Federal Appeals Court Says Warrantless Wiretaps Can Continue

A divided federal appeals court today dismissed a case challenging the National Security Agency’s program to wiretap without warrants the international communications of some Americans, reversing a trial judge’s order that the program be shut down.

The majority in a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, in Cincinnati, ruled on a narrow ground, saying the plaintiffs, including lawyers and journalists, could not show injury direct and concrete enough to allow them to have standing to sue.

Because it is extremely difficult to show concrete injury from the highly classified program, the effect of the ruling was to insulate the program from judicial scrutiny in ordinary federal courts.

All this and more from Adam Liptak of the New York Times.

The majority did not rule on the merits of the case, though the appeals judge who wrote the lead opinion, Alice M. Batchelder, said the case provoked “a cascade of serious questions.” Those questions included whether the program violated a 1978 law, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, along with Constitution’s First and Fourth Amendments.

But Judge Batchelder was implicitly critical of the decision last year by Judge Anna Diggs Taylor of the Federal District Court in Detroit, whose ruling striking down the program was stayed during the appeals. “The district court answered all of these questions in the affirmative,” Judge Batchelder wrote, “and imposed an injunction of the broadest possible scope.”

A second appeals court judge, Julia Smith Gibbons, concurred in the judgment dismissing the case but did not join in Judge Batchelder’s extensive and technical discussion of whether the plaintiffs had standing to sue. Judge Gibbons agreed, however, that the case turned “upon the single fact that the plaintiffs have failed to provide evidence that they are personally subject to the program.”

This is what's become of our "justice system". If you can't prove they're spying on you, you have no right to challenge them for spying on other people.

This warrantless spying program is clearly illegal, and the president has proclaimed his intention of continuing it regardless of any ruling from any court. Where does he get the legal standing to do that?

And meanwhile, nobody else has legal standing to challenge him? And all because the illegal warrantless spying program is so highly classified?

The most ridiculous aspect of this travesty is often overlooked: FISA warrants -- the warrants the president insists on doing without -- are easy to get! The government can even apply for the warrant after they start the wiretap. So when the president says he needs to work outside the FISA structure, he's blowing smoke.

But FISA warrants leave a paper trail, and that's one of the things the president is trying to avoid. The other thing he's trying to avoid is any form of accountability under the law. And he's getting away with it -- on what amounts to not much more than a technicality.

Another fine thought for a Friday afternoon.

Congressional Democrats Subpoena Harriet Miers And Sara Taylor

David Stout of the New York Times says:

Congress Subpoenas Miers and Former Bush Aide

WASHINGTON, June 13 — Two former White House officials were subpoenaed today as Congressional Democrats intensified pressure on the Bush administration over the dismissals of eight United States attorneys.

From the House Judiciary Committee (PDF):

House and Senate Investigations Revealed Significant White House Involvement In US Attorney Firings:

Key White House political advisors Karl Rove and then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales were involved from the beginning in plans to remove U.S. Attorneys. According to documents obtained from the Department of Justice and Mr. Sampson’s testimony, Mr. Sampson discussed the plan with then-White House Counsel Gonzales not long after President Bush’s re-election in late 2004. A January 9, 2005 e-mail released by the Department shows that Karl Rove initiated inquires as to “how we planned to proceed regarding U.S. Attorneys, whether we were going to allow all to stay, request resignations from all and accept only some of them, or selectively replace them, etc.” In his response to queries from David Leitch, a White House official, Mr. Sampson expressly deferred to the political judgment of Mr. Rove as to whether to proceed with plans for the replacement of U.S. Attorneys, writing,“[I]f Karl thinks there would be political will to do it, then so do I.”

Mr. Sampson, who has testified that he “aggregated” the list of U.S. Attorneys to be fired, was in frequent contact with White House officials about multiple versions of proposed lists of possible U.S. Attorneys for dismissal and potential replacements over the course of nearly two years, sending draft lists for review in March 2005, January 2006, April 2006, and several drafts in September 2006 through the firings on December 7, 2006.

David Stout:

The Senate and House judiciary committees ordered Harriet E. Miers, the former White House counsel, and Sara M. Taylor [photo], a former deputy assistant to President Bush and the White House director of political affairs, to appear before their panels.

House Judiciary Committee:

According to documents and testimony, Sara Taylor, the head of the White House political operation and deputy of Karl Rove, and Scott Jennings, another aide to Mr. Rove, were involved in the discussions and planning that led to the removal of Bud Cummins and bypassing the Senate confirmation process to install Tim Griffin, another former aide to Mr. Rove, as U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of Arkansas. They were part of a group that discussed using the Attorney General’s expanded authority under the Patriot Act Reauthorization to avoid the opposition of the Arkansas Senators by appointing Mr. Griffin as interim indefinitely. In one e-mail, Mr. Sampson described Mr. Griffin’s appointment as “important to Harriet, Karl, etc.” After the firing, writing from her RNC email account, Ms. Taylor writes that “Bud is lazy – which is why we got rid of him in the first place.”

Mr. Sampson testified that Ms. Taylor was upset when the Attorney General finally “rejected” this use of the interim authority -- a month after telling Senator Pryor he was committed to finding a Senate-confirmed U.S. Attorney.

David Stout:

Ms. Taylor was ordered to appear before the Senate committee on July 11. Ms. Miers, who was briefly a nominee for Supreme Court justice, was told to appear before the House panel the following day.

House Judiciary Committee:

John McKay, former U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Washington, testified that when he met with Ms. Miers and her deputy William Kelley in August 2006 to interview for a federal judgeship, he was asked to explain “criticism that I mishandled the 2004 governor's election,” in which Republicans were upset with him for not intervening in that closely contested election.

David Stout:

The committees had already voted to authorize such subpoenas, so it was not surprising that they decided today to go ahead and issue them. Still, the action stepped up the political confrontation over the dismissals, and over the general performance of Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and the state of the Justice Department.

So far, the White House has said it will not make any current or former officials available to testify before the panels on the matter except in private interviews, with no transcripts kept. The lawmakers have disdained that arrangement as unacceptable.

“By refusing to cooperate with Congressional committees, the White House continues its pattern of confrontation over cooperation, and those who suffer most in this case are the public and the hard-working people at the Department of Justice,” Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, chairman of the Senate committee, said in a statement today.

Representative John D. Conyers of Michigan, the chairman of the House committee, said the subpoenas were “a demand on behalf of the American people.”

House Judiciary Committee:

Since the firings of these U.S. Attorneys for political reasons became public, there has been an effort to minimize, and in some instances, cover up, the role of White House officials. According to documents and the testimony of Mr. Sampson, the Attorney General was upset after the February 6, 2007, testimony of Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty because Mr. McNulty’s testimony put the White House involvement in the firings into the public domain. Former Justice Department White House Liaison Monica Goodling recently told the House Judiciary Committee that she was told not to attend a briefing by Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty on the firings to the Senate Judiciary Committee in February, 2007, because of the concern that her presence might prompt Senators to ask questions about White House involvement.

The Administration’s February 23, 2007, response to a letter from Senators Reid, Schumer, Durbin and Murray regarding the firings stated, “I am not aware of Karl Rove playing any role in the AG’s decision to appoint Griffin.” Earlier e-mails indicate that the appointment of Mr. Griffin, another former deputy to Mr. Rove, was important to Mr. Rove. The White House, Associate White House Counsel Chris Oprison, signed off on this letter. Before Griffin was installed, Mr. Oprison, who signed off on the letter, had written that the Griffin issue was “front/center on [his] radar screen” and that he had “had several conversations with [Rove aide] Scott Jennings” about “the controversy.” Many parts of this letter have since been retracted by the Department.

David Stout:

“The breadcrumbs in this investigation have always led to 1600 Pennsylvania,” Mr. Conyers said, referring to the White House by its street address. “This investigation will not end until the White House complies with the demands of this subpoena in a timely and reasonable manner, so that we may get to the bottom of this.”

House Judiciary Committee:

According to the testimony of Department officials, Mr. Rove and other White House officials attended a meeting at the White House on March 5, 2007 -- the day before Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General William Moschella testified before the House Judiciary Committee -- to “go over the admin position on all aspects of the US attorney issue.” Rove is reported to have spoken at this meeting and directed the Department to provide reasons to explain the firings in the next day’s testimony.

