House of Delegates '09 - Scott Surovell Launches Bid (44th District)

As expected, Scott Surovell announces his candidacy for the seat being vacated by Kris Amundson

An excerpt:

To truly solve the state's problems, we still need to bring change to the Virginia House of Delegates. Todays House turns down and obstructs virtually every reasonable measure to move Virginia forward. Each year, it sends scores bills focused on divisive social issues or scoring political points instead of problem-solving measures to improve people's lives. I am committed to keeping the 44th district in Democratic hands and moving the House of Delegates to Democratic control. Our leaders cannot truly solve our problems until this happens.

That just about sums it up.

Please go read.

Is Deeds Painting Himself Into a Corner on Taxes?

The answer, in short, is maybe.

The other night in Lynchburg, Deeds and Bob McDonnell took the stage separately, but at this point in time, as the candidates size each other up, it was as close to a debate as we will get -- at least for the next four weeks.

Here was the lede in the RTD coverage of the event:

Gubernatorial hopefuls R. Creigh Deeds and Bob McDonnell, in their first back-to-back appearances on the same stage, told Boys State attendees in Lynchburg yesterday that they could improve transportation in Virginia without raising taxes.

Deeds, a Democrat, said he would seek to pay for better roads by promoting business growth that would increase state revenues, but ultimately that growth depends on better roads.

"I have no plan to raise taxes," Deeds said twice.

McDonnell, a Republican, said he'd try to finance roads by "cutting spending on things that are not a priority."

Uh-oh.

I recently wrote about the GOP’s desire to have a debate on taxes with Deeds, saying the Democrats need not fear this debate. I noted the blog Mason Conservative, which wrote, “So yes, please o' please Deeds and Dems, run on who's going to cut taxes and who's not,” and responded as follows:

The problem is that voters will not necessarily frame the question like Mason Conservative does. The salient issue will not be "who's going to cut taxes and who's not." The issues voters will more likely be concerned with are who has a positive agenda for moving the state forward? Who has pragmatic ideas for solving the transportation problems of the state? If my taxes will go up, what will they be used for? Who will level with me about all the facts so I can make an informed decision?

I stand by what I wrote, but if the issue becomes, as Mason Conservative framed it, who will raise taxes and who won’t, Sen. Deeds will lose that argument, if not the election. No Democrat can beat the single-minded refusal of Republicans to acknowledge the legitimacy of any tax.

If voters are going to frame the issue in a favorable manner for Deeds, it will be because Deeds have effectively framed it for them.

Given this, Sen. Deeds engagement on the issue in Lynchburg did not bode well.

“I have no plan to raise taxes” is, for all intents and purposes, engagement on the GOP’s turf. It sets the stage for a discussion over who is more likely to raise taxes.

I understand the tactic -- blow the tax hiker allegation off by simply denying any intent to raise taxes. I'm just not convinced, however, it will work.

First, it affords the Republicans the opportunity to say Deeds is, well, lying about his intentions. The fact is that Deeds did vote for recent tax increases to fund transportation, so if he is going to say now he has no plans to raise taxes, he will need to explain why raising taxes seemed like the right medicine several months ago. This feeds into the caricature Republicans like to paint of Democrats -- we're incurable tax-and-spenders who won't level with voters during elections.

Read, for example, what Bearing Drift had to say today about this:

Don Beyer, Mark Warner and Tim Kaine could all do the “I’m not going to raise taxes” spiel with no voting record to deny and to suggest they might was to commit some grave sin of prevarication.

But Deeds does have a record, a long, long list of voting for tax increase after tax increase. Deeds voted for regional tax increases for Hampton Roads the same time he voted for massive tax increases across the state (we in Hampton Roads got a double whammy).

I’m not a professional political operative, so I won’t embarrass myself by trying to suggest a better message for Deeds, but (oh, okay, I will embarrass myself) as I said in my earlier post on this, it seems to me the effective response to the Republicans lay in a crafting a pithy argument along the lines of this: Deeds is a pragmatist searching for practical solutions to our problems. He will not take anything off the table if it will help the Commonwealth’s economy grow and make everyone more prosperous. No one can deny Transportation is an essential part of that. Bob McDonnell, on the other hand, is a ideologue trying to peddle the same narrow discredited economic policies of George W. Bush, unthinking reponses that are really no more than slogans that may sound good in a stump speech, but that we know from our current situation don’t work in the real world.

