Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Welcome Back Newtie

by digby

As much as I love having Newtie back on the scene reprising his former role as a fake Republican reformer, I can’t help but wonder how he hopes to explain the fact that he was officially reprimanded as Speaker for his unethical behavior by a special counsel . I realize that this happened almost ten years ago, so it’s ancient history, but it was quite the circus at the time:

The House ethics committee recommended last night that House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) face an unprecedented reprimand from his colleagues and pay $300,000 in additional sanctions after concluding that his use of tax-deductible money for political purposes and inaccurate information supplied to investigators represented “intentional or . . . reckless” disregard of House rules.

The committee’s 7 to 1 vote came after 5 1/2 hours of televised hearings and the release of a toughly worded report on the investigation by special counsel James M. Cole. The recommendation, which followed a week of partisan conflict that has split the House into warring camps, sets the stage for a resolution of this investigation into Gingrich’s actions.

Gingrich earlier admitted he had violated House rules and was prepared to accept the committee’s recommendation for punishment. If the full House votes as expected on Tuesday, Gingrich would become the first speaker to be reprimanded for his conduct and would begin his second term politically weakened and personally diminished.

[…]

Cole said he had concluded that Gingrich had violated federal tax law and had lied to the ethics panel in an effort to force the committee to dismiss the complaint against him. He said the committee members were reluctant to go that far in their conclusions, but said they agreed Gingrich was either “reckless” or “intentional” in the way he conducted himself.

[…]

Cole made clear he had concluded that Gingrich’s activities were not random acts but part of a pattern of questionable behavior. “Over a number of years and in a number of situations, Mr. Gingrich showed a disregard and lack of respect for the standards of conduct that applied to his activities,” he said.

Newtie was always loosey goosey about ethics, even as he excoriated the Democrats. (He did it just recently, saying that people expect the Democrats to be corrupt.) And like all Republicans, his hypocrisy knew no bounds:

How sweet a victory it must have been when Newt Gingrich ran former House Speaker Jim Wright (D-Texas) out of town because he made $55,000 off the bulk sale of his book to lobbyists. The trick was turned by Gingrich’s insistence that an independent counsel be appointed. As Gingrich put it back in 1988: “The rules normally applied by the Ethics Committee to an investigation of a typical member are insufficient in an investigation of the Speaker of the House, a position which is third in line of succession to the Presidency and the second most powerful elected position in America. Clearly this investigation has to meet a higher standard of public accountability and integrity.” Gingrich’s words must haunt him now, when his own far more lucrative and questionable book deal has been added to complaints filed with the House Ethics Committee alleging his improper use of political-action-committee and nonprofit-foundation money.

Gingrich has attempted to squiggle out of the book controversy by giving up the $4.5-million advance from HarperCollins, the book publishing company owned by Rupert Murdoch…he had met secretly with Murdoch — Mr. Multinational himself, a man who built his media empire by hustling legislators on three continents — Nov. 28, three days before he began negotiating the book contract. But when the book deal was announced in December, Gingrich’s press spokesman, Tony Blankley, told reporters he didn’t know whether his boss had ever met with Murdoch. Why didn’t Gingrich step forward then and admit to the meeting if there was nothing to hide? Why was it only after the New York Daily News broke the story that he confessed?

The truth leaked out when a Murdoch spokesman the next day conceded that an NBC lawsuit against the Murdoch-owned Fox network, based on the foreign-ownership issue, was discussed. And two days later, we learned from Murdoch’s Washington lobbyist, Preston Padden, who was also at the meeting, that this was not a chance courtesy call but rather was planned to counter NBC’s lobbying.

This week, Gingrich was dissembling once again: “They said something to me about, ‘We are in this big fight with NBC,’ and I said fine. I mean, I don’t care. I never get involved in individual cases like that.”

And then, of course, there’s this:

In August 1999, Gingrich revealed that he had been carrying on an extramarital affair for the past six years with a House clerk twenty-three years his junior, Callista Bisek. Critics noted that Gingrich’s adultery had taken place while he was leading moral attacks against Bill Clinton during the Lewinsky scandal. Because of the similarity of the situations, critics charged Gingrich’s attacks on Clinton had been grossly hypocritical

Still, despite his checkered past, we really shouldn’t be surprised that Newtie is the Republicans’ front man on ethics and a likely candidate for president. At this point he’s about the cleanest they’ve got.

.

