Meese alert

What a drag it is to be reminded of the enduring presence of Ed Meese. But twice in one day?

Misery loves company, so DB passes the fun to you:

Mercury Rising finds an interesting article about the Pacific Legal Foundation, the right-wingers behind the attacks on Affirmative Action.

Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF), a right-wing legal advocacy group founded in 1973, represents the Seattle parents. In 2001, PLF represented Ward Connerly's American Civil Rights Institute (ACRI) and provided pro-bono counsel to then Calif. Gov. Pete Wilson in a successful effort to expand the scope of Prop. 209, which banned affirmative action in public education, employment and contracting.

[...]

Scaife gave former U.S. attorney general Edwin Meese $1.9 million to start PLF. Between 1985 and 2005, Scaife gave more than $4.5 million to PLF. He is the primary supporter of the Heritage Foundation, of which he is a trustee and Meese a former staff member.

And tonight David Kurtz at TPM locates this interview with the man himself:

Let's move to the Geneva Conventions. A lot of people are concerned that terrorism suspects don't have any kind of habeas corpus.
In order to be covered by the Geneva Convention, you have to fulfill certain requirements. . . . So there are a number of criteria in the Geneva Convention that are not met by everyone on the battlefield. Then there's another category of people going back to the Revolutionary War—people who were in those days called spies. If they were not in uniform, they were subject to being summarily executed.

You mean they were executed without even a military tribunal?
I think there were some. Also, a "tribunal" could be a military commander ordering the hanging. I think that's what happened to some of them.

You're advocating summary execution.
Well, yeah, that happens in the military. Illegal combatants are not entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions.

Will guys like Meese just keep dragging us down forever? Will we ever be able to close the chapter on these Reagan-era power brokers?

Help me, Carl Sandburg:

Limited

I AM riding on a limited express, one of the crack trains
    of the nation.
Hurtling across the prairie into blue haze and dark air
    go fifteen all-steel coaches holding a thousand people.
(All the coaches shall be scrap and rust and all the men
    and women laughing in the diners and sleepers shall
    pass to ashes.)
I ask a man in the smoker where he is going and he
    answers: "Omaha."

UPDATE (No offense, Carl): Digby sums Meese up pretty damn well:

This is the quality of thinking among the "honor and integrity" "grown-ups" for whom everyone in DC circles is still so nostalgic. I frankly don't see anything in that last comment that wouldn't have been perfectly natural coming out of Mary Matalin's or Rush Limbaugh's gaping gobs. He's a sub-standard intellect from a bankrupt political movement who worked for a genial dunce and is now being called in to rescue an arrogant idiot. He is, in other words, the best and the brightest the Republican party has to offer.

Well done.