Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Goldilocks Journalists

by digby

Greenwald took Mike Allen downtown yesterday for his absurd granting of anonymity to a former Bush administration official to blast Barack Obama. This one is so obvious that it ended up garnering a rather petulant public response from Allen, typical of the political press being oh so upset an being caught doing shoddy journalism.

But Allen’s whine was nothing compared to the sniffling Dana Milbank, complaining mightily that his ombudsman told him to read the comments but they are all written by icky partisans who don’t have a lick of sense.

He is very confused on one point. It seems he can’t figure out why “the left” is so mad since they’ve got it all:

The comments are naturally an unscientific indicator, but the impression I got is consistent with what I’ve heard from colleagues: The vitriol of last year’s presidential campaign has outlasted the election. For the right, this isn’t terribly surprising; their guys lost the White House in 2008 and control of both chambers of Congress in 2006, so lashing out in frustration is to be expected. The left, however, is more difficult to explain. It made sense for them to be angry when George W. Bush was in the White House. But now, even under Obama, the anger on the left is, if anything, more personal and vitriolic than on the right.

A reader in an online chat brought this to my attention a couple of months ago, noting the animosity in the comments following a column. “Did you torture their cats and grandmothers? Most of the truly unhinged comments appear to come from Democrats, who apparently think you’re Cindy McCain in reverse drag.”

I replied that, to keep my blood pressure under control, I don’t read the comments, and that I did, in fact, torture their cats.

Well, last week I read the comments. On April 10, I wrote a column about an Obama appearance urging Americans to refinance their mortgages — a fairly gentle piece pointing out that the president sounded like a LendingTree.com pitchman. The comments compared me to Bernard Goldberg and Glenn Beck. One complained that “I gave Bush and the Republicans a pass.”

Actually, a National Review column called me “the most anti-Bush reporter” in the White House press corps, but never mind that. “Uh oh, Milbank,” wrote commenter “farfalle44.” “Now the Obamabots have labeled you an Obama hater — watch out!”

Far be it for me to defend angry, vitriolic commenters. I have certainly had my share and it’s true that the commenters on the major media sites seem to be particularly turbo-charged. I suspect it’s because many of them are not particularly sophisticated political observers who are still in love with internet’s anonymity so they can say mean things with impunity. (Most blog readers are long past that point.)

However. It doesn’t seem to occur to Milbank that “the left” might just not like the snotty, juvenile, shallow kind of journalism he practices, no matter who is in office. If they’re mad at his reporting whether it’s Bush or Obama, does it not occur to him that it might be him and not them?

I’m sure there are plenty of lefties in the comments who are jackasses. The right does not have a monopoly on such people. But the media critiques of the left and the right are substantially different. The right thinks the media is filled with liberal operatives pushing the Democratic agenda. The left thinks the media is filled with insular, shallow and out of touch stenographers. If it makes Milbank and his friends think the anger at the media stems from the last election it’s just more proof that the left’s critique is correct.

Also, if you didn’t get a chance to read Jay Rosen’s latest on “he said/she said” journalism, don’t miss it. The affect on our discourse of this po-mo approach to very serious scientific controversies is severe. But I would just add that one of the important problems with the he said/she said in political coverage is that journalists commonly use the absence of official pushback as an excuse not to investigate important stories. When questioned as to why they didn’t follow up, reporters will often say “well, the Democrats/Republicans weren’t pushing it” as if the only framework within which they can possibly report political events is the partisan divide.

The he said/she said convention is extremely limiting and has caused a great deal of trouble over the past couple of decades as the Republicans developed their sophisticated noise machine and were able to create phony controversies and successful defensive actions while the Democrats desperately (and foolishly) worked to erase any partisan edge. For a long time this gave a tremendous advantage to the GOP and it’s only the abject failure of their policies and the culmination of years of abuse of the political system that’s brought them low. If the political press had been more professional and independent it would not have had to come to this point.

