Better, not just different

I have long argued that it is noble if one's goal is to eliminate corruption but it is not when one seeks simply to make oneself the beneficiary of it. There are many examples of those who criticize the way things are but they are, in fact, just criticizing who's on top. It's as if they were saying: it's unfair... unless it benefits me. This is absurd and hypocritical, like cheating to get into power so that you can eliminate corruption or, my old favorite, killing for peace. Sadly, this thinking is prevalent. It's bad... unless I do it. In other words: IOKIARDI.

I'm looking for people who believe in serving the public good which, because of the lack of the public's homogeneity, will involve compromise in many ways, not the least of which will be balancing that which benefits the most people with that which benefits those with the greatest need. The focus of good leadership is the welfare of those being led, not that of the leader. That is the nature of the sacrifice required of good leaders. It is their responsibility to concern themselves with the needs others and not just their own.

It was these thoughts that came to mind as I read another excellent post by Glenn Greenwald, about Presidential candidates and "substance". He tells us that we need someone who is effectively an "insurgent" and who is "opposed to... even hostile towards and disgusted by" the rotted, corrupt and broken Beltway system. "[A]ny candidate who does not address those systemic political diseases is not actually being "substantive" at all".

The latest rat deserts the sinking SS BushCo

I have little respect for those who are only now coming to realize the many failures of BushCo and its nominal leader. I mean, who but the willfully blind could not have seen this sooner? I have even less respect for those who finally do so only because BushCo's malevolence has now affected them personally. I have referred to this characteristic lack of empathy before.

But there is something significant about the story of Matthew Dowd, even if it's simply the fact that he's the first member of Mr. Bush’s inner circle to speak out so publicly against him. Dowd was appointed the president’s chief campaign strategist in 2004.

He said his decision to step forward had not come easily. But, he said, his disappointment in Mr. Bush’s presidency is so great that he feels a sense of duty to go public given his role in helping Mr. Bush gain and keep power.

[...]

His views against the war began to harden last spring when, in a personal exercise, he wrote a draft opinion article and found himself agreeing with Mr. Kerry’s call for withdrawal from Iraq. He acknowledged that the expected deployment of his son Daniel was an important factor.

It may be that he's not evil, just self-centered and not very smart. It's amazing though, how often much evil can result from the actions (and inactions) from such banal creatures.

The media has abdicated its responsibilities

Glenn Greenwald writes a great post about the great failure of the media - that they have failed to "fulfill their core responsibility -- to serve as an adversarial check on government".

Like every other group, elite Beltway journalists are not monolithic. There's a natural tendency to search for One Simple, All-Clarifying, Unifying Theory that explains everything bad in the world ("reporters are paid to lie for their corporate masters to promote corportism"), but human beings are complex, and such theories -- while perhaps accounting for partial and isolated influences -- are almost never valid standing alone. Even among journalists who produce wretched and mindless reporting, they are driven by different motives.

Analyzing the dynamic of how the national media works is an extremely complex undertaking and the factors are virtually endless -- some of those journalists are genuinely malicious political operatives; others are just politically biased. Large numbers are just careerist sycophants, while others still simply lack critical faculties and/or the initiative to do anything other than recite what they hear. And the socioeconomic transformation of journalists into coddled, rich elites -- along with the dependence of journalists on those in power for access and scoops -- obviously create a greater identification with the political officials they are supposed to investigate, scrutinize and check.

But one overarching influence affecting the group as a whole is that they have been enmeshed in the culture of national journalism for so long that they are incapable of viewing it critically. In every environment and every profession, broken and corrupt behavior becomes commonplace and then normalized. When that happens, even decent and well-intentioned people can engage in such behavior believing that it's constructive and proper. And because those rules of behavior are normalized, they actually come to believe that the more they adhere to them, the more appropriately they are acting.

As Atrios recently noted, Washington -- with some exceptions -- has been a town dominated by the Republican power structure for close to two decades now. For the last six years, Democrats have been almost completely irrelevant (as but one example, I paid almost no attention to, and had no opinions about, Nancy Pelosi until October of 2006, because prior to that, she was completely inconsequential).

Journalists like Harris who want to break stories and have meaningful sources -- for years -- have needed to cultivate relationships primarily with Republican sources, and that process of currying favor with the Republican power structure, listening to Republican sources, being dependent in their careers upon Republican favors and Republican access, unquestionably influences how they think and who they like and how they view and talk about the world, even among the most well-intentioned and ethical journalists. And the fact that, by their own admission, their world is shaped by a right-wing hack with the most unscrupulous partisan behavior only exacerbates those influences.

The effect of that process -- whereby currying favor largely with powerful figures on the Right is a prerequisite for career success -- is substantial even for the best journalists. And the cumulative effect on the craven careerists who compose the bulk of our media elite is virtually limitless.

Much of the deep-seated dysfunction of our national press is the result of the fact that many of our national journalistic elite simply do not believe in the real purpose of political journalism. But it is also true that even the more earnest and well-intentioned ones are enmeshed in a culture that produces dysfunctional, deeply biased and corrupt journalism, and it will just naturally be very difficult, perhaps close to impossible, for those who are such a vital part of that culture -- and whose careers depend upon thriving within it -- to view its operating principles as anything other than normal, proper and even honorable, even when they are anything but.

[...]

Even six months after this country invaded Iraq, 70% of Americans continued to believe that Saddam helped personally plan the 9/11 attacks. That heinous fact, by itself, should have provoked a major crisis in political journalism -- a desperate effort to find out what went so fundamentally wrong. Yet it did nothing of the sort. Most of the energies of national journalists are devoted instead to defending how they operate and, most of all, condescendingly disparaging their critics as shrill partisans who don't understand the real role of journalists.

I honestly find it unfathomable that any national journalist like Wolffe or Harris can defend their profession, and deny that there are deep-seated and fundamental flaws in it, when this country started a war with the overwhelming majority of citizens -- 70% -- believing an absolute, complete myth, a known falsehood, one which, more than anything else, caused them to support that war. Leaving aside every other issue of gullible, government-propaganda-based reporting, that fact standing alone is a towering indictment of our country's press corps, and the fact that they continue to believe that the way they operate is proper, that they are sufficiently adversarial to the political powers that be, and that it is their critics who are "ideological" and therefore easily dismissed -- all reveals that they have not changed at all.

They may not know it, but the disaster of the Iraq War and the absolute myths which they allowed to take root -- and which they never investigated, exposed or attacked -- is an inescapable indictment of what they do. That is the foundation on which media criticism rests, and there is nothing "partisan" about it. It is the opposite of "partisan." It is instead a demand that the media fulfill their core responsibility -- to serve as an adversarial check on government -- a responsibility which they have profoundly abdicated.

In an e-mail exchange with the the editor of Politico, Glenn gets this exactly right:

I have a great deal of respect for the role journalists are intended to play in this country. I am a great admirer of, for instance, of your former colleague, Dana Priest. I devoted large parts of my litigation practice when I litigated to defending the First Amendment. My criticism of the press is based on my sincere belief that it is supposed to play a critical role -- but has abdicated its responsibility -- to serve as a watchdog over our government and to check abuses of power by political leaders. I don't think journalists should promote partisan storylines or promote any political agenda. I think they ought to fulfill the function the founders envisioned, because our country's political health would be substantially improved. That's what motivates my media criticism.

Loyal Bushies politicizing the DOJ

There is a good op-ed in the LA Times by Joseph D. Rich, chief of the voting section in the Justice Department's civil right division from 1999 to 2005, about BushCo's blatantly unethical attempt to introduce politics into law-enforcement so as to influence the outcome of elections.

The scandal unfolding around the firing of eight U.S. attorneys compels the conclusion that the Bush administration has rewarded loyalty over all else. A destructive pattern of partisan political actions at the Justice Department started long before this incident, however, as those of us who worked in its civil rights division can attest.

I spent more than 35 years in the department enforcing federal civil rights laws — particularly voting rights. Before leaving in 2005, I worked for attorneys general with dramatically different political philosophies — from John Mitchell to Ed Meese to Janet Reno. Regardless of the administration, the political appointees had respect for the experience and judgment of longtime civil servants.

Under the Bush administration, however, all that changed. Over the last six years, this Justice Department has ignored the advice of its staff and skewed aspects of law enforcement in ways that clearly were intended to influence the outcome of elections.
It has notably shirked its legal responsibility to protect voting rights. From 2001 to 2006, no voting discrimination cases were brought on behalf of African American or Native American voters. U.S. attorneys were told instead to give priority to voter fraud cases, which, when coupled with the strong support for voter ID laws, indicated an intent to depress voter turnout in minority and poor communities.

At least two of the recently fired U.S. attorneys, John McKay in Seattle and David C. Iglesias in New Mexico, were targeted largely because they refused to prosecute voting fraud cases that implicated Democrats or voters likely to vote for Democrats.

