it was his duty to obey. did. at or near arlington, virginia. on or about 31 march 2010, fail to obey the same by wrongfully not reporting as directed.

SPECIFICATION 2: in that lieutenant colonel terrence l. lakin. US army. having knowledge of a lawful order issued by colonel gordon r. roberts. to wit: a memorandum signed by the said colonel gordon r. roberts, dated 31 march 2010, an order which it was his duty to obey. did, at or near arlington. virginia. on or about 31 march 2010, fail to obey the same by wrongfully not reporting as directed.

SPECIFICATION 3: in that lieutenant colonel terrence l. lakin. US army. having knowledge of a lawful order issued by colonel peter m. mchugh. to wit: temporary change of station orders 099-17. dated 9 april 2010, issued by colonel peter mchugh. requiring the said lieutenant colonel terrence l. lakin to report to fort campbell, kentucky not later than 1500 hours on 12 april 2010, an order which it was his duty to obey. did at or near washington. district of columbia. on or about 12 april 2010, fail to obey the same by wrongfully failing to report to 32nd calvary regiment. 101st airborne division (air assault), fort campbell, kentucky.

SPECIFICATION 4: in that lieutenant colonel terrence l. lakin. US army. who knew or should have known of his duties at or near washington. district of columbia. on or about 12 april 2010. was derelict in the perforrmance of those duties in that he willfully failed to report to fort campbell, kentucky in accordance with temporary change of station orders 099-17. dated 9 april 2010, issued by colonel peter mchugh. in support of operation enduring freedom. as it was his duty to do.

note that the name "barack h. obama" does not appear anywhere in these charges, and even if it could be demonstrated that every military order traces back to the president, no court is going to agree that every latrine assignment since noon january 20, 2009 has been illegal.

second, lakin takes careful pains to avoid claiming that obama isn't the lawful president (possibly to avoid added charges of contempt). he only claims that he's unsure and just needs his mind put at ease. unfortunately for soldiers, there is no room for doubt in the chain of command, no matter how sincere. lakin is obligated to follow orders unless he has damning evidence in hand at the time of his refusal. asking for the judge's help to find the evidence that he's required to bring to court himself counts for real chutzpah if nothing else.

third, even if obama were proven ineligible, his orders would nonetheless remain perfectly valid, according to the de facto officer doctrine:

the de facto officer doctrine confers validity upon acts performed by a person acting under the color of official title even though it is later discovered that the legality of that person’s appointment or election to office is deficient.

... the de facto doctrine springs from the fear of the chaos that would result from multiple and repetitious suits challenging every action taken by every official whose claim to office could be open to question, and seeks to protect the public by insuring the orderly functioning of the government despite technical defects in title to office.

all of lakins arguments collide head-on with well-established mechanisms essential to maintaining military discipline and those mechanisms are designed to turn recalcitrants like lakin into toast, which he must full well know:

i attempted all avenues i could over a year ago. i submitted an article 138, which is the only way that i could research how to &mdash how to address this issue, asking and begging my leadership for guidance in how to — how to address this issue. and the answers that i got were not ...

... answers that he wanted to hear, apparently — confirmed by former JAG defense attorney charles gittins:

i told LTCOL lakin that he was being badly advised when he called me to join his legal team. i gave him my (very) candid advice. i told him to seek opinions from other military justice experts if he was not willing to accept my advice. he is where he is for a reason. i am very sad for him. he has been deluded by a very incompetent attorney, who has done a disservice [to] our profession and military justice.

now that lakin's legs have been predictably cut from under him, his attorney and his cheerleaders claim that he's not being allowed a defense. but the judge, rightly, wants lakin to defend against the charges he's facing. all that lakin's being denied is the opportunity to rant incoherently. during his trial for the murder of dr. george tiller, scott roeder was not allowed to rant incoherently about perfectly legal abortion procedures. instead, facing a charge of first degree murder, roeder was allowed only to explain if he believed someone's life was in imminent danger or if he were legally insane when he pulled the trigger, because those are the only justifications allowed.

as noted in the cnn report above, lakin's attorney has already been forced to concede in court that lakin's orders were legal. if that leaves lakin without a defense, the person at fault is not the judge.

the toast is ready. it is only waiting to be served.

the hammer

when you have a hammer, people will bring you nails:

what’s the point of you saving this superb military for, colin, if we can't use it? — former un ambassador madeleine albright

mcchrystal's cadre

via marc ambinder @ the atlantic, a birther wet dream dries up and blows away:

beginning in the early afternoon, a cadre of military and civilian soldiers loyal to gen. stanley mcchrystal began to spread rumors throughout the capital city: that ground commanders in afghanistan were threatening to resign ... that the CIA's chief of station in kabul had stepped down ... that the commander of the joint special operations command (JSOC), william mcraven, was irate and wanted to step down ... that commanders of the "special mission units" like mcraven's former subordinates at devgru (SEAL team six) would refuse taskings from the national command authority ... that buried secrets were about to be exposed, like who actually leaked the mcchrystal afghanistan review to bob woodward. first, though a lot of officers who hitched their careers to mcchrystal are indeed quite angry, no one has resigned, the CIA's station chief remains in place (though he's quite close to mcchrystal) and mcraven isn't going anywhere. second, it is meaningful and endearing that so many people are loyal to mcchrystal. they revere the man. third, such behavior, while in one context explicable, is precisely an argument in favor of president obama's decision to remove mcchrystal ...

