Res Ipsa Loquitur

It's been quite some time since my last post--almost 4 months.  Events in my personal life have kept me busy, but I can't stay silent with all that is happening in the country right now.  Since I last spoke, the rubber stamp Republican Congress has passed the Tyranny Enabling Act (i.e. the Military Commissions Act of 2006), which legalizes the institutionalized use of torture by our government.  It does this by attempting (and I say attempting because the Supreme Court will have final say on this) to give Bush the power to determine who is an "enemy combatant" via secret trials where the defendants have no rights, as well as attempting to cut off all judicial review (suspending the 'Great Writ' of habeas corpus).  At the time of passage, a great many people in the great uninformed (and easily fooled) mass of America hailed the bill as a moderate compromise.  Some compromise...these military commissions are nothing more than drumhead trials, and the suspension of habeas corpus is blatantly unconstitutional because the US is not in a state of rebellion or invasion (as the Constitution requires).  Arlen Specter (the worthless piece of shit) observed in Senate floor debate that the Tyranny Enabling Act takes us back 900 years to before the Great Writ was first implemented.....and then he voted for it.

Watch Keith Olbermann (video) and constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley for a brief but concise explanation of what exactly this means.  If it couldn't before, now it can happen to you.  You could be picked up off the street, whisked away to a secret prison in some third-world country, tortured (perhaps even to death), held without charge or trial and denied any appeal of the basis for your detention.  If you have no right to contest your detention, all the other legal protections in the world (like those prohibiting torture, coerced testimony, warrantless searches) mean *nothing.*  Oh wait, they're doing away with those too!! It sounds like something out of 1984 or "V for Vendetta," but I wouldn't risk my credibility if it weren't the truth.  And let's not forget that the illegal spying program affecting millions of Americans is still in operation and has not been repudiated by the Republican Congress or the American people.  We live in a tyranny now, not a free country, and certainly not under the rule of law.  It doesn't feel that much different on an everyday level does it?  I told Mandy early on in our relationship that the day we switched from being a democratic body to a dictatorship, few people would even notice, and there would be no official announcement.  Well, it has happened.  Turley seems to think that the Supreme Court--conveniently deferential after two ultra-conservative appointments by Bush--may not save us this time.  Which means that we have to save ourselves.  Consider the words of Scott Horton at Balkinization, musing on the "Enabling Law" which gave Hitler dictatorial powers. He and a number of others have noted the striking similarities in the dismantling of both the Weimar constitution and our own, but Horton sees some hope in the recent and striking Republican meltdown:

If the elections on November 7 proceed as the polls now suggest [edit: the Republicans losing control of one or both houses of Congress to the Democrats], the stage will be set for events quite different from the years following the Enabling Law. It appears likely that a more assertive, opposition-oriented Congress will try to draw back on the transfer of power to the Executive. This new Congress will very likely use the committee hearing process to probe the dark secrets of the first six years of the Bush Administration in a way we have not seen up to this point. Further it is clear that the MCA will be challenged as an unconstitutional termination of habeas corpus, a proposition which Hamdan suggests may get very favorable reception in the courts. Moreover, the Republican claim that the assumption of an imperial Executive authority is legitimized by the ballot box would then also be less plausible. All of this suggests that unlike 1933, the future assertions of rule by exception will be steadily more tenuous. But this analysis also underscores the tremendous importance of the November 7 elections. In a very real sense, this election will determine not merely the identity of various representatives to Congress, but the constitutional structure of the American Government going forward. In that respect, it is unlike any other election in my lifetime.

To explain a bit, when Horton says "rule by exception" he means basically a state of affairs opposite of what you would expect under the rule of law, where the law applies to everyone including the President.  What rule by exceptions means, is that the laws apply to everyone *except* the "leader"  (did you know that Fűhrer means "leader" in German?)   I couldn't agree more with what Horton says about the importance of this election...it is really unlike any other that many of us have ever known.  I also think this is one of our last shots to save our system of government before it is too late. It survived the civil war, two world wars, and the cold war's threat of nuclear annihilation, but without some action on the part of us, the people, it seems as if it's all going down the drain this time around.  Let's hope people don't sit at home, or vote Republican, on November 7th.

You don't have to do much, really, to save America.  Just make sure your friends know 1.) that election day is November 7th (6 AM - 6 PM in Kentucky), 2.) You can find out where you vote through your State Board of Elections, and 3.) We need to throw the Republicans out, and November 7th is the only chance to do it.

