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Arianna Huffington, reporting from the Nashville “Tea Party” Convention, noticed a startling element of Sarah Palin’s speech:

Indeed, at times in her speech, Palin sounded like the second coming of Huey Long. “While people on Main Street look for jobs, people on Wall Street — they’re collecting billions and billions in your bailout bonuses,” she said. “And everyday Americans are wondering: Where are the consequences? They helped to get us into this worst economic situation since the Great Depression. Where are the consequences?”

Obama, meanwhile, is Mr. Nuance on the latest set of bonuses paid out to the Masters of The Universe.  From an interview yesterday on Bloomberg.com, via Zack Carter of Alternet:

Q: Let’s talk bonuses for a minute: [Goldman Sachs CEO] Lloyd Blankfein, $9 million; [JP Morgan CEO] Jamie Dimon, $17 million. Now, granted, those were in stock and less than what some had expected. But are those numbers okay?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, look, first of all, I know both those guys. They’re very savvy businessmen. And I, like most of the American people, don’t begrudge people success or wealth. That’s part of the free market system. I do think that the compensation packages that we’ve seen over the last decade at least have not matched up always to performance. I think that shareholders oftentimes have not had any significant say in the pay structures for CEOs.

Now to be fair, there’s more in Obama’s comments about reforms he’d like, etcetera.  (To continue being fair, Obama also makes an inane comparison with million dollar baseball players who don’t make the World Series.)

But of the two, Palin’s statements convey more anger and emotion about the Great Recession, and more directness — however dishonest, however  shortlived — about its origins than Obama’s unspeakably stupid, tone-deaf opener “first of all I know both those guys.” Next he’ll be telling us how deeply he’s looked into their eyes.  But the real problem is claiming they are beneficiaries of a “free” market.  As Paul Krugman points out in his reaction to Obama’s interview (”Clueless”),

“these bank executives are not free agents who are earning big bucks in fair competition; they run companies that are essentially wards of the state. There’s good reason to feel outraged at the growing appearance that we’re running a system of lemon socialism, in which losses are public but gains are private.”

For a variety of reasons, I’ve given up caring why Obama says the things he says or does the things he does.  Maybe he was a community organizer once; he walked away from that a long time ago.  And I was barely interested in whether the Democratic Party still has a pulse a year from now.  It stood for civil rights and prosperity for a growing middle class once — and it didn’t just stand for those things, it enacted them.  Now it’s a wretched, hollow shell of an organization, unable to parlay a majority in the House, a (now vanished) supermajority in the Senate, and an electoral landslide for the White House into the accomplishment of its alleged number one goal: meaningful health care reform.  Ever since the Massachusetts Senate race loss and the health care reform doldrums, I’ve felt like David Mamet’s line: these guys could f**k up a baked potato.

Now someone like Sarah Palin — a far more dangerous, instinctively able, Nixonian politician than she’s given credit for — is bidding to wrest the populist torch away from the none-too-resisting hands of Obama and the Democrats.  And Palin is good enough at what she does to succeed overtly at what Brown did more or less covertly in Massachusetts — assuming the mantle of change, and conveying the hope of momentum for disaffected, fickle, “independent” voters who are rightly bummed and rightly want to throw the bums out.  If she isn’t, others are.  And Obama, the Democrats, and progressives and liberals who tied their hopes to them will have forfeited the very hope and change that seemed to be the wind in Obama’s sails one short year ago.

Andrew Leonard defends Obama’s performance, complaining: “We’ve got a guy in the White House capable of more nuance than anyone in recent memory, and a political culture that can’t deal with any nuance at all.” Look: nuance and a dollar fifty will buy you a cup of coffee. We don’t need nuance.  We need action.  We need jobs, we need homes saved, we need health care that doesn’t threaten us with choosing between ruin and death, and oh, we need to get out of a couple of wars and stop the ice caps from melting. The question is how, at what cost - and whether we can believe the people we hire to do the job.

