(UPDATE: The GOP is in a panic over the legacy of this administration and its effect on November elections. See below the fold.)

We all know Dear Leader has no shame, but here’s yet another example of his terror alert leash jerking and fearmongering, intimating that electing a Democrat will lead to disaster if the U.S. withdraws from Iraq.

President Bush warned in an interview Tuesday that the Democratic presidential candidates’ plans to withdraw abruptly from Iraq could “eventually lead to another attack on the United States” and would “embolden” terrorists.

In a White House interview with Politico and Yahoo News — a president’s first for an online audience — Bush said his doomsday scenario for a premature withdrawal “of course is that extremists throughout the Middle East would be emboldened, which would eventually lead to another attack on the United States.”

I hate to break it to his highness, but he f*cked up the whole region with his Big Military Adventure. It’s hard to imagine anyone screwing over both this country and Iraq any more than he has.

In the interview, he also shows how he prays away any guilt at sending young Americans to perish fighting military battles based on his bad judgment and Darth’s dark hand. God’s comfort is all these families need, not an apology from the man sitting in the Oval Office.

His Christian faith has increased in office, since “part of the faith walk is to understand your weaknesses and is to constantly try to embetter yourself and get closer to the Lord, and that’s a daily occurrence.”

“Obviously, there’s been some tough moments in here,” he said. “When you know that somebody lost their loved one as a result of a decision that I made, that’s a tough moment. If you’re a faithful person, you try to empathize with the suffering that that person is going through. On the other hand, there is a knowledge that the good Lord can comfort during these moments of grief. And that’s what I ask for in my prayer.”

And what can only be described as the public ramblings of a sociopath, our president said he shows his solidarity with families who have lost loved ones in his military misadventure by...not going out on the links anymore. I’m not sh*tting you.

See the video below the fold.
(more…)

Wow. What candor — from a man who desperately avoided serving his country. I’m sure all 4,000 service members that have died as a result of the Cheney/Bush Iraq misadventure really wanted to be there.

“The president carries the biggest burden, obviously,” Cheney said. “He’s the one who has to make the decision to commit young Americans, but we are fortunate to have a group of men and women, the all-volunteer force, who voluntarily put on the uniform and go in harm’s way for the rest of us.”

[ABC News’ White House correspondent Martha] Raddatz noted that some soldiers, Air Force members, and Marines have been on multiple deployments and have been sent back to Iraq because of the stop-loss policy — an involuntary extension of a service member’s enlistment contract. The Army alone says 58,000 US soldiers have been redeployed to war because of the stop-loss policy.

“When you talk about an all-volunteer force, some of these soldiers, airmen, Marines have been on two, three, four, some of them more than that, deployments,” Raddatz said. “Do you think when they volunteered they had any idea that there would be so many deployments or stop-loss? Some of those who want to get out can’t because of stop-loss?”

…”A lot of men and women sign up because sometimes they will see developments,” Cheney said. “For example, 9/11 stimulated a lot of folks to volunteer for the military because they wanted to be involved in defending the country.”

Oh, so he’s still pimping the idea that Iraq had something to do with 9/11, or that he and Dear Leader did the old bait-and-switch on those who enlisted?

The title idea is from a constant refrain from Atrios.

Another anniversary of 9/11 and another round of people saying, “What were you doing on that day?” I can tell you one thing most people won’t be saying: “How can we use this attack that was orchestrated mostly by Saudis and ordered by the Saudi leader of a terrorist organization based mainly in Afghanistan as leverage to wage a pointless war on Iraq so that our President can finally show his family that his dick is indeed bigger than his father’s?”

Of course you wouldn’t say that. Which is why any random dumbfuck off the street would be a better President than the Shrub, who did in fact immediately start looking for a way to use the death of 3,000 innocent Americans as a way to dupe the American public into getting into a war he was dying to start. Remember, this meeting took place while the smoke was still in the air and rescue workers were trying desperately to find survivors.

“The president dragged me into a room with a couple of other people, shut the door, and said, ‘I want you to find whether Iraq did this.’ Now he never said, ‘Make it up.’ But the entire conversation left me in absolutely no doubt that George Bush wanted me to come back with a report that said Iraq did this.

“I said, ‘Mr. President. We’ve done this before. We have been looking at this. We looked at it with an open mind. There’s no connection.’

