Veteran blogger Brad Friedman of The BRAD BLOG is perhaps the most well-known and respected advocate on the Internet for free, fair and accountable elections. He’s in Denver attending Democratic National Convention events and was kind enough to stop by Lime, S&R’s Convention headquarters, to chat with Mike Sheehan. (Photo by Jack Shaftoe)

MS: You’re the guy to ask: have you seen any progress in election certification on a national scale, or is it strictly regional improvements, or are you not seeing any improvements at all?

BF: I would pretty much say no improvements at all. And I hate to say it. On a federal level, there is sort of an incremental improvement, in that the United States Election Assistance Commission (EAC) has put in place a new certification process which is much more stringent than the previous one. That said, apparently it’s so stringent that none of the machines have passed testing. And yet, one of the two Democratic appointees to the EAC, Gracia Hillman, wants to do away with that testing, wants to say “forget about this new procedure and let’s just let the machines work anyway.” And this is a Democrat, a Democratic appointee. So no, it’s not good. There have been incremental changes: states like California, you got a better secretary of state; Ohio, better secretary of state. But then you get Colorado here, and you got this yutz Mike Coffman who’s forced by a judge to test all of the machines, finds that none of them works, so he decertifies them and then he recertifies them. So you guys are in the same mess you were in four years ago here.

MS: He just won his primary and he’s potentially on his way to Congress.

BF: Yeah, he’s running for a different office. So you guys are held hijacked to these crappy machines that don’t work and Colorado’s gonna be a very serious… could be a very, very close state this year. Good luck! I mean, really… there’s gonna be no way to verify what happens here in Colorado. … And the media seems to have gotten no better. I mean, suddenly they’ve started reporting on these stories that they could’ve reported on two, three years ago — we could’ve made a difference between then and now — they didn’t. They always do this, just before the election, when there’s no time to make any actual changes. And what do we have last week? Diebold is forced to admit that all of their machines — all of them, not just ones in Ohio — all of them lose votes. Seems like a problem to me; apparently not a lot of other people give a damn for some reason.

MS: I notice that too. Let’s talk about the Internet itself, the “state of the Web” I suppose. Speaking in a broad sense, have you seen your readership or your influence grow, or has it waned, or has it stayed the same? How’s the Web treating you these days?

BF: Well I suppose influence is different than traffic, and you can’t necessarily measure one by the other. For example, we had huge traffic back in January when we had the New Hampshire primary and we had this result that made no sense, and I came out and said, “Well, don’t you think we should count those ballots, since we’re lucky enough to have paper ballots? Don’t you think we should actually count them?” since they were all counted on voting systems that are known to be hackable as we saw in HBO’s Hacking Democracy.

MS: Kucinich made an effort…

BF: Kucinich tried, but he had to go in and pay for it. He could only afford… I think he counted 40 percent of the votes. We found all kinds of miscounting errors. So my traffic goes through the roof. At the same time, I got these guys over at Daily Kos saying “Brad Friedman is crazy and he’s saying that Hillary Clinton stole the election.” And we never said any such thing, never said it was stolen, certainly never said it was Hillary Clinton if it was stolen. And it turns out one of the front-pagers he has over there who blogs under a pseudonym, turns out his name is Dana Houle, and he was chief of staff for the congressman from New Hampshire. So he’s sitting behind his little mask of anonymity. You ask, does your influence go up? Does your traffic go up? I’m not sure if you call that influence, I don’t know if you call it traffic, I don’t know. But obviously people are paying attention to guys like you and me. You know, important people, I guess. Elected people are paying attention. Media are certainly paying attention to what you and I do, we’re driving them crazy, the corporate media.

MS: I’d like to think so, yeah.

BF: We are. They’re jumping out of buildings. They really are… they’re like so depressed that the readership is going down and that guys like Scholars and Rogues, and BRAD BLOG, and Raw Story, consistently scoop them. I’ve talked to a lot of them… they’ve gotta rewrite stories suddenly, because we beat them to it, so they gotta figure out new angles to cover it.

MS: I hope that continues.

BF: I hope they do something.

MS: You mentioned elected officials, I wanted to ask you your thoughts on this. Do you have any theories…

BF: Can I add that Barack Obama could’ve recounted the entire state of New Hampshire for $2,000 because the race was so close?

MS: I heard his campaign’s really low on funds.

BF: [chuckle] Yeah, right.

MS: Has he been asked why he hasn’t…?

BF: I haven’t been able to ask him. Have you?

MS: No.

BF: I wish somebody would.

MS: Can’t get close to the guy.

BF: Yeah, I know.

MS: You mentioned elected officials, I wanted to ask you: any theories or ideas or guesses as to why John Conyers, of all people, is pushing back so vigorously on impeachment.

BF: You know, I haven’t asked him directly. I just saw him about an hour ago…

MS: That’s right, he was here.

BF: We chatted quickly about election issues.

MS: Because I’ve seen reports in the media where he’s been confronted by voters and he always commiserates, but nothing happens.

BF: All I can give you is the same speculation that everybody has, which is that I think that as tough as he is, he’s also a good, loyal Democrat. And if Nancy Pelosi — actually I think it’s more Steny Hoyer, frankly, and Rahm Emanuel than anybody else — but if those guys say to him, “No, we’re not doing impeachment,” I think that’s what he does.

MS: I wanted to get your thoughts on the Convention itself. You’re here from L.A.

BF: Yup.

MS: Your general impressions about how Denver’s handling things? Have you noticed the rampant security? Any surprises? What are your general impressions?

BF: I’m surprised it’s 90 degrees in Denver. What the hell is up with that?

MS: And then tomorrow it could drop to 70 all of a sudden.

BF: Why don’t we have the conventions in the winter and the elections in the summer? Why do we have the elections when it’s freezing cold and then we have to have these conventions, and now you can’t move anywhere and it’s 90 degrees?

MS: Maybe the parties just like the crazy, when everybody gets rabid with heat…

BF: There seems to be Obama fever in town, people seem to be having a good time…

MS: Well, he’s the Messiah, haven’t you heard?

BF: That’s right. Walk-on-water Obama. The SWAT teams are out, but so far everybody seems to be in a good mood. As long as FOX News doesn’t keep taunting demonstrators, perhaps they’ll be no riots. My hope here is to find this Griff Jenkins, this jerk who was asking all of these demonstrators, “Why are you demonstrating?” and they didn’t want to talk to him because he’s FOX News, and he would say, “Don’t you believe in free speech?” Does he not understand the concept? Just because you believe in freedom of speech, it doesn’t mean you have to talk to FOX News, it means you get to not talk to them. So anyway, if I can track him down, we’ll take a videocamera out there, we’ll do some ambush interviews with Griff Jenkins and we’ll find out if he believes in freedom of speech.

MS: I think he’s probably trying to ask Barack Obama why they won’t put Hillary on the ticket.

BF: Idiots. God, are they idiots… and it’s gonna be a real tough time for Democrats, now and forever, until they do something about the media. And it’s not just FOX, they’re emblematic. We drove here, we drive all around the country… you turn on the radio, it’s four levels deep of right-wing talk radio. Good luck finding any progressive radio. And if you can have that kind of coverage, that kind of ownership of the media by the so-called “right wing,” you know, you’re gonna have this every single time. Turn a war hero like Kerry into a raving pansy.

MS: Max Cleland.

BF: …Max Cleland. They’re doing the same job on Obama. And the Democrats need to really start paying attention and do something when it comes to media reform and election reform.

MS: Well there’s a little glimmer of hope with Rachel [Maddow] over at MSNBC.

BF: A glimmer. But she’s not [big] on the radio, and that’s what people are listening to driving home from work. And every single station reporting the same bullshit, repeating the stuff that comes up from wingnut Associated Press…

MS: Rupert Murdoch sitting on the board and all that.

BF: Yeah, yup.

MS: I just want to get your thoughts on this: do you have any remarks or any opinion on the apparent “Hillary subterfuge” that’s underway. I’m really not hearing it from citizens and seeing it myself, but if you watch the media, apparently Hillary is…

BF: Ron Fournier at AP?

MS: That’s one part of it…

BF: Fox News? Are they telling you…?

MS: But all day today at CNN and FOX…

BF: The Recreate 68? They’re “taking over…?”

MS: Is that real, is it a media construct…?

BF: Of course it is. Of course it is. They want a story, I’m sure Hillary and Bill are not thrilled to not be the nominee this year, but as far as undermining the entire thing, as far as supporting some effort to… it’s these idiots who just refuse to cover the issues, refuse to cover the things that are important to America, want to cover themselves. You’re gonna see, coming out of this, the coverage of the coverage.

MS: Afterwards. “Where did we go wrong?”

BF: So, we’re going to try to cover the coverage of the coverage. We’re covering the coverage coverage. Because that’s what they do: they talk about themselves, they look for stories instead of serving America. They’re disserving America, they’re undermining our country, and we’re screwed. When you ask a question about a guy like John Conyers — a hero, frankly, a war hero, longest-serving member of the Congress, I think, at this point — when he can’t even proceed with doing the right thing because the entire party is so frightened about what the media will say about them, even though it’s the right thing… I’m quite concerned for this country. It is not business as usual, despite looking around and it appearing to be. But I don’t think it is, and I think this place is a tinderbox. I’m quite worried about where we go from here.

MS: Allright, let’s move onto something more mundane. Joe Biden: what strengths or liabilities does he bring to the ticket, if any, or is he just a safe pick…

BF: Well, he’s got great one-liners.

MS: (chuckles)

BF: No, seriously, and they could use that. America elects presidents based on one-liners…

MS: Yeah, he came out swinging on McCain’s “Parade of Homes.”

BF: He could use someone like that, a pit bull, like Biden. That said, I wish Biden wasn’t as much of a liar. And I should say, I used to love Biden. I was a big fan of Biden. And then he came on Bill Maher’s show once. You may remember this. He came on Bill Maher’s right before the ‘06 election, might have been in ‘05, during the whole Jeff Gannon thing, and he said, “Well, this is why we need to elect Democrats, ’cause if we were in charge of Congress, we’d hold hearings, we’d get to the bottom of this Jeff Gannon thing, and find out what the hell is going on, and believe me, heads would roll, and there’d be arrests, and jail time…” So he gets the chairmanship, they get the majority, and what have they done? They’ve held a few hearings, but virtually no accountability. Nothing from Joe Biden on Jeff Gannon. At that point, it seems to be that he was a liar.

MS: Maybe in retrospect now, Jeff Gannon, compared to how the media are going now, is probably more qualified than a lot of the people on the air…

BF: Yeah. He’s exactly the same as the rest of the media, except that he’s a gay prostitute as opposed to just a regular prostitute.

MS: Here’s a question I like to ask people in interviews who have political ties. Are there any circumstances under which you yourself would run for office?

BF: (laughs) Yeah! There are, in that I do think that people need to step up, citizens need to step up. And there’s a lot of folks — let me put in a plug for some of the citizens, citizen election integrity advocates who have stepped up. Ellen Brodsky and Susan Pynchon, down in Florida, they’re both running for county election supervisors. Clint Curtis, the software programmer, he’s running for Congress against Tom Feeney…

MS: Oh yeah, you’ve covered that extensively.

BF: …the guy who asked him to create vote-rigging software. Jason Osgood up in Washington, running for secretary of state. So I do think that citizens need to step up and throw these bums out and do the right thing. At this point, I think I can be more effective doing what I’m doing, which is blogging and speaking and so forth, but I think at some point we might have to look at this situation and say, “Well, how best can we serve the country?” And if the bloggers ran Congress, I think we’d in a hell of a lot better shape. So if you think you’re off the hook, Sheehan, you’re not…

MS: (chuckles)

BF: You’re gonna have to run. You’re gonna be in the same freshman class.

MS: Oh, God. I don’t know if that would help America or hurt America.

