Month: February 2008

If The President Does It, Then It’s Not Illegal

by dday

Mike Mukasey, Attorney General of the United States, before the House Judiciary Committee today. (UPDATE: This is a paraphrase, not a transcript)

Delahunt: You said if an opinion was rendered, that would insulate him from any consequences.

MM: We could not investigate or prosecute somebody for acting in reliance on a justice department opinion.

Delahunt: If that opinion was inaccurate and in fact violated a section of US Criminal Code, that reliance is in effect an immunity from any criminal culpability.

MM: Immunity connoted culpability.

Delahunt: This is brand new legal theory.

MM: Disclosure of waterboarding was part of CIA interrogation and permitted by DOJ opinion, would and should bar investigation of people who relied on that opinion.

Delahunt: Let’s concede that waterboarding is in contravention of international obligation. If opinion rendered that amounted to malpractice, whoever employed that technique, simply by relying on that opinion would be legally barred from criminal investigation.

MM: If you’re talking about legal mistake, there is an inquiry regarding whether properly rendered opinions or didn’t. But yes, that bars the person who relied on that opinion from being investigated.

Delahunt: I find that a new legal doctrine. The law is the law.

MM: If it comes to pass that somebody at a later date that the opinion should have been different the person who relied on the opinion cannot be investigated.

Delahunt: Is there a legal precedent.

MM: There is practical consideration.

Delahunt: I can’t cite you a case.

The Attorney General is saying that the President can do anything he wants, break the law any way he wants, as long as the President’s own Justice Department, populated his own handpicked officials, validates it. And he’s saying it directly to members of Congress, essentially telling them that they don’t exist. They have no power to prosecute because the Justice Department won’t take up the case, and the courts have no power to adjudicate because these are official state secrets. There is only one branch of government that matters.

JMM David Kurtz:

President Bush has now laid down his most aggressive challenge to the very constitutional authority of Congress. It is a naked assertion of executive power. The founders would have called it tyrannical. His cards are now all on the table. This is no bluff.

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Shocking

by digby

In his withdrawal speech, Romney said:

“If I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Senator Clinton or Obama would win. And in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign, be a part of aiding a surrender to terror,” Romney told the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington.”

Matthews, all wide-eyed and apparently shocked, asked a McCain supporter if his candidate agreed with that assessment.

I guess he hasn’t heard McCain say about a thousand times:

“For the first time in American political history, a candidate for president has called for surrender and raised the white flag,” McCain told reporters. “I think that’s terrible.”

The CPAC McCain kidz eventually drowned out the booing Mexican haters with big cheers when he pretty much declared war on the world. Look for Limbaugh and Hannity to kiss his ring even if McCain fails to take his advice to put Huckabee on the ticket. Their little tantrum is just a shot across the bow to St McCain and the political establishment to remember who has the wingnut microphones. They expect to lose.

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They Will Not Stop

by digby

What K-Drum said:

Now, it’s obvious that everyone believes a stimulus bill of some kind is a good idea (the House bill passed nearly unanimously), so it’s not as if anyone voted against the Senate version because they believe it’s a fundamentally flawed concept. And since the last month’s worth of economic news has been uniformly bad, no one who believes in stimulus has any real reason to balk at fattening up the package a bit. This wasn’t a principled stand about letting the economy work things out on its own.

But what happened? Republicans filibustered the larger bill and then sustained the filibuster on virtually a party line vote. Why? Because it had a few billion dollars of spending targeted at Democratic priorities. There’s nothing more to it.

The moral of the story is this: Republicans have no intention of ever working with Democrats on anything remotely like a bipartisan basis. Even on something as trivial as this, they filibustered and won. They will do the same thing next year no matter who’s president. They will do it on every single bill, no matter how minor. They will never stop obstructing. Period. Presidential hopefuls, take note.

If you look at the race so far, it’s clear that it’s no easy task to even unify the Democratic Party. And as long as the Republicans have 41 votes, they’ll never stop- obstructing. They are doing this now simply because they can. (After all, they could pass a popular bill like this and let the president veto it if they wanted to play at bipartisanship for the sake of the public who everyone claims is desperate for it.) The truth is that as they have at least 41 safe Republican senate seats, they just don’t give shit. The regional heart of the party is solid and strong and whether they are in a minority or a majority they will make damned sure there isn’t any compromise. They don’t need it and they don’t want to dilute their message or their brand for the future.

