Hannah's Blog

A Rigged Game?

While the Congressional game might look like it's rigged, it's actually a lot worse than that. Republicans are the only ones to field a team. The coach has them running back and forth and the Democrats are expected to stand on the side-lines and cheer. There's not even the semblance of a fair competition left.

Some of the Democrats fall all over themselves to be allowed to get into the game. But, it's not to be and, as the spectators can easily see, the melee on the field is just an unholy mess. No wonder respect for Congress has sunk to an all-time low.

Fortunately, 2006 is an election year in which ALL of the House and one third of the Senate can be sent packing. Of course, if they're just replaced with the same cookie-cutter rubber stamps, there won't be any change. What's needed is players who actually know what being a public servant means and are prepared to do more than make a spectacle of themselves, mouthing plattitudes and shilling for wealthy dudes. 2006 can be a really good year.

Conclusive Evidence

I've long argued that the "right to remain silent" only applying when a person risks giving evidence against himself is a bad idea. Seems to me that if "freedom of speech" has any meaning, then it should imply the freedom not to say anything at all at any time.
But, that's not the law. And in this case, whether a candidate for the Supreme Court should answer the questions put to him by the people who are making the hiring decision, it's not even relevant. Judge Alito's claim that revealing his understanding of Constitutional principles would somehow compromise his objectivity in the future is nicely refuted by Professor Paul Savoy.
I suppose one could argue that a judicial applicant claiming a right to remain silent is a radical elaboration of the Fifth Ammendment's protection against self-incrimination, but Professor Savoy's thesis seems entirely adequate to reach the conclusion that Judge Alito has flunked the qualification process for the Supreme Court.

Published on Saturday, January 28, 2006 by CommonDreams.org
Mr. Smith Comes to Washington
by Paul Savoy

"Dad always used to say the only causes worth fighting for were the lost causes."
? Jimmy Stewart as Senator Jefferson Smith in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington."

How many senators does is take to launch a filibuster? If you said 41, you?d be wrong. It takes only one.

The term, filibuster, from a Dutch word meaning "pirate," describes a hallowed tradition of unlimited debate in the Senate based on the principle that any senator has the right to talk his head off for as long as he wants on any issue. That is, until at least 60 senators vote to shut him up.

In the classic Frank Capra film, "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," Jimmy Stewart, playing freshman Senator Jefferson Smith, carries on a one-man filibuster for more than 23 hours until he passes out from exhaustion. Smith, an idealistic senator from an unnamed state, reads from the Declaration of Independence, and summons his colleagues to get up there with that Lady of Liberty on top of the Capitol Dome and take a stand against "compromise with human liberties."

Senator John Kerry, in announcing that he and Senator Edward Kennedy would participate in a filibuster against the confirmation of Judge Samuel Alito, said, "It?s not ?Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.? . . . It takes more than two or three people to filibuster successfully."

At least five other Democrats have announced their support for the filibuster: Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, Assistant Minority Leader Dick Durbin, Dianne Feinstein, and Hillary Rodham Clinton. But, in trying to block the confirmation, each of these senators may have to be a "Senator Smith" to succeed in demonstrating the danger a Justice Alito would pose to civil rights and civil liberties.

Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter has defended Judge Alito?s refusal to answer specific questions from Democratic senators aimed at showing the American people just how frightening a Justice Alito would be. The distinguished senator from Pennsylvania has declared that the nominee "has answered questions as far he could go." Judge Alito said it would not be "appropriate" for a judicial nominee to express his views on issues that might come before him if he were appointed to the Court. Well, it turns out that Judge Alito and Senator Specter are wrong. Who says? The Supreme Court. That?s who says.

In 2002, the Supreme Court, in Republican Party of Minnesota v. White, 536 U.S. 765, declared that it is not only proper for a judicial candidate to express his views on disputed legal issues -- the First Amendment guarantees him the right to do so. In an opinion written by Justice Antonin Scalia, and joined by then-Chief Justice Rehnquist, and Justices O?Connor, Kennedy, and Thomas, the Court concluded that a Minnesota canon of judicial conduct which prohibited a candidate for judicial office from announcing his position on abortion rights and other controversial issues violated his right to freedom of speech under the First Amendment.

The Minnesota decision yields three fundamental constitutional principles:

First, a judicial nominee has a First Amendment right to express his specific legal views on controversial issues even if they are likely to come before him should he be confirmed.

Second, a necessary corollary of the nominee?s right to express his views is the right of the people and their representatives in the Senate to know them. This right entitles the people to know not only a nominee?s judicial philosophy or general legal views, but, according to the Court in the Minnesota case, how those views are "exemplified by application to a particular issue of construction likely to come before [the] court -- for example, whether a particular statute runs afoul of any provision of the Constitution."

Third, and most important, in the absence of specific answers to senators? questions about a nominee?s views, his confirmation would be a violation of the Constitution?s Article II requirement that the Senate exercise its "Advice and Consent" function in an informed manner. This implication from the Court?s Minnesota decision, as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg explained in her dissent, is clear: "[B]y the court?s reasoning, the reticence of prospective and current federal judicial nominees dishonors Article II, for it deprives the President and the Senate of information that might aid or advance the decision to nominate or confirm."

The Court specifically rebuffed the kinds of arguments Judge Alito?s supporters have made in defense of his refusal to answer questions about whether he believes Roe v. Wade should be overruled, or if the President acted unlawfully when he ordered electronic eavesdropping on Americans without a warrant. Announcing his views, Alito?s defenders argue, would compromise his impartiality. They say that a preconceived view about the law would make a judge less open-minded in deciding particular cases.

Resoundingly rejecting this argument, Justice Scalia, writing for the majority in the Minnesota case, said, "A judge's lack of predisposition regarding the relevant legal issues in a case has never been thought a necessary component of equal justice, and with good reason. For one thing, it is virtually impossible to find a judge who does not have preconceptions about the law."

Quoting from an earlier opinion by Rehnquist regarding the Supreme Court itself, Scalia continued: "Since most Justices come to this bench no earlier than their middle years, it would be unusual if they had not by that time formulated at least some tentative notions that would influence them in their interpretation of the sweeping clauses of the Constitution and their interaction with one another."

"Indeed, even if it were possible to select judges who did not have preconceived views on legal issues," Scalia declared, "it would hardly be desirable to do so." Quoting Rehnquist again, Scalia wrote: "Proof that a Justice's mind at the time he joined the Court was a complete tabula rasa in the area of constitutional adjudication would be evidence of lack of qualification, not lack of bias." The "blank mind" argument, Scalia quipped, "contemplates a federal bench filled with the unfit."

A discussion by a judicial candidate of his constitutional views is not the same as a promise to produce a particular result. While Justice Scalia indicated that "pledges or promises" remain unprotected by the First Amendment, his opinion for the Court makes clear that it is perfectly proper for a judicial candidate to go beyond a discussion of his judicial record or his methodology for deciding cases, and to say, for example, whether he believes the Constitution protects a woman?s right to an abortion, or whether he would overrule Roe.

Although the Minnesota case articulated a right of a judicial candidate to express his views in the context of a process of electing judges, the Court?s First Amendment rationale necessarily extends to the federal system of nomination and confirmation, and, as a necessary corollary, to the people?s right to know the views of a candidate or nominee. In an election, a judicial candidate has a First Amendment right to announce his legal views because under our judicial system, the Supreme Court explained, judges not only find the law and apply it; they often "make law themselves" or "set aside the law enacted by the Legislature." Therefore, citizens need to know how a candidate is likely to change the law by overruling precedent or invalidating statutes or executive orders. This power of judicial lawmaking exists whether a judge is elected directly by the people, or nominated by the President and confirmed by the people?s representatives in the Senate. In both cases, the people have a right to know what kind of imprint a candidate or nominee is likely to make on judge-made law.

To be sure, Judge Alito remained free not to state his views. However, as Senator Feinstein pointed out during the confirmation hearings, if a nominee chooses to remain silent, senators are entitled to vote against him for this reason and this reason alone. This may thrust the nominee on the horns of a dilemma, but he cannot escape it by pleading judicial ethics. "[I]f you say one thing, you upset my friends and colleagues on that side. If you say the other, you upset those of us on this side. But the people are entitled to know."

A CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll conducted after the confirmation hearings shows that 54 percent of the American people support Judge Alito?s appointment. But when asked about their support if they became convinced Alito would overturn Roe, opinions dramatically shifted: from 54 percent in favor, to 56 percent against his confirmation.

The people?s "right to know" is therefore central to the confirmation process. So, it is hard to understand why Democratic senators on the Judiciary Committee were not trumpeting the Supreme Court?s Minnesota decision from the Capitol Dome. Whatever the reason, the effect has been to keep the people in the dark about a constitutional right to know a nominee?s legal views.

The "Advice and Consent" function of the Senate mandated by Article II of the Constitution means informed consent. For too long, trying to understand how a nominee would shape the fate of millions of Americans has been like reading tea leaves. Today, in light of the Minnesota decision, senators would be violating their constitutional duty under Article II if the Senate were to vote on Judge Alito?s nomination without more information about how he is likely to decide some of the most momentous issues of our time.

The prospect of an unconstitutional confirmation gives rise to "extraordinary circumstances" -- the standard agreed upon by a bipartisan group of 7 Republican and 7 Democratic senators (the so-called Gang of 14) to justify a filibuster.

To defeat a "cloture" motion to end debate, supporters of a filibuster do not actually have to gather 41 votes to defeat the motion; they merely have to persuade enough colleagues to simply abstain from voting so that filibuster opponents do not achieve the 60 votes required for cloture. For example, a 59-29 vote to end debate, with 12 senators abstaining, would not be sufficient to carry a cloture motion, and Judge Alito?s nomination could not be brought to an up-or-down vote.

The abstention option provides the necessary cover for Democratic senators who do not want to participate in a filibuster, but who can be persuaded to at least refrain from denying colleagues the Senate?s more than 200-year-old privilege to speak on an issue for as long as a senator wishes. Respecting that privilege is imperative when, as here, a filibuster is conducted to (1) inform the American people of their First Amendment right to know a nominee?s views, and (2) honor a senator?s duty under Article II to block a judicial appointment that would be unconstitutional.

No answers should mean no confirmation.

Paul Savoy is a former prosecutor and professor of constitutional law, and a past dean of the John F. Kennedy University School of Law.

Copyright 2006 by Paul Savoy

A Little Civil War?

After almost three years' experience on the ground in Iraq, it is inconceivable that the U.S. military is still foundering. So, the only logical conclusion is that the mayhem being created is intentional, a rationale for why the American forces will be required as the monitoring systems and missile bases are being set up. Then, with N.S.A. East esconced in the Green Zone, all but the rotating crew of technicians for the main bases can be withdrawn and Bush can declare "mission accomplished" again. The mission, of course, being to set up a permanent American presence in the Middle East from which to control the flow of communications in the global economy.

******

"Maybe they just need to have their civil war"
Fueling Sectarian Violence in Iraq
By Gareth Porter

Since last summer, the ad-jingle-style centerpiece of the U.S. mission in Iraq, as defined by George Bush, has been: "As Iraqis stand up, we will stand down." In recent months, that "standing up" of Iraqi security forces to gradually replace American occupation troops has become even more important in administration pronouncements on the war. The objective is now accepted as self-evident wisdom in the mainstream media and among the punditocracy, the only question being whether it can be successfully accomplished. The Democratic Party leadership has not challenged this goal in any way, even as Democrats complain that it is simply not being done fast enough or effectively enough.

Given Iraq's well documented descent into sectarian violence in 2005, however, the question that should be asked is not whether the United States can put enough Iraqi troops into the field with enough training; it is whether, in arming and deploying Shiites and Kurds to fight Sunnis, it is actually stoking the fires of sectarian and ethnic civil war.

The administration has gone to great lengths to avoid such questions. When Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, who was, until recently, responsible for training the new Iraqi military, was asked at a briefing last February what the religious-ethnic breakdown of Iraq's security forces might be, he claimed to have no such numbers. He was, however, being disingenuous. The U.S. command may not have had precise figures on the subject, but he certainly knew that the units being sent into largely Sunni cities and towns in the most rebellious parts of Iraq were overwhelmingly, provocatively, Shiite and Kurdish in their make-up.

Petraeus also deliberately misled the reporters at the briefing by stating that "regional forces, both local police and?the Iraqi National Guard ?tend to reflect the ethnic makeup of their community." What he did not say is that this only applied to the Kurdish and Shiite sections of the country. In Sunni cities and towns, the real policing was not being done by local Sunni forces but by Shiite and Kurdish commandos from elsewhere.

Throughout 2005, Bush administration speeches and communications to Congress systematically obscured the fact that the U.S. command was carrying out a battle plan calling for reliance on units filled exclusively, or nearly exclusively, with Shiite and Kurds to occupy Sunni neighborhoods in Baghdad and elsewhere in the "Sunni triangle".

That policy guaranteed the acceleration of already growing tendencies in Iraqi society toward sectarian and ethnic violence -- and possibly toward civil war as well as forms of "ethnic cleansing." Many of the Shiite troops and officers in the military and police commando units of the new Iraqi military are, in fact, motivated by hatred not just of Sunni insurgents but of the Sunni population as a whole. One fine reporter in Iraq, Knight Ridder's Tom Lasseter has, in fact, explored this new Iraqi reality on the ground in ways no other American reporter has thought to do. Last October, he "embedded" himself for a week in a unit of Lt. Gen. Petraeus's new military, the all-Shiite 1st Brigade, the first Iraqi unit to be given its own area of operations and often considered the template for the future of the army. What he discovered was a purely sectarian outfit obsessed with revenge against Sunnis. His is a chilling account of the violent Shiite hatred of Sunnis that drives Iraqi military operations in Sunni neighborhoods and essentially guarantees that the insurgency will only grow fiercer in response.

Lasseter found that Shiite officers and troops want to inflict death on a far broader swath of Sunnis than simply those insurgents they can identify. Their motive is clearly to intimidate the Sunni population into silence and acquiescence, while at the same time satisfying their own lust for revenge for past acts of oppression by the formerly powerful Sunni minority. One sergeant told Lasseter that, in 2006, the Shiites would "do what Saddam did -- start with five people from each neighborhood and kill them in the streets and go from there."

In December, Lasseter traveled to Kurdish areas of Iraq where he reported:

"Kurdish leaders have inserted more than 10,000 of their militia members into Iraqi army divisions in northern Iraq to lay the groundwork to swarm south, seize the oil-rich city of Kirkuk and possibly half of Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city, and secure the borders of an independent Kurdistan? The interviews with Kurdish troops? suggested that as the American military transfers more bases and areas of control to Iraqi units, it may be handing the nation to militias that are bent more on advancing ethnic and religious interests than on defeating the insurgency and preserving national unity."

His eyewitness accounts make it clear that sending either Shiite or Kurdish units into Sunni neighborhoods is likely only to create a dynamic of retaliation and revenge that will quickly spread to the larger communities on both sides. This, then, is the open secret of the Bush administration's present policy toward what has already become a dirty war on a massive scale.

The Roots of a Future Civil War?

As is true of practically everything about the U.S. occupation of Iraq, the strategy of pitting Shiites and Kurds against Sunnis was not the result of careful planning. Its origins were, in fact, in a purely military response to the most important turning point in the occupation of Iraq -- the complete collapse of Sunni security forces in which the U.S. command had placed such high hopes.

During an April 2004 offensive launched by the insurgents, most Sunni military units simply disappeared overnight. According to a June 2004 Government Accounting Office report, the number of Civil Defense Corps troops in Western Iraq, which included the Sunni strongholds of Fallujah and Ramadi, was estimated to have fallen by over 80% -- from 5,600 to about 1,000 -- largely because of "collective desertion of units."

The US command's response to this debacle was a decision that summer to create a special "Fallujah Brigade." It consisted of 1,600 Sunni troops recruited to patrol that restive city, led by the former Baathist officer whom the Americans had picked to head Iraq's intelligence service. This force was meant to be the alternative to a bloody U.S. assault on Fallujah that the U.S. military preferred to avoid. But the brigade collaborated with the insurgents in Fallujah, turning over to them the 800 assault rifles, 27 pickup trucks, and 50 radios provided by the U.S. command. The Fallujah Brigade was quietly dissolved by the command in September 2004.

In November 2004, when the insurgents launched their next offensive in Mosul and Ramadi, there was yet another mass defection, this time in Mosul. The Sunni police force largely went over to the other side. Brig. Gen. Carter Ham, the commander of US troops in Northern Iraq told reporters that 3,200 of the 4,000 policemen in Mosul helped the insurgents to weapons, radios, police uniforms, and 50 police cars before leaving their posts. Ham admitted that there had been "premeditated infiltration" of police recruits by the insurgents. In Ramadi, the Americans were so distrustful of the Sunni police that they unilaterally disbanded the entire force when the insurgent offensive began.

In the third week of November, with Mosul in insurgent hands, the U.S. turned to its Kurdish allies for help. It brought in nearly 2,000 Kurdish peshmurga militiamen to control Mosul, and five battalions of predominantly Shiite troops, with a smattering of Kurds, to police Ramadi. Hundreds of Shiite troops from Baghdad and southern areas of the country were also sent into Samara and Fallujah.

This Shiite and Kurdish occupation of Sunni cities, which has only grown more pronounced, was certain to intensify sectarian-ethnic hatreds. In Mosul, there was already a long history of intense animosity between the Kurdish parties and Baath party loyalists who made up a large part of the Sunni population of the city. The Sunni Arab majority were afraid the Kurds planned to take over the city and add it to Kurdistan. There was also talk among Arab residents about taking revenge against Kurdish militiamen who had been blamed for widespread looting in the city immediately after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

Once they had consolidated control over Mosul and the surrounding area, the Kurds imposed what essentially was a police state on the Sunni majority in Nineveh province. Anthony Shadid and Steve Fainaru of the Washington Post reported last August that Kurdish security forces had abducted hundreds of Sunni Arabs and Turkmen from the city, transferring them to secret prisons in Kurdistan. The Post quoted a June State Department memo noting that Kurdish abductions had "greatly exacerbated tensions along purely ethnic lines."

