Mr Victoria Toensing just had a hissy fit on Wolfie because his co-pundit Richard Ben-Veniste agreed that Cheney didn’t break the law but pointed out that it was hypocritical for Cheney to lecture people about leaking when he was authorizing his staff to selectively leak to reporters under cover of anonymity.
Mr Toensing rose up and bared his claws at Wolf because he had apparently agreed to come on to only discuss the “legal” issues and not to get into a partisan discussion. He’s just an old non-partisan, country lawyer, you know. He doesn’t do politics.
White House aides had arranged for only the first few minutes of the session to be open to reporters. But an apparent mistake left a microphone on for longer than anticipated.
In the interim, he said, “I support the free press, let’s just get them out of the room. …”
“I want to share some thoughts with you before I answer your questions,” he went on to the Republican House members. “First of all, I expect this conversation we’re about to have to stay in the room. I know that’s impossible in Washington.”
He then moved to a defense of the NSA program that allows wiretaps without court warrants as part of certain terrorist investigations.
“I wake up every morning thinking about a future attack, and therefore, a lot of my thinking, and a lot of the decisions I make are based upon the attack that hurt us,” Bush said.
Referring to the controversy surrounding whether the program is legal, he said, “We put constant checks on the program.”
“I take my oath of office seriously. I swear to uphold the Constitution and laws of the United States,” Bush said.
Isn’t he terrific? Even in private he is exactly the same as he is in public. Boy oh boy, it sure is a good thing he didn’t say anything controversial, though. That “technician” (who is coincidentally named Karl Rove — go figure) would have been given a first class ticket to the woodshed. But our preznit is the same stalwart patriot no matter who he is speaking to so that technician knew he had nothing to worry about.
Uh oh, better tell the Beltway Quilting Bee and Ladies Circle Jerk Society that the Angry Left is at it again. One of them infiltrated the annual Republican Decency In Public Discourse Convention and reported on their confidential internal discussion. These leftist barbarians have no shame:
Before an overflow crowd of at least 1000 young right-wing activists, Coulter took her brand of performance art to new heights. Afterwards, I caught up with Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist to ask him about Coulter’s characterization of Muslims as “ragheads.” Before I reveal his indignant response, here are a sampling of Coulter’s most memorable lines.
Coulter on Muslims:
“I think our motto should be post-9-11, ‘raghead talks tough, raghead faces consequences.'” (This declaration prompted a boisterous ovation.)
Coulter on killing Bill Clinton:
(Responding to a question from a Catholic University student about her biggest moral or ethical dilemna) “There was one time I had a shot at Clinton. I thought ‘Ann, that’s not going to help your career.'”
Coulter on moderate Republicans:
“There is more dissent on a slave plantation then amongst moderates in the Republican party.”
Coulter on the Holocaust:
“Iran is soliciting cartoons on the Holocaust. So far, only Ted Rall, Garry Trudeau, and the NY Times have made submissions.”
Coulter on the Supreme Court:
“If we find out someone [referring to a terrorist] is going to attack the Supreme Court next week, can’t we tell Roberts, Alito, Thomas and Scalito?”
After Coulter’s speech, I approached Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist in the CPAC exhibitor’s hall. I asked him what he thought of Coulter’s characterization 15 minutes earlier of Muslims as “ragheads.” HIs reply? “I wasn’t there so I better not comment.”
Something’s going to have to be done about all these rude leftwing bloggers. They have no business sneaking around asking Senator Frist questions like that. Don’t these people have any manners at all?
Update: Jane finds even more grubby angry leftists pretending to be journalists. Lock your doors and hide the wimminfolk.
Update II: Kevin at Catch reports that certain right wing blogs are unhappy with Coulter’s tasteless comments. That’s surprising. They never said anything before. She’s been wowing ’em at the CPAC for years.
