Graham is so outraged by the Supreme Court decision, that it appears that’s just what he’s prepared to push for:
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) vowed Thursday to do everything in his power to overturn the Supreme Court’s decision on Guantanamo Bay detainees, saying that “if necessary,” he would push for a constitutional amendment to modify the decision.
Graham blasted the decision as “irresponsible and outrageous,” echoing the sentiments of many congressional Republicans and President Bush.
I simply don’t know what to say about the complete idiotocracy that has ruled the Republican Party for the past 8 years.
Octavian
Sounds like Lindsey needs another beatdown from Jim Webb.
The Moar You Know
My jaw hit the floor reading this.
This is a serious question: What’s wrong with these people? I literally don’t understand what is motivating them. It’s not “blind adherence to Bush – hell, my mother was saying the same thing the other day, and she hates him.
We joke about these people hiding under their beds and pissing themselves, but that literally seems to be one facet of the problem. My mother (to use an example that’s near and dear, not trying to pick on her) is scared shitless of the “Mooslims” – and she’s never met one in her life. And she’s not a person particularly prone to irrational fear.
9/11 flipped a switch for a bunch of people that is leading us down a path of destruction. I hope we can figure out how to flip that switch back.
Gotta get some coffee, too early for this heavy stuff.
MattF
“Rights” are only for the right sort of people. What’s so hard to understand about that?
nightjar
Good luck with that Lindsey. You had your chance with the Great Permanent Wingnut Majority. So huff and puff all you wish but you will only expel more CO2 and we don’t need more of that.
incertus
Graham just got past a primary challenge from the right. Maybe he’s in full-on wingnut mode, instead of his usual faux-moderate mode. It’s been interesting watching them tack right instead of center.
smiley
It’s been a lot longer than 8 years.
slippy hussein toad
Ladies and Gentlemen, the American Fascists have removed their disguises. Linsdey Graham wants to be less tolerant than a NAZI and he’s just said as much to the press.
Prepare the New Nuremberg trials, folks. It’s gonna be a long Truth and Reconciliation season.
Mick
kinda like: “All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.” That story didn’t end well.
BFR
He’s referring to the WWII Nazi saboteurs who were caught on US soil, tried by military commissions and executed, basically all with the Supreme Court’s blessing.
jake
I think it would be easier and better for America if we removed Linseed Oil from Congress and placed him in a nice mental institution.
The Moar You Know
The Reichtards are going to run with this until they drop; it’s a great soundbite and most folks will believe it. Sad that it just isn’t true. They don’t have the same rights as an American citizen – the ruling establishes that they merely have the same rights as any other prisoner of war.
Rick Taylor
Someone should ask McCain what he thinks of Lindsey’s suggestion we need a constitutional amendment.
Apsaras
Let’s see. The British Empire, Hitler’s Wehrmacht, Imperial Japan, The Soviet Union hmmm ok they were very dangerous but now we have some angry Muslims with box cutters! Eeeeeeeek!
It really needs to be said just what incredible pussies men like Linday Graham are.
El Cid
Lindsey’s got what plants crave!
ThymeZone
Not for nothing, but Lindsay Graham is not the brightest LED on the instrument panel.
The man is possessed by some kind of intellectual Tourette’s Syndrome, he is likely to say anything.
I seriously doubt that he is going to be able to rid America of Habeas Corpus.
Joshua Norton
What makes Lindsey think he’d benefit from the removal of Habeas Corpus? Wingnuts can be “disappeared” as easily as anyone else.
Their “I claim I’m a patriotic person, so I can fuck up the country as much as I like” mindset needs to end. One way or another. They’re not patriotic, they’re just part of the New American Fascist Party that’s taking over for the Republicans.
Shygetz
I’m always amazed that there is so much overlap between the group of people who hold on to their guns for dear life to protect themselves from the government and the group of people who will gladly give their other liberties away to the government with both hands. You would think those two positions would be somewhat exclusive.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
This never would have happened if Ronald Reagan hadn’t appointed all those damm liberal activist judges to teh SCOTUS.
crw
That’s the fracture point between the National Security Uber Alles brownshirts, who give lip service to the right to keep and bear arms, and the libertarians who actually believe owning a .22 is going to protect your liberty when the tanks start rolling down main street.
snabby
The circular logic of that wussy is just amazing. And the weaselly little man is a lawyer.
