Too late to eat crow with Charles Krauthammer

It is too late to eat crow with Charles Krauthammer, according to the Center for the American Experiment. The conservative Minneapolis think tank’s June 1 annual dinner, with the Washington Post columnist as keynoter, is sold out. I lambasted Krauthammer when the event was announced last January and had no reason to change my tune until yesterday, when I found myself agreeing with large helpings of his column in the Star Tribune titled, “Obama asks: What would W. have done?”

In the piece, Krauthammer helpfully provides a one-stop shop for policies that other conservative columnists have observed Obama carrying over from Bush, starting the list by quoting the National Review’s Victor Davis Hanson, who backed Bush:

The Patriot Act, wiretaps, e-mail intercepts, military tribunals, Predator drone attacks, Iraq (i.e. slowing the withdrawal), Afghanistan (i.e. the surge) — and now Guantanamo.

Krauthammer adds, in a paraphrase of conservative Jack Goldsmith in the New Republic:

rendition — turning over terrorists seized abroad to foreign countries; state secrets — claiming them in court to quash legal proceedings on rendition and other erstwhile barbarisms; and the denial of habeas corpus — to detainees in Afghanistan’s Bagram prison, indistinguishable logically and morally from Guantanamo.

For Krauthammer, who led a staggering recent run of pro-torture columns on the Strib’s op-ed pages with not one but two recent pieces, crow has to be a recommended dietary staple. I’d join him next Monday, but the Center for the American Experiment tells me tickets are gone — from the $25,000 table to the $250 cheap seats.