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UPDATE, 2/12: Full Business Week/Bloomberg interview here, via John Judis of The New Republic, who points out that Obama’s choice of known union-basher and FedEx CEO Fred Smith as a CEO he “admires” is pretty disappointing too. Judis: “Overall, the impression the interview leaves is of a president surprisingly oblivious to the fury that is sweeping the nation. Obama has occasionally attempted to speak to it, or read speeches that address it. But this interview shows that, in the choice between Main Street and Wall Street, his natural inclinations lie more toward one side—and it ain’t Main Street.”
UPDATE, 2/14: In a similar vein: Frank Rich NYTimes op-ed Palin’s Cunning Sleight Of Hand.

I guess it’s good to see that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton can really get busy when America’s values and interests are on the line.  Mark Landler and Sebnem Arsu of the New York Times report from Zurich (”Turkey and Armenia, After Hitch, Normalize Ties“):

Sitting in the back of a black BMW sedan at a hilltop hotel here, aides thrusting papers at her, Mrs. Clinton worked two cellphones at once as she tried to resolve differences between the Armenian foreign minister, Eduard Nalbandian, and his Turkish counterpart, Ahmet Davutoglu.

Too bad all that drama was on behalf of a deeply flawed pact between Turkey and Armenia.  While it’s hailed as a breakthrough, it seems to me the reality is that an exhausted Armenia surrendered too much in return for normalized relations between the two countries.  The difficulty, as ever, was in Turkey’s ongoing campaign to obfuscate and deny its responsibility for the Armenian Genocide of 1915-18.

It’s not a great sign that the difficulty Clinton solved rested on Armenian objections to Turkish post-signing statements, nor that the solution she brokered was for the Turkish delegation not to say anything.  The text of the protocols includes language bitterly denounced by many (but not all) Armenian diaspora organizations — specifically, text appearing to pledge Armenia to not taking an active role in the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute, and text calling for the two countries to

Implement a dialogue on the historical dimension with the aim to restore mutual confidence between the two nations, including an impartial and scientific examination of the historical records and archives to define existing problems and formulate recommendations…

The Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) has posted an annotated copy of the protocol, and comments that this

…secure[s] Armenia’s tacit support for [Turkey's] longstanding aim of downgrading the Armenian Genocide from a matter of settled history [...] At the same time that Turkey is seeking to gain credit internationally by appearing open to dialogue, its government is enforcing Article 301 and other laws criminalizing even the discussion of the genocide.

Turkey is reportedly open to ‘accepting the verdict’ of such a historical commission — but my guess is that commission will deadlock, with Armenian and many outside historians saying one thing, Turkish ones (though there are honorable exceptions) saying another, and Turkish politicians saying “see? No one can agree.”

The Washington Post reports that Secretary Clinton was in “frequent contact with the two sides in recent weeks“, and President Obama called Armenian president Sarkissian to salute him in advance for his “leadership” in accepting the deal.  While some news reports point to regional and U.S. interest in building an anti-Russian alliance in the Caucasus, others cite simpler, more profitable reasons.  The Guardian’s Simon Tisdall:

International pressure on Turkey and Armenia not to let the chance of a rapprochement slip is intense. Both are vital links in the chain of actual or planned western oil and gas pipelines stretching from central Asia to Europe.

Set that against a mere 1.5 million dead in the first modern genocide, and I suppose it was always clear what Clinton’s BMW drama and Obama’s Oval Office phone calls were going to be about — never mind Obama’s own campaign promise to have the U.S. call the Armenian Genocide by name.

Honduras
The Obama administration has been displaying no such sense of urgency in Latin America’s first coup in years — Roberto Micheletti and his clique’s ousting of rightful Honduran president Manuel Zelaya.  As is well known, Zelaya recently ‘infiltrated’ his own country after his forcible exile, seeking asylum and support in the Brazilian embassy.

Despite strong support from the OAS (Organization of American States) for Zelaya, and even official acknowledgment by the U.S. State Department  that a coup took place, the Obama administration has not taken further concrete steps to put pressure on the Micheletti coup regime — including, at minimum, Secretary of State Clinton’s active efforts to restore an elected leader of an OAS member country to power.

Meanwhile, in Honduras, the coup leaders continue to repress their opposition (often lethally),  have set and lifted curfews, and have claimed the right to curtail freedom of speech to secure their hold on power, and carried out or condoned attacks on independent radio stations.  Now, the standoff at the Brazilian embassy is getting more tense.  Adrienne Pine, who has been monitoring the Honduran media, reports:

Platforms with highly armed sharpshooters installed outside the embassy, using telescopic and infrared targeting systems, just meters away from the windows of the building where the president, his family, and many others are held hostage by the regime.