Cain
It’s a lot more sophisticated than tanks. You got unmanned aircraft that can buzz the skies and drop bombs. Your .22 ain’t going to do shit.
Lindsey is an idiot of the highest order. Maybe he needs to get arrested to understand what habeaus corpus means..
cain
crw
Exactly. But try explaining that to the black helicopters crowd.
Point being, this is one of the wedges that, if pushed hard enough, will destroy the Republican coalition and relegate them to a rump party in the South and Appalachia.
John Cole
Republicans like offering Constitutional amendments beause they know they won’t get passed and it gives them the chance to look like they are doing something. Just ignore him.
D. Mason
After the last few years I’m really surprised to see the leftist derision of the Second Amendment is still as forthcoming as ever. Sure, everyone who believes in exercising their right to own a firearm is a lunatic who envisions themselves fighting off tanks with a .22. Keep telling yourself that stupid shit. That reminds me of Republicans who deride anyone who is against the war as a traitor. Same kind of blanket idiocy.
When the dollar is worth so little that South American countries laugh at the idea of selling us food you might just be glad you have a neighbor with a gun that knows how to hunt. Or maybe you prefer bread lines because you think the government is dependable in a crisis?
Cain
Yet more fodder for the demonizing of the liberals. The republican party does a great job of demonizing and a lousy job of actual governing. They like to give the impression that things would just be peachy if it weren’t for those flag burning, unpatriotic liberals.
All I can say is that it’s shown what lousy jobs the Republicans have done for the past 12 years that the more sane of the partisans have switched parties. The only divisions now are between us at the 28% of the country that will only get further isolated. Which is too bad, because I’m sure they are relatively good people. I know several of these people in that demographic. Other than their strong convictions in this area, they are good people. I’d hate to see them demonized but there you have it.
cain
RSA
I’ll offer a Constitutional amendment belatedly allowing South Carolina to secede from the Union.
b-psycho
Because their only true beef with the government is that they won’t let them point their guns at who they REALLY want to shoot. Their excuse for the contradiction amounts to “well we wouldn’t need all this if we could just go mow down the mooslims…and the mexicans, and the blacks, and…”.
Besides, when the government gets to the point of bombing its own subjects, that’s by definition Too Late. Violence can’t work anyway, people that are consistent in their anti-State views already know that and seek to undermine the political authority rather than fantasize about killing the random saps that happen to hold it. The people involved are beside the point.
montysano
How about LIndsey and the Boyz spend some time repealing the Military Commissions Act, which allows for you, me, and your gray-haired grandma to be disappeared into the chokey at the Sun King’s say-so? That would seem like time well spent.
The Right has become unhinged over this. Maybe my eleet brain has been damaged by sushi and lattes, so help me out here: just what, precisely, are they afraid is gonna happen due to this ruling?
It’s like teh gay marriage: I understand that they hate the idea of it, but what actual, tangible danger are they afraid of?
gypsy howell
I’m still unclear why McCain and Huckleberry don’t think habeas corpus is a human right.
Did our founders really distinguish between natural rights for American citizens, and the rest of the human race?
Whatever happened to “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights. . .”
McCain was spouting off about this the other day to cheering crowds. WTF is the matter with these people?
montysano
Well, the Magna Carta, which first established habeas corpus, was signed by King John of England. He was married to a French woman, so there you go….. the whole concept becomes a little poofy.
Otto Man
Simple. As soon as we get the Obama administration in place, we go all out to catch Osama Bin Laden and put him on trial for murder. He gets every criminal right afforded to him under the Constitution, full defense lawyers, the whole deal.
I’m betting the outcome will still land his ass in jail. Hopefully in gen pop.
It brings closure and, more important, lets people see that we can still keep our rules and values and exact justice.
4tehlulz
I’m going to go with “They hate freedom and 9/11 gave them cover to be open about it.”
Bin Laden must be so happy to have people like Graham and McCain proving that American talk about freedom and liberty is just talk.
Cain
haha.. if that happens, I can imagine SC reverting to a pre-civil war era. They’ll kick out the liberals become an evangelical state and then…. profit!
Let’s take it further, as their economy tanks because there is no way to attract new people cuz it’s a wasteland of backwardness, businesses will leave and state will be well on it’s way to being an agricultural and laboror economy used as a place to get cheap labor by surrounding countries including Mexico. But that won’t be enough, things will be so tough people will turn to crime and drugs and state will be copmletely be taken over by robber barons and it’ll be a way station for all things criminal. We’ll then have to declare war on South Carolina like we did on Panama because of the War on Drugs ironically by some Republican president on the U.S. side.
