In a column in the Seattle Times today, the Washington Post’s Charles Krauthammer explains exactly how to appease al-Qaeda and then excoriates President Obama for not doing it:

The reason the country is uneasy about the Obama administration’s response to this attack is a distinct sense of not just incompetence but incomprehension. From the very beginning, President Obama has relentlessly tried to downplay and deny the nature of the terrorist threat we continue to face.

This is so far beyond false, I don’t even know where to begin. Obama has not only expanded the war in Afghanistan, he’s also broadened the scope of our international fight against terrorism to Pakistan and Yemen. His approach to terrorism has been just as bellicose as his predecessor’s.

Obama reassured the nation that this “suspect” had been charged. Reassurance? The president should be saying: We have captured an enemy combatant — an illegal combatant under the laws of war: no uniform, direct attack on civilians — and now to prevent future attacks, he is being interrogated regarding information he may have about al-Qaida in Yemen.

Instead, Abdulmutallab is dispatched to some Detroit-area jail and immediately lawyered up. At which point — surprise! — he stops talking.

What? When Abdulmutallab was arrested, he did spill the beans on the connections he had to al-Qaeda in Yemen. He didn’t need to be waterboarded or denied due process. And giving him a lawyer didn’t all-of-a-sudden cause him to clam up and refuse to cooperate.

There are a few more inaccuracies and examples of bad logic, but I want to cut to the heart of Krauthammer’s fallacy:

The president said that this incident highlights “the nature of those who threaten our homeland.” But the president is constantly denying the nature of those who threaten our homeland. On Tuesday, he referred five times to Abdulmutallab (and his terrorist ilk) as “extremist(s).”

A man who shoots abortion doctors is an extremist. An eco-fanatic who torches logging sites is an extremist. Abdulmutallab is not one of these. He is a jihadist. And unlike the guys who shoot abortion doctors, jihadists have cells all over the world; they blow up trains in London, nightclubs in Bali and airplanes over Detroit (if they can); and are openly pledged to war on America.

This is a distinction without a difference. In fact, it may not even be a distinction at all, considering that environmental extremism exists throughout the world. A jihadist is an extremist, just a particular flavor of extremist. And there’s no rationale for treating them – and their movement – any differently than we treat eco-terrorists or the way we treated Timothy McVeigh and his movement.

Al-Qaeda is not a single organization with a heirarchy. It’s a movement based upon extreme views about America’s power in the world. And it thrives whenever America’s actions play into certain paranoid stereotypes about us. But Krauthammer argues that we should be doing exactly the kinds of things that play into those stereotypes. It’s hard to imagine a worse way to deal with the problem of jihadism.

The root of what makes people like Abdulmuttalab into willing jihadists is a feeling of powerlessness. To overinflate the reality of their own potency is to appease that desire. In the past, we’ve dealt with Richard Reid and Zacarias Moussaoui by trying them in criminal court, treating them just like any other criminal, and that properly squashed their desires to be seen as some special kind of threat that America needs to treat differently.

The goal of radical Islamic extremists is to have a war between the Muslim world and the United States. It’s not a rational goal by any stretch, but that’s what makes them extremists. The worst thing we can do is to convince ourselves that these small groups of nutjobs are sufficiently powerful enough to force us to change our own way of life and our own customs. But Krauthammer is arguing just that. He’s asking us to change the way we handle criminals simply because he’s as afraid of them as they want all of us to be. His attempts to overinflate their importance is nothing more than appeasing them, making them into the powerful people they aspire to be.

Media Matters has more about the revelations that the Tea Party Express bus tour this summer was little more than a scam to separate fools from their money. As Glenn Beck repeatedly demonstrates, it’s pretty damn easy to do.

Dick Cheney giving advice on how to fight terrorism is like Charlie Sheen giving advice on how to save your marriage.

Back in November, I posted the following:

Remember the big push a few years back after the Terri Schiavo mess to encourage people to have a living will for such situations? If you were one of the people who did that, make sure you avoid Catholic health care institutions as they’ve been ordered by the United States Council of Catholic Bishops to ignore people’s wishes and keep patients alive regardless of the circumstance.