“He came back at me and said, “Iraq! Saddam! Find out if there’s a connection.’ And in a very intimidating way. I mean that we should come back with that answer. We wrote a report.”

Clarke continued, “It was a serious look. We got together all the FBI experts, all the CIA experts. We wrote the report. We sent the report out to CIA and found FBI and said, ‘Will you sign this report?’ They all cleared the report. And we sent it up to the president and it got bounced by the National Security Advisor or Deputy. It got bounced and sent back saying, ‘Wrong answer. … Do it again.’

“I have no idea, to this day, if the president saw it, because after we did it again, it came to the same conclusion. And frankly, I don’t think the people around the president show him memos like that. I don’t think he sees memos that he doesn’t– wouldn’t like the answer.”

This is why it’s hard for me to give enough of a shit about the latest round of war propaganda being issued from General Petraeus. Like Atrios says, this war being a product of Bush’s ego means that regardless of what is actually happening in Iraq with this “surge”, it will be spun as working just enough to justify staying there in hopes it might work even more, period. And less than “just enough” would be reason to pull out and shrivel the White House phallus and any more would be reason to pull out and shrivel the White House phallus. And Bush must maintain the illusion to himself, day in and day out, that his is the might phallus, and that illusion can’t be maintained if he has to pull out of Iraq.

Is the man back on the sauce? What parallel universe is Dear Leader in? (CNN):

“The security situation is changing,” Bush told reporters during the visit. “There's more work to be done. But reconciliation is taking place.”

But according to the Sydney Morning Herald of Australia, the president gave a more-to-the-point assessment to Australia Deputy Prime Minister Mark Vaile.

“We're kicking ass,” Bush said to Vaile Tuesday, according the Herald, after the deputy prime minister inquired about his trip to Iraq. On Thursday, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino would not confirm or deny the reported comment.

Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey of Workers' World wasn't subtle in his commentary:

If “kicking ass” is creating a scenario whereby billions and billions of dollars (and Congress is today being presented with requests for more) of the US citizens' hard-earned wages are poured into a black hole of corruption (the Iraqi govenment, which dares not to venture beyond the refines of the Green Zone in Baghdad), if “kicking ass” is targeting civilian structures with military hardware, then George Bush proves that he indeed reunites the worst qualities of the cowboy clown-statesman the world feared back in 2000.

The best part are the comments left at the CNN article. Those are after the jump.
(more…)

What bothered me at the time was how many smart people didn’t see it. The barely suppressed smirk. The condescending gleam in his eyes. His posture was the same as the guy saying, “Hey, I thought she wanted it,” when he knows damn well that crying and struggling to escape is not a sign of sexual excitement.

(more…)

Guess that illuminates what scandal finally sent Rove down the river.

Sticker available soon!

I’ve never been very forgiving of Nader voters. I say that not to rile up more argument about Naderites’ role (or lack thereof) in the 2000 elections, but as a disclaimer, since I’m on record as being disappointed in those who support the unelectable at the expense of the simply acceptable, especially when the stakes are as high as they are in Presidential politics. And no, I’m not a blind Democrat supporter, ready to believe that if we just elect our corporate whores they’ll run this country so much better than their corporate whores.

I run this disclaimer because I’m stating my support* for Dennis Kucinich. You know, the unelectable Dennis Kucinich? I voted for him in the 2004 primary, but that’s not real support, not when you’re voting in Oregon, a state which would probably have held the 2004 primary in 2005 if they’d been able to get away with it. No, I’ve always known that Dennis Kucinich would be my preferred D if, in fact, he wasn’t a fringe candidate, only barely more electable than Ralph Nader.

(more…)

Still traveling, but I have a few thoughts on the whole Karl Rove business. We’re going to be seeing a lot of partisan Democrats and boring old liberals write articles swearing to Rove’s Machivellian genius, or at least going forth with that underlying assumption. I’ve written about Rove’s “genius” before. This is self-aggrandizing stuff, the desire to blow up an enemy to larger-than-life in order to explain away your defeats.

I can’t seem to find the quote on Google, but there was an article from a couple of years ago that pointed out what suddenly seemed rather obvious—Karl Rove is not smarter than the rest of us. He’s just more evil. His utter lack of sophistication is what tends to frustrate people. While most of us are out there talking about framing and polling and all that jazz, Rove spreads a rumor that his opponents like it up the butt and watches the numbers roll in. He’s simply willing to do what makes most human beings with a scrap of decency left recoil.

