Constitution 7, Limitless Executive Power 0

Every time — every single time — that President Bush asserted some unlimited executive power in the name of “national security” or “terrorism,” a federal court has shot him down. Let’s take a walk down memory lane.

2004 marked the first big loss for the Bush administration in the judiciary branch. Hamdi v. Rumsfeld was the first major challenge to President Bush’s self-asserted national security powers. In that case, the Bush administration asserted that Hamdi, an alleged terrorist captured in Afghanistan, had no right to contest his detention. The U.S. Supreme Court disagreed and said that Hamdi, an “enemy combatant,” did have the right to contest his detention before a neutral decisionmaker. In Boumediene v. Bush (2008), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that prisoners held in Guantanamo Bay did have the right to habeas petitions, and the Military Commissions Act’s hearings were unconstitutional. In Rasul v. Bush (2004), the Court struck down legislation that ostensibly prevented the federal courts from ruling on whether or not Guantanamo detainees were wrongfully imprisoned. Judge Anna Diggs Taylor,of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, ruled in 2006 that the Bush administration could not use the state secrets privilege to dismiss evidence in a case involving warrantless wiretapping and surveillance of U.S. citizens. In 2006, the Supreme Court ruled, in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, that Congress did not intend to use the Detainee Treatment Act to strip the Supreme Court of its authority to hear pending habeas petitions from prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. Also in 2006, Judge Vaughn Walker of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, refused to dismiss a civil suit against AT&T for warrantless wiretapping. The Bush administration had again asserted the state secrets privilege.

And now we come back to present day. President Obama’s Justice Department has, much to my chagrin, continued — and in some cases, exceeded — the use of the state secrets privilege. It even wanted to have an entire case dismissed on the grounds that the evidence to be used was classified under the state secrets privilege. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals down on Hyde Street in San Francisco — right across the street from the public library — ruled today that Obama could not have the case dismissed due to “state secrets.”

Judge Michael Daly Hawkins, writing the unanimous opinion of the three-judge panel, didn’t buy the Justice Department’s argument that “the very subject matter” of the case was so confidential, and could be so potentially damaging to national security, that it couldn’t even be discussed in court. The “subject matter” was Jeppesen Dataplan’s involvement in the “extraordinary rendition” of terrorism suspects in U.S. custody to CIA “black sites” around the world, where they would be presumably tortured. (Jeppesen Dataplan is an oddly-named subsidiary of Boeing, whose airplanes were used to transport suspects to other countries for torture.)

The Ninth Circuit was quite strong in its affirmation that the Obama administration was making things up (the judges rejected the “very subject matter” argument because “it is unsupported in the case law”; i.e., Justice Department lawyers made it up). It was also strong in its affirmation of the separation of powers principle. The job of the courts is to interpret the law. The job of the executive is to enforce the law. For Obama to assert that there exists a scenario in which the court cannot be allowed to interpret the law is a gross overreach of presidential power that violates the separation of powers principle.

Oh, and they took time out of their busy schedule to say that “arbitrary imprisonment and torture under any circumstance is a ‘gross and notorious … act of despotism.’” (Bonus points: that was part of Justice Scalia’s dissent in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld).

What’s interesting about Obama’s argument here is that he wants to use the state secrets doctrine to prevent even the confirmation or denial of the fact that people were extraordinarily rendered. We’re not even talking secret evidence here; Obama says that it is detrimental to national security to say merely that something happened or not. Judge Hawkins will have none of this: “The state secrets privilege has never applied to prevent parties from litigating the truth or falsity of allegations, or facts, or information simply because the government regards the truth or falsity of the allegations to be secret,” he writes. Sure, the state secrets privilege can be used to suppress evidence, but not to suppress the fact that something happened. To go into the nitty-gritty of how extraordinary rendition works (which would be evidence) might be damaging to national security, but merely stating that it happens is not damaging to national security. (What it is damaging to is the country’s public image, and it opens up the government to litigation. Let’s be clear, here: this has nothing to do with actual national security and everything to do with damage control, something the Ninth Circuit hints at in the opinion.)

Finally, the Ninth Circuit addresses the fine distinction between “classified” and “secret.” Classified information is ipso facto subject to a whole host of laws, many of which give the executive branch the authority to decide what to classify and declassify. The distinction becomes important to this case because the government argues that courts should defer to the executive, per the Freedom of Information Act, regarding what should or should not be “secret,” since all secret things are also necessarily classified. The government cannot seriously argue, says the court, that information that has been made public (as this was; The New York Times reported years ago on the existence of this rendition program) is still “secret,” and by way of “secret,” therefore “confidential.” It does not follow that, because the executive says something is confidential, the courts must necessarily accede and declare that confidential thing to be secret within the scope of a judicial proceeding.

The court emphasized that its ruling was limited only to the issue of whether or not the state secrets privilege could be used to dismiss the case wholesale. The case will be remanded back to the district court from whence it came, with the understanding that Obama may use the state secrets privilege to have certain evidence excluded, but he may not have the whole case dismissed. Even then, it will be up to the court to decide whether to actually exclude the evidence or not.

Given that seven cases over five years have all declared absolute executive power to be unconstitutional, you’d think that the executive branch would take the hint. And I’m especially disappointed by Obama, who wrote in a January memorandum to all executive agencies:

The Government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and failures might be revealed, or because of speculative or abstract fears. Nondisclosure should never be based on an effort to protect the personal interests of Government officials at the expense of those they are supposed to serve.

Are they just empty words? We’ll see.

If Republicans Won’t Play Along on Health Care, Who Cares?

The Republicans bluffed and lost in February when they complained that the stimulus bill wasn’t “bi-partisan” enough. Okay, so House and Senate Democrats acquiesced to some of their demands, including tax cuts for businesses and removing provisions for “family planning” (the euphemism that refers to things like abortion and contraception). The Republicans responded to these concessions by voting against the bill.

Not a single House or Senate Republican voted in favor of the stimulus bill. They apparently believed that this would demonstrate to the American people their opposition to wasteful spending and fiscal irresponsibility. Trouble is, the American people didn’t much care what the Republicans thought; they’re in the midst of a financial crisis, where hundreds of thousands of jobs are being lost each month. Hell, yes, they want a stimulus!

