Having said that, we do support Cooley and Sexton’s decision not to penalize Varadarajan. We believe that every viewpoint from students, faculty and administration is just as valid as any other. We wrote as much two months ago in discussing prospective law professor Thio Li-ann, whose stance on gay rights drew considerable opposition among NYU students: “Intellectual discourse is rooted in conflicting opinions, and for this to happen, people of disagreeing perspectives and paradigms must come together to engage one another … No viewpoint will ever satisfy all sides, but each belief is as valid as any other.”

Way to quote yourself, guys; that argument was so awesome it needs to be heard twice!

Except I can’t get my head around the idea that anyone at WSN really believes that. Each belief is valid? Really? On one side, you’ve got, “Muslims should be banned from the military because it’s reasonable to assume that any given Muslim person is probably a cleverly disguised murderous psychopath,” and on the other side you’ve got, “No, that’s not true, and you’re a dick,” and Washington Square News thinks that both of those views are equally valid?

Time to grow up, guys. “Everyone’s opinion is equally valid” is something we tell to fourth graders to keep them from getting into fistfights over whether or not Batman is cooler than Superman (he is), but I figured by college everyone had abandoned that view. Sure something like your favorite flavor of ice cream is entirely subjective, but the statement “America would be safer if we banned all Muslims from the military” is not. There are good arguments and bad arguments, good views and bad views. Sometimes it’s hard to tell one from the other, but here’s a hint: if your argument involves portraying over 1.5 billion people worldwide as unhinged lunatics because of the actions of a small band of radicals, it’s probably a bad argument. And WSN knows this! You can tell, because earlier in the editorial they wrote, in characteristically tortured language, that Vadajaran’s column “stereotypes an entire culture and paints negative connotations to its beliefs.”

That’s not to say that I think Vadajaran should get fired. Nor did I think Purdue’s librarian or Ward Churchill should have gotten sacked. Sure, in each of these situations, I think the views expressed were reprehensible (or as WSN would say: “paint negative connotations to something something”). But there are issues of academic freedom to consider. If there’s no preexisting policy of conduct, then randomly shitcanning a professor sets an ugly precedent. And if you want to create a preexisting policy that prevents professors from publicly discriminating, I don’t know what kind of rule you could come up with that wouldn’t be too broad and could possibly stifle legitimate debate elsewhere.

Which isn’t to say that the NYU administration should do nothing. NYU prides itself on being a multicultural school, and if they want to paint positive connotations on whatever the fuck it is connotations are painted on, then it’s important for Sexton to repudiate Varadarajan’s column. And despite what WSN says, he actually did do that. Perhaps the editorial board would have noticed that if they got they bothered to read their own newspaper.

In a statement, Sexton said that although he found Varadarajan’s column to be offensive and disagrees with it, he values civil discourse. Sexton said he will not impose a sanction against Varadarajan.

Here’s the exact wording from the statement:

So where do we find ourselves today? A journalist and NYU clinical faculty member has written a piece for Forbes that many Muslims find offensive. I understand how they feel — I found it offensive, too. I am teaching Muslim students now, and I have taught them in the past; the portrayal of Muslims in the Forbes piece bears no resemblance to my experience; I disagree with the Forbes piece and think it is wrong.

That certainly reads a lot like repudiation to me. But I’m not going to insist that WSN messed and should issue a correction, because, hey, their take on this is equally valid!

Nobody should be surprised to hear former New York mayor/failed presidential candidate/potential future governor of NY/blood-sucking specter of doom Rudy Giuliani express the above views. Stomping all over civil liberties and the rule of law is his job! It’s just unfortunate that, also unsurprisingly, the entire Republican party has mobilized behind him, to say with one voice: Due process for me, but not for thee.

For example, there’s the house minority leader claiming that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is being granted a trial by jury to appease “liberal interest groups.” And there’s another failed presidential candidate, John McCain, shaking his wizened head from side to side to express his disappointment.

Now you’re probably wondering: Is Joe Lieberman in on the grandstanding too? You bet your sweet ass he is! Dude could smell an opportunity to wrap himself in the neocon flag and condescend to the proles if it was twenty miles away and buried under a heap of garbage, which he would undoubtedly burrow into like a mole to get to the sweet stuff.

If I’m going over even my own high standards of incivility here, there’s a reason for it: when it comes to Eric Holder’s announcement on Monday that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed would be tried in a New York City court, there is no reasonable room for disagreement. If you think the man should be placed before a military tribunal instead–or better yet, not given a trial at all–then you’re an idiot.