Florida Election Travesty 3.0

by digby

Because there are so few older voters in Florida,and its population is so stable and immobile, I suppose this doesn’t matter too much:

Republican legislative leaders have lost all sense of shame with their 11th-hour bill to roll back voting rights in Florida. The legislation is so disgraceful it is no wonder a Republican-led House committee debated the bill for all of 6 minutes Friday before silencing public comment and approving the bill along party lines. This fast-moving train needs to be stopped cold.

The legislation moving through the Senate and House is breathtaking for its naked grab for power. The Senate bill, SB 956, and its companion legislation moving through the House would make it harder for voters to have their voices heard and easier for the major political parties to manipulate the outcome of the electoral process. It would ban retirement center and neighborhood association cards from the forms of identification now acceptable to vote. So much for seniors who do not drive and whose military days are far behind them. Voters who moved 29 days before an election would be forced to cast a provisional ballot rather than a regular one. Third-party groups that register voters would have to submit new voter registration applications as soon as 48 hours after the form was completed.

There’s more. Lots more.

They may very well come to regret the provisions pertaining to the elderly since before too long the average age of their base is going to be 97. But I’m sure they’ll decry the regulations at that point and blame the Democrats.

This is the sort of thing that’s going on under the radar in states all over the country where the GOP still has some clout. As they are showing once again in Minnesota and New York as we speak, they have divorced themselves from any common understanding of what constitutes a fair election. It’s just trench warfare now.

If you haven’t already pledged a “Dollar A Day To Make Norm Go Away” now’s the time.(The NY Times wrote about it today.) We simply have to elect people to office who don’t see democracy as an obstacle.

The Chief Of Staff Of Looking Forward Not Backward

by dday

Rahm Emanuel wants us all to just forget about the people who tortured in our name, those who authorized it, the ones who created the justifications and underpinnings for it, the entire torture regime:

Never mind the moral backflips you have to make to let people off the hook for torture. Never mind the fact that the interrogators did not even follow the guidelines and meager safeguards set out in the OLC memos – Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times in one month. Let’s put all of that aside for a second. Rahm Emanuel is calling on the President and the Justice Department to willingly break the law.

US President Barack Obama’s decision not to prosecute CIA agents who used torture tactics is a violation of international law, a UN expert says.

The UN special rapporteur on torture, Manfred Nowak, says the US is bound under the UN Convention against Torture to prosecute those who engage in it.

Mr Obama released four “torture memos” outlining harsh interrogation methods sanctioned by the Bush administration.
Mr Nowak has called for an independent review and compensation for victims.

“The United States, like all other states that are part of the UN convention against torture, is committed to conducting criminal investigations of torture and to bringing all persons against whom there is sound evidence to court,” Mr Nowak told the Austrian daily Der Standard.

Maybe the President should clarify his position. According to his chief of staff, the President and the Attorney General are committed to breaking international law. Once again, we see that covering up past crimes does nothing but entangle the current executive in the crimes themselves.

Meanwhile, regarding the impeachment of Torture Judge Jay Bybee, Claire McCaskill is now on the record considering it, while sadly still holding to the rancid Village-approved rhetoric of “looking foward” with regard to other matters.

What’s scary to me, Chris, is that one of them got a lifetime appointment on a federal bench. Yikes! You know, a lawyer that’s responsible for this kind of advice that clearly went too far in terms of stretching what our law is. It worries me that he’s sitting on the federal bench right now.

She then said she doesn’t want to “look in the rearview mirror.” Asked by host Chris Wallace whether she would favor the impeachment of the judge, Jay Bybee, McCaskill responded, “I don’t know. I think we have to look at it.”

McCaskill is not a wild-eyed lefty. Like any American with a conscience, she understands the failing of having the man who signed those memos sitting judgment on the federal bench. It is time to impeach.

