Q Well, Mr. President, you’ve known Mr. Prodi for a long time, and you’ve known Mr. Berlusconi — you’ve known both of them. And how would you assess the personal relationship that you had with Mr. Prodi and with Mr. Berlusconi? Is there a difference how comfortable would you feel with one or the other?
THE PRESIDENT: I feel very comfortable with both. The first thing that’s important is I feel comfortable with the people of Italy. We’ve got very close ties.
And let me just take a step back. What’s interesting about our country is that we’ve got — we’ve had close ties with a lot of countries. My ranch was settled by Germans.
Q Really?
THE PRESIDENT: Yes. There’s a huge number of Italian Americans. A lot of Russian Americans. You know, Norm Mineta in my Cabinet is a Japanese American. In other words, so when you talk about relations with an American President, you’ve got to understand that there’s a — at least I have, I know my predecessors have, connections, close connections with people who have fond — either fond memories and/or great pride in their motherland.
The consistent inability of Democrats and liberals to pay proper respect to their adversaries has surely done more damage to them than to their adversaries. Their misunderestimation will continue to cost them as long as they persist in their comforting delusion that the whip-smart George W. Bush is an idiot.
And, by the way, Norm Mineta’s resignation was official last week.
Jonathan Chait expands upon his Sunday op-ed, noting that I offered up “a fairly cogent and persuasive, albeit profanity-laced, case against Lieberman.” (I did say shit and fuck once each. Oops, I did it again.)
Chait reiterates that he dislikes Lieberman but is concerned that if Lieberman loses he will become a martyr. I suppose he probably will. But he will be one without a platform in the US Senate. He will do much less damage as a Fox News analyst or an AEI fellow — or even Sec Def reporting to his good pal Dick Cheney. (Even I don’t think he’s worse than Rumsfeld — who is?) In any event, he will no longer be an elected Democrat from a liberal state deriding his own party and enabling the Republicans. That is its own reward.
Chait worries even more that if Lieberman actually wins the primary, or the general as an independent, he’ll be angry and alienated from liberals. Frankly, I’m not sure what that means. Will the man of integrity suddenly begin changing his stance on the issues? If the worry is that he will become more rhetorically abusive toward the base of his own party, well what else is new? He already went on the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal and said we were undermining national security by speaking out against the president. His disdain for us (and I would argue in that case, for American values) is manifest already and has been for years.
Chait’s larger point is that the netroots are a danger to liberalism because of our alleged “party line.” He begins with this:
Since I have space here, I’d offer up two prime examples of the party line. The first is Iraq. To be on the side of the angels, one must favor withdrawal and believe that there was no rational case to be made for war given the publicly-known information in 2002.
I find this interesting because to the best of my knowledge, virtually the entire Democratic party is in favor of some kind of withdrawal from Iraq. This is a mainstream position. Indeed, there were only six Democrats in the senate who voted against the Levin-Reed resolution that called for a phased redeployment: Sens. Mark Dayton of Minnesota, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Mark Pryor of Arkansas, Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, Bill Nelson of Florida and Ben Nelson of Nebraska. Only one of them is taking heat for his position on Iraq. There is no litmus test — but Blue State Democrats in safe seats who defy their constituents’ wishes on this matter risk being challenged — by their constituents.
The second part of his argument — “one must … believe that there was no rational case to be made for war given the publicly-known information in 2002” is puzzling. After all, the rationale for the war in Iraq was absurd on its face: al Qaeda had attacked us so we attacked Iraq. We could have attacked New Zealand for all the sense it made.
Now I realize that they dazzled a lot of people with a lot of bullshit but the fact remains that even if the publicly known information had turned out to be true it still wouldn’t have made any sense. The world was full of potential threats. Why Iraq? Why then? Why the rush? Why alienate our allies? Why take our eye off the ball? Why not North Korea or Pakistan, both of which at that very moment presented a more obvious threat? Those are questions that have not to this day been adequately answered. Hell, the questions have barely even been asked by the mainstream press.
This was not a tough call on the merits, regardless of the lame demagogic gobbledygook (drone planes anyone?) about Iraq’s “weapons of mass destruction.” That is unless you supported the ridiculous Bush Doctrine that permits the US to “take out” any country that might someday think of posing a threat. Or you agreed with the puerile notion that we had to prove our manhood in the middle east by kicking somebody’s ass — didn’t matter whose. I reserve the right to not support people who thought things like that — or who believed that it made sense after 9/11 to invade a country in the mid-east that had not attacked us. They were very foolish about something very serious.