Josh Marshall has posted an interesting piece of correspondence from a Democratic staffer regarding the Abramoff affair. There are as number of things in the letter that are worth discussing, but there is one point that offers an intriguing talking point:
The vast majority of Democratic staffers work on the Hill, despite the miserable pay and long hours, to try to achieve some measure of good. Many, many Republican staffers- convinced that government is an evil- work here in order to make money off that necessary evil. That breeds corruption. When you have a majority of members and staffers that could care less about policy ad governing and more about power/influence/money/profit Abramoff is inevitable. When the hard, tedious work of legislating and oversight is done by people motivated by careerism rather than professionalism not only do you have Abramoff, but you have Michael Brown, Halliburton, and illegal NSA wiretapping.
We need to think about ways to communicate why this “culture of corruption” is so pervasive in GOP government and why it is unique to them. This is one good way to explain it:
When Republicans are in charge, watch your wallets. Corruption and incompetence naturally stem from sending people who hate the government to Washington. They obviously aren’t there to be responsive to the public because they don’t believe the government can or should be responsive to the public. They are either there to exercize power for power’s sake, make contacts and build their careers or they are second rate hacks who can’t make it in the private sector. Democrats come to Washington to do good. Republicans come to Washington to feed at the trough.
Most people have already heard how poor little Brownie took down that unctuous haircut with lips, Norm Coleman, this morning. What you may not know is that shortly afterward on MSNBC, professional journalist Bob Kur used Coleman’s attack as an example of bipartisan anger at poor little Brownie — identifying Coleman as a Democrat. .
Somebody get Duncan on the phone. He’s going to have to clear his schedule for another blogger ethics panel.
I wrote sometime back that we had reached a point with this administration that we were entirely dependent upon the integrity of a few members of the legal community to save the country. I know that sounds hyperbolic, but I think it may literally be true.
I’m not usually a big friend of tough prosecutors. I hate the drug war and I think they play fast and loose when trying to take down a target by squeezing people who are only peripherally involved. There is always tension between civil libertarians and the government and that is as it should be. It’s that balance that allows us to live in a (mostly) civilized society.
When a government becomes corrupt and power mad one normally depends upon the political opposition and the press to sound the alarm — and to some extent that has happened. But due to a corporate media that pumps non-stop sensation into people’s heads 24 hours a day, the signal to noise ratio is seriously out of whack, even when something very important happens. Only terrorist attacks and catastrophic natural disasters can break through the static. As Peter Daou writes today, the sheer number of scandals makes it almost impossible for the press and the public to see any of them clearly.
And even if something begins to break through, we know from the Plame scandal and others that the administration exerts an iron grip on the media almost as painful as the one with which it chokes dissenters in its own party. After all, when Scooter Libby called Tim Russert to complain about Chris Matthews’ coverage, bureau chief Russert didn’t simply say that Matthews had a right to his opinion or that NBC always provided a forum for the administration to rebut any claims and leave it at that. No, he reported Libby’s complaints to the president of NBC, Matthews’ bosses. I think that pretty much tells the tale of the Washington press corps in a nutshell. I wouldn’t count on them to help us out of this mess.
In addition, our two party tradition provides for very little real power to be invested in an oppostion party on its own — the rules have been devised for bipartisan compromise. When you have a very disciplined majority (even if only with a slight numerical advantage) the minority party can be virtually shut out of government, as in a parliamentary system. We have little experience with this kind of government and without the open floor debate and partisan press that exists in other systems, this makes for very lopsided power structure.
The structural political imbalance, the media cacophany and the overwhelming numbers of crises and scandals both large and small have virtually paralyzed this country’s ability to deal with the very serious constitutional crisis that is developing over the president’s assertion of unlimited executive and warmaking powers. I think the law is our only backstop on this. It’s appearing more and more that we are going to have to ask certain lawyers, cops and judges who understand that their duty to their country is bigger than their duty to this president to step up. And that brings me to James Comey.
All evidence suggests that I would not agree with James Comey’s politics, but I can’t be sure since he has scrupulously guarded his poltical leanings. I very much doubt that this law and order prosecutor sees the world through my ACLU lens. However, like many of the growing numbers of law enforcement officers who have grown alarmed by this administration’s lawless governance, he is by all accounts a straight arrow. He was the number two man in the Justice Department when all the recent affronts to the constitution (torture, spying, the death of habeus corpus, indefinite detention, presidential infallibility) were delivered and from what we know he objected vociferously. It is, therefore, no surprise that this non-political career civil servant is no longer in government.