This pattern also extended to hiring. In March 2006, Bradley Schlozman was appointed interim U.S. attorney in Kansas City, Mo. Two weeks earlier, the administration was granted the authority to make such indefinite appointments without Senate confirmation. That was too bad: A Senate hearing might have uncovered Schlozman's central role in politicizing the civil rights division during his three-year tenure.

Schlozman, for instance, was part of the team of political appointees that approved then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's plan to redraw congressional districts in Texas, which in 2004 increased the number of Republicans elected to the House. Similarly, Schlozman was acting assistant attorney general in charge of the division when the Justice Department OKd a Georgia law requiring voters to show photo IDs at the polls. These decisions went against the recommendations of career staff, who asserted that such rulings discriminated against minority voters. The warnings were prescient: Both proposals were struck down by federal courts.

Schlozman continued to influence elections as an interim U.S. attorney. Missouri had one of the closest Senate races in the country last November, and a week before the election, Schlozman brought four voter fraud indictments against members of an organization representing poor and minority people. This blatantly contradicted the department's long-standing policy to wait until after an election to bring such indictments because a federal criminal investigation might affect the outcome of the vote. The timing of the Missouri indictments could not have made the administration's aims more transparent.

This administration is also politicizing the career staff of the Justice Department. Outright hostility to career employees who disagreed with the political appointees was evident early on. Seven career managers were removed in the civil rights division. I personally was ordered to change performance evaluations of several attorneys under my supervision. I was told to include critical comments about those whose recommendations ran counter to the political will of the administration and to improve evaluations of those who were politically favored.

Morale plummeted, resulting in an alarming exodus of career attorneys. In the last two years, 55% to 60% of attorneys in the voting section have transferred to other departments or left the Justice Department entirely.

At the same time, career staff were nearly cut out of the process of hiring lawyers. Control of hiring went to political appointees, so an applicant's fidelity to GOP interests replaced civil rights experience as the most important factor in hiring decisions.

For decades prior to this administration, the Justice Department had successfully kept politics out of its law enforcement decisions. Hopefully, the spotlight on this misconduct will begin the process of restoring dignity and nonpartisanship to federal law enforcement. As the 2008 elections approach, it is critical to have a Justice Department that approaches its responsibility to all eligible voters without favor.

Potpourri

The WaPo has a good article called The Myth Of Voter Fraud alluding to those cases that the fired U.S.A's weren't prosecuting:

Allegations of voter fraud -- someone sneaking into the polls to cast an illicit vote -- have been pushed in recent years by partisans seeking to justify proof-of-citizenship and other restrictive ID requirements as a condition of voting. Scare stories abound on the Internet and on editorial pages, and they quickly become accepted wisdom.

But the notion of widespread voter fraud, as these prosecutors found out, is itself a fraud. Firing a prosecutor for failing to find wide voter fraud is like firing a park ranger for failing to find Sasquatch. Where fraud exists, of course, it should be prosecuted and punished. (And politicians have been stuffing ballot boxes and buying votes since senators wore togas; Lyndon Johnson won a 1948 Senate race after his partisans famously "found" a box of votes well after the election.) Yet evidence of actual fraud by individual voters is painfully skimpy.

Glenn Greenwald makes the point that Neoconservative radicalism has reshaped our political spectrum. Once again the odious David Brooks gets some much deserved bashing.

On every front, the Bush administration has ushered in vast expansions of federal power -- often in the form of radical and new executive powers, unprecedented surveillance of American citizens, and increased intervention in every aspect of Americans' private lives. To say that the Bush movement is hostile to the limited-government ends traditionally associated (accurately or not) with the storied Goldwater/Reagan ideology is a gross understatement.

But none of this expansion of government power has been undertaken in order to promote ends traditionally associated with liberalism either -- none of it is about creating social safety nets or addressing growing wealth disparities or regulating business. Instead, federal power is enlisted, and endlessly expanded, in service of an agenda of aggressive militarism abroad, liberty-infringement domestically, and an overarching sense of moralistic certitude and exceptionalism. This movement is neither "liberal" nor "conservative" as those terms are understood in their abstract form, but instead, is radical in its attempt to fundamentally re-define the American government and the functions it serves.

[...]

And now here is Brooks, very explicitly repudiating the Goldwater/Reagan template and admitting that this movement is devoted to large expansions of federal power -- justified in the name of "protecting" Americans -- all devoted to what that movement claims is promotion of some objective Good. The central tenets of the right wing movement in this country -- which has seized and now defines the term "conservative" -- are easy to see. They're right there in plain sight -- they want to expand government power in pursuit of mindless, bloodthirsty warmongering and empire-building abroad, and the accompanying liberty-infringement at home.

As a result, to be considered "liberal" or "leftist" now means, more than anything else, to oppose that agenda. All of the people now deemed to be on the "left" -- including many who have quite disparate views about the defining political disputes of the 1990s -- have been able to work together with great unity because all energies of those "on the left" have been devoted not to any affirmative policy-making (because they have had, and still have, no power to do that), but merely towards the goal of exposing the corruption and radicalism at the heart of this extremist right-wing movement and to push back -- impose some modest limits -- on what has been this radical movement's virtually unlimited ability to install a political framework that one does not even recognize as "American."

Digby revisits from whence it came. Election stealing is not some new aberration but how BushCo came into being. It's what they do.

[S]ince I first started writing on-line, one of my recurring themes is that the modern Republican party has become fundamentally hostile to democracy.(And we already knew they were crooks.)

And here we are, six years later, actually debating whether the Bush White House has been manipulating the electoral system. For god's sake --- of course they have been. This administration was installed through crude manipulation of the rigged levers of power in the Bush family's political machine and they see such outrageous conduct as perfectly legitimate. Indeed, I'm sure they believe "it's not Machiavellian" to use the Department of Justice to rig the vote --- it would be Machiavellian not to.

He ain't lying, he's just...

Paul Kiel lets us know that Abu Gonzales didn't lie, he's just... "imprecise".

But there's more. Sampson will also give a rather unflattering portrait of his boss, Alberto Gonzales. Here's how this morning's New York Times paints that portion of his testimony:

... over time, friends and former colleagues say, Mr. Sampson noticed what three people who worked with the attorney general separately called a pattern of “imprecision” in Mr. Gonzales’s public statements.

...friends said Mr. Sampson could not defend the accuracy of all of Mr. Gonzales’s statements in the case like his insistence that he had no personal involvement in planning the removals or selecting prosecutors.

Justice Department records show that Mr. Gonzales discussed the removals at a meeting on Nov. 27, 2006.

Mr. Gonzales “is not a litigator, and he is not an accomplished public speaker,” said a friend of Mr. Sampson who also worked with Mr. Gonzales, known as Judge Gonzales because he was on the Texas Supreme Court. “When the judge says, ‘I wasn’t involved,’ he means something specific. If you teased it out, you would figure out what it was he meant. But in the political world where you only get one shot, it comes across as misleading.”

Your attorney general: a lawyer who even his closest advisors admit is imprecise with language.

Ask the U.S. Marshall, Josh Marshall

When considering the widening scandal of the U.S. Attorney purge, everyone should consider Josh Marshall's TPM as required reading. Not only is Josh supremely informed but his keen analytical skills enables him find the real story and, thanks to his perspicuity, he makes it easy to understand.

Before Mr. Sampson goes before the Senate Judiciary Committee tomorrow, let's get one big chunk of administration bamboozlement out of the way. In a much-quoted passage from the prepared remarks he'll deliver tomorrow, Sampson says "The distinction between 'political' and 'performance-related' reasons for removing a United States attorney is, in my view, largely artificial."

This use of the word 'political' is at the heart of Sampson's and others effort to lie their way out of what happened here.

'Political' can mean many things in different contexts. US Attorneys are 'political' appointees, in that they are overwhelmingly, though not exclusively, drawn from among the president's political supporters. They are also subject to 'political' direction, in that they are expected to follow the administration's law enforcement priorities -- more or less gun prosecutions, crack downs on dead beat dads or pornography, etc.

Neither of these meanings of the word 'political' are what this investigation is about. And, like others, Sampson is using these multiple meanings of the word as a dodge. The charge against Sampson and crew is not that they fired them for 'political' reasons. The charge is that they fired these prosecutors for not using their law enforcement powers to help the Republican party.

Set aside for the moment whether the charge is proven or whether you think it's true. That is the charge. That's what this is about.

The evidence with respect to John McKay in Washington state and David Iglesias in New Mexico is copious and overwhelming. They were fired because Republicans in their states were angry they weren't seeking indictments against Democrats over bogus claims of voter fraud -- claims which are themselves cudgels in the GOP political arsenal. In the case of Iglesias his unwillingness to use his prosecutorial powers to turn a congressional election in the Republicans' favor also played a key, perhaps the decisive role. In the case of Carol Lam, the case remains circumstantial though very strong that she was fired for pursuing the expanded Cunningham investigation.