For one thing, neither KSM nor any of the 9/11 hijackers and plotters are soldiers. And they’re not “enemy combatants” either, which is a legally ambiguous nonsense term coined by the Bush administration as a thin justification for trampling habeas corpus. They’re common thugs and murderers, and they should be treated as such. To behave as if they’re something more is, as Matthew Yglesias points out, to accept their own ludicrous narrative.

What this means is that while KSM may count among the rankest sacks of shit that humanity has to offer, he still has rights. He’s just as entitled to a trial by jury as any other criminal or non-criminal. The idea that Giuliani, Lieberman, Boehner, et. al. are espousing that these rights are special privileges that can be given and retracted by the state has more in common with the political philosophy of totalitarian regimes like the Taliban than it does any of the ideals the United States was founded on. I hate getting into insipid pissing matches over who loves America more, but in this case there’s no room for ambiguity: if you have any faith or understanding in the principles this country was founded on, then you accept the premise that everyone has the right to legal representation.

It’s a perfectly human reaction to not care about that and just want revenge. But it’s wrong, and I don’t think that’s even what the strong pushback on this is about. Sure, indirectly it is–the core constituency of the Republican Party is people who don’t give a rat’s ass about due process and just want to see some blood. But Giuliani and his coterie of crypto-fascists have enough legal experience (i.e. more than a failing grade in a high school civics class) that they should know better. Hell, I’m pretty sure they do know better, and are just cynically appealing to the worst instincts of their supporters for a little extra press coverage and a couple more fundraising dollars. It’s shameful, obscene behavior, and I hope that they’re all thanking the ghost of Patrick Henry each and every night that the same basic liberties they’re currently playing political foosball with allow them to go on TV and blithely condemn some of the most basic legal and philosophical touchstones of our civilization.

Because make no mistake: to create a populace controlled by fear and undermine what makes our country so strong was the intention behind the 9/11 attacks, and these fucking clowns are going on FOX Sunday and cheerfully helping that process along. It’s sickening.

Which is not to say that the Obama administration is free from blame in this matter. But their problem is the exact opposite of what their critics are making it out to be: what the Obama administration is really doing that’s so dangerous is picking and choosing which terrorists get to have a civilian trial based on who they think they can get a conviction for. In effect, this is only marginally better than depriving all of them of the right to trial by jury, and it’s unacceptable. Each and every murderer in our custody should face justice by due process.

You’re probably wondering at this juncture why anyone thinks it would be a challenge to convict any of the terrorists in American custody. Torture was likely a factor in the decision; even with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the treatment he faced in American custody will probably play a role in the trial. For others, it’s not inconceivable that it could get cases tossed out entirely.

But you don’t pick and choose who gets to keep their rights based on a cost-benefit analysis. And isn’t it funny that the people publicly opposing fair trials for people who were tortured because the torture itself weakens the case for conviction so greatly are the same ones who cheered on torture in the first place? Their disregard for human rights has already fucked us all over, but they just can’t help themselves.

Remember Stephen Colbert’s Christmas special from a couple years back? Remember how funny that was? Well good news! If you think that was awesome, think about how fantastic it is that the real, non-ironic doppleganger of Colbert’s narcissistic stage person will be bringing his own lame Christmas special to NYU’s Skirball center.

Glenn Beck, he of the golden tears and incitements to revolution, will be reading from his modern-day holiday classic, A Christmas Sweater, which Publishers Weekly praises as “a weak attempt at a holiday classic in the vein of It’s a Wonderful Life.”

I haven’t been able to find any info on tickets yet, but believe me, figuring out some way into this event is my project for the next three weeks. It’s going to be glorious: readings from the Good Book (no, not The Bible), awkward, gratuitous crying, and live music! Presumably it will all wrap up with the greatest Christmas tradition of all: Glenn Beck peddling his merchandise and toxic right-wing ideology. God bless us, everyone!

Bill O’Reilly conceding that ‘killing all the Muslims would be challenging, so we might as well try something else’ may be one of the low-lights of the recent spike in anti-Muslim bigotry, but it doesn’t get much better from there. Not when you’ve got Pat Robertson calling Islam a “violent political system,” the author behind the House GOP’s anti-Muslim intern-hunt wishing aloud for (and I can’t stress enough that this is his own words) a “professional and legal backlash against the Muslim community and their leaders,*” Michelle Malkin railing against Muslim soldiers with “attitude,” and the American Family Association calling for an outright ban on Muslims serving in the military.

Looks like the teabagging crowd’s long-simmering anti-Muslim bigotry is now back in full force. So it’s time for a reality check.

You might think otherwise if you limit your sample size to the actions of a single disturbed individual, but there’s absolutely no evidence to suggest that the attitudes of the Muslim-American community at large pose any terrorism threat at all. There are, of course, ways to change that: an effective method of encouraging politically-motivated violence among any group of people is to allow blind hatred of that group to motivate public policy.

