Moderation v. Extremism

One only needs to ask in hindsight what Obama would have done shortly after 9/11. I predict he will get that chance before the next 4 years pass and his Administration comes to an end because of his decisions.
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Just saying!

Thank you for that post. Good stuff. Now stop propping up the facade that Krauthammer is an intelligent and skilled writer. On second thought, you are a true professional so I respect your polite silence on the painfully obvious.

“On one side of the spectrum, there are those who make little allowance for the unique challenges posed by terrorism, and who would almost never put national security over transparency. On the other end of the spectrum, there are those who embrace a view that can be summarized in two words: “anything goes.”
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Up yours Mr.President. Your second example has proponents including the last administration and in the current congress, what are the examples of the first?
Who are these people who almost never put national security over transparency?
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And frankly the government only works when there is transparency so if you are going to make a case for less transparency you better do more than engage in the fear mongering you like to complain about.

As a side note, I may be making an ass out of u and me, but it makes one wonder how many of those comments from an anonymous “senior administration official” during Bush’s presidency were, in fact, Cheney. (I’m too lazy to dig up any quotes.)

“We need his voice to remind us what we’ve happily escaped.”
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What have we escaped? Responsibility? Uh-uh.
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I’m not too happy with Obama’s use of the false dilemma. I know of no one in a position of power or influence who would “almost never put national security over transparency.” It’s not extremist to want to see Cheney and his henchmen behind bars — equal justice under the law is a moderate position.

Examples of that threat include people who have received extensive explosives training at al Qaeda training camps, commanded Taliban troops in battle, expressed their allegiance to Osama bin Laden, or otherwise made it clear that they want to kill Americans
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The other day I joked that last time I checked, “thinking bad thoughts” was not a crime. It appears that I was mistaken.
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The only way Obama can create a legal basis for the sort of permanent detention he’s envisioning is if he asks for and receives and actual Declaration of a State of War on the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Otherwise we’re still swimming in legal limbo and the President clearly knows it.

The votes are in: America’s terrorist enemies have given all of their votes to Obama as their true American Idol. The terrorists just loved today’s dutifully rendered apology to them in his latest Blame America First speech. Time magazine actually called this clueless, thoroughly unqualified loon an “American exceptionalist”! I can’t wait to see Time’s 18th cover story on Obama. Will Time wait to place him, adoringly, on the cover following his next worldwide “America Sucks” world tour?

On one side of the spectrum, there are those who make little allowance for the unique challenges posed by terrorism, and who would almost never put national security over transparency.
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No actual humans fit that description.
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On the other end of the spectrum, there are those who embrace a view that can be summarized in two words: “anything goes.”
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That is every Republican, such as those running America the last 8 years, minus maybe Graham.
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Joe, you are a fool for false dichotomies and the unprincipled middle ground you can claim as a result. There are worse flaws, Lord knows, but I wish you were a little more self-aware on this point.

A shorter version of the gutless wonder’s speech, isn’t it horrible the way the Right behaved, breaking the law and all, but I refuse to do anything about it and from now on the Left is responsible for any more deaths of American soldiers.

I agree with PNNTO and others who take exception to the false “”almost never put national security over transparency” line. Although, to be fair, he did throw in “almost.”
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What I find more interesting is that he was using a rhetorical device, identifying two extreme, practically insane, polar opposite positions. The one on the left is seen as absurd, and I doubt anyone could find links to someone promoting the position Obama suggested. But the one on the right: “anything goes.” Does anyone here take exception to that one? Would anyone here have any difficulty finding links to repuglicans saying, effectively: “whatever it takes to keep us safe?”
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Just another example of how extreme the center of the RW has become.

McJoan has a thoughtful review of the speech. In response to “almost never put national security over transparency” mcjoan says:
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To this, I have an extreme objection. That is a strawman and is nonsense. Accepting and forwarding the Republican frame that those who are arguing for accountability would sacrifice national security is damaging. That’s accepting the canard that transparency aids and abets the enemy. On behalf of the ALCU, the CCR, the EFF, every organization that has worked diligently for the past eight years to let Americans know what the Bush administration did in our names, I reject the characterization.
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On one side of the spectrum, there are those who make little allowance for the unique challenges posed by terrorism, and who would almost never put national security over transparency.
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He means Glenn Greenwald, Jane Hamsher and the ACLU. It’s silly to pretend otherwise. Whether he’s accurately describing them is a separate question but he certainly knew who he meant when he wrote the line.

We can’t have security unless we have transparency. I can’t believe some people can’t see this.
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Transparency is the check on governmental excess. Without it, we’ve had corruption, torture, war based on false premises. We need transparency to allow the people to enforce accountability.

Just another example of how extreme the center of the RW has become.
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As a consequence, the slavish, by-definition-unprincipled devotees of centrism like David Broder become more extreme, and drag the supine Congressional Democrats along with them.

PD-for the sake of argument let’s assume you are right, although it isn’t as clear to me as it is to you who BHO is talking about.
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But if that is the case his two “extremes” are two private citizens and a private group versus elected members of Conges.
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Pathetic.