It is vital that he testify in a future hearing on the illegal NSA spying hearings. I do not know what he will say, and he may even defend the program on some level. But there is a reason why Comey refused to sign off on reauthorizing this program, forcing Gonzales to go to the hospital and try to strong arm a man who just had surgery to sign off on it instead. In his testimony earlier this week, Gonzales implied that it may have been a problem with another program. How very interesting.
We need to know just what in the hell was going on during the period between the time the program was instituted and the time Comey and others refused to reauthorize it. Why was it suspended? We need to know if there were other illegal spying programs. Comey is the man who can answer those questions.
Apparently, Comey believes that the administration may invoke executive privilege. Considering what poor little Brownie said this morning, I suspect that all former administration officials are told that if called before congress the president will likely invoke executive privilege. He is after all, infallible. But at the very least the committee should force the administration to invoke it. Let’s get all the cards on the table.
I have no idea if there are other illegal programs out there or if this program has been used for domestic spying. But it’s clear that something about all this stinks to high heaven and the Democrats know it. The smart money says that they’ve created a full-on datamining capability along the lines of Total Information Awareness and they are using it on US Citizens for god knows what purpose. Maybe Americans don’t mind being subject to constant monitoring by the government. And maybe they really are so afraid of terrorists that they are willing to officially end our 230 year experiment in liberty by codifying an elected dictatorship rather than a carefully balanced representative government. But before we flush the constitution down the toilet, let’s give democracy one last hurrah, shall we? Let’s find out if these actions are legal and constitutional (and if the people of this country really are the bedwetting cowards the Republicans take them for.)
Firedoglake is collecting comments on this matter in the hopes that the powers that be on the Judiciary Committee will understand that the grassroots are engaged and knowledgeable on this issue and will back up any Democratic Senator who pushes for more testimony, specifically the testimony of James Comey. Either leave a comment here or go over to FDL and add your voice to the chorus if you agree.
White House Knew of Levee’s Failure The Night Katrina Struck
by tristero
So you’re thinking, “Surprise, surprise, Bush lied.” Well then just read the entire article and see if you can still maintain a cynical, world-weary attitude as the details accumulate about the sheer extent of what happened – and didn’t – during Katrina. And the extent of the lying.
I’ll stop here; I’m too angry to write. Unforgivable. Unforgivable.
I just saw that fatuous gasbag Bill Bennett on CNN talking about the cartoons and was reminded once again of the seemingly limitless hypocricy of the wingnuts. I realize that it is futile to point this out to them since they have completely abandoned all claims to intellectual integrity, but we should document these atrocities anyway if only to keep things straight in our own minds. Luckily, intrepid bloggers are on the case.
* The editorial page of a newspaper—a community organ—is a perfectly appropriate place to print ill-conceived, unfunny cartoons for pretty much the sole purpose of mocking the faith of some members of that community, and it’s irresponsible to voice even quasi-official disapproval despite the shockingly murderous backlash because, hey, free speech, they should grow up and suck it up and learn to deal;
* However, a memorial service—for a woman whose life has been dedicated to the fight for peace and justice and damn well grabbing the arc of the universe and bending it with her own bare hands—is a staggeringly inappropriate place to say much of anything at all about the fight that was her life, and the very particular strife and injustice yet afflicting her world and her country, because, hey, the president might be embarrassed, and how dare they carry on like that.
Being ‘appropriate” is so difficult these days isn’t it? Embarrassing a craven opportunistic president whose sole claim to civil rights credibility is having his picture taken with black children and appointing every black conservative in the country to his cabinet, is a terrible, terrible faux pas. Printing cartoons guaranteed to inflame millions of people in order to make an obscure point is the height of principled behavior. Ok.
The Bush war propagandists proclaimed with deafening unanimity: “Newsweek is directly responsible for the rioting and the deaths that occurred in Afghanistan after its story appeared. Freedom of the press doesn’t mean you can or should publish anything you think is a ‘story.’ We’re at war! It is the war between civilization and barbarism! Newsweek hurt America and helped our enemies. They’re on the other side! That’s the evil leftwing media for you!” In terms of what follows, let’s remember just two examples I noted in my first post about the Newsweek story: Drudge’s huge headline: “THE NEWSWEEK RIOTS,” and the phrase that, predictably, Michelle Malkin injected into every war propagandist’s discussion: “NEWSWEEK LIED. PEOPLE DIED.”