When I posted this, I didn’t think it was too terribly daring a thing to post about (although I certainly could have been more specific about the relevant circumstances, which are fairly rare), but for Joel Connelly of the Seattle PI, it apparently struck a nerve, as he left this comment for me:

Would you please spare us your anti-Catholic bigotry? It was disgusting during the I-2000 [sic] campaign. It is despicable now.
A simple call to Providence administrators, or the boss up at St. Joseph Hospital in Bellingham, would have given you honest material with which to work. You could have asked about living wills — in which a person’s wishes get laid out — which are strongly encouraged.
You could have asked about the provision for hospice care, available to everyone regardless of ability to pay.
Or you could have delved into what they’d do in the case of a patient wishing to exercise his/her “right” to end life.
Instead, we get an ignorant screech.
Apparently, on Horsesass.org, one form of religious prejudice is not only acceptable but encouraged.

After reading this, I was genuinely worried that the folks at Compassion and Choices might have overstated their case and that maybe I was being a little too harsh in my post. So I tried to contact a number of local Catholic hospitals via email asking if Connelly was right and that they would refuse the directive that C&C was referencing, but I got nothing back. Then I contacted Connelly directly to see if he could point me to a facility who would “give me honest material with which to work”. Oddly, when I did this, Connelly sent me the name of a hospital administrator to contact, then started walking back his claims after I posted an update to HorsesAss.

By this point, though, I was already starting to become well aware that Connelly was full of shit. In fact, the hospital administrator whose name he gave me wasn’t the only name he passed along. He also sent me the name of a hospital administrator in Canada, despite the fact that this directive was from the United States Council of Catholic Bishops. Connelly apparently knew nothing about the updated directive or the legal and ethical issues involved and simply didn’t care. As far as I can tell, he just assumed that Compassion and Choices was full of it because he doesn’t like them. And he was confident enough about this blind assertion to call me a bigot over it.

Barbara Coombs Lee from Compassion and Choices, however, does know what she’s talking about and does understand the issues involved here. Her latest post details more of the legal and ethical issues behind this decree and points to this article, which quotes from someone a bit more qualified than Connelly:

Alan Meisel, founder and director of the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Bioethics and Health Law, wonders if Catholic hospitals could be compelled by law to respect patients’ advance directives, regardless of the Church’s moral stance. He says it is not clear whether the legally binding power of an advance directive would outweigh the Church’s right to administer medicine in accordance with its beliefs.

…

“[If] the hospital seeks to impose a treatment on a patient which that person does not want, to impose that treatment is battery,” he says,but adds a caveat: “One could say since you’ve admitted yourself to a Catholic hospital, that’s a form of consent.

“If I were a patient with a directive,” he continues, “I would probably add to it that I didn’t want to be taken to a Catholic hospital.”

I’m sure Joel Connelly will get his typewriter out now and send Meisel a little note informing him that he needs to spare us all his anti-Catholic bigotry.

UPDATE: In somewhat related news, the Montana Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling that legalizes death with dignity in that state.

A few drug war items of note:

– Yesterday, KUOW’s The Conversation took on the topic of marijuana legalization. State Representative Roger Goodman was a guest, as well as State Senator Jeanne Kohl-Welles, Ethan Nadelmann from the Drug Policy Alliance, and Dave Rodriguez of the Northwest High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas office. As for Goodman’s bill to legalize marijuana in Washington state, Jamie Pederson has also signed on as a co-sponsor.

– Steve Elliott looks into how willing media outlets are to distort scientific studies in order to paint a picture that marijuana is far more dangerous than it really is.

– I finished up indexing the second document dump from the Department of Corrections regarding their attempts to nullify the medical marijuana law for people on probation. I put together a thorough timeline from the roughly 1300 pages of released documents of what was being discussed and acted on within the DOC with regards to medical marijuana patients under their supervision and posted it here. I’ll likely be writing more about this again later, but this controversial court decision out of California really emphasizes how heated a battle this has become throughout every state where medical marijuana is now legal, and how frustrated many people within the criminal justice system are becoming when dealing with this shift away from the “tough on drugs” mentality. It’s forcing them to rethink the role they play in keeping us safe and to rethink the relationship between drugs and crime, which we’ve been getting wrong for as long as I’ve been alive.

– The Wall Street Journal writes about how ending prohibition is the only way to stop the violence in Mexico.

Apropos to Goldy’s post below (from XKCD):

Last week’s contest was won by wes.in.wa for his second in a row. It was Juarez, Mexico.

Here’s this week’s, good luck!

That’s gotta hurt.