Tolerance In The Heartland

by digby

TBOGG has the scoop on the Utah theatre that banned “Brokeback Mountain”. It’s quite strange when you think about it because Mormans were traditional adherants of polygamy which Rick Santorum contends is the inexorable consequence of legalizing gay marriage.

In fact, I find all this Utah intolerance to be quite puzzling. Here’s Orrin Hatch in 2003:

‘I’m not here to justify polygamy,” he said. ”All I can say is, I know people in Hildale who are polygamists who are very fine people. You come and show me evidence of children being abused there and I’ll get involved. Bring the evidence to me.”

Hatch said he could not take unsubstantiated claims and enforce law, and he would not ”sit here and judge anybody just because they live differently than me.

”There will be laws on the books, but these are very complicated issues,” Hatch said.

Gee, and gay sex isn’t even illegal.

For those looking for the bigger picture, here’s the latest on the grosses for the film that everyone assumned would fail big time in Real Murika:

Don’t look now, but Brokeback Mountain is selling in the heartland. The gay cowboy romance, which has been cleaning up in early awards races, was considered a difficult box-office sell nationwide because of its subject matter.

But Brokeback Mountain is averaging $10,000-plus per screen in such markets as San Antonio, Nashville and Columbus, Ohio, according to Nielsen EDI.

The Ang Lee film was ninth at the box office this weekend with $5.8 million on 483 screens, a healthy $11,904 per-screen average. That’s a higher average than the No. 1 movie of the week, Hostel.

“It’s been humbling to see how the movie is getting received across the country,” says Jack Foley, head of distribution for Focus Features. “We knew we were getting good reviews and doing well at the awards. But that’s never a guarantee you can sell your movie across the country — particularly the most conservative parts of it.”

And all the Oscar talk is bringing in couples, including a lot of hetero men who suffer from Larry David syndrome:

Comedian Larry David joked in a New York Times commentary that “cowboys would have to lasso” him into the theater, because he’s sure the voice in his head would say, ” ‘You like those cowboys, don’t you? They’re kind of cute.’ “

I think everyone can agree that Jake Gyllenhall does have a purdy mouth.

.

Who’s A Terrorist?

by digby

Kevin responds to Joe Klein’s tremulous admonition that Democrats should temper their criticism of the NSA illegal spying because it makes us look like we don’t care about terrorism:

Politically, I continue to think Democrats should make it absolutely clear that what they’re attacking isn’t necessarily the NSA program itself, but the fact that the president unilaterally decided that he could approve the program without congressional authorization. In the world of 10-second sound bites, that might end up being a difficult distinction to make, but it’s worth making it over and over anyway. We’re not opposed to cranking up our intelligence efforts, but we are opposed to a president who thinks that a vague and indefinite state of war gives him the authority to do anything he wants.

Absolutely. But then, I don’t understand why anyone is worried about this in the first place. I don’t think anyone seriously suggests that the government doesn’t have the power to spy on suspected terrorists. The polls show that a majority of people already believe that the president should have to get a warrant before spying on American citizens. Indeed, I think all of us naturally assumed that the FBI has been doing that for years and those in the know understood that the NSA had the ability to do it through the FISA court. I don’t know of anyone who is saying that the government should be able to do this at all — this idea that people are just “against wiretapping” is a straw man.

There is no downside to criticizing this administration for illegally wiretapping Americans in no uncertain terms. But, I think we can take it one step further. We need to be asking why they couldn’t even get John Ashcroft to sign off on the renewal of this program back in 2003. Why did the FISA court deny more applications after 9/11? It’s impossible to imagine that they were tightening existing rules at a time like that. The history of this program is suspicious and it isn’t just unAmerican civil libertarians like me who are aware of the potential for abuse. Even people who support the program see it. Here’s a quote from the AP poll over the week-end:

The issue is full of grays for some people interviewed for the poll, including homebuilder Harlon Bennett, 21, a political independent from Wellston, Okla. He does not think the government should need warrants for suspected terrorists.

“Of course,” he added, “we all could be suspected terrorists.”

This is an issue that cuts across all the abuses of power in the GWOT, from rendition to torture to illegal wiretapping. What constitutes a suspected terrorist? Without due process how do we know that innocent people aren’t being accused? There is no review. There is no oversight. We are asked not only to take the word of the president that he is using these extra-legal powers judiciously, we are asked to believe that all the people he’s judiciously using these powers against are guilty.