I do not, however, think that the Democrats in congress believed any such thing. I’m not so naive that I don’t know that the political exigencies of the moment put Democrats in a tough spot. I wish they had had the courage to stand up and say, “wtf?” but the militant zeitgeist demanded that they genuflect to the flag every five minutes or be called terrorist loving traitors. It was not easy, particularly since the memory of the Democratic votes against the first Gulf War seemed fresh to many of those geezers.
Still, 22 Democratic senators and Jim Jeffords voted against the use of force resolution, so it’s not like this view was way out there. And I have no doubt that not one of those 23 saw even the remotest justification for war with Iraq. (I seriously doubt the rest of them did either.)
Today, most Democrats who voted for the resolution have found ways to publicly distance themselves from that moment. I think they know that history is going to judge them harshly for their weakness. It will judge America harshly. But while I do insist on my prerogative to boldly assert that up was up and down was down back in 2002, I’m not suggesting that every Democrat who voted for the war be booted out of office. I haven’t seen any evidence that anyone is doing that. You will recall that Democrats, including the entire blogosphere, supported John Kerry and John Edwards in overwhelming numbers, both of whom voted for the war. It just ain’t so that we are hardline doctrinaire on this subject. (At least until Commandante Markos orders us to be.)
As for political writers who continue to insist that the war was rational in 2002, I no longer respect their opinions. So what?
Chait’s other example of a party line is that we bloggers demand that everybody kiss our asses:
To be in the good graces of the activists, one must believe not only that the rise of Internet activism has some potentially positive ramifications, but to signal that one accepts a Manichean battle between virtuous people-powered activists and corrupt Washington insiders.
I am unaware of that requirement, but speaking for myself I could not care less if people believe that we are the second coming or even that they think “the rise of Internet activism has some potentially positive ramifications.” (I do have to wonder how much you have to hate internet activism to think that there aren’t even any potential positive ramifications of it, though.) Perhaps there are those who feel that politicians must signal that they accept the “Manichean battle between virtuous activists and corrupt Washington insiders” but I didn’t get the memo. Requiring everyone to see us as heroes is a little grandiose, even for the elite blogofascist cabal.
It should be noted that the observation that the political establishment is corrupt is pretty mundane stuff, however. It’s been a staple of politics forever. And the belief that “the people” need to take back control of their government is also pretty mundane. It’s even got a name. It’s called populism. Only the delivery system is new. After nearly two decades of DLC corporatism and Democratic losses, did anyone not anticipate that that there might be exactly this sort of backlash? Whose fault is that?
It’s certainly fair enough to criticize populism on the merits. There are ongoing debates within the blogosphere on that very topic. I will admit that defending the political establishment probably won’t find you Kos level readership (a sad reality of which I’m sure that the publishers of TNR are all too well aware.) But the blogging marketplace is wide open to anyone and if someone wants to defend the establishment they are free to do so and there are plenty of blogs that do it. There are even official establishment blogs. The worst thing they face from people who disagree is criticism.
Chait quotes Kevin Drum who wrote:
Last I heard, Grover Norquist had built an entire career on insisting that every last Republican politician kiss his pinkie ring and pledge never to vote for a tax increase. And the Republican Party seems to have done pretty well as a result.
and then adds:
I think the citation of Norquist is telling. Some of the liberal internet activists consciously fashion themselves after Norquist (who, by the way, fashions himself after Lenin) and would like to replicate on the left the comintern-like apparatus he has constructed on the right. It is true that the Norquist mentality has helped Republicans win elections. But plenty of conservatives wonder whether it has actually helped advance conservatism. Government, after all, has grown under Republican rule, and the fact that it now funnels more of its largesse to GOP-affiliated interests is of small comfort to honest conservatives.
(That’s actually a cheap shot at Drum. He was making a rhetorical argument not advancing that theory.)
If there are those in the blogoshpere who are consciously fashioning themselves after that corrupt putz Grover Norquist, I’m unaware of it, and I think I’d know. The only people anywhere who are wearing that particular tinfoil are the writers of TNR.
Certainly Democrats of all stripes have awakened to the notion that the partisan infrastructure the Republicans created must be met with something. We are at a huge disadvantage. But that isn’t a netroots thing. Ask John Podesta or Simon Rosenberg or any number of others who are working to set up think tanks and publishing houses and all kinds of organizations that have nothing to do with the netroots. I honestly don’t know what the hell he’s talking about.
I would welcome a little more organization and communication in the netroots and look forward to the medium maturing as an effective way to advance liberalism. But all we’ve got right now is a very loose confederation of activists, writers, gadflys and humorists — and millions of readers — who all agree that Republicans (and Joe Lieberman) are bad for the country and we are doing whatever we can to replace them. We also tend to agree that something has gone awry in the Democratic party — the fact that we are completely out of power being the big clue. We discuss that a lot. Some bloggers raise money for candidates. Some write emails to each other about topics they are interested in and try out new ideas on each other. Is that really so threatening?
