Unabashed

Pulling Teeth for Gold

2006-08-18T12:08:00.000-07:00

Here are a few links to articles of note that I've seen recently:

First, Slate has great piece up on the background of "no knock" warrants as well as the "the most important Supreme Court case you've never heard about" Hudson v. Michigan.. (HT to TalkLeft)

Also, while Glenn Greenwald at Unclaimed Territory is locked up finishing his book, he has a guest post, by Pete Guthier and Hypathia, called "Using the Drug "War" to Expand Government Power." Hmmm. There was an ulterior motive?

Finally, and sickeningly, TalkLeft has post called "Justice Dept. and ATF Sink to New Low" about ATF agents attempting to seize the gold caps from two federally indicted defendant's teeth. An excerpt, from the Seattle Times story:

According to court documents and attorneys involved in the case, Flenard T. Neal Jr. and Donald Jamar Lewis -- who were both charged in U.S. District Court with several counts of drug and weapon violations in January -- on Tuesday were taken from the Federal Detention Center in SeaTac to the U.S. Marshal's Office in Tacoma. There they were told the government had a warrant to seize the grills from their mouths and that they were being taken to a dentist in Seattle for removal.

Both made hasty calls to their attorneys, but were loaded into a vehicle and on their way to Seattle when their attorneys were able to persude a judge to stop the seizure, according to Neal's federal public defender, Miriam Schwartz.

The next time someone asks, "How can you defend those people?" tell them what Richard Troberman, past president of the Washington Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers told the Seattle Times:

"It sounds like Nazi Germany when they were removing the gold teeth from the bodies, but at least then they waited until they were dead."

Another Spying Story

2006-08-18T12:07:00.000-07:00

Here is a comment I left at Digby's blog, following an article about the phone records scandal. To me this story is scarier, since it involves a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment, not just a federal statute. Not to diminish the implications of a massive database of civilian phone records in the "Sweet Land of Liberty," but warrantless searches of a lawyer's home should raise a giant red flag, and should not be overlooked despite the rest of the bad news...

Here's what I wrote:

It's hard to keep track of all the evidence of illegal acts, but another story was revealed this week, via Alternet, about an Oregon lawyer whose office and home were searched, shortly after he began representing a person named al-Buthi. You can find the article at http://www.alternet.org/rights/35807/

An excerpt:
"A few months [after he started representing al-buthi] Nelson observed inconsistencies when he came to his office: His computer would be left on, disks still in the drive, materials shifted. Fellow lawyers... noticed someone on at least three occasions posing as a janitor, trying to get into the office...
Nelson approached the security people at the building, they wouldn't talk to him.... "There was no direct denial. At the end, I said, 'You probably couldn't tell me if something was going on anyway.' He said, 'That's probably right.'"
After these incidents, Nelson brought the al-Buthi files to his house. That's when he and his wife experienced lapses in his home alarm that the company monitors refused to explain..."

The article describes Nelson as a "close friend" of Brandon Mayfield's, the Oregon lawyer whose fingerprint the FBI claimed to have a "no doubt" match to one found in the Madrid train bombings. The FBI later released Mayfield (after Spanish authorities matched the print to someone else), claiming in court to having made an "honest mistake."

One of the lawyers involved in the case told me Mayfield's children suspected the searches when they saw their alarm clocks blinking (showed power cut off during search) and when they found muddy boot prints on the carpet. On one occasion, one of Mayfield's kids, home sick from school, hid inside his own house while agents roamed around it.

In Mayfield's case, the FBI had a FISA warrant, but the judge refused to allow continued monitoring of Mayfield after his release.

In the case of Mayfield's friend, attorney Thomas Nelson, the article states that "[i]n August 2004, as a routine court procedure, the FBI provided the lawyers and defendants with documents... [but] accidentally released a document that showed the government had used logs of conversations between the lawyers and their clients... to categorize Al-Haramain as a terrorist group. The catch is that the logs were obtained without a warrant."

Like the Bush administration, it appears the FBI decided to ignore that pesky constitution and those meddling judges and spy on attorneys, even in their homes, without a warrant.

You can't make this stuff up!

2006-05-17T20:03:00.000-07:00

We found out this week that our phone calls are being tracked. And the guy who leaked the original story on NSA warrantless wiretaps promises a more revelations this week.

But this "pilot program" to test raw sewage to determine the number of people using drugs is right out of Kafka. According the the Washington Post article:

If government studies are a reliable guide, about 25,000 residents of Fairfax County -- 2.5 percent of its population -- have used cocaine in the past year. The same data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health suggest that about 9,000 have partaken within the past 30 days.

Those estimates, based on personal and computer-assisted interviews, rely almost completely on the candor of the respondents. The Bush administration, hoping to someday broaden the government's knowledge of illegal drug use, is probing the mysteries of Fairfax's sewage for a clearer picture.

The news from the "Decider" just gets more bizarre every day. It would be funny if it weren't an indication that this administration weren't throwing Fourth Amendment down the same sewer their latest pilot project is focused on.

How did Jon Stewart miss this one?

Frank Rich is the New Ed Murrow

2006-05-14T07:13:00.000-07:00

Here is the text of Frank Rich's New York Times piece. It's only available thru Times Select, but this one needs to be distributed for free...

Will the Real Traitors Please Stand Up?

By FRANK RICH
WHEN America panics, it goes hunting for scapegoats. But from Salem onward, we've more often than not ended up pillorying the innocent. Abe Rosenthal, the legendary Times editor who died last week, and his publisher, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, were denounced as treasonous in 1971 when they defied the Nixon administration to publish the Pentagon Papers, the secret government history of the Vietnam War. Today we know who the real traitors were: the officials who squandered American blood and treasure on an ill-considered war and then tried to cover up their lies and mistakes. It was precisely those lies and mistakes, of course, that were laid bare by the thousands of pages of classified Pentagon documents leaked to both The Times and The Washington Post.

This history is predictably repeating itself now that the public has turned on the war in Iraq. The administration's die-hard defenders are desperate to deflect blame for the fiasco, and, guess what, the traitors once again are The Times and The Post. This time the newspapers committed the crime of exposing warrantless spying on Americans by the National Security Agency (The Times) and the C.I.A.'s secret "black site" Eastern European prisons (The Post). Aping the Nixon template, the current White House tried to stop both papers from publishing and when that failed impugned their patriotism.

President Bush, himself a sometime leaker of intelligence, called the leaking of the N.S.A. surveillance program a "shameful act" that is "helping the enemy." Porter Goss, who was then still C.I.A. director, piled on in February with a Times Op-Ed piece denouncing leakers for potentially risking American lives and compromising national security. When reporters at both papers were awarded Pulitzer Prizes last month, administration surrogates, led by bloviator in chief William Bennett, called for them to be charged under the 1917 Espionage Act.

We can see this charade for what it is: a Hail Mary pass by the leaders who bungled a war and want to change the subject to the journalists who caught them in the act. What really angers the White House and its defenders about both the Post and Times scoops are not the legal questions the stories raise about unregulated gulags and unconstitutional domestic snooping, but the unmasking of yet more administration failures in a war effort riddled with ineptitude. It's the recklessness at the top of our government, not the press's exposure of it, that has truly aided the enemy, put American lives at risk and potentially sabotaged national security. That's where the buck stops, and if there's to be a witch hunt for traitors, that's where it should begin.

Well before Dana Priest of The Post uncovered the secret prisons last November, the C.I.A. had failed to keep its detention "secrets" secret. Having obtained flight logs, The Sunday Times of London first reported in November 2004 that the United States was flying detainees "to countries that routinely use torture." Six months later, The New York Times added many details, noting that "plane-spotting hobbyists, activists and journalists in a dozen countries have tracked the mysterious planes' movements." These articles, capped by Ms. Priest's, do not impede our ability to detain terrorists. But they do show how the administration, by condoning torture, has surrendered the moral high ground to anti-American jihadists and botched the war of ideas that we can't afford to lose.

The N.S.A. eavesdropping exposed in December by James Risen and Eric Lichtblau of The Times is another American debacle. Hoping to suggest otherwise and cast the paper as treasonous, Dick Cheney immediately claimed that the program had saved "thousands of lives." The White House's journalistic mouthpiece, the Wall Street Journal editorial page, wrote that the Times exposé "may have ruined one of our most effective anti-Al Qaeda surveillance programs."

Surely they jest. If this is one of our "most effective" programs, we're in worse trouble than we thought. Our enemy is smart enough to figure out on its own that its phone calls are monitored 24/7, since even under existing law the government can eavesdrop for 72 hours before seeking a warrant (which is almost always granted). As The Times subsequently reported, the N.S.A. program was worse than ineffective; it was counterproductive. Its gusher of data wasted F.B.I. time and manpower on wild-goose chases and minor leads while uncovering no new active Qaeda plots in the United States. Like the N.S.A. database on 200 million American phone customers that was described last week by USA Today, this program may have more to do with monitoring "traitors" like reporters and leakers than with tracking terrorists.

Journalists and whistle-blowers who relay such government blunders are easily defended against the charge of treason. It's often those who make the accusations we should be most worried about. Mr. Goss, a particularly vivid example, should not escape into retirement unexamined. He was so inept that an overzealous witch hunter might mistake him for a Qaeda double agent.

Even before he went to the C.I.A., he was a drag on national security. In "Breakdown," a book about intelligence failures before the 9/11 attacks, the conservative journalist Bill Gertz delineates how Mr. Goss, then chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, played a major role in abdicating Congressional oversight of the C.I.A., trying to cover up its poor performance while terrorists plotted with impunity. After 9/11, his committee's "investigation" of what went wrong was notoriously toothless.

Once he ascended to the C.I.A. in 2004, Mr. Goss behaved like most other Bush appointees: he put politics ahead of the national interest, and stashed cronies and partisan hacks in crucial positions. On Friday, the F.B.I. searched the home and office of one of them, Dusty Foggo, the No. 3 agency official in the Goss regime. Mr. Foggo is being investigated by four federal agencies pursuing the bribery scandal that has already landed former Congressman Randy (Duke) Cunningham in jail. Though Washington is titillated by gossip about prostitutes and Watergate "poker parties" swirling around this Warren Harding-like tale, at least the grafters of Teapot Dome didn't play games with the nation's defense during wartime.

Besides driving out career employees, underperforming on Iran intelligence and scaling back a daily cross-agency meeting on terrorism, Mr. Goss's only other apparent accomplishment at the C.I.A. was his war on those traitorous leakers. Intriguingly, this was a new cause for him. "There's a leak every day in the paper," he told The Sarasota Herald-Tribune when the identity of the officer Valerie Wilson was exposed in 2003. He argued then that there was no point in tracking leaks down because "that's all we'd do."

What prompted Mr. Goss's about-face was revealed in his early memo instructing C.I.A. employees to "support the administration and its policies in our work." His mission was not to protect our country but to prevent the airing of administration dirty laundry, including leaks detailing how the White House ignored accurate C.I.A. intelligence on Iraq before the war. On his watch, C.I.A. lawyers also tried to halt publication of "Jawbreaker," the former clandestine officer Gary Berntsen's account of how the American command let Osama bin Laden escape when Mr. Berntsen's team had him trapped in Tora Bora in December 2001. The one officer fired for alleged leaking during the Goss purge had no access to classified intelligence about secret prisons but was presumably a witness to her boss's management disasters.

Soon to come are the Senate's hearings on Mr. Goss's successor, Gen. Michael Hayden, the former head of the N.S.A. As Jon Stewart reminded us last week, Mr. Bush endorsed his new C.I.A. choice with the same encomium he had bestowed on Mr. Goss: He's "the right man" to lead the C.I.A. "at this critical moment in our nation's history." That's not exactly reassuring.

