Fay Paxton recently posted a blog on the wonders of Obama and the wrongheadedness of Progressives who would criticize him or even worse fail to support him. Not surprisingly, given the almost cliched democratic party liberalism the post enunciated, the editors picked it for the cover, where it has run to the swooning of all manner of OS regulars.

I commented on the blog to the effect that I believed Obama's civil liberties and human rights record has been nothing short of disgraceful, as bad as Bush's in fact, and that since his policies were more than bad, they were evil, I saw no reason progressives should not hold him to account.

Now Paxton, in rehearsing to rebut the litany of criticisms of Obama, nowhere mentioned that he had failed to pull the troops out of Iraq as he promised, but instituted a 5o,000 troop exception, exception being another word for lie. I pointed this out.

Still more seriously, she nowhere confronted the fact that renditions have actually increased under the Obama administration. I pointed this out.

More seriously still, she did not mention the drone warfare that Obama is waging in Northeast Pakistan, resulting in the slaughter of thousands of innocent citizens of an allied country. I pointed this out.

 Most seriously of all, as we all know, the Obama administration has defended a plan to assassinate certain US citizens without trial, without judicial review and without any transparency, claiming the right to pursue this policy in secret. No president in history has ever claimed the right to abridge the civil rights of US citizens to the point of killing them without the least scintilla of legal procedure to legitimate their decision. In a particularly fatuous moment in her post, Paxton waved the criminality ofthis policy off, claiming that we had long sought to assassinate Osama and it made no difference that he isn't a citizen. I pointed out that unlike Osama, a US citizen was protected by the constitution and the bill of rights, which the president was sworn to uphold. I asked her if she could grasp this rather simple distinction. Subsequent comments on her part, while ignoring mine, attested that she could not.

 Since her post reported all the criticisms of Obama she was sick of, I concluded by declaring what I was sick of: to whit, people so besotted in their attachent to either political party or tribe that they a) refused to recognize how far down the road toward a police state we've been going for the past ten years, and are still going, and b)refused to hold to account those who take us there, be he a Bush or an Obama, a democrat or republican.

Fay Paxton did not display the intellectual chops to answer my arguments; she did not display the intellectual courtesy to address my arguments. Well and good. But she also did not display the minimal intellectual and moral courage necessary to leave my arguments, arguments she evidently could not refute, remain part of the conversation. Unable to reckon with my arguments she deleted them. And so, as I have done for right wing blowhards and cowards before, I will do for F. Paxton. I will enshrine her in the blog hall of shame, reserved for those censor points of view they can neither counter nor comfortably leave stand. It has been awhile since I added to the rogue's gallery of gutlessness. But I would invite others who have been treated likewise to do the same. It is important as a matter of principle not to let the weasels control the record.