Robert Byrd, Republicans, Nazis, and the "Nuclear Option"

http://byrd.senate.gov/byrd_newsroom/byrd_news_march/byrd_news_rls_03012005.html

initial reactions:

1. Byrd shouldn't have said this not because it's so offensive or reprehensible but because it's PRECISELY the sort of thing that Republicans are so good at spinning.
2. The context of his words make sense to me, though perhaps he should've used less loaded comparisons (see above).
3. Matt Brooks totally missed what was meant by:

"some in the Senate are ready to callously incinerate" senators' rights to filibuster. The comment came amid several references by Byrd to the "nuclear option."

what does he think happens during a nuclear strike? people aren't incinerated?

4. Byrd was a Klan member and that's a reprehensible thing but the Republicans also venerate Strom Thurmond, so...
5. Kinda disappointed in ADL but at least I don't think there's any nefarious motives behind their statement, even though I don't agree.

because that's the only thing that the Nazis were about, and to discuss fascism generally is to deny its enormity

btw anybody see that thing (maybe it was in the Times?) about the American GI POWs sent to the labor camp?

first: if foxman and brooks really don't want to trivialize the holocaust, they should both just shut the fuck up wr2 sen. byrd's comments. they won't, but they still should. both are shameless, but this is old hat.

second: going over byrd's KKK past is SO old-hat and unnecessary at this point. fer crying out loud, he's apologized for it at least a zillion times already. as tommy lasorda once said, they only crucified jesus once.

third: my understanding of when jewish people use the term "holocaust" is that they do NOT mean to dismiss or demean the suffering of other people that the nazis persecuted or killed (in the camps or elsewhere). their intent is to call attention to the facts that the nazis specifically singled out the european jews and their culture for extermination, made it a point to round up (or have their allies round up) the jews in any part of europe that were under their control, and that they did so in an organized and methodical manner (as opposed to just killing the jews outright). this is why jewish people refer to the holocaust as "the shoah."

i'm not well-versed in the history, but i think it does trivialize the "Jewish" nature of the holocaust not to recognize the relative intentionality in the genocide involved. maybe this was just a matter of numbers, but i don't think so. and Jews, of course, are not merely an ethnicity (I'm not sure the Roma are, either, but it's hardly the same), or sexual identity. they embody a belief system that was sought to be destroyed. they were also a stand-in for an intellectual culture that is still being attacked in, at least, Iraq.

bad analogy wrt this thread.

third: my understanding of when jewish people use the term "holocaust" is that they do NOT mean to dismiss or demean the suffering of other people that the nazis persecuted or killed (in the camps or elsewhere). their intent is to call attention to the facts that the nazis specifically singled out the european jews and their culture for extermination, made it a point to round up (or have their allies round up) the jews in any part of europe that were under their control, and that they did so in an organized and methodical manner (as opposed to just killing the jews outright). this is why jewish people refer to the holocaust as "the shoah."

The first part of this statement sort of refutes the rest. Surely the Nazis also specifically singled out other cultures for extermination?

and Jews, of course, are not merely an ethnicity (I'm not sure the Roma are, either, but it's hardly the same), or sexual identity.

"merely." ouch

they embody a belief system that was sought to be destroyed. they were also a stand-in for an intellectual culture that is still being attacked in, at least, Iraq.

I agree with this, up until you namedrop Iraq. Surely the destruction of Jewish cultures in primarily Arabic parts of the Middle East has to do with the creation of the state of Israel? I'm not saying Israel caused that, btw. Just that populations (both Arabic and Jewish) migrated (by force or willingly).

It is imperative that we only be led only in the foreseen and approved directions. Otherwise, the result is anarchy.

yes -- i didn't realize that till just now. sorry to have offended.

It's the most intensively studied event of the 20th Century, so the margin of error is not quite a wide here as for most of the other wars and oppressions on this page. Most historians agree that the death toll was about 50 million (including wartime atrocities).

Brzezinski says:

Military: 19M
Civilians, "actual byproduct of hostilities": 20M
Civilians, Sino-Japanese War: 15M
Hitler's murders: 17M

TOTAL: 71M

Rummel says:

European War Dead (1939-45): 28,736,000
Sino-Japanese War Dead (1937-45): 7,140,000
War-related Democides
Hitler: 20,946,000
Stalin: 13,053,000
Japanese: 5,964,000
Chinese Nationalist: 5,907,000
Allied Bombing: 796,000
Croatian: 655,000
Tito: 600,000
Romanian domestic democide: 484,000
Chinese Communist: 250,000
Hungarian democide in Yugoslavia: 78,000
[TOTAL: 48,733,000]
[TOTAL (1937-45): 84,609,000]

The MEDIAN of most estimates is 50M.

