Today is the third day since 1994 that the United States doesn’t have a Violence Against Women Act in place. That’s right, after nearly two decades of bipartisan support, Congress has allowed VAWA to expire. (Here’s a .pdf of the bill, if you can stand to read it.)

When I say Congress, what I really mean is the House of Representatives. And when I say the House of Representatives, I really mean a small group of batshit crazy conservative Republicans — and specifically House Majority Leader, Republican Eric Cantor. I’m talking about this guy:

Eric Cantor (Republican asshole)

Don’t get me wrong. VAWA isn’t a perfect law. No law is without flaws. And, to be fair, one of Cantor’s complaints about VAWA has some merit. Not much, but some. Cantor and his fellow Republicans complain about a provision of the law that allows immigrant women married to abusive US citizens to gain a temporary (up to four years) residency status while their case is resolved.

Right now you’re probably saying to yourself, Dude, giving abused immigrant women temporary US residency sounds like a good thing. And you’re right, it is — under most circumstances. The physical, emotional, and sexual violence committed against mail-order brides and other immigrant spouses often goes unreported in part because the victims are also threatened with being sent back to their native countries. This provision of the law protects them. However, there have been a small number of immigrant women who have falsely claimed abuse in order to gain a green card. Indeed, this seems to have become a tactic used by some Russian organized crime gangs. There are maybe two or three dozen known or suspected cases of Russian brides making such a claim.

So there are a few legitimate problems with the law. But Eric Cantor and other conservative Republicans aren’t opposed to the law simply because a minor loophole has benefited twenty or thirty Russian immigrants. No, they also oppose it because it offers protections for lesbians and Native American women.

Seriously. I know that sounds completely fucking insane, but I swear I’m not making that up. The guys are actually opposed to extending the law to protect certain groups of women.

Cantor claims his problem with the provisions protecting Native women is that it extends the jurisdiction of tribal justice to include non-Native American men. Right now, if a white guy commits a crime of violence against a Native woman on a reservation — if he beats her, or rapes her, or murders her — tribal police and tribal courts can’t act. The crime has to be reported to Federal authorities, who generally don’t reside on the reservation or have offices on the reservation. So it may take hours for them to respond. Failure to respond quickly means evidence is lost or tainted. Without evidence, prosecutions either fail or, more often, prosecutors simply decline to prosecute.

A report by the General Accounting Office noted that prosecutors declined to bring charges against 52% of the violent crimes reported on reservations. Why? Lack of evidence. What makes this even more serious is the data reported in the Tribal Law and Order Act of 2010:

34 percent of American Indian and Alaska Native women will be raped in their lifetimes

39 percent of American Indian and Alaska Native women will be subject to domestic violence

A third of Native American women will report being raped and/or beaten by domestic partners. Let me repeat that, because it boggles the mind. A third of Native American women will report being raped and/or beaten. Some of those rapists and abusers will be white men. Most of their crimes won’t be reported. Of those that are reported, about half won’t even be prosecuted, primarily because of inadequate evidence collection.

Lisa Marie Iyotte, domestic violence victim/advocate, at signing of the Tribal Law and Order Act of 2010

The new provisions in VAWA gives tribal police and courts some limited authority to investigate and prosecute non-Native Americans accused of domestic violence, sexual assault and other crimes against Native American women on Indian reservations. That’s it. That’s all it does. For some reason, Eric Cantor and his Republican friends think it’s inappropriate for tribal police to investigate white suspects or prosecute white defendants.

As for their opposition to including lesbians in VAWA, the only conclusion I can draw is this: they just don’t care if lesbians get raped or have the shit beat out of them. What other explanation is there?

But I have a suggestion for Eric Cantor. This is my suggestion:

Eric, don’t think of victims of violence in terms of their immigrant status, or their ethnicity, or their sexual preference. Just think of them as victims of violence. Then grow the fuck up and do the right thing. In a few days a new session of Congress will begin. Pass VAWA.

Oh, and really, stop being such a dick.

There’s a very good chance you’ve never heard of Adnan Farhan Abd-al Latif. Wait…make that the late Adnan Farhan Abd Al Latif. He died in September. He died in his cell in a Guantanamo Bay detention center. A couple days after he died, a spokesman for the Department of Defense said “There is no apparent cause [of death], natural or self-inflicted.” No apparent cause of death. He just died, they said. End of story. Go on home, nothing to see here.

Except, of course, it really isn’t the end of the story and there really is something to see, although we might not want to look at it.

Immediately after the terrorist attacks on 9/11/2001, the U.S. cast an exceedingly wide net to catch anybody who might be even remotely connected to the plot. That response was extreme, to be sure, but mostly understandable under the circumstances. What is not understandable and what is indefensible is what the U.S. has done since then.

Adnan Farhan Abd-al Latif

Latif, a citizen of Yemen, was one of the people caught in that wide net. In December of 2001 he was (according to his testimony) traveling to Pakistan to obtain treatment for ongoing neurological issues stemming from an auto accident seven years earlier. He was seized by Pakistani police, who turned him over to U.S. authorities. It’s been widely documented that the CIA offered bounties of between US$7,000 to $25,000 to Afghan tribesmen and Pakistani police for capture of suspected al Qaeda or Taliban fighters. The Pakistanis routinely arrested foreigners and sold them to the U.S.

Latif was shipped to Guantanamo on Jan. 17, 2002 — one of the first people to be detained in Gitmo.The Bush administration claimed that the 779 people detained in Gitmo during the “war on terror” weren’t covered by the Geneva Conventions and therefore could be held without charge, without any due process, and without any sort of judicial review — and they could be held indefinitely. Forever.