Chances are a great deal of Americans live in a Congressional district that is up for grabs by the Democrats this year.  Here in Kentucky's 4th, Ken Lucas (D) is challenging the extremist Bush apologist Geoff Davis (R).  I plan to go canvassing door-to-door in my area to do my part.  We just can't sit on the sidelines anymore and hope for the best.  As Turley says, Justice Kennedy is going to go along with the Bush administration at some point, deferring to the people's branch because, well, we wouldn't re-elect them if we weren't OK with all this, right?

I will be blogging regularly from now to election day.  There's so much to cover that I missed.  I just hope I still have some readers!!!

Update: Turley says he isn't really sure how we got to this point.  Uhm, I'm sure.  Republicans, Republicans, Republicans.  Having supported Bush's power grabs, I guess they would consider it "cutting and running" to back down now.

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"In Germany, the Nazis first came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Catholics, but I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.

Then they came for me...By that time there was no one to speak up for anyone."

--Reverend Martin Niemoller

I don't think anything beyond this needs to be said:

the real purpose of the Bush administration's postwar mission in Iraq: ...to obtain a new, regional military platform in the heart of the Arab world.

A few days ago I was outraged that Specter wouldn't be holding hearings about illegal domestic spying. The most recent news is much, much worse. He has actually proposed legislation that would grant blanket amnesty to anyone involved in the domestic spying program, including the President, which of course the White House still half-heartedly insists is "completely legal." But why would anyone need amnesty for legal actions?

There is another aspect of this that would seem to defy common sense: if, as some people, including Specter, have claimed, we need more information before a definitive legal judgment can be made about the domestic spying, then how can anyone even consider preemptively granting amnesty for those involved? Specter would seem to be contradicting himself: we need to know more before we can condemn the program(s), but at the same time that lack of knowledge won't stop us from granting amnesty.

Glenn Greenwald makes the critical point, which it's easy for me to forget as much as anyone, that while Specter is putting on a disgusting show of cowardice, other than Russ Feingold (D-WI) hardly another person in Congress has had the courage to say or do anything about the Bush administration's utter contempt for the rule of law. So while Specter is clearly abdicating his constitutional duties here, the rest of the bastards and bastardesses are arguably doing so even more. We are in serious trouble, my friends.

It's nice to know somebody has it these days...



From DARE Generation Diary

I found this in the New York Times review of books:

The public scenes of the President surrounded by smiling legislators whom he praises for their wonderful work as he hands out the pens he has used to sign the bill are often utterly misleading. The elected officials aren't informed at that time of the President's real intentions concerning the law. After they leave, the President's signing statements—which he does not issue verbally at the time of signing— are placed in the Federal Register, a compendium of US laws, which members of Congress rarely read. And they are often so technical, referring as they do to this subsection and that statute, that they are difficult to understand.

For five years, Bush has been issuing a series of signing statements which amount to a systematic attempt to take power from the legislative branch. Though Ronald Reagan started issuing signing statements to set forth his own position on a piece of legislation, he did it essentially to guide possible court rulings, and he only occasionally objected to a particular provision of a bill. Though subsequent presidents also issued such statements, they came nowhere near to making the extraordinary claims [of power] that Bush has; nor did they make such statements nearly so often.

"A gutless Republican worm cowering in the face of pressure from the administration and fellow Republicans."  That's how Jack Cafferty is describing Arlen Specter, who made a good show of the possibility of holding Bush's feet to the fire on domestic spying, but then when the cameras stopped rolling, he caved.

Instead of hearings, Orrin Hatch has received "assurances" from Cheney.  We all know what it means when the Bush administration assures Congress of anything: they're lying through their teeth. 

Senators like Specter are in many ways worse than those who openly support the imperial presidency, because they talk a good game--and make it look like we have a system of checks and balances in operation--but then do nothing about it.  This is just further evidence that there are no Republican "moderates" left, only collaborators in the construction of a full-blown dictatorship.

"It doesn't have to happen...we have everything we need, save perhaps political will.  And in America, that's a renewable resource, but the way to renew it is to follow the advice of James Madison and cultivate a well-informed citizenry.  'You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.'"

Desparate to distract voters from important issues like domestic spying, rising health care costs, inflation, gas prices and Iraq, Bush and company have unveiled their top priorities for this year: gay marriage and flag burning.

Senate leaders this week "are planning votes on emotional issues dear to social conservatives, many of whom are upset with President Bush and GOP lawmakers about immigration and other matters,” reports the Houston Chronicle. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) has “tentatively scheduled a vote when lawmakers return from their Memorial Day break on a constitutional amendment that would ban same-sex marriage. In subsequent weeks, the chamber's Republican leadership intends to take up another constitutional amendment that would allow Congress to ban flag burning."