This being an election year, Karl Rove hopes the hearings can portray Bush opponents as soft on terrorism when they question any national security move. It was this bullying that led so many Democrats to rubber-stamp the Iraq war resolution in the 2002 election season and Mr. Goss's appointment in the autumn of 2004.

Will they fall into the same trap in 2006? Will they be so busy soliloquizing about civil liberties that they'll fail to investigate the nominee's record? It was under General Hayden, a self-styled electronic surveillance whiz, that the N.S.A. intercepted actual Qaeda messages on Sept. 10, 2001 — "Tomorrow is zero hour" for one — and failed to translate them until Sept. 12. That same fateful summer, General Hayden's N.S.A. also failed to recognize that "some of the terrorists had set up shop literally under its nose," as the national-security authority James Bamford wrote in The Washington Post in 2002. The Qaeda cell that hijacked American Flight 77 and plowed into the Pentagon was based in the same town, Laurel, Md., as the N.S.A., and "for months, the terrorists and the N.S.A. employees exercised in some of the same local health clubs and shopped in the same grocery stores."

If Democrats — and, for that matter, Republicans — let a president with a Nixonesque approval rating install yet another second-rate sycophant at yet another security agency, even one as diminished as the C.I.A., someone should charge those senators with treason, too.

Here is Tristero's piece about the article, where the text appeared in a comment.

Not to be missed

2006-05-11T08:31:00.000-07:00

A few stories not to be missed:

(1) Lawyer's Home Searched without a Warrant.

In this eerie article from Alternet, new evidence surfaces that "An Oregon attorney may have proof of Bush's domestic spying operation." The summary goes on to predice that "the illegal program's days may be numbered" but how many times have we misunderestimated these people's willingness to break the law and even defend this act? The story of the FBI's detention of lawyer Brandon Mayfield is scary enough, but the story of Mayfield's "close friend," Thomas Nelson, is even more shocking. An example...

Thomas Nelson has been practicing administrative law for most of his professional life, but after Sept. 11 he first began offering pro bono work for immigrants detained in broad FBI terrorism sweeps.[...]

Nelson officially started representing al-Buthi in September 2004 ...
A few months later, Nelson observed inconsistencies when he came to his office: His computer would be left on, disks still in the drive, materials shifted...
The Oregonian reported that attorney Jonathan Norling "was sleeping on a couch at their practice early one morning last May, when a man dressed as a custodian tried to enter Nelson's office. Norling startled the man twice one night in July, when he caught the man trying to enter the locked office." The man in question had what appeared to be a valid badge for the building. But Norling notes, "This person wasn't a cleaning crew. I know the cleaning crew. I've worked here seven years, and I've worked a lot of nights, and I never experienced anything like that until Tom was working (on this case)."

Though Nelson approached the security people at the building, they wouldn't talk to him. "They were very blunt," he told AlterNet in a phone interview. He then took his concerns to the building manager. "It was all very disconcerting and inconclusive," says Nelson. "There was no direct denial. At the end, I said, 'You probably couldn't tell me if something was going on anyway.' He said, 'That's probably right.'"

After these incidents, Nelson brought the al-Buthi files to his house. That's when he and his wife experienced lapses in his home alarm that the company monitors refused to explain. "They basically stonewalled us," says Nelson. "We kept calling people and they kept referring us around and saying 'We'll call you back,' but no one would ever call back."

Sensing that he may be experiencing the same kinds of searches as the FBI performed in Brandon Mayfield's case, Nelson wrote a letter [PDF] to Karin Immergut, U.S. attorney for Oregon in September 2005, requesting she "look into the matter and to inform me if representatives … have engaged in these searches." Immergut said she was not aware of any warrantless searches. After the New York Times broke the NSA story, Nelson wrote Immergut again, stating that, based upon the report, he may be the target of searches outside of the scope of FISA. Immergut responded, "I was completely unaware of any NSA surveillance program until I read about it in the media," and suggested Nelson contact the NSA directly.

I'm sure they'll be forthcoming and upfront. Hopefully this line of questioning will come out in Hayden's confirmation hearings, but I'm not holding my breath after reading the Democrats are already voicing their support for the former head of the NSA. Illegal warrantless spying inside attorney's homes, a President who justifies breaking the law, and a weak opposition party whose every move seems geared towards not appearing soft on national security. A terrifying combination.

(2) Here is a link to Glenn Greenwald's latest post on the real risks of the Bush administration ignoring the Constitution that he swore an oath to uphold. An excerpt:

This continuous evasion of judicial review by the administration is much more serious and disturbing than has been discussed and realized. By proclaiming the power to ignore Congressional law and to do whatever it wants in the area of national security, it is seizing the powers of the legislative branch. But by blocking courts from ruling on the multiple claims of illegality which have been made against it, the administration is essentially seizing the judicial power as well. It becomes the creator, the executor, and the interpreter of the law. And with that, the powers of all three branches become consolidated in The President, the single greatest nightmare of the founders. As Madison warned in Federalist 47:

From these facts, by which Montesquieu was guided, it may clearly be inferred that, in saying "There can be no liberty where the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or body of magistrates," or, "if the power of judging be not separated from the legislative and executive powers," he did not mean that these departments ought to have no partial agency in, or no control over, the acts of each other.

As I've reported before Glenn's upcoming book is revolutionizing net publishing and the book's development and success look to be as big of a story as it's contents. You can pre-order the book, How Would a Patriot Act? here.

(3) According to today's Washington Post, "NSA Stymies Justice Dept. Spying Probe"
According to the article,

"The government has abruptly ended an inquiry into the warrantless eavesdropping program because the National Security Agency refused to grant Justice Department lawyers the necessary security clearance to probe the matter.

The Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility, or OPR, sent a fax to Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y., on Wednesday saying they were closing their inquiry because without clearance their lawyers cannot examine Justice lawyers' role in the program."

The news just keeps getting better, doesn't it? Steve Earle has a point when he says, "It just keeps getting tougher every day, to sit around and watch it while it slips away."

Can't Have it Both Ways

2006-05-03T08:16:00.000-07:00

Last week, after being asked his thoughts about a British music producer's new version of the National Anthem in Spanish. Bush stated ""I think the national anthem ought to be sung in English. And I think people who want to be a citizen of this country ought to learn English, and they ought to learn to sing the national anthem in English."

But yesterday the Washington Post, reported, under the headline "Administration Is Singing More Than One Tune on Spanish Version of Anthem," he has he hasn't always felt this way. An excerpt...

In his book, “American Dynasty,” Kevin Phillips wrote that Bush “would drop in at Hispanic festivals and parties, sometimes joining in singing ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ in Spanish, sometimes partying with a ‘Viva Bush’ mariachi band flown in from Texas.”

The article also quotes Leonard Rodriguez, who was national director of Hispanic Coalition for Bush/Cheney 2000:

“Honestly, I don’t remember him ever singing the national anthem in Spanish,” said Leonard Rodriguez ... “I can’t see any of his advisers recommending it.” But he added: “They may have played it. That’s certainly in the realm of possibility.” And Rodriguez said he does not recall Bush ever objecting to it.

Looks like another attempt to distract us from Iraq and $3.00 a gallon gas sorta backfires. Watch out for more distraction attempts (a pre-emptive nuclear attack?) as the administration's desperation continues and the midterm elections approach.

Neil Young's New Song "Let's Impeach the President"

2006-04-27T10:04:00.000-07:00

Sometimes a song takes on a life of its own, and I'm hoping it's Neil Young's "Let's Impeach the President." (which begins streaming on www.neilyoung.com on Friday.) You know when FauxNews.com calls this an "eye opening recording" that the potential is there.

Anybody who says "I ain't playin' for pepsi, ain't playing for coke, ain't playing for nobody, I think it's a joke" the year that Miller Beer sponsored the Stones on Tour has the credibility to turn a deceptively simple rock song into a anthem that pushes people into action.

A Congressman whose name escapes me was asked the other day what it would take to push Congress into voting on a resolution to get out of Iraq and he responded something to the effect of "when people are in the streets and it runs on the news." Evidently Margaret Mead was onto something when she said, "A small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."

Here are the song lyrics, which begins streaming tomorrow.

Let’s impeach the president for lying
And leading our country into war
Abusing all the power that we gave him
And shipping all our money out the door
He’s the man who hired all the criminals
The White House shadows who hide behind closed doors
And bend the facts to fit with their new stories
Of why we have to send our men to war
Let’s impeach the president for spying
On citizens inside their own homes
Breaking every law in the country
By tapping our computers and telephones
What if Al Qaeda blew up the levees
Would New Orleans have been safer that way
Sheltered by our government’s protection
Or was someone just not home that day?
Let’s impeach the president
For hijacking our religion and using it to get elected
Dividing our country into colors
And still leaving black people neglected
Thank god he’s cracking down on steroids
Since he sold his old baseball team
There’s lot of people looking at big trouble
But of course the president is clean.

Never Misunderestimate A Neocon

2006-04-12T08:27:00.000-07:00

Seymour Hersch's article, which described plans for a U.S air assault on Iran and which described the possible use of nuclear, "bunker buster" bombs, has understandably generated a lot of "shock waves." (no pun intended)

In fact, Bush even called the article's claims "wild speculation." However, notice that in this description, the article's claims were not disputed, only called "wild speculation." Terrifyingly, if the claims were not true, wouldn't you think a denial or a clarification was in order? In short, if it's not true, why not deny it rather than calling it "speculation?" Of course, it's speculation and of course an unprovoked nuclear attack is "wild," but if there's not some truth to it, why not deny it? The answer is terrifying, especially given what we know about this "shoot first, ask questions later" administration.

I just never thought they'd go nuclear, but I've constantly "misunderestimated" their gall and the places their "messianic vision" would take them.

One point I read yesterday that resonated is that there are two factions within the Bush administration who will both push for an attack. First, the hard-line, cold warriors like Cheney will push for decisive action and "shock and awe" even after their last attempt depletes our resources and our allure in the world. To them, knowing their influence is waning and their days in power numbered, this looks like the last chance to act. Secondly, political pragmatists- who tolerate the hard-liners but whose vision is much more geared toward retaining power- will push for an attack in the face of 38% approval ratings, remembering the days when the "mission was "accomplished" and the country rallying around their flag-draped fake flyboy.

So I'm scared, to death. Why? People much smarter than me, whose opinions I trust are scared too. For example, Digby stated yesterday:

I don't think I'm a panic artist. At least I never have been. But after the last few years I have to say that Billmon's dark prediction sounds entirely believable to me. This Iran thing scares the hell out of me, and I'm not sure what anyone can do about it.

This president has asserted a doctrine of presidential infallibility. He does not believe that he can be stopped. And the way things are going I think he may think he has nothing to lose. There has been a sense of craziness in the air ever since 9/11, but it's just taken a very, very surreal turn

.

The post he was referring to is Billmon's excellent essay, appropriately entitled "Mutually Assured Dementia" which start out...

Maybe it's just me, but I've been at least a little bit surprised by the relatively muted reaction to the news that the Cheney Administration and its Pentagon underlings are racing to put the finishing touches on plans for attacking Iran – plans which may include the first wartime use of nuclear weapons since Nagasaki.

I mean, what exactly does it take to get a rise out of the media industrial complex these days? A nuclear first strike against a major Middle Eastern oil producer doesn't ring the bell? Must every story have a missing white woman in it before the cable news guys will start taking it seriously?

For another interesting post revealing another possible neocon motive for invading Iraq, check out this post, from Grand Moff Texan which starts out with this...

I may be spinning my wheels, but in putting together pieces of things I've been hearing over the last week I'm beginning to think that something weird may happen in the next couple of weeks.