David Stout:

The White House reacted quickly today to the subpoenas, arguing that the committees could easily obtain all the facts they need through interviews and relevant documents, but that the Democratic chairmen “are more interested in drama than facts,” as Dana Perino, a White House spokeswoman, put it in an exchange with reporters.

Quite a publicity stunt, no? There's nothing at stake -- unless you count the future of the world's most belligerent former democracy.

Move along, folks, there's nothing to see here ... just another publicity stunt by the Democrats; you know how those Democrats are!!

Court Head-Slaps Chimp, Appeal Is Certain

The Chimp Administration never takes "NO" for an answer, no matter where it comes from, and especially if the source happens to be a court of law. "Rule of Law is for the weak, and we are strong," his chimperial drunkenness maintains, "therefore the rule of law is our enemy and we must fight it wherever possible." Which explains virtually every aspect of the administration's policies about virtually everything.

If I were able to blog full-speed, I would be writing reams about yesterday's court decision, which was reported by Adam Liptak of the New York Times as follows:

In a stinging rejection of one of the Bush administration’s central assertions about the scope of executive authority to combat terrorism, a federal appeals court ordered the Pentagon to release a man being held as an enemy combatant.

“To sanction such presidential authority to order the military to seize and indefinitely detain civilians," Judge Diana Gribbon Motz wrote, “even if the President calls them ‘enemy combatants,’ would have disastrous consequences for the Constitution — and the country.”

As Carol D. Leonnig of the Washington Post reported,

Civil libertarians who championed Marri's case had warned that if the administration prevailed in its argument, the military could next round up U.S. citizens and jail them without trial. The court appeared to agree.

"The President cannot eliminate constitutional protections with the stroke of a pen by proclaiming a civilian, even a criminal civilian, an enemy combatant subject to indefinite military detention," the panel found.

Back to Adam Liptak of the NYT:

“We refuse to recognize a claim to power,” Judge Motz added, “that would so alter the constitutional foundations of our Republic.”

The ruling was handed down by a divided three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va., in the case of Ali al-Marri, a citizen of Qatar and the only person on the American mainland known to be held as an enemy combatant.

Mr. Marri, whom the government calls a sleeper agent for Al Qaeda, was arrested on Dec. 12, 2001, in Peoria, Ill., where he was living with his family and studying computer science at Bradley University.

He has been held for the last four years at the Navy Brig in Charleston, S.C.

Judge Motz wrote that Mr. Marri may well be guilty of serious crimes. But she said that the government cannot circumvent the civilian criminal justice system through military detention.

Mr. Marri was charged with credit-card fraud and lying to federal agents after his arrest in 2001, and he was on the verge of a trial on those charges when he was moved into military detention in 2003.

The government contended, in a partly declassified declaration from a senior defense intelligence official, Jeffrey N. Rapp, that Mr. Marri was a Qaeda sleeper agent sent to the United States to commit mass murder and disrupt the banking system.

Two other men have been held as enemy combatants on the American mainland since the Sept. 11 attacks. One, Yaser Hamdi, was freed and sent to Saudi Arabia after the United States Supreme Court allowed him to challenge his detention in 2004.

The other, Jose Padilla, was transferred to the criminal justice system last year just as the Supreme Court was considering whether to review his case. He is now on trial on terrorism charges in federal court in Miami.

The Jose Padilla saga is a full indictment of the so-called GWOT and our so-called legal system, all by itself. This decision will do nothing for him. And neither will it effect the goings-on at Gitmo, much less the clandestine CIA torture facilities that we still don't know much about.

The decision does not appear to affect the rights of men held at the American naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Judge Motz stressed that the court analysis was limited to those who have substantial connections to the United States and are seized and detained within its borders.

A dissenting judge in today’s decision, Henry E. Hudson, visiting from the Federal District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, wrote that President Bush “had the authority to detain al-Marri as an enemy combatant or belligerent” because “he is the type of stealth warrior used by Al Qaeda to perpetrate terrorist acts against the United States.”

Henry E. Hudson needs to wash his brain out with soap. There is no provision anywhere in our Constitution or in any other other civilized legal system that gives the president -- or anyone else -- the authority to detain people indefinitely without charge or hearing, based on anything -- let alone an uncorroborated accusation that the person being held is of a certain "type".

Jonathan Hafetz, the litigation director of the Liberty and National Security Project of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law and one of Mr. Marri’s lawyers, said of the court’s decision: “This is landmark victory for the rule of law and a defeat for unchecked executive power. It affirms the basic constitutional rights of all individuals — citizens and immigrants - in the United States.”

Let's not get carried away, Jonathan. It is a step in the right direction, but it is a very minor step -- one sure to be appealed forever and a day -- and it doesn't really guarantee anything, especially given the Chimp administration's track record when it comes to compliance with legal strictures.

Writing for the majority, Judge Motz ordered the trial judge in the case to issue a writ of habeas corpus directing the Pentagon “within a reasonable period of time” to do one of several things with Mr. Marri. He may be charged in the civilian court system; he may be deported; or he may be held as a material witness; or he may be released.

“But military detention of al-Marri,” Judge Motz wrote, “must cease.”

We'll see how long it takes for them to get around to complying. Who decides what constitutes "a reasonable period of time"? The Pentagon itself?

And what happens if the Pentagon fails to issue such a writ "within a reasonable period of time"? I'm certainly not planning to hold my breath.

For a much more thorough treatment of this case and the issues it raises, please visit Chris Floyd's excellent site, Empire Burlesque, and read what he has to say about this. I'll get you started:

Now we've got something going on. Now there's a little something to play for. This ruling draws a clear line in the sand on one of George W. Bush's most egregious abuses of the illegitimate power he was given (by the courts) in 2000: his self-proclaimed, arbitrary, unchecked right to designate anyone he pleases an "enemy combatant" and keep them locked up indefinitely in military detention.

Now it seems certain that the case will reach the Supreme Court, and we will have a clear-cut answer at last: Are we still a semblance of a Republic, where our liberties are inalienable – or is our freedom simply the "gift" of an autocrat (elected or otherwise), who can bestow it or take it away at his own will?

Please go read the rest. Click a few links, too.

No problem; you can thank me later.

When Catastrophic Emergency Hits, The Decider Will Decide Everything

I've been trying to figure out how to write about all this but now I don't have to.

Mark Morford | SFGate dot com
Bush Declares Self 'Mega Decider'
New documents ensure Dubya will rule America, should calamity strike. Free balloons!

It's just one of those obscure little unreported-upon conspiracy theory-ready hunks of floating White House detritus, a couple of odd, sticky, foul-smelling documents no one really wants to touch and no one knows quite what to make of, probably means nothing, probably being misread anyway, all a bit overblown and strange and not all that important and not all that different than the way things are now.

Unless, you know, it's not. Unless the violent twinge of queasy paranoia crossed with that uncontrolled bout of colon-clenching sighing you experience is deadly accurate and your radar for all things sinister and Rovean is right on target as you read about the delightfully titled National Security Presidential Directive/NSPD 51 and the Homeland Security Presidential Directive/HSPD-20, wherein it is calmly and furtively revealed that, in essence, George W. Bush owns your sorry ass.

Or, to put it another way, it looks like the Bumbling One just gave himself ever more power. Power to control and dictate the entire government, power to really spread the gospel of happy GOP incompetence, power to command the entire wobbly American universe should some sort of epic -- or not so epic, as the case may be -- calamity strike the homeland.

The entire column is worth reading. Hint, hint!

[Morford's links]

The White House
NATIONAL SECURITY PRESIDENTIAL DIRECTIVE/NSPD 51
HOMELAND SECURITY PRESIDENTIAL DIRECTIVE/HSPD-20

leo fender | Daily Kos
The mechanisim to end democracy?

