The depraved Ed Meese speaks

[ProSense]

From Talking Points:

(November 17, 2006 -- 07:50 PM EDT)

FORMER ATTORNEY GENERAL Ed Meese is interviewed in the latest issue of GQ--and not for his sartorial splendor. This is as depressing a statement on American liberty and justice as anything I have read these last six years.

Here are some highlights from the Q&A:

Let's move to the Geneva Conventions. A lot of people are concerned that terrorism suspects don't have any kind of habeas corpus. In order to be covered by the Geneva Convention, you have to fulfill certain requirements. . . . So there are a number of criteria in the Geneva Convention that are not met by everyone on the battlefield. Then there's another category of people going back to the Revolutionary War—people who were in those days called spies. If they were not in uniform, they were subject to being summarily executed.

You mean they were executed without even a military tribunal?
I think there were some. Also, a "tribunal" could be a military commander ordering the hanging. I think that's what happened to some of them.

You're advocating summary execution.
Well, yeah, that happens in the military. Illegal combatants are not entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions.

Snip...

Meese is not a has-been from the Reagan years. He has been a key advisor to the current White House on the nominations and confirmations of Supreme Court Justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito. This is a man who is widely considered to be at the pinnacle of the powerful conservative legal movement. This is what we have come to.

Update: Meese is also a member of the Baker/Hamilton Iraq Study Group, readers have reminded me.

[Nay]

1. Meese is a soulless thug from the Nixon years. When, oh when,

will these depraved fossils go to their Great Reward?

[babylonsister]

2. Meese is a member of Baker/Hamilton. Ugh. How legit

can he be? Or reasonable, or bipartisan, or anything I might embrace? Ugh.

[whistle]

3. Oh Jesus, I thought Ed Meese had been mummified!

...Someone throw a bucket of ice water on that guy, he will likely disintegrate into a smoldering pile of vapor.

[acmejack]

4. Still a punk after all these years.

He rather famously said the poor paid too little in taxes in on Hannity & Colmes one night in 2002. The only link I could find quickly was to an article in Slate.

[blondeatlast]

5. Why are all my '80s nightmares returning to haunt me?

Depraved is simply the best way to describe him.

[MuseRider]

6. Same here but I can tell you why

it is because nobody took them down and right at this moment I am doubtful our current crop of criminals, the few that are not the old crooks, will be either. They will return to haunt us in our old age or haunt our children. We MUST make them pay for their crimes or next time we just might not recover (still hoping we will recover from this).

[troubleinwinter]

7. That fuck has haunted me since the 1960s.

As (CA governor) Reagan's chief of staff, Meese was instrumental in the decision to crack down on student protestors at People's Park in Berkeley, California, on May 15, 1969. Meese was widely criticized for escalating official response to the People's Park protest, during which law enforcement officers killed one student and seriously injured hundreds of others. Meese advised Reagan to declare a state of emergency in Berkeley, contrary to the recommendation of the Berkeley City Council, which led to a two-week occupation of the city by National Guard troops.

That fuck had tanks rolling down the streets of my town. National Guard bivouacked in town for the occupation. Citizens were forcibly herded into limited areas and prevented from dispersing by armed Nat'l Guard, then tear gas was spewed onto the crowds from military helicopters. Those citizens included the students at the School For The Blind.

I've hated that fucking evil bastard for 37 years for the pain in the face of the blind students I helped to try to run away from the tear gas enveloping whole blocks and blocks and blocks.

He would be positively orgasmic to be the one to personally pull the trigger on Martial Law.

[blondeatlast]

10. I was in the single digits then but my parents were die-hard progressives

and I remember the image oh so well. I didn't know the names behind it but somehow it isn't at all surprising that Ed Meese was one of them.

Someone has to convince me he's human. He's just a unique brand of depraved.

[soothsayer]

8. I hate Meeses to pieces!

[shance]

9. Once again we see who is running our country and its not George Bush Jr.

But his father's original Administration.

[OzarkDem]

11. Worst Ed Meese quote

from an interview (can't recall which publication) during Bush I:

"Remember, the Bill of Rights was just an Amendment to the Constitution. It can be overturned."

WTF was going on in 1990 that necessitated that kind of BS?

[bobthedrummer]

12. He isn't alone-these BFEE zealots are our Robespierre's, Himmler's

Cromwell's, Pharisees, Stalin's...they've got to GO.

They value the "rights" of corporations, which get away with crimes against humanity and ecology, over people and view anything that gets in the way of their less than divine right to make $$$$ and that's fascist.

Meese was the co-founder of the Federalist Society. Think of the history of the kinds of AG's we've seen from the RW Republicans-Agnew, Meese, but recently torture enablers like Ashcroft, and Gonzales.