if, as birthers promise, the military's ready to overthrow the kenyan usurper, it doesn't look like it's going to happen this week. 'til then, the brass will just have to keep following his orders and keep showing him the respect he's lawfully due.

birther morituri

the interview is just under eight minutes. i doubt the court-martial lasts as long:

cooper:	he's a decorated army doctor, and tonight lieutenant colonel terrence lakin has become the face of the so-called birthers movement, whose followers believe president obama may not have been born in the U.S. and may not be eligible to be president of the united states. lieutenant colonel lakin, who's been an active-duty physician for the military for 18 years, has been ordered to deploy to afghanistan for a second tour of duty. but lakin is refusing that command, saying the order is coming from a commander in chief who he believes may not, in fact, be a natural-born citizen. lakin has also invited his own court-martial and says he wants proof the president was born in the U.S. lieutenant colonel terrence lakin joins me now, along with his attorney, paul jensen. i appreciate both of you being with us. colonel, you say you're refusing your orders because, quote, "there is significant evidence or unanswered speculation that mr. obama is not eligible to be president." you said that in a note to general casey. now, ignoring the idea that you actually cited speculation as a justification for your decision, but to say there's significant evidence that the president was not born in america is just false. i mean, you're an honorable guy. you've served your country incredibly well. you're a doctor. do you honestly believe president obama was not born in hawaii?
jensen:	well, anderson, let me answer as his lawyer ...
cooper:	no, no, no. excuse me. wait, this is a doctor — excuse me. this is a doctor. this is a man who served his country for 18 years. i think he can answer a question by himself.
jensen:	i think that the lawyer should protect the client from incriminating himself. you say it's false. you're not prosecuting this case.
cooper:	ok, lieutenants colonel, if you call up the state of hawaii and you ask for a birth certificate, you're sent a certificate of live birth. that is the official document. and the president has ...
jensen:	that is not correct.
cooper:	and the president ...
jensen:	that is absolutely not correct.
cooper:	and the president has released — and the president has released that certificate of live birth — there it is — to newspapers. in 1961, had birth announcements provided by the state of hawaii health department. certificates. the republican governor of hawaii sent someone to personally view the birth certificate at the department of health and says it's there.
jensen:	that's not ...
cooper:	again, can the colonel not talk for himself? the guy's an adult.
jensen:	you said that that's a birth certificate, mr. cooper. now you want to tell the truth to your viewers.
cooper:	according to the state of hawaii ...
jensen:	that's an abstract, a computer-generated abstract ...
cooper:	according to the state of hawaii, the certificate of live birth, and i'm quoting from the state of hawaii health department. the certificate of live birth is the standard form acceptable by federal agencies. so are you saying, colonel, but you're not actually saying anything. but i would appreciate it if you actually would, and not hide behind your attorney. are you actually saying that all soldiers who currently serve who are from hawaii should be suspect because that's what they provide?
lakin:	this is a constitutional matter. and the truth matters, and ...
cooper:	well, and answers matter. can you answer my question? should all soldiers who are from hawaii and who have given certificate of live births as their proof of citizenship, should they all be suspect now?
lakin:	this isn't a matter about all soldiers. this is a matter about ...
cooper:	well, you're saying the president ...
lakin:	... the two positions that are — require — that require a natural-born citizen.
cooper:	you've taken countless orders in your — in your laudable service over the years. have you ever asked for any superior's birth certificate?
jensen:	you know, that really is — begs the question...
cooper:	no, no, no, sir, please let your client answer. you served under general casey. where was he born?
jensen:	i'm the lawyer, and i'm going to tell you, mr. cooper, the issue isn't about where general casey was born, where mr. ...
cooper:	he doesn't know. because you've never asked the question, because you just assume that they're americans.
jensen:	he doesn't have to be a natural-born citizen to be the chief of staff of the army.
cooper:	actually, to serve in the united states army, according to your own documents, citizenship papers have to be brought to bear. in fact ...
jensen:	that's not the issue. to serve as president of the united state...
cooper:	in your own letter ...
jensen:	mister — mr. cooper, please.
cooper:	in your own letter ...
jensen:	... to be president of the united states ...
cooper:	... to general casey you have said that you had to provide your birth certificate.
jensen:	you're afraid of letting me answer. are you afraid of letting me answer?
cooper:	no, i'd like your client to answer.
jensen:	the issue under the united states constitution is whether the president is eligible to hold the office. that determine — is determined by whether he's 35 years old and a natural-born citizen. those are not requirements for the chief of staff of the army, sir. and what colonel lakin has said is that there's mounting evidence that he is not. and the original birth certificate has not been released.
cooper:	right, ok. there's not mounting evidence. and he has ...
