Edgewise

Play the SoTU drinking game

Catch presents The State of the Union Drinking (& Other Stuff) Game:

1. Every time Bush says “freedom”: Take one very small sip of Wild Turkey (he said it 21 times during last year’s SOTU)
2. Every time Bush mentions Jack Abramoff, Duke Cunningham, Scooter Libby or Tom DeLay: Drink three bottles of Wild Turkey
3. Every time Bush mentions “democracy” and “Hamas” in the same sentence: Drive to the Wild Turkey distillery in Lawrenceburg, KY and consume the contents of three full oak barrels
4. Every time Bush says “culture of life”: Vomit in your mouth
5. Every time Bush says “sanctity of marriage”: Vomit in the lobby of a mega-church
6. Every time Bush mentions Iraq: Even though it’s not true, accuse the bartender of watering down the drinks and, if he doesn’t admit to it, ransack the bar, loot the liquor, and then make all of the patrons stain their right index fingers. When the cops show up to arrest you, just point to the fingers, tell the policemen they hate freedom, and question their patriotism.
7. Every time Bush mentions 9/11: Imagine he’s really saying “the gift that keeps on giving,” because, really, he is.
8. Every time Bush mentions Iran or Syria: Email seven pro-war bloggers the phone number of their local Army recruitment office.
9. Every time Bush promises to cut the deficit in half: Ask the bartender to make you an Absolut Bullshit
10. Every time Bush promises to make his tax cuts permanent: Tell the bartender you have no intention of paying your tab
11. Every time Bush mentions overhauling Social Security: Laugh and laugh and laugh
12. Every time the Republicans give Bush a standing ovation: Yell “United States of Omega House!”
13. Every time the Democrats give Bush a standing ovation: Drink until the pain goes away
14. Every time you see one of Dennis Hastert’s chins jiggles: Guzzle a can of Michelob Ultra
15. Every time they show Dick Cheney smirking: Take a quaalude (your TV will thank you)
16. Every time they show Sam Alito: If you’re a woman, say something soothing to your uterus. If you’re a man, say something soothing to the uterus of the woman closest to you.
17. If they show Alito’s wife crying: Pray for the future of America

Abramoff vs The Tribes

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Debra J. Saunders sounded like Rep. Richard Pombo’s big sister taking on the corner bullies in her Sunday rant, “Lay off Pombo” in which she lit into “the left”, Nancy Pelosi, and Democratic party leaders for picking on Pombo for getting money from the tainted former lobbyist, Jack Abramoff, and his “client tribes.” She pointed out that Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash) also got money from “Abramoff tribes,” thus proving her point that “…Democratic leaders don’t really care about ethics.”

The Abramoff “lobbying” scandal has begun to morph into a veiled attack on American tribal groups now described as “client tribes” of the confidence man and scam artist Jack Abramoff. The tribes were the victims of the scandal - not the perpetrators. It was their money that Abramoff siphoned into his fake “charity” groups, such as the Capital Athletic Foundation, which received $2.02 million from tribes he promised to help. The Capital Athletic Foundation then spent the money on a private school Abramoff created and which his sons attended. Abramoff also solicited tribal contributions for the National Center for Public Policy Research, which in turn paid for the now-infamous golfing party in Scotland for indicted former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, his wife, and others.

The tribes believed they were getting access to the people in Washington who could help them secure enabling legislation for their casino operations, highly lucrative businesses for the tribes that are able to build them. Jack Abramoff was a canny operator who used the tribes’ profits to fund his own ambitions as a star fundraiser for conservative politicians and the Republican party. Here’s what one of them told Washington Post journalist, Thomas B. Edsall, in a Nov. 8, 2004 article:

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), said Abramoff convinced him that “it was the conservatives who would be the saviors of the Indians by providing an environment where they could be self-sufficient and run their own affairs instead of being like inner-city welfare recipients.”

It is obvious from the e-mail messages (evidence in the Senate Indian Affairs Committtee investigation) between Jack Abramoff and his business partner, Michael Scanlon, that they had nothing but contempt for the tribal leaders that funded Abramoff’s political kitties. And as for being a “super lobbyist” (as Saunders refers to him), Abramoff directed most of the tribes’ money to his own private slush funds not to Greenberg-Traurig, the lobbying firm he was nominally employed by.

And as for Debra J. Saunders, you have to read the fifth paragraph of her Sunday column carefully to catch her unequal comparison of “Abramoff” money received by Sen. Patty Murray and Rep. Richard Pombo: Murray’s money ($40,980 in 2002 and 2004) came only from “Abramoff tribes” while Pombo’s money came directly from Abramoff and his wife ($7,000 in 2004) as well as from “Abramoff tribes” ($33,500 in 2004).

So Debra and others, Lay Off The Tribes and see Abramoff for what he really is, Republican confidence man who saw in tribal profits a path to political riches for the party of George W. Bush.