The country-by-country medians for military personnel killed in the war are:
USSR: 10.0M
Germany: 3.5M
China: 2.05M
Japan: 1.5M
USA: 0.4M
Romania: 0.3M
Yugoslavia: 0.3M
UK: 0.28M
Italy: 0.23M
France: 0.21M
Hungary: 0.14M
Poland: 0.125M
TOTAL: 19.0M

He didn't, because for some reason Matt Brooks refuses to acknowledge that getting rid of the filibuster was compared to the "nuclear option" which of course refers to a "nuclear holocaust," not the Holocaust.

yeah, blount, they'll take any spin they can get. Too bad Byrd sorta pitched them a hanging curve.

rick santorum is one strong democratic challenger away from being ex-senator santorum. he didn't win by all THAT much against a pretty weak challenger in 2000.

not to mention that his last name has become an OBVIOUS punch-line (b/w "sanitarium" and becoming a dan savage-coined dirty joke).

it was an aside, only to recognize, for the purpose of refusing to limit the impulse to an historical antecedent, that someone (Baathists?) is murdering Iraqi intellectuals (who I would assume are jews in only a few cases).

you could say the Nazis also persecuted people based on their "mere" political ideologies but since that's something that it's pretty obv. ILXors hold dear, to say a political ideology is "mere" is condescending.

my intent was to diminish only in the sense that 1, however significant, is always less than 1+1. i was seeking to point out that trying to eradicate an idea/belief/knowledge is qualitatively different than trying to eradicate a people.

hey is anyone else having 'president santorum' nightmares too? gabbneb tell me i'm crazy to worry about this!

don't count anyone (Rice, Barbour, Cheney) out. I wouldn't assume he's too right wing to make it (but i'd certainly act like it), though that is probably true at the margin. he is certainly not without appeal, but i would think he's slightly too dorky for a younger guy to be a serious contender. but PA will be a powerful lure if you assume he could do anything for them there (i don't, really). Bob Casey, Jr.'s race against him may be one of the big priorities of the next two years, but it may be mostly because it will feel good to get rid of the guy. and it will be nothing to compare in importance to Rendell's re-election in '06, though he will certainly be the favorite there.

Frist doesn't scare me. I still think it quite possible that he will be on the ticket, but don't expect him to be at the top, and think I wouldn't be off the mark in looking forward to him in that role. I can't think of anything he has going for him that isn't essentially a prerequisite.

"An army that carries the ark before it...is invincible."

Political speeches are all about timing, see.

The absolute and utter demonization of 'the other' in American politics, while neither new nor lovely to think about, is something that neither major party can be particularly proud of and which nearly all partisans seem to gleefully engage in as it suits them -- as you are happily demonstrating. When the rhetoric has heated up to the point where an opposition, rather than dealt with, must be destroyed in order to secure a power base first and foremost instead of dealing with actual 'issues,' then the pretence of being offended when a voice from said (however putative) opposition snarls back is hard to accept. After all, the grotesqueries of privilege and power evident under Democratic rule in Congress have been happily and merrily replicated by the GOP rule -- there are no innocents in this idiotic folderol, and you know it.

The point about this being a constitutional-level change -- two-thirds Congress, three-fourth states, hardly an immediate slam-dunk -- is accurate and should be kept in mind. It excuses neither historical simplifications nor holier-than-thou condemnations.

also, i'm glad that you think that hitler's evil can be "cheapened." and that your jurisprudential rant is in defense of a perceived American Weltschaunng. just like "the Homeland" sounds a little like the Lebensraum.

He's not a governor.

Dan Perry is a "mensch" to all! As far as some other people on this thread, "oy", you have got a lot of "khutspe"

this at least partly a serious question -- to see if mr. foxman is at least consistent. i strongly doubt that a shill like matt brooks was saying anything, though.

-- Gear! (can Jung shill it, Mu?) (speed.to.roam@gmail.com), March 4th, 2005.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v216/sexymollusk/bushark.jpg

For example (from the Congressional Record):

"Now, forgive me, but that is right out of Nazi Germany. I don't understand...why all of a sudden we are passing laws that sound as if they are right out of Nazi Germany."
-Sen. Gramm, R-TX, September 5, 2002 (speaking in opposition to a Democratic tax plan)

"That, Mr. Speaker, is a modern-day equivalent of the Nazi prison guard saying 'I was just following orders.' It was all legal in Nazi Germany at the time."
-Rep. King, R-IA, September 8, 2004 (speaking in opposition to a legal ruling on abortion)

[...]

"We certainly have all seen the rejections of Nazi Germany's abuses of science. As a society and a nation, there ought to be some limit on what we can allow or should allow."
-Sen. Sessions R-AL, October 11, 2004 (speaking in opposition to stem cell research)

"He also said that imposition of the Kyoto Protocol 'would deal a powerful blow on the whole humanity similar to the one humanity experienced when Nazism and communism flourished.' And that was the chief economic advisor to Russian President Putin. The world has certainly turned on its head that we Americans must look to Russians for speaking out strongly against irrational authoritarian ideologies."
-Sen. Inhofe, R-OK, October 11, 2004 (speaking in opposition to the Kyoto Protocol)

Well, the right to filibuster is not in the Constitution. If it was, then obv. the GOP couldn't end it by a simple Senate rule change. There are specific places where the Constitution requires a super-majority, and ending a filibuster is not one of them.

this is from santorum's hometown (alt-)paper.

there are a lot of things that are not necessarily undemocratic. there is no necessary prescription for democracy. we're talking about a rule change taking place in a larger context of a widespread effort by the Executive and its political faction to consolidate power and avoid the restrictions of existing law.