American officers in Mosul, however, were not concerned with ethnic strife but with winning a war, or at least staunching their losses, and the peshmerga seemed like the only effective Iraqi instrument in sight for doing so. "They're well-organized, fierce and get the job done," a U.S. company commander in Mosul rhapsodized about them.

Later, the Kurdish militiamen would be joined by the fierce Shiite "Wolf Brigade," whose founder reportedly considered the Sunni members of the Association of Muslim Clerics to be "infidels". That unit tortured innocent Sunnis to force them to confess to being part of insurgent organizations -- confessions which the local authorities recognized as having been coerced once the Brigade left the city. Nevertheless, in December 2005, NBC's Richard Engel reported that the Wolf Brigade was considered to have been effective in Mosul.

The US command still prefers Shiites and Kurds to police Sunni cities and towns. According to journalist Chris Allbritton, for instance, members of the city council in Fallujah requested the responsible U.S. commander to allow local people to replace Shiite units from the south that are still occupying the city and substituting for the police. The Americans refused, charging that local officials were still "turning a blind eye to insurgent activities." In November, local Sunni leaders in Ramadi demanded that U.S. troops be withdrawn from the city and be replaced with security forces raised by local tribal leaders. Instead, the U.S. command sent the Wolf Brigade into Ramadi in advance of the December elections.

Not only the Embassy but the U.S. military was quite conscious of the serious consequences of its sectarian-ethnic strategy. Last May, for instance, Washington Post reporter Ann Scott Tyson wrote that "U.S. military analysts" conceded that, "by pitting Iraqis from different religious sects, ethnic groups and tribes against each other," the U.S. strategy "aggravates the underlying fault lines in Iraqi society, heightening the prospects of civil strife."

With the Sunni community even more overwhelmingly behind the anti-occupation armed struggle than was the case a year ago, the U.S. command feels it has no choice but to depend on just such sectarian or ethnic units to help put down the Sunni insurgency. But even if they do not explicitly admit it, U.S. commanders know that this is a brutal and cynical policy. Thus, they have had to find a way to justify it to themselves. In October, a "senior military official in Baghdad" was quoted in another Tom Lasseter piece saying, "Maybe they just need to have their civil war. In this part of the world it's almost a way of life." That official was unconsciously echoing the words of General William Westmoreland, the former commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam, who rationalized the hundreds of thousands of deaths inflicted on the Vietnamese by the U.S. intervention in an infamous statement: "The Oriental doesn't put the same high price on life as does a Westerner... Life is cheap in the Orient."

There is no doubt that the history of violence among the Sunnis, the Shiites, and the Kurds made for strong tendencies toward sectarian-ethnic violence in post-Saddam Iraq. But the fact that a senior American military official would resort to such a racist explanation to evade responsibility for creating civil-war conditions in Iraq only underlines the depths to which the United States has descended.

Gareth Porter, a historian and political analyst, now writes regularly on Iraq. He is the author of several books on the Vietnam War, most recently Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam.

Copyright 2005 Gareth Porter

Double No on Alito

FROM THE BALTIMORE SUN -

Alito fails the test
By HOWARD DEAN
Originally published January 9, 2006
It's been widely acknowledged that President Bush had a bad year in 2005.

One of the problems America faces as a result is the White House's
willingness to make decisions based on what benefits the administration
politically rather than what's right for America.
The nomination of Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. to replace Supreme Court
Justice Sandra Day O'Connor is just one example of this. The president
hopes to make up ground with his right-wing base instead of appointing
someone who will have the confidence of a wide range of Americans.

Over the past few months, as we've learned more about Judge Alito's core
beliefs and the kind of justice he would be, it has become clear why the
Senate should reject his nomination.

Judge Alito's decisions, such as his attacks on the Family Medical Leave
protections and his willingness to excuse the grossest form of sexual
harassment in the workplace based on technicalities, have harmed working
people.

Judge Alito has also attacked Americans' personal liberties by approving
the inappropriate strip search of a 10-year-old child and defending the
construction of all-white juries by unscrupulous prosecutors trying black
defendants.

A Supreme Court justice must show impartiality and fairness. Judge Alito
does not pass that test.

Further complicating Judge Alito's nomination is a lack of credibility
that has emerged as he has tried to distance himself from his record and
prior statements. He has supported government overreaching into women's
personal lives. He has memory lapses regarding membership in the
ultraconservative group Concerned Alumni of Princeton, and he failed to
keep his word when he did not recuse himself from a major Vanguard mutual
funds case despite pledging under oath - during confirmation hearings for
his 3rd U.S. Circuit Court judgeship - to do so.

On Nov. 3, The Boston Globe reported Judge Alito held $390,000 worth of
Vanguard mutual funds during the time he ruled for the company in a civil
case before him. These facts are not in dispute. When the chief
administrative judge for the circuit reviewed the case on complaint, he
vacated Judge Alito's decision and assigned the case to another panel.
Judge Alito complained vigorously. He has since failed to offer a credible
explanation about why he broke his promise to recuse himself from the case.

Every American should shudder at the prospect of an ethically tone-deaf
judge sitting on the one institution in Washington not yet in the pocket
of the extremists who comprise the right wing of the Republican Party.

A culture of corruption, arrogance of power and insensitivity to the
appearance of conflict of interest has plagued key Republican
officeholders for the past five years. This includes Republican Senate
Leader Bill Frist's ownership of stock that he falsely claimed was in a
blind trust; the repeated evidence that Halliburton, formerly run by Vice
President Dick Cheney, benefited from no-bid contracts in Iraq; and
revelations that our government may be illegally spying on Americans and
paying journalists for positive stories.

House Judiciary Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. has traveled the
world, racking up $177,000 worth of lobbyist-funded trips. Tom DeLay has
been indicted on money-laundering charges. Republican super-lobbyist Jack
Abramoff pleaded guilty to three federal criminal charges. Karl Rove still
has a security clearance, despite leaking the identity of a CIA agent. The
vice president's chief of staff has been indicted on charges that he lied
to a grand jury. We need honesty and backbone in Washington, most
especially on the court.

I oppose Judge Alito's nomination. I want to be proud of our government
again. That can only happen if the rule of law, and the integrity that it
requires, are clearly foremost in the consideration of every decision made
by the court.

There are simply too many writings in Judge Alito's record that show a
willingness to favor government power over individual liberties.

How can we believe that he will put aside his personal beliefs and keep an
open mind when he already has broken one promise made to the American
people?

America needs strength now, and America needs a Supreme Court where
personal and political considerations do not appear to influence any
decision at any time. Judge Alito's nomination must be rejected. And
President Bush needs to nominate someone to the court who will bring us
together, not continue to drive us apart.

Wifeknapping--DoD approved

If nothing else, here's clear evidence that the so-called "insurgents" are nothing more than Iraqi citizens. Since their children seem not to have been taken away, "wife-knapping" seems the appropriate term.

Documents Show Army Seized Wives as Tactic
By Charles J. Hanley
The Associated Press

Friday 27 January 2006

The US Army in Iraq has at least twice seized and jailed the wives of suspected insurgents in hopes of "leveraging" their husbands into surrender, US military documents show.

In one case, a secretive task force locked up the young mother of a nursing baby, a US intelligence officer reported. In the case of a second detainee, one American colonel suggested to another that they catch her husband by tacking a note to the family's door telling him "to come get his wife."

The issue of female detentions in Iraq has taken on a higher profile since kidnappers seized American journalist Jill Carroll on Jan. 7 and threatened to kill her unless all Iraqi women detainees are freed.

The US military on Thursday freed five of what it said were 11 women among the 14,000 detainees currently held in the 2 1/2-year-old insurgency. All were accused of "aiding terrorists or planting explosives," but an Iraqi government commission found that evidence was lacking.

Iraqi human rights activist Hind al-Salehi contends that US anti-insurgent units, coming up empty-handed in raids on suspects' houses, have at times detained wives to pressure men into turning themselves in.

Iraq's deputy justice minister, Busho Ibrahim Ali, dismissed such claims, saying hostage-holding was a tactic used under the ousted Saddam Hussein dictatorship, and "we are not Saddam." A US command spokesman in Baghdad, Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, said only Iraqis who pose an "imperative threat" are held in long-term US-run detention facilities.

But documents describing two 2004 episodes tell a different story as far as short-term detentions by local US units. The documents are among hundreds the Pentagon has released periodically under US court order to meet an American Civil Liberties Union request for information on detention practices.

In one memo, a civilian Pentagon intelligence officer described what happened when he took part in a raid on an Iraqi suspect's house in Tarmiya, northwest of Baghdad, on May 9, 2004. The raid involved Task Force (TF) 6-26, a secretive military unit formed to handle high-profile targets.

"During the pre-operation brief it was recommended by TF personnel that if the wife were present, she be detained and held in order to leverage the primary target's surrender," wrote the 14-year veteran officer.

He said he objected, but when they raided the house the team leader, a senior sergeant, seized her anyway.

"The 28-year-old woman had three young children at the house, one being as young as six months and still nursing," the intelligence officer wrote. She was held for two days and was released after he complained, he said.

Like most names in the released documents, the officer's signature is blacked out on this for-the-record memorandum about his complaint.

Of this case, command spokesman Johnson said he could not judge, months later, the factors that led to the woman's detention.

The second episode, in June 2004, is found in sketchy detail in e-mail exchanges among six US Army colonels, discussing an undisclosed number of female detainees held in northern Iraq by the Stryker Brigade of the 2nd Infantry Division.

The first message, from a military police colonel, advised staff officers of the US northern command that the Iraqi police would not take control of the jailed women without charges being brought against them.

In a second e-mail, a command staff officer asked an officer of the unit holding the women, "What are you guys doing to try to get the husband - have you tacked a note on the door and challenged him to come get his wife?"

Two days later, the brigade's deputy commander advised the higher command, "As each day goes by, I get more input that these gals have some info and/or will result in getting the husband."

He went on, "These ladies fought back extremely hard during the original detention. They have shown indications of deceit and misinformation."

The command staff colonel wrote in reply, referring to a commanding general, "CG wants the husband."

The released e-mails stop there, and the women's eventual status could not be immediately determined.

Of this episode, Johnson said, "It is clear the unit believed the females detained had substantial knowledge of insurgent activity and warranted being held."

Hamas Surprise

The print edition of the Boston Globe got it wrong. By mid-morning, the story had disappeared, even from the Today's Globe section. So, in the interest of historical accuracy, here are the two versions.

Close Fatah win seen in Palestinian vote
Exit polls show inroads by Hamas
(By Anne Barnard, Globe Staff)
Gaza City, Gaza Strip--The militant group Hamas was on track to win more than a third of the vote yesterday in Palestinians' first parliamentary elections in 10 years, according to exit polls, ending the decades-long political monopoly of the ruling Fatah party.
The surveys of voters showed Fatah heading for a narrow victory, with 42 percent to 46 percent of the vote, and Hamas winning 35 percent to 40 percent in the peaceful balloting.
[...]

and then-----

In stunning upset, Hamas seen as victor
(By Anne Barnard, Globe Staff)
The militant group Hamas won a majority of the seats in the Palestinian elections, a stunning victory that threatens to derail the Middle East peace process.
[...]

****
Not only does it look like the exit polls were wrong, but while Fatah winning was characterized as a peaceful event, the Hamas success is portrayed as a threat to peace. It's probable that Anne Barnard has no axe to grind, but her reporting can't be characterized as objective.

Electronic Home Invasion

The Bush Administration is bragging about its "domestic surveillance" program as if a white-gloved Martha Stewart were coming to check out American's dusting habits.

In fact, what's been going on is nothing short of an electronic home invasion whose criminality doesn't evaporate just because it's government agents who are doing it.

The line between the criminal and the lawman is often thin. In this case, the lawmen have crossed the line en masse and it's way past time to rein them in. Time to impeach the main mobster and indict the operative.

Kickback Mountain

Which State Will be First?

An impeachment resolution from a state.

Mr. Speaker, I believe that the impeachment of a president by this House is a question of privilege. I have made a joint resolution adopted by the legislature of the State of ______, a part of the resolution which I desire to submit to this House for its adoption. In pursuance of this joint resolution of the legislature of the State that I have the honor in part to represent, I impeach George W. Bush, president of the United States, of high crimes and misdemeanors; the resolution of which I have prepared in accordance with former proceedings of this House in like cases:

Be it resolved by the legislature of the State of ________that
Whereas Section 603 of the United States House Rules for the 109th Congress permits the inception of impeachment proceedings by charges transmitted from the legislature of a state; and
Whereas George W. Bush, President of the United States, has so conducted himself and his administration as to cause the people of the State to doubt his integrity and to believe that his official actions as president are susceptible to corrupt influences and have been so corruptly influenced; and
Whereas it appears that George W. Bush is, having, on his own admission, repeatedly directed unwarranted surveillance of U. S. persons, guilty of open and defiant violations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of the United States, which requires court approval for national security wiretaps and sets up a special procedure for obtaining it; and
Whereas it also appears that George W. Bush has, in his comments and his signing statements pertaining to torture and degrading treatment and rendition of prisoners, shown great scorn for our international treaties, ratified by the Senate, which are the Law of the Land, and our obligations under the United Nations Charter and the Geneva Conventions; and
Whereas the reputation of George W. Bush as a corrupt and imperious president is very injurious to the interests of the entire State of ______ and his constant insistence on his right to violate the law causes great annoyance and expense to citizens in his country and sacrifice of their rights; and
Whereas it also appears that the said George W. Bush is not only a corrupt president, but that he is ignorant and incompetent, and that his presidential opinions do not command the respect or confidence of the people; and
Whereas, it appears that George Walker Bush knew or had reason to know of a decision by the Secretary of Defense to divert funds appropriated for action in Afghanistan to develop plans for action in Iraq, and failed to prevent this action even though said action was contrary to appropriations as enacted by the Congress; and
Whereas, it appears that George Walker Bush communicated to the Congress, as per the requirements of Public Law No: 107-243 (Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002) that military action against Iraq was justified because Iraq gave aid and comfort to the perpetrators of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001; even though George Walker Bush knew the evidence that supposedly supported this determination was false and fabricated; and
Whereas, it appears that George Walker Bush knew or had reason to know of a decision by the Secretary of Defense to divert funds appropriated for action in Afghanistan to develop plans for action in Iraq, and failed to prevent this action even though said action was contrary to appropriations as enacted by the Congress; and
Whereas the administration of the United States' invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq has resulted in nearly every instance in the waste of the assets of all countries involved, by being absorbed in unnecessary costs, expenses, and allowances, as a result of improperly granted contracts and insufficient oversight, to the great wrong and injury of creditors and others, until such administration is, in effect, legalized robbery and a stench in the nostrils of all good people:
Be it resolved by the house of representatives of the State of _____ (the senate concurring), That our Senators and Representatives in the United States Congress be, and they are hereby, requested to cause to be instituted in the Congress of the United States proper proceedings for the investigation of the proceedings of the Executive Branch by George W. Bush as President of the United States, and of his acts and doings as such, to the end that he may be impeached and removed from such office.
Be it also resolved, That the foregoing charges are hereby being transmitted by the legislature of the state of ______ to the United States Congress on this ___ day of ______, 2006.
Be it resolved further, That the secretary of state of the State of ______ be, and is hereby, instructed to certify to each Senator and Representative in the Congress of the United States, under the great seal of the State of ______, a copy of this resolution and its unanimous adoption by the legislature of the State of ______.

********************************
STATE OF ____, OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY OF STATE.
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, State of ____, ss:

I, ____, secretary of state of the State of ___, hereby certify that the foregoing is a true and exact copy of the senate joint resolution in reference to George W. Bush, President of the United States, passed by the legislature of ____, session of 2006, and on file in this office.
Given under my hand and the great seal of the State of ____ at
____, the capital, this the __th day of ___, A. D. 2006.

________, Secretary of State

Section 1983

It seems worthy of note that Section 1983 deals with the "deprivation of federal constitutional rights," a broader category than the "civil right" which both Roberts and Alito seem to consider as a maximum.

http://www.cfif.org/htdocs/legal_issues/legal_updates/us_supreme_court/suing_government.htm

Let me throw out a rather radical thought here--that the reason African Americans continue to be resented is because they continue to insist on the civil rights of all people. Not content with no longer being slaves, African Americans insist on full citizenship and all the benefits that go along with it.
Whether or not citizens have rights is still an important issue. Let me refer you to an article that references Section 1983 which, in essence, made public officials liable for their acts as public officials if they could be proven to have deprived someone of their rights.

The article I am referencing was published in 2002, but the issue has been festering because prior to these rulings public officials were considered immune from prosecution for decisions and actions they took as part of their official positions. In other words, being a public official made one special, better than the ordinary citizen and it's the people who keep carping about civil rights who've brought about this change. "Equality" is a laudable principle, but in practice it's not appreciated all that much.

While I'm at it, let me just share my hypothesis that slavery was actually rejected by the northern states because the workers in the first example of industrial agriculture--i.e. the plantation slaves--had set a bad example by negotiating benefits, hours of work, age of retirement, and child-labor regulations. That this aspect of plantation agriculture has not gotten much attention is not surprising. The people who wrote the histories prefered to focus on the moral high ground or, if they looked at the economics, to conclude that the plantations were not sufficiently profitable to compete with foreign produce. In fact, the reason the plantations ended up in brankruptcy courts was because they were poorly managed and their owners took out too much money to support an extravagant life-style. Which is, of course, the very problem we see in our corporate sector today.

Anyway, read the piece on Section 1893 and see what you think. I'd hazard a guess that the exodus from public sector service is in part a consequence of the immunity from liability having been lost.
People were willing to work for lower salaries as long as they felt they were in charge and their decisions could not be challenged.