Reconstruction: Iraq vs Louisiana

The Bush administration has doled out a lot of cash for the “reconstruction” of Iraq and we now have a report from the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. The long story short is that $25 billion was appropriated by Congress to rebuild Iraq, including for 136 projects to improve water and sanitation and 425 projects to provide electricity; fewer than half of the water and sanitation projects will get built; 300 of the electricity projects will be completed. $400 million went to “unforseen administrative costs” which reduced the funds available for projects. Former Ambassador John Negroponte “shifted” over $3 billion from reconstruction to training Iraqi security forces, and miscellaneous “democracy institution-building” projects. A separate audit of financial practices of the American administration in Iraq revealed the disappearance of substantial sums of money, some of which shrink-wrapped piles of $100s had been cached in unlocked closets and piled on office floors.

Congress has appropriated $6.2 billion for reconstruction of Louisiana. The aid will be in the form of “block grants” to state agencies. Louisiana state officials had asked for $30 billion [see Note below] to help owners rebuild 200,000 homes destroyed by Hurricane Katrina and a federal program set up to oversee rebuilding efforts. The Bush administration rejected that proposal, and Donald E. Powell, son of former Secretary of State Colin Powell and now federal Gulf Coast coordinator, said to state officials, “I thinks it’s important for Louisiana to spend this money in a very prudent and wise manner” and indicated that the federal government will be keeping close watch on the Block Grant money going to the state.

Congressionally authorized funds for water, sanitation, electricity infrastructure projects, as well as security force training funds and unspecified administrative costs to Iraq = $24 billion

Congressionally authorized funds for Community Development Block Grants to Louisiana = $6.2 billion

Note: The Congressional Budget Office estimates of capital losses due to Katrina are $70 to $130 billion (287, 000 homes lost overall, with 135,000 homes damaged just in New Orleans; 90% of crude oil production and 70% of natural gas production facilities in the Gulf destroyed or damaged). The CBO compares this with the total cost of damage due to the Sept. 11 attack which was $87 billion (although only $10 billion of it was property loss).

What do you do...

...when a political party that is pledged to your destruction wins on election day? I don't mean folks who you suspect would get a kick out of your destruction -- like, maybe, if you were destroyed they'd exchange a high-five on the side. But a group that's been actively putting out the positive spin on your non-existence for going on two decades, and following up these words with lethal action....

The news today out of the West Bank and Gaza is that Hamas appears to have won -- not placed strong, but won outright -- in yesterday's Palestinean election. And this is the trick (at least from the West's perspective) with introducing democracy to the angry anti-American/anti-Israeli Arab populations that have been given little reason to become pro-blue jeans. I mean, it sure sounds great on the stump to say that freedom is on the march and all that. But ya know, Adolf and friends had a pretty good election day too. Democracy in action!

I'm not comparing this situation to the Nazis winning in '33. Well, OK, I am. But only in this one sense: it's a stone cold fact that democracy in and of itself doesn't guarantee a country or a government that plays well with others. And when you stop and think about it. I mean really, when you stop. And think about it. Introducing democracy while giving a population all sorts of reasons to hate you and your allies is arguably just plain stupid.

Now I know, I'm wildly oversimplifying here. (1) consensus insta-analysis appears to be that Hamas' victory had more to do with Fatah's rising corruption than with rising anti-American/anti-Israeli sentiment. (2) Hamas actually removed the bit about the destruction of Israel from its manifesto earlier this month. And (3), they haven't launched an attack in the last year. All of which is to the good.

So here's hoping Hamas in power behaves differently than Hamas out of power. Here's hoping they rise to their moment.

Here's hoping.

Update: Ugh. I just heard on the TV that Bibi Netanyahu made a similar point today about Hitler coming to power through democracy. If there's one yahoo I don't want to sound like, it's that jerk. But you know the old saying: "even massive tools are right twice a day." Honestly, I never really understood that. But people have been saying it for a long time now, so it must be true.

Bush & Johnson: In the Mirror of War

Many have made comparisons between the Iraq war and the Vietnam war but I have been thinking lately about the characters and careers of the two men who waged those American—made wars: GWB and LBJ.

Both were Texans, one a senator, the other governor, before entering the White House. They came from opposite sides of the cultural tracks, Johnson from poor farmers in one of the poorest regions of the country, Bush from a long line of wealthy aristocrats. They both had fathers in the public eye. Lyndon’s father had been a state legislator who fought for his poor, farm country constituents but was soon out of office, and out of work. His father’s failures embarrassed Lyndon. Bush’s father, a combat veteran and president, overshadowed the younger George during his undistinguished college and business career. Neither Johnson nor Bush saw military service in the wars of their youth. Johnson managed to avoid service in World War II and Bush likewise sought alternative service that would put him out of harm’s way. And both men were ruthless campaigners, Johnson famously stuffing ballot boxes in his first Senate win—Bush holding an entire nation at bay while lawyers fought over disputed ballot counts, ultimately winning by Supreme Court fiat.