Spencer S. Hsu | Washington Post
Bush Changes Continuity Plan
Administration, Not DHS, Would Run Shadow Government

Lee Rogers | Global Research dot ca
Bush To Be Dictator In A Catastrophic Emergency

American Civil Liberties Union
How "Patriot Act 2" Would Further Erode the Basic Checks on Government Power That Keep America Safe and Free

[Other interesting links]

Douglas Tonks | Talk Talk Talk Talk Talk Myself to Death
Connecting Some Dots

Viewed in one light, that's fairly alarming, and I've wondered to some extent why this isn't getting more attention. Apparently a number of readers of Talking Points Memo wondered the same thing, so TPMMuckraker took a look. Their conclusion is that it's not such a big deal. They point out that Clinton had a similar plan and interview a number of experts from the ACLU and various places suggesting that, if not this one, some kind of similar plan needs to be in place. The Clinton directive put FEMA in charge in similar circumstances, and during the Clinton administration, that wasn't a bad idea. Nowadays, though, you'd after wonder how much any of us want to turn to FEMA in case of catastrophic emergency.

On the other hand, this is the Bush administration we're talking about. The new directive might indeed make sense if we were to presume good faith on the part of the government. But I'm not sure good faith has been operative in the administrative branch for years now. While this might not be an obvious power grab on the surface, if such a circumstance were to arise, it seems to me that we have to assume the Bush administration will try to grab whatever power it could get its hands on. The Bushies don't deal with us at face value, and we have to stop dealing with them at face value.

HighCrimesandMisdemeanours
I thought Bush stole 2000, but there is PROOF he stole 2004

Bush, Rove, Griffin, and Goodling need to be called to testify UNDER OATH now! Before he invokes Presidential Directive 51

Deja Vu All Over Again: LA Cops Get Violent Against Peaceful Protest

Yesterday in Los Angeles, the May Day rally for immigration reform had been peaceful all day -- a blatant abuse of what the Constitution calls Freedom of Assembly and one which could not be allowed to continue.

And so, with their usual finesse and subtlety, the LAPD broke it up -- with a violent attack!

There's good video from the local FOX affiliate here:
LAPD Uses Force to Disperse Immigration Marchers

Thousands of people marched in Los Angeles Tuesday calling for immigration reform. The marches were peaceful until the evening, when the LAPD used force to disperse the crowd.

And here:
Raw Video: Police Move in on May Day Crowd

raw video from the scene as Los Angeles police officers move in on May Day marchers

And you might find this a bit predictable:
Bratton Responds to LAPD's Use of Force

LAPD Chief Bill Bratton stated that there will be an investigation into the LAPD's use of force during the immigration marches on Tuesday.

But there's more here:
Immigration March Protestors Standoff with Los Angeles Police,

An estimated 200,000 worker's rights marchers flooded the streets of downtown Los Angeles today. The march was peaceful for most of the day despite the constant undertow of tension present at this protest that was not present last year. The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) was more on its guard and protesters were more circumspect than last year. Tensions came to a head at McArthur Park at late evening where riot police fired rubber bullets and tear gas into an estimated 5,000 people and used batons on demonstrators.

"They just starting firing those rubber bullets and tear gas at the people. It was crazy," said A.G. a protester making his way out of McArthur Park at about 6:30 pm.

Police cleared the park declaring it an illegal assembly but came at loggerheads just outside the park with a small group of protesters who squared off with LAPD at the corner of 6th and Alvarado. Demonstrators taunted police with cuss-word names and wiggle-butt dances then threw a glass bottle, the reason for the first crackdown from the police inside the park. Protestors were on the north side of 6th street and the LAPD was on the south side while a police chopper flew low overhead shining its spotlight on the crowd.

After the glass bottle flew, the police line switched from a baton carrying front to a rubber bullet gun and tear gas front. Demonstrators taunted and carried on with the day's chant "Si, se puede!" (we can do it).

After the LAPD collapsed their line and gathered up traffic signs, the officers got in their vehicles and left. The demonstrators then charged across the street shouting "We won! We won!"

