Monday, July 11, 2005

''The Enemy of Our Enemy May Still Be the Enemy of Democracy''

"In The Enemy of Our Enemy is Our Friend, Rob McKay suggests giving the potential Supreme Court nomination of Alberto Gonzales a relative pass, because his nomination will split religious conservatives from the Republican party and because if we don't get him, we're likely to get someone worse.

We don't completely control the outcome in this fight, but when someone exhibits as much contempt for democracy as Gonzales does, you have to challenge him. He's not David Souter, a relative unknown. As Mckay acknowledges, he's an architect of many of the most destructive Bush policies like the 2002 torture memo that said "injury such as death, organ failure, or serious impairment of body functions - [are necessary] in order to constitute torture." He helped push through the Patriot Act and wrote the Presidential Order saying that terror suspects could be tried and sentenced to death by secret military tribunals. This isn't someone to embrace, morally or politically.

Maybe his nominaton would split the right temporarily, but it can easily be balanced by Bush then appointing a "real conservative" when William Rhenquist's seat comes open. Meanwhile we'll have raised the bar still further till we're unable to challenge anyone short of Attila the Hun and Vlad the Impaler, and then only if they've spoken too impoliticly."-from Paul Loeb's column on The Huffington Post.

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