FISA 2

Glenn Greewald has done a careful review of "Sen. Specter’s proposed legislation to amend FISA" and he wants to make one thing perfectly clear:

this scandal arose not because the Administration has adopted some radical views specifically about its eavesdropping powers, but instead, this scandal, at its core, is based on the fact that the Administration has embraced the general theory that the President has the right to make decisions about all matters concerning national security without any limitation or "interference" from the Congress or the courts.

[...]

I believe that this legislation could actually achieve a good result for this scandal – in a sense, it calls the Administration’s bluff. From the beginning of this scandal, the Administration has claimed that it eavesdropped outside of FISA because the FISA standards are too restrictive and the FISA process too cumbersome to enable the eavesdropping it wants.

But the falsity of that excuse has been apparent from the beginning – because FISA is incredibly permissive, because the FISA court has rubber-stamped virtually every application it received, and because the Administration could have easily had Congress make any liberalizing revisions it wanted to FISA, but it never did so, opting instead to ignore the entire FISA framework when eavesdropping.

The reality that has long been apparent is that the Administration did not want – and still does not want – to have any oversight at all, or any approval requirements for its eavesdropping activities. Instead, it insists on the power to eavesdrop in secret, without anyone knowing whose communications it is intercepting and without having to justify the eavesdropping to anyone, let alone to some unelected judges.

The Administration does not care about loosening FISA standards and it never did. That’s why this Specter legislation does nothing for it. It cares only about one thing: the principle that the President is free to act without interference from Congress or courts when it comes to making decisions broadly relating to national security. Anything that undermines or negates that unchecked, unilateral power will be equally unacceptable to the White House.

[...]

It is worth remembering that Congress, as part of the Patriot Act, gave the Administration all of the FISA amendments it asked for to liberalize FISA, and the Administration -- at roughly the same time -- still went ahead and violated FISA by eavesdropping outside of its framework. That fact alone ought to demonstrate that the Administration is not and has never been interested in liberalizing FISA. The Administration is interested in solidifying its law-breaking powers and insisting on the right to act without having to adhere to the law.

This doesn't look like Kansas...

The CunningRealist tells us that Bush has pledged to help rebuild the Golden Mosque shrine and CR senses that this is another "Toto moment".

So this is what it's come to. Ponder it for a moment. We are now in the mosque-rebuilding business in the Middle East, smack-dab in the middle of a civil war. (And yes, it is a civil war. For the past week, the phrases "on the brink" and "possibly leading to" have preceded that term. Those waiting for an American style stand-up fight with skirmish line battles a la Antietam will be waiting for a long time.) We are asking 20-year olds from Tulsa and Des Moines and Gary and Fresno to navigate hundreds of years of religious and ethnic hate and to sacrifice their feet, legs, hands, arms, eyes, and lives in the process. We asked them to remove Saddam and his regime, and they did that. We asked them to guard infrastructure, and they did that. We asked them to rebuild an entire nation's military from scratch, and they are doing it. We asked them to find WMD's, and they tried. Now, we're rebuilding mosques.

This is one of those "Toto Moments" when you realize how far from Kansas you've come, and you retrace the path in your mind wondering just how it happened. Soon, five years will have passed since 9/11. During those years, we've lost tens of thousands of troops to death and permanent injury by going "massive, things related and not, sweep it all up." We've spent hundreds of billions, with more to come. And after all of it, Bin Laden---as "marginalized" and "irrelevant" as ever---continues to urge attacks on oil facilities, the latest of which occurred this week at the crucial Abqaiq plant in Saudi Arabia.

And through it all we have a president who can only tell us to trust him because democracy takes time to develop and this is, after all, hard work. "Fret not, little doggies....in a few hundred years the history books will call me a genius." No. Just as patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel, citing history's inevitable judgment is the last resort of an incompetent. It's a feckless and faith-based approach to leadership, and it's a cop out.

On The Brink In Iraq

Robert Dreyfuss at TomPaine.com in an article called On The Brink In Iraq begins...

With Iraq perched at the very precipice of an ethnic and sectarian holocaust, the utter failure of the Bush administration’s policy is revealed with starkest clarity. Iraq may or may not fall into the abyss in the next few days and weeks, but what is no longer in doubt is who is to blame: If Iraq is engulfed in civil war then Americans, Iraqis and the international community must hold President Bush and Vice President Cheney responsible for the destruction of Iraq.

The CIA, the State Department, members of Congress and countless Middle East experts warned Bush and Cheney— to no avail— that toppling Saddam could unleash the demons of civil war. They said so before the war, during it and in the aftermath, and each time the warnings were dismissed.

[...]

For the most radical-right neoconservative Jacobins amongst the Bush-Cheney team, the possibility that Iraq might fall apart wasn’t even alarming: they just didn’t care, and in their obsessive zeal to overthrow Saddam Hussein they were more than willing to take the risk.

[...]

In a paper for an Israeli think tank, the same think tank for which Wurmser, Richard Perle and Douglas Feith prepared the famous “Clean Break” paper in 1996, Wurmser wrote in 1997 : “The residual unity of the nation is an illusion projected by the extreme repression of the state.” After Saddam, Iraq would “be ripped apart by the politics of warlords, tribes, clans, sects, and key families,” he wrote. “Underneath facades of unity enforced by state repression, [Iraq’s] politics is defined primarily by tribalism, sectarianism, and gang/clan-like competition.”

[...]

Such black neoconservative fantasies—which view the Middle East as a chessboard on which they can move the pieces at will—have now come home to roost. For the many hundreds of thousands who might die in an Iraqi civil war, the consequences are all too real.

and he closes with...

It is all ugly and likely to get much uglier. So far, hundreds of Iraqis on all sides have died since Tuesday, scores and perhaps hundreds of mosques attacked, execution-style slayings proliferated, and ordinary Iraqis driven into hiding or into exile. A weekend curfew has Iraq on the knife’s edge.

Like the Sarajevo assassination that precipitated World War I, the attack on the mosque may trigger a war, but it won’t be the cause. The cause is far more deep-rooted, embedded in the chaos and bitterness that followed the U.S. invasion of Iraq and America’s deliberate efforts to stress sectarian differences in creating the Iraqi Governing Council and subsequent government institutions. If the current crisis doesn’t spark a civil war, be patient. The next one will.

Whose judgment on the Iraq War is entitled to respect?

The incomparable Glenn demonstrates that when one "reviews the pre-war arguments made by Howard Dean as to why the war was ill-advised, it is glaringly self-evident just how right he was -- at a time when few others recognized it -- about virtually everything". It is so important not to allow those who would re-write history to succeed. This task is all the more difficult because the electorate seems to have the attention span of a goldfish. However, by proving that claims that "everyone thought he had WMD" and that "everyone supported the war at the beginning" are lies is a good way to start.

[Forgive me for quoting this excellent post in its entirety. --bill]



Whose judgment on the Iraq War is entitled to respect?
by Glenn Greenwald

It is becoming increasingly apparent even to loyal Bush followers that our occupation in Iraq has turned into a full-blown, irreversible disaster. Conservative hero William Buckley, writing in the pages of National Review yesterday, emphatically in that war.

The United States has a tragic and disastrous situation on its hands, and there are no good choices. Having invaded the country, shattered its infrastructure, removed its government and promised to stay until the country was re-built, stabilized, and democratic, there is something self-evidently unseemly and extremely irresponsible about simply leaving the mess in the Iraqi’s lap by withdrawing our military presence the minute it looks as though a civil was is about to break out.

But, as Jack Murtha pointed out (months before Buckley did so), there is no point in staying if our military occupation is not improving the situation, let alone if it is making the situation worse (an observation which caused Murtha to be promptly accused by the White House of wanting to "surrender to the terrorists").

During the build-up to the war in 2002 and early 2003, most prominent Democrats were bullied and intimidated into supporting the invasion of Iraq by a combination of Bush’s sky-high popularity and accusations of subversiveness which were launched at anyone who opposed the Leader’s war. One of the few nationally prominent Democrats to emphatically oppose the war was Howard Dean, and it is truly staggering just how right he was in virtually every statement he made about the war.

This is worth noting not because this is a time for recriminations or because of the satisfaction which one can derive from a celebratory "I-told-you-so" moment. It is critical to focus on who was right about this war because this country, right now, has extremely difficult choices to make with regard to the disaster it has created in Iraq – and the first choice is whose judgment and foreign policy wisdom ought to be listened to and accorded respect.