Merry Christmas everyone!

The Cannabis Defense Coalition just received the second document dump from the State Department of Corrections. The documents are now posted at their website. I’m looking through them now and hope to provide an update on my previous post on their (and the AG’s) attempts to undermine the medical marijuana law here in Washington.

Right here

[via Reddit]

“And I think if you’re going to get on your feet and debate, and make assertions, you should really be familiar with the content of the bill”
– Minnesota Senator Al Franken, while handing South Dakota Senator John Thune his own ass.

A few links to share while I root for Chad Ochocinco and Vernon Davis to keep my fantasy season going.

– Pete Guither catches the New York Times sanitizing a story on Mexico’s violent drug war. This comes while the Washington Post and reporter Ashley Halsey III are still digging in their heels after being caught passing along completely imaginary statistics fed to them by the drug czar.

– Josh Feit points out that Larry Haler (R-8) has introduced a bill to overturn the state’s voter-approved medical marijuana law. One can only imagine what the voters of the 8th LD would think if the federal government passed a strict gun ownership ban, the voters of Washington passed an initiative that restored gun ownership rights, and then a Seattle legislator introduced a bill to overturn that voter initiative. Yet I’m sure people will still vote for Larry Haler next year because he believes in liberty, or something.

– Barbara Coombs-Lee has another follow-up on the attempt by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ to override individuals’ advance directives at their many hospitals and health care facilities around the country. Despite the protestations by certain local commenters, I’m still not aware of any Catholic facility in Washington state that will refuse the order and respect the living wills of individuals who come under their care.

– Kentucky GOP Senate candidate Rand Paul (son of Ron Paul) is in a bit of trouble now that his main spokesman, Chris Hightower, had to resign after he was caught with some seriously racist stuff on his MySpace page. [via the General]

Last week’s contest was won by wes.in.wa. It was Indian Harbor Beach, Florida.

Here’s this week’s, good luck!

Seattle’s mayor-elect supports House Bill 2401:

“I actually took this position during the campaign and nobody noticed. It was an answer to the question in the Stranger’s election land,” McGinn said. “If every elected official who ever smoked marijuana voted to legalize it would probably be legalized in an instant. We recognize that, like alcohol, it’s something that should be regulated not treated as a criminal activity and I think that’s where the citizens of Seattle want us to go.”

I think Jane Hamsher has been pretty insightful when reading between the lines on the health care reform battle, but I’m not sure I get this part (via John Cole):

The sight of pundits yucking it up about the “Democratic circular firing squad” have become as tedious and threadbare as those counseling “don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” Both of these admonitions have at their heart the notion that “liberals” are being irrational, unreasonable and rigid in refusing to accept the Senate health care bill.

But in the very next breath, they will then promote statistics that say the tea parties are more popular than either the Democratic or the Republican party, and wonder if it’s an opportune time for a third party candidate. (From the “right,” of course, because who would take the “left” seriously.) At no time do the synapses firing in their brains make the connection that both the “lazy progressive bloggers” and the tea party activists are saying almost the exact same thing about the Senate bill.

There are two aspects to political problems – being able to identify a problem and knowing how to fix it. Most people are really good at the first part, but it’s the second part that matters far more.

Imagine you have an old car that you need to fix up. It needs a new transmission, new brakes, a new alternator, new upholstery, and new tires. The mechanic tells you that you only have enough money to fix the transmission right now. You know the mechanic is dicking you around, driving up the price and making it seem far more difficult to fix the car than it really is, but you just don’t have the tools or the knowledge to do it yourself. It sucks. All you want is to drive it again. Your crazy neighbor, however, thinks that you can just tape some cardboard wings on each door and the magical unicorns in the sky will make the car drive. That same crazy neighbor may tell you that just fixing the transmission isn’t enough to fix the car, and he’ll be exactly right, but you’re still better off working with the mechanic to fix the car.

This is the dilemma that we’re facing right now. The tea party activists may be able to identify problems with our health care system – and some may even echo our own sentiments about the shared power between government and big business – but their prescriptions for fixing it far too often live in the realm of fantasy. They continue to advocate for less regulation of what insurers and drug companies can and can’t do when every other health care system in the world that’s more organized, efficient, and cost-effective has more robust regulation than ours has. This bill is far from perfect, but it’s not bad enough that we have to join ranks with the crazies and pray for the magical unicorns to save the day.