An invasion of Iran is not possible. Iran's nukes are not the only target, they are only a pretext. The goal is what the goal was all along, apparently, and I've never heard its name before today.

Khuzestan. Perhaps the goal is not to take Iran, or take on Iran, but to spin off a part of Iran that Iran has trouble holding onto, thus redrawing the map and significantly altering the balance of power in the Persian Gulf region.

The point is, Digby is right. There has "been something crazy in the air since 9-11." Now that the public is turning on Bush and now that he's claimed that he's willing to do what no future Democratic or Republican president would do, who knows where his messianic vision will take him.

Think I'm exagerating and that this would be on the network news if it were truly scary? Well, the lead story on CNN.com right now is "The Last Minutes of Flight 93," which is pretty good evidence that something crazy is still in the air after 9-11. Consider also that Congress, which has acted primarily as a rubber stamp to Bush's policies after 9-11, is just now responding to opinion polls and checking the power of the Neocons, and is also in recess for the next 10 days or so.

Each time these people have been given an inch, they've tried to take it a mile. They ignore the law, they distort the facts, they "fix" the intelligence around the "policy," they claim they talk to God, and they feel their days are numbered.

What will they do next? Billmon says we might not feel the consequences at home significantly right away, but he rightfully makes the point that we don't know this and that the results of an unprovoked nuclear attack could be devastating for our economy, our security and our national standing.

Osama, obviously cognizant of the fact that the Muslim world sits atop much of the world's oil reserves and that the West is structured to rely on this, has expressed his dream of seeing oil prices at $150 a barrel.

Bush, obviously cognizant of the fact that his vision for Iraq is not panning out, wants to reverse his fortunes and preserve his legacy, wants to return to his aircraft carrier days. Since attacking is so much easier than governing and long term vision is so much more difficult than short term "mission" planning, and since he's surrounded himself with "Machiavellian Mayberrys" and cowboy-like cold warriors, Hersch's "wild speculation" looks to be as accurate as his descriptions of Abu Ghraib.

Will Osama's dream of $150 oil prices merge with Bush's dream of "liberating" another country with firepower?

It looks dire, and nobody seems to be asking the questions as we sit on the verge of striking another country with a nuclear weapon.

I hope to God I'm wrong and that somebody will be laughing at this post in the future. (At least they'd be reading it, unlike now!)

But what if I'm not?

A "Messianic Complex" and a Nuke-ular Bomb

2006-04-08T12:19:00.000-07:00

With apologies to the last post, which quoted Boston Legal....

When it was revealed that George Bush violated the FISA, I couldn't fathom that he'd have the gall to claim he had the right to violate the law for "national security" but he did.

When it was revealed that, according to a top secret British official communication in America "the facts were being fixed around the policy" of invading Iraq, I thought there would be a public outcry or at least some widespread press coverage and follow-up questioning, but there wasn't.

When it was revealed that, while Bush said that if the person who leaked Valerie Plame's name were discovered he or she "would no longer be in this administration," and then Bush's spokesman confirmed that it was actually Bush himself who authorized Scooter Libby to reveal her name and her identity as a CIA agent, I thought people would take rise up en masse, but they haven't, at least not yet.

But now, now that Yahoo News, via Seymour Hersch (the guy who broke the Abu Ghraib story) is running a story about Bush administration plans to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities, possibly using a bunker buster atomic bomb , it dawns on me that these Neocons will stop at nothing, not law, not the popular vote, not approval ratings around 33%.

[Here is a link to Hersch's story, where he quotes an unnamed House member who remarks that "this guy has a Messianic complex."]

The phrase "Machiavellian Mayberrys" has always struck me as funny, but now we're talking about an unprovoked nuclear strike in an area that's already volatile.

A quote from the article:

One former defense official said the military planning was premised on a belief that "a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government," The New Yorker pointed out...One of the options under consideration involves the possible use of a bunker-buster tactical nuclear weapon, such as the B61-11, to insure the destruction of Iran's main centrifuge plant at Natanz, Hersh writes.

In the comedy, "Canadian Bacon" that suddenly doesn't seem so far fetched or funny, Alan Alda's character decides that a little war will bring up his approval ratings. Could it be that Rove's next move, to deflect attention from Bush's leaks, lies and domestic spying on citizens, is to start a "little" war (like Iraq was billed!), to rally at least 51% of us around the flag again.

Let's face it: the Mayberry Machievellis are now looking a lot more like Slim Pickins in Dr. Strangelove, cowboy hat in hand, and oblivious to the long-term consequences of their actions.

Let's hope Seymour Hirsch got this one wrong. It's really hard to overstate how terrifying this is, given how Iraq looks years after George claimed "Mission Accomplished."

They've already ignored the law, the Constitution, and the popular vote. Now they're ready to exercise "the Nuclear option."

God help us.

W: "How ... did this get past network censors?"

2006-04-08T06:17:00.000-07:00

Got this email from the Trial Lawyers College List Serve, from "W"

Two weeks ago, in the "Stick It" episode of ABC's Boston Legal, actor
James Spader, as attorney Alan Shore, delivered a speech one might pray someone
would have the chutzpa to deliver to Congress, a speech the likes of which
I've never heard on television, and it's frightening pathetic that it has
to come out of the mouth of a fictional character to get aired on a network.

How in heavens name did this get past network censors?

A woman has been accused of not paying her income tax. Her attorney
doesn't know how to defend her since she admits she's guilty, but he finally rises
to the occasion, delivering the following summation to the jury...

ALAN SHORE: When the “Weapons of Mass Destruction thing” turned out not to be true, I expected the American people to rise up! Huh! They didn’t.

Then, when the Abu Ghraib “torture thing” surfaced, and it was revealed that our government participated in “rendition,” a practice where we kidnap people and turn them over to regimes who specialize in torture, I was sure, then, the American people would be heard from. We stood mute.

Then came the news that we jailed thousands of so-called “terrorist suspects” — locked them up, without the right to a trial or even the right to confront their accusers. Certainly, we would never stand for that. We did.

And now, it’s been discovered, the executive branch has been conducting massive, illegal, domestic surveillance on its own citizens — you and me. And I at least consoled myself that finally, finally the American people will have had enough.

Evidently we haven’t. In fact, if the people of this country have spoken, the message is, “We’re okay with it all.” Torture, warrantless search-and-seizures, illegal wiretappings. Prison without a fair trial — or any trial. War on false pretenses. We as a citizenry are, apparently, not offended. There are no demonstrations on college campuses; in fact, there’s no clear indication that young people even seem to notice.

Well, Melissa Hughes noticed. Now, you might think instead of withholding her taxes, she could have protested the old-fashioned way: made a placard and demonstrated at a Presidential or Vice-Presidential appearance. But we’ve lost the right to that as well. The Secret Service can now declare “free speech zones” to contain, control, and, in effect, criminalize protest.

Stop for a second, and try to fathom that: At a Presidential rally, parade, or appearance, if you have on a supportive T-shirt, you can be there. If you’re wearing, or carrying something in protest, you can be removed. This, in the United States of America. This, in the United States of America! Is Melissa Hughes the only one embarrassed?

JUDGE: Mr. Shore, that’s a chair for witnesses only.

ALAN SHORE: These long speeches make me so tired sometimes.

JUDGE: Please get out of the chair.

ALAN SHORE: Actually, I’m sick and tired.

JUDGE: Get out of the chair!

ALAN SHORE: And what I’m most sick and tired of, is how every time somebody disagrees with how the government is running things, he or she is labeled “un-American.”

PROSECUTOR: Evidently it’s speech time.

ALAN SHORE: And speech in this country is free, you hack! Free for me, free for you, free for Melissa Hughes to stand up to her government and say, “Stick it!”

PROSECUTOR: Objection!

ALAN SHORE: I object to Government abusing its power to squash the constitutional freedoms of its citizenry. And, God forbid, anybody challenge it, they’re smeared as being a heretic. Melissa Hughes is an American! Melissa Hughes is an American. Melissa Hughes is an American!

JUDGE: Mr. Shore, unless you have anything new and fresh to say, please sit down. You’ve breached the decorum of my courtroom with all this hooting.

ALAN SHORE: Last night, I went to bed with a book. Not as much fun as a 29-year-old, but, the book contained a speech by Adlai Stevenson. The year was 1952. He said, “The tragedy of our day is the climate of fear in which we live, and fear breeds repression. Too often, sinister threats to the Bill of Rights, to freedom of the mind, are concealed under the patriotic cloak of anti-communism.”

Today, it’s the cloak of anti-terrorism.

Stevenson also remarked, "It's far easier to fight for principles then to
" live up to them." I know we are all afraid, but the Bill of Rights? We
have to live up to that. We simply must. That's all Melissa Hughes is trying
to say. She was speaking for you. I would ask you now to go back to that
room and speak for her.

The jury finds Melissa Hughes "not guilty".
The speech won a well-deserved "Wings of Justice" Award from
Buzzflash, and a predicable write-in campaign from repressive wingnuts to cancel the
show. Please write to ABC and thank them for having the courage to air
it, not to give in to political pressure, and to continue to air one of the best shows on television.

Here is the comment I left at Digby's blog, regarding his comments about how Knight Ridder is reporting the truth, unfiltered.

Maybe somebody finally watched "Good Night and Good luck." Knight-Ridder seems like the most Murrowesque right now, and, as Molly Ivins pointed out, theirs was the only Washington bureau to "report skeptically on the administration's claims about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction before the war." The Headline read, "Lack of Hard Evidence of Iraqi Weapons Worries Top U.S. Officials" and ran on 9-6-02.

A bit OT, but in another example of members of the MSM with cajones grandes, did anyone catch James Spader's speech to the jury on Boston Legal a couple weeks ago?

A snippet, "And now, it’s been discovered, the executive branch has been conducting massive, illegal, domestic surveillance on its own citizens — you and me. And I at least consoled myself that finally, finally the American people will have had enough. Evidently we haven’t."

The entire speech can be found at
http://forwardlateral.com/blog/2...nd-and-deliver/
but, like the Knight Ridder stories, the author deserves our support for being one of the few people who are pointing out the emperor's nakedness when most of the MSM have their chins too high to notice. The fact that it had to be done through a fictional character- instead of on the news- speaks volumes where we're at right now.

Still, these people who are speaking out need our support since nothing triggers the wrath of the right wing more than pointing out the obvious.

The buzz flash award and article is here, and you can leave your comments at the Boston Legal site here.

Police State?

2006-04-06T08:18:00.000-07:00

Found this link at Indefensible, David Feige's blog (and the title of his new book coming out in June, about his experience as a Public Defender in NYC). Watch the video that loads on the right side and see how "disruptive" the young man is who requests a complaint form and notice how "cooperative" the officer (a sergeant) is in response.

It's the kind of stuff I see all the time and the kind of stuff my friends who say "how can you defend those people?" never see or choose to ignore.

Lord Acton was right when he said "All power corrupts; absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely."

Think cops don't have too much power and aren't corrupted by it? Then test out your theory by doing what the guy on the video did: Go and ask for a complaint form, courteously, like this guy, and see how it goes. Chances are it will go well, as most of the officers I know don't act like this clown and do their jobs well.

What you might see (and what I see all the time) is that some cops are corrupted by power. Because they have the power to issue tickets, they can usually deflect situations like this by ticketing the guy for disorderly conduct or disturbing the peace and then by saying that he threatened or "got in their face," like this officer clearly did.

Then, since there's usually no video evidence like this occasion, the ex-prosecutor judge (there's no Constitutional right to a jury trial if the potential jail time is less than six months!) believes the "testilying" cop, and you learn about the system the hard way.

Want to know how I can "defend these people?" It's because there are people like this cop out there right now corrupted by power and insulated from punishment. Keep in mind this guy's job was to respond to complaints!