Republicans were using a two-pronged approach to sway the public: (1) tax cuts are superior to government spending when it comes to stimulating the economy; and (2) the government is spending way too much. I won’t go into the merits of the arguments here, but suffice it to say that those were the counter-arguments to the Democratic spending bill (yes, “stimulus” = “spending.” Recall President Obama’s statement: “What do you think a stimulus bill is?”).

The public doesn’t much care for tax cuts when those tax cuts would benefit only the top earners in the country. Now, what does look like a good idea is investment in public works projects that have been long-neglected by Reaganites who believe that the government shouldn’t spend any money on anything that isn’t national defense.

Those four paragraphs were a flashback.

Interior — White House, Present Day.

President Obama is meeting with GOP leaders, reminding them that when they clamored for “bi-partisanship,” they abandoned it just as much as they accused Democrats of abandoning it. Between 2003 and 2009, Republicans were used to getting their way every time. Sure, Democrats have controlled Congress since 2007, but for some reason, Democrats spent those two years perfecting the fine arts of cowering and acquiescing. Whenever Republicans talked about “bi-partisanship,” they meant, “Give us everything we want or we’ll call you names. We’ll say you’re soft on terrorism. We’ll say you’re engaging in pork-barrel spending. And if that doesn’t work, then we’ll call you socialists and say that you hate America and want the terrorists to win. So you’d better give us all the things we demand, and if you ever try to put your own agenda forward, we’ll slap you down so hard you’d think Mike Tyson had taken Trent Lott’s seat.”

Well, the tables have certainly turned. And I’m pleased that Obama is prepared to shut Republicans out if they refuse to play ball. Hypocrisy? Not at all. I believe in universal health care. I think it’s absolutely necessary and I think it’s nothing but good. If Democrats are willing to embrace it and make it law, then I support them. When Republicans tried to stop SCHIP, I disagreed with them. It’s a matter of not only agreement and disagreement, but also of what’s good for this country. Quite honestly, the Republicans are not interested in governance. They’re interested in stalling until 2010. They want the wheels of government to grind to a halt so that they can then go back to their constituents in November, 2010 and say, “Look at what the Democrats have done for you! Nothing, that’s what! Aren’t you sorry that you voted them into office?”

And therein lies the fundamental difference: Democrats, including President Obama, are interested in doing something constructive. I will frequently disagree with the methods they use, but I largely agree with their philosophy that the government is going to need to spend money to improve the country. I agree that the wealthy should pay for the impoverished. And I agree that health care should be our right not only as citizens, but as human beings. I think the Democrats’ approach is superior to the Republicans’ approach, and that is why I believe that if Republicans are unwilling to reach an actual compromise with the Democrats, then they should be left behind. It is not the Democrats who should have to bend to appease the Republicans; the Democrats won, their ideas are better, and if the Republicans don’t want to go along with them, then it’s their own funeral. Congress doesn’t even need the Republicans.

I’m not the only one who believes this. The American people would rather the Democrats get on with their agenda instead of watering it down to please Republicans whose sanction they don’t need and whose contempt they will get in return for their efforts. In the New York Times/CBS poll referenced above, 56% of those surveyed said that they thought Democrats should stick to their policies, but 79% thought that it was Republicans who should be bi-partisan. That says a lot: not only do Americans want Democrats to do whatever it is Democrats want to do, but they simultaneously think that Republicans should do whatever it is the Democrats want to do.

Health care reform is way too important for Democrats to be chicken about. The last significant health care reform we had in this country was the prescription drug bill from 2005, which funneled a lot of money directly from the government into the hands of prescription drug companies. Sure, the bill could have included a provision for the government to use its significant bargaining power to get better deals on drugs — but then, that would hurt the drug companies’ revenue, wouldn’t it? At approximately the same time, Congress passed a bankruptcy bill that offered terrific terms for banks, credit card companies, and the very wealthy, but left middle- and low-income people in the dark.

The relationship between bankruptcy and health care is quite close; President Bush declared, in 2005, that we needed the bankruptcy bill so as to stop people from gaming the system and trying to get the rest of us to pay off their debts. To listen to him, you’d think Americans were going bankrupt after buying too many Faberge eggs. At the time he said that, though, fully half of bankruptcies in American were being caused not by frivolous over-spending, but by health-care spending. People were — and still are! — spending themselves into tremendous debt in order to stay healthy and alive. And since our health care system discourages regular check-ups, people are guaranteed to see a doctor only when the condition is serious, which means that it will cost more money to fix than it would have if a doctor had caught the condition earlier, during a regular check-up.

It shouldn’t be surprising that Republicans see health care as a political issue instead of a humanitarian one. In 1993, Bill Kristol wrote that Republicans couldn’t afford to let the Clinton health care plan survive; if it did, then the Republicans would be finished. Let me re-iterate that: to Bill Kristol, it was more important that heath care get defeated so the Democrats wouldn’t win re-election in 1994 than it was for people to have universal access to health care.

That’s what we’re up against. And that’s why I support the Democrats. And if Republicans don’t want to join, who cares? Let them explain to their constituents in 2010 about how they didn’t want those same constituents to have universal health care, all so that the free market could survive.

Sex Scandals and Politics: A New Norm?

In light of David Vitter’s political survival and the apparent political comeback of Eliot Spitzer written on the wall, I began to think back to a simpler time, a time when sex was taboo and charlatans claimed a 100,000 Dow was possible.

When thinking about such a time, I also remembered chuckling a few years back when I saw a particularly astute bumper sticker that read:

When Clinton Lied, Nobody Died

In the midst of the many abuses of power by the Bush administration, not seen since Watergate (and probably Teapot Dome before that), it seemed funny in retrospect how obsessed many had been in the late 1990s, just a few years before, about President Clinton’s zipper problem with the infamous Ms. Lewinsky.

Many of the popular defenses of Bill Clinton’s behaviors during the aftermath of the Lewinsky affair seemed to be based on two lines of thought:

1. This sort of behavior was nothing new among American Presidents.

Popular icons such as FDR and JFK were anything but faithful during their days in the White House. While no evidence exists about oral favors in the Oval Office per se, speculation about JFK makes Clinton’s behavior look like an ABC Family Special. Granted the press also conveniently never mentioned that FDR was in a wheel chair or that Kennedy was in ill health. In addition, for anyone who has watched the television series Mad Men knows, it was a different time. It was before the sexual revolution, it was before Watergate and the loss of trust between the public and its politicians, and most importantly, it was before the rise of the popular press and cable news (not to mention the internet). There wasn’t the competition we see today, and those in power were good friends with those in the media. For good or bad, it was a good old boys club with respected boundaries.