The allocation of blame and moral culpability was of particular interest, especially given the rightwing propagandists’ usual praises for personal and moral “responsibility.” As one perceptive commentator noted:
What is singularly lacking from the rightwing hatefest currently sweeping across the Internets is condemnation of the killers themselves. … The rightwing line is therefore that these murder[er]s are within their rights, are acting with justifiable outrage in killing people because of what was allegedly done, or not done, to their precious book.
He went on:
As everyone from Glenn Reynolds to the fools at Powerline to the moronic Michelle Malkin line up to condemn Newsweek, the only thing that matters to them is that they can score a few points against what they perceive to be the dreaded leftwing media. If that means turning a blind blog to the Islamic terrorists murdering people just because of a true-or-false account of damage being done to the Koran then that’s just fine by them.
Score one for the case of Islamic terrorism courtesy of the rightwing scream machine.
[…]
But in the case of the cartoons, the war propagandists now tell us that every news organ in the world is obliged to print them. Nothing less than the future of civilization is at stake. I do not exaggerate: “This really is a case of civilization against the barbarians.”
(Read the whole thing.)
Can you believe it? The comparison to the Newsweak flap could not be more apt. The entire wingnut apparatus went completely around the bend, blaming Newsweak for killing people because they printed a tiny blurb reporting that Korans had been desecrated. No pictures. No “depictions.” The story was old news and had been reported before. But when cynical political actors in the mid-east stoked the hot coals of Muslim anger, the right didn’t blame the leaders or the rioters — they blamed Newsweak. Indeed, they claimed the magazine was personally responsible for the carnage. And the poor rioters were just responding as one would expect to such a heinous insult to their religion.
I wonder what it’s like living with no intellectual consistency at all? Do you suppose they find it confusing? But, I guess they don’t really need any. They’re good team players. Just like the “barbarians.”
And speaking of cartoons: what about the garment rending just last week over Tom Toles’ political cartoon depicting “the army” as a man without arms or legs? Yes, nobody rioted. They just whined and pouted and stomped their tiny feet about how “mean” it was.
It wasn’t a case of civilization against the barbarians, it’s true. It was a case of civilization against the whiny ass titty babies.
Update: Oh, and that poker addicted racist calumniator is hardly one to to be going here:
ZOGBY: The policy of the Catholics during the Inquisition is not synonymous with my church, nor is the policy of the Islamic extremists synonymous with the Prophet Mohammed. Let’s be fair and use one standard. I agree, we have a double standard and frankly I think the way this story is cast is the wrong double standard.
BENNETT: Here’s the standard. Catholicism is as Catholicism does, Judaism is as Judaism does, and by God Islam is as Islam does and what it’s doing right now I wouldn’t wanted to associated with
.
As a practicing Catholic, he probably needs to stop and think about that a little bit. You don’t have to go back to the Inquisition to see that he’s on very slippery ground. Bennett complained about the priest scandal, but he very much remained “associated” with his church. Decades upon decades of covering up for and enabling these priests by the highest members of Bennett’s church aren’t wiped away by throwing a handful of sick men in jail. To this day the Church has refused to adequately deal with that horror. Bennett has some nerve lecturing to John Zogby about the morality of his religion when the shards of his glass house are lying all over the floor. Muslims should not be held to any higher standard than he is.
(To be clear, I’m not saying that Catholicism is inherently “evil” either. All religion has a dark side. But it’s outrageous to cast aspersions on Islam’s “theology” with the inquisition, witch burning and covering up for pedophile priests all being part of Christian history — and in each case there was ample “theology” that could be called up to support their actions. It ain’t the faith, it’s the humans who interpret it and abuse the power it gives them.
An astute political party could easily start to nail Republicans to the wall on their atrocious national security policy simply by making a major issue of the GOP’s obsession with faith-based technologies and their assault on science education.
