Month: May 2007

Uhm, No

by digby

Can’t someone tell the monsignor that these endless paeans to his alleged salt-of-the-earth fabulousness are just a tad unseemly?

Am I Doing God’s Work?

“Let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.” –John F. Kennedy
January 20, 1961 I was ten years old when I heard those words. They still resonate with me nearly a half century later. Am I doing God’s work? Is being a journalist my vocation? How does my faith influence my judgment as a reporter? Should it? Are the demands of my chosen profession leaving enough time for my responsibilities as a son, brother, husband, father and friend?

St. Luke teaches us “to whom much is given, much is expected.” Am I hearing that admonition—and responding to it in a generous way? Do I have a true appreciation of the uniqueness and goodness of others? More questions than answers, I’m afraid. One particular day provided some clarity. September 11, 2001. I don’t think the English language has yet found the words to describe the pain and anguish we felt that day. And yet we learned much about each other. The bravery of the first responders who went up the stairs of burning buildings. The heroic selfless souls on United flight #93. The patience of tens of thousands of drivers who left the devastated areas in an orderly way. I have not honked my car horn since September 11 as a gesture of respect to all of them. 9/11 also gave me a whole new insight into my Dad and why he left school in the 10th grade to enlist after Pearl Harbor. I wrote a book affirming his life. It changed my life and my relationship with my father—and my son—forever. We now share openly the love and respect and pride we have in each other. A day doesn’t go by when other sons and daughters want to share stories of their dad with me. Now that’s a journey I never expected, but one which is so meaningful—perhaps even more important than my “career.” Bottom line. I’m working hard, laughing often and praying with purpose. On with life!

Posted by Tim Russert on May 18, 2007 9:54 AM

More questions than answers is right.

Is it really necessary that we hear over and over again about his Dad joining up after Pearl Harbor, a tale that is so common among people his father’s age as to be entirely unremarkable?

Is it “doing God’s work” to refrain from honking your horn for reasons that make no sense at all? Really?

And is it really Christian to use his Catholic faith to shill on the God pages of the WaPo for yet another of the embarrassing Hallmark cards he calls “books?” (I think I know what Jesus would say about that…)

Finally, does the managing editor of NBC News have an unusual form of ADD or does he always write in non-sequitors?

As to his question about whether he’s doing God’s work, well — no. He’s a performing seal for the political establishment. (white marker board! Ork ork!) Neither is God’s work “listening to stories” about people and their parents. That’s nice, but it’s something a child could do, not a multimillionaire with access to the biggest megaphone in the world. If there were a God, I think she might be expecting something a little more impressive from the monsignor. But what do I know of such things? Apparently, all you have to do is not honk your horn and you’re in like Flynn.

.

Suppression From Wayback

by digby

I see that Slate and Rick Hazen have followed up on Bradblog’s research about the “the incredible, disappearing American Center for Voting Rights” — another one of those “vote fraud” front groups. Seems their web-site no longer exists and nobody can find them. This, after they were hastily put together just after the 2004 election to testify before congressional hearings on the scourge of voter fraud. Odd, don’t you think?

But they aren’t the first web-site to disappear. When I was doing research for my posts about former “voter fraud” specialist, Bush DOJ civil rights unit destroyer and now FEC commissioner, Hans Von Spakovsky, I couldn’t find the web-site for the original Voting Integrity Project, which was started by Helen Blackwell, wife of infamous GOP operative Morton Blackwell. The web-site was linked several times in this Salon article from 2000:

The Voting Integrity Project, which has focused on cleaning up national voter rolls, said the problems in Florida have shined the spotlight on widespread voter fraud across the county. “Election 2000 and the ensuing controversy in Florida have focused public attention on the need to combat voting fraud,” the group’s Web site reads. The Florida skirmish is just the latest battle in an old and partisan war: Republicans are usually on the side of cleansing the rolls energetically, and Democrats tend to fight back, claiming efforts to purge ineligible voters often cast eligible low-income and minority voters off the rolls. The battle goes back to Huey Long’s Louisiana and Richard M. Daley’s Chicago, cesspools of Democratic voter fraud where legend has it ballots were cast by dead people. VIP itself has come under fire for leading what some have called partisan crusades, opposing programs that make it easier to register voters, and supporting those that aggressively clean the voter rolls, which Democrats say disproportionately knocks low income and minority voters off voter lists. Though the group maintains it is bipartisan, it is true that it often allies with Republicans on voter-roll cleanup efforts. VIP gave an award to ChoicePoint for its Florida work, praising its “innovative excellence [in] cleansing” the state’s voter rolls. VIP is promoting the firm’s proprietary methods to purge voter rolls nationwide, and has partnered with Database Technologies, a subsidiary of ChoicePoint, to identify small communities that need pro-bono voter roll “scrubbing.” This year, VIP launched a pilot voter registration clean-up program, focused on Fayette County, Pa., and Atlantic Beach, N.C. In Fayette County, Democrats outnumber registered Republicans better than 3-1, according to data from the Pennsylvania department of state. In Atlantic, Democrats hold a 58-42 percent registration advantage over Republicans, according to the state department of elections.

