Hullabaloo

Tuesday, January 24, 2006

 
Foxy Eddie

by digby

Atrios links to the Bob Casey/Ed Rendell endorsement of Alito and it is pretty hard to take. I happened to see Rendell on Fox earlier today (Bill Hemmer's show) and he didn't just endorse Alito. He went out of his way to bash Democrats for being so partisan and failing to recognise that Alito is superbly qualified. Oh, and Bush won the election so he is out King.

He was good little Fox Democrat. I hope they gave him nice chew bone and a scratch behind the ears when he was done.


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digby 1/24/2006 07:24:00 PM |

 
Probable Destruction Of The Fourth Amendment

by digby


Talk Left has an interesting post up about a proposed expansion of the uniformed secret service which is being called a "federal police force."

I guess the FBI, DEA and ATF aren't getting the job done.

But why should they be given the power to "make arrests without warrant for any offense against the United States committed in their presence" ... "or for any felony cognizable under the laws of the United States if they have reasonable grounds to believe that the person to be arrested has committed or is committing such felony."

The last I heard police had to have probable cause to arrest someone. Apparently, the Republicans are trying to change the plain meaning of the fourth amendment.

I hate to get all Godwin, but come on.

Update: Here is what the above link says about reasonable suspicion and probable cause:

Definition of Probable Cause

Many factors contribute to a police officer’s level of authority in a given situation. Understanding the what, when, why, and how of police conduct during a stop is confusing for most people. Varying standards of proof exist to justify varying levels of police authority during citizen contacts. While FyR maintains that it is never a good idea to consent to a search or answer incriminating questions, an understanding of these standards will help the citizen understand when police can surpass constitutional protections.

Reasonable suspicion Facts or circumstances which would lead a reasonable person to suspect that a crime has been, is being, or will be committed

At this stage, police may detain the suspect for a brief period and perform a frisk. In some cases, drug-sniffing dogs may be called to the scene, although officers must cite a reason for suspecting the presence of drug evidence in particular. Refusing a search does not create reasonable suspicion, although acting nervous and answering questions inconsistently can. For this reason, it is best not to answer questions if you have to lie in order to do so. Police authority increases if they catch you in a lie, but not if you refuse to answer questions. As a general rule, reasonable suspicion applies to situation in which police have reason to believe you’re up to something, but they don’t know what it is.

Probable cause Facts or evidence that would lead a reasonable person to believe that a crime has been, is being, or will be committed and the person arrested is responsible

At this stage, police may perform a search, and often an arrest. Probable cause generally means police know what crime they suspect you of and have discovered evidence to support that belief. Common examples include seeing or smelling evidence which is in plain view, or receiving an admission of guilt for a specific crime.

For the conscientious citizen, the best advice regarding police authority is to stick to your guns and not waive your constitutional rights under any circumstances. Police officers will often give misleading descriptions of what their authority is, but you have nothing to gain by submitting to coercive police tactics. Police must make ad hoc decisions in the streets regarding their authority level in a given situation and these decisions are subject to review in court. Asserting your rights properly is good way to avoid arrest, but it is an even better way to avoid a conviction.

Here is what Law.com says:

probable cause

n. sufficient reason based upon known facts to believe a crime has been committed or that certain property is connected with a crime. Probable cause must exist for a law enforcement officer to make an arrest without a warrant, search without a warrant, or seize property in the belief the items were evidence of a crime. While some cases are easy (pistols and illicit drugs in plain sight, gunshots, a suspect running from a liquor store with a clerk screaming "help"), actions "typical" of drug dealers, burglars, prostitutes, thieves, or people with guilt "written across their faces," are more difficult to categorize. "Probable cause" is often subjective, but if the police officer's belief or even hunch was correct, finding stolen goods, the hidden weapon or drugs may be claimed as self-fulfilling proof of probable cause. Technically, probable cause has to exist prior to arrest, search or seizure.


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digby 1/24/2006 03:12:00 PM |

 
Update to the post directly below:

Speaking of writing your own epitaph: It's not the same James A. Baker.

This is particularly galling because I was aware of the earlier flap about James A Baker,even wrote about it, so I checked. When I saw the Wikipedia entry I made the assumption that it was the "real" James Baker this time, "serving quietly" in an oversight position (which I assumed to be kind of like the defense policy board or something.) Wrong, wrong, wrong. Wiki was wrong and I was wrong to have believed it.

Played For A Fool

by digby

I'm sure that most of you have already read Glenn Greenwald's blockbuster catch today in which it's shown that Mike DeWine submitted legislation in 2002 that would have reduced the standard for FISA wiretaps from "probable" to "reasonable" cause, but the administration's own Office of Intelligence Policy argued against it. Needless to say, this blows General Hayden's explanation yesterday out of the water.

One little tid-bit I don't think people may get right away about this is that the man who issued the statement arguing against changing the law is none other than major league heavyweight, James A. Baker III.

Since 2001 he has quietly served as head of the Office of Intelligence Policy and Review. This government agency handles all Justice Department requests for surveillance authorizations under the terms of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, advises the Attorney General and all major intelligence-gathering agencies on legal issues relating to national security and surveillance, and, according to the agency website, "coordinates" the views of the intelligence community regarding intelligence legislation. Baker has often testified before Congress on behalf of Bush administration intelligence policies, and most recently has defended the USA PATRIOT Act before the House Judiciary Committee.

You. Do. Not. Fuck. With. Jim. Baker. Not even Rove would dare try it.

I think Jimbo needs to be added to the witness list as well. Maybe we can "devaaaahn the will of the administration" from him.

In June of 2002, James Baker didn't even believe it was constitutional, necessary or practical to use this "reasonable" standard to wiretap non US citizens. It's very hard to believe that he's changed his mind so much that he now thinks it was fine for the administration to wiretap US citizens without any kind of warrant at all.

He's a very slippery operator. I'm sure he'll come up with something creative to square what the administration was already doing when he made that public judgment. But it's going to have to be mighty creative or he's going to look like an idiot. I don't think James A Baker III likes looking like an idiot.


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digby 1/24/2006 12:01:00 PM |

 
Getting With The Program

by digby


I am really loving the wingnut magnolia wilting over us rude leftist vulgarians. I am tempted to get out my bulging folder filled with examples of right wing cretinism (which I've been collecting for over 15 years) but it's a waste of time. The newsmedia is feeling beseiged by the left and that is an unadultered good thing. Being nice is beside the point.

But it's a pleasure to reprint this e-mail from Rick Perlstein to this little naif over at CBS who seems to think that the left invented swarming the Amazon reviews section:

Cher colleague, you know nothing about Amazon.com and have fallen for a
right-wing propaganda campaign. People have been driving down the ratings of books for ideological reasons since there have been reviews on Amazon, with conservatives in the lead by about half a decade.

I append an article I wrote on the subject in 2000, in which I observed "most conservative books" garner "80 percent five-star ratings and 20 percent one-star, as opposed to pro-Clinton books, which receive 20 percent five-star, 80 percent one-star."

I humbly suggest a correction.

Rick Perlstein

That article was written in 2000.

To those of us not living in a cave for the last decade, the manipulation of book reviews on Amazon by freepers of one ilk or another is not a surprise any more than is right wing manipulation of book sales. I've always kind of admired them for it. For decades the right has had book clubs and book stores and now online book clubs and book stores to promote their own thinkers and writers. They support their idea people explicitly and compensate them well. I think that's a good idea if your job is to persuade people that your idea is better than the other guys' which is what politics is all about.

They also learned very early on to game the system in both the media and in places like Amazon by placing fake "liberals" on TV and radio and creating a false impression in the public's consciousness that conservatism is a much more powerful force than it actually is. They have been using mischief to manipulate the Amazon rating system for years.

This is simply another illustration of the whiny-ass bedwetting that characterizes so much of the right wing. They benefit for years from gaming the system and then faint with the vapors when subjected to their own tactics.

What a shame. Here's a hankie.



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digby 1/24/2006 10:50:00 AM |

 
Reasonable

by digby


Kevin notices something quite important about General Hayden's Q and A yesterday; He said the illegal wiretapping this was not some sort of vague, impersonal data mining:

Hayden stressed that the program "is not a drift net over Dearborn or Lackawanna or Freemont, grabbing conversations that we then sort out by these alleged keyword searches or data-mining tools or other devices that so-called experts keep talking about. This is targeted and focused."

Ok. Good to know. Kevin says:

This was just ordinary call monitoring, according to General Hayden, and the only problem was that both FISA and the attorney general required a standard of evidence they couldn't meet before issuing a warrant. In other words, the only change necessary to make this program legal was an amendment to FISA modifying the circumstances necessary to issue certain kinds of warrants. This would have tipped off terrorists to nothing.

So why didn't they ask Congress for that change? It certainly would have passed easily.

Matt Yglesias surmises that their "reasonable" (as opposed to probable) standard is probably quite elastic. They might just think it's reasonable to monitor any call made overseas by an American of Arab descent. They could, after all, know someone who knows someone who knows Kevin Bacon. In any case, their reason for not working to change the law or finding ways to do this legally is clearly because they knew very well that reasonable people can disagree quite disagreeably about what is reasonable.

For instance, in this week's Newsweek, we learn more about another program the government is using to protect us from terrorists:

The demonstration seemed harmless enough. Late on a June afternoon in 2004, a motley group of about 10 peace activists showed up outside the Houston headquarters of Halliburton, the giant military contractor once headed by Vice President Dick Cheney. They were there to protest the corporation's supposed "war profiteering." The demonstrators wore papier-mache masks and handed out free peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches to Halliburton employees as they left work. The idea, according to organizer Scott Parkin, was to call attention to allegations that the company was overcharging on a food contract for troops in Iraq. "It was tongue-in-street political theater," Parkin says.

But that's not how the Pentagon saw it. To U.S. Army analysts at the top-secret Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA), the peanut-butter protest was regarded as a potential threat to national security. Created three years ago by the Defense Department, CIFA's role is "force protection"—tracking threats and terrorist plots against military installations and personnel inside the United States. In May 2003, Paul Wolfowitz, then deputy Defense secretary, authorized a fact-gathering operation code-named TALON—short for Threat and Local Observation Notice—that would collect "raw information" about "suspicious incidents." The data would be fed to CIFA to help the Pentagon's "terrorism threat warning process," according to an internal Pentagon memo.

Just because one secret government spying program thinks that handing out peanut butter sandwiches outside Halliburton is a threat to national security perhaps we shouldn't jump to any conclusions about this secret NSA program either. But let's just say it makes it "reasonable" for us to have some suspicions. Critics of the president have been told often enough that we are giving aid and comfort to the enemy, which is the explicit constitutional definition of treason.

"The American people know the difference between responsible and irresponsible debate when they see it…. And they know the difference between a loyal opposition that points out what is wrong, and defeatists who refuse to see that anything is right," Bush said.

"I ask all Americans to hold their elected leaders to account and demand a debate that brings credit to our democracy — not comfort to our adversaries," Bush said.

When the president says things like this, how unreasonable is it to demand that somebody oversee his secret program?

I know one person who should be very worried about this now that the NSA has revealed that this is not a random program: Grover Norquist. Needless to day, his "leave us alone" coalition should be supportive of a check on executive power and against warrantless wiretaps on principle alone. But Norquist also happens to be married to a Muslim, had contacts with the Taliban going way back and spent considerable time cultivating the Muslim community in the US as a Republican voting block. He is the prime example of an American who the government could find it "reasonable" to monitor without a warrant.

Perhaps Norquist would like to testify before the senate judiciary committee in the illegal wiretap hearings next month. Aside from proving that he isn't all talk and no action when it comes to privacy and liberty, this could be a very personal issue for him.


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digby 1/24/2006 08:21:00 AM |

Monday, January 23, 2006

 
Liars For Life

by digby


William Schneider did a little blurb earlier today on Blitzer about the Alito nomination in which he said that most people think that Samuel Alito will not vote to overturn Roe vs. Wade:

SCHNEIDER ... Just over a third of the public believes Alito would vote to overturn Roe. While 44 percent believe he would not. That's what shapes opinion on Alito's confirmation. People who favor Alito's confirmation overwhelmingly believe he would not vote to overturn Roe. Those who oppose Alito believe even more strongly that he would vote to overturn Row. But the number of people who believe that is not large enough to turn public sentiment against him.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(on camera): Is there public support for filibuster of Alito's confirmation? By 48 percent to 38 percent the public says a filibuster is not justified -- Wolf.

People who favor Alito's confirmation overwhelmingly believe he would not vote to overturn Roe.

Bullshit. It is absurd to think that the wingnuts who support Alito so fervently don't believe that he will overturn Roe. They are lying.

When I saw an anti-abortion activist appear on NOW a couple of weeks ago I was struck by how deeply and profoundly dishonest she was:

BRANCACCIO: The head of Kansans for Life, Mary Kay Culp has a good reason for watching the big story in Washington this week.

Appeals court judge Samuel Alito did not trip up in any grotesque way this week. The conventional wisdom that dictates these things signals that Alito will soon occupy the swing seat on the Supreme Court. And his rulings could shift the court's position on hot-button issues like abortion.

It's just that kind of shift on the court that Mary Kay Culp and her group in Kansas have been hoping for.

BRANCACCIO: Thanks for coming in.

MARY KAY CULP: Thanks for having me.

BRANCACCIO: Well, looks like Samuel Alito is going to get this. That must, given all the work you've done over these years, make you happy.

MARY KAY CULP: I am glad that President Bush's nominee looks like he's going to make it on the court. Whether or not it's going to make me happy from a pro-life point of view, I think that remains to be seen.

BRANCACCIO: Why are you being tentative? He--

MARY KAY CULP: Well, he looks like he's a real careful-- a real careful, thoughtful, analytical guy, and I like that. And-- because I'm a little tired of this being portrayed as if he has an agenda, that all of a sudden, poof is going to happen if he gets on the court.

BRANCACCIO: Agenda being getting rid of Roe v. Wade?

MARY KAY CULP: Exactly. I don't think that that's going to happen. And if it does, all it means is that the issue comes back to the states.

BRANCACCIO: But, with all the work that you've been doing in Kansas for all these years, don't you think that if it becomes a State's matter that in Kansas like that (SNAP) you'll get rid of abortion? Huh?

MARY KAY CULP: No. I don't. Unh-uh. I don't think that'll happen in the states. But, what can happen is a real discussion. What can happen are committee hearings in your Senate and your House where witnesses are called-- witnesses who have had abortions-- witnesses on both side of the issue. And, it can be heard — the most frustrating thing about Roe is that it just slammed the door. When you try to get a State law passed even to regulate just a little bit, or partial birth abortion, anything, a legislator will tell you-- "Well, you know-- we can't do that under Roe versus Wade anyway."

BRANCACCIO: But you must be encouraged about the way things are going with Samuel Alito? All right, I'll encourage you then.

MARY KAY CULP: Okay.

BRANCACCIO: You know-- Pat Buchanan?

MARY KAY CULP: Uh-huh.

BRANCACCIO: My favorite conservative commentator.

MARY KAY CULP: Yes. Uh-huh.

BRANCACCIO: He said with Alito-- here's the quote from this week.

MARY KAY CULP: Okay.

BRANCACCIO: "Roe could go. George W. Bush is one Justice away from succeeding where Nixon, Ford, his father and even Ronald Reagan all failed."

MARY KAY CULP: That would be - one Justice after Alito.

BRANCACCIO: One Justice after Alito.

MARY KAY CULP: Unless-- not with Alito. Yeah.

BRANCACCIO: So, it's gettin' there.

MARY KAY CULP: Right.

BRANCACCIO: I don't understand how Kansas wouldn't-- ban abortion quit quickly after that. What do you know about the state of that debate in your state...

MARY KAY CULP: It isn't that. It's just that I know how the political system works. Then you can have real discussion. Then every-- both sides are gonna get aired, and if the media's fair about it, both sides are gonna get aired. That-- you know, that's a question. But at least democracy will have a chance to work on it. But, that doesn't necessarily mean anything either way.

But, well, I do know what might happen in Kansas. We have late term abortions in Kansas, and we're known for having late term abortions in Kansas. Those, yes, we might be able to get rid of right away.

BRANCACCIO: But, really there are two questions here. There's the political calculation that I did ask you about. Do you think that Roe v. Wade's going to be overturned and therefore abortion will become illegal? You don't think so. But, what about your goal? Would it make you happier? Is this your vision of America where abortion is illegal.

MARY KAY CULP: It would be nice to know that tomorrow morning no knives are gonna be taken to unborn babies. That'd be a nice thing. But, in order for that to happen and for it to-- to stay in place, I mean, if you just boom turn it around-- without people really understanding the issue, it's not as-- certainly not as satisfying as it happening for the right reasons.

Because, the media in this country becomes unafraid to actually hear both sides of this issue, 'cause that hasn't been the case for 30 years. It's been getting better. But, really it's kind of an interesting dynamic, because-- I didn't notice really a change until a partial birth abortion issue came along in Congress, and that really earns you a lot of credibility. And, then people start to look and listen. And, as we got stronger politically, it's really-- it's amazing how a political win really can draw peoples' attention to an issue.

BRANCACCIO: You know, Mary Kay, from your discussion, though, there are a lot of people who do not like abortion, who want to reduce the number of abortions I America--

MARY KAY CULP: Uh-huh.

BRANCACCIO: But are very concerned about an America where if a woman chooses to do this for whatever complicated reason that they have that choice. You could have some of these States deciding based on a different Supreme Court, "We are gonna outlaw it." And, that means if you got the money, you go to another state. If you don't got the money and your poor, terrible things could happen.

MARY KAY CULP: You know, terrible things are happening right now-- terrible things. But, nobody knows about 'em, because nobody's really looking at the other side of this issue. Terrible things can happen on both sides of this issues, if it's recognized for what it is and the way it impacts a woman's life and impacts society. And that's what I think we need to look at.

There are a lot of mainstream Americans out there that care about this issue. It isn't-- you know-- people can stereotype us and call us names if they want to. You know what? We don't care, because there's just more and more of us, and we're having more of a political effect. And, I hope we'll get some credibility with the media only so that we can look at these issues in a-- in a real way.

BRANCACCIO: Well, Mary Kay Culp, Kansans for Life, thanks for coming in to help us understand where you're coming from and possibly understand where the ascent of Samuel Alito came from.

MARY KAY CULP: Thank you for allowing me to come. I appreciate it.

That woman who believes that abortion is the killing of babies with knives is one slick political operator. She knows that this isn't about any dialog. She knows that Alito will vote to overturn Roe. She knows that the minute Roe is overturned a whole bunch of states will make it illegal. She is lying about all of that.

Why in the hell is it necessary for some woman from Kansas not to tell the truth about her cause or her goals? What is she so afraid of? Why does the born again conservative president have to phone in his support instead of appearing proudly and openly before his pro-life supporters? If this is an issue of deeply felt morality that all Americans are having difficulty dealing with, why can't they just admit openly that they want to outlaw abortion?

We know why:

Only 25 percent of those polled said they believe the precedent should be overturned, while 66 percent said they believe Roe should stand.

Could someone please inform the Democrats that when 66 percent of the public agrees with you on an issue that you can feel confident that you are not losing elections because of that issue?

Pro-life people even at the state level are savvy political con artists who are pretending to be more powerful than they are while lying about their goals. They are operating from a position of weakness not strength. Anybody in politics who is fooled by this crap should be fired.



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digby 1/23/2006 04:28:00 PM |

 
What Creeps Me Out More

by digby


From the future ex-Mrs Limbaugh:

KAGAN: Yes, I'm not doing that. I don't know what creeps me out more, vampires or the idea of Colin Farrell kissing a 14-year-old girl in this other movie, "The New World."

LEATHERMAN: It's really weird. It's a little bit strange.

KAGAN: It's illegal is what it is!

LEATHERMAN: When they made this movie she was 14. And the thing about this movie is everybody knows the plot. It's about the settlers coming over. He plays John Smith, who gets in a relationship with Pochahantas, who was -- the actress was 14 when they made this movie.

This is a Terrence Malick film. He makes a film about one every 27 years.

KAGAN: Yes, that's good.

LEATHERMAN: A lot of people really love his work. I have to tell you, I thought this movie was tedious and slow, boring and slow and slow. It was just -- for the parts of the movie I was awake, Daryn, it was beautiful to look at. But if you're looking for a good snooze, I suggest you go see "The New World."

KAGAN: And you got the biggest womanizer in Hollywood kissing a 14-year-old girl. Pass and pass.

LEATHERMAN: You are angry.

KAGAN: I'm angry about that.

I'm angry that sometimes I turn on my television and this woman appears, instantly bringing to mind a picture of her in bed with that gelatinous pill-popping cretin. And then I throw up a little in my mouth.



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digby 1/23/2006 03:48:00 PM |

 
Tally Me Bananas

by digby


I see that many people are upset about Father Tim's rather odd question this week-end in which he queried Barack Obama about Harry Belafonte. Attaturk defends the Monsignor and rightly so:

Before we get too angry at Li'l Russ

He didn't ask about Harry Belafonte's quotes of just Barak Obama and Colin Powell just because they are African-American.

After all the next time he has Condelezza Rice on, I'm sure he won't ask her about Belafonte.

He'll stick to asking her about what she thinks of Li'l Kim serving time.

I also heard that His Holiness plans to ask Russ Feingold about Barbra Streisand's political contributions, so that's good. It's not like it's a black thing.



Be sure to click the link to Attaturk for an illustration of what we can expect the next time the Secretary of State appears on Press the Meat.


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digby 1/23/2006 03:14:00 PM |

 
Lefties Rule

by digby


How great is it that every blog nominated for best Political Blog in the Bloggies is a member of the left blogosphere?

Wonkette, Kos, Talking Points Memo and Crooks & Liars, Firedoglake

Great blogs, all of them.

That would not have happened just a year or so ago. When I first started lurking around the blogosphere it was pretty slim pickings for libs. I had to pretend that Instapundit was a real libertarian and actually read him because there just wasn't much else. Liberals were way in the wilderness then.

Now a thousand bloggy liberal voices have bloomed. Congratulations to all the nominees.


And pay a little visit to our very own friendly folks at Wampum, too, who are hosting the Koufaxes --- Left Blogistans community awards. And toss them a couple of bucks if you can. They are wonderful people who devote a ridiculous amount of time to doing this every year for us.



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digby 1/23/2006 02:41:00 PM |

 
Tweety's Oeuvre

by digby


If you haven't paid a visit to An Open Letter To Chris Matthews today, check it out. They have gathered quite a list of Tweety's biased (and bizarre) comments.

But come on folks, how could you leave this one out?

I want to see him debate somebody like John Kerry or Lieberman or somebody wearing that jumpsuit ... it was like throwing that strike in Yankee Stadium a while back after 9/11. It's not a stunt if it works and it's real. And I felt the faces of those guys--I thought most of our guys were looking up like they were looking at Bob Hope and John Wayne combined on that ship.

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digby 1/23/2006 02:08:00 PM |

 
Shameless

by digby

I don't know what class in Wingnut U teaches phony sanctimony, but it's clearly a requirement for graduation. Even the father of convicted felon Jack Abramoff has the unmitigated gall to pull a "this is not a goood man" on George Clooney:

He said the lobbyist’s daughter, who was watching the show, was in “a fit of tears” after hearing Clooney’s remarks.

“Are you proud of that?” Abramoff wrote. “Shame on you.”

Huckleberry Graham would be proud. The man whose son, the orthodox Jew, just pled guilty to several felonies and is about to implicate his friends and colleagues in any number of crimes says, "shame on you" to someone who derides him publicly. It clearly didn't even occur to him that he had no legitimate claim to the moral high ground; it didn't occur to him that he should be hanging his head in shame himself. Indeed, he apparently felt entirely justified in publicly protesting that his son's immoral and criminal behavior was the subject of public derision.

No matter how nasty, how ruthless, how cruel or how unjust Republicans are (and they are) they never fail to shamelessly turn on the crocodile tears and blubber into their lace hankies like Miss Manners when Democrats say "enough." They have taken manipulative behavior to its most exalted level. Dems need to jettison the political strategists and start consulting psychologists.


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digby 1/23/2006 11:18:00 AM |

 
Killing Me Softly

by digby

I'm feeling down right now. I know I shouldn't. The fact that Tom DeLay has stepped down is such a huge victory for humanity all by itself that I should be dancing a jig for the next six months. But, I'm down in the dumps, mostly because I am watching George W. Bush repeat his patented mantra for the 514,346th time. It's filled with lies, mischaracterizations and simple-minded gibberish, as always, and I'm watching it go out unfiltered, in its entirety, unchallenged by the media, no Democrats in sight, on every cable channel. I think they are personally trying to drive me crazy.

There is one new wrinkle. Regarding the illegal wiretapping, he just said, "it's amazing to me when people say I just wanted to break the law. If I wanted to break the law why would I brief congress?"

His masterful sound guy is there, compressing the sound, building the audience response to statements like that from a distant chuckle to a soft moan of appreciation, slowly ratcheting it up to a low roar until it reaches a crescendo of ecstatic, sustained hysteria. I think I even saw some rending of garments in the fourth row.

They are going to the 9/11 well again. They say that Democrats are sending talking points to Osama and giving aid and comfort to the enemy. Rove says we don't believe that the government should monitor al Qaeda's telephone calls. The next several months will be spent fending off accusations that if we don't let the president do anything he damned well pleases we are all going to die.

I don't know if it will work again. But I also don't know if I can take this campaign one more time. Five years of hearing the same thing over and over again and watching American sheeple fall for it over and over again is just too depressing. I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to January 20, 2009 (and I'm of an age where rushing the future is no longer wise.) The day I no longer have to listen to one more word from this immoral, dishonest, incompetent, delusional prick will be the best day of my life.



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digby 1/23/2006 10:29:00 AM |

 
They Sound Just Like Osama!

by digby

Bill Sherr reminds me of certain "similarities" between the views of the Republican party and Osama bin Laden:

"Who can forget your President Clinton's immoral acts committed in the official Oval office? After that you did not even bring him to account, other than that he 'made a mistake', after which everything passed with no punishment. Is there a worse kind of event for which your name will go down in history and remembered by nations?"

Absolutely not and I imagine that Osama and his good friends on the right are in complete agreement on this. He's much happier to be fighting Jihad against a man of great personal moral rectitude like George W. Bush.

But then, our president has often called forth language that is similar to that used by bin Laden. Indeed, when you read their words together you would think that we are engaged in a religious war. I noticed this back in 2003 when I wrote a post called Brothers In Weltanschauung:

"We do not claim to know all the ways of Providence yet we can trust in them, placing our confidence in the loving God behind all of life, and all of history. May he guide us now."

In the end, I advise myself and you to fear God covertly and openly and to be patient in the jihad. Victory will be achieved with patience.

I also advise myself and you to say more prayers.

"Our prayer tonight is that God will see us through and keep us worthy," "Hope still lights our way, and the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness will not overcome it."

God Almighty says: "Those who believe fight in the cause of Allah, and those who reject faith fight in the cause of evil."

"There is power -- wonder-working power -- in the goodness and idealism and faith of the American people."

Verily, Allah guideth not a people unjust.

"The American people have deep and diverse religious beliefs, truly one of the great strengths of our country. And the faith of our citizens is seeing us through some demanding times. We're being challenged. We're meeting those challenges because of our faith."

God Almighty says: "Oh ye who believe! If ye will help the cause of Allah, He will help you and plant your feet firmly."

"After we were attacked on September the 11th, we carried our grief to the Lord Almighty in prayer."

Obey Him, be thankful to Him, and remember Him always, and die not except in a state of Islam with complete submission to Allah.

"The role of government is limited, because government cannot put hope in people's hearts, or a sense of purpose in people's lives. That happens when someone puts an arm around a neighbor and says, God loves you, I love you, and you can count on us both."

The jurisdiction of the socialists and those rulers has fallen a long time ago. Socialists are infidels wherever they are, whether they are in Baghdad or Aden

"I ask you to challenge your listeners to encourage your congregations to work together for the good of this nation, to work hard to break down the barriers that have divided the children of God for too long. There is no question that we can rid this nation of hopelessness and despair, because the greatest of America is the character of the American people."

Before concluding, we reiterate the importance of high morale and caution against false rumors, defeatism, uncertainty, and discouragement.

"What I'm saying is, the days of discriminating against religious groups just because they're religious are coming to an end. I have issued an executive order banning discrimination against faith-based charities and social service grants by federal agencies."

Allah is sufficient for us and He is the best disposer of affairs.

"And we are a courageous country, ready when necessary to defend the peace. And today, the peace is threatened. We face a continuing threat of terrorist networks that hate the very thought of people being able to live in freedom."

We also stress to honest Muslims that they should move, incite, and mobilize the [Islamic] nation, amid such grave events and hot atmosphere so as to liberate themselves from those unjust and renegade ruling regimes, which are enslaved by the United States.

"They hate the thought of the fact that in this great country, we can worship the Almighty God the way we see fit. And what probably makes him even angrier is we're not going to change."

Muslims' doctrine and banner should be clear in fighting for the sake of God. He who fights to raise the word of God will fight for God's sake. So fight ye against the friends of Satan: feeble indeed is the cunning of Satan

"We face an outlaw regime in Iraq that hates our country."

Needless to say, this crusade war is primarily targeted against the people of Islam.

"A regime that aids and harbors terrorists and is armed with weapons of mass murder. Chemical agents, lethal viruses, and shadowy terrorist networks are not easily contained. Secretly, without fingerprints, Saddam Hussein could provide one of his hidden weapons to terrorists, or help them develop their own. Saddam Hussein is a threat. He's a threat to the United States of America. He's a threat to some of our closest friends and allies. We don't accept this threat."

We are following up with great interest and extreme concern the crusaders' preparations for war to occupy a former capital of Islam, loot Muslims' wealth, and install an agent government, which would be a satellite for its masters in Washington and Tel Aviv, just like all the other treasonous and agent Arab governments.
This would be in preparation for establishing the Greater Israel.

"My attitude is that we owe it to future generations of Americans and citizens in freedom-loving countries to see to it that Mr. Saddam Hussein is disarmed."

This is a prescribed duty. God says: "[And let them pray with thee] taking all precautions and bearing arms: the unbelievers wish if ye were negligent of your arms and your baggage, to assault you in a single rush."

"It's his choice to make as to how he will be disarmed. He can either do so -- which it doesn't look like he's going to -- for the sake of peace, we will lead a coalition of willing countries and disarm Saddam Hussein."

Regardless of the removal or the survival of the socialist party or Saddam, Muslims in general and the Iraqis in particular must brace themselves for jihad against this unjust campaign and acquire ammunition and weapons.

"But should we need to use troops, for the sake of future generations of Americans, American troops will act in the honorable traditions of our military and in the highest moral traditions of our country."

Amid this unjust war, the war of infidels and debauchees led by America along with its allies and agents, we would like to stress a number of important values

"In violation of the Geneva Conventions, Saddam Hussein is positioning his military forces within civilian populations in order to shield his military and blame coalition forces for civilian casualties that he has caused. Saddam Hussein regards the Iraqi people as human shields, entirely expendable when their suffering serves his purposes."

"...we realized from our defense and fighting against the American enemy that, in combat, they mainly depend on psychological warfare. This is in light of the huge media machine they have. They also depend on massive air strikes so as to conceal their most prominent point of weakness, which is the fear, cowardliness, and the absence of combat spirit among US soldiers.

"America views the Iraqi people as human beings who have suffered long enough under this tyrant. And the Iraqi people can be certain of this: the United States is committed to helping them build a better future. If conflict occurs, we'll bring Iraq food and medicine and supplies and, most importantly, freedom."

In the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate. A message to our Muslim brothers in Iraq, may God's peace, mercy, and blessings be upon you.

"We're called to defend our nation and to lead the world to peace, and we will meet both challenges with courage and with confidence."


If all the world forces of evil could not achieve their goals on a one square mile of area against a small number of mujahideen with very limited capabilities, how can these evil forces triumph over the Muslim world?

"Liberty is not America's gift to the world. Liberty is God's gift to every human being in the world."

God, who sent the book unto the prophet, who drives the clouds, and who defeated the enemy parties, defeat them and make us victorious over them.

"There's an old saying, 'Let us not pray for tasks equal to our strength. Let us pray for strength equal to our tasks.' And that is our prayer today, for the strength in every task we face."

...we remind that victory comes only from God and all we have to do is prepare and motivate for jihad.

"I want to thank each of you for your prayers. I want to thank you for your faithfulness. I want to thank you for your good work. And I want to thank you for loving your country. May God bless you all, and may God bless America."

O ye who believe. When ye meet a force, be firm, and call Allah in remembrance much (and often); That ye may prosper. Our Lord. Give us good in this world and good in the Hereafter and save us from the torment of the Fire. May God's peace and blessings be upon Prophet Muhammad and his household.

Us, them



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digby 1/23/2006 09:47:00 AM |

 
Unbelievable.

by tristero

Photographer Robert Mapplethorpe used to boast that within one year of his coming out and entering the heavy leather gay scene, he had seen every kind of deviance, fetish, and perversion there was to see. Nothing could shock him.

Then again, Mapplethorpe never lived to see the Bush administration. Read it all. And if you don't get it, then read it again.

Got it now? That's right, the Bush administration, in cahoots with the gas and oil industries, has systematically defrauded the US government. To the tune of $700 million for gas royalties alone.

Can't get your head around the leaders of a US administration conspiring to bilk the US government of more than 2/3 of a billion bucks? Neither can I. But that's exactly what's going on.

What Bush's henchmen are doing makes jamming a finger inside another man's penis look like a gentle caress.

(Revised shortly after posting to correct a bad typo on the amount defrauded ($700 million not billion), which required editing out some inappropriate examples. An apology: I read the article in the print edition of the Times and misread the amount. An inexcusable error of fact which I will make every effort not to repeat. During my career as a blogger, I haven't made too many of these careless mistakes -literally around a handful, but if someone has kept track, and I've made more, I'll issue another correction. Nevertheless each one I've learned about has been quickly corrected and a straightforward apology has been offered. Thanks much to the readers who found this one.)
tristero 1/23/2006 06:04:00 AM |

Sunday, January 22, 2006

 
What Molly Says

by tristero

Like Howard Dean, Ivins is saying things that need to be said and saying them the way they need to be::

There are times when regular politics will not do, and this is one of those times.

What kind of courage does it take, for mercy's sake? The majority of the American people think the war in Iraq is a mistake and we should get out. The majority (65 percent) of the American people want single-payer health care and are willing to pay more taxes to get it. The majority (86 percent) favor raising the minimum wage. The majority (60 percent) favor repealing Bush's tax cuts, or at least those that go only to the rich. The majority (66 percent) want to reduce the deficit not by cutting domestic spending, but by reducing Pentagon spending or raising taxes.

The majority (77 percent) think we should do "whatever it takes" to protect the environment. The majority (87 percent) think big oil companies are gouging consumers and would support a windfall profits tax. That is the center, you fools. Whom are you afraid of?

I listen to people like Rahm Emanuel superciliously explaining elementary politics to us clueless naifs outside the Beltway ("First, you have to win elections"). Can't you even read the damn polls?

Here's a prize example by someone named Barry Casselman, who writes, "There is an invisible civil war in the Democratic Party, and it is between those who are attempting to satisfy the defeatist and pacifist left base of the party and those who are attempting to prepare the party for successful elections in 2006 and 2008."

Oh come on, people — get a grip on the concept of leadership. Look at this war — from the lies that led us into it, to the lies they continue to dump on us daily...

Bush, Cheney and Co. will continue to play the patriotic bully card just as long as you let them. War brings out the patriotic bullies. In World War I, they went around kicking dachshunds because they were "German dogs." They did not, however, go around kicking German shepherds. The minute someone impugns your patriotism for opposing this war, turn on them like a snarling dog and explain what loving your country really means. Or eviscerate them with wit (look up Mark Twain on the war in the Philippines). Or point out the latest in the endless "string of bad news."