When did government transparency become exclusively a left wing issue? It is the right who have spent most of their time crying about the size and power of government, even though the division of power and limited government is an old liberal principle.

PNNTO: But if that is the case his two “extremes” are two private citizens and a private group versus elected members of Congess. Actually, the majority of the elected members of Congress of one party, and a majority of their most faithful supporters and their unofficial leaders (Rush, Fox, etc). Millions and millions, 20ish% of the population, would readily identify with “whatever it takes.”
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Other than the gratuitous “never put national security over transparency” I thought President Obama did a rather nuanced and fine job describing the necessary balance/tension between security and transparency, and laying out reasonable principles for the decision point. I find it good to have eloquent legal experts like Greenwald apologetically pushing Obama to err on the side of transparency. That makes him think more deeply about his decisions in this area, just as Krugman helps by sniping on economics.

But if that is the case his two “extremes” are two private citizens and a private group versus elected members of Conges. Pathetic.
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Why pathetic? He’s successfully portrayed his congressional opposition and Cheney as extremists, who can be written off by those interested in securing a reasonable response.
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I love GG and the rest, but this is smart political positioning, one that ultimately advances liberal politics.

Derek, on a related point, here are Mickey Edwards and William S. Sessions had an op-ed today on Dawn Johnson, in which they said:
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. The Senate should act expeditiously to approve her nomination. Though Ms. Johnsen’s politics may not mirror the choice John McCain or other Republicans might have made – they lost the election, after all – her views on the limits of presidential power are precisely what the Constitution envisions and conservatives have long championed.
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What is needed in the Office of Legal Counsel is a person with the constitutional understanding to know that even presidents with whose politics she agrees must obey both the Constitution and federal statutes and who has the gumption to say so, even if the advice won’t be well received.
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We needed that with a Republican in the White House; we need it with a Democrat in the White House. For those reasons, we hope Ms. Johnsen will be confirmed expeditiously and put to work ensuring that the Constitution’s constraints remain in force.

just a thought: preview would be my friend if I used it.

FireDogLake’s Blue Texan:
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From Dick Cheney’s remarks at AEI this morning:
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Critics of our policies are given to lecturing on the theme of being consistent with American values. But no moral value held dear by the American people obliges public servants ever to sacrifice innocent lives to spare a captured terrorist from unpleasant things. And when an entire population is targeted by a terror network, nothing is more consistent with American values than to stop them.
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Anything is permissible in defense of the Fatherland Homeland.
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Harry Truman, 1950.
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I know that it would be easier to catch and jail criminals if we did not have a Bill of Rights in our Federal and State constitutions. But I thank God every day that it is there, that that Bill of Rights is a fundamental law. That is what distinguishes us from the totalitarian powers.
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This seems to be lost on the former Vice President.

At this point I must assume that Cheney, and his crowd, really and truly don’t “get” this whole “Rule of Law”, Constitution, and democracy thing.
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But they are the real Amuricans.

On one side of the spectrum, there are those who make little allowance for the unique challenges posed by terrorism, and who would almost never put national security over transparency.

Those that abide by the law.

On the other end of the spectrum, there are those who embrace a view that can be summarized in two words: “anything goes.” Their arguments suggest that the ends of fighting terrorism can be used to justify any means, and that the President should have blanket authority to do whatever he wants – provided that it is a President with whom they agree.

Those that don’t.
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I get your points about false equivalences and strawmen. (The four knights of the apocalypse (Roberts, Scalia, Alito and Thomas) do it frequently to stand justice on its head. I’m sure they are incensed by the fact that the “fundamentalist” position has placed them on the side of the lawless.)
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Being labelled as an absolutist, however, is one indignity that I am prepared to suffer as long as it gets us to the point where transparency and national security are coextensive is a concept accepted and understood at the beginning of the debate.

“…Cheney proceeded to mischaracterize, oversimplify and distort the views of those who saw his policies as extreme and unconstitutional, to say nothing of the views of the current Administration. This is the habit of demagogues.
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Yet thirty-seven percent say they have a favorable opinion of Cheney, which means that for every six people you pass on the street, two of them don’t have a clue what you are saying. And that number appears to be going up. You would do more to help the situation whereby Cheney gains such respectability by attacking the mechanisms within your own industry that cause people to be confused about what sort of person Dick Cheney is (as well as the many other demagogues in the “conservative” movement), rather than taking easy shots at this particular (though particularly miserable) demagogue.

[...] Joe Klein in Swampland [...]

wvng recogizing equality before the law is now a value only held by the radical Left, who are entirely motivated by wanting to put the nation’s safety at risk. It is only the Left that is naive enough to still believe in trasparency, checks and balances, the separation of powers, and so on. The Constitution, and it’s common law justice system, are relics of the age of absolutes. Now even nature is relative, just like the customs of law. Principles that were progressive in the 19th century, and then conservative in the 20th, are now the exclusive domain of argula eating radicals and elitists, living in big cities, near water.

Plus a few country boys that ride around on John Deere tractors and make crop circles to amuse the neighbors.

[...] Time’s Joe Klein puts it this way: [...]

[...] things. 1. joe klein said the same. struck me then that obama is anything but a demagogue; reason enough to be a craven apologist [...]