Think about it this way: The Bush administration has, in the past, treated Karl Rove like he’s some kind of genius. They’re basically wrong about everything else, so there’s no reason to think they’ve got the read on the situation here. His major political victories involve a lot of race-baiting and gay-baiting. The big time Rovian win of Bush over McCain in South Carolina was based on spreading redneck-friendly rumors that McCain was mentally ill and that his adopted children are black (and possibly the result of an affair with a black woman). In Texas, he helped Bush defeat Ann Richards by spreading rumors that she was a lesbian and using her position as governor to orchestrate a homosexual takeover of the Texas government. Yes, only stupid, mean, crass, evil, small-minded people fell for these tactics, but remember, Rove was trying to build a permanent Republican majority.

But who cares? From the Bush administration’s point of view, “cheap and evil” is better than “political genius” anyway. Rove is claiming he needs to spend more time with his family, the standard disgraced resignation message, but it’s possible that he’s not being driven out by a dissatisfied administration. This just might be a signal that they’ve given up all pretense of governing like they care about the political will of the nation, and instead will just be doing whatever they want without even trying half-assedly to sell it to the public.

No warrants necessary. And the Dems let him have it. (NYT):

President Bush signed into law on Sunday legislation that broadly expanded the government’s authority to eavesdrop on the international telephone calls and e-mail messages of American citizens without warrants.

Congressional aides and others familiar with the details of the law said that its impact went far beyond the small fixes that administration officials had said were needed to gather information about foreign terrorists. They said seemingly subtle changes in legislative language would sharply alter the legal limits on the government’s ability to monitor millions of phone calls and e-mail messages going in and out of the United States.

They also said that the new law for the first time provided a legal framework for much of the surveillance without warrants that was being conducted in secret by the National Security Agency and outside the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the 1978 law that is supposed to regulate the way the government can listen to the private communications of American citizens.

…Previously, the government needed search warrants approved by a special intelligence court to eavesdrop on telephone conversations, e-mail messages and other electronic communications between individuals inside the United States and people overseas, if the government conducted the surveillance inside the United States.

Melissa has a good roundup of reaction over at her pad, including, the ACLU, Larisa Alexandrovna, Glenn Greenwald, Shayana Kadidal, Publius, and Steve Benen. Kevin Drum:

“All [the government have] to do is claim that the real target is the foreigner and that a ’significant purpose’ of the eavesdropping is related to intelligence gathering. Not terrorism, mind you, just intelligence generically. What’s more, they don’t even have to go to the minimal trouble of making that claim to a court. They can just make it and approve it themselves. So that’s that. The government is now legally allowed to monitor all your calls overseas with only the most minimal oversight. But don’t worry. I’m sure they’ll never misuse this power. They never have before, have they?”

He’s a little late to the party, no?

U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney acknowledged on Tuesday he was wrong in 2005 when he insisted the insurgency in Iraq was in its “last throes.”

It was Cheney’s most direct public admission of how badly the administration had underestimated the strength of America’s enemies in the increasingly unpopular war in Iraq.

…”I thought there were a series of these milestones that would in fact undermine the insurgency and make it less than it was at that point. That clearly didn’t happen. I think the insurgency turned out to be more robust.”

Under-flipping statement of the year. Lest you think Darth has had any change in thinking about Dear Leader’s Big Military Adventure, think again.

But Cheney, an architect of the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, otherwise gave no ground in an interview on CNN’s “Larry King Live” as he defended President George W. Bush’s Iraq policy.

He said the Bush administration would still send troops into Iraq if it could do it all over again, even knowing what it knows now, including that more than 3,000 U.S. military personnel would be killed.

Nice.

The fact that Dear Leader is a megalomaniac has been apparent for quite some time now, but on May 9, when he placed his John Hancock on the “National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive,” his fulfillment of the fantasy of becoming King George has alarmed even the true believers.

President Bush has signed a directive granting extraordinary powers to the office of the president in the event of a declared national emergency, apparently without congressional approval or oversight.