(Photos are at the link.)  You’d think that would be worth a flurry of cell phone calls.

A Nobel foreign policy?
After the same initial “for what?” reaction everyone else had, I figured that despite my many reservations about Obama, awarding him the Nobel Peace Prize was a decent strategic choice by the Nobel committee.  As the Nobel committee’s press release put it,

The Committee has attached special importance to Obama’s vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons.

Obama has as President created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play. Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts. The vision of a world free from nuclear arms has powerfully stimulated disarmament and arms control negotiations. Thanks to Obama’s initiative, the USA is now playing a more constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting. Democracy and human rights are to be strengthened.

I can agree about the nuclear weapons efforts, where Obama has restored nuclear nonproliferation and arms reduction to prominence in U.S. and world foreign policy. That’s important enough that giving him a prize in advance may actually make some sense — maybe this way he’ll stick with this issue the way he sometimes doesn’t with others.  (For more on this, see especially nonproliferation experts Joe Cirincione of Ploughshares, and William Hartung of the New America Foundation.)

Much of the rest of the statement rings hollow, though — especially that last sentence.  But I can fix it with just two words: “when convenient.”

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UPDATE, 10/10: ANCA is running a “Tell the President: Genocide Shouldn’t Pay” email protest campaign against US support for the Turkey-Armenia protocol.  From the message:

The United States should address genocide as a moral imperative, not as a geo-political commodity to be traded or sold to the highest bidder. Sadly, however, that is exactly what has happened. Turkey enlisted the powerful, sustained, and very likely decisive support of our government in its shameless but nonetheless successful effort to compel Armenia into acceptance of a set of humiliating and dangerous concessions.

UPDATE, 10/11: See also “Stop The Protocols” website, created by Armenian American student groups.
UPDATE, 10/14: Naturally, the Washington Post editorializes in favor of the protocols.  Nice line: “The genocide issue — and the refusal of some in the American Armenian community to compromise on it — still threatens to undo the deal.” How unreasonable of “some” in the American Armenian community! One hopes the Post would never urge Jewish groups to compromise on recognition of the Holocaust, even if some groups had the so-called “common sense” to acquiesce to a process even the Post acknowledged could “filibuster” the issue.

The Obama plan both builds upon and improves our current insurance system, upon which most Americans continue to rely, and leaves Medicare intact for older and disabled Americans. The Obama plan also addresses the large gaps in coverage that leave 45 million Americans uninsured. Specifically, the Obama plan will: (1) establish a new public insurance program available to Americans who neither qualify for Medicaid or SCHIP nor have access to insurance through their employers, as well as to small businesses that want to offer insurance to their employees; (2) make available the National Health Insurance Exchange to help Americans and businesses that want to purchase private health insurance directly; (3) require all employers to contribute towards health coverage for their employees; (4) mandate all children have health care coverage; (5) expand Medicaid and SCHIP to cover more of the least well-off among us; and (6) allow state flexibility for state health reform plans.

– from “Barack Obama’s Plan for a Healthy America” (PDF), via Jane Hamsher (”firedoglake”).

Thus, Obama specifically campaigned for what is now called the “public option”  –  and it wasn’t just the 8th of 11 bullet points in some forgotten speech in Cornstalk, Iowa, it was the very first specific element of his official health care plan.  It was positions like this one that helped convince me, after Edwards’s exit, that the health care issue was at least a rough tossup between Clinton and Obama in the primaries, and helped convince me that Obama was worth working for in the general election campaign.  I don’t seem to be the only one, judging by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee’s (PCCC) yeswestillcan.org site, which placed the ad to the right in the New York Times on Tuesday.