2 . This sort of thing was not a big deal elsewhere in the world.

This line of thought was especially interesting to me as at the time when I was studying European politics. It seemed that all of the institutional factors that had arisen in the US, such as the popular press, the internet, and the devolution of the good old boys club, had all occurred in Europe as well. However, unlike the US, despite the fact that the public now knew about the personal faults of their leaders, it seemed that the public didn’t give a damn. The easy explanation for this at the time was that Europe didn’t have the same evangelical and fundamentalist tradition as the US and was far more secular. As such, they didn’t see their politicians as moral role models and therefore could properly separate their actions as individuals from their policies which actually affected their pocketbooks.

As I read a Newsweek snippet that claimed that Bill Clinton’s survival was the exception to the rule of death by sex scandal, I began to wonder whether or not Bill Clinton’s scandal was not an exception, but rather an inflection point in the ethos of the politics of sex scandals. The more I thought about this hypothesis, the more it seemed to make sense. If this were true, what then could be the reasons for this new dynamic?

The Moral Crusaders Went Too Far

This argument goes on the assumption that politics works like a pendulum in the sense that one side often goes too far, which then causes a big backlash that moves the pendulum swinging back in the other direction. From a cultural perspective, this argument would start somewhere back in the middle of the 20th century. Out of the economic and war torn family unit of the Great Depression and World War II emerged a period from the late 1940s to the early 1960s that is sometimes referred to as the neo-Victorian era. This period of unprecedented economic prosperity enabled a return the one worker per family norm that hadn’t been seen in several generations. However, “hi honey, I’m home” had run its course by the mid-1960s, and the pendulum swung far back to the cultural left with the rise of the sexual revolution, the flower children, and a general destruction, for good or bad, of the morals and cultural norms of the previous period. This period in turn ran its course with the excesses of the 1970s, and by the early 1980s the new “moral majority” had risen to power and catapulted conservative California governor Ronald Reagan (who was once deemed far too conservative to ever be elected president) to power. This backlash/pendulum argument would then speculate that this moral majority movement had gone too far, starting with the Lewinsky affair and ending with the assault on homosexuals and immigrants in the years to follow.

Generational Changes

Tied to this previous explanation is the fact that just as the moral majority was stepping too far, new generations began to come of age who cared little for the wedge politics that defined their parents and grandparents generations. Many in these new generations X and Y had grown up in broken families, had a parent who had strayed, and had had friends of different races and sexual orientations. To many in these new generations, things weren’t as black and white or as us versus them. Simply put, most young people don’t care about consensual adult sex.

Context is Everything

Finally, as hinted at before, in the light of Bush’s abuse of powers and the overall failure of a presidency, all of 1990s’ political scandals seemed so feeble in comparison. Dear God, how naïve were we back in those roaring 90s? This argument is not only the easiest to explain, but is also needed by default to even begin to explain and/or justify the previous arguments. This would also seem to imply that any movement of the past decade in cultural norms is anything but nonreversible. If history is any guide, there is likely to be at least one step backward before we can necessarily begin to move forward. Conservative cultural forces in the United States are too strong and too entrenched to simply fade away.

What’s Next?

Granted, it will be years before we will know for sure whether the recent cases of David Vitter or Eliot Spitzer are evidence of a new dynamic or confirmation that our cultural pendulum has not swung much after all. Perhaps in the context of American evangelical traditions, American politicians with loose zippers can now finally be born again.

They Grow Up So Fast

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments yesterday in a case that was bizarre if only for the fact that it had to reach the Supreme Court at all. The case is apropos due to the recently-reported trend of what the media are calling “sexting”: the phenomenon of teenagers sending nude or semi-nude photographs of themselves to each other. It is another front in the War on Sexuality that parents and politicians have been fighting for years. The crux of the argument is this: teenagers should not be having sex, despite the fact that they’re probably in the sexual prime of their lives. It’s like trying to hold back the Colorado River with a wooden, beaver-made dam. It’s not that teenagers didn’t have sex in the past; certainly they did, but it just wasn’t discussed. Sexuality, for everyone — adults included — was something to be ashamed of. We’re just more open about it now. And that’s not a bad thing.

Earth to parents, teachers, and politicians: teenagers will have sex. They are having sex, probably right now. They are programmed to have sex. You can’t stop them. The most you can do is give them the information they need to make good decisions. If you deny them that information, you’re not preventing them from having sex; you’re just denying them information and ensuring that they will probably make bad decisions, instead.

Moving on.

Yesterday’s case involved 13-year-old Savana Redding, who was strip-searched because the principal heard a rumor (”an uncorroborated tip from the culpable eighth-grader,” says the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals) that she might have brought prescription-strength ibuprofen to school. The school has a zero-tolerance policy for any drugs, whether outright illegal, prescription, or over-the-counter.

Let’s put aside for right now the tired arguments about how zero-tolerance policies don’t work, create criminals out of otherwise law-abiding citizens, and provide no room for human beings to make mistakes of varying degrees.

Let’s also put aside the fact that ibuprofen is not a narcotic and is not to be found on any of the five schedules of the Controlled Substances Act. The only reasons a kid would try to abuse ibuprofen are: (1) she’s really in a lot of pain; or, (2) she’s an idiot. Not only will ibuprofen not alter your mind in any way, taking too much of it will give you tremendous pain and cause stomach bleeding. I’d love to think that Safford Middle School was only looking out for the best interests of its students in preventing an overdose on prescription-strength ibuprofen, but sadly, I don’t really think that’s the case. I think what’s far more likely is an overzealous administrator cracking down on anything and everything that appears to be “drugs.”

In case the summary of this case isn’t disturbing enough and you’d rather have the play-by-play, just read the “Background” section of the Ninth Circuit Court’s opinion. For one, Savana didn’t refuse the search because she said that she felt as though she would be in more trouble if she didn’t comply. If this isn’t the very reason for the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against “unreasonable search and seizure” — namely, the threat of punishment for people who don’t agree to warrantless searches — then I don’t know what is.

