Month: April 2009

The Indictment Of The Bush Six

by dday

Scott Horton reports that indictments of top Bush Administration officials could be handed down in Spain as early as today:

Spanish prosecutors have decided to press forward with a criminal investigation targeting former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and five top associates over their role in the torture of five Spanish citizens held at Guantánamo, several reliable sources close to the investigation have told The Daily Beast. Their decision is expected to be announced on Tuesday before the Spanish central criminal court, the Audencia Nacional, in Madrid […]

The six defendants—in addition to Gonzales, Federal Appeals Court Judge and former Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee, University of California law professor and former Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo, former Defense Department general counsel and current Chevron lawyer William J. Haynes II, Vice President Cheney’s former chief of staff David Addington, and former Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith—are accused of having given the green light to the torture and mistreatment of prisoners held in U.S. detention in “the war on terror.” The case arises in the context of a pending proceeding before the court involving terrorism charges against five Spaniards formerly held at Guantánamo. A group of human-rights lawyers originally filed a criminal complaint asking the court to look at the possibility of charges against the six American lawyers. Baltasar Garzón Real, the investigating judge, accepted the complaint and referred it to Spanish prosecutors for a view as to whether they would accept the case and press it forward. “The evidence provided was more than sufficient to justify a more comprehensive investigation,” one of the lawyers associated with the prosecution stated.

…the Obama State Department has been in steady contact with the Spanish government about the case. Shortly after the case was filed on March 17, chief prosecutor Javier Zaragoza was invited to the U.S. embassy in Madrid to brief members of the embassy staff about the matter. A person in attendance at the meeting described the process as “correct and formal.” The Spanish prosecutors briefed the American diplomats on the status of the case, how it arose, the nature of the allegations raised against the former U.S. government officials. The Americans “were basically there just to collect information,” the source stated. The Spanish prosecutors advised the Americans that they would suspend their investigation if at any point the United States were to undertake an investigation of its own into these matters. They pressed to know whether any such investigation was pending. These inquiries met with no answer from the U.S. side […]

The Bush Six labored at length to create a legal black hole in which they could implement their policies safe from the scrutiny of American courts and the American media. Perhaps they achieved much of their objective, but the law of unintended consequences has kicked in. If U.S. courts and prosecutors will not address the matter because of a lack of jurisdiction, foreign courts appear only too happy to step in.

Which is, as Hilzoy says, to our eternal shame. The Bush Six violated our own laws as surely as they violated Spanish law. We are signatories to the same treaties to which Spain is a signatory. We have the duty, actually, the requirement under the Constitution and the Convention Against Torture, to prosecute those who broke these laws and treaty obligations. We shouldn’t let Spain do our dirty work. History will not look kindly on it.

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Teabaggin’ Armey

by dday

Nobody could have anticipated that the teabag parties were simply a pretense for conservative movement list-building.

Dear [fake name based on a risqué pun],

Tax day is upon us once again and it is clearer than ever that we need to fundamentally reform the tax code. It’s unfair, complex, inhibits saving, investment and job creation, imposes a heavy burden on families, and undermines the integrity of the democratic process.

To this end, we have completely revamped ScraptheCode.org and created a petition to let Congress know we want to scrap the code and replace it with a simple, low, flat, fair, and honest tax code.

I’m writing to ask you to do two things:

Please join the thousands of Americans signing our petition to Scrap the Code, and

Please contribute to our campaign so we can get the word out and get more petition signers!

Some of our members are so frustrated with the tax-and-spend ways of Washington they’re taking to the streets on Wednesday for the nationwide Tea Party protests and helping us support them. If you’re looking for one near you, we have every one we’ve heard about or helped with on a map here and created instructions on how to organize your own.

Fixing our broken tax code is so important to America’s future prosperity that FreedomWorks Foundation Vice-Chairman Steve Forbes and I have both written books calling for fundamental reform.

Our team in Washington has also published the Top 10 Reasons to Scrap the Code, which I have included below.