But the “public option” was a disposable afterthought — merely an “additional step we can take” — in Obama’s speech to Congress on Wednesday evening.  Even after noting that a majority of Americans “still” favor the idea, Obama continued:

But its impact shouldn’t be exaggerated — by the left or the right or the media.  It is only one part of my plan, and shouldn’t be used as a handy excuse for the usual Washington ideological battles.  To my progressive friends, I would remind you that for decades, the driving idea behind reform has been to end insurance company abuses and make coverage available for those without it.  The public option — the public option is only a means to that end – and we should remain open to other ideas that accomplish our ultimate goal. …

Wrong.  Having eschewed a single payer model for health care insurance, the public option is utterly necessary for meaningful health care reform. The separate “Health Insurance Exchange” market that Obama and writers like Ezra Klein put much of their faith in will only be as good for Americans as the best insurance provider within that risk-pooling and -adjusting exchange — not just in co-pays and premiums, but in accessibility and service.  Without a public option, the profit motive and shareholder pressures all but guarantee that private insurors will see such an exchange as just another regulatory framework to game — either by “innovatively” colluding and signaling industry-wide higher fees and premiums than necessary to eachother, by “innovatively” finding ways to cherrypick the healthiest clients within the exchange without appearing to do so, or both.

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I agree with Julian Sanchez about the alleged astroturfing behind the angry town hall crowds:

Manifestly, there are groups like FreedomWorks trying to catalyze or corral opposition to Obama’s policies, but it hardly sounds as though they’re in control—at most, it seems like they’re providing focal points for the kind of genuine, strong sentiment you can’t fake… and that I’d think few political operatives would want to fake.

You can certainly shake your head about Dick Armey, Rupert Murdoch, and Howard Phillips — a report in Alternet by Adele Stan illuminates their roles well.  But I think it’s a false sense of superiority to call the right wing participants in these events “fringe” or “astroturf.” No more so than Obama supporters turning out by the hundreds and more for campaign rallies — called there by e-mail, text message, and spiffy web sites. Sanchez continues:

That said, I think the sharp line between “grassroots” and “astroturf” will probably make less and less sense in the emerging media environment. The Platonic form of a grassroots campaign is, say, a bunch of ordinary parents in Peoria, largely unconnected with and certainly undirected by any larger political entity, banding together to agitate for some change or other. And the Platonic form of astroturf is when Peoria Parents for a Brighter Future turns out to be three bachelors  in a K Street office with some letterhead and a fat check from McDonalds or something. But the lines between local and national politics are much blurrier when all the organizing and reporting are taking place online.

In a comment, he concedes a reader’s point that “the “genuine, strong sentiment ” you [applaud] is authored by deceit,” and so do I — see Re: Fw: SENIOR DEATH WARRANTS below.  But it does no one any good to bemoan that.  Freedomworks et al have been out-organizing Obama’s people, and by a considerable margin. Why is that?  I have a few theories.

First, while it was possibly a justified legislative strategy, Obama’s laissez-faire approach to the Congressional health care debate wasn’t an effective campaign strategy: it made it hard to know what people were supposed to rally around.  Katha Pollitt of The Nation:

Every day I get e-mails from Health Care for America Now, Organizing for America, MoveOn.org and similar groups urging me to write my Congressman, attend a town-hall meeting, host a gathering. But how can I speak knowledgeably about a plan that does not yet exist and in which the parameters keep shifting?

Second, that approach went hand in hand with shying away from moral arguments (e.g., health care is a right, 47 million uninsured Americans is a wrong) and — the flip side of the same coin — obsessively seeking bi-partisan, “post partisan” common ground with Republican leaders.

Third, and with all due respect, there was always more than a bit of a starry-eyed celebrity worship going on with Obama’s “grassroots” - hopeandchange, shepardfaireyposter, obamagirl, all that — and also more than a bit of utopianism about how the Internet would inevitably unleash the better angels of our nature. Given FreeRepublic and Michelle Malkin, I don’t know why anyone ever thought that, but after the town hall ambushes of 2009, maybe we’ll all be disabused of those illusions for good, and high time too.

Now Obama finds himself facing an energized anti health care reform/anti-Obama movement — and like it or not, the thing has the look of a movement — with a moribund “Organizing for America” base of his own.  A New York Times report today (”Health Debate Fails to Ignite Obama’s Grass Roots“) supplies some examples from Iowa; here in Maryland, after the right overran town halls and even conducted one hanging in effigy, I finally got a message from OFA (Organizing for America) on August 19 all but admitting that:
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As the health care “debate” lurches forward under the expert guidance of our Democratic leadership, my thoughts turn unbidden to the past.