It is true that the Norquist mentality has helped Republicans win elections. But plenty of conservatives wonder whether it has actually helped advance conservatism. Government, after all, has grown under Republican rule, and the fact that it now funnels more of its largesse to GOP-affiliated interests is of small comfort to honest conservatives.
Yes, isn’t that something? Now that it is falling under its own venal, corrupt weight, all the “honest conservatives” are suddenly realizing that it isn’t conservative at all. How very convenient. Chait is falling for the oldest trick in the book and my regular readers know exactly what I’m talking about. Conservatism cannot fail, it can only be failed. (If you want to see a purge in full glory, keep your eyes on the right if they lose the election. Nobody does it better. Not even Stalin.)
Chait claims the blogosphere is paranoid and sectarian and he worries what it will do to liberalism. I’m frankly worried about the paranoia and sectarianism at The New Republic, a magazine I’ve been reading for 30 years. This notion that Kos is some sort of commander of the blogofascist empire is ridiculous. Kos is a successful, respected blogger, but believe me, I don’t take orders from anybody and I don’t know any other bloggers who do. The blogosphere is a kind of organism. To the extent there’s a hierarchy, it’s not manufactured, it’s organic, and there is no recognized leadership — there’s readership. This idea of a Stalinist comintern is a misunderstanding of epic proportions. The blogosphere has the most open distribution of power of any human endeavor I’ve ever participated in. If a certain amount of groupthink occurs, it’s certainly no more than what you see at the DLC — or The New Republic.
People in Washington need to wrap their minds around the fact that this stuff really is bubbling up from below and it’s real. Bloggers are merely in the vanguard of a rising leftwing populist sentiment around the country. It is a predictable reaction when a party ceases to be responsive to its voters. Liberalism has been moribund for some time now. This is a chance to at least begin the process of resuscitation and could be used by the political establishment as a useful counter-weight to help drag the country back from the brink of rightwing extremism.(If that’s what they want, that is.) Smart politicians will accept this and find a way to use its strength strategically, not fight it.
Jay Rosen wrote in the comments to Chait’s post:
In my view… The TNR writers just cannot accept that liberal opinion journalism of the insider variety has been invaded or at least affected by the unbelievably crude, overheated and totally unsavvy writers in the Kos, Townhouse orbit, and that people in politics, specifically the Democratic party, actually pay attention to these activist-loudmouths. The “perch” they thought TNR represented just isn’t the same in the Net era, which to them isn’t fair. They hate it. They wanted their turn to sneer at the unsubtleties of left activists so as to demonstrate TNR-style Washington savvy.
They went to good schools; they know people on the inside. They want those gates (around liberal opinion journalism) back up. The gates were good to them.
I didn’t say it, he did.
I would just again point out that the characterization of the “Kos Townhouse” orbit as being a group of “unbelievably crude, overheated and totally unsavvy … activist-loudmouths” is only partially correct. (I proudly wear the labels, others may not.) But to the extent you believe it’s true, keep in mind that it reflects the frustration of millions of politically active progressive citizens who have been scapegoated and derided for decades by the political insiders who now find themselves on the other end of the attack. These people are the base of the Democratic Party. If people think the party can prevail in this modern hyper-partisan era by continuing to insult its most active and ardent supporters, then have at it. But no one should be surprised then when those supporters decide to take matters into their own hands. Democracy is untidy that way.
I consider it my duty to promote young liberal entrepreneurs whenever I can, so here’s a little product you might find refreshing as we go into the dog days of summer.
I have not tried it yet, but it sounds really, really good to me.
I didn’t get the memo from Carville, so I don’t know if he warned Democrats to tip-toe around religious issues and instead suggested that more votes could be had by assisting the religious right in their attempts to take over the government. But I wanted to revisit the statement made a few days ago by Barack Obama where he paid lip service to religious conservatives by stating Democrats should embrace the evangelical end of the spirituality spectrum. He crossed a line, in my opinion, when he said this:
“It is doubtful that children reciting the Pledge of Allegiance feel oppressed or brainwashed as a consequence of muttering the phrase ‘under God.'”
Lately I’ve been reading through Bernard Bailyn’s Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, a work that earned him the Bancroft Prize in American History, along with a Pulitzer in the same category. In the book, Bailyn cited A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law where John Adams essentially lays out his views on church and state (or what he refers to as the canon and feudal law):
Since the promulgation of Christianity, the two greatest systems of tyranny that have sprung from this original, are the canon and the feudal law. The desire of dominion, that great principle by which we have attempted to account for so much good and so much evil, is, when properly restrained, a very useful and noble movement in the human mind. But when such restraints are taken off, it becomes an encroaching, grasping, restless, and ungovernable power. Numberless have been the systems of iniquity contrived by the great for the gratification of this passion in themselves; but in none of them were they ever more successful than in the invention and establishment of the canon and the feudal law.