Karl Rove has declared that Republicans intend to make national security the principal issue leading up to the 2006 elections, but how could that possibly benefit anyone other than Democrats? With regard to what we should do about the war, following the advice of Bush and the neonconservative geniuses who led us into this disaster is a bit like wanting to build a ship and hiring the naval architect of the Titanic to build it and the Titanic’s captain to navigate it. Put simply, Bush supporters were wrong -- fundamentally and tragically wrong -- with regard to every facet of this war.

By stark contrast, when one reviews the pre-war arguments made by Howard Dean as to why the war was ill-advised, it is glaringly self-evident just how right he was -- at a time when few others recognized it -- about virtually everything. Here are excerpts from a speech Dean gave on February 17, 2003 -- just over a month before we invaded -- at Drake University which reflects the prescient warnings he was making back then:

I believe it is my patriotic duty to urge a different path to protecting America's security: To focus on al Qaeda, which is an imminent threat, and to use our resources to improve and strengthen the security and safety of our home front and our people while working with the other nations of the world to contain Saddam Hussein. . . .

Had I been a member of the Senate, I would have voted against the resolution that authorized the President to use unilateral force against Iraq - unlike others in that body now seeking the presidency.

That the President was given open-ended authority to go to war in Iraq resulted from a failure of too many in my party in Washington who were worried about political positioning for the presidential election.

The stakes are so high, this is not a time for holding back or sheepishly going along with the herd.

To this day, the President has not made a case that war against Iraq, now, is necessary to defend American territory, our citizens, our allies, or our essential interests.

The Administration has not explained how a lasting peace, and lasting security, will be achieved in Iraq once Saddam Hussein is toppled.

I, for one, am not ready to abandon the search for better answers.

As a doctor, I was trained to treat illness, and to examine a variety of options before deciding which to prescribe. I worried about side effects and took the time to see what else might work before proceeding to high-risk measures. . . .

We have been told over and over again what the risks will be if we do not go to war.

We have been told little about what the risks will be if we do go to war.

If we go to war, I certainly hope the Administration's assumptions are realized, and the conflict is swift, successful and clean. I certainly hope our armed forces will be welcomed like heroes and liberators in the streets of Baghdad.

I certainly hope Iraq emerges from the war stable, united and democratic.

I certainly hope terrorists around the world conclude it is a mistake to defy America and cease, thereafter, to be terrorists.

It is possible, however, that events could go differently, . . . .

Iraq is a divided country, with Sunni, Shia and Kurdish factions that share both bitter rivalries and access to large quantities of arms.

Anti-American feelings will surely be inflamed among the misguided who choose to see an assault on Iraq as an attack on Islam, or as a means of controlling Iraqi oil.

And last week's tape by Osama bin Laden tells us that our enemies will seek relentlessly to transform a war into a tool for inspiring and recruiting more terrorists.

There are other risks. Iraq is a divided country, with Sunni, Shia and Kurdish factions that share both bitter rivalries and access to large quantities of arms.

Using the standard rhetorical tactic of Bush followers, Dean was caricatured and falsely accused by Republicans, some Democrats, and an easily manipulated media as being some sort of radical pacifist subversive who should be mocked rather than listened to. That was achieved only by distorting his views. As Dean made repeatedly clear, he favors fighting wars which are truly necessary to defend the United States from imminent threats, but he believed there was no persuasive evidence demonstrating that Saddam constituted a threat which justified the war.

And those who claim that there was nobody before the war who doubted that Saddam Hussein possessed WMDs which compelled our invasion ought to read this passage from Dean's speech:

Now, I am not among those who say that America should never use its armed forces unilaterally. In some circumstances, we have no choice. In Iraq, I would be prepared to go ahead without further Security Council backing if it were clear the threat posed to us by Saddam Hussein was imminent, and could neither be contained nor deterred.

However, that case has not been made, and I believe we should continue the hard work of diplomacy and inspection. . . .

Secretary Powell's recent presentation at the UN showed the extent to which we have Iraq under an audio and visual microscope. Given that, I was impressed not by the vastness of evidence presented by the Secretary, but rather by its sketchiness. . .

Can anyone dispute that Dean was right about virtually every prediction and claim he made, every warning that he issued about why invading Iraq was ill-advised and counter-productive? Compare this outright prescience from Dean to the war supporters’ declarations of cakewalks, predictions of glorious victory celebrations, promises that the war would pay for itself, Purple Finger celebrations where they insisted that democracy was upon us, errors regarding the number of troops needed, inexcusable failure to anticipate or plan the insurgency, and shrill fear-mongering about Saddam’s non-existent weapons.

Americans long ago abandoned Bush’s war once they realized that the premises on which the war was justified were false. But while this war was George Bush’s from start to finish - and he will live with it forever ignominiously tagged to him in history – it is now America’s war as well. And as the country decides what course of action we ought to take to extricate ourselves from this disaster, it is worth remembering whose judgment was so accurate and wise and whose judgment was so horribly wrong in every respect.

Democrats ought to be eager to make national security a critical issue for this year's elections. After all, Bush and his followers are responsible for the single worst strategic error made by the United States during our lifetimes, perhaps in the country's history.

Civil War: Rwanda/Bosnia/Lebanon/Iraq

Josh Marshall shares this...

A note from TPM Reader AK ...

Rwanda/Bosnia/Lebanon/Iraq

As I heard NPR's reports about Sunis pulling shiites out of their homes (and prbably vice-versa), a chill went up my spine. I have no doubt that the worst is about to begin in Iraq with ethnic cleasnsing / mass murders/ Lebanon-style (Sabra and shatilla) civil war about to begin. And the US is stuck in the middle. While it would be great to get out right now (last month would have been better), the responsibility for everything is on us. We can't leave now, and we will be blamed (mostly correctly) for all that is about to happen. I am filled with dread. Our leadership is still saying to hold the line, when the line is not there.

Fear and hate is a vicious combination, each feeding off the other, like a well-built fire.

Jane Hamsher adds:

The neocon monsters had an awful lot of help bringing the world to this awful place. They could not have done it without the help of compliant -- and one can only assume willfully ignorant -- journalists. May it be tied to their tails like a tin can for all eternity.

Bush, the Leaker-in-Chief?

No darkened parking garages for our Dubya, no siree. Hubris uses the front door.

Murray Waas has written an article in which he asks the questions:

Did the Bush administration “authorize” the leak of classified information to Bob Woodward? And did those leaks damage national security?

The vice-chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) made exactly that charge tonight in a letter to John Negroponte, the Director of National Intelligence. What prompted Rockefeller to write Negroponte was a recent op-ed in the New York Times by CIA director Porter Goss complaining that leaks of classified information were the fault of “misguided whistleblowers.”

Rockefeller charged in his letter that the most “damaging revelations of intelligence sources and methods are generated primarily by Executive Branch officials pushing a particular policy, and not by the rank-and-file employees of intelligence agencies.”

Later in the same letter, Rockefeller said: “Given the Administration’s continuing abuse of intelligence information for political purposes, its criticism of leaks is extraordinarily hypocritical. Preventing damage to intelligence sources and methods from media leaks will not be possible until the highest level of the Administration cease to disclose classified information on a selective basis for political purposes.”

Exhibit A for Rockefeller: Woodward’s book “Bush at War".

[...]

Did the leaks to Woodward damage national security? Michael Scheuer, the CIA’s former head of the CIA’s Bin Laden Unit, wrote in his book Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror:

“After reading Mr. Woodward’s Bush at War, it seems to me that the U.S. officials who either approved or participated in passing the information—in documents and via interviews—that is the heart of Mr. Woodward’s book gave an untold measure of aid and comfort to the enemy.”

What was not known by Scheuer at the time was that officials on the “seventh floor” of the CIA were literally ordered by then-CIA director George Tenet to co-operate with Woodward’s project because President Bush personally asked that it be done. More than one CIA official co-operated with Woodward against their best judgment, and only because they thought it was something the President had wanted done or ordered.

One former senior administration official explained to me: “This was something that the White House wanted done because they considered it good public relations. If there was real damage to national security—if there were leaks that possibly exposed sources and methods, it was not done in this instance for the public good or to expose Watergate type wrongdoing. This was done for presidential image-making and a commercial enterprise—Woodward’s book.” [emphasis mine --bill]

et tu Buckley?