Perhaps I give the voters too much credit, thinking that they can understand this level of nuance. And, of course, it is easy for me, as a relatively anonymous blogger with nothing on the line professionally, to contribute my two cents. I'm quite honestly not certain what I would suggest were there a possibility of anyone actually listening to what I had to say, so perhaps the professionals have it right: When it comes to any mention of taxes, at all costs deny, deny, deny, and worry about it tomorrow.

House of Delegates '09 - Shannon Valentine Kicks Off Re-Election Bid (23rd District)

Courtesy of Off K Street, Shannon Valentine kicks off her re-election campaign.

An excerpt:

Whenever you say Lynchburg and Democrat, most people think you're joking. The Democratic House of Delegate member from District 23 is no joke. In a part of the state where Liberty University and Thomas Road Baptist Church are the 800 Lb gorilla in the room and the surrounding areas are all represented by Republicans and two "Independents" (Watkins Abbitt I-Appomattox and Lacy Putney I-Bedford), Delegate Shannon Valentine is the only member of the Lynchburg area delegation that demonstrates any understanding of social and economic justice and how issues directly affect people from their doorstep to the curb.

It's an excellent post with plenty of good pics.

(Note: I will be trying between now and election day to highlight good blog posts containing news about House of Delegates campaigns, in order to hammer home that retaking the HoD is of statewide importance. This is the first such post on my part.)

Cuccinelli's Sickening Defense Of Predatory Lending Renders Him Unfit to be Attorney General

Based on his performance at his recent debate with Steve Shannon in Virginia Beach, Ken Cuccinelli demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that he is not qualified to be the Attorney General of Virginia.

Look no further than Mr. Cuccinelli’s comments on predatory lending.

Mr. Cuccinelli was asked for his thoughts about predatory lending and whether he would support an interest rate cap. Here is his complete answer (emphasis added):

People wouldn’t use them [payday loans] if they didn’t need them. The alternative for a lot of these folks is nothing for some, and for others it is running up their credit cards.

This is not an illegitimate product, although it is clearly an expensive one. What we find, in my neighborhood, I have one of these near my home, is that people use them for a short term problem, try to get by the problem, and pay it back and get ahead.

Now, the problem arises when people start getting into the cycle of debt, where they can’t get out of it. That’s true of credit cards as well. Certainly, what we need to focus on in the Attorney General’s office is to make sure the lenders are telling folks the truth and giving them the full picture of the consequences of the contract they are about to enter. With that step taken, I believe widely in letting people contract for what suits their needs at the moment, as long as it’s within the law.

Mr. Cuccinelli’s answer is a fine one for a Delegate or State Senator to give, albeit one with which I would disagree. It closely tracks the industry’s talking points, and is carefully designed to put a legitimate moral face on what is simply legalized loan sharking. If a legislator wishes to spout the talking points of a favored industry, and cast his or her votes in favor of that industry, that is between them and their constituents.

But the job of the Attorney General is different, and the spouting of talking points from a predatory industry by a candidate for that office is completely inappropriate.

Among other responsibilities, the Attorney General serves as an advocate for and protector of Virginia’s citizens. When it comes to predatory lending, that obviously requires both an understanding and appreciation of the devastating effect these loans have on innocent peoples’ lives.

In saying that predatory lending is “not an illegitimate product,” Mr. Cuccinelli demonstrates that he possesses neither. Further, in his futile attempt to defend this industry, Mr. Cuccinelli unwittingly becomes the witness in chief in establishing his disqualification for the very office he is, paradoxically, seeking.

According to Mr. Cuccinelli, payday and car-title loans are designed as a one-time short-term fix for people in need of money. “What we find, in my neighborhood … is that people use them for a short term problem, try to get by the problem, and pay it back and get ahead,” Cuccinelli said, adding almost as an afterthought, “Now, the problem arises when people start getting into the cycle of debt, where they can’t get out of it. That’s true of credit cards as well.”