*****
U.S. Supreme Court

Suing Government: Courts Part the Skirts of Qualified Immunity

Government entities and their insurance carriers should take note of a sea change in qualified immunity jurisprudence. The defense of qualified immunity to constitutional rights violations is increasingly and, in many instances, appropriately coming under attack since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against defendant officials last June in a case involving a prisoner punished by being lashed to a hitching post. Just last week, the First, Fifth, Sixth, Eighth and Eleventh Circuits each decided cases involving constitutional rights claims, and in each such case where the affirmative defense of qualified immunity was raised, the "state actor" was not entitled to its protection.

If that statistic isn?t enough to raise the neck hairs of an insurance executive, there?s more. Also, last week, the U.S. Supreme Court shipped back to the Eleventh Circuit a civil rights case against two police officers and the largely self-insured city of Boynton Beach, Florida with instructions to reconsider the case in light of its June ruling. In that ruling, Hope v. Pelzer, the Supreme Court held that the critical issue concerning qualified immunity is whether the defendant official had "fair notice" that his conduct was unconstitutional.

Prior to the Hope ruling, the Eleventh Circuit had reversed a federal jury award of $6 million to a shooting victim, ruling that the police officers were entitled to qualified immunity for their actions because no similar case had been tried. As a result, the officers could not have known what they were doing was wrong, the Eleventh Circuit reasoned in granting them qualified immunity. The Supreme Court?s order effectively puts the officers and the city back on the liability hook.

Section 1983 is the federal statutory cause of action that allows a person to sue a government officer or entity for a deprivation of federal constitutional rights. Section 1983 states that "[e]very person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory or the District of Columbia, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress." 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (1994). To recover damages against a government official under section 1983, a plaintiff must establish that a constitutional right exists, that the defendant violated that right under color of state law, and that the defendant's acts proximately caused the plaintiff's injury.

A public official who engaged in constitutional wrongdoing may nonetheless avoid liability by invoking the affirmative defense of qualified immunity. Qualified immunity insulates officials from liability for conduct that "does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known." Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818 (1982). The Court later stated that: "The contours of the right must be sufficiently clear that a reasonable official would understand that what he is doing violates that right. This is not to say that an official action is protected by qualified immunity unless the very action in question has previously been held unlawful ... but it is to say that in the light of pre-existing law the unlawfulness must be apparent." Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635, 640 (1987) (citations omitted).

As a practical matter, qualified immunity led to the dismissal of a significant percentage of civil rights cases against public officials, until the Hope decision threw up its major roadblock. In December, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Chavez v. Martinez (No. 01-1444) and address whether the Ninth Circuit was correct in holding that the conduct of an officer making a stop and use of deadly force in a narcotics case was so offensive as to deny him qualified immunity. Government actors, their insurers and those of us concerned about government disregard for constitutional rights must closely follow this case as it provides another opportunity for the Court to reduce blanket use of the qualified immunity defense.

No Cut and Run

TO THE AMERICAN MEDIA-------

Please, this time when we impeach George Bush don't let him cut and run. It was a big mistake to let Nixon just walk away, maintaining the illusion that he was in charge and leaving in place the peopel who betrayed him and the nation.
Having gotten away with their traitorous behavior once, these miscreants have been plotting mayhem and destruction for the last thirty years. It's time they were exposed to the light of day and driven from the seats of power they occupy.
Never mind that poor George's just been doing what he's told. If he had an ounce of integrity, he wouldn't have gone along with the scam. No, he'll just have to stick it out.

They Asked for It

The clearest sign that the Bush Administration has sunk to the level of the common thug is the claim that Congress "asked" for the American people to be spied on. Anybody who's sat in a criminal court knows all about the "she asked for it" refrain. Whether it comes out of the mouth of an accused rapist or the run-of-the-mill car thief to whom total strangers have entrusted their cars to be deposited in another state, the assertion that he had permission, incredible as it seems on its face, is part of the criminal's stock-in-trade. That's because, in most cases, it's difficult to prove what someone didn't do.

In this case, however, there's a public record--documents to demonstrate that while the Administration may have wanted and asked for unlimited powers to continue spying as they had been doing for some time, the Congress rejected that request and just said "no."

So, why didn't they just come back and ask again? Why pretend that "no" meant "yes" and just continue doing what they wanted? Probably because they didn't want to call attention to the fact that what was being asked for was permission, after the fact, for doing what they'd been doing on the sly all along.

It's one thing to have a particular activity left out; it's another to ask for specific permission and have it denied. Think of the teen who borrows the family car on a Friday night and drives it cross country. While he's got a legitimate claim to be in possession of the car, unlike the afore-mentioned thug, the claim that a three-day excursion was authorized is a stretch. Of course, whether or not the teen is called to account depends on whether parental authority invokes the assistance of the state and makes the case that this was a theft.

So, what's the Congress going to do? If nothing else, such thuggish behavior should alert law-and-order Republicans that their golden boy needs to be called on the carpet, for once. Spying on the American people is way more serious than a college prank or driving drunk.

Attributes of freedom

Rather than calling them rights, which are subject to being retracted, I prefer to refer to core attributes which define a free man or woman. So far, I've fixed on five of these, without which an individual cannot be said to exist.

They are:

Privacy
Integrity
Mobility
Observation
Expression

What's particularly intriguing about these attributes is that they make up a self-regulating and self-limiting system. That is, for example, if privacy is to be realized then the individual needs to exercise restraint in his expressive behavior. Ostentatious public display, whether by word or deed, is inconsistent with being ignored and invites a violation of privacy concerns.

Similarly, the heedless pursuit of mobility without regard to the physical limits of the environment puts individual integrity (wholeness) in immediate jeopardy. And misdirected observation in combination with automobility is almost certain to have a disasterous result. There is no privacy for the dead.

All of which leads me to suggest that perhaps the increasing violation of these attributes on the part of American society, ostensibly under the rubric of keeping its members free, safe and secure, is actually having the opposite effect. Perhaps the failure to recognize and support those essential attributes is responsible for the loss of self-restraint and the ability to keep oneself safe.

On the other hand, when you think about it, it's fairly obvious that freedom and security are contradictory goals. A secured individual is one that is tied down, locked up, or otherwise restrained. A secure individual is by definition not free. The government can call being sequestered behind gates and going around with identity cards hanging from their necks freedom, but it isn't.

Sell Out? cont'd

Perhaps the most telling word Bill Clinton used in his speech was "optimist." Were he not so adept at using the right words, one might think he mis-spoke and really meant to say "opportunist." Because, of course, that's what the current occupant of the White House is. He's an opportunist par excellence.

"Optimist" is the word George W. Bush uses to describe himself. It is, like so many other words that have come out of his mouth, a lie. There's no reason for him to expect that anything will turn out well, since, as an opportunist, distress of one sort or another (nature or man-made) is what fuels his expectations for the future.

On the other hand, it's quite possible for an individual to be totally lacking in empathy for his fellow man. That would explain why the drowning of New Orleans represents an "opportunity" to get rid of a population that had resisted forced relocation for some time. It would also explain the peculiar logic which demands that the deaths of many be 'honored' by the deaths of many more.

Why a man whose reputation for empathy for his fellow man is undisputed would participate in such a charade presents us with a conundrum. After all, it's not like Bill Clinton's tenure as President was made more successful by the actions of Republicans and the Bush cronies. If he's simply grateful not to have been destroyed entirely, that's sad. If he thinks his loyalty will be rewarded with success for his spouse, he should probably have a chat with Saddam Hussein, who knows as well as anyone that the Bushes are not to be trusted.

Bill Clinton, Sell Out?

When did Bill Clinton sell his soul to the Bush cabal and for what? What prompts this question? Well, it's been apparent ever since he left office that Clinton is in thrall to George Herbert Walker Bush. It's almost as if he's found a long-lost father, but that's not the whole of it. In a recent speech, at the Academy of Achievement, Clinton went so far as to mouthe the current Republican party line in praising "the American people's consistent preference for optimistic leadership in the nation's highest office."

Since Clinton didn't go on to make the point that the American people obviously didn't get their preference in either 2000 or 2004, we have to assume that the reference was intended to suggest that the current occupant was elected for his optimism and his leadership--an assessment that has no basis in fact.

The fact is that George W. Bush not only wasn't elected either time, but it took an extraordinary effort and manipulation of the electoral process to make it appear that he was the country's choice. While certainly not complete, the following gives a good sense of effort expended:

1) An all-out assault of slander and mis-information by various groups targeting the other candidates.
2) An absence of support for the Democratic candidates by the President (people blame Gore for not "using" Bill in his campaign, but what if Bill never offered)
3) A concerted campaign of electoral fraud.
4) A concerted campaign to reduce the vote among targeted populations.
5) Subversion of the vote reporting system under the control of the corporate media.
6) Subversion of the vote tally in several states.
7) Spurious legal challenges in the courts.
8) Delay tactics to run out the clock and create a "constitutional crisis"--i.e. no executive to swear in.
9) Intervention by the Supreme Court in a matter that should have been sent back to the State of Florida.

And then, of course, there was the total absence of any response by Clinton's Department of Justice to the disenfranchisement of minority voters in Florida and other states--strategies which were well known long before the election and could have triggered a federal response. But, Bill Clinton did nothing.

Why? Who and what bought his silence? Was it a promise during his impeachment that he would not actually be convicted and removed from office prematurely? Or did it go back much farther to when the Clinton campaign needed start-up money and Jackson T. Stephens, a long-time supporter of the Bushes, turned on the taps for the erstwhile head of the Democratic Leadership Council? Or was it a promise that, when the Bush dynasty had run it's course, Hillary's long association with the Stephens Group would bear fruit and facilitate a claim on the Oval Office in her own right? Is that why Wesley Clark and the Club for Growth were both dispatched by Stephens, to derail the upstart Howard Dean lest he foil the grand scheme?

Whatever the start point, there's little question that Bill Clinton was complicit in the plot to set down permanent American military roots in the Middle East and that what he aimed to accomplish with threats and not-so-gentle persuasion, the successor was supposed to capture by force--not a likely assignment for Al Gore or, as it has turned out, for John Kerry either.

It doesn't really much matter for what Bill Clinton sold his soul: a fairly intact reputation as a successful Democratic President, despite that damned spot on the dress, or the expectation that his dynastic aspirations would be achieved by the ascendance of his spouse. The American people have been sold out. They've had their privacy and their liberty reduced in the name of national security and, no matter how eloquent Hillary Clinton waxes in support of freedom for the Middle East, the fact remains that the strategy, having been promoted by a lie, is a stain that, like Lady MacBeth, the Senator from New York won't be able to remove.

Dean Speaks

Let's hope this is the beginning of a co-ordinated effort to bring honesty back to Washington. If Vice President Gore's speech on Monday was his "J'accuse," the Democrats plan for Honest Leadership is the prescription for starting the healing process.

Dear Friend,

Many Americans sense that our government has been bought and paid for by powerful interests with deep pockets. They sense that our government's priorities are being dictated by something other than the public interest.

They are right.

Republican leaders in Washington have deliberately and shamelessly built a money-for-influence machine unlike anything our democracy has ever endured. Many Democrats have spoken out about this Republican culture of corruption over the past months and years. But today our party takes a giant step forward -- with a single voice, we demand sweeping reform.

Right now in Washington our leaders in the House and Senate are unveiling the Honest Leadership & Open Government Act -- a set of specific reforms that will completely change business as usual in Washington. Democrats in the House and Senate are united behind this legislation, which aims to fulfill a specific promise: returning power to the American people.

Change in Washington requires more than the support of Democrats in Congress or Republicans scrambling to save face. Making real change will require an outpouring of support for that change by ordinary Americans. Democrats across the country and in the halls of Congress must speak with a single voice.

Please join the demand for honest leadership on this historic day:

www.democrats.org/honesty

It's not just Washington that needs a change.

I am writing to you from Ohio, where this morning I stood with Democratic state legislators demanding the same honesty and accountability in a state where Republican officials have defrauded the public and infected everything from the budget to the voting process with cronyism and corruption.

Our work together building the Democratic Party in all 50 states will ensure that we have a potent, organized political force making the case for clean government everywhere.

The first step is to get everyone you know who is ready to say, "Enough is enough" on board. Sign on to the demand for honest leadership and get the message out in your community:

www.democrats.org/honesty

This fight will not end today, and this demand will not go away. Every single Democrat in Congress will be pressing for this reform legislation, and everyone from governors to mayors to challengers running against incumbent Republicans will be carrying the banner of change.

Today Democrats across the country are united on the way forward. But as we head into this election year, there is one thing you should remember.

This legislation won't change anything for those elected leaders who have already demonstrated that they will break the law in their quest for money and power. One Republican leader has already pleaded guilty to bribery, another has been indicted for money laundering, and still more are under investigation.

We need a higher standard for all of our elected leaders. But when it comes to Republicans who have already broken the law, we need to clean house.

Let's do it together.

Governor Howard Dean, M.D.

Gore to Congress--Investigate

It's long past time that the country come to recognize that in promoting the rights of African Americans, Martin Luther King and all the civil rights workers were advancing the rights of every individual in our land. Thus, it was particularly appropriate that Al Gore challenged the Congress on this day to call the administration to account for violating of the privacy of countless citizens with its program of secret surveillance.

Text of Gore speech, January 16, 2006

RAW STORY
Published: January 16, 2006

Congressman Barr and I have disagreed many times over the years, but we have joined together today with thousands of our fellow citizens-Democrats and Republicans alike-to express our shared concern that America's Constitution is in grave danger.

In spite of our differences over ideology and politics, we are in strong agreement that the American values we hold most dear have been placed at serious risk by the unprecedented claims of the Administration to a truly breathtaking expansion of executive power.

As we begin this new year, the Executive Branch of our government has been caught eavesdropping on huge numbers of American citizens and has brazenly declared that it has the unilateral right to continue without regard to the established law enacted by Congress to prevent such abuses.
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It is imperative that respect for the rule of law be restored.

So, many of us have come here to Constitution Hall to sound an alarm and call upon our fellow citizens to put aside partisan differences and join with us in demanding that our Constitution be defended and preserved.

It is appropriate that we make this appeal on the day our nation has set aside to honor the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who challenged America to breathe new life into our oldest values by extending its promise to all our people.

On this particular Martin Luther King Day, it is especially important to recall that for the last several years of his life, Dr. King was illegally wiretapped-one of hundreds of thousands of Americans whose private communications were intercepted by the U.S. government during this period.

The FBI privately called King the "most dangerous and effective negro leader in the country" and vowed to "take him off his pedestal." The government even attempted to destroy his marriage and blackmail him into committing suicide.

This campaign continued until Dr. King's murder. The discovery that the FBI conducted a long-running and extensive campaign of secret electronic surveillance designed to infiltrate the inner workings of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and to learn the most intimate details of Dr. King's life, helped to convince Congress to enact restrictions on wiretapping.

The result was the Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act (FISA), which was enacted expressly to ensure that foreign intelligence surveillance would be presented to an impartial judge to verify that there is a sufficient cause for the surveillance. I voted for that law during my first term in Congress and for almost thirty years the system has proven a workable and valued means of according a level of protection for private citizens, while permitting foreign surveillance to continue.

Yet, just one month ago, Americans awoke to the shocking news that in spite of this long settled law, the Executive Branch has been secretly spying on large numbers of Americans for the last four years and eavesdropping on "large volumes of telephone calls, e-mail messages, and other Internet traffic inside the United States." The New York Times reported that the President decided to launch this massive eavesdropping program "without search warrants or any new laws that would permit such domestic intelligence collection."

During the period when this eavesdropping was still secret, the President went out of his way to reassure the American people on more than one occasion that, of course, judicial permission is required for any government spying on American citizens and that, of course, these constitutional safeguards were still in place.

But surprisingly, the President's soothing statements turned out to be false. Moreover, as soon as this massive domestic spying program was uncovered by the press, the President not only confirmed that the story was true, but also declared that he has no intention of bringing these wholesale invasions of privacy to an end.

At present, we still have much to learn about the NSA's domestic surveillance. What we do know about this pervasive wiretapping virtually compels the conclusion that the President of the United States has been breaking the law repeatedly and persistently.

A president who breaks the law is a threat to the very structure of our government. Our Founding Fathers were adamant that they had established a government of laws and not men. Indeed, they recognized that the structure of government they had enshrined in our Constitution - our system of checks and balances - was designed with a central purpose of ensuring that it would govern through the rule of law. As John Adams said: "The executive shall never exercise the legislative and judicial powers, or either of them, to the end that it may be a government of laws and not of men."

An executive who arrogates to himself the power to ignore the legitimate legislative directives of the Congress or to act free of the check of the judiciary becomes the central threat that the Founders sought to nullify in the Constitution - an all-powerful executive too reminiscent of the King from whom they had broken free. In the words of James Madison, "the accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."

Thomas Paine, whose pamphlet, "On Common Sense" ignited the American Revolution, succinctly described America's alternative. Here, he said, we intended to make certain that "the law is king."

Vigilant adherence to the rule of law strengthens our democracy and strengthens America. It ensures that those who govern us operate within our constitutional structure, which means that our democratic institutions play their indispensable role in shaping policy and determining the direction of our nation. It means that the people of this nation ultimately determine its course and not executive officials operating in secret without constraint.

The rule of law makes us stronger by ensuring that decisions will be tested, studied, reviewed and examined through the processes of government that are designed to improve policy. And the knowledge that they will be reviewed prevents over-reaching and checks the accretion of power.

A commitment to openness, truthfulness and accountability also helps our country avoid many serious mistakes. Recently, for example, we learned from recently classified declassified documents that the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which authorized the tragic Vietnam war, was actually based on false information. We now know that the decision by Congress to authorize the Iraq War, 38 years later, was also based on false information. America would have been better off knowing the truth and avoiding both of these colossal mistakes in our history. Following the rule of law makes us safer, not more vulnerable.