Glenn writes a piece about the president's dismal poll numbers called A Dying Presidency and he ends it with this:

UPDATE: The father of modern conservatism, William Buckley, may have been one of the people polled by Rasmussen. He announced today that our mission in Iraq has failed

[...]

A few months ago, when Howard Dean said that he thought we would be unable to fulfill the mission in Iraq as Bush has described it, he was denounced as a traitor and Ronald Reagan's son urged that he be hanged -- literally. And yet, now we have William Buckley saying that our mission failed and it's time for Bush to acknowledge defeat. Will they hang him, too? Once we hang all the traitors and subversives who have abandoned Bush, there sure won't be many people left.

The Boy Who Cried Wolf

William Greider gets it!

For years I've been saying that Bush is a real terrorist because he terrorizes his own people. He always seems to be exclaiming: "Be afraid, be very afraid! Be afraid of terrorists, be afraid of Arabs, be afraid of Muslims, you can't be too careful!!!".

But now he's being hoisted on his own petard with regard to the DPW "scandal". What he's previously wanted was for everyone to be afraid... when that suits him. But not now... now, it's not that big a deal, it's just global business, so relax... trust him.

I must confess to not being nearly so concerned about "PortGate" as many others are and certainly not as concerned as I am about their criminal incompetence e.g. Iraq, WMD, Plamegate, Katrina, NSA wiretaps, etc. So I'm not prepared to hype the "scandal", though there is plenty about it that stinks (e.g. see Digby) and on which Bush and his cronies deserve to be called. But I am guilty of enjoying the poetic justice of his predicament. I know, I know... schadenfreude again.

The Boy Who Cried Wolf
by William Greider

David Brooks, the high-minded conservative pundit, dismissed the Dubai Ports controversy as an instance of political hysteria that will soon pass. He was commenting on PBS, and I thought I heard a little quaver in his voice when he said this was no big deal. Brooks consulted "the experts," and they assured him there's no national security risk in a foreign company owned by Middle East Muslims--actually, by an Arab government--managing six major American ports. Cool down, people. This is how the world works in the age of globalization.

Of course, he is correct. But what a killjoy. This is a fun flap, the kind that brings us together. Republicans and Democrats are frothing in unison, instead of polarizing incivilities. Together, they are all thumping righteously on the poor President. I expect he will fold or at least retreat tactically by ordering further investigation. The issue is indeed trivial. But Bush cannot escape the basic contradiction, because this dilemma is fundamental to his presidency.

A conservative blaming hysteria is hysterical, when you think about it, and a bit late. Hysteria launched Bush's invasion of Iraq. It created that monstrosity called Homeland Security and pumped up defense spending by more than 40 percent. Hysteria has been used to realign US foreign policy for permanent imperial war-making, whenever and wherever we find something frightening afoot in the world. Hysteria will justify the "long war" now fondly embraced by Field Marshal Rumsfeld. It has also slaughtered a number of Democrats who were not sufficiently hysterical. It saved George Bush's butt in 2004.

Bush was the principal author, along with his straight-shooting Vice President, and now he is hoisted by his own fear-mongering propaganda. The basic hysteria was invented from risks of terrorism, enlarged ridiculously by the President's open-ended claim that we are endangered everywhere and anywhere (he decides where). Anyone who resists that proposition is a coward or, worse, a subversive. We are enticed to believe we are fighting a new cold war. But are we? People are entitled to ask. Bush picked at their emotional wounds after 9/11 and encouraged them to imagine endless versions of even-larger danger. What if someone shipped a nuke into New York Harbor? Or poured anthrax in the drinking water? OK, a lot of Americans got scared, even people who ought to know better.

So why is the fearmonger-in-chief being so casual about this Dubai business?

Because at some level of consciousness even George Bush knows the inflated fears are bogus. So do a lot of the politicians merrily throwing spears at him. He taught them how to play this game, invented the tactics and reorganized political competition as a demagogic dance of hysterical absurdities, endless opportunities to waste public money. Very few dare to challenge the mindset. Thousands have died for it.

Bush's terrorism war has from the start been in collision with the precepts of corporate-led globalization. One practices hyper-nationalism--Washington gets to decide where it goes to war, never mind the Geneva Convention and other "obsolete" international restraints. Yet Bush's diplomats travel the world banging on governments for trade rules that defenestrate a nation's sovereign power to run its own affairs. The US government regards itself as comfortable with this arrangement since it assumes the superpower can always get its way. Most citizens are never consulted. They are perhaps unaware that their rights have been given away, too.

It would be nice to imagine this ridiculous episode will prompt reconsideration, cool down exploitative jingoism and provoke a more rational discussion of the multiplying absurdities. I doubt it. At least it will be satisfying to see Bush toasted irrationally, since he lit the match.

It's started... again

The first shot over the bow in the latest attack on Roe v. Wade has been fired by South Dakota. Jane at FDL reports and fulminates on the fact that "South Dakota has now passed a law banning abortion with no exception for rape or incest [...] The law was passed, in large, because the way is now clear to a Supreme Court who might actually uphold it".

Read this powerful piece by ReddHedd entitled Try Standing in Someone Else's Shoes.

Life is ugly, messy and unfair. Last time I read my Bible, Christ asked his followers to do for the least of his bretheren as they would do for the highest of them.

Last I checked, rape and incest victims didn't ask for the violent, terrifying, horrible action taken against them. But clearly someone in South Dakota disagrees.

Shame on them. And shame on every single "pro-choice" politician who voted for cloture on Alito. Every woman in this nation is about to reap what those politicians so cavilierly have sown. Shame, shame, shame.

Digby calls it as he sees it:

As the country careens toward a supreme court showdown on Roe vs Wade, I just have to point out that columnists like EJ Dionne are full of shit when they say that most members of the right to life movement care more about a the taking of an innocent life rather than wanting to control a woman’s reproductive systems. They may think that’s what they care about but if that were true 81% of Americans, including many who call themselves "pro-life," wouldn't believe that abortion should be legal in case of rape or incest.

I hate to point out the obvious but children who are conceived in rape or incest are just as innocent as those who are conceived because birth control failed. The difference is not in the relative innocence of the children --- it’s the "innocence" of the woman. Most people believe that she should not be forced to bear the child of her molester, her relative or her rapist. And I think it’s fair to assume that they think this because they believe that the pregnancy wasn’t her “fault."

[...]

But let’s face it. Even if everyone had birth control, unwanted pregnancies would still happen. Nothing is foolproof. As the Republicans remind us incessantly, the only foolproof way to ensure there is no unwanted preganancy is abstinence. That's the real message of the "pro-life" movement. If women don't want to endure forced childbirth they shouldn't have sex. Period.

Jane is on the same page. She doesn't believe that the...

"forced childbirth forces actually "care" about the taking of innocent life [...] What they care about is punishing women for having sex".

My but Jack gets around!

Paul Kiel over at DailyMuck tells us that Jack Abramoff was working for the Russians too and guess who went on a junket with him to Russia? Yup, his good buddy, Tom Delay.

A subpoena in the case, issued this month to an Abramoff associate, says the US government is seeking information on Abramoff-related activities with ''any department, ministry, or office holder or agent of the Russian government."<>

Investigators have asked for any information about Abramoff's dealings with two top Naftasib executives, Alexander Koulakovsky and Marina Nevskaya. Senior Naftasib executives helped arrange a trip Abramoff took to Moscow in 1997 with former House majority leader Tom DeLay, a longtime Abramoff friend.

The subpoena specifically requests information about dealings between the Abramoff associate receiving the subpoena and DeLay

Trust us

Here are a couple of excerpts from what Digby has to say about the latest Bush admin scandal:

You Can Never Be Too Careful

He needs to be [able to] secretly spy on American citizens without a warrant and he needs to be able to hold them indefinitely in jail without a trial and he needs to be able to torture innocent people with impunity because we just can't be too careful after 9/11.

But there's no reason to go overboard by saying that we shouldn't outsource our port management to a company owned by a state whose leaders have been known to hang out with bin Laden.

Perhaps the best way to put this is that the administration seems to trust the leaders of the United Arab Emirates more than the US congress or the secret FISA Court.

[...]

