Earlier today, Representative Virginia Foxx (R-NC) addressed the U.S. House of Representatives in opposition to a bill expanding hate crime legislation, the bill is commonly known as the Matthew Shepard Act. To help refresh your memory, in October of 1998 Matthew Sheppard was robbed, pistol whipped, beaten, tortured, strapped to a fence post and left for dead in rural Wyoming. His murder made national headlines as it was initially suggested, then proven in a court of law, that he was targeted and killed because he was gay.
In the video below, Rep. Foxx made it clear that she doesn't believe Matthew was killed because he was gay, even though the killers admitted to police they killed him because he was gay, going as far as saying that the story is a "hoax". Pretty much every sensible person that is familiar with Matthew's story and the criminal case believe he was killed because he was gay. She not only said the circumstances relating to his death is a hoax, she said this on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives and while in the presence of Matthew Shepard's mother.
Was Rep. Foxx factually incorrect? Yes. Was her statement insensitive? Yes. Will she be a U.S. Representative in 2 years? Probably not.
Just watch.
The Act passed out of the House of Representatives today.
Before I go off on my rant let me just say, philosophically, I understand Mr. Specter’s decision to leave the Republican Party. I officially left the Republican Party a little over a year ago and mentally left much earlier. But to be completely honest, I feel I didn’t leave the Republican Party but it decided to push me out. There is no room in today’s Republican Party for any moderate perspective or idea. That is why it is quickly becoming a minor-party and why existing Republicans should be concerned – extremism plagues Libertarian and Green party membership and that is why they don’t have much of a voice in our politic. I personally think it is unhealthy for the Republican Party to lose those who might help provide some moderate perspective. This is just another sign that the Republican Party is less about accomplishing something and more about extremist ideology.
With that said . . .
U.S. Senator Arlen Specter should not be allowed to change his party affiliation during his current senate term. Sen. Specter made a commitment to the Pennsylvania Republican party and its members when he decided to run as a Republican in 2004. The Republican Party made a good faith effort to vote the person they felt most accurately represented their perspective and platform through their primary election system and gave Arlen Specter the privilege to represent the Republican Party as its candidate for U.S. Senate against a Democratic candidate. Upon that win, all of Pennsylvania’s voters voted for or against him upon his platform and his party affiliation as Republican representative of his state. His ability to switch parties during his term disenfranchises all Republican and Democratic voters in the state that voted for him. If he wants to officially switch parties, the appropriate time to do so is during the election season when he declares his incumbent candidacy for the office.
Some of you may say, “Wait a second! Didn’t you vote for Obama? Don’t you want the Dems to have a majority in the Senate?” Honestly I don’t care. Sen. Specter voted the way he wanted, which was rarely along party lines. His designation means nothing to me on how he votes. He can be a Republican and still vote with Democrats. My problem is that he made a commitment to the voters of Pennsylvania to be a Republican Senator for the state of Pennsylvania, today he is reneging on that commitment.
I would say the same for any Democrat interested in switching parties. A public office holder should not be allowed to switch party designation while in office.
Arlen Specter felt the same way I do in 2001 when Jim Jeffords decided to renounce his Republican designation and become an Independent. Jeffords shouldn’t have been able to do switch but his offense isn’t nearly as condemning. Jeffords didn’t switch to the other side of the isle. Specter did.
Will this be a good thing for the Democrats? Time will tell. Strengthening their stranglehold on congress may ultimately hurt the party as overconfidence and overreaching may become the norm. It didn’t work out too well for the Republicans during the early part of this decade. As for Specter, it was the right political play. He wasn’t going to win his primary against Toomey and I’m sure he made a very good campaign funding deal with the Democratic National Committee to ensure he has the money to hold on to his seat. Was it the correct political play? No doubt! Should it have been allowed? Never.
*Christopher Hitchens initially rejected the notion that waterboarding, a controversial interrogation technique that has been used on prisoners held by the United States at Guantanamo Bay, constitutes torture. Subsequently, he was asked by Vanity Fair to experience it for himself. In May 2008, Hitchens voluntarily experienced waterboarding, after which he fully changed his opinion. He concluded "if waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture.
"any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on male or female person for such purposes as obtaining from him, or a third person, information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in, or incidental to, lawful sanctions"
Did we torture?
I guess that depends on if you are Jay Bybee signing the memo legally endorsing the acts or if you are the person on whom these acts are performed. You can call it “enhanced interrogation techniques” if you’d like but I think it comes down to one question: would we allow FBI agents or local law enforcement to use the same techniques in collecting information from American citizens? The answer is a resounding “NO!” Did the Bush administration and the CIA and U.S. military break U.S. law? Yes. Did we break international treaty? According to Article 7 and Article 5 of the Geneva Convention, Yes. Did it keep us all a little safer? Probably. Was it right to do? No. I write that because the gain did not out-weigh the consequence - the loss of our international moral authority.
