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During the previous administration, Bush and his Republican chorus in Congress and the right-wing punditry exploited the fear and ignorance of most Americans to invade a country that represented no threat to us, establish what amounted to an offshore America gulag for our enemies, real or imagined, and to spy on United States citizens without judicial approval or oversight. 

Today, the GOP and allies are doing it again to stir opposition to the agenda of President Obama and the Democrats as they seek to enact comprehensive health care insurance reform and steer the ship of state in a more moderate and progressive direction.  And it’s clearly working.

Obama’s poll numbers have plummeted and Democrats have lost a senate seat in Massachusetts, of all places, and governorships in Virginia and New Jersey.  Never mind that the two previous Democratic governors in Virginia had been instrumental in making it one of the best administered states in the union.  Or that the seat won by a right-wing Republican with nothing to distinguish him save his abs was previously that of Senator Edward Kennedy, who accomplished so much for his state and his country and whose unrequited dream was universal health coverage for all Americans.

A grumpy and fearful electorate has bought into GOP lies and distortions to blame Obama and the Democrats for not fixing in a year what took the Republicans nearly three decades to break.  Sure, some blame attaches to Democrats who foolishly bought into or lacked the courage to oppose the deregulatory fervor of the right.  But it was the GOP, starting with Reagan and ending with George W Bush, who pushed the idea of the self-regulating free market and the notion that stricter government oversight unnecessarily and perniciously fettered our financial institutions.  We failed to heed the warning of the savings and loan fiasco of the 90’s and the result, in time, was an economic meltdown precipitated by irresponsible banks. 

Yet the GOP has succeeded in painting Obama as a typical big-spending liberal, ignoring the fact that junior Bush added three trillion dollars to the national debt after inheriting a budget surplus from his Democratic predecessor, and that the current deficit is partly the result of the $750 billion TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) passed under the previous administration.  The Obama $787 billion stimulus bill, on the other hand, was a necessary response to the deepest recession since World War II that he inherited and it has helped to ameliorate what would otherwise have been a much worse employment picture.

As for the health care bill, Americans again have been guilty of both woeful ignorance and susceptibility to GOP propaganda.  A Kaiser Foundation tracking poll found that whilst Americans are evenly divided on whether they support the Democratic bills, most have no clue what’s in them.  Furthermore, when told of the bills’ specific key elements, support rises significantly.  

Yet the GOP and the right-wing punditry have managed to convince Americans, falsely, that the Democratic legislation will increase the deficit, raise their taxes, and diminish the quality of their own health insurance whilst raising its cost.

Congressional Republicans may be a despicable bunch but their manipulations of the truth could not succeed without an American electorate too lazy to find out the facts for themselves.

From a column by Jonathan Turley in The Los Angeles Times: 

In his [Atty. Gen. Michael B. Mukasey's] twisting of legal principles, the attorney general has succeeded in creating a perfect paradox. Under Mukasey’s Paradox, lawyers cannot commit crimes when they act under the orders of a president — and a president cannot commit a crime when he acts under advice of lawyers.

…

Mukasey’s Paradox appears designed to play tricks with Congress. Its origins date back to Mukasey’s confirmation hearings, when he first denied knowing what waterboarding was and then (when it was defined for him) refused to recognize it as torture. In fact, it is not only a crime under U.S. law, it is a well-defined war crime under international law.

The problem for Mukasey was that if he admitted waterboarding was a crime, then it was a crime that had been authorized by the president of the United States — an admission that would trigger calls for both a criminal investigation and impeachment. Mukasey’s confirmation was facing imminent defeat over his refusal to answer the question when Sens. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) suddenly rescued him, guaranteeing that he would not have to answer it.

…

A paradox is a statement that seems true but yields a contradiction or a dual truth. When reduced to its purest form, Mukasey’s Paradox is that government officials cannot violate the law — but that because executive privilege is also a law, it’s sometimes necessary to violate the law in order to uphold the law.

This is fleshed out in much greater detail with examples.  Read it all here.