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CIA CYA

by digby

Michael Isikoff and Evan Thomas do a decent job on implications of the torture memos, particularly their reporting on the deliberations inside the administration. But they miss the point pretty badly with this:

Someone at the CIA came up with the idea—right out of “1984,” it would seem—of putting him in a small, dark box and letting an insect crawl on him. But since this was America, and not Orwell’s fantasy police state, the CIA first had to get permission from a lawyer at the Department of Justice.

I’m pretty sure that Orwell’s fantasy police state did exactly that. In fact, the hallmark of a police state is the bureaucratizing of barbarity. The United States engaging in such a thing is hardly a sign of our “exceptional” virtue.

Still, they do report some welcome news:

Though administration officials declared that CIA interrogators who followed Justice’s legal guidance on torture would not be prosecuted, that does not mean the inquiries are over. Senior Justice Department lawyers and other advisers, who declined to be identified discussing a sensitive subject, say Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. is seriously considering appointing an outside counsel to investigate whether CIA interrogators exceeded legal boundaries—and whether Bush administration officials broke the law by giving the CIA permission to torture in the first place.

At this point, I think an argument could be made that Holder has to appoint a special prosecutor because the administration has made a blanket claim that they won’t prosecute for political reasons. (You can be sure that if the torture regime had happened under a Democrat the Republicans would be screaming rending their garments over that claim for being a political cover-up.) And congress should pursue it as well, particularly with an impeachment inquiry for Torture Judge Jay Bybee, which would get to the essence of the problems with the OLC.

Isikoff and Thomas end their piece with a plaintive recitation of CIA grievances over the years about having to take the gloves off and then be left holding the bag with their naked hands. I don’t actually have any pity for them. They battled the experts at the FBI and won a turf war for the right to interrogate prisoners,something with which they had little experience and the FBI did. Far too many of their highest leadership are implicated in this, including those like CIA acting General Counsel John Rizzo who were actively engaged in creating this Orwellian legal framework to excuse torture.

Of course the Bush administration, including the president himself, are ultimately to blame for all this, but there is too much reporting out there at this point that indicates the CIA wanted to be the interrogators and didn’t know what they were doing. You win the turf war, you get the responsibility that goes along with it when it goes wrong.

Once again, we are back to the endless CIA wars, where the Republicans treat them like dirt because their analysis doesn’t validate the right’s grandiose global schemes and paranoid fantasies, while the left gets infuriated by their barbaric covert behaviors and actions that usually result in American foreign policy folly.

But this isn’t just a battle between the right and the left. It’s a battle within the CIA, which is obviously riven by its two responsibilities. They always feel under seige, because they are attacked from all sides. But the problem is that they only do one thing well — obtain and analyze information. The right goes after them because the CIA analysis are usually right and it undermines imperial plans. The left goes after them because what they do in these covert activities inevitably goes wrong. They just aren’t very good at that stuff — nobody is. In fact, nobody should do it at all because the potential for blowback from the unintended consequences and the inevitable application of Murphy’s Law makes it a losing proposition.

The CIA should be gathering information, period. They should not be running prisons, they should not be assassinating people, they should not be in charge of “enhanced interrogation.” Their analysis has proven to be good far more often than not, even if it doesn’t fulfill the dark wishes of the wingnut imperialists. That’s what they’re good at. Let them stick to it.

And the next time some wingnut in the White House tells them to “take the gloves off” they should just say no. I know 9/11 was a terrible thing and nobody says that the government shouldn’t have taken action. But many of the actions they took have been counterproductive and worse, have fulfilled the world’s worst presumptions about America. They did not make the country safer, no matter how much the bloodthirsty torturers with their schoolyard logic want to believe it.And much of the problems, from Iraq to torture, stem from top people in the CIA refusing to man up and step down. Some of them did, and they spoke out, and that very fact is enough to hold those who went along responsible. It’s not like they couldn’t have have done the right thing.

And to those who say that if the CIA isn’t excused over and over again for their proven excesses and failures they will stop doing their jobs, I can only reply that this means they should all be fired immediately. You cannot have a clandestine service that blackmails the American people into granting them immunity from the law. They are unpatriotic at best for even threatening such a thing and treasonous at worst if they actually carried it out. This kind of blackmail should not be tolerated.