…The directive establishes under the office of the president a new national continuity coordinator whose job is to make plans for “National Essential Functions” of all federal, state, local, territorial and tribal governments, as well as private sector organizations to continue functioning under the president’s directives in the event of a national emergency.

“Catastrophic emergency” is loosely defined as “any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions.”

The directive revokes the 1998 Presidential Decision Directive 67 that was signed by Bill Clinton. The summary of PDD 67 is that it required federal agencies to develop continuity plans in the case of an emergency or national disaster (the full text of the document hasn’t been released to the public). That 1998 directive obviously didn’t satisfy Bush’s requirements for executive branch power.

The power grab, which hasn’t received enough press fanfare (I wonder why?), even has the likes of Swift Boater Jerome Corsi unloading on this news at WND. See after the flip.
(more…)

Nope, still a douchebag

Despite myself, I tend to be kind of a sentimentalist - a softy, even. When I hear about brave people - even people that I intensely dislike - standing up to evil, I get a little choked up. When I heard excerpts from Peter Comey’s testimony Tuesday, I actually shed a tear or two. This has been talked about around the blogosphere, but until I heard Rachel Maddow’s show yesterday, I didn’t really know any of the details. In case anyone missed it, I think it’s worth reprinting a large chunk of it here:

(more…)

21st Century Update: Call those “subprime lenders” and “eBay”, respectively

Liberal Avenger’s Raul Groom is shrill:

[S]ome malcontents wonder what it will take to bring the power back to the streets, where The People live. In stairwells, jail cells, penthouses, and basements, individuals call for a change to the policies that kill three Americans (and untold foreigners) every day, for reasons no one seems to be able to explain.

The majority of the country - the VAST majority - sees what is going on. But does this fabulous country afford us no avenue to enforce this vision beyond electing representatives through the same corrupt system that produced our foundering Congress, bankrupt government, and dysfunctional Press?

In fact, it does. “Congress shall make no law respecting… the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.�? The Constitution by its words and the Declaration by its example provide us with an avenue for taking peaceful action in exactly the dire condition in which we find ourselves today.

If the insanity that is our current government is to be ended, it will not be ended by the same hidebound thinking that produced it in the first place. We must organize, and act. And we must do it soon.

I call for a General Strike beginning August 1st, 2007. The details can be worked out at a summit in July, which I will organize and host.

I look forward to seeing everyone.

Now, Raul hasn’t yet invited me to be the keynote speaker at this summit, although I’m sure it’s just a matter of time. Here’s a preview of what I’ll be saying to the assembled masses in July*:

The conditions which surround us best justify our co-operation; we meet in the midst of a nation brought to the verge of moral, political, and material ruin. Corruption dominates the ballot-box, the Legislatures, the Congress, and touches even the ermine of the bench. The people are demoralized; most of the States have been compelled to isolate the voters at the polling places to prevent universal intimidation and bribery. The newspapers are largely subsidized or muzzled, public opinion silenced, business prostrated, homes covered with mortgages, labor impoverished, and the land concentrating in the hands of capitalists. The urban workmen are denied the right to organize for self-protection, imported pauperized labor beats down their wages, a hi - Excuse me, I’m on stage here, and - you what? Plagi-what? Pardon me for a moment, folks, I’ll be right back - whisperwhisperOmahawhisperwhisperPopulistwhisperwhisper.

Ahem. Thanks for bearing with me, folks. I’ll tell you what, let’s just move on…

(more…)

From an e-mail press release:

Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) will hold a news conference tomorrow
afternoon to announce the introduction of articles of impeachment against
Vice-President of the United States Richard B. Cheney.

First Vermont, now Kucinich: This thing’s getting legs. Well, not yet, but it’s an important statement to make, and one that a lot of people will be making this weekend:

George Bush and Dick Cheney have lied the nation into a war of aggression, are spying in open violation of the law, and have sanctioned the use of torture. These are high crimes and misdemeanors that demand accountability. Since Congress doesn’t seem to get it, on April 28 Americans from Miami, Florida to North Pole, Alaska are going to spell it out for them: IMPEACH! It’s time to say NO to impunity for lying, spying, and torture.