"Neither the same-sex marriage nor the flag-burning proposals are expected to win the two-thirds votes in both chambers of Congress needed to get the issues to the state legislatures. Nevertheless, the Republicans hope that their efforts will motivate a key constituency that needs to turn out in force at the polls in the November elections if the party is to retain control of Congress."

Are you distracted yet? If not, take a gander at this:

The Pentagon has decided to omit from new detainee policies a key tenet of the Geneva Convention that explicitly bans "humiliating and degrading treatment," according to knowledgeable military officials, a step that would mark a further, potentially permanent, shift away from strict adherence to international human rights standards.

I guess you can't exactly call them the "Do-nothing Congress" - they're actually doing things, most of them really bad, and certainly not anything that's going to address the serious issues facing the country.

Personally I am so sick of gays being used as scapegoats by the Republican Party I'm about to blow my top.

"Suddenly religion comes along and you suddenly realize, I think we all have to realize, that liberal rights, dear old dreary liberal rights, have got to be continually fought for. It's like anything else in life, you don't climb up to a plateau where the sun always shines, you are always marching on relentlessly. Nothing stands still and liberal rights, which are the easiest thing in the world to sneer at, have in fact taken a long time to create, particularly in the United Kingdom. We really have to fight to make sure we keep them," - Neil Tennant

"We think we've come so far...that the torture of heretics, the burning of witches is all ancient history. Then before we can blink an eye, suddenly it threatens to start all over again... Vigilance: that is the price we must continually pay." -- Captain Jean-Luc Picard, "The Drumhead"

"These are offenses against the rule of law and the Constitution that I never imagined could happen, much less be allowed to continue." - Al Gore, on NPR's Fresh Air the other day

OK, so we know that President Bush has never vetoed a bill, the first president to not do so since the 1800's.  We also know that instead of using the veto power, which can be overridden and is very public, Bush signs the bills but attaches a signing statement in which he carves out an exception or declares that a provision will be completely ignored.  Examples include the ban on torture, oversight requirements of the USA PATRIOT Act, and about 748 other ones, all designed to increase the scope of presidential power.

A recent article provides a bit more of a window into this process.  Turns out that David Addington, one of Cheney's staff, is responsible for reviewing all the legislation passed by Congress and flagging any of it that might contradict with Dick Cheney's expansive view of that power.  The White House legal team then presumably writes up the signing statement, and Bush puts pen to paper.  The Constitutional scholars in the article seem to agree with me that this is clearly cannot be reconciled with the Constitution:

Cheney's office has taken the lead in challenging many of these laws, officials said, because they run counter to an expansive view of executive power that Cheney has cultivated for the past 30 years. Under the theory, Congress cannot pass laws that place restrictions or requirements on how the president runs the military and spy agencies. Nor can it pass laws giving government officials the power or responsibility to act independently of the president.

Mainstream legal scholars across the political spectrum reject Cheney's expansive view of presidential authority, saying the Constitution gives Congress the power to make all rules and regulations for the military and the executive branch and the Supreme Court has consistently upheld laws giving bureaucrats and certain prosecutors the power to act independently of the president.

The veto power is the President's only allowed method of blocking legislation that has been duly passed by both houses of Congress; what this amounts to is an abdication of the President's duty to faithfully execute the laws that he himself has approved.

Despite how this appears, as in the image above, Bush cannot be excused as simply ignorant of what he is doing:

Martin Lederman , who worked in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel under presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush , said that Addington is simply doing the day-to-day legwork for Cheney and that he is influential within the administration because of the vice president's desire to enhance executive power and Bush's willingness to endorse Cheney's views.

``In every administration, Democratic and Republican, there are officials with strongly held constitutional views, including somewhat idiosyncratic views," said Lederman, now a law professor at Georgetown University. ``What is new is that the extremely idiosyncratic and aggressive constitutional views are being adopted by the vice president and, therefore, by the administration."

I just discovered the other day that the Ashland Daily Independent printed my letter to the editor about the fall congressional races.  A friend from high school told me at the gym that he had seen it, and that he completely agreed with me.  A very good sign considering he was a Bush voter before; I wonder how many more are out there?

Fall Congressional races are critical

I’m writing to urge citizens to participate in the midterm congressional elections this fall.

The issues couldn't be more crystal clear. President Bush has presided over a concerted effort to expand the powers of the presidency at the expense of Congress (and hence, us all). He gave the green light to warrantless wiretapping of American citizens in direct contravention of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and continues to assert the power to do so.