There's more on-the-ground reporting at this link, and updates will no doubt be available here, where the story is BREAKING!

~~~

How confusing! What does this all mean?

Some people will tell you it's too soon to say for sure. Hogwash. What this means was clear a long time before it happened. It's the result of a massive and systematic failure -- a failure of education above all.

That's some frightening, graphic, disturbing video. Defenseless people, assembling peacefully in the streets of a major American city and being oh-so-casual about it. Watch it again if you can stand to see them just walking along in their light blouses and short-sleeved shirts -- as if they were in a civilized country!

What has happened here? Why don't they know???

Creating A Fascist Dictatorship Is Easy

Chilling indeed is Naomi Wolf's recent piece in The Guardian, "Fascist America, in 10 easy steps". (Thanks to Bob in Prague for mentioning it in a comment.)

Here's a quick summary:

From Hitler to Pinochet and beyond, history shows there are certain steps that any would-be dictator must take to destroy constitutional freedoms ... George Bush and his administration seem to be taking them all:

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy
2. Create a gulag
3. Develop a thug caste
4. Set up an internal surveillance system
5. Harass citizens' groups
6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release
7. Target key individuals
8. Control the press
9. Dissent equals treason
10. Suspend the rule of law

Ms. Wolf's column gives examples of the Bush administration doing each of these ten things, and I commend it to your attention if you haven't already read it. It is no doubt harrowing, but it probably only tells about half the story. Our position appears to be much worse than Ms. Wolf lets on.

To supplement her case, we can add some of the tactics which, even if they haven't been features of all fascist-enablers throughout history, have been used (and continue to be used) against American democracy:

11. Stage false flag terror attacks

Ms. Wolf doesn't go so far as to call 9/11 a false-flag attack, but I have no such qualms. It was obvious on the day, and the passage of time has made it even more so.

For that matter, the first attack on the World Trade Center (in 1993) was patently false. So too were the London bomb attacks of July 7, 2005, as well as the Madrid train bombings of March 11, 2004.

The constantly-repeated but unsubstantiated official stories of these attacks all make it look as if the entire world is under threat from terrorists. And in fact it is. But the terrorists are not Arabic or Muslim or hiding in a cave.

12. Corrupt the electoral process

Prevent people from voting if you think they will vote against you. If you can't prevent them from voting, prevent their votes from being counted. And if you can't prevent their votes from being counted, prevent them from being counted correctly.

13. Poison the nation's political discourse

Stake out violent, radical positions and call them "mainstream". Refer to your political opponents as "enemies" and call their positions "lunatic fringe", even if those positions were recently identified with mainstream politics.

Fabricate misleading names for your legislation, so people who know nothing about the actual bills will support them.

14. Lie about everything -- constantly!

Even if you get caught lying and are forced to tell the truth once, that's only a temporary setback. Go back to the original lie as early and as often as possible.

Presidential spokeswoman Dana Perrino recently told a news conference that our troops are in Iraq at the invitation of the Iraqi government. See how easy that was?

15. Attack on all fronts simultaneously

This splits the opposition. Some will oppose your foreign policy; some will oppose your domestic economic policy; some will oppose your domestic social policy. This works in your favor by dissipating their energy, and may even lead to arguments among the opposition as to which issue(s) should be fought hardest. Your main objective is to make sure the opposition never has a chance to unite.

16. Accuse your opponents of the crimes you intend to commit

If they deny the charges, you say "They'll deny anything." If they refuse to dignify your charges with a denial, you say "See! They don't even deny it". And then when you get caught doing it, you can claim it's no big deal -- just something everybody does.

17. Disguise your agenda

If your society is affluent, pretend to be conservative. People who consider themselves conservative are basically very greedy and extremely stupid and they will support you to the hilt, especially if they have no idea what you are doing.

If your society is poverty-stricken, pretend to be socialist. Then the people who have nothing will support you in the hope of improving their lot. It will never happen, of course, but they probably won't find out until it's too late.

18. Engage in selective political assassination

Disguise some of the murders as accidents, but in other cases make it very plain that the victim was deliberately killed. This not only eliminates potentially powerful opposition but it also instills fear in the segment of society that the assassinated leaders represented.

19. Start a war and claim it's a national emergency

Claim special powers because the country is at war. Claim you are doing everything in your power to make the country safe. But don't actually take any steps in that direction, for the safer the people feel the less they will support you.

20. Hide as much information as possible

What they don't know can't hurt you.

21. Wrap your treason in the flag, and hide your sins behind the Bible.

It works like a charm. Doesn't it?

Here's Naomi Wolf again:

Of course, the United States is not vulnerable to the violent, total closing-down of the system that followed Mussolini's march on Rome or Hitler's roundup of political prisoners. Our democratic habits are too resilient, and our military and judiciary too independent, for any kind of scenario like that.

I disagree entirely. We may be just one false-flag attack away from total dictatorship.

Rather, as other critics are noting, our experiment in democracy could be closed down by a process of erosion.

Or perhaps a combination of both ... slow erosion and sudden shocks.

But that's a minor disagreement, in the grand scheme of things. More to the point:

We need to look at history and face the "what ifs". For if we keep going down this road, the "end of America" could come for each of us in a different way, at a different moment; each of us might have a different moment when we feel forced to look back and think: that is how it was before - and this is the way it is now.

"The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands ... is the definition of tyranny," wrote James Madison. We still have the choice to stop going down this road; we can stand our ground and fight for our nation, and take up the banner the founders asked us to carry.

How can we in fact "stand our ground and fight for our nation"? I hope to explore that question in greater detail in upcoming posts. In the meantime, and as always, your thoughts and comments are most welcome.

Bob Koehler: Devil Weed

Here's a rarity: a column by one online friend about another.

The friends are Bob Koehler (photo ==>) and Bernie Ellis (<==) respectively. Bob is (among other things) a columnist whose work has appeared here once in a while; Bernie is (among other things) an election integrity advocate. And that's how all our paths crossed.

Back in July of 2005, Bob and Bernie were both kind enough to participate in the first annual one and only "BradBlog Blogathon", for which event it was my honor to serve as host (and to contribute a few articles).

The other guest bloggers, by the way, were Clint Curtis, Bob Fitrakis, Larisa Alexandrovna, David Cobb, Chris Floyd, Gandhi, Josh Mitteldorf, and John Amato. And they all contributed good articles and/or live-blogged very interesting threads (in other words, all these links lead to gold!). But I digress.

Fast forward to the present, or nearly so, anyway. Bernie has been ...

Wait a minute. I'm getting ahead of myself here. I should know better.

The thing to do is let Bob tell the story.

Devil Weed
Dark shadow of ignorance hangs over Bernie's farm

“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.”

So of course a guy like Bernie Ellis — who signs his letters with this catchphrase, and who lives it in so many ways, doing what needs to be done, putting himself in the vanguard of vital social movements like the one for fair elections (which is how I know him) — would eventually get nailed for crossing a line.

How easy to have played it safe, but Ellis, who until a year and a half ago lived on a 187-acre farm 40 miles southwest of Nashville, Tenn., and worked as a public health epidemiologist, had been growing, along with other crops, a small amount of medical marijuana on his farm. The recipients over the years, via their social workers, were terminally ill AIDS and cancer patients, who obtained nausea and pain relief from what has been called (by no less than Francis Young, a Drug Enforcement Administration law judge) “one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man.”

For reasons that will probably forever remain murky, Ellis’ farm was raided in August 2002. A few days earlier, a local dealer had tried to buy some pot from him and was told to shove off, so the suspicion lingers that the dealer turned him in. Two helicopters swooped overhead and eight or nine officers of the Tennessee Marijuana Eradication Task Force entered his property — a lot of hoo-hah, you might think, for seven pounds of weed, worth about $7,000.

Ellis was interrogated for two hours and freely “confessed” to his activities. Indeed, at the very moment of the raid he’d been crafting recommendations, at the request of New Mexico’s then-Gov. Gary Johnson, on how that state could establish a program making cannabis available immediately to patients in need. He gave the officers a printout of his proposal. How guilty can you get?

“I said this from the beginning,” Ellis told me. “I’m not ashamed of what I’m doing.”

And he wasn’t arrested. The Task Force officers did some checking around and learned that Ellis was not only well known but highly respected among county officials. His troubles didn’t begin till the federal government became interested in his case — and this gets at the core outrage of the whole matter. The zeal to keep marijuana criminalized in the face of so much evidence — it has 50 to 100 therapeutically beneficial subcomponents and has been studied in connection with the treatment and control of Alzheimer’s, brain tumors, epilepsy, MS and even schizophrenia, among much else — emanates from the federal level.

Welcome to the Bush administration’s other bogus war: the war on drugs. Science be damned. Rationality, compassion and state’s rights be damned. What matters is the continual drawing of random and arbitrary borders, which are then ruthlessly defended no matter what. And with the drawing of borders comes the creation of enemies, and in the world of herbs, marijuana is the enemy — the devil weed, no matter how medically useful.

As Ellis noted, “Every federal commission since Nixon has recommended reclassifying marijuana, allowing it to re-enter the medical pharmacopoeia.” Yet the feds have been known to prosecute medical marijuana growers even in states that have legalized it. Twelve have done so, including, most recently, New Mexico, whose law, signed last month by Gov. Bill Richardson, incorporates the recommendations Ellis was working on at the time of the raid.

No matter. In federal court, Ellis was prosecuted as an ordinary drug dealer and convicted. Though his sentence was relatively lenient — an 18-month term in a federal halfway house, which ends in May — he has incurred some $70,000 in legal debt and, far more frightening, faces the loss of his farm in a federal civil action.

The Nashville community has rallied to his support, and a series of benefits are planned. If you’re interested in contributing to the cause, see www.saveberniesfarm.com.

“If you really do believe what you’re doing is not wrong, then you’ve threatened the foundation of their legitimacy,” Ellis said. “You’ve raised your head above the foxhole.”

For my friend Bernie’s sake, I truly hope the forces of rationality are successful. And I recoil at the idea that his beautiful farm, where he has lived for four decades, could be fed into the maw of “example,” a reminder to like-minded others that an ignorant and arrogant administration is in power right now and will impose the Dark Ages on all of us for as long as it can.

Thanks once again to Bob and Bernie: please support the effort to save Bernie's farm (if you can), and do be sure to bookmark Bob's excellent "Common Wonders", where there's a new column every week and the archives are worth their weight in gold pixels.

On The David Hicks Case And The Mainstreaming Of Modern American Insanity

Under the insane headline Some Bumps at Start of War Tribunals at Guantánamo, William Glaberson writes even more insanity for the New York Times (and the emphasis is mine):

As the first of the war crimes cases under a new law began here a few days ago, a military law specialist said it was a test run “to show that this plane will fly.”

If I'm writing it, I'm asking: What sort of nonsense is this? Is this your new public diplomacy "proving ground"?

You notice the pentagon never has "testing" anymore, just "proving". They never want to find out whether the plane will fly, only to show that it will.

And sometimes it won't, of course. What insanity! But it's a traditional military insanity, and of only slight import compared to the horrendous new insanity initiated in the immediate wake of 9/11.

From the start, Guantánamo, its detainees and the legal proceedings here have provided enough grist to support the competing views of the detention center: a necessary mechanism for dealing with a new kind of enemy, or the embodiment of the war on terror gone awry.

What a bald-faced lie!

From the start?? Guantánamo has never provided any "grist" to support the view that it is "a necessary mechanism for dealing with a new kind of enemy", if by "grist" one means actual legitimate palpable and/or verifiable evidence.

Or, as Chris Floyd points out,

Only a self-deluded fool [...] could believe that the hideous regime of concentration camps, secret prisons, torture, kidnapping and "extrajudicial killing" established by Bush is anything but "the embodiment of the war on terror gone awry."

But oh! no! the Times also tells us:

Military officers quickly began to refer to Mr. Hicks as the “convicted war criminal” in the not-so-subtle battle of competing words here.
...
To the prosecutors and the extensive public relations apparatus assembled by the military here, Mr. Hicks’s case proved, as one spokeswoman regularly repeated, that the military commission system offers a “fair, legitimate and transparent forum.”
...
The chief military prosecutor, Col. Morris D. Davis of the Air Force, told reporters ... it was ... a victory for a much maligned system that he said had been unfairly criticized before it was given a chance to prove it could deliver justice.

“There’s a notion that this is a rigged system,” he said when asked if he was disappointed by the outcome. “I think this shows that’s not true.”

But then you look at the case, and how it was settled, and there's just so much more nonsense, all interleaved with reasons why the David Hicks case shows exactly the opposite of what the five-sided demons claim. Listen:

The military commissions being convened here are special war crimes tribunals to try terrorists that do not offer the legal protections of civilian courts. One justification for the looser rules is that they will deal with the worst of the worst.

But the first man through the double doors of the heavily secured courtroom here was no Osama bin Laden. He was David Hicks, a 31-year-old Australian whose lawyer described him as a ninth-grade dropout and “wannabe soldier” who ran away when the shooting started in Afghanistan.

Glaberson doesn't quite get around to mentioning the fact that before the shooting started in Afghanistan, the Taliban and al-Q'aeda were supported by the Pakistani intelligence agency ISI, which in turn was supported by the CIA. Not for nothing is al-Q'aeda sometimes called "al-CIA-duh".

Of course the New York Times doesn't call it that.

In the somber, makeshift courtroom, the lead prosecutor of the Hicks case, Lt. Col. Kevin Chenail of the Marines, tried to portray Mr. Hicks as public enemy No. 1.