There are various “Voting Integrity” groups all over the country now, on both sides of the partisan divide as well as non-partisan. But this was the original “VIP”, the one that spawned current FEC commissioner Von Skakovsky, and like the American center For Voting Rights, it no longer seems to exist.

Except it does, courtesy of the Wayback Machine. The most recent page I can bring up is December 2000, where it features such stories as:

Election Day Special:
Combat Vote Fraud!
If you observed any activity on Election Day that you feel is questionable, please report it directly to your local election officials and your political party officials. Then, also send us a report using our online reporting form. For more information on combatting fraud, click here to read Worried About Fraud on Election Day?.
News Headlines:
Election 2000 and the ensuing controversy in Florida have focused public attention on the need to combat voting fraud, the need for an accurate counting of votes, and the deficiencies in “motor voter” — all issues on which VIP has been seeking to raise awareness.

As did Americans For Voting Rights president Mark “Thor” Hearne, (who has cleansed his résumé of affiliation with the group) in 2005, Deborah Phillips, president of VIP, testified before the Senate on the spring of 2001 about the ongoing scourge:

American elections will probably always be vulnerable to vote buying, vote hauling, machine tampering and electioneering. But the National Voter Registration Act has tied the hands of election directors to protect the rights of legitimate voters from the dilution of vote fraud. This is a voter rights issue of the highest magnitude!

I have no idea what happened to VIP. Their web site is dead and they no longer seem to be active, at least in any obvious way connected to their former identity. Who knows why?

But one thing we do know is that “voter fraud” is a fraud, at least as any kind of systemic problem. Indeed, we have a much bigger problem and that is the suppression of legitimate votes by rightwingers who can’t win elections legitimately. And for some reason, all these organizations that dedicate themselves to this suppression, cloaking themselves with phony rhetoric about “protecting legitimate voters from having their votes diluted” seem to disappear after they “scrub” the rolls and testify before congress about the horrors of voter fraud they witnessed in the previous election. It’s all a coincidence, I’m sure. Still, it’s worth thinking about the next time the Republicans run their game.

.

Rule ‘O Law

by digby

I was so excited to see that renowned conservative legal scholar Douglas Kmiec had an op-ed discussing the illegal NSA spying program in the Wapo this morning because he has so often been such an eloquent defender of the rule of law and the necessity of presidents being subject to legislative and statutory limits on their power.

For instance, in this fascinating book, Kmiec contributed an entire chapter on executive authority which he begins like this:

I am a defender of executive power. No one who has headed the office of legal counsel, designed to preserve the office of the presidency, could be otherwise. But defending the constitutional parameters of presidential power is fundamentally different from defending assertions of power inclined toward excess or abuse.

Having been impeached by the house of representatives and found in contempt by a federal judge foir misleading a federal court in a civil rights uit brought against him, President Clinton has had some difficulty with the requirements of the rule of law, Whether of not one thinks the personal behavior of the president is a fit subject for judicial and congressional scrutiny, one cannot help but be concerned about the extent to which this president is carrying out his government functions, has directed the executive beyond the boundries of lawful authority. This chapter focuses on the use of executive orders and other presidential directives, but the excesses outlined here take on greater magnitude when coupled with the president’s willingness to engage his nation in undeclared wars, circumvent the advise-and-consent functions of the Senate or employ the White House as a fund-raising prize.

It is significant that presidential power in the Constitution is cast mostly in language of duty: to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” As one presidential scholatr has written, “the duty to execute the laws “faithfully’ means that American presidents may not — whether by revocation, suspension, dispensation, inaction or otherwise — refuse to honor and enforce satutes that were enacted with their consent or over their veto. Many scholars have agreed that the Take Care Clause was meant to deny the president a suspending or dispensing power [like that exercised, before American independence, by the Stuart Kings].

…The duty of the president is to faithfully execute, not invent, the law. yes, the extent of executive power can be debated, and yes, some political scientists complacently claim that all modern presidents have pressed or exceeded the boundaries of Article II authority. Yet those sworn to “taking care” of the execution of the law must be held to a high standard.

He went on to explain that President Clinton’s use of executive orders, while numbering no greater than other modern presidents, were nonetheless a usurpation of the proper judicial and legislative functions of the government. And more importantly, they undermine our faith in the rule of law, (which is what Republicans care about most in this world.)

