Monthly Archive for February, 2010

Iraqi national parliamentary elections are right around the corner. It’s no surprise that electioneering and campaigning looks a bit different in Iraq than it does in other young democracies.  But there are refreshing mundane similarities when people anywhere decide to settle their political differences by empowering democratically elected representatives. Politicians are politicians, even in post-civil war sectarian tinderboxes in the heart of the Middle East.

Case in point: Prime Minister al-Maliki announced today that the government was going to reinstate 20,000 former Baathist army officers, all of whom had been put out of work in 2003 when Paul Bremmer decided to disband the Iraqi Army. This announcement a week before the election is a clear political move designed, I suppose, to curry favor with supporters of rival Shiite and secular parties and brandish Maliki’s “post-partisan” bone fides. A spokesman for the opposition Sunni coalition was skeptical, and said of the move, “This is purely a means of trying to gain more votes.”

My first thought was, Well good for him! A politician making a conciliatory, if cynical, gesture in an attempt to gain more votes? How scandalous! Next thing you know he’ll accuse al-Maliki of not relating to “real working people”.  If the heart of the opposition’s complaint is that the incumbent is trying to gain more votes, I’ll take it!

Really though, how refreshingly unremarkable. A bit better than drumming up votes through state-sanctioned death squads and campaigns of intimidation and violence against political opponents and their supporters.

Though you’ll see from the rest of the article that I’ve no reason to be overly sanguine about any of this. There have been plenty of incidences of isolated sectarian reprisals, civic unrest, and allegations of corruption, electoral irregularities, and misconduct.

And this move by al-Maliki is a bit mystifying. Marc Lynch noted yesterday that thus far in the campaign al-Maliki has been wary of appearing “soft on the Baath”. Just last Tuesday the official De-Baathification committee, charged with purging the military and government of people who still harbor Saddamist loyalties (and headed by our old friend, the double-dealing charlatan Ahmed Chalabi) named hundreds more intelligence and security officers for de-Baathification. Al-Maliki doesn’t seem too concerned about that, even while he acts as the savior of unemployed former Baathists elsewhere.  Lynch sees the ongoing de-baathification racket as a sign of the “degradation and politicization of Iraqi state institutions.”

Nir Rosen, who I think has spent more time in Iraq than not since the war began, has a note of optimism over at Tom Ricks’ blog. He says that even though al-Maliki is a corrupt authoritarian, large-scale sectarian violence and militia activity is over in Iraq:

It’s not about whether Iraqis are sectarian or not. They are, though the vitriol and hatred have decreased. It’s that they are not afraid of the other sect anymore. Fear is what led to the militias taking power and to the political and military mobilization along sectarian lines. There are attempts by some Shiite and Sunni parties to scare people again but in my conversations I feel it is failing. The fear is gone and the Iraqi Security Forces fill the security void, even if it’s not pretty.

This post is presenting a muddled, opaque, and insanely complicated picture of Iraqi politics, which matches my own level of understanding of things; but also, Iraqi politics is muddled and opaque and insanely complicated. Welcome to the Middle East.

PoliticsInVivo is heading out to California tomorrow, so I thought I’d check in on the Golden State political scene a little bit. 

Wow, it ain’t pretty.

The bursting of California’s housing bubble—one of the more toxic in the country—combined with a uniquely dysfunctional political system and a crippling global recession, has led to exciting times for Sacramento. California’s unemployment rate is third-highest in the country. The state has a budget shortfall of $20 billion through next year. After being forced last summer to issue billions of dollars in IOUs to pay its bills and service its debt, California now has the lowest credit rating of any U.S. state. Governor Schwarzenegger recently unveiled his new budget, in which he was forced to propose steep cuts in a wide range of social services: health care for low-income families and children, assistance to the elderly and disabled, public transit, and enviromental programs will all be gutted in an attempt to avert complete economic collapse. (interesting tidbit: it is against federal law for a state to declare bankruptcy)

The only good news for Arnold is that this is the last budget he’ll ever have to submit. His term limit is up this year, and the race to take over this economic train wreck of a state is heating up. In the Republican primary we’ve got Meg Whitman, billionaire former CEO of eBay, versus Steve Poizner, California’s insurance commissioner. The two spent last weekend at a NASCAR event trying desperately to out-pander each other. Apparently there’s a bit of an uproar over Meg Whitman’s decision to wear a designer Burberry coat while she waved the green flag.