In fact, I am continually gobsmacked by the common blithe assertion by far too many people that certain members of society, from bankers to spies to judges to presidents are so important and above the rest of us that they cannot be subjected to the rule of law even when their crimes are so egregious that they risked destroying the country. Apparently, there is a substantial number of citizens in this country who prefer to be subjects.

Update: Ferchrist’s sake:

Rahm on This Week:

STEPHANOPOLOUS: The President has ruled out prosecutions of CIA officials who believed they were following the law. Does he believe the officials who devised the policies should be immune from prosecution?

RAHM: Yeah, what he believes is, look, as you saw in that statement he wrote. And I think, just take a step back. That he came up with this, and he worked on this for four weeks. Wrote that statement Wednesday night, after he made his decision, and dictated what he wanted to see and then Thursday morning I saw him in the office, he was still editing it. He believes that people in good faith were operating with the guidance they were provided. They shouldn’t be prosecuted.

STEPHANOPOLOUS: But what about those who devised the policies?

RAHM: But those who devised the policies –he believes that they were — should not be prosecuted either. And it’s not the place that we go — as he said in that letter, and I really recommend that people look at that full statement. Not the letter, the statement. In that second paragraph: This is not a time for retribution. It’s a time for reflection. It is not a time to use our energy and our time in looking back, and in a sense of anger and retribution. We have a lot to do to protect America. What people need to know, this practice and technique, we don’t useany more. He banned it.

Jane Hamsher writes:

Is that truly what the administration thinks? That people who want to see those who illegally led the country down the road of torture held to account are simply “looking back” in “anger” and “retribution”? Fifty percent of the country favor such investigations, including 69% of Democrats and a majority of independents. Is Rahm saying that President Obama believes they’re nothing more than an angry, vindictive mob, and that nobody could possibly have a rational basis for believing that our laws should be enforced?

Anyone who gets upset at the Republicans and fat cats who destroyed the country over the past decade are an angry pitchfork wielding mob. (Tea bagging morons with Hitler signs, however, are patriots just exercising their right to dissent.)

One thing to keep in mind here: the president does not actually have the power to decide who gets prosecuted in this country and neither does his chief of staff. We have an independent justice department that is supposed to operate outside of politics. Holder’s job is to “look back” and see if crimes were committed. Just because Bush’s Attorneys General were all toadies doesn’t mean that’s the way it’s supposed to be.

A special prosecutor would solve this whole problem for Obama and Holder. The best way to get the hot potato off their desks is to give it to an independent, career prosecutor.

Torture Nation: Inside The Border

by digby

Nice little fourth amendment you have there. Be a shame if anything happened to it:

I admire people who are willing to test the principles and application of the constitution like this, because they are almost always brutalized for their trouble. But somebody needs to do it once in a while or judges will never have a clear cut case of an innocent person standing on his constitutional rights and being forced to comply.

h/t to Jonathan Schwartz for the title: “In The Future Everyone Will Be Tazed For 15 Minutes.”

“Congress should impeach him…”

by dday

The New York Times today called for the impeachment of Jay Bybee.

In one of the more nauseating passages, Jay Bybee, then an assistant attorney general and now a federal judge, wrote admiringly about a contraption for waterboarding that would lurch a prisoner upright if he stopped breathing while water was poured over his face. He praised the Central Intelligence Agency for having doctors ready to perform an emergency tracheotomy if necessary.

These memos are not an honest attempt to set the legal limits on interrogations, which was the authors’ statutory obligation. They were written to provide legal immunity for acts that are clearly illegal, immoral and a violation of this country’s most basic values […]

At least Mr. Obama is not following Mr. Bush’s example of showy trials for the small fry — like Lynndie England of Abu Ghraib notoriety. But he has an obligation to pursue what is clear evidence of a government policy sanctioning the torture and abuse of prisoners — in violation of international law and the Constitution.