The President and I agree on one thing. The threat from terrorism is all too real. There is simply no question that we continue to face new challenges in the wake of the attack on September 11th and that we must be ever-vigilant in protecting our citizens from harm.

Where we disagree is that we have to break the law or sacrifice our system of government to protect Americans from terrorism. In fact, doing so makes us weaker and more vulnerable.

Once violated, the rule of law is in danger. Unless stopped, lawlessness grows. The greater the power of the executive grows, the more difficult it becomes for the other branches to perform their constitutional roles. As the executive acts outside its constitutionally prescribed role and is able to control access to information that would expose its actions, it becomes increasingly difficult for the other branches to police it. Once that ability is lost, democracy itself is threatened and we become a government of men and not laws.

The President's men have minced words about America's laws. The Attorney General openly conceded that the "kind of surveillance" we now know they have been conducting requires a court order unless authorized by statute. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act self-evidently does not authorize what the NSA has been doing, and no one inside or outside the Administration claims that it does. Incredibly, the Administration claims instead that the surveillance was implicitly authorized when Congress voted to use force against those who attacked us on September 11th.

This argument just does not hold any water. Without getting into the legal intricacies, it faces a number of embarrassing facts. First, another admission by the Attorney General: he concedes that the Administration knew that the NSA project was prohibited by existing law and that they consulted with some members of Congress about changing the statute. Gonzalez says that they were told this probably would not be possible. So how can they now argue that the Authorization for the Use of Military Force somehow implicitly authorized it all along? Second, when the Authorization was being debated, the Administration did in fact seek to have language inserted in it that would have authorized them to use military force domestically - and the Congress did not agree. Senator Ted Stevens and Representative Jim McGovern, among others, made statements during the Authorization debate clearly restating that that Authorization did not operate domestically.

When President Bush failed to convince Congress to give him all the power he wanted when they passed the AUMF, he secretly assumed that power anyway, as if congressional authorization was a useless bother. But as Justice Frankfurter once wrote: "To find authority so explicitly withheld is not merely to disregard in a particular instance the clear will of Congress. It is to disrespect the whole legislative process and the constitutional division of authority between President and Congress."

This is precisely the "disrespect" for the law that the Supreme Court struck down in the steel seizure case.

It is this same disrespect for America's Constitution which has now brought our republic to the brink of a dangerous breach in the fabric of the Constitution. And the disrespect embodied in these apparent mass violations of the law is part of a larger pattern of seeming indifference to the Constitution that is deeply troubling to millions of Americans in both political parties.

For example, the President has also declared that he has a heretofore unrecognized inherent power to seize and imprison any American citizen that he alone determines to be a threat to our nation, and that, notwithstanding his American citizenship, the person imprisoned has no right to talk with a lawyer-even to argue that the President or his appointees have made a mistake and imprisoned the wrong person.

The President claims that he can imprison American citizens indefinitely for the rest of their lives without an arrest warrant, without notifying them about what charges have been filed against them, and without informing their families that they have been imprisoned.

At the same time, the Executive Branch has claimed a previously unrecognized authority to mistreat prisoners in its custody in ways that plainly constitute torture in a pattern that has now been documented in U.S. facilities located in several countries around the world.

Over 100 of these captives have reportedly died while being tortured by Executive Branch interrogators and many more have been broken and humiliated. In the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, investigators who documented the pattern of torture estimated that more than 90 percent of the victims were innocent of any charges.

This shameful exercise of power overturns a set of principles that our nation has observed since General Washington first enunciated them during our Revolutionary War and has been observed by every president since then - until now. These practices violate the Geneva Conventions and the International Convention Against Torture, not to mention our own laws against torture.

The President has also claimed that he has the authority to kidnap individuals in foreign countries and deliver them for imprisonment and interrogation on our behalf by autocratic regimes in nations that are infamous for the cruelty of their techniques for torture.

Some of our traditional allies have been shocked by these new practices on the part of our nation. The British Ambassador to Uzbekistan - one of those nations with the worst reputations for torture in its prisons - registered a complaint to his home office about the senselessness and cruelty of the new U.S. practice: "This material is useless - we are selling our souls for dross. It is in fact positively harmful."

Can it be true that any president really has such powers under our Constitution? If the answer is "yes" then under the theory by which these acts are committed, are there any acts that can on their face be prohibited? If the President has the inherent authority to eavesdrop, imprison citizens on his own declaration, kidnap and torture, then what can't he do?

The Dean of Yale Law School, Harold Koh, said after analyzing the Executive Branch's claims of these previously unrecognized powers: "If the President has commander-in-chief power to commit torture, he has the power to commit genocide, to sanction slavery, to promote apartheid, to license summary execution."

The fact that our normal safeguards have thus far failed to contain this unprecedented expansion of executive power is deeply troubling. This failure is due in part to the fact that the Executive Branch has followed a determined strategy of obfuscating, delaying, withholding information, appearing to yield but then refusing to do so and dissembling in order to frustrate the efforts of the legislative and judicial branches to restore our constitutional balance.

For example, after appearing to support legislation sponsored by John McCain to stop the continuation of torture, the President declared in the act of signing the bill that he reserved the right not to comply with it.

Similarly, the Executive Branch claimed that it could unilaterally imprison American citizens without giving them access to review by any tribunal. The Supreme Court disagreed, but the President engaged in legal maneuvers designed to prevent the Court from providing meaningful content to the rights of its citizens.

A conservative jurist on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals wrote that the Executive Branch's handling of one such case seemed to involve the sudden abandonment of principle "at substantial cost to the government's credibility before the courts."

As a result of its unprecedented claim of new unilateral power, the Executive Branch has now put our constitutional design at grave risk. The stakes for America's representative democracy are far higher than has been generally recognized.

These claims must be rejected and a healthy balance of power restored to our Republic. Otherwise, the fundamental nature of our democracy may well undergo a radical transformation.

For more than two centuries, America's freedoms have been preserved in part by our founders' wise decision to separate the aggregate power of our government into three co-equal branches, each of which serves to check and balance the power of the other two.

On more than a few occasions, the dynamic interaction among all three branches has resulted in collisions and temporary impasses that create what are invariably labeled "constitutional crises." These crises have often been dangerous and uncertain times for our Republic. But in each such case so far, we have found a resolution of the crisis by renewing our common agreement to live under the rule of law.

The principle alternative to democracy throughout history has been the consolidation of virtually all state power in the hands of a single strongman or small group who together exercise that power without the informed consent of the governed.

It was in revolt against just such a regime, after all, that America was founded. When Lincoln declared at the time of our greatest crisis that the ultimate question being decided in the Civil War was "whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure," he was not only saving our union but also was recognizing the fact that democracies are rare in history. And when they fail, as did Athens and the Roman Republic upon whose designs our founders drew heavily, what emerges in their place is another strongman regime.

There have of course been other periods of American history when the Executive Branch claimed new powers that were later seen as excessive and mistaken. Our second president, John Adams, passed the infamous Alien and Sedition Acts and sought to silence and imprison critics and political opponents.

When his successor, Thomas Jefferson, eliminated the abuses he said: "[The essential principles of our Government] form the bright constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation... [S]hould we wander from them in moments of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty and safety."

Our greatest President, Abraham Lincoln, suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War. Some of the worst abuses prior to those of the current administration were committed by President Wilson during and after WWI with the notorious Red Scare and Palmer Raids. The internment of Japanese Americans during WWII marked a low point for the respect of individual rights at the hands of the executive. And, during the Vietnam War, the notorious COINTELPRO program was part and parcel of the abuses experienced by Dr. King and thousands of others.

But in each of these cases, when the conflict and turmoil subsided, the country recovered its equilibrium and absorbed the lessons learned in a recurring cycle of excess and regret.

There are reasons for concern this time around that conditions may be changing and that the cycle may not repeat itself. For one thing, we have for decades been witnessing the slow and steady accumulation of presidential power. In a global environment of nuclear weapons and cold war tensions, Congress and the American people accepted ever enlarging spheres of presidential initiative to conduct intelligence and counter intelligence activities and to allocate our military forces on the global stage. When military force has been used as an instrument of foreign policy or in response to humanitarian demands, it has almost always been as the result of presidential initiative and leadership. As Justice Frankfurter wrote in the Steel Seizure Case, "The accretion of dangerous power does not come in a day. It does come, however slowly, from the generative force of unchecked disregard of the restrictions that fence in even the most disinterested assertion of authority."

A second reason to believe we may be experiencing something new is that we are told by the Administration that the war footing upon which he has tried to place the country is going to "last for the rest of our lives." So we are told that the conditions of national threat that have been used by other Presidents to justify arrogations of power will persist in near perpetuity.

Third, we need to be aware of the advances in eavesdropping and surveillance technologies with their capacity to sweep up and analyze enormous quantities of information and to mine it for intelligence. This adds significant vulnerability to the privacy and freedom of enormous numbers of innocent people at the same time as the potential power of those technologies. These techologies have the potential for shifting the balance of power between the apparatus of the state and the freedom of the individual in ways both subtle and profound.

Don't misunderstand me: the threat of additional terror strikes is all too real and their concerted efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction does create a real imperative to exercise the powers of the Executive Branch with swiftness and agility. Moreover, there is in fact an inherent power that is conferred by the Constitution to the President to take unilateral action to protect the nation from a sudden and immediate threat, but it is simply not possible to precisely define in legalistic terms exactly when that power is appropriate and when it is not.

But the existence of that inherent power cannot be used to justify a gross and excessive power grab lasting for years that produces a serious imbalance in the relationship between the executive and the other two branches of government.

There is a final reason to worry that we may be experiencing something more than just another cycle of overreach and regret. This Administration has come to power in the thrall of a legal theory that aims to convince us that this excessive concentration of presidential authority is exactly what our Constitution intended.

This legal theory, which its proponents call the theory of the unitary executive but which is more accurately described as the unilateral executive, threatens to expand the president's powers until the contours of the constitution that the Framers actually gave us become obliterated beyond all recognition. Under this theory, the President's authority when acting as Commander-in-Chief or when making foreign policy cannot be reviewed by the judiciary or checked by Congress. President Bush has pushed the implications of this idea to its maximum by continually stressing his role as Commander-in-Chief, invoking it has frequently as he can, conflating it with his other roles, domestic and foreign. When added to the idea that we have entered a perpetual state of war, the implications of this theory stretch quite literally as far into the future as we can imagine.

This effort to rework America's carefully balanced constitutional design into a lopsided structure dominated by an all powerful Executive Branch with a subservient Congress and judiciary is-ironically-accompanied by an effort by the same administration to rework America's foreign policy from one that is based primarily on U.S. moral authority into one that is based on a misguided and self-defeating effort to establish dominance in the world.

The common denominator seems to be based on an instinct to intimidate and control.

This same pattern has characterized the effort to silence dissenting views within the Executive Branch, to censor information that may be inconsistent with its stated ideological goals, and to demand conformity from all Executive Branch employees.

For example, CIA analysts who strongly disagreed with the White House assertion that Osama bin Laden was linked to Saddam Hussein found themselves under pressure at work and became fearful of losing promotions and salary increases.

Ironically, that is exactly what happened to FBI officials in the 1960s who disagreed with J. Edgar Hoover's view that Dr. King was closely connected to Communists. The head of the FBI's domestic intelligence division said that his effort to tell the truth about King's innocence of the charge resulted in he and his colleagues becoming isolated and pressured. "It was evident that we had to change our ways or we would all be out on the street.... The men and I discussed how to get out of trouble. To be in trouble with Mr. Hoover was a serious matter. These men were trying to buy homes, mortgages on homes, children in school. They lived in fear of getting transferred, losing money on their homes, as they usually did. ... so they wanted another memorandum written to get us out of the trouble that we were in."

The Constitution's framers understood this dilemma as well, as Alexander Hamilton put it, "a power over a man's support is a power over his will." (Federalist No. 73)

Soon, there was no more difference of opinion within the FBI. The false accusation became the unanimous view. In exactly the same way, George Tenet's CIA eventually joined in endorsing a manifestly false view that there was a linkage between al Qaeda and the government of Iraq.

In the words of George Orwell: "We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield."

Whenever power is unchecked and unaccountable it almost inevitably leads to mistakes and abuses. In the absence of rigorous accountability, incompetence flourishes. Dishonesty is encouraged and rewarded.

Last week, for example, Vice President Cheney attempted to defend the Administration's eavesdropping on American citizens by saying that if it had conducted this program prior to 9/11, they would have found out the names of some of the hijackers.

Tragically, he apparently still doesn't know that the Administration did in fact have the names of at least 2 of the hijackers well before 9/11 and had available to them information that could have easily led to the identification of most of the other hijackers. And yet, because of incompetence in the handling of this information, it was never used to protect the American people.

It is often the case that an Executive Branch beguiled by the pursuit of unchecked power responds to its own mistakes by reflexively proposing that it be given still more power. Often, the request itself it used to mask accountability for mistakes in the use of power it already has.

Moreover, if the pattern of practice begun by this Administration is not challenged, it may well become a permanent part of the American system. Many conservatives have pointed out that granting unchecked power to this President means that the next President will have unchecked power as well. And the next President may be someone whose values and belief you do not trust. And this is why Republicans as well as Democrats should be concerned with what this President has done. If this President's attempt to dramatically expand executive power goes unquestioned, our constitutional design of checks and balances will be lost. And the next President or some future President will be able, in the name of national security, to restrict our liberties in a way the framers never would have thought possible.

The same instinct to expand its power and to establish dominance characterizes the relationship between this Administration and the courts and the Congress.

In a properly functioning system, the Judicial Branch would serve as the constitutional umpire to ensure that the branches of government observed their proper spheres of authority, observed civil liberties and adhered to the rule of law. Unfortunately, the unilateral executive has tried hard to thwart the ability of the judiciary to call balls and strikes by keeping controversies out of its hands - notably those challenging its ability to detain individuals without legal process -- by appointing judges who will be deferential to its exercise of power and by its support of assaults on the independence of the third branch.

The President's decision to ignore FISA was a direct assault on the power of the judges who sit on that court. Congress established the FISA court precisely to be a check on executive power to wiretap. Yet, to ensure that the court could not function as a check on executive power, the President simply did not take matters to it and did not let the court know that it was being bypassed.

The President's judicial appointments are clearly designed to ensure that the courts will not serve as an effective check on executive power. As we have all learned, Judge Alito is a longtime supporter of a powerful executive - a supporter of the so-called unitary executive, which is more properly called the unilateral executive. Whether you support his confirmation or not - and I do not - we must all agree that he will not vote as an effective check on the expansion of executive power. Likewise, Chief Justice Roberts has made plain his deference to the expansion of executive power through his support of judicial deference to executive agency rulemaking.

And the Administration has supported the assault on judicial independence that has been conducted largely in Congress. That assault includes a threat by the Republican majority in the Senate to permanently change the rules to eliminate the right of the minority to engage in extended debate of the President's judicial nominees. The assault has extended to legislative efforts to curtail the jurisdiction of courts in matters ranging from habeas corpus to the pledge of allegiance. In short, the Administration has demonstrated its contempt for the judicial role and sought to evade judicial review of its actions at every turn.

But the most serious damage has been done to the legislative branch. The sharp decline of congressional power and autonomy in recent years has been almost as shocking as the efforts by the Executive Branch to attain a massive expansion of its power.

I was elected to Congress in 1976 and served eight years in the house, 8 years in the Senate and presided over the Senate for 8 years as Vice President. As a young man, I saw the Congress first hand as the son of a Senator. My father was elected to Congress in 1938, 10 years before I was born, and left the Senate in 1971.

The Congress we have today is unrecognizable compared to the one in which my father served. There are many distinguished Senators and Congressmen serving today. I am honored that some of them are here in this hall. But the legislative branch of government under its current leadership now operates as if it is entirely subservient to the Executive Branch.

Moreover, too many Members of the House and Senate now feel compelled to spend a majority of their time not in thoughtful debate of the issues, but raising money to purchase 30 second TV commercials.

There have now been two or three generations of congressmen who don't really know what an oversight hearing is. In the 70's and 80's, the oversight hearings in which my colleagues and I participated held the feet of the Executive Branch to the fire - no matter which party was in power. Yet oversight is almost unknown in the Congress today.

The role of authorization committees has declined into insignificance. The 13 annual appropriation bills are hardly ever actually passed anymore. Everything is lumped into a single giant measure that is not even available for Members of Congress to read before they vote on it.

Members of the minority party are now routinely excluded from conference committees, and amendments are routinely not allowed during floor consideration of legislation.

In the United States Senate, which used to pride itself on being the "greatest deliberative body in the world," meaningful debate is now a rarity. Even on the eve of the fateful vote to authorize the invasion of Iraq, Senator Robert Byrd famously asked: "Why is this chamber empty?"

In the House of Representatives, the number who face a genuinely competitive election contest every two years is typically less than a dozen out of 435.

And too many incumbents have come to believe that the key to continued access to the money for re-election is to stay on the good side of those who have the money to give; and, in the case of the majority party, the whole process is largely controlled by the incumbent president and his political organization.

So the willingness of Congress to challenge the Administration is further limited when the same party controls both Congress and the Executive Branch.

The Executive Branch, time and again, has co-opted Congress' role, and often Congress has been a willing accomplice in the surrender of its own power.

Look for example at the Congressional role in "overseeing" this massive four year eavesdropping campaign that on its face seemed so clearly to violate the Bill of Rights. The President says he informed Congress, but what he really means is that he talked with the chairman and ranking member of the House and Senate intelligence committees and the top leaders of the House and Senate. This small group, in turn, claimed that they were not given the full facts, though at least one of the intelligence committee leaders handwrote a letter of concern to VP Cheney and placed a copy in his own safe.