How vividly I remember how we were counseled not to upset our sensitive Republican friends with any prospect of impeachment or subpoenas or prosecution, or of anything at all that might hold them or their chieftains even a little bit accountable for anything.

No, even though it was our most fundamental birthright to hold our rulers accountable when they break laws and break faith and break oaths, we were looking forward, not looking back.  And that was because we were looking forward to that “progressive place” Pelosi prattled on about once — serious liberal Democrats like Harold Meyerson and Chris Van Hollen and Eric Alterman nodding sagely at her side.  Well, Alterman came later, but I’m being allegorical here.

When we got there, she told us, there’d be a delicious yummy exit from Iraq and then! a delicious yummy climate change bill and then! a delicious yummy health care plan!  It was a wonderful story!  Instead of having to fight mean Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, we’d just wait for them to go away and we’d have a much easier time with all their friends.  Why, we might all look back on everything and just laugh at how silly we’d been!

So we gave away our birthright, and now I suspect that instead of getting anything delicious and yummy, we’re going to get the mess of pottage I understand you can expect when you do that.  Although there was nothing in the old story about the Iraq surge and FISA amendment and all the other sh*t sandwiches we got to eat first.  Which just goes to show those old stories never get it exactly right, but they can still get pretty darned close.

If so, I imagine people will be saying, “mmm! pottage!” or “you know, for a mess of pottage, it’s not half bad!” And they’ll say it with uniquely American Homer Simpson voices.  And I’ll be banging the desk with my head.

UPDATE, via Jed Lewison at DailyKos:

Nell points to this notice at Adrienne Pine’s blog:

Hondurans for Democracy, School of the Americas Watch (SOAW), CODE PINK and several human rights organizations and groups opposed to the military-led coup of June 28, 2009, will hold a VIGIL FOR PEACE IN HONDURAS. The vigil is being held in light of the brutal acts of violence perpetrated by the de facto regime in Honduras such as assassinations of protesters/critics, disappearances, kidnappings, and multiple violations of human rights.

What: Vigil for Peace in Honduras
Where:Reflecting pool on west side of the US Capitol Building
Time: 8:30 - 10:30 PM
Date: Tuesday, August 11, 2009

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For the occasion, more stirring words from President Barack Obama, this time from his June 4 speech in Cairo:

I know there has been controversy about the promotion of democracy in recent years, and much of this controversy is connected to the war in Iraq. So let me be clear: no system of government can or should be imposed upon one nation by any other.

That does not lessen my commitment, however, to governments that reflect the will of the people. Each nation gives life to this principle in its own way, grounded in the traditions of its own people. America does not presume to know what is best for everyone, just as we would not presume to pick the outcome of a peaceful election. But I do have an unyielding belief that all people yearn for certain things: the ability to speak your mind and have a say in how you are governed; confidence in the rule of law and the equal administration of justice; government that is transparent and doesn’t steal from the people; the freedom to live as you choose. Those are not just American ideas, they are human rights, and that is why we will support them everywhere.

…there are some who advocate for democracy only when they are out of power; once in power, they are ruthless in suppressing the rights of others. No matter where it takes hold, government of the people and by the people sets a single standard for all who hold power: you must maintain your power through consent, not coercion; you must respect the rights of minorities, and participate with a spirit of tolerance and compromise; you must place the interests of your people and the legitimate workings of the political process above your party. Without these ingredients, elections alone do not make true democracy.

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I just forwarded this appeal, posted here at “Just Foreign Policy” (JFP), to my Congressman. Please join me:

I urge you to sign the letter being circulated by Rep. Grijalva calling for more U.S. pressure on the coup regime in Honduras to stand down. Signers of the letter include Reps. McGovern, Conyers, and Serrano.

After three weeks of illegitimate rule, repression of opponents and stifling of the free press, the de facto regime in Honduras rejected the proposals of Costa Rican President Oscar Arias over the weekend of July 18 and 19. The elected Honduran President, Manuel Zelaya, accepted all seven conditions proposed by Arias to resolve the crisis and restore legitimacy, democracy and constitutional order in Honduras, and the coup regime has consistently stated they will not accept any solution that involves the return of the elected president to his office.