Some Americans don’t trust this president. Some Americans wouldn’t trust a Democratic president. And some of us don’t trust any president with the power to unilaterally decide who is a terrorist and who isn’t and then unleash extra-legal actions against them. Certainly, we don’t believe that any president can unilaterally declare someone guilty.

Yet that is exactly what has been happening. And we know that many of the people who the president has decided are guilty were not. A fair number of those who were beaten, abused and tortured in our custody at Gitmo and elsewhere have turned out to be cases of mistaken identity. Others were “sold” to Americans as terrorists by rivals. Still more were low level grunts who had no operational knowledge of anything. This has happened quite often. Yet, we have accepted it because we “we’re at war” excuses a great deal of inhumane behavior (which is why we should always be careful about saying that we are waging one.) It’s very easy for people to fall into a primitive tribalism — the old “the only good Muslim is a dead Muslim” or perhaps “if you don’t want to be seen as a terrorist, don’t be a Muslim.”

But this NSA illegal spying issue has brought all that home. We have a president who believes that he knows who is guilty and who is not. He believes that he has the inherent constitutional power to declare American citizens “unlawful combatants.” He interprets the office of president to be above the laws. When you have a president who takes this position, it is not illogical to assume that he might declare some innocent Americans to be suspected terrorists as well. And that innocent American could be anyone.

The supporter of wiretaps who I quoted above knows that, too. I can’t see any reason why Democrats and civil libertarians of all stripes should be afraid to make that point openly. It’s why due process was made a part of the Bill of Rights in the first place.

If we willingly discard this principle in the case of morons who are planning to attack the Brooklyn Bridge with a blow torch, why on earth should we adhere to the principle in cases of dangerous gangs or serial killers or child molesters? After all, throwing those people in jail without due process, wiretapping them without a warrant, holding them indefinitely without trial could easily be seen as the president upholding his personal oath to “protect the American people” which has now officially usurped his official oath to protect the constitution.

The fourth amendment is in place to protect innocent people who mistakenly or purposefully get caught up in the government’s hugely powerful maw. To pussyfoot around that bedrock principle is to help destroy it.

I’m betting that Joe Klein and his band of would-be tough guy liberals are on the wrong side of this. Fifty-six percent of the country already believes that the government should have to follow due process. Even that guy who supports wiretaps knows very well that there is a danger in allowing anyone the unilateral power to decide who is a suspected terrorist. I hope that Democrats ignore the mewling of timorous pundits and call upon Americans’ regard for liberty and their healthy skepticism of government power to make this argument explicitly.

.

Presidential Infallibility

by digby

Atrios flags this catch by Weldon Berger regarding Bush’s use of “signing statements” (which I admit I only vaguely understood until until recently.) Weldon writes:

Bush doesn’t veto bills because in his view, he doesn’t have to; he can simply ignore the ones he doesn’t like.

The administration have made that argument explicit, but only in terms of the president’s capacity as “commander in chief” during an endless war, as with the National Security Agency’s warrantless wiretapping, the decisions to ignore various Geneva Conventions and the selective suspension of habeas corpus. According to the Hutcheson story, though, it isn’t only legislation dealing with national security issues that the White House asserts the right to ignore.

The Hutcheson story lays out how Bush has used these signing statements:

President Bush agreed with great fanfare last month to accept a ban on torture, but he later quietly reserved the right to ignore it, even as he signed it into law.

Acting from the seclusion of his Texas ranch at the start of New Year’s weekend, Bush said he would interpret the new law in keeping with his expansive view of presidential power. He did it by issuing a bill-signing statement – a little-noticed device that has become a favorite tool of presidential power in the Bush White House.

In fact, Bush has used signing statements to reject, revise or put his spin on more than 500 legislative provisions. Experts say he has been far more aggressive than any previous president in using the statements to claim sweeping executive power – and not just on national security issues.

“It’s nothing short of breath-taking,” said Phillip Cooper, a professor of public administration at Portland State University. “In every case, the White House has interpreted presidential authority as broadly as possible, interpreted legislative authority as narrowly as possible, and pre-empted the judiciary.”

Signing statements don’t have the force of law, but they can influence judicial interpretations of a statute. They also send a powerful signal to executive branch agencies on how the White House wants them to implement new federal laws.

In some cases, Bush bluntly informs Congress that he has no intention of carrying out provisions that he considers an unconstitutional encroachment on his authority.