BF: Couldn’t hurt it any worse than the shape it’s in right now. ∞

S&R: Will the next president have any say in the prosecution of George Bush?

VB: No, he doesn’t have any say in it at all. The attorney general on his own can institute legal proceedings against Bush. But a pretty powerful way is for Congress to send what they call a criminal referral over to the attorney general.

S&R: That was probably in your book. I just forgot.

VB: No, I didn’t talk about criminal referral in my book because the most likely way is not by way of a criminal referral. But here’s an example. You know about the Mitchell hearings and Roger Clemens. They were talking about the possibility of a criminal referral from Congress to the attorney general. And that’s still a possibility.

If they make a criminal referral that doesn’t mean the attorney general has to investigate. But certainly it carries more weight coming from Congress than from a private citizen. Congress is spineless. They’re not going to do that.

Anyway neither of these things is necessary and they’re not the typical way. Usually when the attorney general brings a case, it’s not because it has been referred to him by Congress. The typical way is just that he’s the attorney general, a crime has been committed in the US, and he finds out about it. 99% of their cases happen that way.

The most likely way that Bush will end up in court after he leaves the presidency would be either a state attorney general or a district attorney. Of those two, the most likely is some D.A. in some county in this country.

But on a state level, I’ve established jurisdiction for the attorney general in each of the 50 states, plus the approximately 950 district attorneys in counties within those states. To prosecute Bush for the murder of a soldier or soldiers from their state or county who died fighting Bush’s war.

That’s 1,000 prosecutors. My position is that though there may not be a high probability, as a direct result of this book, there’s a substantial possibility that Bush may end up in an American courtroom being prosecuted for murder. There’s no statute of limitations for the crime of murder. Before Bush passes on, there will have been 15 to 20,000 prosecutors out there.

There may be some law student who heard me on the radio or read the book who’s saying to himself, “When I get out of law school, I’m going to become a D.A. or state attorney general and I’m going to bring charges against Bush.” Pinochet down in Chile? 33 years later they brought murder charges. His death aborted the process.

I’ll give you something a little closer to home. There’s a lawyer back east who said a couple of weeks ago, “Mr. Bugliosi, I read your book. We haven’t lost any citizens from my county in the war in Iraq, but if we lose a soldier, I’m going to run for D.A. in the county. If I win, I’m going to prosecute Bush.”

The reason I’m telling you this story is to show you there’s a lot of people out there that someday can prosecute George Bush. I think I said in the book if I achieve nothing else — and I certainly want to achieve much more because I won’t be happy until I see him in a courtroom being prosecuted for murder.

If I achieve nothing else, I want him to know for the rest of his life that any give day, some aide on his ranch might tap him on the shoulder and say, “Mr. President, there’s this prosecutor up in Fargo, North Dakota, sir, he’s prosecuting you for murder. And we’re due in Fargo at 10 a.m. Tuesday for your arraignment.” I want to put that thought in his mind. This guy has gotten away with murder.

The thing that has angered me beyond all belief is that he’s enjoyed himself throughout the entire period, had a lot of fun. How this guy can be enjoying himself when young kids are being blown to pieces by roadside bombing. . . what kind of human monster is this? It’s just mind-boggling.

Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

For more on Bush & Co.’s crimes, see. . .
The 935 lies of George Bush (and friends) by Martin Bosworth
Mission accomplished, part deux by Dr. Slammy
Bush golfing again, says “long nat’l nightmare” over by Brad Jacobson

The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder is a call to action. A man of 73, in the wake of years spent creating his masterwork, 2007’s Reclaiming History about the Kennedy assassination, has constructed his case with the passion of an idealistic college student. Surely the rest of us are capable of catching one last wave of Bush & Co. outrage. We do want to see Bush brought to justice, don’t we?

S&R: On July 25 you appeared on a panel before the House Judiciary Committee with the likes of Dennis Kucinich and Elizabeth Holtzman to examine the “imperial presidency” of George Bush. When you appeared at the Great Mind Series in Los Angeles, it was reported that you said of Committee Chairman John Conyers, “He’s completely behind what I’m doing here.” Do you think summoning you to speak was Conyers’s way of shifting attention from impeachment to a process with a better chance of success?

VB: Conyers called me up and said he read the book and liked it very much. This was before there was any mention of the hearing. Then I got the invitation. So I spoke to his assistant and I said I’m not an authority on impeachment. I’m only talking about prosecuting George Bush for first-degree murder. Everyone there was talking about one of two things: executive power and constitutional limitations or impeachment, and I was talking about murder. So they knew in advance.

Though they didn’t say it, they may have expanded the hearings for me. I’m just saying that I told them that I was not coming back there [to Washington from L.A. -- Ed.] to talk about the subject matter of the hearings. Although, certainly, if you’re talking about the basis for impeachment — high crimes and misdemeanors — murder obviously qualifies as one. They may have very well felt that what I was saying obviously did apply.

I tried to simplify for the hearing. I didn’t have much time. The difficulty always is it takes more time to figure out how to convey your message when you only have a short period of time. [Here Bugliosi cites the famous saying attributed to either Pascal, Voltaire, or Mark Twain: "I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I've written a long one instead." –- Ed.]

They’re telling me I’ve got five minutes — tell me what’s in your book in five minutes. It took me more time to figure out how I was going to do that then if they said I had a half hour. I tried to compress it into five minutes, which was not easy at all. But I got some good stuff in there.

I want to make it very clear. I definitely believe that Bush should be impeached. There’s no question about that. It’s just that I’m not satisfied with impeachment, him not spending one day in the county jail, continuing to enjoy himself. I don’t see any real justice there.

But impeachment isn’t too likely because of a couple of things: One, the time element. Two, Nancy Pelosi, doing what Democrats do so well, is not in favor of impeachment and she’s the speaker. That makes it almost insurmountable when you have the speaker against it. Three, impeachment would be good even if it’s not successful. Anything to stain the record of this terrible human being.

You can’t get a conviction on impeachment because you need two-third vote of the Senate and, as you know, the Senate is evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats. Still, I’d like to see an impeachment at least. But the notion that would be enough for what he did is something that I don’t agree with.

S&R: You’re not working in opposition to Congressman Kucinich, who introduced articles of impeachment against Bush, are you?

VB: No, absolutely not. I agree with everything Dennis says. But, again, impeachment alone is too good for George Bush.

S&R: You also said to the Judiciary Committee: “It would greatly dishonor those in their graves who paid the ultimate price because of this war were you not to refer this case to the Department of Justice.” Does the go-ahead for a prosecution start with Conyers and his committee?

VB: No, it doesn’t start there. This is just one way to get this case going and it’s the least likely. If they did it, then a criminal investigation would commence. The attorney general in Washington DC, that would be the best way. If anyone does anything –- I have to be candid with you –- it’s unlikely that any one of the 93 federal attorneys would begin criminal proceedings without getting the consent of their boss in Washington, the attorney general. And that’s why, realistically, on a federal level, there is only one person who would ever bring criminal charges against Bush and that’s the attorney general.

I want to point out that the burden that has to be met when referring a case to the attorney general’s office is very low. All that’s required is that there be a quote reasonable unquote suspicion that a crime has been committed. Surely, there’s a reasonable suspicion here that Bush took this nation to war under false pretenses. The attorney general’s office can’t prosecute him now but they can commence the investigation immediately. Then once he leaves office, at that point they can file charges. But there’s only one attorney general and it’s a highly politicized office.

Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

For more on Bush & Co.’s crimes, see. . .
The 935 lies of George Bush (and friends) by Martin Bosworth
Mission accomplished, part deux by Dr. Slammy
Bush golfing again, says “long nat’l nightmare” over by Brad Jacobson

As you may have heard by now, the mainstream media has been giving Vincent Bugliosi’s latest book, The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, the cold shoulder. Never mind that he authored what was, at the time, the bestselling crime book in history, Helter Skelter, about his successful prosecution of the Manson family. Nor that he’s written numerous bestsellers since. His 2007 book, Reclaiming History, a 1,600-page attempt to dispel alternative histories of the Kennedy assassination, is being made into a mini-series by HBO and Tom Hanks.

In the only mainstream media article addressing The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder and its reception, New York Times reporter Tim Arango writes: “The editor of Newsweek, Jon Meacham, said he had not read the manuscript, but he offered a reason why the media might be silent: ‘I think there’s a kind of Bush-bashing fatigue out there.’”

The main reason though may be Bugliosi’s agenda: Impeach Bush? Convene a truth and reconciliation commission for him and his gang? Forget all that. Once Bush is out of office, let’s drag his butt into a court of law. But the media’s perception that much of the public can’t conceive of prosecuting a president in a court of law is probably accurate.

Most Americans are too invested in whatever remains of the myth of the presidency and fear that a trial would subvert a president’s authority. Besides, as Bugliosi himself said in an interview with the Nation, “Americans just can’t believe an American President would engage in conduct that smacks of such criminality, and thus the whole notion of taking the President to court for murder is a revolutionary one.”

Myth-busting aside, and however out of fashion Bush-bashing may be, Bugliosi summons up a depth and breadth of rage that shames those of us who have been reduced to ennui and cynicism by the Bush years. You’d never know that not only is he 73 years old but still on the rebound from the monumental task of researching and writing his Kennedy tome.

For instance, he has no compunctions about pulling the rug out from under soldiers’ rationalization of last resort –- that they fight over there to keep from fighting here. To Bugliosi the question isn’t why but who. He writes: “If you say our young men didn’t die for Bush, Cheney, and Rove, then whom did they die for?”

Nor does he pull any punches on Bush’s character. “What I strongly believe (without absolutely knowing) is that this man has no respect or love for this country.” What makes him think that?

For starters, Bush put our young people in harm’s way for no good reason, avoided the draft when young himself, and experiences no apparent concern for the carnage in Iraq. Furthermore, he spends much of his time in Crawford, neglects to read reports, and is guilty of blatant cronyism. What really sticks in Bugliosi’s craw is the cheerfulness and insouciance that Bush exhibits in a time of war.

For instance, Bugliosi cites an August 2005 day Bush spent in Crawford in the midst of a two-week period during which 42 Americans were killed. With Bush’s only work-related activity lunch with Condoleezza Rice, he called it a “perfect day.” Bugliosi writes: “I don’t know about you, but if I ever killed just one person, even accidentally, like in a car accident, I’d never have another perfect day as long as I lived.”

At one point Bugliosi even declares: “Bush is a grotesque anomaly and aberration.” If, even in the service of rallying us to prevail upon the Justice Department to bring charges, such exclamations seem over the top, look at this way. The least we could do is allow Bugliosi to vent since much of this book is essentially a turnkey project for a federal attorney to start the ignition on the prosecution of Bush and put it in gear.

A crime is an act that’s not only prohibited, but accompanied by criminal intent. In the case of murder, this is known as malice aforethought, which comes in two varieties. The first is express malice — the specific intent to kill. In the second, implied malice, the intent is not to kill but to commit a dangerous act with wanton disregard for the consequences as well as an indifference to human life.

Bush, Bugliosi writes, not only fulfilled the second requirement, implied malice, but he started the Iraq War “without any lawful excuse of justification.”

Bush’s defense would be self-defense –- that he needed to carry out a preemptive strike on Saddam. But lying that Saddam possessed WMD and conspired with al Qaeda to commit 9/11 shows that Bush wasn’t acting in self-defense, but, instead, in a criminal state of mind. Hence, every American killed as a result of his actions are murders on Bush’s part.

In most states implied malice is second-degree murder. But, Bugliosi writes, “Bush’s alleged crime is. . . on such a grand scale that it would greatly dishonor those. . . who paid the ultimate price because of it if he were not to pay the ultimate penalty.”

In the interest of prosecuting Bush for first-degree murder, Bugliosi writes that a “very credible argument could be made that in a real sense he did intend to have American soldiers killed in his war.”