I hope you find it as informative as I did and will sign our petition and contribute to our efforts to get the word out.

Sincerely,

Dick Armey
Chairman
FreedomWorks

It’s going to be so awesome when all those homemade “Scrap the Code” signs just start popping up everywhere at these rallies.

Save the Rich has a lot more about the corporate underwriting of these “spontaneous” events. And by the way, Dick Armey has been organzing these things for over a month.

I believe it was Johnny Rotten who said, “Ever feel like you’ve been cheated?”

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Strange Justice

by tristero

Adam Liptak on Clarence Thomas:

… he said he had found solace in his den.

“Sometimes, when I get a little down,” Justice Thomas said wearily, he goes online. “I look up wonderful speeches…

Speeches on the Internet. Clarence Thomas looks up speeches on the Internet in his den. Riiiiight:

The decision to rush the swearing-in of Justice Clarence Thomas spared the controversial nominee the publication of more embarrassing personal revelations than Anita Hill’s notorious testimony. That same day, three Washington Post reporters were set to write a story about Thomas’ extensive taste for pornography, including accounts from eyewitnesses such as the manager of his local video store. “But since Thomas had been sworn in, the Post decided not to pursue the issue and dropped the story.”

But there’s hope. From Liptak’s article again:

“I am rounding the last turn for my 18th term on the court,” he added, but his work — “this endeavor,” he called it, “or, for some, an ordeal” — has not gotten easier. “That’s one thing about this job,” he said. “You get a little tired.”

The poor guy. He should consider resigning so he can spend more time online in his den looking up…speeches.

For those new to politics who don’t quite understand what the brouhaha over Thomas is about, pick up Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas by Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson. His confirmation hearings changed forever how Americans would look at Coke cans.

Podcast: Barbara Forrest Discusses Bobby Jindal

by tristero

I had a chance recently to discuss Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal with Barbara Forrest. Go here to play or download a podcast of my interview. As you’ll learn, his ties to the extreme religious right are far more elaborate than the mainstream national press has chosen to report.

For further information on Jindal, Barbara provided the following links:

“Bobby Jindal: George Bush Redux in Louisiana,” February 28 2009

“Bobby Jindal’s Creationist Talking Points,” June 14 2008

“Bobby Jindal’s Creationism and Alliance with David Barton,” September 29, 2007

A Jindal Primer (You Betcha!).

Barbara Forrest, for those of you who don’t know, was one of the critical expert witnesses in the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District case in which the judge – a W. Bush appointee, no less – determined that “intelligent design” was a form of creationism and could not be taught as science in public schools. Barbara Forrest’s book, Creationism's Trojan Horse, written with Paul Gross, is considered the definitive history of the intelligent design creaionism movement. A Louisiana native, Barbara teaches at Southeastern Louisiana University.

Obama’s Whitewater

by digby

Impeachment now!

Teabagging For Dummies

by digby

If you thought the Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction caused a stir wait until people get a load of this. From Tbogg:

The Reagan.org / Patriot Depot duo has been invited to display our tea bags at the official tea party in Washington DC at the US Treasury Department (National Stage) 12:00pm-2:00pm and Lafayette Park (Grassroots Stage) 11:00am-3:00pm.

Definitely NSFW.

Update: Go to SaveTheRich.com for all your teabagging event needs.

FWIW

by dday

Al Franken won the 2008 Senate election in Minnesota.

Over five months after the election, a three-judge panel has declared Democrat Al Franken the winner of the Minnesota U.S. Senate race.

The judges issued their final ruling late Monday, stating “Franken received the highest number of lawfully cast ballots in the Nov. 4, 2008 general election.”

They also have determined that Franken is entitled to receive the certificate of election.

In most countries, this would mean that Franken would receive that certificate and actually enter the Senate. But as long as Norm Coleman has a few wealthy benefactors willing to bankroll him, he can appeal. Again and again. Now, the Supreme Court might not have anyone available to hear that appeal, since two justices served on the state canvassing board, and one has donated money to Norm Coleman in the past. But of course, the Minnesota Supreme Court is just a stepping stone to a federal district court of appeals. Which is just a stepping stone to the US Supreme Court. Which is just a stepping stone to some other judicial body Coleman can find. Which is just a stepping stone to the 2014 rematch. Franken will only have been an incumbent for a few months by then.