This clear violation of simple pander etiquette really calls into question Whitman’s ability to patronize on a larger scale. It earned her a sharp rebuke from the Poizner campaign, which accused Whitman of being out of touch with "regular working people". Poizner, though also a billionaire from his days founding and selling tech companies in Silicon Valley, is way less of a billionaire than Whitman, which I suppose makes it a little easier for him to relate to the "regular working people" whose social services are about to disappear. 

Anyway, this is all moot, as Meg Whitman is up 30 points in the polls. In November she’ll face off against Democrat Jerry Brown, former CA governor and current attorney general. As of now the race is a tossup. Good times.

I probably won’t be hitting up any NASCAR events in Cali, however I will frantically look into founding and selling tech companies in Silicon Valley. That sounds lucrative. I bet I could found and sell three of them this weekend. Then I could buy this designer Burberry cape to blog in. It would help me pander better to you, my affluent, erudite, stylish, and uncommonly good-looking readership. The cape is only $1,500. Donate button is right on the sidebar there.

George Packer has a great post at the New Yorker lamenting the horse-race style of political news analysis. You know this style well: it’s one in which we tend to not get substantive coverage of the thing-itself (be it health care legislation, the stimulus, etc.) but just the highlights of the Washington debate about the thing; how politicians are using recent polling to take control of the narrative surrounding the thing; or (we can get as meta as you like here) how the tone of the debate of the thing will affect the public’s perceptions of the thing and how that might impact the fundraising prospects of this or that politician which in turn might wreak havoc on the electoral map.

For example, on health care, when death panels were all the rage last summer, we didn’t get much reporting about whether there was actually a provision in the bill that created a bureaucratic murder board. Instead we got a lot of coverage about the “death panel controversy”, and how the political parties are scrambling to take advantage of it. Lots of: “In Washington today Republicans continued to accuse the Democrats of wanting death panels. Democrats continued to deny the charge. Now let’s go to our death panel roundtable where they will take a look at our recent death panel polling data….”  We never do learn whether death panels actually, you know, exist.

Every policy debate can be rendered into these meta terms. This sort of news coverage is so ubiquitous that we rarely even notice it. It’s appealing to the media and to media consumers first because it’s easy: to follow along requires no substantive knowledge of the underlying issue. But also, meta-political debates are fun! Campaign-style absurdities are awesome. There’s a reason that throughout 2008 I wanted to race home by 5pm every day so I could see Chris Matthews lean over his desk making his rabid spittle-face, breathlessly telling me about the latest psycho-dramatic twist in Hillary Clinton’s campaign, or what Obama’s batshit-crazy pastor was up to. It’s a serial soap opera for political junkies, and it’s irresistible.

But as Packer notes, it would be odd indeed if we treated every policy issue like we treat political campaigns:

It would be strange if the Times’s coverage of the financial crisis, which has been stellar, focussed entirely on things like Richard Fuld’s handling of his P.R. problems while Lehman was going down. And it would be strange if the paper’s coverage of Afghanistan, which has also been stellar, focussed entirely on things like Hamid Karzai’s use of traditional Pashtun rhetoric in his effort to ride the wave of public anger at the Americans.

Strange indeed, unless you work for Politico. There just so happens to be an item today about the financial crisis; specifically, about Hank Paulson’s new memoir, in which he apparently makes fun of the bumbling ineptness of Republican politicians during the TARP negotiations. Politico chimes in at the end: “But the Republicans might have the last laugh….” Hmm, ok, why I wonder. Because TARP is a spectacular failure and the U.S. banking system has collapsed? Er, no:

TARP is, arguably, the most unpopular federal program in recent memory – and voters seem poised to punish Democrats for passing it, even if Republicans like Cantor eventually signed off.

Ahh, TARP stinks because it’s unpopular. And the voters are poised, or, sorry, seem poised. Politico doesn’t happen to inform us whether TARP did or did not stabilize the U.S. financial system, or how the infusion of liquidity may have helped loosen the credit market, or whether the investment banks have already paid back all or most of the bailout money. All we’ve learned is that this entity called TARP is unpopular and Republicans are laughing about that.