And they will make damned sure the villagers proclaim the Democrats to be weak and loathsome losers whose refusal to reach across the aisle is failing all Americans. I wish I knew how either Clinton or Obama planned to deal with this, but I confess I haven’t the vaguest idea.

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Re-Branding Torture

by dday

A couple weeks ago, John Negroponte blurted out that America has used the practice of waterboarding, but only a few times. The admission of a torture technique dating back to the Spanish Inquisition, you would think, would have led to Negroponte’s sacking, mass protests lasting weeks, and in a Parliamentary system, a no-confidence vote against the current government. Instead it led to a new PR strategy:

Negroponte’s comments, which were seen as confirmation that waterboarding had in fact been used before that, were not cleared beforehand and caught White House officials off guard, according to the senior administration official. “It was an accidental disclosure,” said the official. It also forced a reassessment of whether the administration should at least publicly confirm Negroponte’s remarks, if only to reap whatever public-relations benefit could be derived from the slip.

That third word is “benefit.”

For while they’re still spooked about defining waterboarding as torture – leading to inanities like DNI Mike McConnell saying “I said waterboarding was torture, but I meant that I don’t like water up my nose” – they have no problem confirming these details in public, and even suggesting that we’d use it again:

“It will depend upon circumstances,” spokesman Tony Fratto said, adding “the belief that an attack might be imminent, that could be a circumstance that you would definitely want to consider.”

In other words, the message is, “Yeah, we did it, and we’ll do it again, and what are you gonna do about it with your laws and regulations?”

This has been a persistent pattern. Faced with deliberately flouting the law, they turn the law into a partisan issue. Anyone who doesn’t think America should torture is a dirty liberal who wants to tax our families and endanger our kids. They’re so used to politics as a bar fight that they know politicizing everything is a winner – I mean, please, Dick Durbin, an investigation? What are you investigating? They told you they torture, and they’re defending it.

The White House on Wednesday defended the use of the interrogation technique known as waterboarding, saying it is legal — not torture as critics argue — and has saved American lives. President Bush could authorize waterboarding for future terrorism suspects if certain criteria are met, a spokesman said.

A day earlier, the Bush administration acknowledged publicly for the first time that the tactic was used by U.S. government questioners on three terror suspects. Testifying before Congress, CIA Director Michael Hayden said Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubayda and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri were waterboarded in 2002 and 2003.

Waterboarding involves strapping a suspect down and pouring water over his cloth-covered face to create the sensation of drowning. It has been traced back hundreds of years, to the Spanish Inquisition, and is condemned by nations around the world.

The President is telling you that he authorized drowning terror suspects. He still claims it’s legal, but his people won’t investigate that because it’s not true. He’s demanding that the guy who wrote the legal opinion legitimizing torture be confirmed by the Senate, making them an accessory to torture. And somehow, there’s this belief that this is the only secret that will be revealed. It’s not.

For the first time, the top commander of detention operations at Guantanamo has confirmed the existence of the mysterious Camp 7. In an interview with The Associated Press, Rear Adm. Mark Buzby also provided a few details about the maximum-security lockup.

Guantanamo commanders said Camp 7 is for key alleged al-Qaida members, who must be kept apart from other prisoners to prevent them from retaliating against long-term detainees who have talked to interrogators. They also want the location kept secret for fear of terrorist attack.

And the official response from the White House will be “Yeah, we kept a secret detention camp at Guantanamo, and we’d do it again, because we believe in protecting your children, which our critics obviously don’t!” And the media nods grimly, and somehow this bullying of the legal system and the Constitution continues, because nobody will punch back and use the handcuffs that are needed to take these criminals out of the White House.

This week a detainee died of natural causes at Guantanamo. It’ll be a fate that will likely befall many other detainees. This particular one was accused of being a terrorist by people who held grudges against him and needed the bounty offered by the US government. He was never charged, never allowed to defend himself in court, and we’ll never know just what he was guilty of doing. And if questioned, your leaders will tell you that his detention and death was necessary to protect your family. And you’ll still believe that you live in a free society.

