The Most Valuable Progressives of 2005 (Feingold, Conyers...)

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat?bid=1&pid=45342

BLOG | Posted 12/28/2005 @ 11:29pm
John Nichols

It is hard to complain about a year that began with George Bush bragging about spending the "political capital" he felt he had earned with his dubious reelection and ended with the president drowning in the Nixonian depths of public disapproval.

But the circumstance didn't just get better.

A handful of elected officials, activist groups and courageous citizens bent the arc of history toward justice.

Here are this one columnist's picks for the Most Valuable Progressives of 2005:

* MVP -- U.S. Senate:

This is an easy category. While California Democrat Barbara Boxer deserves credit for refusing to go along with the certification of the dubious presidential election results from Ohio, and Arizona Republican John McCain merits praise for forcing the administration to back down from its pro-torture stance, there's no question that Wisconsin Democrat Russ Feingold was the essential senator of 2005. He was the first member of the chamber to call for a timetable to withdraw troops from Iraq -- a stance that initially was ridiculed but ultimately drew support from many of Feingold's fellow Democrats and even a few Republicans. And he ended the year by forging a bipartisan coalition that beat back the Bush administration's demand for the long-term extension of the Patriot Act, scoring one of the most significant wins for civil liberties that Congress has seen in years.

lots more...

* MVP -- U.S. House:

Ohio Democrat Sherrod Brown
Vermont Independent Bernie Sanders
North Carolina Republican Walter Jones
Pennsylvania Democrat John Murtha
Michigan Democrat John Conyers

* MVP -- Executive Branch:
Lawrence B. Wilkerson, the retired U.S. Army colonel who served as chief of staff for Secretary of State Colin L. Powell

* MVP -- Law Enforcement Branch:

While Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald
Travis County, Texas, District Attorney Ronnie Earle

* MVP -- Citizen Branch:
Cindy Sheehan

* MVP -- Watchdog Branch:
After Downing Street

No wonder I don't bother even clicking links to The Nation anymore...

Oh and by Progressive, he means 'elected' to federal office to drown out Progressive voices...

I saw the Feingold part without noticing the comment about McCain. Seems extremely bizarre to me. Here's an interesting article that describes what McCain was up to regarding the torture bill:

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/dec2005/tort-d17.shtml

McCain-Bush “anti-torture” measure gives legal cover for continued abuse
By Joe Kay and Barry Grey
17 December 2005

<edit>

The McCain amendment will have no effect on US policy toward alleged terrorists detained by Washington. This policy flows organically from the drive by the American ruling elite to achieve by military force a hegemonic position in oil-rich regions such as the Middle East and Central Asia, which is deemed critical to the broader aim of establishing American imperialist hegemony on a global scale.

The hypocrisy that underlies McCain’s position was on display at his joint appearance with President Bush on Thursday. He ended his remarks praising the White House by declaring, “Now I think we can move forward with winning the war on terror and in Iraq.”

The claim that adherence to international law on the treatment of prisoners can be squared with support for the war in Iraq is a repudiation of the fundamental principle laid down at the Nuremberg trial of Nazi war criminals after World War II. The prosecution, led by US Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, insisted that the basic crime committed by the defendants, from which flowed all other crimes—including torture, the network of concentration camps, even the extermination of the European Jews—was the planning and waging of aggressive war. Bush, McCain—in fact, the entire US political establishment and both parties—defend just such a war of aggression: the unprovoked “preventive” war against Iraq, plotted years in advance and launched on the basis of lies.

The differences between McCain and the White House were from the start more a matter of form than substance. The sticking point had been the insistence of Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney that the CIA be exempted from any ban on the use of torture or abusive methods.

The real position of McCain and other congressional backers of his amendment is that such open sanction for torture is politically and militarily inexpedient. McCain is well aware that the US and forces trained and financed by Washington have long engaged in such methods, most notoriously in Latin America and Vietnam. Their basic position can be summed up as: do it, but don’t talk about it.

more...

Sure McCain's antics were to ensure that ONLY Repukes discuss the matter--the fact that McCain himself was tortured as an 'enemy combatant' just seemed to add to his irreproachability on the subject and thus ensure that a 'compromise' on this subject of a 'little torture is OK'.

Of course another opportunity to put the 'smackdown' on Rummy was massaged out of the picture and the WH's image is saved again...

Another interesting point about all of this I read was:

Why is Congress banning torture but allowing the use of torture testimony?

Congress deserves a pat on the back today for facing down the Bush administration and passing John McCain's unconditional ban on torture, right? Not exactly. Alongside McCain's legislation sits another amendment that undercuts the ban by allowing for the legal use of testimony obtained by torture. If enacted, that provision will move the United States away from standing behind a clear legal and moral principle and into the murk of hedges and exception-making—achieving exactly what McCain's bill is supposed to avoid.

...

Graham-Levin-Kyl (admendment) thus means that when a Guantanamo detainee gets his moment in court—or the closest thing to it, to which he's currently entitled—he can claim that he hasn't fought against the United States, doesn't belong to al-Qaida, and should be allowed to go home. And then the government lawyers on the other side can say, "Actually, you are an al-Qaida member. We think so because another guy said you were. We asked him about you right before we made him think he would suffocate if he didn't say what we wanted to hear.

Graham-Levin-Kyl is a bipartisan effort, sponsored by Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., along with Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Jon Kyl, R-Ariz. If it passes, we will have both parties to thank for putting it on the record that the United States is a country that locks people up based on testimony obtained by torture that they don't know about and can't challenge. Contrast that with last week's unanimous decision by Britain's law lords, who ruled—in defiance of the government—that evidence obtained by torture may never be used in British courts. "The rejection of torture by the common law has a special iconic importance as the touchstone of a human and civilised legal system," one of the law lords wrote. The same cannot be said, apparently, for the laws of the United States.

http://www.slate.com/id/2132572/

So according to the Nation's Nichols, McCain is more Progressive than the Conservative British High Courts...and McCain hs done a stellar job for the Left!!

The Nation and Nicholls definitely have a moral inconsistency preferring the 'ticking time bomb' intellectual fraud of torture to the real world of international law and Constitutions.