Steven Clemons Is Shrill (For Good Reason)

Steven Clemons, who managed almost single-handedly to block the Bolton nomination in the Senate without ever getting shrill, has been pushed over the edge into shrillness by the GOP’s latest evil, ham-handed, maneuvering:

Republican Majority Leader Bill Frist and House Speaker Dennis Hastert have asked House Intel Committee Chairman Peter Hoekstra and Senate Intel Committee Chairman Pat Roberts NOT to look into the subject of the hidden sites America has for secretly holding prisoners and detainees — but to look into who LEAKED that information to Dana Priest at the Washington Post.

…

This just makes me sick. Frist still has not learned that the White House has burned him over and over again. And now he is playing their shill once more.

But though I have opposed Frist’s general take on the war and these issues for some time — it’s still very difficult for me, just as an American citizen — to watch any leader, Republican or Democrat, implicitly endorse the notion that America has the right to indefinitely hold without due process any prisoners or detainees in some systemized fashion.

This is what the Soviet Union did. This is what Maoist China did. This is what America fought the Cold War against! Yes, we are fighting and dealing with horribly dangerous people in the world — but they must be brought to justice in courts of law before American and global peers.

Frist and Hastert have both blighted their careers with this letter. It’s outrageous — and they should immediately retract this effort to lynch leakers rather than holding the Executive Branch accountable for serious infractions of human rights and our legal norms.

I need a new category for this post. Like ‘Sickening Irony’ or ‘Total Lack of Shame’ or something.