Though I sympathize with the awkward position in which these men and women were placed, I cannot disagree with the Liberty Coalition when it says that Democrats as well as Republicans in the Congress must share the blame for not taking action to protest and seek to prevent what they consider a grossly unconstitutional program.

Moreover, in the Congress as a whole-both House and Senate-the enhanced role of money in the re-election process, coupled with the sharply diminished role for reasoned deliberation and debate, has produced an atmosphere conducive to pervasive institutionalized corruption.

The Abramoff scandal is but the tip of a giant iceberg that threatens the integrity of the entire legislative branch of government.

It is the pitiful state of our legislative branch which primarily explains the failure of our vaunted checks and balances to prevent the dangerous overreach by our Executive Branch which now threatens a radical transformation of the American system.

I call upon Democratic and Republican members of Congress today to uphold your oath of office and defend the Constitution. Stop going along to get along. Start acting like the independent and co-equal branch of government you're supposed to be.

But there is yet another Constitutional player whose pulse must be taken and whose role must be examined in order to understand the dangerous imbalance that has emerged with the efforts by the Executive Branch to dominate our constitutional system.

We the people are-collectively-still the key to the survival of America's democracy. We-as Lincoln put it, "[e]ven we here"-must examine our own role as citizens in allowing and not preventing the shocking decay and degradation of our democracy.

Thomas Jefferson said: "An informed citizenry is the only true repository of the public will."

The revolutionary departure on which the idea of America was based was the audacious belief that people can govern themselves and responsibly exercise the ultimate authority in self-government. This insight proceeded inevitably from the bedrock principle articulated by the Enlightenment philosopher John Locke: "All just power is derived from the consent of the governed."

The intricate and carefully balanced constitutional system that is now in such danger was created with the full and widespread participation of the population as a whole. The Federalist Papers were, back in the day, widely-read newspaper essays, and they represented only one of twenty-four series of essays that crowded the vibrant marketplace of ideas in which farmers and shopkeepers recapitulated the debates that played out so fruitfully in Philadelphia.

Indeed, when the Convention had done its best, it was the people - in their various States - that refused to confirm the result until, at their insistence, the Bill of Rights was made integral to the document sent forward for ratification.

And it is "We the people" who must now find once again the ability we once had to play an integral role in saving our Constitution.

And here there is cause for both concern and great hope. The age of printed pamphlets and political essays has long since been replaced by television - a distracting and absorbing medium which sees determined to entertain and sell more than it informs and educates.

Lincoln's memorable call during the Civil War is applicable in a new way to our dilemma today: "We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country."

Forty years have passed since the majority of Americans adopted television as their principal source of information. Its dominance has become so extensive that virtually all significant political communication now takes place within the confines of flickering 30-second television advertisements.

And the political economy supported by these short but expensive television ads is as different from the vibrant politics of America's first century as those politics were different from the feudalism which thrived on the ignorance of the masses of people in the Dark Ages.

The constricted role of ideas in the American political system today has encouraged efforts by the Executive Branch to control the flow of information as a means of controlling the outcome of important decisions that still lie in the hands of the people.

The Administration vigorously asserts its power to maintain the secrecy of its operations. After all, the other branches can't check an abuse of power if they don't know it is happening.

For example, when the Administration was attempting to persuade Congress to enact the Medicare prescription drug benefit, many in the House and Senate raised concerns about the cost and design of the program. But, rather than engaging in open debate on the basis of factual data, the Administration withheld facts and prevented the Congress from hearing testimony that it sought from the principal administration expert who had compiled information showing in advance of the vote that indeed the true cost estimates were far higher than the numbers given to Congress by the President.

Deprived of that information, and believing the false numbers given to it instead, the Congress approved the program. Tragically, the entire initiative is now collapsing- all over the country- with the Administration making an appeal just this weekend to major insurance companies to volunteer to bail it out.

To take another example, scientific warnings about the catastrophic consequences of unchecked global warming were censored by a political appointee in the White House who had no scientific training. And today one of the leading scientific experts on global warming in NASA has been ordered not to talk to members of the press and to keep a careful log of everyone he meets with so that the Executive Branch can monitor and control his discussions of global warming.

One of the other ways the Administration has tried to control the flow of information is by consistently resorting to the language and politics of fear in order to short-circuit the debate and drive its agenda forward without regard to the evidence or the public interest. As President Eisenhower said, "Any who act as if freedom's defenses are to be found in suppression and suspicion and fear confess a doctrine that is alien to America."

Fear drives out reason. Fear suppresses the politics of discourse and opens the door to the politics of destruction. Justice Brandeis once wrote: "Men feared witches and burnt women."

The founders of our country faced dire threats. If they failed in their endeavors, they would have been hung as traitors. The very existence of our country was at risk.

Yet, in the teeth of those dangers, they insisted on establishing the Bill of Rights.

Is our Congress today in more danger than were their predecessors when the British army was marching on the Capitol? Is the world more dangerous than when we faced an ideological enemy with tens of thousands of missiles poised to be launched against us and annihilate our country at a moment's notice? Is America in more danger now than when we faced worldwide fascism on the march-when our fathers fought and won two World Wars simultaneously?

It is simply an insult to those who came before us and sacrificed so much on our behalf to imply that we have more to be fearful of than they. Yet they faithfully protected our freedoms and now it is up to us to do the same.

We have a duty as Americans to defend our citizens' right not only to life but also to liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is therefore vital in our current circumstances that immediate steps be taken to safeguard our Constitution against the present danger posed by the intrusive overreaching on the part of the Executive Branch and the President's apparent belief that he need not live under the rule of law.

I endorse the words of Bob Barr, when he said, "The President has dared the American people to do something about it. For the sake of the Constitution, I hope they will."

A special counsel should immediately be appointed by the Attorney General to remedy the obvious conflict of interest that prevents him from investigating what many believe are serious violations of law by the President. We have had a fresh demonstration of how an independent investigation by a special counsel with integrity can rebuild confidence in our system of justice. Patrick Fitzgerald has, by all accounts, shown neither fear nor favor in pursuing allegations that the Executive Branch has violated other laws.

Republican as well as Democratic members of Congress should support the bipartisan call of the Liberty Coalition for the appointment of a special counsel to pursue the criminal issues raised by warrantless wiretapping of Americans by the President.

Second, new whistleblower protections should immediately be established for members of the Executive Branch who report evidence of wrongdoing -- especially where it involves the abuse of Executive Branch authority in the sensitive areas of national security.

Third, both Houses of Congress should hold comprehensive-and not just superficial-hearings into these serious allegations of criminal behavior on the part of the President. And, they should follow the evidence wherever it leads.

Fourth, the extensive new powers requested by the Executive Branch in its proposal to extend and enlarge the Patriot Act should, under no circumstances be granted, unless and until there are adequate and enforceable safeguards to protect the Constitution and the rights of the American people against the kinds of abuses that have so recently been revealed.

Fifth, any telecommunications company that has provided the government with access to private information concerning the communications of Americans without a proper warrant should immediately cease and desist their complicity in this apparently illegal invasion of the privacy of American citizens.

Freedom of communication is an essential prerequisite for the restoration of the health of our democracy.

It is particularly important that the freedom of the Internet be protected against either the encroachment of government or the efforts at control by large media conglomerates. The future of our democracy depends on it.

I mentioned that along with cause for concern, there is reason for hope. As I stand here today, I am filled with optimism that America is on the eve of a golden age in which the vitality of our democracy will be re-established and will flourish more vibrantly than ever. Indeed I can feel it in this hall.

As Dr. King once said, "Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movements and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us."

Bush-CIA connection?

Why did Richard Nixon resign his office? Perhaps he knew too much and didn't want to end up like JFK.

What were the sins of JFK? He took the missiles out of Turkey and backed down on "freeing" Cuba from Castro.

Who set up Lee Harvey Oswald?

Who heads up the Texas Waspia?

The Bush family, the Cuban mafia and the Kennedy assassination
Por BY REINALDO TALADRID and LAZARO BAREDO 15/01/2006 às 19:24

One of the most tantalizing nuggets about Nixon's possible inside knowledge of JFK assassination secrets was buried on a White House tape until 2002. On the tape, recorded in May of 1972, Nixon said: "And it was the greatest hoax that has ever been perpetuated," he considered the Warren Commission findings a hoax.

The Bush family, the Cuban mafia and the Kennedy assassination

BY REINALDO TALADRID and LAZARO BAREDO

IN 1959, a young officer and businessman from Texas received directions to cooperate in funding the nascent anti-Castro groups that the CIA decided to create, but it wasn?t until 1960 that he was assigned a more specific and overt mission: to guarantee the security of the process of recruiting Cubans to form an invasion brigade, a key aspect within the grand CIA operation to destroy the Cuban Revolution.

The CIA Texan quickly took a liking to the Cuban assigned to him for his new mission. The system of work, although intense, was simple. Féliz Rodríguez Mendigutía, "El Gato," would propose a candidate to him, who would then be checked out, both in the Agency and among the Miami groups, and finally, the Texan would give the go-ahead.

In that period, Félix Rodríguez already knew quite a few Cubans, like Jorge Mas Canosa (subsequently the leader of various counterrevolutionary organizations and then president of the Cuban-American National Foundation) and had confirmed his loyalty to "the cause" and to the Americans. For that reason he was among the first to be proposed. He passed through the process satisfactorily, and in a meeting in the city of Miami, which the Texan liked to make as formal as possible, Jorge Mas Canosa officially became an agent of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.

Jorge Mas didn?t know how to thank Félix for what he had done for him. From that moment he was constantly grateful to him and, at the same time, obedient to his every petition.

But Jorge Mas was far from imagining the significance of this recruitment on the rest of his life. The significance rested on the fact that that Texan officer who undertook his recruitment process, approved it and then notified him at that meeting, was none other than George Herbert Walker Bush, the same man who, later, between 1989 and 1992, was the 41st president of the United States.

Various sources coincide on the foregoing. Paul Kangas, a Californian private investigator, published an article containing part of his investigations in The Realist in 1990, in which he affirms that a newly discovered FBI document places Bush as working with the now famous CIA agent Félix Rodríguez on the recruitment of ultra-right wing exiled Cubans for the invasion of Cuba.

For his part, in his "Report on a Censored Project," Dr. Carl Jensen of Sonoma State College states: "? there is a record in the files of Rodríguez and others involved in the Bay of Pigs invasion, which expounds the role of Bush: the truth is that Bush was a senior CIA official before working with Félix Rodríguez on the invasion of Cuba."

But Kangas is more precise in his quoted article, when he states:

"Traveling from Houston to Miami on a weekly basis, Bush, with Félix Rodríguez, spent 1960 and 1961 recruiting Cubans in Miami for the invasion."

Other publications that have referred to the theme are The Nation magazine, whose August 13, 1988 edition reveals the finding of "a memorandum in that context addressed to FBI chief J. Edward Hoover and signed November 1963, which reads: Mr. George Bush of the CIA;" or the Common Cause magazine that, on March 4, 1990, affirmed: "The CIA put millionaire and agent George Bush in charge of recruiting exiled Cubans for the CIA?s invading army; Bush was working with another Texan oil magnate, Jack Crichton, who helped him in terms of the invasion."

Without knowing it, Jorge Mas had become part of something far more complex than the planned mercenary invasion. The recent recruited CIA agent became one of the participants in what was originally known as Operation 40.

Operation 40 was the first plan of covert operations generated by the CIA to destroy the Cuban Revolution and was drawn up in 1959 on the orders of the administration of President Ike Eisenhower.

In his book Cuba, la Guerra secreta de la CIA (Cuba, the CIA?s Secret War), Divisional General (ret) Fabián Escalante Font, former head of the Cuban Counterintelligence Services, explained what occurred in the early 1960.

"A few days later (end of 1959), Allen Dulles, chief of the CIA, presented to the King (Colonel, chief of the Western Hemisphere Division of the CIA) memorandum to the National Security Council, which approved the suggestion of forming a working group within the agency which, in the short term, would provide ?alternative solutions to the Cuban problem.?"

The group, Escalante Font relates, was composed of Tracy Barnes as head, and officials Howard Hunt, Frank Bender, Jack Engler and David Atlee Phillips, among others. Those present had one common characteristic: all of them had participated in the fall of the Jacobo Arbenz government in Guatemala.

General Escalante recounts in his book that, during the first meeting, Barnes spoke at length on the objectives to be achieved. He explained that Vice President Richard Nixon was the Cuban "case officer" and had met with an important group of businessmen headed by George Bush and Jack Crichton, both Texas oil magnates, to collect the necessary funding for the operation.

In a 1986 edition of the Freedom Magazine U.S. journalist L.F. Proury explains that Richard Nixon had long and close links with the Bush family dating back to 1946 when Nixon, responding to a petition by Preston Bush (George?s father) presented himself as a candidate for the U.S. Congress, financed by the old Bush.

The group constituted within the CIA, states Escalante in his book, set up various teams in charge of organizing clandestine operations, psychological warfare actions and exerting economic and diplomatic pressure, which would put paid to the island government. This was compounded by the preparation of an elite group of Cuban agents who, after specialized training, would infiltrate Cuba and deal a mortal rearguard blow to the Revolution, which included the assassination of its principal leaders.

Jorge Mas Canosa gave his recruiters a very positive impression and was immediately assigned to a special mission. "Now things are going to take off," he said enthusiastically.

In the Exito magazine, Mabel Dieppa narrates:

"He was sent to a U.S. Marines training camp close to the Mississippi River, where he was trained to participate in the Bay of Pigs invasion."

But Jorge Mas, as stated, had been attached to a very special group, still within the preparations for the mercenary invasion. The group was composed of 160 men of total confidence and was headed by the traitor and likewise CIA agent Higinio Díaz Ane (Nino). In the abovementioned book, General Escalante explains: "These men were given the mission to attack the town of Baracoa, in the easternmost part of the island, in order to distract the revolutionary forces when the brigade landed at the Bay of Pigs." Once they had taken Baracoa, they were to head for the Guantánamo Naval Base and, simulating Cuban troops, organize a provocation by attacking the installation, thus facilitating a U.S. military response with a formal reason for intervening in the conflict created by the mercenary invasion. That plan was the secret mechanism that the CIA and the Pentagon had up their sleeve, and nobody, not even President Kennedy, knew of it.

On the day of the invasion, the 160 "elite" agency men left in a boat for their destination but, on reaching Baracoa, fear at the movement of Cuban troops in the area won out over the sterling training they had received, and they confined themselves to continue navigating south of the island until they reached the westernmost extreme. From there, they headed for Puerto Rico, arriving there the same day. In Miami, as a joke, this action was christened "Skirting round Cuba."

After the Bay of Pigs defeat in April 1961 the CIA recouped its men. It reiterated its confidence in them and assigned them new missions, maintaining the objectives that gave rise to Operation 40.

In the weekly Política, the author Natacha Herrera explained:

"Along with another 207 agents, Mas went to Fort Benning, Georgia for basic U.S. army training and was selected to take a special intelligence, clandestine communication and propaganda course."

In his extensive work published for the Esquire magazine in January 1993, Gaeton Fonzi affirms that in Fort Benning, Mas Canosa?s friends with whom he was most closely linked in complex covert operations were Félix Rodríguez and Luis Posada Carriles," the latter of whom became notorious for the sabotage of a Cubana Airline passenger plane in full flight over Barbados in 1976.
"After Fort Benning," says the U.S. investigator, "there was some CIA connection in every move or action in Jorge Mas? career."

Precisely because of the outstanding results obtained in Fort Benning, the Agency later assigned Mas Canosa to another delicate mission. On this occasion, he would have to move to an "ultra-secret" base located a little south of Fort Benning, to join what was known as the "New Orleans group." That group, which took its name from the location of the base on the outskirts of the southern U.S. city, was mainly composed of veterans from the Bay of Pigs and Fort Benning, although some agents of confidence like Antonio Veciana, recently arrived from the island and reportedly very close to Jorge Mas in that period, were incorporated. Their preparation was sui generis. The group took a course on the use of means and methods of combat of the Cuban army.

The content of the mission was disclosed by General Escalante in his book: "Once again, the plot consisted of a self-provocation against the Yankee base (of Guantánamo), via the infiltration of a commando of 150 men who trained in an ultra-secret CIA base on the outskirts of the southern U.S. city of New Orleans."

The mission was cancelled due to the occurrences that gave rise to the Missile Crisis in October 1962, which convinced the organizers of the inevitability of a direct military intervention by the U.S. army without the need of any pretext."

After this new failure, Mas Canosa was full of rage and impotence and acknowledged to the U.S. writer Pat Jordan in an interview that, "the two men he most hated were Fidel Castro and John F. Kennedy."

In the United States, the media has once again picked up on the relationship of the émigré Cubans who worked for the CIA with the assassination of President Kennedy in Dallas in 1963.

During a long conversation with the investigator Gaeton Fonzi in Havana, we discovered a story that, given its content, it is worth reproducing. Fonzi is not just any common or garden investigator. He had devoted much of his life to working for various congressional committees, including those responsible for investigations into the covert activities of the CIA and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

A few years ago, and after much effort, Fonzi managed to get a private interview with Antonio Veciana, the same old buddy of Jorge Mas in the "New Orleans group," where the two of them became close friends while fulfilling CIA missions. Veciana had been interrogated by the Grand Jury charged with investigating the assassination of President Kennedy, and years later, had had some drug-related problems; but he vehemently affirmed to Fonzi that these difficulties were nothing more than a "trap" set up by somebody.

"I have a lot of information, but I am keeping that to myself because it is my life insurance," Veciana told Fonzi."

Antonio Veciana Blanch was a public accountant who worked for the Cuban sugar magnate Julio Lobo. He rapidly opposed the Cuban Revolution and, in 1960 was recruited by the CIA in Havana. He received his initial training in an English Language Academy supervised by the U.S. embassy in the Cuban capital. In October 1961, after the failure of a plot he devised to assassination Prime Minister Fidel Castro with a bazooka during an event at the former Presidential Palace, Veciana fled Cuba.