That investigation should start with the lawyers who wrote these sickening memos, including John Yoo, who now teaches law in California; Steven Bradbury, who was job-hunting when we last heard; and Mr. Bybee, who holds the lifetime seat on the federal appeals court that Mr. Bush rewarded him with.

These memos make it clear that Mr. Bybee is unfit for a job that requires legal judgment and a respect for the Constitution. Congress should impeach him. And if the administration will not conduct a thorough investigation of these issues, then Congress has a constitutional duty to hold the executive branch accountable. If that means putting Donald Rumsfeld and Alberto Gonzales on the stand, even Dick Cheney, we are sure Americans can handle it.

I’m not sure there can even be much argument about this. Jay Bybee’s continued presence on the federal bench constitutes a moral outrage.

My petition to the California Democratic Party to pass a resolution of impeachment has as of 9am PT 684 signatures. Please sign it if you haven’t already. We’re going to have a lot more actions around this as the week progresses.

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Saturday Night At The Movies

Conspiracy a go-go

By Dennis Hartley

Hey, Aqualung! Crowe and Affleck in State of Play

Let’s get this out of the way first. I have not seen the original BBC series that Kevin MacDonald’s terrific new thriller, State of Play, was based upon. So if there are any nuances that have been lost in translation, I will profess in advance that I am blissfully unaware of them (so, uh, feel free to fight amongst yourselves in the comments section).

Chock-a-block with paranoid journalists, shadowy assassins, corrupt politicians, and soulless lackeys of the corporate war machine (perhaps “State of the Union” would have been more apt?), the film is a mash-up of complex, old school conspiracy thrillers like The Parallax View and slicker contemporary fare like Enemy of the State. And perhaps most interestingly, it delivers its timely appraisal of corporatist Washington politics and the usurpation of responsible American journalism with a decidedly European sensibility.

Cal McAffrey (Russell Crowe) is an investigative reporter for The Washington Globe; he’s one of those grizzled, rumpled newspaper veterans of the “analog” variety. His office cubicle has that “lived-in” look; an explosion of chaotic, paper-strewn clutter that tells us that this is a guy with ink-stained fingers who actually digs deep, takes notes and probably even fact checks before he writes a story (remember that kind of journalism?). Cal, sporting unkempt long hair, a scraggly beard and frequently outfitted in a long wool overcoat, may look like he just strolled off a Jethro Tull album cover, but you sense that once he latches onto a story, he is going to get the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but.

In his years on the Beltway beat, Cal has made a lot of friends in high places, including Congressman Stephen Collins (Ben Affleck), a golden boy whose star is on the rise. Collins chairs a committee that is investigating some dubiously vetted Defense Department contract awards (are there any other kind?). Currently under the committee’s microscope is a shady Blackwater-type corporation that appears bent on spearheading the complete privatization of America’s Homeland Security operations. On the eve of the scheduled hearings, the congressman’s young female research assistant (wink wink) dies under mysterious circumstances. Cal is immediately put on the story by his requisitely crusty yet benign editor (Helen Mirren). When the panicked congressman reaches out for Cal’s counsel as a friend, the stage is set for a test of the reporter’s objective integrity, especially as the (personal and professional) circumstances become more byzantine.

If it’s starting to sound like you may have been here before, there’s a reason for the plot point déjà vu. Three reasons, actually. The trio of writers who adapted the screenplay is kind of like the Crosby, Stills & Nash of conspiracy thriller scribes. Tony Gilroy wrote Michael Clayton, which was about deadly corporate machinations; Matthew Michael Carnahan did Lions For Lambs , which delved a bit into the grey areas in the relationships between Beltway journalists and politicians; and Billy Ray scripted Breach (based on a true story) which dealt with duplicity and betrayal within the intelligence community.

