I am going to be out most of the day so I want to leave you all with some good reading from around the blogosphere:
This article by Arthur Silber about the inevitability of action in Iran is spot on. We are not dealing with rational actors. And he’s not talking about the Iranians.
This post by Pastordan at Street Prophets about heresy in the Evangelical church is quite instructive. As usual the media gets it wrong.
Eric at Wampum answers my question about how the Democrats should answer the Republicans on national security with a fascinating reminder that there are still sharks in the blue water.
Assparrot (apparently still hungover) holds a “Digby nailed it …” contest.
Oh, and in case you have been in a coma for the last four decades, this article in the Washington Post may help you understand that you are not crazy for noticing that all the racists are now Republicans.
Uhm, would anybody care to speculate about why William Donohue, president of the Catholic league is so obsessed with incest and sodomy? Yesterday he said:
DONOHUE: Well, look, there are people in Hollywood, not all of them, but there are some people who are nothing more than harlots. They will do anything for the buck. They wouldn’t care. If you asked them to sodomize their own mother in a movie, they would do so, and they would do it with a smile on their face. You know, it’s such a cop-out to talk about freedom of expression.
My he has quite an imagination doesn’t he? Don’t blame Hollywood. I don’t think they’ve been making any movies featuring such scenes. I don’t even think the porno industry has been making movies featuring such scenes. That lovely image came right out of that sick fuck’s twisted subconscious.
(In case you didn’t catch the show, Donohue was talking about Muslim intolerance, by the way.)
After all, 15-year-olds, they go to abortionists. They get their babies killed without parental consent. The new Puritans [those criticizing The Passion of the Christ] don’t seem to worry about that. They like gay sex. They like [the film] The Dreamers, a brother and sister who bathe together and stuff like that. The same people in The New York Times who say this movie, I don’t think it’s not really right for kids, they have no problems when it comes to sodomy. It’s smoking they don’t like and Catholicism. [MSNBC, Scarborough Country, 2/25/04]
Mothers, brothers, sisters. (What, no dear old Dad?) Yeah, it’s Hollywood that’s got a problem.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President George W. Bush disclosed new details on Thursday of a thwarted al Qaeda plot to use shoe bombs to hijack a plane and fly it into a Los Angeles building, as he sought to justify his tactics in fighting terrorism.
With critics questioning the legality of his authorization of a domestic spying program, Bush used newly declassified details of a previously revealed plot to show that the threat of terrorism has not abated.
“America remains at risk, so we must remain vigilant,” Bush said.
He said that in early 2002 the United States and its allies disrupted a plot to use bombs hidden in shoes to breach the cockpit door of an airplane and fly it into the tallest building in Los Angeles.
But he got the name of the building wrong, saying the “intended target was Liberty Tower.” He meant Library Tower, now the US Bank Tower, that at 1,017 feet (310 metres) high is the tallest building in the United States west of the Mississippi River.
It seems Bush wasn’t the only one confused by the name of the tower. This shocking leaked NSA intercept of two of the shoe-bombers shows even the terrorists were confused:
AQ#1: Have you received our target yet?
AQ#2: Yes. The Literary tower in Los Angeles.
#1: The Literary Tower?
#2: Yes. You know, the really tall one.
#1: Fool, you mean the LIBERTY Tower, not the…
#2: No no no, the Literary Tower, I remember specifically. That’s the big one. With all their books.
#1: Their books?? Who cares about the infidel’s books? The plan is to strike down their liberty. That makes our target the Liberty Tower, not the Literary tower. Are you sure we’re talking about the same tower? Do you have a map? We are talking about Los Angeles, aren’t we?
[paper shuffling]
#2: Um… uh… I can’t figure this out. Oh, who cares what it’s called. It’s the tallest one. How many tallest buildings can there be in Los Angeles, anyway?
#1: Three? Four?
#2: …Well, it doesn’t matter. Any one of them will do. Do you have the information on our weapons?
#1: Yes, I am told we will hide high explosives in our shoes, and then…
#2: Uh, say that again? It sounded like you said “high explosives” and “shoes.”
#1: Yes. Explosives. In our shoes. We’ll use them to gain access to the cockpit…
#2: Uh, Mohammed?
#1: Yes Mohammed?
#2: Something, um, doesn’t sound right. Are you quite sure…
#1: Of course I’m sure. It says right here [sounds of more paper shuffling] that we are to use high explosives to gain access to the cockpit, where we then threaten to blow up the rest of plane if they don’t fly it into the Liberty…
#2: Literary…
#1: Liberty, Literary… I don’t… [sighs] Look, just tell the pilot “The tall one.” I’m quite sure they’ll know which building you’re talking about. Just tell them that if they don’t immediately fly the plane into the tallest building in Los Angeles, you’ll blow them up with your Sneakers of Mass Destruction. They won’t want that, I can assure you.
#2: Uh… there’s something I don’t understand.
#1: Yes?
#2: How do we explode our way into the cockpit and still threaten to blow up the plane?
#1: Fool, that’s why we hide the explosives in our shoes. Just use one shoe on the cockpit door. That way we still have the other shoe to threaten to blow up the rest of the plane with.
#2: Ooooh. That makes sense. Sort of. [long pause] We get to take them off first, right?
#1: I assume. Let me check [paper shuffling]. Well, I don’t see where it says we can’t. So I suppose it should be okay. [pause] Wait. Did you hear that?
#2: Yes, I did. Is there somebody else on the line? You don’t have a party line, do you? Please tell me you paid for a private line…
#1: Yes, of course this is a private line. Now shut your hookah-hole, I’m trying to listen. [“if you’d like to continue this wiretap for another –ten– minutes, please insert an additional –75– cents”] ACK! I think this line is being tapped!
#2: Do Americans have such technologies?
#1: Damn. I once read where they did, but I completely forgot about that.
Mr. Brown said that he told a senior White House official early on of the New Orleans flooding, and that the administration was too focused on terrorism to respond properly to natural disasters…
The Bush administration, as a whole, he said, did not seem to care enough about natural disasters and had relegated natural disasters to a “stepchild” of national security.
“It is my belief,” Mr. Brown told the senators, that if “we’ve confirmed that a terrorist has blown up the 17th Street Canal levee, then everybody would have jumped all over that and been trying to do everything they could.”
Did they actually let him get away with that nonsense? Did nobody point out the obvious which Atrios immediately saw? That there is no essential difference between a response to a terrorist blowing up the levee or a hurricane blowing it? That you cancel your vacation and get your butt in gear ’cause you got a serious, serious emergency – thousands of lives are at stake – that requires the full attention of the fucking president?
Was Brown forced to concede that the Bush “intense focus on terrorism” is really a perverse obsession with the publicity at the expense of reality? Those of you who saw Brown testify – did anyone make that point?
Apparently not. Yes, Brown blamed the White House for the failure in Katrina rather than his own ineptitude; given the amount of trouble he’s in, he had no choice. Even so – this is incredible! – he re-emphasized, without contradiction or explanation, THE single most important Republican talking point:
Republicans make national security and fighting terrorism Priority 1.
And while he spewed this partisan bullshit, Democrats “gently” urged him to keep his chin up and “keep fighting!” Brownie, you truly have done a heckuva job.
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.