“They don’t like some of the things Congress has done so they assert the power to ignore it,” said Martin Lederman, a visiting professor at the Georgetown University Law Center. “The categorical nature of their opposition is unprecedented and alarming.”

Lest anyone think that this is a unique practice of the Bush administration, the article points out that other presidents have issued signing statements too. But Bush has made a fetish out of them by issuing more than 500 of them, often specifically citing the Presidential Infalliibility Doctrine (aka the “Unitary Executive Theory”).

Here’s what I find fascinating about that. Other presidents issued signing statements to bills. (I have no idea if they also cited the Presidential Infallibility Doctrine.)But they were almost always working with a congressional majority of the other party. You can see why a president would want to establish his interpretation of a hard fought negotiation with political opponents. So, although I am appalled at the idea of unchecked presidential power under any circumstances, I can at least see the logic of a typically authoritarian Republican using these tactics when dealing with a liberal Democratic congress. But you have to ask yourself why he can’t get laws passed exactly the way he wants them to in his rubber stamp congress? He couldn’t get Bill Frist, his own handpicked puppet, and Tom DeLay, his own Tony Soprano, to pass bills in language that he could agree with? After 9/11?

The answer is of course he could have. He chose not to:

The roots of Bush’s approach go back to the Ford administration, when Dick Cheney, then serving as White House chief of staff, chafed at legislative limits placed on the executive branch in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal and other abuses of power by President Nixon. Now the vice president and his top aide, David Addington, are taking the lead in trying to tip the balance of power away from Congress and back to the president.

Weldon Berger puts it this way:

The upshot of this is that until someone gets around to challenging the White House, Congress is just an advisory body with the authority to dole out bucketloads of cash. For now, we have a coup.

I can’t help but chuckle mordantly at these chickenshit congressional Republicans who have laid down their integrity and their duty to the constitution for this spoiled little Dauphin and his evil grey eminence, Dick Cheney. But then, they’ve been paid handsomely in mountainous piles of pork, so I suppose they’ve been amply rewarded for their pusillanimous gluttony.

Barring a filibuster, it looks as if Alito will be confirmed on a party line vote (or close to it.) There is little doubt in my mind that he believes in this doctrine. However, after Bush vs Gore, I also no longer have any illusions that the Supreme Court is above partisan politics. I suspect that Alito and others will have qualms about codifying the Unitary Executive Theory because someday a Democratic president could face a Republican congress.

But it doesn’t matter. The president doesn’t believe that the Supreme Court has the power to rule on the issue of presidential power in the first place. I’m sure the Federalist Society will come up with an appropriate remedy should a Democrat ever become president and decide to exercise the same power.

If you are interested in going deeply into this topic, Michael Froomkin is an expert on this doctrine of presidential infallibility (aka “the Unitary Executive Theory”) and has been writing about it for quite some time:

[This is] an argument popular with the Federalist Society, but not taken seriously by mainstream academics, for unlimited, uncontainable, Presidential power. The so-called “unitary executive” argument is set out most clearly in a Harvard Law Review article, Steven G. Calabresi & Kevin H. Rhodes, The Structural Constitution: Unitary Executive, Plural Judiciary, 105 Harv. L. Rev. 1155 (1992). My explanation as to why this article is profoundly wrong and dangerous can be found at A. Michael Froomkin, The Imperial Presidency’s New Vestments, 88 Nw. L. Rev. 1346 (1994), which in turn sparked separate and not entirely consistent answers from each of the two authors of the Structural Constitution article. My rebuttal article Still Naked After All These Words, 88 Nw. L. Rev. 1420 (1994) is also online.

.

Sickness

by digby

New details have emerged of how the growing number of prisoners on hunger strike at Guantánamo Bay are being tied down and force-fed through tubes pushed down their nasal passages into their stomachs to keep them alive.

They routinely experience bleeding and nausea, according to a sworn statement by the camp’s chief doctor, seen by The Observer.

[…]

Edmonson’s affidavit, in response to a lawsuit on behalf of detainees on hunger strike since last August, was obtained last week by The Observer, as a Guantánamo spokesman confirmed that the number of hunger strikers has almost doubled since Christmas, to 81 of the 550 detainees. Many have been held since the camp opened four years ago this month, although they not been charged with any crime, nor been allowed to see any evidence justifying their detention.