In the cases of the other US Attorneys it is not always clear precisely why they were fired. In a case like Arizona, scuttling an investigation into a Republican congressman seems a reasonable hypothesis. But we don't know enough to say. Yet in those cases where we lack clear evidence of a partisan political aim behind the firing, the lack of any other credible explanation and the clear-cut cases of McKay, Iglesias and Lam make an assumption of wrongdoing reasonable and the need for further scrutiny unquestionable.

But this is getting ahead of ourselves. This is all about the investigation and what it may or may not uncover. But Sampson's claim and conceit is not so much that he and his crew are innocent of the charge but that the charge doesn't even really exist, that it's all just a misunderstanding or a witch-hunt. What he did is fine, he says. The problem is just the "confusion, misunderstanding and embarrassment" caused by how the thing was handled.

So, have your eyes out for Sampson's word play and games. This investigation is about whether Sampson and his crew corrupted the justice system by purging US Attorneys who wouldn't use their prosecutorial powers to help the Republican party.

This is my kind of war-supporter

Michael Berube responds to being lumped in with supporters of the Iraqi invasion:

Cockburn's essay is gradually making its way through the Intertubes.... I can say that my position on Iraq four years ago hasn't led me to wonder how much responsibility I have for the war. I opposed the war, and no, I"'m not sorry about that. Four years and six weeks ago, I had just gotten back from the antiwar rally in New York, and I wrote this:

Many of us fear what will happen to Iraqi civilians and American civil liberties; I fear this too, but as the impervious Bush imperium machine grinds on, I fear the aftermath of the war even more than the war itself. A military governorship in Baghdad for at least two years? A Greater Turkey to contain the Kurds in the north? Osama at large and al-Qaeda regrouping in Afghanistan and Pakistan? NATO and the UN in shreds?

What a complete and terrible and deadly mess. Everyone with any damn sense at all knows that if President Gore were sitting in his rightful place in the Oval Office right now, we wouldn't be on this obsessive and profoundly counterproductive path. Yes, President Gore would have taken out the Taliban and its terrorist training camps immediately after 9/11. And rightly so. But from that point on, there's almost no point of contact between what Bush has done and what any sane or competent President would have done....

Calm Down With the Threats, Little Man

TRex at FDL writes a great piece on crumbling BushCo -- reminds me a bit of driftglass.

Well, I don't know about you guys, but so far I think the 110th Congress is an unqualified success. I especially liked hearing Grandma Pelosi quietly and patiently explain to the Toddler-in-Chief today that he needs to suck it up and learn to effing cooperate before she pulls this country over and tans his behind out in front of God and everybody.

Think Progress has the video.

SPEAKER PELOSI: Calm down with the threats. There is a new Congress in town. We respect your constitutional role; we want you to respect ours. This war must end. The American people have lost faith in the President’s conduct of the war. Let’s see how we can work together. This war is diminishing the strength of our military, not honoring our commitment to our veterans, and not holding the Iraqi government accountable.

That's riiiiiiiight, y'all. The Imperial Presidency has run aground on the submerged reef of accountability, suffered massive damage to its hull, and is currently taking on water at a high rate of speed.

Frankly, I don't understand why we don't just go ahead and impeach the little turd. And his minder, Dead-Eye. And absolutely anyone and everyone that their vipers'-nest of an administration has appointed to any job at all since the 2000 elections. I mean, what further proof could we possibly need at this point that every little thing Republicans touch is irretrievably corrupted and infected, rotting from the inside from unchecked necrotic politicization? The Justice Department, the GSA, the War and subsequent "Reconstruction" in Iraq, the Patriot Act, the nation's intelligence agencies, the educational system, everything these filthy kleptocrats have turned their hands to has been sullied almost beyond repair by the "loyal Bushies'" insistence on politicizing EVERYTHING.

From "The Pleasurers of the President", a Chris Lehman piece about the US Attorney firings in today's New York Observer:

Except, of course, this case is all about legal authority of the most destructively controlling sort. “You particularly have the legal branch of government trashing the law,” says legal historian Stanley I. Kutler, author of the Nixon-tapes chronicle Abuse of Power. “The rule of law isn’t applying to the rulers any longer.”

Mr. Kutler notes as well that this sort of core tampering with the separation of powers isn’t exactly easy to reel back once it’s been unleashed. “So am I supposed to think that Hillary will instantly bring my habeas corpus back?” Mr. Kutler asks. “For 40 years, I taught legal and constitutional history. I’m glad I’m no longer teaching. If I had to give one of those lectures today, I’d have to tell my students, ‘This is all now bullshit.’”

Veterans of past Justice Departments feel much the same outrage.

“When I joined the Justice Department in 1990,” recalls Jonathan Shapiro, a former assistant U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, “there were still folks around who would tell you the story about how they lined the hallways to give Elliott Richardson a standing ovation when he left,” after the then Attorney General resigned in protest over Richard Nixon’s “Saturday Night Massacre” firing of Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox. “When I left the job in 1998, there was still the sense that it was verboten to fuck around the with the U.S. attorneys. No one had the brass to fire them for political motivations—it would look far too craven, partisan and dirty.”

But "craven, partisan, and dirty" is the only thing Republicans know how to do these days. Fiscal responsibility went out the window in the "Me first, bitchez!" Reagan 80's. "Morality" and "Family Values" left the station the moment Newt Gingrich fucked an employee on his desk in between Impeachment hearings for Bill Clinton. "Patriotism"? Don't make me laugh. If there's one thing that the Hannitys, Limbaughs, Althouses, and Coulters have proven to us in the last decade, it's that their version of "patriotism" would be a lot more appropriate to Kim Jong Il's boot-licking inner circle of cronies or Saddam Hussein's extended family than it is here in The Country Formerly Known as the Land of the Free.

Frankly, I hope that President Pissypants cleaves as tightly as he can to his little jumped-up ambulance chaser buddy from Austin, Alberto. I also hope he vetoes the Iraq bill. Why? Because this presidency is wounded, bleeding in the water. I don't think the administration really realizes at this point how deeply isolated they are and how much the public has come to despise them. A Constitutional Crisis might set the stage nicely for drawing up the Articles of Impeachment.

And even if, somehow, Chimpy manages to actually make it to the end of his term, his current round of high-handed petulance in the face of real crises to our nation's well-being are not going to serve his party well in the decades to come. I think that in their quest for Karl Rove's "Permanent Republican Majority", the Republicans have accomplished exactly the opposite, a Republican Party that's going to have to start sucking dicks for change in a bus-station bathroom to support itself for the next 50 years.

But given their track-record on everything else, does this surprise you?

Comeuppance

Jane Hamsher at FDL says:

For years journalists and pundits have bent over backwards to keep people (and I use the term loosely) like Rush Limbaugh from tagging them as "liberal." Are they now getting squeamish because their videos are going viral, and folks like Glenn Greenwald are calling them GOP tools?

Matthews today called bullshit on wingnut Terry Jeffrey, who said Hillary Clinton's position on the war was "incoherent":

MATTHEWS: You know what's more incoherent? The views of people like you and other traditional conservatives. You've never liked this war, but you went along with it because the leader, Bush…

JEFFREY: No…

MATTHEWS: You don't like this war Terry, Pat doesn't like this war, Bill Buckley doesn't like this war, and yet you went along with it….

Jeffrey starts to babble GOP talking points about what a bang up idea it was to invade Iraq, to which Matthews responds:

MATTHEWS: I'd love to have you under oath on this, because I think you guys deeply questioned this war. If this was Clinton's war, you wouldn't have fought it.

As Digby notes, the elite pundits of wingnuttia have been babbling horseshit they quite obviously didn't believe for years and nobody bothered to call them on it. Being publicly challenged like this must be quite gobsmacking to them.

McCain: Republican Senator for Neverland

John McCain has become a joke, a pathetic joke... increasingly irrelevant but still a dangerous joke. Last week I read about him bumbling an answer to whether he supported contraception to prevent AIDS via the NYTimes:

Mr. McCain: “I haven’t thought about it. Before I give you an answer, let me think about. Let me think about it a little bit because I never got a question about it before. I don’t know if I would use taxpayers’ money for it.”

Q: “What about grants for sex education in the United States? Should they include instructions about using contraceptives? Or should it be Bush’s policy, which is just abstinence?”

Mr. McCain: (Long pause) “Ahhh. I think I support the president’s policy.”

Q: “So no contraception, no counseling on contraception. Just abstinence. Do you think contraceptives help stop the spread of HIV?”

Mr. McCain: (Long pause) “You’ve stumped me.”

Q: “I mean, I think you’d probably agree it probably does help stop it?”