By the former of these, the most refined, sublime, extensive, and astonishing constitution of policy that ever was conceived by the mind of man was framed by the Romish clergy for the aggrandizement of their own order. All the epithets I have here given to the Romish policy are just, and will be allowed to be so when it is considered, that they even persuaded mankind to believe, faithfully and undoubtingly, that God Almighty had entrusted them with the keys of heaven, whose gates they might open and close at pleasure; with a power of dispensation over all the rules and obligations of morality; with authority to license all sorts of sins and crimes; with a power of deposing princes and absolving subjects from allegiance; with a power of procuring or withholding the rain of heaven and the beams of the sun; with the management of earthquakes, pestilence, and famine; nay, with the mysterious, awful, incomprehensible power of creating out of bread and wine the flesh and blood of God himself. All these opinions they were enabled to spread and rivet among the people by reducing their minds to a state of sordid ignorance and staring timidity, and by infusing into them a religious horror of letters and knowledge. Thus was human nature chained fast for ages in a cruel, shameful, and deplorable servitude to him, and his subordinate tyrants, who, it was foretold, would exalt himself above all that was called God, and that was worshipped.
In the latter we find another system, similar in many respects to the former; which, although it was originally formed, perhaps, for the necessary defense of a barbarous people against the inroads and invasions of her neighboring nations, yet for the same purposes of tyranny, cruelty, and lust, which had dictated the canon law, it was soon adopted by almost all the princes of Europe, and wrought into the constitutions of their government. It was originally a code of laws for a vast army in a perpetual encampment. The general was invested with the sovereign propriety of all the lands within the territory. Of him, as his servants and vassals, the first rank of his great officers held the lands; and in the same manner the other subordinate officers held of them; and all ranks and degrees held their lands by a variety of duties and services, all tending to bind the chains the faster on every order of mankind. In this manner the common people were held together in herds and clans in a state of servile dependence on their lords, bound, even by the tenure of their lands, to follow them, whenever they commanded, to their wars, and in a state of total ignorance of every thing divine and human, excepting the use of arms and the culture of their lands.
But another event still more calamitous to human liberty, was a wicked confederacy between the two systems of tyranny above described. It seems to have been even stipulated between them, that the temporal grandees should contribute every thing in their power to maintain the ascendancy of the priesthood, and that the spiritual grandees in their turn, should employ their ascendancy over the consciences of the people, in impressing on their minds a blind, implicit obedience to civil magistracy.
Thus, as long as this confederacy lasted, and the people were held in ignorance, liberty, and with her, knowledge and virtue too, seem to have deserted the earth, and one age of darkness succeeded another, till God in his benign providence raised up the champions who began and conducted the Reformation. From the time of the Reformation to the first settlement of America, knowledge gradually spread in Europe, but especially in England; and in proportion as that increased and spread among the people, ecclesiastical and civil tyranny, which I use as synonymous expressions for the canon and feudal laws, seem to have lost their strength and weight. The people grew more and more sensible of the wrong that was done them by these systems, more and more impatient under it, and determined at all hazards to rid themselves of it; till at last, under the execrable race of the Stuarts, the struggle between the people and the confederacy aforesaid of temporal and spiritual tyranny, became formidable, violent, and bloody.
It was this great struggle that peopled America. It was not religion alone, as is commonly supposed; but it was a love of universal liberty, and a hatred, a dread, a horror, of the infernal confederacy before described, that projected, conducted, and accomplished the settlement of America.
I don’t think Democrats should acquiesce on the fundamental principle of religious separation, one of the root causes of the American rebellion, and instead should make hay from something recently brought back into view by the euthanizing of right wing icon Ken Lay. It also happens to be something the Carville memo indicates is ripe for harvesting; it’s the corruption of the American system of free enterprise, which is now dominated by hierarchical schemers and corporate thieves. The current administration favors restricted competition, monopolies, oligopolies, and cartels because it makes it easier to play the market, and because in the short run it protects the big boys by stifling competition. But the losers in the corrupted game are the workers (voters), including honest entrepreneurs and innovators, who are left frustrated and anxious by a system that rewards cheaters. Everyone is being eaten alive by the sharks in the water. The endless cycle of mergers and acquisitions keeps the money flowing up the pyramid, where it is then siphoned off for personal gain by pyramid-squatting CEOs. So if the Democrats need to be righteous about something, and want something to reclaim from the opposition, I would say to reclaim the integrity of the marketplace, which this administration has utterly corrupted and destroyed. A marketplace free from abuse yields a symbiosis between a Republic and her people. Government infused with religion has the opposite impact, as John Adams so eloquently wrote long ago.
