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Panetta Was Half-Right

A few weeks back, CIA director Leon Panetta faced criticism for saying, half-jokingly, that Dick Cheney was “wishing that this country would be attacked again, in order to make his point.” In fairness, Dick Cheney probably isn’t that crazy. But this guy is:

With this excerpt, to quote the Simpsons, Beck (and guest) “cross[] that line between everyday villainy and cartoonish super-villainy.” Literally. Previously, the explicit and acknowledged dream of exploiting disaster for political gain has been reserved to the likes of Watchmen‘s Ozymandias, and V for Vendetta‘s Norsefire. That’s how much Beck *sniff* loves his country.

Buchanan Takes Selective Quotations, a Reference to Hitler, and Calls it an “Article”

Lest we forget that there are, indeed, still battles to be fought in the culture war, Pat Buchanan returns to “Human Events” this week with an eminently predictable screed against evolution, creatively titled “Making a Monkey Out of Darwin.” Har har! Get it?!

Yes, it turns out that – stop me if you’ve heard this before – the theory of evolution is directly responsible for everything Hitler ever did. While I thoroughly reject the argument that entire schools of thought can be discarded out of hand because Hitler once might have heard about them, it’s worth noting that this particular point of attack actually bites itself: there’s as much evidence that Hitler was a creationist as there is that he was a “Darwinist.” Next.

Buchanan’s only other point is to take two quotes by the eminent biologist Stephen Jay Gould concerning the debate between different schools of evolutionary biology and stand them on their heads, until they lose all of their original meaning and sound like Gould is, somehow, arguing against his chosen field of research. Don’t buy it. Gould never called evolution a “religion,” nor did he suggest that any abscence in the fossil record came close to endangering evolutionary biology as a whole. Rather, he took partial absences from the record as, at most, evidence against the idea of gradual evolution, and for the theory of punctuated equilibrium. Disagreements within the academy about the finer points of evolutionary biology do not somehow lend credence to creationism. You might as well argue that the conflict between general relativity and quantum theory compels the validity of heliocentrism as a gap-filler, because hey, even Stephen Hawking has his doubts about general relativity!

You have to wonder about a man who depends upon open and obvious deception to make his case to the public. What kind of example does this set for his organization, and the young men who look up to him? Oh — right.

Buying Elections: A Surprising Degree of Candor from Conservapedia

Who’d have thought it?

The Supreme Court Gets Ready To Turn on the Corporate Fundraising Spigot,” and that could spell the end of liberal control of elections.

That’s what we’ve been saying all along – unlimited corporate fundraising distorts the outcome of elections by essentially auctioning them to the most powerful interest groups. It’s a curious pundit that concedes this point while still arguing against campaign finance reform; more curious still when the proponents is a “strict constructionist” who still, somehow, finds the words “corporate money” in the First Amendment’s speech protections. If the First Amendment does protect political contributions as expressive acts, that case is far more nuanced, far more interesting, and far more “activist” (read: countermajoritarian) than the textualist crowd is willing to admit.

That said, it does indeed look like the Supreme Court, upon re-argument, will strike down Congress’ decades old, reasonable, bipartisan limits on corporate funding for politics. See Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, 494 U.S. 652 (1990). Roberts hates campaign finance reform, and Scalia and Kennedy voted against the case the first time it came up, making Justices Thomas & Alito swing votes. God help us all.