Mr. McCain: (Laughs) “Are we on the Straight Talk express? I’m not informed enough on it. Let me find out. You know, I’m sure I’ve taken a position on it on the past. I have to find out what my position was. Brian, would you find out what my position is on contraception – I’m sure I’m opposed to government spending on it, I’m sure I support the president’s policies on it.”

Q: “But you would agree that condoms do stop the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. Would you say: ‘No, we’re not going to distribute them,’ knowing that?”

Mr. McCain: (Twelve-second pause) “Get me Coburn’s thing, ask Weaver to get me Coburn’s paper that he just gave me in the last couple of days. I’ve never gotten into these issues before.”

Last night I read Digby & Crooks and Liars accounts of the Senator for Neverland confirmed to Wolf Blitzer that he (McCain) had really did say:

There are neighborhoods in Baghdad where you and I could walk through those neighborhoods today. [...] The U.S. is beginning to succeed in Iraq.

When Blitzer said:

[Y]ou go outside of that secure area, relatively speaking, you're in trouble if you're an American.

McCain responded with:

You know, that's why you ought to catch up on things, Wolf.

General Petraeus goes out there almost every day in an unarmed Humvee. You want to -- I think you ought to catch up. You see, you are giving the old line of three months ago. I understand it. We certainly don't get it through the filter of some of the media.

But I know for a fact of much of the success we're experiencing, including the ability of Americans in many parts -- not all. We've got a long, long way to go. We've only got two of the five brigades there -- to go into some neighborhoods in Baghdad in a secure fashion.

Blitzer then got CNN's Michael Ware who is in Baghdad to comment [emphasis is mine -- bill]:

Well, I'd certainly like to bring Senator McCain up to speed, if he ever gives me the opportunity. And if I have any difficulty hearing you right now, Wolf, that's because of the helicopter circling overhead and the gun battle that is blazing just a few blocks down the road.

Is Baghdad any safer?

Sectarian violence -- one particular type of violence -- is down. But none of the American generals here on the ground have anything like Senator McCain's confidence.

I mean, Senator McCain's credibility now on Iraq, which has been so solid to this point, has now been left out hanging to dry.

To suggest that there's any neighborhood in this city where an American can walk freely is beyond ludicrous. I'd love Senator McCain to tell me where that neighborhood is and he and I can go for a stroll.

And to think that General David Petraeus travels this city in an unarmed Humvee. I mean in the hour since Senator McCain has said this, I've spoken to some military sources and there was laughter down the line. I mean, certainly, the general travels in a Humvee. There's multiple Humvees around it, heavily armed. There's attack helicopters, predator drones, sniper teams, all sorts of layers of protection.

So, no, Senator McCain is way off base on this one -- Wolf.

[...]

Michael, when Senator McCain says that there are at least some areas of Baghdad where people can walk around and -- whether it's General Petraeus, the U.S. military commander, or others, are there at least some areas where you could emerge outside of the Green Zone, the international zone, where people can go out, go to a coffee shop, go to a restaurant, and simply take a stroll?

WARE: I can answer this very quickly, Wolf. No. No way on earth can a westerner, particularly an American, stroll any street of this capital of more than five million people.

I mean, if al Qaeda doesn't get wind of you, or if one of the Sunni insurgent groups don't descend upon you, or if someone doesn't tip off a Shia militia, then the nearest criminal gang is just going to see dollar signs and scoop you up. Honestly, Wolf, you'd barely last 20 minutes out there.

I don't know what part of Neverland Senator McCain is talking about when he says we can go strolling in Baghdad.

UPDATE: Faced with overwhelming evidence that he is wrong, McCain... admits it, nope... he denies saying it! Think Progress:

This morning, during an interview with McCain, CNN’s John Roberts rebutted McCain’s assertions, stating, “I checked with General Petraeus’s people overnight and they said he never goes out in anything less than an up-armored humvee.” He added that a new report by retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey “said no Iraqi government official, coalition soldier, diplomat reporter could walk the streets of Baghdad without heavily armed protection.”

Faced with overwhelming evidence that he was wrong, McCain denied he’d ever said it: “Well, I’m not saying they could go without protection. The President goes around America with protection. So, certainly I didn’t say that.”

The Right To Remain Silent…Or Not

Christy has a great post about Goodling taking the 5th. Read the whole thing. Here are some excerpts:

No fear of criminal implication against oneself, no 5th Amendment. Which means that Ms. Goodling can only invoke this if she fears that she has done something which is prosecutable under the law. No taking the 5th because you might embarrass yourself, your boss, or your political cronies — there has to be a connection to some criminal matter in order for it to be properly invoked. And no invoking it as a means to avoid testimony that might be difficult because you might have to rat out folks higher up on the crony chain — the law does not make exceptions for the powerful, nor does it make exceptions for the vindictive and nasty. Truth is truth. Period.

And no taking the 5th just because the mean old Senators and Congresspeople want to do their sworn Constitutional duty and provide oversight in the possibility that you and your peeps at the DoJ, and all the various and sundry minions in Rove's political shop decided that you could run the United States government as your own personal electioneering machine, regardless of the laws of this nation. Even Boss Tweed had to pay the piper for his corruption and graft in the end, and just because you work for the President's bestest buddy does not mean that you don't have to follow the law, too. (Hint: You work at the DoJ. Try hanging out in the law library and actually reading the books there. Start with a text on the Constitution — you clearly need a refresher.)

What does this say to me? It says that Ms. Goodling's attorney, one John Dowd, will begin negotiations with the Senate Judiciary Committee regarding the potential for Ms. Goodling to put up under cover of immunity. (Note to Mr. Dowd: if your letter to the committee chair was as snotty as it is rumored to have been, it's a nice public act to put on for the GOP cronies of your client while you negotiate behind the scenes, but you might want to back that down a notch because Pat Leahy is not the sort to put up with a lot of posturing crap for very long. Just FYI.) It also says to me that Ms. Goodling either has a nice cash stash, that someone else is footing her legal bills, or that Mr. Dowd is an old family friend, because a man with this background does not come cheaply to the negotiation table

[...]

And that seems to me to be the crux of the problem for Ms. Goodling: the cover story hasn't been settled on this one, and in a fluid situation where telling the truth can get you in trouble with the vindictive pit of vipers that work in "Rove's shop," she'd rather not have to be honest, thank you very much. Except that isn't what the law provides, and I'm certain that her lawyer is more than aware of that — and that folks on the Judiciary Committees in both houses of Congress are more than aware of this as well. So, why the public feint? Again, I think it's a maneuver to buy some time for behind-the-scenes negotiations. But I'm going to do some more digging on this.

While we are at it: huge kudos to Rep. Henry Waxman who sent out a lovely note to the White House document folks reminding them of their legal responsibility to maintain and archive ALL e-mails, even those using an non-WH addy, and that Waxman would like to have a chat about just how many of those are being used. You know, while we're thinking about it. More from Justin Rood at ABC's The Blotter. And from emptywheel.

Ahhhh, I love the smell of oversight in the morning.

Because the survey says...

Crooks and Liars reinforces the point that you can't trust the pundits to tell the truth, they just pull it out of their butts.

Just over the last few days, much of the media establishment has decided that Democrats are running against public opinion by pursuing the prosecutor purge scandal. Americans, pundits tell us, just don’t agree Dems on this one. Unfortunately, the media’s assumptions about the public’s perspective appear wildly misplaced.

Americans overwhelmingly support a congressional investigation into White House involvement in the firing of eight U.S. attorneys, and they say President Bush and his aides should answer questions about it without invoking executive privilege.

In a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll taken Friday-Sunday, respondents said by nearly 3-to-1 that Congress should issue subpoenas to force White House officials to testify.

In fact, the results weren’t even close. Asked whether Congress should investigate the White House’s involvement in the controversy, 72% said lawmakers should pursue the matter. Asked if White House officials should invoke executive privilege or answer all questions, 68% prefer the latter. Asked if Congress should issue subpoenas to force testimony, 68% said yes. And by a 2-to-1 margin, poll respondents said the U.S. Attorneys were fired for political reasons, not job performance.

Glenn Greenwald concluded: "I would never dream of coming to this blog and just start making assertions that 'Americans believe X' or 'Americans oppose Y' unless I had actual evidence to support those claims. That’s because I would not expect readers of this blog to view what I write as being credible if I just spewed assertions with no empirical basis like that. No credible blogger would do that. Why don’t pundits on MSNBC — including the Managing Editor of Time Magazine — recognize those same basic constraints?"