Do not sit there cowering and pretending the only way to win is as Republican-lite. If the Washington-based party can't get up and fight, we'll find someone who can.

tristero 1/22/2006 10:27:00 AM |

 
This Is How Dems Should Talk When They're Being Charitable To Republicans

by tristero

Governor Dean:

"Karl Rove only has a White House job and a security clearance because President Bush has refused to keep his promise to fire anyone involved in revealing the identity of an undercover CIA operative," said Dean. "Rove's political standing gets him an invitation to address Republicans in Washington, DC today, but it doesn't give him the credibility to question Democrats' commitment to national security. The truth is, Karl Rove breached our national security for partisan gain and that is both unpatriotic and wrong."

tristero 1/22/2006 10:03:00 AM |

Saturday, January 21, 2006

 
When Will The Times Stop Kowtowing To Creationists?

by tristero

Judith Shulevitz in tomorrow's Times Book Review continues the utterly disgraceful NY Times coverage of evolution and "intelligent design" creationism. Shulevitz lets some creationist from Discovery rail against Judge Jones' brilliant decision in Kitzmiller v. Dover for somehow imposing his religious opinions on others. You'd never guess that during the trial, this very same judge listened patiently for hours while creationist "experts" demonstrated from their own words that "intelligent design" was just a new phrase for the same old creationism and that in fact these same "experts" had repeatedly stated that "intelligent design" was invented to bring religious ideas back into public schools. She neglected to mention that one of these brilliant "scholars" was so ignorant of what science is, he asserted that by his definition, astrology would be considered a science. And you'd never guess that some of the instigators of the "intelligent design" creationism initiative in Dover were so deceitful in their answers and behavior that the judge made a point of declaring calling them out and out liars.

And then there are Shulevitz's mistakes. She writes:

Darwin...realized that if he were to turn his theories into a credible science, he'd have to avoid ascribing a higher merit to those who won out in the battle for life.

But earlier Shulevitz (mis-)described Darwin's theory of natural selection as "the continual culling of less fit forms of life that drives evolution forward," ie, precisely the kind of oversimplified, easily mistaken, Spencerian formulation of evolution Darwin was trying to avoid.

Shulevitz then discusses Michael Ruse's contention that there's a quasi-religious movement among scientists called "evolutionism," which apparently is a "partly secularized postmillennialist" movement. The problem with this is that as far as I know of no scientist when discussing either evolution or their thoughts about how evolution might - repeat might - impact ethics, politics, and culture has ever tried to bring discussions of when the Son of God will return (and what we need to do to hasten that happy day) into the discussion. It doesn't work, even as metaphor, as Shulevitz suggests.

No matter. Shulevitz nevertheless accepts the existence of an evolutionism religious cult:

[T]he notion that evolution equals progress still runs through many evolutionary theorists' works and public statements, giving them, at times, a curiously spiritual feel.

But she fails to provide a single example. I've read Ruse's The Evolution-Creation Struggle, the book she discusses, and I can't remember detecting a "spiritual feel" behind any of the remarks Ruse describes as "evolutionistic." And I recall being quite unimpressed with the notion that there was any coherent religious or philosophical system in the extra-scientific musings he quoted, even from such known firebrands as Dawkins. It all seemed more ad hoc than "spriitual."

Finally, Shulevitz winds up saying, sure, teach science in science class - good for her! But were it not for the IDiots and their tomfoolery, that would go without saying. And then:

Teach evolution in biology class and evolutionism in religion class, along with creationism, deism and all the other cosmologies that float unexamined through our lives.

But Judith, how can you teach "evolutionism" as a religion if there is no such thing, outside of Ruse's dubious ruminations?!?

In short, Shulevitz, and the Times in general, continue to mis-cast the battle over teaching "intelligent design" creationism as one between two sides, religion or science. This mischaracterization persists despite considerable evidence that it is simply not the case that this is a religion/science clash of civilizations. Rather, it really is a fight between a handful of well-funded lunatics clamoring to make their particular religion - and no one else's - a State religion and the rest of us, who know that that is one of the stupidest fucking ideas ever.

(I'll leave the interesting subject of whether creationism is a fit subject even for a religion class to another post. For now, I'll just say that in some overlooked testimony during Kitzmiller, a Christian theologian and scholar cast considerable doubt on creationism's viability as an intelligible theology. In short, creationism is to theology as astrology is to astronomy: not worth the time and effort to study. )
tristero 1/21/2006 09:59:00 AM |

Friday, January 20, 2006

 
Hotshots

by digby


So Tweety introduced a new feature today called the "Hardball Hotshots" with Joe Scarborough, Tucker Carlson and Rita Cosby --- two wingnuts and a babbling tabloid airhead. They all agreed that bin Laden was parroting Michael Moore, John Kerry and Ted Kennedy in his tape yesterday.

No apologies. In fact, quite the opposite. Chris did say that he'd been misunderstood, but he didn't elaborate. They all agreed that it was going to help the president.

(Remind me. Whose side is bin Laden supposed to be on again?)


They also agreed that Hillary was incredibly offensive with her plantation statement. Rita was particularly shocked because she's from the south. No comment yet from anyone in the media about all the prominent Republican references to the "Democratic Plantation." Perhaps those comments aren't offensive because it only refers to African Americans who are supposed to be too stupid to know which party better serves their interests. Hillary was beyond the pale. She accused white southern males of running a plantation. In Limbaugh Nation, that's racist you see.


Hardball:

(202) 824-6707

Tell Chris Matthews
what you think.


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digby 1/20/2006 03:18:00 PM |

 
Update

Apparently the number for Hardball is:

(202) 824-6707

Just in case.






thanks again to uggabugga
digby 1/20/2006 01:49:00 PM |

 
Limbaugh Nation

by digby


A commenter alerted me to this article in The American Prospect that explains why the Democrats picked Tim Kaine to give the Democratic response at the State of the Union: he speaks in religious moral terms. Good to know.

But the article is interesting because it profiles a new and influential polling and analysis group that is trying to change the way the Democrats look at the electorate. And as far as I can tell, the Democrats (or maybe just the author) are taking the wrong lessons from them.

Here's the story:

In April 2005, Nordhaus left his job at the opinion research firm Evans/McDonough Company to start, along with Shellenberger, an American branch of the Canadian market research behemoth Environics, which specializes in the study of consumer behavior, right down to the level of “neighborhood lifestyle segmentation.” Though such data are not collected on behalf of political figures, it’s the kind of information political operatives often use to slice and dice the electorate into ever thinner pieces. Similar data allowed Republicans in 2004 to make sure they targeted last-minute calls and fliers to domestic SUV-drivers, subscribers to hunting magazines, and women who watch Will and Grace. American Environics intended to use the detailed data its parent company had collected since 1992 for a different purpose, however: to challenge progressive interest-group orthodoxies and the progressive movement itself.

In the great debate about how Democrats can stage a comeback (beyond simply waiting for the coming Republican implosion that never seems to arrive), American Environics rejected some of the more popular recommendations out there. Rather than focusing on reframing the Democratic message, as Berkeley linguistics and cognitive science professor George Lakoff has recommended, or on redoubling Democratic efforts to persuade Americans to become economic populists, as another school of thought suggests, the American Environics team argued that the way to move voters on progressive issues is to sometimes set aside policies in favor of values. By focusing on “bridge values,” they say, progressives can reach out to constituents of opportunity who share certain fundamental beliefs, even if the targeted parties don’t necessarily share progressives’ every last goal. In that assessment, Shellenberger and Nordhaus are representative of an increasingly influential school of thought within the Democratic Party.

Nothing too revolutionary there, you say? Well, no, when described in that predictable way. We all love values. Values are, in fact, the basis of all poltiics. What a good idea. Let's talk values. The article also (for inexplicable reasons) spends a great deal of time discussing the data produced by Stanley Greenberg who, like clockwork, interviews a bunch of rural voters in Arkansas and finds out that they care more about gay marriage than putting food on the table. Which means we will lose because of values and we need to get some. (Those of us who disagree with the rural Arkansans are assumed to have no values, apparently.)

But the article skews that way for reasons that have little to do with the study. Here's what Environics actually found out and it's quite interesting:

Looking at the data from 1992 to 2004, Shellenberger and Nordhaus found a country whose citizens are increasingly authoritarian while at the same time feeling evermore adrift, isolated, and nihilistic. They found a society at once more libertine and more puritanical than in the past, a society where solidarity among citizens was deteriorating, and, most worrisomely to them, a progressive clock that seemed to be unwinding backward on broad questions of social equity. Between 1992 and 2004, for example, the percentage of people who said they agree that “the father of the family must be the master in his own house” increased ten points, from 42 to 52 percent, in the 2,500-person Environics survey. The percentage agreeing that “men are naturally superior to women” increased from 30 percent to 40 percent. Meanwhile, the fraction that said they discussed local problems with people they knew plummeted from 66 percent to 39 percent. Survey respondents were also increasingly accepting of the value that “violence is a normal part of life” -- and that figure had doubled even before the al-Qaeda terrorist attacks.

Lumping specific survey statements like these together into related groups, Nordhaus and Shellenberger arrived at what they call “social values trends,” such as “sexism,” “patriotism,” or “acceptance of flexible families.” But the real meaning of those trends was revealed only by plugging them into the “values matrix” -- a four-quadrant plot with plenty of curving arrows to show direction, which is then overlaid onto voting data. The quadrants represent different worldviews. On the top lies authority, an orientation that values traditional family, religiosity, emotional control, and obedience. On the bottom, the individuality orientation encompasses risk-taking, “anomie-aimlessness,” and the acceptance of flexible families and personal choice. On the right side of the scale are values that celebrate fulfillment, such as civic engagement, ecological concern, and empathy. On the left, there’s a cluster of values representing the sense that life is a struggle for survival: acceptance of violence, a conviction that people get what they deserve in life, and civic apathy. These quadrants are not random: Shellenberger and Nordaus developed them based on an assessment of how likely it was that holders of certain values also held other values, or “self-clustered.”

Over the past dozen years, the arrows have started to point away from the fulfillment side of the scale, home to such values as gender parity and personal expression, to the survival quadrant, home to illiberal values such as sexism, fatalism, and a focus on “every man for himself.” Despite the increasing political power of the religious right, Environics found social values moving away from the authority end of the scale, with its emphasis on responsibility, duty, and tradition, to a more atomized, rage-filled outlook that values consumption, sexual permissiveness, and xenophobia. The trend was toward values in the individuality quadrant.

No kidding. Is the culture growing more coarse? Check. Cruel? check. Nihilisitic? check. Xenophobic? check. Consumption worshipping? check. Sexist? check. Rage filled? check. Hmmmm.

Exactly my point! This is no different than what happens at the skull and bones initiation and we're going to ruin people's lives over it and we're going to hamper our military effort, and then we are going to really hammer them because they had a good time. You know, these people are being fired at every day. I'm talking about people having a good time, these people, you ever heard of emotional release? You of heard of need to blow some steam off?"

This is a very revealing portrait of what's happening in America and it explains some things about why the right is so successful. And it's the opposite of what everybody says it is. It isn't because they've become more moral and religious. It's because they've fostered and exploited extremism, nihilism and cruelty. After all, if it was the libertine culture of "Brokeback Mountain" or "unwed motherhood" or (gasp) abortion that was creating this shift, you'd think we would have benefitted, not them. For all their crowing about traditional values, it's the right that has embraced decadence, sadism, vice and corruption.

Yes, it's a trend. It started years ago when the feminist movement decided that their best friends were going to be German shepherds. You know. So that's -- well, it's true. You go to the right airports and you can see it.

I have little doubt that most of the people who listen to Rush also believe that they are good practicing Christian conservatives. And many Christian conservatives probably don't listen to him. But they listen to this:

You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war.

And this:

How about group marriage? Or marriage between daddies and little girls? Or marriage between a man and his donkey? Anything allegedly linked to civil rights will be doable, and the legal underpinnings for marriage will have been destroyed." Now, that's more or less a prophecy. Not a divine prophecy, but a prediction.

Notice how Limbaugh and the preachers pander to the depraved imagination? It's not religious values these people are selling. They are selling a brutal, domineering, degenerate culture, making their listeners and viewers wallow in it, plumbing the depths of the subconscious, drawing forth Goyaesque images of bestiality and violence and death. That's a feature of some religions, to be sure, but it's not the nice upright Christian morality everybody's pretending it is.

If the culture is careening into a crude, dog-eat-dog corrupt "Pottersville" it's because the greedheads and the juvenile authoritarian thugs, whether in street gangs or talk radio or K Street, have taken it over. And it is hard for liberals to counter this because our bedrock values include tolerance, free expression and personal autonomy and that enables this decadent turn in many ways. But let's make no mistake, it is only on the right that purveyors of brutal, sadistic, depraved political discourse are welcomed into the houses, offices and beds of the nation's political leadership.

I'm not sure what the answer to this is, but I know that this is where the real political problem for Democrats lies. So, perhaps we can stop bullshitting ourselves that we can solve this problem by speaking in rightwing approved religious language and pulling our punches on abortion. That is not the real reason the right is winning and we won't win that way either. Religion is cover for these people. Rush Limbaugh is the guiding spirit of the Republican Party.

LIMBAUGH: And these American prisoners of war -- have you people noticed who the torturers are? Women! The babes! The babes are meting out the torture...You know, if you look at -- if you, really, if you look at these pictures, I mean, I don't know if it's just me, but it looks just like anything you'd see Madonna, or Britney Spears do on stage. Maybe I'm -- yeah. And get an NEA grant for something like this. I mean, this is something that you can see on stage at Lincoln Center from an NEA grant, maybe on Sex in the City -- the movie. I mean, I don't -- it's just me.

When Limbaugh came under fire for those vulgar comments, the leading lights of the Republican party quickly came to his defense.

Rush's angry, frustrated critics discount how hard it is to make an outrageous charge against him stick. But, we listeners have spent years with him, we know him, and trust him. Rush is one of those rare acquaintances who can be defended against an assault challenging his character without ever knowing the "facts." We trust his good judgment, his unerring decency, and his fierce loyalty to the country he loves and to the courageous young Americans who defend her. For millions of us, David Brock is firing blanks against a bulletproof target.

— Kate O'Beirne is Washington Editor for National Review.

Figure out how to deal with that and we might be able to make some headway.




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digby 1/20/2006 01:07:00 PM |

 
Liberals Are Not Religious Fundamentalists

by digby

It's a contradiction in terms. Comparing liberals like Michael Moore to Islamic fundamentalist terrorists is calumny in every possible way. Islamic fundamentalism is the antithesis of liberalism. It's not funny and it's not cute when influential pundits try to make points by comparing the two. I'm sick of it.

Tell Chris Matthews you want an apology, by dropping by this board and leaving your remarks. He'll read it. MSNBC has been getting an earful.



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digby 1/20/2006 09:37:00 AM |

 
Response To Kevin Drum

by tristero

Kevin asks liberal bloggers to respond to a hypothetical and I will cheerfully do so, although my argument won't please Kevin, I think:

For the sake of argument, let's assume that we had pretty good intelligence telling us that a bunch of al-Qaeda leaders were in the house we bombed. And let's also assume that we did indeed kill al-Masri and several other major al-Qaeda leaders. Finally, let's assume that the 18 civilians killed in the attack were genuinely innocent bystanders with no connection to terrorists.

Question: Under those assumptions, was the attack justified? I think the answer is pretty plainly yes, but I'd sure like to see the liberal blogosphere discuss it. And for those who answer no, I'm curious: under what circumstances would such an attack be justified?

My answer, which will surprise no one who knows my writing, is that what Kevin has written is so loaded that it is utterly incoherent as a spur to an honest discussion of terrorism and what to do about it. The only appropriate way to answer is ask the questions that should be asked in the first place, the ones that are being sidestepped. To explain:

Although it seems there are two questions here, there are exactly no real questions being asked. In fact, Kevin simply has crafted a blunt accusatory phrased as a question which can only elicit one possible answer: his. He's really saying, roughly, "You'd be out of your mind not to bomb them, even if 18 innocents died. Thousands, if not millions, of lives, will be spared."

The question, "Was the attack justified?" is not meant to be seriously disputed and a little bit of thought will show that it never can be. Let's just say you answer no and with tremendous eloquence you discuss the morality of it, invoking not only the Bible, but the Bhagavad Gita and a few scientific studies of moral dilemmas. It's all meaningless, for all Kevin needs to do is follow up with, "Okay, let's say the people in that building were putting the finishing touches on a plan to nuke Boston. Would you now say it's justified?" And if that doesn't change your mind, Kevin can simply continue to up the ante - in the house, say, was enough Chemical W to obliterate the Midwest for generations. Eventually, even you will be forced to abandon your objections.

But what happens if you agree with Kevin that the attack was justified? Well, an opponent can easily play this game, too. Simply respond with the opposite extension of the hypothetical. "Okay, let's say those 18 killed included your Mom, your Dad, your brother, two sisters, and your favorite cousins. Was it still justified to attack that house?" And sooner or later you will end up saying, no it wasn't justified.

And around and around you'll go, fine tuning the hypothetical to provide you with exactly the answer you want. It only looks like a moral dilemma but really, it isn't. A moral dilemma happens in the real world, not in hypothetical situations. Kevin's hypothetical is a setup. In fact, and this really should be patently obvious, it isn't even Kevin's hypothetical, but the Bush administration's, a hypothetical they are asserting actually occurred. And while they're marketing it as likely fact, this situation doesn't resemble genuine moral dilemmas I know, which are far more complex than a carefully constructed hypothetical which this clearly is. In other words, the story of the attack and its justification is a lie.

The question Kevin asked is precisely the one Bush wants us to ask. They have composed this "justification" for the attack which they expect will meet the minimum standards necessary for some dispassionate observers to conclude that yes, it just might be worth it to have unfortunately killed all those innocent civilians. But the closer you look at the story, how it developed, how it's being described, the more bogus it seems. For example:

Mysteriously, the bodies of the targeted terrorists were removed before they could be identified. The US government, quite skillfully, has refused to confirm or deny the latest Pakistani story which originally contended it was al Zawahiri but now it's a mad bomber genius, al Qaeda's own Unabomber, who was - ever so ironically - blown to bits. Surely, that's worth 18 innocent lives, yes?

And that, plus other peculiarities, is why I don't believe a word of it. It's too pat, too perfect a concretization of a carefully crafted arm chair accusatory skewed towards only one right answer - Bush's - and as details emerge it can be easily adjusted to make that answer even more inevitable. And tellingly, the structure of the Pakistan assertion combined with a US refusal to confirm easily enables the story to be disowned a few months from now, when no one's paying much attention.

Am I saying that there is no way in hell the story put out by the Pakistanis and the Bushies could be true? What I'm saying is this: the story of 18 innocents sacrificed to eliminate an Evil Bombing Genius is so perfectly tailored to fit the moral theorizing of amateur philosophers rather than any possibly real conflict with al Qaeda that it resembles more the fake Jessica Lynch heroism stories than the real Lynch story.

This is merely Bush propaganda at its most cynical and crude. Frankly, I'm amazed that Kevin asked precisely the question Bush wanted us to ask, a question posed only so that outrage over American bombing of civilians - a war crime if deliberate - would dissipate. I'm also amazed, in fact saddened, that PZ Myers didn't realize this was was a con and chose to respond as if it were a serious question designed to "engage" a debate about national security and its tradeoffs. PZ didn't realize the fundamental bogosity of the question.

But while Kevin may be naive when it comes to accepting the terms of the Bush administration for debate - and he is, as his pre-invasion support for the war shows - he is no Bushite. In fact he is probably after a deeper question here: How should al Qaeda be confronted? What techniques and strategies will not only neutralize al Qaeda's ability to strike but eliminate al Qaeda-ism as a serious danger? That's a question I'd like not only liberal bloggers to discuss; I'd like the government of the United States to address it directly instead of spewing an endless stream of third rate propaganda intended only to make it impossible for their domestic political opponents to object to their cockmamie plans.

Perhaps Kevin is also posing a meta-question here: How can liberals construct narratives that are rhetorically as slippery as the rightwing, like this one about the botched bombing? That is another very good question. Personally, I lean towards crisply telling the truth no matter where the chips land. I'm not sure much more is required to bring down Bush and Bushism for good. It would be nice if a political party did that in a consistent fashion, just as an experiment some time.

(updated immediately after posting to fix grammar and clarify some subsidiary points.)
tristero 1/20/2006 08:09:00 AM |

 
The Best Response To The Democrats' SOTU Response

by tristero

When you're asked to donate to the Democratic party, just remember that your dollars are paying the salaries of the idiots who decided that this man was the appropriate person to deliver the response to Bush's 2006 State of the Union address.

Don't get me wrong. There are some great Americans in the Democratic party - Dean, Kerry, Pelosi, Obama - make your own list. But something is seriously - major seriously - askew with the plumbing behind the scenes. And Dean, even as head of the party, won't be able to fix it. In short, Daou's an optimist.

What to do? I suggest donating to another organization that recognizes exactly how serious a danger Bushism represents an organization that's shown they will fight tooth and nail against it. I'm suggesting that such an organization could then use its financial and electoral clout to demand the Democrats fire every last strategist, consultant, and adviser who was involved in the inexcusable losses of the 2002 and 2004 elections and hire new people who are prepared to implement a winning strategy.

What NOT to do? Don't forgo political donations - give them to groups that you think matter. Don't drop out and refuse to vote - every vote counts. Most importantly, don't, for a moment, hold on to the delusion that the Democrats, as presently run, are a viable national second party. They're not, and we're going to have to work like hell to create a national party that can confront the Republicans and marginalize the extreme right.

One personal note. I truly hate having to blog about this issue. I'm no purist, I'm not a Naderite, a radical. I'm a moderate liberal. I recognize that a national strategy opposed to Bush can't possibly address many of the issues I care about. I understand that I will inevitably disagree with positions taken to attract a more conservative voter than myself.

But what the Democratic advisers are doing isn't wise strategy designed to appeal to the center. It's sheer stupidity and incoherence. And if bloggers don't speak out - loudly - then no one will. Although our influence is genuinely trivial, it is not zero. And so we must protest in the hopes that someone, somewhere, will read what we say and perhaps try in some small way to turn the Democrats around so that the US can once again become a two party democracy.
tristero 1/20/2006 06:43:00 AM |

 
Timing Is Everything

by tristero

It looks like some Gooper brownshirt was a bit ahead of his time in his offer of a $100 to any student willing to record the lectures of politically "suspect faculty." Another few years, at the most, and CNN will instead describe them as "deviant faculty" and some earnest Ralph Reed clone will say that if professors have nothing to hide, then they won't object to having their lectures taped and sold to watchdog organizations. And after a while, no one will care and eyes will roll at dinner parties if anyone is politically correct enough to question its morality.
tristero 1/20/2006 03:30:00 AM |

Thursday, January 19, 2006

 
One of The Boys

by digby


Just this morning, in honor of Matthews and Imus sharing masculine chuckles over "that movie" I took a little trip down Hardball lane and relived those glorious days of yore when Tweety and the Sycophants sang their song of manly love to Commander Codpiece and Big Dick Cheney.

A commenter later pointed out that Tweety has been socializing with GOP mouthpiece Ed Rogers, celebrating the impending nuptials of objective reporter Campbell Brown and her fiance Dan Senor, former professional GOP spokesliar for Viceroy Bremer. (He had been promoted from Ari Fleischer's harem.) Tweety gushed at how much fun he'd had hanging with the wingnuts:

MATTHEWS: Dee Dee, you're great to come on. Ed Rogers, same to you.

Thanks for the party the other night.

ROGERS: Enjoyed having you.

MATTHEWS: (inaudible) Brown and her husband about to be.

This was after a ridiculous segment in which Tweety let Rogers spin like Tonya Harding on meth about the goddamned plantation nonsense, while Dee Dee Myers (typically unprepared) apologized for Hillary and babbled nonsensically about Democrats being in the minority.

That's all within a 24 hour period. But that wasn't the end of it. Tonight he said that Osama bin Laden sounds like Michael Moore (via Crooks and Liars):

I mean he sounds like an over the top Michael Moore here, if not a Michael Moore. You think that sells...

Come on. This is ridiculous. This man is either working overtime to kiss right wing ass for some reason or he's been paid off to do full-on GOP character assasination. This is exactly what the Republicans did to Tom Daschle and Max Cleland.

This comparing liberals to Osama bin laden has been going on long enough. We don't want to subjugate women and kill gays. We don't want to turn free societies into theocracies and inflict a particular religious doctine on everyone. We don't see geopoliticc through the lens of religious revelation and compel others to act upon it. It is beyond absurd to keep comparing liberals, any of us, to religious fundamentalist terrorists.

Peter Daou calls for an apology and I agree that it's long overdue:

Bin Laden sounds like Clint Eastwood" -- "Bin Laden sounds like Ron Silver" -- "Bin Laden sounds like Rush Limbaugh" -- "Bin Laden sounds like Bill O'Reilly"-- "Bin Laden sounds like Mel Gibson" -- "Bin Laden sounds like Bruce Willis" -- "Bin Laden sounds like Michelle Malkin"... Imagine the outrage on the right and in the press (but I repeat myself) if a major media figure spat out those words. Well, on Hardball, Chris Matthews just blurted out that Bin Laden sounds like Michael Moore. Simple: Matthews should apologize. On the air. This has NOTHING to do with Michael Moore and everything to do with how far media figures can go slandering the left. And last I checked, Michael Moore didn't massacre thousands of innocent Americans.

Golly gee, I only wish that I had Monsignor Tim's number and could call and report Tweety's transgressions as Scooter Libby did. Scooter's complaint got a call from the padre to the president of NBC news and I'm pretty sure Matthews got a trip to the woodshed.

But a few thousand emails from readers demanding an apology might just get somebody's attention too:

Hardball@msnbc.com

MSNBC

www.msnbc.com
world@msnbc.com

One MSNBC Plaza
Secaucus, NJ 07094
Phone: (201) 583-5000
Fax: (201) 583-5453


NBC News

www.nbc.com

30 Rockefeller Plaza
New York, NY 10112
Phone: (212) 664-5900
Fax: (212) 664-2914



By the way: Tweety's tied to the Abramoff probe. He happily raised money for one of Casino Jack's front groups. And he's gone out of his way to trivialize the unprecedented bribery, shakedowns and protection racket his best pals have been engaged in. I'm just sayin'


Update: Thank you John Kerry.

"You'd think the only focus tonight would be on destroying Osama Bin Laden, not comparing him to an American who opposes the war whether you like him or not. You want a real debate that America needs? Here goes: If the administration had done the job right in Tora Bora we might not be having discussions on Hardball about a new Bin Laden tape. How dare Scott McClellan tell America that this Administration puts terrorists out of business when had they put Osama Bin Laden out of business in Afghanistan when our troops wanted to, we wouldn't have to hear this barbarian's voice on tape. That's what we should be talking about in America." -- John Kerry

Update II: Americablog, Daily Kos, firedoglake, and MYDD have all issued a call for apology as well.


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digby 1/19/2006 06:48:00 PM |

 
Keepers of The Flame

by digby


Garance at TAPPED writes today about the Patriots to Restore Civil Liberties and cautions the Democrats not to get too excited about guys like Grover Norquist or Paul Weyrich leaving the Republican coalition over Bush's disregard for civil liberties.

I have no idea if she was referring to my post among those she admonishes, but I think it's worth clarifying anyway. My point was not that Grover and company were going to leave the Republican Party, but that they were laying the groundwork for purging others from the coalition. They will not do this while Bush is in office, for obvious reasons, but they are beginning to make the case that Bush was not a "real conservative" and therefore anything he did while in office cannot be defined as "conservatism." They do this whenever a politican becomes unpopular.

I linked to Rick Perlstein's post on HuffPo from a while back in which he tells of his speech to the conservative cabal that was meeting at Princeton late last year:

This past year, I interviewed Richard Viguerie about conservatives and the presidential campaign. I showed him an infamous flier the Republican National Committee had willingly taken credit for, featuring a crossed-out Bible and the legend, "This will be Arkansas if you don't vote." "To do this," Viguerie told me, "it reminds me of Bush the 41st, and not just him, but other non-conservative Republicans."

Republicans are different from conservatives: that was one of the first lessons I learned when I started interviewing YAFers. I learned it making small talk with conservative publisher Jameson Campaigne, in Ottawa, Illinois, when I asked him if he golfed. He said something like: "Are you kidding? I'm a conservative, not a Republican."

But back to Viguerie's expression of same. With a couple of hours' research I was able to find a mailer from an organization that was then one of his direct-mail clients that said "babies are being harvested and sold on the black market by Planned Parenthood."

Why not cut corners like this, if you believe you are defending the unchanging ground of our changing experience?

[...]

This part of my talk, I imagine, is long after the point a constitutive operation of conservative intellectual work has clicked on in your minds: the part where you argue that malefactor A or B or C, or transgression X or Y or Z, is not "really" conservative. In conservative intellectual discourse there is no such thing as a bad conservative. Conservatism never fails. It is only failed. One guy will get up, at a conference like this, and say conservatism, in its proper conception, is 33 1/3 percent this, 33 1/3 percent that, 33 1/3 percent the other thing. Another rises to declaim that the proper admixture is 50-25-25.

It is, among other things, a strategy of psychological innocence. If the first guy turns out to be someone you would not care to be associated with, you have an easy, Platonic, out: with his crazy 33-33-33 formula--well, maybe he's a Republican. Or a neocon, or a paleo. He's certainly not a conservative. The structure holds whether it's William Kristol calling out Pat Buchanan, or Pat Buchanan calling out William Kristol.

Norquist, Weyrich and Keene (not Barr, who I think might be a principled libertarian) are all keepers of the flame. Their job is to maintain "Conservatism" the brand, the movement, the value. The Republican party is their beloved vessel, not their cause.

I doubt that anyone is suggesting that Grover Norquist is thinking of leaving the Republican coalition over this. He's thinking ahead to the moment when it is clear that Bushism and DeLayism are so tainted that they will make "conservatism" look bad. That is when they will be revealed to have not been true blue in the first place. In fact they will have been traitors to the movement. Only "real conservatives" like Norquist and Weyrich and Keene can be counted upon to be pure keepers of the flame. Or so they say.

Garance points out that these "Patriots for Checks and Balances" aren't actually doing anything, just sending out press releases. This is par for the course. They aren't going to actually work to undercut the Republican Party. The party is one of their assets. What they are most concerned with is maintaining the value of their brand and that requires constant vigilance. Grover and his conservative "leave us alone coalition" aren't worth much if they sign on blindly to illegal wiretapping, are they?

None of this means that Democrats could still not deftly exploit this for our own purposes. But that's another story.



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digby 1/19/2006 03:45:00 PM |

 
Innoculation

by digby


Glenn Greenwald tells me that KellyAnn "I wish I were as cute as Ann Coulter" Conway and her little dog George have started a blog in which they are recapping the Cinton scandals for the folks. Glenn's post does a smashing job of reminding us of the professional character assasins of the GOP, many of whom have been woefully underemployed since the GOP owns everything in town:

Examining filth-peddling relics of the 1990s like the Conways is not merely an exercise in masochistic nostalgia. As their new National Review blog demonstrates, lowly character smears are a quite current and integral weapon in the Republican arsenal. These gutter tactics and their vile purveyors haven’t gone anywhere. And it is beyond doubt that all of the Clinton smears which lowered our political discourse to the primordial level, along with many new ones, are being kept warming in the oven just in case Hillary gets anywhere near a Presidential election.

But the real reason to remember this despicable filth-peddling is because these same Republicans are being permitted by an amnesic and manipulated media to parade themselves around as the Paragons of Civility and Dignity. That Republicans can deliver dignity lectures to the media, which then dutifully reports them with a concerned face while repeatedly showing video of Sam Alito’s wife crying, is quite compelling evidence of just how wretchedly dishonest Republican moralizing is and, worse, how utterly dysfunctional our media has become.

There's another reason they have trotted out the bitch-twins, as well. They are desperate to keep the public believing that the "culture of corruption" is bi-partisan. I have no doubt in my mind that Mighty Wurlitzer has employed Kellyanne and George for the specific purpose of recycling smears from the 90's (that can be helpfully passed on to the right wing blogs, talk radio and TV pundits) in order to "remind" people how corrupt Democrat Clinton was. Look for the Conway crap to show up in the blogosphere before long and soon in the major media. We should be prepared for it.

In some ways, the Clinton scandals of the 90's can be seen as innoculation for the Republican corruption that was rampant, even then. We all know that the charges against the Clinton administration were bullshit, but the non-stop pounding for eight long years is one of the main reason why the public sees corruption as bi=partisan in Washington today. They've been hearing about scandals pretty much non-stop for the last 14 years. I don't believe this is an accident. These people are very good at this stuff. And we are very bad at seeing it coming.


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digby 1/19/2006 12:43:00 PM |

 
Tweety And His Hot Man Love

by digby

So I see from Atrios that Tweety was on Imus and the two of them shared a few manly laughs about "Brokeback Mountain" and praising the psychotic Michael Savage.

MATTHEWS (1/18/06): Have you gone to see it yet? I’ve seen everything else but that. I just—

IMUS: No, I haven’t seen it. Why would I want to see that?

MATTHEWS: I don’t know. No opinion on that. I haven’t seen it either, so—

IMUS: So they were—it was out when I was in New Mexico and—it doesn’t resonate with real cowboys who I know.

MATTHEWS: Yeah—

IMUS: But then, maybe there’s stuff going on on the ranch that I don’t know about. Not on my ranch, but you know—

MATTHEWS: Well, the wonderful Michael Savage, who’s on 570 in DC, who shares a station with you at least, he calls it [laughter]—what’s he call it?—he calls it Bare-back Mount-ing. That’s his name for the movie.

IMUS: Of course, Bernard calls it Fudgepack Mountain...

How droll.

Oopsie. Somebody's glass house has a big fat crack in it. Let's take a little trip down memory lane, shall we?

MATTHEWS: Let's go to this sub--what happened to this week, which was to me was astounding as a student of politics, like all of us. Lights, camera, action. This week the president landed the best photo of in a very long time. Other great visuals: Ronald Reagan at the D-Day cemetery in Normandy, Bill Clinton on horseback in Wyoming. Nothing compared to this, I've got to say.

Katty, for visual, the president of the United States arriving in an F-18, looking like he flew it in himself. The GIs, the women on--onboard that ship loved this guy.

Ms. KAY: He looked great. Look, I'm not a Bush man. I mean, he doesn't do it for me personally, especially not when he's in a suit, but he arrived there...

MATTHEWS: No one would call you a Bush man, by the way.

Ms. KAY: ...he arrived there in his flight suit, in a jumpsuit. He should wear that all the time. Why doesn't he do all his campaign speeches in that jumpsuit? He just looks so great.

MATTHEWS: I want him to wa--I want to see him debate somebody like John Kerry or Lieberman or somebody wearing that jumpsuit.

Mr. DOBBS: Well, it was just--I can't think of any, any stunt by the White House--and I'll call it a stunt--that has come close. I mean, this is not only a home run; the ball is still flying out beyond the park.

MATTHEWS: Well, you know what, it was like throwing that strike in Yankee Stadium a while back after 9/11. It's not a stunt if it works and it's real. And I felt the faces of those guys--I thought most of our guys were looking up like they were looking at Bob Hope and John Wayne combined on that ship.

Mr. GIGOT: The reason it works is because of--the reason it works is because Bush looks authentic and he felt that he--you could feel the connection with the troops. He looked like he was sincere. People trust him. That's what he has going for him.

MATTHEWS: Fareed, you're watching that from--say you were over in the Middle East watching the president of the United States on this humongous aircraft carrier. It looks like it could take down Syria just one boat, right, and the president of the United States is pointing a finger and saying, `You people with the weapons of mass destruction, you people backing terrorism, look out. We're coming.' Do you think that picture mattered over there?

Mr. ZAKARIA: Oh yeah. Look, this is a part of the war where we have not--we've allowed a lot of states to do some very nasty stuff, traffic with nasty people and nasty material, and I think it's time to tell them, you know what, `You're going to be help accountable for this.'

MATTHEWS: Well, it was a powerful statement and picture as well.

After the segment, Chris handed out cigarettes and ice cold bottles of evian to the panel. But they had rolled over and gone to sleep.

If there has ever been a more embarrassing display of repressed erotic longing on national television, I haven't seen it. Oh, wait:

From May 13, 2003, Via The Daily Howler:

MATTHEWS: What do you make of this broadside against the USS Abraham Lincoln and its chief visitor last week?

LIDDY: Well, I-- in the first place, I think it's envy. I mean, after all, Al Gore had to go get some woman to tell him how to be a man [Official Naomi Wolf Spin-Point]. And here comes George Bush. You know, he's in his flight suit, he's striding across the deck, and he's wearing his parachute harness, you know --- and I've worn those because I parachute --- and it makes the best of his manly characteristic. You go run those, run that stuff again of him walking across there with the parachute. He has just won every woman's vote in the United States of America. You know, all those women who say size doesn't count --- they're all liars. Check that out. I hope the Democrats keep ratting on him and all of this stuff so that they keep showing that tape.

"You know, it's funny. I shouldn't talk about ratings," he [Matthews] said, also gazing at Bush's crotch. "But last night was a riot because ... these pictures were showing last night, and everybody's tuning in to see these pictures again."

I have no doubt that Chris watched those pictures again and again and again --- until his hand got tired.