That will be the history of the great state of South Carolina. The End.
cain
ps I’m blaming the hot oatmeal I’m eating right now..it’s giving me.. visions!
b-psycho
In a way they’re actually holding closer to the founders, in that dark people were functionally excluded at the time despite the rhetoric.
I wonder what the reaction would be if a certain someone, in response to McCain’s crap on the issue, made that point in public…
crw
Wow. Oversensitive much? Where in there did I deride the Second Amendment? I was merely observing (in my snarky way) that a subset of Second Amendment advocates do so on the grounds that “a well armed populace is the best defense against tyranny” as the saying goes. Do you deny people like this have been part of the Republican coalition for the past 30 years?
That particular subset, in my experience, is absolutely livid with the way the Global War On (Some) Terror™ has been used as an excuse to trash basic civil rights. I doubt folks like that can be persuaded to vote Democratic. But if Democrats keep pushing issues like habeas corpus, that group can be persuaded to stay home or vote for Bob Barr.
Just because I think the anti-government angle is a little…anachronistic…it doesn’t follow that I think there are no valid grounds to support the Second Amendment.
Scott H
Republicans like offering Constitutional amendments…
Democrats are just as bad, which see Jay “Moron of the Litter” Rockefeller and the perennial flag ‘desecration’ amendment. There is some other First Amendment pander that walks him into a corner for daze, too, but who can keep track.
Aaanyway. Linsey Graham and and all of the other Pander Bears that have jumped on this wagon need pounded. Hard. Ridicule. Humiliate. Disgrace.
And whence this precious, precious notion that rights are only protected, such as they are for the duration of this administration, for Merkin citizens? (Yes, Merkins, kids. We have all been pubic wigs since 2001.)
Besides, when the government gets to the point of bombing its own subjects, that’s by definition Too Late.
West Virginia coal miners. Been there. Done that. Another one not for your high school Merkin history books.
Cain
I’m fairly leftist and I’m pro-gun. I hate guns, I don’t own one, but I can see why we have it. The problem occurs when you don’t know how to take care of a gun and then you get moronic politicians who have to show that they are doing SOMETHING to address the problem and you get all these restrictions. Parents at least in urban settings should teach their kids how to use a firearm. Maybe we should have more shooting galleries or something.
cain
b-psycho
I looked it up after you mentioned this: The Battle of Blair Mountain, 1921. Bombs dropped against union organizers.
Says a lot, doesn’t it?
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Democrats winning elections?
ColoRambler
OK, that settles it.
Non-Republicans may get accused of having a “pre-9/11 mentality”, but it’s clear that many Republicans now have a “pre-6/15 mentality”.
Brachiator
There is a bit of disconnect with reality here, and also a typical rhetorical bait and switch. Most cite the 2nd Amendment as a pretext to defending against tyranny. Fair, but odd then to acquiesce in the gummint’s “right” to lock people up and not even bother with the key.
The hunting thing is pure BS. Here in Southern Cal, I know many people who own guns, are not lunatics, and are excellent shots. None of them know how to hunt, nor would any of them know what to do with a killed animal.
Besides, given our massive degree of urbanization, where would all this hunting take place? At the mall?
Huh? King John was mostly French himself, part of what made the Magna Carta necessary was John’s attempts expand his authority as he tried to regain his French lands and properties.
El Cid
Maybe the reason “the left” scoffs at right wingers’ claims that they value the 2nd amendment because it might help protect against government tyranny is that the right wingers spend the rest of their time trying to encourage every last bit of government tyranny they can get away with and destroying every last liberty they can get their slimy little hands around.
Maybe if right wingers seemed to give a flying f*** about any other amendment than the 2nd, they might seem convincing.
Scott H
The Battle of Blair Mountain.
The President deployed a US bomber squadron under the command of Billy Mitchell. I think, it was a ‘Blackwater’ of the day who was doing the actual bombing. They also faced the marching miners, who carried hunting rifles and shotguns, with machine gun nests. Fun times.
‘Redneck’ comes from the red bandanas the miners wore. Some people think ‘redneck’ is a pejorative. Certainly, to this day, that idea is encouraged.