Two Great Posts: One Ex-NPR and One Ex-CIA...

2006-04-01T05:36:00.000-08:00

On Digby's Blog, Tristero points out this article, by former NPR reporter Sarah Chayes, about her observations of the unintended consequences U.S. policies and practices are creating on the ground in Afghanistan. A snippet...

The steadily worsening situation in southern Afghanistan is not the work of some ineffable Al Qaeda nebula. It is the result of the real depredations of the corrupt and predatory government officials whom the United States ushered into power in 2001, supposedly to help fight Al Qaeda, and has assiduously maintained in power since, along with an 'insurgency' manufactured whole cloth across the border in Pakistan--a U.S. ally. The evidence of this connection is abundant: Taliban leaders strut openly around Quetta, Pakistan, where they are provided with offices and government-issued weapons authorization cards; Pakistani army officers are detailed to Taliban training camps; and Pakistani border guards constantly wave self-proclaimed Taliban through checkpoints into Afghanistan.

But beleaguered Afghans have a hard time getting U.S. political and military officials to focus on these two factors, which feed on each other. U.S. personnel cling to the fictions that Afghans are responsible for the local officials who rule over them--despite the overwhelming moral and material support the United States has provided these officials--and that the Pakistani government is cooperating in the war on terror. And so the Afghan villagers, frightened, vulnerable, and disillusioned, are obliged to come to terms with the 'fairies who come at night.'

This state of affairs is so bewildering that Kandaharis have reached an astonishing conclusion: The United States must be in league with the Taliban.

Oops. Not exactly what we had in mind, but what you get with a "shoot first, don't ask questions later - not with us, against us" foreign policy outlook. Here's a comment I left at Tristero's post, followed by a comment he left in response. I'm flattered Tristero noticed, and it's nice to know that the great Tristero , actually the composer Richard Einhorn, (NYTimes article) saw the importance of my link to Robert Baer's interview. He's right, Baer's sunny disposition shines through....

U.S. military and civilian officials remain obsessed with 'Al Qaeda'

Besides this article, I read something else shocking this week regarding Queda. Robert Baer, the former CIA case officer- whose book See No Evil inspired Syriana (Clooney plays Baer's role)- wrote an article found at http://www.chronogram.com/issue/.../news/ index.php in which he states that "queda is an idea."

This guy, like Sarah Chayes, understands places like Afghanistan and yet when you justapose his knowledge with what we're doing on the ground, with how we're misinterpreting the insurgency as 9-11-like terrorism, the unintended consequences are of this effort are terrifying. Just as Bush's question "who authorized putting the guy on pain medicine?" question trickled down into Abu Ghraib, his "not with us, then against us" beliefs typify our approaches and willingness to adapt on the ground. It's like sending a bull to kill mice in china shop, except the cost of this bull means, as Baer points out, that in the future Americans will have to retire at 75 instead of 60 when the bills come due. And that's just considering the cost in dollars. What really scares me is that we'll be paying for doesn't enhance our security, it further threatens it.

Tristero responds...

David,
I read both his book and just read that article. Tx for the link. Glad to see he's kept his sunny disposition.

Hopefully this 'sunny disposition' is just a symptom of Baer's career path, (As a CIA Case Officer, Baer navigated places like Beirut, where a scene in his book has an ice-water veined potential operative so toughened that the polygraph he's taking doesn't register any response when bombs explode outside) and not a reflection of the hard realities of the Middle East. (Me, I'm just thrilled that the great Tristero noticed my comment! My sunny disposition is firmly intact!)

Khaltouma wants the world to know...

2006-03-30T08:43:00.000-08:00

The following story was not written by me. It came from a concerned lawyer (whose name I won't use until I get permission) who put it on the list serve for Gerry Spence's Trial Lawyer's College, with this message: "In the daily news of Iraq, we may lose sight of other atrocities. Attached is a letter from a friend working for "Doctors without Borders" in the Sudan."

Khaltouma’s Story – as told to me on Monday, March 20, 2006

On a Saturday night in 2004, Khaltouma’s village was attacked. Her husband, father, and infant were killed before her eyes, as were all of the men in her village. She and 63 other women and girls were kidnapped along with all of the community’s livestock (oxen, camels, sheep, goats, and donkeys), and forced to walk for five days to the Nyala airport. She had her infant daughter with her - the twin of the child slaughtered in front of her - but had to leave behind a toddler crying in the hut.

Thirty minutes after arriving at the airport a green (military) helicopter arrived. The Janjaweed captors started cheering and clapping because their money was in the heli. The women were flown to a place in Khordofan, a state adjacent to Darfur, where they waited for 36 days until the livestock arrived. They were moved to another place in Khordofan and a village was established, with the men taking the Fur women as their wives. In a neighboring village some kind people discovered what had happened to the women and decided to help. Unfortunately, the JJ got wind of the plan and scattered, dividing the women and animals between them.

Khaltouma was taken with ten men, one of whom claimed her as his wife. She was forced to stop breastfeeding her baby, and she quickly became pregnant with another set of twins. She suffered many abuses at the hands of this JJ ‘husband’. He tried to kill her several times, hanging her from a tree, strangling her, and trying to break her neck. He held a gun to her head many times. In spite of all the abuse, she delivered healthy twin girls.

A travelling traditional healer came upon Khaltouma one day while she was sitting under a tree and asked her why she was so sad. She told him her story. He made her an amulet from her breast milk and the hair of her and her children, and then he told her to leave in three days. Three days later the JJ returned home after a triumphant day of robbing and looting – they had stolen a car. A lot of alcohol was consumed during their celebration and Khaltouma’s “husband” passed out. She strapped the three children to her back, front and shoulder, and left. She walked for five months arriving in Kalma four days ago.

NOTE: Khaltouma (not her real name) gave me permission to share her story – she wants the world to know what is happening in Darfur.

Why Isn't This In the Papers?

2006-03-29T16:46:00.000-08:00

From Slate, and also heard on NPR's Day to Day, this revelation, that's still not in the papers...

In a nutshell, two GOP senators- Kyl and Graham- submit a brief in Hamdan, which was argued yesterday in the Supreme Court.

"It's not within the Supreme Court's power to decide the constitutional challenges brought by Salim Ahmed Hamdan, the Guantanamo detainee whose case [was] argued before the court [Tuesday] say Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Jon Kyl, R-Ariz. In a brief they filed with the Supreme Court, they argue that Congress kicked Hamdan's current case out of court when it passed the Detainee Treatment Act last December.

The senators base their argument on the "legislative history" of the DTA—the official statements that members of Congress make about a bill leading up to its passage, as captured in the Congressional Record. In other words, Graham and Kyl cite themselves: in particular, an "extensive colloquy" between the two that appears in the Record on Dec. 21, 2005, the day of the DTA's passage.

Justice Department lawyers for the Bush administration rely on the same colloquy as evidence that "Congress was aware" that the DTA would strip the Supreme Court of jurisdiction to hear "pending cases, including this case" brought by the Guantanamo detainees.

The problem is that Kyl and Graham's colloquy didn't actually happen on Dec. 21. It was inserted into the Congressional Record just before the law passed, which means that the colloquy did not alert other members of Congress to the views it contains. Inserting comments into the Record is standard practice in Congress. What's utterly nonstandard is implying to the Supreme Court that testimony was live when it wasn't. The colloquy is evidence of what Kyl and Graham thought about the meaning of the DTA...

In their own brief to the court, Hamdan's lawyers said that Kyl and Graham's colloquy didn't take place on the floor of the Senate. As evidence, they cite the C-SPAN tape for the debate leading up to the Dec. 21 voice vote. Kyl and Graham don't appear. (See for yourself.) Senate officials confirm that the Graham-Kyl colloquy was inserted. When a senator wants to put a statement into the record, he or she signs it, writes "live" on it, and, with the routine consent of the rest of the body, into the record it goes.

That's not, however, what Kyl and Graham told the court. Their brief states that "the Congressional Record is presumed to reflect live debate except when the statements therein are followed by a bullet … or are underlined" (their italics). The colloquy appears in the record without a bullet or underline; ergo, the brief implies, it must be live. The colloquy is even scripted to sound live. "Mr. President, I see that we are nearing the end of our allotted time," Kyl says at one point. At another, Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., appears to interject a question. "If I might interrupt," he begins..."

Why isn't this news? Two Senators attach a document to a Senate bill and disquise it to look like it was live, even inserting interruptions to make the lie look real.

Then they mislead the Supreme Court by implying- in a brief, as lawyers- that the testimony was indeed live. But it wasn't.

So, you have 2 U.S. Senators, aided by a third, trying to trick the highest court of the land into believing that something was said on the floor of the Senate when it wasn't. The Senators get caught red-handed and yet only readers of Slate and listeners to NPR's Day to Day hear about it?

Clinton twisted the word "is" in a deposition and got impeached. Two Senators feign legislative history to trick the Supreme Court and no paper or network covers it.

Sadly, I think Jon Stewart is our only hope to spread the word on this...

One Client's Story, in brief

2006-03-27T10:55:00.000-08:00

This is a comment I left at Glenn Greenwald's blog, regarding his quest's post about the war on drugs, and how it's succeeded at spending a lot of money to accomplish nothing. Hmmm, sound like any other wars? It describes one of my clients who, tragically, is back in prison after a few years clean.

Here it is...

"When the woman who witnessed her step-daughter be struck and killed by the drunk driver read her letter to the court at the man's sentencing, she seemed like a typical mom, her life seemingly together until the day she witnessed the tragedy. She choked back tears and had no idea that Mother Against Drunk Driving would eventually publish her letter in their magazine.
What the readers of the MADD newsletter didn't know when they read this woman's letter was about a year before she wrote it, she was laying on the floor of the jail, quivering from heroine withdrawal as her public defender, me, tried to interview her.
The woman who wrote the letter, who witnessed the drunk driving accident was on probation for theft when she wrote it, and she also plead guilty to drugged driving since, when the police picked her up, she was strung out.
What transformed the woman from quivering on the jail floor to writing articles in MADD's newsletter? One lucky break.

I was talking to a woman who told me she was five years sober from crack addiction and that she conducted AA/NA meetings at the jail. Offhandedly I asked her to look in on my client, Teresa, adding that she was probably a lost cause, but that she wasn't always this way.

The woman I talked to met Teresa in jail and even picked Teresa up on her release date,taking her straight to an AA meeting and agreeing to act as her sponsor, to help her get back on her feet.

When I saw Teresa in court, months after this, the change was amazing. She looked like a different person and even the hardened judge was shocked at teh transformation.

So, how do we duplicate this story and turn a junkie into a productive citizen, who writes letters that MADD publishes in its newsletter? I'm not sure but I know building on AA/NA, on free sponsorship, on drug courts and on people who give a shit about other people are a good start. Short term incarceration is often a good start too, especially if incentives to avoid more jail in the future are incorporated.

One of my clients told me that when they asked her to "just stop using" without offering her treatment was like telling me to "just stop breathing." "After all." she said, "it's something I don't know how to do without."

Jailing addicts and small dealers for decades makes about as much sense."

You can probably see why I didn't include the part about her being back in prison, eh?

Ag Dept.: "Test for Mad Cow, Go to Jail"

2006-03-27T09:08:00.000-08:00

According to the Omaha World Herald (article here) from last Thursday: "A Kansas meatpacker [Creekstone] sued the government on Thursday for refusing to let the company test for mad cow disease in every animal it slaughters." It seems the company wants to test for the disease to accomodate its Japanese customers. However, as the article continued, the company was "threatened [with] criminal prosecution [by the Agriculture Department]if Creekstone did the tests, according to the company's lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Washington."