If ever there was a closet case, he is it. He routinely makes a fool of himself on national television, literally drooling over what he thinks are big masculine Republican men.

Remember this one?

MATTHEWS: Will the most powerful vice president in American history become the man who ramrods the rise of the new South and with it a legacy that could promote a draft for a Cheney presidency? The question is a big one. Is Cheney charging down South to serve as President Bush‘s executioner or full-fledged viceroy?

Oooh lala. The question is HUGE! Ramrodding the rise of the new south, indeed.

I suppose we should have some sympathy for Tweety. He probably felt all hot and confused and funny down there when he was talking to Don Imus. After all, Imus wears a cowboy hat and you know what those masculine symbols do to old Chris. I'm sure when he snuck in to see Brokeback Mountain in the suburbs last week, he was smart enough to carry a raincoat.



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digby 1/19/2006 11:47:00 AM |

 
Muddling The Message

by digby


I am a big fan of Harry Reid. I thought his op-ed the other day was masterful.

But watching him last night on the Lehrer News Hour made me realize that we are going to fail in making it clear that the Republicans are a criminal enterprise. In fact, we are probably going to get blamed for it. In the end, I wouldn"t be surprised if the Republicans don't succeed in becoming the John McCain "party of reform" and we actually lose seats.

Here's why:

JIM LEHRER: And now to the minority leader of the Senate, Sen. Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada. Senator welcome.

SEN. HARRY REID: My pleasure.

JIM LEHRER: First, why has it taken so long for everybody to move on lobbying reform?

SEN. HARRY REID: Jim, it's taken a while for this culture of corruption the Republicans have developed to come into fore. The Republican leader in the House, four ethics convictions in one year, money laundering indictment, the Republican leader being investigated criminally and civilly, we have for the first time in 135 years, someone who works in the White House indicted. Safavian, who is in charge of government contracting, the president appointed him, hundreds of billions of dollars a year, led away in handcuffs because of sweetheart deals he had with Jack Abramoff and then you have, as has been talked about earlier in your program, the K Street Project.

Think about this, the "pay and play" program. You as a lobbyist, you pay, and we Republicans will take care of you legislatively. That's why it hasn't come to the forefront. The arrogance of power, the culture of corruption has not come to the attention of the American public as it has the past several months.

JIM LEHRER: But it's been going on for years and years-- the very things that you and the Republicans agree on to correct have been legal up till now. In other words, these are not the things that Abramoff is charged with or any of these people that you say are going off in handcuffs, right?

SEN. HARRY REID: Yes. But of course this culture of corruption, we need to change the rules and regulations that you talked about here on the program, but people are taking millions of dollars defense contractors, as one Republican was doing, and is now -- pled guilty. The stuff that DeLay has done, you don't need to change the rules.

JIM LEHRER: That's my point exactly.

SEN. HARRY REID: The point is, he has already been in trouble. But I think it has shone a bright light on the abuses that have taken place that need to be corrected. And that's what we want to do. We want to shine a bright light and make things better than what they were. We don't think there should be a pay or play system. We don't think this K Street Project, which they have worked on for a long time to get up to snuff -- it was done with Abramoff; it was done with Norquist; and it was done with Ralph Reed. These are people who are in the political circles are famous for being infamous.

JIM LEHRER: But the specifics that are involved in the current situation aside, the practices of lobbyists taking people -- financing trips abroad, taking people to meals -- all of that -- free airplane travel -- all that sort of stuff has been common practice. Democrats and Republicans have been doing that for years, correct?

SEN. HARRY REID: Well, Jim, listen. The Jack Abramoff situation where he's flying people around to golf tournaments in Scotland and other places, I don't think that has been -- if it has, I don't know about it, but if it has been, it's time to stop.

I just know that this is another one of the things that I didn't take the time to mention that has been so abused, and the American people now see this.

JIM LEHRER: Okay. But members of Congress did not see it until the Jack Abramoff case came along?

SEN. HARRY REID: Of course, we as -- friends have helped us; there have been criminal indictments. I've listed those.

JIM LEHRER: Right.

SEN. HARRY REID: We have had ethics committees who have met, and the Democratic -- I'm sorry, pardon me. Strike that from the record, the Republican leader in the House four times convicted of ethics violations. I mean, we've had a little help bringing this to the attention of the American public.

JIM LEHRER: What I'm getting at, I think, Senator, is it's a little bit of an "oh, I'm so shocked" element to this that a lot of people are having trouble understanding because this kind of practice of lobbyists trying to influence legislation is part and parcel of the system.

SEN. HARRY REID: Jim, your question is very valid, and I'm sorry I didn't get to the answer sooner. Here's the situation we have though. We are in the minority. There's an arrogance of power here in Washington that is untoward. Republican White House, Republican House, Republican Senate. Seven of the nine members of the Supreme Court have been appointed by Republican presidents.

You know, you can't get things done unless there's a bipartisan movement, and I would hope that with this scandal, this Republican-driven scandal, we'll get a few Republicans of goodwill to step forward and say we should have done this a long time ago, but we didn't; let's do it now. And that's what I hope happens.

By coming up with this "reform package" we have managed to make people think this is about reforming arcane congressional rules when it is actually about a bribery and protection racket. And that is exactly what the Republicans wanted us to do. After all, if its only a matter of changing a few rules, they can do that themselves and just move along. Reid starts out with all the right rhetoric and then ends up calling for bipartisanship, for heaven's sake.

The problem is that Democrats listen to conventional wisdom and bad strategists who all insist that you have to have a positive agenda or people will hate you. This is because when they do focus groups people always say they hate all the negativity and they just want politicians to tell us what they are going to do to fix things.

That is bullshit. People say that because they think that's what they are supposed to say. They don't know how much they are being manipulated by all the negative images and so they simply say they don't like them. It doesn't mean they don't respond to them. It's subliminal. The Democratic party needs to hire a top psychologist to explain this to them --- or find a politician who has good instincts.

Here we have Harry Reid trying very hard to make Jim Lehrer see that this is a Republican scandal. But because he is focused on "lobbying reform" --- just like the Republicans are --- Jim doesn't see the beef. Everybody knows that politicans and lobbyists are in each others' pockets. This seems to him like a tempest in a teapot. (Or he's pretending it does. Lehrer knows very well what the real story is.)

The problem is that Reid and the rest of the Democratic party believed that they had to "offer a solution" because otherwise the public would think they are just being negative. (And yes, the punditocrisy would have been all over them for not offering any solutions, just like they always are.) But had they simply said, "this is way beyond lobbying reform. Republicans like Tom DeLay and Jack Abramoff have been running a criminal enterprise out of the US congress," they could have framed the argument as Republican criminality instead of systemic problems that can be fixed with a few changes in the rules.

If Lehrer said, "isn't this just the way business is done in Washington?" Reid could shoot back, "sorry Jim, this K Street project's first order of business was to require the lobbying firms to hire only Republicans, many of them staffers from Tom deLay's office, to pay off congressmen. The Democratic party is not perfect but we don't operate like the mob." If Lehrer had said, "well what do you propose to do about it?" Reid should have said, "I'll let the criminal justice system do its work, and it has its work cut out for it. But it's clear that we badly need checks and balances back in our system. Putting this country solely in the hands of the Republican Party has been a disaster."

You could sense Reid's frustration in the interview. He made many great points but they were all muddled by this stupid "reform plan" that Lehrer was obsessed with. And that's because the Democrats had stepped on their own most potent argument --- the Republicans are in charge and they are running a corrupt criminal enterprise out of the House and Senate. Even a Republican Justice department could not avert its eyes from the rampant criminality. Duke, DeLay, Abramoff, Rove, Libby, Safavian.... all of them and many more are either under indictment, pled guilty or remain under suspicion. This is not business as usual and the solution isn't another package of rules changes about who buys the pizza.

I had grave doubts when I heard about the Democratic leadership's plan to offer competing lobbying reform packages and keep harping on the "culture of corruption." I knew the message was going to get muddled. We simply need to understand that being "negative" is a perfectly acceptable way of communicating .... about criminal behavior. (Duh.)

We cannot, as usual, depend on the press because they are incompetent. As this piece by Eric Boehlert points out, the press is "afraid of facts."

The Democrats needed to Keep It Simple Stupid and do nothing but pound away that this was a Republican Criminal Enterprise. They should have swept aside all the DC punditry and stayed on message until they could see that they had traction. Only then should they have started thinking about a positive message --- preferably a lot closer to the election, once people had absorbed the Republicans are crooks meme and were looking at the Democrats with a more open mind. Instead we just threw it all on the table in one big pile of mush.

Big mistake. Huge.


Read or watch the whole interview. It will make you hang your head in despair. I like Reid, but this was just terrible. The caucus needs to rethink both its message and its strategy.


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digby 1/19/2006 09:26:00 AM |

 
Backing Up Murtha

by digby


This op-ed in the NY Times from yesterday by James Webb, Reagan's secretary of the Navy, in which he defends John Murtha against the latest swift boat smears, is a must read. I had occasion to bring this up with some Republican veterans recently and they were uncomfortable with the implications. Unlike Kerry, who they all agreed had joined up purely to advance his political career and was a total phony, Murtha isn't so easy to peg. And when I asked if it was reasonable that every single Bush critic who is a veteran is either lying about his war record or crazy, much hemming and hawing ensued. And when I questioned their medals, they got angry.

At some point the military itself is going to have to defend itself against these attacks. Every time these swift boat assholes do this they call into question every medal that's been awarded. If all these public figures could get away with this it's only logical to assume that the military hands out a great many improper medals. After all, they couldn't have known at the time that these particular men would someday be politicians. This would have to be a systemic problem.

Webb cautions about its effect on the military:

... in recent years extremist Republican operatives have inverted a longstanding principle: that our combat veterans be accorded a place of honor in political circles. This trend began with the ugly insinuations leveled at Senator John McCain during the 2000 Republican primaries and continued with the slurs against Senators Max Cleland and John Kerry, and now Mr. Murtha.

Military people past and present have good reason to wonder if the current administration truly values their service beyond its immediate effect on its battlefield of choice. The casting of suspicion and doubt about the actions of veterans who have run against President Bush or opposed his policies has been a constant theme of his career. This pattern of denigrating the service of those with whom they disagree risks cheapening the public's appreciation of what it means to serve, and in the long term may hurt the Republicans themselves.

[...]

A young American now serving in Iraq might rightly wonder whether his or her service will be deliberately misconstrued 20 years from now, in the next rendition of politically motivated spinmeisters who never had the courage to step forward and put their own lives on the line.

Rudyard Kipling summed up this syndrome quite neatly more than a century ago, writing about the frequent hypocrisy directed at the British soldiers of his day:

An' it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' anything you please;

An' Tommy ain't a bloomin' fool - you bet that Tommy sees!

The Carpetbagger adds:

On a related note, still no word from the White House on whether the president is willing to denounce this baseless attack on a man Bush recently described as "a fine man, a good man, who served our country with honor and distinction as a Marine in Vietnam and as a United States Congressman." Scott McClellan wasn't asked about it at yesterday's briefing. Maybe today the White House can do the honorable thing and publicly reject this nonsense.

I'm not holding my breath.


Via Jane over a Firedoglake, I see that a message board has sprung up for people to register their wish that Murtha give the Democratic response at the State of the Union. I think it is a teriffic idea and would be an excellent way to show these swift boating scumbags that the Democratic Party will not be intimidated by their smears.

Murtha is just terrific on TV. His grizzled countenance, his obvious sincerity and straighforwardness, his credibility make him the perfect person to speak for the Democrats on Iraq. Even my wingnut Dad has to say "well, he's got a point." After listening to the callow preznit spew out words he doesn't even know the meaning of for an hour, Murtha would be like a breath of fresh air.

And Democrats need, right now with no further ado, to show this brave man that we have his back. By Democrats I mean both the rank and file and the leadership. If they can get away with swiftboating John Murtha, then there is simply no use in any Democrats bothering to speak the truth on national security. Everybody just get ready to fight useless wars whenever these bedwetters have a scary nightmare or need to prove their manhoods.

Here are a the e-mail addresses of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid

sf.nancy@mail.house.gov
Or here is her web page form you can use.

Reid only has the web page form.

If there was ever a time to show these Republican thugs that they can't just swift boat every Democratic veteran and get away with it, it's now.



Update: Never mind

National Democratic leaders today will ask Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine (D) to deliver the party’s response to the president’s State of the Union address, believing that the new governor can best deliver their 2006 message of inclusiveness, American values and high ethical standards.

Feel the magic.
digby 1/19/2006 08:00:00 AM |

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

 
Foiled Again

by digby


Via Kevin, I see that the Republicans have come up with a scathing attack on Harry Reid that is sure to blow the lid off the Democrats' call for reform:

We are shocked, shocked to see that politics is going on here!

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digby 1/18/2006 04:54:00 PM |

 
Purge The Bushmen

by digby


It appears that the "movement conservatives" are getting ready to cut Dubya loose. (They usually do this when any Republican becomes unpopular, so as not to sully the brand.)

Patriots to Restore Checks and Balances (PRCB) today called upon Congress to hold open, substantive oversight hearings examining the President's authorization of the National Security Agency (NSA) to violate domestic surveillance requirements outlined in the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

Former U.S. Rep. Bob Barr, chairman of PRCB, was joined by fellow conservatives Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform (ATR); David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union; Paul Weyrich, chairman and CEO of the Free Congress Foundation and Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation, in urging lawmakers to use NSA hearings to establish a solid foundation for restoring much needed constitutional checks and balances to intelligence law.

Good for them and welcome to the fight for civil liberties. But lest anyone think that these people have some core of values that make them "different" lets not forget this from March 30, 2005:

Fellow Conservatives,

I'm writing to ask you to join me in doing something effective against the leftist organizations and liberal media who have launched truly vicious attacks on U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay.

They attack Tom DeLay for just one reason: Congressman DeLay is one of the most effective fighters for conservative principles.

Time and again, Majority Leader Tom DeLay manages the strategy which wins for conservatives in the narrowly divided House of Representatives.

I know personally that Tom Delay is almost obsessively careful to get good legal advice before he takes any step which might conceivably be questioned under the law or suspected as an infraction of House rules. None of the leftist uproar has contains any evidence he has done anything illegal or violated the House rules.

The only fire under all that smoke generated by the leftist attacks is their burning hatred of a good man.

Conservatives must respond with a richly deserved attack on leftist groups and liberal media trying to lynch Tom DeLay. That's why I'm writing to you.

And you and I must do all we can to make sure any politician who hopes to have conservative support in the future had better be in the forefront as we attack those who attack Tom DeLay.

Media and organizations who would let left wingers get away with almost anything are trying to generate a feeding frenzy against DeLay. No matter what he does, they attack him. Not content to make mountains out of mole hills, they invent mole hills to make mountains.

If Tom DeLay preferred Fords to Chevrolets or Chevrolets to Fords, the leftists would gin up reasons to attack his preference either way.

Unscrupulous leftist media will huff and puff to breath life into any trivial or phony leftist complaint against any act of any powerful conservative, no matter how upright and innocent. And they'll keep doing this until a public reaction begins to embarrass and damage those spreading the propaganda.

You've seen this all your life.

These guys appear to have seen the writing on the wall since then. It's time to start the purges. (For more on this, see Rick Perlstein's brave foray into the belly of the beast.)

The movement conservatives are not really very comfortable on the inside. Witness their absurd appeal above. It's all about the "permanent revolution" for them, even to the extent that they could ridiculously defend Tom deLay as innocent, upright and under seige from powerful liberal factions less than a year ago. They seem to have realized that it won't work any longer and it's time to begin the conservative purification rituals if they want to keep the revolution alive.

Not that any of that it makes any difference for these purposes. These guys make the illegal wiretap case easier to get past the media's knee-jerk dismissal of all things Democratic so, viva la revolucion!



Update: Rick Perlstein seems to have caused quite a ruckus by posting the press release over on Free Republic. They are very confused. Here's a sample:

Hillary will do this stuff anyway. It's not the present NSA intercepts you have to fear, they were checked and vetted even through the opposition, and no one balked at the program.

Like stated earlier, we don't need to commit suicide to keep our rights.

Hillary et al are corrupt, and they will do anything (and already have) to maintain their power base. She and her ilk are the dangerous ones. Gore and these so-called conservatives are way off base.

------

But Barr won't be complaining when or if it happens anymore than the NY Times will be upset about past or future Clinton spying on their enemies, i.e., conservatives, right wingers, political enemies as defined by the Clintons, meaning any Republican, because Barr will not be drawing a paycheck anymore if he does. It's real simple even if many of you are unable to grasp the facts - the Clintons were doing this before the Patriot Act, before Bush was elected, and they will do it again if given the chance and to hell with the constitution or any law passed or not passed by congress because NONE OF IT APPLIES TO DEMOCRATS or in those immortal words of Al Gore, "There is no controlling legal authority."

You wonder why Bush is able to get away with speaking gibberish?

But then, there's this:

"So you are okay with warrant less wiretaps? I'm not"

Nor am I.

And I’m pretty astounded by the number of conservatives who are willing to surrender unlimited power to whoever happens to sit in the oval office for the duration of a possibly endless war (can you imagine a time when there is no one who wishes the US harm?)

My wife's desk is in the Sears Tower - now the tallest building in the country, and presumably short listed by possible terrorists – so I’ve though about this a lot. And my conclusion that in terms of what really matters long term ultimately she's safer there – at least as long as this is a country where there are judicial checks on the legal powers of the executive branch - than in a country where the Maximum Leader makes whatever rules she or she prefers as tribal War-Lord.

At the moment, it’s often hard to get this point across – some people are willing go to just about any length to avoid facing the question of possible abuse of such power.

But IMO when you see people such as Paul Weyrich being derided as liberal lap-dogs, you know the argument is off the rails - the problem with this sort of approach is that you have dismiss the opinions of ever larger numbers of thoughtful conservative commentators; if they are elected they are RINOs, if unelected, “who do they represent?”, if current members of government they are said to be “disloyal”, if they have left government service they are attacked as “traitors”, and so on.

Still, at the moment I’m in the minority, and can only hope that a majority of voters come to their senses before such power is vested in someone really inimical to our traditional freedoms.

I suspect Rove is beginning to feel that atomic wedgie right about now.

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digby 1/18/2006 12:14:00 PM |

 
Crying Wolf

by digby

This article from First Post says it all:

Among British neo-con commentators and policy wonks - the Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld right-wing fan club centred on the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail - anger over the West's vacillation in the face of Iranian intransigence is running especially high.

[...]

But before they blame everybody else for letting him [Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the new Iranian president] get away with it, the armchair warriors of the right should ask themselves why he seems able to defy the world with such apparent impunity. The invasion of Iraq, the neo-cons' favourite cause, is one obvious answer. With the US bogged down in Iraq, Tehran can be sure that the American public is in no mood for another Middle Eastern adventure.

Should that show signs of changing, Tehran can up the pressure on the coalition whenever it wants. Ironically, the Iraqi government, installed by the Americans, is dominated by pro-Iranian Shias. So are many of the militias that run large parts of the country.

So pervasive is Iranian influence in Iraq post-Saddam that, when the US and its allies eventually withdraw, Iran is likely to turnout to be the principal beneficiary of the invasion.

The Iraq fiasco has demonstrated the limitations of American power in the Middle East, for all the world to see. If the neo-cons had only bothered to make serious plans for the reconstruction of the country, Tehran might now take Western sabre-rattling rather more seriously.

Then, as always, there is the question of oil. Iran is still the world's fourth largest exporter of the black gold; and at a time when supplies are tight, that gives it obvious leverage. In addition, the majority of all Middle Eastern oil exports have to pass down the Gulf and through the Straits of Hormuz, which the Iranians effectively control.

If need be, Tehran could have the world literally over a barrel. Experts have been warning about the West's dangerous dependence on imported oil for years. But the neo-cons have consistently pooh-poohed their warnings and opposed any attempt to curb America's profligate use of energy.

The other day, Jack Straw said the Iranians were "pushing their luck" by pressing ahead with uranium enrichment. Given the neo-cons' disastrous record of bad judgment, incompetence and worse, the Iranians must think that they are pushing at an open door.

The neo-cons told us that Saddam had to be removed because he had weapons of mass destruction, when in fact he had none. Now that we find ourselves up against a dangerous country that really is about to get WMD, we discover the neo-cons have already squandered our power and credibility in Iraq.

I have written before about how powerful countries must maintain their mystique or risk having crazy people make mistakes. Once it shows that its military is not omnipotent and that its intelligence is crude, it emboldens madmen to play their cards. It's a stupid, unnecessary error to be proven impotent by lying so boldly and being wrong so grandly, which is what we did with our misbegotten invasion of Iraq. Powerful nations should only go to war when they either have no other choice or are virtually assured of success in concert with a powerful coalition of allies. Screwing up this way in the nuclear age is especially dangerous.

We toppled Saddam, but we exposed the fact that our greatest asset --- the belief that we have super, high tech intelligence and military capabilities beyond anyone's imaginings--- was a sham. And our poor planning proved to everyone that the military braintrust running this country can at times be so wrong that it can render our superior military and economic prowess irrelevant.


And the neocons know it. Here's Ken "Cakewalk" Adelman suddenly turned into Ken "Kumbaya" Adelman on Wolf Blitzer last Monday. And here I thought we were fighting World war IV:

BLITZER: ... Joining us now to talk about the possible showdown [with Iran]is Ken Adelman. He's a former deputy U.S. representative to the United Nations, former director of the U.S. arms control and disarmament agency.

[...]

BLITZER: Is there a military option, a viable U.S. military option to go ahead and knock out the Iranian nuclear facilities?

ADELMAN: I don't think we should ever take it off the table, but when you look at the practicalities of knowing what they are doing, knowing where they are doing it and knowing that you can get to those targets, it seems very improbable to me.

[...]

ADELMAN: ...I hope there is a regime change in Iran. And then it can come about not by military action but that can come about by subverting the regime right there, using the methods of Martin Luther King to tell you the truth, civil disobedience, peaceful, nonviolent techniques.

BLITZER: Well, should the U.S. and its allies be engaged in covert action to try to result in this regime change?

ADELMAN: Sure, we should have been doing that for the last 30 years. And that's part of the spread of freedom the president talks about, but we haven't done enough on that.

And what you can do, very quickly is take the playbook from Poland, from our approach to Poland in the early 1980's with -- from the Carter administration, and then especially the Reagan administration, dealing with solidarity, and just update it. Instead of using money to give for machines, use the Internet. Now instead of walkie-talkies, you now use cell phones. But what you want to do is to help Democratic forces.

BLITZER: So to encourage the dissidents in Iran right now to overthrow the regime.

ADELMAN: Absolutely.

BLITZER: And you think that is a doable option?

ADELMAN: Well, it's certainly doable to give them support, more support than we are doing. Whether they succeed or not, you just don't know, but one thing you can do is to model it after what you had in the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, what you've had in peaceful demonstrations around the world.

BLITZER: Well, I've heard, you know, that scenario, but the U.S. has been trying to do that in Cuba, for example, for decades unsuccessfully to get rid of Fidel Castro. North Korea, the U.S. has been trying to do that for decades to get rid of Kim Jong-il unsuccessfully.

Yes, there was a successful end of the Cold War and all the change, the Democratic reforms in central and eastern Europe, but is Iran, in that model?

ADELMAN: No, Iran is a much more right model. It's more like Poland is at the outset of solidarity. Why is that? Because what we know is the majority of people in Iran, the vast majority, can't stand these corrupt and really awful repressive laws.

And so you have the conditions, it's a far more educated population. It's a far more open population. It's a far more open country than others. So that you can really go in there and these kind of techniques that you had in Poland, and you in the Ukraine, and you had in Georgia.

I mean, this is a proven technique. Now, it's not proven everywhere, and it doesn't work everywhere, but it's not going to work unless you help it.

BLITZER: I've heard top administration officials say that the goals should be to delay Iran's development of a nuclear weapon for as long as possible, with the hope that perhaps in the interim there could be regime change.

ADELMAN: That's fine. I would agree with that.

BLITZER: The question is how long is it going to take them to develop, to get beyond the point of no return?

ADELMAN: I mean, we have been by and large very successful since the early 60's in non-proliferation. You have to worry now about India and Pakistan leading the way, you have to worry about Iran and North Korea on the verge.

But overall, it's remarkable, Wolf, when you think of a 1963, I believe it was, Kennedy -- President Kennedy gave a speech in which he predicted by the 1970s, that there would be 25 nuclear nations, nuclear-armed nations around the world.

Well, you know, in the 1970s there were probably seven or eight. There weren't 25. And here we are in 2006, and there are not 25. So we've done much better than expected, and I think if we do Iran right -- really concentrate on regime change through nonviolent means, through peaceful means, through Martin Luther King means -- I think we can make some progress.

More cartoon history. Last time we were re-creating WWII, this time we are re-creating Selma and Solidarity. (And I can't help but be amused that Adelman and his pals, who only two years ago said that the non-proliferation regime of the last 40 years was liberal mollycoddling, are now wrapping themselves in it. Chutzpah, thy name is neocon.)

Immature political thinkers that they are, the Bush administration and the neo-con cabal had been aching to prove America's manhood (and their own) to the world for so long that they prematurely ejaculated. Now we are spent, at least for a time, and the whole world knows it.



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digby 1/18/2006 09:59:00 AM |

Tuesday, January 17, 2006

 
House Slave

by digby


Tweety is gleefully flogging Hillary's "plantation" comment like he just discovered his little winkie.

There has bever been as great a GOP tool as Tweety Matthews. He gets a little bit uppity once in a while so they force feed him some bullshit which he happily regurgitates with gusto so as not make somebody important in the Republican establishment really, really mad at him. (When that happens, as we know, Monsignor Tim reports him to the Big Boys.)

Atrios has put this link up explaining why the Republican Magnolias having the vapors over this plantation comment is a steaming pile of fetid, GOP talking points.

I don't know if any of you would like to tell Chris Matthews how to use Google, but of you would, here's his e-mail: hardball@msnbc.com

Maybe he or his staff would like to look over those links and then explain why he and his Republican pals thinks she's so out of line.


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digby 1/17/2006 02:03:00 PM |

 
What's Wrong With This Picture?

by digby

Speaking of CNN, I don't know what to make of this, but it's interesting. I mentioned yesterday that Bill Schneider said this on the Situation Room yesterday. It was quite soon after gore's speech so I figured he would get an earful from the powers that be and we'd hear the last of it. But today he pretty much repeated it verbatim. To my ears, it sounds non-judgmental veering on positive. Schneider isn't usually a very reliable observer, but this strikes me as pretty fair and pretty provocative toward the Bushies. Am I wrong?

WILLIAM SCHNEIDER, SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Wolf, Democrats heard a voice from the past today, but it's a voice that may be charting a course for the party's future.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

(voice over): Who speaks for Democrats these days? Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are minority leaders. Howard Dean's job is to represent the broad range of Democratic views. Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and John Edwards may run for president, and they are pretty cautious. So is Bill Clinton who is invested in his wife's political future. Enter Al Gore, giving full throated voice to the outrage that many Democrats feel over the administration's wiretapping of American citizens.

GORE: ... What many believe are serious violations of law by the president.

SCHNEIDER: Violations of law? Exactly.

GORE: ... Into these serious allegations of criminal behavior on the part of the president.

SCHNEIDER: That may be grounds for impeachment. Gore never used the I word, but he did call for ...

GORE: ...The appointment of the special counsel to pursue the criminal issues raised by the warrantless wiretapping of Americans by the president.

SCHNEIDER: A special counsel would have to be appointed by the attorney general, who works for President Bush, and how realistic is it to think about impeachment when Congress is controlled by Republicans? Gore's answer?

GORE: It should be a political issue in any race, regardless of party, section of the country, house of Congress, for anyone who opposes the appointment of a special counsel.

SCHNEIDER: Gore is telling Democrats, let's make this our issue.

Just the fact that Schneider brings up Impeachment, which Gore did not, seems to me like a good thing. I must be missing something.



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digby 1/17/2006 01:06:00 PM |

 
Down On The Plantation

by digby

I'm glad to see that CNN has booked two African-Americans agreeing that Hillary Clinton was wrong to compare the Republican House to a plantation, so that's good. The poncy Republican is calling for her to resign but the other thinks that probably isn't necessary. We're getting fair and balanced coverage on this issue.

Apparently, this is an outrageous thing to say. I wonder if anybody thought this article by Joseph Farrah of World Net Daily called "Racism on Dem plantation" (available today only on Google cache for some reason)was out of line. Or how about this one on on Townhall by Cal Thomas who refers to "the Democratic Party and its plantation mentality." And then there's Rush Limbaugh who's been know to refer to anybody who's in the leadership position in the Democratic Party" as "pimps" who attempt to deceive black people into remaining on the "Democratic plantation."

Here's the thing. When the Republicans talk about the "plantation" they are specifically talking about race, claiming that the Democrats are using (presumably stupid) Black Americans against their own interests.

Hillary was talking about the fact that the Republican leadership treats their own caucus (not to mention the minority) like they are slaves.

Now which of those views is racist?

Yet, the Republicans are all over this and they will probably end up getting her to apologise because Democratic politicians have never learned how to respond to being called racist. Until they do, the Republicans are going to use this ridiculous epistemic relativism against them.


Update: As a couple of commenters remind me, perhaps the most famous of these plantation comments cane from none other than Newtie:

"...on the eve of his great electoral victory ten years ago, the speaker-to-be told a reporter he was leading a "slave rebellion" against the Democrats who "run the plantation."

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digby 1/17/2006 12:35:00 PM |

 
The Whole Schmear

by digby

I agree with Kevin that the ineffectiveness of the illegal wiretap program is not the most important issue. The president having unlimited power, even to the extent that he is not bound by the law or the constitution, is the fundamental threat and this wiretap program is just the most recent example of it.

However, this revelation that the illegal wiretapping is a waste of time does refute the most important argument of the other side. That argument is best articulated by today's winner of the Golden Globe for best tease, Trent Lott:

"I don't agree with the libertarians," said Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.). "I want my security first. I'll deal with all the details after that."

If the details show that the FBI is wasting valuable man hours chasing its tail, it's not exactly giving you "your security" is it? Not only is the president breaking the law, he's wasting the valuable time and energy of the FBI which could be spent preventing terrorism and catching criminals. Why on earth would that make a frightened little bedwetter like Trent Lott feel safer? It should scare the lil' guy to death.


Josh Marshall has an insightful post up today about Al Gore's speech yesterday that speaks to how these issues all work together.

The point Gore makes in his speech that I think is most key is the connection between authoritarianism, official secrecy and incompetence.

The president's critics are always accusing him of law-breaking or unconstitutional acts and then also berating the incompetence of his governance. And it's often treated as, well ... he's power-hungry and incompetent to boot! Imagine that! The point though is that they are directly connected. Authoritarianism and secrecy breed incompetence; the two feed on each other. It's a vicious cycle. Governments with authoritarian tendencies point to what is in fact their own incompetence as the rationale for giving them yet more power. Katrina was a good example of this.

The basic structure of our Republic really is in danger from a president who militantly insists that he is above the law.

The illegal wiretap scandal is a perfect example of this --- authoritarianism, official secrecy and incompetence. (No wonder they call it "the president's program.") When you add in endemic corruption, you have a recipe for a constitutional crisis and a political tyranny --- which is exactly what they have been cooking up.

It's awfully hard to respect people who are so frightened they don't know they are helping the terrorists to achieve what the terrorists couldn't achieve on their own.


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digby 1/17/2006 09:59:00 AM |

 
Trent's Slot Safe

by digby


Incumbent Senator Trent Lott called a press conference to announce whether he's running again. He'd hinted that he might not, so the suspense was palpable. A Democrat, after all, was favored to win if Lott didn't run. Would he or wouldn't he? What was going to happen? Oooh, it's the kind of thing that sends chills down your spine. After about ten minutes of stirring oratory celebrating all the fine people he's worked with over the years, he soulfully looks into the camera, nods his head to his staff and then announces ... he's running again.

And now Ed Henry talking about how this sets the stage for him to make a great comeback and win back the majority leader job! Is Trent awesome or what?

None of the CNN anchors even have the decency to look sheepish about being played for morons. But then, why would they?



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digby 1/17/2006 09:08:00 AM |

Monday, January 16, 2006

 
Arlen's Spectacle

by digby

Isn't this special?

In an interview on Sunday, Mr. Brownback said he was heartened by the hearings. He argued that in the 2004 elections, Republicans had showed Democrats that "we can run on abortion rights and win the public," adding, "they are trimming their sails some on it."

The apparent outcome of the Alito nomination may call into question a political assessment that Mr. Specter made after those elections. Mr. Specter said at the time that it was highly unlikely that a Supreme Court nominee who would change abortion rights precedents could be confirmed, in part because of the determined opposition of the Democrats. Some leading Democratic senators publicly agreed.

Conservatives, upset at Mr. Specter's comment, almost unseated him from the chairmanship of the Judiciary Committee.

After the hearings ended on Friday, Mr. Specter said he would vote for confirmation and declined to revisit his earlier comments. But he said it was impossible to know how Judge Alito might vote as a Supreme Court justice. He said abortion rights groups had also opposed Justice David Souter, Justice Anthony Kennedy and Justice Sandra Day O'Connor - all Republican nominees who have voted from the bench to uphold the core abortion rights precedents.

"There are weighty considerations involved in changing Roe v. Wade, very weighty considerations in modifying that principle and a woman's right to choose," Mr. Specter said.

This is why everyone should laugh in Arlen Specter's face when he says this:

A top US Republican senator on Sunday for the first time mentioned impeachment in connection with President George W Bush's authorisation of electronic surveillance inside the United States without a court warrant.

Arlen Specter, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, cautioned it was too early to draw any conclusions as his committee gears up for public hearings into the growing controversy early next month.

But in his appearance on ABC's "This Week" program, Specter insisted the Senate was not going to give the president what he called "a blank cheque."

When asked what could happen if lawmakers find Bush in violation of the law, Specter answered: "Impeachment is a remedy. After impeachment, you could have a criminal prosecution, but the principal remedy ... under our society is to pay a political price."

He made it a point to clarify, however, that he was speaking theoretically and was "not suggesting remotely that there's any basis" for a presidential impeachment at this moment.

[...]

He added that the issue of wartime presidential powers was "a very knotty question" that "ought to be thoroughly examined."

Specter assured he was prepared to listen to the administration's explanations, but warned, "I'm going to wear my skepticism on my sleeve."

Uh huh. This man has run for years as a pro-choice Republican in a swing state. This is probably his last term. And he tossed abortion rights out the window without a second thought. This emerging narrative that Arlen is going to be tough on the administration on these wiretapping charges is total bullshit:

Gonzales said he had agreed with Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, a Republican from Pennsylvania, to testify in hearings on the controversial program that eavesdrops on U.S. phone calls and e-mails.

Gonzales said he would not discuss any operational details at the hearing and would only explain the legal justification.

The testimony will take place in Senate hearings that are expected to be held early next month.

It was unclear whether the judiciary committee would also hear testimony from senior intelligence officials such as the NSA director, Army Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander, or Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, the No. 2 U.S. intelligence official who ran the NSA when the eavesdropping program began.

"What we‘re thinking is that this is primarily the attorney general‘s show," said an official who spoke on condition of anonymity because plans for the hearing had not been finalized.

Yeah. Arlen's in charge allright.

Here's what's going to happen. The Republicans will carefully plan and coordinate their strategy. Guys like Jeff Sessions will be in charge of fear-mongering and ad hominem attacks on dissent. Huckleberry Graham will express grave concerns about liberty only to be convinced by the end of the hearing that the gravest threat to the nation is Democratic rudeness. Gonzales will then say this is nothing but a high tech illegal deportation across the Rio Grande. Sam Brownback will offer objections to abuse of presidential power but will concede that it is necessary since godless abortionist terrorists are trying to kill us all in our sleep. His wife will inexplicably start crying and run out of the room. Everyone will agree that Alberto Gonzales has been remarkably forthcoming. Arlen will concede that the constitution does indeed provide for a King.

The Democrats, meanwhile, will take a much needed week long vacation before the hearings. They'll meet up in the mens room just before they begin, to discuss a strategy. (Dianne will watch the door.) Kennedy will suggest that he attack Gonzales on presidential power and Shumer will snap that he's sick of Kennedy getting all the good attacks and insists that Kennedy takes that boring Unitary Executive bullshit this time. Biden will request that he lead the questioning which will make Pat Leahy tell him to go fuck himself. Joe will remind the whole group that he once had a phone call overheard in college so he's been the victim of warrantless wiretapping and can bring the personal touch to the hearings. Feinstein will ask, "what are these hearings about again?" In the end the Democrats will strongly object to Arlen's conclusions that the constitution provides for a King.

