“When the “al-Qaida Seven” and their two DoJ colleagues fought to defend alleged terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, they weren’t fighting to protect jihadist murderers. They were defending the U.S. Constitution—the great whomping chunks of the Bill of Rights that Cheney and her friends are so eager to write out of existence. They did it because that’s what lawyers are ethically obligated to do. They did it because—as Spencer Ackerman points out—the Military Commissions Act of 2006 expressly provided that detainees get defense lawyers. And they did it, as Jay Bookman notes, for the same reason John Adams agreed to represent British soldiers charged with killing civilians during the Boston Massacre in 1770. Because long before Liz Cheney was born and long after she’s gone, the Bill of Rights requires serious people to take it seriously.”

-Dahlia Lithwick on Liz Cheney’s McCarthyism 2.0, revealed in this new web ad campaign.

One, via Maddow, is an informative opinion piece for The Atlantic by Ta-Nehisi Coates on the justification and rationalization of illegal/anti-religious teaching actions by our side and Al Qaeda’s side of the war, respectively.

This NYT piece is an in-depth investigation into how an American became a powerful jihadist in Somalia. His quote:

“I was finding it difficult to reconcile between having Americans attacking my brothers, at home and abroad, while I was supposed to remain completely neutral, without getting involved” is pretty striking and ties into/butts up against Coates’ piece that says:

“In combination with the furious efforts of moderate Muslims and even committed Islamists like al-Sharif, al Qaeda and its methods have been largely discredited…”

Both entities go to great intellectual lengths to justify their visceral actions/beliefs in response to each other and both are struggling with a split populace within themselves. I’m not a historian but I’m guessing this is an example of history repeating itself.

Also related, a brief outline of world history from the East/Islamic Empire view.

“In the wake of the bill’s passage, Republicans stood up as one to say that the stimulus would fail (at least the non-tax-cut part of it) because it was axiomatic that government spending could not create any jobs—never did, can’t won’t. As Michael Steele put it: “Let’s get this notion out of our heads that the government can create jobs. Not in the history of mankind has the government ever created a job.” Of course, that argument was wrong in theory—and in practice. In the intervening months, Republicans have essentially debunked their own argument. As President Obama noted in his State of the Union address, many Republican members of the House and Senate who voted against the stimulus on economic, political, and philosophical grounds rushed to take part in ribbon-cutting ceremonies for projects funded by the stimulus bill. More recently, reporters and commentators have noticed that many of the Republicans who voted against the stimulus (on the grounds that it couldn’t create jobs) have since petitioned government agencies on behalf of their states and districts to get stimulus funds—on the grounds that it would create jobs.” —Gross, on the stimulus bill, one year later

via newsweek