In the interview that he gave to Fonzi he related that, once in Miami, he was looked after by a CIA official who used the pseudonym of Maurice Bishop. Among other tasks, this "Bishop" ordered Veciana to promote the creation of the ALPHA 66 organization.

"Bishop" had frequent contact with Veciana from 1962-1963 in the city of Dallas. Veciana recalled that, at one of those meetings in a public building, he saw Lee Harvey Oswald.

Fonzi noted that various acts of disinformation were organized as part of the operation that cost the life of President Kennedy: one in Dallas, another in Miami and a third in Mexico City. The objective of the disinformation was to manufacture the image of a "revolutionary" Oswald, a "defender of the Cuban Revolution."
Hence the ex-marine was filmed in acts of solidarity with Cuba, demonstrating in a very aggressive manner. But the most daring act of disinformation was effected in Mexico City. There, Lee Harvey Oswald turned up at the Cuban embassy to ask for an entry visa to the island. All of that was filmed from a surveillance post that the CIA had opposite the Cuban embassy, so that it would be documented.

The strange thing is, as Veciana told Fonzi, in one of his contacts with "Bishop" in early 1963, the latter said that he knew that he (Veciana) had a cousin in Cuban Intelligence, who was located at the Cuban embassy in Mexico. "Bishop" stated that if it suited his cousin to work for them in a very specific action, he would pay him whatever he wanted. Veciana commented to Fonzi that he had never spoken of this cousin to "Bishop" and also, at that time, "Bishop" was assigned to the U.S. embassy in Mexico City and even went directly from the Mexican capital to some contacts in Dallas.

In fact Veciana was the cousin of the wife of the then Cuban consul in Mexico City, Guillermo Ruiz, and in the days following the assassination of Kennedy, that woman was the victim of a recruitment attempt in the same city, with the clear proposition that, once in the United States, she would testify as to Oswald?s "complicity" with the Cuban secret services.

Questioned by Fonzi as to the existence of renewed contacts with "Bishop" after the Dallas homicide, Veciana answered that there had been, particularly in 1971, when he received an order to leave for Bolivia and work in the U.S. embassy in that country, where he would appear as an official for the Agency for International Development (USAID) and should wait for a visit from a known person. Fonzi checked the USAID archives in Washington and found an application form to enter the USAID in the name of Antonio Veciana, handwritten in letters distinct from those of Veciana and unsigned.

The "known person" who contacted him in Bolivia was "Bishop," at that time located in the U.S. embassy in Chile. "Bishop" immediately incorporated him into a team plotting an attempt on the life of President Fidel Castro, who was to visit the South American country.

Fonzi told us that he interviewed Antonio Veciana again, but this time accompanied by a specialist with the aim of composing a photofit of "Maurice Bishop" so as to determine his real identity.
Veciana gave a detailed description and the photofit was made. Fonzi spent weeks trying to identify the character, and one Sunday, suddenly received a call at home from a Republican senator for Pennsylvania for whom he was working at the time, and whom he had consulted on the identity of the man in the drawing.

The senator assured him that the he was absolutely sure that the man using the pseudonym of Maurice Bishop was none other than David Atlee Phillips. He was a veteran CIA officer who was in Havana on a working visit in 1958 as a specialist in psychological warfare, participated in the creation of Operation 40 and later, as part of the same, organized the Radio Swann transmitter. With time, Phillips would become head of the Western Hemisphere Division of the Agency.

However, at the end of 1993, in the documentary ¿Caso cerrado? (Case Closed?), the former chief of Cuban Security , Divisional General (ret) Fabián Escalante, revealed a secret report from one of his agents, which spoke of a meeting between Antonio Veciana and David Phillips in a hotel in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in the early 70s.

"Veciana told me," said the Cuban agent, "that he was a CIA agent and it was the CIA that assassinated Kennedy and that senior CIA officials including David Phillips, the official attending to him, were behind it all. Veciana never wanted to give me any details of that affirmation, but recently, I have been able to confirm it, because once when I was in a hotel with Veciana, I heard a conversation that he had with his officer, David Phillips, in which Veciana swore that he would never talk about what happened in Dallas in 1963."

General Escalante guarantees that the source has direct access to Veciana, and was in his total confidence:

"I believe," Escalante affirmed, "that that is very important information because I have to say that, in 1973, when Antonio Veciana was liquidated by the CIA; in other words, when the CIA took him off their books, he received a compensation payment of $300,000."

But there is more. According to Cuban State Security investigations disclosed by General Escalante in the abovementioned documentary, various witnesses quoted by the Warren Commission described two Cubans, one of them black, leaving the Daley Plaza Book Deposit in Dallas, a few minutes after the assassination was effected. In parallel, through secret information and public testimony (the statement by Marita Lorenz, ex-CIA agent to a congressional committee), Cuban Security knew that two days before the assassination various Cubans were in Dallas with weapons and telescopic sights, including Eladio del Valle and Herminio Díaz, two paid killers and expert sharpshooters linked to the Mafia and Batista politics. The physical characteristics of Del Valle and Herminio Díaz matched the descriptions that various witnesses gave to the Warren Commission of the two Cubans seen leaving the building seconds after the president had been assassinated.

The really curious fact is the final fate of both of them: Eladio del Valle was brutally murdered in Miami when Jim Garrison, the New Orleans district attorney initiated his investigation into the Kennedy assassination; Del Valle was chopped into pieces with a machete. Even more interesting was the end of Herminio Díaz, who died near the Havana coast in 1965, when he collided with a patrol boat while trying to infiltrate the island with the mission of assassinating Osvaldo Dortícos and submachine gunning the Riviera Hotel

In order to fulfill the mission on which he was sent, Díaz had to infiltrate the island right in the capital via Monte Barreto in Miramar (where a number of hotels are currently going up) at a time when, because of an incident at the Guantánamo naval base, the Cuban army was on combat alert, and aerial and coastal vigilance was been reinforced to the maximum. In the eyes of experts, and the Cuban Security, the operation was a veritable suicide mission.

The financial organizer and planner of such "a strange mission" was none other than Jorge Mas Canosa.

But the history of the CIA?s links with its Cuban agents and the Kennedy assassination has not only been explored by Fonzi. Many other authors and investigators, and even the film studios that gave origin to the U.S. movies Executive Action and JFK, have covered the subject.

In an article published in The Realist magazine, the investigator Paul Kangas affirms:

"Among other members of the CIA recruited by George Bush for the (Bay of Pigs) invasion) were Frank Sturgis, Howard Hunt, Bernard Baker and Rafael Quintero? On the day that JFK was assassinated, Hunt and some of the subsequent Watergate team were photographed in Dallas, as well as a group of Cubans, one of them with an opened umbrella as a signal, alongside the president?s limousine, right where Kennedy was shot? Hunt and Sturgis fired on JFK from a grassy knoll. They were photographed and seen by 15 witnesses."

On May 7, 1990, in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, Frank Sturgis acknowledged:

"?the reason why we robbed in Watergate was because (Richard) Nixon was interested in stopping the news leaks related to the photos of our role in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy."

Another of Bush?s recruits for the Bay of Pigs invasion, Rafael Quintero, who was also part of this underworld of organizations and conspiracies against Cuba, stated:

"If I was to tell what I know about Dallas and the Bay of Pigs, it would be the greatest scandal that has ever rocked to nation."

Up to here are certain details of one of the existing theories on the above-mentioned event but, will the whole truth come out some day? Will Antonio Veciana, former member of the "New Orleans group," decide to reveal his "life insurance" or Rafael Quintero, to tell what he knows and thus, "rock the nation?" ?

NB Quotes in English retranslated from the Spanish.

http://www.midiaindependente.org/pt/blue/2006/01/342879.shtml

The CMI is a Brazilian organization.

Get Along Alito

Much has been made in recent days of Judge Alito's claim, on a twenty year old job application, to have belonged to an organization that opposed inclusive policies towards women at Princeton. Then, the revelation that he hadn't actually taken part in the activities of CAP, was supposed to demonstrate that he wasn't a bigot (Senator Graham's word) after all. But, what is one to think of a person who associates himself with an exclusionary group in order to ingratiate himself?

A point I want to make, in order to explain this peculiar behavior, is that bigotry, or unwarranted antagonism towards particular ethnic, racial or gender groups, is primarily motivated by a desire to bond with the dominant group. Alito's reference, in his application to the Reagan administration, to a group (CAP) with which he seems to have had no real affiliation, is a good example of relying on a sense of shared antagonism to demonstrate one's fealty. Alito THOUGHT that membership in such a group would earn him brownie points and so he used it, even though, as research seems to indicate, he wasn't actually active in it.

Thoug this lack of evidence of his participation is now being used to validate that he's not actually a bigot, that's not really the point, is it? His willingness to claim an association that didn't exist in order to advance himself gives evidence of a significant character flaw.

I mean, what if someone claimed to have been an active member of the Nazi party, twenty years after its demise, but he actually wasn't. What if someone claimed to be a member of the Klan, but he wasn't? What would those claims tell us about the person?

What it tells me is that Alito is a "go along to get along" kind of fellow, lacking significantly in a personal commitment to principle. He does what he's told and goes where the wind blows. In short he's an opportunist.

Which has led me to send the following letter to New Hampshire's Republican Senators. Who knows if it will make a difference? If nobody speaks up, it certainly won't.

*****
It seems increasingly obvious that people who are attracted to the GOP are looking to be followers, to have people tell them what to do and to make decisions for them. They don't want to be responsible for any mistakes they might make, preferring to blame someone else for whatever goes wrong.

The main problem with this strategy is that in ruling out individual enterprise and initiative it virtually guarantees there won't be any people in the GOP who are actually competent to lead. Evidence of which is painfully evident in Washington at the present time.

While it might have been thought that the absence of political leadership in the GOP could be made up for by drawing on the resources available in the private sector, it's becoming painfully evident that the characteristic self-interest and bottom-line focus of the corporate elite has spawned a culture of corruption far in excess of anything we have seen before--a consequence, no doubt, of the leadership vacuum having been exploited by people with a criminal bent.

That's what happens when the institutions of government are populated by "go-along to get-along" individuals lacking a commitment to independent thought and unchanging principles. Unfortunately, since both Justice Roberts and Judge Alito are of the same mold, a vacilating Supreme Court is the best we can expect. A Supreme Court that bends to the will of an unprincipled executive may well write finis to our democracy.

Perhaps it is too much to hope that there are a few GOP Senators ready and able to reverse this disasterous course. Nevertheless, Gregg and Sununu should be pressed to vote no on the Alito nomination. We don't need another yes-man on the Supreme Court.

*****
Upon further consideration:

Senator Graham's rhetorical question to Judge Alito was really un-called for. But, coming from a person who grew up in a culture where behavior that some people call bigoted is just a habit, it's understandable.
This habit of looking down on people who are somehow different is such a big part of maintaining a sense of belonging with one's own group that even a man's claiming to be part of a bunch of bigots when he wasn't doesn't come as a surprise.
But, you know, when that man is a candidate to sit on the highest court in the land, it should. In fact, pretending to be something you're not should be enough to disqualify the man from holding such a prominent position.
And I'm not just referring to the pretense of twenty years ago. No, the pretense goes on. Judge Alito claims to support the Constitution and yet he's willing to serve a President who's proud to break the law.
Seems like the Judge is still too eager to belong to be his own man.

Halucinogenic Bush

January 12, 2006

?Freedom in action?

Yesterday Mr. Bush warned U.S. citizens of more violence in Iraq?again.

He called it the ?price of progress? as Iraq ?moves toward democracy.?

In the shady, smoke and mirror filled world of Mr. Bush where violence
is progress and Iraq inches ever closer to their elusive ?democracy,?
truth remains ever distant from the rhetoric of his speech writers.

Mr. Bush referred to ?a good deal of political turmoil? in Iraq as
?freedom in action.?

If only reality matched his hallucinatory projections?

If only Abdul Aziz Al-Hakim, the most influential politician in Iraq and
leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, hadn?t
issued a not-so-veiled warning yesterday to Sunni Arab Iraqis that the
ruling Shiites would not allow significant amendments to the country?s
new constitution?

If only?

The commander-in-chief of the U.S. military, speaking to members of
Veterans of Foreign Wars also stated yesterday, ?We will continue to
hand over territory to the Iraqis so they can defend their democracy, so
they can do the hard work, and our troops will be able to come home with
the honor they have earned.?

Like Brandon Bare from North Carolina.

The 19 year-old soldier returned from Iraq last April, wounded with cuts
and other injuries from a grenade attack. Three months after his return
home young Brandon Bare found it necessary to kill his 18 year-old wife
by stabbing her 71 times. He was obviously traumatized by his time in
Iraq which found him engaged in combat in both Mosul and Fallujah.

?Pacified? Fallujah, the ?City of Hope,? as FOX ?News? likes to call it,
where three more U.S. soldiers were killed yesterday when their Humvee
was destroyed by a roadside bomb?and a fourth soldier, like Brandon
Bare, was wounded in action.

Yet, the land of hallucinations is a nice place to be for someone like
Mr. Bush, who also said yesterday that most Iraqis are upbeat about
their future.

Despite rampant kidnappings, unemployment soaring to well over 50%,
little electricity, no potable water and violence continuing unabated,
Bush said, ?The vast majority of Iraqis prefer freedom with intermittent
power to life in the permanent darkness of tyranny and terror.?

The security is so bad in Baghdad now that many people now don?t leave
their homes unless it is absolutely necessary. Rampant abductions of
Iraqis are symptomatic of the escalating lawlessness in Iraq which is of
course aggravated by the political turmoil that has engulfed the country
since the December 15 polls.

Iraqi officials say as many as 30 Iraqis a day are reported kidnapped in
Baghdad. The abductions are part of the rising lawlessness accompanying
the country's political turmoil/?freedom in action.?

Nothing has changed with the kidnapping since my last trip to Baghdad.
Many of the hostages are freed when the ransom demanded is paid by their
families. Other times when the ransom is paid, as happened to a friend
of my interpreter, the family received a call telling them they could
pick up the body of their 16 year-old son at the morgue.

An email I received today from an Iraqi man in Baghdad runs a bit
contradictory to the rhetoric of Mr. Bush?s speechwriter:

?Dear Dahr,

It is difficult to make a picture of what is going on, the situation is
just so bad.

Lack of supplies, including water, petrol and electricity.

Jamming of traffic, as the police allow one lane to pass through the
security check points, and it takes long time to pass through these
check points.

Many areas in Baghdad are very unsafe, and quite inaccessible.

The kidnapping and assassination of physicians is still going on.

A consultant surgeon was recently assassinated in his home. He lives in
Yarmouk district near the culture center. One of his sons was kidnapped
a few months before and released after paying several thousands of U.S.
dollars.

A friend of mine, Dr. S. who is a well known Neurologist, was kidnapped
from his clinic and his family asked the help of his friends and
relatives to help collect the ransom.

My wife was driving downtown and she was hit on her left hand by a big
stone thrown from a police pickup because she did not recognize that she
should give way to a fast car that was trying to bypass her.....she is
lucky not to get shot by them!!!!

The Iraqis now get frightened from the local police and military as they
exhibit a very high level of misconduct and abuse of the authority that
they now have.

Have I mentioned that power supply is one hour every five hours!!!!!

Ahmed [Name changed for security reasons]?

_______________________________________________
(c)2004, 2005 Dahr Jamail.
All images, photos, photography and text are protected by United States and international copyright law. If you would like to reprint Dahr's Dispatches on the web, you need to include this copyright notice and a prominent link to the http://DahrJamailIraq.com

I Concur

While I personally happen to agree that Roe vs Wade was wrongly decided,because it affirmed the right of the state to make medical decisions that should be left to professionals in consultation with their patients, and am, therefor, not fixated on Judge Alito's history as regards the medical care of women, his approach to judging, as outlined in his opening statement, clearly indicates that he is not Supreme Court material.

In stating that "good judges are always open to the possibility of changing their minds based on the next brief that they read, or the next argument that's made by an attorney who's appearing before them, or a comment that is made by a colleague during the conference on the case when the judges privately discuss the case," Judge Alito tells us that he considers the law to differ little from a sporting event in which the judge's role is to determine which side has the better argument.

While this perspective may well be adequate for the circuit criminal or civil bench, the role of the Supreme Court is not to determine whether subordinate courts' rulings were appropriate to the record, but rather to determine whether the principles outlined in the Constitution are being sustained by the law and particular rulings.

Perhaps Judge Alito has spent too much time in the company of judges and that's why he assumes that the Supreme Court's job is merely to review their work, rather than insure that the rights of the people, from whom the government gets its authority to rule, are supported by the law. However, that would not explain his obvious deference to the executive or any other power structure, such as corporations, at the expense of individual rights and prerogatives.

One might argue that an inclination towards authoritarianism is associated with a strong religious commitment, but recent history suggests that religious affiliations are more likely to serve as an excuse for what authoritarian personalities like to do--make other people miserable so there's no question who's in charge.

****
What effect does it have on a man's thinking to believe in Original Sin?

If you're a person who believes that man is inherently evil (tainted by original sin) and that governments are set up to control those evil impulses, then it's entirely logical to conclude that, regardless of the "innocent until proven guilty assumption" (an artificial construct that simply serves to define the judicial process), the individual has an obligation to demonstrate himself worthy of enjoying the rights accorded to citizens. There are no "entitlements" and no human rights apart from those recognized by the state.

Consequently, the state's assertion of a right to life on the part of the fetus is simply a part of the effort to support the claim that it is the state which holds the power over individual life and death.

What's ironic is that this claim is in direct conflict with the religious belief that God is the giver of all life. In other words, in making laws (claiming jurisdiction) about the reproductive, life-producing functions, the state is usurping the power of the god-head or life-giving spirit.