…That’s amusing, the three-judge panel cited Bush v. Gore in their opinion – specifically, the part where it declares itself “limited to the present circumstance.”

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GoodReads

by digby

I wanted to pass on couple of thought provoking blog posts on the origins of our economic problems and where we are today. The first is by Stirling Newberr writing at Corrente and the second by Numerian writing at the Agonist. I’m still pulling together my thoughts on all this so I’m not going to comment. I’d be interested in your reactions.

Blogger Candidate

by digby

I had meant to post this last week but for some reason it failed to show up as scheduled. So, my apologies to all concerned, but here’s hoping that late is better than nothing:

It was inevitable that political bloggers would turn to electoral politics eventually, I suppose, but it’s good to see that it’s finally happening. One of the first, that I’m aware of, is Judd Legum, with whom most of your are undoubtedly familiar from his work at Think Progress over the years. Judd is throwing his hat into the ring in Maryland for the office of State Delegate and he’s asking for help from his virtual homeboys and girls, the progressive online community. He says:

My election is about replacing a reactionary, far-right representative with a new generation of progressive leadership. I’m aiming to take the values I learned as a progressive blogger — accountability, transparency, inclusiveness — and bring them to the state house.

He’s a very serious guy, a lawyer and activist as well as a former campaign consultant. He doesn’t wear pajamas to work. He needs our help.

If you have a few dollars to spare to help out a fellow progressive,you can go here to donate go here to donate.

Corporate Grassroots

by digby

Following up on Krugman’s column today and the shrieking and rending of garments by the rightwing, I think it’s it’s probably important to make very clear why the tea-bagger parties are not a grassroots uprising.

The right seems to want us to believe that Fox News is promoting this non-stop as a genuine news event rather than a sponsor — despite the fact that it is an event which hasn’t happened yet. They are, by definition, promoting it.

Local news organizations, which are reporting on the planning for this event either do not realize that they are being spun by a front group pretending to be a grassroots organizing campaign or they don’t care. That front group is called Freedom Works, which presents itself as the conservative answer to Move On.

Here is how Move On was conceived:

The MoveOn.org domain name was registered on September 18, 1998 by computer entrepreneurs Joan Blades and Wes Boyd, the married cofounders of Berkeley Systems, an entertainment software company known for the flying toaster screen saver and the online game show “You Don’t Know Jack.” After selling the company in 1997, Blades and Boyd became concerned about the level of “partisan warfare in Washington” following revelations of President Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky. The MoveOn website was launched initially to oppose the Republican-led effort to impeach Clinton. Initially called “Censure and Move On,” it invited visitors to add their names to an online petition stating that “Congress must Immediately Censure President Clinton and Move On to pressing issues facing the country.”

At the time of MoveOn’s public launch on September 24, it appeared likely that its petition would be dwarfed by the effort to oust Clinton. A reporter who interviewed Blades on the day after the launch wrote, “A quick search on Yahoo turns up no sites for ‘censure Clinton’ but 20 sites for ‘impeach Clinton,'” adding that Scott Lauf’s impeachclinton.org website had already delivered 60,000 petitions to Congress. Salon.com reported that Arianna Huffington, then a right-wing commentator, had collected 13,303 names on her website, resignation.com, which called on Clinton to resign.

Within a week, however, support for MoveOn had grown. Blades calls herself an “accidental activist. … We put together a one-sentence petition. … We sent it to under a hundred of our friends and family, and within a week we had a hundred thousand people sign the petition. At that point, we thought it was going to be a flash campaign, that we would help everyone connect with leadership in all the ways we could figure out, and then get back to our regular lives. A half a million people ultimately signed and we somehow never got back to our regular lives.” MoveOn also recruited 2,000 volunteers to deliver the petitions in person to members of the House of Representatives in 219 districts across America, and directed 30,000 phone calls to district offices.