Say what?

Bugliosi explains. A typical example of implied malice is a high-speed chase though a school zone, in which “not only didn’t the defendant intend to kill, but he had no way of knowing whether someone would die or not. [But] while Bush never specifically intended to kill any American soldier, he absolutely knew American soldiers would necessarily die in his war.” (Italics are Bulgiosi’s.)

He continues. “Therefore, a case could be made that unless Bush intended to have a war without any casualties, which is. . . an argument that would make Bush sound absurd. . . he did, in fact, specifically intend to have American soldiers killed.”

In other words, as everyone knows, in war, casualties come with the territory. If the “natural tendency” of an act is to take another’s life, the law can’t help but conclude that was intentional.

As for his chances of success, “. . . as a former prosecutor with twenty-one murder convictions without a loss. . . I am probably in a better position than the average person to know what type of evidence is necessary to go to trial with.” If he’s rusty, he sure doesn’t sound like it. In fact, he’s begun to arouse the interest of current prosecutors.

Much of the rest of The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder is given over to cataloging Bush’s crimes. Bugliosi brings some to our attention that have gone unnoticed by many of us. For example, who remembers Hans Blix, UN weapons inspector, stating before the invasion that Iraq’s cooperation in the inspections, “can be seen as active, even proactive”?

Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

For more on Bush & Co.’s crimes, see. . .
The 935 lies of George Bush (and friends) by Martin Bosworth
Mission accomplished, part deux by Dr. Slammy
Bush golfing again, says “long nat’l nightmare” over by Brad Jacobson

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

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

— from the Declaration of Independence; July 4, 1776.

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

— from a March 13, 2006, signing statement by President Bush explaining how he will interpret the USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act of 2005; despite oversight provisions in the law that directed he inform Congress regarding the FBI’s use of the act’s expanded police powers, President Bush, in effect, told Congress he felt no obligation to do so; emphasis added.

In the annals of the human race, the separation of one people into two, is an event of no uncommon occurrence. The successful resistance of a people against oppression, to the downfall of the tyrant and of tyranny itself, is the lesson of many an age, and of almost every clime. It lives in the venerable records of Holy Writ. It beams in the brightest pages of profane history.

— from “An address, delivered at the request of the committee of arrangements for celebrating the anniversary of Independence, at the City of Washington on the Fourth of July 1821 upon the occasion of reading The Declaration of Independence” by John Quincy Adams.

Provisions of the Act, such as sections 2104 and 6024, purport to require congressional committee approval prior to certain obligations or expenditures of funds appropriated by the Act. The executive branch shall construe such provisions to require only prior notification to congressional committees, as any other construction would be contrary to the constitutional principles set forth by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1983 in INS v. Chadha.

— from an Aug. 2, 2005, signing statement by President Bush attached to the Department of Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2006; emphasis added.

Now even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us — the spin masters, the negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of “anything goes.” Well, I say to them tonight, there is not a liberal America and a conservative America — there is the United States of America. There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America — there’s the United States of America.

The pundits, the pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I’ve got news for them, too. We worship an “awesome God” in the Blue States, and we don’t like federal agents poking around in our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and yes, we’ve got some gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.

— from the keynote address by Sen. Barack Obama to the 2004 Democratic Convention; July 27, 2004.

I cannot give you that list.

— response of Michelle Boardman, deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice, after Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., asked her during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing to provide a list of laws that President Bush has decided, through signing statements, not to enforce; June 28, 2006.

I am proud that we worked together with such bipartisan spirit in the weeks following the despicable attacks on our Nation. My Administration will work together with the Congress to address additional needs as they become known during the second session of the 107th Congress.

— from a Jan. 10, 2002, signing statement by President Bush attached to the Department of Defense and Emergency Supplemental Appropriations for Recovery from and Response to Terrorist Attacks on the United States Act of 2002; emphasis added.

A realistic president recognizes that he is president within the Constitution and that the Constitution provides the framework in which he can exert considerable power. But the power depends on persuasion, and it depends on consent. And our great presidents have, on the whole, exerted that power within the Constitution.

— from a 1980s clip of Arthur M. Schlesinger, author of “The Imperial Presidency,” aired on PBS; March 1, 2007; emphasis added.

The executive branch shall construe as calling solely for notification the provisions of the Act that purport to require congressional committee approval for the execution of a law. … Section 513 of the Act purports to direct the conduct of security and suitability investigations. To the extent that section 513 relates to access to classified national security information, the executive branch shall construe this provision in a manner consistent with the President’s exclusive constitutional authority, as head of the unitary executive branch and as Commander in Chief, to classify and control access to national security information and to determine whether an individual is suitable to occupy a position in the executive branch with access to such information.

— from an Oct. 9, 2006, signing statement by President Bush attached to the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2007 in which he tells Congress he has the power to edit DHS reports regarding whether it obeys privacy rules while handling background checks, ID cards and watchlists; emphasis added.

Section 503(c) of the Homeland Security Act of 2002, as amended by section 611 of the Act, provides for the appointment and certain duties of the Administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Section 503(c)(2) vests in the President authority to appoint the Administrator, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, but purports to limit the qualifications of the pool of persons from whom the President may select the appointee in a manner that rules out a large portion of those persons best qualified by experience and knowledge to fill the office. The executive branch shall construe section 503(c)(2) in a manner consistent with the Appointments Clause of the Constitution.

— from an Oct. 9, 2006, signing statement by President Bush attached to the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2007; according to The Boston Globe’s Charlie Savage, “To shield FEMA from cronyism, Congress established new job qualifications for the agency’s director in last week’s homeland security bill. The law says the president must nominate a candidate who has ‘a demonstrated ability in and knowledge of emergency management’ and ‘not less than five years of executive leadership”; Oct. 6, 2006; emphasis added.

The president hasn’t vetoed any bills, but basically he has done a personal veto. He has said which laws he will not follow and … put himself above the law, even the same law he has signed.

— Sen. Patrick Leahy during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing; June 28, 2006.

Provisions of the Act, including sections 841, 846, 1079, and 1222, purport to impose requirements that could inhibit the President’s ability to carry out his constitutional obligations to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, to protect national security, to supervise the executive branch, and to execute his authority as Commander in Chief. The executive branch shall construe such provisions in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President.

— from a Jan. 28 signing statement by President Bush attached to the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008; emphasis added.

Congress is Republican-controlled. Polling shows that a large majority of Americans are willing to give up their civil liberties to prevent another terror attack. The USA Patriot Act passed with overwhelming support. So why didn’t the President simply ask Congress for the authority he thought he needed?

The answer seems to be, quite simply, that Vice President Dick Cheney has never recovered from being President Ford’s chief of staff when Congress placed checks on the presidency. And Cheney wanted to make the point that he thought it was within a president’s power to ignore Congress’ laws relating to the exercise of executive power. Bush has gone along with all such Cheney plans.

No president before Bush has taken as aggressive a posture — the position that his powers as commander-in-chief, under Article II of the Constitution, license any action he may take in the name of national security — although Richard Nixon, my former boss, took a similar position.

— excerpt from FindLaw column by John W. Dean, former counselor to President Richard M. Nixon; Dec. 30, 2005; emphasis added.

Sections 8007, 8011, and 8093 of the Act prohibit the use of funds to initiate a special access program, a new overseas installation, or a new start program, unless the congressional defense committees receive advance notice. The Supreme Court of the United States has stated that the President’s authority to classify and control access to information bearing on the national security flows from the Constitution and does not depend upon a legislative grant of authority. Although the advance notice contemplated by sections 8007, 8011, and 8093 can be provided in most situations as a matter of comity, situations may arise, especially in wartime, in which the President must act promptly under his constitutional grants of executive power and authority as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces while protecting certain extraordinarily sensitive national security information. The executive branch shall construe these sections in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President.

— from a Jan. 2, 2006, signing statement by President Bush attached to the Department of Defense, Emergency Supplemental Appropriations to Address Hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico, and Pandemic Influenza Act, 2006; emphasis added.

As the letter from the Acting Attorney General explained in considerable detail, the assertion of Executive Privilege here is intended to protect a fundamental interest of the Presidency: the necessity that a President receive candid advice from his advisors and that those advisors be able to communicate freely and openly with the President, with each other, and with others inside and outside the Executive Branch. In the present setting, where the President’s authority to appoint and remove U.S. Attorneys is at stake, the institutional interest of the Executive Branch is very strong. The Acting Attorney General’s letter clearly identifies the subject matter of the deliberations and communications at issue and provides an extensive treatment of the issues implicated by the subpoenas and the legal basis for the President’s assertion of Executive Privilege.

— from a July 7, 2007, letter from Fred F. Fielding, counsel to President Bush, to Sen. Patrick J. Leahy and Rep. John Conyers Jr. asserting executive privilege “with respect to the testimony sought from Sara M. Taylor and Harriet E. Miers covering White House consideration, deliberations or communications, whether internal or external, relating to possible dismissal or appointment of United States Attorneys”; emphasis added.

I have to wonder if the White House’s refusal to provide a detailed basis for this executive privilege claim has more to do with its inability to craft an effective one.

— comment of Sen. Patrick J. Leahy following receipt of Mr. Fielding’s letter; July 11, 2007.

The clear message of these decisions taken together is that the Court is willing to allow Congress some leeway in putting limitations on executive power but that it is wholly unwilling to permit Congress to participate in administering the laws itself or through its agents.

— Alan B. Morrison, a Washington lawyer who filed a brief as a friend of the Court supporting a special prosecutor law adopted by Congress in the wake of investigations of Reagan Administration officials and former officials; the law provided for judges to appoint special prosecutors in such cases, insulated from presidential control. The Reagan Administration argued that this was an unconstitutional encroachment on the president’s power; the Court ruled 7-1 against the administration; June 30, 1988.

The executive branch shall construe section 11(c) of the Act, relating to executive branch reports to the Congress concerning investigations of alleged criminal and fraudulent activities in connection with a specified project, in a manner consistent with the constitutional authorities of the President to supervise the unitary executive branch and to withhold information the disclosure of which could impair the performance of the Executive’s constitutional duties, including the conduct of investigations and prosecutions to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.

— from a Dec. 25, 2006, signing statement by President Bush attached to the National Transportation Safety Board Reauthorization Act of 2006; emphasis added.

In late 1947 Clark Clifford and James Rowe instructed Harry Truman, “The worse matters get, up to a fairly certain point—real danger of imminent war—the more is there a sense of crisis. In times of crisis the American citizen tends to back up his President.” The result was the famed war scare of 1948, in which that accidental President started trumpeting “the critical nature of the situation in Europe,” the necessity for “speedy action,” the “great urgency” of the problem of the Soviet threat. He did this even though, as State Department counselor Charles Bohlen explained in a confidential January 1948 memo, the government considered its position “vis-à-vis the Soviet better now than at any time since the end of the war.”

— excerpt from a commentary in The Nation. by Eric Alterman; Feb. 7, 2002.

RUSH LIMBAUGH: Is this really part of an effort by some in the Senate to try to convince the American people we don’t face a threat anymore, and there’s no reason to run the risk of violating people’s civil liberties, blah, blah, blah?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, it’s been focused especially on the Democrats in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Pat Leahy, chairman of the committee, has opposed parts of the statute that we think are essential in terms of going forward, including specifically this retroactive liability provision. But I don’t like to question people’s motives. I assume he’s got reasons why he believes the way he does, but the fact is it’s their inability to resolve that issue that’s delayed passage on this legislation.

I think there are people out there, frankly, Rush, that don’t like what we’ve done, that are opposed to the bold action and tough decisions the President has made since 9/11. I think there were a lot of people who were panicky in the aftermath of 9/11, but now that we’ve demonstrated our ability to defend the country for the last six-and-a-half years, they want to act as though there’s no threat and we don’t need to take these important measures.