Let me get this straight. Your government, funded by your money, threatens to prosecute a meatpacker that wants to ensure it isn't selling mad cow infested beef?

Currently, according to the article, mad cow testing in the U.S. is controlled by the department, which tests about 1 percent of the 35 million cattle slaughtered each year and that level is slated for reduction.

As the article continued, "Department officials say they oppose 100 percent testing because it does not ensure food safety. The disease is difficult to detect in younger animals, which are the source of most beef. Larger meatpackers worry that insistence from Japanese buyers would force them to do testing and that a suspect result might scare consumers away from eating beef."

Testing would cost "about $20 per animal", and yet, despite the fact that the third case of mad cow disease in the U.S. was discovered last week in Alabama, "larger meatpackers worry that insistence from Japanese buyers would force them to do testing and that a suspect result might scare consumers away from eating beef."

In short, we test one of every 100 cows, we threaten companies who want to do more testing than this with criminal prosecution, and we worry about the effect of a "suspect" test on "large meatpackers."

So who's the Ag Department concerned about, large meatpackers or consumers? When you threaten to criminally prosecute a meatpacker that wants to follow consumer demands, it's hard to claim you're pro-consumer.

It sounds to me like when Mike Johanns had to choose between protecting consumers or protecting meatpackers against possible "suspect" tests, he chose the meatpackers. Risking the spread of mad cow disease to stave off a possible scare that hurts meatpackers is bad public policy.

Maybe I won't stop and pickup that hamburger on the way home...

"Augustine" Was No Saint

2006-03-24T17:31:00.000-08:00

What a week for the Washington Post! They unveil their new Right Wing Blogger, Ben Domenech, who supposedly balances out Dan Froomkin's White House Briefing, but who soon admits (after being outed by bloggers) that he writes under the pseudonym "Augustine" at RedState.org. Not a big deal unless you call calling Coretta Scott King a communist on the day of her funeral and repeatedly plagiarizing all in a day's work.

On Monday, Digby proclaimed "this is gunna be fun" but today it was over as the Washington Post announced Ben's resignation. There's been enough written about this elsewhere but it's nice to see a small group of committed people make an arrogant institution take notice. Here is a comment I left on Digby's blog:
"And if you look at the overwhelming bulk of everything I've written, you'll find there is no question about it."
-Ben Domenech

In other words, "most of what I wrote wasn't plagiarized, so get off my back!" Reminds me of the great philosopher Homer (Simpson) who once opined, "I wasn't lying; I was writing fiction with my mouth."

It's a great day for the digby-inspired Davids of the world. A few well-organized, committed individuals banded together and uncovered enough facts, within days, that an institution, which was supposed to be built for checking facts, flat-out missed.

It's a great day, but I wonder how the empire will spin this, how they'll try to twist the firing of an obvious plagiarist and "dog whistle" racist and call it liberal bias somehow.

Oh well, y'all made an institution take notice of the truth and sent one of their golden boys back to the gated community.

Above the Law, Again

2006-03-24T12:40:00.000-08:00

As you know, after much debate in Congress and after the inclusion of new provisions granting Congressional oversight over its implementation, the Patriot Act was renewed and signed into law on March 9. Here's the rest of the story...

It seems a lot of time was wasted in Congressional debate because, as the President stated in a signing statement that accompanied his signature:

"The executive branch shall construe the provisions of H.R. 3199 that call for furnishing information to entities outside the executive branch, such as sections 106A and 119, in a manner consistent with the President's constitutional authority to supervise the unitary executive branch and to withhold information the disclosure of which could impair foreign relations, national security, the deliberative processes of the Executive, or the performance of the Executive's constitutional duties."

In other words, as the Unitary Executive (sounds a little King-like, doesn't it?) I don't have to follow the law doing so "impair[s the President's deliberative processes." While the concept of Bush deliberating is oxymoronic and darkly humorous, ignoring the law, repeatedly, is not.

Keep in mind that no investigation of the so-called "terrorist surveillance program" is in the works at this point. In other words, while Bush feels entitled to ignore Congress, Congress doesn't feel the need to investigate how far this Unitary Executive is taking his belief that their oversight power doesn't exist.

Read This Post At Your Own Risk

2006-03-23T20:23:00.000-08:00

Found this article, which scares me to death, at the new firedoglake.com site. When a friend of Bush starts talking about the end of the world as we know it, maybe it's time to take notice.
I've also been reading Robert Baer's book "Sleeping With The Devil" about what could happen to the world, both economically and politically, if a few determined terrorists go after Saudi Arabia's oil infrastructure. Of course, it's also about how, and why, we've aligned ourselves with the Royal Family of this country, which 14 of the 18 9/11 bombers called home.
Considering that Baer was a career CIA case officer, whose book became the movie Syriana, his second book is a terrifying account that's subtitled "how Washington sold our soul for Saudi crude."

Two fascinating but terrifying links that need a little comic relief like this snippet from this week's South Park... here.

Judge Follows Oprah's Lead: Bullshit is Bullshit

2006-03-12T17:03:00.000-08:00

Check out this pdf link to a Federal Bankruptcy Judge's order dismissing a couple's bankruptcy petition.

Here is a link to the Alternet story with all the details. Here's an excerpt from the great article...

"Judge Monroe wrote in his ruling that by passing the Bankruptcy Act, Congress ignored the scores of judges, academics and lawyers who spoke out about the flaws of the Act. "It should be obvious to the reader at this point how truly concerned Congress is for the individual consumers of this country," he wrote. "Apparently, it is not individual consumers of this country that make the donations to the members of Congress that allow them to be elected and reelected and reelected and reelected."

Hagel Says "Investigate," Votes Against Investigation

2006-03-08T10:53:00.000-08:00

This is the text of a letter I wrote to the editor of the World Herald today. Since it probably won't make it in, here it is...

As a Nebraskan, I’ve been proud that one of our Senators was willing to fulfill his role as a legislator and act, as the Founders envisioned, as a check on the power of the executive branch. When it was discovered that the President had ordered surveillance that plainly violated federal law, Senator Hagel even wrote a letter to the President stating that “it is critical that Congress determine, as quickly as possible, exactly what collection activities were authorized… how many names and numbers were involved over what period, and what was the asserted legal authority for such activities. In sum, we must determine the facts.” However, while Senator Hagel’s words made it appear as if he was concerned about “the facts,” yesterday he voted against investigating the warrantless eavesdropping program. In short, while Hagel said he wanted to “determine the facts” he voted against investigating them, even when his vote would have tilted the Senate Intelligence Committee’s 8-7 vote in favor of an investigation. Whatever your political party is, a President’s violation of a federal law is a serious matter if our government is to remain one “of laws and not of men” as Lincoln so eloquently stated. Just as the “facts” need to “be determined” about the extent of the Bush Administration’s domestic surveillance program, Senator Hagel needs to explain why he says investigation is essential and then votes against authorizing it. In short, Senator Hagel was for the investigation before he was against it and an opportunity for him to demonstrate leadership was buried, along with the “facts” about whether you are being illegally spied on as part of the “war on terror.”

Two Americas

2006-02-18T07:11:00.000-08:00

This is a comment I left at digby's blog. The first part is a quote from a comment someone left about my observation that Cheney's cocktail at dinner might have been an "alibi" drink, to point to as evidence of intoxication after the shooting in case the sheriff actually did his job and checked for booze on breath. Strangely, Digby's blog keeps losing comments. Maybe it has something to do whith bloggers being labelled as potential terrorists. I knew the 4th Amendment was "acceptable collteral damage" to Bush. so I wonder how much longer we'll have the 1st. All I ask is that the Equal Protection Clause still apply. Fat chance.

"We should also remember that if a driver accidentally runs over a pedestrian and then drives straight to a bar to have a drink because he/she was just so shook up, that is totally innocent behavior. There is no evidence at all that this driver was following a well known pattern of drunk drivers to produce an alibi for a positive alcohol test."

How true in theory but how naive in practice. I work as a public defender, constantly pointing out truisms like this to the cynical, ex-prosecutor judge who rolls his eyes at my indigent client and at me pointing out the presumption of innocence and then throws my client in jail for being so callous as to drink right after a tragedy, usually commenting that "I know why went to the bar." Yet somehow when it's the Veep we're talking about, people who've undoubtedly never seen the difference between the way a cop acts in your neighborhood compared to the way he acts in the 'hood, trot out things like 'remember we can't prove it beyond a reasonable doubt so we shouldn't speculate.'

It's true I can't prove the dinnertime cocktail was a cover up and that digby can't prove he was drinking all day. But it's also true that if this were one of my indigent clients, the suburb raised prosecutor would speculate about it to the jury and at sentencing and the ex-prosecutor judge would drop the hammer over my cries that we shouldn't speculate when we don't know. Of course, if you grew up in the suburbs, where your parents political power guaranteed that the cops treated you fairly or else daddy would call the supervisor, it's difficult to see how these arguments are pure comedy to people who see the way things really are when you're poor, politically powerless and only asking that the same rules that apply to Dick Cheney apply to you.

That rarely happens but most people don't see this because they don't look for it. I'm not asking for special rules for my poor clients, just that the same one's apply. Trust me, it hardly ever happens. Better yet, check this out yourself by driving your beemer through the hood at night. You'll undoubtedly be afraid of being a crime victim but my bet is that you'll be pulled over before you get very far, by a profiling cop who makes up a reason. Tell him this violates your 4th amendment rights and watch him laugh at your naivete. Then you'll see my point: there really are two Americas and 2 sets of rules, despite the Equal Protection Clause. Some pigs really are more equal than others, as Orwell observed. Welcome to Dick Cheney's America.

Drunk's Oldest Trick in the Book

2006-02-17T09:33:00.000-08:00

The oldest trick in the book, for a person to hide their level of intoxication at an event, is to go fix a cocktail immediately afterwards. That way the person can always claim that "well, I'm drunk now but that's from what I drank afterwards." My clients have claimed this to me and I've heard of people avoiding DUI's with the same trick: Crash car, walk to 7-11 and get six pack.
Strange that Cheney claimed to delay notifying the press because of "concern" for the shootee but was seen drinking a cocktail at dinner by the crony/host. Just as the "beer at lunch" comment was a set up to diffuse the inevitable information regarding drinking that would eventually come out anyway, perhaps the "cocktail afterwards" was a trick to deflect any tests the sheriff might have had in mind. Fortunately for Dick, the sheriff was "one of the old boys" and let the penguin hide behind the security detail until he could sober up.
Has anyone else noticed the irony of claiming the delay was for the victim, but his response was to go eat dinner and fix a stiff drink? I'm just glad the next time the prosecutor trashes my client for having 2 dui convictions or for drinking after an accident, I can reply that this is just the example of the vice president trickling down to the streets.

Alberto the Spy

2006-02-17T07:28:00.000-08:00

Here's a link to an animated cartoon imagining Alberto the Spy advertising like a personal injury attorney might. Of course most people laugh at the personal injury attorney (a.k.a. ambulance chasers) for ads like these, but, let's face it, while corporate attorneys like Harry Whittington are drumming up business by drinking beer and shooting pen-raised birds on crony-owned private game reserves, the lawyers for the poor guys have to find their clients somehow. Sometimes ads like this, which admittedly often go over the top, are the only way to reach the poor people who have legal rights and claims but often don't know how to exercise them. Speaking of this, here's what happens when a hispanic man accidentally shoots and kills another man in a hunting accident in Texas: Manslaughter charge. When you're the Veep, though, the sheriffs get turned away by the security detail and the alcohol dissipates by the time they come back the next morning. If Whittington expires, however, doesn't the equal protection clause demand that the law that charges this poor man also applies to the "five deferment" war profiteer? I know the fourth amendment doesn't mean much to Dick and Alberto. I guess the demise of the equal protection clause isn't too far away by this logic. As I said before, Cheney believes in Liberty and Justice for all, and all pigs are equal on his animal farm. Some pigs, and Dicks, are just more equal than others.