On July 22, the regime’s “Foreign Minister”  rejected Arias’ “final” proposal, re-affirming their position that any solution respecting international opinion as expressed by the OAS, the UN and the United States is “inconceivable, unacceptable.”

But the Honduran regime has not been content to run out the clock on President Zelaya’s mandate and obstruct his return. As documented in a report by the respected Honduran human rights NGO, COFADEH, and elsewhere, the regime has been intimidating and closing down media outlets opposing the coup, shooting journalists, opening fire on unarmed protesters, killing at least one, 19-year-old (WARNING: disturbing image) Isis Murillo, beating and jailing marchers and political leaders, and generally violating civil liberties.

This assault on human rights and on people and movements opposed to the coup cannot be allowed to continue without grave harm to the fabric of Honduran democracy, even if and when President Zelaya is restored.

In response to the worsening situation, I feel that President Obama should follow up on his comments rejecting the coup and denounce the repression carried out by this illegitimate regime. He can also take immediate action that will surely get the attention of the regime by freezing the US assets and visas of those connected to the coup. This suggestion, which was notably raised by the Los Angeles Times editorial board last week, seems to be sensible and appropriate as past actions have failed to have the intended effect, mediation efforts appear to have failed, and the human rights situation continues to worsen.

Please sign the letter being circulated by Rep. Grijalva calling for more U.S. pressure on the coup regime in Honduras.

(Links added; there has now been at least one more death at the hands of coup soldiers and/or “golpistas.”)  If you want to personalize the message, you might add a plug for co-sponsoring H.Res. 630, a resolution by Rep. William Delahunt (D-MA-10) condemning the coup.

I learned of the JFP appeal via Nell Lancaster (”A Lovely Promise”), which is where I’ve mainly been following the Honduras news — since the coup in late June, she’s been writing about little else (the link leads to the list of her posts on the topic), and it’s been a one-stop roundup, analysis, and education stop for me.  She links to plenty of other knowledgeable blogs and resources on the topic; for instance, it turns out Obama enthusiast Al Giordano is also a long time Central America hand, and is currently on the scene reporting via his blog. The Real News Network has also proven to be an excellent broadband Internet resource, with strong ongoing coverage of the coup and the tardy, confused U.S. response.
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The “beer summit” is history; were Obama’s hopes of the Gates-Crowley incident becoming a “teachable moment” realized?  I think it’s unlikely — and whatever small amount of worthwhile learning occurred was despite Obama’s intercession and retreat, not because of it.

The incident
In my view, Obama was right the first time in saying that Cambridge PD officer Mark Crowley “acted stupidly” in arresting Henry Gates.  Of course it was also right and reasonable for a passerby seeing an apparent break-in to report that, and it was reasonable for the Cambridge PD to investigate that report — and it was unreasonable of the Harvard professor to object to that, if that’s what Gates was objecting to.  Despite all that, however, Crowley’s own incident report shows he believed early on that Gates was lawfully in the residence:

While I was led to believe that Gates was lawfully in the residence, I was quite surprised and confused with the behavior he exhibited toward me. I asked Gates to provide me with photo identification  [...] Gates initially refused, demanding that I show him identification but then did supply me with a Harvard University identification card.

Once Gates presented ID sufficient to establish he was a rightful occupant of the house, that should have been the end of the story; instead, when Gates followed Crowley out onto the porch — likely still yelling, though accounts differ — he was arrested with the arch comment,“Thank you for accommodating my earlier request.”

Yet it was Gates’s home and his porch; while there — actually, while anywhere, but certainly on his own property — he could be rude to and shout at whomever he likes,  including police officers, by the ancient principle of “my home is my castle,” by the First and Fourth Amendments, and even by specific Massachusetts case law.**  In one of her typically excellent analyses, digby of “Hullabaloo” sums up (emphasis added):

“Henry Louis Gates may have acted like a jackass in his house that day. But Sergeant Crowley arresting him for being “tumultuous” was an abuse of his discretion, a fact which is backed up by the fact that the District Attorney used his discretion to decline to prosecute. Racially motivated or not he behaved “stupidly” and the president was right to say so. “

Race as red herring, citizen as peon
It’s possible that Crowley was more likely to arrest an ‘uppity’ black man than an ‘uppity’ white one under the same circumstances; we’ll never know.  But I think it would have been a much more interesting discussion to take Crowley’s own documented (some would say alleged) anti-profiling expertise and/or the testimonials of his black colleagues at face value — because that would have led directly to the question why Crowley felt entitled to arrest anyone under the circumstances he described.  Unfortunately, that discussion was short-circuited first by Gates and then by Obama, both describing the case as an incident of “racial profiling” when it never really fit that label per se.