Why does the state find it necessary to do that? Why does the state claim the power of giving life when it obviously has little or no interest in its sustenance? Because the power over life is a prerequisite for the power to impose death. In other words, the argument over the beginning of life is made necessary by the state's claim to the power to end it. That is, the claim to have power over the end of life makes it necessary to exert control over its beginning.

Leaving the reproductive process in the hand of God and the individuals He has chosen to complete it out would negate the state's claim to extinguish that life whenever it so decides.

BTW, when Cindy Sheehan challenges the head of the state to justify sending innocent Americans to their deaths, what she's really doing is challenging the state's unbridled power over the life and death of each and every citizen. Sheehan is asserting the power of the people to call the government to account. Which is, of course, a challenge to the power that is being claimed for the state by the current regime.

On an individual basis, what the assertion of state power over individual existence means for all practical purposes is that, when an individual takes a life he incurs an obligation to demonstrate that this behavior was not an effort to usurp the power of the state, not an insult and not a crime. On the other hand, when the state takes a life it has no obligation other than to demonstrate that the taking was not discriminatory on its face. That's the only limitation on state power. In other words, if any other person in a similar circumstance could expect his/her life to be taken by an agent of the state, then the state is within its rights. That's what "equal justice under law" means. In a sense, the anti-discrimination clause assigns more importance to a person's characteristics, than to the person himself. (Any person can be put to death, if it serves the state, as long as his ethnic, racial or gender attributes don't make him more susceptible than to being killed than others).

According to this interpretation of the origin and purpose of the state, the state is presumed to have the right to take the life of the people within its jurisdiction. Of course, if we accept that presumption, then it goes without saying that the state has the right to take everything short of an individual's life as well--i.e. torture must be permitted as a lesser, included right.

NO Speaks

For a long time now, government on every level, has fallen into the hands of individuals with special interests--mainly individuals who enjoy employing their entrepreneurial spirit without taking any individual risks. That the impact of Katrina on New Orleans has produced an almost unprecedented opportunity for people so inclined towards private profit at public cost was to be expected. What is to be hoped is that the citizens of New Orleans and the Mississippi coast will be able, for once, to insure that the public gets what it pays for.

Hostility Greets Katrina Recovery Plan
Residents Assail Eminent Domain and Other Facets of New Orleans Proposal

By Manuel Roig-Franzia
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 12, 2006; Page A03

NEW ORLEANS, Jan. 11 -- Angry homeowners screamed and City Council members seethed Wednesday as this city's recovery commission recommended imposing a four-month building moratorium on most of New Orleans and creating a powerful new authority that could use eminent domain to seize homes in neighborhoods that will not be rebuilt.

Hundreds of residents packed into a hotel ballroom interrupted the presentation of the long-awaited proposal with shouts and taunts, booed its main architect and unrolled a litany of complaints. One by one, homeowners stepped to a microphone to lampoon the plan -- which contemplates a much smaller city and relies on persuading the federal government to spend billions on new housing and a light-rail system -- as "audacious," "an academic exercise," "garbage," "a no-good, rotten scheme."

"You missed the boat," homeowner Fred Yoder, who lived in heavily flooded Lakeview, told committee members. "Give me a break: We don't need a light-rail system. We're in the mud."

The plan released Wednesday is the first stage of what is sure to be a multi-layered, multi-level effort to resuscitate New Orleans. Mayor C. Ray Nagin, who can accept or alter the proposal, will have to present the plan to a state commission that will control allocation of billions of federal dollars, as well as to Donald E. Powell, President Bush's hurricane recovery coordinator, and the White House. The commission's recommendations are heavily dependent on federal money, counting on $12 billion to buy storm-damaged homes and $4.8 billion for infrastructure improvements, including an ambitious light-rail proposal to connect downtown New Orleans with the city's airport, Baton Rouge and the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

The furious reaction to the plan is the latest agonizing episode in this city's troubled campaign to reinvigorate itself after the devastating floods caused by Hurricane Katrina last August. Nagin, already politically weakened by widespread criticism of his response to the flooding, now faces the difficult challenge of guiding decisions about whether some parts of the city will cease to exist.

Some activists have long accused the commission -- which was appointed by Nagin -- of trying to find ways to abandon predominantly black neighborhoods, such as the Lower Ninth Ward. Wednesday's unveiling did nothing to assuage their fears, even though commission members promised to give all neighborhoods an opportunity to prove that they should be rebuilt by convening planning groups in coming months. The proposed moratorium would be in the city's most damaged neighborhoods, and officials would use the four-month period to gauge whether enough residents will come back to make the areas viable.

"If this plan goes forward as it is, many people's worst fears about our African American heritage and population will come true," said Sue Sperry of the New Orleans Preservation Resource Center. "It's almost like it will be extinguished from this earth."

Within minutes of the plan's unveiling, Nagin was already showing signs that he might back away from the commission's most controversial proposal. He told WWL-AM that he had some "hesitancy" about the building moratorium. He promised to seek more public input before making a final decision.

At least two of the commission's proposals -- the creation of the Crescent City Rebuilding Authority to buy flood-damaged homes and the implementation of a master redevelopment plan -- will require changes to the city charter, a prospect sure to be contentious because of the mayor's long-standing animosities with the New Orleans City Council. The city is also waiting on the Federal Emergency Management Agency to determine base elevation levels required before flood insurance can be issued. The commission is hoping that Congress will approve a quasi-public recovery authority proposed by U.S. Rep. Richard H. Baker (R-La.) that would sell bonds to buy flood-damaged homes, then work with private developers to rebuild neighborhoods.

Despite the hurdles ahead, the commission urged fast action on a broad set of recommendations, including stronger levees and a restructured school system. John Beckham, a consultant who helped devise the plan, urged residents to "imagine the best city in the world."

Beckham -- who declined repeated requests Wednesday to identify the private foundation that hired him to draw up the plan for the commission -- told the audience that New Orleans could have "a park in every neighborhood," "a bustling downtown" and a city connected by bike paths and public transportation systems.

Beckham was introduced by the commission's urban planning chairman, Joseph C. Canizaro, a real estate developer and major fundraiser for Bush, who chuckled when he was booed by some in attendance. "This is just a beginning," Canizaro told the audience.

Mindful that Bush will have a tremendous influence on how much money finds its way to Louisiana, Beckham displayed some of the president's pledges on large screens. He reminded the crowd that Bush said Sept. 15 that "we will do what it takes" to rebuild New Orleans and of his promise in December to build levees that are better and stronger than before. On Thursday, Bush will visit the city for the first time in three months.

The commission's recovery plan anticipates a city that will be only a fraction of its pre-Katrina size of nearly half a million residents. Beckham said the city now has about 144,000 residents and is projected to grow to 181,000 by September and 247,000 by September 2008.

The shrunken city will need a restructured and more efficient local government, Beckham said, drawing smirks from City Council members seated behind the committee. The City Council, which has clashed with Nagin repeatedly -- most recently trying to use zoning laws to block sites he selected for temporary housing trailers -- has effectively been cut out of the power loop in the recovery process and does not have authority over the recovery plan. Before the commission's report had even been announced, five City Council members -- responding to leaks of the plan's main components to the city's influential newspaper, the Times-Picayune -- held a news conference to condemn the committee in the same hotel where the recovery plan was to be unveiled.

Council member Jackie Brechtel Clarkson called the proposal "a blatant violation of property rights."

"I think it's unprecedented in America," said Clarkson, who is also a real estate agent.

The council members were flanked by leaders of the large Vietnamese community that flocked after the Vietnam War to New Orleans East, one of the areas that would be affected by the moratorium. "It just hurt us -- again," said the Rev. Luke Nguyen of Mary Queen of Vietnam Church. "We have 700, 800 families already returned, ready to gut and fix their houses."

Nguyen streamed into the reception hall, shouldering past activists and homeowners bristling with anger. On a table nearby, the commission had placed placards, declaring, "We're Home." Nguyen did not bother to pick one up.

Eenie, meenie.........

Eenie, meenie, minie, moe
Sam Alito's got to go
When he falters, hear him say
I love Bush, three times a day.

Sam Alito's judicial philosophy.

No on Alito

FROM THE BALTIMORE SUN -

Alito fails the test
By HOWARD DEAN
Originally published January 9, 2006
It's been widely acknowledged that President Bush had a bad year in 2005.

One of the problems America faces as a result is the White House's willingness to make decisions based on what benefits the administration politically rather than what's right for America.

The nomination of Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. to replace Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor is just one example of this. The president hopes to make up ground with his right-wing base instead of appointing someone who will have the confidence of a wide range of Americans.

Over the past few months, as we've learned more about Judge Alito's core beliefs and the kind of justice he would be, it has become clear why the Senate should reject his nomination.

Judge Alito's decisions, such as his attacks on the Family Medical Leave protections and his willingness to excuse the grossest form of sexual harassment in the workplace based on technicalities, have harmed working people.

Judge Alito has also attacked Americans' personal liberties by approving the inappropriate strip search of a 10-year-old child and defending the construction of all-white juries by unscrupulous prosecutors trying black defendants.

A Supreme Court justice must show impartiality and fairness. Judge Alito does not pass that test.

Further complicating Judge Alito's nomination is a lack of credibility that has emerged as he has tried to distance himself from his record and prior statements. He has supported government overreaching into women's personal lives. He has memory lapses regarding membership in the ultraconservative group Concerned Alumni of Princeton, and he failed to keep his word when he did not recuse himself from a major Vanguard mutual funds case despite pledging under oath - during confirmation hearings for his 3rd U.S. Circuit Court judgeship - to do so.

On Nov. 3, The Boston Globe reported Judge Alito held $390,000 worth of Vanguard mutual funds during the time he ruled for the company in a civil case before him. These facts are not in dispute. When the chief administrative judge for the circuit reviewed the case on complaint, he vacated Judge Alito's decision and assigned the case to another panel. Judge Alito complained vigorously. He has since failed to offer a credible explanation about why he broke his promise to recuse himself from the case.

Every American should shudder at the prospect of an ethically tone-deaf judge sitting on the one institution in Washington not yet in the pocket of the extremists who comprise the right wing of the Republican Party.

A culture of corruption, arrogance of power and insensitivity to the appearance of conflict of interest has plagued key Republican officeholders for the past five years. This includes Republican Senate Leader Bill Frist's ownership of stock that he falsely claimed was in a blind trust; the repeated evidence that Halliburton, formerly run by Vice President Dick Cheney, benefited from no-bid contracts in Iraq; and revelations that our government may be illegally spying on Americans and paying journalists for positive stories.

House Judiciary Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. has traveled the world, racking up $177,000 worth of lobbyist-funded trips. Tom DeLay has been indicted on money-laundering charges. Republican super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff pleaded guilty to three federal criminal charges. Karl Rove still has a security clearance, despite leaking the identity of a CIA agent. The vice president's chief of staff has been indicted on charges that he lied to a grand jury. We need honesty and backbone in Washington, most especially on the court.

I oppose Judge Alito's nomination. I want to be proud of our government again. That can only happen if the rule of law, and the integrity that it requires, are clearly foremost in the consideration of every decision made by the court.

There are simply too many writings in Judge Alito's record that show a willingness to favor government power over individual liberties.

How can we believe that he will put aside his personal beliefs and keep an open mind when he already has broken one promise made to the American people?

America needs strength now, and America needs a Supreme Court where personal and political considerations do not appear to influence any decision at any time. Judge Alito's nomination must be rejected. And President Bush needs to nominate someone to the court who will bring us together, not continue to drive us apart.

Hastert Stays Home

Dennis Hastert, the Leader of the House, has made a good decision, along with Ray LaHood, in forgoing a trip to Southeast Asia this month. The question is why did he plan it in the first place.
Whatever the explanation, the report that he's planning to oversee the creation of a GOP ethics package isn't reassuring either, if he thinks what's needed is "lobbying reform."

The lobbying industry is not the problem. The problem is the Congress which has handed over its duties to political consultants, pollsters, public relations firms and lobbyists to, in effect, privatize the work of congress. So, all that's left for our Representatives to do is make regular appearances among the glitterati, who pay the freight, and show up for an occasional vote to rubber stamp the agenda that's been laid out for them.
If they have any interaction with the folks back home, it's as a representative of Washington to their districts, rather than the other way around.
Fortunately, the framers of the Constitution anticipated that the people entrusted with the nation's purse things might not be up to the task, so every two years the people get the opportunity to chuck them out.
2006 is one such year.

Bush Reject

Too Many Wise Men

Reach Out and Touch No One
by Maureen Dowd
The New York Times
January 7, 2006

Doing the math, you've got to figure that the 12 wise men and one wise woman had about 30 seconds apiece to say their piece to the president about Iraq, where vicious assaults this week have killed almost 200 and raised U.S. troop fatalities to at least 2,189.

It must have been like a performance by the Reduced Shakespeare Company, which boils down the great plays and books to their essence. Proust is "I like cookies." Othello raps that he left Desdemona "all alona, didn't telephona." "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey" condense into "The Idiodity." "Henry V" is "A king's gotta do what a king's gotta do," and "Antony and Cleopatra" is "Never get involved in Middle Eastern affairs."

Beyond taking a class picture ringed around Mr. Bush's bizarrely empty desk - a mesmerizing blend of "Sunset Boulevard," "The Last Supper" and a "Sopranos" ad - the former secretaries of state and defense had to make the most of their brief colloquy with W.

The spectral Robert McNamara might have enlightened on Vietnam: "Didn't understand the culture. Misjudged the opposition. Didn't know when to get out." If he was a fast talker, he could have added: "It's the dominoes. If Iraq falls, then Syria falls, then Lebanon falls, and before you know it, all of Southeast Asia - I mean, the Middle East - will fall."

Melvin Laird only needed to add: "Ditto."

Al Haig's summation would have been a cinch: "I resign. I'm in charge here. I resign - again."

Instead of his good-soldier silence, Colin Powell could have redeemed himself with four words: "I should have resigned."

Madeleine Albright might have succinctly imparted some wisdom from Somalia and Rwanda: "Didn't understand the culture. Misjudged the threat. Didn't know when to get in."

James Baker, Svengali and Sphinx, must have been thinking: "I told your dad not to let you in here. I could tell you how to get of Iraq in 10 minutes, but you're too under the sway of that nutball Cheney to listen."

George Shultz only needed to say: "I have a tiger tattooed on my fanny," and Lawrence Eagleburger could have abridged his thoughts to "I need a smoke. Bad."

It may seem disturbing at first, that with several hundreds of years' worth of foreign policy at his elbows, and a bloody, thorny mess in Iraq, Mr. Bush would devote mere moments to letting some fresh air into his House of Pain.

Sure, he has A.D.D. But he just spent six straight days mountain-biking and brush clearing in Crawford. He couldn't devote 60 minutes to getting our kids home rather than just a few for a "Message: I Care" photo-op faking sincerity?

"We all went into the bubble and came out," one of the wise men noted.

Mr. Eagleburger explained their role as props, saying it was hard to volubly express yourself with a president. "There was some criticism, but it was basically 'You haven't talked to the American people enough.' " Lighting a cigarette on the way out - he'd thrown one in the bushes on the way in - he added the world-weary coda: "We're all has-beens anyway."

Mr. Eagleburger knows the truth. If W. had wanted to really reach out, rather than just pretend to reach out so that his poll numbers would go up, he would have sought advice outside his warped inner circle long ago - including from his own father.

Because W.'s mind is so closed to anybody except yes-men who tell him his policies and wars are slam-dunks, uneasy seasoned mandarins are forced to make a noisy stink. Brent Scowcroft, one of Bush Senior's closest friends, had to resort to the pages of The New Yorker to voice his objections. He ominously said Dick Cheney, his old colleague, was someone he no longer recognized.

You wonder whether the other contemporaries of Cheney and Rummy from Ford, Reagan and Bush I days were thinking the same thing at Thursday's meeting: Why have these guys gone so kooky?

W. is drunk on Cheney Kool-Aid. So he got testy when Ms. Albright pointed out that North Korea and Iran were going nuclear while the U.S. was bogged down in Baghdad. Then, after a quick photo in the Oval, he shooed the old-timers out, letting anyone who wanted to stay talk to the security factotum Stephen Hadley.

Still busy spreading fog over the war, W., Cheney, Rummy and Condi had no time to hear McNamara expound on the fog of war. In the picture, as Ms. Albright cringes, Mr. McNamara looks haunted, unable to escape second-guessing over Vietnam.

The only thing that would have made the photo even more utterly phony was the presence of that vintage warmonger, Henry the K.

Topplebush.com
Posted: January 8, 2006

Iraqi Dispatch

US Propaganda vs. Iraqi Reality

US Propaganda vs. Iraqi Reality

It appears as though the Cheney administration will soon ?redeploy?
thousands of US troops out of Iraq. While several permanent US military
bases are under construction there as I type this, the Capital Hill
Cabal, desperate to paint the Iraq disaster in a glorious hue, are
working their pundits and spokespeople overtime to convince the
ill-informed they have not failed dismally in every aspect of their
illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq.

In his weekly radio address on Saturday, Mr. Bush did not mention Iraq
once. Instead, he spoke of the bright and shining US economy and the
need to maintain current tax cuts.

?Unfortunately, just as we?re seeing new evidence of how our tax cuts
have created jobs and opportunity, some people in Washington are saying
we need to raise your taxes,? he said, ?They want the tax cuts to expire
in a few years, or even repeal the tax cuts now.?

What better time to maintain tax cuts in the US, particularly when a new
study by Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard budget expert Linda
Bilmes estimates the cost of the Iraq war to be between $1-2 trillion,
and the national debt already over $8 trillion?

Meanwhile, the reality in Iraq is the opposite of that generated by the
Cheney administration as the carnage and chaos in Iraq worsens each day.