Here’s how it does business:

MoveOn uses e-mail as its main conduit for communicating with members, sending action alerts at least once a week.

The MoveOn.org web site also uses multi-media, including videos, audio downloads, and images. In addition to communicating via the Internet, MoveOn advertises using traditional print and broadcast media, as well as billboards, bus signs, and bumper stickers, digital versions of which are downloadable from its web site. It also contains an area called the “Action Forum”, which functions much like a traditional electronic discussion group. The Action Forums act as a grassroots organization allowing members to propose priorities and strategies.

Through this grassroots methodology, MoveOn collaborates with groups like Meetup.com in organizing street demonstrations, bake sales, house parties, and other opportunities for people to meet personally and act collectively in their own communities.

Some of its core principles are that it is not dependent on foundation money and that it has the ability to use ‘hard money’ – as opposed to grants and tax-deductible contributions – which enables them to be partisan, contribute to political campaigns, and exercise clout in the political process.

Here’s how Freedom Works came to pass:

Stealing a page from MoveOn.org‘s successful organizing playbook, the leaders of FreedomWorks – a complete merger of the conservative think-tanks Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE) and Empower America – hope to conduct massive get out the vote and political education campaigns in the swing states on behalf of President George W. Bush.The two groups decided to merge because there was “an overlap in issues between the two organization,” Shawn Small, the Director of Policy at Empower America, told me in a telephone interview. It was an opportunity to bring together Empower America, which Small characterized as a “grasstops” organization driven by such inside the beltway “superstars” as William Bennett, Vin Weber and Jean Kirkpatrick and CSE’s “grassroots” following.Will FreedomWorks be successful? Maybe, maybe not, but it is sure to be controversial with longtime Republican Party operative Matt Kibbe at the helm.If the agenda of FreedomWorks sounds familiar, that’s because it is. The organization’s new website proclaims that it “will expand and broaden the national fight for lower taxes, less government, and more economic freedom.”The leaders of FreedomWorks have all been around the Beltway a number of times. Former House Majority Leader, Texas Republican congressman Dick Armey, C. Boyden Gray, onetime legal counsel to Bush’s father and chairman of the Committee for Justice, an organization about to launch a campaign on behalf of Bush’s right wing judicial appointees, and former Housing and Urban Development Secretary and failed vice-presidential candidate, Jack Kemp, will serve as the Co-Chairmen of the organization.

And here’s how it operates:

FreedomWorks claims a membership of over 360,000 and a multi-tentacled legal structure that includes a 501 c(3), a 501 c(4), a 527, a federal PAC, and various state PACs. John Stauber, co-author of Banana Republicans: How The Right Wing is Turning America into a One-Party State, recently pointed out that that according to internal documents leaked to the Washington Post in January 2000, the bulk of Citizens for a Sound Economy‘s revenues ($15.5 million in 1998) came not from its members, but from contributions of $250,000 and up from large corporations, including Allied Signal, Archer Daniels Midland, DaimlerChrysler, Emerson Electric Company, Enron, General Electric, Johnson & Johnson, Philip Morris and U.S. West (now Qwest).

And like their progenitors they get millions from the conservative foundations.

Can we all see the difference between Freedom Works and Move On? I knew that you could.

Now, none of this means that the people who show up at the rallies don’t actually believe in what they’re rallying for. It’s primarily a team sport for them, and this is the conservative team’s play. But most of them probably don’t realize (and wouldn’t believe if you told them) that they are rallying on behalf of a major media conglomerate and other vastly wealthy interests to support rich people and corporations at the expense of people like themselves. Of course, that is the organizing principle of the Republican Party in general, but it is spectacularly arrogant at a time like this.

If the press were to do its job, it would inform the public of this instead of regurgitating professional beltway press releases and pretending that these tea bagger parties are even coherent much less representing a legitimate grassroots anti-tax movement.

Update: Hamsher has more on this same topic.