Johnson never wanted to be involved in a war in Southeast Asia and he inherited the Vietnam conflict as he had inherited the presidency after the assassination of John Kennedy. But he could not say no to the generals, and presided over the escalation of the war. Bush came into office with unfinished business in the Middle East and perhaps a war agenda from the beginning but the unexpected attack of September 11 in the first year of his presidency gave overwhelming impetus to war plans—with Iraq the chosen target. Johnson saw the Vietnam war as a threat to his domestic agenda, and the price of that war lead to cycles of inflation and economic crises. Bush made the “war on terror” his domestic agenda, and the justification for ballooning national debt and transgressions of civil liberties.

The Vietnam war lasted ten years. By 1975 the “enemy” had taken the city of Saigon, and North and South Vietnam were reunited under a communist government just two years after President Nixon’s “peace with honor” ceasefire and troop withdrawal. Collatoral damage included millions of Vietnamese citizens, three political assassinations (Kennedy, King, and Kennedy) and a one-term presidency for Johnson.

Bush’s “war on Terror” may not be concluded in ten years. But it is inevitable that the struggle in Iraq will go on, whether American troops are there or not. Bush got his second term, unlike Johnson who left politics and died soon after, defeated by his war. Bush has unilaterally declared victory in the war in Iraq but we wait for the real outcome. Johnson’s presidency left one enduring legacy - the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Bush’s legacy will most likely be a Supreme Court lineup that will reexamine the rights of women, minorities, and prisoners in order to limit, not expand them.

From a ruthless competitor risen from the dust of the Texas plains to the heights of power, Lyndon Johnson ultimately will be known by acts that depended on empathy with the poorest, the most disenfranchised. To do it, he tore apart the traditional alliance with the racist Christian South that had gotten him elected and had made the Democratic party so powerful. George W. Bush’s Republican party today is the spitting image of that alliance. His campaign slogan touted the “compassionate conservative” but there is little compassion in the presidential acts of GWB.

Lyndon Johnson was a poor country hick who clawed his way to the top but in the end didn’t forget where he came from, and did something big for those who had little. George W. Bush didn’t forget where he came from either, and inspite of his playing at the role of country boy on his Texas estate, he will make sure that those who fostered his rise to power will be well rewarded.

Vietnam was Johnson’s accidental war and it was his undoing. Bush made Iraq his war and it is his strength. Americans no more like this war than they did the Vietnam war in 1967 but we aren’t as mad about it. We are less mad than scared, and we can thank Bush’s war for that.

Love the man, part two

Democrats.com says Karl Rove Has Zero Cred on National Security and quotes my favorite straight shooter, Howard Dean:

Karl Rove only has a White House job and a security clearance because President Bush has refused to keep his promise to fire anyone involved in revealing the identity of an undercover CIA operative. Rove’s political standing gets him an invitation to address Republicans in Washington, DC today, but it doesn’t give him the credibility to question Democrats’ commitment to national security. The truth is, Karl Rove breached our national security for partisan gain and that is both unpatriotic and wrong.

Karl Rove to Mitt Romney: "Al Qaeda calling. Just kidding!"

Mitt Romney is running for president but he doesn’t want my vote. Here’s what he said to New York Times reporter Adam Nagourney recently from Iowa where he is campaignin…er visiting.

“The eavesdropping is a big matter on the coasts for people who are inclined to dislike the president,” Mr. Romney said.”

The Coasts, people. That’s me and you and more than half of the population of the United States. According to a recent report from NOAA (National Oceanic & Atmospheric Adminisitration), approximately 153 million people (53 percent of the nation’s population) live in U.S. coastal counties.

And for those of you reading this who don’t live in a coastal county? According to Mitt, you are one of

The great majority of Americans [who] think it is the president’s first responsibility to protect the lives of the American citizens in an urgent setting where there is a threat of terrorism.

He means that you won’t mind if the president eavesdrops on your cell phone conversations (just in case al Qaeda called, or got a wrong number). However! And let Mr. Romney be perfectly clear on this,

“I would never suggest that the president should break the law. My guess is, my assumption is, he did not break the law. The president has a responsibility to follow the law, which I believe is likely to be found, but he also has a primary responsibility to protect the American people.”

So although Romney believes the president has a responsibility to follow the law (a risky statement!)… and the law is likely to be found, or the president is likely to be responsible, or has a primary responsibility to find the law, or something like that, the president is also required by law or primarily responsible for or likely to find? protection of the American people. Well, except maybe those people on the coasts.

Romney is in remarkably close agreement with Karl Rove, who happend to be quoted saying (the very same day!):

Let me be as clear as I can be: President Bush believes if Al Qaeda is calling somebody in America, it is in our national security interest to know who they’re calling and why. Some important Democrats clearly disagree.