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Twister Wreckage

by digby

As we are all digging deep to fund candidates today, maybe we can throw a couple of bucks this way too:

Whilst we’re waiting for George’s Promised Prayers to roll in, down here in the Tornado-Stricken Mid-South, I might recommend some DIRECT HUMAN INTERACTION.

This Is My Best First Start To Help My Region.

As Scout Prime is to NOLA, I am, suddenly, to the Mid-South area (I LIVE here, and was Live-Blogging these horrible storms all night), and have started to get the help-ball rolling down here. Some of you know where I work. I started a Food Drive there today for the Mid-South United Way Food Bank.

As the area affected is so broad and detached, and everyone in the Country was distracted by politics last night, as yet, there is no central assistance hub set-up. So, at the link, above, you’ll find the two agencies with the broadest radius to help the area right now. Both take DIRECT donations.

A small-blog swarm on that post would be greatly appreciated by more people than just me. I can’t describe how wide-spread the damage is down here. It’s enormous. The Media, per usual, is only just now waking up to the situation, after their Super-Duper-Let’s-All-Wet-Our-Pants-Together- Tuesday Political Hangover. Like NOLA, these are REALLY poor folks down here, and have nothing, and nowhere to go.

A short post about this at YOUR Blog, linking either to my post, above, or directly to the two Orgs mentioned in the post above, would sure be a big help, and would be greatly appreciated by many people who are relying on help. They are all that we have right now.

I just donated a deer’s worth of ground venison, along with the 100 pounds of rice and quart-sized ziplock bags that they said that they needed at the United Way Mid-South Food Bank, when I phoned them this morning. Their pantry is BARE, and I’ll be loading them up with all the potatoes, rice, veggies, bags, and other staples that I can fit in my truck tomorrow.

This is serious Red State country, and a flood of help from the DFH Left would REALLY make a big difference in a number of good ways.

I thank you all in advance.

Click Here for more about what’s going on down here. It’s all that I am writing about right now. Help is needed.

Your humble peer,

Monkeyfister

Still Not Making Trouble

by digby

Clammyc at Dkos puts this whole sad congressional session into context and it isn’t a pretty sight.

Reid allowed subpoenas to be ignored by administration members and didn’t follow up with any call for accountability. Pelosi allowed subpoenas to be ignored by administration members and didn’t follow up with any call for accountability. The PR battle over the nonsensical “surge working” hasn’t only been lost by the Democrats, it wasn’t even fought all that much by leadership – which could be another lie that leads to a President McCain.

Reid allowed a vote to condemn MoveOn – an entity that has been entirely supportive of the Democratic Party over the years, and then inexplicably had Rush Limbaugh praised officially on the Senate floor by republicans when his comments insulted the troops who were actually fighting this clusterfuck in Iraq. As for Iraq itself, well how many tens of billions were pledged under Reid and Pelosi’s leadership over the past year? And what kind of constraints were put on these blank checks? On a similar note, how does an inflammatory bill like Kyl/Lieberman get to the Senate floor, let alone pass – especially since we now know from the NIE how much of a threat Iran isn’t to us?

A FISA law needed a technical correction, and yet, we now are faced with expanded and illegal powers by this administration to continue breaking the law. And on top of that, when two bills are prepared that would fix the technical issue, one allowing for retroactive immunity for telecom companies that willfully broke the law to help this administration break the law and one without such immunity, what bill does Reid bring to the floor? The one that allows for retroactive immunity, and a kick in the teeth to the fourth amendment, not to mention We the People.

With republicans setting the world record for filibusters in one year (with absolutely no pushback) and the asinine “we need 60 votes for anything” suddenly becoming the new rule, who does Reid stick it to on a filibuster? His own damn party – brave folks and true leaders like Chris Dodd and Russ Feingold. When republican Senators put holds on bill after bill, Reid respects the hold. But when one of his own party does the same, he overrides it.

Sad, but true. The Democrats have adopted the “don’t make trouble” strategy and this is the result. They got punk’d again today:

The fate of $600-$1,200 rebate checks for more than 100 million Americans is in limbo after Senate Democrats failed Wednesday to add $44 billion in help for the elderly, disabled veterans, the unemployed and big business to the House-passed economic aid package.

Republicans banded together to block the $205 billion plan from advancing Wednesday, leaving Democrats with a difficult choice either to quickly accept a House bill they have said is inadequate or risk being blamed for delaying a measure designed as a swift shot in the arm for the lagging economy.

