petition day
Because I know Joey Lib loves petitions so much, here’s two:
Via Mobius… Go put your name down as being in support of beginning impeachment of Bush. Yes, it’s a long shot, yes complicit democrats are on the record as stating that they do not support the prosecution of Bush or Administration members for possible criminal acts, but it’s important nonetheless.
Via Skippy… Oldy McOld gets a free pass from the “liberal press”?
via c&l, help media matters hold the press accountable for their obvious mclame man-love:
remember, the center for media affairs at george mason university found that obama got far more negative press on the big three networks than mcsame (72% negative for obama to 57% negative for mclame).
In the least, you’ll have a nice thick file of your doings at Homeland Security.
Read Morewatching liberty go down the drain: FISA, Rove….
This observer has no doubt that when that great foretold moment comes when the American citizenry willfully gives up it’s basic liberties, say, o I don’t know, the Fourth Amendment, that many will sit and watch it happen on their televisions as if it was just one more entertainment event. Most won’t realize it has occurred at all. Some of us have noticed though. A sitting President has committed a felony and no one cares.
What separates the idea of a proper democracy from the rabble is one simple thing: the rule of law. The simple idea that everyone is equal and must answer to the laws of the land if they violate those laws or are accused of violating those laws. They must deal with the system and the laws whether they are guilty or innocent. The system and the people will decide. It’s not perfect by any stretch, but it is what we have. And, it’s the lynch pin of law and order in our society. It is also that which keeps the select few from attaining power that is unresponsive to the will of the people and the rule of law. It’s the lynch pin to checks and balances.
So, what happens when people refute the overriding principle that everyone must be subject to equal protection and application of those laws? We literally become that which those who established our Constitutional form of government were fleeing from and refuting. The founders were reacting specifically to the practice within a monarchy of unequal protection under the law, that is: some were able to skirt laws and oversight and the will of the people by being above the law or protected by the monarchy, who were entirely above the law.
Of course, any honest observer knows fully well that the USA has not been a proper democracy for decades and functions today as a plutocracy. We are becoming that which the founders feared.
And, it shall not stand.
idiocracy watch
Yes, even a good fiction writer couldn’t make this stuff up.
A taste for torture
The simple fact of the matter is: we are better than torture. We are, or at least we once were… The country that held the moral high ground during the Nuremburg trials would not condone torture of enemies. Torture was the tactic of savages, of the evil Japanese Empire, the Nazi’s, the Soviets, the Red Army, the Khymer Rouge…
Not the USA.
Robert Greenwald has a new video, which is directly below.
Digby is keeping this issue on the fire, by posting some posts from the past. Here’s one that I wrote two and a half years ago as well.
Hot topic at: Empty Wheel, and Think Progress, and Open Left and Attytood.
This shall not stand. Our failure of a president supports torture. We do not. Write to your local press or nearest media outlet and let them know.
Then, get thee over to Condi Must Go and sign the petition.
the mind of dubya
From a man who could have served his nation in his youth my enlisting in the war in Vietnam, yet chose instead to serve in the National Guard (a sure way of avoiding war duty at the time) comes this gem:
I must say, I’m a little envious… If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed. It must be exciting for you … in some ways romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger. You’re really making history, and thanks…
This is the kind of doe eyed, fantastical, uber patriotic pablum that wing nuts eat up like starved dogs. But here in the land of truth, it comes off like it is: a joke with no punchline. And, let there be no doubt that in his little pea of a brain, the president of the most powerful nation on Earth believes what he has said is the G-d honest truth. He would grab a gun and fight for freedom, if her were younger, and didn’t have a job, you know, that was really important. He would fight. Honest. Really. He would. Cause, it’s so romantic, fighting war, with Dutch and Billy and all the others. Fight! Fight! Fight!
Read Moreciao tucker and other stuff for a monday
Cheney and the Iraq Energy Task Force…
…the weed that won’t die. Jon Taplin gets down to brass tacks. (via Boing Boing)
There is obviously something to this… Not like it’s a state secret that the US needs and wants Iraqi oil. It really says a great deal about conservatives and others who have never really been able to readily admit that the entire reason the US is even involved in the Middle East or Iraq or Afghanistan is oil.
Personally, I’d have a lot more respect for all the keyboard commando’s and the chicken hawks if they simply admitted this fact outright. But, they do not, as if doing so will cross some line in the sand where only real and evil fascists go, a line they’ve already crossed anyway.