What’s also interesting about this sort of coverage is the implict condescending exclusivity of it. We can read endlessly with detached haughtiness about “the voters” or “the public” without considering that we ourselves are voters and members of the public too. When Politico tells us what “the voters” are “poised” to do, implicit in that is, “we don’t mean you, dear Politico reader; you are not “poised” like those other voters are. We’re all just talking above their heads here at the adult table.”

This sort of detached condescension is the main feature of all tv cable news. We relish glimpses into what “the public” thinks, what it’s doing, who it might vote for, what new irrational nonsense it has been led to believe. But there are always two publics in mind: the one watching this sophisticated pundit show, and the other rubes out there who aren’t. We enlightened few who are watching reflexively exempt ourselves from the patronizing analysis being offered.

It’s harmful enough treating health care policy as a campaign, or foreign wars as a campaign, or averted economic collapse as a campaign. But Chris Matthews wrote a book a few years ago whose title declares that Life’s a Campaign, and he went on the Daily Show to talk all about it. John Stewart’s takedown of this frightening, fatuous proposition is absolutely classic. The book’s terrifying maximalist claim is really the inevitable culmination of treating serious public policy as all-contrivance, all zero-sum, all horse-race, all the time.

It’s pretty assured that the GOP will gain a substantial electoral victory this November. They are certainly poised to win; but are they poised to govern? Below is British Conservative leader David Cameron’s final election sales pitch. It sounds extraordinary to my American ears, because its tone and content stand in such stark contrast to the reactionary grievance-mongers and malcontents that lead today’s GOP. Watch:

Refusing to impugn the motives of his opponents? Crediting Labor for its strides toward social justice? No villification of government? No mad-lib cliches about tax cuts and getting tough on national security? This is bizarro-world political discourse. Cameron calls several times for a “fairer society”. His centerpiece is child poverty, education, assistance for seniors, worries over income inequality (!!). He also wants to “put more money into improving public health in the poorest areas.” I wonder if John Boehner wants to do that.

Another line that struck me: Cameron says that the hopes for a stronger, fairer society are “alive with us, in the modern conservative party.” That word modern got my attention. By contrast, the GOP has its big CPAC convention this week. They’re releasing a conservative manifesto of their own, called “the Mount Vernon Statement.” Here’s an exerpt, from First Read:

In recent decades, America’s principles have been undermined and redefined in our culture, our universities and our politics. The self-evident truths of 1776 have been supplanted by the notion that no such truths exist. The federal government today ignores the limits of the Constitution, which is increasingly dismissed as obsolete and irrelevant… The change we urgently need, a change consistent with the American ideal, is not movement away from but toward our founding principles. At this important time, we need a restatement of Constitutional conservatism grounded in the priceless principle of ordered liberty articulated in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

So David Cameron not only seeks accommodation with modernity, but a full-throated embrace of it; of the vagaries and vibrancy and extraordinary opportunities inherent in a plural and messy society. Meanwhile, the GOP is, as ever, standing athwart history, and yelling STOP. It’s all 1776, founding principles, Mount Vernon. Our culture has been undermined. The evil universities and the hippies are to blame. We are beseiged by moral relativism. We may engage in the pursuit of happiness, but on our tiptoes, only if it’s “ordered”, only if we heed the GOP’s timeless truths as interpreted by Michael Steele and Mitch McConnell and god-help-us Sarah Palin. We don’t need new ideas for a new age, because there are no new ages; there are no new ideas; just a perpetual “restatement” of 200-year-old ideas, a perpetual dusting off of powdered wigs, an endless modulation and recalibration of the dials of indignance, grievance, loss of privilege, and virulent cultural resentment. We don’t need to reinvigorate our social pact to meet modern challenges; whatever they had in 1776 is probably fine. Urgent change is needed, but it’s the kind that demands of you to plug your fingers in your ears, spin around, and walk directly behind you, indefinitely.

This is pablum, and deeply unserious about the demands of governance. It’s an unabashed rejection of modernity and progress, of the idea that culture and institutions can change, must change, have changed; that history barrels along whether you stand athwart it or not, and your invocation for it to STOP is not brave, not principled; but depraved, petulant, puerile. It’s an affront to all those “in recent decades” who realized that the natural law of the Declaration of Independence didn’t apply to them unless they demanded it be so; it is an unforgivable offense to those that took issue with some of the “self-evident truths” that would have consigned them to a lifetime as part of a permanent underclass, devoid of dignity and humanity, overseen by a scheme of “ordered liberty” that did not include them, a scheme that brought no order, no liberty.