All this handwringing amongst the cognoscenti about the barbarians at the gates ruining everything for the Democratic party (again) and what do I find in my mailbox but this strategy memo from insider Dem establishment polling outfit, Democracy Corps run by none other than Carville and Stan Greenberg. And lo and behold, here’s what they have to say:
The Democrats need to catch up with the country, which wants to vote for outsiders, is demanding change and ready to respond to the Democrats’ message and definition of the election. All things considered, this is not a bad problem to have, but it requires a new intensity and focus to grab ahold of the forces for change and take the Democrats to a new level.
Change dynamic one: The Iraq war. This is the biggest voting issue for Democrats (and independents and change voters). While voters are divided on policy issues(like timetable for withdrawal), the continuing attention to the war increases dissatisfaction and elevates the change vote.
This means that it is not a loser to run against the war. It has always been self-evident to me, but for some reason the Democratic leadership and the punditocrisy can’t seem to grasp this. Indeed, this Lamont challenge may just help other candidates around the country because it shows that the Democratic party is serious about challenging the Republican “stay the course” policy.
Change dynamic two: Washington is working for big corporations and the privileged, not the people or the country. There is an abiding sense that things are out of balance in Washington, with political leaders working for the big corporate interests and the privileged, rather than trying to have America work for everyone. This is the top reason (along with rising costs) for wanting to change the Republican Congress.
Change dynamic three: They’re not taking care of America. Across a whole range of issues – Iraq, Katrina, the borders and immigration, and trade and manufacturing – voters think the political leaders are failing to step up and take care of America. This is why the House Republicans are trying to keep immigration focused on the borders.
Change dynamic four: This economy brings you high gas and health care costs and financial pressure for the middle class. Because the elites, journalists and the Republicans think this is a strong economy, the campaign thus far has neglected the great frustration with rising costs and financial pressures – for many groups, the top reasons to change the Congress.
Change dynamic five: They’ve bankrupted the country. There is a sense of foreboding in the country that this Republican government has bankrupted the country, run up the deficits and passed on our debts and obligations to future generations. They have made a mess of things financially and hurt the country. This is one of the top worries about any future Congress, and one of the key things voters want to put a halt to.
Now all that’s really funny to me because it is pretty much exactly the constellation of issues the netroots have been plugging for months now. As it turns out we aren’t a bunch of out of touch retreads who have no sense of what the silent majority really wants — it turns out we are the ones in tune with the zeitgeist. All these Lieberman defenders of the status quo are the ones who are failing to make the sale to the American people because they don’t have a fucking clue what the American people are looking for.
The Republicans are trying to deny Democrats the voters they need. Understand that those undecided and dislodged voters do respond to these conservative issues, yet these are the voters Democrats need to raise their vote. They have not closed the deal because the image of the Democrats has not improved over the last year and the number of Democratic identifiers has not risen.
Thus, Democrats must do better in identifying with the forces for change and making them matter in the election. If they do that, they will consolidate their vote, win over the undecided, increase turnout and demoralize the Republicans. But Democrats must also act aggressively to confound and undermine the efficacy of the conservative issues, thus allowing these voters to vote for change. That combination can take the Democrats to a dramatic level.
I would suggest that the whining about the horrible hippie horde that is challenging poor old Joe Lieberman might not be the best way to do this.
There’s a lot in the memo that’s quite interesting, but I’m going to highlight this because it’s an argument I’ve been howling about for months now, and have been increasingly demoralized because it seems Democrats are running as fast as they can from it:
The increased attention to Iraq, even when Republicans control the debate, hurts them when people decide their congressional vote. The country is divided on setting a deadline (50 to 49 percent) and we win an actual exchange on the issue by just 4 points (50 to 46 percent).
However, when we include accountability in the message – “exercise oversight and push for a new direction, not more of the same” rather than a deadline – Democrats’ advantage doubles to 8 points. More importantly, when we promise to send investigative committees to find the missing money, investigate the lack of armor and no-bid contracts, the lead nearly doubles again to 14 points (55 to 41 percent).
For some reason the Democratic leadership is convinced that if they run explicitly on accountability — on any subject — they will be seen as sourpusses and nobody wants to vote for a downer who will spend a bunch of time and money trying to sort out the atrocities of the last few years. This is clearly not the case. People are frustrated but they have no reason to believe that the Democrats will do anything about this situation in Washington. Why should they?