What Rove Has Wrought

Even Andrew Sullivan gets it right sometimes:

I'm somewhat stunned by the ambivalence of many of my fellow Beltway pundits to the seriousness of the charges in the U.S. Attorneys scandal. From the Chicago Tribune today:

"New Mexico's David Iglesias got the boot after Republican lawmakers made it plain they were unhappy about his failure to seek indictments in an investigation of alleged Democratic corruption. John McKay of Washington state, who was also fired, had been chided by White House counsel Harriet Miers for not bringing charges of voter fraud in the aftermath of a governor's race narrowly won by a Democrat."

The central question is whether the Bush administration has used the U.S. Attorneys as a systematic weapon in targeting the opposition party, rather than rooting out corruption and malfeasance wherever it appears. The natural inference from the evidence so far - and the conflicting stories from the administration - is that the eight fired attorneys were not being partisan enough.

But what is the actual pattern of prosecutions by U.S. Attorneys under the Bush administration? Here's a month-old statistical study that seems to me to be worth wider examination. The authors of the study notice a fascinating wrinkle: there is not much partisan disparity in prosecutions at the state-wide or federal level, where the national press keeps tabs. But when you look at the local level, below the radar of the national media, you find something much more striking. If you remove Justice Department investigations of State-wide and federal elected officials from the tally, and look solely at investigations of local officials, you're left with a stunning disparity:

From 2001 through 2006 the Bush Justice Department investigated elected Democratic office holders and office seekers locally (non-state-wide and non federal offices) at a rate more than seven times greater (nearly 85 percent to 12 percent) than they investigated local Republican elected office holders and seekers. This was so even though, throughout the nation, Democrat elected officials outnumber Republican elected officials at the rate of only 50 percent to 41 percent. Nine percent of elected officials are Independent/Other.

This strikes me as classic Rove. He works below the radar, using the U.S. Attorney system to throttle the opposition party, knowing that only local media will pick up on the local stories and that the pattern likely won't emerge in the national media. Hence the panic from Gonzales when the media started pulling at the thread. Pull some more, guys. We may have deep, deep corruption of the justice system, all designed to foment unstoppable, uncheckable one-party rule.

Who Are They Kidding?

Digby on impeachable offenses:

I'm not wrong about the insult to my intelligence when wingnuts persist in saying that it's perfectly normal that the president of the United States took an unusual interest in alleged Democratic voter fraud that certain party members said weren't being aggressively enough pursued by the Republican prosecutors he himself appointed. Why would he put any credence into such complaints? His prosecutors weren't Democrats --- they had no agenda. And the inappropriateness of a president interfering in such things is so obvious that any man with integrity would have dropped that hot potato the instant it was put to him --- it just doesn't get any more wrong than him putting the heat on his Justice department to prosecute members of the opposite party on trumped up electoral fraud. After all, there is no evidence that the president or anyone else took an interest in the issue of electoral integrity in general or were concerned about the numerous issues raised by Democrats during the last two presidential elections, so no one can reasonably claim that this was about policy.

What this white house appears to have done goes to the very heart of our democratic system. It's true that he can fire anyone he wants but being party to a plan to rig elections is impeachable.

Digby, on one of GWB's 150 lawyers who graduated from Pat Robertson's university:

It seems that former white house justice department liaison Monica Goodling may be stretching her right not to incriminate herself to mean a right not to talk to people who may be mean to her. Josh has the lowdown here.

Ms Goodling is a lawyer so people might think it's unusual that she wouldn't know the law. But I'm frankly not surprised Ms Goodling would have some rather unconventional, out of the mainstream, legal views. She's a graduate of Regent University law school (class of 1999) --- Pat Robertson's very own college.

Apparently the president of the United States hires the finest legal minds in the Christian Coalition to work in the highest reaches of his administration. I'm not sure he's getting what he prays for.

Digby again:

It sure does make you wonder about the ethical and moral instruction at these conservative Christian colleges, doesn't it? [...] I wonder what book in the Bible blesses vote rigging? Did Jesus preach that lying to is a good thing or that ruining someone's reputation in order to cover up ethical misdeeds (and potential crimes) is godly? I hadn't heard that. But then, I don't share the conservative Christian "worldview" so what do I know about morality?

It's always about the crime

Josh Marshall keeps us up-to-date on the U.S. Attorney purge:

So now we've got another story. It's all Deputy AG Paul McNulty's fault apparently. Right.

Catch the headline. "Testimony Contradicted Gonzales in U.S. Attorney Matter, Sparked Controversy."

Here's the lead.

The firestorm over the fired U.S. attorneys was sparked last month when a top Justice Department official ignored guidance from the White House and rejected advice from senior administration lawyers over his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. The official, Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, ignored White House Counsel Harriet Miers and senior lawyers in the Justice Department when he told the committee last month of specific reasons why the administration fired seven U.S. attorneys — and appeared to acknowledge for the first time that politics was behind one dismissal. McNulty's testimony directly conflicted with the approach Miers advised, according to an unreleased internal White House e-mail described to ABC News. According to that e-mail, sources said, Miers said the administration should take the firm position that it would not comment on personnel issues.

Until McNulty's testimony, administration officials had consistently refused to publicly say why specific attorneys were dismissed and insisted that the White House had complete authority to replace them. That was Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's approach when he testified before the committee in January.

I just feel like I've died and gone to muck ridiculousness heaven.

I can almost imagine Harriet Miers pitching the ABC reporter on this nonsense. Okay, sure, probably not Harriet Miers. But same difference. Look at the logic here. If McNulty just would have stuck to the Miers line forever -- the Miers line being to refuse to say why the unprecedented US Attorney firings had taken place -- then everything would have been fine.

It's true that the claim that the firings were performance related set off a chain reaction of events. Most importantly it pushed some of the US Attorneys to defend their professional reputations.

But this is the classic case of mistaking the symptom for the disease. As McNulty could see, refusing to give any explanation for an unprecedented firing of multiple US Attorneys with active investigations or prosecutions of prominent Republicans simply wasn't tenable. Vague lies about performance problems was the least worst option available.

Frankly, simply reviewing the multiple instances in which Bush Justice Department officials threatened the firees with attacking their reputations if they didn't go quietly, I have real doubts whether any of the performance related line started with McNulty. But it hardly matters. The fuse was lit when the White House ordered the DOJ to fire the list of US Attorneys for hurting Republicans and not damaging Democrats. A really good cover story might have kept the thing hidden but a blanket refusal to discuss the matter -- in a department the Congress oversees -- was never going to cut it.

There's this old line the wise folks in Washington have that 'it's not the crime, but the cover-up.'

But only fools believe that. It's always about the crime. The whole point of the cover-up is that a full revelation of the underlying crime is not survivable. Let me repeat that, the whole point of the cover-up is a recognition that a full revelation of the underlying bad act is not survivable. Indeed, the cover-ups are usually successful. And that's why they're tried so often. Just look at this administration. They're the ultimate example of this truth.

Just consider Watergate -- the ur-scandal from which this bit of faux wisdom emanates. Of course, there had to be a cover-up. How long would Richard Nixon have lasted in the White House after he came forward and admitted that he had a private team of professional crooks breaking into the opposition party's headquarters and committing various other crimes at his behest? How would that have gone over?

Same here.

Enough of this shambling foolery. The controversy wasn't 'sparked' by the break down of the cover-up. The 'controversy' is about the underlying bad acts. To say that there's a scandal because the cover-up didn't work is no more than a dingbat truism -- something you really would expect from Miers.

This is about finding out what really happened. All the effort that has gone into preventing that tells you the tale.

Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good

I read a great quote (Voltaire's, I think) in the comments of some blog somewhere that said: "It never makes sense to let the perfect be the enemy of the good". I really liked this because it speaks to those who take principled stances that achieve no tangible results (see poputonian's post). I can respect that... but I can also respect those who say things like: "something is better than nothing" (see Digby's post). In fact, I have been in both camps having moved from the former to the latter. Some might see this as moving from the principled to the compromised or from the passionate to the moderate, but I see it as the result of seeing more clearly what my goal really is.

The goal (self-referentially) is about achieving the goal, whatever it is, together. It's not about winning but about making it work... for all of us, because we are all part of it. As I have often put it, it's about direction not location. It's about making the world a better place... for all of us. So, if we are making progress in the right direction, even if it's only slowly, I can accept that. I have been convinced that the compromise solution is the best solution if it's the best one you could actually get -- if it's the best one that we could all agree to.

The best way to build a coalition until it includes all of us is not to fight among ourselves. It's not about imposing your will (or my will) on everyone else. Instead it's discovering what the collective will is, and knowing that it will be a compromise -- partly mine, partly yours, partly the other guys'. You argue and you listen and you reach consensus -- you do the best you can. That's the reality of living as a member of a group.

I remember being involved in a strike years ago when it looked like some members would have to go back to work simply because they didn't have the money to pay their bills. I argued that as soon as one person had to go back, we should all go back. We shouldn't let the strike breaks us up as a group -- we went out together, we should go back together. Together we would live to fight another day.

