Carter takes break from busy schedule

In its ruling on Guantanamo trials Thursday, the Supreme Court said that no, George W. Bush can't set up kangaroo courts based on mythical authority that he pulls out of his butt, and yes, the tragic curiosity of a Bush presidency in the first place notwithstanding, the United States, for all it's scary strangeness of late, is still a signatory to the Geneva Conventions, whether Bush likes it or not. Or words to that effect.

Which brings us to Jack Carter.

Back in January, before he had officially announced his candidacy for Senate, Carter wrote an opinion piece that was published in the Elko Daily Free Press. A couple passages were highlighted (and the entire piece published) on this site at the time, and they're worth republishing (with some after-the-fact bolding) in light of Thursday's court decision:

"There is no doubt that torturing people is un-American. There is no doubt that unfettered eavesdropping on Americans by the executive branch is un-American.  There is no doubt that holding prisoners without due process is un-American.

"These are the spear marks our attackers left, every bit as much a wound as the gaping hole in New York’s skyline. These were inflicted, not by suicide bombers, but by Fear – the opponent of Values and the "other" weapon in the terrorists’ arsenal."

A month or so later, when he made his candidacy official, Carter again spent not a little time in his announcement speech hammering the Bush administration for shrouding itself in a "cloak of secrecy" and abandoning "the rule of law." And Thursday, even as his campaign, like virtually every congressional and senatorial campaign in the country, was preoccupied with raising as much money as possible before Friday's end-of-quarter financial reporting deadline, Carter put out a statement praising the court's ruling:

"...I applaud the administration’s intentions in fighting our enemies, but the foundations of our American democracy rest on checks and balances among the three branches of government. When the executive branch tries to evade review of their actions by our courts or to avoid oversight by our elected representatives in Congress, it is a patriot’s duty to demand a change. We have existed for more than 200 years under this form of government. There is no reason to depart from it now.

If the Republican-controlled Congress would stand up like the Supreme Court and demand to be a part of the decisions which affect the security of our country instead of rolling over like lap-dogs to every whim of the executive branch, we patriots could go back to making a living."

As it happens, Elko was a fitting place for Carter to publish that opinion piece back in January. It was also in Elko in 2000 that Carter's opponent, Sen. John Ensign, boldly declared that "most of what the United States government does is unconstitutional." Six years later, almost to the day, the Supreme Court delivered Ensign a case in point.

Somehow, however, it seems doubtful that Ensign is overly concerned about the constitutionality -- make that the confirmed unconstitutionality -- of Bush's rash attempt to circumvent both domestic and international law and set up a phony court based solely on the authority of Bush's alarming and unbalanced sense of his infallibility. More likely, that's exactly the sort of thing Ensign can get behind.

Or, as Carter said Thursday, "The junior Senator from Nevada is part of the problem."

The Bush administration's treatment of prisoners, or its eavesdropping program or its other offenses against civil rights and the Constitution in the name of "smoking out" the "evildoers," are exactly the type of offenses against the nation, and all for which it stands, that a lot of Democrats try to stay away from. They fear that by championing civil liberties (or "American values," as Carter will occasionally phrase it when talking about Bush's attacks on liberty), they will be branded as coddling the enemy and/or insufficiently bloodthirsty with regard to the "war on terror." Much safer to talk about raising the minimum wage.

Carter, though making his first bid for political office, can hardly be called a political neophyte. He, too, assuredly understands the political risk of going out of his way to blast the administration over policies that the administration and the Republicans simply love to talk about; doing "whatever it takes," even if it means bending or breaking the law, to "hunt down" the "bad guys."

So why, with the pressures of last-minute fundraising, did Carter feel compelled to whip up a statement on the Supreme Court ruling Thursday? Why did he bring up the administration's assault on the Constitution and Constitutional principles during his announcement speech in February? Why did he raise the specter of the U.S. torturing people, eavesdropping, and holding prisoners without due process in an opinion column in January --  in the newspaper in Elko, Nevada?

Maybe Carter feels that with Ensign presumed to be so far out ahead, he's got nothing to lose. Maybe Carter's got some internal polling that shows the civil liberty issues, presented properly, actually connect with an underlying libertarian streak in Nevada.

Or, there is the possibility, s'pose, that when Carter says, "When the executive branch tries to evade review of their actions by our courts or to avoid oversight by our elected representatives in Congress, it is a patriot’s duty to demand a change," he, you know, believes it.

Comments

[IronJawed]

It would be really nice to believe that Zogby poll - but alas the interactive Zogby polls are generally bunk.

It's also too bad he will probably be out-spent 3-to-1 by Ensign and his "pay to play" antics. One need only look at his negative vote on Net Neutrality and the donations from telecoms that acted as catalysts.

I'm getting prepared for the inevitable attack ads by the Ensign campaign that will depict Carter as the devil, literally (like the Porter ads against Gallagher circa 2004 where Gallagher was photoshoped to look like, well, the devil).

The truth is that Ensign's voting record is abysmal. But, Nevadans will never know his voting record because getting that information out above the din of attack ads and fear mongering will be next to impossible.

All George Bush had to say in 2004 was:
"9/11, 9/11, 9/11, gay, gay, and gay activist judges, amen."

So, we know what Ensign's attack ads will be: "High, gay liberals want to abort your babies. Vote Ensign for senate."

But, maybe those guys over at the DailyKos will be able to raise lots of money for Carter... I just wish they'd stop with the tropes, the totally inaccurate analysis and complete conjecture (presented as facts) about our state.

[IronJawed]

Excuse me. I meant, "High, gay, terrorist liberals want to abort your babies."

[myrna the minx]

Irascible, noble western savages. Aren't we cute?