Up to now, I’ve only been going on instinct, but I have always felt that they will not get the turnout they need unless they make an explict case for why the Democrats will be able to make a difference if they win this election. I simply can’t see how they can do that without running on accountability. People know that Bush will be in for two more years, so any hope of enacting a positive agenda is impossible. He’d love to use that rusty veto pen of his. This is a referendum on the Republicans and we should run against them, hard.
I think war profiteering is a surefire winner. People know this has been a windfall for corporations and this is an excellent way to consolidate the Republican culture of corruption and the dissatisfaction with the war(the two most important issues according to this poll) under one umbrella. I think people are becoming outraged — they just don’t see that the Democrats will do anything about it. (I would also like to see a Democratic majority judiciary committee look into the abuse of presidential powers — hold some hearings, air this thing out in public. For the good of the country…)
In fairness, there is a bunch of stuff in the strategy memo about “reasurring” voters that we are against gay marriage, raising taxes on the middle class, sex and violence on TV and precipitously withdrawing from Iraq. The usual boilerplate defensive moves. They claim that these issues are salient with seniors and blue collar workers and must be finessed. I would think that these are the kinds of issues that each candiate needs to take into consideration depending on the make up of his or her constituency. The national party line should be 100% offense.
The good news is that we aren’t nuts. The people really are looking for change. We in the netroots and the grassroots are agitating for that change — and change is painful for entrenched interests so they are fighting us all the way. That’s ok. It’s the way it works. We will just keep hammering this and hope that candidates are listening to their potential constituents and that the establishment is reading the polls.
Last night on CBS the analysis was that “the left” is pulling the Democrats away from the mainstream and the Republicans would win going away because the “moderates” would be scared off. That analysis is wrong. These numbers quite clearly show that the grassroots of the Democratic party are not pulling the party away from the mainstream, they are pulling it toward it. This isn’t about left vs right. It’s about change vs. status quo.
Everybody’stalking about the fact that Jon “Box Turtle” Kyl and Huckleberry Graham wrote a little play and tried to insert it into the congressional record as a transcript in the Hamdan case. I mentioned this in passing last week in my post about Bush’s “unusual” interpretation of the decision (which when you consider his interpretive signing statements, may be less of a joke than that I originally made it.)
Knowingly filing false information with a court is grounds for disbarment in my state, and I would be very surprised if Arizona and South Carolina didn’t have the same standards — this sort of behavior skews the entire legal process and it cannot be tolerated. Period.
I cannot emphasize enough how much this is NOT done as an attorney, and how it clouds every single thing you ever do from that point forward. No judge, anywhere, is going to believe anything either man ever does or files after this without triple checking it. And when you don’t have your integrity and your honesty as an attorney, you are useless to your clients over the long run.
Actually that’s already happened. At the end of this informative John Dean article, he writes:
Out of an apparent concern for interbranch comity, the High Court has chosen to ignore the bogus brief filed by Senators Graham and Kyl, rather than reprimanding the Senators. Nevertheless, when Graham and Kyl sought to file the very same brief, a month later, with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columba, Slate’s Emily Bazelon reports that court “issued an unusual order rejecting” their amicus brief alone, although they accepted five others.
No one familiar with this remarkable behavior by Graham and Kyl can doubt why the court did not want to hear from these senators.
Does anyone remember the entire alumni association of the Barbizon school of blond former prosecutors hissing and shrieking in unison over the threat to the legal system posed by Monica Lewinsky filing a false deposition in the dismissed Paula Jones case? I do. You see, it was an assault on the rule of law to file false documents in a court proceeding. Nothing was more of a slap in the face to our constitution and our American system of justice than to try to defraud the court.
Now Huck and the Turtle were only dealing with a case of the most serious magnitude imaginable, a direct constitutional question of the separation of pwoers that was headed all the way to the Supreme Court to decide. There were, to my knowledge, no blow jobs involved. (There have been allegations of sexual humiliation and torture. But only the good kind.) And Huck and the Turtle are, after all, Republicans, which means that when they defraud the court it is for the country’s own good.
Still, I will never get over the rank hypocrisy of Huckelberry Graham, the unctuous House Manager, who droned on day after day in the impeachment hearings pretending to care deeply about the rule ‘o law. One hopes that Christy is right and that any time the government tries to cite a Huckleberry colloquy going forward that the opposing counsel brings this up and requests that it be checked for veracity. Huck and his partner The Box Turtle have shown they have a remarkable talent for writing fictional dialog.
Update: I was remiss in not mentioning that this issue was discussed a couple of months ago on other blogs such as Slate and Unclaimed Territory. I was aware of it and I just assumed that everyone else was as well.