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A high school student, disappointed in the cancellation of an extracurricular event, organizes an impromptu but energetic email and phone campaign to lobby against that cancellation.  Her principal, extremely annoyed by this, exchanges words with the student, though stories differ on what those words were: the student reports she was told the event was canceled, but that decision might be reversed if she “played her cards right,” while the principal denies she ever said the event was canceled. The student goes home and writes an angry post on her “LiveJournal” public blog in which she describes the event as canceled — and also (regrettably) describes the school central office as “douchebags.”*

As it happens, the event goes forward after all — but a few weeks later, the principal learns of the posting, demands and gets an apology, requires the student to display the post to her parents, which also happens… and demands the student withdraw from a student election, which the student refuses to do.  The student’s eventual write-in victory is annulled.  The student and her mother sue on the grounds that the student’s freedom of speech was violated.

= = =

These are the basic facts of Doninger v. Niehoff,* as argued in March, 2008 and decided in the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals in June, 2008.  Sadly, and in my view wrongly, that court found for the school and against the student, by affirming that a district court was right to deny the student’s motion for relief on the basis that she had “failed to show a sufficient likelihood of success on the merits.”

Sadly, also, one Sonia Sotomayor was one of three Circuit judges who delivered this unanimous judgment; Judge Sotomayor also took no exception whatsoever to the particularly distressing explanation of the judgment — and of the state of freedom of speech today — written by Judge Debra Livingston.

Foreseeable  risk of substantial disruption trumps free speech
Livingston did not deny that Doninger had suffered injury, even ‘irreparable injury,’ nor that her speech was curtailed.
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Word cloud of Obama’s speech, via Aziz
Poonawalla. Originally uploaded by abde,
used here by permission.

President Obama and former Vice Torturer Cheney gave much-anticipated speeches in Washington on Thursday. I tend to agree with critics who are a little weary of Obama’s trademark eloquent lip service to constitutional values and rule of law, while belittling those who actually insist on defending it as “finger pointers.” For me, Obama’s most telling lines were these:

…the recent debate has been obscured by two opposite and absolutist ends.

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.” 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. Both sides may be sincere in their views, but neither side is right.

That first part sounds like a bit of payback for a reportedly testy meeting between Obama, high level staff, and leading civil liberties advocates in the White House on Wednesday, in which “one of the attendees warned the President he was letting George Bush’s policies become his own [...] Obama was not pleased by that characterization.” Thanks a bunch for using weasel words like “little allowance” and “almost never” while balancing off the ACLU, CCR, HRW, and HRF against a miscreant like Cheney — a tired “if they’re all mad at me, I’m doing something right” approach.  Yet it’s been groups like these — far more than Obama’s own party — who have been plinking away at U.S. government excesses these last 8 years; it’s an open question whether Obama would be president at all without their work.

Of course, Obama looks and sounds great compared to Cheney:

Some are even demanding that those who recommended and approved the interrogations be prosecuted, in effect treating political disagreements as a punishable offense, and political opponents as criminals. It’s hard to imagine a worse precedent, filled with more possibilities for trouble and abuse, than to have an incoming administration criminalize the policy decisions of its predecessors.

No, it’s hard to imagine a worse precedent, filled with more possibilities for trouble and abuse, than to have an incoming administration shrink from prosecuting the crimes of its predecessors for the sake of expediency.

Trouble is, Obama sees that as some kind of unseemly food fight:

I understand that it is no secret that there is a tendency in Washington to spend our time pointing fingers at one another. And our media culture feeds the impulses that lead to a good fight. Nothing will contribute more to that than an extended re-litigation of the last eight years. Already, we have seen how that kind of effort only leads those in Washington to different sides laying blame, and can distract us from focusing our time, our effort, and our politics on the challenges of the future.

With that, here are some reactions from other respected writers in the blogosphere and among activists.

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