Ranters and Idiots

Pat Buchanan's racist editorial, basically saying that black America should thank this country for all the greatness (like slavery, Jim Crow, and locking up 1 out of every 9 of its young men) it has bestowed upon them, is just another sad chapter in a sad old racist man's life. But the fact that he gets an almost-daily platform on MSNBC to spout nonsense and garbage like this, without anyone batting an eyelash, is shocking. The same with the fact that John Yoo is allowed to write anywhere, especially on the topic of THE US CONSTITUTION, in any publication in the country. They just recycle these discredited individuals over and over. Nobody is ever marginalized to the point that they cannot resurface.

That the 2008 Democratic nominee for president will be chosen by individuals no one voted for in the primaries flew for too long under the commentariat's radar. This from the party that litigated to "make every vote count" in the 2000 Florida recount, reviled the institution of the Electoral College for letting the loser of the national popular election win the presidency, and has called the Bush administration illegitimate ever since [...]

This delegate dissonance wasn't anything the Framers of the U.S. Constitution dreamed up. They believed that letting Congress choose the president was a dreadful idea. Without direct election by the people, the Framers said that the executive would lose its independence and vigor and become a mere servant of the legislature. They had the record of revolutionary America to go on. All but one of America's first state constitutions gave state assemblies the power to choose the governor. James Madison commented that this structure allowed legislatures to turn governors into "little more than ciphers."

You know what the Framers didn't dream up? Torture as official US policy. They actually had the direct election of Senators as a kind of "superdelegates" and didn't want anyone but male landowners to have the right to vote, so Yoo is completely wrong on that point. But the man who assaulted the Constitution and debased all of our souls doesn't get a chance to say ANYTHING about the intentions of the Framers. It's vomit-inducing.