Neil the Ethical Werewolf, subbing over a Ezra’s place yesterday, made some excellent points about the Lieberman challenge:
Criticizing “extremists” in your party and making opponents of the war look like unpatriotic radicals does nothing to help Claire McCaskill and Harold Ford win their Senate races. By painting a picture of unpatriotic extreme antiwar Democrats, Lieberman damages the party’s brand and hurts Democrats everywhere.
Triangulation makes sense as a strategy for individual candidates, but it’s not a strategy that an entire party can engage in. In a country with an established two-party system, the media will define the space of moderate opinion relative to the parties themselves. No party will be able to gain a lasting reputation for moderation by compromising and moving towards its opponents. All that’ll happen is that the space of moderation will be narrowed, and opinions that previously were considered moderate will be regarded as extreme.
[…]
I don’t want my safe-seat Democrats triangulating into moderate positions. I want them to explore new territory on the left, so that when our Arkansas and Nebraska Senators triangulate off of them, they end up in positions that are fairly good, or at least non-destructive. And that’s why I have no use for Joe Lieberman. Where Lamont would stretch the field leftward as a moderate personality with progressive views, Lieberman compresses it and perpetuates negative stereotypes of Democrats. It’s time to remove him from politics, and threaten anyone who follows his path with a similar fate. There’s more.
One of the things I think has not been discussed is the value of Joe not being elected as a Democrat if he wins the general election as an independent. Him not being allowed to speak for the party is a positive, he only hurts the ballclub. He’ll have to join the GOP team and just be one of a large crowd of rabid liberal haters. I’m sure it will not be nearly as ego gratifying. That’s a shame.
I realize that these Lieberman posts may be somewhat boring to some of you. But it’s important to me that grassroots Dems arm themselves with the cogent argument for why we are supporting this primary challenge. There is a willful misunderstanding on the part of the MSM and the establishment as to our motives, which does not surprise me, and I think it’s important to use the platforms we have as bloggers to make our case. Sometimes that requires redundancy. I hope you will bear with me, and consider the arguments I make and to which I link. I think we can change this silly out-moded narrative the establishment has concocted if we work at it. At least, I think it’s worth a try.
…The situation in Iraq is a lot better, different than it was a year ago. The Iraqis held three elections. They formed a unity government. They are on the way to building a free and independent Iraq. Their military — two-thirds of their military is now ready, on their own, to lead the fight with some logistical backing from the U.S. or stand up on their own totally. That’s progress.Joe Lieberman, July 6, 2006
Brutality and corruption are rampant in Iraq’s police force, with abuses including the rape of female prisoners, the release of terrorism suspects in exchange for bribes, assassinations of police officers and participation in insurgent bombings, according to confidential Iraqi government documents detailing more than 400 police corruption investigations.
A recent assessment by State Department police training contractors echoes the investigative documents, concluding that strong paramilitary and insurgent influences within the force and endemic corruption have undermined public confidence in the government.
Officers also have beaten prisoners to death, been involved in kidnapping rings, sold thousands of stolen and forged Iraqi passports and passed along vital information to insurgents, the Iraqi documents allege.
The documents, which cover part of 2005 and 2006, were obtained by The Times and authenticated by current and former police officials.
The alleged offenses span dozens of police units and hundreds of officers, including beat cops, generals and police chiefs. Officers were punished in some instances, but the vast majority of cases are either under investigation or were dropped because of lack of evidence or witness testimony.
The investigative documents are the latest in a string of disturbing revelations of abuse and corruption by Iraq’s Interior Ministry, a Cabinet-level agency that employs 268,610 police, immigration, facilities security and dignitary protection officers.
Oh, and there’s even more progress! McJoan at Kos notes this good news:
A mob of gunmen went on a brazen daytime rampage through a predominantly Sunni Arab district of western Baghdad on Sunday, pulling people from their cars and homes and killing them in what officials and residents called a spasm of revenge by Shiite militias for the bombing of a Shiite mosque on Saturday. Hours later, two car bombs exploded beside a Shiite mosque in another Baghdad neighborhood in a deadly act of what appeared to be retaliation.
While Baghdad has been ravaged by Sunni-Shiite bloodletting in recent months, even by recent standards the violence here on Sunday was frightening, delivered with impunity by gun-wielding vigilantes on the street. In the culture of revenge that has seized Iraq, residents all over the city braced for an escalation in the cycle of retributive mayhem between the Shiites and Sunnis that has threatened to expand into civil war….
Far be it from me to question Senator Lieberman’s analysis, but you’d think he’d at least acknowledge that things are just a tad dicey in Iraq right now as he’s smugly scolding his fellow Democrats for undermining the president at the nation’s peril. Optimism is a character trait. Delusion is a diagnosis.
