XDA

There was a copy of The Nation magazine in the gym, so I picked it up. What a change has gone on since the last time I picked one up. It's small now, and printed on the same cheap sort of paper you used in First Grade with the really widely spaced lines on it. Under the leadership of Victor Navsky, who has left for greener pastures but is still listed as Publisher Emeritus on the masthead, circulation is supposed to have skyrocketed from 20,000 to 184,000, a nine fold increase--most of it in the past few years. That's not bad. It has about as many advertisements as The National Review, which is none too many compared to a flashy magazine like Vogue or Vanity Fair. It seems to be now a boutique publication for those who hate President Bush, and Lord knows there are plenty of them

The Editor and Publisher is Katrina vanden Heuvel, who I think is one of the more radical and bitter loopy leftists out there. It is a weekly (usually) magazine of the far left and it has a website, so no one can say it's not moving ahead with the times. I found this original policy statement, which is still displayed on the website, to be a little ironic:

The Nation will not be the organ of any party, sect, or body. It will, on the contrary, make an earnest effort to bring to the discussion of political and social questions a really critical spirit, and to wage war upon the vices of violence, exaggeration, and misrepresentation by which so much of the political writing of the day is marred.
-- from The Nation's founding prospectus, 1865 [It's a pretty old magazine]

Ironic because if The Nation is not an organ for the Democrat wing of the Democrat Party, what would you have to call it--a magazine of socialist nostalgia? Ironic too because in the on line article I'm going to examine briefly, there were plenty of exaggerations and misprepresentations. Let's get to it.

The article was titled "The Impeachment of George W. Bush" by Elizabeth Holtzman. Since I agree with Mark Steyn that the Democrats should be encouraged to talk long and often about impeaching the President, especially for the NSA warrantless surveillance of al Qaeda, let me praise this article for its achievements. There were no spelling errors. Uh, it was almost 6 pages long. That's all I can think of.

What about the exaggerations and misrepresentations? Here's a paragraph where she gets busy.

Like many others, I have been deeply troubled by Bush's breathtaking scorn for our international treaty obligations under the United Nations Charter and the Geneva Conventions. I have also been disturbed by the torture scandals and the violations of US criminal laws at the highest levels of our government they may entail, something I have written about in these pages. These concerns have been compounded by growing evidence that the President deliberately misled the country into the war in Iraq. But it wasn't until the most recent revelations that President Bush directed the wiretapping of hundreds, possibly thousands, of Americans, in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)--and argued that, as Commander in Chief, he had the right in the interests of national security to override our country's laws--that I felt the same sinking feeling in my stomach as I did during Watergate.

Here, in order, are responses to Ms. Holtzman's points. Because of its utter inaction in light of atrocities in Africa, the former Yugoslavia and the Mid-East and its rampant corruption and sclerotic bureaucracy, the UN is worthy of a lot of scorn. It is the League of Nations II, and has failed as completely and utterly as the original failed in the 30s. The Geneva Convention does not apply to al Qaeda, but when we capture its members, they are treated much, much better than any American prisoner of war has been treated since May, 1945. Why does she write 'torture scandals" in the plural? Abu Graib is the only scandal I am aware of, it did not involve real torture unless, ultimately, merely capturing and detaining an enemy or unlawful combatant is torture. In short order, the guys and girl who took the embarrassing photos have been tried and punished and the general in charge at the time replaced and retired. Violation of laws at the highest levels? Who is she talking about? Are there proven crimes by officials at the highest levels and only her readers know about them? Indeed, they must be so well known that she does not have to mention anyone by name. So far, she's a little light in the supporting evidence department. And what growing evidence the President deliberately misled us? Translation: yet another repetition of the tired lie, Bush lied. Apparently old slanders never die; they merely slink off to pulpy oblivion at The Nation. Then she mentions the main event--NSA surveillance of foreign enemies without FISA warrants and the declaration that the Constitution empowers the President as commander in chief with the ability to spy on our foreign enemies. Ms. Holtzman compares that to Watergate (apparently everything a Republican administration does can eventually be compared either to Vietnam or to Watergate). I don't quite see the parallel; Nixon spying on the Democrat party in DC versus Bush spying on al Qaeda overseas. Somehow it seems different to me.

There's more in the pages and pages that follow but no foot- or end-notes, no links, hardly any names (but Bush), and really no evidence. Here's a better example of her supporting evidence:

While many facts about these wiretaps are unknown, it now appears that thousands of calls were monitored and that the information obtained may have been widely circulated among federal agencies. It also appears that a number of government officials considered the warrantless wiretaps of dubious legality. Reportedly, several people in the National Security Agency refused to participate in them, and a deputy attorney general even declined to sign off on some aspects of these wiretaps. The special FISA court has raised concerns as well, and a judge on that court has resigned, apparently in protest.

I highlighted the weasel words. This is more like cheerleading than argument. There's more.

Ms. Holtzman rings the alarm bell about the coming Presidential coup:

...it is impossible to find in the Constitution unilateral presidential authority to act against US citizens in a way that violates US laws, even in wartime. As Justice Sandra Day O'Connor recently wrote, "A state of war is not a blank check for the President when it comes to the rights of the nation's citizens."

Oh, so Lincoln acted unconstitutionally when he ordered the Army of the Potomac to march into Virginia and shoot anyone who opposed them, or jailed secession supporting Marylanders without charges? Although it's not a high point in our history, the Supreme Court decided that FDR's internment of American citizens of Japanese descent in 1942 passed constitutional muster. It can't be unconstitutional if the Supreme Court says it's constitutional, unless you're a Democrat who knows better than the Supreme Court. Ms. Holtzman quotes Justice O' Connor from the Hamdi case but neglects to mention that the Court in that case approved the President's actions even though detention of captured members was not specifically mentioned in the Authorization for Use of Military Force [against al Qaeda] on which the President relied to detain Mr. Hamdi. Holtzman later says the lack of specific mention of spying on al Qaeda in the same Congressional authorization means the President committed a High Crime to try to protect the country from attack by foreign terrorists.

You get the picture from these few examples. I think it's going to be a few more years before I pick up another copy of The Nation. I guess I'm too partial to proof, facts and logic.