Amazing!!!

Matt Yglesias says he "noted with amazement" here that conservative commentators are rediscovering the threat of executive power now that they do not hold it.

Is it really all that amazing? I think a better word would be "predictable" or perhaps "in retrospect, glaringly obvious." Maybe Matt is being sarcastic.

It should also be noted that we are also seeing the reverse.

Plenty of Blame to Go Around

Some are more surprised than others at the latest revelation that Nancy Pelosi was among a small bipartisan group of Congresscritters briefed by the CIA in 2002 about our new and innovative interrogation techniques, including waterboarding. They did not object.

Now I have no less contempt for Democrats than anyone else, but let's think about this for a second - this was 2002. A quick google search reveals that President Bush's approval ratings in September of 2002 were 70%; even Cheney and Rumsfeld polled in the 60s. Failing to stridently oppose the neo-conservative agenda seems politically stupid for the Democrats now, but in 2002 it would have been a principled, prescient, honorable political suicide.

The nation was collectively insane in 2002. The President should never, ever have 70% approval ratings, let alone the 87% he had around when the Patriot Act passed. To expect the President not to abuse that power, and to expect the opposing party to put up an objection, is to forget what this country was like in 2002. Politicians willing to commit political suicide lose elections long before they make it to Congress. This is not news. Pelosi deserves no more and no less contempt than anyone else in the Democratic party for letting the popular president have his way in 2002. Our political system produces politicians, and successful politicians are concerned first and foremost with keeping their jobs.

I'm all for endorsing anti-torture candidates even if they're a little nuts, but this little episode doesn't tell me anything about Democrats or Pelosi that I didn't already know. The lesson here is that 70% approval rates are as ripe for abuse as any other form of power.

Local Knowledge, You Goddamn Technocrat

Sometimes I get my hopes up about Matt Yglesias. Here he is, exhibiting an admirable level of cynicism with respect to the staggeringly expensive missile defense system we're building to piss off Russia and defend against Iran's nonexistent nuclear weaponry:

Naturally, though, the exorbitant financial cost of the program counts as a point in its favor. The US would never want to build something cheap, useless, and incredibly damaging to our relationship with Russia. But since the missile defense initiatives are so damn costly, they're also incredibly profitable to the people who build them, and thus to the members of congress who get their campaign contributions and to the think tankers who they support. The best way to kill this initiative would be a scientific breakthrough that allowed its goals to be achieved cheaply and with some efficacy. If that was on hand, diplomatic considerations just might win out.

And then you get to posts like this:

In practice, arguments about federalism are almost universally made opportunistically. People favor devolving power to the states when they think doing so will produce policies they approve of, and people favor concentrating power in Washington when they think doing so will produce policies they approve of. Everyone knows this. And while one might condemn the hypocrisy of it all, this always strikes me as a good thing to be hypocritical about. I don't really have a principled view about the appropriate division of powers between states and the federal government and don't really intend to develop one. The congressional policy being enacted here seems to me to be a good one, so that's good enough for me.

I like Matt so I'll try and limit my ire to the title of the post, but if he wants a principled view I'll give him a principled view. Here it is:

If a function can be performed by a state or local government, it shouldn't be performed by the federal government.

A larger, more powerful government has more corruption, because bribing one official gets you more power. It has less efficiency, because its policies have to be implemented and enforced over a greater number of people in a larger geographic area.

Anyway, it's easy to recite the general arguments for federalism, and liberals who have been around the block have heard them before - and they'll be the first to point out that those arguments were used to defend some vile discriminatory practices that took place in the South. They can be forgiven for questioning the motives of people arguing federalist principles, but that does not render those principles meaningless. I'd argue that fundamental rights to equality under the law are much more necessarily federal than rules governing the nutritional content of school lunches.

The federal government, especially today, has a completely corrupt decision-making process. It is the ultimate sausage factory, and electing Democrats is not going to change that. Matt understands this when it comes to foreign policy, but he maintains a naive optimism that a good idea will stay a good idea after the federal government decides how to implement it - let alone the technocratic belief that if we just come up with The Right Policy we can solve all of our problems. Does he really want the federal government, granter of billions of fattening farm subsidies, making nutrition rules? Here's a clue.

Ctrl-V

Since I typed up a bunch of stuff for the petition Mona linked to, might as well paste it here.

Dear Democrats,

You were elected as an opposition party, but you have failed to oppose an arrogant, incompetent president whose disastrous policies continue unabated. You swore an oath to defend the Constitution, but you have yielded despotic powers of warrantless wiretapping to to President Bush, out of an irrational fear of the political influence of the least popular executive in a half century. Your supporters demand an end to an unjust and pointless war, yet you continue to believe the propaganda of the executive branch, which continues to insist with manufactured evidence that another 6 months will bring significant progress. It will not. It will only bring more death and destruction, both to our troops and to the Iraqi people - remember them? - who overwhelmingly oppose our continued presence.

Furthermore, it is clear that all the allegations made five years ago regarding Saddam Hussein's imminent acquisition of weapons of mass destruction were mistakes at best, deliberate deceptions at worst - and yet the same arguments are being made by the same people with respect to Iran. These are also lies, and a war with Iran would be 10 times the disaster that the war with Iraq has been. And yet you do nothing to oppose it, and accept every administration assertion about Iran at face value.

This must change. The President is not a statesman; he is a tyrant who has rejected every founding principle of this nation. The statements of his administration need to be considered lies until independently proven true. He does not deserve your respect; you certainly will get no respect from him. I realize that without true control of the Senate, your political power is limited; however the extent to which you have submitted to his desires is despicable and disgusting. I don't demand impeachment. I demand forceful, substantive opposition.

Do your duty, uphold your oath, and oppose the President stridently and defiantly. This means voting against any bill he supports. This means rejecting the absurd proposition that anything stated by General Petraeus is any more objective than a Rush Limbaugh broadcast. If you do not, if you continue down your current path, history will remember you as cowards of the highest order. And I certainly won't vote for you again.