Although Dale makes a valid point in his posts about how the law doesn’t require giving due process and transparency to suspected terrorists, I think he missed the point Jon was trying to make about that we should give these things to the suspected terrorists “not because they’re good people, but because we are.” I believe Dale missed that point because of semantics.

Here’s a quote from Jon that gets right to the point:

This is why we have due process. This is why we have transparency. This is why a free people who want to remain that way ought to insist we apply due process and transparency even to suspected terrorists.

The “we” in the first sentence is referring to U.S. law applied to U.S. citizens – nothing more. The final sentence states that we “ought to insist.” This alone implies that he’s aware the law isn’t required to apply to the detainees, but instead suggesting that because we are a free society, and we value our freedom, we should extend those freedoms to the detainees. We don’t have to, but we should. Semantics. I think both Dale and many of the comments to Jon’s post failed to see the distinction.

Now disagreeing over whether we should or not is completely different, but Dale, and most of the comments, weren’t concerned with that – instead they were mistaken in believing that Jon was insisting that we must.

UPDATE:

Now McQ at QandO has jumped into the ring and does a fine job of bridging the gap between Jon and Dale.

Freedom of speech and freedom of the press are two ideal very much entrenched in Western society. Our societies depend on the ability to say and publish just about anything we want. On the other hand, Muslims believe that certain things are sacred and should not be published in any way. The big no-no is the depiction of Muhammad, and especially so in negative light. Obviously the depiction of Muhammad with a bomb under his turban isn’t being seen as humorous.

Unfortunately, I don’t think this row is going anywhere anytime soon. Newspapers are going to keep publishing the pictures to either stand up against the suppression of free speech, or to do what their suppose to be doing – report the story in with the pictures so readers get the whole picture and can try to determine what the big deal is all about. Muslims are going to react to any re-publishing (whether as a poke in the eye or simply reporting) with anger. The more the caricatures are published, the angrier they’re going to get and the more news their going to make so the more likely the caricatures will get published again so the angrier…nice circle, huh?

Now I’m no bigot and tend to give all groups the benefit of the doubt. I try to see it from their point of view and all. But this thing isn’t making Muslims as a whole look good, even if it’s only a small percentage involved. What’s worse for them is that their not focusing on the U.S. on this one – they would have had a lot more sympathy had the U.S. been the original “culprit.” Their taking their feelings of having their ideals trampled on and telling the Western world to replace their ideals – it ain’t going to happen.

The Islamic world has been complaining about how there is a anti-Islamic campaign being waged in the world and making Islam look bad – their reaction to this is making them look worse and worse every day.

I think the thing that jumped out at me the most was Bush’s proposal for initiatives, commissions, more funding for education, more funding for alternative energy research, more, more, more – and I suppose this is fine if you’re for the government having it’s fingers in everything. The big BUT, though, is that he also wants to extend his tax cuts AND reduce the deficit. I’m all for cutting taxes, but could someone please explain to me how the hell you add or expand programs AND cut taxes AND reduce the deficit WITHOUT considerable program cutting? Can it be done? Although Bush’s speech was thin on detail, somehow I have a feeling the numbers won’t add up.

Just to see an example of Bush’s math take a look at this section of the speech:

Keeping America competitive requires us to be good stewards of tax dollars. Every year of my presidency, we have reduced the growth of nonsecurity discretionary spending — and last year you passed bills that cut this spending.

This year my budget will cut it again, and reduce or eliminate more than 140 programs that are performing poorly or not fulfilling essential priorities. By passing these reforms, we will save the American taxpayer another $14 billion next year — and stay on track to cut the deficit in half by 2009.

However, this statement is deceiving at best, as Stephen Slivinski, director of budget studies notes on the Cato Institutes site:

Mr. Bush proposed cuts in spending of around $14 billion. In a government that spends $2.7 trillion, a spending cut of this sort amounts to only 0.5% of the entire budget. But it’s also not entirely clear that these are going to be real cuts instead of just declines in the rate of spending growth. The president congratulated Congress for passing bills last year that included so-called cuts to non-security discretionary spending. Yet the newly released CBO numbers show that sort of spending grew by at least 4%. In the real world, that isn’t a cut.

One place that a little bit of progress could be made is with earmark reform, but it would be just a drop in the bucket, and I have serious doubts anything will truly be accomplished in Congress on this front.

A couple other things I want to touch on, but I’m not really going to discuss, that I thought were notable:

• Bush’s continued push for democracy in the Middle East – this coming from a president to ran in 2000 as a “Non-Nation Building” candidate. Amazing how far we’ve come in 6 short years.
• He continued to deny that the Patriot Act and NSA spying are infringing on U.S. citizens freedoms – in fact just the opposite. He’s insisting the Patriot Act is necessary and, although not stated, maybe even too limited. He also feels he completely right in spying on U.S. citizens without warrants.

As a lot of analysts are speculating, I doubt much weight can be given to much of what Bush spoke of in the SOTU address. He’s pretty much a lame-duck president, at least, until after the mid-term elections. Also, I think a lot of Republicans are realizing that by toeing the party line, as defined by the Bush administration, they’re alienating their core. I think we’ll see more Republicans voting on traditional Republican values, and not Bush Republican values – clearly not a recipe for accomplishing things in Congress.

As I was anticipating it was a bunch of fluff – we’re doing this, we’re not doing that, I’m starting initiatives and forming commissions – yadda, yadda. I couldn’t really get past the stupid expressions the nut makes.

Fluff…Nut…

Fluffernutter…mmmmmm.

I’ll write more later – I’m going to make a sandwich.