That same astute party could also point, in contrast, to an excellent science and tech policy and promise to halt the decline in American science perpetrated by the right and make genuine science a priority if they ever got elected.
Too hard to explain? Nonsense. The NRA’s opposition to an autmatic rifle ban. THAT’S hard to explain. But they they have. Making it clear that it’s a bad idea to fund a missile defense system armed with the power of prayer and nothing else is child’s play in comparison.
[UPDATE: It will take a lot more than this, duh, to reverse the perceptions. But, my God, you couldn’t ask for a more stark situation to get started.]
Matt Stoller nicely deconstructs this Red State post about the King funeral that is perfectly illustrative of right wing comportment vapors and thinly veiled racism. Here’s just one little bit to give you the flavor:
I also think I have a clearer understanding of why the culture of so many black Americans in this country is below what it should be and is capable of being.
One expects this kind of thing over in Freeperland. They pride themsleves on being crude and thuggish, after all. Via pandagon, here’s a sampling of their cute caption contest:
“I would like another roll with dinner please.”
“Two classy people sitting behind a pile of trash.”
Lowery: And yesim, we’s be black and we’s be proud. We’s for the gubmit but not Bush’s gubmit. Bush’s gubmit is against us black peoples…
W: “What’s that old saying, ‘Better to be thought a complete race baiting moron than open your mouth and remove all doubt.’”
“Psst…Laura, you sure that ain’t Looter Guy?”
47 posted on 02/07/2006 2:56:13 PM PST by Horatio Gates (Go Seah….uh…Mariners! Congrats to the Steelers. Well done.)
Ok. It’s Freeperland. But here we have Red State, commonly thought of as the “thoughtful” right wing community. They aren’t quite as crude, to be sure. But they share many of the same impulses:
You evidently did live during the civil right era. There was nothing peaceful about it.
If the truth be told, it was an extortion scam to enrich themselves. Mrs. King carried on this tradition. Anytime you wanted to use anything that was MLK, Jr. you had to pay Mrs. King.
Don’t forget who the pupils were of this scam; Jesse Jackson, Joesph Lowery, and Hosea Williams. They practiced this extortion of Corporations all of their lives and some are still doing it.
So lets be honest, praise Mrs. King for the loss of a husband and who had to raise her children by herself, but don’t latch on to a myth and try to make it true.
—-
Bush should take back New Orleans money and force these aholes to come begging for it.
—–
I don’t know the makeup of the King funeral attendees but you can bet a large portion were high profile Dems with an even higher concentration of race hustling poverty pimps. It was their show and if they want to defile the King legacy with no-class antics, why shouldn’t it be on TV?
Whether anyone in the audience walked out in protest or not, Bush #41 and #43 were class acts and that won’t be lost on reasonable viewers — including many black families watching at home.
—-
Anyone who didn’t find that, or the Wellstone funeral, offensive, lacks a sense of decorum. If the Afro-American community applauds this funeral, they will make a statement about no one but themselves. And that is just what that group did at the funeral.
——
Back during the Bush/NAACP speech flap, I thought Bush should have sent in a third-tier official to give a speech explaigning that Bush wasn’t going to cater specifically to them since he could win elections without their vote, and catering to them wouldn’t change their vote anyway.
Simple fact it, Dems must have the black vote to win, and even with it they loose more often than not. Yet the Dems are quite capable of taking the black vote for granted.
What is worse political messages at a funeral about a great civil rights leader or people trying to turn those messages as something that the late “Queen” would find offensive.
Not simply political messages but cheap shots. Perhaps she would have been fine with such cheap shots. But the proper way to pay respect in such a situation is to not take such cheap shots, and act with dignity–irrespective if the deceased would have demanded such dignity or not.
Frankly, it ain’t about her or blacks in general.
—-
He was Joseph Lowery, former head of the SCLC. One of the biggest extortinist organization in the country. They used the same tactics that Jesse Jackson uses to extrort money from Corporations. You pay or we picket.
Myth buster, these were pupils of MLK, Jr.
—
This is Al Sharpton to Howard Dean in 2004:
“Do you have a senior member of your cabinet that was black or brown?”
