It looks like Fox News may be able to call off their search for Glenn Beck’s replacement. If drooling delirium and glassy-eyed insanity is the criteria, then Judge Andrew Napolitano has the role sewn up. Today he opened his program on Fox Business Network, Freedom Watch, saying…
“Osama Bin Laden assassinated, killed on the illegal whim of the President.”
That’s right. Osama Bin Laden, a brutal commander of terrorists responsible for thousands of deaths, is finally found and dispatched, and Napolitano says that President Obama is the criminal. The only thing Napolitano needs to seal the deal is a blackboard tying George Soros and Van Jones into the operation as well. Napolitano continued…
“Tonight on the docket Osama Bin Laden is dead and the President thinks he has a right to kill whomever he wants so long as the person is a monster and the people support it. Of course the attacks on 9/11 were a horrific tragedy, but killing Osama Bin Laden is a symbol of all we’ve lost in this pointless war on terror and we can’t forget that.”
Whomever he wants? Napolitano thinks that the President’s decision to target the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, who has been the subject of an international manhunt for ten years, is the same as a decision to kill anyone else with whom the President may have a beef. In Napolitano’s eyes there is nothing special about Bin Laden. Napolitano also believes that killing Bin Laden is “a symbol of all we’ve lost.” What would allowing Bin Laden to live and continue to murder innocent people be a symbol of, Judge? And why are you taking Bin Laden’s side in this against your President?
During the program Napolitano correctly criticized the Patriot Act, but conflated that unfortunate infringement of civil liberties with the mission to capture or kill Bin Laden. Despite the fact that the Bush administration exploited 9/11 to pass the bill, it never had anything to do with protecting Americans from terrorism. It was a cynical power grab on the part of Bush and a majority Republican congress (although way too many Democrats voted for it as well). For Napolitano to bring it up in the debate over whether Bin Laden should have been killed makes about as much sense as Beck’s theory that Muslims and teachers unions are conspiring to bring Sharia law to Wisconsin.
This must be Napolitano’s audition reel for Beck’s hour on Fox. And with delusional, fear-mongering material like this he could easily slip into the time slot without any of Beck’s addled fans noticing any difference.
It’s actually more complicated than that, as discussed on NPR yesterday afternoon. Given most Americans’ utter refusal to try Guantanamo prisoners on American soil, exactly how would they feel about a trial of Bin Laden? Where exactly, then, could/would such a trial have taken place had it been possible to take him alive (seems a woman, as yet unidentified, was being used as a “human shield,” usually deemed an appropriate reason for taking out a “perp”)? I suspect an awful lot of folks in the Obama administration are breathing huge sighs of relief that the whole issue of “We’ve got him — now, what do we do with him?” didn’t have to be dealt with.
Wouldn’t be that complicated, bring him to The Hague.
And do you really think that most Americans would accept *that* idea either? Dream on (sadly).
Yeah, I do. What with ‘let’s not try KSM in NYC’ and all that. The argument that he is a danger to the whole world and not just us, as many global attacks will prove, would be easy to make instead of ‘try him in a military tribunal’.
The Foxsters miss Bin Laden because he was the perfect bogeyman: Muslim, bearded, scary-looking–not unlike Emmanuel Goldstein in Orwell’s 1984. Without a convincing bogeyman, you can’t keep the children scared.
Funny if the president had them capture OBL and bring him to the states for trial all hell would brake loose. The republicans would want to know why didn’t they kill him instead of bringing him to trail. Obama is in a no win situation. Thank god Obama doesn’t listen to the republicans. They would rather have OBL out there so they could hit Obama over the head with it.
Obama will always and forever be in a no-win situation with conservatives. They hate him. They’ve hated him since before Day 1. They can’t find reasons to hate him, so they make shit up. I know someone who hates him and always has based on “a feeling”. Then when pressed, he says something general and generic like “policies and politics”, followed by stuff that’s all talking points without substance or reason. In their eyes he’s already the worst president in history, and having Bin Laden killed on his watch does absolutely zero to change that.
Your right. I know people also. When I press them they can’t give you any specific reason but when they do its ususally a Fox News lie. Then I tell them forget it. Your a lost cause because you allow facts to get in the way. They know your right but they just can’t bring themselves to believe your right and they are wrong. How sad because this country will never unite with that attitude. I just wish the president stops trying and just govern. They will never except him.
I must be talking to the same people you are. When presented with facts they deny they are facts, or just ignore them because it doesn’t fit their limited views they get from Fox/am radio. I think some know the facts but it just torques their jaws that the black man in the WH is showing them what leadership is all about. Some, as you say, give some bullshit answer about policies, etc, etc, but they have to know that is a weak answer.
You must be talking with some of my family. They hate Obama and talk of the need for a smaller government as they cash their SS checks and go to see their doctors through their Medicare benefits. So, since Obama ordered the successful strike against bin Laden they:
1. Say we need to give the military all of the credit.
2. Feel Obama is self serving because he kept patting himself on the back during his speech on Sunday night. I didn’t hear that at all, but then I wasn’t listening with my “I hate Obama ears”.
I find it truly comical, yet unbelievable, how these talking heads on fox keep a straight face as the bile erupts onto the TV screen and runs out onto their front. They should wear bibs or something.
Screw ’em. When they no longer even make a half-hearted attempt to gloss over their twisted propaganda or hide their stupidity, they’ve already crossed the line into fascism. Personally, I’m done being nice.
By Napolitano’s logic, Bush is a war criminal for killing Sadam Hussien’s sons and displaying their dead bodies.