Mark S.
As long as Lindsay is proposing stupid amendments that will never pass, why not throw everything the wingnuts have been hollering for in one Constitutional grab bag? I propose:
Amendment XXVIII: The Habeas Corpus stuff is so totally repealed. Also, zygotes are people entitled to equal protection, flag-burning is punishable by death, and marriage is only between a pee-pee and a wa-wa.
Electoral gold!
Xenos
The really annoying thing is that the Constitution does not guarantee any rights to citizens – only to persons. There is no legit legal issue here, never has been, never could be. Graham comparing detainee rights to “citizen rights” is an act of profound intellectual dishonesty.
Citizens have special rights, but those do not come from the Constitution, but from state and federal statutes. The founding fathers were smart enough to base constitutional rights on personhood because they knew twerps like the reichtards would love to go around depriving people of citizenship in order to consolidate rightwing power. These guys knew a thing or two about stopping monarchical overreach, thank god.
Graham’s being a ridiculous right winger is bad enough, but at least it is a forgivable error in judgment. Here, though, Graham is just being a dishonest, lying bastard.
RSA
I’m no expert, but I think that when the Founding Fathers discussed the right to bear arms, it was mostly in the context of preventing a tyrannical government from arising. So it’s not inconsistent, assuming you’re big on original intent, to think that the Second Amendment is toothless if it doesn’t allow you, for example, to defend yourself against being arrested if you haven’t done anything wrong. And it would take a lot more than a .22 to do that.
PaulW
Here’s an interesting tidbit from Wikipedia under Citizen’s Arrest:
Each state with the exception of North Carolina permits citizen arrests if the commission of felony is witnessed by the arresting citizen, or when a citizen is asked to assist in the apprehension of a suspect by police. The application of state laws varies widely with respect to misdemeanors, breaches of the peace, and felonies not witnessed by the arresting party. American citizens do not carry the authority or enjoy the legal protections of police, and are held to the principle of strict liability before the courts of civil- and criminal law including but not limited to any infringement of another’s rights.
Though North Carolina General Statutes have no provision for citizen’s arrests, detention by private persons is permitted and apply to both civilians and police officers outside their jurisdiction.
Detention, being different from an arrest in the fact that a detainee may not be transported without consent, is permitted where probable cause exists that one has committed a felony, breach of peace, physical injury to another person, or theft or destruction of property.
Considering Graham’s ranting are cause of concern, and that his actions will lead to a breach of the peace and other felonies such as violating his oath of office to uphold the Constitution, I say we can arrest him via power of citizen’s arrest, and show him what it’s like when he himself doesn’t have Habeus to save his sorry ass.
Hedley Lamarr
Jeez, buck up, Lindsey! What would his pioneer ancestors say about you hiding under the bed? His chances of being killed by a terrorist are close to nil.
BC
What they are really fuming about is they thought they had done an end-run around the Supreme Court by having the prisons in Cuba – not US soil – and the Supreme Court reaffirmed that the “Consititution follows the flag.” This idea that foreigners do not have the same rights as Americans in criminal court is not correct – if a foreigner is accused in US of a crime, all the rights under the Constitution apply. Always have. The Germans executed during WWII invaded US soil – difference right there, they weren’t arrested in Germany and flown to US. The rightwing since at least the Miranda decision really have no clue about the Bill of Rights. They cling to the 2nd Amendment because they like guns and they like to think they are gunslingers in the Old West who could tame the rowdies in town. But they really don’t like the amendments that limit government action in criminal cases: like having a lawyer, not having to testify against themselves, making the government show why they are holding you if you are arrested, etc. That is why, when people convicted of a crime are released because their constitutional rights were not protected, they call it a “technicality.” Except in case of Oliver North, who was convicted of a felony and got off because of his immunity deal with Congress – that is NOT a technicality because . . . it was Oliver North, one of them, St. Ronnie really liked him, so he couldn’t be guilty of anything.
Cassidy
You’d be amazed at what you can accomplish with .22LR hollow points. And 22 magnum isn’t anything to laugh at either.
Batocchio
Says Graham, the man who lied in an amicus brief to the SCOTUS on Hamdan. He should have been disbarred for that one.
TenguPhule
Why? It will make it just that much harder to kill and eat them.
Chuck Butcher
I thought I’d had something to say about this crap, evidently more could have been said.