America’s principles have not been underminded by our culture, but our culture was for two centuries undermined by a deliberate bastardization of our principles. A hard-fought “redefinition of our politics” has saved the promise of America’s founding ideals many, many times throughout our history. It would be nice to see a hint of humility and self-awareness and contrition about this from those who wish to lead us. Instead they insist, with a straight face, that we join them in their proud oblivion.

I very strongly recommend Jane Mayer’s new piece in the New Yorker, which profiles Attorney General Eric Holder and the partisan circus that has come to dominate the terror trial debate. (Really Jane is all you need to read on this, but I wrote a bit about the issue here and here.) I’m going to quote at length, but again, just go read the piece.

On the supposed superiority of military commissions in handling the toughest cases:

The makeshift military-commission system set up by Bush to handle terrorism cases has never tried a murder case, let alone one as complex, or notorious, as that of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who will face the death penalty for the murder of nearly three thousand people….

…There is no evidence suggesting that military commissions would be tougher on suspected terrorists than criminal courts would. Of the three cases adjudicated at Guantánamo, one defendant received a life sentence after boycotting his own trial; another served only six months, in addition to the time he had already served at the detention camp; the third struck a plea bargain and received just nine months. The latter two defendants—Salim Hamdan, a Yemeni who worked as Osama bin Laden’s driver, and David Hicks, an Australian who attended an Al Qaeda training camp—are now at liberty in their home countries, having been released while Bush was still in office.

And this is a good point on an oft-overlooked benefit of civilian trials:

But the conventional court system has proved surprisingly effective at extracting intelligence. Dozens of suspected terrorists in the criminal system have coöperated with the government, usually in exchange for leniency in sentencing….And, last week, the Justice Department confirmed that Abdulmutallab was now coöperating with the F.B.I. A department official noted, “He has an incentive to talk in the criminal-justice system, which the other system doesn’t offer.” The key to gaining Abdulmutallab’s coöperation was the F.B.I.’s ability to enlist his family in getting him to talk. Holder asked me, “Would that father have gone to American authorities if he knew his son might be whisked away to a black site”—a secret prison set up in a foreign country—“and subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques?

So literally, in Abdulmutallab’s case the choices were: do you want information from him, or do you want to torture him at Gitmo? Can’t have both. I really think that many people on the military commission side of the debate are deep down more interested in extracting punitive violent revenge from our adversaries than extracting useful intelligence.

Jon Chait points to this Post piece on the fragile etiquette that prevails in snowy cities when it comes to shovelled-out parking spots:

Boston has codified its citizens’ right to benefit from their backbreaking snow-clearing labor; a city law says that if you dig out your car in a snow emergency, a lawn chair or trash can renders the spot yours for at least two days while you’re away at work. In Chicago, blocking a parking spot is illegal, but city officials acknowledge an informal rule of dibs if you’ve done the digging.

As anyone who’s lived in Boston knows, this is a deadly serious business:

In South Boston, a handful of assaults, slashed tires and other cases of vandalism end up in District Court each year after drivers are perceived to have broken the code."

Washington, DC however, is not at all prepared for its new status as the snow capital of the East Coast. There is no shared body of snow etiquette. It’s a free-for-all down here, with some people embracing Boston parking rules, others pleading for a sensible honor system, and some, like DC transportation spokesman John Lisle, living in a complete snow utopia fantasy land:

In the District, said city transportation spokesman John Lisle, blocking spots is illegal. "We would hope people would work together and clear out several spaces instead of just one, but you can’t block a space," he said.

And I would hope John Lisle would work together with the rest of the transportation department and send just one plow down my street, or really any street in my neighborhood; but that’s apparently not part of his idea of snow etiquette either.

These sites live-blogged throughout the night and early morning. There were reports of sporadic violence; government forces were out in overwhelming numbers and seemed to have prevented the opposition from ever coalescing into large groups. On Twitter, Green supporters in Tehran said their main goal was to disrupt the government rally in Freedom Square, and as proof of their success they note that official state tv was at times forced to cut to canned video of celebrations from previous years, or replace the live sound with music or other broadcasting to obscure opposition chants.