I could hardly wait to hear what he would say about a president ignoring the long standing the FISA act, but also the deep concerns of certain judges and the highest levels of the Justice Department (including the Attorney General) to carry out a secret spying program. Surely, compared to issuing executive orders, which has been done openly and without legal controversy by every president, this action could not “complacently” be seen as business as usual. Indeed, this would be the very definition of “inventing” the law.

How disappointing then to find that this great upholder of the “rule of law” is just another snotty partisan whore.

Ok, I’m kidding. I already knew that. And the fact is that a very large number of right wing legal scholars seem to have the unusual view that a president has committed high crimes and misdemeanors if he lies about a sexual affair but he has ultimate authority to do anything he chooses in his role as president. I find this a little bit strange.

Marty Lederman takes Kmiec’s argument apart, piece by piece in devastating fashion — and exposes it for the dishonest, nasty piece of work it is. But there should never be any doubt about guys like Kmiec. They are not scholars. They are mob lawyers.

The book I excerpted above has this blurb on the back:

The Rule of Law in the Wake of Clinton contains 15 essays by scholars, lawyers, lawmakers and cultural critics that chronicle Clinton’s utter disregard for “a nation of laws, not of men.”

University of Virginia Law Professor Lillian R. BeVier opens the book with a scholarly essay defining the rule of law and explaining why it is so important as a constraint on “the conduct of both individual citizens and those who govern them.”

Senator Fred Thompson examines China’s illegal contributions to the Clinton-Gore campaign and the abject refusal of Attorney General Janet Reno to investigate the matter, concluding that “there can be no clearer example of the undermining of the rule of law.”

ACLU President Nadine Strossen condemns, among other things, Clinton’s actions to restrict habeas corpus, his attempts to censor the Internet, and his efforts to create databases on all Americans. Clinton has worked closely with the Republican Congress to undermine the rule of law, she says, but “the Clinton administration bears the brunt of the blame for all those devastating assaults on cherished constitutional rights.”

Roger Pilon looks at Clinton’s disdain for constitutionally limited government. Repeatedly, Clinton acted “as if the Constitution were an empty vessel to be filled with his policies and programs.” In a similar vein, former Assistant Attorney General Douglas W. Kmiec examines Clinton’s efforts to promote his policies through executive orders, “often without any citation of statutory authority, thereby bypassing legislative procedure.”

Timothy Lynch, director of the Cato Project for Criminal Justice, notes that “Clinton has exhibited contempt for the very Constitution he took an oath to uphold,” as evidenced by his support for warrantless searches of public housing units, warrantless drug testing in public schools, a weakening of the right to trial by jury, and expanded property forfeiture. Clinton’s record on economic liberties is no better. James Wootton, president of the U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform, examines the administration’s resistance to compensation for “regulatory takings” of private property. But when the federal government does have power to override state tort law that frustrates interstate commerce, Wootton says, Clinton refuses to use it.

Cato Senior Fellow in Constitutional Studies Robert A. Levy and Alabama Attorney General Bill Pryor focus their attention on the illegitimate wars on tobacco and guns, respectively. Both wars undermine centuries-old common law principles. Former White House Legal Counsel C. Boyden Gray looks at the administration’s war on Microsoft, which “represents nothing more than a successful hijacking of the government’s regulatory power by Microsoft’s competitors — an especially grievous abuse of the rule of law.”

Former Assistant Attorney General Theodore B. Olson chronicles how Clinton and Reno have thoroughly politicized the Justice Department.

Berkeley Law Professor John C. Yoo discusses the imperial president abroad, showing how Clinton has abused constitutional restraints on his foreign power while ceding the authority of the federal government itself to international institutions.

Finally, the book examines how and why the institutions one would normally expect to be defending the rule of law have failed. Former Justice Department attorney Daniel E. Troy, Illinois Law Professor and Cato Visiting Scholar in Constitutional Studies Ronald D. Rotunda, and author David Horowitz look, respectively, at the political parties, the bar and the legal academy, and the media and the cultural institutions, each of which not only failed but was often complicit in undermining the rule of law.

Man, it makes you want to stand upand sing “The Star Spangled Banner”, doesn’t it?