The U.S. Supreme Court disagreed, and in 2004 they ordered that Guantanamo detainees were entitled to minimal due process. At the very least they had to be informed of the allegations made to justify their detention and given the right to try to refute them.

Latif was given a hearing in which no evidence was offered to support his detention. He was cleared to be released from custody. That was in 2005. He was cleared for release again in 2007, and once again in 2009. Each time, the release was blocked or delayed. In 2010 Federal District Judge Henry Kennedy Jr. ordered Latif’s release, saying his ongoing detention was unlawful. That ruling was also blocked.

After the first time his release was denied, Latif tried to commit suicide. He tried several times, in fact. He went on hunger strikes, during which he was forcibly fed through a tube inserted in his nose. He spent most of the last five years in solitary confinement, often with his hands in cuffs and his arms pinned to his sides by a body cuff in order to prevent him from more suicide attempts. In September, Latif apparently found a way to finally succeed.

Of the 779 men detained over the years at Guantanamo, only 167 remain there. Most of the detainees were found not to be a threat and were released without charge. About 70 were transferred to detention centers in their native countries. Eight to ten inmates died, several of them by suicide. Of the 167 men who remain, about half have been cleared for release. But they’re still in Gitmo.

“There is no apparent cause [of death], natural or self-inflicted,” says the Department of Defense of Adnan Farhan Abd-al Latif. He was 32 years old. He’d been held without charge at Guantanamo for 10 years, 7 months and 25 days — a third of his life. He’d been cleared for release for more than six years.

There’s a cause of death, right there.

Here’s the problem: ‘energy exploration’ instead of drilling for oil; ‘death tax’ instead of inheritance tax; ‘job creators’ rather than the richest two percent; ‘healthy forests’ and not logging.

energy exploration

Beginning in the 1990s, Republicans discovered that words have power and can shape emotion. Change the words describing a thing, and you can change how a person feels about that thing. You want to frighten people about health care reform? Refer to it as a ‘government takeover of health care’ and start talking about ‘death panels.’

frank luntz

There was nothing new about that idea. Politicians and preachers have been using that trick since the glory days of Greece. What was new was that Republican strategists (and most notably Frank Luntz) began to stress the important of playing on emotion over the formulation of policy. Symbolism began to trump ideas, scandal replaced debate over political positions. Instead of identifying weaknesses in the policies of Democrats, Republicans began using emotional arguments to frighten voters and turn them against their opponents. Even the smallest gesture can be re-interpreted this way; let’s not forget how the Obamas’ post-inaugural speech knuckle dap was turned into a ‘terrorist fist jab.’

terrorist fist jab

The Mitt Romney presidential campaign is the natural result of this approach to politics. He has essentially abandoned any attempt to formulate realistic domestic or foreign policies, opting instead to build a campaign around a few phrases, a handful of buzzwords, and the dissemination of scandal. His policies on jobs revolve around a deliberate misinterpretation of the statement “you didn’t build that.” His foreign policy is the president didn’t use the word ‘terrorism’ to describe the assault on the consulate compound in Benghazi. When that attack was raised during the last presidential debate, Romney didn’t didn’t discuss what sort of security might be appropriate for Benghazi, he was only interested in what words Obama used on what day. Everything is interpreted through a lens attuned to scandal, fear-mongering, and dog-whistle racism.

And hey, it’s working. Frank Luntz is right when he says most people make decisions primarily on emotion, not on intellect. Tonight, when you watch the debate, Romney will talk about being ‘resolute’ and ‘being a staunch friend to Israel’ and ‘standing up to Iran’ and Obama’s mythical ‘apology tour.’ He’ll use a lot of strong words, a lot of emotional words, and almost nothing of substance. He’ll be more concerned with looking and sounding presidential than in offering a coherent view of how the United States should act in the world as it is today. In the world of modern Republicanism, substance is secondary.

Marc Thiessen was a speechwriter for President George W. Bush. He also wrote speeches for Donald Rumsfeld when he was Secretary of Defense. He’s the author of a book (I hesitate to call it ‘non-fiction’) entitled Courting Disaster; How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack. In part, the book argues that the use of torture (redefined as ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’) is legal, moral and effective. Thiessen is associated with the Government Accountability Institute, which is a conservative group that claims to investigate government fraud. He also writes opinion pieces published in the Washington Post.

Recently the Government Accountability Institute issued a report claiming President Obama has ‘skipped half of his intelligence briefings.’ That claim is based on the number of times the president, after reading his daily intelligence briefing, decided he didn’t need a more detailed in-person follow-up briefing. Let me clear about this: there were, in fact, NO skipped briefings; there were only briefings that were sufficiently clear that President Obama didn’t require any additional information.

Marc Thiessen

Thiessen, in a recent Washington Post opinion piece, repeated the ‘Obama skipped half of his intelligence briefings’ claim. Thiessen not only neglected to report the facts on which the misleading claim is made, he failed to note his relationship with the group that made the claim. Right wing bloggers picked up the claim and began to repeat it, without bothering to check its accuracy. American Crossroads SuperPAC, one of Karl Rove’s political attack machines, featured the claim in a pro-Romney campaign advertisement, noting the Washington Post as the source in order to validate the claim. Bloggers, right wing pundits, and contributors to FOXNews began to complain that the ‘mainstream press’ was deliberately ignoring the story.

And now there is a portion of the U.S. population who believes President Obama actually skipped half of his intelligence briefings.

If you ever wonder why a third of the Republican Party believes the president is a secret Muslim, or that he’s a socialist, or that he was born in Kenya — this is why. This is how the Republican Party works these days.