In other words, a Muslim community that is entitled to the same legal rights as everyone else, and treated with the same respect and dignity, is a partner, not a threat. Although the myth that Muslim radicals “hate us for our freedom” is still strangely pervasive, the fact of the matter is that limiting the freedom of Muslims–or anyone, really–is a surefire way to provoke terrorist acts. If you want an example of how making a conscious effort to not treat Muslims different from any other citizens is good for national security, just look at Germany, where even a bona fide convicted terrorist publicly discourages jihad against the state because of the lack of anti-Muslim discrimination.

So please, to Robertson, O’Reilly, Malkin, et al.: If you’re honestly concerned about national security, then STFU because right now you’re hurting more than helping. But if your first priority is to boost ratings and book sales by abandoning any pretense to moral authority and appealing to the darkest side of humanity, then keep on truckin’!

*Now, of course, he’s claiming it was just a xenophobic typo. Oops!

Above is a pretty curious sight: Republicans using every parliamentary trick they’ve got to try and delay the passage of the health care bill. Of course, it didn’t work, and the whole incident seems an awful lot like an ineffective temper tantrum.

Which, as of late, has more or less been the right-wing modus operandi. Take, for example, the minor Tea Party freakout in DC the day before. Complete with out-there Holocaust comparisons that are almost too self-evidently ridiculous to be offensive.

The thing is, all of this nonsense produced a better bill. After all, imagine if the Republicans had taken on the role of the Blue Dogs–vowing to cooperate with the Democrats in crafting the language, and then gradually weakening it into an unrecognizable lump. Instead, they paid lip service to bipartisan cooperation, and then promptly made it as obvious as possible that the only acceptable bill to them was none at all.

This in turn freed the Democrats of any obligation to deal with them as a real force in the legislation-crafting process. The bill’s still not perfect–just look at the gaping, pus-filled blister on its surface known as the Stupak amendment–but that’s largely because of the Blue Dogs. A bill with meaningful Republican input would look significantly weaker. In fact, it does; we call it the Senate bill.

As long as the Republicans continue to frame every single battle as the ultimate struggle of good and evil, and refuse to actually participate in the political process, they’re going to keep losing fights. Because sure, blind obstructionism in the Senate can stop a lot of stuff from happening, but it can only stop so much. And in the meantime, every goal that you don’t achieve looks like a crushing defeat if you insist on framing it as the most important struggle of your lifetime.

The funny thing is, for the people who call themselves conservative, all of this wailing and shirt-rending doesn’t reflect a very conservative disposition. Real conservatism would embrace incremental, achievable goals over preening theatrics and outright refusal to make the smallest of concessions.

Yesterday, Middle East expert and University of Michigan professor Juan Cole had a piece in Salon in which he suggested that a two-state resolution to the Israel-Palestine conflict had reached a dead end. And it’s true, things look pretty grim right now. Sadly, the Obama administration, while initially signaling a promising shift in US policy towards Israel, has only exacerbated things by retreating to the reflexively pro-Israeli government posture of the Bush administration.

It started with the Goldstone Report, the product of a UN investigation which found evidence that both Israel and Palestinian militant groups (most notably Hamas) were guilty of war crimes. Needless to say, the Israeli government was displeased.

Pop quiz: Did the Obama administration A) acknowledge the slaughter committed by their ally, or B) do everything they could to suppress the report? The depressing answer is below the fold.

The answer is B. The White House prevailed upon the Palestinians not to make an issue out of it in the United Nations, the result being both a lack of accountability for Israel and a sharp spike in Palestinian National Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s unpopularity.

Meanwhile, the US State Department has taken a surprisingly soft line on Israeli West Bank settlements, patting Israel on the back for agreeing to slow–but not stop–further expansion into Palestinian territory. Clinton later backtracked, but the fact remains that a two-state solution is inconceivable while Israel continues to eat up more West Bank territory, and the United States seems unwilling to put much energy into pressuring them to stop.

And then there was the news today: because he acquiesced to American pressure to suppress the Goldstone Report, Abbas has found his base so diminished that he will not seek reelection. Which is great news for Netanyahu, who, as Matthew Yglesias says, “loves the idea of isolating and discrediting Palestinian moderates in order to bring Palestinian radicals to power and thus have the pretext he wants to avoid peace negotiations.”

Look, this has always been an extremely difficult situation, and Obama took office at a particularly difficult point, after the Gaza incursion. But he indicated a very different approach during and after the campaign that he hasn’t followed up on. And in the mean time, he’s fucked up bad.