These are very serious people, the “grown-ups” who (with the exception of Nadine Strossen)wrote this devastating critique of the lawless Clinton administration and have sat by while the Bush administration, (and some of these writers personally) turned the constitution into toilet paper. I listened to them moan and screech and rend their garments for years about the Clinton administrations failure to uphold the “rule ‘o law” and how it was undermining the moral fabric of America. In fact, here’s a perfect example of their bilious phony sanctimony from the same book:

“The rule of law is no pious phrase from a civics textbook. It is what stands between us and the arbitrary exercise of power by the state. It is the safeguard of our liberties. Once, that was broadly understood in our land. If that understanding is lost, or if it becomes seriously eroded, the American deomcratic experiment and the freedom it guarantees are in jeopardy. The contribution made by this book to our understanding of those important lessons is crucial for American democracy at the dawn of the 21st century.”
–Henry J. Hyde, Chairman, House Judiciary Committee

Blah, blah, blah. Lying to cover up unauthorized presidential fellatio was a grave threat to the constitution. Impeach! But today, as the government endorses torture, indefinite imprisonment without access to a lawyer (and more that we still don’t know about) these lecturers about “honor and integrity” are writing snide and shallow op-eds in the Washington Post defending the president even when he was so insistent on his dictatorial prerogatives that he sent his henchmen to the bedside of a sick man on drugs to coerce him into signing off on illegal, unconstitutional programs.

The American conservative project is morally and intellectually bankrupt. There is nothing left but the decaying corpse of a once great political philosophy, surrounded by a bunch of vultures and jackals feeding off its fetid flesh. And Douglas Kmiec has long been one of the leading liars of the legal pack:

DOUGLAS KMIEC: Jim, I think the public has always been – I think Bruce is partly right. The public has been saying two things, however: they’ve been saying they view this President as a popular, likeable President. But they’ve also acknowledged in almost every poll that I’ve seen that they don’t accept perjury; they don’t accept abuse of office; and they recognize that President Clinton had not given any factual defense to the wrongdoing that he’s committed in office. And so they’ve – while they’ve said they didn’t want him removed, they have said they wanted a proportionate punishment placed upon him. And the constitutional proportionate punishment is for the full House of Representatives to vote an article of impeachment. Now, it’s a separate question as to whether or not that impeachment is prosecuted, and he’s convicted and removed from office. I think the public is saying they don’t want that, but I think they do want the historical statement that this President has abused his powers.

JIM LEHRER: What about Mr. Yannett’s point that these crimes – if these alleged crimes – if, in fact, they were committed by the President – were not an abuse of presidential power?

DOUGLAS KMIEC: Well, the difficulty with that is, yes, it’s true that Richard Nixon misused the FBI and the CIA in ways that as far as we know, William Clinton did not. But Richard Nixon was punishing his enemies while William Clinton was apparently allegedly lying in a judicial proceeding to have himself be exonerated from a very serious sexual harassment charge. And he was also lying in front of apparently a federal grand jury. These are things that the rule of law just simply can’t tolerate, and so I think the public is quite willing to go along with the House of Representatives and say as a matter of historical record we want it to be understood that the President is to keep his presidential oath, and the way to do that is to vote an article of impeachment whether or not he’s convicted in the Senate.

JIM LEHRER: Mr. Yannett.

BRUCE YANNETT: Well, Jim, according to a poll that I read today, two thirds of the American public not only give the President a favorable approval rating but two thirds say Congress should stop this impeachment stuff right now, and another two thirds say at most, they should censure him. And so this notion that the American public is behind the House voting an article of impeachment and then leaving it up to the Senate to do with it as it sees fit, I don’t know where Mr. Kmiec gets that from.

I do.

.

Goodfella

by digby

Via Perlstein, I see the Republicans can’t find even one congressman to head committees who isn’t implicated in a corruption probe.

BACKGROUND – Republican committee assignments have become a corruption merry-go-round:

* April 19, 2007 – Doolittle steps down from the Appropriations Committee following the FBI raid of his home. Doolittle is under investigation for his work with convicted lobbyist Republican Jack Abramoff
* May 11, 2007 – The Republican Conference names Ken Calvert – under investigation for a shady land deal — to replace Doolittle on Appropriations.
* May 15, 2007 – The Republican Conference names Tom Feeney – under investigation for his work with convicted lobbyist Republican Jack Abramoff — to replace Calvert as the senior Republican on the Space Subcommittee of the Science Committee.

My main recollection of Feeney’s oily visage is during the Florida recount when he was the speaker of the Florida house:

Feeney first came to national prominence in 2000, shortly after his election as Speaker, when he led efforts to certify the state’s Republican presidential electors even though it was still unclear whether George W. Bush or Al Gore had won the state’s electoral votes. Feeney and his colleagues claimed that Florida’s electoral votes were in imminent danger of being removed from consideration if the results of the popular vote in the state could not be determined with legal certainty. While Article 2 of the United States Constitution places this power in the legislature, many Democrats insisted that recounts needed to be completed, and that by doing so, a clear legal victor would emerge. Feeney and State Senate president John McKay argued that the state Supreme Court’s verdict in favor of the Democrats’ position on recounts essentially “tainted” the entire process, so that there was (as Feeney stated) “a great risk” Florida’s electoral votes would be disregarded altogether in the selection of the next President.