Thanks to Lindsey “Goober Pyle” Graham, they never will, either:

This and other Guantánamo lawsuits now face extinction. Last week, President Bush signed into law a measure removing detainees’ right to file habeas corpus petitions in the US federal courts. On Friday, the administration asked the Supreme Court to make this retroactive, so nullifying about 220 cases in which prisoners have contested the basis of their detention and the legality of pending trials by military commission.

Someday, US Army grunts and innocent Americans with no operational information are going to be held captive by another country and that country is going to use the same rationale for imprisoning and tormenting them indefinitely. And the people who do it will eventually go to the ninth circle of hell and join George W. Bush and Dick Cheney as they scream into the void for eternity about how they had to become sadistic monsters in order to prove they weren’t afraid.

.

Nixonian Rhapsody Part Deux

by digby

Glenn Greenwald has an excellent post up today about the latest Republican “public intellectual’s” assertion that president has a right to use the constitution as toilet paper whenever he unilaterally decides that we are at “war.” Someone named “fly” writes in the comment section:

As a “Bush defender” I would like to point out that the NYT article entitled “Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts” encourages readers to conclude that this is a first in domestic surveillance …

Reader Poputonian wrote this in response:

As a Bush supporter, fly, you are absolutely right to point out that he is not the first president to use the wiretap illegally. At least one past president confronted matters of grave national security by shifting the legal locus of control to his own domain. He understood how secret spy programs were necessary to preserve this great nation of his. He believed that citizens would willfully surrender their liberties to him, and he knew the threat constituted by a hostile media, and he knew what to do about it. He also understood how to make a nation of bedwetters feel more secure. But his theory died when an activist judge ruled against the argument of executive privilege, a ruling which was later upheld by the Supreme Court. By then, what might be called ‘harangue fatigue’ was creeping into the American living room and, frankly, people were sensing that they had reached their limit.

All of which now necessitates Mansfield’s illusory extra-legal theory of what the founders really meant when they designed this system of government. Let’s call it — ‘Mansfield’s Separation of Powers, Except’ — clause to the Constitution. Naturally, it would tip off the enemy if this were stated directly in the Constitution, so what the founders did was they cloaked it in mysterious ambiguity so only a future ideologue could detect its presence. But make no doubt about it, as a previous Chief Executive had ascertained, a very close reading of the Constitution shows the founders’ original intent, and it was as plain as the nose on his face. It really does give the president extra-legal power, in spite of what the courts ruled.

Some might argue whether or not history repeats itself, but one thing is sure — it often rhymes.

He’s right. This isn’t unprecedented. In fact, it’s a pattern.

.

Culture Of Conservatism

by digby

Frank Rich’s column today is getting lots of attention as it should. It’s great. But I have to take issue with one passage:

Real conservatives, after all, are opposed to Big Brother; even the staunch Bush ally Grover Norquist has criticized the N.S.A.’s overreaching.

Norquist isn’t a “real conservative.” In fact, there is no such thing as a real conservative in the Party or movement leadership. The only “real conservatives” left are regular citizens, a few scholars and a couple of pundits.

This is an easy trap to fall into. Whenever their leaders inevitably suck the treasury dry, usurp the constitution, turn America into an international pariah (you know, the usual) “conservatives” protect their valuable brand by simply saying that these particular leaders weren’t really “conservative” after all.

Grover Norquist believes in one thing and one thing only — the perpetuation of Republican power. His job is managing the leaders of the GOP base — which he fatuously calls “the leave us alone” coalition:

The Leave Us Alone Coalition is an idea popularized by conservative/libertarian activist Grover Norquist for a wide-ranging and loose collaboration among various elements of U.S. politics, united by a common desire for minimal involvement with and restrictions from government, especially the U.S. federal government. There is no actual organization by this name, rather, it is a description of a hoped-for reality of cooperation between social conservatives, libertarians / free market supporters, and various single-issue voters such as gun rights supporters.

He has to say that he opposes the NSA wiretaps if he hopes to keep this political devil’s bargain together. Here’s what Norquist is really all about:

“The Republicans are looking at decades of dominance in the House and Senate, and having the presidency with some regularity,” Norquist told the New York Times last week. A few days earlier, he made the same point, with slightly less confidence, to CNBC Washington bureau chief and Wall Street Journal columnist Alan Murray: “For the next 10 years in the House and Senate, we’re looking at Republican control.” In the Washington Post last month, Norquist wrote of a “guarantee of united Republican government” that “has allowed the Bush administration to work and think long-term.”

