It remains the top Google search for “ACORN video“: FOX News’ credulous “reporting” of the two kids who posed as a pimp and prostitute and entered various ACORN headquarters to ferret out the wrongdoers among them. The scandal as FOX continues to see it – despite overwhelming law enforcement evidence to the contrary – is that an ACORN volunteer is seen on the video confessing to the murder of her ex-husband. But is that where the story actually is? Or is there some other illumination to be gleaned from this whole affair? We’ve seen lots of video taken from the front of the camera, but let’s take a moment to look at who was behind the camera, posing as a “pimp.”

Hannah Giles and James O'Keefe, purveyors of thespian sexual favours.

Meet Hannah Giles and James O’Keefe, the two activists who journeyed into the Heart of Darkness, also known as “The Ghetto.” One can hardly imagine a more appropriate pair to pose as two drug-addicted, hard-bitten inner city thugs with a taste for the sex trade. The video they produced shows the realistic method acting and authentic attire they employed in their subterfuge. Who among the volunteers at ACORN, many of whom have spent their lives in the streets where prostitutes ply their wares, could help but fall for their crafty ways?

After all, nothing say’s “hooker” like blond hair, healthy skin, expensive slut-gear and a full set of teeth. I can see this bad, bad, pimpin’ man screaming now, “Bitch betta have my latte!!”

Only FOX News could be so eager to grind their axes as to fall for this ridiculous scam. The only way anyone would go to these two dolts for sexual favours is if they were looking for a sexual act known as “The Full Milk Toast.” When I first heard about some of the video they captured, I was a little worried. But then I saw the third video – the one with the supposed murderer – and then I saw the kids who tried to pull this off and the whole thing just collapsed under its own farcical weight.

It reveals something far more compelling about FOX News viewers and their concept of what “The Ghetto” is that they would be equally willing to fall for this nonsense. You really do have to be from somewhere at least as snow-white as Utah to believe that:

1. These two idiots could pass for a “hooker” and a “pimp.”
2. That dressing for a Cozumel night club and dressing for a night of heavy prostitute work are the same thing: a slut’s a slut.
3. That anything so exact as a “hooker” and a “pimp” really exists in the world: these are not professions for which you get a certification.¹
4. That “hookers” and “pimps” regularly announce themselves as such.
5. That “hookers” and “pimps” import their prostitutes from El Salvador; that “hookers” and “pimps” have enough money to fly someone in from El Salvador – coach, one would presume, but even so… – but can’t think of anything better to do with their money than visit ACORN offices in search of cheap rental property.
6. That the idle question, “how much do you charge,” is answerable with a set list of charges and services, like your local chimney sweep.
7. That people who commit murder routinely share this information with strangers whom they meet for the first time; that murder in “The Ghetto” is a thing for which such a cavalier attitude is commonplace.

But facts don’t seem to matter much to the executives at FOX News, who continue to allow their “journalists” to spew hate about an organization upon whose head not a single conviction has fallen so far. Neither it seems do facts matter to their audience, for whom FOX News serves as a means to reinforce their beliefs at the expense of reality. At issue is the shared socio-political axe FOX and it’s audience have to grind; not facts or even half-assed observation, either of which would have forbade them to cover this “story.”

What is worse is the lemming-like behavior of the Mainstream Media and Democratic politicians, both of whom are being led by the nose for fear of looking weak on voter fraud. Since when as FOX News ever proven itself to be worth of such unqualified and unexamined sourcing? What major news has the FOX News network ever broken that turned out to be legitimate in any way, apart from being handed interviews and White House leaks by a Bush White House that was friendly to it’s cause?

And all of this built on the “work” of a minister’s daughter and an MBA.

I’ve been blogging for at least five years, now. I’ve been doing so right along with a lot of my other Lefty buddies, commenting on and applauding a lot of the same news sources, such as Rachel Maddow, Ed Schultz and what has become the entire MSNBC lineup. And right along with Bill Mahar, too. I thought I understood what they were saying when we all complained about George Bush, but in recent months, I’ve begun to doubt that.