If Savana were an adult an not in school, her constitutional rights would clearly have been violated, the authorities would be in a world of legal hurt, and we wouldn’t be having this discussion. Not to mention that the uncorroborated testimony of a suspect would not have been sufficient evidence for a search even in the Real World. (By the way, the girl who was caught with the ibuprofen, the girl who fingered Savana as the supplier, was not punished.)

But since Savana is in school, and the doctrine of in loco parentis is in play, she suddenly has greatly reduced constitutional rights. Civil Liberties Lite, specially designed for children. Naturally, the principal could have obtained permission from the girl’s parents to perform such a search. For some unfathomable reason, he didn’t, apparently unaware, in his quest to save children from themselves, of the kinds of torts he could be exposing (no pun intended) the school district to. One man’s “reasonable search” is another man’s “assault and battery.”

For a great analysis, check out Slate’s evaluation of the oral arguments, which includes this wonderful sentence about the cognitive dissonance between “school districts all around the country finding naked photos of teens and immediately calling in the police for possession of kiddie porn. Yet schools see nothing wrong with stripping these same kids naked to search for drugs. Evidently teenage nakedness is only a problem when the children choose to be naked.” (Please read this transcript of the oral arguments.)

Then again, should we be surprised the depths to which our police powers are going? And isn’t it surprising that we shouldn’t be surprised? Though I hate to harp on the damage that the George W. Bush administration has done to this country, it’s harping that must be done because the damage is real, significant, and pervasive. The average American’s expectation of privacy has gone down in this Post-9/11 World. Intrusive, unlawful searches are now expected and have become normalized as we are told that these are necessary trades for a gain in security. It would be one thing if there were empirical data indicating that, say, a 10% decrease in liberty causes a 10% or greater increase in security. At least then we could have a debate (even though it still wouldn’t be ethical to trade in that liberty). But as it is now, we have no data indicating that an increase in surveillance cameras yields a decrease in crime, or that warrantless wiretapping is more effective than lawful wiretapping, or that unreasonable strip searches of 13-year-olds yield drug possession convictions. (Well, actually, we have some anecdotal evidence for the last one: Savana had no drugs on her person. One wonders if the principal contemplated a body-cavity search.)

Sorry for the rant. Back to my original thesis: teenagers occupy a nebulous zone between children and adults. Biologically, they are “adults,” even though mentally they are not quite adults, or at the very least, lack the experience of adults. Yet, what qualifies one as an “adult”? There are plenty of adults — cf. global financial crisis — who act like children, and yet we afford them the right of adults, not of children. It was quite brave for the court to admit, in Tinker v. Des Moines, that humans who are defined as children are as capable of profound thought and understanding as humans who are defined as adults, and in so recognizing, that the speech of those so-called children ought to be just as protected as the speech of so-called adults. Unfortunately, the court has continued to shoot itself in the foot over the years, eroding the rights of schoolchildren because, hey, they’re just kids! What do they know?!

We routinely ask teenagers to take on adult responsibilities — President Obama has emphasized volunteering, for example — and yet we fail to consider that they have adult minds, adult thought processes, and adult opinions. Show me a teenager who has made a bad decision and I’ll show you an adult who has made an equally bad decision — or possibly a worse one, since adults are afforded more rights and thus the capability to screw up more in degree than a teenager can. (A teenager sure can’t get a mortgage that he knows he can’t pay for!)

Nevertheless, the brains of humans in the midst of puberty are chemically different from the brains of children or full adults, and it is for this reason that teenagers do a lot of stupid things. But sometimes, teenagers do great things that are on par with the great things that adults do. There’s no reason to assume the worst when it comes to teenagers, as the assistant principal at Safford Middle School did.

The New Devil Wears Diplomacy

Obama is taking heat for politely conversing with Venezuela dictator Hugo Chavez and accepting a gift book. I’m not sure what people want Obama do? Throw the gift back at Chavez and start an argument?

So, what exactly did Chavez give to Obama? An influential leftist track from 1971 entitled “Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent,”  which is about mineral extraction and Spanish colonial legacies. The book rose to number two on the Amazon best-sellers list, giving the publisher better publicity than the best astroturf viral campaign ever could hope for.

The art of diplomacy has to do with taking on your enemies and getting them to do what you want. You can’t use the “Bush” doctrine as a guidepost forever. I don’t care for Hugo Chavez or Fidel Castro or Iran either, but diplomacy is needed because we can’t go to war with everyone.

Obama is going to make his mistakes, but at least he is sizing up America’s opponents without  idle threats. Time will tell, but a new approach to diplomacy may actually make progress.

Tax Resisting Takes a Stand on Tax Day

Last Wednesday was tax day for most Americans. I say “most Americans” because there are some who recognize the legal obligation to pay taxes, but who chose not to pay some or all of their taxes for ethical or moral reasons. And, in big cities all over the United States, groups gathered on April 15 to protest the bank bailouts, gay marriage laws, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq with the argument that paying taxes to the federal government encourages corporatism, discrimination, or unjust combat.

In the United States, some citizens subject themselves to IRS fines and penalties and actually resist paying taxes. And while many Americans may be disgruntled by Timothy Geithner’s bank plan, tax resisting (not to be confused with tax evasion, which is subject even stricter penalties and possible jail time), has always has been an integral part of American democracy in spite of the the fact that it is subject to fines and penalties. In the 1790s the first US Treasury Secretary, Alexander Hamilton, implemented a controversial luxury tax on whiskey that had some citizens so riled up that they actually tarred and feathered a handful of tax collectors. While Hamilton insisted that the tax had to be instated in order to pay off debts from the Revolutionary War, the tax resisters were not pleased with that explanation, and in 1794 Washington had to send an army of 12,000 to rural Pennsylvania to quell a rebellion (by the time the troops arrived, the dissenters had dispersed).

Of course, Henry David Thoreau is probably the most famous tax resister, spending a night in jail for refusing to pay six years of back taxes on the principle that he did not support the Mexican-American War and institutionalized slavery. But what about today? Is withholding taxes, despite the fact that it is subject to heavy government penalties, still one of the best ways to show anger and frustration towards one’s government?

A resident of Brooklyn, who I will call Barb Smith for purposes of anonymity, thinks that if you’re frustrated with your government, it makes you a “more responsible citizen.” At a demonstration on the front steps of the New York Post Office, she and fellow disgruntled citizens gathered to lend their voice to the anti-war movement. Handing out fliers that document military spending in this country, Smith, a third-year tax resister and war protester, pointed out that, “Money has an impact and where you spend your money has an impact. My decision [not to pay federal taxes] is in alignment with my conscience.”