But the fact is that Payday and car title loans are not, in practice, short-term, one-shot loans. In fact, according to the group Virginians Against Payday Loans, 99% of payday loans are converted into long-term debt.

Data from the Virginia Organizing Project tells the same story. According to VOP data from 2005, 90% of these predatory loans were made to persons who take more than five loans per year. Amazingly, 62% of the loans were made to people who take out more that twelve loans per year!

The industry is obviously hip to this economic reality. The VOP reports that more than 90% of the industry’s revenue is derived from fees paid by these trapped borrowers. In 2006, the VOP found, the typical payday borrower paid back $793 for a $325 loan.

Make no mistake, this is exactly what the product is designed to do – otherwise, the predatory lending financial model will not work. Consider, it cost lenders money to secure each new customer, i.e., advertising, paperwork, credit checks, etc., but the cost of developing business from a trapped borrower is relatively minimal, because they have no choice but to come to the lender and borrow more.

So, right off the bat, for someone as intelligent as Mr. Cuccinelli to describe these lending products as legitimate because they are just short-term, albeit costly, one-time loans to tide people over until they can get back on their feet is -- and there is no way to sugarcoat this -- a lie.

In this sense, payday and car-title loans are a classic bait and switch, advertising themselves as a relatively fair and simple transaction to attract customers, while the lenders real goal is to trap borrowers in a long-term cycle of debt.

It is mind-boggling to me that a candidate for Attorney General, even a Conservative Republican, would defend this as a “legitimate” consumer business tactic. Simply amazing. There is no honor or principle involved in defending abusing fellow citizens.

Further, Mr. Cuccinelli mentions the problem with being trapped in a cycle of debt in an almost off-hand manner, comparing it to revolving credit card debt, minimizing it by comparing it to something that millions of Virginians do every day in a responsible manner. In doing so, Mr. Cuccinelli removes any doubt that he is simply misinformed about the severe effects of predatory lending, and makes it clear that he is involved in active deception of the havoc such lending wreaks on thousands of Virginians.

Finally, Mr. Cuccinelli drives the final nail in his coffin with his assertion that payday lending is simply a matter of allowing people to contract for what suits their needs. No honest, knowledgeable and serious attorney can believe this to be the case.
In a payday lending transaction, almost by definition, involve unconscionable adhesion contracts that would not be enforceable but for the legitimacy laid upon them by Virginia’s ill-advised and ill-enacted legislation. The borrower is always desperate. Furthermore, the gap in the relative sophistication level of the lender and borrower is typically quite large. So, even as the law declares these agreements to be lawful, as a moral and ethical matter the parties to these transactions are in no way on equal footing bargaining at arms length. To suggest entry into predatory lending agreements is simply a manifestation of the free right to enter in contracts, good or bad, turns the entire idea of freedom on its head. Freedom does not mean that the rich and powerful in society ought to be free to abuse the weaker and more needy members of society, does it?

Finally, the suggestion that all this can be cured by some frm of disclosure is naive, at best, and dishonest, at worst.

Look, I am 180 degrees opposite from Ken Cuccinelli on the political spectrum, so I wasn’t going to be voting for him either. And the problem is not that Mr. Cuccinelli is misstating the current law – predatory lending is lawful in Virginia.

But that doesn’t make it right or ethical or moral, and the fact that a candidate who aspires to be Attorney General of Virginia presents himself as a defender and apologist of the disgraceful predatory lending industry just makes me sick.

Crossposted to Blue Virginia

McDonnell's Social Agenda: Run Away! Run Away!

In a post today, Conservative blog Bearing Drift was discussing a fund-raising e-mail from the Deeds campaign, in the process of which it claims the e-mail uses "the same tired rhetoric about McDonnell’s 'extreme social and economic agenda' (you mean the one that wants to create jobs, stimulate the economy, and keep taxes low?)"