In recent months, since the Obama Administration took the White House, Progressive talking heads have been consistently pushing on a number of issues. Gays in the military, Guantanamo, the stimulus package and many others. And the common refrain has been some variation of, “with the stroke of a pen, President Obama could end all this…”

Perhaps I’ve lost my mind, but I could have sworn that one of the things we didn’t like about George Bush was… his use of executive orders and signing statements to bypass the will of the Congress? Did I totally misread that? Because now that we have our man in the White House, we want him to employ precisely the same tactics that I recall people decrying as circumventing the U.S. Constitution. And beyond that apparent contradiction, there are a number of problems with executive overrides of this type which are also worth mentioning.

The first should be obvious: if we can turn over all of Bush’s executive hanky-panky this easily, so too can the next president “correct” the Obama Administration. I may be confused about what we Lefties were talking about a few years ago, but I remember my U.S. History and Government class, and this is definitely not what the Founders had in mind. We are not meant to be a cult of personality like Saddam’s Iraq or Kim’s North Korea. Our laws are not meant to be subject to the whims of the most powerful ape in the room. We may like things fast in our modern world, but some things are better left up to the stodgy, old, slow and yes, painfully prejudiced and ignorant Congress.

Secondly, if the president does not get the work done through Congress, Congress can always pass a law that circumnavigates his circumnavigation. Potentially, they can do so in a way that overrides the veto. Remember how Congress’ slowness was a bad thing? Well, with a stroke of a pen, you’ll be counting on it.

Third, in some cases, it’s really not that simple anyway. The president is sitting on a prison in Guantanamo filled with people who have been wrongly imprisoned. People whose basic human rights have been violated, which is a crime which our Constitution is particularly well-suited to prosecute… harshly. In fact, history buffs will know that the entire point of the Constitution is precisely that.

The president cannot simply wave his pen and declare “Do-over!” He cannot free Gitmo detainees without complications. And he certainly cannot do that by, once again, short-circuiting the legal process. The only legally justifiable means of releasing the Guantanamo detainees is by putting them on trial, but since most of the evidence against even those guilty of actual crimes against the United States was obtained via torture and is therefore not admissible, that means both the guilty and the innocent would be set completely free.

The CIA is another sticky wicket. The good and bad news about stable democracies is that the institutions of government – from the Department of Agriculture to the military to the CIA – maintain contiguous operation beyond presidential terms. The Department of the Interior does not suddenly loose all it’s staff and get repopulated every time a new president takes the oath, though it came close in the Bush Administration. It is this contiguous institutionalization of government that provides the democratic stability we enjoy as Americans, not the voting part. There is even an argument to be made that this bureaucratic stability is what eventually ground the Bush Administration down in the end: whistleblowers throughout the government leaked the documents and instigated the investigations that mired the Bushies down for the past three or four years.

But in the case of the CIA, that also means there are bodies buried deep in the vaults of that secret agency that no president has probably ever known about. And even if presidents do, we the public don’t. Again, untangling this web, especially where torture has been used, is not as simple as people seem to think it is. And as we’ve learned from the Bush Administration, the leadership can only push agencies just so far before they earn the ire of career bureaucrats who will outlast them. I’m quite certain that, as a Constitutional law professor, President Barack Obama is quite well aware of the problem torture presents. I’m quite certain that he’s interested in removing the stain of torture from our government – not out of ideological zeal, but out of fidelity to the Constitution he spent his life studying. But this, like much of the damage done by the Bush Administration, is going to take time to put right.

Of course, I understand that we need people to push issues. Just because a president with a D next to his name gets elected does not mean that the things we need done will get done. There has to be pressure on politicians if anything is to be accomplished, especially presidents; there needs to be a loyal opposition, a position for which the Republicans are ill-equipped these days. But we need to be cautious that, in pushing for small changes, we don’t arrive at unforeseen and lamentable large changes. Pressure is one thing, but irresponsibility is quite another.