The situation we face is made more dire by the fact that Republicans in Congress — even the fabled “moderates” and “mavericks” — are rubber-stamping the president. They’ve apparently not contemplated that they are handing a loaded gun to Bush and future presidents.

With no restraints on the president’s ability to spy on Americans, overturn laws and suspend due process, the next terrorist attack on American soil will be the day we mourn not only loss of life but the further erosion of our liberties.

We need a Congress that is willing to do its job — to exercise the power of the purse and subpoena to stand up to this reckless president. That won't happen until we have Democratic leadership; Republicans in Congress have amply demonstrated that.

Justin Faulkner

Catlettsburg

Sorry I haven't posted much lately, I've been concentrating on the wonderful new girlfriend in my life and honestly haven't been home all that much.  I wanted to relate this comment ary from Balkinization about illegality and corruption on the part of the Republican White House and Congress.  It's such a powerful post that I don't think I could add much, but a quick summary is in order.  From what I can tell, an executive branch raid on a Congressman's office has the Rubber-Stamp Republicans spooked.  Despite approvals by these true believers of virtually every expansion of presidential power, now they're crying foul because it has hit home.  Too little, too late, I say; if there's any justice in this world the litmus test for 2006 will be whether a candidate is willing to stand up to the White House.  By that measure, most of the current crew should be kicked out.

The Bush Administration has, over the past six years, detained American citizens without any of the protections of the Bill of Rights, engaged in cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of detainees, imposed new forms of secrecy to insulate itself from oversight both by the Press and by Congress, used the state secrets privilege to shut down any investigation into its mistreatment of detainees, hid and prevaricated about the evidence justifying, the reasons for, and the cost of Iraqi war, and begun a massive spying program on American citizens. Throughout all of these events, the United States Congress has been essentially supine, unable or unwilling to lift a finger to oppose an executive branch that was simultaneously incompetent, arrogant and out of control. And now, when the FBI catches redhanded a Congressman engaged in the most egregious act of corruption, *now* members of Congress are upset that the Executive is asserting too much authority.

...

Make no mistake: the real reason why Congress is so concerned about the raid on Jefferson's office is that many of them know that corruption within Congress is rampant. If the FBI and the Justice Department can start getting serious about investigating corruption in Congress, many of their colleagues (and possibly they themselves) could be next. Is it any accident, do you think, that instead of trumpeting corruption by a Democratic Congressman, Speaker Hastert-- who himself is rumored to be under investigation in the Abramoff affair-- is objecting loudly to the search of Jefferson's office?

The American Constitution is premised on the idea that any Executive overreaching that might take us on the path to tyranny and dictatorship would be met with Congressional objection and Congressional oversight. For six years we have been subjected to an arrogant, self-righteous, and incompetent Administration, which has grabbed for power and avoided accountability in every way it could, chipping away at Americans' proud traditions of freedom, harming our country's interests around the world and undermining the deliberative processes that produce sound policy and good governance. It is an Administration blinded by smug self-righteousness, devoted not to the development of competent and sound policies for the governance of our country, but to the concentration and perpetuation of its own power. But at the moment that we need the Congress most, it is feckless, corrupt, and venal, offering no resistance to mounting evidence of this Administration's illegality and incompetence. If Congress now finds that Executive power is encroaching a bit too close for comfort, it is poetic justice, for this Congress has thoroughly abdicated its constitutional responsibilities to protect the American people from Executive overreaching.

That's what you call being hoisted on your own petard.  Having encouraged the rabid racism and xenophobia of his base (the clash of civilizations, etc), if he now makes any concessions toward a realistic immigration policy they will abandon him.  At the same time, if he satisfies them by trying to deport 11 million hispanics, he will lose even more votes over the course of the next generation or so.

In other news, the right-wingers are using the Holocaust as proof that we can successfully purge the US of illegal immigrants.  Oh boy...

...but for some reason this segment on Scarborough Country about the NSA "Phone Tap Fiasco" leaves a strange taste in my mouth.  Probably because I realize that people are more likely to understand how the Bush administration is trying to trample all constitutional barriers to absolute executive power (i.e. dictatorship) when it's delivered as an analogy based on popular movies and television. And that's pretty fucking sad. It's just too flashy and tongue-in-cheek, I guess; why use "There's something about Mary" as an example of abuse of power when there are so many more legitimately chilling ones?