This was, of course, one of the pressure tactics set forth by Rove and the Federalist society cabal to keep people thinking that the sky was falling (by threatening to blow everything up) if the election wasn’t decided that minute. It was very clever.

Tom Feeney was one of the corrupt levers of Bush family power in Florida that put Junior in the white house and he was amply rewarded for his crimes. After his successful intimidation in 2000, he was elected to the US Congress and immediately welcomed into the warm (and lucrative) embrace of Jack Abramoff and the boys. It was a sweet deal.

Tom Feeney has been up to his sweaty brow in Bush corruption from the get. No way are they cutting him loose. He’s a made man.

Update: Bradblog has also been following another story about Feeney and Florida “voter election fraud.”

.

Victimhood

by digby

Limbaugh must be back on the little blue babies. He’s brain is very thick and slow these days:

You can count on it in every — just like there’s a template developing for the Republican debate last night. “How come there are no women and minorities on stage?” I guess you forgot about 2004. And I guess — you know, the Democrats never get those kinds of questions because it’s always assumed that they’re fair and just, and not discriminatory and all that.

“My beautiful little dolls. One. And one more….”

.

I Know You Are But What Am I

by digby

I was going to mention this too, but I see Atrios got there first:

Back in those happy days in the 90s, if Clinton had refused to answer a question like this a shitstorm would’ve erupted. Ted Koppel would’ve put up a “17 days and still no answer” clock. Tweety would have had 37 blond conservative lawyers on every night to demand “accountability.” etc… etc…

Bush’s answer (like most of Gonzales’ ) is entirely unresponsive and should be greeted with howls of protest from the press and relentless pounding from the punditocrisy. This isn’t some “investigation” about which Bush has “promised” not to comment, as he has claimed with previous scandals. This was a direct question about whether he ordered Card and Gonzales to go over to Ashcroft’s room in the ICU to get him to sign off on a program that he had already said he would not sign off on.

That’s key, you know, as to just how despicable this gambit was. Ashcroft had made it known that he would no longer sign off on this (or these) programs before he got sick. They were trying to get the man to sign something with which he disagreed while he was under heavy sedation in the ICU. And according to Comey, it was his impression that Bush had personally called Mrs Ashcroft to get her to let them in the room. How low is that? (And how important it was to them that they would even risk it for what would surely be a short period — after all, Ashcroft would recover, and presumably would resent the fact that they had done this thing.)

In any case, Bush was deeply involved. He met with both Comey and Mueller on the issue after they all said they’d resign. The spinners are trying to say that their Dear Leader finally overruled others who had nefarious intentions , but his refusal to answer the question today should put that to rest. There’s no reason for him to launch into such outdated 2003 gibberish about enemies lurking who “would like to strike” if he didn’t order it. It’s obvious that he did.

It would be nice of all the “Democratic strategists” pushed this today when they appear on the gasbag shows. Bush is personally on the run, now. They should chase him.

.

Sadists R Us

by digby

A major divide has emerged among the leading Republican candidates for president over a central question of the 2008 campaign: Whether to follow the Bush administration’s lead in pushing for aggressive treatment of detainees in fighting terrorism.

Tuesday’s GOP debate in South Carolina showcased those differences. Sen. John McCain of Arizona called for limits on interrogation techniques, whereas former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and onetime Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney aligned themselves more closely with President Bush’s approach.

Giuliani said interrogators should use “any method they can think of” and did not reject a moderator’s suggestion that his answer encompassed the controversial practice of “water-boarding,” which experts say simulates drowning. Romney proposed doubling the size of the detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where terrorism suspects are held.

The issues arose in response to a hypothetical question about how each candidate would respond to the capture of suspects who may have knowledge of a coming attack on U.S. soil. But the exchange took place against a real-life backdrop, with Al Qaeda suspected of holding three U.S. soldiers in Iraq.

As US soldiers were being held prisoner, we have a group of sophomoric “24” and “300” fanboys telling the whole world that they just can’t get enough of torture and would really like to torture even more — to the cacophanous applause of a bunch of bloodthirsty neanderthals. More trash talk leadership. (And they have the nerve to complain that congressional debates about withdrawal are hurting the troops.)