Also gathered on the steps on the Post Office was a small group of elderly women from an international pacifist organization. One woman brandished a sign that said, “Raging Grannies and their Daughters.”

However, the sign did not mention granddaughters and Smith noted that, “Unfortunately, there are not many young people involved [in the tax resisting movement]. It’s mostly middle-aged and older people who are passionate about the issue.”

However, despite the age gap, the movement definitely gained momentum this year in cities around the country. Fox News had all day coverage of  “tea parties” in cities like Atlanta and Salt Lake City where protesters angrily voiced their tax boycott of the Wall Street bailouts. In Austin, Texas, Governor Rick Perry galvanized a crowd of angry citizens and even suggested that Texas might secede one day while, in downtown Houston, close to 2,000 people turned out to protest the federal government and threaten secession.

In Boston (the home of the first tea party back in 1773) gay rights groups gathered to protest their inability to file federal joint tax returns, even though Massachusetts has legalized gay marriage. A group with similar concerns gathered on the steps of the New York Post Office but when asked, none claimed to be resisting taxes. “We just want Albany to give us equality,” one woman implored.

Yet, despite all the hoopla surrounding tax resisting this year, the demonstrations still beg the question, does tax resisting in spite of the potential penalties really make a difference?

“I don’t know if the IRS cares,” another protester, who I will call Mark Johnson for anonymity, a fifth year tax resister from New Jersey said, “but I’m appalled at what the money is used for and I resist with a token amount.”

When asked what he does with the money he owes, Johnson insists, “I don’t keep it, I give it to organizations that do good that hopefully counterbalance what the government would do with the money. This year, I’m giving the $198 I owe and I’m sending it to the Iraq Collateral Repair Project.”

And, while he admits he only protests with a small amount of money, Johnson notes that there “is not enough outrage” and that he does the little that he can to press the point that he is not pleased with military spending in this country.

Although it is doubtful that Congress or the Obama administration paid much attention to tea parties, protests, or tax resister demonstrations on Wednesday, many see tax resistance, despite the fact that it is illegal, as the one act outside of voting that citizens can participate in to vocalize their disappointment with their government. And, while there is always the possibility that you can be audited, Smith notes that, “This is America. I’m not afraid of the IRS.”

Editor’s Note: This Web site does NOT in any way endorse or condone any act of tax resisting or tax evasion. Because of possibly incriminating statements, the names of quoted individuals were changed at the request of the editor.

Teaching College in Dubai: Osama on the Screensaver

After 13 years in the desert Middle East, I carry certain sentimental longings of home: Green leaves, black clouds, hard silver rain (or soft rain of any color, for that matter), and the change of seasons.

Still, “The UAE is like a resort compared to Saudi Arabia,” say the weekend visitors who come to escape Saudi, a nation run like a vast, gender-segregated prison. They are amazed that dating is allowed, abayas (those tent-like black burkas) are not required, and you can have a real drink. Their jaws drop (the better to imbibe mass quantities of beer) and exclaim “Boy, you guys have got it made!”

Imploding economy aside, Dubai is still the place to go in the Middle East. It’s a modern-day Casablanca on steroids, a soon-to-be over-the-top, oversized, outlandish version of Las Vegas that even without the casinos will make Vegas look like a quiet hamlet in Vermont where the biggest excitement came in 1952 when Mad Dog Madden chopped down Mortimer Pumblechook’s maple tree in a fit of syrup-producer envy. Dubai Developments on hold are supposed to include replicas of the Eiffel Tower, the Great Wall of China, giant ships in the middle of the desert and, according to one account, “a huge snow dome that looks like Superman’s home planet.” Until then, Dubai’s got pubs, nightclubs (yes, alcohol flows freely), really big malls (Emirates Mall has an indoor ski slope), tropically landscaped beaches and the world’s highest concentration of hotels.

“Ah,” says my mythical cigarette-smoking fat man in the hotel café, “And how long do you staaayyy in Casablanca?–I mean, Dubai?”
“Who can tell, sir–who can tell?” I reply, patting my inside pocket to feel the letters of transit that are signed by General De Gaulle and cannot be rescinded or even questioned. “I live in Dubai. Perhaps I will die in Dubai.”

This smog-encrusted jewel by the sea supposedly sports about 100,000 British residents installed in their newly owned condos (built by Pakistani laborers laboring under slave-like conditions and wages). The Brits have apparently eschewed the old Spanish Costas for the more cosmopolitan trappings of Dubai. But do they know the summer temperature in Dubai soars to 120 degrees F. with 90% humidity? Thank goodness for air-conditioned malls with indoor ski slopes. Who knows–fake London-style drizzles and fog may be just around the corner from that Burberry shop.

In the summer of 1997, after a year of underemployment in Houston (where at least I had bought a house with my Saudi earnings) I accepted a job at a government women’s college in Dubai. Government colleges in the UAE don’t take any guff from teacher-drones. The job was well-paid, to be sure, with the usual package of tax-free salary, free housing, and annual ticket money to your home of record, but if you stick up for yourself, you’re out the door. It’s the first college I’ve seen where a teacher was fired within 10 days of his arrival (during orientation and before classes even started). This was disturbing, I thought, given that the usual procedure is to wait until instructors have actually entered a classroom and taught a few incompetent lessons before booting them out the door. The college president has to answer to the education minister–a Royal Family Sheikh. One time His Excellency saw a class picture with a male instructor and noticed one of the women students had her hand on his shoulder. Swhoosh! That was the sound of the teacher flying out the front door and onto the next plane out of here. Kissing the Sheikh’s ass doesn’t help either: the computer hardware lecturer who sat near me should have kept his mouth shut when His Perfumed Magnificence stopped by our workstations. “Would you like some tea, sir?” he offered.

The Sheikh glared at him. “WHAT ARE YOU, A LECTURER OR A TEABOY?” he thundered back.