Much as I hate the idea of legislation that in any way supports this evil enterprise in Iraq, I think that this bit of legislation is the best that this disparate group could accomplish at this time.

Digby:

Legislative sausage making is always somewhat unnerving to watch, but this one actually went quite well by historic standards. The progressives used all of their clout to get as strong a bill as possible and quite a few of the Blue Dogs made the hard choice to vote with the party. The Democratic party is a coalition not a monolith and the fact that they were able to get a bill with virtually everyone on board is a testament to the party's strength not its weakness.

[...]

This is hideous sausage making, but it's the way our system works. [...] The polls before the vote showed that the public was losing faith in the Democrats on Iraq. Had the first vote out of the House been a story of Democratic disarray and defeat (the Fox dominated media's favorite meme), they may never have gotten another chance. The headlines that came out of this vote moves the ball forward and gives the Dems the opportunity to show the general public that they can work together to get this thing done.

Having said all that, let me just emphasize again that a strong left flank is tremendously important to making that happen. Without the grassroots pressure and the "out of Iraq" caucus publicly holding the line on the vote and then offering to free certain members who were willing to vote for the bill at the last moment, it wouldn't have passed --- and the liberals wouldn't have collected the chits they need for the next round (or received a standing ovation from their caucus.) This is what a functioning political coalition that is working together looks like. It isn't pretty, but it's how things get done.

Terrorized by 'War on Terror'

Nothing like having a heavyweight echo my sentiments. "Enough of this hysteria, stop this paranoia".

How a Three-Word Mantra Has Undermined America
By Zbigniew Brzezinski
Sunday, March 25, 2007

The "war on terror" has created a culture of fear in America. The Bush administration's elevation of these three words into a national mantra since the horrific events of 9/11 has had a pernicious impact on American democracy, on America's psyche and on U.S. standing in the world. Using this phrase has actually undermined our ability to effectively confront the real challenges we face from fanatics who may use terrorism against us.

The damage these three words have done -- a classic self-inflicted wound -- is infinitely greater than any wild dreams entertained by the fanatical perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks when they were plotting against us in distant Afghan caves. The phrase itself is meaningless. It defines neither a geographic context nor our presumed enemies. Terrorism is not an enemy but a technique of warfare -- political intimidation through the killing of unarmed non-combatants.

But the little secret here may be that the vagueness of the phrase was deliberately (or instinctively) calculated by its sponsors. Constant reference to a "war on terror" did accomplish one major objective: It stimulated the emergence of a culture of fear. Fear obscures reason, intensifies emotions and makes it easier for demagogic politicians to mobilize the public on behalf of the policies they want to pursue. The war of choice in Iraq could never have gained the congressional support it got without the psychological linkage between the shock of 9/11 and the postulated existence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Support for President Bush in the 2004 elections was also mobilized in part by the notion that "a nation at war" does not change its commander in chief in midstream. The sense of a pervasive but otherwise imprecise danger was thus channeled in a politically expedient direction by the mobilizing appeal of being "at war."

To justify the "war on terror," the administration has lately crafted a false historical narrative that could even become a self-fulfilling prophecy. By claiming that its war is similar to earlier U.S. struggles against Nazism and then Stalinism (while ignoring the fact that both Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia were first-rate military powers, a status al-Qaeda neither has nor can achieve), the administration could be preparing the case for war with Iran. Such war would then plunge America into a protracted conflict spanning Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and perhaps also Pakistan.

The culture of fear is like a genie that has been let out of its bottle. It acquires a life of its own -- and can become demoralizing. America today is not the self-confident and determined nation that responded to Pearl Harbor; nor is it the America that heard from its leader, at another moment of crisis, the powerful words "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself"; nor is it the calm America that waged the Cold War with quiet persistence despite the knowledge that a real war could be initiated abruptly within minutes and prompt the death of 100 million Americans within just a few hours. We are now divided, uncertain and potentially very susceptible to panic in the event of another terrorist act in the United States itself.

That is the result of five years of almost continuous national brainwashing on the subject of terror, quite unlike the more muted reactions of several other nations (Britain, Spain, Italy, Germany, Japan, to mention just a few) that also have suffered painful terrorist acts. In his latest justification for his war in Iraq, President Bush even claims absurdly that he has to continue waging it lest al-Qaeda cross the Atlantic to launch a war of terror here in the United States.

Such fear-mongering, reinforced by security entrepreneurs, the mass media and the entertainment industry, generates its own momentum. The terror entrepreneurs, usually described as experts on terrorism, are necessarily engaged in competition to justify their existence. Hence their task is to convince the public that it faces new threats. That puts a premium on the presentation of credible scenarios of ever-more-horrifying acts of violence, sometimes even with blueprints for their implementation.

That America has become insecure and more paranoid is hardly debatable. A recent study reported that in 2003, Congress identified 160 sites as potentially important national targets for would-be terrorists. With lobbyists weighing in, by the end of that year the list had grown to 1,849; by the end of 2004, to 28,360; by 2005, to 77,769. The national database of possible targets now has some 300,000 items in it, including the Sears Tower in Chicago and an Illinois Apple and Pork Festival.

Just last week, here in Washington, on my way to visit a journalistic office, I had to pass through one of the absurd "security checks" that have proliferated in almost all the privately owned office buildings in this capital -- and in New York City. A uniformed guard required me to fill out a form, show an I.D. and in this case explain in writing the purpose of my visit. Would a visiting terrorist indicate in writing that the purpose is "to blow up the building"? Would the guard be able to arrest such a self-confessing, would-be suicide bomber? To make matters more absurd, large department stores, with their crowds of shoppers, do not have any comparable procedures. Nor do concert halls or movie theaters. Yet such "security" procedures have become routine, wasting hundreds of millions of dollars and further contributing to a siege mentality.

Government at every level has stimulated the paranoia. Consider, for example, the electronic billboards over interstate highways urging motorists to "Report Suspicious Activity" (drivers in turbans?). Some mass media have made their own contribution. The cable channels and some print media have found that horror scenarios attract audiences, while terror "experts" as "consultants" provide authenticity for the apocalyptic visions fed to the American public. Hence the proliferation of programs with bearded "terrorists" as the central villains. Their general effect is to reinforce the sense of the unknown but lurking danger that is said to increasingly threaten the lives of all Americans.

The entertainment industry has also jumped into the act. Hence the TV serials and films in which the evil characters have recognizable Arab features, sometimes highlighted by religious gestures, that exploit public anxiety and stimulate Islamophobia. Arab facial stereotypes, particularly in newspaper cartoons, have at times been rendered in a manner sadly reminiscent of the Nazi anti-Semitic campaigns. Lately, even some college student organizations have become involved in such propagation, apparently oblivious to the menacing connection between the stimulation of racial and religious hatreds and the unleashing of the unprecedented crimes of the Holocaust.

The atmosphere generated by the "war on terror" has encouraged legal and political harassment of Arab Americans (generally loyal Americans) for conduct that has not been unique to them. A case in point is the reported harassment of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) for its attempts to emulate, not very successfully, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Some House Republicans recently described CAIR members as "terrorist apologists" who should not be allowed to use a Capitol meeting room for a panel discussion.

Social discrimination, for example toward Muslim air travelers, has also been its unintended byproduct. Not surprisingly, animus toward the United States even among Muslims otherwise not particularly concerned with the Middle East has intensified, while America's reputation as a leader in fostering constructive interracial and interreligious relations has suffered egregiously.

The record is even more troubling in the general area of civil rights. The culture of fear has bred intolerance, suspicion of foreigners and the adoption of legal procedures that undermine fundamental notions of justice. Innocent until proven guilty has been diluted if not undone, with some -- even U.S. citizens -- incarcerated for lengthy periods of time without effective and prompt access to due process. There is no known, hard evidence that such excess has prevented significant acts of terrorism, and convictions for would-be terrorists of any kind have been few and far between. Someday Americans will be as ashamed of this record as they now have become of the earlier instances in U.S. history of panic by the many prompting intolerance against the few.

In the meantime, the "war on terror" has gravely damaged the United States internationally. For Muslims, the similarity between the rough treatment of Iraqi civilians by the U.S. military and of the Palestinians by the Israelis has prompted a widespread sense of hostility toward the United States in general. It's not the "war on terror" that angers Muslims watching the news on television, it's the victimization of Arab civilians. And the resentment is not limited to Muslims. A recent BBC poll of 28,000 people in 27 countries that sought respondents' assessments of the role of states in international affairs resulted in Israel, Iran and the United States being rated (in that order) as the states with "the most negative influence on the world." Alas, for some that is the new axis of evil!

The events of 9/11 could have resulted in a truly global solidarity against extremism and terrorism. A global alliance of moderates, including Muslim ones, engaged in a deliberate campaign both to extirpate the specific terrorist networks and to terminate the political conflicts that spawn terrorism would have been more productive than a demagogically proclaimed and largely solitary U.S. "war on terror" against "Islamo-fascism." Only a confidently determined and reasonable America can promote genuine international security which then leaves no political space for terrorism.