Here’s why:

“The president has made it clear that he doesn’t want that extension of unemployment benefits,” Republican Senator John Thune said.

The only reason they won’t make the lame duck asshat veto this stuff is that they know they will be so successful at blaming the Democrats for it that they don’t need to worry about upsetting their own constituents. The red state Republican senators are an awesome obstructive force for the GOP. Unless we get over 60 (not counting the Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelsons) they are going to keep playing these games very effectively until somebody figures out a way around them.

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I’m John McCain And I Approved Killing This Polar Bear And Sending That Poor Person Ou t Into The Street

by dday

So the Senate, not known for its boldness or its speed, got together and stood up for some additional important elements of the economic stimulus bill, including some pretty solid green energy tax incentives and jobs packages. They also included extensions to unemployment benefits, one of the simplest and most proven methods of injecting money into the economy. This was a fairly good bill.

It came up for vote today. It missed by one vote.

The U.S. Senate refused to consider a Democratic-backed $156 billion economic stimulus bill that would expand a House measure by giving tax rebates to more people and extending unemployment benefits.

The Senate’s 58-41 vote was two short of the 60 needed to overcome Republican objections and consider the measure further. Republicans said the legislation passed by the Democratic- controlled Senate Finance Committee last week added too many provisions and would delay getting money into the hands of consumers.

“The president has made it clear that he doesn’t want that extension of unemployment benefits,” Republican Senator John Thune said.

The article says two votes, but Harry Reid voted “no” for procedural reasons so he could take it up again. So one vote would have made the difference.

58 + 41 equals 99. Who missed the vote?

Not that man of honor!

The Senate also addresses one of the biggest failings of last year’s energy bill. Wind and solar power installations are growing at a sizzling pace, but that growth is fueled by production tax credits that expire at the end of the year. An extension was stripped from the energy bill because of an unrelated dispute over taxing oil companies. The credits must be extended as quickly as possible because investors won’t pump money into clean power if there’s a danger of losing their tax incentives. Renewable energy reduces reliance on foreign oil while cutting greenhouse gases and other pollutants; green technology is also an extremely promising growth industry that could help make up for the loss of manufacturing jobs.

The Senate vote has been delayed until Wednesday, mainly so that the two Democratic senators still in the presidential race, Barack Obama of Illinois and Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, will have a chance to return to Washington after today’s Super Tuesday primaries in order to weigh in (both are expected to support the Baucus plan). That would put the count of those expected to vote in favor at either 58 or 59, according to lobbyists — just shy of the 60 needed to avoid a filibuster. Which means the plan’s success or failure could depend on one man, who has kept mum about his stance: Republican candidate John McCain of Arizona.

McCain has made much during the campaign about his determination to combat global warming. If he’s the man of conviction he claims to be, he should return to Washington and back the Baucus bill.

Ducking a vote that would be tough to explain to your global warming-denying base; now that’s some straight talk. I guess he can go up to the Antarctic and say “My friends, those polar bears aren’t ever coming back.

I think I’m going to puke if I have to hear about the “honor” of John McCain for the next nine months.

UPDATE: John Sununu voted against poor people and polar bears, too. That’s not going to work in a rapidly bluing New Hampshire. This vote will stick with those incumbents up for re-election.

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Green Light

by digby

Now it makes sense. Mukasey told us a week ago that waterboarding wasn’t actually torture because it depended on who did it and what the circumstances were. Yesterday, in the midst of all our Super Tuesday obsessing, Michael Hayden admitted that the US government had done it:

The CIA used a widely condemned interrogation technique known as waterboarding on three suspects captured after the Sept. 11 attacks, CIA Director Michael Hayden told Congress on Tuesday.

“Waterboarding has been used on only three detainees,” Hayden told the Senate Intelligence Committee. It was the first time a U.S. official publicly specified the number of people subjected to waterboarding and named them.

Congress is considering banning the simulated drowning technique. A Democratic senator and a human rights advocacy group urged a criminal investigation after Hayden made his remarks.

“Waterboarding is torture, and torture is a crime,” Human Rights Watch said in a statement.

Those subjected to waterboarding were suspected Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and senior al Qaeda leaders Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, Hayden said at the Senate hearing on threats to the United States.