Senator Reid: I'm begging you, man. If there is any way you can move these hearings to another venue, please, please do it. I can't go through this again so soon.



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digby 1/16/2006 06:30:00 PM |

 
Civil Obedience

by digby


I can't tell you how moved I was by Bush's speech commemorating Martin Luther King today. Particularly this:

Bush told the crowd at the annual "Let Freedom Ring" performance that Congress must renew provisions of the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act that are set to expire next year. The president had previously declined to support the renewal until last month, and the crowd erupted in applause when Bush insisted that it be renewed.

They applauded because he said it as if he had just crawled across the Edmund Pettus Bridge himself. Which was surprising since it was only a year ago that Bush told members of the NAACP that he was "unfamiliar" with the voting Rights Act, which I'm sure was true.

There really is nothing more sickening than seeing the right wing suck up on Martin Luther King Day after all the years they demonized him and how hard they fought to keep this day from beocming a national holiday.

Rick Perlstein writes in to remind me that back in the day some of our most revered conservative icons had a different way of looking at things:

Reagan after the King assassination:

it was just the sort of "great tragedy that began when we began compromising with law and order, and people started choosing which laws they'd break."

Strom Thurmond:

"We are now witnessing the whirlwind sowed years ago when some preachers and teachers began telling people that each man could be his own judge in his own case."

Just in case it isn't clear, by "people choosing which laws they'd break" and "telling people that each man could be his own judge in his own case," they referred to King's doctrine of civil disobedience.

That, in other words, King brought his own assassination upon himself.

I recall as a kid hearing a lot of that kind of talk. Civil disobedience and passive resistence were considered the work of the commies by many on the right. But then I'm sure they considered Henry David Thoreau a commie too, even if he didn't know it. It was his all-American idea of civil disobedience, after all, that went half way around the world and back again inspiring Ghandi and King and resulting in the liberation and conference of civil rights upon millions of people. You can't get any more commie than that. Anybody who espouses that kind of talk is just asking to be killed.



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digby 1/16/2006 03:00:00 PM |

 
Using Her Power For Good

by digby

Congratulations to Jane Hamsher and her readers for single handedly driving down the sales of Kato Beirne's latest atrocity. I'm pretty sure it qualifies her for sainthood.

Kato's book is just the latest in a long line of tough as nails Republican career women who make money writing books reassuring smug conservative housewives and their impotent husbands that they are better off being second class citizens. It's a racket that goes all the way back to the original beehived Republican icon, Phyllis Schlaffly.

Whenever I see Kato on television lecturing the public about real womanhood, I'm reminded of TBOGG's famous catch some years back featuring Kate and some hot wingnut chicks talkin' bout dick:

ERICA WALTER: Manliness has experienced a renaissance for two reasons: The Bush/Cheney administration has set the tone for the political culture. And 9/11, of course. Why did America fall in love with soldiers and firemen and traditional male occupations? Because we realized we’re at risk. The comeback of manliness is here to stay as long as national security is an issue.

[snip]

CHARLOTTE HAYS: The modern-day loss of respect for manliness is an aberration. Men and their virtues have always been prized. The great epics aren’t about women and their virtues. The post-9/11 love affair with police, firemen, and soldiers is a return of normal relations between men and women. Most people today never needed to be carried out of a burning building. But once they see 3,000 people that need to be rescued, they know it takes men.

O’BEIRNE: We were reminded on 9/11 and again during the military efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq that we depend on manly characteristics to keep us safe. Every single one of the dead firemen heroes on 9/11 were men. This was one group where liberals didn’t ask why there wasn’t a more pleasing gender balance. Because the Upper West Side is not fireproof. What happens in combat in some distant field is abstract to Upper West Side liberals, but they can understand the need to have strong, brave, reckless men in their fire department.

>WALTER: When it comes to role confusion among men themselves, though, I believe the damage of the ’60s and ’70s has persisted.
During my first pregnancy, I rode the Washington, D.C. subway every day. I was amazed at the number of men who didn’t offer me their seat, didn’t lift a finger for me. A Marine friend of mine, who is a normal, manly man, got so angry that he rode the subway with me, and in full cars pointedly asked men: “Would you please give up your seat for this young lady?” The request meant: “Will you do what you’re supposed to do?”

[snip]

O’BEIRNE: I don’t think there has to be a trade off. Men will behave however women demand they behave. I don’t spend time with male boors, so I don’t think most American men lack manners. British men are terribly mannerly, but they’re all wimps. I think well-raised American men have the ability to be thoroughly masculine and mannerly at the same time.

[snip]

O’BEIRNE: Anyone married with children appreciates why children need fathers. The typical mother of a second-grade boy is destroyed if he’s not invited to a certain birthday party. Mothers would wrap sons in cotton. It’s the fathers who instill the sense of risk-taking, of the stiff upper lip.

NAOMI SCHAEFER: But what about daughters? They often need to know how to keep a stiff upper lip, too. Whatever the problems with feminism, I guess I’m sort of glad that it all happened.

CHAREN: It would be wrong not to give feminism some credit for improving women’s place in the world. But I believe many of these changes would have happened organically anyway—with rising prosperity, labor-saving devices in the home, and widespread education. You didn’t need a bunch of bra-burners for that.

[snip]

...and a conversation among these women wouldn't be complete with mentioning....The Clenis™:

ROLLINS: What is your definition of virility? Does it have a role in political leadership?

WALTER: It’s a nebulous quality for a political leader. Bill Clinton was virile—in a very sleazy way. There’s also the sex appeal of someone like Don Rumsfeld. President Bush possesses this intangible something—you really saw it on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln. Testosterone and camaraderie—many people responded to it. In George W. Bush, people see a contained, channeled virility. They see a man who does what he says, whose every speech and act is not calculated. Bill Clinton showed a lot of outward empathy and he was very articulate but I don’t think many of us would have trusted him with our daughters.

GAVORA: If virility equates with strength, then there is no question that Bill Clinton lacked it completely. Bush has shown that he has it. His willingness to go after terrorism root and branch despite the widespread opposition among our European allies and even some at home, and to withstand that pressure, is strength. Bill Clinton made surface gestures. He refused to go against the media, popular opinion, the pinstriped boys at the State Department, because he lacked that strength.

HAYS: The most masculine man I ever knew was my grandfather, who supported seven children and never failed to stand when a woman came into the room. Bill Clinton is virile, but he’s not masculine or mature. He never became a grown man.

O’BEIRNE: When I heard that he grew up jumping rope with the girls in his neighborhood, I knew everything I needed to know about Bill Clinton. There’s no contest between Clinton and Bush on masculinity. Bill Clinton couldn’t credibly wear jogging shorts, and look at George Bush in that flight suit.

ROLLINS: But why do so many American women love Bill Clinton?

SCHAEFER: You can learn a lot jumping rope with girls. It won’t make you sexually attractive, but it will make you a more effective, patient listener.

O’BEIRNE: Bill Clinton did understand, from the matriarchy he grew up in, how to appeal to women in that modern way.

HAYS: Clinton could feel your pain like one of your girlfriends. But he could never make a decision like Bush has had to make. He would still be trying to negotiate with the terrorists. The use of force, which until recently was passé, has come back. Clinton couldn’t use force except in a motel room.

Ok. I know that was unfair so soon after lunch, so I'll give you a moment to purge.

Are you ok now? Good.


Thank you Jane. Destroying her book sales on Amazon is a public service. You are a patriot and a credit to women everywhere.



Update: Kudos also to RenaRF for her superb rant that started the whole thing off.
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digby 1/16/2006 01:36:00 PM |

 
Showdown!

by digby

The number one story on Wolf Blitzer's "The Situation Room"

Blitzer: Unleashing powerful new accusations against the man who defeated him, the Democratic 2000 presidential nominee is today accusing President Bush of criminal behavior by authorizing secret domestic slying. And Al gore is calling for appointment of a special counsel to investigate what he calls a "direct assault on the constitution."

Our correspondents are covering this story, the political motives, the legal fallout of this showdown over spying.

Kenny Boy Mehlman's response to Gore's claims was weak as a newborn kitten. And William Schneider just brought up the "I" word.

Now, everyone is pretending that Arlen Specter is capable of holding serious hearings, but at least we are moving in the right direction. First things first.



Update: Ken Adelman is on now. I sure wish that Wolf would ask him if dealing with a nuclear armed Iran will be a cakewalk.



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digby 1/16/2006 01:02:00 PM |

 
MyDD Polling Project

by digby

MYDD has commissioned a poll and could use a little financial help to get its fundraising over the top.

Here's what they are doing:

Our groundbreaking poll, which will challenge conventional wisdom on a variety of topics—Iraq, withdrawal, terrorism, Bush approval, domestic spying—is about to be brought to the public. This will be the first comprehensive nationwide public survey where the questions are informed by the collective knowledge of the netroots and the blogosphere. You helped to make these questions, and with your help this poll will serve as a direct challenge to the entire field of public polling as it is run by commercial news organizations. Now, we need your help in order to bring the answers to the public.


Even though the poll is about to go into the field, we have not yet completed our fundraising in order to pay for the entire costs of the poll. We still need roughly $6,500 in order to complete fundraising for the poll. We need you to donate to the polling project today.

This is a useful blogospheric project from which we can all benefit. We know the mainstream pollsters refuse to ask questions outside the narrow interests of the beltway establishment and that prevents us from knowing the real lay of the land. That's what this new polling operation proposes to challenge. And because it is blogosphere based, it is not beholden to either the corporate media or the party, which makes it a valuable tool for grassroots opinion makers --- whether it's for blogging, the local Democratic club or around the office water cooler. Check it out. This could be the first of many opportunities we have to find out what the people will say when they are asked real questions.



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digby 1/16/2006 12:36:00 PM |

 
For The Sake Of The Constitution

by digby

Al Gore has become the conscience of the Democratic Party. Following the lead of the new media, and the blogosphere in particular, he just laid out the case as to how the invertebrate Republican congress has sold out its constitutional duty to a president who sees himself as above the law and why this poses an unprecedented threat to our constitution.

There are reasons for concern this time around that conditions may be changing and that the cycle [of presidential overreach during wartime] may not repeat itself. For one thing, we have for decades been witnessing the slow and steady accumulation of presidential power. In a global environment of nuclear weapons and cold war tensions, Congress and the American people accepted ever enlarging spheres of presidential initiative to conduct intelligence and counter intelligence activities and to allocate our military forces on the global stage. When military force has been used as an instrument of foreign policy or in response to humanitarian demands, it has almost always been as the result of presidential initiative and leadership. As Justice Frankfurter wrote in the Steel Seizure Case, "The accretion of dangerous power does not come in a day. It does come, however slowly, from the generative force of unchecked disregard of the restrictions that fence in even the most disinterested assertion of authority."

A second reason to believe we may be experiencing something new is that we are told by the Administration that the war footing upon which he has tried to place the country is going to "last for the rest of our lives." So we are told that the conditions of national threat that have been used by other Presidents to justify arrogations of power will persist in near perpetuity.

Third, we need to be aware of the advances in eavesdropping and surveillance technologies with their capacity to sweep up and analyze enormous quantities of information and to mine it for intelligence. This adds significant vulnerability to the privacy and freedom of enormous numbers of innocent people at the same time as the potential power of those technologies. These techologies have the potential for shifting the balance of power between the apparatus of the state and the freedom of the individual in ways both subtle and profound.

Don't misunderstand me: the threat of additional terror strikes is all too real and their concerted efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction does create a real imperative to exercise the powers of the Executive Branch with swiftness and agility. Moreover, there is in fact an inherent power that is conferred by the Constitution to the President to take unilateral action to protect the nation from a sudden and immediate threat, but it is simply not possible to precisely define in legalistic terms exactly when that power is appropriate and when it is not.

But the existence of that inherent power cannot be used to justify a gross and excessive power grab lasting for years that produces a serious imbalance in the relationship between the executive and the other two branches of government.

There is a final reason to worry that we may be experiencing something more than just another cycle of overreach and regret. This Administration has come to power in the thrall of a legal theory that aims to convince us that this excessive concentration of presidential authority is exactly what our Constitution intended.

This legal theory, which its proponents call the theory of the unitary executive but which is more accurately described as the unilateral executive, threatens to expand the president's powers until the contours of the constitution that the Framers actually gave us become obliterated beyond all recognition. Under this theory, the President's authority when acting as Commander-in-Chief or when making foreign policy cannot be reviewed by the judiciary or checked by Congress. President Bush has pushed the implications of this idea to its maximum by continually stressing his role as Commander-in-Chief, invoking it has frequently as he can, conflating it with his other roles, domestic and foreign. When added to the idea that we have entered a perpetual state of war, the implications of this theory stretch quite literally as far into the future as we can imagine.

This effort to rework America's carefully balanced constitutional design into a lopsided structure dominated by an all powerful Executive Branch with a subservient Congress and judiciary is-ironically-accompanied by an effort by the same administration to rework America's foreign policy from one that is based primarily on U.S. moral authority into one that is based on a misguided and self-defeating effort to establish dominance in the world.

The common denominator seems to be based on an instinct to intimidate and control.

Yes. A president who can so easily toss aside international law, treaties and decades of mutual understanding is now showing that he looks upon the rule of law within our own country much the same way. We should not be surprised. It's clear that this particular political faction has an instinct to dominate and control. It's a facet of human nature and those whose personalities feature it strongly tend to gather together under the banner of authoritarianism.

The Enlightenment was in many ways a study of human nature and those who were educated in its ideas, like the founders of this country, used those observations to understand how power works. Knowing that some leaders will seek ever expanding power is exactly why the constitution was designed with its careful system of checks and balances and why the Bill of Rights was written. It's a flaw in our species which, if recognized, can be held at bay by systemic roadblocks. That's what's being fiddled with here and it's dangerous.

Gore went on to point out the obvious -- that this (oft repeated on the right) aphorism "the constitution isn't a suicide pact" in terms of islamic fundamentalism is absurd considering the threats we've faced in the past:

One of the other ways the Administration has tried to control the flow of information is by consistently resorting to the language and politics of fear in order to short-circuit the debate and drive its agenda forward without regard to the evidence or the public interest. As President Eisenhower said, "Any who act as if freedom's defenses are to be found in suppression and suspicion and fear confess a doctrine that is alien to America."

Fear drives out reason. Fear suppresses the politics of discourse and opens the door to the politics of destruction. Justice Brandeis once wrote: "Men feared witches and burnt women."

The founders of our country faced dire threats. If they failed in their endeavors, they would have been hung as traitors. The very existence of our country was at risk.

Yet, in the teeth of those dangers, they insisted on establishing the Bill of Rights.

Is our Congress today in more danger than were their predecessors when the British army was marching on the Capitol? Is the world more dangerous than when we faced an ideological enemy with tens of thousands of missiles poised to be launched against us and annihilate our country at a moment's notice? Is America in more danger now than when we faced worldwide fascism on the march-when our fathers fought and won two World Wars simultaneously?

It is simply an insult to those who came before us and sacrificed so much on our behalf to imply that we have more to be fearful of than they. Yet they faithfully protected our freedoms and now it is up to us to do the same.

He goes on to say that we must do four specific things:

1) demand a special counsel to investigate the wiretapping leaks. This is exactly the kind of investigation that should not be left in the hands of an executive branch appointee who approved the measures in question.

2) demand comprehensive hearings and go where the facts lead. I and others in the blogosphere have been calling for a select committee to invetigate the wiretap leaks so that we can have legal counsel rather than elected bloviators lead the questioning. This is absolutely necessary.

3) we must not rubber stamp the Patriot Act

4) demand that telecommunications companies cease and desist in their illegal invasion of Americans' privacy.


The Liberty Coalition sponsored this speech today and it looks like they are a non-partisan group working on privacy issues. I'm all for that. Here's their mission statement:

The Liberty Coalition works to help organize, support, and coordinate transpartisan public policy activities related to civil liberties and basic human rights. We work in conjunction with groups of partner organizations that are interested in preserving the Bill of Rights, personal autonomy and individual privacy.

The Liberty Coalition is concerned about the threat to Americans' fundamental and inalienable rights. The Coalition is dedicated to upholding and protecting our basic rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. In order to accomplish our task, we seek to protect those freedoms as articulated in the Bill of Rights. We base our concerns on the fundamental values and principles of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, particularly the separation of powers and federalism, and Bill of Rights. These are also embodied in the 14th amendment, especially the due process and privileges and immunities clauses.

To accomplish this mission, the Liberty Coalition seeks to restore, maintain, and improve individuals' right through developing a networked forum for information and policy education and advocacy. The Coalition examines and expresses opinions on legislation and other government actions that would, on the one hand, limit the rights of citizens that would, on the other, advance efforts to enhance citizens' rights.

Our primary focus is on restrictions on privacy, autonomy and liberty related issue such as the Patriot Act, National Identification Cards/National Drivers License and government databanks. We are also concerned with medical and financial privacy and confidentiality, and work more broadly as appropriate The Liberty Coalition seeks politically and judicially to retain our liberty while increasing our safety.

When it comes to this issue of presidential overreach and government spying, the most effective action will be bi-partisan. (Townhall is ostensibly part of the coalition which I'll believe it when they pull their noses out of Bush's spidey hole.) But any conservative or libertarian with intellectual integrity should be on board with this. I can guarantee you that if a Democrat tried what Bus has done I would feel exactly the same way about it. These are not transitory partisan issues, they are fundamental American values.

If you didn't get a chance to see Al Gore give his speech, at least read the transcript (via Raw Story.) He's singing our song today. If he's crazy then so am I and I'm proud of it.



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digby 1/16/2006 10:34:00 AM |

Sunday, January 15, 2006

 
True Believer (kind of)

by digby

Julia has the skinny on Shadegg and the rest of his class of 94 "reformers." What an inspiring group. Shadegg, the self-styled "clean" and principled candidate seeking to replace Tom Delay ran pretty much specifically on the idea of term limits. He strongly believed that politicians shouldn't make a career out of politics. Now, not so much.



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digby 1/15/2006 07:26:00 PM |

 
Mutual Friends

by digby


So I was loooking over the Abramoff e-mails trying to see if there's any evidence in them that Jack directed his Native American clients to give to Democrats and that Democrats knew it (there isn't) when I came upon this notorious note from Ralphie Reed:

From: ralphreed@
Sent: Thursday, November 12, 1998 12:19 AM
To: Abramoff, jack (DC)
Subject: RE: Hi Rlaph

Hey, now that I'm done with electoral politics, I need to start humping in corporate accounts. I counting on you to help me with some contacts. Have you talked to Grover since the Newt development. I'm afraid he took a hit on the consulting side with that since so much of it was Newt maintenance but I hope I'm wrong. I'm getting ready to do some work with mutual friends that we probably ought to discuss. Let's chat.

Hmmm. Remember this?

WASHINGTON, Jan. 24, 2002 - Karl Rove, President Bush's top political adviser, recommended the Republican strategist Ralph Reed to the Enron Corporation for a lucrative consulting contract as Mr. Bush was weighing whether to run for president, close associates of Mr. Rove say.

The Rove associates say the recommendation, which Enron accepted, was intended to keep Mr. Reed's allegiance to the Bush campaign without putting him on the Bush payroll. Mr. Bush, they say, was then developing his "compassionate conservativism" message and did not want to be linked too closely to Mr. Reed, who had just stepped down as executive director of the Christian Coalition, an organization of committed religious conservatives.

At the same time, they say, the contract discouraged Mr. Reed, a prominent operative who was being courted by several other campaigns, from backing anyone other than Mr. Bush.

Enron paid Mr. Reed $10,000 to $20,000 a month, the amount varying by year and the particular work, people familiar with the arrangement say. He was hired in September 1997 and worked intermittently for Enron until the company collapsed.

In interviews today, both Mr. Rove and Mr. Reed said the contract with Enron had had nothing to do with the Bush campaign. But Mr. Rove said he had praised Mr. Reed's qualifications in a conversation about the job with an Enron lobbyist in Texas.

"I think I talked to someone before Ralph got hired," Mr. Rove said. "But I may have talked to him afterward."

"I'm a big fan of Ralph's," Mr. Rove said, "so I'm constantly saying positive things."

[...]

Around the time that Mr. Reed worked out his deal with Enron, he made clear to the Bush team that he was supporting Mr. Bush for president. Mr. Reed once recalled that at a meeting in 1997, he told Mr. Bush, then the governor of Texas: "I hope you go. I hope you run. And if you run, I'll do everything I can to help get you elected."

From then on, Mr. Reed was an unpaid consultant to the Bush organization, though after the race was well under way his firm was paid by the campaign for direct mail and phone banks.

[...]


Mr. Rove, who sold roughly $100,000 in Enron stock last year, months before the company's collapse, said Mr. Reed was clearly on Mr. Bush's team prior to taking the Enron job.

"Ralph Reed made it clear right from the beginning," Mr. Rove said, "that he wanted to be for him, and gave sound and solid advice in the years running up to the president's decision to be a candidate."

Now, I would never dream of jumping to any conclusions about the "mutual friends" Ralphie wanted to chat with his good friend Jack about just as the 98 elections were over and the presidential campaign was lurching into gear. But it was certainly nice of Ralph to be so careful about mentioning the name of whoever it was in that e-mail, wasn't it?


Update: Poor Ralphie

The controversy has confronted Reed with a fierce headwind here. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has published 48 articles and editorials on the Reed-Abramoff connection. The paper's main circulation area includes the suburban and exurban areas surrounding Atlanta, which provide more than half the votes cast in statewide Republican primaries.

[...]

Random interviews on Main Street in heavily Republican Alpharetta -- a rapidly growing town of 37,850 on the far northern suburbs of Atlanta -- suggested that even many people who follow politics casually are aware of the linkage between Reed and Abramoff.

"Ralph Reed? He's a politician," said David Loudenflager, a Republican who retired after working 32 years for the Arrow Shirt Company. "He was involved with Jack Abramoff and the Indians and all those."

Loudenflager does not like the Democratic Party -- "they give away everything" -- but he puts no stock in the Christian Coalition: "All these people running around telling you how good they are, and how right they are. You better be careful and hold on to your wallet."

Todd Guy, owner of Trader Golf, said succinctly in response to an inquiry: "Ralph Reed of the Christian Coalition? My God! Abramoff."

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digby 1/15/2006 06:08:00 PM |

 
Buy This Man A Drink

by digby

BLITZER: Should there be a change in attitude after 9/11?

BERGEN: I think the short answer is no. I mean, the nation has faced much more serious crises than 9/11.

We faced an existential crisis in the Cold War and with the Nazis; 9/11, obviously, was a very big deal, but I think we need to have some perspective.

We're not in a situation where our enemies can simply annihilate us as the Soviets could. Certainly, they can do us a lot of damage. But we have to, sort of, weigh that against the fact that we also want to live in a society where constitutional -- the Constitution is paid attention to.

Thank You!

Blitzer looked a little non-plussed because, you know, Bergen was being extremely un-PC. Very few people have been willing to publicly challenge the conventional wisdom that we are facing an evil enemy more threatening than anything ever experienced in human history.

Obviously, he will have to be dealt with. If this keeps up, somebody might just notice that there's no such thing as a war on terrorism either.


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digby 1/15/2006 04:19:00 PM |

 
Breaking The Machine

by digby

TIME magazine has posted an essential article about the effect of the Abramoff scandal on the house Republicans.

Meet the "reform" candidates who would like to replace Tom DeLay:

Boehner is no babe in the woods. He was one of Newt Gingrich's closest allies in bringing Republicans to power in 1994. When they took control of the House in 1995 after 40 years of Democratic rule, Boehner, as the House conference chairman, the No. 4 leadership position, was put in charge of building coalitions with business groups. He ran a meeting every Thursday of more than a dozen top business lobbyists in Washington. The relationship was mutually beneficial: House Republicans pushed through pro-business legislation, while the business groups provided campaign cash and grass-roots support to get bills passed. Boehner, who was part of the so-called Gang of Seven that had attacked Democrats for overdrafts from the House bank in the early 1990s, quickly became less known for his reform actions than for his closeness to lobbyists. He famously handed out campaign donations in the form of checks from tobacco lobbyists to members on the floor of the House in 1995.

[...]

The battle between Boehner and Blunt got ugly quickly. Blunt allies called Boehner a "joy boy" more concerned about partying than about the party. Boehner allies distributed a Rube Goldberg- like diagram, intentionally drawn to resemble opponents' depiction of Hillary Rodham Clinton's failed health-care plan, headlined Rep. Roy Blunt's efforts on behalf of Jack Abramoff and his indian gaming clients.

[...]

Shadegg has the strongest reform credentials of the three contenders. He entered Congress in the famous class of 1994, which campaigned on a pledge to reform Washington after years of Democratic rule. He once headed the caucus of the House's most conservative members of Congress

There you have it, two crooks and a fanatical wingnut. Excellent choices all.

The TIME article from which I excerpted the above has a great lede that should be sent around to everyone you know. It encapsulates the whole ugly business:

The spreadsheet, bristling with million-dollar totals, jumped from flat screen to flat screen last winter in the Washington underground of fund-raising consultants and political-action committees. It had been created by allies of Congressman John Boehner, an Ohio Republican known for massive, raucous late-night parties. A window into the science of the shakedown, the spreadsheet calculated the "efficiency" of fund-raising committees headed by various leaders of the House, showing which were most generous to other Republicans. Boehner's backers were thrilled when the widely forwarded spreadsheet produced a front-page headline in The Hill, a newspaper focused on Congress, saying boehner boasts of big bucks. Eight months later, his team smiled again when the paper ran a list of Boehner's "K Street Cabinet," loyal lobbyists and other power brokers who would help run the show if he achieved his longtime ambition of becoming House Speaker or majority leader. With Tom DeLay's machine still in charge of the Capitol, those were the credentials that would get an aspiring lawmaker taken seriously.

They didn't even try to hide it.

Haven't you ever wondered why it is that we are told constantly that it's nearly impossible for the Democrats to take back the house because they've been safely gerrymandered and yet Republicans spend almost all their time fundraising? If their seats are safe, what do they need all this campaign cash for?

It's a money laundering operation. The lobbyists give money to the GOP as campaign cash, the recipients gain power and influence in the party by spreading that campaign cash around. The Republican leadership allows the lobbyists to write their own legislation and the members earmark large sums of money to their own personal special interests. The taxpayers then pay back the lobbyists at a very nice profit.

The taxpayers are thereby funding the Republican party. Nice racket isn't it? And anybody who doesn't understand that this is a distinctly Republican problem (like the inexplicable Deborah Howell who refuses to see the forest for a couple of twigs on the side of the road) is willfully blind.

In 1995, DeLay famously compiled a list of the 400 largest PACs, along with the amounts and percentages of money they had recently given to each party. Lobbyists were invited into DeLay's office and shown their place in "friendly" or "unfriendly" columns. ("If you want to play in our revolution," DeLay told The Washington Post, "you have to live by our rules.") Another was to oust Democrats from trade associations, what DeLay and Norquist dubbed "the K Street Strategy."

[...]

It took the 2000 elections, which gave Republicans the White House and Congress, to completely change the climate. In the months after, Santorum became the Senate's point man on K Street and launched his Tuesday meetings. Working on the outside, Norquist accelerated what he calls the "K Street Project," a database intended to track the party affiliation, Hill experience, and political giving of every lobbyist in town. With Democrats out of power, these efforts are bearing fruit. Slowly, the GOP is marginalizing Democratic lobbyists and populating K Street with loyal Republicans. (DeLay alone has placed a dozen of his aides at key lobbying and trade association jobs in the last few years--"graduates of the DeLay school," as they are known.) Already, the GOP and some of its key private-sector allies, such as PhRMA, have become indistinguishable.

The piece in TIME ends with this:

...in the warrens of the Capitol, Republicans debate how they can project change while keeping things much the same. The big totals on future spreadsheets depend on it.

It is hard to overemphasize how important this Abramoff scandal is. It's not just "gotcha" politics. This Republican political machine is one of the most corrosive forces this country has ever seen. They are literally stealing huge sums of money from the taxpayers, sometimes blatantly for personal financial gain, as with the Dukestir. But in a larger sense they are blatently using our money, the people's money, as the primary way to fund their party and keep it in power. The exposure of this scam has shaken the foundation of their long term strategy.

The combination of their proven undemocratic impulses with their propensity for thuggishness and corruption has made the modern GOP one of the most pernicious political factions in our history. Putting an end to their shakedown racket is a necessary first step to breaking up their coalition and restoring some sanity to our two party system.



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digby 1/15/2006 04:00:00 PM |

 
Nattering Nabobs of Negativism

by digby


My good friend William Henders has written in to help me understand the errors of my leftist ways.

Dear Digby,

Once again it falls to me the thankless task of instructing you and your rabid base of liberal mouth-foamers on a few realities of public life in America.

It is true that in recent times the current administration and the GOP as a whole has proven sporadically incompetent, sleazy and downright mendacious in dealing with a host of matters of grave national importance. The list of such transgressions has been ably chronicled by you and your ilk in the partisan hack brigade. There is little need for me to run through it - WMDs, Katrina, Abramoff, Plame, FISA violations, torture, etc. etc., blah blah blah, yada yada yada.

Yes, you folks have had all these and more little "gotcha" moments, upon the discovery of which the Left has regularly shown itself to be basely thrilled to toot its own horn as "speakers of Truth to Power."

What your side fails to appreciate is that as terrible as any crimes by Republicans in leadership positions might be, it is in fact the whole concept of "speaking Truth to Power" that is the real cancer destroying our country from the inside out. The British of the Raj had a word for it: "Croaking."

The American polity understands this. It's why few on our side fear that the Democrats will regain any semblance of power in 2006, 2008 or beyond. But because you, Digby, and others like you so clearly have a tin ear to the concerns of real Americans, allow me to explain.

We are at war. When President Bush concedes that there exist "responsible ways" to debate our progress in the War on Terror, he is being overly generous (to his credit). But there is simply no "responsible way" to undermine through criticism of any stripe our leadership's actions to protect us, no matter how plainly mistaken, inadequate or served by ulterior motives those actions may be. There may be time for future historians to do so, though the nature of this particular war means that the proper time for such revisionism will be at least decades from now.

An analogy: The "facts on the ground" are that we Americans have, through the democratic process, lined ourselves up behind a lead dog in a sled race against Islamofacism. Even though we may at times think that this lead dog is dragging us towards thin ice, or miring us in soft snow, or hurtling us over a cliff, the only purpose served by "fouling the traces" through criticism of the leader is to lessen our resolve to compete in this Global Iditarod against Terror at all.

Nor is the profound problem of the Left's counterproductive harping limited to the affairs of war. What did incessant criticism of the President's handling of the Katrina disaster do but promote more despair amongst the victims, who clearly needed a reason for hope as much as they needed relief supplies and an evacuation plan? Who amongst the survivors will find the inner spirit to rebuild, when the Digbys of the world are constantly reminding them of promises unkept by their leaders?

In an economy that is increasingly stratified and underserving of a growing underclass mired in debt and with vanishingly few options for entry into positions of financial health, the Left would only add to the problem by putting the brakes on any optimism that may naturally, if fitfully, arise under such conditions. How? By relentlessly picking apart every failed initiative by our leadership, by doggedly bringing to light every omission of relevant data in the administration's projections ... when instead of such micro-criticism of details, a macro-optimism towards Bush economic strategy is called for, nay incumbent upon any who would call himself a
patriot.

To put it bluntly, the problem is not the efficacy of any particular plan for war, disaster relief or economic growth put forward by our leaders, but rather the real threat that under the assault of liberals like you, we may have no leaders and no plans at all.

Cordially, etc.

William G. Henders

He's right, of course. It's no secret that the left has perversely signed on to the independent feline political style. (Check out that evil look in their eyes.)We will not foolishly expend our energy waging a useless, marathon Iditarod Against Terror. (We like to sleep a lot.)

However, like the lethal lion pride we are, we will encircle the Republican dogs, chained to their lead dog Balto Bush and his driver Karl "over the cliff" Rove as they optimistically yip and bark around their campfire. And then we will go in for the kill. On the veldt of American politics, the predators always win in the long run. (Why do you think the Chairman of the DNC is known for his leonine roar?)

To Mr Henders' larger point that we endanger our country's physical and economic security when we criticize the president, I can only hang my head in shame. I understand now that if you aren't willing to unquestioningly support your president you don't believe in freedom. QED.



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digby 1/15/2006 10:54:00 AM |

Saturday, January 14, 2006

 
Grover's Eunuchs

by digby

Wolcott says:

I was traveling the cable dial this afternoon where I came upon a panel on CNBC's Kudlow & Company just as Lanny Davis, his insipid, ingratiating grin firmly in place, was saying that he hoped Democrats wouldn't "politicize" the Jack Abramoff situation but simply let the facts of the case emerge.

[...]

Beltway Dems like Davis and the DLC crowd don't want to politicize the Iraq war, or the Alito hearings, or the Katrina clusterfuck, or the NSA spying scandal; they shy away from every prospective fight and prevent any ongoing debate or controversy from gaining traction. Just as Jack Murtha's bombshell was gaining momentum, in droops Joe Lieberman to back up the president with a gift-wrapped testimonial. Yes, I know Lanny Davis is not an elected official but he was representing the Democratic side along with Harold Ford against John Fund of WSJ and Arizona congressman Jeff Flake (R). Given how Davis was fawning over Flake (who was making mild reformist noises about the need to clean house)--saying that he wished he could vote for someone so bright and sensible--and how Ford was prudently urging us to stay the course in Iraq and Afghanistan, it was more of a barbershop quartet than a doubles match. Kudlow, of course, couldn't have been more pleased by the civility and consensus shown by the fab four. Lanny Davis and Harold Ford were his kind of Democrats--reasonable, moderate, mainstream, and completely housebroken. They were good little guests.

Sadly, that brings to mind Grover Norquist's observation after the last election:

"Once the minority of House and Senate are comfortable in their minority status, they will have no problem socializing with Republicans. Any farmer will tell you that certain animals run around and are very unpleasant, but when they've been fixed, then they are happy and sedate. They are contented and cheerful. They don't go around peeing on the furniture and such."

To be fair, this does not apply to all Democrats. The leadership of Reid, Pelosi and Dean have been very aggressive. And the old dogs like Kennedy have been unafraid to raise a challenge. The problem lies with the alleged moderates like Ford and the gasbags like Biden who don't know the difference between partisan rhetoric and action (and fail to publicly play the game with any finesse.) But the biggest problem is the "liberal" pundits like Davis who should all be shunned. They don't speak for me and I don't think they speak for the Democratic party. They seem to speak for the conventional wisdom of the beltway which places a premium on obedient, neutered Democrats.


Again, it's the the old joke:

"Harry and Lanny are facing the firing squad. The executioner comes forward to place the blindfold on them. Harry disdainfully and proudly refuses, tearing the thing from his face. Lanny turns to him and pleads: "Please Harry, don't make trouble!"

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digby 1/14/2006 12:41:00 PM |

 
"Intelligent Design" Creationism Is So 2005

by tristero

Now, it's "intelligent evolution" creationism. Same lousy ideas. Same lack of peer-reviewed scientific evidence.

As PZ says, let's remember exactly what Dembski wrote when they claim that they've got an entirley new product that's not creationism:

I therefore offer the following proposal if ID gets outlawed from our public schools: retitle it Intelligent Evolution (IE). … [H]ey, it would still be evolution, and evolution can be taught in schools. In fact, I think I'll title my next book Intelligent Evolution: The Mindful Deviation of Evolutionary Pathways. Perhaps this book has already been written.

Note to anyone who wants to argue against science and for "intelligent design" creationism: As always, first please go to Pharyngula and convince PZ Meyers that you're right. When he's satisfied, come on back here and I'll be happy to discuss the subject with you. Until then, any attempt to "engage" will be answered by a boilerplate response to convince PZ first before wasting our time.
tristero 1/14/2006 10:32:00 AM |

 
Message From Beyond The Fourth Dimension

by tristero

In tomorrow's NY Times Magazine (no link yet), Yale Law professor Kenji Yoshino has a fascinating, provocative and nevertheless profoundly weird article about changes in discriminatory behavior.

The law, Professor Yoshino argues, has effectively eliminated discrimination by group membership; it is illegal to fire someone simply because she is black, for example. However, discrimination continues through the legal suppression ("covering") of any expression of minority group membership. So an African-American flight attendant can be fired simply for wearing cornrows, as a company regulation prohibits all braided hairdos. Professor Yoshino argues that while the law can address a small part of this kind of discrimination, the best way to fight against this obsession with minimizing differences is in other cultural arenas. After all, even two seconds of thought makes it quite clear that an important question to ask about the flight attendant case is why there is a company regulation prohibiting cornrows in the first place. And the more one thinks about it, the more it seems like something that couldn't possibly matter at all in the flight attendant's workplace except to prohibit any hint of diverse cultural expression. And that is discrimination, argues Professor Yoshino.