In re: 2nd Amendment, its purpose is the protection of a free state, it is not bound to foreign enemies, “a free state” is universal in meaning. You can scoff at firearms, what they ensure is the MAD of the Cold War. I don’t play with .22s, several of mine will reliably drop a person wearing military armor at 1/3 mi, one pistol will through and through such a person at 60 feet. GWB is probably the best arguement I can think of for the 2nd. You’ll have to start from a pretty odd place to put me in the ranks of the right wing.
TenguPhule
When it’s not being run by Republicans….
TenguPhule
No, it’s not.
No person or group of people can match military firepower and tactics head-on.
Iraq should have made this clear.
The stupid ones with the guns waving around die en masse.
The ones making the IEDs tend to live longer.
In the event shit breaks down in the US, the military will grab supplies wherever they are. Resistance from people who owned the supplies will be put down with lethal force.
This is the America that we have.
TenguPhule
Fair trials, sentences and exections.
A Different JC
When some freeper says this kinda stuff (and I hear it), the best response is always “how do you know they’re a member of Al Qaeda?” The whole point of the court system is to prove that! And even then the Al Qaeda guy will get the same rights as an American citizen who commits an act of war against America…
John in New Mexico
Poor Lindsey. Bless her little heart. She should have stuck with her acting career. Didn’t she use to play Beverly Leslie on Will and Grace?
gypsy howell
Nice try attempting to pass off Lindsay as one of ours. Sorry dude, Lindsay belongs to your sex, not mine. He’s all yours. Deal with it.
:-D
(And thanks for the implication that being female is some kind of slur.)
Lee
As others have pointed out, once the military gets involved the guns are not going to make much difference.
But prior to that you’ll be able to cull the heard of the police ranks very effectively.
/not a black helicopter guy
/really
Bruce Baugh
The real problem with the argument for guns as a bulwark against tyranny is that it got tested, in pretty much precisely the situation its advocates predicted, and it and they failed completely.
All through the ’90s, political forums in Usenet, BBS networks, and the like were inundated with claims that jackbooted thugs would be along to deny us habeus corpus, impose arbitrary arrest, institute unlimited surveillance, grant dictatorial powers to the chief executive, and so on. And when that happened, we were told, it’d be the freedom-loving, gun-bearing among us who would rise up to resist.
Now, I naively disbelieved in the scenario at the time. One up to the bulwark. What they predicted did in fact come true, in broad terms, even if there aren’t black helicopters or UN peacekeepers tromping through our fair land in large numbers. The domestic conditions of tyranny do apply.
And what did they do? They rose up en masse and…loudly supported the tyrant and set about bullying dissenters. Some of the more prominent names from the whole ’90s anti-Clintonian pro-RKBA scene are still among us, as warbloggers. A few are even official staffers, lobbyists, and such.
Where is even one prominent public demonstration by pro-RKBAers against the tyranny? Where are the efforts to liberate fellow Americans and fellow human beings from capricious arrest? Where is the harassment or assassination of officials carrying out repressive orders, and where the sabotage and disruption of surveillance efforts and the like? Nowhere, to the best of my knowledge.
The real work against tyranny is being done almost entirely by liberals and left wingers: through the research and legal efforts of groups like Human Rights Watch and the ACLU, still frequently denounced by the bulwark as enemies of liberty. The NRA sometimes joins in, and good for it, but amicus curiae briefs weren’t what the advocates of guns against tyranny were talking about a decade ago.
We know now that we can’t count on an armed populace to resist tyranny, at least not in America. Any future discussion of the role of guns in American life should take that as a starting point, I think.
LiberalTarian
Whenever I start freaking out about how crazy people are today, I start reading historical accounts of how crazy people were back when. Recently? History of philosophy, Roman history, Greek history, a biography of HL Menken.
People have always been fucked up. Sometimes, much much worse than others. Like now, for instance. So, I go out and water my tomatoes, and thank whatever powers that be that I am not in Iraq or Gitmo, cuz surely, there but for the grace of God go I.
So, who is going to make sure the world knows what a lunatic the Lindsey Graham is? Oh, John Cole and his ilk. Thank you John and Co. My tomatoes are safe, for now.
RSA
You’re talking to someone who knows nothing about guns
except for what’s shown on TV and in movies and novels.[Fixed to remove redundancy.]
Gay Veteran
I am sick and tired of these closeted ReThug faggots (and that includes George Bush).