But the fact of the matter is, the threat is still there, it still exists. I look at it every day in our intelligence brief. We need to perpetuate and protect our capabilities here, as well as in terms of our ability to interrogate prisoners.

— excerpt from radio interview of Vice President Dick Cheney, conducted by Rush Limbaugh; Jan. 30; emphasis added.

Debates about the extent of presidential constitutional powers are as old as the republic itself, as the debates between James Madison and Alexander Hamilton illustrated. There is, however, general agreement that the past wartime presidents, including Lincoln, Wilson and F.D.R., have exerted their constitutional powers to the utmost. At the same time, any president should endeavor to work cooperatively with Congress as much as possible.

— from a written statement from the presidential campaign of Sen. John McCain, quoted in a New York Times analysis by James Risen; June 22.

photo credits:

• Declaration of Independence: Library of Congress
• Agenda for America poster: 4president.org
• Michael Brown, former head of FEMA: Allen Fredrickson, Reuters
• President Nixon leaving the White House, Aug. 9, 1974: Nixon Presidential Library & Museum
• President Bush: Joyce N. Boghosian, The White House
• President Harry S. Truman with pistols: Harry S. Truman Library and Museum
• Vice President Cheney: David Bohrer, The White House

Quotabull is a weekly feature of Scholars & Rogues.

• proven track record for getting country out of wars
• strong foreign policy diplomat who forged stronger relationships with powerful developing (and enemy) nations
• implemented the first significant federal affirmative action program
• dramatically increased spending on federal employee salaries
• organized a daily press event and daily message for the media
• oversaw first large-scale integration of public schools in the South
• advocated comprehensive national health insurance for all Americans
• imposed wage and price controls in times of crisis
• indexed Social Security for inflation and created Supplemental Security Income
• created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the Office of Minority Business Enterprise
• promoted the Legacy of Parks program
• appointed four Supreme Court Justices, three of which voted with the majority in Roe v. Wade

Have you figured out where this is going yet?

No, I’m not here to tell you that what American needs is Richard Nixon. I’m sure as hell not here to laud the man, who was – as Hunter Thompson so eloquently put it – so crooked he had to screw his pants on in the morning. I’m not here to argue that his policies were always noble or implemented with unrelenting elegance. Yes, he got us out of Vietnam, but not before considerable mucking around in the region. Yes, his record on race was … mixed. And so on.

The point I’m making isn’t about Nixon at all. Instead, it’s about our major political parties and the people who occupy them today. It’s about how far to the right even the left has slid in the last 35 years.

Let’s advance a posit, shall we?

If he were a candidate in the 2008 presidential election, Richard M. Nixon would be more progressive than either the Republican or Democratic nominees.

Discuss.

Thanks to Wikipedia for pulling a lot of stuff together in one handy-dandy place. I don’t usually cite them, but for things like this they’re a good jumping-off point.

Let me just start by saying that I don’t like you.  You are part of a fraternity of yes-men, mouthpieces, and belly-crawling boot-lickers spawned by Edward Bernays, Sigmund Freud’s nephew, the father of public relations, and author of the seminal work, Propaganda.  Like you, Bernays helped some of the most despicable organizations and people get their way by manipulating public opinion. 

So, now you’re repentant, are you?  I suppose that’s something.  It doesn’t absolve you any more than it absolved Lee Atwater when he apologized on his death bed for being one of you, but it probably drops you a notch below Joseph Goebbels in the Public Relations Society of America’s Hall of Heroes.  Maybe if you devote the rest of your life to good works, you’ll come back as E. coli. 

It’s the most you can hope for.

Despite my personal revulsion, I’m going to give you a piece of advice on how to handle the Lamar Smiths of the world when they come right out and call you a Judas, as the Republican Congressman from Texas’ 21^st district, and a Republican (have I already mentoned that?), did when he said:

While we may never know the answers, Scott McClellan alone will have to wrestle with whether it was worth selling out the president and his friends for a few pieces of silver.

I’m going to give you this piece of advice, because for once in that malodorous, oozing pustule you call a life, you have done something good.  Maybe you have learned, albeit way too late in life, that being a toady to a regime that thinks the rule of law is only for those who don’t agree with them on every political issue is not a great way to run a society your children have to live in.  Perhaps there’s a small kernel of your soul still alive in the blackened, twisted wreckage you’ve made of the rest of it.

When Lamar Smith, or any other person with Lamar Smith’s leanings, comes at you again with a remark like that, here’s what you say:

Congressman, I won’t have to wrestle with this at all.  I did all my wrestling some time ago, and I’m very comfortable with the side of me that won the match. 

That side began by asking where my highest political loyalty lies, and it was an insidiously difficult and painful question for me.  You see, I’ve studied the Nixon years, and I’ve found that those who came forward and enumerated President Nixon’s crimes – his misuse of the sacred power granted him by the American people who trusted him not to misuse it – were accused of the same sort of disloyalty that I’m being accused of.  And I’ve come to understand that they were, in fact, disloyal to President Nixon in the same way that I’m being disloyal to President Bush.

I’ve also come to understand, Congressman, that the world is full of conflicting loyalties.  All of us are disloyal to someone or something during our lives, if only to be loyal to something else.  And that’s where the good side of me won out. 

You see, when I realized that I was very loyal to the American people, to our history, to our ideals, and to the embodiment of those ideals in the US Constitution, and that I was very loyal to the people who risk their lives to defend her and us, our soldiers and intelligence gatherers in the CIA, I found I could no longer serve both loyalties.  I had to betray one or the other, and I chose President Bush.

I cannot make that choice for anyone else, Congressman, and if your choice is different from mine, then so be it.  But I will not change my mind.  I am clear now:  My highest political loyalty is to the United States of America, and if I must betray those who betray her, then that is what I must do.

And that is what I have done. 

I regret that I could not be loyal to both President Bush and the United States, but that is not my fault.  He forced a choice, and I chose.

 

 

 

 

 

George Walker Bush: I’ve been telling my Republican friends for five years now that Dubya was going to do more damage to their party than an army of Hillarys could dream of doing. And 2007 was the year where I think the truth of this proposition finally started becoming evident. Scandals at the Justice Department and World Bank did him no favors, nor did the conviction of Scooter Libby (which necessitated the most politically debilitating pardon/commutation sequence since Ford saved Nixon). Iraq got worse by the day and we’re not seeing a lot of GOP presidential hopefuls looking to surf that Bush legacy.

Many people are saying he’s the worst president ever. I can’t make that claim because I’m not really a presidential scholar and there’s a lot I don’t know about a lot of past presidents. He’s certainly the worst in my lifetime, and from what I can tell you have to go all the way back to Hoover to even get a good argument going on the subject.

History isn’t going to be kind to George Bush, and 2007 was just the beginning.

The Dick: Most days it seems like the only reason he hasn’t been impeached is because the Democrats saw how the GOP hounded the Clintons. I think they feel like impeachment would be taken as a purely partisan act, and a lot of them are sifting through their own closets and realizing that the last thing they want is to make impeachment seem like an acceptable thing to do. But maybe I’m just being cynical.

Here’s what we know. Scooter Libby didn’t think that shit up all by himself. And it’s almost impossible to imagine that a thorough, honest, hard-charging investigation could avoid exploring treason. And by “thorough, honest, hard-charging,” I’m suggesting that we should throw at least as much at the outing of a CIA operative as we would at, say, a land deal gone bad, mmmkay?

So, President Bush Commuted the Perjury Sentence for Scooter Libby: We learned in History of the World, Part 1 that it’s good to be da king. If you can’t be da king, we now know that next best thing is to be the guy who has evidence against da king.

Alberto Gonzales: We once figured you had to be pretty damned smart to be Attorney General. Turns out you don’t even have to be smart enough to remember your own name.

Mike Mukasey: You don’t have to be able to recognize that Spanish Inquisition techniques constitute torture, either.

2007 wasn’t just about The Dubya & The Dick Show, though. There were all these people lining up auditioning to replace Mr. Bush.

Hillary Clinton: We’re not sure what tells you more about Hillary – her Bush-wannabe stance on Iraq or her taste in campaign theme songs. Neither has us 100% in love with her vison for America, though.

Barack Obama: In our minds the defining moment of his campaign so far isn’t his Obama/Oprah in 2008 Tour or his alleged stances on the issues. No, it’s Chris Dodd busting his ass to prevent a blanket retroactive grant of immunity to telecoms for what look like serious violations of the law while Barack continues smiling for the cameras on the Campaign Trail. He likes to talk about real change, but in what way, exactly, is this a change?

John Edwards: He’s going about it wrong, but he’s the only candidate among the frontrunners who’s willing to talk about some of the real issues facing American families.

Rudy Giuliani: Thanks to Rudy, we now know that mistresses are only a bad thing when Democrats have them.

Mike Huckabee: Preacher-in-Chief wannabe had a great 2007 – out of nowhere to legit threat. He’s got a tough road ahead, though. There seem to be all kinds of things in his past that he might not want to talk about, like some positively Spears-esque parenting missteps that should give pause to his Christian followers. And that’s just the start.

John McCain: [sigh] What might have been. Will the defining moment of his career boil down to a badly rendered performance of “Bomb Iran”?

John Fitzgerald Mitt Romney: JFK once gave a famous speech designed to convince Protestants that it would be okay to elect him, a Catholic, because he’d protect the separation of church and state. Drawing on that precedent, Romney gave a speech designed to assure people that it would be okay to elect him, a Mormon, because he’d ignore the separation of church of state.

Fred Thompson: Wow. In a few months he went from “the next Ronald Reagan” to a guy who’d kill for Ron Paul’s numbers.

Ron Paul: We think there are tremendous problems with Mr. Paul’s record and platform, but you have to give credit where credit is due. His supporters are simply rabid, and there’s always a value in having a legion of backers who aren’t willing to let anything get in the way. Like facts, for instance.

Mike Gravel: Old guy got mad skilz. Next year look for a collaboration with Jay-Z.

Dennis Kucinich: Went on Colbert and revealed that his pockets contain a rip in the space/time continuum, allowing him to store a veritable warehouse of stuff. And by the way, how do you look like that and score a wife who looks like this? He’s like the Ric Ocasek of politics.

We don’t have time to tackle all the fun stuff that happened on the politics and media front this year, but there are a few things we’d like to observe in passing.

Nancy Pelosi Became the First Woman Speaker of the House: Then promptly makes us wonder what we thought the difference was going to be.

Harry Reid Became First Woman Senate Majority Leader: And promptly made us wish for the kind of strong, masculine leadership that Pelosi is providing across the hall.

The Wild Willy Follies! Starring Larry Craig, Ted Haggard and David Vitter: In Act 1 of our Republican morality play we learn that diddling hookers is bad, but not fatal, so long as they’re chicks. In Act 2 it is revealed that diddling “escorts” is bad, and exceedingly fatal, if they’re packing the same equipment you are. So remember, preachers and GOPlayas, before stepping out on the missus, be sure to conduct a thorough anatomy check.

News that Sen. Vitter patronized the DC Madam raises a really important question: is there any low to which a prostitute won’t stoop? (By they way, Mr. Vitter has now discovered that “I’m a Republican Congressman from Louisiana” isn’t technically a valid plea.) Like most Americans, though, I’m just grateful that Dick Cheney wasn’t involved. The thought of him attempting to roger something both human and alive makes me want to take a brillo pad to my eyeballs.

Scott McClellan on the Road to Damascus: “So I stood at the White house briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the senior-most aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby. There was one problem. It was not true. I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice President, the President’s chief of staff, and the president himself.” Scotty, we’re looking forward to your book and we hope it helps put some richly deserving criminals where they belong. But there’s one little problem with your story. We knew you were lying. If you didn’t, you’re either a raging moron or a man of “tremendous faith.”