Now, I don't work for the Deeds campaign, and am not certain what his campaign meant in this particular e-mail, but Bearing Drift's Mr. Hoeft, who wrote the post, is obviously smart enough to know that creating jobs, stimulating the economy and keeping taxes low are, at best, goals we all share, and at worst, meaningless political bromides intended to masquerade a candidates real policies.

That said, perhaps the "extreme social and economic agenda" to which the e-mail refers is one that, given its druthers, would outlaw all abortions, even in cases of rape and incest, and even if the life of the mother is in danger; one that would leave in place outlawed gay marriage and civil unions; one that would deny gay people the right to become judges, and presumably other professions as well, on the grounds that they may have violated an anti-sodomy statute; one that rejected $125 million in federal aid for Virginia's unemployed on the grounds that it offended some debatable legal interpretation of state sovereignty.

But truth be told, all that is beside the point. What I don't understand is why Mr. McDonnell and his supporters seem to be running away from his extremely Conservative social positions.

Strange. It's like they are trying to keep this part of Mr. McDonnell's record from the voters. I wonder why?

GOP Howl on Transportation: Taxing and Spent

Lawyers have a saying about the proper way to mount an effective argument at trial.

If the facts are against you, the saying goes, you pound on the law. If the law is against you, you pound on the facts. And if the law and the facts are against you, you pound on the table.

Yesterday, trying to defend Virginia Republicans against charges of inaction on the issue of transportation, William Howell, the Speaker of The House of Delegates, pounded on the table.

By way of background, last week Gov. Kaine published an article in the WaPo discussing the GOP obstruction on transportation funding in the House of Delegates. Sunday, Speaker Howell responded with a political rant entitled, “Virginia Republicans Kept Their Promises on Transportation.”

Teeing up his attack on the Governor, Speaker Howell begins by falsely accusing Kaine of “[attempting to tag] Republicans in the House of Delegates with sole responsibility for every failing of Virginia’s transportation system.” According to Howell, “In [Kaine’s] view, credit for all progress on transportation belongs to his administration and the federal government under President Obama.” Gov. Kaine, according to Howell, is a “partisan hard-liner.”

Hilariously, Howell then proceeds to claim, on behalf of Republicans, credit for all progress on transportation in the Commonwealth, and to attack Kaine and Democrats in the House for opposing the GOP because their proposals did not include tax increases, as if tax increases were an end in themselves.

To be fair, Kaine did lay some blame for the state’s transportation woes at the feet of the GOP, specifically, the decision “that we should not invest more state dollars in transportation.” He also asserts Republican legislators “rebuffed” his “efforts to get more money for statewide or regional needs.”

These, however, are not so much partisan attacks as they are simply statements of fact with which I suspect, were he not so intent in working himself up into an angry lather, Speaker Howell would agree. Indeed, Howell crows about the efforts to block the gasoline tax increase Kaine proposed during the recent special session of the General Assembly, so what exactly is the beef he has with Kaine saying exactly the same thing, albeit from a different point of view?

But, hey, why should the GOP let reality intrude at this point? In defending Republican performance against Kaine’s imagined attack, Howell asserts that House Republicans were the sole driving force behind such initiatives as public-private partnerships for pursuing transportation projects and land use legislation.

Hmmm. I wonder what Gov. Kaine had to say about these initiatives? Did he take “sole responsibility” for them, as Howell claimed?

Here is what Gov. Kaine wrote about public-private partnership and land use legislation: “These changes have been important and generally bipartisan in nature.”

Uh, okay. Perhaps Speaker Howell missed that sentence when he read the article.

More seriously, to understand Speaker Howell’s table pounding requires some understanding of the dynamics of the transportation debate, and the larger problem facing the GOP as it seeks a return to political relevance.

Whatever critiques may fairly be leveled against Gov. Kaine for his failure to fix the Commonwealth’s transportation issues (and there are some), and whatever good policies the House GOP may have supported from time to time (and there are some), the central fact is that the Republicans in the House of Delegates have blocked efforts to address the core transportation problem in the Commonwealth: the lack of new funding for desperately needed new transportation infrastructure, mainly in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads.