Unbelievable...

2006-01-25T08:00:00.000-08:00

Terrifying Breakdown of Recent News on Bush's Warrantless Spying
- On Monday, Gen. Hayden claimed the reason the Bush administration went outside of the NISA's required "probable cause" standard is that it's too onerous. (Same old line about "we're at war", right)
- However, as Glenn Greenwald revealed, "in June, 2002, Republican Sen. Michael DeWine of Ohio introduced legislation (S. 2659) which would have eliminated the exact barrier to FISA which Gen. Hayden yesterday said is what necessitated the Administration bypassing FISA.
- During that time, the Administration was asked to advise Congress as to its position on this proposed amendment to loosen the standard for obtaining FISA warrants.
- In response, the Bush Administration submitted a statement from James A. Baker, the Justice Department lawyer who oversees that DoJ's Office of Intelligence Policy and Review.
- Baker's Statement:

The reforms in those measures (the PATRIOT Act) have affected every single application made by the Department for electronic surveillance or physical search of suspected terrorists and have enabled the government to become quicker, more flexible, and more focused in going "up" on those suspected terrorists in the United States...

One simple but important change that Congress made was to lengthen the time period for us to bring to court applications in support of Attorney General-authorized emergency FISAs. This modification has allowed us to make full and effective use of FISA's pre-existing emergency provisions to ensure that the government acts swiftly to respond to terrorist threats. Again, we are grateful for the tools Congress provided us last fall for the fight against terrorism. Thank you.

- In fact, Baker expressed concerns that lowering the standard for domestic wiretapping was possibly unconstitutional: "The Department's Office of Legal Counsel is analyzing relevant Supreme Court precedent to determine whether a "reasonable suspicion" standard for electronic surveillance and physical searches would, in the FISA context, pass constitutional muster. The issue is not clear cut, and the review process must be thorough because of what is at stake, namely, our ability to conduct investigations that are vital to protecting national security. If we err in our analysis and courts were ultimately to find a "reasonable suspicion" standard unconstitutional, we could potentially put at risk ongoing investigations and prosecutions.

- To summarize, the Bush administration OPPOSES legislation to reduce the standard needed to obtain a warrant and eavesdrop, stating it was "grateful for the tools Congress provided us last fall for the fight against terrorism"
- Then, after Dewine's bill is shot down, the administration continues wiretapping in violation of the federal law, FISA, as the New York Times revealed.
- Next, when the wiretapping is revealed, the administration claims that FISA was too restrictive, and that it also that it had the power under the Congress' granting the President the power to "use all necessary force" in the war on terror.
- In short, when offered the chance to change the law, they said no thanks.
- But when they are asked why they violated the law they say they needed to, to win the "war on terra."

* It's the same old cross exam question: Were you lying then, when you said you didn't need more power or are you lying now when you say you do?

The Last Question for them: What are you covering up?
The Last Question for us: Can we actually be debating whether the President has the power to break the law? If so, it looks eerily like the end of our democracy, as Lenny Bruce's lawyer claims.

Here's a link to Greenwald's revelation. Read it. It's powerful and should be on the front page. (Why isn't it?)

Uplifting Image of the Day

2006-01-25T07:24:00.000-08:00

A picture's worth a thousand words! Here are Georgetown University Law Students unveiling a banner as Alberto Gonzalez speaks about warrantless domestic wiretapping, I mean the "terrorist surveillance program," as it's now being called. Great to see that while the press is largely complicit and cowered, the students aren't buying these subtle word games that destroy the 4th Amendment.

Correction - Rosen Didn't Call For Civility

2006-01-23T19:11:00.000-08:00

Jay Rosen commented on my last post, pointing out that:
(1) I wrote that he called for "restraint and civility" from bloggers.
(2) That he actually wrote "I don't think "civility" gets Brady anywhere. And I'm not confident I know what he means when he says, "The issue here was civility." Absent enforcement by pro-active moderators, The Rules the Post declares in force will simply not be in force. This is not a new finding about the Internet."

I owe him an apology for saying that his piece, "in a nutshell is pretty nutless." I guess I was not only "heated" and "over the top," like some of the bloggers responding to the Post, but downright nasty. Imagine how I felt when he emailed me and nicely responded to my comments on HuffPo, even finding my blog only to discover that I called him nutless. I was trying, unsuccessfully, to play a quick, clever word game with "nutshell" and "nutless" but I was dead wrong.

I guess if Rosen's point is that Bloggers need to be smart, and not vulgar, to truly have lasting effect on the quality of the MSM and the corresponding level of understanding in the public, my stupid word choice makes his point pretty well. I can only hope that he, unlike the Post, will still be open to comments, in spite of my vulgar, stupid, uncalled-for word choices.

I guess the lesson is that if you want someone to listen to your perspective, and perhaps reform theirs and inform yours along the way, calling them names doesn't get you anywhere, no matter how clever and rebellious the word choices make you feel. Sorry, Mr. Rosen. Thanks for responding genuinely and eloquently to my comments. I apologize for not doing the same for you.

Deborah Howell - Ombudswoman or Stenographer?

2006-01-22T09:47:00.000-08:00

Here's my take on the WaPo ombudswoman fiasco. It's a response to Jay Rosen, who calls for restraint and civility from bloggers on the HuffPo.

I sing the praises of digby in this comment, but it's about more than that.

Here's an article for context and background, from firedoglake.

Here's my take on Rosen's advice for bloggers to worry about the costs of pissing off the WaPo. In a nutshell, it's pretty nutless. Here goes...

"Mr. Rosen, here's a story you might want to take to the roundtable with the Post. Bought a second computer for Christmas and put it in the kitchen. Couldn't wait to read the post instead of the biased rag that is pretty typical of my spot here in "flyover country." After a few days of reading the Post, expecting to be informed by the institution that dug out the truth about Nixon, I hear the OMBUDSMAN spouting GOP talking points and wanting to change the name of Froomkin's blog because a so-called "grassroots" complaint about its bias. Turns out the truth is the complaint came from a high-profile GOP operative, meaning what Howell thought of as grassroots was really astroturf.

Next, the ombudsman of a paper I couldn't wait to read online not only doesn't come clean about being an, (inadvertant or not) tool of the GOP machine, but invites further controversy when she misstates facts and blames the democratic party for a scandal that is so far tied exclusively to a Bush "pioneer."

When confronted by this fact, the paper shuts down comments and the ombudsman comes out swinging, saying she will continue to "speak her mind."

I couldn't wait to read the Post and then I find out its just as constricted by the two (contradictory) controlling principles of print journalism, (1) avoid the liberal bias label, and (2) state the facts so as to avoid breaking rule #1.

The Post doesn't lose a thing when I skip their bookmark on my screen and go straight to firedoglake or digby. But I was ready to write them a check, still craving paper over pixels. Now I'll write Digby the check I would have written them, hoping he'll become a professional who doesn't worry about costs the way you advise.

Whether this roundtable the Post is calling for and that you're moderating turns out to be an attempt to listen or to placate depends on who's included. Thus far, it doesn't look promising. For example, rather than bring in a trueblue blogger like Digby, they invite a "Rhinestone Cowboy" professor (there's been a load of compromising on the road to your horizon?) who advises us, on HuffPo of all places, that "[d]riving up the internal costs of opening outward is not smart politics for those who want two-way newspapers that speak, listen, hear and get heard."

Here's a headline for you, Mr. Rosen: WE ARE NO LONGER DEPENDENT ON THEM! If Russert Watch is about getting Tim to apologize, it's a waste of time 'cause it'll never happen. Sure we want the Post to "hear and get heard" but when we start compromising when they cut our mikes O'Reilly style and give us ombudspersons who lie and then threaten to keep "speaking their mind" we need to twist the knife (hypothetically speaking Mr. FBI agent!) until they get the message.

Make sure they get this message and maybe you'll fulfill your role as an advisor to the MSM and an advocate for bloggers: Because blogs give us access to (temporarily?) amateur journalists who blow the professionals away, they're the ones who should be worried about costs, not us! They can laugh at us for writing in our pajamas, but this is the laughter of the emperor, just before he's told that he has no clothes. The jokes on them when the amateurs exceed the professionals.

What you seem to be saying, in a nutshell, is that even though the emperor is buck naked, let's break it to him gently, so he doesn't get too embarrassed. It might cost us too much to point out the obvious, and he might cut our precious mainstream media mike!

Get this through your (and their) head. When you spin the truth, and worry about the "cost" of speaking it, your credibility becomes the real cost. When Woodward worries more about access and book deals than his reputation, he sells it, and us, out. As he continues his "spin" to stay in the club and maintain access, Katherine Graham and Murrow spins in their graves, at a time when we need checks on a president's unprecedented grab for power.

To paraphrase another powerful woman, worrying about the cost of speaking the truth is not cajones, or even "smart politics, it's cowardice. Bloggers, fresh off taking down that stenographer Howell, have shown that they (alone?) have what it takes to takes to take on the powerful. If this means taking on the currently castrated, liberal bias-avoiding MSM, along the way, then so be it!

Like the MSM she embodies, Ms. Howell still sits on her throne, but her contract is about all she has left. Her reputation became a "cost" of trying not to piss off the powerful, while attempting to patronize the pajama-ed. Whether the Post is willing to let its reputation become a "cost" of this scandal remains to be seen. Cutting the reader's mikes wasn't the most promising start.

There's a rule in politics that you "have to dance with the one what brung ya." Mr. Rosen, you seem to tell us to imitate Ms. Howell when you tell us to worry about the "cost" of speaking the truth? Isn't that what she did, paying the price for it?

Unless bloggers remember, as they get more powerful, that "what brung them" was a willingness to point out the emperor's nakedness, no matter what the cost, our "dance," and our power, will be about as brief as Ms. Howell's contract, and Bush's second term.

I'm scared. The machine is powerful, the opposition rag-tag and split. But your call to worry about "costs" sounds like an effort to castrate one of our most powerful weapons. You might be worried about what the WaPo thinks of you, but if bloggers start doing this, the cost is one we can't afford to pay, not at a time like this. Bloggers must proclaim, and remain, "not for sale." That's what brought us here."

What do you think of my comment? Leave me one below!

A Case for Impeachment?

2006-01-12T13:06:00.000-08:00

Here's a link to a great Nation piece describing, in detail, why impeachment needs to happen and how to get it started. Today it was announced that Alito's nomination will probably be approved, while Nebraska's Ben Nelson describes seeing "no reasons to vote against him." and can you imagine that the hard-won preservation of the filibuster, against the threatened "nuclear option" might not be used to stop Alito's nomination?

If we fought so hard to save the filibuster, what are we waiting for? If self-disclosed membership in the "Concerned Alumni of Princeton" and departure from Justice O'Connor's votes on essential privacy and bill of rights issues isn't enough to trigger the filibuster, when will it be the right time?

It's scary. With a gung-ho cowboy President who believes the law doesn't apply to him and that he need not seek approval from a Congress his party controls, and with nutless opposition from Democrats like Nelson, the future of the Republic looks bleak.

Molly Says It Best

2005-12-30T09:08:00.000-08:00

As usual, Molly Ivins writes about the most important story of the year- the President deliberately violating the law by authorizing warrantless wiretapping- with subtle wisdom and eloquence. While the initial uproar over Bush's forced disclosure is dying out, Molly reminds us that "either the president of the United States is going to have to understand and admit he has done something very wrong, or he will have to be impeached." In other words, if we let this go, the inch we give this shrub will turn into a mile.