If anyone believes that these were the only times, I have some Florida condos to sell you at 2006 prices.

The US admits that it tortures, and says it was very effective. One can only assume they reserve the right to do it again if they feel it is necessary.

The world now has a green light. Torture is officially back on the menu:

He told the committee he opposed limiting the CIA to using interrogation techniques permitted in the U.S. Army Field Manual, which bans waterboarding. CIA interrogators are better trained, and the agency works with a narrower range of suspects in its interrogations, he said.

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Scrubbing Maureen

by digby

Bob Somerby and Molly Ivors take Maureen Dowd to task for her deeply depraved column today so I won’t belabor the point here. Go read them both. It doesn’t matter whether you are a Clinton or Obama supporter, the column is equally insulting to both candidates. She writes about Clinton as if she is a dark, paranoid hermaphrodite (and Stanley Crouch called her yesterday) and Obama as a skinny little girl named Obambi. (Not that there’s anything wrong with little girls, of course, but I don’t think anyone thinks a little girl is electable to the presidency of the United States.) This is a disturbed column, even by Dowd’s low standards.

But Somerby points out something very strange. Like me, his dead tree version of the New York Times has this nasty line:

Even though Obama stopped smoking when he started running for president, he has lost five pounds racing around the country. Just like Hollywood starlets, he works out religiously and he can make a three-course meal out of a Nicorette.

It’s missing from the online version. Somerby says it’s also missing from Lexis- Nexis. How did that happen? And why?

I should point out that it doesn’t make any difference. She still portrays him as a silly naive lightweight up against the cunning gorgon. But this paragraph was removed for a reason and it would be interesting to hear what it was. Did her editors finally step in and say she’d gone too far? Can we hope for more?

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Go Howard

by dday

From a DNC email:

How we’ll beat John McCain

Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney are done. John McCain will be the Republican nominee — he’s the only one with a reasonable path to the nomination.

So how do we beat him? We stand up — right now — start fighting, and show the American people that he’s not who they think he is.

We can’t wait for Hillary or Barack to win the nomination. Now that the Republicans have a candidate, the dollars are starting to pour in from special interests who will do anything to beat the Democratic nominee. They’re just waiting for us to decide so they can start smearing […]

John McCain is a media darling, but don’t trust his carefully-crafted image – he’s worked for years to brand himself. From Iraq to health care, Social Security to special interest tax cuts to ethics, he’s promising nothing more than a third Bush term.

After championing campaign finance reform and ethics legislation to score political points, he now has a staggering amount of lobbyists involved in every aspect of his campaign. In fact, two of the top three sources for John McCain’s campaign cash are D.C. lobbying firms, and he looked the other way as Jack Abramoff bought and paid for the Republican Party and the Culture of Corruption.

On immigration reform, he’s run as far to the right as he can, aligning himself with the most extreme elements of the Republican Party.

On the war, McCain scoffed at Bush’s call to leave troops in Iraq for 50 years, saying “Make it a hundred!”

On a woman’s right to choose, McCain has vowed to appoint judges who would overturn Roe v. Wade.

On the economy, one of the issues that the American people care most about, McCain has said: “I know a lot less about economics than I do about military and foreign policy issues. I still need to be educated.”

We can’t afford four more years with a President who drives the economy into the ground. We can’t afford four more years with a President who fights an endless war in Iraq. We can’t afford four more years with a President who gives tax cuts to companies who ship jobs overseas; with a President who can’t get every American the health care they deserve; with a President we just can’t trust.

This is extremely smart to be thinking about this immediately. In 1996 the Clinton campaign defined Bob Dole so fast it made the general election campaign irrelevant. And the increased technology and the ability to go viral will improve upon that feat. The progressive movement has done a very good job of defining the Republican candidates, and Dean’s frames on McCain are pretty accurate, and are already being seen in the traditional media. “He’ll make Cheney look like Gandhi.” “Less jobs, more wars.” You can see these being used all the way to November.

Howard Dean is doing right by the party. I don’t think Hillary or Obama will keep him around come 2009, but his 50-state strategy is too a major part of the story, in terms of driving turnout in all these primary states. They should commit to keeping that structure in place; it’s been enormously beneficial.

You can help out Dean here.

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