Eideard

 
This morning, Lloyd Blankfein, the head of one of the most prestigious investment firms in America released a video on YouTube for the Human Rights Campaign. Supporting equal rights for same-sex marriage.

So, kudos to you, Lloyd. I don’t own any shares of Goldman Sachs – or any investment bank for that matter. But, as an ordinary American who thinks our Constitution and Bill of Rights mandate equal opportunity that is still denied by today’s generation of conservatives, Republicans, Tea Party types, right-wing priests and pundits – welcome aboard!

Now there’s a way to protest those intrusive TSA X-ray body scanners without saying a word. Underclothes printed with the 4th Amendment in Metallic Ink. Let them know they’re spying at the privates of a private citizen. The 4th Amendment to the US Constitution is readable on TSA body scanners.

From the designers:

“4th Amendment Wear made a statement without having to say a word. It’s what we considered ‘technological Judo’ – it used the very act of invading someone’s privacy to communicate a message that questioned how far Americans were willing sacrifice that sense of privacy. It didn’t outright condemn the search – it just raised questions. It gave the wearer a sense of individual liberty to be able to express their concerns, while not causing a disturbance.”

Yes, this truly appeals to my sense of humor – and provokes limitless ideas of variations on the theme. Some of which aren’t even obscene.

Thanks, Ursarodinia

See any dissent on behalf of the Bill of Rights in this photo?
Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

Top lawmakers in the House and Senate reached a deal to extend the Patriot Act for four years, a week before key provisions were set to expire…

Extending the Bush-era surveillance law has not been a slam dunk for House GOP leaders this year. In fact, Republicans were unable to muster enough votes to fast-track the bill through the House earlier this year because of objections from lawmakers ranging from libertarian-minded conservatives to liberal Democrats. When a 90-day extension passed earlier this year, Republicans needed Democrats to carry it across the finish line…

Another plus for both parties: the four-year compromise places the vote in 2015 — which is not an election year.

Civil liberties groups reacted with anger to the news of a four-year extension for the controversial law without committee review.

“That is how the Patriot Act first came into being 10 years ago—without meaningful debate,” said the Bill of Rights Defense Committee in a statement issued on Thursday night.

“Today, despite the prior approval of the Senate Judiciary Committee of a bill introduced by Senator Patrick Leahy to impose some (albeit inadequate) reforms, the congressional leadership is dictating the result of a long overdue policy debate that has never happened.”

I would expect nothing less. Like foreign policy since World War 2, there is no debate, little dissent from the party line – from either wing of the ruling political hacks.

The smallish progressive Democrat caucus + the very few libertarian Republicans oppose this crap. Blue Dog Democrats, Republicans and the Kool Aid Klowns are as united against freedom as ever. Congress hasn’t been so well-defined by cowardice since the witch-hunt days of Joe McCarthy.

[Wiping away the drool]
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

I was asked yesterday whether I would be going to CPAC, the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, which is currently being held a half-hour’s walk from my office in D.C. It was a logical question, not only since the meetings are so close at hand but also because for five years I chaired CPAC.

CPAC brings together conservative activists from every corner of America. As national chairman of the American Conservative Union, a founding trustee of the Heritage Foundation, and director of the policy task forces for Ronald Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign, speaking at CPAC and shaping the program were high priorities on my personal agenda every year, even while serving in Congress.

But the answer to yesterday’s question was “no.” No, I’m not going to CPAC. And, truth be told, most of the folks there wouldn’t want me there. They wouldn’t think I’m a conservative; many wouldn’t think Barry Goldwater was a conservative; many, had this been three decades ago, might have been seeking a “true” conservative to run against Ronald Reagan. I don’t begrudge these activists their views and they are entitled to use the term “conservative” to describe themselves if they so choose. But the views many of them profess have little in common with the distinctly American kind of conservatism that gave birth to CPAC and the modern American conservative movement…

I’m not at CPAC because I believe in America. I believe in liberty. I believe that governments should be held in check. I believe people matter. I believe in the flag not because of its shape or color but because of the principles it stands for–the principles in the Constitution, the principles repeated and underlined and highlighted and boldfaced and italicized in the Bill of Rights. The George W. whose presidency and precedents I admire was the first president, not the 43d. It is James Madison I admire, not John Yoo. Thomas Paine, not Glenn Beck. Jefferson, not Limbaugh.

Ronald Reagan would not have been welcome at today’s CPAC or a tea party rally, but he would not have wanted to be there, either. Neither do I.

As I’ve mentioned before, I have friends and family who left the Republican Party after 50 years dedicated membership. Most left during the reign of King George W.. None would be inclined to return to the fold as designed and led by Dick Cheney, Dick Armey and the Birchers. Traditional American conservatism never marched to goosestep drums.

Ralph D. Fertig, a 79-year-old civil rights lawyer, says he would like to help a militant Kurdish group in Turkey find peaceful ways to achieve its goals. But he fears prosecution under a law banning even benign assistance to groups said to engage in terrorism.

The Supreme Court will soon hear Mr. Fertig’s challenge to the law, in a case that pits First Amendment freedoms against the government’s efforts to combat terrorism. The case represents the court’s first encounter with the free speech and association rights of American citizens in the context of terrorism since the Sept. 11 attacks — and its first chance to test the constitutionality of a provision of the USA Patriot Act.

Opponents of the law, which bans providing “material support” to terrorist organizations, say it violates American values in ways that would have made Senator Joseph R. McCarthy blush during the witch hunts of the cold war.

The government defends the law, under which it has secured many of its terrorism convictions in the last decade, as an important tool that takes account of the slippery nature of the nation’s modern enemies.

The law takes a comprehensive approach to its ban on aid to terrorist groups, prohibiting not only providing cash, weapons and the like but also four more ambiguous sorts of help — “training,” “personnel,” “expert advice or assistance” and “service…”

Douglas N. Letter, a Justice Department lawyer, said in a 2007 appeals court argument in the case…it would be a crime for a lawyer to file a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of a designated organization in Mr. Fertig’s case or “to be assisting terrorist organizations in making presentations to the U.N., to television, to a newspaper.”

Speech, the Press, thought must all be evaluated according to some sacrosanct standard of patriotism before it is to be “free” in the home of the unbrave. These are the same sort of rules a small band of rebels opposed in 1775. And won.

Most predictably, looking around the blogosphere, today – rightwing nutballs, religious reactionaries, all are pissed off about the Times covering Fertig’s defense of the Bill of Rights. They have become so sucked up by their fear of terrorists, their usual blather about liberty has been completely cast off.