Dean did not, but apparently, we can take Sharpton’s cue and refer to all non-African dark-skinned people as “brown”…unless he meant Latinos only, in which case we must deploy “sienna” and “umber” in our earth-tone rainbow coalition.
It really is funny to watch you “progressives” jump all over itrytobenice for picking up the wrong crayon. Why don’t you throw in a lecture on the difference between “colored people” and “people of color”?
—–
Those who follow leaders like Dr, Lowry deserve to be marginalized.
Funny, but I recall that African-Americans are losing political clout in America, as the Hispanic population increases in size.
So, explain to me again why the NAACP and other “mainstream” African-American organizations should be accorded respect, if they refuse to be respectful– or even polite themselves?
—
That crowd looked to be heavily Afro-American, and with their response and their applause, they showed themselves to be the same–no class! Just like the Paul Wellstone funeral–the memories of many are going to be long.
Insulting the sitting President of the US, when he has the respect to come to a funeral to honor the deceased and the causes they/she fought for–this is going to stick with me, a long, long time.
This is a crowd that as Karl Rove said, is pre–9/11. Protect the country, forget it. Every chance they get they’ll just want their political ox gored, and their handouts increased.
—-
blah … blah .. blah blah It’s doubtful that either Coretta or MLK will be standing up for any reason … not anymore.
—-
And The Winner Of the Most Idiotic Moonbat Meme of the Year, for the FIFTH year running is. . .?
“You can’t tell us how to mourn!”
Gee, if those Muslims burning down embassies claimed to be mourning someone (Mohammed, presumably, since Cindy Sheehan demonstrates that there’s no time limit on this principle, either), I guess they’d have an airtight justification among our friends on the left.
—–
Actually, I can’t wait for the unsealing of the secret FBI King files in 2027 to reveal the truth about MLK and his less than honorable life and legacy (thanks to a liberal judge and the King family they have bought time preventing their release under FOIA… hmm, you think they have something to hide?). In the mean time, the country remains held hostage to the unbalanced and intellectually dishonest legacy of this man and his family. Pardon me if I choose not to worship at their phony altar.
Also, I can see clearly why blacks just love the Democratic party for all its done for them in perpetuating their continued pride in their own sense of victimhood. Bravo!
Got racial hostility much?
I have written a lot about race on this blog over the last three years. It’s a topic that I feel strongly about and work hard to understand. Everytime I write about it, I’m told by more than a few people that racism isn’t really a problem anymore, it’s a class issue.
With the amount of energy expended in that Red State thread deriding blacks for having “no class” perhaps in one respect that is true. But in the sociological sense, it is not. Class is an issue in this country, to be sure. But it is not the same as or the cause of racism. Racism lurks just beneath the surface of our culture. Lurking beneath the surface is an improvement over the blatant violence and legal segregation of the Jim Crow era of 40 years ago, but racism has not disappeared.
The comments and the disgusting picture above are indicative of the racist strain that has been a presence in both political parties but which settled on the Republican side after the civil rights movement. Over the last quarter century this impulse was regulated with coded race speech and marginalization of the worst purveyors of racist sentiment to the fringes of political life. But something seems to be changing. I’m seeing this more often all of a sudden and not just in wingnut sinkholes like Free Republic, but in mainstream blogs like Red State, the constantly recurring discussion of “The Bell Curve” and the pages of the Wall Street Journal where James Taranto writes things like this:
The truth about race that Katrina illuminates, then, is that, at least when it comes to matters involving race, black Americans are extreme political outliers. This is why attempts to play the race card are politically futile: They have to appeal not just to blacks, but to a substantial minority of whites. The Gallup poll results makes clear that the current racial appeals are not resonating with whites.
Fuck the blacks. They don’t vote for us anyway.
But then, there’s always some good reason to fuck the blacks isn’t there? I wrote a comment about the continuing problem with hiring patterns some years back on Kevin Drum’s old blog:
Hiring minorities is a problem because:
1955 – They are an inferior race 1965 – They aren’t good workers 1975 – They make old white customers uncomfortable 1985 – Affirmative action means their diplomas are bogus 1995 – They are a litigation risk for discrimination
When it comes to equal rights it’s always something, isn’t it?