Katie Couric: Amidst much controversy, took over Cronkite’s old chair. Has since revolutionized broadcast journalism by offering hard-hitting analysis and relentless critiques of high government corruption. Oh, wait a second – no, that was Keith Olbermann.

Don Imus: Some ill-conceived comments on his radio show destroyed his career for a few months. But now he’s back, all rehabilitated and swearing that it’ll never happen again. To make sure it won’t happen again he’s surrounding himself with all the people who made it happen in the first place.

We hope 2007 was good to you and that 2008 will be even better. Our resolution is to make Scholars & Rogues an even better source of analysis and insight in the coming year, which is going to be a big one, especially here in the US. We invite you to make us part of your everyday reading list and join in when we say something interesting.

Happy New Year.

What Matt Stoller says here about the “crazy uncle theory” of politics is absolutely right–the more that so-called “mainstream” pols reject the public’s will and ignore their needs, the more they’ll gravitate to alternatives, no matter how long-shot and outlandish they may seem, to the point where (as John Aravosis notes) they start making much more sense.

But how crazy are people like Paul, Gravel, and Kucinich, really? The major players in the Democratic party and the top-shelf netroots have done all they could to denigrate Mike Gravel for running a crappy campaign with weird videos, for instance–but look at his campaign platform. That’s a progressive’s wet dream right there. Imagine if the Big Three Dems were running as hardcore left as Gravel is.

Or what about Kucinich? Both the mainstream left and the netroots have been killing Kucinich for years, and yet, who’s the one who had the balls to stand up and demand that Darth Cheney be held accountable as a war criminal and a disgrace to his office? Whereas Nancy Pelosi, who had a historic opportunity to bring down the Bush junta, chose to take impeachment off the table and has since done a fine job of carrying the regime’s water.

And then you have Paul himself. The reason Paul is so wildly popular is that he represents an outlet for angry, disaffected Republicans who simply cannot or will not bring themselves to vote Democrat. Beyond the cranks, crazies, 9/11 truthers, and racist hate groups who are falling over themselves for Paul, there is a huge range of angry moderates, independents, and libertarians who oppose the Iraq fiasco, the PATRIOT Act, and our empire of oil. These people would be more than willing to convert to the progressive cause, but their cultural and social mores have so completely inculcated in them the belief that Dems are weak and compromising that they won’t do it. So Paul is their “steam vent,” if you will.

And after seeing the 2006 class of Democrats–many of whom were powered to victory by the netroots–promptly betray the voters by kowtowing to Bush’s desires on the Iraq war and the FISA reauthorization, can we really tell these people differently?

Now, let me be clear–all of these guys have severe flaws that make them difficult (if not impossible) to support. But after seven years of being told by a corrupt government and a complacent, enabling media that the War on Terra is being fought to preserve the country from the tides of Islamofascism, and that the economy is great despite all evidence to the contrary, and that our rights are necessary sacrifices to the altar of security–I gotta tell ya, the crazy is starting to sound really nice.

I’ve said it before and I will say it again–the more that the “mainstream” Democrats act like Republicans (see Russ’ post on Hillary’s nuclear nonproliferation non-policy, for example) and the more that the media enables the worst, most obsequious, and trivial aspects of the campaign to dominate the narrative, the more that angry voters will gravitate to extremes. As progressives, we would do well to stop marginalizing the extreme voices and start listening to what they have to say.

It may turn out that they know something we don’t.

Taibbi: They’ve done some good things. In the 109th and the other Republican Congresses the two-day work week was standard, and even those two days were often half-days. This Congress has brought back the five-day week. They’ve eliminated for the most part the “vampire congress” late-night sessions and phased out the holding open of votes to intimidate recalcitrant members and that sort of thing. But on the other hand… the Democrats came in amid much fanfare and announced that they were reforming the system, eliminating earmarks, etc. After the first Continuing Resolution they passed (I think it was on January 31), Rahm Emanuel was bragging about how it was an “earmark-free bill.” But there are all sorts of earmarks in it. A guy I know named Winslow Wheeler, a former Senate aide, found many millions worth of earmarks (including a cancer-research handout on page 30 of the bill) within minutes. Same with the Iraq Supplemental — it had all sorts of military handouts in it, despite the fact that they were claiming otherwise. It even says that in the Supplemental: “Pursuant to clause 9 of rule XXI of the Rules of the House of Representatives, this conference report contains no congressional earmarks…” But if you look in the report, there is, among other things, $192 million earmarked for new FA-18 airplanes in there, just wedged in quietly, probably by Murtha’s people.

Along with the Congress’s failure to do anything substantive in terms of ending the war — despite the fact that they’d been elected to do so — this sort of purely cosmetic reform is very disappointing. On the other hand… the difference between a “business as usual” congress and the Belarus-style rubber stamp that Tom DeLay had put together is pretty stark.

S&R: Some big-name progressive bloggers are pissed at what they perceive as the betrayal of newly elected “moderate” Democrats who tend to vote with the Republicans. Is their outrage justified?

Taibbi: A lot of people were upset with the Blue Dog coalition — the “moderate” Democrats who advocate mainly for fiscal conservatism in congressional spending — for defecting from the party to pass a temporary fix of the FISA law that continued to allow warrantless searches. But I don’t know… there were a lot of Blue Dogs and other moderates who won districts that had voted for Bush in ‘04, and who have really outraged Republicans for passing what they call a “tax hike” (actually a budget that envisions the end of the Bush tax cuts) this year, as well as some ambiguous votes on embryonic research, Iraq, and so on. You can look at these moderates as traitors to the Democratic side or you could say that the Democrats are lucky they ran as Democrats at all. I think the country is still a lot more conservative than is reflected in the Congressional makeup.

S&R: You said of the debate over blogs versus newspapers, “As long as men keep shitting on Sunday mornings, the print newspaper will thrive.” Should print media care about the rise of mobile communication such as texting, or are trees still screwed?

Taibbi: Sure print media has to worry. Especially financially. Things like Craigslist have basically put the alternative newspaper out of business. I believe people will always want to read actual paper, but the issue is what paper media can offer than electronic media can’t, from a revenue perspective. And that’s not much. The net offers so much more in terms of multimedia and click-throughs and links to shopping sites and so on that, from an advertiser’s perspective, it’s just a much safer bet. It’s also much more quantifiable in terms of finding out exactly how many readers there are and how many respond to the ads. So this is all bad for print media. The only papers that are going to survive are going to be the ones that are actually sold at newsstands, i.e., don’t rely on advertising for all their revenue. And I think some will. Just like HBO, people are going to find that the quality increases if they pay for their media product directly.

S&R: Steve Rosenbaum wrote recently in The Huffington Post that Jon Stewart “isn’t funny anymore,” meaning that the joke of the Bush years is on us and Democrats can’t and won’t do jack to change things. Your recent RS piece ‘The War Party‘ blasted the GOP presidential candidates as “fourth-rate buffoons.” Is this a good time for a major third party to formulate?

Taibbi: There’s never been a better time. Both mainstream parties are looking likely to nominate deeply flawed candidates. If the race comes down to Hillary and Giuliani, the Green Party could nominate Big Bird and win 28% of the vote. And a third party is definitely needed, since the Democrats have become captives of the money wing of their party.

S&R: It seems like every day Reps. Waxman, Conyers, et al. are conducting hearings on the malfeasance of the Bush administration, yet impeachment remains officially “off the table.” Are there practical reasons for the pushback on impeachment?

Taibbi: I’m on the fence on that one. Ironically, the reason impeachment might not be a good idea is that we had such a recent experience with it under Clinton. It would be a terrible, destabilizing thing if opposition political parties began to regularly appeal to the impeachment process as a weapon against sitting presidents, and I think this is part of Waxman’s thinking there. That said, Bush certainly qualifies for impeachment — there’s no question he’s committed “high crimes and misdemeanors,” and that he would be vulnerable to such a prosecution, especially in the area of lying to Congress. But I don’t think anyone wants to go there, after the Ken Starr debacle.

S&R: You wrote in ‘Spanking the Donkey‘ that the ‘04 race for the White House was “one of the greatest and most prolonged insults to human dignity the world has ever seen.” Yet you’re subjecting yourself again to the mind-numbing tedium of another campaign in your new RS blog, ‘Year of the Rat.’ How do you keep the horror from getting to you?

Taibbi: I don’t. The horror gets to me. What worries me is that I have this sneaking suspicion that I deserve this assignment somehow, like I’m paying some kind of large karmic bill by going out there again. I can’t say why I feel that way, but I do. But I certainly hate it. I’ve reached the point now where when I interview “men on the street” and they give me the same crazy answers over and over again (like “We have to fight them over there so they won’t come over here”). I really have to struggle to keep from grabbing them by the neck, screaming “What the fuck!!!”, etc.

S&R: Are you going to volunteer for any campaigns this election cycle, like you did for Bush in ‘04?

Taibbi: Um, there’s going to be something along those lines, but I can’t say exactly what, for obvious reasons. I have a book coming out next year called ‘The Great Derangement‘ that includes a pretty lengthy undercover job, but I can’t say exactly what it was yet.

S&R: Why do you think the traditional political press has avoided discussion of the Constitution and rule of law in presidential debates and discourse? Do they presume that Americans don’t care about the Constitution?

Taibbi: Well, they certainly do care. I’ve run into more Ron Paul supporters this year than I have supporters of any other candidate, and by and large they support Paul because they believe the Constitution is being misinterpreted/ignored by modern politicians. People are upset that presidents can declare war without Congressional approval, they’re upset by things like FISA, they’re upset by certain varieties of taxes… The press and the candidates have mostly ignored these issues, but I believe these questions of “process” are going to move front and center in the near future, because people are more and more concerned not with specific issues like abortion but with wider questions of how our government works now, how money influences lawmaking, and how unaccountable elected leaders are, etc.

S&R: You expressed pity for Cindy Sheehan, who seemed overwhelmed by the anti-war movement she triggered in ‘05. After quitting activism earlier this year in disgust, she’s come back, saying she’ll run for Pelosi’s seat. Is she still a force?

Taibbi: I don’t know. Cindy Sheehan lost me when she started backing the 9/11 Truth Movement. I liked her personally when I met her — I guess more than anything I felt sorry for her — but my sense of her is that she is cracking a little under the stress of having to play the role of a grassroots leader, that this is maybe a little too much responsibility for her.

S&R: Under what circumstances would you ever run for office?

Taibbi: Jesus. Me? I could never run for office. I once wrote an article called “God Can Suck My Dick.” I once threw a pie made of horse sperm at a New York Times reporter. I’m an unmarried drug addict with bad teeth. I think these things pretty much disqualify me. There are times when I wish I could work for someone like Bernie Sanders, but I’d probably want to go back to writing pretty fast.

S&R: ‘Smells Like Dead Elephants‘ is your latest compilation of writings, and the much-anticipated ‘Great Derangement,’ a non-fiction political narrative, will be out next year. You have a few books under your belt but whither the novel you always dreamed of writing? Do you still think your fiction sucks?

Taibbi: Yes, my fiction indeed sucks. While in Russia I wrote a sort of parody of a Sherlock Holmes novel called ‘The Great Popkin’ that actually wasn’t bad, but I lost it at some point during a breakup three years ago. Masha, if you find it on your computer, please send it to me. But I don’t think fiction’s really my thing and the great thing about that novel I always wanted to write is that I don’t want to write it anymore. I’d like to try to write a good non-fiction book first.

S&R: Scuttlebutt is that your first book, ‘The eXile,’ which details your time at that paper, will be turned into a movie. Any details on that?

Taibbi: I haven’t heard that. We optioned it years ago and it never got made. There were some close calls, but thankfully it’s retired for good, or at least that’s the last I heard. The script was horrifying. They turned me into the earnest, goody-two-shoes reporter opposite Mark Ames’s oversexed bad-boy character. I hated both of us in the script and I’m sure audiences would have, too.