And if you’d like to do some more extensive reading about how the Bush Administration has used the claim of executive privilege to evade laws we used to think were pretty clear and strongly ingrained in American society, check out Scott Horton’s essay in the March 2008 issue of Harper’s Magazine titled “VOTE MACHINE – How Republicans hacked the Justice Department.”

The American system of democracy has many defenses, and the Bush Administration overcame each of them in turn.  It was not enough simply to control the bureaucracy.  High officials as well had to understand that their function was not to enforce the law but rather to express the will of the president.

…

But the Bush Justice Department demonstrated its power in supporting a partisan electoral agenda and in outfitting the executive with extraordinary and extra-constitutional powers.  Is it realistic to think that any new occupant of the White House would surrender those powers?  The American historical experience on this point is clear:  once a power or prerogative is successfully asserted by a president, his successors have generally guarded that power carefully, whether they make actual use of it or not.

…

Our Constitution provides a mechanism for countering transformational excess, but the people’s representatives thus far appear to have decided that the impolite process of impeachment is only for presidents who have affairs.  Given this failure of will, we must be prepared to accept a changed system in which the will of the people is subsumed by good manners and fearful politics.  As long as this new democracy prevails, little will matter beyond the will of the president.

So vote for change this coming November and then demand it of your newly elected officials.

Today’s New York Times editorial expresses their concerns about last week’s Senate debate of the FISA Amendments Act of 2007. 

The Senate debated a bill that would make needed updates to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act — while needlessly expanding the president’s ability to spy on Americans without a warrant and covering up the unlawful spying that President Bush ordered after 9/11.

The Democrat who heads the Senate Intelligence Committee, John Rockefeller of West Virginia, led the way in killing amendments that would have strengthened requirements for warrants and raised the possibility of at least some accountability for past wrongdoing.

…

Congress was certainly not informed, and if Mr. Ashcroft or later Alberto Gonzales certified anything under oath, it’s a mystery to whom and when. The eavesdropping went on for four years and would probably still be going on if The Times had not revealed it.

…

So Mr. Rockefeller and other senators want to give the companies immunity even if the administration never admits they were involved. This is short-circuiting the legal system. If it is approved, we will then have to hope that the next president will be willing to reveal the truth.

…

This whole nightmare was started by Mr. Bush’s decision to spy without warrants — not because they are hard to get, but because he decided he was above the law. Discouraging that would be a service to the nation.

Funny that they should bring up “service to the nation.”  You might recall that The New York Times sat on the story for over a year before they published it in December 2004.  That’s right, AFTER the 2004 election.

In today’s editorial, they have the audacity to say how this program “would probably still be going on” if they had not revealed it.  They also argue that Bush’s wiretapping program was illegal, so the Senate should not vote to circumvent the legal system by granting immunity to the telecommunications companies involved.  If the Senate does pass the bill and Bush is not held accountable as he should be, then they “hope that the next president will be willing to reveal the truth.”

Had The New York Times released the story before a very close 2004 election, we might already be beyond “hoping.”  We might already have a new president, and he probably would have revealed the truth.

The New York Times failed in its service to the nation by not reporting the story in time for the people of this country to assimilate it and factor it into their choice for president in November 2004.  The Times was complicit in allowing the illegal wiretapping program to continue on unchecked for a whole year after they found out about it, and they are disingenuous now because they do not admit that they were part of the very problem they addressed in today’s editorial.

P.S.  If you want the lowdown on why Jay Rockefeller joined sides with The Dark Lord to undermine our civil liberties, read Glenn Greenwald.

Here is a part of a rant by David Michael Green posted on CommonDreams.org that you really should read:

Regressives like to call people like me Bush-haters, and so it is important to address that claim before proceeding, because the entire intent of hurling that label at the president’s critics is to undermine their credibility. If you simply hate the man, they imply, you’re not rational, and your critiques can be dismissed. But it isn’t that simple – not by a long shot. First, it should be noted that the regressive right is far wider a phenomenon than just one person. It currently includes an entire executive branch administration, almost (and, just a year ago, more than) half of Congress, a majority of the Supreme Court and probably a majority of the lower federal courts, a biased-to-the-point-of-being-a-joke mainstream media, and tons of lobbyists, think tanks and profitable industries.