“Today in this courtroom, we are on the front lines of the global war on terror,” Colonel Chenail told a panel of military officers assembled from around the globe Friday to hear arguments on the appropriate sentence. Mr. Hicks pleaded guilty on Monday to providing material support to Al Qaeda. “The enemy is sitting at the defense table,” Colonel Chenail added, gesturing to Mr. Hicks. “We are face to face with the enemy” who was “trying to kill Americans,” he said.

Killing Americans how? By running away when the shooting started?

He admitted training with Al Qaeda, guarding a Taliban tank and scouting a closed American embassy building. But there is no evidence he was considering a terrorist attack or capable of carrying one out. Yet he was held five years and four months before he got his day in court. And at the end of a very long day at the tribunal Friday, his actual sentence was only nine months...

The worst of the worst? The first "detainee" to be tried? Held for sixty-four months before he could even get a sham hearing, and then sentenced to nine months more? Doesn't he get credit for time served? He's done the nine months already, plus fifty-five more. For what? For being tortured?

To some in the courtroom, the proceedings proved only that the system was rigged to show detainees that the only way out of Guantánamo was to give the prosecutors what they wanted. Not only did Mr. Hicks plead guilty, but he also signed a plea bargain in which he recanted his accusations about being abused in detention and promised not to speak to reporters for a year.

In the courtroom, the military judge had Mr. Hicks acknowledge each of the contentious provision[s] of his deal. Mr. Hicks, the judge read, agreed that he had “never been illegally treated” while in American captivity, including “through the entire period of your detention by the United States at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.” Mr. Hicks agreed to that statement.

Doesn't it all depend on what you mean by "illegal"? And if a twice-unelected president of a former democracy says some "interrogation technique" is "legal", then it's legal. That's the new rule, isn't it? So the statement Mr. Hicks agreed to is not so far-fetched after all.

It's the system that's far-fetched.

Mr. Hicks’s lawyer, Maj. Michael Mori of the Marines, said he was speaking for his client, who he said was too nervous to speak for himself. “He wants to apologize to Australia and to the United States,” Major Mori said during the proceedings, adding that Mr. Hicks wanted to thank members of the armed services who, he said, had treated him professionally.

OMG! This is too thick to scrape off your shoes without power tools! And the New York Times reports it straight.

Is this the same David Hicks who, according to another NYT article of less than two weeks ago,

alleges in court document that he was beaten several times during interrogations and witnessed abuse of other prisoners during more than five years in American custody; Hicks, an Australian seeking British citizenship, says abuse began during interrogations in Afghanistan, where he was captured in late 2001...

Sometimes I wonder whether the old grey bitch is afraid of being charged with treason or whether that's just a ploy to make it seem like she's a Bush opponent. After all, the wingnuts can't claim the media is left-biased if the NYT licks Bush's shoes all day every day, can they?

In fact they can and they do say anything they like, regardless of whether it has any truth to it at all, or just a smidgen.

But in reality, and as expressed by

observers from advocacy and human rights groups here to monitor the proceedings, the plea deal Mr. Hicks reached was fresh evidence of the coercive power of this place. The plea bargain included a provision that will get Mr. Hicks out of detention here and into an Australian prison to serve the rest of his sentence within 60 days.

It takes that long to arrange transportation? What are all the unmarked planes doing? Isn't one of them free sometime in the next month, or six weeks, anyway? Or is Mr. Hicks' accommodation down under a problem?

Actually the whole Hicks case has been a problem down under, and one can't avoid the thought that this is why they dealt with him first.

There had been growing diplomatic pressure on the Bush administration to return Mr. Hicks to Australia, where his case has drawn wide attention and where Prime Minister John Howard, one of President Bush’s most stalwart supporters, is facing a tough re-election fight.

David Hicks has become a cause celebre in Australia. How many prisoners are held hostage at Guantánamo? And how many of them have the weight of an entire country -- an allied country at that -- behind them? And it goes without saying that an allied country which happens to be a so-called democracy must be led by an insane warmonger who is facing a re-election bid soon. Ah ha ha!

Ben Wizner, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union who is one of the regular observers in the courtroom here, said the deal showed that the military commission was intended to bring cases to the conclusion the government wants. “A person here, in order to have any hope of going home,” he said, “has to play by whatever rules the government sets.”

Jennifer Daskal, an observer for Human Rights Watch, said after the sentencing that the unusual rule silencing Mr. Hicks for a year showed that the government’s primary goal was “the protection against the disclosure of abuse.”

The most sensible comment came from Hicks himself, through his attorney:

Other than a few muted words in court, Mr. Hicks was not heard from directly. But as developments unfolded, David H. B. McLeod, an Australian lawyer working with the defense, provided insight into Mr. Hicks’s thoughts.

“He says that if he is the worst of the worst, and the person who should be put before a military commission first,” Mr. McLeod said, “then the world really hasn’t got much to worry about.”

Well that's insane too because the world has a great deal to worry about.

If I were a worrier I would worry about the way the national discourse has been shifted so far into the pro-torture realm that anyone, anywhere -- much less the NYT -- could possibly write a "fair-and-balanced" piece on such a heinous subject.

Fair and balanced now appears to be everywhere -- except the blogs with axes to grind -- but what it means in practice is that the wingnut insanity: indefinite detention without charge or hearing, much less a speedy trial; various forms of torture -- up to and including murder; "military tribunals" where confessions obtained under extreme duress are considered acceptable, and this is not to mention the sort of debacle we saw with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, where the pentagon released a "transcript" of an alleged hearing, with no video, no audio, not even a current photograph, and a "confession" that reads like a laundry list.

In the very midst of describing the horrors, is it really necessary to include the defense department's mantra?

Mr. Hicks’s case proved, as one spokeswoman regularly repeated, that the military commission system offers a “fair, legitimate and transparent forum.”

Yeah, sure it does.

Hey spokesman: You ever hang from the ceiling by your wrists while the guards smash your legs with baseball bats? No? You should try it sometime.

The fact that we are even discussing such a thing would have come as a shock to most Americans -- I would hope -- not all that long ago. But now, as Chris Floyd reads the not-so-subtle message just behind the lines:

This view -- the open acceptance of concentration camps, indefinite detention and unconstitutional judicial processes -- can actually be "supported" by the workings of the kangaroo court thus far, the venerable Times informs us. Check out this classic case of accomodation with evil masquerading as journalistic objectivity: "From the start, Guantánamo, its detainees and the legal proceedings here have provided enough grist to support the competing views of the detention center: a necessary mechanism for dealing with a new kind of enemy, or the embodiment of the war on terror gone awry."

Only a self-deluded fool -- either blinded by the cowardly panic that is the hallmark of the Bootlicker Brigade (Malkin, Limbaugh, Beck, etc.) or dulled by the well-wadded cozy "insider" status of our media barons (recently on such sickening display at the Gridiron Club Dinner love-in with all the adorable Bushies) -- could believe that the hideous regime of concentration camps, secret prisons, torture, kidnapping and "extrajudicial killing" established by Bush is anything but "the embodiment of the war on terror gone awry." Yet these mindsets -- the bootlickers and the well-wadded barons -- control our national discourse...and will continue to do so, as we noted yesterday, long after George W. Bush has retreated to his bunker in the Texas scrub, leaving a scorched earth behind.

At this point I'm not sure which is more dangerous -- the hideous regime of concentration camps, secret prisons, torture, kidnapping and "extrajudicial killing" established by Bush or the extent to which it is being "mainstreamed".

This isn't hard to figure out, folks. If David Hicks is among the worst of the worst, the whole system stinks on ice!

And if William Glaberson gets paid for this bootlicking blather -- by the New York Times, no less -- while Chris Floyd blogs ...

Was Paul McMulty Less Than Candid? Does The Pope Shxt In The Woods?

So much spin, so little time, part two:

I'm sitting here watching the wheels fall off again as the Washington Post reports the current White House spin:

The senior counselor to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales will refuse to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee in the unfolding U.S. attorneys scandal, invoking her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, her attorneys said today.

Monica M. Goodling -- who is on an indefinite leave of absence from Gonzales's office -- also said that at least one senior Justice Department official blames her for failing to fully brief him prior to a Senate appearance, leading to "less than candid" testimony.

The reference is to Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty [photo], who told the Senate Judiciary Committee in early February that most of the prosecutors were fired for "performance-related" reasons. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) has said that McNulty called him to apologize for not telling the truth and blamed it on incomplete briefings.

There's something about this explanation that doesn't make any sense. But you'd be hard pressed to find it on your own. Fortunately, ABC has a much more convincing explanation:

Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, ignored White House Counsel Harriet Miers and senior lawyers in the Justice Department when he told the committee last month of specific reasons why the administration fired seven U.S. attorneys — and appeared to acknowledge for the first time that politics was behind one dismissal.

McNulty's testimony directly conflicted with the approach Miers advised, according to an unreleased internal White House e-mail described to ABC News. According to that e-mail, sources said, Miers said the administration should take the firm position that it would not comment on personnel issues.

Paul McMulty said too much; he sparked a political firestorm by going against orders.

Now he's under new orders: squelch the fire!

So he's calling Senator Schumer to "apologize for not telling the truth" and he's blaming it on "incomplete briefings".

I wonder if Schumer's thinking:

Ha Ha Ha!! You were less than candid? What do you think we are, stupid?

The answer to that question would be "YES", by the way ...

Oh what an odious web they weave, they who think they can deceive... But ABC has a nice, detailed scoop!

Until McNulty's testimony, administration officials had consistently refused to publicly say why specific attorneys were dismissed and insisted that the White House had complete authority to replace them. That was Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's approach when he testified before the committee in January.

But weeks later, McNulty — confident he could draw on a long relationship with New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, a Democrat — decided he would instead try to explain in more detail, sources told ABC News.

In doing so, he went well beyond the scope of what the White House cleared him to say when it approved his written testimony the week before the hearing, according to administration sources closely involved in the matter.

Most important, part of McNulty's testimony also appeared to directly contradict the earlier testimony by Gonzales.

Those inconsistencies — and McNulty's characterization of the firings — fueled a firestorm over the dismissals, prompting the U.S. attorneys to aggressively defend themselves and their work and angering senators demanding to know what role politics played in the process.

"That's what lit the fuse," said Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl, a senior Republican on the Judiciary Committee. "They should've expected pushback — not only from the U.S. attorneys but from their supporters once they characterized the reason as negative performance, inadequate performance."

There's a lot more, and it's beautiful! Go read it! Ha ha ha!!

Paul McMulty was "less than candid". And I am less than stupid. ;-)

I'm just sittin' here watchin' the wheels fall off and off
I really love to watch them roll...

OOPS! Did I say "wheels"?

To Insanity, And Beyond! -- Is The 'Unitary Executive' Theory 'Quaint'?

In yesterday's column, "New Developments in the U.S. Attorney Controversy: Why Bush Refuses to Allow Karl Rove and Harriet Miers to Testify Before Congress, and What Role New White House Counsel Fred Fielding May Play", John Dean shot more than a few straight arrows, including these:

For both Bush and Cheney, virtually any limit on presidential power is too great. And this conflict, in the end, is all about presidential power.
...

In a piece last year for The New Republic's July issue, legal journalist Jeffery Rosen summed up George W. Bush's outlook on the presidency: "One of the defining principles of the Bush administration has been a belief in unfettered executive power."
...

Rosen reported that Bush's perspective is not "mere political opportunism -- a cynical rationale devised after September 11 to allow the president to do whatever he likes in the war on terrorism." Rather, Rosen explained, Bush's actions stem from his embrace of the "unitary executive theory."

Dean gives a brief overview of this "unitary executive" madness -- clearly a smokescreen to cloud the accretion of incredible power in unprincipled hands -- and he provides links to even more detailed articles about it. But essentially he summarizes the unitary executive theory by saying that in the minds of its adherents it

precludes any but the most minimal role for Congress: Its role, they believe, is simply to decide whether to appropriate money; otherwise, it must butt out completely.

Stunning?

Nothing!!

Mild and lazy indeed, compared with the fallout from yesterday's passage in the House of a pro-war bill disguised as a timetable for withdrawal, as reported in the Washington Post

"These Democrats believe that the longer they can delay funding for our troops, the more likely they are to force me to accept restrictions on our commanders, an artificial timetable for withdrawal, and their pet spending projects. This is not going to happen," the president said. "The Democrats have sent their message. Now it's time to send their money."

That's my emphasis (here and above), but even without it, the implication couldn't be clearer: the twice-unelected so-called president has moved even beyond the lunatic fringe of the "unitary executive" school of constitutional "thought". Now, rather than tolerating the most minimal role for Congress (i.e. deciding whether to appropriate money), the chimperor simply demands that Congress shut up and appropriate the money.

"The Democrats have sent their message. Now it's time to send their money."

Whose voice is this?

Is it a defiant teenager, interrupting "I raised you better than this..." with: "Cut the crap. Just gimme my allowance"?

Or maybe it's the schoolyard bully: "Shot da fock op an' gimme yer lonch money, ya fockin' creeps!"

I think it may be some of each.

The other kids in the playground have finally got their act together, sort of, but unfortunately just barely enough to say: "We're not gonna let you push us around anymore, starting a year and a half from now."

For this spineless act, with the majority of the country firmly against the war, they are righteously to be called "fockin' creeps", IMVHO.

And they may deserve even less respect than they get from Bush Lightyear, a beyond-unitary nutcase who sneers at them and says: "Cut the crap and gimme the fockin' money!" while he launches the nation -- and indeed the world -- to insanity and beyond.