Where is the U.S. leader ready to say, "Enough of this hysteria, stop this paranoia"? Even in the face of future terrorist attacks, the likelihood of which cannot be denied, let us show some sense. Let us be true to our traditions.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter, is the author most recently of "Second Chance: Three Presidents and the Crisis of American Superpower" (Basic Books).

Founding father anticipated the U.S. Attorney purge

Responding hundreds of years before the wilfully ignorant asked: what's the big deal in firing these U.S. Attorneys, James Madison was clearly clairvoyant:

... let us consider the restraints he [the President] will feel after he is placed in that elevated station. It is to be remarked that the power in this case will not consist so much in continuing a bad man in office, as in the danger of displacing a good one. Perhaps the great danger, as has been observed, of abuse in the executive power, lies in the improper continuance of bad men in office. But the power we contend for will not enable him to do this; for if an unworthy man be continued in office by an unworthy president, the house of representatives can at any time impeach him, and the senate can remove him, whether the president chuses or not. The danger then consists merely in this: the president can displace from office a man whose merits require that he should be continued in it. What will be the motives which the president can feel for such abuse of his power, and the restraints that operate to prevent it? In the first place, he will be im-peachable by this house, before the senate, for such an act of mal-administration; for I contend that the wanton removal of meritorious officers would subject him to impeachment and removal from his own high trust.

Impeach George Bush, Impeach him now...! It's what the Founding Father would want.

Just following orders

Anyone who knows much about "Abu" Gonzales knows that he is GWB's guy. He is a Bush loyalist with no history of independence. It is no surprise to me that GWB is pledging unswerving support for Abu, after all, Boy George don't cut 'n run. But what is surprising is that any erstwhile BushCo supporter, who is willing to say that Gonzales should resign, could argue that this would close the book on the scandal because all this malfeasance originated with Abu. As everyone who has followed this business at all knows, this is a White House operation with Rovian finger smears all over it.

And anyway, what else could GWB do? There is no one above the rank of U.S. Attorney in the DOJ who isn't tarnished by now and besides if someone who was competent and principled (think Patrick Fitzgerald) were brought in, what do you think would happen to BushCo? They wouldn't find GWB's hand in a cookie jar, they'd find dozens of smashed jars all over the Oval Office floor and a crumb-speckled Boy George burping behind the desk. Any exposure to law enforcement from within would send Bushies scurrying like vampires from the blazing sun.

Josh Marshall:

For some, it is a matter of outrage that President Bush has renewed his support for Alberto Gonzales even after new evidence has emerged that the Attorney General has repeatedly lied about the US Attorney Purge. Myself, I see it more as a matter of confirmation and almost a welcome one in that it confirms the nature of the debate we're having.

This isn't a case where Alberto Gonzales has fallen short of the president's standards or bungled some process. This is the standard. The Attorney General has done and is doing precisely what is expected of him.

Consider this.

When Alberto Gonzales went up to the Hill earlier this year and answered questions about the US Attorney firings, he lied about why they'd been fired. When evidence revealed that what he had told the Senate was not true, he told the country in his televised press conference that he hadn't been directly involved in the process and thus had not knowingly misled the Senate. Friday's document dump showed that that too was a lie. These of course are only the most conspicuous examples and I leave aside the numerous instances of his aides lying on his behalf.

It is not too much to say that everything that has come out of Alberto Gonzales' mouth on this issue has been a lie. Sure, that sounds like hyperbole. But it's just a factual summary of what the public record now shows. On the very day his second lie was being exposed Gonzales was publicly claiming "it’s reckless and irresponsible to allege that these decisions were based in any way on improper motives."

And the president is fine with all of this. Fine with the fact that the Attorney General has not only repeatedly lied to the public but has also been exposed as repeatedly lying to the public. He's fine with at least two US Attorneys being fired for not giving in to pressure to file bogus charges to help Republican candidates.

Of course he's fine with it. Because it comes from him. None of this is about Alberto Gonzales. This is about the president and the White House, which is where this entire plan was hatched. Gonzales was just following orders, executing the president's plans. This is about this president and this White House, which ... let's be honest, everyone on both sides of the aisle already knows.

Congressional oversight, a linchpin of how democracy works

Glenn Greenwald at his best:

It is so inescapably clear that Alberto Gonzales repeatedly lied about what occurred with the U.S. attorney firings that the national media and even many Bush supporters are clearly acknowledging that fact. But what needs to be constantly emphasized is that there is nothing aberrational in any way about Gonazles' behavior in this case.

There is one thing and one thing only distinguishing this U.S. attorneys scandal from all of the others over the past six years: namely, because Democrats now have subpoena power and seem willing to use it, the administration is forced to disclose actual evidence and documents -- rather than simply issue unscrutinized and uninvestigated denials of wrongdoing -- and that evidence demonstrates that their claims are false. In the past, this is how every scandal transpired:

1. Questions about administration conduct are raised.

2. Administration denies wrongdoing.

3. Administration officials selectively and voluntarily disclose exculpatory documents, appear before Congress, assure everyone that safeguards are in place, deny wrongdoing, and claim the conduct in question is used only for proper purposes (e.g., protecting country again terrorism).

4. Administration followers -- led by those controlling Congress -- insist that no investigation is needed because Official X made clear that there are safeguards in place protecting us and everything is being done for proper purposes.

5. Congressional Republicans block Congressional investigations, compel no disclosure of evidence, do nothing to investigate administration claims.

6. Scandal ends, unresolved.

That pattern has repeated itself over and over and over for six years now -- from controversies over secret and illegal surveillance programs to torture, black sites and rendition. In the U.S. attorneys case, everything proceeded according to script -- Alberto Gonazles did what he and other Bush officials always do: namely, issue false statements about what they did in order to conceal their wrongdoing and mislead everyone about what our Government is doing.

And had it not been for the forced disclosure of internal DOJ emails and other documents -- something which never would have occurred prior to the November, 2006 election -- the same thing here would have happened: namely, Alberto Gonzales and top DOJ officials would have lied about what they did and nobody would have been able to prove that. Congressional Republicans would have blocked all investigations, insisting that we can trust the Attorney General, and Gonzales would have proceeded blithely along, having lied to Congress and the country with total impunity.

The only thing that changed is that there is now some minimal amount of oversight -- and already, within a mere three months of that oversight finally being exercised, our country's Attorney General stands revealed as a serial liar on a matter of obvious significance.

That is why oversight is so critical -- because as a country we simply do not trust, and never have trusted, our government officials to act properly when they can act in secret and with no checks. The most staggering fact, as always, is that this principle -- what used to be the very bedrock of our country's political framework, what defined "America" as a country -- is really no longer a principle which so many of our elite opinion-makers embrace. Hence, Beltway journalists from Michael Kinsley to David Broder to David Igantius continue to insist that investigations and oversight are so very improper, so disruptive, so gauche, so wasteful, so destructive, so wrong.

But a country that allows its political leaders to operate without oversight and in secret will, in every case, become not only dysfunctional but tyrannical. That is just obvious.

[...]

But that which the Court said is "unavailing" -- namely, relying on "mere requests for such information" and remaining content with only that which is "volunteered" -- is precisely what has been happening in this country for the last six years. As a result, the information we have received about what our government is doing has been incomplete, misleading, and often outright false.

And the fact that Alberto Gonzales and top DOJ officials simply got caught lying the minute that minimal amounts of oversight were exercised -- the minute that their statements were investigated for accuracy rather than blindly assumed to be true -- demonstrates just how pervasive this corruption and deceit has been at the highest levels of the Bush administration. And this has occurred principally as a result of a Republican-led Congress that did not just fail to investigate, but deliberately sought to help the administration conceal wrongdoing so as to politically prop up and protect the President.

In light of how quickly and powerfully evidence of wrongdoing and deceit is spewing forth with minimal amounts of prodding, it is just inconceivable that our Beltway stars -- including alleged journalists -- would be more worried about the unpleasantness and disruption that comes from uncovering corruption and illegality than they are about the corruption and illegality itself. But that is exactly the message they are conveying.

And none of that should be surprising, even though it is so destructive. After all, our government would not have been able to spend the last six years blocking all forms of accountability and checks if not for the support of our national media. So it should hardly come as a surprise that so many of them do not believe in that which lies at the core of our political system since its founding -- namely, a belief that all political leaders must constantly be subjected to rigorous scurtiny and compelled disclosure of their conduct.

[...]

Update: "Checks and balances" is something that "we all learn about in fifth grade civics class," and that is why it is has been so genuinely confounding and frustrating that our media and political classes have been perfectly content to allow this President to rule over our country for the last six years in virtually total secrecy and without any checks or balances of any kind.

