According to The Australian/The Nation, he recently shocked visiting Australian jurists with his extremist musings:
I suggest you read the article fully. Upon reading it this morning, I foreswore my usual second cup of coffee and dashed off the following letter to the Judge, who I pray shall never get closer to SCOTUS than he already is:
Hon. Richard Posner:
Suggest you check in with your cardio-vascular physician, as it is apparent that oxygen is simply not getting to your brain in sufficient supply to ensure optimal brain function. Suggest a carotid artery Doppler Ultrasound.
Each year, Americans kill 36,000 of ourselves on the highway, and we are perfectly happy to accept those losses in order to continue to drive 300 hp SUV's at 80+ mph while chatting on cell phones. Conservatives continue to resist regulation to make vehicles safer.
Each year, Americans kill 36,000 or ourselves with handguns, and we are perfectly happy to accept those losses in order to have free and easy access to deadly handguns and the right to concealed carry. Conservatives allow the assault weapons ban to expire AND fight further regulation of handgun purchases.
Each year, between 90,000 and 120,000 Americans are killed by medical mistake (AMA figures), and we are perfectly happy to accept those losses. In fact, conservatives like yourself attempt to cap damages for the victims and families of the persons killed by medical mistakes based on bogus economic theories of law.
A one-time event kills 3,000 Americans, primarily due to the inability of the President and the fawning sycophants around him to understand what a memo saying "Bin Laden Determined to Strike Inside America" means, and your measured response espoused to visiting jurists is to jettison our time-honored, tested and true means of governance, throw the protections of the Constitution out the window, conduct secret trials absent habeas corpus, etc, etc.
Such a position is a disgrace to the Anglo-American tradition of law, in addition to failing to address the underlying causes of terrorism aimed at the US, to wit: 737 military bases in 130+ countries around the world. In Imperial Hubris, Michael Scheuer documents Osama bin Laden's justifications for strikes against the US, citing US military personnel on Islamic soil in countries around the world REQUIRING Muslims to wage defensive jihad against foreign occupiers.
The US stations troops in many Islamic countries: Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Turkey (secular but Islamic majority). Uzbekistan, Kirghizstan, probably Pakistan, perhaps even Iran. Each such instance is a continuing affront. Can you name one Islamic country that stations troops in a Western or Christian nation?
In many instances, we prop up corrupt and oppressive regimes, e.g., Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iran (until 1979). We spend as much on "defense" as the rest of the world combined, and most of it is used in order to perpetuate corporate hegemony and to guarantee the continued ability to exploit the third world for natural resources we essentially demand at the point of a gun. Why do you support one set of rules for the United States and another for everyone else. Is this simply mindless American exceptionalism, or do you harbor some Straussian fantasies of an elite cognoscenti to be sole arbiters of informed public policy?
People do not hate us for our freedom. They hate us for the exploitation that props up 5% of the populace using 25% of the natural resources, and for our obliviousness to the exploitation that benefits us on a daily basis. For example, we countenance authoritarianism and slave labor in China because the Chinese are kind enough to buy our national debt AND supply Wal-Mart with cheap (albeit occasionally deadly) consumer products.
Your solution to the terror problem is to create a totalitarian police state in which the citizenry is dependent upon the good auspices of its corporately selected leadership, e.g., Bush and Cheney, for Christ's sake, the most incompetent and dangerous fools ever to steer the ship of state, or whomever the next corporate flunky selected by the board of Brave New World, Inc. is. We have already endured a presidency that admits violating Title 50, Ch. 1, Subchapter 36, Section 1800 et seq. of the US Code, and claims that such laws do not apply to the King . .. er . . .the Unitary Executive. Unmitigated balderdash! The Framers must be spinning, as having just deposed a monarch, they were in no hurry to establish another, and were fully aware that Parliament disabused Charles I of such foolish notions in 1649 when they lopped off his head.
Each warrantless wiretap is a felony with a punishment of up to 5 years and a $10,000.00 fine. 1,000 wiretaps = 5,000 years in prison and a $10,000,000.00 fine. A good starting point in the Articles of Impeachment.
If your ruminations on the proper course for the Ship of State are going to continue to be so short-sighted, do us all a favor and don't share them with the public and visiting Aussies. There are impressionable minds who might actually buy into that crap.
Respectfully,
Bob Lewis