Blackmail

Is it any wonder that this whole thing has brought about extreme cognitive dissonance?

It may be that we have gotten ourselves into a terrible position in which we cannot "offend" the UAE by blocking this deal because they may reciprocate by blocking access to their deep water ports. If that's the case, then we are being blackmailed by the UAE for big money and potentially putting our own ports in danger in the process. According to the 9/11 report they have been playing both ends against the middle for years. And we have Yosemite Sam and Quickdraw McGraw in charge of dealing with them. It's not a big surprise that the whole thing is blowing up in their faces.

[...]

Empty Veto

Dan Bartlett is going on and on about the "rigorousness" of the process the administration undertook with this port deal. He keeps saying that they have a lot of experience with this company and that the department of Homeland Security will be in charge of security. Apparently, they have no idea that they have lost the trust of the people on exactly these kinds of things. The rigor of their planning, the "experience" with private companies and the ineptitude of Homeland Security.

They have fear mongered their way to victory for four long years, going on and on about how "the oceans don't protect us" anymore and now they act as if port security is just another contract and claim it's important for "our image" to give security contracts to state owned middle eastern companies with ties to terrorism. Wow.

They are left with nothing but the president's "resolve" to govern. They believe that if he digs in his heels everyone will capitulate out of sheer admiration for his machismo. At 39%, the power of his machismo has shrunk to a fraction of what it once was. He's in very icy water now.

Hypocrisy - Part 3

Glenn Greenwald presents us with the laughable image of Bill "pro-censorship" Bennett hoisting the banner of freedom of the press when it comes to publication of the Mohammed cartoons that so many find offensive but not for publication of reports of criminal NSA wiretaps (whistle-blowers should be prosecuted) or the Abu Ghraib torture photos (treasoness support of the terrorists). Truly their hypocrisy knows no limits.

... of all the free-press-attacking Bush supporters, the very last one who has any basis for masquerading as a free press advocate is Bill Bennett, who has built a bloated career over several decades waging war on free expression and a free press, while attempting to compel suppression of ideas he finds offensive.

[...]

These demands by Bush followers that ideas be freely expressed without restraint are extremely selective – they want the ideas they like to be disseminated widely and aggressively but ideas which they dislike to be suppressed. In general, when one espouses standards and principles which one applies only selectively and in a self-interested manner, the result is just garden-variety hypocrisy. But when principles of a free press are applied selectively -- such that one urges some ideas to be vigorously safeguarded while other ideas be aggressively suppressed -- it is not merely hypocritical, but incomparably pernicious, because what is really being sought, by definition, is a system of laws and rules which exist to propagandize.

Boobs

What You See Is What You Get
by digby

I was just watching Bush give a speech and he said "it makes sense for the government to incent people."

I've never really subscribed to the great man theory, but I have to say that in my experience organizations do take their cues from the person at the top. When you have a president who says things this ridiculous every single day, for more than five years, I think it's safe to say that he is a boob. And his government is a perfect reflection of him: incompetent, arrogant, short-sighted, impulsive, secretive. A failure. That is the story of Bush's life. Let no one ever say again that it doesn't matter who the president is because he'll have great people around him. Bush's government is as bad as anyone could have predicted when we saw him flub that answer about foreign leaders back in 1999 --- he was clearly unprepared and unqualified. And he's proven it.

Left and Right unite

The always thought-provoking Glenn Greenwald writes today about the sentencing of Holocaust-denier David Irving to three years in prison in Austria. He makes the really good point and, as usual, he makes it really well, that the negative reaction to this is not a conservative nor liberal one, but rather, that it's an American sentiment that...

...nobody should be imprisoned or prosecuted by the State for expressing an idea, no matter how repugnant the idea might be. That sort of trans-ideological consensus is almost unheard of these days with regard to any issue, and it raises what I think are several extremely interesting and important points.

[...]

We are a nation that lives under the rule of law. No man is above the law, including the President. Presidents do not have the right to engage in conduct which Congress makes it a criminal offense to engage in. To avoid the President seizing the powers of a King, the powers he exercises must always be checked and balanced by the Congress and the courts. In order to ensure that we have a representative government, only the people, through their Congress, make the laws, and everyone, including the President, is required to abide by those laws. We are a nation that is ruled by the people -- our elected officials do not rule over us -- and when we enact restrictions through our Congress on what our Government can do to us as citizens (as we did with FISA), those laws bind all citizens, including our elected officials.

None of those principles is even arguably liberal or conservative in the contemporary, political sense of those words. They are the defining American principles of government which has guided our country since its founding. And the Administration’s radical theory that any matter relating to national security threats "is for the President alone to decide" and that neither Congress nor the courts "can place any limits on the President's determinations" – which even bestows on the President the power to ignore Congressional laws or to wield war powers against American citizens on U.S. soil – could not be any more contrary to all of these core principles.

These are the principles that led Americans, in 1978, to enact a law, in response to decades of abuse of eavsdroping powers by Administrations of both parties, which made it a criminal offense for our government to eavesdrop on Americans without judicial oversight and approval. We collectively decided that we want aggressive eavesdropping against our foreign enemies, and the law we enacted enables aggressive eavesdropping. But we also decided that we trust our government to eavesdrop on Americans only with judicial oversight, not in secret and with no oversight. Through our Congress, that was the law we passed, and with that law, we imposed restrictions on the powers which our government could exercise against us.

George Bush concluded that he has the power to ignore that law – or any other law even remotely relating to national security – which he finds burdensome or undesirable. That is the Administration’s expressly stated theory of the President’s power, and it is what led them not only to violate this law, but to engage in the most un-American act possible of detaining U.S. citizens and imprisoning them indefinitely in a military prison without so much as charging them with a crime or allowing them access to a lawyer.

That conduct, and the theories underlying it, are at least as repulsive to core American political values as imprisoning people for expressing prohibited ideas.

Recommended

Interesting article in Newsweek about Dick Cheney called The Shot Heard Round the World.

The always provocative Jane Hamsher tears another strip off Deborah Howell.

Brad DeLong points out a prescient article about Jack Abramoff written almost four years ago.

Dick Cheney - Moral Coward

Josh Marshall reports that...

On Meet the Press today Mary Matalin claimed that Vice President Cheney never sent surrogates out to blame Harry Whittington for last weekend's hunting accident in the first days after the news broke.

He then goes on to detail exactly how they did just that and then concludes by saying:

This just isn't even up for debate. Until they were forced to switch course the party line was that Whittington screwed up by sneaking up behind the vice president.

About physical courage I don't know the answer. But all available evidence suggests that the Mr. Cheney is a man of deep moral cowardice. Makes a mistake and shoots his friend; blames the friend. Only he won't do it directly. So he gets underlings to do it for him. Forced to speak out publicly, he appears before a ringer-journalist guaranteed not to press uncomfortable questions.

It's all of a piece with the man's record. He's afraid of accountability. That's why he's such a fan of self-protecting secrecy. That's why he's big on smearing government whistle-blowers. It's really just two sides of the same coin. He's afraid of accountability. It's the same reason why he's such a notorious prevaricator -- lies to avoid accountability.

These are all the hallmarks of a moral coward.

Lest we forget...

georgia10 at the DailyKos tells us that...

Yesterday, Senator Salazar read George Washington's Farewell Address on the Senate floor. A timely excerpt on the separation of powers:

It is important, likewise, that the habits of thinking in a free country should inspire caution in those entrusted with its administration, to confine themselves within their respective constitutional spheres, avoiding in the exercise of the powers of one department to encroach upon another. The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create, whatever the form of government, a real despotism. A just estimate of that love of power, and proneness to abuse it, which predominates in the human heart, is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this position. The necessity of reciprocal checks in the exercise of political power, by dividing and distributing it into different depositaries, and constituting each the guardian of the public weal against invasions by the others, has been evinced by experiments ancient and modern; some of them in our country and under our own eyes. To preserve them must be as necessary as to institute them. If, in the opinion of the people, the distribution or modification of the constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed. The precedent must always greatly overbalance in permanent evil any partial or transient benefit, which the use can at any time yield.

Myth Busters

Shotgun style... it would seem that the grassy knoll was closer than 30 yards. In a court of law, the judge will instruct a juror that (s)he may ignore all testimony from a witness who has lied.

This is kinda interesting.

