Today is the seventh anniversary of the death of Rachel Corrie in Gaza by Israeli government bulldozer, and the anniversary this year comes at an…

When it comes to answering the question of how the Obama administration must conduct its policies relating to Iran, most of these experts line up behind one of two recommendations, both flawed.

Condemnation.

While The Christian Science Monitor claims not to be an instrument of evangelizing, it does include a daily religious feature and it rejects drug advertising…

Steve Benen:

“Obstructionism,” for example, only refers to Democratic minorities opposing Republican proposals.

“Tyranny” is found when an elected Democratic majority passes legislation that Republicans don’t like.

“Reconciliation” describes a Senate process that Republicans are allowed to use to overcome Democratic “obstructionism.”

“Terrorism” refers to acts of political violence committed by people who aren’t white guys.

“Bipartisanship” is found when Democrats agree to pass Republican legislation.

“Big government” describes a dangerous phenomenon to be avoided, except in cases relating to reproductive rights or gays.

“Treason” refers to Democrats criticizing a Republican administration during a war.

“Patriotism” refers to Republicans criticizing a Democratic administration during a war.

“Fiscal responsibility” is a national priority related to keeping our deficit in check, which only applies when Republicans are in the minority.

“Parliamentarian” is a seemingly independent official on the Hill who Senate Republicans are allowed to fire when the GOP disapproves of his/her rulings.

“Government-run health care” doesn’t refer to popular government-run health care programs like Medicare.

“The heartland” is the most wonderful place in America, even if no conservative pundit would be caught dead living there.

“Serving your country” is honorable if you’re a Republican, but a subject of derision when Democrats do it.

Your turn.

For that tiny subset of Democrats who still dare call ourselves socialists, the right-wing penchant for attaching that label to Barack Obama and his administration is hilarious. “If only that were true,” we say. The message-makers who came up with this talking point for the 2010 elections don’t likely believe it. But at least some of the elected Republicans who have latched onto it undoubtedly do. All surely know that while they cannot follow the technique of Ann Coulter’s hero of the 20th Century Joe McCarthy by directly calling Obama a communist, the taint they hope to inject into the minds of the electorate with socialist has nearly equivalent impact.

The Jonah Goldbergs and other right-wing megaphones would, of course, love it if liberal had the same negative clout with the voters as socialist does, and, over the past few decades they’ve made considerable inroads in that process. What they seek now is the spread of a Hitler=commie=socialist=liberal meme along the lines of some of the signs seen at various teabagger rallies. While few Republicans would actually say Hitler to describe Obama, they damn well hope to benefit by the willingness of others to do so.

If you view this as left-wing caterwauling and a prima facie violation of Godwin, you probably think they were kidding at the Conservative Political Action Conference in mid-February when this nonsense was spouted from the podiums. At The New Yorker, Hendrik Hertzberg writes about it:

Newt Gingrich, the former Speaker of the House, is a reader—and something of a postmodern interpreter—of the works of Albert Camus and George Orwell. A few days before President Obama’s big health-care “summit,” Gingrich addressed the Conservative Political Action Conference. He cited Camus’s “The Plague,” summarizing its message with Jack Nicholsonian authoritativeness: “The authorities can’t stand the truth.” His discussion of Orwell was more narrowly targeted. The message of “1984,” he explained, is

that centralized planning inherently leads to dictatorship, which is why having a secular socialist machine try to impose government-run health care in this country is such a significant step away from freedom and away from liberty, and towards a government-dominated society.