But as to George W. Bush, himself, I suspect it’s quite fair to say that most Americans and even most progressives did not originally despise or loathe him. I didn’t. I certainly didn’t admire the guy, nor did I think he was remotely prepared to be president of the United States. (Nor, by the way, was I particularly impressed with Al Gore in 2000.) Bush campaigned as a center-right pragmatist (a “compassionate conservative”, in his words), much as his father had been, and I expected that’s how he would govern if elected. You know, more embarrassing most of the time than truly destructive.

I mention all this because it is important to note what has – and what has not – been responsible for my/our anger, and to make clear that attempts to dismiss that anger as some Bush-hating bias or predisposition are false, a ploy to destroy the messenger when one doesn’t care for the message he’s carrying. If Bush had governed like he campaigned I’m sure I would have disliked him, but neither hated him nor his policies, nor experienced the rage that I feel about what he’s done to the country and the world. Frankly, my feelings toward another center-right Bush presidency would have likely been largely the same as my feelings toward the center-right Clinton presidency which preceded it.

But he hasn’t governed anywhere near to how he campaigned, and he wasn’t even elected properly, and I do in fact feel huge anger at the damage done. Moreover, I cannot for the life of me imagine how anyone – even conservatives – could feel differently. Even the wealthy, to whose interests this presidency is so wholly devoted, have to sleep at night. Even they have children who will inherit a broken country existing in an environmentally and politically hostile world, though no doubt they figure that big enough fences, mean enough private armies, and loads of central air conditioning will insulate them from the damage.

Followed by a litany of nauseating offenses.  Read it all here.

Inspectors General work in an office that was set up by The Inspector General Act of 1978.  The IG office is supposed to investigate all branches of the federal government and report all findings of fraud and abuse to department heads and to Congress.  It’s also supposed to be non-partisan, independent, and objective while performing its investigative functions. 

You will not be surprised to find that the current IG office is accused of being pretty much the opposite of that.

Yesterday, Representative Henry Waxman, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, wrote a fourteen-page letter to State Department Inspector General Howard Krongard.  Here’s just a few of the things he had to say in his letter:

Dear Mr. Krongard:

I am writing to request your assistance with an investigation the Oversight Committee has initiated into allegations involving your conduct as Inspector General of the State Department.

Since your testimony at the Committee’s hearing on July 26, 2007, current and former employees of the Office of Inspector General have contacted my staff with allegations that you interfered with on-going investigations to protect the State Department and the White House from political embarrassment. Because some of these individuals still work for you, they have sought whistleblower status and have asked that their identities be kept confidential. Others have already resigned from their positions and have agreed to go on the record.

…

The allegations made by these officials are not limited to a single unit or project within your office. Instead, they span all three major divisions of the Office of Inspector General – investigations, audits, and inspections. The allegations were made by employees of varied rank, ranging from line staff to upper management.

One consistent element in these allegations is that you believe your foremost mission is to support the Bush Administration, especially with respect to Iraq and Afghanistan, rather than act as an independent and objective check on waste, fraud, and abuse on behalf of U.S. taxpayers. According to the officials, your strong affinity with State Department leadership and your partisan political ties have led you to halt investigations, censor reports, and refuse to cooperate with law enforcement agencies. The officials also report that you are dismissive of your statutory obligations to Congress.

Like I said, it’s a fourteen-page letter, so rather than list all the accusations, here’s a summary from the Think Progress website:

Refused to send “any investigators” into Iraq and Afghanistan to “pursue investigations into wasteful spending or procurement fraud.”

Stalled investigators from cooperating with a “Justice Department investigation into waste, fraud, and abuse relating to the new U.S. Embassy in Iraq.”

Used “irregular” and incomplete investigative procedures to help exonerate a prime contractor of the U.S. embassy in Iraq of charges of labor trafficking.