Here's a paragraph from her article, which I found at alternet.org: "I don't like to play scary games where we all stay awake late at night, telling each other scary stories -- but there's a reason we have never given our government this kind of power. As the late Sen. Frank Church said, "That capability could at any time be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capacity to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn't matter. There would be no place to hide."

You can find the article here.

Some Pigs More Equal Than Others

2005-12-21T12:40:00.000-08:00

Arianna Huffington wrote this post yesterday, under the headline "We Live in a Country of Laws"?: I just listened to Mayor Bloomberg on CNN International discussing the New York transit strike. "We live in a country of laws," he said, "where there can be severe consequences for those who break them." Here is my question for the mayor: is it just the mass transit workers who live in a country of laws, or does the president of the United States reside there as well?”

Here’s my comment in response: “Arianna, maybe that tropical air is getting to you. You see there's been a change in the law. It's true that all pigs are equal, some pigs are just more equal than others. Taking an oath to preserve the Constitution means you don't have to follow it! Just ask Bill Kristol, who wrote this (describing a good "24" plot line in the process) in the Post yesterday. He even had the audacity to imply that this is what the founders had in mind, a king-like president who gets to use "secrecy" to keep the people safe. Let's face it. We elected Ollie North. Lying is o.k. if it's done in the name of patriotism and security. The audacity of these Neo-cons is truly frightening and yet NPR keeps giving us two competing perspectives, as if the law's application to an elected official was debatable. Expect both doublespeak and "wartime" to continue indefinitely. It's what these people thrive on.”

Don't worry your pretty little heads about domestic Spying!

2005-12-21T09:24:00.000-08:00

At Spences’ Trial Lawyers College in Wyoming this summer, it was fascinating to hear him tell stories about the Brandon Mayfield case. Mayfield is the Oregon lawyer, a converted Muslim and former Army officer, who was arrested and held for two weeks before the F.B.I. apologized and released him. The F.B.I., it seems, made the mistake of concluding that Mayfield’s fingerprint was on material found after the Madrid bombings. Only after Spanish authorities alerted the Bureau did the F.B.I. release Mayfield, whom they had been holding as a “material witness.”

As the Washington Post described it, “Under a provision of the U.S. Patriot Act, they entered his home without his knowledge — but aroused the family’s suspicion by bolting the wrong lock on their way out and leaving a footprint on the rug that didn’t match any family members. During a later raid, FBI agents took Mayfield’s computers, modem, safe deposit key, assorted papers, as well as copies of the Quran and what they classified as “Spanish documents” — apparently Spanish homework by one of Mayfield’s sons.
Spence even left the ranch to attend a hearing and told us how the Mayfield’s young son knew agents had been in their house. The F.B.I., it seems, shut off the electricity during the day when the family was gone, but didn’t take the time to reset the clock radios. The young boy saw his clock radio blinking and could thus pinpoint when the agents had been in the family’s home. Toothbrushes were even taken, ostensibly to retrieve DNA samples.

As the Post described “[t]he FBI apologizes to Mr. Mayfield and his family for the hardships that this matter has caused,” (and) … also said it would review its practices on fingerprint analyses.”

Here are a couple other examples of F.B.I. mistakes:

“Report: FBI faked terror probe documents”: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10313763/

“FBI admits to wiretapping wrong
numbers” : http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9546933/from/RL.3/

Something to keep in mind when you hear Bush say “when you think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution.”

Value, my ass. Bush recently said the Constitution “is just a goddamned piece of paper.

Oath to Preserve the Constitution Means Get to Ignore it!

2005-12-20T12:13:00.000-08:00

Bill Kristol makes this totally fucked up argument in today's Washington Post. What it boils down to is that even though the President swears an oath to protect the Constitution, he doesn't have to comply with it to carry out his duties. Also, the link below shows that his duties include lying to us about getting judicial permission before conducting wiretaps.

Here's a quote:

"That chief executive could, in times of war or emergency, act with the decisiveness, dispatch and, yes, secrecy, needed to protect the country and its citizens.

That is why the president uniquely swears an oath -- prescribed in the Constitution -- to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution. Implicit in that oath is the Founders' recognition that, no matter how much we might wish it to be case, Congress cannot legislate for every contingency, and judges cannot supervise many national security decisions. This will be especially true in times of war."

Haven't we been at war for decades now? Remember the war on crime, the war on drugs and, now, the war on terror?

I'm truly numb, both at the boldness of the president, the limp reaction of so-called "conservatives" and especially at the way most people don't give a rat's ass about these people lying and disregarding the constitution in the name of saving the country from terrorists.

We have met the enemy and he is us. We elected him. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine Bush would justify these actions and refuse to back down from taking them. This refusal is truly shocking, and revealing. These people truly think they are above the law and Bill Kristol truly believes the Founders created a king-like chief executive who is above even the Constitution from which he derived his powers.

Check out Huffington Post for snippets of editorial headlines, but be worried. These Neo-cons will stop at nothing it seems, and I wonder if anybody has the will to do it.

Be afraid. Be very afraid. Osama must be laughing as his enemy destroys American democracy in the name of saving it.

President's Pants on Fire!

2005-12-20T11:47:00.000-08:00

Remember Bush's justification for the recently revealed surveillance on American citizens without court approval? Well, apparently the actions he must take to protect us include lying to us! Check out this report, from the White House website-which reveals the text of a speech in which he says "Secondly, there are such things as roving wiretaps. Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so. It's important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution.

But a roving wiretap means -- it was primarily used for drug lords. A guy, a pretty intelligence drug lord would have a phone, and in old days they could just get a tap on that phone. So guess what he'd do? He'd get him another phone, particularly with the advent of the cell phones. And so he'd start changing cell phones, which made it hard for our DEA types to listen, to run down these guys polluting our streets. And that changed, the law changed on -- roving wiretaps were available for chasing down drug lords. They weren't available for chasing down terrorists, see? And that didn't make any sense in the post-9/11 era. If we couldn't use a tool that we're using against mobsters on terrorists, something needed to happen.

The Patriot Act changed that. So with court order, law enforcement officials can now use what's called roving wiretaps, which will prevent a terrorist from switching cell phones in order to get a message out to one of his buddies."

When you go to the speech, you have to skip down to get to the quote above. It's nine clicks on the toolbar. The paragraph starts with "Secondly,..."

Be careful what you say, though, or they'll wiretap your phones without ever involving the court and justify spying on citizens in the name of protecting the people.

"Paranoia Will Destroy Ya" (the kinks)

2005-12-14T10:09:00.000-08:00

A Russian proverb says "choose your enemies carefully for you will become like them. Keep this in mind as the Patriot Act is expanded, with almost lone opposition from Russ Feingold, in the coming weeks. NPR reported this morning that a bipartisan group of Senators wants additional time to debate the renewal of the act. But expect more fear-mongering as so-called patriots demand the "budget cuts" in the bill of rights in the name of security.

Today NBC News reportedly uncovered a 500-page document (download here) from the Defense Department that describes "threats" such as meetings planned to peacefully protest military recruitment at high schools in Florida.

The article can be found here.

Apparently we've met the enemy, and he is us.

The Cartoon Behind the GOP's Latest Image

2005-12-13T08:48:00.000-08:00

Found this article at slate.com about the latest Republican Nat'l Committee Ad that tries to link dissent against the War Machine to hurting the troops. Turns out, as this article shows, that the soldier, who's shown in the ad looking at a street scene, was really watching that Christmas classic, How the Grinch Stole Christmas. It would be funny if it weren't so sad. Who is truly using the troops to reach their own political ends?

Loved Traffic? See Syriana.

2005-12-08T09:06:00.000-08:00

From the screenwriter of Traffic, comes George Clooney starring in Syrianna, opening on Dec. 9. Screenwriter Stephen Gaghan writes his first blog entry today at Huffington Post. It's great to see two great Clooney flicks out right now, one about the role journalism should play (Good Night and Good Luck) and the other about the role oil plays in politics and the corruption that ensues. Syriana is based on the book "See No Evil," which was discussed a couple days ago on All Things Considered. (Listen here.) Fresh Air. Amazingly, the ex-CIA agent/author (whose character Clooney plays in Syriana) talked to NPR's Robert Siegel about being disowned by the CIA after he left and being threatened with prosecution for the capital crime of attempting to murder a guy you may have heard of by the name of Saddam. You can't make this stuff up, which is why I can't wait for the book and the movie, which is out tomorrow.

Thank God We're Not in Kansas (Anymore)

2005-12-07T14:04:00.000-08:00

Check out this article from the Mother Jones Blog about a principal in Kansas who suspended a student for speaking Spanish to his friends at lunch. Granted, the school woke up and allowed the kid back in school after the superintendent learned of the reason behind the suspension. The principal who made this brainless (racist?) decision refused to comment, but you can tell her how you feel about by clicking here. Hey, I'm not trying to say I live in a blue state or anything, but what's going on in the "free state?" First the Kansas school board votes to stop teaching evolution (see http://www.cnn.com/US/9908/12/kansas.evolution.flap/) and now kids have to talk to each other only in English? What, is Cousin Eddie running the school system?

Finally, A REAL Christmas Song

2005-11-29T07:34:00.000-08:00

I've never heard the song, but I received an e-mail today with these lyrics to a Jackson Browne Christmas song. It's a nice antidote to those images of people in fistfights over IPods outside Walmarts on Black Friday.

Jackson Browne's "The Rebel Jesus."
(Originally recorded by Browne for the 1991 Chieftains holiday collaboration, The Bells of Dublin)
All the streets are filled with laughter and light
And the music of the season
And the merchants' windows are all bright
With the faces of the children
And the families hurrying to their homes
As the sky darkens and freezes
They'll be gathering around the hearths and tales
Giving thanks for all god's graces
And the birth of the rebel Jesus
|
Well they call him by the prince of peace
And they call him by the savior
And they pray to him upon the seas
And in every bold endeavor
As they fill his churches with their pride and gold
And their faith in him increases
But they've turned the nature that I worshipped in
From a temple to a robber's den
In the words of the rebel Jesus
|
We guard our world with locks and guns
And we guard our fine possessions
And once a year when Christmas comes
We give to our relations
And perhaps we give a little to the poor
If the generosity should seize us
But if any one of us should interfere
In the business of why they are poor
They get the same as the rebel Jesus
|
But please forgive me if I seem
To take the tone of judgment
For I've no wish to come between
This day and your enjoyment
In this life of hardship and of earthly toil
We have need for anything that frees us
So I bid you pleasure
And I bid you cheer
From a heathen and a pagan
On the side of the rebel Jesus.

Bombing Al Jazeera Not a New Idea

2005-11-28T11:06:00.000-08:00

As Eric Schmeltzer pointed out on HuffPo, a simple google search turned up this article from 9/30/03 on FoxNews.com by Frank Gaffney Jr., who "held senior positions in the Reagan Defense Department [and] is currently president of the Center for Security Policy."
Under a headline which proclaims "Take Out Al Jazeera," Mr Gaffney writes:

'If we are serious about this war, we need a totally revamped information policy -- replete with much more concerted and effective efforts to win the hearts and minds of people who have no reason to fear us, let alone to attack us, but are being told to do so by Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya. A place to start would be to rapidly start up a satellite television service of our own, capable of reaching millions of currently unserved viewers in Iraq... In the meantime, it is imperative that enemy media be taken down if they insist on using their access to the airwaves as instruments of the war against us and our allies."

Kind of puts that "outlandish" comment by the White House to rest, don't you think?

Why do we still call them trial courts?