S&R: Hunter Thompson once wrote that the Book of Revelation was his biggest literary inspiration. Does the Bible do anything for you?

Taibbi: I’ve had to read the Bible a lot lately, for reasons that will become clear when ‘The Great Derangement’ comes out. I find it to mostly be hilarious horseshit. I was laughing so hard reading the Old Testament last year that I started writing a sort of CliffsNotes version of it for fun. I love the part where the two angels come to Sodom and the Sodomites start banging on Lot’s door, because they want to bone the angels so badly, and Lot, being a good Dad, starts offering the men his two virgin daughters, so as to spare the angels… I think if someone were to write a truly deadpan version of these stories, it would be the greatest comedy ever printed.

S&R: You’re often compared to Thompson, but you make no secret of your admiration of H.L. Mencken, who was eerily prescient when he wrote in 1920, “On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.” Ben Franklin also warned that the nation would eventually devolve into despotism, and the subtitle of your forthcoming book calls this the “twilight of the American Empire.” Have we really reached our nadir at last?

Taibbi: America is a very strong country still, but there are elements of corruption in our system of government that run so deep now that we have to really be concerned, I think. The thievery that we saw in Iraq during this war by our contracting community is something that even the Russians would be hard-pressed to match. Right now we have a government that lacks even enough civic instinct to take care of pressing emergencies like Katrina and Iraq. When the level of public confidence in the government begins to correspond to the reality of its low performance, we’re going to be in trouble.

There’s also the matter of our economy. Right now America’s international strength is based almost entirely on its military power. Our manufacturing base is disappearing daily. It’s tough to maintain a world empire with a service-based economy.

S&R: You spent your formative years in Russia; what insight can you bring to the whole Litvinenko poisoning fiasco? Do Russians enjoy political intrigue as much as Americans seem to?

Taibbi: I’ve heard varying interpretations of the Litvinenko scandal, but none that really make sense to me. It seems to me that it had something to do with the issue of the succession and Putin’s upcoming decision about whether or not to step down, with Litvinenko and the information he reportedly had on Putin presenting itself as a kind of wild card here. I know Litvinenko was very outspoken about the Putin-and-little-boys thing, an issue that I heard rumors about as far back as 2001. I remember the Russian reporters I used to hang out with talking about these rumors that Putin was “in pocket” because of some shameful sexual thing in his past. But who knows. There are so many angles here that it’s almost impossible to decipher. Trying to decipher the meaning of the parade of hits in Russia is certainly challenging. I think Russians would be more entertained by it if it didn’t have such grave consequences for their daily existence.

S&R: Related to that, what do you make of presidential brother Neil Bush’s tight relationship with Boris Berezovsky?

Taibbi: Berezovsky is hilarious. In political terms, he’ll fuck anything that moves. I almost admire him. As for Neil… I wrote an article about Neil Bush once and was bowled over by his assertion that it was normal for women to show up at his hotel room and simply propose sex with him (this happened overseas; apparently he was being compensated by certain employers wanting to curry favor with the Bush family). I keep waiting for his ex to go public with the more explosive material everyone says she has on the family.

S&R: You’ve said you were having a “lot more fun in Russia” and might head back overseas somewhere. Still feel that way, is that still in the cards?

Taibbi: I was also doing a lot more drugs back then. I may go back sometime, but it depends on some personal factors. Nine months of winter and eleven time zones of bad food is a tough sell to a lot of women, let’s put it that way.

S&R: Any fond memories of Uzbekistan?

Taibbi: I was thrown out of the country there, and there is a very funny story about that. One of the funniest of my life. I had just written something for the AP about the Uzbek independence day and mentioned something about Karimov suppressing political parties. So naturally the next day agents of the former KGB (I think was the NSS; I’m not sure what it is now) came to my apartment. They were actually already inside when I came back from baseball practice (I was playing with the national baseball team). There was one middle-aged blonde woman who was interrogating me and two goons who were turning all my stuff over. The woman is asking me questions and suddenly one of the goons comes over, carrying my laptop. “What’s this?” he says. “A computer,” I say. “What do you use it for?” he asks. Now, I was there on a student visa — illegally — so I had to make something up. “I’m a student,” I say. “I write all sorts of things.” He looks at it and says, “Do you write poetry?” I shrug and say, “Well, sure, sometimes.” He frowns. “Do you have any talent?” he asks. I looked at him kind of sadly and said, “No, I don’t have any talent.” That’s when he handed the computer back to me. “Well, then,” he said. “You shouldn’t write poetry.” Five minutes later they were handing me a train ticket and telling me to get the fuck out of Uzbekistan. I thought that was beautiful, that they did it with real class. One side note: on the way out of the country, I tried to send a telegram to my mother. The note said, “KGB KICKING ME OUT EVERYTHING OK MATT.” But the note she got read “KGB KICKING ME GUT EVERYTHING O MATT.” She nearly had a heart attack. It wasn’t until I reached Moscow three days later that she found out I was okay.

S&R: Does Pope Benedict give you the same warm fuzzy that John Paul did?

Taibbi: I’m going to decline comment on Popes for a while. That last effort didn’t work out too well for me.

S&R: On to something you probably enjoy talking about more than politics: sports. Did Michael Vick get the shaft? Does Barry Bonds deserve to be asterisked? Bill Belichick – shameless fraud, misunderstood genius, lucky bastard?

Taibbi: Vick: an idiot. Being a sports star is like being in a murder conspiracy. If you think anything you do is going to remain a secret, you’re a moron. All this guy had to do was not commit major felonies on his property and he was going to be rich for the rest of his life. Now he’s going to end up doing celebrity boxing with the Fridge and Star Jones and stuff like that to pay off his reclaimed signing bonus. I will say, however, that it blows my mind that he can be banned from the NFL while Leonard Little gets to play, even after killing an actual human being.

Bonds: I’m less interested in seeing Bonds punished than I am in seeing McGwire reduced to the Bonds level of public disgrace. Bonds at least stands up and takes the heat publicly. McGwire has been hiding like a little bitch. He always grossed me out the way he used to shake his head and talk about how even he is amazed by how great he is, yada yada.

Belichick: I’m a Patriots fan, so I’m biased. But I thought the whole scandal was idiotic. I mean, all the coaches in the league send out dummy signals. Why? Because everyone knows someone on the other team is trying to read their signals. I’m glad it happened, though, because the Pats seem like they’re pissed enough about it that they want to stomp the brains and teeth out of every team they play. So thanks a lot, Eric Mangini. How’d that move turn out for you, by the way?

S&R: If you were Jesus, would you use your divine powers to meddle in the outcome of sporting events, as teams like the Rockies believe he does?

Taibbi: If and when I ever get to be Interior Minister, one of my first acts is going to be the putting to death of anyone who thinks God interferes in the outcome of things like sporting events and elections. I’d want to have a giant shark tank built expressly for this purpose. Just throw them in there and then dump a couple of barrels of cow blood in the water.

S&R: You smeared a reporter’s face with horse-spunk pie, you dropped acid and wore a Viking helmet to a campaign interview, you followed John Kerry around in a gorilla suit… Is there anything left on the to-do list?

Taibbi: The punchline answer would be “Grow up,” I guess. Beyond that, I’m not going to explain what the circumstances would be exactly, but I will say that I have a recurring fantasy about chainsawing a certain person’s desk in half on live television. But I’m getting a little old for all of that stuff, unfortunately. ∞

(Special props to Beth Jacobson and Matt Browner-Hamlin.)

In fact, the world did not change that day. Terrorism—the violent acts of those too weak to do anything else—and war—the violent acts of those too unimaginative to do anything else—have always been part of human history. It was only the United States that changed, driven to fear and frenzy by its lying leaders.

That week my wife and I had arrived in the village of Izzalini for two months of undisturbed writing and rambling. Our small apartment in the tenth-century stone castle had no phone, no television, no radio, so on September 11 we spent the day setting up a computer (in the arched room that had once been the armory) and enjoying a long walk through the countryside. It was a beautiful, peaceful place, surrounded by olive groves and vineyards, fields of wheat and sunflowers, and a sprinkling of stone farmhouses and hilltop villages.

The region around Izzalini has not always been so peaceful. Hannibal and his elephants, fresh from their victory over the Romans at Trasimeno, rampaged over the countryside until they were turned away at the gates of Todi. In nearby Orvieto, Guelphs and Ghibellines battled for centuries, and the losers’ bodies were sometimes dumped down the municipal well. And the very castle where we were staying was the site of a horrendous fifteenth-century massacre. Francesco Sforza, duke of Milan, attacked Izzalini, and when the besieged villagers refused to surrender, he burned 200 of them to death, including many women and children.

But on 9/11/2001, Umbria seemed like the most peaceful place on a peaceful earth. One day later, the idyll was broken: friends returned from Spoleto with newspapers containing the incredible photographs of Manhattan burning. We were shocked, poring over Corriere della Sera and Il Messagero with our imperfect Italian, confused by the coltellini used as weapons by the hijackers—our dictionary translated the word as letter openers. We drove into Todi to find an English-language paper or a hotel with cable news. No paper, and by that time CNN was carrying nothing but reports on stranded travelers in Canada and the latest rumors of further attacks. No summary, no context, just fear and confusion and rage. We returned to the castle and figuratively raised the drawbridge. We predicted that day that Bush and Cheney would use these terrible events to further their reactionary policies. We had no idea of the extremes to which they would go.

For the next two months I continued to avoid television and radio, following developments by reading The International Herald-Tribune and Italian newspapers and by phoning friends and family. I was well informed, but my brain was not flooded with constant television images of the collapsing towers and constant bellicose speeches by the vengeful president. The printed words provided me with something like a Brechtian distance on the American political circus, allowing me, I thought, to place the very real dangers in a historical context, to think calmly about appropriate reactions to the technological leverage that terrorists can now exercise. There have always been terrorists, but there have not always been Boeing 767s.

Almost 3,000 Americans died on 9/11 as a result of the actions of 19 hijackers. Since that time, at least 300,000 people—perhaps as many as a million—have died in Afghanistan and Iraq as a result of the actions of the American government. Almost all of them were as innocent as those Americans.

But we Americans are no longer so innocent, in either sense of the word. We are both less trusting and more guilty than we were six years ago. We are now unreasonably wary of those who are not recognizably brothers, and we are guilty of electing George Bush to a second term and allowing him to pursue his murderous course. That day did change us and our country.

It may take a generation to reclaim our soul. We can start by insisting that our too-reticent senators and representatives stop funding the Iraq War and bring the warfighters home. We can encourage them to impeach Bush and Cheney and indict Rumsfeld and Gonzales. We can begin to demolish the military-industrial complex that is undermining our democracy. We can elect a president who has more arrows in his intellectual quiver than hatred and greed and war.

There are real dangers in the world. And there are appropriate actions we can take to minimize those dangers, pragmatic policies that take account of the complexities of human cultures and human history. Perhaps by the time 9/11 rolls around again we can begin to grasp the nettle and seize the day.

[Cross-posted at Rubicon]

Dear Mayor Bellamy:

As you no doubt realize by now, you have something of a PR nightmare on your hands. One of your police officers, Russell Crisp, recently arrested a resident named Jonas Phillips for obstructing a sidewalk. Since people were apparently having no trouble walking past him, and since the police department is reportedly trying to decide whether or not he ought instead be charged with some sort of state violation for “endangering motorists,” you can see how people like me (a North Carolina native who loves your wonderful city, has vacationed there, and who has recommended it highly to friends and family contemplating where to spend their tourism dollars) might suspect that the real reason he was arrested had something to do with the “Impeach Bush-Cheney” sign he was holding at the time.