Orwell’s position on the House and Senate health-care bills is unknown, but, like Camus, he was a lifelong democratic socialist (he was a member of the Independent Labour Party, which regarded regular Labourites as wishy-washy) and, as such, a big fan of government-run health care. Confusion about who is and who is not a socialist and what is and what is not socialism was endemic at C-PAC, as the conference’s participants affectionately call it. “The hope and change the Democrats had in mind was nothing more than a retread of the failed and discredited socialist policies that have been the enemy of freedom for centuries all over the world,” Senator Jim DeMint, of South Carolina, said, adding, in a reference to the President, “Just because you are good on TV doesn’t mean you can sell socialism to freedom-loving Americans.” Representative Steve King, of Iowa, listed the enemy within: “They are liberals, they are progressives, they are Che Guevarians, they are Castroites, they are socialists.” Then he mentioned a few more key segments of the Democratic coalition, including, besides Trotskyites, Maoists, Stalinists, and Leninists, “Gramsci-ites—ring anybody’s bell?” Strictly speaking, that should be Gramscians, followers of Antonio Gramsci, the Italian Communist Party leader of the nineteen-twenties. Ding-dong!

Not all that long ago, Republicans didn’t have big problems when one of their own made nice with Chairman Mao while Deng Xiaoping, the “capitalist roader” whose policies would later lay the foundation for today’s powerhouse China, manufactured widgets in coerced exile at a tractor factory. But, then, to mention “hypocrisy” and “historical amnesia” in the same breath as “Republican” gives redundancy a bad name.

Democratic socialism is a perfectly respectable governing philosophy that has as much in common with Stalin’s policies as Toyota has with public relations finesse. Saying, “no we’re not,” of course, shouldn’t be the Obama administration’s response to all the shrieks of “socialist!” that will be coming its way as Republicans try to hammer incumbent congressional Democrats this campaign season. It’s quite obviously true that neither Obama nor his administration come close to being socialist. As George Lakoff has warned, however, you reinforce your foe’s point of reference by denying (and thus repeating) it rather than constructing one of your own.

But, golly, how refreshing it would be to live in a land where “socialist” isn’t a slur and where democratic socialist policies are given a chance to compete with the ones that got us into the economic mess that Republicans and a significant fraction of Democrats seem to think can be solved without major surgery.

Volcker is no radical. He is the former Fed chairman. He has a tightwad’s view of monetary policy, even in a severe recession. But he has been around long enough to know that Wall Street speculators are capable of terrible mischief when regulations are dismantled. If Obama is serious about financial reform, he needs to fight for it — against corporate Democrats as well as Republicans, and against his chums on Wall Street. Paul Volcker deserves better than intermittent gestures. So do the American people.

So, the Pentagon is looking into what bunker-busting bombs might do to Iran’s underground nuclear sites. Even if it works (a doubtful proposition at best),…

The Washington Post today reported: "Obama advisers are set to recommend military tribunals for alleged 9/11 plotters." The report indicates that the Obama administration now leans towards trying self-proclaimed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) and his co-conspirators in military tribunals. Reactions were swift and are offered below without comment.

"Obama said that the choice between our security and our ideals is a false choice. He was right," writes Adam Serwer at The American Prospect. "The real choice was always between our ideals and our politics, and if the above story is true, then Obama will have made the obvious, if profoundly disappointing, choice."

At Harper’s, Scott Horton introduced "Barack Obama’s new attorney general: Rahm Emanuel," apparently blaming Emanuel for the administration’s shift in policy. Marcy Wheeler seemed to agree.

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Hold the champagne.

So we have to rely on Bush administration officials to strenuoulsy defend Obama DOJ appointees against the McCarthyite smears coming from the Cheney crowd.

A former Justice Department official who led the Bush administration’s courtroom defense against lawsuits filed by Guantanamo detainees is denouncing attacks on Obama administration appointees who previously helped such prisoners challenge their indefinite detention without trial.

Peter D. Keisler, who was assistant attorney general for the civil division in the Bush administration, said in an interview that it was “wrong” to attack lawyers who volunteered to help such lawsuits before joining the Justice Department.

“There is a longstanding and very honorable tradition of lawyers representing unpopular or controversial clients,” Mr. Keisler said. “The fact that someone has acted within that tradition, as many lawyers, civilian and military, have done with respect to people who are accused of terrorism – that should never be a basis for suggesting that they are unfit in any way to serve in the Department of Justice.”