The Long Hard Slog

Glenn Greenwald rallies the troups after indications that some are discouraged "as a result of yesterday’s unilateral obstruction by the incomparable White House shill Sen. Pat Roberts of the long-planned and long-promised investigation into the operational aspects of the NSA program by the Senate Intelligence Committee". He compares the current scandal to the Watergate scandal and he reminds us that...

The Watergate scandal took 2 1/2 years from the time it began until the time Nixon left office because of it in disgrace. The NSA scandal has been with us for 2 months. Watergate resulted in Nixon’s downfall not due to one large smoking gun revelation, nor was it because the country heard about the break-in and then stormed the streets demanding Nixon’s impeachment.

Nixon began that scandal as an immensely popular President - infinitely more popular than the unpopular Bush is now. And when the Watergate scandal began, the mere notion that it could lead to Nixon’s downfall was fantasy. And the scandal unfolded as a slow, grinding process which was the result of tenacious, relentless investigative work and a slow transformation of public opinion. And the Administration fought the investigation every step of the way, doing what they could to obstruct it at every turn.

He explains that...

...this scandal was never going to be the downfall of the Administration after a few weeks, and anyone who expected this was operating with wildly unrealistic expectations. It is going to take hard, focused, patient work to bring about a just resolution to this scandal. It is an uphill battle that will have to overcome substantial and formidable efforts on the part of the Administration to block investigations and they will do everything in their considerable power to ensure that they will be immunized from consequences. All of that has to be expected. None of it should come as a surprise.

There is nothing surprising – and nothing even remotely fatal – about the fact that someone like Pat Roberts engaged in slimy maneuvering in order to comply with Dick Cheney’s decree that there be no investigation by that Committee into this scandal. If that little stunt is enough to make people say that the whole thing is over and the Administration won, then it means that we weren’t prepared to fight very hard over this matter.

[...]

The Bush Administration isn’t going to just roll over at the first whiff of a scandal. But enormous strides have been made in public opinion. And there are already multiple Congressional investigations, lawsuits, raging and growing disputes within the President’s own party, and at least some important journalists who have shown a rare journalistic hunger over this story.

And most important of all, there has been no real campaign to convince Americans of what is truly at stake with this scandal. Most Democrats can barely get themselves to utter the fact that the President broke the law, and yet half of all Americans have already reached that conclusion on their own.

There is enormous potential for this scandal to grow, but that will only happen if people who believe that Presidential law-breaking is a serious threat remain resolute about making it grow and believe that they can contribute to its growth. Dick Cheney lobbied so hard to prevent the Intelligence Committee from investigating precisely because they want to create the appearance that this scandal is dying. That will happen only if people allow it to die, only if Bush opponents internalize the notion that they will inevitably lose because everything is against them and there is no way to change that.

Resisting Revisionism

The consistently good Glenn Greenwald takes on the revisionists; those who would have us believe that the Cold War never existed, that those quaint, obsolete FISA laws were intended only for "peacetime" and that the President had to break the law... to save us from the evil law-breakers. However, Glenn, a member of the evidence-based community, provides some interesting and illuminating evidence that puts the lie to these revisionist claims. We give the wingnuts a free pass when we allow them make up stuff without calling them on it. Glenn does just that here:

Section 1811 of FISA happens to be entitled "Authorization during time of war," and it expressly does what Captain Ed and so many other Bush followers falsely claim it does not do – namely, regulate eavesdropping during times of war:

Notwithstanding any other law, the President, through the Attorney General, may authorize electronic surveillance without a court order under this subchapter to acquire foreign intelligence information for a period not to exceed fifteen calendar days following a declaration of war by the Congress.

How can someone argue -- as so many Bush followers do -- that FISA was intended to regulate only peacetime surveillance when there is a clause in that law expressly regulating surveillance during times of war? On its face, FISA is a law that governs how the Executive can eavesdrop on Americans both in times of peace and in times of war.

Moreover, contrary to the notion that we were concerned about unchecked eavesdropping on Americans only during peacetime, it is worth pointing out that there was a war during the Nixon Administration. It was called the Vietnam War. Many of the documented eavesdropping abuses which led to FISA occurred during this war. As a country, we enacted FISA precisely because we wanted to make it a criminal offense for the Federal Government to eavsedrop on Americans without judicial oversight -- whether during peacetime or war. The law could not be any clearer about that. To claim that FISA grew out of concerns about eavesdropping abuses only during peacetime is inarguably false.

[...]

This is an oft-overlooked point that is vitally important. The Soviet Union was an infinitely stronger, more formidable, more sophisticated enemy with far vaster resources than Al Qaeda could dream of possessing. And Communists, we were always told, employed their own deadly version of "sleeper cells" by systematically implanting foreign agents and even recruiting American citizens on U.S. soil to work on their behalf, including infiltrating the highest levels of the U.S. Government with their agents and sympathizers.

And yet, in the midst of all of these internal and external threats, the Congress enacted and the President signed into a law a statute permitting eavesdropping for foreign intelligence purposes only with judicial oversight. And more generally, during the four decades during which America fought the "Cold War" -- a war which was always depicted by both parties as posing an existential threat to our country -- no President ever seized, nor did Americans ever bequeath, the power to act contrary to Congressional laws and outside of the parameters of judicial "interference."

[...]

FISA was first enacted in 1978 but was amended and thereby re-affirmed in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, when the Administration requested changes to the law which Congress then made, causing the President to praise FISA this way on October 27, 2001:

The new law [amending FISA] recognizes the realities and dangers posed by the modern terrorist. It will help us to prosecute terrorist organizations--and also to detect them before they strike. . . .

Surveillance of communications is another essential method of law enforcement. But for along time, we have been working under laws [FISA] written in the era of rotary telephones. Under the new law [which amends FISA], officials may conduct court-ordered surveillance of all modern forms of communication used by terrorists. . . .

After 9/11, in the midst of our war against Islamic terrorism, the President himself argued that FISA is a modern and sufficient tool to enable us to conduct surveillance on the modern terrorist. Shouldn't Bush followers be precluded from claiming that FISA is obsolete and incapable of enabling surveillance of modern terrorist communications when the President said exactly the opposite?

A Case for Professional Help?

Brad Delong lays a smacking on Jim Brady of the Washington Post with regard to the Deborah Howell business and suggests that Jim get some professional help and steers him the right direction. Read it all; it's a gem...

Up is down

Max Sawicky says: Don't call it a trade deficit...

So says the new Economic Report of the President... in a chapter entitled "The U.S. Capital Account Surplus." "Surplus" sounds much better, don't you think? We've got a surplus in the capital account. Capital is flowing in. It shows foreigners love us, they really love us.... Capital account surplus means foreigners are taking increasing ownership of U.S. dollar-denominated assets, since we buy more from them than we sell to them. It's like this: if you own your home free and clear and take out a mortgage to buy skittles and beer, you've got yourself a capital account surplus.

We learn, in this chapter about the movements of capital, that the best thing the U.S. can do about the surplus is to raise national saving. Turns out that "At 13 percent of GDP... the U.S. domestic saving rate is the lowest among the advanced economy countries," them Euro-socialist countries with the big, bad tax systems. Much else can be done to reduce our trade deficit capital account surplus, according to the report, but it all must be done by other countries.... Worse, the savings rate has decreased since 1995, the bad old days of sky-high Clintonian Euro-socialist taxes. One component of this rate is the rise in the Federal deficit after 2001.... The reductions in the top marginal rates and the special preferred rates on dividends and capital gains are the jewels in the crown of supply side tax policy. They are supposed to raise saving. How can you not get more saving if you increase the returns to saving? It's like a law of physics, goddamn it...

Laziness Doesn't Begin To Explain It.

Tristero, guest-blogging at Digby's, takes Kevin Drum to task for a lazy post. The explanation for why people who spoke out against the war in Iraq were under-represented in the MSM is not laziness. It's another word that begins with 'L'.

Dear Kevin, You're wrong. I was there. I remember.

Laziness doesn't explain why George Stephanopoulos failed to mention on the proceeding Sunday show in February that millions of people in the United States marched the day before to oppose Bush's insane plans for war. Oh he mentioned Europe but not a word about the US marches. That's right, Kevin: Stephanopoulus failed to mention what was almost certainly the largest US demonstration in history the day after it happened. That wasn't laziness. And it's not laziness that the February and March '03 marches been all but eliminated from the official memories of 2002/2003.