The trailer for this bold-looking movie featuring Al Gore can be viewed here. From the website:

With 2005, the worst storm season ever experienced in America just behind us, it seems we may be reaching a tipping point - and Gore pulls no punches in explaining the dire situation. Interspersed with the bracing facts and future predictions is the story of Gore's personal journey: from an idealistic college student who first saw a massive environmental crisis looming; to a young Senator facing a harrowing family tragedy that altered his perspective, to the man who almost became President but instead returned to the most important cause of his life - convinced that there is still time to make a difference.

I think over the past couple of decades we have seen a remarkable (and effective) effort by a large portion of the private sector (in particular the energy industry) to convince people that environmental dangers are the stuff of science fiction and nothing more than the batty environmentalist equivalent of an end times scenario. But the truth of the matter is that the science is sound and as close to conclusive as science ever purports to be. It's silly and naive not to recognize that living systems such as the earth are not indestructable. Planets other than ours experience environmental calamities every second; it's just that those don't matter too much to us because we don't live there. Isn't it the bigger fantasy to assume that no matter what we do, the Earth will forever continue as a suitable environment for a population of humans on the order of 8 or 9 billion?

Speaking of science fiction, though...I can't help but imagine an episode of Star Trek about a civilization destroying their world and never even realizing it. Indeed, a sizable portion welcomes the planet's tumult as a sign of their God's descent from above, wherein he will reconquer the holy land and settle a millenia-old land dispute.

When I attended the election school for Tuesday's primary election I was struck by the archaic nature of the oath that poll workers are required to recite.  We had to swear or affirm that we hadn't participated in a duel with firearms recently, among other things.  Thinking back on it today, while reading Billmon discuss why polls shouldn't be determinitive when it comes to constitutional rights, I thought about the oath of office that Bush took:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.

Of course he added "so help me God," as so many other presidents have done, to pander to the religious. But my question is, do the words mean anything to him? When he swore that oath, was he just looking at it as a job requirement to be fulfilled? Because he sure hasn't been faithfully executing lately. Or preserved, protected, or defended the Constitution, for that matter.

I know enough about history to realize that in previous centuries, oaths really meant something to people that swore them.  Klingons, too, with a government as corrupt as they come, have a deep respect for the importance of giving your word in the form of an oath.  To break an oath is to greatly dishonor oneself.  Hence, Bush and basically the entire Republican Congress, and a few Democratic enablers, can rightly be called dishonorable for abandoning their oaths of office.

So maybe the message of the 2006 elections should be right out of Bush's 2000 election playbook: "restoring honor and integrity" to a dishonored government.

It's simple: his tenure at the NSA would have included overseeing the warrantless domestic spying, which is flat-out illegal.  As a military officer, and a government official, he had a duty to report (and not cooperate with) violations of the law.  By not fulfilling that duty, he's demonstrated that he can't be trusted.

Jack Cafferty:

We all hope nothing happens to Arlen Specter, the Republican head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, cause he might be all that stands between us and a full blown dictatorship in this country. He's vowed to question these phone company executives about volunteering to provide the government with my telephone records, and yours, and tens of millions of other Americans.

Shortly after 9/11, AT7T, Verizon, and BellSouth began providing the super-secret NSA with information on phone calls of millions of our citizens, all part of the War on Terror, President Bush says. Why don't you go find Osama bin Laden, and seal the country's borders, and start inspecting the containers that come into our ports?

The President rushed out this morning in the wake of this front page story in USA Today and declared the government is doing nothing wrong, and all this is just fine. Is it? Is it legal? Then why did the Justice Department suddenly drop its investigation of the warrantless spying on citizens because the NSA said Justice Department lawyers didn't have the necessary security clearance to do the investigation. Read that sentence again. A secret government agency has told our Justice Department that it's not allowed to investigate it. And the Justice Department just says ok and drops the whole thing. We're in some serious trouble, boys and girls"

Tens of millions of people's phone records....does that sound like narrowly targeting Al-Qaeda to you?  How many more times will people foolishly give them the benefit of the doubt?  And how many more dupes of the public can we afford before the mechanisms of government accountability that form the backbone of our democracy are tattered beyond repair?

2006 is shaping up to be a great year:

After months of speculation and intrigue, a special grand jury investigating the state government’s hiring practices indicted Gov. Ernie Fletcher on three misdemeanor charges of conspiracy, official misconduct and political discrimination.

If you'll recall, this all centers around the merit hiring scandal: Ernie's attempt to coopt our state government into a political machine by purging Democrats from rank-and-file merit jobs. Alas, as with many Republican endeavors, this one has a built-in flaw: it's illegal. And I hope above hope that Fletcher goes down in flames for it. He tried to stop the investigation once by pardoning all the indicted officials in his administration, but he's going to find it difficult to avoid justice this time.