Links and summaries from around the web follow:

Andrew Sullivan and his crew were up all night. They compiled all their updates:

Reports of an attack on Karoubi here, as the junta brought in masses of pro-government supporters to pre-empt the protests; state TV is using Fox News-style old footage of scene in Azadi square for Ahmadi’s rally – without live sound;  the square itself was wired off in advance; there are confirmed reports that Karroubi’s son was arrested, and that Khatami’s brother and wife were temporarily detained; Ahmadinejad’s speech is videoed and twittered here; the first videos coming out of the country are here, with a new chant: “Referendum! Referendum! This is the slogan of the people.” Ahmadinejad’s boast that the country his junta controls has broken past a key nuclear threshhold is exposed as almost certainly a lie here; a video of desultory pro-government chants by small groups of demonstrators can be seen here….

…There’s an update on the Gmail crackdown here. The basij – some looking like Hezbollah thugs – arrive on the scene here, Widespread terror of the basij can be seen in gripping videos here. Scenes of crushing army and police forces preventing any rallies in central Tehran are here. Reports of shootings here. Any members of the foreign press were forced to listen to Ahmadinejad’s rants, as reported here and prevented from covering any of the protests elsewhere. The sense begins to develop that this has been a major victory for the junta, as Tehran Bureau reports:

Everyone we have spoken to so far this morning has said about the same thing: “A big anticlimax,” “defeat,” “An overwhelming presence from the other side. People were terrified.”

Eye-witness accounts of brutal attacks on the increasingly few protestors on the streets – assaulted with chains, cables, batons and gas – here. The junta seems to have been able to keep any big crowds from assembling by brute force, although the full picture is at this point unknowable. A physical assault on Moussavi’s wife, Zahra Rahnavard, is reported by Robert Mackey here.

NYT’s Lede Blog:

My colleague Nazla Fathi writes that authorities have arrested at least 100 protesters in the city of Mashad, the opposition Web site Jaras reported. The site also reports that 20 people were arrested in the city of Shiraz. According to large numbers of Basij militia members were deployed in both cities ahead of the anniversary. She also notes that a report on the opposition Web site Kaleme said that Basijis attacked Zahra Rahnavard, the wife of opposition leader Mir Hussein Moussavi, at a rally on Thursday, punching her and beating her with batons. The site also reported that the militia members surrounded Mr. Moussavi, a former prime minister, and prevented him from marching along the same route he had taken during the celebration in previous years.

Tehran Bureau:

Everyone we have spoken to so far this morning has said about the same thing — in a word or two: “A big anticlimax,” “defeat,” “An overwhelming presence from the other side. People were terrified.”

In fact, it appears that the regime was so confident, it did not feel the need to disrupt cellphone or messaging services, or even the internet for that matter.

One Tehran Bureau correspondent relayed the following:

Today has been a bust. Lots of people left town, left the country. There was extra security. I was down at Azadi Square, and they [regime] couldn’t even get the huge crowd they wanted. It didn’t matter though, because the Greens either didn’t show up or authorities were successful in keeping them out.

The square was crowded, but not super crazy. There were definitely a lot of people, but compared to the way it’s been filled by Greens a couple of times, it was much less than that. One could move around and it wasn’t the crush of people you sometimes see (except in the front). I think they used all their resources to get people there, but the fact is this was a five-day weekend this year and many people (even from their side) just decided to get out of town. They also blocked all of the entryways into the area, so it was hard to get in without permission.

NIAC:

It’s still very early to be drawing conclusions from today’s events, as people are still out in the streets.  But one thing I’m struck by is just how much the government has been in control today.  Sure, they chartered busses and lured tens of thousands to the official government rally with free food, but they have also managed to keep the opposition activities largely on their terms today.

The government’s strategy is to depict the protesters as a small group of rioting thugs, burning trash cans and disrupting order for their own radical, “foreign-backed” agenda.  Toward that end, they have been very effective at keeping the demonstrations today dispersed and nervous — less of the “million man march” and more like Seattle WTO protesters.  Above all else, the ruling elites know the danger of big crowds: strength in numbers takes over and individuals no longer feel like they will be held accountable for their actions, thus their demands get more radical and their tactics more extreme; this forces a harsher backlash from security forces, possibly including using lethal force.  And then that’s the ball-game.  That’s exactly what happened in 1979, and Khamenei learned that lesson well enough that he’ll do his utmost not to repeat it.

So today’s events (like previous ones) have seen security forces disrupt crowds before they can coalesce into a large group, arresting numerous individuals as a way of controlling the crowds before they get out of the police’s hands.