[...]

We were lied to and laziness doesn't explain that. [...] The press lied to the American people.

That is the truth. Oh yes, the press was, and is lazy. [...] But that was hardly what uniquely characterized 2002/2003. What happened was that the press became an active collaborator in the single worst decision ever made by a United States president. Ever.

[...]

Laziness excluded anti-war voices on Sunday shows? After what we've all seen of the Bush/Cheney obsession with information control? Laziness? Please, Kevin. You're smarter than that.

[...]

Laziness. Yeah, right.

[...]

As for blaming Democrats for being boring, that is NOT what happened. That is NOT what makes the run up to war one of American journalism's most shameful period. What happened, what is still happening, is that voices that were right about Iraq in 2002 are still systematically excluded. They were/are not excluded because they are boring, but because they are unwanted. There's a difference.

Trademark double-standard

Glenn Greewald is on a roll! I've already commented twice on his article on the nature of "Conservatives" and their criteria for casting the "liberal" epithet and his follow-up . But in a posting at Crooks & Liars he said that he thought that Glenn Reynolds...

"has an obligation to either denounce or defend Coulter’s comments [...] based on the fact that Reynolds routinely lectures Democrats on what he claims is their obligation to denounce "extremists on the Left" – even when the extremists in question are totally fringe and inconsequential figures who have nothing to do with Democrats, and -- unlike Coulter here -- don’t have huge throngs of followers and aren't invited to be the featured speaker at the most important political events of the year."

Well, he seems to have touched a nerve, and Reynolds, who like most wingers can dish it out but can't really take it, has written to Greenwald to complain. However, Greenwald, in what has become his trademark, articulate and reasoned manner, puts him in his place. Says our Glenn:

I wrote my post urging that Reynolds be asked about his conspicuous silence concerning Coulter only once: (a) several days elapsed after Coulter’s speech and Reynolds said nothing to condemn it, and (b) I began receiving e-mails pointing to posts written by Reynolds where he piously demanded that Democrats not remain "silent" in the face of intemperate remarks by far less important figures than Coulter.

[...]

(1) I did not argue that Reynolds has an obligation to denounce Coulter's comments on the ground that I think that everyone in the world has the obligation to jump up and denounce every repugnant comment. I argued that Reynolds has this obligation here because Reynolds himself has previously argued for that standard and applied it to Democrats -- by, for instance, condemning Democrats who failed to denounce the super-significant, iconic "Democrat" Ward Churchill.

Thus, with regards to Reynolds, I'm not arguing for a standard that imposes an obligation on everyone to denounce offensive comments. I'm arguing that Reynolds has that obligation himself because he imposes this obligation on others. I think that point was very clearly expressed in the post, but please - anyone else who wants to defend Instapundit here, recognize and address that point, since it's the whole point of the post.

(2) If people want to argue, as Joe did, that Coulter is just some fringe, irrelevant figure whom Republicans detest, then it really is incumbent on them to explain why millions of Bush followers buy her books, why they cheer on her hateful, violence-advocating rants, why she is one of the most featured pro-Bush pundits on Fox, and why she is one of the featured speakers at the most important conservative event of the year. Coulter has a vast and enthusiastic following among Bush followers and is treated accordingly. If she's "objectively pro-terrorist," as Reynolds claim, shouldn't this not be the case?

[...]

Contrary to Reynolds' claim that he "tend(s) mostly to ignore Coulter," and contrary to his defenders' insistence in the Comments section that he has a long and clear history of denouncing her, what he actually has -- as this Comment from Y.G. Brown demonstrates -- is a pattern of linking to Coulter and/or promoting her latest ventures, such as her blog. So, here we have someone promoting and linking to the ideas of a reprehensible hate-monger, who simultaneously lectures Democrats about how they are morally shameful for failing to denounce obscure, irrelevant extremists.

Truly, the hypocrisy of Bush supporters is almost limitless and it has consistently been one of their most distinguishing traits. I've written about this before here and here.

More: No love Bush, no be conservative

Glenn Greenwald writes a follow-up to his article on the changing characteristics of what it takes to be considered a Conservative. In it he said: "Now, in order to be considered a "liberal," only one thing is required – a failure to pledge blind loyalty to George W. Bush. The minute one criticizes him is the minute that one becomes a "liberal," regardless of the ground on which the criticism is based." Not surprisingly, the bulk of the criticism he received did not address his arguments but consisted of personal attacks which justified the dismissing his article beause he was a "liberal" or a "leftist".

Here are some excerpts. Go read the whole thing here...

It is somewhat amazing to write a post describing this phenomenon only for Bush followers to deny its validity and, in doing so, provide such vibrant examples of exactly what I describing. They read the post and then rushed to dismiss what I wrote as coming from a "leftist" all because I criticized Bush and his followers. I suppose I should be grateful for the argumentative support.

[...]

Here is an example of a kind of intellectually honest conservative I was describing, Matthew Regent, who explains his perspective in a comment here:

I'm a Republican and a conservative. I voted for Bush twice. I didn't want to the second time, but it was a two-horse race, and the other horse was Carter redux. I disapprove of Bush's job performance and have more than once been called a liberal or equivalent on conservative blogs as a consequence, despite my beliefs, which put me solidly in the moderate-conservative portion of the political spectrum.

I disapprove of Bush's presidency for a number of reasons, including fiscal recklessness, the misprosecution of the GWOT, the nationalization of issues like education and marriage, and general incompetence on the issues, from Katrina to Miers. Frankly, I don't think Bush is much of a conservative himself. I think he's a low-tax liberal who gets along with religious people at home and a Wilsonian abroad.

And yet when I say as much to many Bush supporters, I'm the one who is branded the liberal, the troll, etc. Bushism IS a personality cult.

The list of long-time conservatives who are the target of all sorts of attacks and decrees of excommunication when they criticize George Bush is long and growing, and if anything, my post was a defense of those conservatives rather than some claim that they do not exist.

[...]

None of the bloggers purporting to reply to the post addressed the fact that the arguments made by conservatives over the last three decades have been abandoned almost entirely and have been replaced by their precise antitheses -- all in order to justify George Bush’s conduct. The principal example used was the angry opposition to warrant-based FISA eavesdropping voiced by conservatives under the Clinton Administration, as compared to the stirring defense of warrantless, oversight-less eavesdropping now engaged in proudly by the Bush Administration.

But beyond that specific, quite revealing instance is the general disappearance of an anti-federal-government ethos. Principles of a restrained federal government and distrust of that government -- previously centerpieces of the conservative movement -- have been discarded like yesterday's trash in order to maintain praise of George Bush's actions and to maximize the powers and reach of the Federal Government now that Bush controls it.

[...]

That Bush supporters abandoned all of their anti-federal-government rhetoric the moment they got control of the Federal Government -- whereby there was no longer any such thing as an excessively powerful Federal Government -- can’t really be denied. So the only option available to them is to justify the fundamental reversal of their views once George Bush took office, and it really isn’t pretty to watch.

[...]

If The New York Times gave me a pen and blank piece of paper and said that I could write any article I wanted to support my argument from yesterday, I would have written the article published today by Bush admirer Elisabeth Bumiller, entitled "An Outspoken Conservative Loses his Place at the Table" (h/t Devoman in Comments). It begins this way:

What happens if you're a Republican commentator and you write a book critical of President Bush that gets you fired from your job at a conservative think tank?

For starters, no other conservative institution rushes in with an offer for your analytical skills."Nobody will touch me," said Bruce Bartlett, author of the forthcoming "Impostor: Why George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy." "I think I'm just kind of radioactive at the moment." . . .

Mr. Bartlett, a domestic policy aide at the White House in the Reagan administration and a deputy assistant treasury secretary under the first President Bush, talked last week at his suburban Washington home about his dismissal, his book and a growing disquiet among conservatives about Mr. Bush. . . .

He is unhappy, too, with the president's education and campaign finance bills and his proposal to overhaul the nation's immigration laws, which many Republicans call a dressed-up amnesty plan. The book, to be published by Doubleday on Feb. 28, also criticizes the White House for "an anti-intellectual distrust of facts and analysis" and an obsession with secrecy.

"I haven't switched to the Democratic Party," he said. "I wrote this for Republicans."

The article details how Bartlett, after being fired, has been shunned by conservatives for his blasphemy in criticizing George Bush on the ground that Bush has governed contrary to conservative principles.

