RAGGED THOTS

I will be directing my attention to the back benches. I'll be watching Jim Webb.

With his stunning upset of George Allen, the heavily favored Republican incumbent, the newly elected Democratic senator from Virginia arrives as the most exotic bird in the Washington aviary.

Unlike most modern politicians, Webb hasn't spent his entire adult life running, or plotting to run, for political office. He is a man of unimpeachable physical courage and battlefield heroism, having been awarded the Navy Cross, the Silver Star and two Purple Hearts for his service as a Marine in Vietnam.

As the author of six novels, most of them bestsellers and all of them bristling with interesting ideas, he enters the Senate with a record of creative and intellectual accomplishment not seen there since the death of Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

And best of all, his election last Tuesday makes him the most deeply conservative national Democrat since Grover Cleveland.

Mr. Webb, meet Ms. Pelosi.

If Webb's own writing indicates his priorities, then he can be expected to speak up loudly and eloquently next year when his Democratic colleagues seek to repair the constitutional vandalism wreaked by passage of the Military Commissions Act in September. Like the military officers who tried and failed to preserve habeas corpus, due process and the Geneva Conventions from the zealous authoritarians of the Bush administration, Webb believes strongly in upholding those protections and feels that the excesses of the "war on terror" have damaged the honor of the U.S. military.

During the final days of his Virginia campaign, Webb's Republican adversaries attempted to smear him as a sexual deviant by using carefully selected passages from his novels. Of course they ignored the real meaning of his written works (no doubt because it was well beyond the comprehension of desperate buffoons like George Allen and his campaign manager, Dick Wadhams). But it is worth noting that years before 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq, Webb examined the same kind of moral risk we now face when he wrote "The Emperor's General," his 1999 historical novel about the prosecution and hanging of a top Japanese officer by Gen. Douglas MacArthur in the aftermath of World War II.

"The Emperor's General" is a dark tale about the corruption of MacArthur and of the book's narrator, a fictional aide to the legendary American general named Capt. Jay Marsh, who learns that winning wealth and power requires the sacrifice of justice, integrity and love. As he elucidates those sweeping themes, Webb delves into the details of the war-crimes trial of Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita, who commanded the Japanese forces in the Philippines and was eventually hanged for atrocities committed in Nanking and Manila. But Webb believes that the Japanese general was a scapegoat executed to protect Emperor Hirohito. He is unsparing in his description of how MacArthur framed Yamashita -- or at the very least deprived him of a fair trial -- through the bureaucratic instrument of a "military commission."

Some of the most telling passages occur in an exchange between Marsh and Yamashita's lawyer, Witherspoon, whose rebuke of the military commission as "a sham" echoes into the present:

"We're Americans, Captain. We're supposedly bringing an accused man into the American system of justice. This is a capital case. Yamashita's life is at stake. I know a lot of people died in the war, and life was cheap, but the war is over. Tell MacArthur if he wants to kill Yamashita, why hide behind us? Why doesn't he just come down here and shoot him in the fucking head?

"You're not a lawyer, MacArthur's not a lawyer, and this isn't a court! He's convened a military commission! [italics in original] ... It's his own little creation ... I don't even have a military judge to object to on points of law, like I would in a regular court-martial, for Christ's sake! Do you think any of them [the five generals serving on the commission] are even going to understand the rules of evidence? Admissibility? Relevance? Probity? And MacArthur is the sole reviewing authority for their actions! ... He's waived traditional rules of evidence ...

"They [the prosecutors] know as well as I do that it's not going to matter! Do you realize what this trial -- if you can call it a trial -- this illegal, judgeless commission is going to look like? It's going to be nothing but a public circus!"

At the end of this tirade, Marsh recalls, "Witherspoon had now stunned me into silence." Now this fictional passage doesn't necessarily reflect Webb's view of the present circumstances, although he spoke out against the Bush administration's usurpation of constitutional rights during his campaign. It is important to point out as well that the Yamashita case is of more than academic or historical interest. In 1946, the U.S. Supreme Court refused Yamashita's petition for a writ of habeas corpus to overturn his conviction, but the dissents by Justices Wiley Rutledge and Frank Murphy have outlived the majority opinion.

"I cannot believe in the face of this record that the petitioner has had the fair trial our Constitution and laws command," Rutledge wrote.

Justice John Paul Stevens, who clerked for Rutledge in 1948 and 1949, cited that dissent extensively when he wrote his blistering majority opinion in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld last summer, overturning the Bush plan to try terrorist suspects before military commissions. In that opinion, Stevens referred to the Yamashita prosecution as "the most notorious exception" to the principle that military trials of enemies must afford them the same rights as American soldiers had.

# posted by Robert A. George @ 6:00 PM

This comes from Les Carpenter of the Washington Post:

Just days before the NFL Network broadcasts its first game on Thanksgiving, one of the league's top executives sat in a Senate hearing room yesterday trying to explain its decision to put games on a channel that many cable subscribers won't be able to see.

Jeffrey Pash, the NFL's executive vice president and legal counsel, told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the cable systems should not have to charge viewers extra to carry the NFL Network on its main tier of service even as it is embroiled in disputes with Time Warner, Cablevision and others over that very subject....

...The hearing was part of a larger inquiry by the committee into the 1961 Sports Broadcasting Act, which allows joint broadcasting agreements between networks and sports leagues to exist despite antitrust laws. The committee is looking into whether the legislation is outdated, and next month it will examine cross-ownership between sports teams and cable systems.

And this comes from Steven Zeitchik of Variety.com:

Legislators questioned not just the disagreement, but whether the league violated the Sherman Antitrust Act by essentially selling itself a package of eight late-season games in the first place...

...Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), who reps a state with two NFL teams and called the relatively last-minute meeting, flogged the antitrust issue hardest...

...Specter also questioned the agreement that allows DirecTV the exclusive right to offer all out-of-market games via its Sunday Ticket Package.

No offense to the honorable senator from Pennsylvania, but aren't there more important things to attend to then the business of football on TV?

Both parties involved in the hearing had this to say:

"The government should leave the solutions to the marketplace..." - Landell Hobbs, executive with Time Warner.

"These disputes are generally resolved because one or both parties reassess and modify their positions. They do not raise antitrust issues and do not require intervention of the Congress." - Jeffrey Pash, NFL executive veep.

The two sides that are against each other in this dispute both agree that the goverment should focus on more important matters such as war...then on overstepping their authority with respect to the open market place. I couldn't agree more.

Also, I think that the Senator should consider the following. The National Football League is the only league that allows all of its games to be seen for free by the fans. For every local team, the fans are allowed free access to the team on TV. If the game is either on ESPN or the NFL Network, a local broadcasting network must air the game. The MLB, NBA, and the NHL do not allow for this to occur. Back in 1994 I had to listen to the New York Rangers win the cup over the radio since I did not have cable TV. Was this a violation of the broadcasting laws? Should that have necessitated an investigation of Congress?

Of course not...

# posted by J. Mark English @ 5:42 PM

....President Bush's political adviser Karl Rove, who is Mr. Mehlman's mentor, would rather see Mr. Steele serve in the president's Cabinet, perhaps as secretary of Housing and Urban Development. These officials said no one has actually offered Mr. Steele either the RNC post or a Cabinet post.

By tapping Martinez to be the party's public persona, the White House turned to a lawmaker who has been a staunch supporter of the president — including on the issue of comprehensive immigration reform that includes a guest-worker program — and one of the more politically savvy Republican senators.

# posted by Robert A. George @ 6:43 PM