This is why they spend so much time trying to convince the world that it’s the other side that are the fascists. Sad.
And, lest we forget, Cheney’s planning to invade Iraq prior to 9/11 is one of the numerous points listed in Bruce Fein’s well thought out article on impeachment of the Administration for violations on a number of levels.
Read Morenot so curious george
If ever there was a metaphor for the Bush Administration, this would be it…
Heard the story about Dubya’s reworking the meaning of a painting he had in his office when he was Governor of Texas to his own meaning? Jim Hightower goes over it… not difficult to believe, and not the first such story about President Dubya of this nature to surface.
It’s just monumentally sad, for Bush, and for us. The American people wanted a president that they felt was one of them, that they could have a beer with.
They got it. Too bad he’s an arrogant, ignorant boob to boot.
The recent story on this is in Harper’s which has a good bundle of links following this meme back a few years, including what is apparently the original one, from 2004. (Scroll down mid page to “GEORGE W. BUSH, ART CRITIC”.
Read Moreimpeaching cheney’s white house mafia
It’s become obvious to even the most casual observer, who isn’t a Bush/Cheney Kool-Aid Kid™, that laws have been broken and continue to be broken by members of the Bush / Cheney Administration. From the Op-Ed page of the Atlanta Constitution-Journal:
In theory, President Bush is sworn to faithfully execute the laws of the United States. In reality, he has treated federal law as a menu from which he picks and chooses those laws he likes, while ignoring those that do not suit his taste.
That royalist attitude may soon inspire a constitutional confrontation unrivaled in U.S. history.
At the moment, the president’s penchant for ignoring laws he finds inconvenient is best displayed in the standoff with Congress over subpoenas. Congress has demanded the sworn testimony of White House officials as part of an investigation into the Justice Department; the White House is refusing to allow that testimony, citing executive privilege.
In itself, that conflict is hardly unusual; it continues a traditional contest of wills between presidents and Congress that goes back to the earliest days of the Republic. The conflict is so standard that federal law lays out a clear process for resolving it. If witnesses refuse to honor congressional subpoenas and are found in contempt, the matter is referred to the U.S. attorney from Washington, D.C., “whose duty it shall be to bring the matter before the grand jury for its action.”
The wording of that law doesn’t give the U.S. attorney any leeway. It doesn’t say that he or she “can” or “may” bring it before the grand jury. It says he or she “shall” bring the matter to the grand jury, so the courts can resolve the conflict between the other two branches of government.
Bush, however, claims the right to ignore that law. He not only refuses to allow his aides to testify, he refuses to allow the U.S. attorney to refer the matter to the grand jury, as the law says he must. In essence, Bush is denying Congress access to the courts as an impartial arbiter of their dispute.
It’s visible for all to see – a basic lack of respect for the law of the land is fostered by those two good ‘ol boys at the top. And, it most definitely trickles down. There are dozens of examples of this disrespect in action, from the use of signing statements to Gonzales most recent testimony to Cheney’s game of “Catch Me If You Can” where he was a part of the Executive Branch, then he wasn’t, then he was again. The most egregious example in my opinion is the joint appearance, not under oath, of Bush and Cheney before the 9/11 Commission. Does it make any sense that the investigation of the most devastating attack on US soil in the history of the nation did not have sworn testimony from the President and Vice President?
The back bone for this hubris is a simple game of shell; wrong doing by the Administration really doesn’t exist. It’s a phantom created by the Evil Librul Media. Even better, if such wrong doing really does exist, it’s justified, because it’s alright to break the laws and disregard constitutional process in pursuit of right wing ideology. In many ways, it’s a Mafia like existence. For decades the Mafia was a shadow organization whose very existence was questioned. “The Mafia doesn’t exist. It’s a myth.” Such went the argument, that was fostered by the Mafia itself. But, today we know that the Mafia did and does indeed exist. We know that laws were broke, people were murdered. And, today, even though there are those who would have us believe that no laws have been broken by the Cheney White House, this is not the case in reality. And, the possibility of impeachment has been brought forth a number of times in a number of different manners.