Our abaya-clad students added to the underlying sense of anxiety, considering, for example, their reaction to the latest Palestinian intifada during which they screamed insults at the college president, who was American, and sent emails to some American teachers accusing them of being Jews. The local Arabic-language press also ranted about our college being riddled with Jews, an accusation that was both false and, of course, racist. I remember what I was doing in the Middle East on September 11, 2001, four years after I joined the college, although it’s not very dramatic. I certainly wasn’t George Clooney racing across sand dunes in an SUV, trying to save the Emir. I was in a classroom with a lot of other teachers receiving instructions on operating our new laptops.

“Have you heard about this plane crash in New York?” somebody said nonchalantly. “Something about a jetliner crashing into the World Trade Center. It’s bizarre.”

I screwed my face up. “Sounds unlikely to me,” I said. Later, as the facts filtered in, an Arab faculty member scooted past me, stopping just long enough to blurt, “I tell you something–it’s only the Israelis who stand to gain something from this!” Another was overheard saying it was about time the Americans got what’s coming to them.

Some students had Osama bin Laden screensavers on their laptops. Others came to my cubicle to dispute my intelligence and teaching methods with insulting remarks. My classes became a nightmare. Finally, the next July, I resigned from the college and took a position in Abu Dhabi at the Petroleum Institute, a men’s university where the students were surprisingly affable. It is reassuring to note that the UAE is, with a few exceptions like that silly women’s college, and compared to Saudi Arabia, actually a fairly gracious and friendly country. At least I didn’t have to listen to Rush Limbaugh.

I’ve Seen This Movie Before

I had the most amazing dream last night. Thankfully, Jimmy Kimmel in a diaper wasn’t in this one. Instead, I saw Barack Obama giving a speech about government openness and accountability. He talked about the closure of the U.S. terrorist prison in Guantanamo Bay; he talked about ending extraordinary rendition of U.S. terrorism suspects to other countries where they would be tortured; he talked about ending the use of extra-legal means to spy on Americans under color of law, and he talked about an absolute ban on the use of torture.

Recent events have confirmed that this is only a dream. The candidate of alleged change has instead agreed with George W. Bush on almost every torture and secrecy issue. He ordered the closure of Guantanamo Bay. But, in a brilliant feat of misdirection, none of us ever saw that his Justice Department was working tirelessly to ensure that the same civil liberties that were held to apply to Guantanamo detainees would never apply to detainees held at, for example, Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan.

A Lawless Prison By Any Other Name

Sure, Boumediene v. Bush clearly established that, at a minimum, prisoners in the United States’ Guantanamo Bay facility are entitled to habeas corpus, the 793-year-old doctrine that if a person is to be held in jail, he must be charged with a crime. The Bush administration thought that it had sent 600-some detainees of the War on Terr’ into a “legal black hole” (the Justice Department’s words) where US law did not apply, and therefore, people could be kept there indefinitely without being charged with a crime, without the right to challenge their detention, and without the government having to prove that they were terrorists.

Then the Bush administration relented, wrote the Military Commissions Act, and decided that was good enough. The Act explicitly stripped detainees of their habeas rights and said that the government would create military commissions to evaluate whether or not each detainee should continue to be held. The Supreme Court didn’t like that, either, saying that the MCA process was fundamentally flawed, and furthermore, it was not within Congress’ power to take habeas rights away from anyone.

As soon as he came into office, Obama put a halt to the Military Commissions Act tribunals, recognizing that they were fundamentally flawed. He also said he would close the prison in Guantanamo Bay. While those are both laudable, his next action is, once again, right out of How to Suspend the Constitution Without Really Trying, David Addington’s best-selling Richard P. Cheney thriller. Detainees of the War on Terr’ would instead be moved to Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. The argument is that, since Afghanistan is still an active war zone, it would be ludicrous to give prisoners there any habeas rights, since they would be prisoners of war. Then again, that was the rationale used to scoop up hundreds of people on the “battlefield” in Afghanistan in 2001 and send them to Cuba.

Wiretapping? What Wiretapping?

A few weeks ago, the Obama Justice Department moved to dismiss a case in federal court involving illegal wiretapping. In spite of his January memoranda committing the Executive Branch to transparency and accountability, Obama’s reasoning vis-a-vis wiretapping remains unchanged from the Bush years; that is, opacity in the extreme, no accountability (i.e., you can knowingly and maliciously break the law, but you won’t be prosecuted for it), and a firm commitment to using the state secrets privilege to cover up illegal government activity.

Earlier this month, the Obama administration filed a petition to have the entire warrantless wiretapping case dismissed under a never-before-seen doctrine of “sovereign immunity” that comes from the USA PATRIOT Act. It’s not the sovereign immunity itself that is at issue (sovereign immunity is a very old legal doctrine which holds that the sovereign — in this case, the government — is immune from criminal prosecution in some instances). It’s that sovereign immunity has never before been used a a defense in these wiretapping cases. To the Obama administration’s credit, it has interpreted into being a sovereign immunity claim based on the fact that Congress had not explicitly waived sovereign immunity when it came to these cases. Therefore, argues the Justice Department, the courts must err on the side of the sovereign. This is, of course, in addition to the standard-issue “state secrets” defense, which consists of, “In order for you to have a case, you need to prove you’ve been harmed. In order for you to prove you’ve been harmed, you need access to classified information. Because giving you that information would compromise national security, we’re not going to give it to you. Since you don’t have that evidence to prove your case, you have no case. So let’s dismiss the case.”

Let’s Talk Torture

Yesterday, after years of legal battles led by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Obama administration released four memoranda from the Bush years in which the Office of Legal Counsel — the legal-advice arm of the White House — declared that, yes, “enhanced interrogation techniques” like water-boarding were perfectly legal. In making these documents public, however, Obama added the caveat that CIA employees who engaged in these techniques, which are correctly and properly called torture, will not be prosecuted.

I am of two minds on this particular issue. On the one hand, we have the Nuremberg Defense, used by various strata of Nazi soldiers in the post-World War II Nuremberg trials. The defense amounted to, “I was just following orders,” the implication being that very low-level soldiers who did the actual dirty work of killing 6 million Jews (and millions of others of various non-Nazi-approved races, nationalities, ethnicities, and sexual orientations) were faced with the choice of either doing what they were told, despite their orders being obviously morally and legally wrong, or standing up to their superiors and facing court marshall or death themselves. The outcome of the trials was Nuremberg Principle IV, which states, “The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.” This principle was incorporated into the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and now U.S. military personnel may refuse to follow an order that they believe violates the law, with the law including the U.S. Constitution and any treaties to which the U.S. may be a party (including the Geneva Conventions, which explicitly forbid the use of torture).