After seeing the allegedly deeply religious South Carolina Republicans lustily cheer the cross-dressing, pro-choice New Yorker and the abortion flip-flopping, Taxachusetts pretty boy at that debate when they proclaimed their macho bonafides I am more convinced than ever that the Republican base is nothing more than hypocritical bullies whose dedication to blastocysts and fetuses is solely due to their primitive need to dominate women (or force other women to be dominated as they are.) Not that I didn’t always suspect it. After all, they love that screeching harpy Ann Coulter and the drug addled Rush Limbaugh too, both of whom are malignant monsters whose idea of compassion is to provide a blindfold at the executions. (That is unless it is they who are in trouble with the law, of course…)

But as this primary unfolds, it’s becoming more and more obvious that ninety percent of these hard core conservative “Christians” are completely full of shit. Let’s not waste any more time debating issues like abortion or bending over backwards to respect their allegedly deeply held religious convictions. Those are merely rhetorical bludgeons with which to beat other people over the head. What they care about is brute power, period.

Giuliani apparently went even further than he had done in the debate in a conference call yesterday, so I’m expecting these guys to spend the next few months describing in ever more lurid detail which brutal forms of torture they would be willing to inflict, preferably with their bare hands. It seems to be working for them:

He elaborated on his debate remarks during a Wednesday conference call with bloggers. Giuliani said he would leave the distinction between enhanced interrogation techniques and torture to “the people who do it,” according to a report on the National Review Online. He described water-boarding simply as “aggressive,” the report said.

It’s Giuliani time, baby! The more sadistic the better. This crowd loves it:

South Carolina GOP Chairman Katon Dawson said his state’s primary voters wanted to support a candidate who would embrace the Bush administration’s approach to fighting terrorism.

“In the Republican Party base here, George W. Bush is overwhelmingly loved,” Dawson said.

The wags and the chatterers spent years saying the left wing of the Democratic party destroyed its party for a generation. I’ll be very curious to see if they can see it actually happening to the other side in real time.

.

Al Gore’s New Book

by tristero

It’s called The Assault on Reason, it comes out May 22 and you should order it now. You can read an excerpt here. And here’s some excerpts from that excerpt:

It is simply no longer possible to ignore the strangeness of our public discourse. I know I am not alone in feeling that something has gone fundamentally wrong. [No, Al. You’re not alone, my friend.]

…

Our Founders’ faith in the viability of representative democracy rested on their trust in the wisdom of a well-informed citizenry, their ingenious design for checks and balances, and their belief that the rule of reason is the natural sovereign of a free people. [Contrast that with John Ashcroft’s nonsense at Bob Jones University: “Unique among the nations, America recognized the source of our character as being godly and eternal, not being civic and temporal. And because we have understood that our source is eternal, America has been different: We have no king but Jesus.”]

…

As a college student, I wrote my senior thesis on the impact of television on the balance of power among the three branches of government. In the study, I pointed out the growing importance of visual rhetoric and body language over logic and reason. There are countless examples of this, but perhaps understandably, the first one that comes to mind is from the 2000 campaign, long before the Supreme Court decision and the hanging chads, when the controversy over my sighs in the first debate with George W. Bush created an impression on television that for many viewers outweighed whatever positive benefits I might have otherwise gained in the verbal combat of ideas and substance. A lot of good that senior thesis did me.

…

We must ensure that the Internet remains open and accessible to all citizens without any limitation on the ability of individuals to choose the content they wish regardless of the Internet service provider they use to connect to the Web. We cannot take this future for granted. We must be prepared to fight for it, because of the threat of corporate consolidation and control over the Internet marketplace of ideas.

The danger arises because there is, in most markets, a very small number of broadband network operators. These operators have the structural capacity to determine the way in which information is transmitted over the Internet and the speed with which it is delivered. And the present Internet network operators—principally large telephone and cable companies—have an economic incentive to extend their control over the physical infrastructure of the network to leverage control of Internet content. If they went about it in the wrong way, these companies could institute changes that have the effect of limiting the free flow of information over the Internet in a number of troubling ways.

I’m sorry, I have to say it, even now, when it’s been said a million times. It’s not only shameful that Bush, not Gore, has been at 1600 Pennsylvania since 2001. It’s been downright dangerous.

The New New Journalism

by digby

If you haven’t heard, Firedoglake is once again expanding the parameters of netroots blogging and they’ve engaged veteran journalist Lew Koch to cover the Padilla trial in Miami. Judging from the first dispatch it’s going to be fascinating.

Now that the case is finally coming to trial, I wondered how much has the five year pursuit of this relatively unremarkable thug Padilla cost the taxpayer so far? Adding up the fractional salary costs of the people and prisons we have two Attorney Generals, two, four Deputy Attorney Generals and several Assistant U.S. Attorneys, the Solicitor General, Deputy Solicitors General and Assistants to the Solicitor General, three U.S. District Court Judges, two Federal Courts of Appeals Judges, law clerks by the dozen, several baker’s dozens of FBI agents, intelligence community agents, U.S. Marshals, supervisory and support personnel for the law enforcement agents overt and covert., at least three full-time federal public defenders, many court reporters, plus personnel benefits for all federal employees and the salaried of the benefits managers, imprisoning for five years including solitary confinement for three and a half years, under close observation twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week in a Navy brig, and what appears to be a six month trial in Miami, Florida, the cost to the United States Government and its hapless taxpayers comes to more than $20 million. And counting. All to justify an absurd-on-the-face-of-it contention that Padilla– a misfit Chicago Latin King gang thug – was going to trigger a radioactive dispersal device –a “dirty bomb” when the more likely reality was that this former thug-dishwasher wanted to go down in history as a somebody.