This site is a political site, primarily, with a ton of other random subjects as suit my fancy and that of my blogger friends who are good enough to help me out. I am generally uncomfortable delving into subjects such as the Brittanee Drexel case because there’s not a lot I can add to the conversation and because I feel like those of us in alternative media and media generally who have nothing to contribute aught not to interfere.

I understand that this crisis affects a lot of people and that those people deserve to have their pain acknowledged by their community. In fact, I am much more personally aware than most readers know, though by no means among the directly affected. But at the same time as I acknowledge the need for local media coverage, I find the national media coverage of such subjects largely ghoulish, voyeuristic and opportunistic. So while this space will remain largely silent on the condition of the ongoing investigation and on the suffering of Brittanee, her family, her friends and the coping of all those kids and teachers and parents and custodians and security guards and principles and so many others whom she knew and or went to school with, I felt as though I aught to address the one subject for which this website is suited: the media.

The South Carolina press has finally caught wind of the fact that Brittanee Drexel’s prom – along with that of hundreds of other Gates-Chili kids innocent of the entire awful affair – is this Saturday night. That means that the national media – who has already been watching this case – is also aware. You know what that means, don’t you?

Swarms of cameras outside of the party house where the kids are having their prom. Cameras and journalists pushing for a spot closer to the door, eager to interview kids who know nothing more than they do. Kids who can’t get inside because the media’s in the way; Can’t get in the way to their own prom because of people who will forget this case in a month. Maybe even a few kids who won’t go in, just because the media is there.

So, if you’re listening down there in New York, ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, Fox News and all the rest of the Katzenjammer Kids: do us a favour and have your local affiliates – who have to live here – do a bit of light filming and let it go at that. Let these kids have their prom.

I’m surprised I need to make this distinction, but allow me to point out that there is a difference between accepting history with all it’s warts and accepting contemporary crimes as simply a matter of historical fact. As the torture story continues to evolve in the media, we find that many people, particularly Pat Buchanan and Joe Scarborough, want to simply dismiss the acts committed in the Bush Administration as part of a larger historical fact of life which cannot be helped. For example, let’s review the TPM “Day in 100 Seconds” from yesterday:

The fire bombing of Dresden was indeed a nightmarish and shameful act. The dropping of atomic bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima were the most egregious acts of war in the history of mankind, it’s fair to say. And in both cases, while we may argue around the particulars, these acts were done in the heat of a war when generals did not believe other alternatives remained. Sherman’s march to the sea also comes to mind.

But those things are in the past. We might have done something different at the time, but we did not. And in the animal nature of man and the horrors of war, these things do happen repeatedly throughout history. We cannot condemn all of our history – or that of mankind – as simply evil because of the evil acts contained in that history. All of this is true. Yet that hardly justifies or excuses criminal acts of war committed in our recent past, still subject to criminal investigation. Neither justifies, excuses those acts, nor releases us from the duty to prosecute those acts.

Put simply, the question is this: because Jesse James killed a lot of people and robbed a lot of banks, does that mean we have to accept that bank robbers and murderers operate in our midst currently? Or do we hold the present to a different standard than the past? By Morning Joe’s standards, there is no particular reason to seek out Osama bin-Laden, since after all, terrorists have always existed. Or how about Bernie Madoff? Thief is probably as old an occupation as whore, don’t you think?

Senator Ted Stevens walking away from what seems like richly deserved jail time is upsetting to many people. However, the bigger issue here is that prosecutors withheld information that could have negated their case, which has been ruled by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional. That’s the larger issue that Judge Emmet Sullivan chose to address in his remarks on the case.

And I mean, honestly: what’s more important? A grumpy old Senator from Alaska or the rights of all Americans that have been so abused by the Bush Administration?