Now maybe Romney got “important Democrats” and people “on the coasts” mixed up but he most definitely thinks that the president should know who Al Qaeda is calling in America and why. (You know, it’s really not so hard to just answer your cell and, if it’s Al Qaeda, say “look, Al Qaeda, the president wants to know why you’re calling me and I want to know why you’re calling me so just stop it, okay?!!” Or, if Al Qaeda doesn’t identify himself and just breathes heavily into your receiver, call the phone company and tell them you’re being harrassed by Al Qaeda and they’ll call the president or something.)

But here’s something to ponder (you do ponder, don’t you?). Just a few months (but oh so long) ago Mitt Romney, talking about the Hurricane Katrina disaster, said it had caused more economic* damage than the September 11 terrorist attack and that the government’s reponse was “undermanaged” and an “embarrassment.” He then went on to deny rumors that he might accept a possible invitation from the White House to lead the Katrina disaster recovery effort, saying he’s happy being the governor of Massachusetts.

Until he’s happier Running for President. But that reminds me… doesn’t Massachusetts have a coast?

*the Katrina death toll now stands at 1,392. September 11 death toll is 2,752.

New York Times Hides Cheney Spy

Hid him in plain sight, I might add, on the back page of the Saturday national edition. And here’s the bland headline to David Johnston’s inscrutable article on Paul Wolfowitz’s former minion in the Department of Defense’s “Office of Special Plans” who has just been sentenced to 12 years and seven months in prison (and the question is why a confessed spy gets such a short sentence) for handing over state secrets to Israeli “lobbyists” (spies): “Former Military Analyst Gets Prison Term for Passing Information.”

Just to refresh, in 2001 Larry Franklin, a U.S. Air Force Reserve colonel and former attaché to the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv, seems to have been in Rome and, along with Michael Ledeen (former Reagan “Iran-Contra” scandal figure and friend to Karl Rove) and to have talked with Italian officials about Iraqi WMD at about the same time that Paul Wolfowitz was setting up his Office of Special Plans in the Pentagon with Douglas Feith (then Bush’s Under Secretary of Defense for Policy) and William (Bill) Luti (former staffer to Dick Cheney and at that time Deputy Under Secretary of Defense, Special Plans & Near East and South Asia Affairs). Bill Luti later hired Larry Franklin to work in the secretive and highly influential Office of Special Plans which was the main dissementator of the bogus intelligence about Niger “yellowcake” sales to Iraq.

Bill Luti, Larry Franklin’s boss at the Office of Special Plans, was also, according to the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, one of only two people allowed to read reports coming from the Iraqi National Congress in 2002. The other person was John Hannah, Dick Cheney’s Senior National Security Advisor. After “Scooter” Libby was indicted for obstruction of justice and lying to the FBI in connection with the Yellowcake/Valerie Plame scandal, Cheney appointed Bill Luti to replace one-half of Libby—the National Security Advisor half—while David Addington was appointed by Cheney to be Libby’s other half—Chief of Staff and Assistant to the President.

So, Larry Franklin was Bill Luti’s errand boy and Luti was Cheney’s errand boy and they all were dealing in classified intelligence from the CIA, along with their own private lines of “intelligence” from Iraqis working in a program funded by the U.S. State Department (Paul Wolfowitz), and who-knows-what from the Italian secret service.

Also in 2001, the FBI was conducting a sting operation in New Jersey and New York City to uncover Israeli spy operations (Israel officials deny they spy on us) and, while FBI agents were watching a restaurant in New Jersey where the suspected Israeli spies were lunching, they noticed Larry Franklin walk in and sit down with the suspects. The spies, who call themselves “lobbyists” (note to self) were Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman, both senior staff members of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) which, as stated in today’s Times article “…was close to officials in the Bush administration.”

Years pass… we go to war on Iraq based on fake charges they are going to nuke us… and the FBI decides to “investigate” Larry Franklin because he refuses to cooperate with their continuing sting operation of Israeli spy cells. The FBI raids the offices of AIPAC in Washington (where else) and recovers hard drives and files that show Larry Franklin was passing classified information to the AIPAC “lobbyists”. On May 4, 2005 the FBI arrests Larry Franklin for violating the Espionage Act.

Larry Franklin then admits to passing classified information to the AIPAC “lobbyists” and an Israeli diplomat (unnamed) and, on January 19, 2006 Franklin is given a 12-year and 7-month sentence by Federal District Court Judge T.S. Ellis III who says at the sentencing that Mr. Franklin only desired to help the United States. Excuse me?!!

Since Franklin turned in “lobbyists” Rosen and Weissman, he won’t have to start serving his sentence until their trials are completed, at which time, according to Franklin’s lawyer “…the court will entertain a motion to reduce his sentence”. Entertain a motion, indeed. Perhaps Bush will entertain a notion to award him a medal of honor.