~~~

(Thanks to Bannoy dot com for the "Bush Lightyear" graphic.)

'Bush Rejects Show Trials' -- A Politically Correct Response

The president muttered incoherently in public again yesterday, about the extraordinary measures he and his staff are willing to take to bury the fast-spreading scandal over the firing of eight US Attorneys, apparently for purely political reasons. After Bush tried to explain what he would and would not allow in the way of an investigation; the BBC summarized it this way:

Bush rejects Senate 'show trials'

US President George W Bush says he will not allow his advisers to take part in "show trials" in the escalating row over the firing of federal prosecutors.

He has offered to let his staff give evidence, but only in private and not under oath.

The head of the Senate Judiciary Committee has rejected the offer.
...

Mr Bush has backed Mr Gonzales, a long-time confidant, and warned Democrats against seeking a fight over the issue in order "to score political points".

"We will not go along with a partisan fishing expedition aimed at honourable public servants," Mr Bush said.

If I may ...

First: There are no honourable public servants involved in this case, so we can dispense with that red herring from the outset.

Second: This is not about scoring "political points". It's about fighting what appears to be wanton political corruption at the highest levels of the federal justice system [sick]. Serious questions have been asked here and the American people deserve straight answers -- for once! -- at the very least. Spin-meisters need not apply.

Third: People in civilized countries are required to obey the law of the land no matter where they work, so when the president's aides are called to testify under oath, that's the way they should testify, the same as any other potential witness to any other potential crime. In no civilized country is it considered suitable for the suspects to control the terms of an investigation. And that's been happening a lot around here lately, so it's time to revert to the tried-and-true method.