The government could argue that the cost was worth it if Padilla was bent on “unleashing hell” on the United States.

But there’s another cost involved in this case – one that cannot be measured in dollars and cents, the costs to a citizen’s constitutional rights under law.

Stay tuned. This is going to be very interesting. The government lost its collective mind for a time — I suppose we could have expected it after 9/11. But they have refused to regain it once the smoke cleared and have been covering up for it ever since then in innumerable ways. There are huge lessons to be learned about human nature and the nature of power. (And I must admit that I am waiting most anxiously for the novelists and playwrights to use this material. I think it may be the only way we will really understand it.)

But in the meantime, I am greatly looking forward to reading Koch’s tale of the trial on FDL and congratulations to Jane and her crew for putting this together. Some people may not want to admit it, but real journalism is being done on some of these here blogs and “real good” journalism at that.

.

What Could Possibly Be So Bad?

by digby

I did not get a chance to see the full Comey testimony until today and it is a doozy, all right. (If you haven’t see it yet, check out the YouTube)

Glenn Greenwald says most of what needs to be said in this piece, and The Muckraker and FDL also fill in some gaps.

I think the question has come back to something I was wondering about well over a year ago after watching this exchange:

SCHUMER: It’s been reported by multiple news outlets that the former number two man in the Justice Department, the premier terrorism prosecutor, Jim Comey, expressed grave reservations about the NSA program and at least once refused to give it his blessing. Is that true?

GONZALES: Senator, here’s the response that I feel that I can give with respect to recent speculation or stories about disagreements.

There has not been any serious disagreement — and I think this is accurate — there has not been any serious disagreement about the program that the president has confirmed. There have been disagreements about other matters regarding operations which I cannot get into.

I will also say…

SCHUMER: But there was some — I’m sorry to cut you off — but there was some dissent within the administration. And Jim Comey did express, at some point — that’s all I asked you — some reservations.

GONZALES: The point I want to make is that, to my knowledge, none of the reservations dealt with the program that we’re talking about today. They dealt with operational capabilities that we’re not talking about today.

SCHUMER: I want to ask you, again, about — we have limited time.

GONZALES: Yes, sir.

SCHUMER: It’s also been reported that the head of the Office of Legal Counsel, Jack Goldsmith, respected lawyer and professor at Harvard Law School, expressed reservations about the program. Is that true?

GONZALES: Senator, rather than going individual by individual, let me just say that I think the differing views that have been the subject of some of these stories did not deal with the program that I’m here testifying about today.

SCHUMER: But you were telling us that none of these people expressed any reservations about the ultimate program, is that right?

GONZALES: Senator, I want to be very careful here, because, of course, I’m here only testifying about what the president has confirmed.

And with respect to what the president has confirmed, I do not believe that these DOJ officials that you’re identifying had concerns about this program.

SCHUMER: There are other reports, I’m sorry to — you’re not giving me a yes-or-no answer here. I understand that.

Newsweek reported that several Department of Justice lawyers were so concerned about the legal basis for the NSA program that they went so far as to line up private lawyers. Do you know if that’s true?

GONZALES: I do not know if that’s true.

[…]

SCHUMER: OK. Well, whatever way we can, I’d be all for.

On privilege — because that’s going to be the issue, even if they come here, as I’m sure you will acknowledge, Mr. Chairman — I take it you’d have no problem with them talking about their general views on the legality of this program, just as you are talking about those; not to go into the specific details of what happened back then, but their general views on the legality of these programs.

SCHUMER: Do you have any problem with that?

GONZALES: General views of the program that the president has confirmed, Senator, that’s — again, if we’re talking about the general views of the…

That was in February of 2006 and it struck me as incredibly odd. Why was he being so explicit about “the program that the president has confirmed.” Was there another program?

The exchange seemed so odd that I wondered if the Democrats didn’t have some information that there was another domestic surveillance program that they couldn’t discuss publicly.

It is indisputable that the admnistration has engaged in surveillance of political groups. We know this. It has been verified. We also know that they believe that political dissent gives aid and comfort to the enemy. The president says so himself.

Therefore, it is entirely reasonable to suspect that this administration would use this illegal surveillance program for purposes other than that to which they have admitted, particularly since they consider political dissent to be bordering on treason.