Now, I got some problems with the details of his argumentation here, but I am on the good Professor's side; he's got a point. A very important point. He's identified quite clearly an important, little noticed pattern of unfair discrimination. So the next step is for those of us who care about discriminatory practices to argue out the problems in Yoshino's thesis and find ways, both little and small, to bring them to bear on American culture.

And it is at this point, it becomes distressingly clear how truly weird Professor Yoshino's article was.

Although he says he teaches at Yale, which is in New Haven, Connecticut in the United States, I honestly don't know what country Professor Yoshino is living in. As it happens, I too live in a country called the United States, where coinicidentally there also is a New Haven and a Yale Law School about 2 hours or so away from where I live. But in the country in which I live, initiatives to broaden and extend the cultural definition of discrimination are unimaginable. In my country right now, we are trying to find a way to rebuild an entire city that was predominantly African American until they were flooded out of their homes and whose awful plight has been met with foot-dragging, racist indifference by the national government. "Extend" civil liberties? How about, you know, simply making sure that one's skin color doesn't determine the speed with which one's home is cleaned of raw sewage?

In my country, we are seeing, as David Neiwert documents so painfully over at Orcinus, a resurgence in the crudest form of elimationism rhetoric, "mainstream" think tanks and "respected" pundits rationalizing the internment of Japanese citizens during World War II as well as the murder, torture, and rape of prisoners today. Non-whites buying cellphones in bulk is deemed reasonable cause for fear of terrorism. To make matters worse, the very same people obsessed with excusing this kind of behavior seem all but indifferent to the crimes and terrorism being planned and committed by all white militia gorups.

In Professor Yoshino's America, the citizens care about eliminating racism and discrimination because, apparently, they believe that by doing so they will develop a stronger America whose diversity will give it the flexibility and mental suppleness needed to confront 21st century problems. But here in my America, we're arguing whether the Ku Klux Klan really was a racist organization or a legitimate expression of an aggrieved ethnic group.

Now the latest, hippest theories in physics tell us that there very well may be parallel universes, identical to ours but with different values for the natural laws. If that is so and Professor Yoshino's paper is a communique from an alternate reality, does anyone know how that paper could have ended up in THIS universe? And more importantly, does anyone know how I can leave this reality and enter his? Like today?

However, if, by some slim chance, the latest theories of multiverses are wrong, and Professor Yoshino and I are in fact citizens of the same country on the same planet and are presumably experiencing the same reality, then one of us (at least) is talking pie-in-the-sky nonsense. Because nothing close to Professor Yoshino's aspirations for increased civil liberties are conceivable in this America until Bushism collapses and the Enlightenment values which informed this country's founders are once more affirmed and practiced. And frankly, I don't see a chance of that happening anytime soon.


{Update: Added the Malkin Terrorist Cellphone Caper.}
tristero 1/14/2006 09:35:00 AM |

Friday, January 13, 2006

 
Can't Have It Both Ways

by digby

The Editors quote Pat Buchanan on the GOP's hispanic problem:

Today, a Republican can sweep the white vote 55 percent to 45 percent, and still lose. And as President Clinton merrily predicted a few years ago, white folks will be just another minority in 2050, as they are already in California and Texas.

In short, Republicans need minority voters to survive as America’s Party. The Bush-Rove solution to the looming demographic disaster is to go all-out to court the nation’s fastest growing minority, Hispanics, who now number 40 million and 13 percent of the U.S. population. But, in seeking to win the Hispanic vote, the inherent defects of the Bush-Rove strategy have become manifestly clear.

First, Hispanics have never voted Republican in any presidential election. In his 49-state landslide in 1984, Reagan, despite a macho image that appealed to Hispanics, managed to win only 44 percent. In national elections, the Hispanic vote ranges between 56 percent and 75 percent Democratic. Thus, the more Hispanic America becomes, the more Democratic America becomes. […]

The question Bush and Rove face is this: Can the GOP be both the party that secures the border against Hispanic invaders and sanctions employers who hire them, and still be the party Hispanics will vote for? In the old imagery, if Bush reaches for the bird in the bush, the Hispanic vote, by favoring open borders and amnesty, he may lose the bird in the hand, the support of the white working and middle class that is the heart of the Republican coalition.

Bush and Rove think they can have both. They can’t. But if George Bush’s father, 15 years ago, had only sealed and secured the border and begun to deport illegals, his son and Rove would not be facing the seemingly insoluble problem the GOP is presented with today.

Either Bush and Rove secure the border now, or we can kiss the GOP goodbye.

The Editors, wise as always, add:

Pat’s got personal reasons for wanting to paint a bleak picture, of course, and there’s no fundamental reason why “God, gays and guns” wouldn’t work on socially conservative Latinos as well as it worked on socially conservative whites. Of course, there’s no fundamental reason why it wouldn’t work on socially conservative blacks, either, but it sure as shit doesn’t. That’s because - as Pat is at pains to avoid discussing - the reason the Nixon/Reagan strategy worked was not because conservative whites suddenly developed an interest in religion, marksmanship, and heterosexuality. The reason was race. The reason, as Pat more or less admits, is still race. It wouldn’t be impossible for the Republicans to appeal to Latinos, but it’s impossible to do that and hold on to the conservatarian whites who voted for Reagan, Nixon, and Bush. If the Republicans are still in trouble in November, a little media-driven race war could really help turn out that vote.

It might not be enough. Get this:

The Latino Coalition, a conservative group close to the GOP, has now provided just that: a new nationwide poll of Hispanics which, as it happens, confirms the trend away from the GOP shown in the June poll. Indeed, this poll shows the GOP in even worse shape among Hispanic voters than was suggested by that earlier poll. And, given who conducted it, you certainly couldn’t accuse this new poll of Democratic bias. Indeed, Latino Coalition Hispanic polls in the past have typically produced results substantially more favorable to the GOP than contemporaneous results of DCorps and other national polls of Hispanics. So it’s a real eye-opener to get these very, very unfavorable results from this particular organization at this point in time.

Let’s start with the generic Congressional contest. This poll finds Democrats with a stunning 61-21 lead over the GOP among Hispanic registered voters, which translates into a 50 point lead (75-25) among those who express a preference. The analogous figure among those who expressed a preference in the June DCorps poll was “only” 36 points. By way of comparison to the last two off-year elections, 2002 and 1998, Democrats carried the Congressional vote by 24 and 26 points, respectively.

The new poll also finds Democrats with a 35 point lead (58-23) in party identification among voters.

This issue buried the GOP in California for the last decade. So, let Pat (and Tom Tancredo) rant. The last time he got on this bandwagon he helped usher in a Democratic president.



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digby 1/13/2006 05:32:00 PM |

 
Honest Graft

by digby


Matt Yglesias, guest hosting TPM for the day, makes an important observation:

Abuse of the government contracting process is bad, and perpetrators of wrongdoing should in no way get off the hook. Nevertheless, the entire concept of farming government out work to private firms is a more-or-less open invitation to corruption. There are instances when contracting is the only reasonable solution. But for some years now -- predating Bush, predating the DeLay era -- all the pressure has always been to privatize more and more government functions. The theory is that the private sector is more efficient than the public sector, so contracting functions out to private firms should save money. The reality has had a lot more to do with union-busting, machine-building, and "honest graft" than money saved or improved efficiency.

I know it's ridiculous to even ponder the idea that we might look to some of the endemic graft that's grown into our new "free market" guvmint, but it's there, nonetheless. The chances of reforming it are almost nil, of course. It's the union buster, machine builders gift that just keeps on giving.



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digby 1/13/2006 05:09:00 PM |

 
A Matter Of Trust

by digby


Kevin Drum, Marshall Wittman and John Dickerson all issue dire warnings to the Democrats not to:

a) challenge the Republicans on the illegal NSA wiretapping scandal (and by extension the administration's belief that the president has the power as both a unitary executive and commander in chief to ignore the laws) because the Republicans will wipe the floor with us just as they did over the Homeland Security issue in 2002.

and

b) get too excited about Abramoff because with Iran out there threatening, Bush will be able to use national security as effectively as he did in the past.

To all of that I say balderdash. Times have changed. There is no longer a single "boogeymahn" narrative. Not after Iraq.

The politics are very different now than they were in 2002. This country is no longer in thrall to a president with an 80% approval rating. Iraq is a huge drag, the Republicans' credibility is in shreds because of it --- and the Abramoff scandal just reinforces the whole ugly mess. The man with the bullhorn is now seen as the man with the bullshit to around 60% of voters.

Here are some numbers on the NSA scandal:

"As you may know, the Bush Administration has been wiretapping telephone conversations between U.S. citizens living in the United States and suspected terrorists living in other countries without getting a court order allowing it to do so...Do you think the Bush Administration was right or wrong in wiretapping these conversations without obtaining a court order?"


Right Wrong Unsure
50 46 4


Even when its worded in the most administration friendly way possible("between US citizens and suspected terrorists") half the country is against it. What do you think will happen when most people understand that the conversations were not just with "suspected terrorists?" After all, all these thousands of Americans who have allegedly been chatting to suspected terrorists overseas are still walking free; the only thwarted plot they've mentioned was some bozo from Cleveland who wanted to dismantle the Brooklyn bridge with a blowtorch.

Here's another polling question to ponder:

"Do you think the Republican Party or the Democratic Party can do a better job of writing laws which help the government find terrorists without violating the average person's rights?"


Republican/Democrat/Both/Neither/Unsure
1/5-8/06 33 42 5 7 13
12/7-10/01 33 26 14 7 20


As long as we are being crassly political, this is an important question:

"After 9/11, President Bush authorized government wiretaps on some phone calls in the U.S. without getting court warrants, saying this was necessary in order to reduce the threat of terrorism. Do you approve or disapprove of the President doing this?"


Approve/Disapprove/Unsure

ALL adults 49 48 3
Republicans 82 17 1
Democrats 31 67 2
Independents 41 54 5

From an electoral standpoint, (unless you think that the 31% of Democrats who support this will vote for Republicans because of it) the number to look at there is the independent voter. That's the swing vote and they don't like it.

Finally, there's this:

"During wartime, some presidents have either received or assumed special war powers, which give the president more authority to act independently when he feels it is necessary. In the current campaign against terrorism, is it a good idea or a bad idea for the president to have the authority to make changes in the rights usually guaranteed by the Constitution?"


Good Idea/Bad Idea/Unsure
1/5-8/06 36 57 7
12/7-10/01 64 29 7


To be fair there are a bunch of questions in this poll that indicate that people don't care much about this or support the president. They are all over the map. Which means that this is one of those issues about which people are still open to persuasion.

I do not think this is the same country that it was in 2002 and we are finally able to look at these issues with a bit of reason and dispassion. It's time to make the case for rational assessment of the risks. I do not bleieve that the public is nearly as willing to jump on any national security whim as they were four years ago. At least I think it's time to find out. If we don't, there may be no going back.

And while some are apparently willing to take Bush at his word that he has only used the illegal wiretapping for purely national security reasons, nobody can be sure of that because there is no oversight. Which is the problem. Nobody says that the president shouldn't be able to monitor Americans who are talking to suspected terrorists. But at least half the country doesn't see why he couldn't find a way to do that legally. Certainly, the more than a dozen whisteleblowers who came forward to the NY Times think he could have and that is what raises suspicions about his motives.

I think a good part of his motive is a desire to institutionalize Presidential Infallibility Doctrine and that is bad. People are not aware of this yet, but hearings, if done properly, could serve to educate them a bit.

But there is also ample reason to doubt the president's word that this has not been used as he says it's been used. And that's because it has recently been revealed that the Pentagon has been monitoring protestors and political groups. The president's most trusted advisor (who is possibly going to be indicted for perjury, I might add) along with a legion of his supporters, say publicly that "liberals" are unpatriotic. The president himself is going all over the country as we speak saying that anyone who questions his motives is giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

One can certainly see a scenario in which a president who thinks this way could also think that it is necessary to monitor American dissenters on national security grounds. And under his reading of the constitution, we have no right to inquire or demand that anyone review a decision like that. I continue to believe that most Americans would find that repugnant.

And that leads us to the Abramoff scandal. This issue of corruption and graft in the Republican party is hugely important and it is going to have a life of its own even if we do nothing. It plays directly into the idea that Republican leadership believes that they are above the law. Just like the president.

As for Iran, I have no idea what will happen politically. But I'm willing to bet big money that the president will not get the same benefit of the doubt he got on Iraq. And that is just sad because he blew his credibility on bullshit to the detriment of our country's national security. Had he maintained the mystique of American power instead of proving to the world how incredibly fucked up we really are, we might have some clout to deal with Iran today. Iran with nukes is not good.

However, the consensus is that they cannot get one for another five years. So, I think we can afford to hold back any patriotic impulse to support this lying sack of shit until we can elect a new congress that can provide some oversight. This administration has damaged American credibility so badly that we are going to be lucky if we can persuade the world to believe us when we say the sun is coming up tomorrow. For the sake of national security I think it's vitally important that we neuter him as much as possible. Every word he utters now makes this world a more dangerous place to live.

We cannot continue to worry about whether the Republicans are going to call us chickenshits on national security. They are. But I'm betting that the time is ripe to turn that back on them. There is an undercurrent of discontent with this administration and the Republican party in general, particularly on Iraq and public corruption. It's all a matter of trust and they are losing it. We won't benefit from that by playing it safe on matters of fundamental principle.

Right now the Democrats have a distinct advantage when it comes to the question of who "will write laws that will help the government find terrorists without violating the rights of the average American." That is what we build upon. And if we lose in November, then we lose having at least begun to make a real case for progressive principles instead of losing because we tried to convince people that we weren't quite as bad as they say we are.



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digby 1/13/2006 04:25:00 PM |

 
Going Chris Matthews One Better

by tristero

Should the president have the right to break the law and gather information after 9/11? Chris Matthews tells us what he thinks:

MATTHEWS: We're under attack on 9-11. A couple of days after that, if I were president of the United States and somebody said we had the ability to check on all the conversations going on between here and Hamburg, Germany, where all the Al Qaeda people are, or somewhere in Saudi [Arabia], where they came from and their parents are, and we could mine some of that information by just looking for some key words like "World Trade Center" or "Pentagon," I'd do it.

TICE [a former NSA official]: Well, you'd be breaking the law.

MATTHEWS: Yeah. Well, maybe that's part of the job.

Well, I'll see Matthews and raise him. I think the president of the United States should have detained for questioning the relatives of anyone suspected of involvement in 9/11. I don't care what anyone says about guilt by association, if you're related to bin Laden, for example, then by God, nothing in the weeks after 9/11 should stop the US Government from keeping you around for some extended questioning.

The thing is... nothing did stop the the Bush administration from detaining bin Laden's relatives and other Saudi nationals here in the US after 9/11 for as long as they wanted. Except, of course, the Bush administration itself.* Oh, and it would have been perfectly legal to detain them, but they didn't bother. That's right: no laws had to be broken. Bush just had to exercise some common sense and summon the patriotic will to disobey his Saudi masters... oops, I mean good friends.

A corollary question: Would an illegal wiretap have prevented 9/11? Well, if it takes breaking the law to gather that kind of information, then yeah, let's Dirty Harry Cleans Up Frisco, fellas! Screw the law.

But y'know what's kinda funny? It really wasn't necessary to break any laws to gather information that would have prevented 9/11. But it really is pretty important to have someone around who understands the language when they first come in::

Before Sept. 11, U.S. agencies collected about 30 communications from suspected al Qaeda operatives or other militants referring to an imminent event, but many were false alarms, a U.S. intelligence official said on Monday.

"You can't dismiss any of them, but it doesn't tell you tomorrow is the day," the official told Reuters on condition of anonymity. [Oh?? Shades of Austin Powers: "That's not my Swedish Penis Pump." Read on.]

Messages from members of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network included the phrases "Tomorrow is zero hour" and "The match begins tomorrow," which government sources have said were picked up on Sept. 10 by National Security Agency eavesdropping on global communications.

Those two messages were not translated from Arabic until Sept. 12.

But let's cut the crap. Matthews' little conversation was about quite a serious topic, but the topic wasn't the security of the United States which is adequately served by its security laws (the competence of its agencies under Bush is a different story). You don't gotta be a cowboy to be president. Or a torturer, or a murderer of prisoners. And Matthews knows this. And he also knows what his real topic is:

Is it ok for George W. Bush to continue to violate the laws of the people and the government of the US? Is it ok for Bush to insist he is answerable only to the Voice of God in his head but not to any court of law?

Chris Matthews thinks that's just fine. And y'know something? I don't think Bush even has to pay him to say so. Kinda gives you the creeps, doesn't it?



*Now, you may have noticed, if you clicked the link to Snopes, that they make a point of debunking the claims that the flights of bin Laden relatives and Saudi nationals occurred immediately after 9/11 and before the FBI questioned them. No argument with that: I'm not claiming Jim Garrison-style conspiracy, just incredible incompetence mixed with political pressure from on high (and no one believes permission for those flights didn't come straight from Crawford's Answer To Churchill himself).

Now the flights to evacuate the Saudis started a mere five hours after airspace opened up on 9/13. Most of the fugitives... I mean passengers, were not interviewed. Then, on Sept. 20, only nine days after the attacks, a flight with 26 passengers, mostly related to the terrorist mastermind left the US. Now twenty two of these people were interviewed and swore they knew nothing. Wouldn't you? And they scrammed out of the country.

That's what I call a thorough investigation.
tristero 1/13/2006 01:07:00 PM |

 
Too Important For Bloviators

by digby

I would like second Glenn Greenwald's call for a special Select Committee to investigate the illegal NSA wiretapping scandal. This issue is obviously too complex and difficult to be handled by Arlen Specter's Judiciary Committee. I realize that the nation can't get enough of Blowhard Biden and Huckleberry Graham after their riveting Kabuki star turns over the past week but I would hate to see them get over exposed. Trying to stay awake while boring senators get turned inside out by much more nimble witnesses is thrilling TV, I know, but we don't want to overdo it.

Glenn points out that the House has a select bi-partisan committee up and running right now to investigate the federal response to hurricane Katrina so it's not as if this is unusual. It is commonly used for hearings of national importance like the Katrina response, the Clinton impeachment hearings, Iran Contra, Watergate and others. This is that important and it should be treated that way. If it's left up to Huckleberry's cornpone lectures and Tom Coburn's insane ramblings the hearings will be quickly made irrelevant by the incompetent questioning and bored media reaction alone.

These hearings are going to be about a fundamental constitutional understanding of how our system of government works. The stakes are very high. We could be setting a precedent for a unitary executive that completely abrogates the system of checks and balances. The committee will interview legal experts who are going to make arguments that the president has a right under the constitution to ignore the laws and I don't want Dianne Feinstein being the one to challenge them.

The other side is going to question opposing views with a simple bullshit rationale about saving the babies from the boogeyman. We cannot leave the much more complicated opposing argument to gasbag senators questioning much more agile legal minds than theirs. We need real, practising lawyers who know the issues and know how to question a witness.

After watching the soporific Alito sideshow this week, it's quite clear to me that the judiciary committee is not a venue in which to get to the bottom of this.



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digby 1/13/2006 11:16:00 AM |

 
"Who's Being Naive, Kay?

by digby

Today, I'm calling a moratorium on calling Democrats spineless losers. This op-ed column by Harry Reid is one of the most in-your-face challenges I've seen in quite some time and it gets right to the heart of the matter:

In 1977, I was appointed chairman of the Nevada Gaming Commission. It was a difficult time for the gaming industry and Las Vegas, which were being overrun by organized crime. To that point in my life, I had served in the Nevada Assembly and even as lieutenant governor, but nothing prepared me for my fight with the mob.


Over the next few years, there would be threats on my life, bribes, FBI stings and even a car bomb placed in my family's station wagon. It was a terrifying experience, but at the end of the day, we cleaned up Las Vegas and ushered in a new era of responsibility.

My term on the gaming commission came to an end in 1981, and when it did, I thought I had seen such corruption for the last time. Unfortunately, that has not been the case. It is not quite the mafia of Las Vegas in the 1970s, but what is happening today in Washington is every bit as corrupt and the consequences for our country have been severe.

Our nation's capital has been overrun by organized crime — Tom DeLay-style.

The gangsters are the lobbyists, cronies and lawmakers who have banded together and abused their power to serve their own self-interest. The casinos are the Capitol, which has had its doors thrown open for special interests to waltz in and help themselves, and the victims, of course, are the American people.

There is a price to pay for the culture of corruption, and we can see it in the state of our union.

Consider the state of our economy. On one side is Big Oil, which reaped $100 billion in profits in 2005. On the other side are middle-class families. Their wages are declining at the same time they are paying more for gas, heat, education and other needs.

Take the state of health care. On one side are the HMOs that benefited greatly from a $10 billion slush fund in the Medicare bill. On the other side are seniors who face gaps in their coverage and the high cost of prescription drugs.

And then there is our national debt. On one side are the special interests and the multimillionaires who have received tremendous tax breaks over the last five years. On the other side are our children and grandchildren who will pay for these tax cuts when they inherit billions in debt.

In our country today, we are seeing what happens when lawmakers and lobbyists conspire to put the needs of special interests before the needs of the American people. We have a country that grows more dependent on foreign oil each day. We have cronyism like that exposed by Hurricane Katrina, and we have a national security policy that does a good job of protecting Halliburton's bottom-line but not a good enough job protecting the American people.

Damn!

This is exactly how this should be framed. They are a criminal mob. Democrats should not shy away from using that exact language because it's absolutely true.

"I AM the federal government."

- Comment uttered by Tom DeLay to the owner of Ruth's
Chris Steak House, after being told to put out his cigar because of federal government regulations banning smoking in the building, May 14, 200

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digby 1/13/2006 10:06:00 AM |

Thursday, January 12, 2006

 
Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds

by digby


Hindquarters writes yesterday:

George W. Bush is Churchill's heir in our century.

He explains:

Regular readers of this site know that we admire, above all others, Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill. President Bush's reference to "victory" as the mandate he gives to his commanders recalls, intentionally, I am sure, Churchill's great speech upon becoming Prime Minister in May 1940--the speech in which he said, "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat."

This is what brought the comparison to mind. First, here's Junior:

So that was a good question. Thank you. (Applause.)

Let's see, yes, ma'am. I'm running out of time here. You're paying me a lot of money, and I've got to get back to work. (Laughter.)

First of all, I expect there to be an honest debate about Iraq, and welcome it. People can help, however, by making sure the tone of this debate is respectful and is mindful about what messages out of the country can do to the morale of our troops. (Applause.)

I fully expect in a democracy -- I expect and, frankly, welcome the voices of people saying, you know, Mr. President, you shouldn't have made that decision, or, you know, you should have done it a better way. I understand that. What I don't like is when somebody said, he lied. Or, they're in there for oil. Or they're doing it because of Israel. That's the kind of debate that basically says the mission and the sacrifice were based on false premise. It's one thing to have a philosophical difference -- and I can understand people being abhorrent about war. War is terrible. But one way people can help as we're coming down the pike in the 2006 elections, is remember the effect that rhetoric can have on our troops in harm's way, and the effect that rhetoric can have in emboldening or weakening an enemy.

That "I can understand people being abhorrant about war" passage really sings, doesn't it? You can easily see why it would bring to mind this passage from Churchill:

You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.

Bush is complaining about his political opponents pointing out that he's a lying sack of shit. Churchill is bucking up the British people as they are being bombed mercilessly by the Germans duiring the blitz. Who could fail to be moved by the comparison?


Now that I look at it, I can see another analogy. Bush begging his kool-aid drinkers to come out and vote is necessary to ensure his party's survival. When we win, it's going to be a nasty few years for Republican politicians as they face the consequences of their criminal reign.


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digby 1/12/2006 07:33:00 PM |

 
Pat Robertson Has High Standards

by tristero

And they're all green. See, with a 50 million buck Israeli real estate scam deal on the line, Pat now thinks it was "clearly insensitve at the time" to say Sharon's stroke was divine retribution for the Gaza withdrawal.

It never ceases to amaze me how clearly phony, how greedy, and how cynically irreligious America's "spiritual leaders" are. And how many people are willing not only to respect their whacked ideas, but actually send them oodles of their hard-earned money. What a racket.

And that is why every day I wake up and pray for The Rapture to come., "Please God, take all these self-righteous clown up to their Final Reward and leave me down here." I mean, is that too much to ask from a truly merciful Divinity?
tristero 1/12/2006 03:27:00 PM |

 
Ripper Takes The Fifth

by digby


It looks like General Geoffrey D. Ripper might finally be coming into the crosshairs. It is long overdue. This sadistic piece of rubbish is largely responsible for instituting the war crimes that have contributed to our becoming a pariah state. Junior and the Nixon Retreads loved the guy.

Not that I'm holding my breath, but this article in the WaPo this morning indicates that he's suddenly taking the fifth now that the notorious Col. Pappas has been granted immunity in return for his testimony:

Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, a central figure in the U.S. detainee-abuse scandal, this week invoked his right not to incriminate himself in court-martial proceedings against two soldiers accused of using dogs to intimidate captives at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, according to lawyers involved in the case.

The move by Miller -- who once supervised the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and helped set up operations at Abu Ghraib -- is the first time the general has given an indication that he might have information that could implicate him in wrongdoing, according to military lawyers.

Harvey Volzer, an attorney for one of the dog handlers, has been seeking to question Miller to determine whether Miller ordered the use of military working dogs to frighten detainees during interrogations at Abu Ghraib. Volzer has argued that the dog handlers were following orders when the animals were used against detainees.

[...]

Miller's decision came shortly after Col. Thomas M. Pappas, the commanding officer at Abu Ghraib, accepted immunity from prosecution this week and was ordered to testify at upcoming courts-martial. Pappas, a military intelligence officer, could be asked to detail high-level policies relating to the treatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib.

He also could shed light on how abusive tactics emerged, who ordered their use and their possible connection to officials in Washington, according to lawyers and human rights advocates who have closely followed the case. Pappas has never spoken publicly. Crawford said Miller was unaware of Pappas's grant of immunity. "This could be a big break if Pappas testifies as to why those dogs were used and who ordered the dogs to be used," said Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights. "It's a steppingstone going up the chain of command, and that's positive. It might demonstrate that it wasn't just a few rotten apples."

[...]

Eugene R. Fidell, a Washington expert in military law, said that Miller's decision is "consistent with his being concerned that he may have some exposure to worry about." Fidell added: "It's very unusual for senior officers to invoke their Article 31 rights. The culture in the military tends to encourage cooperation rather than the opposite."

Miller has long been in the spotlight of the Abu Ghraib abuse investigations, largely because he was sent to the Iraq prison in August and September 2003 with the goal of streamlining its intelligence-gathering operations, using Guantanamo Bay, commonly called "Gitmo," as a model. Officers at Abu Ghraib have said that Miller wanted to "Gitmo-ize" the facility, and that harsh tactics migrated from the Cuba facility via "Tiger Teams" that Miller sent to Iraq as trainers.

[...]


In an interview with defense attorneys for those MPs in August 2004, Miller said he never told Pappas to use dogs in questioning detainees. Photos of the dog handlers scaring detainees at Abu Ghraib were among the most notorious to emerge from the prison. Dogs were also used at Guantanamo Bay.

"At no time did we discuss the use of dogs in interrogations," Miller said, according to a transcript.

Volzer, who represents Sgt. Santos A. Cardona, one of the military dog handlers charged with abuse, said he believes the grant of immunity to Pappas will essentially clear his client, because Pappas already has admitted in administrative hearings that he improperly ordered the use of dogs. Volzer said he believes that Pappas was taking direction from Miller, and that Miller was acting on instructions from Defense Department officials. Cardona and Sgt. Michael J. Smith are scheduled to be tried in separate courts-martial in February and March.

"I think the command is hiding something, and I think what they're hiding is material that is exculpatory that says the interrogation techniques were approved by powers above General Miller," Volzer said. "Having Pappas available to testify may have given Miller the impression that he is next to be accused of doing something inappropriate or giving inappropriate orders."

No kidding. Miller was an artillery officer who replaced the original Gitmo Commandant who was accused of being too soft on the prisoners and not getting enough intelligence. Miller fixed that. He got reams and reams of "intelligence" with his methods. The only problem was that it was all bullshit. But they liked his bullshit so much they sent him to Iraq to torture even more bullshit out of the Iraqis.

This was during the period when Cambone, Rumsfeld and Rice were leaning heavily on the military to provide them with piles of paper to prove how well we were doing --- "in-box metrics." No bin Laden, no WMD. But lots and lots of reports.

Miller was the best brown-nosing sadist they could find to generate a flurry of paperwork based on coercive techniques virtually designed to gain false intelligence. Sadly, as a result of these ineffective and immoral methods bin Laden is still at large and we managed to create a violent anti-American opposition in Iraq. Oh yes, and we have also lost all the moral authority we built up over the course of our history. Excellent work all around.

He is a war criminal. And so are his bosses.



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digby 1/12/2006 10:54:00 AM |

 
Always Alert

by digby


I know everybody loves a Nixonian Republican named Martha who cries, but would it be too much for the press to actually report the backround on this little kabuki today?

TIME wrote last night:

The always-alert Creative Response Concepts, a conservative public relations firm, sent this bulletin: "Former Alito clerk Gary Rubman witnessed Mrs. Alito leaving her husband's confirmation in tears and is available for interviews, along with other former Alito clerks who know her personally and are very upset about this development."

In case that was too much trouble for the journalists, the firm also e-mailed out a statement from the Judicial Confirmation Network calling "for the abuse to stop."

This was all spontaneous, of course. Any resemblance to Clarence Thomas' "high tech lynchings" or Lynn Cheney's "this is not a gooood man" is purely coincidental.

I think it's time for Ted Kennedy to haul some little girls who were strip searched in to testify. You wanna play? Bring it.

And it's also time for Democrats to see this as the gift it is. For once the snivellers are the Republicans, playing against type. But that means we're playing against type also. It's not often that the country sees us as "too tough." We should play like Pat Fitzgerald and say "we're just doing our jobs, ma'am. This is important business." Let Huckleberry and the boys whimper like little old ladies.



Via Talk Left's fine analysis of yesterday's hearings

Update: Rending his garments and speaking in tongues, Roger L. Simon hits a new low.

Update II: Uncomfortable with being seen as the delicate Ashley and Melanie's they are, there's this:

And I think Mrs. Alito was crying because she couldn't jump out of her seat and beat the living hell out of those arrogant condescending bastards who were making those false and scurrilous implications about her husband.

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digby 1/12/2006 09:12:00 AM |

 
Wedge Politics

by digby


David Neiwert's got a must read piece up on immigration, the Minutemen and the Australian race riots. Nobody does this difficult subject better than he does. Get ready. it's going to be one of the big topcis coming up in this next year whether we like it or not.

It's happening everywhere -- in the Northwest, in California, in the Midwest, in the South, even in pockets in the Northeast. What's important to understand is that much of this agitation is taking place under the radar, by well-financed organizations who operate through focus groups and "think tanks." Minneapolis Star-Tribune columnist Nick Coleman described just such an operation taking place recently in Minnesota under less-than-upfront circumstances:

The woman moderator, who said she was from Maryland, wanted very much to talk about immigrants. The participants already had discussed any issues they were concerned about, except the war in Iraq. There would be no talk about Iraq, the woman said. But up to that point, no one had mentioned immigration, much to the annoyance of the moderator. So she prodded the group to complain about immigrants.

"I haven't heard anybody talk about immigration," Peoples, an independent, recalls her saying. "Anybody have a problem with the illegal aliens coming in?"

The group's response to the question was "a deafening silence," Peoples says. But the woman pushed harder, listing some of the complaints she said she had heard in other states where she had conducted focus groups. Still, no one obliged her. Instead, Peoples mentioned the immigrant workers in a nearby town, praising them for how hard they seem to work.

Not the correct answer. Someone was paying money for this. They wanted problems.

"She shut me off," Peoples recalls. "Then she said, 'Aren't you having problems here?' "

The state Republican and DFL parties each deny having sponsored the mystery focus group, as does the Republican congressman for the area, Gil Gutknecht, and his DFL challenger, Tim Walz. Also in denial mode was the office of Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who recently poured gasoline on the immigrant issue with the release of a crudely overstated report designed to inflame opinion and make immigration into a wedge issue.

That last bit was opinion. But this is fact: Anti-immigration forces are working hard to raise resentment and to exploit immigration for political gain, cozying up to politicians who will help them fence the borders.

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of all this is the big picture: the anti-immigrant push really represents a significant incursion of right-wing extremism into mainstream conservatism. Each is busy empowering the other, with the end result being an American right pushed even farther to the right.

I'm not looking forward to fighting this battle. Some fair minded good people are getting caught up in it because they don't understand that it is a manufactured political wedge issue. It's going to be unpleasant.

If Democrats can muster the self discipline keep our poweder dry on this, it will work as a much deeper wedge into the GOP. If we don't, we'll be split by it too.


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digby 1/12/2006 08:45:00 AM |

 
Proverbs For Bloggers

by tristero

1. A blogger who knows not irony, knows not a lot:

The headline reads A Plea for Civility. And the lede begins:

After the Democrats' thuggish behavior yesterday...

Update: Tx to kc and cleek in comments for reminding me that John Hinderaker once provided a fellow blogger with an exceptionally clear object lesson in civility.
tristero 1/12/2006 06:30:00 AM |

Wednesday, January 11, 2006

 
You Go Girl!

by digby

We Democrats have a penchant for calling our party spineless and complaining that they never challenge the Republicans.

Well, get a load of this:

Bush said the war's critics should stop questioning the motives that led him to launch the invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

"The American people know the difference between responsible and irresponsible debate when they see it…. And they know the difference between a loyal opposition that points out what is wrong, and defeatists who refuse to see that anything is right," Bush said.

"I ask all Americans to hold their elected leaders to account and demand a debate that brings credit to our democracy — not comfort to our adversaries," Bush said.

[...]

Karen Finney, the Democratic National Committee's communications director, said "the Bush administration's attack, distract and distort tactics reflect a Nixonian paranoia that is un-American."

Of course, saying things like this might make Laura cry and cause lil' Huckleberry Graham to clutch his opera length pearls and purse his purdy lips together in a pout, but, you know, fuck it. This is not a goooood man.



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digby 1/11/2006 07:00:00 PM |

 
Sniffling Kabuki

by digby

Following up my post below, is there anyone besides me who thinks that Huckleberry Graham's grandmotherly lecture and the teary Mrs Alito's exit seemed just a bit too pat?

Huckleberry, after all, served as Stripsearch Sammy's coach for the hearings. I'm just saying...



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digby 1/11/2006 03:58:00 PM |

 
Miss Manners


by digby


Does anybody but me get tired of listeing to Huckleberry Graham constantly lecture the senators about their manners? Every damned time he gets in one of these situations he pulls his Andy Taylor talking to Opie voice and drones on and on about good people not wanting to be in government because Democrats are so rude.

Wring your little lace hankie someplace else, Lindsay. This is important shit. Give a little weekly lecture to your thuggish Republican colleagues why don't you? They could use a little Miss Manners.

Jayzuz. This cornpone sanctimony makes me want to hurl.



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digby 1/11/2006 01:52:00 PM |

 
First Things First

by digby


There is some discussion about whether the Democrats should concentrate on accusing the Republicans of criminal behavior or putting forth a competing reform plan, which might imply that the system itself is at fault for the Republican abuses. I'm not sure that we have to choose so starkly, but I do think that tactically we need to make sure that this scandal is clearly framed as a Republican scandal before we produce any larger reforms. Right now the public is just starting to get a sense of what this scandal is about and we have an opportunity to exploit some existing images and archetypes to paint the Republicans as the criminals they are before we launch a national campaign to clean up the mess.

It pays to keep in mind that the 1994 Republicans didn't put out their "Contract On America" until six weeks before the election. They've pretended that it won them the election but that's a joke. (They did use bogus polling to give that impression.) What won that election was relentless criticism over the course of many months leading up to it. They built upon a reserve of discontent about a slow economic recovery by placing the blame for everything squarely on the "liberals" and the Democratic party. Their "positive" agenda was just gilding the lilly.

