Friday, April 4, 2008

This Week On NPR

I meant to blog about this earlier in the week but I never got around to it. This American Life is one of my favorite radio shows. It's consistently intersting, informative, and by turns touching, funny, and provoking.

This week's episode was titled "The Audacity of Government" and the first story is really worth listening to (well the whole show is too...). It tells the tale of really typical lawless misbehavior by this administration. The case centers around the Bush Justice Department asserting it's authority to control the actions of the US Commissioner on the "International Boundary Commission" which has controled the US/Canada border for the last 100 years. It centers around this wall that the commission ordered taken down, and a subsequent lawsuit brought by the American property owners involved. The DoJ basically wanted to take the case over so they could roll over in the law suit and strengthen property rights, and the Commission (and especially the Bush appointed commissioner) wouldn't agree to that because he felt he had an obligation to uphold the treaty (which is the "supreme law of the land" according to the US Constitution).

Now none of this is particularly surprising to me. I mean, I didn't know about this in particular, but the cavalier attitude towards international law, bullying officials who are supposed to be neutral arbiters and non-partisan beurocrats all seems totally expected and par for the course. What I found so interesting was the attitude of the (former? still under litigation) US Commissioner Dennis Schornack. It was almost touchingly naieve. He seemed genuinely surprised that an administration that called the Geneva conventions "quaint" and specifically decided to open an indefinite detention facility in a location with confusing jurisdictional issues might seek to ignore or undermine an international treaty for purely ideological reasons. He supported Bush and worked hard for Bush's REELECTION, even after it was perfectly clear to everyone who looked at the evidence that thousands of people had died for, basically, no good reason on evidence manufactured and marketed by Bush and his employees. I hate to see this happen, and I genuinely hope that Mr. Schornack is successful in annulling his removal, but really, what did you expect.

This is the sort of thing that happens when people pay attention to "news" issues and horse race "who won" what legislation battles and totally lose focus on "what exactly is this administration doing? What is it's track record, and based on that what might I expect from it in the future?" It's just compeletly predictable. As Brad DeLong is fond of saying the "Bush administration is worse than you imagine possible, even after you take account of the fact that it is worse than you imagine possible."

Anyway, it's still available for download (and will be until Sunday night at least I think) so go give it a listen if you haven't yet. Some additional background on the issue here.

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