I think it’s notable that the film also gives a nod to the advent of the blogosphere, and the ripple effect it is has had on traditional mainstream journalism (something my friend Digby has written about, oh, once or twice). When a cub reporter (Rachael McAdams) from the news paper’s online division ingratiates herself into a co-assignment with Cal on the congressional assistant’s murder story, he initially reacts with a fair amount of hostility. There’s a great little scene where Cal calls her with some urgent information that she needs to write down; the look on his face as he waits for her while she is obviously scrambling to find a pen says it all. Eventually, however, despite the “oil and water” mix, the pair develops a working dynamic that vacillates between the time-honored student/mentor relationship and Woodward and Bernstein following the money.

Despite the utilization of a few genre clichés (I think there has been a rule ever since All the President’s Menthat you are required to have at least one tense scene that takes place after hours in a dark and foreboding underground parking garage) I found the film quite involving, thanks to a great cast and tight direction. It was fun to watch Mirren and Crowe working together; these are two of the finest actors currently walking the planet (although I wish they would have given Dame Helen a bit more to do aside from pacing and fuming about imminent deadlines). The underrated Robin Wright-Penn (excellent as the congressman’s wife) is also on hand. I think MacDonald, who also helmed The Last King of Scotland, has the potential to become the next Costa-Gravas. His feature films all vibe an undercurrent of docu-realism; perhaps not too surprising, since he made his bones with highly lauded documentaries like Touching the Void and One Day in September. In a spring season of mall cops and 3-D monsters, with Summer Release Purgatory looming, State of Play is one film at the multiplex that will not require putting your brain on hold.

Previous posts with related themes:

The International

Michael Clayton

Frost/Nixon

Lions for Lambs

Breach

Charlie Wilson’s War

War, Inc.

The Good Shepard

Seven Days in May

Update: Digby here. I happened to catch this one too and enjoyed it. I just wanted to add that it is particularly interesting for Village watchers. The un-self consciousness with which the characters live out their conflicts of interest and incestuous relationships is quite real, I think. Only in journalism would someone be assigned a story in which one of his closest friends is a principal — for both the cynical and naive reasons one might do such a thing. Despite it’s realistic portrayal of that conflict, the film treats it as business as usual, which I think is quite right. To those of us who don’t live and work in the Village, all these elites intertwined through their familial, collegiate and professional ties look suspiciously like the political arm of an aristocracy. Silly us.

California Clout

by digby

Following up on dday’s idea to have the California Democratic Party follow the lead of a unanimous vote by the Los Angeles Dem party and pass a resolution to impeach Judge Jay Bybee, let me just emphasize that this is not an obscure, tilting at windmill exercise. The fact is that the Speaker of the House is from California and as dday points out below, there are numerous members of the house Judiciary Committee from California, Los Angeles in particular. Bybee is on the 9th circuit Court, which covers California. This is something where the state delegation should have plenty of juice if we can exert grassroots pressure for them to take action.

This is not unprecedented. Federal judges have been impeached for many reasons over the years and not just for personal indiscretions or corruption as some would like us to believe:

Samuel Chase, Associate Justice, Supreme Court of the United States.

Impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives on March 12, 1804, on charges of arbitrary and oppressive conduct of trials; Acquitted by the U.S. Senate on March 1, 1805.

James H. Peck, U.S. District Court for the District of Missouri.

Impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives on April 24, 1830, on charges of abuse of the contempt power; Acquitted by the U.S. Senate on January 31, 1831.

West H. Humphreys, U.S. District Court for the Middle, Eastern, and Western Districts of Tennessee.

Impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives, May 6, 1862, on charges of refusing to hold court and waging war against the U.S. government; Convicted by the U.S. Senate and removed from office, June 26, 1862.

Charles Swayne, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida.

Impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives, December 13, 1904, on charges of abuse of contempt power and other misuses of office; Acquitted by the U.S. Senate February 27, 1905.

George W. English, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Illinois.

Impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives, April 1, 1926, on charges of abuse of power; resigned office November 4, 1926; Senate Court of Impeachment adjourned to December 13, 1926, when, on request of the House manager, impeachment proceedings were dismissed.