There’s a case against it, of course, and Sanford Levinson makes it. The most compelling issue, to my mind:

Although I admire some of those calling for impeachment, one should recognize that some of their ostensibly legal claims are all too dubious. Consider the charge that Bush lied to the country during the run-up to the war, which may well be true. If lying to the public about matters of grave importance were an impeachable offense, however, almost no President–including, for starters, Franklin Roosevelt and his deceptions regarding lend-lease–would survive. It is even more difficult to construct criminality out of Bush’s reckless disregard of the consequences of Katrina. It is not, however, at all difficult to accuse him of maladministration and disqualifying incompetence.

But, as Levinson points out, the framers refused to give us the right to impeach for maladministration. As for Cheney, well, it will be interesting to see the specific counts Kucinich presents. One would think that the name “Valerie Plame” might figure prominently.

Federalist No.86: No bogarting.

Digby wrote the post I was going to write, and what’s worse, wrote it before I even thought of writing it. Typical.

Via Avedon Carol, I was reminded of this speech by James Madison on the subject of impeachment…

Yes, impeachment was considered the remedy for such high crimes and misdemeanors as the promotion and protection of incompetent government officers and the “wanton removal” of good ones. The founders didn’t anticipate that serving and pleasuring the president would be casually accepted as politics as usual.

Instead, we now have a political party and pitiful press corps who think that all this manipulation of the justice system for partisan gain is just adorable, while this was worthy of impeachment…

The irony, of course, is that James Madison is the premier patron saint of the conservative movement. Which is what makes this so funny:

Well, here are a few facts that the MSM and the Democrats seem to not be aware of. First, federal prosecutors are appointed by the President and serve at the pleasure of the President, which means he can fire them for any reason…

Secondly, in 1993 then President Clinton and his Attorney General Janet Reno in a one day fired all ninety-three US Attorneys. At the time there was no investigation, no cries for Janet Reno to be fired, in fact, the media called it a clean-sweep and a fresh start…

By now you are probably wondering why this is such a big story? You might be tempted to think that the firings were motivated by partisan politics, getting rid of a few holdover Democrats in the Justice Department. That could be true except seven of the prosecutors identify themselves as Republican with the other listed as an independent. However, even if the firings were politically motivated, it would not matter because US attorneys are political appointees.

That’s right, the Wayne State Chapter of the Federalist Society - an organization that has as its logo a bust of James Madison - is defending the right of a President to wantonly remove meritorious officers.

That is the question Kucinich poses in a new video posted at YouTube and on the presidential candidate’s Web site.

I have no doubt in my mind that Bush, Cheney and others have broken numerous laws. And while I generally agree that Congress “…cannot avoid its constitutionally authorized responsibility to restrain the abuse of Executive power,” I’m not certain that diverting resources from Pelosi’s agenda will accomplish much at this point in the game. On the other hand, if Bush starts using his veto …

Scooter Libby has been found guilty on four out of five counts.

Bush will have his surge even though it’s a stupid idea.

Bush will have his surge even though everyone with two brain cells to rub together opposes it.

Bush will flout the Geneva Convention.

Bush will react to a democratic election lifting a party into power by deciding that he can have all the wars he wants, and he does not care about what the people who he supposedly works for think.

Bush decided that if the American people aren’t going to let him have his war on Iran, he would make sure that we have no choice.

By flouting all common rules of diplomacy and attacking the Iranian consulate in Iraq, BushCo is clearly trying to provoke another terrorist attack or even worse, military retaliation from Iran. There’s a number of reasons this probably seems like a really good idea to them. The primary one that Marc points to is that they quite likely think that this is the only way to stop the terrible, horrible predicament of having to pay the piper in a democracy. Bush barely got elected, acted like a tyrant, and had the American people, in an act of massive ingratitude for his tyranny, vote for the opposing party. How else to undermine the Democrats than to have another terrorist attack or an act from a foreign country to make people rally around Dear Leader?

In addition, this attempt to make war with Iran inevitable demonstrates what true believers the Bushies are. When it turned out that we weren’t being greeted in Iraq with parades and flowers as predicted, the finger-pointing and excuse-seeking began. And one favorite excuse as for why the Iraqi people aren’t behaving as predicted is that the Iranians are a bad influence, pouring impure “terrorist” elements over the border. So, from their perspective, if this is true, the key to getting the parades and flowers from the Iraqis is to stomp out the bad influence of Iran. So, in a weird, simple, sick way, the insistence that we attack Iran that persists in the face of all sane indications that we couldn’t and, more importantly, we shouldn’t, is persisting because it’s the last thread of hope that BushCo has of being right about Iraq.

