Month: January 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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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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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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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.

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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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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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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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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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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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.