So, amongst all the hysteria about foreign terrorists and presidents spying on google users, you gotta hand it to the ol’ J. Edgar Hoover-Better Dead Than Red-Eleanor Roosevelt Was A Commie-FBI to catch actual spies who happen to be operating about as openly as Jack Abramoff at a Signature’s Restaurant fundraiser. The ol’ FBI. No fancy dancy Department of Homeland Security here. Just some Israeli spies…er lobbyists, a Cheney-affiliated Pentagon mole, and lots of classified documents.

What was in those documents anyway?? Oh, right. They’re classified.

Unfair Ridicule

This sentence structure may not really deserve to be criticized, but it is still always fun to misread:

Philip Jackson, who studies brain systems responsible for empathy at the University of Laval in Quebec City in Canada, said he found the sex differences intriguing and worth following up on.

Article

Whose Eyebrows?

Drudge is linking to a story on wcbstv.com and echoing their subhead, which reads: "Clinton's Use Of Word 'Plantation' Raises Eyebrows." I don't know about you (I mean, really, I don't) but when I read that headline over on Drudge I thought, 'Holy cow, Hillary went and said something racially insenitive on MLK Day. What sort of maroon is running that campaign anyways?' Is that just me? Or did you think something like that too?

Imagine my surprise when I clicked through and read the details. Here's Hillary's quote, which comes from a speech she made at an event sponsored by Rev. Al Sharpton's Action Network:

"When you look at the way the House of Representatives has been run, it has been run like a plantation and you know what I'm talking about..."

And the eyebrows she raised? They belong to Representative Peter King (unrelated to Martin Luther King, jr.), a white Republican NY congressman who said:

"It's always wrong to play the race card for political gain by using a loaded word like plantation. But it is particularly wrong to do so on Martin Luther King Day".

I'm not here to argue that point. I'm just saying, taken in some context, it's a different sort of story altogether. Is all I'm saying.

Elections--A Luxury in Wartime?

In peacetime, it is vitally important to our American democracy that we adhere to the legally scheduled election-cycles in choosing and changing our high public officials. This allows candidates and parties who are not currently in power to challenge and, if they prevail, to replace those presently in office.

In wartime, however, when the very lives of our citizens and the survival of our freedoms are at risk, it may become necessary for the Commander-in-Chief to accept the constitutional responsibility to temporarily suspend the legal election-cycle--whose inherent uncertainties and often debilitating domestic conflicts are well known to our enemies--and therefore, only for the duration, to...

Oh well, you know the rest.

It's OK. Love the man.

If you're a Democrat, whatever your feelings about Howard Dean, it's hard to watch this sequence and not, at least momentarily, love the man. Go on. Watch this video. I double-Democrat-dare you not to love him.

Gore won in 2000

I know I’m supposed to be “over it” by now, but dammitall, I’m not.

Lance deHaven-Smith, who wrote The Battle for Florida (University Press of Florida, 2005, explains it thusly:

It’s an embarrassing outcome for George Bush because it showed that Gore had gotten more votes. Everybody had thought that the chads were where all the bad ballots were, but it turned out that the ones that were the most decisive were write-in ballots where people would check Gore and write Gore in, and the machine kicked those out. There were 175,000 votes overall that were so-called “spoiled ballots.” About two-thirds of the spoiled ballots were over-votes; many or most of them would have been write-in over-votes, where people had punched and written in a candidate’s name. And nobody looked at this, not even the Florida Supreme Court in the last decision it made requiring a statewide recount. Nobody had thought about it except Judge Terry Lewis, who was overseeing the statewide recount when it was halted by the U.S. Supreme Court. The write-in over-votes have really not gotten much attention. Those votes are not ambiguous. When you see Gore picked and then Gore written in, there’s not a question in your mind who this person was voting for. When you go through those, they’re unambiguous: Bush got some of those votes, but they were overwhelmingly for Gore. For example, in an analysis of the 2.7 million votes that had been cast in Florida’s eight largest counties, The Washington Post found that Gore’s name was punched on 46,000 of the over-vote ballots it, while Bush’s name was marked on only 17,000.

One of the things I found that hadn’t been reported anywhere is, if you look at where those votes occurred, they were in predominantly black precincts. And (when you look at) the history of black voting in Florida, these are people that have been disenfranchised, intimidated. In the history of the early 20th century, black votes would be thrown out on technicalities, like they would use an X instead of a check mark. So you can understand why African Americans would be so careful, checking off Gore’s name on the list of candidates and also writing Gore’s name in the space for write-in votes. But because of the way the vote-counting machines work, this had the opposite effect: the machines threw out their ballots.

deHaven-Smith is worried about the health of our democracy, as we all should be:

This is a turning point potentially for us. If we don’t recognize the disorder, I don’t think we have many years left of democracy in the United States. I’m not entirely convinced that it’s not too late, even as we speak.

