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If Sen. Leahy and Rep. Welch want to be intellectually (and morally) consistent...

by: odum

Tue Mar 09, 2010 at 17:50:07 PM EST

...they'll introduce a congressional rebuke of the recent political ad from an organization spearheaded by Liz Cheney and Bill Kristol (the "Dept. of Jihad" ad) which suggests that lawyers defending guantanamo inmates are in league with (or at sympathetic to) al qaeda. From Greenwald:

One of the most inane acts undertaken by the Democratic Congress was its formal and highly bipartisan condemnation of MoveOn.org's "Petraeus/Betrayus" ad. Regardless of one's views of that ad, formally opining on the views of private citizens is not the role of Congress. But since they did that, and apparently believe that repugnant political campaigns merit Congressional disapproval, shouldn't there be some form of formal sanction for the far more pernicious and genuinely McCarthyite attacks on DOJ lawyers from Liz Cheney and Bill Kristol's "Keep America Safe"? So reprehensible was that campaign that numerous right-wing lawyers have vehemenetly condemned it -- including Ken Starr, David Rivkin, Ted Olsen, and even (ironically) former Bush official Cully Stimson -- with most of them signing a letter decrying it as "a shameful series of attacks" that are "destructive of any attempt to build lasting mechanisms for counterterrorism adjudications."

A reminder of that MoveOn vote:

Last week, Senator Leahy and Representative Welch broke with Senator Sanders and brought several flavors of shame to the liberal community under one, all-encompassing umbrella - the vote to rebuke MoveOn. While first and foremost, I find the vote both bizarre and cowardly (for its myopic waste of time on the one hand, and the pointless "Sister Souljah"-style sacrifice of an ally deemed - apparently - disposable on the other), the fact is that it was also an affront to the tradition of free speech in this country.

Don't get me wrong - I didn't like that vote and I don't like the idea of a new one to rebuke this latest attack (and I differ with Greenwald on that). But it does make for an interesting question, the answer to which will tell us whether or not the MoveOn votes by Mssrs. Leahy and Welch were based on genuinely held principles, or whether they were just afraid of the big bad Republican noise machine. Obviously, one would hope it was the former, even if I disagreed with those principles.

If you haven't yet seen it, the ad in question is below the fold.

odum :: If Sen. Leahy and Rep. Welch want to be intellectually (and morally) consistent...