[…]

[I]n the November 1992 American Spectator, he wrote an article titled “The Coming Clinton Dynasty,” in which he admitted that “any vision of conservatism as the ultimate winner in a two-steps-forward, one-step back Leninist march, is a flawed one.”

Instead, Norquist explained, the way a party ensures its perpetual dominance is by controlling the levers of power. In 1974, Watergate led to the election of 75 new Democrats in the House. In Norquist’s view, “this liberal band of congressmen” was “willing to change the rules to ensure their continuation in power.” Without the benefits of incumbency (bigger staffs, larger budgets, taxpayer-funded mail, pork, and the ability to “extort campaign contributions from industries”), Norquist argued, the Democrats could not have remained in office for the subsequent 18 years. Power perpetuates itself. The correctness of conservative ideas paled before the ruthless “minority ideological cabal” in Congress.

It’s shocking that such a delusional person is so influential in American politics, but he is. And despite his rare faux libertarian statements of principle he quite clearly desires a permanent Republican state endowed with unlimited power. He just worries that someone he disagrees with might try to do the same thing. I don’t think that’s conservatism. He’s just a good old authoritarian statist. Here’s Grover on his idol Josef Stalin:

He was running the personnel department while Trotsky was fighting the White Army. When push came to shove for control of the Soviet Union, Stalin won. Trotsky got an ice ax through his skull, while Stalin became head of the Soviet Union. He understood that personnel is policy.

This article in the WaPo from January 2004 on Grover is very entertaining and informative. I particularly liked this part:

Some conservatives have stopped attending the meetings because, they say, the institution has “gone Beltway.” Now that Republicans are in power, the emphasis has shifted from ideology to lobbying for rich clients, they say. At one session, former representative Bob Livingston (R-La.) promoted a telecom client. At another, former Oklahoma governor Frank Keating (R) talked to the audience as president of the American Council of Life Insurers. One coalition dropout dismissed Norquist as a “homo economicus” — driven by market forces rather than by social issues.

Part of the reason for “having the personnel in place,” of course, is to ensure that money is funnelled where it needs to be. And Grover, along with his best pals from the College Republicans, Abramoff and Reed, made sure that this happened. Norquit’s name has already come up in the Abramoff proble and I would expect it to come up again. He’s right in the middle of that mess.

But why wouldn’t he be? As you can see from the quote above, he believes that corruption is the method by which a political party maintains power. And there is nothing Grover cares about more than maintaining power.

Basically, he ascribes to George W. Bush’s political ideology:

“If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I’m the dictator,”

There you have it; modern conservatism in a nutshell.

Update: For more evidence of the mindset, check this out from Josh Marshall:

You have to love this. Three and a half years ago members of the New Hampshire state Republican party, the Republican National Committee and others entered into a criminal conspiracy to disrupt Democratic get-out-the-vote activities on election day.

[…]

Now, in recently filed court papers, the Republican State Committee’s attorney, Ovide Lamontagne, is claiming that the Dems’ suit is “in attempt to use the court system to interfere with the (GOP’s) constitutionally protected election activities.” There’s a certain amount of sense to this, I suppose, since the Republican party, in its current incarnation, does seem to rely heavily on law-breaking as an electoral tool. Still, I’ve never heard it alleged that such criminality is constitutionally protected

.

.

Nixonian Rhapsody

by digby

Finally, somebody in the press wakes up:

“But the climate of those years was so grim that half the Washington press corps spent more time worrying about having their telephones tapped than they did about risking the wrath of Rove, Libby and Cheney by poking at the weak seams of a Mafia-style administration that began cannibalizing the whole government just as soon as it came into power. Bush’s capos were never subtle; they swaggered into Washington like a conquering army, and the climate of fear they engendered apparently neutralized The New York Times along with all the other pockets of potential resistance. Bush had to do everything but fall on his own sword before anybody in the Washington socio-political establishment was willing to take him on.”

Oh sorry. Transcription problem. That was actually Hunter S. Thompson, in the October 10, 1974 Rolling Stone, writing about the Nixon administration. My bad.

Thanks to Rick Perlstein for the gonzo catch. I have a feeling we’re going to see a whole lot of juicy stuff like that when he publishes his new book.