Lawless presidents

Since when do we have a system of Government where the President can simply “waive” away laws?

That’s from Glenn Greenwald in a well-considered and comprehensive commentary, “An Ideology of Lawlessness” at digby’s blogspot. Take a read and educate yerself.

I have to comment myself, however, on lawless precedents of American presidents since this ain’t the first time we have been confronted with suspensions of civil liberties by rogue operators. Most prominent of the lawless presidents was Lincoln who suspended the right of citizens to challenge their imprisonment in a court of law (the right to a writ of habeas corpus). The Supreme Court disagreed with him but he did it anyway - for three years (and as many as 13,000 citizens were arrested and imprisoned). By the way, the Civil War was also an undeclared war - begun with what was considered to be “an act of war”—the firing on Fort Sumter.

Second most prominent was Franklin Roosevelt, who denied rights to citizens of “Japanese ancestry”, initially imposing a curfew on them and then ordering their “removal” from “military zones on the West Coast.” The Supreme Court upheld those actions, and 100,000 Americans of “Japanese ancestry” were imprisoned for the duration of World War II.

Lincoln’s and Roosevelt’s actions were anti-constitution and denied legimate rights to citizens. We somehow allowed them to happen in that “mob mind” we get into during times of civil crisis. The extreme circumstances of the Civil War and World War II post-Pearl Harbor seem to justify the extreme attacks on civil liberties. But the question we have to ask now is what are the extreme circumstances that could possibly justify imprisonment without charges, denial of recourse to courts of law, subjection to physical torture and psychological abuse, abduction in secret and secret imprisonment, and espionage on non-combatant civilians?

The extreme circumstances appear to be coming from extreme beliefs (religious and political) verging on paranoia held by our president and his vice president and their legions of (civil) servants and officials. Even our military lawyers (Judge Advocates General or JAGs) are horrified by their lack of respect for the law. The CIA, itself a questionable institution in a civil society, has questioned the use or necessity of torture to obtain information from “enemy combatants”.

But the American people are confused. We think our safety is at risk. We want guns, big houses, and the confiscation of nail clippers on airline flights. We also don’t think we will ever end up labeled an “enemy combatant” and shoved into a cell on a razor-wire fenced beach in Cuba.

One thing that might actually arouse us to defend our civil liberties is the thought that some bureaucrat in Washington is reading our email or tracking our web browsing. Now that’s an outrage! The real issue, however, is that we just might end up being secretly abducted and spirited away to an extra-U.S. territorial prison camp on the basis of an email message which happens to include the words “bomb”, “spy” or variations on the word “Allah” (ala, alla, allen, ella, al…etc.).

Resumption of feud narrowly averted

Like most people I was following the tragic Sago mine disaster. I couldn’t help noticing that the CEO of International Coal Group, the owner of the mine, was a fellow named Ben Hatfield. Hatfield? I thought to myself. As in the Hatfields and the McCoys?

Radio reports about the lone survivor of the disaster caused me to prick up my ears further, but carefuly research has established that the man fighting for his life in Pittsburgh is in fact named McCloy. Randal L. McCloy, Jr., to be exact.

Whew! Close one.

Bush signed anti-torture statute with fingers crossed

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

“The question is, ” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty. “which is to be master—that’s all.”

Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

First, the President signaled his intention to reserve his authority, as Commander in Chief, to ignore statutory mandates. These include provisions that require advance notice of congressional committees before the use of funds to initiate a special access program, a new overseas installation, or a new start program; and a “report and wait” provision that requires the President to wait 15 days after notifying six congressional committees before using certain appropriations to transfer defense articles or services to another nation or an international organization for international peacekeeping, peace enforcement, or humanitarian assistance operations.

…

Second, the President unsurprisingly signals that the Administration reads the Graham Amendments to cut off currently pending habeas cases, including most importantly the Hamdan case that’s now before the Supreme Court and the Al Odah case (Rasul on remand) that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has under review

Marty Lederman, So Much for the President’s Assent to the McCain Amendment

Abramoff & DeLay: "free-market " friends

Just cleaning out my files….here’s an excerpt from Thomas B. Edsall’s piece in the Washington Post from 2004:

In 1995, Abramoff took on another major client, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, an American protectorate in the Pacific. Again, he capitalized on his ability to exploit conservative ideology. The Marianas sought to retain exemptions from U.S. immigration and labor laws to import laborers from China at $3.05 an hour — $2 under the federal minimum wage — to make garments labeled “Made in the U.S.A.” Abramoff portrayed the Marianas as a case study of the success of the free market unfettered by wage and immigration laws. DeLay became Abramoff’s strongest ally, leading the fight against Democratic efforts to impose wage, hour and immigration regulations on the protectorate. On a trip to the Marianas, DeLay told officials, according to media accounts:

“When one of my closest and dearest friends, Jack Abramoff, your most able representative in Washington, D.C., invited me to the islands, I wanted to see firsthand the free-market success and the progress and reform you have made.”