The primary problem with impeachment is actually choosing who to go after. Bush? Cheney? Gonzales? It’s a mess. Ultimately, without someone going Sammy the Bull on the White House, it will be next to impossible to get an impeachment to stick. It’s important to remember that the Clinton impeachment proceedings were not a foregone conclusion of laws broken and complicity on tape (as was the case with Watergate). The Clinton impeachment was at it’s center a well placed trap, the culmination of a smear campaign called the “Arkansas Project” funded by partisans whose primary goal was to control Clinton by intimidation and to end his presidency. It was both a political ploy meant to pressure him as well as create an atmosphere in which to launch a counter campaign. Scandals are great fodder for dirty campaigns. This goes both ways of course, and part of the current impeachment movement against the Cheney cabal is a knee jerk response to the Clinton impeachment. It’s unavoidable.
In the end, the populace didn’t support the full removal of Clinton from office for lying about sex, and it went no farther than being a procedural footnote. But, it empowered the Bush campaign to run on a platform of bringing moral values back to the White House. And, it worked to a great degree.
It’s going to be interesting to see how this one unfolds. But, the important thing to remember in regard to impeachment is that the crime must be provable and rock solid. There’s the rub… Any impeachment proceedings against the current administration must be defined by the law and more than simply a political vendetta. The American people will know the difference.
Over at Talk Left, Big Ten Democrat has a post that pretty much sums up where this entire issue is at the moment.
Read Moregimme some truthiness
An explosive new book by David Talbot, Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years, examines the hostility that existed between the Kennedy brothers and their own military, intelligence and enforcement agencies during the JFK administration in the early 1960s. The book also reveals that Robert Kennedy, who was Attorney General during his brother’s presidency, believed that JFK was killed by an insider conspiracy of powerful players who didn’t like some of the president’s actions.
It underscores a troubling lesson we seem to never learn: that within all power structures, and certainly within Presidential Administrations, there are often struggles for domination, competing agendas, and subterfuge. Policies and military actions can veer in dangerous directions that have little to do with normal democratic processes.
An extremely salient point. Especially since we are in the middle of such a struggle for domination now. There’s a reason members of the Bush Administration and their fanboys in the media and the blogsphere have been so comfortable accusing anyone who doesn’t believe as they believe or do as they do of being traitors.
Go read the rest of the post, which includes an interview with Talbot.
Cheney has double secret special executive privilge…
… that only he can understand, since he’s not actually part of the executive branch. Dick’s attempt at a Jedi Mind Trick. Impeach. Now.
Read Morehow to impeach bush cheney and not spill your gin and tonic
– Asserted Presidential power to create military commissions, which combine the functions of judge, jury, and prosecutor in the trial of war crimes.
– Claimed authority to detain American citizens as enemy combatants indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay on the President’s say-so alone.
– Initiated kidnappings, secret detentions, and torture in Eastern European prisons of suspected international terrorists.
– Championed a Presidential power to torture in contravention of federal statutes and treaties.
– Engineered the National Security Agency’s warrantless domestic surveillance program targeting American citizens on American soil in contravention of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978.
– Orchestrated the invocation of executive privilege to conceal from Congress secret spying programs to gather foreign intelligence, and their legal justifications.
– Summoned the privilege to refuse to disclose his consulting of business executives in conjunction with his Energy Task Force.
– Retaliated against Ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife Valerie Plame, through chief of staff Scooter Libby, for questioning the administration’s evidence of weapons of mass destruction as justification for invading Iraq. (Read Fein’s SLATE article)
bush and cheney play twister with the constitution
While President Bush “…asserted executive privilege Thursday and rejected lawmakers’ demands for documents that could shed light on the firings of federal prosecutors…” at the same time Vice-President Cheney is apparently “backing away from the claim” that his office isn’t part of the Executive Branch and is in essence a “fourth branch of government” even though the VP has claimed use of Executive privilege in the past.
Not even a good fiction writer could come up with stuff like this…
Read MorePower grab du jour
…4.5 million votes will be shoplifted in 2008, thanks largely to the “Rove-bots” that have been placed in the Justice Department following the U.S. Attorney firings. Being the guy who uncovered the voter “purge lists” of 2000 that disenfranchised black voters, he’s (Greg Palast) worth listening to, even if the mainstream press chooses not to.
This time around, he claims to have 500 emails that the House subpoenaed and Karl Rove claims were deleted forever. They prove definitively, says Palast, that the Justice Department is infested with operatives taking orders from Rove to steal upcoming elections for Republicans and permanently alter the Department.
For more, go to Palast’s site, and check out this interview at Buzzflash.
The current wisdom: The Gonzales DOJ scandal, which is getting good, is likely connected to the plan to steal the election in 2008. For starters. Yup.
Read Moretip jar
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