A quick look at foreign media outlets yields the following developments
that were either not reported or under-reported in the US:

January 4:

-Unidentified gunmen assassinated Rahim Ali al-Sudani, director-general
of the Iraqi Oil Ministry, and his son early on the morning of 4 January
in Al-Amiriyah area in northern Baghdad.

-Clashes broke out between civilians protesting against unemployment and
Iraqi police in Al-Nasiriyah city in Dhi Qar Governorate, wounding
scores of civilians and police officers. The TV added within the same
news summary that two civilians were ?martyred? and two others were
injured when an explosive charge missed a US patrol unit in Kirkuk.

-Al Sharqiyah television reported that a US plane had crashed in Mosul.
Quoting its correspondent in the city, the TV said that US forces had
rushed to the area and sealed off the scene where the crash occurred.

January 5:

-At least 130 Iraqis and 11 US soldiers die (highest number of US
soldiers killed in one day since August) in one of the bloodiest days in
Iraq since the invasion.

January 6:

-A medical source at Al-Ramadi State Hospital [speaking on condition of
anonymity] reports that 14 civilians, including three children, ?were
martyred at the hands of US snipers today.? The source added that ?the
snipers stationed on roof tops of high buildings in Al-Ramadi, killed
those victims in the Al-Ma?arid district in the city center this
morning?. Al Sharqiyah correspondent adds that ?Al-Ramadi has witnessed
massive protests against the presence of US snipers who have been
deployed throughout the city, spreading fear among residents.?
Al-Sharqiyah says that the US armed forces have yet to comment on this
incident.

-For security purposes, Iraq has suspended its daily pumping of 200,000
barrels of crude oil to major oil refineries in Bayji, north of Baghdad.

-A US convoy came under attack in Samarra when an explosive device
planted near a petrol station was detonated. Four children were injured
in the attack and were rushed to Samarra State Hospital.

-A doctor at Nasiriyah Hospital reported that two Iraqis were killed and
23 were injured today as clashes between demonstrators, who were
protesting against unemployment, and Iraqi police continued in Nasiriyah
in southern Iraq.

January 7:

-Fierce clashes broke out between resistance fighters and US forces in
Fallujah when armed men battled with the US troops in al-Tharthar Street
in the eastern part of the city as the latter tightened security
measures, blocking all main entrances to the city. Local residents also
reported fierce clashes between US soldiers and resistance fighters on
Arba?ien Street in central Fallujah.

-Earlier in the day, a roadside bomb went off at about 7:30 a.m. (0430
GMT) in eastern Fallujah as a US military patrol was passing by,
destroying a US Humvee, killing or wounding the soldiers aboard, the
source said. An Iraqi doctor from Fallujah General Hospital was killed
by a US sniper, according to residents.

A recent email from a good friend in Baghdad sums up life for Iraqis in
their new ?democracy?:

?We are living in a very critical situation now, for the ING [Iraqi
National Guard] are covering every corner around us wherever you go
inside Baghdad. The killings are ongoing everywhere inside and outside
the city.?

?Everybody in my family is safe for now only because no one is
interested in putting themselves in danger. Demonstrations are going on
all over Iraq for different reasons; price of fuel, lack of security,
jobless people are having demonstrations as well as those who do not
accept the presence of the Badr Brigades or the American forces.
[Meanwhile others are demonstrating in support of the Badr Brigades but
against the Americans.]?

?This is some kind of situation around us. The last four nights without
electricity?only half an hour every six hours. Fuel prices prevent
people from running their generators at home. Fuel on the black market
is fifty times the price what it used to be, and nobody can stand
waiting at the pumps for days anymore. The minister of oil resigned for
this, and Ahmed Chalabi is now the minister?everybody is frustrated yet
life is still going on as if the people are hypnotized.?

?Nothing has changed except that we see US Humvees and pick-up trucks
full of Iraqi National Guard everywhere [in Baghdad,]? he concluded.

_______________________________________________
(c)2004, 2005 Dahr Jamail.
All images, photos, photography and text are protected by United States and international copyright law. If you would like to reprint Dahr's Dispatches on the web, you need to include this copyright notice and a prominent link to the http://DahrJamailIraq.com website.

Wampum on CNO

The Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma was once an Abramoff client. So, how does that play in the usual Republican guilt by association game?

Is it dishonest not to disclose the whole truth? That, for example, the fellow who got all of $5600 in five years, in addition to being a Democrat, is a member of the Cherokee Nation. If so, then isn't the failure to leave out this information a good example of the "culture of corruption?"

Wampum
Progressive Politics, Indian Issues, and Autism Advocacy
by MB Williams

This morning, I was slumming over at Maine's local Freeper hangout, As Maine Goes, mostly to see how the wingnuts are handling the most recent balance of power fiasco in the Maine House. It was there that I ran across a post highlighting, via a list released by the Republican National Committee, that 90% of Congressional Democrats were tainted by "Abramoff-linked" money.

Now, what exactly does that mean? If one looks at Abramoff's personal contributions, 100% went to Republicans.

I decided to do a bit more research on one of the names on the complete GOP-compiled list, former Congressman and 2004 Senate candidate Brad Carson of Oklahoma, who purportedly accepted $20,600 in "Abramoff-linked" money. A quick release of the monkeys into Google News came up with this brief:
The Associated Press reported Wednesday that at least 48 members of Congress had shed donations linked to Abramoff, including the top Republican leaders in the House and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y.

Istook and Inhofe are the only current members of the Oklahoma congressional delegation who received money directly from Abramoff. A political action committee affiliated with former Sen. Don Nickles, who retired last year, also received money from Abramoff.

Some watchdog organizations that specialize in tracking campaign money have linked former Oklahoma U.S. Rep. Brad Carson and the Oklahoma Democratic Party to Abramoff because both received money from Indian tribes that had been represented by the lobbyist or his firm.

Among the tribes was the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. According to Senate records, Abramoff's firm was registered to lobby for the Cherokee Nation briefly in 2003. A spokesman for the Cherokee Nation could not be reached Thursday.

Note that nowhere in the article does it mention that Brad Carson is an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma.

So to whom else did the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma give their "tainted money"?

Recipient
Donor
Total
Cycle
NRCC
Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma
$5,000
2006
DNC
CNO
$220
2006
DSCC
CNO
$25,000
2004
Democratic Party of Oklahoma
CNO
$10,000
2004
Brad R. Carson (D-OK)
CNO
$4,300
2004
Doug Dodd (D-OK)
CNO
$2,000
2004
Frank D. Lucas (R-OK)
CNO
$2,000
2004
John Sullivan (R-OK)
CNO
$2,000
2004
Kirk Humphries (R-OK)
CNO
$500
2004
Kalyn Cherie Free (D-OK)
CNO
$250
2004
Catherine Heller Keating (R-OK)
CNO
$1,000
2002
Brad Carson (D-OK)
CNO
$500
2002
Brad Carson (D-OK)
CNO
$800
2000
DNC
CNO
$200
2000

Look at all those...Oklahoma candidates. Obviously the CNO would have no other reason than a suggestion from a short-term lobbyist to shell out all that cash to local candidates, particularly enrolled Indians such as Carson and Free.

What is now happening is that any and all money from these tribes, and I imagine soon, ALL gaming tribes (the only ones with enough cash to throw around) will be toxic to politicians. Fortunately, some Democrats are showing spine enough to call the GOP on their bigoted tactics. Rhode Island Rep. Patrick Kennedy, a long-time advocate for Indian tribes on the Hill, rejected the notion that contributions he took from sovereign Indian nations, some of which have on occasion been represented by Abramoff's lobbying firm, be returned to the tribes or donated to other causes, without tribal approval.

In the interest of full-disclosure, Eric and I purchased gas from the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe last summer in Michigan. The Saginaw-Chippewa were clients of Jack Abramoff's lobbying firm. Thus, we here at Wampum have been tainted by the receipt of an Abramoff-linked commodity. Hence, the Koufax Awards must also be tainted, as are all the recipients of Awards from the past four years. And if FEC blog-linking rules go into effect, we've poisoned everyone on our sidebar as well. Isn't that how it works, according to new GOP "they did it too" rules?

Update: I spent most of the morning typing this, and missed ReddHedd's welcome post on the subject. Sadly, some of fdl's readers are idiots when it comes to tribal sovereignty issues, but it's nothing we haven't seen in the past in the Lefty blogosphere.

Update2: skippy, writing in the diaries at MyDD hops on the "those who get it" bandwagon:
the problem with this guilt by association tactic is that it's weak, and not even a real debating point.

for example: skippy is in show business. suppose skippy hires a public relations firm, let's call them abramoff & associates, to publicize his career. ergo, skippy is abramoff's client.

and let's say skippy also pays some of his own money to backstage west for an ad touting skippy's appearance in "blogtopia! the musical!" at a 99-seat equity waiver theater at the complex.

then, for the sake of argument, let's say it turns out abramoff & associates is run by the mafia, and they are bribing television studios with payola to hire their actor clients. by the same logic, then backstage west is affiliated with the mafia, and involved in the bribery scandal. because, after all, skippy is abramoff's client, and backstage "took money from abramoff, his associates, or his clients."

even worse, let's suppose abramoff & associates cheated skippy out of his money. so now it's a case of blaming the victim.

http://wampum.wabanaki.net/vault/2006/01/002253.html

******
While it may be impolitic, I can't help wondering if part of the reason the Native American Tribes were charged so much for nothing was because, if they'd asked for their money back, they ran the risk of being called "Indian Givers."

Forum on the 4th

Hart on Bases

Is it more credible when it's Gary Hart that's lifting the veil on the four "secret" American bases, along with Pentagon East (a new nest for the N.S.A.) masquerading as the largest American Embassy in the world, that are being contructed in Iraq?

Of course, the only way this handful of projects could be a secret from the people on the ground, the contractors supervising the building and China's spy satellites is if, like the emperor's new clothes, they're invisible chimera, virtual constructs designed to "explain" the disappearance of another billion,like the previous nine.

If anything is actually being built, it's only a secret from the American people who are paying for it.

End This Evasion on Permanent Military Bases in Iraq
by Gary Hart

It has been the dream of Republican neoconservatives at least since 1998 - and probably years before - to overthrow Saddam Hussein and to use the new client state of Iraq as the US's military and political base from which to pacify the complex and troubled Middle East. Leaving aside the plausibility of this notion, it is not one with which the great American leaders of history would have identified and certainly not one they would have attempted to carry out in secret.

Having failed in this enterprise, as some of us predicted, the question is: what now? There is still the possibility that a central remnant of this secret scheme may yet be salvaged. Surprisingly, the trick has drawn little attention from the American audience. It is to help install at least the semblance of a "democratic" government in Baghdad, even one that in author Fareed Zakaria's perceptive term is an illiberal democracy; to construct permanent US military bases at strategic points throughout the country and then persuade the new "democratic" government to invite us to stay.

So, now that the debate has finally turned not on whether to stay or to go but on how soon and under what conditions we should leave, it would be a mistake of epic proportions to assume things are that simple. There is an old movie line my friend Frank Mankiewicz, the veteran political adviser, is fond of quoting: "These are desperate men and they will stop at nothing." This he said during the Watergate years and we all knew what he was talking about, but it also applies today. For those of us who warned against kicking a Middle East hornets' nest, to assume that now it is simply a question of timing would be to assume that the neo-con Houdinis who gave us Vietnam-in-the-desert are out of tricks.

Any attempt to find out whether the US is, or is not, constructing permanent military bases meets with frustration. The few who have attempted to get a direct answer to this question are met with evasion and purposeful confusion over what is or is not "permanent". But this is the ultimate test of true Bush administration intentions in Iraq. If we are, in fact, constructing permanent bases, "leaving" simply means a reduction of forces and the permanent stationing of US brigades in Iraq. If this "compromise" solution appeals to you, you might wish to refresh your memory about the disastrous French experience in Indochina or even certain phases of the British occupation of Iraq.

Under circumstances where Congress was performing its constitutional oversight responsibilities, and where the press was less intimidated by power, it would be a straightforward exercise to determine whether a final neoconservative trick is afoot. Congressional committees would have senior civilian and uniformed Pentagon and State department officials answer direct questions about US plans. "Mr or Madame secretary, are we, or are we not, constructing permanent military bases in Iraq and, if so, for what purpose?"

But this Congress has made clear it is a purely partisan institution, not a separate branch of government, and that it has no intention of fulfilling its duties to oversee the executive branch and inform the American people. Obviously, reporters could do the same with the White House press secretary (with no serious hope of an honest answer) or, even better, the president.

And to forgo predictable semantic sleights of hand, let us define "permanent" as: fixed, solid, durable and lasting. In practical terms, that means pouring concrete and welding steel, not tents and ditch latrines.

It is a shame for any American to distrust the veracity of his or her leaders. But the current crop has given us more than enough reason to do so. So when the president says: "When they [Iraqis] stand up, we will stand down," it cries out for an explicit definition of what "stand down" means in practice. Otherwise, "stand down" will quickly join "stay the course" and "support the troops" as rhetorical substitutes for policy and the equivalent of the scarves magicians use to obscure the concealment of an ace up the sleeve.

The art of deception does not require outright lies. It may simply lie in refusing to reveal the truth, the art of the trick. Given all the purposeful obfuscation, deception and card-shuffling that went on during the run up to the Iraq war, and the shuck-and-jive since things turned ugly, does anyone seriously believe the neoconservative magicians are out of tricks?

Gary Hart, a former US senator, was twice a contender for the Democratic presidential nomination. His new book, The Shield and The Cloak: The Security of the Commons, is out this month (Oxford University Press)

© 2006 Financial Times

ICG in West Virginia

The founder of International Coal Group on a happier day.

Wilard L. Ross, Jr , "The King of Bankruptcy," and his new bride,

"Ross, 68, is a billionaire "vulture" investor with a long track record of buying assets from distressed companies, consolidating them and then selling them at a huge gain when market conditions have changed........"

[...]
Ross, 68, is a billionaire "vulture" investor with a long track record of buying assets from distressed companies, consolidating them and then selling them at a huge gain when market conditions have changed.

Most recently, Ross rolled up bankrupt and underperforming steel makers to create International Steel Group. Ross in April sold ISG to Mittal Steel Co. (MT.N: Quote, Profile, Research) for $4.5 billion.

Ross formed International Coal in April to do the same thing for the coal industry, which has enjoyed a revival as sky-high natural gas and oil prices fuel demand for coal. Stockpiles long held by utilities have been whittled down, forcing power producers to buy new supplies.

Ross noted that most of ICG's coal is sold under long-term contracts, which typically re-price only once a year. As a result, there is a lag period when ICG realizes the benefit of higher spot prices.

"Our realizations have been going up," he said, though he declined to comment on his outlook for coal prices, citing regulatory rules surrounding public offerings.

"People just bought $250 million worth of our stock, so you can come to your own conclusions on why they would do that," Ross said.

For now, Ross appears to have struck paydirt with his investments in coal. About two years ago, he said he paid the equivalent of $1.50 to $2.00 a share for what became ICG.
[...]

http://yahoo.reuters.com/financeQuoteCompanyNewsArticle.jhtml?duid=mtfh07055_2005-12-07_18-33-38_n07229070_newsml

******
January 6th update. In an interview on ABC, Wilbur Ross says they've set up a fund for the miners. $2 million so far. This from a man who made $125 million on the stock offering in the last month.

******
January 28th update

Old King Coal still a merry old soul

Some upper-crust types in New York and Palm Beach are tut-tutting over the whirlwind party-hopping of billionaire Sago, W. Va., coal mine owner Wilbur Ross and his wife, society columnist Hilary Geary, in the weeks since the Jan. 2 explosion that killed 12 miners and left one in a coma.

"It's really quite terrible - especially Hilary Geary's column in Quest magazine," an anonymous bluenose sniffed to Lowdown, noting that the platinum-blond Geary - who's the third wife of Ross, her third husband - writes a frothy feature teeming with Social Register types.

Ross is the founder and chairman of International Coal Group Inc., which owns the safety-challenged Sago mine.

"Mr. Ross moves in different circles than coal miners," United Mine Workers spokesman Bill Smith said yesterday. "That's been evident since he formed ICG, and it remains evident today."

Federal and state officials are investigating the accident, but ICG is trying to prevent the union - which does not represent Sago workers - from accompanying investigators into the site of the underground catastrophe.

Above ground in Palm Beach, Ross and Geary were photographed wearing color-coordinated outfits at a lunch for Prince Edward and his wife, Sophie, the countess of Wessex, at Wall Streeter Tom Quick's lush estate.

The weekend before, the couple was snapped at a charity do with Emilia Fanjul, wife of sugar baron Jose (Pepe) Fanjul. They also attended the Winter Antiques Show at the Park Ave. Armory, a few blocks from their palatial apartment in the Sherry Netherland.

Ross spokesman Tim Metz pointed out that that all their partying has been for good causes, and that ICG has put up $2 million for the miners' families, with Ross personally vowing to match contributions above that amount.

"It's a tricky business, but they're not going to stop their lives because of it," said Quest editor David Patrick Columbia. "I think it's a very rough time for them."

Blue Frog Regrets

Welcome To Blue Frog Chocolates

Dear Customers,

Due to your continued support, we are temporarily out of stock of just about every item on our web site. After Hurricane Katrina, we were unable to anticipate the level of orders from all of you wanting to help RENEW-Orleans!

Thank you for allowing us to provide the highest quality chocolates available in the country. Rest assured, all of you chocoholics, that we will continue to provide these products, come hurricane or high water.

Give us a few weeks and our shop will be restocked - especially the Truffettes de France.

Ann, Rick, Adam and Jeannine
Blue Frog Chocolates
New Orleans, LA

DON'T FORGET TO "SHOP NOLA"

Happy New Year

It can't be worse than 2005.

Quote of the day---

IMPEACHMENT: IT'S NOT JUST FOR BLOWJOBS ANYMORE