Private Partisans

by digby

Via Political Cortex

As it hunted down tax scofflaws, the Internal Revenue Service collected information on the political party affiliations of taxpayers in 20 states.

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., a member of an appropriations subcommittee with jurisdiction over the IRS, said the practice was an “outrageous violation of the public trust” that could undermine the agency’s credibility.

IRS officials acknowledged that party affiliation information was routinely collected by a vendor for several months. They told the vendor last month to screen the information out.

“The bottom line is that we have never used this information,” said John Lipold, an IRS spokesman. “There are strict laws in place that forbid it.”

[…]

In a letter to Kelly, Deputy IRS Commissioner John Dalrymple said the party identification information was automatically collected through a “database platform” supplied by an outside contractor that targeted voter registration rolls among other things as it searched for people who aren’t paying their taxes.

They don’t mention who the contractor was, unfortunately, and that is worth finding out. As we know, Brownies have been rewarded by the GOP patronage machine all over the place, both in and out of government. Anybody want to place a little bet?

I have long thought that privacy is a potent issue for Democrats and all these nasty revelations about Republican snooping and interefering in people’s personal decisions just make it more so. With the exception of a few sincere Goldwaterites who have all passed on, the libertarian strain in the Republican party was always just a simple cultural appeal on guns and taxes. History shows that they clearly favor big government that serves their corporate special interests and are more than willing to use the full force of the state at their discretion. (This is most vividly demonstrated by the new presidential infallibility doctrine on one hand and Terry Schiavo on the other.)

Between the Bedwetter Caucus and the Christian Right you also have a very large faction of the GOP that considers people with opposing views to be dangerous. The true philosophy of modern conservatism is about control and domination, not freedom and equality.

I posted this (Warning pdf) before, but it’s worth posting again.

What makes you feel free?

36.

Next I am going to read some basic American rights. For each one, please indicate whether this is crucial to your own sense of freedom, very important but not crucial, somewhat important, or not important at all.

Crucial—very important—Somewhatimportant—Not Important—No opinion

The right to vote 60 37 2 1 *

Freedom of religion 55 39 5 1 *

The right to free speech 52 40 7 1 *

The right to due process 52 37 7 1 3

The right to privacy 47 44 9 * *

The right to petition the government 44 37 15 2 2

Protection against unreasonable searches/seizures 40 39 16 2 2

Freedom of the press 36 37 22 4 1

The right to keep and bear arms 30 26 27 15 2

You’ll notice that the right to privacy is considered more crucial than some other rights that are explicitly written into the Bill of Rights. (You’ll also notice that number one is not a right — which was noted by none other than Uncle Nino during the Florida debacle. Too bad the press was so busy handwringing about preganant chads that it didn’t bother to discuss that fact in any depth.)

And this issue pertains to Republican (and, frankly, certain Democratic) partners in crime as well — the corporations and the “contractors” who are invading citizxens’ privacy these days as if all information is not only public, it is also for sale.

John at Americablog caught this one yesterday:

Anyone can buy a list of your incoming and outgoing phone calls, cell or land-line, for $110 online.

He bought his own records so he knows it’s true. And it turns out that the congress has known all about this and doesn’t give a damn.

I support the idea of Democrats introducing a constitutional amendment to codify a right to privacy once and for all. I have heard some say that we should not do this because people will then realize that we don’t already have that right. I think that’s weak. The only people who are currently concerned with that argument in any practical sense are judges and they understand the issue very well. This is about taking a public stand and fighting for something that most Americans, not just Democrats, believe in and care about.

A constitutional amendment is a very difficult thing to do and would probably require decades to accomplish, but it is something that we can hang our hats on as a matter of fundamental principle. It should be a standard Democratic line along with “health insurance for all Americans” or “equal rights under the law.” People need to understand that when the Republicans say there is no right to privacy in the constitution, they like it that way — and that we disagree. Strongly.

.

Puppet Theatre

Did anyone catch the ignominious debut of the new MSNBC freakshow called “Week-ends With Maury and Connie” today?

I could be wrong, but I think they might be trying to do a sort of grandparents version of The Daily Show. It could also be a tribute to early television pioneer Dave Garroway and his chimp, J. Fred Muggs (Maury is playing the part of the chimp.)

I honestly don’t know what to make of it. I’m pretty sure that Maury is working with Michael Jackson’s plastic surgeon, though. I never saw the resemblance between him and Lena Horn before.

.