For the last several sessions, the GOP has supported various budgeting tricks that move non-existing dollars from one place in the budget to transportation, measures that relied on projected surpluses that never materialized, or measures that rely upon speculative revenue to be generated, if ever, years in the future, such as future revenue from off-shore drilling. But these are measures designed to give the illusion of providing new funding while doing nothing of the kind. Whatever the relative merits of off-shore drilling, given the controversy over it, is staking transportation funding on revenue derived from it a serious and responsible proposal, or is it political theater?

Needless to say, the Righty Blogosphere in Virginia, found Howell’s argument convincing and inspiring. Gov. Kaine’s, uh, not so much. “Bill Howell Kicks Some Ass,” gushed Too Conservative. The generally more sober Tertium Quids was less sanguine about Howell and the GOP, but it labeled Kaine’s mostly factual article “strange.”

In fact, Howell’s aggressive broadside was a signal that Bob McDonnell and the GOP will default to its stale and discredited tactic of anti-tax demagoguery to obstruct any effort to deliver new funding for transportation. No matter how minimal or necessary such funding might be, it will undoubtedly be characterized as “the biggest tax increase in the history of the world since forever.”™ Indeed, that counts for Howell’s, if misplaced, denunciation of Kaine’s supposed partisanship on the issue. The GOP’s anti-tax position is not intended as a rational argument over policy; it only works as a rallying cause against the evil of government.

Howell's rant also presages the upcoming election.

Consider this from the blog Mason Conservative:

So yes, please o' please Deeds and Dems, run on who's going to cut taxes and who's not. I want to talk more about your plan to raise the gas tax during on the worst recessions in a long long time. I want to talk about Deeds supporting raising vehicle registration fees I want to talk about Deeds supporting fuel tax in Northern Virginia, I want to talk about Deeds voting for the 2004 tax increase while Messrs. McDonnell, Bolling, and Cuccinelli all voted "NO." Over and over again, "centrist" "conservative" Rural Courthouse Senator Creigh Deeds has voted YES, YES, YES for tax increase.

So please, lets make who's more likely to raise taxes on the middle class be it directly, or through gas, or through fees a legitimate issue. Because on the back benches in the Senate, Deeds sat back and voted yes over and over on this.

I certainly don’t speak for either the Deeds campaign or Democrats generally, but that debate will spell Democratic victory in November. Sure, there is an element of the electorate virulently anti-tax to which this argument will appeal. But this election is not about their votes, which are not going to Sen. Deeds anyway.

The problem is that voters will not necessarily frame the question like Mason Conservative does. The salient issue will not be "who's going to cut taxes and who's not." The issues voters will more likely be concerned with are who has a positive agenda for moving the state forward? Who has pragmatic ideas for solving the transportation problems of the state? If my taxes will go up, what will they be used for? Who will level with me about all the facts so I can make an informed decision?

And so forth...

This election is about he votes of Virginia’s moderates, and thanks in part to the failed administrations of Gov. Jim Gilmore and, more recently, President George W. Bush, these voters have wised up to the tired and mindless anti-tax rhetoric anti-tax rhetoric of the modern GOP. People have come to understand that the cause of low taxes for their own sake, disconnected from a discussion of the policies and programs such taxes are meant to finance, is not a recipe for good governance.

Does the Mason Conservative really want to talk about the 2004 tax increase? Is there some way to gauge how voters feel about that. If only we could have a proxy election on the issue, like Mark Warner running against Jim Gilmore for statewide office, perhaps we'd get some insight into that question? Ah, well, it’ll never happen – I guess we’ll just have to speculate about what voters think.

More recently, given the severity of Virginia’s transportation problem, does Mason Conservative really want to discuss the gas tax? Consider the proposed increase beat back by Republicans in the House of Delegates during the special session.

The proposed increase was a one cent per gallon per year over the next six years.

To put that into some context, if the average person drives 12,000 miles per year, and assuming an average of 25 MPG, in translates into an additional $5 per year. That would be a total of $30 over the entire six year period.

Of course, some will be taxed more, some less, depending on a variety of factors, but that is the average.