These two motivations are not mutually exclusive. The Iraq War was cherished from the get-go as the key to securing the oil in the Middle East, the solution to terrorism, a permanent solution to the persistent problem of democracy and particularly of having an oppositional party, and the very thing that would make George Bush feel like he’s got one on his daddy. It’s not beyond reckoning that the magic bullet they thought they’d found in Iraq is what they are hoping is going to be under a pile of corpses in Iran.

George W. Bush is a traitor to our country and should be impeached, and tried for his war crimes and crimes against this nation. People who continue to support this war criminal are either in denial or hate this country. Sorry if y’all thought that your man wasn’t such lowly son of a bitch as to deliberately court violence against this country in a temper tantrum over the Democrats winning. You put your money on a man who hates democracy, and it’s time to wake the fuck up to that.

From Tapped today on the Conyer’s impeachment column:

Conyers plan seems like smart politics, but surprisingly unserious policy. By specifying that the Republicans will be chosen by the minority leader, Conyers killed his ability to name independent Republicans actually concerned with congressional oversight to the panel. I’m surprised he closed the door on himself like that. The impetus here is probably Nancy Pelosi, who’s been growing more concerned by the Republican invocation of, ironically, the Republican overreach of the late-‘90s. She’d already removed impeachment from the table, and now she’s got Conyers taking partisanship off as well.

- Ezra

Meanwhile, the fact that there’s even a serious question among some Democrats about the wisdom or desirability of holding aggressive oversight hearings at all if the party takes over is just depressing. The line offered by one Hill staffer in Roth’s Washington Monthly story — “When you do oversight, ultimately, the press is the judge of your credibility�? — captures perfectly one of the great crippling problems of modern Democratic political strategy. It’s become something of a cliché, but it’s obviously a lesson that some Democrats (though not many in the top leadership, fortunately) still haven’t learned: The press is not your friend.

– Sam Rosenfeld

One has to consider whether she’s saying this just to offset the new GOP media campaign that’s now underway. But still, it’s amazing how the Democratic leadership will turn soft at the slightest whiff of power.

— Alec Oveis

These guys are getting a bit tougher on the impeachment question than they were a few months ago aren’t they?  Weren’t these some of the same folks cautioning against even talking about impeachment a while back?

And meanwhile at the Washington Monthly, Zachary Roth, says:

More important, it’s good to see that Conyers doesn’t seem to be listening to the sizable subgroup of Democrats arguing that essentially any attempts to investigate Bush administration transgressions will be seen as partisan witch-hunts, and will backfire politically. When I asked some prominent Democrats how the party should conduct oversight if it wins in November, I was surpised by the number who took this view. Lanny Davis told me “I don’t care about digging up whether Bush lied or not, or whether they manipulated evidence or not. That’s just playing gotcha.�? And one committe staffer cautioned “when you do oversight, ultimately, the press is the judge of your credibility.” I’m glad that Conyers seems to be more concerned with providing a full accounting of what’s happened during the Bush years, and less concerned with what David Broder might say.

I could be wrong about the specific personalities.  But there has seemed to be a marked shift (in the right direction) in the last couple of months from the cautious left on the impeachment question.  And that’s a good thing.

Hey All.

Just wanted to note that Maryscott O’Connor from My Left Wing was on Fox News with John Gibson the other day discussing impeachment with Bob Beckel (the segment can be watched here).  I haven’t personally been able to listen to it yet, cause I dont have speakers.  But I hear it went like this:

“Gibson opened the segment with the now infamous clip of Harry Taylor confronting Bush in West Virginia. Gibson wondered if this was a sign that there was a tip to the left ? Maryscott O’Connor was set up as the spokesperson for the Left and Beckel was the Centrist guy. If there was a debate imagined by the FOX producers, it never happened as planned.

Gibson asked O’Connor why she didn’t like Hillary Clinton as a candidate for 2008. Without hesitation, O’Connor said she was “too centrist”. Gibson wanted to know if the candidate O’Connor would support would have to back censure or impeachment. O’Connor came back with strength, ” I would expect candidates from both parties to impeach Bush.”