….

This week, the conservative group Keep American Safe, which is led in part by Liz Cheney, the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, and by Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard, had released a political video attacking the Obama administration for concealing the identity of those it called the “Al Qaeda Seven.”

“Whose values do they share?” a voice asks over images of seven silhouettes superimposed on Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden. “Americans have a right to know the identities of the Al Qaeda Seven.”

The Keep America Safe video led to widespread discussion in the blogosphere, with some critics likening it to McCarthyism. Mr. Keisler did not use that term. But he strongly defended the lawyers who were once his opponents in litigation.

As volunteer lawyers for the detainees, he said, “they were asserting the position that there should be more judicial review of the circumstances of that detention – a position the Supreme Court ultimately agreed with. And it’s wrong to suggest that people who took that position are somehow sympathetic to Al Qaeda.”

We are still not seeing significant pushback from any elected Dems on this. The lack of a massive fight back against this crap from the Cheneyites just generates more crap, as documented by Glenn:

The last thing I would ordinarily do is watch a Wolf Blitzer broadcast, but I knew that this was going to be a heinously illustrative episode in modern political journalism — at best the vile campaign was going to be presented in the standard “each-side-says” format which defines modern journalistic “objectivity” — but it was far, far worse than even I expected.  Blitzer first teased the segment as this on-screen logo appeared, taken directly from the Cheney/Kristol ad: “HAPPENING NOW: DEPT. OF JIHAD?”

The next time he teased the story, CNN flashed this logo — “Al Qaeda 7?” — also taken directly from the Cheney/Kristol ad, as Blitzer explained that numerous Justice Department lawyers have been “accused of disloyalty” by a national security organization headed by Liz Cheney.  The final Blitzer tease came as these words were flashed on the screen:  “Are Justice Dept. lawyers disloyal?”

So Liz Cheney gets to get on TV any time she feels like and spew her vile McCarthyism, calling Obama officials traitors to America because of their efforts to uphold the constitution. Who is going to start answering it?

Court Order Could Halt Destruction of Incriminating Contracting Data On March 12, 2010, the Obama Administration intends to move forward with a plan that could…

One of the key administration nominees, Dawn Johnsen for head of the Office of Legal Counsel, was approved today by the Judiciary Committee by a vote of 12-7, on her way to waiting potentially another year for a vote in the full Senate. She was approved 11-7 last year, only to see her nomination get stuck by a promise on the part of Ben Nelson to join in a Republican filibuster of her because of her past service as legal director of NARAL Pro-Choice America.

The BLT reports:

In an hour-long debate today, senators painted contrasting portraits of Johnsen as either a radical liberal or a respected academic.

“No one on the Republican side has questioned Dawn Johnsen’s qualifications to hold this office,” said Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), referencing her service in the Office of Legal Counsel during the Clinton administration. In an attempt to rebut criticism of Johnsen’s time as legal director of NARAL Pro-Choice America, from 1988 to 1993, Durbin noted that Johnsen has taught Sunday school and is a mother of two….

For Republicans, the hearing was also a chance to defend two former OLC lawyers who worked on memos about interrogation: Jay Bybee, a former assistant attorney general now a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, and John Yoo, a University of California at Berkeley law professor.

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) said that Bybee and Yoo have been treated shabbily. “They’re two brilliant guys,” he said. “They wrote an opinion that people disagree with, and that I think could have been written better. On the other hand, they’re both excellent people, they both worked with this committee, and they’re both respected in the law.”

Yep, leave it up to the very principled and deeply religious Orrin Hatch to bring up the totally irrelevant to this nomination pro-torture argument. The only way this nomination gets passed the torture cheerleaders and Ben Nelson is if Obama decides to take advantage of the Easter recess and pull the trigger on those threatened recess appointments.