Especially since the officer reportedly said things like “I’m sick of this shit!” and “Here’s your fifteen minutes of fame, buddy.” As I’m sure you’re aware, it’s almost impossible not to read these reports in an ugly political context and to wonder whether the officer was abusing his authority by harassing a man whose political views he didn’t like.

Your Honor, Asheville is the budding jewel of the Carolina Blue Ridge. It’s a city that has worked hard to establish itself as a center for the arts and culture, and it has begun to reap the rewards of those efforts. In some ways, Asheville has done a model job of developing the kinds of “human capital” that researcher Richard Florida says are essential to attracting top-flight talent and economic development. I noted this on my last visit, and others I’ve talked to as well nod in agreement when I say that Asheville is becoming the “Boulder of the South.”

The key to this equation is talent. In order for a smaller city to thrive, as yours clearly wants to, it must attract certain kinds of young professionals (and by all means, please read Florida if you aren’t already familiar with him, although I strongly suspect you or some of your people probably are). This has overtly political implications. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the core culture you need tends to be strongly progressive.

The actions of Officer Crisp, and the city’s failure to quickly remedy what can’t help but look like a heavy-handed crackdown by a conservative law enforcement officer who didn’t like the way a citizen was exercising his Constitutional guarantee of free speech – Your Honor, these events are the sorts of things that cause vibrant young professionals and artists, some of who are considering a future in Asheville, to step back and take a harder look at their other options.

Not only that, a lot of people who are doing vacation planning are reading about this story, as well.

These developments are bad for Asheville and its citizens, Your Honor. I’ll go further and argue that they’re bad for America, too – if we can’t agree on a citizen’s right to public expression of a perfectly legal viewpoint (and a viewpoint that has strong support nationwide, to boot), then economic development and tourism dollars are the least of our worries. You and your police officers don’t have to agree with me or Mr. Phillips, but if your fine city is to thrive, you and they must share a commitment to the rights to speak and disagree, which are the very foundation of our Republic.

I’ll be watching as this case develops, Ms. Mayor, and rest assured that my opinion of Asheville, along with how I choose to spend future vacations and the advice I give my friends and readers, will depend on the statement you make about free speech in your city. I strongly encourage you to exercise your influence in making sure the charges against Mr. Phillips are dropped. After all, this one doesn’t look that complicated. If an officer can’t decide what a man holding a sign is doing wrong at a glance, then perhaps the officer and his colleagues in the Asheville Police Department aren’t competent for their jobs.

Or – and this seems more likely to me – perhaps Mr. Phillips wasn’t doing anything wrong at all, and now the police have convinced themselves that rigging a charge they can make stick will somehow save the city further embarrassment. If so, they’re tragically mistaken, and your office will likely find itself wasting a lot of productive time answering for their misjudgment.

I thank you for your time and wish you and your staff the best as you work to set this unfortunate situation aright.

Sincerely,

Samuel Smith, PhD
Editor, Scholars & Rogues
Boulder, Colorado

The shift [in thinking] follows an internal review involving the White House, the Pentagon and the state department over the last month. Although the Bush administration is in deep trouble over Iraq, it remains focused on Iran. A well-placed source in Washington said: “Bush is not going to leave office with Iran still in limbo.”…

The vice-president, Dick Cheney, has long favoured upping the threat of military action against Iran.… [A]t a meeting of the White House, Pentagon and state department last month, Mr Cheney expressed frustration at the lack of progress and Mr Bush sided with him. “The balance has tilted. There is cause for concern,” the source said this week.…

“Cheney has limited capital left, but if he wanted to use all his capital on this one issue, he could still have an impact,” said Patrick Cronin, the director of studies at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

The Washington source said Mr Bush and Mr Cheney did not trust any potential successors in the White House, Republican or Democratic, to deal with Iran decisively.…

No decision on military action is expected until next year. In the meantime, the state department will continue to pursue the diplomatic route.

There is only one way to stop these madmen from starting another catastrophic war: double impeachment. Nancy Pelosi must put that option back on the table—it’s the only way to preserve what’s left of the American republic. As John Nichols told Bill Moyers last Friday on his PBS Journal:

Bill Moyers, you are making a mistake. You are making a mistake that too many people make.…

You are seeing impeachment as a constitutional crisis. Impeachment is the cure for a constitutional crisis. Don’t mistake the medicine for the disease. When you have a constitutional crisis, the founders are very clear. They said there is a way to deal with this.

This is the way: Impeach Dick Cheney. Impeach George Bush. Now.

The AG told Congress on April 27, 2005, that “[t]here has not been one verified case of civil liberties abuse.”

The Post today, however, reported that the FBI had notified Mr. Gonzales of such violations as much as three months before that:

Six days earlier, the FBI sent Gonzales a copy of a report that said its agents had obtained personal information that they were not entitled to have. It was one of at least half a dozen reports of legal or procedural violations that Gonzales received in the three months before he made his statement to the Senate intelligence committee, according to internal FBI documents released under the Freedom of Information Act.

The Post said the FBI reports “included unauthorized surveillance, an illegal property search and a case in which an Internet firm improperly turned over a compact disc with data that the FBI was not entitled to collect.” It reported that “Gonzales was copied on each report that said administrative rules or laws protecting civil liberties and privacy had been violated.”

White House support for the attorney general did not waver. From today’s press gaggle conducted by White House spokesman Scott Stanzel:

Q: Scott, can you respond to The Washington Post story today on — that Attorney General Gonzales received multiple reports from the FBI about lapses in the procedures safeguarding the use of national security letters and other procedures of that sort? Should Gonzales have acted on those reports from the FBI?

MR. STANZEL: I would refer you over to the Department of Justice on that. I’ve certainly seen that story and I know they’ve had comments in it, but I don’t have any information for you on that.

Q: Is it appropriate for a Cabinet officer to ignore reports from below about wrongdoing within his agency?

MR. STANZEL: I’m not aware that that’s the assertion. But maybe that’s the assertion you’re making, but the President has said repeatedly that he has great faith in the Attorney General, and that has not changed.

Q: Will the White House be looking into and evaluating his performance in this regard?

MR. STANZEL: With response to the story, you mean?

Q: With response to these reports that the FBI had –

MR. STANZEL: What reports?

Q: The FBI reports about improper following of procedures, safeguards on national security letters and other things.

MR. STANZEL: That’s — you know, Maura, that’s all I have for you on that. We’ll continue to — I’ll try to gather some more information for you on that, but I’d refer you over to the Department of Justice for more facts about what reports they may have received –

Q: But he still has –

MR. STANZEL: — about this story.

Q: He still has faith in the Attorney General, despite the fact you’re just — I mean –

MR. STANZEL: The President’s views on the Attorney — the President’s views on the Attorney General have not changed.

Mr. Stanzel referred reporters to the Department of Justice for “more facts about what reports they may have received.” (Did you like that subtle dodge of “may have received,” as if none of this really happened? It’s more than “spin,” it’s more than “denial,” it’s sheer bear scat.)

The Post did, of course, ask the DoJ. Here’s the context offered by spokesman Brian Roehrkasse:

[Roehrkasse said] that when Gonzales testified, he was speaking “in the context” of reports by the department’s inspector general before this year that found no misconduct or specific civil liberties abuses related to the Patriot Act.

“The statements from the attorney general are consistent with statements from other officials at the FBI and the department.” He added that many of the violations the FBI disclosed were not legal violations and instead involved procedural safeguards or even typographical errors.”

Typographical errors. Egads.

How many more of Mr. Gonzales’ “errors” and “memory lapses” — and the bullshit spun in response to them — is Congress going to tolerate? Crank up that subpoena machine again, kiddies.

xpost: 5th Estate

• Item: A number of Republican legislators appear to be abandoning Bush on Iraq. It remains to be seen exactly what these changes of heart amount to in terms of votes, but there’s certainly some agitation for change, especially among those who have to face the voters in 2008.
• Item: Karl Rove says “Iraq may not be a big issue in the next election because, he hopes, troops will be coming home by then.” “Hopes” is an interesting word coming from a guy who’s in such a great position to translate his hopes into reality, don’t you think?
• Item: Americans aren’t happy about Iraq and their displeasure at the Democrats’ failure to get us out is growing (at least that’s the logical conclusion to draw from these numbers). They put the Dems in charge of both houses primarily on that one issue. But so far the Dems haven’t gotten us out of Iraq and frankly don’t look like they have a plan to get us moving in that direction.
• Item: On the contrary – Harry Reid says we’re staying! In a press conference this morning Reid said: “Feingold/Reid called for American troops to remain in Iraq to do counter-terrorsim…to protect our assets in Iraq. To train the Iraqis. There are estimates that that would still leave tens of thousands of troops to stay in Iraq. No one is calling for precipitous withdrawal in Iraq. No one…” (Video here.)

So Karl isn’t worried, GOPpers are bailing on Bush, Reid is scouting vacation properties in Baghdad, and the Dems are coming off as do-nothings.

All kinds of questions flit through my mind. Things like:

• So, who’s talking here? Karl Rove, Dubya’s Boy, or Karl Rove, evil minion of [insert GOP hopeful here]?
• Why would he say this out loud?
• If Reid doesn’t think the troops are coming home why would Rove?

Here’s my nightmare scenario.

• America hates war.
• America elects Dems to end war.
• Dems don’t end war.
• But thanks to the keen insight of a core group of Republican visionaries like Pete Domenici, the GOP brings the boys home!

Republicans sweep back into power as the only party that can get things done. Hell, they got more done than the Democrats when the Dems had the majority, right?

I’m sure there are all kinds of problems with this scenario, but where Karl Rove is concerned a little paranoia is perhaps justified….

Meanwhile,

Sheehan Threatens to Run Against PelosiBy ANGELA K. BROWN
The Associated Press
Monday, July 9, 2007; 4:01 AM

CRAWFORD, Texas — Cindy Sheehan, the slain soldier’s mother whose attacks on President Bush made her a darling of the anti-war movement, has a new target: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Sheehan, who announced in late May that she was departing the peace movement, said she decided to run against Pelosi unless the congresswoman moves to oust Bush in the next two weeks.

“Impeach Cheney” vid is #1 at YouTube:

Click here to view the embedded video.

And watch here as Michael Moore rips Wolf Blitzer’s balls off on national TV.

Finally, George Bush offers a lucid explanation of why he clemencerated Scooter Libby.

Click here to view the embedded video.

It’s time for a new Declaration of Independence, but we don’t have to start from scratch. Many charges in the original bill of particulars against George III are equally applicable to George W:

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Keith Olbermann delivered his version of this new declaration yesterday on MSNBC, calling on King George and Regent Dick (Lord Cheney) to abdicate. (Sam posted the complete video here.) Olbermann lays out his own bill of particulars:

I accuse you, Mr. Bush, of lying this country into war.… I accuse you of causing in Iraq the needless deaths of 3,586 of our brothers and sons, and sisters and daughters, and friends and neighbors. I accuse you of subverting the Constitution.…

And I accuse you now, Mr. Bush, … of becoming an accessory to the obstruction of justice.

Libby was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice. His lies protected the king and the regent from any prying eyes that might discover their participation in “high crimes and misdemeanors”; and the king returned the favor, setting free his loyal vassal. Sidney Blumenthal explains:

The pardon is the one monarchical power that the framers of the Constitution assigned the presidency. But they placed one restriction, that it could not be exercised for impeachment. In other words, the president could not use his power to pardon himself. Bush is entirely within his narrow right to use the pardon power in the Libby case. But it violates the spirit, if not the letter, of the law governing that power because it is a consummate gesture of self-exoneration, at least if the vice president is an “entity within the executive branch.” Bush rewards Libby’s cover-up, thwarting the investigation into Cheney’s and
perhaps his culpability. Bush’s commutation is the successful culmination of the obstruction of justice.