[By Thomas B. Edsall Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, November 8, 2004; Page A23 ]

and the latest on suspension of habeas corpus for Guantanamo prisoners….

Habeas Corpus Suspended in the District of Columbia

A single paragraph in Harper’s Weekly on November 9, 1861 said this:

On 23d the President instructed the Marshal for the District of Columbia not to serve writs on the Provost Marshal, but return them to the Court with the explanation that the President has, for the present, suspended the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus in cases relating to the military for reasons of public necessity.

…the administration is moving swiftly to take advantage of an amendment to the military bill that President Bush signed into law last Friday. The amendment strips federal courts from hearing habeas corpus petitions from Guantanamo detainees…Mr. Graham, along with Senators Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, and Jon Kyl, Republican of Arizona, sponsored the amendment to the Defense Act eliminating habeas corpus jurisdiction in federal courts.

It was President Lincoln who in 1861 denied a Maryland resident the right to appear before a court of law to protest his abduction by military officers in the middle of the night and imprisonment in Fort McHenry. No less than the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Roger B. Taney, declared Lincoln’s action illegal and unconstitutional, declaring that only Congress had the power to suspend the writ of habeas corpus.

Taney, in his opinion upholding the right of John Merryman to appear before the court, and overturning Lincoln’s action, reminds us that,

From the earliest records of the English law, no freeman could be detained in prison, except upon a criminal charge or conviction, or for a civil debt. In the former case it was always in his power to demand of the court of king’s bench a writ of habeas corpus ad subjiciendum, directed to the person detaining him in custody, by which he was enjoined to bring up the body of the prisoner, with the warrant of commitment, that the court might judge of its sufficiency, and remand the party, admit him to bail, or discharge him, according to the nature of the charge. This writ issued of right, and could not be refused by the court. It was not to bestow an immunity from arbitrary imprisonment, which is abundantly provided for in Magna Charta (if indeed it is not more ancient), that the statute of Car. II. was enacted, but to cut off the abuses by which the government’s lust of power, and the servile subtlety of the crown lawyers, had impaired so fundamental a privilege.’

American law does not allow imprisonment for debt and we don’t have crown lawyers (though congressional lawyers often exhibit the same ‘servile subtlety’) but in the founding documents of our nation we embraced the right to have “the body of the prisoner brought” before a court of law in order to review the circumstances of arrest and imprisonment and to be judged whether those actions were reasonable, right, and lawful.

In spite of Taney’s ruling, between 1861 and 1863 over 10,000 citizens, including so-called “copperheads” or “peace Democrats” who opposed Lincoln’s policies, and others accused of being southern sympathizers, spies or traitors, were arrested without recourse to judicial review. In 1870, Ulysses Grant also suspended habea corpus in South Carolina to squash the KKK.

In 2004 the Supreme Court visited the ancient writ once again, in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld. Justice O’Connor wrote for the majority opinion that affirmed the right of Hamdi, an American arrested by the military in Afghanistan and held first in Guantanamo and then in the U.S, to have the circumstances of his arrest and imprisonment reviewed in a court of law. She said:

Our resolution of this dispute requires a careful examination both of the writ of habeas corpus, which Hamdi now seeks to employ as a mechanism of judicial review, and of the Due Process Clause, which informs the procedural contours of that mechanism in this instance.

Only in the rarest of circumstances has Congress seen fit to suspend the writ… [in 1863 and 1871]… At all other times, it has remained a critical check on the Executive, ensuring that it does not detain individuals except in accordance with law…. All agree suspension of the writ has not occurred here. Thus, it is undisputed that Hamdi was properly before an Article III court to challenge his detention.

…it would turn our system of checks and balances on its head to suggest that a citizen could not make his way to court with a challenge to the factual basis for his detention by his government, simply because the Executive opposes making available such a challenge. Absent suspension of the writ by Congress, a citizen detained as an enemy combatant is entitled to this process.

This is what O’Connor said about what Hamdi faces without a review of his case:

If the Government does not consider this unconventional war won for two generations, and if it maintains during that time that Hamdi might, if released, rejoin forces fighting against the United States, then the position it has taken throughout the litigation of this case suggests that Hamdi’s detention could last for the rest of his life.

The Graham-Levin Amendment and its suspension of habeas corpus for “enemy combatants” held in Guantanamo prisons, unlike Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus in 1861, is authorized by Congress and therefore “constitutional.” Unlike Grant’s suspension of the right in South Carolina, the civil rights of Americans harassed, threatened, and murdered by the KKK are not at risk by imprisoned “enemy combatants”.