2005-11-28T10:21:00.000-08:00

Here is a sad but true article from The Champion, (the magazine of the Nat'l Assoc. of Criminal Defense Attorneys) pointing out what I see all the time. We've moved away from an "effectiveness" based criminal justice system to an "efficiency" based system. One thing that made me sick in criminal court was the time Judge $%&*# caught me in the hallway and said, "If you take that case to the jury, I'll max him out." The message was simple: if you dare to take up my time with a jury trial, I'll make your client pay the price. Of course, the threat had nothing to do with a tough on crime mentality (the judge went along with the eventual plea recommendation for probation) but was only the product of a "tough of making me stay past 3" mentality. I always wanted to scream aloud in court: "Why is it that the lowest paid person here (the public defender) is the one who's willing to work the hardest?"

As a P.D., I see my job as making the system, which runs almost entirely on efficiency, focus on effectiveness. Taking cases to trial and winning is a great way of accomplishing this, but be careful. When you push for a trial in a system such as this, a "trial tax" often comes into play. In other words, if you actually assert your Constitutional right to a jury trial, you might draw the wrath of a judge who's upset not at the conduct that brought you to court, but your audacity in asserting your rights once you arrived there. Sad, but true, at least in my experience.

Here is an article I wrote that you can find at the same website.

This article will make you thankful

2005-11-23T10:25:00.000-08:00

Found this great article at David Feige's blog. Over the years I've tried to help many felons get past that "ever been convicted of a crime?" question on job applications, and seen how hard it is for them to find jobs, even with non-violent convictions. Yesterday a client whom I'd written off as hopelessly addicted to meth stopped by to thank me for talking to her "like a person." She came by just because the last time I saw her, I told her that if she came by I could help her get clean. When she called and said she'd be right there, I scrambled for things to tell her. I ended up giving her directions to narcotics anonymous office, the address for a guy I know who runs an inpatient treatment program that accepts "her insurance" (None), and a couple dollars in gas money. I was amazed that she showed up and amazed at treating somebody with just a little dignity will do.

"Let's Bomb Them Unless They Act Like Fox!"

2005-11-22T14:41:00.000-08:00

First, the Downing Street memo described Senior British intelligence officials as stating, in an internal communique, that, in America the "intelligence was being fixed around the policy" of invading Iraq.

Now, a British man is being prosecuted for revealing official state secrets. The secret documents: a classified memo that describes President Bush voicing his desire to bomb the offices of Al Jazerra.

I'm speechless, again.

Here's Jane Smiley's excellent essay about what it means to be a superpower and why we're no longer fitting the bill. Kind of seems timely and appropriate in light of the revelation that our chosen leader wants to, once again, shoot first and ask questions later...

Here's an article I found at alternet.org from The Nation on the subject.

Mission Accomplished Now?

2005-11-22T10:25:00.000-08:00

We know it was never a picnic to be stationed in Iraq, but what do we make of this this article from Britain's Guardian. The article begins: "Leaders of Iraq's sharply divided Shiites, Kurds and Sunnis called Monday for a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S.-led forces in the country and said Iraq's opposition had a ``legitimate right'' of resistance.

The final communique, hammered out at the end of three days of negotiations at a preparatory reconciliation conference under the auspices of the Arab League, condemned terrorism, but was a clear acknowledgment of the Sunni position that insurgents should not be labeled as terrorists if their operations do not target innocent civilians or institutions designed to provide for the welfare of Iraqi citizens."

In other words, a conference of Iraqi leaders generates an agreement that attacks against U.S. troops by insurgents represents their "legitimate right of resistance." How'd you like to have a son or daughter over there and to then read that the country they "liberated" now proclaims that attacks against them are "legitimate?"

Now that's something to feel shock and awe over!

Factor This!

2005-11-18T10:53:00.000-08:00

Bill O'Reilly threatens to keep a blacklist of "Enemies" and post it on his website. As REM once said, we're truly "Exhuming McCarthy." Here is a link to Arianna Huffington's blog, where you can join the blacklist yourself and not wait for Bill to smoke you out. Arianna will personally deliver the list to the Wacked out Factor Host.

Bush's New Lies

2005-11-17T13:02:00.000-08:00

It's pretty clear Bush's Spook Cheney is calling the shots at the White House. The man who wasn't afraid to say "go fuck yourself" on the Senate floor, who wants to exempt the CIA from a torture ban, doesn't do well on defense, so he's now calling Democrats claims that the administration misrepresented intelligence to build support for taking the nation to war in Iraq "the most dishonest and reprehensible charges ever aired in this city."

Let me get this straight. Your chief of staff was indicted for perjury last week, and people who question your motives and dishonest and reprehensible? It's pretty obvious Cheney is a one-trick pony who only knows how to fight, not how to govern. He now looks and talks more like someone out of Dr. Strangelove than out of an administration who claimed to be "bring[ing] honor and dignity to the White House." It would be funny if he wasn't truly one heartbeat away...

On the bright side, here's a great article on W's latest lies.

Throw the Benator Out

2005-11-17T09:16:00.000-08:00

Senator Ben Nelson continues his reign of "I'm not a Democrat but I play one on election day" with his latest comments regarding Alito's confirmation. Writing in the World-Herald last Sunday, the "Benator" (W's nickname for this "Democrat" with the most conservative voting record in the Senate among Democrats) stated that "the President's nominees... deserve an up-or-down vote, even if the nominee isn't popular with the special interest groups."

But isn't the lesson of Alito's appointment- the Harriet Myers do-over- that Alito IS popular with the special interest groups, the ones inside the President's own party who persuaded him to withdraw Myers' name because her lack of experience didn't provide them with the litmus test they wanted?

Bush's reign of error will, thankfully, come to an end soon, but isn't the role of the minority party to assure that such a President's influence-, and the influence of the "special interest" Neocons who pull his puppet strings- doesn't extend for generations on the Supreme Court?

Remember the Washington Post article, posted here a couple weeks ago, that compared Alito with O'Connor, stating:
- In 1991, Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. voted to uphold a Pennsylvania statute that would have required at least some married women to notify their husbands before getting an abortion; a year later, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor cast a decisive fifth vote at the Supreme Court to strike it down.
- In 2000, Alito ruled that a federal law requiring time off for family and medical emergencies could not be used to sue state employers for damages; three years later, O'Connor was part of a Supreme Court majority that said it could.
- And last year, Alito upheld the death sentence of a convicted Pennsylvania murderer, ruling that his defense lawyers had performed up to the constitutionally required minimum standard. When the case reached the Supreme Court, O'Connor cast a fifth vote to reverse Alito.

The article continued: "The record is clear: On some of the most contentious issues that came before the high court, Alito has been to the right of the centrist swing voter he would replace."

But Nebraska's DEMOCRATIC Senator seems content that Alito won't have an ax to grind, despite these facts on his record, because Alito "assured [him] that he would consider each case on its merits and would bring no agenda to the bench."

With gutless, Bush-light, Democrats like this, who can blame people from running away from the Democratic party? With many Democrats, Nelson included, who voted for the largely credit card industry-written bankruptcy "reform" legislation last year, who can blame people for not trusting Democrats?

In short, with Democrats like Nelson out there, who take judicial nominees who were picked by the extreme right, at their word, in spite of their clear records, who can blame people for staying home on election day and for proclaiming a plague on both your houses?

I'm proud to be a Democrat, but it makes me sick to think Nelson represents the party? Last night he appeared in another half page ad in the World Herald, paid for by one of those "special interest groups" he claims to ignore. Last night, in the same paper, Nebraska's REPUBLICAN Senator, Chuck Hagel, stated that it's unpatriotic to not question your government!

When Republicans like Hagel speak these truths and when Democrats like Nelson stand for nothing, who can blame the people for staying home on election day? What a phony!

At Least Big Brother is Watching

2005-11-10T19:12:00.000-08:00

I haven't gotten any comments on any posts so far, but I've taken solace in a new report, released by the ACLU, wich concludes "The United States has now reached the point where a total “surveillance society” has become a realistic possibility." At least somebody is out there reading! Don't worry; I won't give up, even if I'm the only one who reads this stuff. It's great just posting this stuff, waiting for the day it generates some interest, even if so far it's as quiet as a Maytag repair shop around here. Oh, and another great thing happened today. The amendment that would have allowed drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge was dropped, so it's safe for at least a little while. You can find the article here. (Happy 38. Another year older. A new one just begun. Let's hope it's a good one.)

Isn't it Ironic: PATRIOT Act leads to spying on "ordinary Americans"

2005-11-08T12:00:00.000-08:00

According to a disturbing article in Sunday's Washington Post, the FBI's use of "National Security Letters" is "extending the bureau's reach as never before into the telephone calls, correspondence and financial lives of ordinary Americans."

"National security letters" were created in the 1970's as narrow exceptions to consumer privacy laws to allow the FBI to review in secret the customer records of suspected foreign agents, but "the FBI now issues more than 30,000 national security letters a year... a hundredfold increase over historic norms."

Eerily, these letters are issued not by judges but by "FBI field supervisors" who "do not need the imprimatur of a prosecutor, grand jury or judge" before issing them.

And what do we do with the information that's received from these investigations? The article continues, "In late 2003, the Bush administration reversed a long-standing policy requiring agents to destroy their files on innocent American citizens, companies and residents when investigations closed. Late last month, President Bush signed Executive Order 13388, expanding access to those files for "state, local and tribal" governments and for "appropriate private sector entities," which are not defined.

Here is a link to the ACLU's news release on this disturbing trend.

Pictureless Cartoons?

2005-11-04T08:15:00.000-08:00

After reading great cartoons by Mike Luckovich, I came up with this political cartoon. However, while my writing ability is in middle school, my artistic skills are still at a third grade level. So bear with me; you'll have to picture this in your mind, which is kind of like having somebody describe a comic strip. It's never as funny as seeing the pictures live. Here's what I came up with...

(1) Bush sits by a distraught Harriet Miers, consoling her, with his hand on her shoulder. He says to her, "Sorry, Harriet, my bosses tell me you're not qualified for that job. But I have another opening where prior experience isn't necessary. How'd ya like to run F.E.M.A.?"

(2) Bush, Cheney, Rummy and Rove sit around a table in the White House. Bush says, "If you're not with us, in this war, you're against us." Rove, holding a paper labelled "poll numbers" says, "Actually, Mr. President, the latest numbers say that if you're not with us in this room, you're against us."

(3) Bush stands at the podium beside Alito, saying to the crowd, "And Judge Alito has offered to help the Iraqi people by giving them all the individual rights he'll take out of America's Constitution, to help us fight this war on terra."

O.K., so they need some work, and definitely some pictures, but it was fun...

Hardball Host Shows Cajones

2005-11-03T12:59:00.000-08:00

As Arianna Huffington points out today, MSNBC's Chris Matthews is a rare example of a true journalist who doesn't stick his finger into the political winds, or care how ownership will respond, before speaking the truth. While his profession is full of power-hungry careerists like Judy Miller, it's nice to see that there are still Murrow-style journalists out there, even in the corporately-owned press. What is really funny about Huffington's post is reading Harry Shearer's comments and thinking of Rupert Murdoch agonizing over the fact that one of his employees (Shearer provides several voices on The Simpsons) is "on the other team" and not walking in lockstep with the rest of the empire.

Taking a Hard Right Turn

2005-11-02T12:17:00.000-08:00

Here is a great Washington Post article showing critical instances where Justice O'Connor voted to overturn cases that Judge "Scalito" voted to uphold. MoveOn.org has a petition going, trying to gather 250,000 signatures against the nomination. What are you waiting for? Click on the link to find the petition.

Cops Get Busted in New Jersey

2005-11-02T09:44:00.000-08:00

Great article from New Jersey about how the people in blue sometimes act just like the people they try to put into orange (jumpsuits.) When will we realize that while there are good cops out there who would never do this, there is a pervasive mentality that if you work as a cop the law doesn't apply to you. Found it at David Feige's blog.