Fourth: The head of the Senate Judiciary Committee was quite correct in rejecting the offer, but could have made a counter-offer to keep the process moving. Don't worry; that's what we're here for.

Finally: The question of "show trials" is a very simple matter. If the president objects to show trials, let us have the trials without the show. Let's have secret tribunals instead.

The details are all figured out already. We can hold the accused incommunicado in secret prisons without charge or hearing indefinitely. We can use the most vigorous interrogation techniques we can imagine, as long as we're careful not to cause death by organ failure. And after four or five years, or whenever it becomes politically convenient necessary, we can release "transcripts" of their "confessions".

By that time some of the suspects may have been shipped to foreign dungeons to be tortured, and some of them may even be dead. But what difference would it make? In a secret tribunal, nobody expects to see the suspect, anyway. We won't have to release any audio or video of the trials; we can even recirculate an old photo or two from the files. What difference would it make? All the information would be classified, anyway. National Security.

Do you think I'm kidding? I'm not! We've seen the system in action already. And we know it works, or at least that's what we've been told.

So now let's use that system to do what it was designed to do -- to neutralize the people who threaten our way of life, to hunt 'em down, smoke 'em out of their caves offices, and hang 'em from the ceiling at Gitmo.

What are we waiting for?

So Much Spin, So Little Time, Part I: Firing The US Attorneys

Even some master counter-spinners are dizzy after a flurry of outrageous scandals one on top of another and somehow -- MSM? Anyone? -- obliterating each other in favor of important stories like Bush asks for patience on anniversary of Iraq war. The cold blogger, pressed for time as usual, has wanted to counterspin the wingnut talking points on several national issues lately, but tick tick tick ... In other words, it was great to see this Editorial Observer piece from Adam Cohen in the New York Times: It Wasn’t Just a Bad Idea. It May Have Been Against the Law.

The Bush administration has done a terrible job of explaining its decision to fire eight United States attorneys. Story after story has proved to be untrue: that the prosecutors who were fired were poor performers; that the White House was not involved in the purge. But the administration has been strangely successful in pushing its message that the scandal is at worst a political misdeed, not a criminal matter.

It is true, as the White House keeps saying, that United States attorneys serve “at the pleasure of the president,” which means he can dismiss them whenever he wants. But if the attorneys were fired to interfere with a valid prosecution, or to punish them for not misusing their offices, that may well have been illegal.

In law schools, it is common to give an exam called the “issue spotter,” in which students are given a set of facts and asked to identify all the legal issues and possible crimes. The facts about the purge are still emerging. But based on what is known — and with some help from Congressional staff members and Stephen Gillers, a law professor at New York University — it was not hard to spot that White House and Justice Department officials, and members of Congress, may have violated 18 U.S.C. §§ 1501-1520, the federal obstruction of justice statute.

Some crimes that a special prosecutor might one day look at:

1. Misrepresentations to Congress.
The relevant provision, 18 U.S.C. § 1505, is very broad. It is illegal to lie to Congress, and also to “impede” it in getting information. Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty indicated to Congress that the White House’s involvement in firing the United States attorneys was minimal, something that Justice Department e-mail messages suggest to be untrue.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales made his own dubious assertion to Congress: “I would never, ever make a change in a United States attorney position for political reasons.”
...
2. Calling the Prosecutors.
As part of the Sarbanes-Oxley reforms, Congress passed an extremely broad obstruction of justice provision, 18 U.S.C. § 1512 (c), which applies to anyone who corruptly “obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so,” including U.S. attorney investigations.

David Iglesias, the New Mexico United States attorney, says Senator Pete Domenici, Republican of New Mexico, called him and asked whether he intended to bring indictments in a corruption case against Democrats before last November’s election. Mr. Iglesias said he “felt pressured” by the call. If members of Congress try to get a United States attorney to indict people he wasn’t certain he wanted to indict, or try to affect the timing of an indictment, they may be violating the law.

3. Witness Tampering.
18 U.S.C. § 1512 (b) makes it illegal to intimidate Congressional witnesses. Michael Elston, Mr. McNulty’s chief of staff, contacted one of the fired attorneys, H. E. Cummins, and suggested, according to Mr. Cummins, that if he kept speaking out, there would be retaliation. Mr. Cummins took the call as a threat, and sent an e-mail message to other fired prosecutors warning them of it. Several of them told Congress that if Mr. Elston had placed a similar call to one of their witnesses in a criminal case, they would have opened an investigation of it.

4. Firing the Attorneys.
United States attorneys can be fired whenever a president wants, but not, as § 1512 (c) puts it, to corruptly obstruct, influence, or impede an official proceeding.

Let’s take the case of Carol Lam, United States attorney in San Diego. The day the news broke that Ms. Lam, who had already put one Republican congressman in jail, was investigating a second one, Mr. Sampson wrote an e-mail message referring to the “real problem we have right now with Carol Lam.” He said it made him think that it was time to start looking for a replacement. Congress has also started investigating the removal of Fred Black, the United States attorney in Guam, who was replaced when he began investigating the Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Anyone involved in firing a United States attorney to obstruct or influence an official proceeding could have broken the law.

Much more needs to be learned, and Senator Patrick Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who leads the Judiciary Committee, has been admirably firm about insisting that he will get sworn testimony from Karl Rove and other key players. It is far too soon to say that anyone committed a crime, and it may well be that no one has. But if this were a law school issue spotter, any student who could not identify any laws that may have been broken would get an “F.”

Thanks to Adam Cohen for a little bit of counterspin on an issue that's been spinning too hard for too long.