Then again, these CIA operatives were assured that what they were ordered to do was legal. They were assured by the president — who is their boss — that it was okay to do what they were doing. It’s not an issue of questionable legality; they were told — by lawyers, who are alleged to be experts in the field of law — that it was okay to water-board suspects, deprive them of sleep, and occasionally hit them. Must they then be faulted for their lack of follow-up? Are they expected to then second-guess White House lawyers? The issue is murky. Definitely the people at the top who were responsible for crafting these policies — Bush himself, Vice President Cheney, David Addington, John Yoo, and Alberto Gonzales — must be prosecuted. But what about the people in the field? As Glenn Greenwald observes, the law compels the Justice Department to prosecute everyone who took part in torture. There was a moral choice: CIA operatives could have made the choice not to engage in torture. And if it risked their careers, so be it. They were not themselves ever threatened with death or torture; the loss of one’s job is not morally equivalent to torturing another human being.

It’s certainly true that President Obama has done a number of laudable things in his four months in office. But he can still do better, and all of us need to push him away from the trope of “centrism” (which, in U.S. political discourse in 2009, means “being conservative”). And if he does have a legitimate national security concern, he should let us know. He doesn’t have to go into the gory details, but it would be nice to know why he’s suddenly changed his mind. After eight years of “Trust me, I know what I’m doing,” I voted for a government that doesn’t demand faith from its people.

Starry, Starry Plight: Obama and the Space Program

Space enthusiasts are watching and listening carefully to find out how President Barack Obama will support NASA during his administration. Earlier this year he gave the space agency a glowing endorsement:

When I was growing up, NASA inspired the world with achievements we are still proud of. We cannot cede our leadership in space. We need a real vision for space exploration. Let’s also tap NASA’s ingenuity to build the airplanes of tomorrow and to study our own planet so we can combat global climate change. Under my watch, NASA will inspire the world, make America stronger, and help grow the economy.

Before we dive into recent developments, a brief review of NASA under George W. Bush is in order. NASA achieved some laudable feats in the last eight years, notably:

• It greatly expanded the International Space Station (ISS) to add more solar panels, laboratories, and living space (with contributions from other nations, notably Russia and Canada).
• It successfully landed two Mars rovers (Spirit and Opportunity) that have been sending pictures back for 5 years, much longer than originally anticipated.
• It repaired and upgraded the Hubble Space Telescope, which has sent more than half a million images back to Earth.
• It developed the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle, which will take astronauts to the Moon and Mars.
• It launched the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has produced sensational images of Mars.

In particular, the string of successful trips to Mars stands in stark contrast to previous missions. Historically most attempts to explore the Red Planet have failed, including one notorious disaster in 1999 caused by a mix-up of measurements made with the metric and English systems.

Yet since the achievements of the Apollo program that landed astronauts on the Moon, there hasn’t been a program that has evoked the same widespread level of interest here and abroad. Indeed in March President Obama made reference to this in an answer to a reporter’s question about the shuttle program

NASA has yielded — or the space shuttle program has yielded some extraordinary scientific discoveries. But I think it’s fair to say that there’s been a sense of drift to our space program over the last several years. We need to restore that sense of excitement and interest that existed around the space program. And shaping a mission for NASA that is appropriate for the 21st century is going to be one of the biggest tasks of my new NASA director.

Sadly as of this writing, The White House’s Technology Page does not include any mention of the space program. Obama has not yet appointed a new NASA administrator, though rumors have been circulating this year about the possible pick of astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson. Anyone who has seen Tyson on PBS’s NOVA scienceNOW cannot deny his charisma and enthusiasm for astronomy and space exploration. Tyson is currently the director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York and is famous (or infamous, depending on your point of view) for advocating the demotion of Pluto from a planet to a “dwarf planet.”

Financial support for NASA remains strong despite the severe worldwide recession. The fiscal year 2010 budget of $18.7 billion is $2.4 billion above the 2008 amount. The first priority listed in their budget summary is climate change monitoring and research. President Obama has repeatedly mentioned addressing global warming as a top issue, as noted in my last article.

NASA scientist James Hansen continues to be a fierce advocate for action to combat global warming. In 2006 he complained that the Bush Administration was trying to silence his dire warnings for political reasons. In December 2008, James Hansen and his wife Anniek Hansen sent an open letter to then President-Elect Obama (and his wife Michelle Obama) urging him to phase out traditional polluting coal plants, support an aggressive carbon tax plan, and encourage R&D of modern nuclear power plants.

Many people are sad to see the end of the successful space shuttle program, currently scheduled for 2010. If and when the shuttle program is canceled, Florida residents may bear the brunt of the employment fallout with 8,000 or more jobs on the line. However a congressman and congresswoman from Florida have introduced legislation to keep the shuttle program alive a bit longer.

The new Orion spacecraft and companion Ares Launch Vehicles are presently in the testing phase. NASA expects to fly the first missions in 2014 or 2015, leaving us with at least a four-year gap in the government’s space transportation system. (Private companies will carry supplies to the ISS, and the Russian Soyuz will be used to rotate crews.)

The James Web Space Telescope (JWST), often described as the successor to Hubble, is currently in development and expected to be deployed in 2013. NASA intends to keep Hubble in operation until at least that time, to avoid any interruption in data collection. JWST is substantially larger than Hubble, though lower in mass. Hubble detects light in the optical and ultraviolet ranges, and can be repaired in space, while JWST will collect data only from infrared light. Nevertheless, JWST will allow scientists to peer substantially further back into the distant past, closer to the origin of the universe.

There have been reports that Obama might combine some space programs from NASA and the Pentagon. The Pentagon’s space budget is significantly higher than NASA’s total budget, and some observers wonder whether the space vehicle gap might be filled in by the military. The merger discussions have been fueled by the fear that China has strong military intentions for its own space program.

While the U.S. must be mindful of threats to our security from other nations, a strong militarization of NASA would be an unfortunate turn of events. NASA was founded during the Eisenhower Administration to conduct non-military space activities. Obviously there is already significant overlap in personnel, and technology flows in both directions. But it would be very sad if NASA becomes distracted or subverted by security issues.