Harold Louderback, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

Impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives, February 24, 1933, on charges of favoritism in the appointment of bankruptcy receivers; Acquitted by the U.S. Senate on May 24, 1933.

Halsted L. Ritter, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.

Impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives, March 2, 1936, on charges of favoritism in the appointment of bankruptcy receivers and practicing law while sitting as a judge; Convicted by the U.S. Senate and removed from office, April 17, 1936.

Walter L. Nixon, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi.

Impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives, May 10, 1989, on charges of perjury before a federal grand jury; Convicted by the U.S. Senate and removed from office, November 3, 1989.

It is unlikely that Bybee would be removed because there are a minimum of 34 bloodthirsty, pro-torture Senators in the congress. And perhaps the man is so rigid that nothing could ever make him resign, not even the disgust of his peers and shunning by decent people everywhere. But he should be impeached anyway, if only so that the Judiciary Committee can publicly consider this outrageous notion that obscure Justice Department lawyers can indemnify agents of the government from illegal activities by issuing a badly reasoned, secret memo.

Seriously, if that’s the case, then we have a dictatorship, the exercise of which depends entirely on the good will of the president and the lawyers he chooses for the Justice Department.

Sign the petition — especially if you are a Californian. (Sign it anyway, even if you’re not.) This is a small grassroots effort that has a chance to work its way up the system through some specific members of congress who have to answer to liberals at the ballot box.

Make them do it.

Yes We Can Impeach Jay Bybee

by dday

As we read with growing horror the most recent torture memos, knowing that there are more revelations to come, I think a lot of us are asking the question that mcjoan asked yesterday. “Now what?” How can we address this moral rot that continues to eat away at our legitimacy? What can be done? Mcjoan offers a couple suggestions.

The process by which our government came not only to torture, but through torturous logic try to convince themselves that it was legal is not just the product of evil. It’s the product of excessive, unchecked power that has proven far too easy to seize, to hold, and to exercise.

And we can’t allow that to happen again.

Mcjoan is right that our corroded, accountability-free zone in Washington will require an incredible amount of effort just to bring us to these steps. We need to counter the establishment pressure to move away from this evil with our own pressure, to support the rule of law, to recognize that justice delayed is justice denied, and that a failure to hold accountable these acts will result in them returning, in spades, in the future. Without this accounting, in a very real sense our democracy dies.

And there is an actual mechanism, a way to leverage grassroots anger and push the elected officials who can make these decisions, at least in one case. We can prove the desire for accountability in the country and take a systematic approach to restore democracy and the rule of law. And it starts with Jay Bybee.

We’ve been talking about this, but I want to reiterate that the California Democratic Party can speak with one voice about this next week. Grassroots activists submitted a resolution to be decided at next week’s convention in Sacramento that would call for the impeachment of Jay Bybee from the 9th Circuit. This resolution has already been accepted, UNANIMOUSLY, by the Los Angeles County Democratic Party. It can pass at the state level.

Impeachment would require a majority vote in the House, and removal would need a 2/3 vote in the trial in the Senate. I agree with Jonathan Zasloff that there are likely 34 Republicans in the Senate willing to go on record as objectively pro-torture, and thus removal would be less likely to be successful. I also agree that the Congress should be compelled to do this anyway.

Regardless of the Obama Administration’s decision on prosecution, then, impeachment hearings and a Senate trial for Bybee would signal a necessary reassertion of Congresional authority and would ensure at least some minimal accountability.

Alas, emphasis there should be on the “minimal.” I would hope that the House would impeach, but Senate Republicans would clearly vote no to prevent removal.

I don’t know how the politics work on this. The Beltway media will clearly spin this as the Democrats obsessed with the past and not concerned about the supposedly grave national security implications. On the other hand, Republicans would be forced to defend an incompetent, ethically-challenged judge.

