Here are a few samples collected at random from around the blogosphere of people's reaction to Congress passing a bill yesterday that legalizes torture and abolishes the right of habeus corpus.
"Surprised? You shouldn't be. This is who we are. Oh yes, there are angwy wibwals out there, mourning the "real" America that appears lost. I don't know what movie they've been watching for the past 40 or so years (not to mention the classics from long before), but judging from their astonished reactions, it looks like it was directed by Frank Capra or perhaps the early Spielberg, with the young Mickey Rooney, Kristy McNichol and Haley Joel Osment waving American flags, washing down caramel corn with sidewalk-bought lemonade as Ray Charles, in a glittering Old Glory tux, sings 'America The Beautiful' while the spirits of Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy hold hands, gaze from the clouds and smile over the proceedings.
"Well, that film is pulled and back in the can. Get ready for coke-fueled Scorsese, baked Tarantino, or Rob Zombie with a blockbuster budget."
"Yeah, the shit is covering the fan, or to paraphrase Burroughs, we now see what's at the end of every fork."
--Dennis Perrin at Red State Son.
"The first thing to do is apparently quite controversial, why, I have no idea. But it is imperative that we fully recognize how seriously godawful the situation is.
"I'll say it again: Americans are living in a fascist state. Don't like the word 'fascism?' Neither do I. So what? It's ludicrous to call the gutting of habeas corpus, etc, etc, by near unanimous consent merely 'authoritarian.' We are living in a fascist state.
"Some commenters...said I am being too discouraging. Hardly. This country's government has been transformed and is no longer recognizable as a working democracy. That's simply a fact and we better accept it.
"Because when you're dealing with fascism, 'We can beat this, people if we just fight harder!' is naive win-one-for-the-Gipper fantasy-land. It's gonna get a lot worse than it is now before it gets better. We're gonna be lucky if more of us don't end up 'persons of interest' to the Bush administration. Remember, if you're not with Bush, you're objectively pro-terrorist and I can't tell you how many times when commenting on rightwing blogs I've been accused of 'aiding and abetting' the terrorists."
tristero at Hullabaloo
"It's good to see that many Senate Democrats (32 out of 44) voted against this bill, but it's too little, too late. Many of them announced only for the first time today (September 28) that they are opposing the bill (though, to be fair, many Democrats attributed their opposition to the recent changes made to the bill over the last few days, ones which were made even after the oh-so-noble McCain-Graham-Warner-White House 'compromise' was announced).
"But it is still difficult to understand the Democrats' strategy here. They failed to try to mount a filibuster because they feared being attacked as coddlers of the terrorists. But now they voted against the bill in large numbers, thereby ensuring those exact accusations will be made anyway -- and made loudly (the White House already started today). Yet they absented themselves the whole time from the debate (until they magically appeared today), spent the last several weeks only tepidly (at most) opposing the President's position, and thus lost the opportunity to defend and advocate the position they took today in any meaningful way. As a result, the Democrats took a position today (opposition to this bill) which they have not really defended until today.
"They make this same mistake over and over. Isn't this exactly what happened when they sort-of-supported-but-sort-of-opposed the Iraq war resolution in 2002 because they were afraid of being depicted as soft on terrorism, only to then be successfully depicted as soft on terrorism because they were too afraid to forcefully defend their position? It's true that fewer Democrats voted for the President's policy this time around, but it's equally true that they found their voice only on the last day of the debate -- on the day of the vote -- after disappearing for weeks while they let John McCain 'debate' for them.
"Nonetheless, it is fair to say, given how lopsided this vote was (both in the House and the Senate), that the Republicans are the party of torture, indefinite and unreviewable detention powers, and limitless presidential power, even over U.S. citizens on U.S. soil. By contrast, Democrats have opposed these tyrannical, un-American and truly dangerous measures. Even if Democrats didn't oppose them as vociferously as they could have and should have, this is still a meaningful and, at this point, critically important contrast."
Glenn Greenwald
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