This king is not given to self-doubt or repentance. It is unlikely that he would ever choose to abdicate. It’s time for impeachment. It’s time to declare independence from King George.

But it is not. Bush decided on commutation, in fact, as simply the best way to protect himself and Cheney, because it keeps the lid on Libby. As Jeff Lomonaco predicted two weeks ago when he wrote this oped, either of the other two courses would have been more likely to open legal avenues for establishing Bush and Cheney’s involvement in the case—including both the initial leak of Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity and the subsequent coverup for which Libby was convicted.

Either pardoning or allowing imprisonment might also have kept the case active in Congress and in the media, as the investigative pot continued to bubble. Pardon would have further enraged Congressional leaders, while imprisonment would have further enraged the right-wing GOP base. But commutation, while hardly a real compromise in legal terms, is more nearly acceptable to Bush’s critics on both sides and so less likely to create continuing dispute.

There is a great deal of evidence that Libby leaked Wilson’s identity with the knowledge of Bush and Cheney and Rove—probably at their direction—and that his subsequent obstruction of justice was also at their direction, but definitive proof is lacking. If Libby had gone to prison, he might have found conditions sufficiently distasteful that he would have cooperated with Patrick Fitzgerald, and his insider information would then have certainly implicated his bosses.

But a full pardon would also run the risk of piercing the veil of secrecy. As Lomonaco predicted, it would have deprived Bush and Cheney of “the rationale they have used successfully for four years to avoid addressing their own roles in the case. And Libby’s trial made very clear that the President and Vice President played significant and troubling roles at the very heart of the case.” After a pardon, Bush could no longer have claimed his silence was because the “legal case is ongoing,” and Congress could have granted Libby immunity and forced him to testify. So that would also have been a dangerous path for the White House.

A pardon at the end of Bush’s term doesn’t entail the same risks, and spokesbot Tony Snow has already made clear that a pardon remains on the table. In fact, Jonathan Zasloff at The Reality-Based Community suggests that Libby’s pardon may not be the only one under consideration: “Will Bush pardon Cheney in January 2009, then resign and be pardoned by newly-sworn-in President Cheney the next day?” That should clear the decks. Of course, in that case Cheney might decide he likes the Oval Office and decide to stay in it after January 20, 2009. Something about terrorists and the Long War, I think.

That Libby receives a just punishment, of course, is less important than the fate of Bush and Cheney. Scooter was just doing the devils’ work, and it’s the devils who must be brought to the bar. Mark Kleiman, also at The Reality-Based Community, thinks Congress should call Bush’s bluff and subpoena Libby, even as the appeals process continues:

At this point, there’s no reason not to bring Libby in, immunize him, and start asking questions. His Congressional testimony wouldn’t be relevant to his appeal. It might prevent a retrial should the DC Circuit reverse his conviction. So what?

After Libby, let’s hear from Cheney. Since he’s not a part of the Executive Branch, surely he can’t claim executive privilege. And if the inquiry is into Cheney’s own impeachment, I doubt the courts would interfere.

Bush’s artfully calibrated commutation could yet backfire, and his approval ratings could enter previously unexplored territory. If that blue line keeps moving southward, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid might even find some new friends among congressional Republicans, putting impeachment back on the table where it belongs.

These criminals must not be allowed to get away with their despicable crimes. As Martin eloquently points out, accountability is all.

Dave actually asked the question I want to address here. Pelosi was discussing the absolute lack of oversight and accountability that has been a hallmark of the Bush junta, and Dave said, simply, “What are you going to do about it?”

Pelosi’s argument against impeachment was, simply, that it wouldn’t be worth expending the political capital and effort to push the process forward. If the situation had been Bush coming in as a new president, she said, things might have been different, but with less than two years left on his watch and his record as a miserable failure etched in stone , the stronger weapon was oversight. Pelosi specifically mentioned the subpoena power that, she said, is making the Dem Congress “Bush’s worst nightmare.”

Essentially, Pelosi argued that we need to push forward and get a Dem in the White House in 2008 to really start enacting serious change, noting that even with majorities in both Houses, the Dems’ power could not overcome the 60 Senate votes needed to beat a Bush veto, and that the courts would be particularly unfriendly to Democratic moves for criminal investigations unless they substantially “built the cases” for each move. “Let the process play out,” she said. “Oversight isn’t political, it’s patriotic.”

Many of the bloggers on the call were unhappy with this, wanting to see more direct action, and Pelosi expressed sympathy with the frustration. For me, this is a tough one. I understand how tough the political process is in the best of environments–and this is anything but. Pelosi is a new Speaker leading the Dems back to power for the first time in 12 years, and she’s a woman, so she gets the 20 percent sexism tax attached to everything she does. I get that. Bush has stacked the government so thoroughly with “loyal Bushies” at every level, in all three branches, that it will take years to get rid of them and undo all their damage. I get that too.

But at the same time, when you look at the sneering defiance with which the Bush/Cheney axis refuses to comply with even the basic tenets of law, or how they’re incapable of passing any sort of legislation without it collapsing under the weight of its own bullshit, or any one of a million other crimes that have been committed under the aegis of the Worst President Ever, you have to ask yourself, “What the hell are we waiting for? How much power can a guy with a historically low approval rating really wield?”

Plenty. Bush’s veto pen can kill all of the progressive, forward-thinking legislation Pelosi wants to push, and without 60 Senators on board to override a veto, that’s that. And do not doubt he will do it–the man has proven time and again that he simply does not care what others think, and will happily kill any legislation out of spite, ignorance, or just plain meanness.

Bush has almost two years left to do incalculable damage and to continue to sully and stain the future and reputation of our country. At a time when the nation’s mindset is leaning more progressive left than ever, and we have strong enough leaders in Congress and elsewhere to make the change, it’s tough to accept that impeaching Bush (and Cheney) for their flagrant violations of law and ethics can’t be done. Right now, they are in the way of making this country a better place.

Indeed, the biggest obstacles to turning this country around are in the White House right now. And when an obstacle is in your way, you find a way around it, or you go through it. If we can’t get around them, then they need to go.

“If this were a dictatorship, it’d be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I’m the dictator.” – George W. Bush, Dec. 19, 2000

Where to begin?

We could pimp it Hollywood style:

FROM THE PEOPLE WHO BROUGHT YOU ATTORNEYGATE – THEY THOUGHT THEY’D REIN HIM IN BY PASSING LAWS. BUT GEORGE DON’T NEED NO STINKING LAWS….HE’S GOT SIGNING STATEMENTS! NOW PLAYING IN AN ADMINISTRATION NEAR YOU….

Or we could do what the Democrats always do – roll over and ask to have their bellies rubbed:

We are Americans. We have the right to participate and debate any administration. – Hillary Rodham Clinton

The Washington Post’s Jonathan Weisman reports today on the GAO study of the Bush administration’s systematic ignoring of provisions of legislation passed by Congress by issuing signing statements – statements of intent that argue that the Bush administration does not have to obey provisions of laws that the President himself signs.

As Weisman reports:

President Bush has asserted that he is not necessarily bound by the bills he signs into law, and yesterday a congressional study found multiple examples in which the administration has not complied with the requirements of the new statutes….The president has challenged a federal ban on torture, a request for data on the administration of the USA Patriot Act and numerous other assertions of congressional power. As recently as December, Bush asserted the authority to open U.S. mail without judicial warrants in a signing statement attached to a postal reform bill.

Now maybe I’m crazy, but I’ve always thought that despite protections such as executive privilege that, in the main, the President of the United States is bound by the laws of the land. That doesn’t seem to be the case with Bush, as we know. His successful adventures with the law over his presidency – practicing torture on enemy combatants, engaging in domestic spying, falsifying intelligence – seem to have given our very own Boy George an expanded sense of droit de Dubya (if that was possible). But now he’s marking out new territory: his – divine, one assumes – right to obey the laws he wants to and ignore those he doesn’t. As Senator Robert Byrd, an old school Constitution defender, observes, Bush seems intent on expanding the power of the executive branch:

“This GAO opinion underscores the fact that the Bush White House is constantly grabbing for more power, seeking to drive the people’s branch of government to the sidelines.”

Although the GAO report seems to suggest that a number of the administration’s actions aren’t egregious flouting of the law, Bruce Fein, constitutional lawyer and a member of the ABA task force that criticized Bush’s use of signing statements in a report last year, disagrees. The Post quotes him thusly:

“At least it makes clear the signing statements aren’t solely for staking out a legal position, with the president just saying, ‘I don’t have to do these things, but I will,’ ” Fein said. “In fact they are not doing some of these things. You can’t just vaporize it as an academic question.”

We’ll see how far Bush will go soon enough. Bush is currently facing the question of whether he should pardon I. Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney’s former chief-of-staff who was convicted of lying to protect his bosses for violating the law of the land and revealing the identity of a CIA operative. A steady drum beat from his cronies is admonishing Bush to let Libby off. An equal drum beat of others, including staunch conservatives like Pat Buchanan and James Gilmore, former governor of Virginia, is telling Bush that pardoning Libby would be tantamount to open admission of his contempt for the law:

“If the public believes there’s one law for a certain group of people in high places and another law for regular people, then you will destroy the law and destroy the system.” – James Gilmore

Given Bush’s sense of privilege and his seeming contempt for laws that don’t suit his purposes that the GAO has now quantified, look for that Libby pardon any day now.

Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.”

]]> http://www.scholarsandrogues.com/2007/06/19/bush-to-the-law-of-the-land-not-in-my-backyard/feed/ 3 http://www.scholarsandrogues.com/2007/06/13/pelosi-a-slave-to-moderate-dems-novak/ http://www.scholarsandrogues.com/2007/06/13/pelosi-a-slave-to-moderate-dems-novak/#comments Thu, 14 Jun 2007 05:14:30 +0000 Mike Sheehan http://www.scholarsandrogues.com/2007/06/13/pelosi-a-slave-to-moderate-dems-novak/ GOP Chatty Cathy Bob Novak says that Nancy Pelosi isn’t a left-wing loon at all… she’s in fact beholden to a handful of Blue Dog (i.e., moderate) Democrats. Count Novakula writes in his latest newsletter:

[Pelosi] is painted by Republicans as a left-wing extremist, but the truth is that the left wing of House Democrats complain privately that she is far too cautious. They grumble that nothing is being accomplished in Congress because Pelosi is far too attentive to 20 or so moderates in the Democratic caucus — especially those who overturned Republicans last year in marginal districts.

I wonder if maybe Novak is miffed that Nancy won’t go nuts and unleash Kucinich, Conyers, and Waxman to impeach Bush & Cheney in a Dem feeding frenzy, because that will set the stage for the inevitable revenge impeachment proceedings against President Hillary Clinton. That’s what Novak and all the neocon chimps want: an excuse to go apeshit in ‘09. Henry Hyde made it plain why the wingers went after Bubba in ‘98. I think Pelosi—to the bitterness of grassrooters slobbering for justice, and the chagrin of conservatives spoiling for a rumble—will bide her time and let the Shrub and his minions be to avoid that whole juvenile retaliation bullshit.

Novak also keeps up his rah-rah’ing for GOP White House hopeful Fred Thompson, this time by taking an easy, steaming dump on the faltering Sen. John McCain.

While [McCain] claims that everything is “fine” in his bid for the Republican presidential nomination, events strongly suggest otherwise. The former frontrunner is now in deep trouble. With respect to the positive signs a presidential campaign can point to at this early stage — fundraising, national polls, state polls, endorsements — McCain finds himself almost empty-handed.

Then Novak whips out some amusing metaphors to describe Uncle Hulka and the GOP also-rans: “If Thompson is the charging bear, McCain is the slowest of the three campers fleeing him — the most likely to be devoured.”

And you thought Republicans didn’t do drugs.

x-post: JAZZ from HELL

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