Impeded investigators’ efforts to cooperate with a Justice probe into allegations that a “large private security contractor was smuggling weapons into Iraq.”

Interfered with an on-going investigation “into the conduct of Kenneth Tomlinson, the head of Voice of America and a close associate of Karl Rove.”

Censored portions of inspection reports on embassies so that information on security vulnerabilities was “not disclosed to Congress.”

Back to Waxman’s letter…

In addition to these specific allegations, the officials have all described a dysfunctional office environment in which you routinely berate and belittle personnel, show contempt for the abilities of career government professionals, and cause staff to fear coming to work.

Washington Post story here.

Just another example of how our first “MBA President” runs our country.

No wonder he couldn’t hold a regular job.

From John Nichols’ latest column describing remarks by Carl Bernstein about how Bush’s presidency is far more damaging to our country than Nixon’s presidency.

Unlike the often crude and conniving but unquestionably intelligent and highly-engaged 37th president, Bernstein says of Bush: “He’s lazy, arrogant and has little curiosity. He’s a catastrophe…”

But that is not the worst part of the Bush era as compared to the Nixon era, explains Bernstein.

What has made this time dramatically more troubling, the 63-year-old journalist explains, is that “there is no oversight.”

“The system worked in Watergate,” Bernstein told the Denver Post.

Even after Nixon was reelected in a 49-state landslide in 1972, Bernstein said, the president was checked and balanced in the manner intended by the founders of the American experiment.

The news media investigated Nixon, and editorialized boldly when the president’s lawless behaviors were exposed.

The Congress responded to those revelations with hearings and demands for White House tapes and documents. When the materials were not forthcoming, Congress went to court to force Nixon and his aides to meet those demands.

The courts responded by aggressively and consistently upholding the authority of Congress to call the president to account.

And when it became clear that Nixon was governing in contradiction to the Constitution, the U.S. House took appropriate action, with Democrats and Republicans on the Judiciary Committee voting for three articles of impeachment. Congressional Republicans, led by Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, then went to the White House to inform their party’s president that he stood little chance of thwarting an impeachment vote by the full House or surviving a trial in the Senate.

Nixon resigned and so ended a constitutional crisis created by a president’s disregard for the rule of law — a crisis that was cured by an impeachment move by House members who respected their oaths of office.

Today, says Bernstein, the system that worked in the 1970s is failing as the country witnesses presidential and vice presidential misdeeds that former White House counsel John Dean has correctly characterized as “worse than Watergate.”

Referring to the media, congressional and judicial oversight that is essential to maintaining a republic, Bernstein says, “That hasn’t happened here.”

Selections from the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:

For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

This all sounds so familiar…

Unfit indeed.

Time to throw him and his lawless coconspirators out of office.

Make not Mistake:  Vice President Dick Cheney is not an executive bound by rules pertaining to the Executive Branch of the U.S. Government  

And according to this ABC story, he claims he does not have to comply with a request from the Information Security Oversight Office to review his document classification records.

Bill Leonard, head of the government’s Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO), told Waxman’s staff that Cheney’s office has refused to provide his staff with details regarding classified documents or submit to a routine inspection as required by presidential order, according to Waxman.

In pointed letters released today by Waxman, ISOO’s Leonard twice questioned Cheney’s office on its assertion it was exempt from the rules. He received no reply, but the vice president later tried to get rid of Leonard’s office entirely, according to Waxman.

…

“Serious questions can be raised about both the legality and advisability of exempting your office from the rules that apply to all other executive branch officials,” Waxman said in his letter to the vice president, and asked him to explain why he felt the rules didn’t apply to him and his staff and how he was protecting classified information in his office.

And in this New York Times story:

Other officials familiar with Mr. Cheney’s view said that he and his legal adviser, David S. Addington, did not believe that the executive order applied to the vice president’s office because it had a legislative as well as an executive status in the Constitution.

…

“Your office may have the worst record in the executive branch for safeguarding classified information,” Mr. Waxman wrote to Mr. Cheney. 