TPM Muckraker connects the dots and comes up with who might have blown the whistle to Peter Hoekstra — and what it probably was about:
I’m not the only person to note that five days before Hoekstra wrote his now-famous letter, NSA whistleblower Russ Tice — James “State of War” Risen’s source for his NYT domestic wiretapping story — told inside-the-beltway pub Congress Daily he was planning to tell congressional staffers “unlawful activity occurred at the agency under the supervision of Gen. Michael Hayden beyond what has been publicly reported, while hinting that it might have involved the illegal use of space-based satellites and systems to spy on U.S. citizens.”
Space based satellites and systems to spy on U.S. citizens. I’m sure these satellites are only tracking terrorists.
Clearly, this isn’t warrantless listening on phone conversations or reading emails. That’s covered by the other secret, illegal NSA spying program. So what the hell else are they doing? Is this some sort of tracking system?
Keep in mind that they are funnelling huge wads of cash to local and state police agencies for “homeland security” as well. How many of these domestic spy programs do you suppose they need?
I’m beginning to think the only way we’ll ever get to the bottom of this is if we start a rumor that they are tracking gun owners. That’s the only thing that worries Republicans enough that the congress will do something about it. If spy satellites are illegally monitoring people’s homes or offices in some way, they believe Americans should be happy to comply. You have to be willing to give up some of your civil liberties so that the government can keep you safe — except from gunfire, for which you should take personal responsibility by being heavily armed and prepared to kill in self-defense. The government has no business messing with the second amendment. The rest, however, are up for grabs.
I am undoubtedly much more liberal than Jim Webb. But we are in agreement (and have been for years) about the ramifications of this war and the need for some accountability:
GS: Senator Allen seemed to say that you were part of the ‘I told you so’ caucus on Iraq.
JW: Well, I think there are a lot of people who don’t want to be reminded that they were warned. I think it’s relevant, when you talk about how you build national strategy, and how you use the military — to talk about how these decisions should be made. There should be some sort of accountability.
Is that so hard?
I would really like to see Democrats everywhere making that argument. If people see that Democrats are going to take over and examine where this country went wrong and that they are prepared to work to develop a real national security strategy, for the first time in many years I think people are ready to listen.
George Allen’s “I told you so caucus” line is whiny and weak. Dems have a good chance to challenge Rove’s persistant, schoolyard nonsense this time. I would love to see them do it.
Jim Webb is the perfect example of a Democrat who is taking it to the Republicans — and in the process proves that there is no ideological litmus test other than a fierce desire on the part of the rank and file to stop taking crap from the GOP on national security — particularly since their national security strategy is dangerous and immoral. They are as weak as they have ever been on that issue and it’s past time to make a move. Webb is one of those guys who’s willing to call them on their delusional nonsense.
I would remind you what he wrote back in 2004:
Bush arguably has committed the greatest strategic blunder in modern memory. To put it bluntly, he attacked the wrong target. While he boasts of removing Saddam Hussein from power, he did far more than that. He decapitated the government of a country that was not directly threatening the United States and, in so doing, bogged down a huge percentage of our military in a region that never has known peace. Our military is being forced to trade away its maneuverability in the wider war against terrorism while being placed on the defensive in a single country that never will fully accept its presence.
There is no historical precedent for taking such action when our country was not being directly threatened. The reckless course that Bush and his advisers have set will affect the economic and military energy of our nation for decades. It is only the tactical competence of our military that, to this point, has protected him from the harsh judgment that he deserves.
And that’s not holding up any longer.
This is big, important stuff and its worth fighting over. Rather than talk about how we need to resurrect the ghosts of George Kennan and Harry Truman and relive the glory days of 1949, maybe we could just live in the here and now and deal with what’s before us. The Republicans fucked up hugely. Somebody has to clean up the mess and it isn’t going to be them. They refuse to admit error. So let’s run on that.
I may not agree with Jim Webb’s every position on some issues I hold dear — he’s a Red State Dem, after all — and I’m sure there will be times when I will be arguing against him if he winds up in the senate. But I think he is a breath of fresh air in the Democratic party and I’m glad to have him. I know that cuts against the prefered narrative that says I’m purging all the good decent centrists in the party for my own personal gain, but it just ain’t so. I’m just looking for a few good men and women who aren’t afraid to take it to the Republicans. Jim Webb is my kind of fighting Dem.
Update: For a serious look at this concept of “judgment” vs “intelligence” see this post, and many others linked within, by Arthur Silber, particularly on the seeming inevitability of an attack on Iran. It will sober you up. This game ain’t over.
Unless there is accountability, unless there is a public assessment of the misjudgment that brought us Iraq (and potentially Iran) we will continue on this fumbling path where cheap political opportunists like Karl Rove can lead this nation around by the nose to fulfill the domestic political needs of his candidates and the coffers of his contributors. It has to stop.