Today a knowledgeable TPM Muckraker reader wrote in with this:

When the warrantless wiretap surveillance program came up for review in March of 2004, it had been running for two and a half years. We still don’t know precisely what form the program took in that period, although some details have been leaked. But we now know, courtesy of Comey, that the program was so odious, so thoroughly at odds with any conception of constitutional liberties, that not a single senior official in the Bush administration’s own Department of Justice was willing to sign off on it. In fact, Comey reveals, the entire top echelon of the Justice Department was prepared to resign rather than see the program reauthorized, even if its approval wasn’t required. They just didn’t want to be part of an administration that was running such a program.

This wasn’t an emergency program; more than two years had elapsed, ample time to correct any initial deficiencies. It wasn’t a last minute crisis; Ashcroft and Comey had both been saying, for weeks, that they would withhold
approval. But at the eleventh hour, the President made one final push, dispatching his most senior aides to try to secure approval for a continuation of the program, unaltered.

Keep in mind that Comey’s “Enzo the Baker” scene took place just eight months before the presidential election.

I have believed from the get-go that this surveillance was being used for political purposes. The FISA court is a rubber stamp court that will allow virtually anything that could remotely be construed as necessary for national security. After 9/11 they would have been even more lenient. And if they weren’t, the administration could easily have gone to the Republican congress and requested changes to the law and they would have gotten it.

How over-the-top must this have been for staunch Republican John Ashcroft to have risen from his ICU bed to argue against it and the entire top echelon of the DOJ were preparing to resign? These are not ordinary times and the law enforcement community has not been particularly squeamish about stretching the Bill of Rights. None of those people are bleeding heart liberals or candidates for the presidency of the ACLU. For them to be this adamant, it must have been something completely beyond the pale.

My suspicion has always been that there was some part of this program — or an entirely different program — that included spying on political opponents. Even spying on peace marchers and Greenpeace types wouldn’t seem to me to be of such a substantial departure from the agreed upon post 9/11 framework that it would cause such a reaction from the top brass, nor would it be so important to the president that he would send Gonzales and Card into the ICU to get Ashcroft to sign off on it while he was high on drugs.

As I pointed out last year:

From Bush’s Brain:

At a seminar in Lexington, Kentucky, in August 1972, Rove and Robinson recounted the Dixon episode with considerable delight. They talked about campaign espionage, about digging through an opponent’s garbage for intelligence — then using it against them. Robinson recounted how the technique had worked well for him in the 1968 governor’s race in Illinois when he “struck gold” in a search of an opponent’s garbage. He found evidence that a supporter had given checks to both sides in the race, but more to the Democrat, Sam Shapiro.

“So one of our finance guys calls the guy up the next day and told him there was a vicious rumor going around,” Robinson said, according to a tape recording of a seminar. “The guy got all embarrassed and flew to Chicago that day with a check for $2,000 to make up the difference,” he said.

This was the summer of the Watergate break-in, with the first revelations of a scandal that unraveled the Nixon presidency.The Watergate burglars broke in to the Democratic National Committee offices on June 17 and the whole business of political dirty tricks was rapidly becoming a very sensitive subject. Both Rove and Robinson recognized that. They even specifically mentioned the Watergate break-in at the seminars, not as a reason to avoid campaign espionage, but as a reason to keep it secret.

“While this is all well and good as fun and games, you’ve really got to use your head about who knows about this kind of thing.” Robinson warned.

“Again in those things, if it’s used sureptitiously in a campaign, it’s better off if you don’t get caught. You know, those people who were caught by Larry O’Brien’s troops in Washinngton are a serious verification of the fact that you don’t get caught.”

Remember: Watergate was about bugging the Democratic National Committee. The “3rd rate burglary” was to replace an illegal bug that had been planted on the telephones of prominent Democrats.

The lesson of Watergate for the chagrined Republicans was that they needed to be more forceful in assuming executive power and they needed to be more sophisticated about their campaign espionage. This is what they’ve done.

Anybody who even dreams that these guys are not using all their government power to spy on political enemies is being willfully naive. It is what they do. It is the essence of their political style. This is Nixon’s Republican party and they have finally achieved a perfect ability to carry out his vision of political governance: L’etat C’est Moi. If the president does it that means it’s not illegal.

After what we now know about the politicization of the DOJ by Karl Rove himself, this seems even more obvious to me.

After all, as Greenwald pointed out in his post, it’s awfully odd that in all these meetings, the FBI was involved but the NSA wasn’t. The FBI does domestic surveillance. Why were they involved in this at all?

Update: I’ve been busy, so I missed this. Peter Swire at CAP has been speculating about this very thing for a while.

.