Republican Congressman Peter King of New York is a jingoistic hack. Now, that sounds like a conclusive personal attack against his fitness for public office, but dear reader, you don’t necessarily have to take it that way. Maybe hackery is an essential, if regretable, component of ruthless self-ambition. And what’s more American than ruthless self-ambition? And maybe you think jingoism is just another word for ‘toughness’, and what’s wrong with toughness?

What got me thinking about Peter King was this item in Politico, in which King criticizes deputy national security advisor John Brennan for saying that criticism of the administration’s handling of the Christmas terrorist plot “serves the goals of al-Qaeda.” King said that Brennan’s statement was “the most mindless, self-serving, and irresponsible statement that a homeland-security adviser can make.”

Yes, questioning the loyalities and motives of political opponents is just plain wrong! Mindless! Self-serving!

Like last year, when the Justice Department flirted with opening an investigation into CIA torture abuses, Peter King said:

“It’s bullshit. It’s disgraceful. You wonder which side they’re on….”

Hmm. It’s not like King to be so self-serving like that. If there’s one thing Peter King hates, it’s self-serving behavior. In fact just yesterday he also called John Brennan an “egomaniac”, adding: “Brennan is trying to be cute by saying that on Christmas Day he briefed Republicans and Democrats. Leave aside the fact that he didn’t brief me…”.

Peter King you’re too modest: how can you possibly expect us to leave aside the fact that he didn’t brief you? That’s all that’s been on my mind since Christmas: I do hope Peter King was briefed about all this.

And I don’t know what you call a congressman from New York who writes political novels that star a fictional terror-fighting congressman from New York, but it’s definitely not egotistical.

Congressman King is, to put it lightly, a serious fan of America’s War On Terror. He likes torture, loves the Patriot Act, and wants to inflitrate more American mosques. Toughness! He believes that 85% of mosques in America are controlled by extremists. “This is an enemy living amongst us,” he said, and he accuses American Muslims of “failing to adequately condemn terrorism.”

This bit about failing to condemn terrorism is fascinating. Because the other interesting thing about Peter King is that for over thirty years, he was an active and outspoken supporter of the IRA, and a fierce apologist for its campaign of civilian terrorism:

He forged links with leaders of the IRA and Sinn Fein in Ireland, and in America he hooked up with Irish Northern Aid, known as Noraid, a New York based group that the American, British, and Irish governments often accused of funneling guns and money to the IRA. At a time when the IRA’s murder of Lord Mountbatten and its fierce bombing campaign in Britain and Ireland persuaded most American politicians to shun IRA-support groups, Mr. King displayed no such inhibitions…

Mr. King’s support for the IRA was unequivocal. In 1982, for instance, he told a pro-IRA rally in Nassau County: “We must pledge ourselves to support those brave men and women who this very moment are carrying forth the struggle against British imperialism in the streets of Belfast and Derry.”

Mr. King believes that those “brave men and women” belonged to a “legitimate guerilla army”, so it makes sense that he helped them fundraise on American soil, and that he didn’t have any reservations about their decades of murdering British citizens, blowing up pubs, slaughtering civilians, and attempting to assassinate the British Prime Minister.

King publically broke with the IRA and Sinn Fein after 9/11. After all, post-9/11 it would be rather unseemly for a hawkish New York politician to be seen condoning political violence elsewhere. But King’s official rationale for the break is bizarre:

The Nassau County politician, who used to travel to Belfast as often as twice a year, has not set foot in Ireland since just before the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Conceding that he has “cooled on Ireland,” Mr. King blames an epidemic of what he calls “knee-jerk anti-Americanism” that swept through Ireland after the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

I don’t buy that it’s just anti-Bush. There’s a certain unpleasant trait that the Irish have, and it’s begrudgery … and resentment towards the Americans,” he said in a recent interview in his Washington office.

That’s right friends-of-King: You may be “carrying forth the struggle against British imperialism”, but it’s a noble cause only so long as you don’t display any “begrudgery” about American wars. Peter King wants you to know: when his love for Irish terrorists comes into conflict with his hatred of American begrudgery, he puts America first!

Well this was only a very partial tour of the mendacity, reflexive jingoism, astonishing hypocrisy, and all-around hackery of Peter T. King.  He’s currently serving his eighth term in Congress; I’m sure he’s just getting started….