Glenn Greenwald has a good piece on Giuliani in of all places, the American Conservative magazine. Glenn runs down Rudy's regime as 'America's mayor' and reminds us of one Giuliani's more disturbing quotes.
What we don’t see is that freedom is not a concept in which people can do anything they want, be anything they can be. Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do.
Jeepers. If you didn't know who said it, wouldn't you have guessed Orwell or Hitler or Mussolini or Cheney or George W. Bush?
Glenn also notes that although Rudy started out as a popular mayor who was given a pass even by liberals for 'cleaning up' New York, by the end of his tenure his approval rating was in the dumper. And much like our tempermental president, the less popular he became, the more arrogantly he wielded his power and imposed his personal vendettas against free expression. It's useful to remember that "[a]ccording to Rachel Morris‘s recent article in The Washington Monthly, Giuliani 'lost thirty-five First Amendment cases in court.'"
And as long as we're flagging Glenn this afternoon, he has a good piece on Harry Reid. It appears Harry has met the enemy, and the enemy is us. Us being his fellow Democrat who refused to toe the party line, Chris Dodd, and the over 500,000 Americans who flooded the beltway with demands that the telecoms be denied their long sought immunity.
But credit, where credit is due, Harry is at least going to continue to thwart the recess appointments of the White House by holding pro-forma sessions over the Christmas break. I'll give him a gold star for that, but it's not enough to win my heart back. I still say the kowtowing Bush enabler needs to be unseated as Senate Majority leader immediately.
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