Whatever 10 point reform plans we produce, and we should produce them, the message has to be simple and straightforward: "The Republicans are crooks and we have to clean house to make sure they can't do it again"

Newtie and Noonan and others have been out there furiously trying to convince the media that the problem is big government (and we know who loves Big Govmint, don't we?) This is no accident. They use every opportunity, even when they are under the gun, to advance negative images against the other side and boldly use that negativitity to advance themselves. They are positioning themselves for a reform message that blames a Democratic value (government) for the Republicans' problems in Washington. "Don't blame us, the Big Government made us do it."

They are saying this because they know very well that the most dangerous negative meme that haunts Republicans is the image of abuse of power and criminal behavior: there are words and phrases that bring this right to the surface like "slush funds," "illegal wiretapping" and "bribery." It's all connected to a certain type of governance ---- that we happen to be witnessing in real time. Again. Nixonian Republicanism.

The GOP has understood for years that they can gain great traction by piggybacking every criticism on existing negative images of Democrats (usually some version of effeminate, undisciplined cowards.) Here we have one of the most vivid negative examples of the Republican archetypes. The greedy little man on the Monopoly Box. We are fools if we don't come at them with everything we have, focusing our fire on the corrupt political machine and the arrogant imperial presidency. In the wake of the faux GOP outrage at the trivial Clinton scandals, which are even fresher in people's memories than Nixon, this could cripple them for a good long while if we handle it correctly.

I realize that some Democrats are feeding at the trough. We need to deal with that. But first things first. This is about a complex criminal political enterprise and there is simply no comparison between it and the rather workaday corruption of politicians generally, including Democrats. Their purpose was to build a permanent majority using whatever illegal and legal means at their disposal. And they planned to create an executive branch that operates entirely independently and is answerable only to an "accountability moment" every four years.

I think it's a big mistake to treat this as just another in a long line of reforms that become necessary every few years. It simply was not business as usual.

Here's a rather amusing example of GOP think on this from a commenter, who offered it up apparently without irony:

allow me to explain why the Abramoff scandal, like so many others before it, will prove to be more devestating to the Dems then it could possibly be to the GOP, much less conservatives.

The Dems bleat daily that they are the "minority" party. That they are the "loyal opposition." Yet who actually does something when a scandal arises? Who opened the investigation into the Plame non-leak? Who is pursuing the leak of an NSA program that threatens national security and possibly civil liberties? Who addressed possible torture at Abu Ghraib? Who is set to clean house over the Abramoff tempest in a teapot that threatens to implicate some of the biggest names in the Republican Party, perhaps the very culture of Republican politics?

Not the "loyal opposition" ... but rather the Bush Administration.

Teh public knows this. Or is growing to know this with each passing day. They, the voting public, will be left to wonder, if the "loyal opposition" cannot even muster the courage to bring such scandals to the light of day, then for what are they good for?

Americans are already starting to realize that if a "loyal opposition" cannot even do its job of defeating the party in powers' corruption and misgovernance (examples of which are legion, apparently), then how can we possibly entrust them with the real job of governing the nation?

Rather, American voters will know they would be wiser to turn to the REpublican Party, which has made some partisan, ideological and hubristic missteps, yes - even engaged in a pattern of criminal behavior it would seem. All those sins, yes, but still the GOP is not so grossly incompetent or lacking in power that it would allow what it has done over the past few years to pass, if it had been the Democrats who had done it.

Truly, the Dems attack the Abramoff scandal at their peril.

William G. Henders |

It's hard to know if he's serious. But he could be. It's a twisted Rovian view in the extreme. No matter what, attack the Dems for being chickenshit. Works like a charm.

I think that we can all agree that ten point plans don't win elections. We have to bring to the surface people's almost palpable discomfort with Republican governance, as measured in the president's approval rating, the right track/wrong track numbers and everything else. We have to make people willing to admit to themselves what they already know and we need to do it in clear no nonsense terms --- or that fellow's mind boggling strategy might just work.



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digby 1/11/2006 12:44:00 PM |

 
Spinning Out

by digby


Bush needs to cut down on the coffee. He's so wound up this morning he looks like he's going to spin off the stage. There is something wrong with this man.





I appears that he is taking Rove's advice over his "younger staffers." He's adopted the super aggressive swagger attitude favored by his guru:

President Bush warned Democratic critics of his
Iraq policy on Tuesday to watch what they say or risk giving "comfort to our adversaries" and suffering at the ballot box in November. Democrats said Bush should take his own advice.

[...]

Tuesday's ... sharp message represented an attempt by the president to neutralize Democrats' ability to use Iraq — where violence is surging in the wake of December parliamentary elections and messy negotiations to form a new coalition government — as an election-year cudgel against Republicans.

Bush acknowledged deep differences over Iraq among casualty-weary Americans, just 39 percent of whom approve of his handling of the war, according to AP-Ipsos. Without specifically mentioning Democrats, the president urged campaigning politicians to "conduct this debate responsibly."

I'm always touched when Republicans show such concern for Democratic electoral prosepcts. I know they only have our best interests at heart.


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digby 1/11/2006 10:46:00 AM |

Tuesday, January 10, 2006

 
K.I.S.S.

by digby

Samela writes in the comments:

I think the simplest story that reveals the difference between what people perceive as 'big-business influence through lobbying" (which they relate to both parties) and the Culture of Corruption swirling around the Republicans is the one involving the Magazine Publishers of America.

Back in 2000 the magazine industry hired Abramoff as a lobbyist (he was then at Preston Gates Ellis) to help stem a proposed rise in postal rates. Now, most people can understand why the magazine industry would not want higher postal rates: it affects the bottom line of their business. Aside from printing, postage is one of their biggest costs. No one, of course, likes higher postal rates (and no one particularly wants magazine subscription rates to rise). But sometimes they are necessary to keep the postal system running. Nonetheless, it would seem perfectly legitimate for the MPA to hire a lobbyist to try to put their case before congressional members. One would assume the USPS would similarly be trying to jawbone legislators to present their side of the story, arguing FOR the need to raise postal rates. Senators and representatives should then duly consider the arguments from both sides and come to a decision about whether rates should rise or not.

This is not what happened. Mr. Abramoff was paid $525,000 by the MPA to seek a postal rate reduction in Congress. Did he make a heckuva case for them? Not exactly: he asked the MPA to give an additional $25,000 to a Seattle-based charity (slush fund) he'd helped found--and then he used that money (as well as another $25K from elottery) to help pay the salary for the wife of Tom Delay staff member Tony Rudy. It's called money laundering and bribery.

It's okay for lobbyists to collect money from clients to argue their cases before legislators. It's even okay (though problematic) for businesses or interests who have a stake in congressional legislation to try to elect the people they think can help them by donating to their campaigns, within the law. (Though I'd like to see changes in those laws.) What's not okay is money laundering and bribery. That is what a number of Republican Congressmen and their staffers are involved in here .... but no Democrats, to our knowledge.

The Democrats may be too tied to corporate contributions, and it's a problem that needs to be addressed. But we have thus far not seen any widespread shakedown, extortion, bribery, money-laundering schemes to which high-level Democrats or their staffers were party.

It's an easier story to understand than the baroque Indian tribe one (though smaller in scale). But it's been going on a long time, and DeLay and his staffers were at the very heart of it.

And yeah.... the Republicans are famous for defending their own until the fire gets too hot. The Democrats let go of Trafficante the moment his shenanigans hit the fan (it might even have been before), disavowing him. The Republicans have been trying to defend DeLay even AFTER his indictment. They got him to relinquish his leadership role, but they have in no way repudiated him formally.

samela

There you have it.


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digby 1/10/2006 02:51:00 PM |

 
How Can He Be Even More Right? A Modest Proposal.

by tristero

George W. Bush's latest thoughtful speech was, as usual, boldly audacious. With his demand that responsible debate over Iraq must be limited entirely to arguments over exactly how much praise he deserves, The President's speech will go down in history as among the most remarkable utterances ever.

The American people know the difference between responsible and irresponsible debate when they see [sic] it. They know the difference between honest critics who question the way the war is being prosecuted and partisan critics who claim that we acted in Iraq because of oil, or because of Israel, or because we misled the American people. And they know the difference between a loyal opposition that points out what is wrong, and defeatists who refuse to see that anything is right.

In other words:

Is the Bush administration doing (1) a heckuva job; (2) a heckuva great job; or (3) a totally heckuva great job? And how can we help The President be more right?

Before we can answer that second question, we need to understand exactly why The President refuses to consider the topics he mentions as worthy of responsible discussion.

Of course, we didn't invade Iraq because of oil. Why this isn't obvious to everyone is one of the mind-boggling mysteries of our epoch. Briefly, all we're trying to do is grow the Iraq economy. Now, everyone knows the world is in a post-industrial phase, where it's high tech that rules, not Big oil-gobbling Iron. Therefore, it's vital to Iraq's infrastructure that they make use as soon as possible of their most abundant resource - sand - and become the major player they deserve to be in the international chip market.

All we're doing is expediting that process by purifying the sand. We're simply eliminating all that putrid-smelling retro petro-pollution from their valuable natural mineral resource and shipping the smelly sludge - at our own companies' expense, mind you - back to the US. This is not about oil but about transforming a volatile region into a Land Of Milk and Honey. And Sand. Because of The President's actions, I can predict with near certainty that within five years Iraq will become the pre-eminent Silicon Desert of the Middle East.

As for Israel, it simply must be recognized that any critic who mentions Israel in the same sentence with Iraq is not only thoroughly irresponsible but clearly an out and out anti-Semite. Now I admit, Pat Robertson may have been overstretching a bit, but only those who refuse to acknowledge cause and effect fail to see the connection between Sharon's recent stroke and the unremitting criticism he received in the past few months by all those here in the US who refused to support the Iraq war.

Now regarding the alleged misleading of the American people, I submit that The President never did such a thing. The proof, as if any is needed (he is after, all The President, and doesn't need proof), can be found in this very speech of 10 January, 2006. Notice how carefully and repeatedly The President distinguishes between "Saddamists" and "foreign terrorists." He's telling us he's known all along that there's a difference and that he's never confused them. Furthermore, notice how he fearlessly deplores the utterly unprecedented abuse of Iraqi prisoners by Iraqi security forces. This also subtly alludes to the moral axis of The President's actions in Iraq. After all, where else could those murderous Iraqi security police possibly have learned to perpetrate such horrors if not while suffering under the obscene guidance of the monstrous Sons of Saddam - Uday and what'shisname?

But The President goes even further in clearing our mind of dangerous clutter. Little noticed by the punditocracy - at least so far - The President makes it very clear he has secret evidence American troops never blew up innocent wedding parties. Those were suicide bombers disguised as American planes and Blackhawks.*

But we digress. Back to that second question: How can The President be more right? Okay. I'll tell you and I'm not going to mince words. And I don't care who wants to turn me in for saying them!

I think the Big Problem is that everyone thinks The President is wrong and they won't trust his judgment. I think it's wrong that these people are wasting The President's time by making him worry that he's only doing a heckuva job. I think responsible debate should be limited to whether The President is doing a heckuva great job or better. If this proposal is adopted, The President by definition would immediately be more right! And that's what we, and he, want.

I think if irresponsible opponents weren't clogging The President's time with so many questions and empty scandals that his presidency has begun to resemble a New Orleans sewer, The President would have been able to sign the necessary emergency orders for more upper body armor for our troops. Now, let me be crystal clear about this: Because The President couldn't find time to sign that order, the critics of the The President's performance are responsible for much more - way much more - than aiding and comforting our enemies. The irresponsible critics of The President are systematically killing our soldiers. And I don't care who knows it.

Now, the Doomsayer Democrats object to certain wiretaps made without authorization. I say if they don't like them, here's a plan that will end the "illegal" wiretaps debate immediately. Disconnect the critics' telephones! And while we're at it, deny 'em ADSL. Let them rant over a 28.8k AOL connection and see how well they like it.

Bottom line: The President couldn't be more right. After all, he wouldn't be The President if that wasn't so. That's self-evident, just like it says in the Constitution. Or somewhere.



*Don't let yourself be misled by the irresponsible rantings of mere eyewitnesses who swore they were American planes. They weren't and I have a reason why they were mistaken.

Now, of course I have only the greatest sympathy for a bride whose husband was turned into viscous red goo in the middle of their vows, but, to be perfectly blunt, such an hysterical woman does not a reliable witness make. Indeed, probably very few men would either, in her position (not as the bride of another man, of course, nor did I mean to imply by "her position" anything smutty, it's just that I meant...oh, you get it, I don't need to explain).
tristero 1/10/2006 12:46:00 PM |

 
Corrupt Reformers

by digby


I admire Rich Lowry's intellectual integrity in pointing out that no matter how much the Republicans might wish to portray the Abramoff scandal as bi-partisan it just isn't. But his prescription just won't do.

You see, this graft and corruption has been going on in plain sight for a long time and GOPers had their mouths so full of pork they apparently couldn't say a word about it until a Republican Justice Department public integrity section stumbled over Jack Abramoff. The Republican party has no standing to reform itself now. It's like the mafia saying they promise to clean up their act once Sammy the Bull blew the whistle.

The Abramoff scandal is about corrupt lobbying and money laundering, which was coordinated at the highest levels of the party, run by the majority leader of the House of representatives. But that's just one of many corrupt GOP practices. There are the perjury and obstruction cases in the CIA leak investigation. And the SEC investigation into the majority leader of the Senate. There are the numerous payola and propaganda schemes. Bribes on the floor of the House. Crooked Pentagon appropriations and missing billions in Iraq. Dirty tricks in New Hampshire. Hiding the real cost of the prescription drug program (and Billy Tauzin being on Pharma take when he got it passed.) The list goes on and on.

(Here are just a few of the alleged GOP ethics abuses from the Washington Post. Here's an even longer one. And here's Think Progress' indispensible compendium of Abramoff criminals.)

This Republican party is crooked. And despite what George Will says, it's not because of big government. Government spending has exploded under the allegedly "small government" Republicans while delivering less and less to average Americans. They have proven that they are completely full of shit on that issue and anyone who votes for them on that basis is an idiot. Judging by their performance the only things they actually care about are padding their own pockets and protecting their own power. If there are a hoard of "reform" Republicans out there who have been objecting to this pillaging of the treasury, they haven't exactly been speaking up. All I've heard is "praise God and pass the contributions."

I expect Republicans to take potshots at Clinton and his supporters whenever possible so I don't usually respond, but this statement is too self-serving to let pass:

Republicans must take the scandal seriously and work to clean up in its wake. The first step was the permanent ouster of Tom DeLay as House Republican majority leader, a recognition that he is unfit to lead as long as he is underneath the Abramoff cloud. The behavior of the right in this matter contrasts sharply with the left's lickspittle loyalty to Bill Clinton, whose maintenance in power many liberals put above any of their principles.

That might be an apt analogy except for the fact that Democrats defended Clinton out of the principle that a rabid partisan witchunt into a president's sex life was beyond the pale.

By contrast, both the Republican president and the invertebrate Republican congress have engaged in or silently acquiesced to blatant graft and corruption for years while the Democrats impotently screamed into the void. The party was keeping the seat warm for months while the majority leader remained under indictment. They changed the rules so that an indicted leader could keep his seat until the public outcry forced them to retreat, for crying out loud, and then they launched a grassroots campaign to defend him:

Conservative leaders are crafting plans to launch a public campaign to defend House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas).

The move follows a meeting last week among DeLay, Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), the chief deputy majority whip, and nearly two dozen conservative leaders, including David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union; Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council; Morton Blackwell, president of the Leadership Institute; and Edwin Feulner, president of the Heritage Foundation.

Perkins, Keene and Feulner called the meeting, according to participants.

“It was a rallying cry to our conservative community that we are under assault. We need to fight back. We’re going to have a challenging year with the judicial issue bubbling up in the senate and the impact it may have on our ability to get things done,” said Cantor, who said he described to the group how Democrats and liberal groups have waged a coordinated battle to raise doubts about DeLay’s conduct.

Several of the conservative leaders who met last week are planning to launch a grassroots campaign targeted at conservatives in the districts of House Republican lawmakers whose support for DeLay may be wavering.

This man is a corrupt thug who ran a corrupt political machine. Everybody in Washington knew it. Republicans celebrated it and bragged about it publicly. For them to now go all Claude Rains about it is just funny.

It's possible that the voters will not care or will not hold Republicans responsible for this corruption. But these are early days in the 2006 election cycle and many more shoes are going to drop over the next few months. I wouldn't want to place a bet that Americans won't laugh at any Republican claiming the mantle of reform come election day. It's going to be very easy to find pictures of Republicans kissing the ring of Tom DeLay.


Update: Read this great post by Tom Watson (via Wolcott)on this topic.


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digby 1/10/2006 10:35:00 AM |

 
Wallflowers

by digby

I feel so dirty. My Alito the freeper post is linked on both The Corner and Free Republic. Seems bedwetters don't like my armchair analysis of the chickenhawk pathology one little bit.

Here's Jonah:

I DUNNO... [Jonah Goldberg]

Byron - Seems to me the cops at the '68 convention proved their "manhood" without going to Vietnam or joining the croud chanting "Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh!" and echoing Che Guevara's call for "two, three, many Vietnams."

Also, it's kind of funny listening to liberals argue that getting laid "a lot" makes you a man.

Addendum: I posted too fast. I meant to say it's kind of funny listening to liberals argue that there are only two paths to becoming a man -- getting laid "a lot" and going to war. And here I thought they didn't like social Darwinism.

He actually wrote the words "getting laid a lot makes you a man" and then came back with an oops "I posted too fast." You can't make this shit up.

Of course if he'd read the post in question he would know that I didn't actually say that there are only two paths to manhood, but that's just nitpicking. He's right. There is a tried and true path to manhood for right wing chickenhawks: they can host Kaffee Klatches for mama, Linda Tripp and Michael Isikoff and then make a whole career out of it.


The best freeper comment is this:

This Freeper will gladly meet Mr. "Digby", anytime, anywhere, for a little test of "physical courage". Hygiene-challenged, hairy little socialist creeps who throw like girls ought not write checks their skinny butts can't cash. I know: when the phone doesn't ring...I'll know it's him. Chickenhawk? Chickensh!t.

Me thinks the lady doth protest too much.


Here's a thread to vote on Alito's freeper handle over at MYDD. I'm thinking "wallflower".



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digby 1/10/2006 08:58:00 AM |

Monday, January 09, 2006

 
Freeping The Court

by digby

I watched the Roberts hearings and couldn't help being impressed by the guy even though I knew he was way too conservative for me. He was obviously intelligent, confident and smooth and I ended up thinking that anybody who was smart enough to keep a good distance between himself and the Federalist Society might just be smart enough to see through their more ridiculous theories. That's probably wishful thinking, but still.

By contrast, I just had a chance to see Alito's opening statement and I have to say that I think he came off as an asshole:

And after I graduated from high school, I went a full 12 miles down the road, but really to a different world when I entered Princeton University. A generation earlier, I think that somebody from my background probably would not have felt fully comfortable at a college like Princeton. But, by the time I graduated from high school, things had changed.

And this was a time of great intellectual excitement for me. Both college and law school opened up new worlds of ideas. But this was back in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

It was a time of turmoil at colleges and universities. And I saw some very smart people and very privileged people behaving irresponsibly. And I couldn't help making a contrast between some of the worst of what I saw on the campus and the good sense and the decency of the people back in my own community.

This is the same guy who wanted to keep women out of Princeton. Presumably, they wouldn't have "felt comfortable" there. But that's not what made that statement so revealing. It's this notion of smart and privileged people "behaving irresponsibly."

I think it's fairly certain that he's not talking about branding frat boys' asses or getting drunk and stealing Christmas Trees. He's talking about anti-war protestors, feminists etc. And like so many campus conservatives of that era, he sounds like he's still carrying around a boatload of resentment toward them.

Roberts apparently came out of all that unscathed. Confident in his own abilities and social prowess, he didn't appear to have this puny, pinched view of liberalism as a threat to decency and morality. (He may have it, but it didn't show --- or he was smart enough to hide it in his hearings.) Alito is one of those other guys. You know the ones:

The only political aspirants among those three groups who failed to meet the test of their generation were the chickenhawks. And our problem today is that they are the ones in charge of the government as we face a national security threat. These unfulfilled men still have something to prove.

And, I suspect because their leadership of the "conservative" movement has infected the new generation, we are seeing much of the same pathology among younger warhawks as well. This is why we hear the shrill war cries of inchoate bloodlust from these quarters every time the terrorists strike. It's a primal scream of inner confusion and self-loathing. These are people whose highest aspirations and deepest longings are wrapped up in their masculinity, and yet they are flaccid failures. They are in a state of arrested development, never having faced their fears, never becoming men, remaining boys standing in the corner of the darkened hallway watching Bill Clinton emerge from a co-ed's dorm room to lead a rousing all night strategy session --- and sitting in the bus station on the way home for Christmas vacation as Chuck Hagel and John Kerry in uniform, looking stalwart and strong, clap each other on the back in brotherly solidarity and prepare to see what they are really made of. They have never been part of anything but an effete political movement in which the stakes go no higher than repeal of the death tax.

In other words, he's a freeper. I say filibuster the creep.



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digby 1/09/2006 07:20:00 PM |

 
Welcome Back Newtie

by digby

As much as I love having Newtie back on the scene reprising his former role as a fake Republican reformer, I can't help but wonder how he hopes to explain the fact that he was officially reprimanded as Speaker for his unethical behavior by a special counsel . I realize that this happened almost ten years ago, so it's ancient history, but it was quite the circus at the time:

The House ethics committee recommended last night that House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) face an unprecedented reprimand from his colleagues and pay $300,000 in additional sanctions after concluding that his use of tax-deductible money for political purposes and inaccurate information supplied to investigators represented "intentional or . . . reckless" disregard of House rules.

The committee's 7 to 1 vote came after 5 1/2 hours of televised hearings and the release of a toughly worded report on the investigation by special counsel James M. Cole. The recommendation, which followed a week of partisan conflict that has split the House into warring camps, sets the stage for a resolution of this investigation into Gingrich's actions.

Gingrich earlier admitted he had violated House rules and was prepared to accept the committee's recommendation for punishment. If the full House votes as expected on Tuesday, Gingrich would become the first speaker to be reprimanded for his conduct and would begin his second term politically weakened and personally diminished.

[...]

Cole said he had concluded that Gingrich had violated federal tax law and had lied to the ethics panel in an effort to force the committee to dismiss the complaint against him. He said the committee members were reluctant to go that far in their conclusions, but said they agreed Gingrich was either "reckless" or "intentional" in the way he conducted himself.

[...]

Cole made clear he had concluded that Gingrich's activities were not random acts but part of a pattern of questionable behavior. "Over a number of years and in a number of situations, Mr. Gingrich showed a disregard and lack of respect for the standards of conduct that applied to his activities," he said.

Newtie was always loosey goosey about ethics, even as he excoriated the Democrats. (He did it just recently, saying that people expect the Democrats to be corrupt.) And like all Republicans, his hypocrisy knew no bounds:

How sweet a victory it must have been when Newt Gingrich ran former House Speaker Jim Wright (D-Texas) out of town because he made $55,000 off the bulk sale of his book to lobbyists. The trick was turned by Gingrich's insistence that an independent counsel be appointed. As Gingrich put it back in 1988: "The rules normally applied by the Ethics Committee to an investigation of a typical member are insufficient in an investigation of the Speaker of the House, a position which is third in line of succession to the Presidency and the second most powerful elected position in America. Clearly this investigation has to meet a higher standard of public accountability and integrity." Gingrich's words must haunt him now, when his own far more lucrative and questionable book deal has been added to complaints filed with the House Ethics Committee alleging his improper use of political-action-committee and nonprofit-foundation money.

Gingrich has attempted to squiggle out of the book controversy by giving up the $4.5-million advance from HarperCollins, the book publishing company owned by Rupert Murdoch...he had met secretly with Murdoch -- Mr. Multinational himself, a man who built his media empire by hustling legislators on three continents -- Nov. 28, three days before he began negotiating the book contract. But when the book deal was announced in December, Gingrich's press spokesman, Tony Blankley, told reporters he didn't know whether his boss had ever met with Murdoch. Why didn't Gingrich step forward then and admit to the meeting if there was nothing to hide? Why was it only after the New York Daily News broke the story that he confessed?

The truth leaked out when a Murdoch spokesman the next day conceded that an NBC lawsuit against the Murdoch-owned Fox network, based on the foreign-ownership issue, was discussed. And two days later, we learned from Murdoch's Washington lobbyist, Preston Padden, who was also at the meeting, that this was not a chance courtesy call but rather was planned to counter NBC's lobbying.

This week, Gingrich was dissembling once again: "They said something to me about, 'We are in this big fight with NBC,' and I said fine. I mean, I don't care. I never get involved in individual cases like that."

And then, of course, there's this:

In August 1999, Gingrich revealed that he had been carrying on an extramarital affair for the past six years with a House clerk twenty-three years his junior, Callista Bisek. Critics noted that Gingrich's adultery had taken place while he was leading moral attacks against Bill Clinton during the Lewinsky scandal. Because of the similarity of the situations, critics charged Gingrich's attacks on Clinton had been grossly hypocritical

Still, despite his checkered past, we really shouldn't be surprised that Newtie is the Republicans' front man on ethics and a likely candidate for president. At this point he's about the cleanest they've got.



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digby 1/09/2006 03:33:00 PM |

 
Tolerance In The Heartland

by digby


TBOGG has the scoop on the Utah theatre that banned "Brokeback Mountain". It's quite strange when you think about it because Mormans were traditional adherants of polygamy which Rick Santorum contends is the inexorable consequence of legalizing gay marriage.

In fact, I find all this Utah intolerance to be quite puzzling. Here's Orrin Hatch in 2003:

'I'm not here to justify polygamy,'' he said. ''All I can say is, I know people in Hildale who are polygamists who are very fine people. You come and show me evidence of children being abused there and I'll get involved. Bring the evidence to me.''

Hatch said he could not take unsubstantiated claims and enforce law, and he would not ''sit here and judge anybody just because they live differently than me.

''There will be laws on the books, but these are very complicated issues,'' Hatch said.

Gee, and gay sex isn't even illegal.


For those looking for the bigger picture, here's the latest on the grosses for the film that everyone assumned would fail big time in Real Murika:

Don't look now, but Brokeback Mountain is selling in the heartland. The gay cowboy romance, which has been cleaning up in early awards races, was considered a difficult box-office sell nationwide because of its subject matter.

But Brokeback Mountain is averaging $10,000-plus per screen in such markets as San Antonio, Nashville and Columbus, Ohio, according to Nielsen EDI.

The Ang Lee film was ninth at the box office this weekend with $5.8 million on 483 screens, a healthy $11,904 per-screen average. That's a higher average than the No. 1 movie of the week, Hostel.

"It's been humbling to see how the movie is getting received across the country," says Jack Foley, head of distribution for Focus Features. "We knew we were getting good reviews and doing well at the awards. But that's never a guarantee you can sell your movie across the country — particularly the most conservative parts of it."

And all the Oscar talk is bringing in couples, including a lot of hetero men who suffer from Larry David syndrome:

Comedian Larry David joked in a New York Times commentary that "cowboys would have to lasso" him into the theater, because he's sure the voice in his head would say, " 'You like those cowboys, don't you? They're kind of cute.' "

I think everyone can agree that Jake Gyllenhall does have a purdy mouth.



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digby 1/09/2006 01:28:00 PM |

 
Who's A Terrorist?

by digby

Kevin responds to Joe Klein's tremulous admonition that Democrats should temper their criticism of the NSA illegal spying because it makes us look like we don't care about terrorism:

Politically, I continue to think Democrats should make it absolutely clear that what they're attacking isn't necessarily the NSA program itself, but the fact that the president unilaterally decided that he could approve the program without congressional authorization. In the world of 10-second sound bites, that might end up being a difficult distinction to make, but it's worth making it over and over anyway. We're not opposed to cranking up our intelligence efforts, but we are opposed to a president who thinks that a vague and indefinite state of war gives him the authority to do anything he wants.

Absolutely. But then, I don't understand why anyone is worried about this in the first place. I don't think anyone seriously suggests that the government doesn't have the power to spy on suspected terrorists. The polls show that a majority of people already believe that the president should have to get a warrant before spying on American citizens. Indeed, I think all of us naturally assumed that the FBI has been doing that for years and those in the know understood that the NSA had the ability to do it through the FISA court. I don't know of anyone who is saying that the government should be able to do this at all --- this idea that people are just "against wiretapping" is a straw man.

There is no downside to criticizing this administration for illegally wiretapping Americans in no uncertain terms. But, I think we can take it one step further. We need to be asking why they couldn't even get John Ashcroft to sign off on the renewal of this program back in 2003. Why did the FISA court deny more applications after 9/11? It's impossible to imagine that they were tightening existing rules at a time like that. The history of this program is suspicious and it isn't just unAmerican civil libertarians like me who are aware of the potential for abuse. Even people who support the program see it. Here's a quote from the AP poll over the week-end:

The issue is full of grays for some people interviewed for the poll, including homebuilder Harlon Bennett, 21, a political independent from Wellston, Okla. He does not think the government should need warrants for suspected terrorists.

"Of course," he added, "we all could be suspected terrorists."

This is an issue that cuts across all the abuses of power in the GWOT, from rendition to torture to illegal wiretapping. What constitutes a suspected terrorist? Without due process how do we know that innocent people aren't being accused? There is no review. There is no oversight. We are asked not only to take the word of the president that he is using these extra-legal powers judiciously, we are asked to believe that all the people he's judiciously using these powers against are guilty.

Some Americans don't trust this president. Some Americans wouldn't trust a Democratic president. And some of us don't trust any president with the power to unilaterally decide who is a terrorist and who isn't and then unleash extra-legal actions against them. Certainly, we don't believe that any president can unilaterally declare someone guilty.

Yet that is exactly what has been happening. And we know that many of the people who the president has decided are guilty were not. A fair number of those who were beaten, abused and tortured in our custody at Gitmo and elsewhere have turned out to be cases of mistaken identity. Others were "sold" to Americans as terrorists by rivals. Still more were low level grunts who had no operational knowledge of anything. This has happened quite often. Yet, we have accepted it because we "we're at war" excuses a great deal of inhumane behavior (which is why we should always be careful about saying that we are waging one.) It's very easy for people to fall into a primitive tribalism --- the old "the only good Muslim is a dead Muslim" or perhaps "if you don't want to be seen as a terrorist, don't be a Muslim."

But this NSA illegal spying issue has brought all that home. We have a president who believes that he knows who is guilty and who is not. He believes that he has the inherent constitutional power to declare American citizens "unlawful combatants." He interprets the office of president to be above the laws. When you have a president who takes this position, it is not illogical to assume that he might declare some innocent Americans to be suspected terrorists as well. And that innocent American could be anyone.

The supporter of wiretaps who I quoted above knows that, too. I can't see any reason why Democrats and civil libertarians of all stripes should be afraid to make that point openly. It's why due process was made a part of the Bill of Rights in the first place.

If we willingly discard this principle in the case of morons who are planning to attack the Brooklyn Bridge with a blow torch, why on earth should we adhere to the principle in cases of dangerous gangs or serial killers or child molesters? After all, throwing those people in jail without due process, wiretapping them without a warrant, holding them indefinitely without trial could easily be seen as the president upholding his personal oath to "protect the American people" which has now officially usurped his official oath to protect the constitution.

The fourth amendment is in place to protect innocent people who mistakenly or purposefully get caught up in the government's hugely powerful maw. To pussyfoot around that bedrock principle is to help destroy it.

I'm betting that Joe Klein and his band of would-be tough guy liberals are on the wrong side of this. Fifty-six percent of the country already believes that the government should have to follow due process. Even that guy who supports wiretaps knows very well that there is a danger in allowing anyone the unilateral power to decide who is a suspected terrorist. I hope that Democrats ignore the mewling of timorous pundits and call upon Americans' regard for liberty and their healthy skepticism of government power to make this argument explicitly.



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digby 1/09/2006 10:42:00 AM |

 
Presidential Infallibility

by digby


Atrios flags this catch by Weldon Berger regarding Bush's use of "signing statements" (which I admit I only vaguely understood until until recently.) Weldon writes:

Bush doesn’t veto bills because in his view, he doesn’t have to; he can simply ignore the ones he doesn’t like.

The administration have made that argument explicit, but only in terms of the president’s capacity as “commander in chief” during an endless war, as with the National Security Agency’s warrantless wiretapping, the decisions to ignore various Geneva Conventions and the selective suspension of habeas corpus. According to the Hutcheson story, though, it isn’t only legislation dealing with national security issues that the White House asserts the right to ignore.

The Hutcheson story lays out how Bush has used these signing statements:

President Bush agreed with great fanfare last month to accept a ban on torture, but he later quietly reserved the right to ignore it, even as he signed it into law.

Acting from the seclusion of his Texas ranch at the start of New Year's weekend, Bush said he would interpret the new law in keeping with his expansive view of presidential power. He did it by issuing a bill-signing statement - a little-noticed device that has become a favorite tool of presidential power in the Bush White House.

In fact, Bush has used signing statements to reject, revise or put his spin on more than 500 legislative provisions. Experts say he has been far more aggressive than any previous president in using the statements to claim sweeping executive power - and not just on national security issues.

"It's nothing short of breath-taking," said Phillip Cooper, a professor of public administration at Portland State University. "In every case, the White House has interpreted presidential authority as broadly as possible, interpreted legislative authority as narrowly as possible, and pre-empted the judiciary."

Signing statements don't have the force of law, but they can influence judicial interpretations of a statute. They also send a powerful signal to executive branch agencies on how the White House wants them to implement new federal laws.

In some cases, Bush bluntly informs Congress that he has no intention of carrying out provisions that he considers an unconstitutional encroachment on his authority.

"They don't like some of the things Congress has done so they assert the power to ignore it," said Martin Lederman, a visiting professor at the Georgetown University Law Center. "The categorical nature of their opposition is unprecedented and alarming."

Lest anyone think that this is a unique practice of the Bush administration, the article points out that other presidents have issued signing statements too. But Bush has made a fetish out of them by issuing more than 500 of them, often specifically citing the Presidential Infalliibility Doctrine (aka the "Unitary Executive Theory").

Here's what I find fascinating about that. Other presidents issued signing statements to bills. (I have no idea if they also cited the Presidential Infallibility Doctrine.)But they were almost always working with a congressional majority of the other party. You can see why a president would want to establish his interpretation of a hard fought negotiation with political opponents. So, although I am appalled at the idea of unchecked presidential power under any circumstances, I can at least see the logic of a typically authoritarian Republican using these tactics when dealing with a liberal Democratic congress. But you have to ask yourself why he can't get laws passed exactly the way he wants them to in his rubber stamp congress? He couldn't get Bill Frist, his own handpicked puppet, and Tom DeLay, his own Tony Soprano, to pass bills in language that he could agree with? After 9/11?

The answer is of course he could have. He chose not to:

The roots of Bush's approach go back to the Ford administration, when Dick Cheney, then serving as White House chief of staff, chafed at legislative limits placed on the executive branch in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal and other abuses of power by President Nixon. Now the vice president and his top aide, David Addington, are taking the lead in trying to tip the balance of power away from Congress and back to the president.

Weldon Berger puts it this way:

The upshot of this is that until someone gets around to challenging the White House, Congress is just an advisory body with the authority to dole out bucketloads of cash. For now, we have a coup.

I can't help but chuckle mordantly at these chickenshit congressional Republicans who have laid down their integrity and their duty to the constitution for this spoiled little Dauphin and his evil grey eminence, Dick Cheney. But then, they've been paid handsomely in mountainous piles of pork, so I suppose they've been amply rewarded for their pusillanimous gluttony.

Barring a filibuster, it looks as if Alito will be confirmed on a party line vote (or close to it.) There is little doubt in my mind that he believes in this doctrine. However, after Bush vs Gore, I also no longer have any illusions that the Supreme Court is above partisan politics. I suspect that Alito and others will have qualms about codifying the Unitary Executive Theory because someday a Democratic president could face a Republican congress.

But it doesn't matter. The president doesn't believe that the Supreme Court has the power to rule on the issue of presidential power in the first place. I'm sure the Federalist Society will come up with an appropriate remedy should a Democrat ever become president and decide to exercise the same power.


If you are interested in going deeply into this topic, Michael Froomkin is an expert on this doctrine of presidential infallibility (aka "the Unitary Executive Theory") and has been writing about it for quite some time:

[This is] an argument popular with the Federalist Society, but not taken seriously by mainstream academics, for unlimited, uncontainable, Presidential power. The so-called “unitary executive” argument is set out most clearly in a Harvard Law Review article, Steven G. Calabresi & Kevin H. Rhodes, The Structural Constitution: Unitary Executive, Plural Judiciary, 105 Harv. L. Rev. 1155 (1992). My explanation as to why this article is profoundly wrong and dangerous can be found at A. Michael Froomkin, The Imperial Presidency’s New Vestments, 88 Nw. L. Rev. 1346 (1994), which in turn sparked separate and not entirely consistent answers from each of the two authors of the Structural Constitution article. My rebuttal article Still Naked After All These Words, 88 Nw. L. Rev. 1420 (1994) is also online.