Josh and Kenny have already noted the passage of Prop 1 in Maine and Bloomberg’s narrow victory earlier this week, but there were some other noteworthy races going on. Let’s see how they shook out.

New Jersey Gubernatorial: The above video is, of course, the loathsome Chris Christie declaring victory over the also pretty loathsome Democratic incumbent, John Corzine. The polls had been neck and neck therefor a while, but Christie eked out a victory in the end, demonstrating that all the money and fat jokes in the world can’t help an unpopular incumbent during a poor economy. This must have been a disappointment for the White House, which put a lot behind the campaign.

Virginia Gubernatorial: Another Republican victory here, and by a significantly larger margin. But the conventional wisdom is that Democratic candidate R. Creigh Deeds never had a prayer in the first place (VA’s not a blue stronghold yet), and the grassroots weren’t terribly enthused about him, so no biggie.

NY-23 Congressional: After some of the prominent figures in the GOP forced out their own candidate, their favored conservative wünderkind, third-party candidate Doug Hoffman, um, lost. And so the tea partiers, by kicking the Republican out of the race, handed over yet another congressional seat to a Democrat.

But don’t take that to mean this is a loss for the Sarah Palin crowd; rather, it’s a victory for them, and a loss for the dwindling faction of sane conservatives. Even though Hoffman lost in the end, the rise of his candidacy demonstrates the ability of the far right to get their way in internal GOP politics. Too bad the far right has no idea how to build an electoral base beyond the distant fringes.

Other news: The Democrats held onto a Congressional seat in CA, and Maine, while banning gay marriage, also found time to loosen the qualifications for medical marijuana.

2010: Republicans did well in the gubernatorial races this year, but I’d say that the overall results don’t augur well for their chances at significant gains in Congress next year. If the Glenn Beckheads get to pick the roster next year, and mount aggressive third-party challenges or primaries against Republicans in districts where only perceived centrism could win, then they’re screwed.

The New York Times reports that two Democratic congresswomen, including the high-powered Rep. Maxine Waters (pictured) are under investigation for potential ethics violations. What they don’t mention until a little further down is that civilians are getting a peak behind the signs of the ethics committee deliberations thanks to a less-than-competent staffer:

A committee statement about the security breach said a junior staff member, working from home, improperly placed a document listing all the continuing inquiries into a file-sharing software system to which people outside the committee had access. The staff member, whose name was not released, has been fired, and committee officials said Thursday that they did not know who had gained improper access to the document.

So who else is on the list? There’s another nascent investigation going on focusing on 5 other Democrats and 2 Republicans. On the Democratic side, you might recognize the names John Murtha and Marcy Kaptur (both of whom are in positions of influence on the appropriations committee and relevant subcommittees).

Keep in mind that since Waters and Richardson are the only two people that the ethics committee announced they would be investigating, the other 7 aren’t necessarily in hot water just yet. A separate Times article details the what’s going on with that particular inquiry:

Perhaps the most serious case involves a defunct lobbying firm, PMA Group, and contributions it gave to House appropriators, who then pushed for earmarks in the military budget that benefited the firm’s clients. The list included seven members of the military appropriations subcommittee. Spokesmen for those members said they had all been contacted by the ethics committee about their earmarks for PMA clients.

The seven members, including Representative John P. Murtha, Democrat of Pennsylvania, received a total of more than $6.2 million in contributions from PMA and its clients since 1998, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. And in the last two years they inserted more than $200 million in military earmarks to PMA’s clients, according to a tally by Taxpayers for Common Sense, which tracks such items.

Meanwhile, the article says, some of the other names that you might see in the future could be false positives:

Representative Connie Mack, Republican of Florida, for example, said he was on the committee list, even though he was not a target himself but had just been questioned about the activities of another House member.

It will be interesting to see what else comes up.

Just as we’re celebrating the return of the late night/weekend L-train, New York City transit takes another blow: this time in the form of a cab fare hike.

But before you go cursing the name Travis Bickle, keep in mind that this was a tax imposed on cab drivers by the MTA, and the drivers themselves are decidedly unhappy about it. From the article:

“It’s going to be affected, because it’s going to be too much [money],” said one driver. “Like after 4 o’clock, it’s going to be almost $5 just sitting in the car.”

“Why are we paying for the MTA?” asked another cab driver. “We don’t have any benefits from the government. So this is not good.”

Not good, indeed.

Speaking of the L train, here’s a happy public service announcement: as of November 2 (this coming Monday), the repairs on the L train tracks will be wrapped up and Brooklyn commuters can once again depart from Union Square late at night or on the weekend secure in the knowledge that they won’t have to transfer to a shuttle bus somewhere along the way. New York City’s 24-hour subway system is well on its way to doing its thing again.