Of particular note is this:

"Bruce is really an exception, not the rule, in the degree and thoroughness of his discontent," said William Kristol, a conservative strategist and the editor of The Weekly Standard. "So I wouldn't make too much of it. On the other hand, one thing I've noticed giving speeches in the last couple of months is that conservatives remain pro-Bush, but the loyalty to the movement and the ideas is deeper than the personal loyalty now. Two years ago, Bush was the movement and the cause."

That would be leading neo-conservative light William Kristol saying exactly what I said yesterday which (when I said it) was supposedly an example of crazed leftist idiocy: namely, that "Bush was the movement and the cause." Now granted, Kristol is claiming that this has changed over the last couple of years, but Bartlett's plight negates that claim rather strongly, and the fact that Kristol himself acknowledges a conflating of George Bush with "the movement and the cause" ought to give honest Bush followers serious pause for thought. Although Kristol says it in his characteristically understated way, it's a pretty serious condemnation to say that George Bush the person became the cause for "conservatives."

If men were angels

georgia10 at the DailyKos says:

James Madison observed the following about the need for a system of checks and balances:

If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

FISA was passed as means of governmental self-control. It was passed by Republicans and Democrats alike who realized that whoever occupied the Oval Office would be surrounded not by a halo, but by temptation to abuse that great power bestowed upon them by the public trust.

We are a nation of laws precisely because we are governed by men, by those whose judgment is fallible and whose priorities do not always coincide with those of the American people. And in our fight against terrorists, we cannot cloak our leaders in shrouds of immunity while they commit grave offenses against us; to do so would be to masquerade men as angels, Presidents as kings, and the Constitution as a defunct document rather then the Supreme Law of the Land.

Hypocrisy that knows no limits

Digby follows up on the hypocrisy of so-called conservatives. In an article called Fallen Statues, he starts off quoting Freepers complaining about government overreach when it was being done by a Democrat but...

It would appear that 9/11 changed the liberty loving, bill of rights supporting, self-sufficient freepers into a gaggle of snivelling little babies who were so traumatized by the terrorists that they now think this jack-booted FISA court is too much oversight and the president actually has the power to spy on any damned citizen he wants to.

[...]

So, it isn't precisely a cult of George W. Bush. It's a cult of Republican power. We know this because when a Democratic president last sat in the oval office, there was non-stop hysteria about presidential power and overreach. Every possible tool to emasculate the executive branch was brought to bear, including the nuclear option, impeachment. Now we are told that the "Presidency" is virtually infallible. The only difference between now and then is that a Republican is the executive instead of a Democrat.


This must be a function of psychology more than ideology. David Gergen said this morning on This Weak, that the Republicans are much better at "messaging" than the Democrats, but that they aren't good at governing. This is true. They win by selling a fantasy of freedom and riches ---- and govern as despots. You can see from the examples cited above that there is no real conservative ideology. If they can jettison their most cherished ideals (small government, balanced budgets, checks and balances, states' rights, individual liberty etc.) whenever a Republican holds office, it is quite clear that what they care about is the power, not the "message" on which they ran.

Today I read that Bob Barr, a man who made his bones by calling for Clinton's impeachment even before the Lewinsky scandal broke, is now being booed by a room full of arch-conservatives for suggesting that the president saying "trust me" is not adequate. We know very well that if the president were a Democrat, everyone in that room would not find it adequate.

He then argues that the so-called conservatives are not just hypocrites vis a vis Democrats but the Ruskies themselves...

Throughout all the years that they decried Stalinism, it wasn't an idealistic belief in human rights and democracy that drove them. It was quite the opposite, in fact. It was envy. All that control over other people. The huge police and military apparatus. The forced conformity. The only thing they genuinely hated about the Soviet Union was its economic philosophy. The totalitarian system, not so much. When you read about the "conservative movement" you find over and over again that the anti-communists immersed themselves in Stalinism and modeled their organizational style on it, often quite openly admiring its efficient application of power. And as we know, one of totalitarianism's most obvious features is the cult of personality that always grows up within it.

The modern Republicans do show all the hallmarks of an authoritarian cult. But I believe that the metaphorical statue of George W. Bush will be toppled very shortly after he leaves office after an "election" based on a message of "reform." They must restore the fantasy. His statue will be replaced, of course, with another infallible leader. That's how it works.

He finishes off with a flourish by pointing us to the Volokh Conspiracy for the ultimate hypocrisy:

Guess Who Wrote This, and About What President: Here is the quote:

President ____ exercised the powers of the imperial presidency to the utmost in the area in which those powers are already at their height --— in our dealings with foreign nations. Unfortunately, the record of the administration has not been a happy one, in light of its costs to the Constitution and the American legal system. On a series of different international relations matters, such as war, international institutions, and treaties, President ____ has accelerated the disturbing trends in foreign policy that undermine notions of democratic accountability and respect for the rule of law.

Who do you think wrote the passage above, and who was the President?

Answer:

(Professor John Yoo, discussing President Bill Clinton. Source: John C. Yoo, The Imperial President Abroad, in Roger Pilon, ed., The Rule of Law in the Wake of Clinton 159 (2000).)

(For the answer, click here.)

Update: I can't think of a better context into which to place Brad DeLong's signature Subject: line than this, so, here goes...

"I'll Stop Calling This Crew "Orwellian" When They Stop Using 1984 as an Operations Manual"

Big Dick, gun slick

Jane comments on Dick Cheney, trophy hunter...

Coming from five time deferment boy? What a surprise:

Monday's hunting trip to Pennsylvania by Vice President Dick Cheney in which he reportedly shot more than 70 stocked pheasants and an unknown number of mallard ducks at an exclusive private club places a spotlight on an increasingly popular and deplorable form of hunting, in which birds are pen-reared and released to be shot in large numbers by patrons. The ethics of these hunts are called into question by rank-and-file sportsmen, who hunt animals in their native habitat and do not shoot confined or pen-raised animals that cannot escape.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported today that 500 farm-raised pheasants were released yesterday morning at the Rolling Rock Club in Ligonier Township for the benefit of Cheney's 10-person hunting party. The group killed at least 417 of the birds, illustrating the unsporting nature of canned hunts. The party also shot an unknown number of captive mallards in the afternoon.

Rich old drunken farts blasting away at Tweety in a birdcage and thinking they're all butch. Yeah let's hear the one about how you're the big white bwana hunter again, Dick.

I know little girls in kindergarten with more stones than that.

PS: Any Texas law enforcement types out there who know what the procedure is following a gunshot accident? Especially with regard to testing for drugs and alcohol. No explaination as to why the guy was shot at 5:30 pm but wasn't admitted to the hospital until 8:15 pm even though he was seriously injured.

Bob Geiger has a top-ten comment:

Dick Cheney’s Top 10 Excuses For Shooting Fellow Hunter

From the home office in blue-state New York, here’s Vice President Dick Cheney’s top 10 excuses for shooting fellow hunter Harry Whittington on Saturday:

10. Sick and tired of Whittington’s “Hey, I’m having a heart attack” jokes

9. Pushed over edge by Dixie Chicks and Streisand blasting on pick-up truck stereo

8. Ongoing dispute over whether it’s acceptable to torture quail before shooting them

7. Thought he saw Michael Moore on other side of tree line

6. Bombed out of his gourd on Wild Turkey and Lone Star Beer

5. Companion’s ill-advised decision to wear Moveon.org sweatshirt

4. Was trying to impress Jodie Foster

3. Whittington’s repeated ribbing that Bush is actually the “real president”

2. Targeting scope on rifle made by Halliburton

And the number one excuse given by Dick Cheney for almost blowing away hunting companion Harry Whittington…

1. Because he’s a wartime vice president, damn it

We don't need due process... just trust us.

"These are people picked up off the battlefield in Afghanistan."— President Bush, June 20, 2005

Jon Henke comments on the National Journal story which contains: "powerful evidence confirming what many of us have suspected for years:

• A high percentage, perhaps the majority, of the 500-odd men now held at Guantanamo were not captured on any battlefield, let alone on "the battlefield in Afghanistan" (as Bush asserted) while "trying to kill American forces" (as McClellan claimed).



• Fewer than 20 percent of the Guantanamo detainees, the best available evidence suggests, have ever been Qaeda members.



