Where’s the Fear?

The Scary Potential of the National Defense Authorization Act | Muslimah Next Door. So let’s get this straight: No longer is there the slim protection that the White House will veto the National Defense Authorization Act. Any person, citizen or otherwise, can be detained, indefinately, without trial, if they are suspected by the government to be a member of al Qaeda or its allies. I think that it would be difficult to find any American who does not support the United States protecting itself against terrorism. But at what cost? At the cost of our civil liberities? At the cost…

Chris Hayes, on the tax cut deal: “It’s the standard bribery model of legislating that has come to characterize Washington in the era of oligarchy: if you want to put food on the table of the unemployed, you must lavishly wine and dine the CEOs and bankers who laid them off.” [From The Era Of Oligarchy]

Distrust Between West And Islam. ”There’s an osmosis in war,” declares the once idealistic army lieutenant Hearn in Norman Mailer’s classic novel The Naked and the Dead. ”Call it what you will, but the victors always tend to assume the . . . the, eh, trappings of the loser.”  Of course, the ”war on terror” wasn’t really a war, and it is far from clear who emerged from it as victor and loser. Nonetheless, after the tragedy in Oslo, the osmosis is obvious. These sorts of attacks were meant to be the preserve of the Islamists who have dominated a…