But maybe, given how unclear the politics are, it might be best to do, you know, the right thing. John Conyers should start scheduling preliminary hearings right away.

Resolutions are somewhat toothless unless used properly AFTER the fact. In the resolution (which I’ll put below), it is stipulated that “a copy of this resolution with its original authorization be sent to the Office of the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, the Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, and the Majority Leader of the United States Senate, and that copies of the signed resolution be sent to each member of the California delegation to the United States Senate and House of Representatives.” California members of the HJC include Zoe Lofgren, Maxine Waters, Howard Berman, Brad Sherman, Adam Schiff and Linda Sanchez. The last five, at least, have part or all of LA County in their districts, and could be told RIGHT NOW that their local party has resolved unanimously to impeach Bybee. Should the entire state party agree, all the California members, including the Speaker of the House, and the two Senators (both of whom voted against confirming Bybee) can be told the same. And resolutions like this could spring up all over the country, increasing pressure from the bottom up for the Congress to act.

It starts next week in Sacramento. The Resolutions Committee meeting will be held at 3:00 on Friday, April 24, at the Sacramento Convention Center, 1400 J St., Sacramento, CA. If you’re in the area or if you are a delegate, you can come to the meeting and advocate for the resolution. But the decision will likely be made beforehand. Only a few resolutions get out of committee and to the floor of the convention, and the others are tabled, or combined, or referred to a separate committee. We CANNOT let this happen. The ledership of the California Democratic Party needs to hear from constituents on this issue.

Sacramento Office
(916) 442-5707 phone
(916) 442-5715 fax

Los Angeles Office
(310) 407-0980 phone
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I’ve also created a petition at Petition Online urging the CDP to pass this.

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We have an opportunity to use the party apparatus to push for accountability and send it up to leaders in Washington. I urge everyone to get on board with this. Thanks.

Military Injustice

by digby

General Taguba, one of the top officers who was drummed out of the corps by the Bush adminstration for telling the truth, has been spending his retirement trying to bring together human rights groups and the army, under the belief that the army cannot function without a strong moral code. He believes that members of the armed services who were involved in these crimes should be prosecuted.

This article describes his work and philosophy and brings up a very good point with which those who argue against prosecution should be confronted:

Even when soldiers are not in combat, and are instead serving the American public and the many peoples of the world abroad via merchant shipping protection and humanitarian aid, they are obliged, Taguba stated, to abide by this strict moral code, since their very presence has a profound effect on the American image. Despite the horrors of combat, Taguba stated unequivocally that troops “are not immune or exempt from criminal acts, bad behavior, or tragedy in their operations.”

Just as troops are not immune from prosecution-indeed, they must be held accountable for their actions-so must senior civilian officials be held accountable for policies that systematized and legitimized torture and other abuses of power by U.S. troops in the War on Terror, Taguba stated. If the “torture memos” penned by John Yoo, Alberto Gonzales, and David Addington, among others, were catalysts for the soldiers to engage in criminal acts, as Taguba surmised, these officials need to be held accountable.

“Abu Ghraib emerged from a structure developed by senior officials in the Bush White House and by those who thought it was necessary to blindly advance the Bush administration’s goals,” the General declared. “Abu Ghraib was not just happenstance. It was a morbid consequence of a policy that emanated from the Office of Legal Counsel and the Justice Department.”

According to Taguba, these failures not only constitute war crimes, but also have emboldened America’s enemies abroad, leading to greater numbers of American deaths in Iraq.

However, far from being held accountable, senior administration officials have quietly ridden off into the sunset. Indeed, after seventeen high level investigations, army soldiers were signaled out for punishment despite presence of evidence regarding upper level officials’ awareness and support. “Over 200 soldiers and officers were punished…unfortunately no civilian officials or contractors have been punished for their involvement,” Taguba stated

Some legal hack writing a CYA memo that isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on cannot cannot excuse the fact that grunts paid a price for their cruel mistreatment of prisoners and CIA operatives and civilian contractors will not. Why the disparity?

h/t to bb