• Many scores, and perhaps hundreds, of the detainees were not even Taliban foot soldiers, let alone Qaeda terrorists. They were innocent, wrongly seized noncombatants with no intention of joining the Qaeda campaign to murder Americans.



• The majority were not captured by U.S. forces but rather handed over by reward-seeking Pakistanis and Afghan warlords and by villagers of highly doubtful reliability.

Jon says:

This is why we have due process. This is why we have transparency. This is why a free people who want to remain that way ought to insist we apply due process and transparency even to suspected terrorists. Instead, we've largely stood by while the Bush administration has run roughshod over innocent people; while the Bush administration detained innocent civilians and lawful combatants, and abused them into false confessions. And then that administration had the temerity to say that legislation removing legal recourse by those people "reaffirm[s] the values we share as a Nation and our commitment to the rule of law"....

Remember: the people who told us that the detainees at Guantanamo Bay were all Taliban, captured on the battlefield or otherwise terrorists are the same people who swear, really, that the domestic surveillance program is "solely for intercepting communications of suspected al Qaeda members or related terrorist groups."

What/who is a conservative?

Glenn Greenwald starts off asking: "Do Bush followers have a political ideology?" and then looks at what it takes to be labeled a "Liberal" and at what characteristics "Conservatives" have in common.

Now, in order to be considered a "liberal," only one thing is required – a failure to pledge blind loyalty to George W. Bush. The minute one criticizes him is the minute that one becomes a "liberal," regardless of the ground on which the criticism is based. And the more one criticizes him, by definition, the more "liberal" one is. Whether one is a "liberal" -- or, for that matter, a "conservative" -- is now no longer a function of one’s actual political views, but is a function purely of one’s personal loyalty to George Bush.

[...]

That "conservatism" has come to mean "loyalty to George Bush" is particularly ironic given how truly un-conservative the Administration is.

[...]

... conservatism has always been based, more than anything else, on a fundamental distrust of the power of the federal government and a corresponding belief that that power ought to be as restrained as possible, particularly when it comes to its application by the Government to American citizens. It was that deeply rooted distrust that led to conservatives’ vigorous advocacy of states’ rights over centralized power in the federal government, accompanied by demands that the intrusion of the Federal Government in the lives of American citizens be minimized.

Is there anything more antithetical to that ethos than the rabid, power-hungry appetites of Bush followers? There is not an iota of distrust of the Federal Government among them. Quite the contrary. Whereas distrust of the government was quite recently a hallmark of conservatism, expressing distrust of George Bush and the expansive governmental powers he is pursuing subjects one to accusations of being a leftist, subversive loon.

[...]

We have heard for a long time that anger and other psychological and emotional factors drive the extreme elements on the Left, but that is (at least) equally true for the Bush extremists. The only difference happens to be that the Bush extremists control every major governmental institution in the country and the extremists on the Left control nothing other than the crusted agenda for the latest International A.N.S.W.E.R. meeting.

[...]

And what I hear, first and foremost, from these Bush following corners is this, in quite a shrieking tone: "Oh, my God - there are all of these evil people trying to kill us, George Bush is doing what he can to save us, and these liberals don’t even care!!! They’re on their side and they deserve the same fate!!!" It doesn’t even sound like political argument; it sounds like a form of highly emotional mass theater masquerading as political debate. It really sounds like a personality cult. It is impervious to reasoned argument and the only attribute is loyalty to the leader. Whatever it is, it isn’t conservative.

This is one of the principal reasons I found the story yesterday of the DoJ’s criminal pursuit of the NSA leakers (including the Times) so serious. Fervent Bush followers have long been demanding that these leakers and the journalists involved in this disclosure be imprisoned, or worse. These demands are made despite the lack of any harm to our national security. They are motivated by one fact and one fact only – whoever disclosed the illegal NSA program harmed George Bush. And for that crime, no punishment is excessive.

If it now places one "on the Left" to oppose unrestrained power and invasiveness asserted by the Federal Government along with lawlessness on the part of our highest government officials, so be it. The rage-based reverence for The President as Commander-in-Chief -- and the creepy, blind faith vested in his goodness -- is not a movement I recognize as being political, conservative or even American.

A movement which has as its shining lights a woman who advocates the death of her political opponents, another woman who is a proponent of concentration camps, a magazine which advocates the imprisonment of journalists who expose government actions of dubious legality, all topped off by a President who believes he has the power to secretly engage in activities which the American people, through their Congress, have made it a crime to engage in, is a movement motivated by lots of different things. Political ideology isn't one of them.

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Example:

...it's particularly noteworthy how true conservative believer Bob Barr was treated like an evil traitor at the Conservative Political Action Conference held this weekend all because he is critical of The President's violations of FISA. Conservatism in some circles really has morphed into The Cult of George Bush, which is why any criticism of the Leader -- even when the criticism is based on conservative principles -- is deemed to be blasphemous to the Cause. This really tells you all you need to know about what "conservativsm" has come to mean in certain circles:

Barr answered in the affirmative. "Do we truly remain a society that believes that . . . every president must abide by the law of this country?" he posed. "I, as a conservative, say yes. I hope you as conservatives say yes."

But nobody said anything in the deathly quiet audience. Barr merited only polite applause when he finished, and one man, Richard Sorcinelli, booed him loudly. "I can't believe I'm in a conservative hall listening to him say [Bush] is off course trying to defend the United States," Sorcinelli fumed.

Connecting the dots

It's not often I'm that I'm this impressed by someone doing such a god job of connecting the dots. But Thomas Powers, in an article in the New York Review of Books called 'The Biggest Secret', made me say: Wow! right out loud. In a review of State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration by James Risen, Powers shows us what we're up against, what Bush and his cronies are doing, how the media and Congress and the public are letting them do it and what the threat really is. He sees the big picture and shows us, as Sinclair Lewis did in his 1935 classic It Can't Happen Here, that it can... and is.

Read his article and learn The Biggest Secret.

Shorter Digby

Once again Digby is bang on! The US is no more at war now than when Nixon and others had their War on Drugs and hardly more than when LBJ had a War on Poverty . It's a scam; it's Wag the Dog, it's 1984. It's about corrupt people getting and keeping power -- period.

I'm watching the NSA hearings and it occurred to me: did the UK and Spain "declare war" on terrorism or al Qaeda? After all, they have been attacked as well and I wonder if they are operating under wartime conditions or wartime laws. Does anyone know whether we are the only country in the world that considers itself "at war" with terrorism in the literal sense of the word?

Digby on the cartoon riots:

In short, no more cartoon riots. No more cartoon editors. No more cartoon evil cavemen. And no more cartoon American administrations. It's time not to listen to what our gut says, it's time to give it some alka-seltzer and get it to shut up so we can think.

Digby on the The Eunuch Caucus:

I say it's because they are craven, bedwetting cowards who are afraid of Karl Rove and addicted to stealing from the American people.

First Rate Burglary

Digby has some interesting not-so-speculative speculation here...

I'm beginning to wonder if the Democrats might not have some information that the administration has done domestic surveillance without a warrant. They keep asking. Pointedly. And Gonzales keeps saying that he isn't "comfortable" acknowledging the question.

It is indisputable that the admnistration has engaged in surveillance of political groups. We know this. It has been verified. We also know that they believe that political dissent gives aid and comfort to the enemy. The president says so himself.

Therefore, it is entirely reasonable to suspect that this administration would use this illegal surveillance program for purposes other than that to which they have admitted, particularly since they consider political dissent to be bordering on treason. This is, remember, an administration that has made a fetish of the politics of personal destruction. The gathering of "oppo research" is the life's blood of their political strategy and it goes all the way back to the Big Kahuna.

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Remember: Watergate was about bugging the Democratic National Committee. The "3rd rate burglary" was to replace an illegal bug that had been planted on the telephones of prominent Democrats.

The lesson of Watergate for the chagrined Republicans was that they needed to be more forceful in assuming executive power and they needed to be more sophisticated about their campaign espionage. This is what they've done.

Anybody who even dreams that these guys are not using all their government power to spy on political enemies is being willfully naive. It is what they do. It is the essence of their political style. This is Nixon's Republican party and they have finally achieved a perfect ability to carry out his vision of political governance: L'etat C'est Moi. If the president does it that means it's not illegal.

Tristero adds: It's Watergate "done right".