Other controversies still brewing include:

• Arguments about whether robots or humans should be sent to the Moon, Mars, and elsewhere.
• Whether we should ever bother going back to the Moon.
• Calls for President Obama to fire NASA’s inspector general Robert Cobb — a recent New York Times editorial accused him of being unethical and ineffectual.
• How much we should cooperate with other nations’ space programs.
• An oldie but a goodie–whether NASA should even exist given all the problems we have to solve on Earth.

Despite the criticisms and controversies, the space program is a vital part of our national identity. It has inspired generations of students young and old, capturing their imagination like nothing else. The dream of human flight and exploration will not go away as long as birds take wing and stars and planets twinkle. NASA must survive and thrive during Obama’s time in office, so we may continue to watch over our pale blue dot from space and keep looking at the stars.

(Thanks to Michael Conway for suggesting the title of this article.)

Tea with a Side of FUD

The inanity of so-called Tea Parties is matched only by the stupidity by which they are backed. Thousands of “working-class” Americans — a euphemism for middle-class people in what used to be called “blue-collar” jobs — will attend such events, protesting President Obama’s budget. This in spite of the fact that the vast, vast majority of those in attendence will receive tax cuts from the budget that they’re protesting. Or perhaps they don’t want repairs made to the infrastructure that hasn’t been overhauled in forty years. Seriously, guys, it’s been that long. And that’s what is costs to have roads, electricity, water, sewage, and so on.

The events are being billed as “grassroots,” meaning they formed spontaneously and were organized by the people who are attending them. The opposite of “grassroots” is “astroturf,” a movement that is designed to appear as though it is spontaneous — to give it greater credibility — but is in fact organized and planned by The Usual Suspects: think tanks, high-level political pundits, and lobbyists. It’s also a credit to how out of touch these same strategic planners are with contemporary culture that they use “tea-bag” as a verb, blissfully unaware of the kind of laughter it engenders among those of us in the know. (Parents, ask your kids.)

Yes, these Tea Parties are just such an event. Republicans have become the party of “no way, no how” in the explicit sense that they both do not want Democrats to have their way, but neither do Republicans have an alternate plan of attack. Two weeks ago, they unveiled their own “budget proposal,” which was full of grandiose talk but very, very short on actual numbers. These faux-organic “tea parties” are only the latest in Republicans’ embrace of what the online community calls FUD, which stands for Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. FUD is a marketing technique (what else?!) used to make consumers think nasty things about the competitor’s product. FUD almost never comes with verifiable evidence; rather, it is couched in vague, shadowy terms, coupled with equally veiled threats. Microsoft used it two years ago when it publicly claimed that the open-source (and often free) operating system Linux infringed on hundreds of its patents — but never mentioned a single one of those patents by name. Microsoft’s aim was to make IT executives wet their pants with the implicit threat of litigation against any company who might employ Linux instead of Windows. Of course, it was an empty implicit threat, but that didn’t stop Microsoft from digging to the bottom of their bag of dirty tricks to try.

So, too, is it with Republicans. And amidst the tea-bagging, their only response to a cogent plan that will hopefully bring the economy back and provide much-needed renovation to long-neglected public works is … drumroll, please: tax cuts for the wealthy! And not just the wealthy, but the super wealthy. The kinds of people who actually look like Rich Uncle Pennybags (that’s the official name of the Monopoly guy; look how much you’re learning today!). Senator John Kyl of Arizona would like to destroy the estate tax, which will be on vacation during 2010 (expect a lot of wealthy old people to “die” suddenly!) and then return in 2011 to its pre-2001 enforcement levels; namely, a $1 million exemption and a 55% tax rate for everything above that. Sen. Kyl’s plan is to increase the exemption to $10 million and decrease the non-exempt tax rate to 35%. Kyl has billed this as a way to stimulate the economy, since wealthy people will be able to invest in the economy with the additional money they’ll get to keep. Or something.

In this regard, Kyl is either willfully stupid or believes the rest of us to be willfully stupid. In no way will de-clawing the estate tax “trickle down” to the rest of us. The millions and millions of dollars upon which taxes must be paid at the time of inheritance are not located in Scrooge McDuck’s money bin; they’re locked in real estate, which will remain in the family for generations to come.  That means no sale. And that means no trickling. (And, to debunk the “double taxation” bromide that is frequently put forth to criticize the estate tax, if the real property has been in the family for generations, that means it’s never been sold, and if it’s never been sold, it’s never been taxed. At all. The same goes for financial securities like stocks and bonds.) By some estimates, the government will lose $65 billion in tax revenue over 10 years if Kyl’s dreams were to come true. Balanced against that would be the financial gain of one hundred people. Yes, 100 people throughout the entire country would benefit from Kyl’s proposal. Out of 300 million, 100 people — that’s fewer than the number who audition for American Idol – would personally benefit from this legislation. And they are 100 of the super-richest people in the country. Pity them and their billions of never-taxed dollars, locked away in swaths of property.

That’s just one example. Here’s another: the highest marginal tax rate, which Republicans insist must be lowered, lest “small businesses” and entrepreneurs pack up their suitcases and haul off to Ireland so they can take advantage of the tax breaks there. This in spite of the fact that, under President Reagan (who is Hercules, Jesus, and Steven Seagal combined into a bacon-wrapped taco shell), the highest marginal tax rate was 50%, and that it was 91% under President Eisenhower. From 1993 to 2000, arguably one of the longest periods of unrestrained growth in this country, the highest marginal tax rate was 39.6%, and we ended the fiscal year 2000 with a $128 billion government surplus. Are you still laughing, Laffer?

And so, on go the great masses of “grassroots” conservatism, led by their Fearless Leaders as much as they ever were. The fact remains that the Republicans are now, more than ever, the party of pointless obstructionism, perfectly ready to block any Democratic proposal — no matter how it may help the country — without putting forward a viable counter-proposal, all in the name of politics. By obstructing Democrats’ plans, they can, in 2010, point to a lack of progress on the Democrats’ part and say, “See? They did nothing for you in the time they were in office!” They expect voters’ memories to be so short. But isn’t that the card they’ve always played: the Ignorant of Spades? Their success has lain in their hope beyond hope that “working-class” Americans believe every word of what Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh say, and praying that those same Americans don’t look out the window and see that those words are the opposite of reality; namely, that the Republicans have been tea-bagging them for years.

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