I’m confident, presented with all the facts, voters will, as a general matter, collectively come to common sense conclusions. This year, Creigh Deeds and the Democrats will be having a serious and honest discussion with voters about setting the Commonwealth on a path of sustained prosperity and economic justice and opportunity for all, a path that begins with fixing our transportation problems.

William Howell, Bob McDonnell and Mason Conservative meanwhile, signal that they will just be pounding the table.

Conservative Incoherence at Virginia's Righty Blogs - UPDATED

I am still new at dealing with the Conservative blogs in Virginia, having spent my still young blogging career mostly immersed in Democratic primary battles. But my experience the last few weeks seeing the give and take between the Progressive and Conservative sides of the blogosphere has been illuminating.

For one thing, it has helped me better understand the crisis that seems to have overtaken the Republican Party and the Conservative movement. At one time, I thought this crisis was simply the result of the failed competence of the Bush presidency, but I am beginning to understand that the crisis, much like the failed Bush administration that precipitated it, results more from the intellectual incoherence of Republican policies than it does from incompetent implementation.

Take the recent contretemps over a post at Bearing Drift this past week by J.R. Hoeft stating that Congressman Tom Perriello “cast the deciding vote” to bring Guantanamo detainees to Virginia.

In truth, Rep. Perriello did nothing of the sort. He voted against an amendment that would have prohibited allocating funds to close down the prison at Guantanamo Bay. The amendment was defeated by one vote, but it was less than clear whether any one Congressperson was “the” deciding vote. And as Rep. Perriello made clear, his vote was based on his moral, ethical, and religious principles, not arm-twisting or following the leadership.

But leave all that aside for the time being.

Because the post focused on “bringing detainees to Virginia,” Mr. Hoeft was clearly advancing an argument that Virginians should be afraid having the detainees in our midst because our prison system could not guarantee holding them securely, either because of lax security or a legal system that would defy all logic and reason by releasing them into society. Indeed, this has been the undercurrent of the whole “closing Guantanamo means bringing terrorists to America” argument, of which I assume Mr. Hoeft is aware.

Lest there be any mistake, Bearing Drift commenter Jessica Pruesser explained:

Several of the commenters here are missing the point about Gitmo. It is not just that they will be brought here, it is that when they are brought here they will be granted the rights of American citizens (which they are not) and then let go by some judge to roam around our streets and start new terrorist cells, because you know dang well that the fed will not be making sure they get sent back to wherever they came from. Which btw none of them want, because those people actually DO torture them.

There is, of course, a legitimate debate to be had about whether to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay. Unfortunately, this is not it. This is just silliness and fear mongering.

So, I wrote a post calling the Bearing Drift post “patently absurd” and explaining my reasoning. Anonymous is a Woman, one of Virginia’s better bloggers, wrote a stronger critique, attacking the implicit assumption in the Bearing Drift argument that America’s prison guards could not adequately guard the terrorists.

That put Mr. Hoeft and some other righty bloggers in high dungeon, channeling their best Capt. Renault -- they were shocked, shocked I tell you, to be accused of fear mongering. It was, on the one hand, kind of amusing watching them cast about when confronted with the logical implications of their own unserious arguments, and my first instinct was just to sit back and watch them flop around helplessly like a fish landed on the deck of a boat, angry, defiant and without any defense whatsoever, save their anger and defiance.

But, ultimately, the sheer disingenuousness of it got to me, and so I am responding.

Here is the comment Mr. Hoeft, the author of the post at Bearing Drift that started it all, left at AIAW’s blog:

This has nothing to do with prison guards or their ability to keep us safe.
It has everything to do with wasting taxpayer money when we have a perfectly good facility at GITMO already doing the job.
It has everything to do with creating unnecessary demands on our local populations when we have to move the prisoner to the courthouse.
It has everything to do with granting U.S. rights to people sworn to undermine the U.S. system of governance and law and order.
It has everything to do with putting these prisoners in general population, allowing them to sew their seeds of hatred amongst U.S. inmates.
It has everything to do with the POTENTIAL of making the area surrounding the prison a target for outside terrorist groups and extremists.