But a Congress largely perceived to be in thrall to a despotically inclined President, his secretive cabinet, and his secretive troops of appointees and assistants has now suspended the right of habeas corpus for persons not clearly identified, and without verified cause, held on American-governed territory but not accessible to anyone but the military, for the duration of a war that may have no end.

John Yoo's Opinions: Discuss

I have to ask how someone as obscure (until recently) as John Yoo, former law clerk to Justice Thomas, currently a law professor at UC Berkeley’s Boalt law school, is in the position of writing innovative legal rationales for the U.S. Justice department advocating denial of legal rights to U.S. prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and allowing torture of anyone deemed to be a “terrorist”. President Bush would rather not discuss these grave matters with us but we are still free to discuss them among ourselves. Here is a beginning…

A memo written by John Yoo, circa 2001, on why prisoners at Guantanamo Bay military prison are not legally privileged under U.S. law:

We conclude that the great weight of legal authority indicates that a federal district court could not properly exercise habeas jurisdiction over an alien detained at GBC [Guantanamo Bay, Cuba].

Yoo’s “great weight of legal authority” is this: Johnson v. Eigentrager, 339 U.S. 763 (1950). According to Yoo, this case supports his case that an “enemy alien” held outside the United States has no right to legal proceedings of the United States civil courts. In that case it was German nationals accused of war crimes for assisting Japan after the surrender of Germany, but prior to the surrender of Japan. They got a military trial but claimed Fifth Amendment violations.

Interestingly, three of the Supreme Court Justices (Black, Douglas, and Burton) dissented in the majority opinion. Here is what Justice Black, writing for the dissent, had to say about granting “enemy aliens” the right of habeas corpus….

Not only is United States citizenship a “high privilege,” it is a priceless treasure. For that citizenship is enriched beyond price by our goal of equal justice under law—equal justice not for citizens alone, but for all persons coming within the ambit of our power. This ideal gave birth to the constitutional provision for an independent judiciary with authority to check abuses of executive power[my emphasis] and to issue writs of habeas corpus liberating persons illegally imprisoned.

and further….

Despite these objections, the Court now proceeds to find a “war crime” in the fact that after Germany had surrendered these prisoners gave certain information to Japanese military forces. I am not convinced that this unargued question is correctly decided. The petition alleges that when the information was given, the accused were “under the control of the armed forces of the Japanese Empire,” in Japanese-occupied territory. Whether obedience to commands of their Japanese superiors would in itself constitute “unlawful” belligerency in violation of the laws of war is not so simple a question as the Court assumes. The alleged circumstances, if proven, would place these Germans in much the same position as patriotic French, Dutch, or Norwegian soldiers who fought on with the British after their homelands officially surrendered to Nazi Germany. There is not the slightest intimation that the accused were spies, or engaged in cruelty, torture, or any conduct other than that which soldiers or civilians might properly perform when entangled in their country’s war. It must be remembered that legitimate “acts of warfare,” however murderous, do not justify criminal conviction.

And one might ask, would those French, Dutch, or Norwegian soldiers fighting against the Nazis be considered “terrorists” in some alternate universe where the definition of war has been deemed to be a state of mind?

Even some conservatives can't get behind presidential law-breaking

In a long well considered post, Glenn Greenwald posits that the illegal wiretap scandal might be one that resists the usual tamping down by the Bush cult of personality (Breaking the Daou Cycle: Conservative opposition to Bush’s law-breaking):

Former Bush loyalists are now, in droves, expressing discomfort or worse with George Bush generally and specifically with his claimed right to break the law, and that is something we have not seen before. It is a clear and hopeful deviation from the scandal-suffocating cycle described so astutely by Peter Daou.

Conservatives who still believe in something beyond George Bush ascribe, genuinely, to a belief in the rule of law and to real limitations on the powers of the Federal Government — the two principles most directly under assault by the Administration’s illegal conduct and by the accompanying Yooian theories of the Omnipotent Unchecked Executive who wields the right to break the law.

And beyond that, Americans of every ideological stripe have an instinctive aversion to political leaders who claim the right to break the law. That is not a naive aspiration. These are deeply ingrained political principles, drummed into us from the time we first attend school. Those are the values which pervade every discussion of “America,” the founding fathers, the Constitution. Even Americans who agree on nothing else know, even if only on the most submerged and basest levels, that what distinguishes America from other countries and what keeps us safe and secure in our liberty is that nobody, including the President, is above the law. People know that the claim that someone should be above the law is the mark of a tyrant claiming a power that is as arrogant and dangerous as it is un-American.

Did they spy on Bill Richardson?

New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson suspects that the NSA intercepted some of his phone calls discussing his negotiations with North Korea (The Albuquerque Tribune: Local / State Government).

Richardson’s name often comes up as a possible Democractic presidential or vice-presidential candidate.