Legal Commentary

Change: Triangulation Becomes 11 Dimensional Chess

By Big Tent Democrat

I watched with inappropriate amusement as Obama DOJ spokesman reporter Marc Ambinder relayed Glenn Greenwald's queries to anonymous Justice Dept officials. The upshot?

[T]he Obama Administration has no plans to do [renounce the expansive Bush view of the state secrets doctrine] formally. They're sensitive to the politics of the case, but they're not motivated by what civil libertarians may write on their blogs

(Emphasis supplied.) As I wrote earlier in a comment, "up yours" to the ACLU used to be known as "triangulation" when a certain William Jefferson Clinton did it. Today it is known as "11 dimensional chess." Another episode today demonstrates the transformation of "triangulation" into "11 dimensional chess:"

Sen. Tom Harkin, a liberal Democrat from Iowa, said fellow Democrats had surrendered too much in a bid to appease three moderate Republicans who can ensure passage in the Senate.

"I think our side gave in too much in order to appease a few people," he said in a hallway interview in the Capitol earlier on Wednesday. He said Democrats should have dared Republicans to filibuster and "see what the public outcry" would have been. "I think the people are getting shortchanged."

Imagine if Bill Clinton had capitulated like this to a Republican Congress in 1995? Or said "up yours" to the ACLU the way Obama did? Do you think the cries of "sellout" would be hard to find today? Me neither.

Speaking for me only

Full post as published by TalkLeft on February 11, 2009 (boomark / email).