It just changes the majority required to pass legislation in the Senate from 60 to 50 (plus the tie-breaker). This will make the Senate more like the House: less genteel, less moderate, more responsive to the will of the majority party.

your description is only practically correct. it does not in fact directly change the majority required to pass legislation, it does so indirectly. it directly changes the majority required to end debate and bring legislation to a vote (and i'm not sure of the scope of the proposal - it may also change the 2/3 majority required to bring a rule change to a vote).

making the Senate like the House is of course contrary to the intent of the framers. They provided specifically that the Senate be a smaller body, with longer terms of staggered service, by older Members, and with the exclusive power to try impeachment of the Executive. and the debates on the Constitution make clear that it was intended that the Senate be the slower, more deliberative, moderating brake upon the House.

of course, this does not make the Senate exactly like the House, only more like the House. but, while this change is arguably at the margin, practically it's more than marginal. while the Senate's rules would remain quite different from those of the House - 50%, plus the Vice President, necessary to end debate, as opposed to the action of a floor Manager in the House - when the same faction controls both houses of the legislature the practical result is largely the same.

the right to filibuster is not in the Constitution

the Constitution does not set forth the Rules of the Senate or the House, but it does provide that those Rules be set forth by those bodies. there are many rights not specifically enumerated in the Constitution. including the right to conduct legislative business not requiring secrecy in public.

surely byrd is out of his mind but if he's standing up for more justices like anthony kennedy who goes shopping for a international treaty to suit his own morality instead of interpreting the US constitution then he's got little to stand on.

What is the philosophy behind looking at legal precedents in one's own country and why can't this apply internationally? (Isn't the whole idea of common law sort of inductive? My sister says the French have a different system, which I think is more deductive.) There was an interesting article about Anthony Kennedy in the LA Times recently: Taking a Road Less Traveled in the High Court. (The link will probably be good without registration for a few more days.) The part about how he broke with Scalia is sad. I like the idea of humanism. Here is an excerpt from a National Journal article:

6) One key to understanding the Court's reliance on international and foreign law, laid out in friend-of-the-court briefs by the European Union and several foreign countries, may be the justices' summer sojourns to glittering international conferences. They may be embarrassed by their foreign friends' concern that America seems so indifferent to world opinion -- so barbaric, even.

I might be embarrassed too. But should the meaning of our Constitution be determined -- and should democratic governance be set aside -- by what Scalia calls "the subjective views of five members of this Court and like-minded foreigners"?

And if international standards are to be our guide, what of the facts that -- by decree of the Supreme Court -- the United States alone broadly bars prosecutors from using illegally seized evidence; is one of only six countries to allow abortion on demand until the fetus
is viable; and is quite exceptional in requiring strict separation of church and state?

What of the fact that the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which the Court cites approvingly for its ban on executing juveniles, also bans sentencing them to life without parole -- a penalty that all, or almost all, 50 states authorize and that Kennedy
cited with approval. By the way, the United States has refused
to ratify that convention, except to the extent that the Court
has now implicitly arrogated the treaty-ratification power to
itself.

The subjectivity of the justices' "independent judgment" is also underscored by Kennedy's side debate with Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's separate dissent. She agrees with the majority's interpretative method, its internationalist bent, and its 2002 precedent in Atkins v. Virginia (which she joined) banning execution of mentally retarded murderers.

But 16- and 17-year-old murderers should not enjoy the same constitutional protection, O'Connor asserts in Simmons, while suggesting that she would welcome a statutory ban on juvenile executions. Why? Because there is "continuing public support" for juvenile executions and because "at least some 17-year-olds" may deserve death. Kennedy, on the other hand, stresses that the impropriety of the juvenile death penalty "gained wide recognition earlier than the impropriety of executing the mentally retarded."

Scalia's own "purely originalist approach" (as he describes it) has its problems, however. Scalia would uphold any punishment deemed
constitutional at the time of the Framers, leaving it to elected
officials to discern "evolving standards of decency."

That would make the Eighth Amendment a dead letter. When it was adopted, children as young as 7 could be executed, among other punishments now universally deemed barbaric.

So the Court must draw a line somewhere to designate how young is
too young for the death penalty. In 1988, it drew a more defensible line, over Scalia's dissent, in Thompson v. Oklahoma, holding that killers 15 years old and younger should not be executed.

But in its impatience with 20 states' current unwillingness to draw their own legal lines where it (or I) would like, the current Court majority has assumed the power to act essentially as a continuing constitutional convention. And not only in the death-penalty context.

MoveOn's going to attempt something during the vote on William Myers, a cattle/mining lobbyist nominated for the US Court of Appeals.

Note that Myers first showed up last year, but was one of twenty nominees blocked(with 204 passing).

Bob "Fuckhead" Novak doesn't like how (head of Senate Judiciary Committee) Arlen Specter did this, either

but, as Spector says, Novak is wrong, and still a fuckhead.

Cheney might try to throw out the rule, too. Such fun will be had.

it might help his argument if he stuck to saying things which are true.