Now we’re talking. Here are some serious arguments. Lets take a look at them, shall we?

Does this have anything to do with prison guards?
I never said it did. I’ll leave Karen to deal with that. My sense of her post, though, was that she was trying to make a point about the absurdity of Mr. Hoeft’s argument more than anything else.

Is GITMO a perfectly good facility?
That depends on what Mr. Hoeft means by “perfectly good.” If all he means is that it is serving its function as a warehouse for human beings to be securely maintained as prisoners, I’d agree.

But Guantanamo Bay has become an unfortunate symbol of an American justice system gone awry, one in which many innocent people, apparently including minors, have been imprisoned for years without any legal rights or review whatsoever. Prisoners have been tortured and abused there, as well. Forget whether or not this makes Guantanamo a recruiting tool for our enemies, there is simply no doubt that the prison, as a symbol, is clearly corrosive to our credibility and moral authority in the world, and is therefore impairing our international power and influence over the behavior of other nations.

But even if you disagree with that assessment, you must acknowledge that the perception I describe is a reality, and that as a result Guantanamo Bay cannot be characterized as “a perfectly good facility.”

Will unnecessary demands be placed on local populations when moving prisoners to courthouses?
Perhaps, but I’d disagree those demands are “unnecessary.” People are inconvenienced all the time in the name of ensuring Constitutional rights for despised minorities. This, more than anything else, makes America a great country, and it is a source of strength for us.

Also, the pragmatic aspects of this can be minimized in any number of ways, for example, by housing prisoners on military bases or at prisons that are not near population centers. In short, Mr. Hoeft’s argument that this would place unnecessary demands on local populations hinges on his assumption that authorities would implement this policy in the stupidest, most inconvenient way possible. Mr. Hoeft, apparently, is under the impression that George Bush is still President.

Will granting “U.S. rights” (whatever they are – I presume Mr. Hoeft means certain rights guaranteed by the Constitution) to people sworn to undermine the U.S. system of law and governance create some unstated difficulty?
I have no direct response to this “argument.” I don’t profess to be a Constitutional expert, but is Mr. Hoeft seriously suggesting that obsequiousness to the U.S. system of justice and government is a criteria for entitlement to Constitutional rights? If he is, and if it turns out he is right, he’s got me, and he wins the argument!

Will putting prisoners in the general population radicalize our homegrown criminals?
Personally, I suspect that the terrorists would have more to fear from being placed in the general population than we have to fear from the risk of them radicalizing American prisoners -- I’d imagine in the jailhouse pecking order that al Queda terrorists would rank somewhere below child rapists, -- but whatever, if this is a real concern, the detainees can easily be housed outside the general population.

Will the area outside the U.S. prison where detainees are held become a terrorist target?
Maybe, but all that will mean is that when given the opportunity to strike, terrorists would simply strike there rather than someplace else. There are already plenty of targets in Virginia.

Look, here’s the problem for Mr. Hoeft and his fellow travelers on this issue: When we seriously debate the merits of closing down Guantanamo, we quickly reach an impasse and it comes down to a judgment call. Fortunately, we don’t have to rely on my judgment or Mr. Hoeft’s judgment to resolve this issue. In America, we have elections to decide who will make the necessary judgments on questions like this, and we have, as a nation, elected Barack Obama as the President of the United States. And he has decided.

Which brings us full circle to Mr. Hoeft and his Republican cohorts resort to silly scare arguments rather than actual arguments on the merits, which they will lose. His position, as reflected in his initial and most revealing post on the matter, is not so much a brief against closing the prison as it is a wailing rage of frustration at the election of Barack Obama and the electoral losses of the Republican Party.

That explains why arguments advanced by an otherwise obviously intelligent individual like Mr. Hoeft are so draped in purported outrage, and so lacking in coherence.

UPDATE: Check out Drew's first rate research on this at his excellent blog, DemBones. As it turns out, all the fear-mongering had been specifically resolved in legislation passed a few days before the Guantanamo amendment that specifically prohibited the release of Detainees on U.S. soil, rendering the hysterics of the righty blogs even more disingenuous.