He’s not an executive, he’s not a congressman, he’s something that we’ll never understand… He is DICK.  Lord DICK!  And he does what he wants.  The rest of us can…

The Atlantic Monthly article on European and American shifts in secularism/religion is a good history and a good analysis.  In the long haul I think that scepticism will probably carry the day but a lot of new “crusades” will be undertaken – but the banners will be only symbolic because they serve a political and economic purpose to rally the troops and raise the funds for maintaining/replacing political structures.

Speaking of stupid political structures…

The stupidity and arrogance of Homeland Security, particularly as it plays out in airport security is beyond belief.  On 60 Minutes this past Sunday the TSA said that the most dangerous players are not on the list because they don’t want to tip people off that they know who they are but, if your name is Robert Johnson, just accept the inconvenience of being searched every time you try to board–they had a room full of Robert Johnsons who related their experiences. 

That reminded me of the time I was challenged trying to take too much booze into California and, in the interrogation room, I asked to see their written guidelines.  When they asked why, I–big mistake–pulled out my ACLU card and said, “Because they tell me that I have some rights.”  He said that, when I was at the border, I had no rights and that they could even search my body cavities to which I replied, “Oooh, will you?” with a smile.  My wife cringed.  The upshot was that they let me leave with my booze but I couldn’t bring it into California.  It was a case of the border police enforcing a California law, not a federal law which would have allowed the gallon of rum that I was carrying.  From then on, I just hid it in a bag of charcoal in my car figuring that at least they would get dirty retrieving it.

Former Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey submitted his written responses to questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee today.  Here’s what he had to say about events leading up to the Alberto Gonzales’s late-night visit to Ashcroft’s hospital bed in an effort to get him to renew the warrantless NSA wiretap program:

Vice President Cheney told Justice Department officials that he disagreed with their objections to a secret surveillance program during a high-level White House meeting in March 2004, a former senior Justice official told senators yesterday.

The meeting came one day before White House officials tried to get approval for the same program from then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, who lay recovering from surgery in a hospital…

Comey said that Cheney’s office later blocked the promotion of a senior Justice Department lawyer, Patrick Philbin, because of his role in raising concerns about the surveillance.

The disclosures also provide further details about the role played by then-White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales. He visited Ashcroft in his hospital room and wrote an internal memorandum on the surveillance program shortly afterward…

It is unclear who directed the two Bush aides to make the visit.

Democrats said yesterday that the new details from Comey raise further questions about the role of Cheney and other White House officials in the episode.

“Mr. Comey has confirmed what we suspected for a while — that White House hands guided Justice Department business,” said Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.). “The vice president’s fingerprints are all over the effort to strong-arm Justice on the NSA program, and the obvious next question is: Exactly what role did the president play?”

A White House spokesman declined to comment.

Comey also named eight Justice Department officials who were prepared to quit if the White House had not backed down, including FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, current U.S. Attorney Chuck Rosenberg of Alexandria and Jack Goldsmith, who headed the Office of Legal Counsel and led an internal legal review of the surveillance program.

The only thing that is “unclear” here is whether or not Cheney was acting on Bush’s orders or if he was pushing his own agenda.  Cheney was definitely involved in the decision to renew the illegal spying program even after many members of the Justice Department raised questions about its constitutioinality and recommended that it be discontinued.
 
But that didn’t stop Cheney from attempting to undermine the Justice Department by trying to get an ailing, drugged John Ashcroft to sign off on its renewal. 
 
Congress should subpoena Cheney immediately and require him to tell them about the NSA program and why he thought it necessary to ignore the advice he was getting from lawyers in the Justice Department and push through what he was being told was an illegal program.
 
I’ve always said that THIS is the issue that will unravel the Bush Administration, because they were clearly in violation of existing laws and the U.S. Constitution, and they’ve even admitted to it.
 
If there is an investigation and for some crazy reason the TRUTH is revealed, Bush and Cheney will be impeached for their total disregard of laws they swore on The Bible to uphold when they took office.