Zinger!

Some vintage Bill Maher as he rips a strip off BushCo for their many crimes but especially the outing of Valerie Plame. Here are some quotes:

Valerie Plame was the CIA's operational officer in charge of counter-proliferation. She tracked loose nukes. CIA agents are troops. This was a military assassination... of one of our own... done through the press.

Rove said: She's fair game, and then Cheney shot her.

Even the mob doesn't go after your family.

Mark Twain said that patriotism is supporting your country all of the time and your government when it deserves it.

Valerie Plame is a patriot because she spent her life serving her country. Scooter Libby is not because he spent his life serving Dick Cheney.

Valerie Plame kept her secrets. The Bush administration leaked like the plumbing at Walter Reed.

H/T Christy at FDL.

Gonzales Approved Firings Of U.S. Attorneys

Think Progress has the goods under the heading: Corrupt Establishment

ABC News reports: “New documents show Gonzales approved firings of U.S. attorneys, contradicting earlier claims he was not closely involved.”

UPDATE: The AP reports:

Gonzales approved plans to fire several U.S. attorneys in a November meeting. …

The Nov. 27 meeting, in which the attorney general and at least five top Justice Department officials participated, focused on a five-step plan for carrying out the firings of the prosecutors, Justice Department officials said late Friday.

There, Gonzales signed off on the plan, which was crafted by his chief of staff, Kyle Sampson. Sampson resigned last week in the wake of the political firestorm surrounding the firings.

UPDATE II: On March 12, Gonzales denied any involvement in the prosecutor purge:

I was not involved in seeing any memos, was not involved in any discussions about what was going on … That’s basically what I knew as attorney general.

UPDATE III: New documents released tonight, “including Gonzales’s appointment calendar, show that the attorney general and his deputy, Paul McNulty, participated in an hour-long meeting about the firings on Nov. 27. Seven of the eight prosecutors were let go on Dec. 7.” The meeting occurred during the 18-day gap in documents the Justice Department had previously released.

My National Security Letter Gag Order

Wow! from the WaPo:

It is the policy of The Washington Post not to publish anonymous pieces. In this case, an exception has been made because the author -- who would have preferred to be named -- is legally prohibited from disclosing his or her identity in connection with receipt of a national security letter. The Post confirmed the legitimacy of this submission by verifying it with the author's attorney and by reviewing publicly available court documents.

The Justice Department's inspector general revealed on March 9 that the FBI has been systematically abusing one of the most controversial provisions of the USA Patriot Act: the expanded power to issue "national security letters." It no doubt surprised most Americans to learn that between 2003 and 2005 the FBI issued more than 140,000 specific demands under this provision -- demands issued without a showing of probable cause or prior judicial approval -- to obtain potentially sensitive information about U.S. citizens and residents. It did not, however, come as any surprise to me.

Three years ago, I received a national security letter (NSL) in my capacity as the president of a small Internet access and consulting business. The letter ordered me to provide sensitive information about one of my clients. There was no indication that a judge had reviewed or approved the letter, and it turned out that none had. The letter came with a gag provision that prohibited me from telling anyone, including my client, that the FBI was seeking this information. Based on the context of the demand -- a context that the FBI still won't let me discuss publicly -- I suspected that the FBI was abusing its power and that the letter sought information to which the FBI was not entitled.

Rather than turn over the information, I contacted lawyers at the American Civil Liberties Union, and in April 2004 I filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the NSL power. I never released the information the FBI sought, and last November the FBI decided that it no longer needs the information anyway. But the FBI still hasn't abandoned the gag order that prevents me from disclosing my experience and concerns with the law or the national security letter that was served on my company. In fact, the government will return to court in the next few weeks to defend the gag orders that are imposed on recipients of these letters.

Living under the gag order has been stressful and surreal. Under the threat of criminal prosecution, I must hide all aspects of my involvement in the case -- including the mere fact that I received an NSL -- from my colleagues, my family and my friends. When I meet with my attorneys I cannot tell my girlfriend where I am going or where I have been. I hide any papers related to the case in a place where she will not look. When clients and friends ask me whether I am the one challenging the constitutionality of the NSL statute, I have no choice but to look them in the eye and lie.

I resent being conscripted as a secret informer for the government and being made to mislead those who are close to me, especially because I have doubts about the legitimacy of the underlying investigation.

The inspector general's report makes clear that NSL gag orders have had even more pernicious effects. Without the gag orders issued on recipients of the letters, it is doubtful that the FBI would have been able to abuse the NSL power the way that it did. Some recipients would have spoken out about perceived abuses, and the FBI's actions would have been subject to some degree of public scrutiny. To be sure, not all recipients would have spoken out; the inspector general's report suggests that large telecom companies have been all too willing to share sensitive data with the agency -- in at least one case, a telecom company gave the FBI even more information than it asked for. But some recipients would have called attention to abuses, and some abuse would have been deterred.

I found it particularly difficult to be silent about my concerns while Congress was debating the reauthorization of the Patriot Act in 2005 and early 2006. If I hadn't been under a gag order, I would have contacted members of Congress to discuss my experiences and to advocate changes in the law. The inspector general's report confirms that Congress lacked a complete picture of the problem during a critical time: Even though the NSL statute requires the director of the FBI to fully inform members of the House and Senate about all requests issued under the statute, the FBI significantly underrepresented the number of NSL requests in 2003, 2004 and 2005, according to the report.

I recognize that there may sometimes be a need for secrecy in certain national security investigations. But I've now been under a broad gag order for three years, and other NSL recipients have been silenced for even longer. At some point -- a point we passed long ago -- the secrecy itself becomes a threat to our democracy. In the wake of the recent revelations, I believe more strongly than ever that the secrecy surrounding the government's use of the national security letters power is unwarranted and dangerous. I hope that Congress will at last recognize the same thing.

How do you spell conspiracy?

The weekend man, David Kurtz makes a very important point:

A key aspect of the U.S. attorney purge that often seems to get overlooked--by those who argue that the firings were business as usual and no different from the removal of USAs at the beginning of a president's term--is the change to the Patriot Act that was quietly inserted by Sen. Arlen Specter at the behest of the Justice Department.

As close followers of the scandal know, the Patriot Act provision, in essence, transferred the power to appoint interim USAs from the federal district courts to the attorney general and allowed the attorney general to install interim USAs indefinitely, thereby bypassing the Senate confirmation process.

Only the naive or willfully blind would see the Patriot Act amendment as a distinct and separate action from the purge itself. Indeed, vesting such powers in the attorney general was a predicate to the purge, and was one of the very first indications, at least to everyone here at TPM, that the removal of the eight U.S. attorneys was not some random act or unrelated series of acts but a deliberately conceived and executed plan that required time to develop and numerous participants to implement. Otherwise, the Senate confirmation process would have made installing political hacks as USAs difficult and would have provided supporters of the ousted prosecutors with a ready-made platform to challenge the removals publicly.

So when William Moschella, who is now the principal deputy attorney general, recently told McClatchy "that he pursued the changes on his own, without the knowledge or coordination of his superiors at the Justice Department or anyone at the White House," the purpose of his comments was to decouple the Patriot Act provision from the purge itself. Since Moschella was, at the time he pursued the Patriot Act changes, just a mid-level assistant attorney general for legislative affairs, we were supposed to believe that simply because B (the purge) followed A (the Patriot Act change), doesn't mean A caused B or was in any way related to B.

But wait.

From the document dump last night, we learn, again from McClatchy, that Moschella sent an email to other Justice Department officials way back in November 2005 announcing support for the change to the law. Paul has more.

So contrary to earlier assertions, the attorney general was involved in the firings, and higher-ups in the Justice Department knew about the Patriot Act provision.

No surprise there, really. But keep this in mind. Everything the Justice Department has said that later turned out to be false was almost certainly known by the White House to be false, at the time the false statements were made, to the media, and most importantly, to Congress.

Let that sink in.

Josh Marshall adds this insight:

Now we know with crystal clear proof what we really already knew a week ago: that Alberto Gonzales was lying about his role in the US Attorney Purge. So add that to the list of all the other things he's lied about.

But don't get distracted by the lying or even the cover-up.

Right-wing shills want to chalk the blundering administration response to US Attorney Purge scandal to incompetence. But just as we can infer the force of gravity from the descent of the falling apple, the panicked succession of lies and dodges out of the administration implies not incompetence but guilty knowledge of underlying bad acts.

This isn't about the AG's lies. It's not about the attempted cover-up. It's not about executive privilege and investigative process mumbojumbo.

This is about using US Attorneys to damage Democrats and protect Republicans, using the Department of Justice as a partisan cudgel in the war for national political dominance. All the secrecy and lies, the blundering and covering-up stems from this one central fact.