Tom Toles: We Don't Need To Dust For Prints

~~~

From Matthew Cardinale at Atlanta Progressive News: Gonzales Nixed Inquiry into Own Conduct at DOJ

At least four Members of US Congress and four US Senators today raised concerns about a breaking report in the National Journal that US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales appears to have known he was going to be negatively implicated in a review at the US Department of Justice’s (USDOJ) Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) when he advised President Bush regarding the review. The review was later squashed when Bush denied security clearances OPR needed to investigate Gonzales.

and more.

I'm just sitting here watching the wheels fall off.

And this is an open thread.

The Must-Do List -- First Steps On The Road To National Sanity

I've been nodding and smiling at something I've been reading on the Editorial page of the New York Times, and thinking "These are some of the first steps on the road to national sanity".

Now I could be wrong; I've been wrong before, and to tell you the truth, sanity is not exactly my strong suit. But I've got a deadline, so let's look at the piece together anyway...

It's called "The Must-Do List" and it starts out like this (with emphasis added):

The Bush administration’s assault on some of the founding principles of American democracy marches onward despite the Democratic victory in the 2006 elections. The new Democratic majorities in Congress can block the sort of noxious measures that the Republican majority rubber-stamped. But preventing new assaults on civil liberties is not nearly enough.

Five years of presidential overreaching and Congressional collaboration continue to exact a high toll in human lives, America’s global reputation and the architecture of democracy. Brutality toward prisoners, and the denial of their human rights, have been institutionalized; unlawful spying on Americans continues; and the courts are being closed to legal challenges of these practices.

It will require forceful steps by this Congress to undo the damage. A few lawmakers are offering bills intended to do just that, but they are only a start. Taking on this task is a moral imperative that will show the world the United States can be tough on terrorism without sacrificing its humanity and the rule of law.

Today we’re offering a list — which, sadly, is hardly exhaustive — of things that need to be done to reverse the unwise and lawless policies of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. Many will require a rewrite of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, an atrocious measure pushed through Congress with the help of three Republican senators, Arlen Specter, Lindsey Graham and John McCain; Senator McCain lent his moral authority to improving one part of the bill and thus obscured its many other problems.

The bulk of the editorial consists of sections with the following headings:

Restore Habeas Corpus
Stop Illegal Spying
Ban Torture, Really

Close the C.I.A. Prisons
Account for ‘Ghost Prisoners’
Ban Extraordinary Rendition

Tighten the Definition of Combatant
Screen Prisoners Fairly and Effectively

Ban Tainted Evidence
Ban Secret Evidence
Better Define ‘Classified’ Evidence
Respect the Right to Counsel

The concluding paragraphs are mostly quite good, in my view:

Beyond all these huge tasks, Congress should halt the federal government’s race to classify documents to avoid public scrutiny — 15.6 million in 2005, nearly double the 2001 number. It should also reverse the grievous harm this administration has done to the Freedom of Information Act by encouraging agencies to reject requests for documents whenever possible. Congress should curtail F.B.I. spying on nonviolent antiwar groups and revisit parts of the Patriot Act that allow this practice.

The United States should apologize to a Canadian citizen and a German citizen, both innocent, who were kidnapped and tortured by American agents.

Oh yes, and it is time to close the Guantánamo camp. It is a despicable symbol of the abuses committed by this administration (with Congress’s complicity) in the name of fighting terrorism.

I agree with every point except the last.

In July of 2005 I expressed my disagreement with those who were saying we should close Guantánamo, and since that time I have not seen any reason to change my mind on this point.

Why do I disagree? At the risk of quoting an unreliable source, the piece was called "Unpopular Thoughts About Popular Causes" and the relevant passage ran:

I was [...] asked last week to promote an effort to force the administration to close the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, which is, of course, notorious for reports of torture as well as the issue of indefinite confinement without charge or trial or right to appeal or contact with family or a lawyer. Who could support such a thing? Even if the prisoners [whom the administration chooses to call "detainees"] weren't being abused, who could support such a thing??

"Close Gitmo", goes the cry. And who could resist? This was not spam; the plea came from an online friend, whose work I admire. But I was not moved.

Regular readers of this space will know that this cold and lowly blogger rails against the administration's policy of ever-spreading torture chambers above all else ... still the Winter Patriot does not support the movement to "Close Gitmo".

Why? First of all because of the reasons that are usually given by those who want Gitmo closed. "It gives propaganda opportunities to America's enemies" and so on. Maybe I could think about supporting the movement if I heard a lot more of "THIS IS WRONG" and a lot less of "THIS MAKES US LOOK BAD". But not likely.

It's deja vu all over again: and I've seen the same mistake before, too. Most recently it was a little boy picking his nose. His mother reprimanded him, saying: "Stop that; it's disgusting. Who wants to see that? I don't want to see that! If you want to pick your nose then go up to your room and pick your nose where I don't have to look at you." But the father said: "Knock it off! Don't pick your nose; it's disgusting."

You see what I'm saying? If they close Gitmo and keep torturing people in Abu Ghraib, Bagram, other places we don't even know about; plus ships at sea or anchored at Diego Garcia; plus so-called "extraordinary rendition", where people are kidnapped and shipped to foreign countries to be tortured by proxy ... as long as they do ANY of these things, we should be shouting "Stop The Torture!"

Not "Torture People Elsewhere!"

Not "Do That Where I Don't Have To Look At It!"

But a good straightforward "Knock It Off!!"

As long as they are unwilling to knock it off then I say they should keep Gitmo open. I think if they're going to keep doing these things then they should keep them doing them where we can see them. So the world will know what sort of evil lurks in the hearts of the monsters who have taken over our country.

US Attorney David Iglesias Fired After Failing To Break The Law For Republican Lawmakers

Over the past six years or so, your frozen correspondent has been gazing in horror at the multi-pronged evisceration campaign being waged by the administration against the country's legal system. It began almost as soon as the so-called president took office, with the abrogation of binding international treaties; it got much worse shortly after 9/11 with the midnight passage of the so-called USA PATRIOT Act; and we've been running downhill ever since.

Difficult as it may be to imagine, the attacks seem to be more frequent and more serious than ever lately. Cornered animal syndrome? Part of a larger plan? A mere targeting of opportunities? All of the above? I don't know, but in any case it's very ugly.

One prong of the campaign -- a relatively recent one, or at least one which has come to light recently -- is the firing of US attorneys, apparently for political reasons.

On Thursday, McClatchy published a fine piece on a suddenly former US attorney, David Iglesias of New Mexico. And it appears that Iglesias lost his job -- despite being a Republican evangelical Hispanic veteran -- for failing to bow to improper pressure from a couple of Republican legislators.

Here's a quick excerpt: Sources: GOP lawmakers tried to influence federal investigation

Sen. Pete Domenici and Rep. Heather Wilson of New Mexico pressured the U.S. attorney in their state to speed up indictments in a federal corruption investigation that involved at least one former Democratic state senator, according to two people familiar with the contacts.

The alleged involvement of the two Republican lawmakers raises questions about possible violations of House of Representatives and Senate ethics rules and could taint the criminal investigation into the award of an $82 million courthouse contract.

The two people with knowledge of the incident said Domenici and Wilson intervened in mid-October, when Wilson was in a competitive re-election campaign that she won by 875 votes out of nearly 211,000 cast.

What timing! Unbelievable? Not!

David Iglesias, who stepped down as U.S. attorney in New Mexico on Wednesday, told McClatchy Newspapers that he believed the Bush administration fired him Dec. 7 because he resisted the pressure to rush an indictment.

According to the two individuals, Domenici and Wilson called to press Iglesias for details of the case.

Wilson was curt after Iglesias was "non-responsive" to her questions about whether an indictment would be unsealed, said the two individuals, who asked not to be identified because they feared possible political repercussions. Rumors had spread throughout the New Mexico legal community that an indictment of at least one Democrat was sealed.

Domenici, who wasn't up for re-election, called about a week and a half later and was more persistent than Wilson, the people said. When Iglesias said an indictment wouldn't be handed down until at least December, the line went dead.

Amazing? There's an awful lot more!

Please click here to read the whole article.

Larisa Alexandrovna, never known for holding her tongue, draws the only logical conclusion: Alberto Gonzales must be removed from office (with my emphasis, here and below):

Seriously, can someone make a citizen's arrest or something? Rep. Heather Wilson and Senator Pete Domenici allegedly (giggle) attempted to force indictments against Democrats in order to have a smear tool for their losing campaigns. When that did not work, their pal Alberto -- should be disbarred -- Gonzales allegedly (giggle) fired the federal prosecutor for not playing political ball with the legal system. Why is this man still in a position of authority. Congress, anyone?

Now my guess is that these two gang members of Congress did not just come up with the idea on their own and separately. So if I am correct, then that would make their activities a conspiracy and Gonzales a co-conspirator for using his position to retaliate against his staff for not violating the law, allegedly (giggle). Again, why is this man in a position of authority when he has broken the law over and over again? Congress, anyone?
...
I tend to think that tampering with a federal investigation is probably a criminal offense, despite also being an ethical violation. After all, it is not like some random person demanded this. This is a Senator and a member of the House in the US government allegedly (giggle) demanding an indictment for political reasons.

One more time and in concert: Alberto Gonzales must be removed from office and disbarred. Demand it. Call your members of Congress and demand oversight of this criminal element tainting the Department of Justice.

Whoa! Did she ever hit the nail on the head that time! I couldn't have said it nearly as well myself.

And Larisa is much less "conspiratorial" than I am, so if she says it's a conspiracy...

Andrei at The American Street goes even farther. Rightly so, IMVHO: And The Horses They Rode Up On

What Congress also needs to do is to expel the two of its members from New Mexico who backed this illegal dismissal. Sen. Pete Domenici and Rep. Heather Wilson should be returned to civilian life — and then indicted for obstruction of justice. Congress can do this by a two-thirds vote, and has done so before in cases of far less oppression than this.

Yes, I know those wimps will probably only settle for censuring them at most — but think of this as a negotiating tactic. Always ask for more than you expect to get, or you’ll never get anywhere with those spineless poll-watchers. As for me, it’s a moral issue: we cannot have a free small-”r” republican country with scum like these two serving in our legislative bodies. Yes, we should close Guantanamo, but Marion, Illinois is still available for them.

That's beautiful! Thanks to Andrei, Larisa, and McClatchy.

I think you should take Larisa's advice (at the very least). You do know how to contact your "elected" representatives, don't you? If not ... here's the House of Representatives (find your rep using the search box at the top left corner) and here's the Senate (find your senators using the box at the top right).

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[see also]

Michael Gisick in the Albuquerque Tribune: U.S. attorney: Politics drove me from office