From the day the towers fell and the Pentagon was attacked, I was fearful that our enemies’ primary goal were to enrage the American public to the point in which we sunk to their level. They wanted us afraid. They wanted us to engage in “their” kind of war. Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, in a "take off the gloves" emotional move, led us down a path which ultimately would cost us more as a people and a country than gain through information. The moment now Justice Bybee signed a legal memo authored by John Yoo which redefined what torture was we became a nation of enablers. The moment the CIA and U.S military engaged in torture we became a terrorist state.
The world has a right to investigate. The world has a right to admonish. The world has a right to point out our hypocrisy. We are guilty of losing ourselves. Is it understandable? Yes. Is it justified? I don’t think so.
I disagree with President Obama. The past is not the past. It will linger. We need to be accountable for what we have done and what we allowed to happen. In fact, the Command responsibility or Medina standard of the UN Convention Against Torture demands us to investigate and prosecute offenders or we (Obama), in turn, are breaking international law.
If we want to demonstrate to the world our country is not above reproach and is worthy of its leadership role, we are legally bound to address these actions. We need to investigate, indict, prosecute and possibly imprison those (if any) whom are guilty of bringing this to pass. We would demand the same of any country on this earth and those forget that we demanded such of the German people and the Nazi’s. Because someone tells you it is okay to torture does not make it okay. You are responsible for your own actions. That is why we had Nuremberg. War crimes are war crimes . . . torture is a war crime and “just following orders” does not mean one is exempt of responsibility.
I understand the argument that making government officials responsible for their decisions will hurt future presidents’ ability to attract quality people willing to give their best effort forward, especially in a time of such perceived danger. Being offered a job in which making decisions may lead you to hire an attorney defending your actions hurts recruiting the best possible people for the job. But I think this is a different situation. Bybee and company were doing the political bidding of the administration, not acting in the best interest of the law.
But in the end we, as Americans, are all to blame. The American people allowed this to happen. We wanted blood. We enabled the Bush White House to do what we all wanted them to do. Get revenge! Knowing that some guy with a strange name was being put through hell to get relatively benign information made us feel better. “They deserve it!” some would say with gusto, others with a hushed whisper. Even though it was in the back of all our minds, it is only now when forced to face what we have done, like a child, we realize the error of our hubris and perceived justified blood thirst.
Our leaders failed us. That much is true. But as a people, we are better than this. We give hope to those who have none and this dark period in our history will not only follow us but our children as well. America is supposed to be above such things and apparently we aren’t.
What disappoints me most is that torture may actually have been used to try and make a connection between Al-Qaeda and Iraq by the Bush White House. We don’t care how you get the proof that Al-Qaeda and Iraq are connected, just get it. We didn’t use it to keep people safe, we used it to justify an illegal war.
If you ask me, "did we torture?" I would say, "yes we did." And the moment we tortured in the name of our country, we lost our collective soul and our moral authority. This is not a partisan question. It is a question of law and morality.
Don't agree or are you not sure? Read these and decide for yourself:
I've been meaning to post for a couple weeks but I've been busy late at night doing Wii Fit, working out and taking in rounds of golf on Tiger Woods 2009 (a 34 year old man playing video games; yes, I know, pathetic).
I promise to continue my series on the financial crisis but seeing that I'm not on deadline, and not getting paid for it, I'm going to go at my own pace.
I was going to do a post on the tea-baggers (I CAN'T BELIEVE THEY CALLED THEMSELVES THAT!!!) but came across a comment on the Las Vegas Review-Journal's story message boards that I thought was the best post I've seen in a while. After reading it, thought I'd save a lot of time trying to come up with a snarky response and just re-post the pretty accurate portrayal of what we just went through and what Wednesday was all about.
"Marcus:
Embarrassing parades of lard. Here's what happened: Reagan told us that rich people were our friends and and would throw money on the floor for us. Clinton told us we could all be rich if we just played with monopoly money and let Wall Street build us a house of cards. So we all pretended we were rich and got fat and stupid. Bush's radicals came and saw they could take a nation full of fat and stupid people and convince them that Jesus wanted their kids to die in fantasy wars, that would cost nothing and bring us joy. We spend a decade boozing at the rightwing keg party, and now it's morning, and we got handed the bill and we're hungover and angry and we're gonna take it out on the black guy who [came] in to clean up our puke.
Since the rightwing media lost the congress and can't make policy there, it's taken to the streets, and whips lower-middle class mobs into media spectacles that they can then broadcast on TV. That's what yesterday was about. Those people [at the tea parties] are [nothing more than] extras in a Fox [News] made-for-TV movie."
The only thing I would add is that the Boston Tea Party was about taxation without representation . . . last I checked everyone protesting was represented, but then again I doubt 99 percent of them actually know what the Boston Tea Party was all about. The whole thing seemed manufactured, needless and lame!!!!
In the video below, Rep. Foxx made it clear that she doesn't believe Matthew was killed because he was gay, even though the killers admitted to police they killed him because he was gay, going as far as saying that the story is a "hoax". Pretty much every sensible person that is familiar with Matthew's story and the criminal case believe he was killed because he was gay. She not only said the circumstances relating to his death is a hoax, she said this on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives and while in the presence of Matthew Shepard's mother.
U.S. Senator Arlen Specter
