Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) on Saturday warned President Barack Obama was working on behalf of ‘anti-American globalists
The great Charles Pierce may deride it as ‘Tiger Beat on the Potomac,
WASHINGTON — We know American politics are dysfunctional. But after a week of scandal obsession during which the nation’s capital and the media virtually ignored the problems most voters care about-jobs, incomes, growth, opportunity, education-it’s worth asking if there is something especially flawed about our democracy.
Our circumstances certainly have their own particular disabilities: a radicalization of conservative politics, over-the-top mistrust of President Obama on the right, high-tech gerrymandering in the House, and a Senate snarled by non-constitutional super-majority requirements.
Still, while it may not be much of a comfort, the democratic distemper is not a peculiarly American phenomenon. Across most of the democratic world, there is an impatience bordering on exhaustion with electoral systems and political classes.
Citizen dissatisfaction is hardly surprising in the wake of a deeply damaging economic downturn. That doesn’t make the challenge any less daunting. We should consider whether democracy itself is in danger of being discredited. Politicians might usefully disentangle themselves from their day-to-day power struggles long enough to take seriously their responsibility to a noble idea and the systems that undergird it.
It’s not hard to discover that this conundrum is global and not just our own. ‘Has democracy had its day?
Fringe right-wing radio host Pete Santilli made disturbing comments about Hillary Clinton last week, calling for sexual violence against the former secretary of state because of her alleged involvement in a bizarre conspiracy theory.
‘Miss Hillary Clinton needs to be convicted, she needs to be tried, convicted and shot in the vagina,
Last October, senior Obama officials anonymously unveiled to the Washington Post their newly minted ‘disposition matrix’, a complex computer system that will be used to determine how a terrorist suspect will be ‘disposed of’: indefinite detention, prosecution in a real court, assassination-by-CIA-drones, etc. Their rationale for why this was needed now, a full 12 years after the 9/11 attack:
Among senior Obama administration officials, there is a broad consensus that such operations are likely to be extended at least another decade. Given the way al-Qaida continues to metastasize, some officials said no clear end is in sight. . . . That timeline suggests that the United States has reached only the midpoint of what was once known as the global war on terrorism.’
On Thursday, the Senate Armed Services Committee held a hearing on whether the statutory basis for this ‘war’ – the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) – should be revised (meaning: expanded). This is how Wired’s Spencer Ackerman (soon to be the Guardian US’s national security editor) described the most significant exchange:
‘Asked at a Senate hearing today how long the war on terrorism will last, Michael Sheehan, the assistant secretary […]