jensen:	that's what you said.
cooper:	excuse me. let me respond. he has taken orders for years from people, probably thousands of orders. countless orders. he has never questioned the legitimacy of the people he is taking orders from. general casey. but he doesn't know where general casey is born. for all he knows, general casey could be a foreign-born, not an american citizen.
jensen:	mr. cooper, if you've done your research, you know that, in the state of hawaii, there's a statute that allows anyone born outside the state of hawaii, including in a foreign country, to obtain a hawaiian birth certificate at any age by going back and filling out a form...
cooper:	right. and if you'd done your research, you'd know that, on the certificate of live birth, it would indicate if the person was born in another country. it would say they were born in another country ...
jensen:	that's not correct.
cooper:	that is correct. that is the fact.
jensen:	i beg your pardon. under hawaiian statute 338-17.8, there's nothing that says that in the statute.
cooper:	ok.
jensen:	you point it out to me if i'm wrong.
cooper:	in your complaint to general casey, colonel, you say, quote, that you're not seeking any grandstanding or publicity for this action. how can you seriously say that? i mean, you put out a youtube video with your — talking, frankly, more than you've talked here tonight. you have this group paying all your legal fees, the american patriot foundation legal defense fund. they've provided the attorney who's sitting next to you. and they're fundraising based on you. they're raising money using you.
lakin:	i attempted all avenues i could over a year ago. i submitted an article 138, which is the only way that i could research how to — how to address this issue, asking and begging my leadership for guidance in how to — how to address this issue. and the answers that i got were not ...
jensen:	mr. cooper, you — the standard is not satisfying you — the standard is to satisfy ...
	[crosstalk]
cooper:	lieutenant colonel, you sound like an honorable man — excuse me. i'm addressing your client. lieutenant colonel, you seem like an incredibly honorable man who's obviously served his country. you're a doctor; you're an educated man. why is it this issue? i mean, of all the orders you've taken, of all the people you've served under, why this, why now? what is it that has got you so, you know, sticking on this issue?
lakin:	it's a fundamental of the constitution, and my oath of office is to the constitution. and i believe we need truth on this matter.
cooper:	but i mean, what's wrong with the certificate of live birth, in your opinion? what's wrong — i mean, how do you explain a newspaper — two newspapers in 1961 announcing the birth of barack obama in hawaii? which is not something his parents did or his grandparents did. those are based on health records sent by the health department, as it does for every person born in hawaii. and everyone gets a newspaper now.
jensen:	mr. cooper, that's simply not correct. and the issue is instead why hasn't the president released the original birth certificate, if one exists? this could be over tonight. tonight. release the birth certificate, if it exists, signed by the doctor in 1961. it's in the state of hawaii's records. if —
cooper:	i'm just going to read you a quote from janice okubu from the department of health: "our certificate of live birth is the standard form which was modeled after national standards that are acceptable by federal agencies and organizations."
jensen:	but it is not the only form ...
cooper:	the governor of hawaii, a republican, has said, and i quote, "i had my health doctor, who is a physician by background, go personally view the birth certificate in the birth records of the department of health, and we issued a news release."
jensen:	and she is not going to be testifying at the court-martial. this is a criminal case. the president should release the original birth certificate, and this would be over tonight. these other documents and testimony are not admissible and will not be admitted in court.
cooper:	well, i appreciate you being on the program tonight. lieutenant colonel terrence lakin, i appreciate it, as well. thank you, sir.
jensen:	thank you.
cooper:	you can join the live chat. let us know what you think about this issue at ac360.com.

none of these birther claims will be admissible at trial, which will go something like this:

judge:	did you disobey a direct order?
lakin:	yes, but ...
judge:	guilty. welcome to leavenworth.
lakin:	b-b-but ...

or, as the military justice blog caaflog explains:

... while i find the eligibility debate interesting, it is also profoundly irrelevant to the prosecution of LTC lakin. LTC lakin is guilty of missing movement and violating lawful orders regardless of whether the president is or isn't constitutionally eligible to serve. there is no real prospect that his court-martial will result in the production of any documents or testimony concerning the irrelevant issue of president obama's constitutional eligibility to serve as president. instead, the case is likely to be a circus leading to an inevitable conviction. attempts to press the issue on direct appeal will fail because ACCA will hold that discovery into eligibility issues isn't relevant and CAAF will either agree or, more likely, simply deny review, thus foreclosing a cert petition on direct review. collateral review attempts will fail under abstention (if filed before the completion of direct appeals) or because the issue was fully and fairly resolved by the military (if filed after completion of direct appeals). some courts on collateral review may add that they agree with the military courts' determination that president obama's eligibility was irrelevant.