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digby 1/09/2006 08:23:00 AM |

Sunday, January 08, 2006

 
Sickness

by digby

New details have emerged of how the growing number of prisoners on hunger strike at Guantánamo Bay are being tied down and force-fed through tubes pushed down their nasal passages into their stomachs to keep them alive.

They routinely experience bleeding and nausea, according to a sworn statement by the camp's chief doctor, seen by The Observer.

[...]

Edmonson's affidavit, in response to a lawsuit on behalf of detainees on hunger strike since last August, was obtained last week by The Observer, as a Guantánamo spokesman confirmed that the number of hunger strikers has almost doubled since Christmas, to 81 of the 550 detainees. Many have been held since the camp opened four years ago this month, although they not been charged with any crime, nor been allowed to see any evidence justifying their detention.

Thanks to Lindsey "Goober Pyle" Graham, they never will, either:

This and other Guantánamo lawsuits now face extinction. Last week, President Bush signed into law a measure removing detainees' right to file habeas corpus petitions in the US federal courts. On Friday, the administration asked the Supreme Court to make this retroactive, so nullifying about 220 cases in which prisoners have contested the basis of their detention and the legality of pending trials by military commission.

Someday, US Army grunts and innocent Americans with no operational information are going to be held captive by another country and that country is going to use the same rationale for imprisoning and tormenting them indefinitely. And the people who do it will eventually go to the ninth circle of hell and join George W. Bush and Dick Cheney as they scream into the void for eternity about how they had to become sadistic monsters in order to prove they weren't afraid.



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digby 1/08/2006 03:29:00 PM |

 
Nixonian Rhapsody Part Deux

by digby

Glenn Greenwald has an excellent post up today about the latest Republican "public intellectual's" assertion that president has a right to use the constitution as toilet paper whenever he unilaterally decides that we are at "war." Someone named "fly" writes in the comment section:

As a "Bush defender" I would like to point out that the NYT article entitled "Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts" encourages readers to conclude that this is a first in domestic surveillance ...

Reader Poputonian wrote this in response:

As a Bush supporter, fly, you are absolutely right to point out that he is not the first president to use the wiretap illegally. At least one past president confronted matters of grave national security by shifting the legal locus of control to his own domain. He understood how secret spy programs were necessary to preserve this great nation of his. He believed that citizens would willfully surrender their liberties to him, and he knew the threat constituted by a hostile media, and he knew what to do about it. He also understood how to make a nation of bedwetters feel more secure. But his theory died when an activist judge ruled against the argument of executive privilege, a ruling which was later upheld by the Supreme Court. By then, what might be called ‘harangue fatigue’ was creeping into the American living room and, frankly, people were sensing that they had reached their limit.

All of which now necessitates Mansfield’s illusory extra-legal theory of what the founders really meant when they designed this system of government. Let’s call it -- 'Mansfield's Separation of Powers, Except' -- clause to the Constitution. Naturally, it would tip off the enemy if this were stated directly in the Constitution, so what the founders did was they cloaked it in mysterious ambiguity so only a future ideologue could detect its presence. But make no doubt about it, as a previous Chief Executive had ascertained, a very close reading of the Constitution shows the founders' original intent, and it was as plain as the nose on his face. It really does give the president extra-legal power, in spite of what the courts ruled.

Some might argue whether or not history repeats itself, but one thing is sure -- it often rhymes.

He's right. This isn't unprecedented. In fact, it's a pattern.



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digby 1/08/2006 02:39:00 PM |

 
Culture Of Conservatism

by digby

Frank Rich's column today is getting lots of attention as it should. It's great. But I have to take issue with one passage:

Real conservatives, after all, are opposed to Big Brother; even the staunch Bush ally Grover Norquist has criticized the N.S.A.'s overreaching.

Norquist isn't a "real conservative." In fact, there is no such thing as a real conservative in the Party or movement leadership. The only "real conservatives" left are regular citizens, a few scholars and a couple of pundits.

This is an easy trap to fall into. Whenever their leaders inevitably suck the treasury dry, usurp the constitution, turn America into an international pariah (you know, the usual) "conservatives" protect their valuable brand by simply saying that these particular leaders weren't really "conservative" after all.

Grover Norquist believes in one thing and one thing only --- the perpetuation of Republican power. His job is managing the leaders of the GOP base --- which he fatuously calls "the leave us alone" coalition:

The Leave Us Alone Coalition is an idea popularized by conservative/libertarian activist Grover Norquist for a wide-ranging and loose collaboration among various elements of U.S. politics, united by a common desire for minimal involvement with and restrictions from government, especially the U.S. federal government. There is no actual organization by this name, rather, it is a description of a hoped-for reality of cooperation between social conservatives, libertarians / free market supporters, and various single-issue voters such as gun rights supporters.

He has to say that he opposes the NSA wiretaps if he hopes to keep this political devil's bargain together. Here's what Norquist is really all about:

"The Republicans are looking at decades of dominance in the House and Senate, and having the presidency with some regularity," Norquist told the New York Times last week. A few days earlier, he made the same point, with slightly less confidence, to CNBC Washington bureau chief and Wall Street Journal columnist Alan Murray: "For the next 10 years in the House and Senate, we're looking at Republican control." In the Washington Post last month, Norquist wrote of a "guarantee of united Republican government" that "has allowed the Bush administration to work and think long-term."

[...]

[I]n the November 1992 American Spectator, he wrote an article titled "The Coming Clinton Dynasty," in which he admitted that "any vision of conservatism as the ultimate winner in a two-steps-forward, one-step back Leninist march, is a flawed one."

Instead, Norquist explained, the way a party ensures its perpetual dominance is by controlling the levers of power. In 1974, Watergate led to the election of 75 new Democrats in the House. In Norquist's view, "this liberal band of congressmen" was "willing to change the rules to ensure their continuation in power." Without the benefits of incumbency (bigger staffs, larger budgets, taxpayer-funded mail, pork, and the ability to "extort campaign contributions from industries"), Norquist argued, the Democrats could not have remained in office for the subsequent 18 years. Power perpetuates itself. The correctness of conservative ideas paled before the ruthless "minority ideological cabal" in Congress.

It's shocking that such a delusional person is so influential in American politics, but he is. And despite his rare faux libertarian statements of principle he quite clearly desires a permanent Republican state endowed with unlimited power. He just worries that someone he disagrees with might try to do the same thing. I don't think that's conservatism. He's just a good old authoritarian statist. Here's Grover on his idol Josef Stalin:

He was running the personnel department while Trotsky was fighting the White Army. When push came to shove for control of the Soviet Union, Stalin won. Trotsky got an ice ax through his skull, while Stalin became head of the Soviet Union. He understood that personnel is policy.

This article in the WaPo from January 2004 on Grover is very entertaining and informative. I particularly liked this part:

Some conservatives have stopped attending the meetings because, they say, the institution has "gone Beltway." Now that Republicans are in power, the emphasis has shifted from ideology to lobbying for rich clients, they say. At one session, former representative Bob Livingston (R-La.) promoted a telecom client. At another, former Oklahoma governor Frank Keating (R) talked to the audience as president of the American Council of Life Insurers. One coalition dropout dismissed Norquist as a "homo economicus" -- driven by market forces rather than by social issues.

Part of the reason for "having the personnel in place," of course, is to ensure that money is funnelled where it needs to be. And Grover, along with his best pals from the College Republicans, Abramoff and Reed, made sure that this happened. Norquit's name has already come up in the Abramoff proble and I would expect it to come up again. He's right in the middle of that mess.

But why wouldn't he be? As you can see from the quote above, he believes that corruption is the method by which a political party maintains power. And there is nothing Grover cares about more than maintaining power.

Basically, he ascribes to George W. Bush's political ideology:

"If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator,"

There you have it; modern conservatism in a nutshell.


Update: For more evidence of the mindset, check this out from Josh Marshall:

You have to love this. Three and a half years ago members of the New Hampshire state Republican party, the Republican National Committee and others entered into a criminal conspiracy to disrupt Democratic get-out-the-vote activities on election day.

[...]

Now, in recently filed court papers, the Republican State Committee’s attorney, Ovide Lamontagne, is claiming that the Dems' suit is "in attempt to use the court system to interfere with the (GOP’s) constitutionally protected election activities." There's a certain amount of sense to this, I suppose, since the Republican party, in its current incarnation, does seem to rely heavily on law-breaking as an electoral tool. Still, I've never heard it alleged that such criminality is constitutionally protected

.





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digby 1/08/2006 12:02:00 PM |

 
Nixonian Rhapsody

by digby


Finally, somebody in the press wakes up:

"But the climate of those years was so grim that half the Washington press corps spent more time worrying about having their telephones tapped than they did about risking the wrath of Rove, Libby and Cheney by poking at the weak seams of a Mafia-style administration that began cannibalizing the whole government just as soon as it came into power. Bush's capos were never subtle; they swaggered into Washington like a conquering army, and the climate of fear they engendered apparently neutralized The New York Times along with all the other pockets of potential resistance. Bush had to do everything but fall on his own sword before anybody in the Washington socio-political establishment was willing to take him on."

Oh sorry. Transcription problem. That was actually Hunter S. Thompson, in the October 10, 1974 Rolling Stone, writing about the Nixon administration. My bad.



Thanks to Rick Perlstein for the gonzo catch. I have a feeling we're going to see a whole lot of juicy stuff like that when he publishes his new book.
digby 1/08/2006 11:32:00 AM |

 
Private Partisans

by digby

Via Political Cortex

As it hunted down tax scofflaws, the Internal Revenue Service collected information on the political party affiliations of taxpayers in 20 states.

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., a member of an appropriations subcommittee with jurisdiction over the IRS, said the practice was an “outrageous violation of the public trust” that could undermine the agency’s credibility.

IRS officials acknowledged that party affiliation information was routinely collected by a vendor for several months. They told the vendor last month to screen the information out.

“The bottom line is that we have never used this information,” said John Lipold, an IRS spokesman. “There are strict laws in place that forbid it.”

[...]

In a letter to Kelly, Deputy IRS Commissioner John Dalrymple said the party identification information was automatically collected through a “database platform” supplied by an outside contractor that targeted voter registration rolls among other things as it searched for people who aren’t paying their taxes.

They don't mention who the contractor was, unfortunately, and that is worth finding out. As we know, Brownies have been rewarded by the GOP patronage machine all over the place, both in and out of government. Anybody want to place a little bet?

I have long thought that privacy is a potent issue for Democrats and all these nasty revelations about Republican snooping and interefering in people's personal decisions just make it more so. With the exception of a few sincere Goldwaterites who have all passed on, the libertarian strain in the Republican party was always just a simple cultural appeal on guns and taxes. History shows that they clearly favor big government that serves their corporate special interests and are more than willing to use the full force of the state at their discretion. (This is most vividly demonstrated by the new presidential infallibility doctrine on one hand and Terry Schiavo on the other.)

Between the Bedwetter Caucus and the Christian Right you also have a very large faction of the GOP that considers people with opposing views to be dangerous. The true philosophy of modern conservatism is about control and domination, not freedom and equality.

I posted this (Warning pdf) before, but it's worth posting again.

What makes you feel free?

36.

Next I am going to read some basic American rights. For each one, please indicate whether this is crucial to your own sense of freedom, very important but not crucial, somewhat important, or not important at all.


Crucial---very important---Somewhatimportant---Not Important---No opinion



The right to vote 60 37 2 1 *

Freedom of religion 55 39 5 1 *

The right to free speech 52 40 7 1 *

The right to due process 52 37 7 1 3

The right to privacy 47 44 9 * *

The right to petition the government 44 37 15 2 2

Protection against unreasonable searches/seizures 40 39 16 2 2

Freedom of the press 36 37 22 4 1

The right to keep and bear arms 30 26 27 15 2

You'll notice that the right to privacy is considered more crucial than some other rights that are explicitly written into the Bill of Rights. (You'll also notice that number one is not a right --- which was noted by none other than Uncle Nino during the Florida debacle. Too bad the press was so busy handwringing about preganant chads that it didn't bother to discuss that fact in any depth.)

And this issue pertains to Republican (and, frankly, certain Democratic) partners in crime as well --- the corporations and the "contractors" who are invading citizxens' privacy these days as if all information is not only public, it is also for sale.

John at Americablog caught this one yesterday:

Anyone can buy a list of your incoming and outgoing phone calls, cell or land-line, for $110 online.

He bought his own records so he knows it's true. And it turns out that the congress has known all about this and doesn't give a damn.

I support the idea of Democrats introducing a constitutional amendment to codify a right to privacy once and for all. I have heard some say that we should not do this because people will then realize that we don't already have that right. I think that's weak. The only people who are currently concerned with that argument in any practical sense are judges and they understand the issue very well. This is about taking a public stand and fighting for something that most Americans, not just Democrats, believe in and care about.

A constitutional amendment is a very difficult thing to do and would probably require decades to accomplish, but it is something that we can hang our hats on as a matter of fundamental principle. It should be a standard Democratic line along with "health insurance for all Americans" or "equal rights under the law." People need to understand that when the Republicans say there is no right to privacy in the constitution, they like it that way --- and that we disagree. Strongly.



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digby 1/08/2006 08:26:00 AM |

Saturday, January 07, 2006

 
Puppet Theatre

Did anyone catch the ignominious debut of the new MSNBC freakshow called "Week-ends With Maury and Connie" today?

I could be wrong, but I think they might be trying to do a sort of grandparents version of The Daily Show. It could also be a tribute to early television pioneer Dave Garroway and his chimp, J. Fred Muggs (Maury is playing the part of the chimp.)

I honestly don't know what to make of it. I'm pretty sure that Maury is working with Michael Jackson's plastic surgeon, though. I never saw the resemblance between him and Lena Horn before.



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digby 1/07/2006 05:24:00 PM |

 
Christian News Network

by digby

I see that conservative evangelical leaders have stepped up to criticize Pat Robertson's wacko statements:

I'm appalled that Pat Robertson would make such statements. He ought to know better," said Richard Land, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest U.S. Protestant denomination.

"The arrogance of the statement shocks me almost as much as the insensitivity of it," Land said in an interview.

[...]

Land, who sat next to Robertson at a Washington event last year honoring Sharon, said that Robertson spoke for "an ever diminishing number of evangelicals, and with each episode like this the rate of diminishment accelerates."

Land said Robertson might have isolated himself from anyone but yes men. "When you're the head of your own organization, if you don't cultivate people telling you what you don't want to hear, sometimes you don't hear it," Land said.

The Rev. Kevin Mannoia, chaplain at Azusa Pacific University and past president of the National Assn. of Evangelicals, was among those who suggested that Robertson's comments could have been a misguided effort to restore his once powerful standing as a religious and political voice in America by creating new controversy.

"I wonder whether, consciously or subconsciously, this is an effort on the part of an individual who has significant influence in the church and the country and recognized that influence is waning," Mannoia said.

"He continues to try to maintain that influence by increasingly controversial statements — perhaps statements out of desperation, perhaps statements out of [wanting] more attention," he said.

Meow. Pull your claws in, boys.

No matter what they say, Pat Robertson is incredibly influential among the rank and file Christian Right through his immensely successful tax exempt television empire, Christian Broadcast Networks. From the Columbia Journalism Review, May/June 2005:

CBN’s new digs are abuzz with activity. The Republican Senator Trent Lott came by for an interview earlier in the day, as did Jim Towey, who directs the White House office of faith-based initiatives. Now Lee Webb, the CBN anchor in from Virginia, sits behind the desk in one of the studios preparing to deliver the network’s first half-hour nightly newscast from this gleaming set. Behind him is a floor-to-ceiling world map illuminated in violet and indigo and a screen emblazoned with CBN’s logo. At his side, just beyond the camera’s view, sits a squat pedestal that holds a battered American Standard Bible. Webb lowers his head and folds his hands. “Father, we are grateful for today’s program,” he says. “We pray for your blessing. We ask that what we’re about to do will bring honor to you.” Then the cameras roll.

To many people — especially in blue-state America — God, news, and politics may seem an odd cocktail. But it’s this mix that fuels much of CBN’s programming.

CBN’s flagship program, the 700 Club with Pat Robertson, is familiar to many Americans. But few outside the evangelical community know how large the network is — it employs more than 1,000 people and has facilities in three U.S. cities as well as Ukraine, the Philippines, India, and Israel — or how diverse its programming...As Christian broadcasting has grown, pulpit-based ministries have largely given way to a robust programming mix that includes music, movies, sitcoms, reality shows, and cartoons. But the largest constellation may be news and talk shows. Christian public affairs programming exploded after September 11, and again in the run-up to the 2004 presidential election. And this growth shows no signs of flagging.

[...]

Christian radio news networks experienced their largest growth spurt in the months after September 11. That was also when CBN launched NewsWatch, the first nightly Christian television news program. The show is on three of the six national evangelical television networks, as well as regional Christian networks and the ABC Family Channel. FamilyNet TV, part of the Southern Baptist Convention’s media empire, followed suit in 2004 by hiring a news staff. And at the 2005 NRB convention, Christian television networks from around the world joined forces to form a news co-op. They intend to pool footage and other resources as a means of improving coverage and helping more Christian stations get into the news business.

Pat's getting at least a million viewers a day on the 700 Club alone. And to those who were listening to his broadcast, his faux pas about Ariel Sharon wouldn't have sounded the least bit odd:

Christian news networks devote an enormous amount of airtime to Israel, and their interest has theological underpinnings. In addition to being the place where many biblical events unfolded, Israel plays a pivotal role in biblical prophecy. Most evangelicals emphasize that God granted Israel to the Jews through a covenant with Abraham. They believe that the Jews’ return to Israel was biblically foreordained, and that Jewish control over Israel will trigger a cascade of apocalyptic events that will culminate in Christ’s second coming. Israel’s strength is vital to their own redemption.

Such beliefs explain the unwavering support for Israel expressed by some evangelical talk show hosts. Among them is Kay Arthur, whose radio and TV program, Precepts For Life, offers audiences biblical solutions to everyday dilemmas such as divorce and addictions. She took to the stage at the Israeli Ministry of Tourism Breakfast, held in conjunction with the 2005 NRB conference, and told the hundreds of broadcasters in the audience, “If it came to a choice between Israel and America, I would stand with Israel.” Janet Parshall, host of a popular political program that also runs both on radio and TV, implored the Israelis in attendance, “Please, please, do not give up any more land.” Lest anyone think her alone in her zeal, she urged all those who believed “in the sovereignty of Israel” to stand. Virtually everyone in the room got up.

[...]

The Israeli government has responded with gratitude. Senior officials meet regularly with evangelical broadcasters. Former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sent Pat Robertson a taped message for his seventy-fifth birthday, thanking him for his stalwart support.

I'm sure that Pat's good friend Benjamin had no problem with his comment that Sharon's stroke was divine retribution. He might even agree.

Pat's been popular with conservative politicians for a long time, as everyone knows. But even though he's been spouting off like a lunatic every couple of months (America was asking for it on 9/11 etc.) the Republican party knows which side of the communion wafer its bread is buttered on:

... a few months after the 2000 presidential election, when President Bush invited the NRB’s executive committee to join him and Attorney General John Ashcroft for a meeting in the Roosevelt Room at the White House. After the gathering the NRB’s board chairman wrote an exuberant message to members, saying there was a “new wind blowing in Washington, D.C., and across the nation . . . . The President has surrounded himself with a wonderful staff of people of faith. And it’s obvious that people of faith are being welcomed back to the public square.” The message also urged members to seize the opportunity to “make a difference in our culture” — which in the parlance of religious conservatives generally means effecting political change.

In the months that followed the Roosevelt Room gathering, the NRB executive committee continued to meet periodically with senior White House staff members. On occasion, Bush himself attended. And monthly NRB-White House conference calls were established to give rank-and-file NRB members a direct line to the Oval Office.

George W. Bush also attended NRB’s 2003 convention and gave a speech, much of it dedicated to promoting the looming war in Iraq. At the event, the NRB passed a resolution to “honor” the president. Though the NRB is a tax-exempt organization, and thus banned from backing a particular candidate, the document resembled an endorsement. The final line read, “We recognize in all of the above that God has appointed President George W. Bush to leadership at this critical period in our nation’s history, and give Him thanks.”

Just last spring, when Pat opened up his shiny new DC CBN studios during the fight over judicial nominees, the Republican leadership happily stepped forth to kiss Pat's ring and genuflect appropriately:

The judiciary was also front and center during opening week at the network’s new Washington bureau. A parade of senators — all of them Republican — made their way into the studio, to go on camera advocating the nuclear option. During his interview, broadcast as part of NewsWatch’s inaugural Washington, D.C., program, Trent Lott stood with studio lights glinting off the American flag pin on his lapel, and held up a scrap of paper with a list of senators’ names and how they intended to vote on the initiative. The tally seemed to be stacking up in his favor. Pat Robertson, who interviewed Lott, asked no tough questions and offered not even a passing nod to opposing viewpoints. Instead, Robertson scored Democrats for trying to “eliminate religious values from America” by blocking the appointment of conservative judges. All the while, the dizzying blend of God, news, and politics that he has crafted and honed was bouncing off satellites, winding through thousands of cable systems, rippling over the airwaves, and glowing on television screens across America.

And contrary to what Reverend Land and others are trying to say, Pat's news and entertainment network is growing, not shrinking:

January 2005:

The 700 Club's average daily audience, according to AC Nielsen's November sweeps, is up 26% over last year. At a time when most daily shows are struggling The 700 Club is experiencing tremendous increases. November's average daily audience of 922,000 households is the highest in ten years and we experienced the same success in October and November.

I suspect that some of this criticism of Pat is simple jockeying for influence in the Christian broadcasting field. You'll notice that Land's Southern Baptist Convention has its own competing network. Pat's the Rupert Murdoch of religious programming and there are a number of little Mini Pats nipping at his heels.

But I'm not worried about him. He's got two thirds of born again Christians watching his news show and they're not going to stop watching because of something he said about Ariel Sharon:

( Mar 14, 2005) The reshaping of Americans’ lives is evident in various facets of their life, including the spiritual dimension. A new nationwide survey conducted by The Barna Group indicates that while 56% of adults attend church services in a typical month, a much larger percentage is exposed to religious information and experiences through various forms of media. Radio and television are the most popular Christian media, but faith-related Internet sites as well as religious magazines, newspapers and books also enjoy significant exposure...Two-thirds of the born again population views Christian programming each month, which is more than double the proportion of non-born again adults (30%) who follow that pattern.

It isn't just FOXNews. CBN is a powerful force in the Mighty Wurlitzer too. Robertson may be a nutcase, but he's also a huge player in GOP politics whether they like it or not.


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digby 1/07/2006 02:36:00 PM |

 
Who Knew?

I just want to follow up a little bit on Glenn's fine post on this blog (and on his own) in which he takes on Highpockets' pathetic argument defending the Bush apologist war cry that revealing the NSA illegal spying scandal harmed national security.

I agree, of course, that despite the fact that Bush likes to talk about how they hide in caves, islamic terrorists aren't cave men. They can read as well as anyone. And because they have what you might call a "particular interest" in such things, they would be more likely than 99% of Americans to know about American surveillance law and practices such as FISA, if such things concerned them.

I also agree that this alleged revelation about "switches" and "encryption" is a red herring. In the first place the Times story didn't mention it, but even if it did, it makes no difference. All this technological information was in the public domain, as were the laws, so if any terrorist was concerned about how the US went about surveillance or the state of technology that enables it, they could have easily found out.

But none of that really matters. The NY Times story revealed nothing that would give a terrorist pause because the fact is that everyone in the world assumed that we were monitoring terrorists' electronic communications. I assumed that. So did Osama bin Laden. I further assumed that American friends of terrorists and their friends would be monitored, too. And I have no doubt that Osama bin Laden assumed the same. But while both Osama bin Laden and I undoubtedly made exactly the same assumptions, only one of us has any interest in the NY Times revelation that the surveillance was illegal --- and it isn't Osama.

This article from the Washington Times, via Glenn, bears that out, saying that all this surveillance has resulted in no good intelligence about al Qaeda in the US.

U.S. law enforcement sources said that more than four years of surveillance by the National Security Agency has failed to capture any high-level al Qaeda operative in the United States. They said al Qaeda insurgents have long stopped using the phones and even computers to relay messages. Instead, they employ couriers.

"They have been way ahead of us in communications security," a law enforcement source said. "At most, we have caught some riff-raff. But the heavies remain free and we believe some of them are in the United States."

But even if that were not true and American suicide bombers were plotting their next attacks in AOL chat rooms, the government would have no trouble getting warrants to spy on them. And that's the rub. I just don't see any scenario in which a FISA judge would not retroactively grant a warrant in a case that thwarted a terrorist plot. Neither can I imagine that if the administration made a case to the congress that it needed to extend the 72 hour retroactive limit to three weeks (or three months!) that the GOP congress wouldn't have gone along. Nor would they have withheld the money required to hire all the people needed to do the paperwork, or whatever the excuse of the day is. The administration would have gotten whatever it needed to legally monitor terrorist suspects. In fact, the terrorists and Anmericans alike assumed it had already done so.

Therefore, the only logical reason that the administration believed that it had to secretly and illegally spy on Americans is because they knew that Americans would not approve of which Americans they were monitoring. As Glenn says, the only security threatened by the revelations in the NY Times story is the Republican Party's political security.



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digby 1/07/2006 10:45:00 AM |

 
Hanging In Wingnutland

by digby

Man, am I one lucky lil' blogger or what? Let's have a hand for Julia of Sisyphus Shrugged and Glenn Greenwald of Unclaimed Territory. I'm sure you will all be visiting their great blogs often. If there were an award for best guest blogging, they would be shoo-ins. Many thanks to both of them for filling in while I was hanging with the wingnuts.

How is FoxNews indoctrinating the subjects these days, you ask? Well, it's interesting. From this small subset of wingnuts, it looks like the Abramoff scandal is spawning a kind of feverish excitement, although they don't seem to realize that it's going to affect their favored political party more than the hated liberal traitors. The atmosphere was very reminiscent of gatherings during Whitewater and Monicagate and it occurred to me that they are either addicted to scandal in general or they were so conditioned during the Clinton years that they now automatically associate scandal with an advantage to their side.

Keep in mind that while these are wingnuts they are not Pat Robertson wingnuts, so they aren't faithbased. However, they are military and their tribal indentification with the GOP is very stong. They are unable to admit, as yet, that this is a throughly Republican scandal, but they are scandalized nonetheless. They say generic stuff like "it's time to throw all those bums out" which, if you knew these particular wingnuts, is as close as they are ever going to get to openly admitting that the Republicans have fucked up.

They also complained that Bush is on TV too much. His hectoring bozo-ism embarrasses them now.

Of course they were also saying, "somebody ought to put a stop to that woman."

Baby steps.




Corrected shoo-in

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digby 1/07/2006 09:07:00 AM |

 
Hey, me too...

What he said. Thanks for the conversation, and for making me feel at home, and thanks to Digby for inviting me.

Since this came up in the comments of an earlier post, Wampum (home of the Koufaces, and they're still a little short the money they need to pay for them, if you happen to think of it when you drop by), firedoglake and his rooness all have smart posts up explaining why if you think that "the tribes donated to Democrats" means that Democrats are implicated in the Abramoff scandal, you don't really understand what the Abramoff scandal is about.

That makes me kind of nervous. We're the ones who are paying attention. Imagine what impressions the people who aren't paying attention are getting.

I think we need to get on message here, folks.

Just, you know, saying.

edit: Oh, man. I almost forgot to make Digby profoundly uncomfortable by suggesting that you head over to the Bloggies with this blog in mind.

Best writer seems to be the popular category.
julia 1/07/2006 08:34:00 AM |

 
A couple of last points

by Glenn Greenwald

Thanks to Digby for asking me to blog here while he was away, and thanks to all of his readers for the lively and provocative comments in response to mine and Julia’s posts. This is the place where one finds what I think is the most consistently superb writing and analysis on the Internet, and I've enjoyed blogging here these last few days.

I wanted to bring two final items to your attention:

(1) The nonpartisan and independent Congressional Research Service released a Report yesterday (.pdf) which analyzed and, in a mild though clear tone, decimated the legal theories advanced by the Administration to defend George Bush’s lawless eavesdropping.

Though lengthy and legalistic, the Report is well worth reading. Of particular note is its discussion of the history of eavesdropping abuses on U.S. citizens by the Executive Branch which necessitated the protections of FISA (page CRS 13); the Report’s destruction of the Administration’s claim that the AUMF (the Congressional resolution authorizing military force against Al Qaeda) can be read to have provided Bush an "exemption" from the mandates of FISA (CRS 32); and its emphatic rejection of the notion that a President can simply violate a Congressional law (rather than asking Congress to amend it) simply because the President views the law as undesirable for national security (CRS 41).

(2) Atrios has spent the last several days repeatedly asking if there are any Bush followers, anywhere, who can answer this question:

Can anyone - anywhere - explain, just a little bit - just one time - how "national security has been damaged" by revelations that the Administration was eavesdropping without FISA-required warrants and judicial oversight rather than with them?

One of the most devoted and loyal Bush followers, John at Powerline, has courageously stepped up to the plate, and attempted to provide an explanation as to how it can be said that disclosure of the illegality of the eavesdropping program "harmed national security."

It’s the first such attempt (at least which I’ve seen) to answer this question. For reasons that I point out here on my blog, John’s explanation is not just astoundingly incoherent, but conclusively demonstrates that John -- as I believe is the case for many Bush followers -- does not have any idea what FISA says or what this scandal is actually about.

The utter emptiness of his response makes quite clear that the only thing "harmed" by disclosure of this illegal program is George Bush’s political interests, not American national security interests. The rage and "treason" accusations arising from this scandal rest on the borderline-religious belief that to criticize and undermine George Bush is the same as criticizing and harming the United States, and harming George Bush’s political interests -- even by pointing out that he broke the law -- is, therefore, by definition, to commit treason. That really is the premise of those who are defending George Bush in this scandal.
Glenn Greenwald 1/07/2006 05:05:00 AM |

Friday, January 06, 2006

 
Hanging the Messenger

by Glenn Greenwald

Atrios asked this question yesterday:

So, what if it does come out that the administration was spying on journalists, political opponents, etc... How WILL the broders/russerts/matthews/hiatts/ roberts/humes of the world react?

I’m not sure exactly what those commentators would say (although I’m sure it would be appropriately balanced and would give due deference to the view that Bush had good arguments for such spying and did so only with the best of intentions for all of us), but I definitely know what Bush’s followers would say: It’s about time, and it doesn’t go far enough. Bush’s blogosphere followers have already begun justifying and excusing the Administration’s potential spying on journalists.

But clearly they believe that a lot more should be done to anti-Bush journalists than simply spying on their calls. Since the New York Times disclosed the undisputed fact that George Bush ordered his Administration to eavesdrop on American citizens with no judicial oversight and outside of FISA, the attacks on the media by the Administration and Bush’s followers have seriously escalated. Since this scandal arose, they have been relentlessly calling the Times and its sources "subversives" and "traitors," and have been openly claiming that they are guilty of treason.

When Bush followers use terms like "subversives" and "traitors," and when they accuse people of engaging in "treason," many assume that they are joking, that it’s a form of political hyperbole and it’s only meant symbolically. Pajamas Media member and Instapundit favorite Dean Esmay wants it know that the terms "traitors" and "treason" are used literally, and that these traitors must meet the fate which traitors deserve:

When I say "treason" I don't mean it in an insulting or hyperbolic way. I mean in a literal way: we need to find these 21st century Julius Rosenbergs, these modern day reincarnations of Alger Hiss, put them on trial before a jury of their peers, with defense counsel. When they are found guilty, we should then hang them by the neck until the are dead, dead, dead.

No sympathy. No mercy.Am I angry? You bet I am. But not in an explosive way. Just in the same seething way I was angry on 9/11.

These people have endangered American lives and American security. They need to be found, tried, and executed.

Similarly, on Powerline yesterday, Big Trunk shared some of his dirty fantasies about criminally prosecuting and imprisoning the reporters and editors of the Times who were responsible for having disclosed the fact that his Leader ordered the Government to eavesdrop on American citizens in violation of the law:

Assuming that the terms of the statute apply to the leaks involved in the NSA story, has the Times itself violated the statute and committed a crime? The answer is clearly affirmative. . . .

Is the New York Times a law unto itself? In gambling that constitutional immunity protects it from criminal liability for its misconduct, the New York Times appears to me to be bluffing. Those of us who are disinclined to remit the defense of the United States to the judgment of the New York Times must urge the Bush administration to call the Times's bluff.

Even discussions of this sort have the effect, by design, of intimidating the nation’s media into remaining quiet about illegal acts by the Administration. With an Administration which throws American citizens indefinitely into military prisons without so much as charges being brought and with access to lawyers being denied, or which contemplates military attacks on unfriendly media outlets, isn’t it just inevitable that all of this talk about treason and criminal prosecution of the Times and its sources is going to have some substantial chilling effect on reporting on the Administration's wrongdoing?

None of this is new. It’s all been tried before. The New York Times previously obtained classified documents revealing government misconduct with respect to the Vietnam War, and the Nixon Administration argued then, too, that the Times’ publication of that classified information was criminal and endangered national security. The U.S. Supreme Court in New York Times Co. v. The United States (the Pentagon Papers Case) 403 U.S. 713 (1971), barred the Nixon Administration from preventing publication by the Times of this information.

In doing so, Justice Hugo Black wrote a concurring opinion which makes clear just how dangerous and perverse it is for the Administration and its followers to seek to silence the media from reporting, truthfully, on the Administration’s illegal eavesdropping. I’m quoting from it at length because it is so instructive and applicable to what is occurring today:

Our Government was launched in 1789 with the adoption of the Constitution. The Bill of Rights, including the First Amendment, followed in 1791. Now, for the first time in the 182 years since the founding of the Republic, the federal courts are asked to hold that the First Amendment does not mean what it says, but rather means that the Government can halt the publication of current news of vital importance to the people of this country. . . .

Yet the Solicitor General argues and some members of the Court appear to agree that the general powers of the Government adopted in the original Constitution should be interpreted to limit and restrict the specific and emphatic guarantees of the Bill of Rights adopted later. I can imagine no greater perversion of history. . . .

In the First Amendment the Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in our democracy. The press was to serve the governed, not the governors. The Government's power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government.

The subtle and not-so-subtle threats against journalists for committing "treason" are not confined to the rabid Bush followers in the blogosphere. Bush’s closest political allies routinely make similar accusations, and Bush himself, in his very first Press Conference after disclosure of his eavesdropping, accused those responsible for the disclosure of “helping the enemy,” i.e., committing treason:

There is a process that goes on inside the Justice Department about leaks, and I presume that process is moving forward. My personal opinion is it was a shameful act for someone to disclose this very important program in a time of war. The fact that we're discussing this program is helping the enemy. . . .

With a Congress that is controlled by Republicans and hopelessly passive, and with a judiciary increasingly packed with highly deferential Bush appointees, the two remaining sources which can serve as meaningful checks on Executive power are governmental whistle-blowers and journalists, which is exactly why the most vicious and intimidating attacks are now being directed towards them.
Glenn Greenwald 1/06/2006 09:31:00 AM |

 
I'm frequently dispirited at the way the obvious doesn't seem to be obvious to the people who provide our news coverage, but every so often I read something that makes me feel as if perhaps someone is paying attention.

Frequently it's written by EJ Dionne

It almost makes you feel sorry for Jack Abramoff.

Republicans once fell all over themselves to get his "moolah," the term used famously by the disgraced superlobbyist, and to get his advice on dealing with that warm and cuddly entity known as "the lobbying community."

Suddenly, Abramoff enters two plea bargains, and these former friends ask, in puzzled tones, "Jack Who ?"

Over the past few days, politicians -- from President Bush and House Speaker Dennis Hastert on down -- raced to return Abramoff contributions, or compassionately sent the moolah off to charity. There's a scramble to treat him as a wildly defective gene in an otherwise healthy body politic, and to erase the past. But seeing the record of the past clearly is essential to fixing the future.

Abramoff, who used to pall around with close Bush allies Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed in the College Republicans and who has been a central figure in the rise of Republican dominance in Washington, is not a lone wolf. He is a particularly egregious example of how the GOP's political-corporate-lobbying complex has overwhelmed the idealistic wing of the Republican Party.

Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, insisted on Wednesday that Bush does not know Abramoff personally. But the record makes clear that Abramoff was a loyal and serious player in Bush's circles.

According to an Oct. 15, 2003, story in Roll Call, Abramoff was one of a half-dozen lobbyists who raised $100,000 for Bush's 2000 campaign. When Bush was battling Al Gore's efforts to recount Florida's votes, Abramoff was there with the maximum $5,000 contribution Bush was taking for the effort. A September 2003 National Journal story noted that Abramoff was so confident he would meet his fundraising goals for the president's 2004 campaign that he was planning, as the lobbyist generously put it, "to try to help some other lobbyists meet their goals."

The administration, in turn, was open to Abramoff. As National Journal reported in its April 20, 2002, issue, "Last summer, in an effort to raise the visibility of his Indian clients, Abramoff helped arrange a White House get-together on tax issues with President Bush for top Indian leaders, including Lovelin Poncho, the chairman of the Coushattas," one of the tribes Abramoff represented.

When journalists would raise questions about Abramoff's role as a lobbyist-fundraiser just a couple of years ago, Bush's lieutenants played down his influence peddling and proudly claimed Abramoff as one of their own.

On an Oct. 15, 2003, CNBC broadcast, journalist Alan Murray asked Ed Gillespie, then chairman of the Republican National Committee, about fundraising by "people like Jack Abramoff, who represents Indian tribes here," and another lobbyist whose name I'll leave out because he has not been implicated in any scandals. "Are you going to sit here and tell us that their contributions to your party have nothing to do with their lobbying efforts in Washington?"

"I know Jack Abramoff," Gillespie replied. He mentioned the other lobbyist and insisted: "They are Republicans; they were Republicans before they were lobbyists. . . . I think they want to see a Republican reelected in the White House in 2004 more than anything."

Roll Call reported on March 12, 2001, that "GOP leaders on and off Capitol Hill are organizing a new drive to lean on major corporations and trade associations to hire Republicans for their top lobbying jobs." The article spoke of a "Who's Who of Republican lobbyists" who had held a meeting on the subject the week before. At the top of the list was Jack Abramoff...

There's been quite a flurry of attempts to play this unholy mess as a bipartisan scandal (I particularly enjoyed this bizarrity from the ever Republican-friendly Gallop, where they make a valiant attempt to "prove" that corruption is a bipartisan problem for Congress in the wake of blanket news coverage of Mr. Abramoff's activities based on polls taken, um, a while ago).

It's not working, and we shouldn't let it work. That means, among other things, you might want to consider defending the Democrats. After all, individual lobbyists weren't making tens of millions of dollars selling both sides of the mall to anyone with money when we held them (pace the junior generation of the Boggs family). Maybe we should grab them back.

If we showed a bit of enthusiasm for the good our team is trying to do rather than focussing on what they're not doing the way we would, it might help.

Just saying.
julia 1/06/2006 09:04:00 AM |

 
An ideology of lawlessness

by Glenn Greenwald

When Rudy Giuliani first became Mayor of New York in 1993, he famously ordered the Police Department to begin enforcing relatively minor "quality of life" laws -- long-ignored prohibitions on things like jumping turnstiles and panhandling. These actions were based on the "Broken Windows" theory of criminality long touted by conservative theorist James Q. Wilson, which held that allowing even small infractions of the law is to endorse criminality which, in turn, leads to more serious crimes and then all-out lawlessness. To this day, whenever it is their turn to pay tribute to the heroic greatness of Rudy Giuliani, conservatives heap lavish praise on his refusal to overlook law-breaking and his glorious re-instatement of the rule of law.

But like the Geneva Convention, precepts of due process and so much else, "rule of law" theories are now quaint relics being cast aside by the so-called conservatives running our Federal Government. In their place, we now have a governmental culture where violations of the law are literally the norm.

What we have in our Federal Government are not individual acts of law-breaking or isolated scandals of illegality, but instead, a culture and an ideology of lawlessness. It cannot be emphasized enough that since September 11, the Bush Administration has claimed the power to act without any constraints of law or checks from the Congress or the courts. Its view of its own power and governing philosophy is based upon, and perfectly encapsulated by, this single paragraph from the incomparably pernicious September 25, 2001 Memorandum, written by then-Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo:

In both the War Powers Resolution and the Joint Resolution, Congress has recognized the President's authority to use force in circumstances such as those created by the September 11 incidents. Neither statute, however, can place any limits on the President's determinations as to any terrorist threat, the amount of military force to be used in response, or the method, timing, and nature of the response. These decisions, under our Constitution, are for the President alone to make.

That decisions about what actions our country takes "are for the President alone to make" – without any interference from the Congress, the courts, or anything else – is not a fringe academic theory. It is a definitely authoritarian and lawless ideology that has truly -- expressly -- become the governing philosophy of George Bush and his Administration. And it is not something the Administration has merely embraced in theory. It has been aggressively exercising these limitless powers.

When the President and the Vice President assure us that all of their actions are in "full accordance with the law," what they mean by "the law" is what is described in the Yoo Memorandum. For everything broadly relating to the undeclared and eternal "war" on terror -- not just on international battlefields but domestically as well -- decisions are "for the President alone to make." Pursuant to this theory, even when the President acts in violation of what we used to understand as "the law" (i.e., acts of Congress which are signed into law by the President), he is still acting "in accordance with the law," because the power to make such decisions rests exclusively with him.

The NSA scandal has received the bulk of the media’s attention over the past month, and deservedly so. But it has drowned out other acts of wanton law-breaking by the Administration. We have learned recently that multiple federal agencies have been tracking the computer activities of American citizens in patent violation of the law. And it was disclosed in the last couple of days that the Administration some time ago unilaterally granted itself an exemption to the National Security Act of 1947, whereby it has refused to brief the Senate and House Intelligence Committees with regard to the NSA’s eavesdropping activities as required by that law. And in violation of the President’s (itself illegal) Executive Order directing the NSA to eavesdrop only on international calls in violation of FISA, the NSA has eavesdropped on domestic calls as well.

Such individual acts of law-breaking are always either excused as being inconsequential or defended as being necessary for our safety. But the dangers posed by this theory are self-evident and severe.

Just two weeks ago or so, I wrote a post asking Bush followers how any limits at all could be recognized on George Bush’s powers in light of the theories of the Yoo Memorandum, and specifically wondered why the debates we were having about things like renewal of the Patriot Act and prohibitions on torture even matter, if, as Bush claims, "such decisions alone are for the President to make." Both Matt Welch at Reason and Scott Lemieux asked the same question with regard to other powers that the Administration could assert. It did not take long for those questions to be answered, and the answer -- coming directly from the Administration -- is that there are no cognizable limits on the President’s law-breaking power.

This answer was delivered in the form of a woefully under-reported "signing statement" which was issued last Friday by the President when he signed into law a defense appropriations bill passed by Congress. That bill included the McCain Amendment, which bans the use of torture as an interrogation tool and which the Administration aggressively argued against. As Marty Lederman has detailed, Bush’s signing statement plainly amounts to a re-iteration – a reminder to all of us – of the theory of the Yoo Memorandum: that while the President was participating in the symbolic ritual of signing the McCain Amendment into "law," he has the power to violate it should he deem it in the national interest to do so. Here is what Bush said in his statement:

The executive branch shall construe Title X in Division A of the Act, relating to detainees, in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President to supervise the unitary executive branch and as Commander in Chief and consistent with the constitutional limitations on the judicial power, which will assist in achieving the shared objective of the Congress and the President, evidenced in Title X, of protecting the American people from further terrorist attacks.

So this new "law" will be interpreted "in a manner consistent" with the Administration’s view of "the constitutional authority of the President to supervise the unitary executive branch and as Commander in Chief." Of course, the Administration’s view regarding the President’s "constitutional authority" is that such decisions are not for Congress to make, but "are for the President alone to make," which is just another way of saying that the President can violate the law the minute he thinks he should.

Lest anyone think that this description of the President’s view of his right to break the law is exaggerated or unfair, we should listen to what the Administration itself is saying about this matter:

A senior administration official, who spoke to a Globe reporter about the statement on condition of anonymity because he is not an official spokesman, said the president intended to reserve the right to use harsher methods in special situations involving national security. . . .

But, the official said, a situation could arise in which Bush may have to waive the law's restrictions to carry out his responsibilities to protect national security. He cited as an example a ''ticking time bomb" scenario, in which a detainee is believed to have information that could prevent a planned terrorist attack.

''Of course the president has the obligation to follow this law, [but] he also has the obligation to defend and protect the country as the commander in chief, and he will have to square those two responsibilities in each case," the official added. ''We are not expecting that those two responsibilities will come into conflict, but it's possible that they will."

Isn’t it rather extraordinary to observe the Congress pass a much-debated bill which the Administration vigorously opposed, and watch the President sign it into law, only for the Administration, on the very same day, to actually come right out and say that the President "may have to waive the law’s restrictions"?

Since when do we have a system of Government where the President can simply "waive" away laws? This law was enacted specifically to prohibit acts of torture which the Administration has engaged in, and the President is openly telling us that he may have to unilaterally "waive" the law. Generously, we hear that he hopes not to have to break the law, "but it’s possible" that he will.

The NSA law-breaking scandal cannot be seen as some isolated act. It is merely the most flagrant symptom (thus far) of the fact that we have a President -- with three full years left in office -- who has claimed for himself the right to ignore Congressional law and who believes that virtually all decisions of any real significance in our country are his "alone to make." FISA. The National Security Act of 1947. The McCain Amendment. These are all federal laws -- laws -- which the Administration is openly claiming it has the right to violate.

Shouldn’t we be having much more of a discussion than we have had about the fact that we have a President who believes he has the power to ignore laws? We have had all sorts of vigorous and sweeping debates lately about things like torture, habeas corpus, surveillance powers under the Patriot Act. But those debates are all just gestures. Like George Bush’s signing a "law" which he simultaneously claims he has no obligation to obey, the oh-so-heated debates we’ve been having are all just some sort of illusory role-playing, where we pretend that we have a representative Congress which makes laws. But what we actually have is a President who says he can violate those laws at will because such decisions are "his alone to make."

Maybe Americans want to have a President who has these powers and can operate without much restraint. Other countries at other times have decided that they want that, usually as a means for protecting themselves against perceived external threats. But shouldn’t we be having this discussion much more explicitly and with much greater urgency than we have had it thus far?

The "war" which is said to justify these extraordinary powers isn't going anywhere any time soon. The Administration itself constantly reminds us that it's a long struggle which could last decades. That means that whatever law-breaking powers we permit to be vested in the President are ones that George Bush, and then subsequent presidents, are going to wield for a long time to come. At the very least, such a radical shift in how our government functions should not be effectuated in secret and without real debate.
Glenn Greenwald 1/06/2006 03:49:00 AM |

Thursday, January 05, 2006

 
FYI

The Talking Dog, who is a bit of a lawyer himself, professionally, has been interviewing the lawyers for a number of the defendants who have been caught up in the current administration's no-constitutional-rights-for-citizens-we-say-are-terrorists (only we don't have to prove it) legal policy.

Today, he posted an interview with Mr. Padilla's lawyer.

As you may or may not know, the current administration is attempting to transfer Mr. Padilla's case from the military courts to the criminal courts in an attempt (unsuccessful, so far) to keep the Supreme Court from deciding on the constitutionality of their denial of constitutional protections to Mr. Padilla, on the basis of their argument that the executive branch has the right to ignore the constitution.

That right, presumably, emanating from the penumbra of something or other. Love me some original intenters.

Anyway, read. It's fascinating stuff.
julia 1/05/2006 07:16:00 PM |

 
O bliss o glee o joy for all my former woes a thousand times repaid...

The Abramoff mess has spread to Maryland, where it is now complicating the life of my beloved Governor Ehrlich.

I'm a lucky girl.
julia 1/05/2006 12:46:00 PM |

 
why the White House is not returning between $100-200 thousand bundled by pioneer Jack Abramoff

President George Bush is giving $US6000 ($8000) in political contributions from Abramoff, his wife and a client to charity, but will keep more than $US100,000 that Abramoff collected for Mr Bush's 2004 re-election campaign, officials said.

The White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, said the $US6000 from the Abramoffs and the Saginaw Chippewa tribe of Michigan would go to the American Heart Association.

A Republican National Committee spokeswoman, Tracey Schmitt, said the money Abramoff raised as a "pioneer" for the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign would be kept. "There is nothing to indicate that those contributions reflect anything but support for the re-election campaign," she said.

And truly, Mr. Abramoff's associates and clients (he doesn't appear to have too many friends, now, does he?) had a long list of reasons to be very, very interested in keeping Our Fearless Leader in the White House.

A few highlights:

Abramoff Arranged White House Meeting at in Exchange for Donation to Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform. A lawyer for the Saginaw Chippewa Indian tribe in Michigan revealed that tribal leaders had "three or four" meetings at the White House—including one with Bush and another with Rove—after they gave a $25,000 donation to Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform at Jack Abramoff's request. ATR later confirmed that Norquist arranged White House meetings for Indian tribal leaders and others who were "supportive of the president's agenda." [Newsweek, 5/2/05]

Jack Abramoff Advised Department of Interior Transition. Abramoff advised the Interior Department during the Bush transition. [Wall Street Journal, 3/19/01]

Abramoff's Former Assistant Became Rove's Gate Keeper. In 2001 Abramoff's personal assistant, Susan Ralston, took a similar job under Karl Rove in the White House. This move essentially made Ralston, "Rove's gatekeeper." [New York Times, 5/1/05]

Lobbying Network Involved Bush Administrator. According to The Washington Post, "in an attempt to influence the Interior Department -- which has the final say on a tribe's gambling ambitions -- Abramoff directed his tribal clients to give at least $225,000 to the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy, a conservative group that was founded by Gale A. Norton before President Bush chose her to be his interior secretary. [Washington Post, 3/13/05]

DC Lobbyist Jack Abramoff Advised Bush Interior Department Transition While Representing Indian Tribes. Abramoff advised the Interior Department during the Bush transition. Aside from the Department of Homeland Security, which regulates coastline gaming, and the Department of Treasury, which regulates illegal financial transactions, the Bureau of Indian Affairs is one of the few means the Federal Government has to regulate the gaming industry, specifically the Native American gaming industry. [Wall Street Journal, 3/19/01; www.doi.gov]

Abramoff Directed Tribal Clients Contributions to Interior Secretary Gail Norton's Foundation. According to The Washington Post, "in an attempt to influence the Interior Department -- which has the final say on a tribe's gambling ambitions -- Abramoff directed his tribal clients to give at least $225,000 to the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy, a conservative group that was founded by Gale A. Norton before President Bush chose her to be his interior secretary. [Washington Post, 3/13/05]

Abramoff Also Arranged A Meeting With Interior Secretary Gail Norton For the Coushattas Tribe. Abramoff also invited the Coushattas to a fall 2001 dinner party attended by Interior Secretary Gale Norton. The Coushattas provided Abramoff with millions in consulting fees and contracts. [National Journal, 4/20/02]

Obviously Mr. Abramoff's little circle was extremely anxious to keep the current team in place.

After all, they'd already paid a great deal of money to Mr. Abramoff in return for favors from inside the White House. They had an investment to protect.

The DCCC has updated their scandal website with the latest noisome details.
julia 1/05/2006 11:51:00 AM |

 
Attacking Bush's only weapon: Fear

by Glenn Greenwald

Among those who now recognize that the Bush Administration has not just deliberately and repeatedly broken the law, but is literally claiming that George Bush has the “wartime” power to continue to break the law, there is a growing impatience to move to the next step – to take action to ensure that there are serious consequences from Bush’s brazen law-breaking. But in order for that to happen, Bush opponents must finally overcome the one weapon which has protected George Bush again and again: fear. Fear of terrorism is what the Administration has successfully inflamed and exploited for four years in order to justify its most extreme and even illegal actions undertaken in the name of fighting terrorism.

Without pause, the Administration has sought to make Americans as frightened as possible about terrorism and has used that fear to justify its actions with regard to almost every issue. Here is Dick Cheney, just yesterday, proudly defending the Administration’s illegal NSA program by arguing that Bush’s warrantless eavesdropping on Americans, like everything else the Administration does, is justified by fear of terrorists:

As we get farther away from September 11th, some in Washington are yielding to the temptation to downplay the ongoing threat to our country, and to back away from the business at hand. . .

The enemy that struck on 9/11 is weakened and fractured yet it is still lethal and trying to hit us again. Either we are serious about fighting this war or we are not. And as long as George W. Bush is President of the United States, we are serious -- and we will not let down our guard.

As always, Cheney urgently warns Americans not to let our fear of terrorism diminish. George Bush has also been fueling these flames of fear in almost every speech he’s given since September 11, 2001. Here he is in a quite typical speech delivered on October 6, 2005, transparently attempting to whip up as much fear as possible in order to bolster support for our ongoing occupation of Iraq:

We know the vision of the radicals because they've openly stated it -- in videos, and audiotapes, and letters, and declarations, and websites. . . . Their tactic to meet this goal has been consistent for a quarter-century: They hit us, and expect us to run. They want us to repeat the sad history of Beirut in 1983, and Mogadishu in 1993 -- only this time on a larger scale, with greater consequences.

"The militants believe that controlling one country will rally the Muslim masses, enabling them to overthrow all moderate governments in the region, and establish a radical Islamic empire that spans from Spain to Indonesia. With greater economic and military and political power, the terrorists would be able to advance their stated agenda: to develop weapons of mass destruction, to destroy Israel, to intimidate Europe, to assault the American people, and to blackmail our government into isolation."

"Our enemy is utterly committed. As Zarqawi has vowed, 'We will either achieve victory over the human race or we will pass to the eternal life.' And the civilized world knows very well that other fanatics in history, from Hitler to Stalin to Pol Pot, consumed whole nations in war and genocide before leaving the stage of history.

"The murderous ideology of the Islamic radicals is the great challenge of our new century. Yet, in many ways, this fight resembles the struggle against communism in the last century. . . .

With the rise of a deadly enemy and the unfolding of a global ideological struggle, our time in history will be remembered for new challenges and unprecedented dangers.

Islamic terrorists here, as always, are depicted as omnipotent villains with quite attainable dreams of world domination, genocide, and the obliteration of the United States. They are trying to take over the world and murder us all. And this is not merely a threat we face. It is much more than that. It is the predominant issue facing the United States -- more important than all others. Everything pales in comparison to fighting off this danger. We face not merely a danger, but, in Bush’s words, an "unprecedented danger" -- the worst, scariest, most threatening danger ever.

And literally for four years, this is what Americans have heard over and over and over from their Government – that we face a mortal and incomparably powerful enemy on the precipice of destroying us, and only the most extreme measures taken by our Government can save us. We are a nation engaged in a War of Civilizations whose very existence is in imminent jeopardy. All of those plans for the future, dreams for your children, career aspirations, life goals – it’s all subordinate, it’s all for naught, unless, first and foremost, we stand loyally behind George Bush as he invokes extreme and unprecedented measures necessary to protect us from this extreme and unprecedented threat.

It is that deeply irrational, fear-driven view of the world which has to be undermined in order to make headway in convincing Americans that this Administration is engaged in intolerable excesses and abuses of its power. The argument which needs to be made is the one that we have seen starting to arise in the blogosphere and elsewhere: that living in irrational fear of terrorists and sacrificing our liberties and all of our other national goals in their name is the approach of hysterics and cowards, not of a strong, courageous and resolute nation.

Several weeks ago, Digby wrote a widely-discussed post describing how Bush followers are driven by their all-consuming and pitifully child-like fears of terrorists, leading them to consent to any measures taken by George Bush as long as he promises to save them. And this weekend, Kos wrote a similar post, in which he contrasted the classic and previously defining American bravery of Patrick Henry with the frightened Bush followers who beg the Government to restrict their liberties in exchange for saving them from the terrorists.

If the blogospheric reaction of Bush supporters is any indication, this argument is as politically potent as it is self-evidently true. Kos’s post provoked shrieking seizures among the tough-guy, blindly loyal Bush followers -- the ones who revealingly give themselves play name like Rocket and Captain and who never tire of touting their own toughness. In response to Kos’s post, they squealed and they yelled and they called him all kinds of names – they did everything but refute the argument.

And notably, in their anger, there was none of that smug bravado or all-too-familiar attacks on the courage of Bush opponents, because with this plainly accurate depiction, they stand revealed as being driven by nothing other than limitless, irrational fear. They are scared and they want to continue to implant their extreme fear into our national policies and onto our national character.

There is no more important goal than exposing and undermining the cowardly and exaggerated fear which lies at the core of the Bush agenda. If, as has been the case, we are bullied into starting from the tacit premise that Islamic terrorism is a unique and unprecedented evil which threatens our very existence -- rather than one of many challenges which we must calmly face and overcome -- then it is a foregone conclusion that whoever advocates the most extreme “anti-terrorist” measures, no matter how excessive and regardless of whether they comport with legal niceties, will prevail.

If that fear-mongering premise is left unchallenged – if we are too afraid to dispute the premise that Islamic terrorism is the “unprecedented” existential threat to the United States which, at any moment, is likely to cause our cities to be in flames and our children to be glowing with radiation and therefore must outweigh every other issue and concern – then we will lose that debate every time, which is what has been happening.

After all, if it really were the case that Islamic terrorism constituted the sort of imminent, civilization-ending threat which the Administration has spent the last four years drumming into everyone’s head, then it would be extremely difficult to gin up much outrage over an eavesdropping program, warrants or not. When one’s very survival is at stake and is in imminent danger, what will matter is being protected from that danger. Everything else will pale in importance, and there will be extreme gratitude towards those who seek to save you, even if they break a few abstract rules to do it.

What must be emphasized is that one can protect against the threat of terrorism with courage, calm and resolve – the attributes which have always defined our nation as it has confronted other threats. Hysteria and fear-mongering are the opposite of strength. The strong remain rational and unafraid.

In a rational world, the basic principle of risk is that it equals impact times probability: "In professional risk assessments, risk combines the probability of a negative event occurring with how harmful that event would be." But the Administration has spent four years urging Americans to ignore that way of thinking and instead assent to any Government measure, no matter the costs or comparative harms, as long as they are pursued in the name of fighting this Ultimate Evil.

In fact, it is now essentially prohibited in good company to even raise the prospect that the threat of terrorism is exaggerated. It is an inviolable piety that there is no such thing as overstating the terrorism risk. One is compelled to genuflect to, and tremble before, the paramounce of this Ultimate Threat upon pain of being cast aside as some sort of anti-American, terrorist-loving loon.

During the 2004 election, John Kerry accidentally stumbled in his clumsy and half-hearted way towards challenging this fear-mongering when he told The New York Times Sunday Magazine: ‘’We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they’re a nuisance." That provoked the predictable outraged and pious braying that Democrats are unserious about the Terrorist Threat and too weak to protect our children from this unparalleled menace. And as happens almost always when Bush opponents express a view that meets with some initial disapproval, all sorts of apologetic backtracking and retraction ensued, and that topic has been basically off-limits since.

But this is a message which Americans are clearly ready to hear, if there are people willing to deliver it. We are four years away from September 11 and, despite the dire warnings of the Bush Administration, people in rural Kansas and suburban Georgia and everywhere else are beginning to realize that on the list of problems and threats which endanger their children and impede their dreams, the potential of an attack by Islamic terrorists is not anywhere near the top of that list. We are not engulfed by the Civil War or fighting World War II. And it is past time to bolster that growing recognition by pointing out over and over that the Bush Administration’s insistence that we live in never-ending fear and panic of terrorists is the opposite of the American virtues of strength and courage in the face of threats.

And it's a message which Americans can understand. Most people know individuals in their lives who live in this type of irrational, all-consuming fear on the micro-level – people who are scared before they are anything else, pathologically risk-averse, always hiding and exerting excess caution lest something go wrong. In its more extreme version, that sort of fear manifests as a life-destroying mental disorder. It is a pitiful image, and such people typically achieve very little. They cannot, because their fear is paralyzing.

The Bush Administration has been trying for four years to reduce this country to a collective version of that affliction. And it is hard to imagine what a nation which is fueled by such fear can accomplish. Hysteria and paranoia have never been the American national character, but along with the founding principles of our Republic, the Bush Administration has been attempting to change that, too.

The Administration has managed to get away with the Orwellian depiction of fear as being the hallmark of courage, and conversely, depicting a rational and calm approach as being a mark of cowardice. They were aided in this effort by a terrified national media and a national political elite who live in Washington, DC and New York and were so petrified of further attacks that they were easily whipped into a state of passive, uncritical compliance in exchange for promises of protection. But we are far away from the emotional shock of September 11, and the power of that Fear weapon is breaking down.

In order to persuade the population that George Bush must not be allowed to claim the powers of a King, literally including the power to break the law, Bush opponents must attack that fear as the by-product of weakness and cowardice which it is. A strong nation does not give up its freedoms or sacrifice its national character in the name of fear and panic. But that is what George Bush has spent the last four years urging the country to do, and it is what he is counting on -- it is the only chance he has -- for having this NSA law-breaking scandal join the litany of other scandals which have meekly and inconsequentially faded away in a cloud of manufactured fear.

Glenn Greenwald 1/05/2006 05:36:00 AM |

Wednesday, January 04, 2006

 
What happened to conservative legal theories?

by Glenn Greenwald

Listening to the Bush Administration and its defenders try to justify George Bush’s deliberate and ongoing violations of the law, one can’t help but notice that the Constitution and Congressional statutes sure do seem quite "flexible" in the hands of those seeking to defend him -- a particular irony given how stridently Bush followers rail against such legal theories in other contexts. The defenses being dredged up to justify Bush’s law-breaking certainly are notable for the liberties they take with "conservative" principles of legal argument, as well as with how sharply they contradict the legal views which the Administration itself previously claimed it believed in.

The central problem for the Administration is that George Bush deliberately engaged in conduct which FISA clearly and expressly makes it a crime to engage in. All of the legalistic smoke screens aside, the issue really is that clear. That’s because the Administration cannot escape the plain and easy-to-understand language of Section 1809 of FISA:

"A person is guilty of an offense if he intentionally— (1) engages in electronic surveillance under color of law except as authorized by statute."

The Administration itself admits, as it must, that it engaged in electronic surveillance in a way that FISA expressly prohibits (by doing so secretly and without judicial approval). Section 1809 says that anyone who does that is guilty of a criminal offense. The law here is clear, and Bush’s violations of the law are equally clear. That presents the Administration with obvious difficulties in defending George Bush.

Because there is no plausible argument to make that Bush’s eavesdropping complied with the requirements of FISA, Alberto Gonzalez’s Justice Department is insisting that Bush had the legal right to eavesdrop on Americans in violation of that law. The DoJ issued a detailed Memorandum (.pdf) advocating its two principal legal theories as to why George Bush was permitted to engage in conduct which FISA makes it a crime to engage in. Both theories are about as far away as possible from the conservative legal principles which Bush has always claimed to believe in and which he says he wants his judicial appointees to apply.

Thus, we have one argument which claims that the 2001 Congressional Resolution authorizing military force in Afghanistan and against Al Qaeda (the “AUMF”) -- a resolution which obviously never mentioned FISA, eavesdropping or surveillance, because it had nothing to do with any of those things -- should nonetheless be "construed" and "interpreted" to have "impliedly" amended FISA by giving Bush an "exemption" entitling him to eavesdrop in violation of that law. And this argument is made even though the Congress which supposedly gave Bush that exemption says that it did no such thing, but to the contrary, expressly refused to provide that very authority.

And then we have the second Bush-defending argument: a dressed-up Constitutional theory which claims that George Bush has the "inherent" authority under Article II of the Constitution to violate Congressional law and eavesdrop on American citizens without the judicial oversight required by FISA – even though nothing in Article II mentions or even references the power to eavesdrop, the power to engage in surveillance, or the right to violate Congressional statutes. Indeed, the only express clause in Article II which seems to relate to this controversy is one that would rather strongly undercut the claim that the President has the right to violate Congressional law. That’s the part mandating that the President "shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed . . . "

So much for plain language and original intent. Who has time for those fancy constructs when George Bush needs defending? What we have in their place are implied, hidden amendments to laws which are silently buried in other laws which don’t even reference the law which it supposedly amended. And that's backed up by a claim that George Bush has certain Executive powers which the Constitution doesn’t mention, but which instead, one presumes, are lurking quietly somewhere in Article II of the Constitution, maybe hiding behind some penumbras or sprouting from the evolving, breathing document.

Just how frivolous (and, for self-proclaimed judicial conservatives, hypocritical) these defenses are is demonstrated by the fact that the Bush Administration itself has aggressively argued against the exact legal theory which it is now trying to peddle in order to argue that Congress silently gave Bush an "exemption" to FISA. In the case of Breuer v. Jim’s Concrete of Brevard, 538 U.S. 691 (2003), the Administration vehemently (and successfully) argued in a Brief to the U.S. Supreme Court (.pdf), signed by Bush’s own Solicitor General, Theodore Olson, that a statute (such as FISA) cannot be "amended by implication" in the absence of clear Congressional intent to amend it. Thus, the Bush Administration itself just two years ago emphasized:

the cardinal rule that repeals by implication are not favored, and will not be found unless an intent to repeal is clear and manifest. . . . In the absence of an affirmative showing of an intention to repeal, the only permissible justification for a repeal by implication is when the earlier and later statutes are irreconcilable. In other words, where the two statutes are capable of co-existence, it is the duty of the courts, absent a clearly expressed congressional intention to the contrary, to regard each as effective.

So, before George Bush needed an excuse for intentionally violating FISA, this was the Administration’s own argument -- that Congress cannot be said to have silently repealed its own law except where it subsequently passes a new law that is in direct conflict with the first one.

The Administration’s previous view of this matter is, of course, the precise opposite of its position now. The Administration now seeks to claim that the Congress -- when it enacted its 2001 resolution authorizing the use of military force in Afghanistan and against al Qaeda -- somehow intended with that Resolution to amend FISA and thereby silently and "impliedly" gave the Administration the right to engage in exactly the secret, warrantless eavesdropping on American citizens which FISA makes it a criminal offense to engage in.

What we really have from these paragons of Judicial Restraint trying to defend George Bush is everything except plain language and original intent – the very tools of construction which these "conservatives," when not concocting legal defenses for the President, claim that they believe in. That’s because the plain language of the law is crystal clear ("A person is guilty of an offense if he intentionally— (1) engages in electronic surveillance under color of law except as authorized by statute") and leaves no doubt that George Bush broke it.

The clarity of this law is why the Administration is reduced to peddling legal theories which, no matter how they are sliced, amount to a claim that George Bush has the right to break the law. And to argue that he has that right, they are employing on George Bush's behalf the very legal theories which advocates of "judicial restraint" have spent the last two decades ridiculing and attacking.
Glenn Greenwald 1/04/2006 01:59:00 PM |

 
Leave it to MSGOP

Winners and losers in the Abramoff scandal
The GOP could suffer, opening the way for a third-party movement

It's really kind of sweet.

Mr. Fineman and his friends at the courthouse are shocked to discover that since the party they favor of the two existing parties has taken complete control over the federal government, the influence of money has sullied the spiritual purity of Washington.

Clearly, the answer is a new party who are nothing like Democrats and who are not called Republicans (Mr. Wittmann, your moment has arrived).

You know, it's just that kind of bold thinking by Mr. Fineman and his friends that made us what we are today.

A country controlled by an incredibly corrupt single party that cares more about money than PhDs, and about the people not at all.

Congratulations.
julia 1/04/2006 11:32:00 AM |

 
Lucky Duckies

by digby

Unfortunately, I have to leave town for a couple of days and won't be able to post. However, I am sure you will enjoy the blogospheric stylings of two fantastic guest bloggers: Julia of Sisyphus Shrugged and Glenn Greenwald of Unclaimed Territory.

Enjoy. I'll see you on the week-end.



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digby 1/04/2006 11:27:00 AM |

 
Credibility

by digby

Back when The NY Times was relentlessly flogging Whitewater, I agreed with Franklin Foer that it would be a bad idea to help discredit the mainstream press because their reputations would be so sullied that eventually they'd have no clout to protect sources and tell the truth.

I thought when the Washington Post took every self-serving leak from the Starr investigation and put it on the front page like it was VE Day that it probably wouldn't be a good idea to vilify their obvious slavishness to GOP operatives because it would be bad when we need the media to have credibility on other major issues.

I was angry about the fact that more than 60 newpapers, including the NY Times editorialized ("until the Starr investigation, 'no citizen ... could have grasped the completeness of President Clinton's mendacity or the magnitude of his recklessness.'") that Clinton should resign because of a personal indiscretion. But I didn't rail against the press for jumping on this Republican manufactured bandwagon because I thought that it was important not to paint mainstream journalism with a broad brush just because they were being absurdly obtuse in this particular case.

When the media treated Al Gore like a circus clown and overlooked the fact that George W. Bush was a gibbering idiot (and admitted openly that they did it for fun) I held in my intemperate remarks because I thought it would harm the party in the long run if we attacked the press as the Republicans do. When they reported the election controversy as if it would create a constitutional crisis if the country had to wait more than a month to find out whether they had the right president I kept my own counsel. After all, who would defend democracy when something truly serious happened?

After 9/11 when they helped the president promote the idea that the country was at "war" (with what we didn't exactly know) I knew it was a terrible mistake and would lead to a distorted foreign policy and twisted domestic politics. But I didn't blame the media because it was very difficult to fight that at the time. They're human, after all.

And when they helped the government make their case for this misbegotten war in Iraq, I assumed that they knew what they were talking about. After all, I had been defending their credibility for years now, in spite of everything I've mentioned. If they would screw up something like this, then for what was I holding back my criticism? This was the most serious issue this country had faced in many a decade.

When no WMD were found and I was informed that they had assigned a neocon shill to report the story, and then defended her when she was implicated in a white house smear to cover up its lies going into Iraq, I no longer saw any need to defend the NY Times.

This is fifteen long years of watching the Times and the rest of the mainstream media buckle under the pressure of GOP accusations that they are biased, repeatedly take bogus GOP manufactured scandals and run with them like kids with a brand new kite, treat our elections like they are entertainment vehicles for bored reporters and generally kowtow to the Republican establishment as the path of least resistence. I waited for years for them to recognise what was happening and fight back. It didn't happen. And I began to see that the only way to get the press to work properly was to apply equal pressure from the opposite direction. It's a tug of war. They were not strong enough to resist being dragged off to the right all by themselves. They needed some flamethrowers from our side pulling in the opposite direction to make it possible for them to avoid being pulled all the way over.

So, it is with great respect and reverence for the press, which I consider to be indispensible to democracy, that I have become a rabid critic. It did this country no good to allow the Republicans to perpetuate their permanent "mau-mau the media" campaign for 25 years. And it does the press no good to be defended by liberals when they succumb to the mau-mauing. Indeed, history shows that their reaction is to lean even more closely to the GOP to show they are not liberal themselves.

I have criticized the press for its absurd behavior in the Plame leak --- refusing to write about it, protecting their powerful administration sources even when they've been used as a weapon for political purposes, their trivial cocktail party insularity. The politically powerful should not be allowed to use the press to do their ratfucking for them. There is, of course, a huge difference between that and protecting genuine whistle-blowers, which I defend unconditionally.

But I will no longer defend the press unconditionally. They have proved that they can't resist the powerful pull of rightwing intimidation and seduction without some counterbalance on the left and I'm more than willing to call a spade a spade to do that. It has not served my politics or my country well to quietly support the media so that they could maintain crediblity. I honestly don't see that we have anything more to lose when presidents are being impeached for trivial reasons, elections are being stolen and wars are being waged on lies. Just how bad would it have to get to justify criticizing the press for its complicity in those things?



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digby 1/04/2006 10:49:00 AM |

 
in light of the deaths of 12 coal miners, a timely reminder that Mr. Alito is on the record as deciding that the Federal Mine Safety and Health Act should protect miners less than it does.

It's also worth remembering that since reaching office, Our Fearless Leader cut MSHA (Mine Safety and Health Administration) funds in real dollars, fired a whistleblower, put a mining company executive in charge, reduced staff by 170, tried to slash funding even more, and exempted the MSHA from the Freedom of Information Act.

He did, however, arrange a photo op with the last group of high-profile miners trapped in the ground, and said this for the cameras:

"It was their determination to stick together and to comfort each other that really defines kind of a new spirit that's prevalent in our country, that when one of us suffer, all of us suffers."

Mr. Bush, we are told, has given up spirits.

edit: are we all suffering now?

Scott and Barb tell us that the mine in question had (among other issues) a full 273 safety violations in the past two years

Leah puts all this into context
julia 1/04/2006 10:17:00 AM