Her answer would normally be an invitation for rant and ridicule on FOX but not today. Beckel earlier in the segment let it be known that he has been a proud Liberal or the last 30 years. Annoyed that Gibson had characterized him as a centrist, Beckel talked about his civil rights involvement and how enraged he was in 1974 when nobody brought up impeachment for Nixon. So when Maryscott O’Connor made her stand on impeaching Bush clear, Beckel agreed that he would be glad if it happened but then he proceeded to discuss why it would be impossible to impeach Bush.

O’Connor responded beautifully without skipping a beat. “Sounds like a strategist talking. We’re talking about a principle.”

comment: This segment would have been unthinkable before on FOX. “

That’s pretty awesome huh? 

Sidenote:  sorry I haven’t been around much lately.  I have some issues.  Hopefully I’ll be back to posting regularly sometime this week. 

Also, if you’re in the mood for nausea, check out even the liberal Ryan Lizza’s handjob for Chuck Schumer. I really hope to mock that more extensively later.  

 

And onto the state of the nation–Bush, who as we all know loves security so much he’s empowered the NSA to listen in on phone conversations while enviromentalists tell their moms how the organic garden looks this year, has been fingered by Scooter Libby as the one who authorized the Plame leak.  He’s objectively worse than Nixon, whose ridiculous crime was merely in service of winning an election and not in service of maximizing the kill rate in the Middle East.

I don’t have a lot to say, but I’m posting anyway lest I fall down on the job of refusing to let this bit of anti-American treachery die from lack of exposure.  I’ll refrain from making jokes about blow jobs.  I’m tired of hearing that this scandal doesn’t have traction due to lack of sexiness.  Outing a secret agent is a very sexy criminal activity–entire superhero movies are based around the importance of having secret identities.  It’s like one of the top 3 sexiest ideas out there.  The only reason the media isn’t blaring the shit out of this non-stop is because they, like the Democrats in Congress, appear to fear the smirking chimp for some reason.

Folks keep talking about what a bad idea impeachment would be.� � And hell, I’m willing to listen.� But their arguments� just keep pushing me toward the opposite course.� Here, Josh Marshall joins the chorus.�

“In the 1990s, congressional Republicans construed the language of “high crimes and misdemeanors” as a roving commission for the Congress to remove the president from office for any legal infraction, either in his personal or presidential capacity. But this was an abuse of the power of impeachment, not a proper use. Stringing up a president on a legal technicality over a deposition in a civil case wasn’t what the Framers had in mind when they wrote the passage into our founding document.

(…)

The clearest case for impeachment is one in which the president refuses to follow the law and accede to the Congress’s and the court’s oversight powers. The only solution to such a constitutional crisis would be for the Congress to remove the president from office for violating his oath and committing political high crimes.

But that’s just not the case at the moment because Congress has made little if any effort to rein him in. So impeaching him can’t make any sense because the Congress — in the constitutionally indolent hands of the Republican majority — has made no attempt to oversee the president by constitutional means.

This isn’t the only case where impeachment might be appropriate. Another would be the case where the president has simply lost the confidence of the country in either the legitimacy of his presidency or his ability to govern. This, I think — for all its legal and constitutional particulars — is the best explanation for the attempted impeachment of Richard Nixon.

As you can probably see from what I’ve said above, I’m in the camp of those who believe that impeachment is inherently political. None of the constitutional scholars who speak of this or that crime “rising to the level” of high crimes and misdemeanors makes any sense to me. Crimes that would lead to impeachment can’t be understood outside their particular political context. Or, to put it another way, the judicial crimes that a president might commit only become impeachable because they become political crimes.

So that’s my take on what impeachment is for and why the current situation doesn’t call for it: Impeachment is for a president who won’t allow Congress or the courts to exercise their constitutional powers. But we’re not there yet because Congress hasn’t tried.”

Josh is all over the map here. Going from the “framer’s intent” to it’s a purely “political” tactic with a detour in between to blather about the substantive point at which impeachment is merited, before concluding that impeachment is bad because Congress hasn’t attempted any oversight. I mean you gotta kinda take a rationale and stick with it. And if it’s an inherently political matter, than what’s the point in even discussing policy rationales?

It’s obvious enough that impeachment is only going to occur when there is the political will to actually do it. That having the strongest hypothetical case for a impeachment matters little if there isn’t political support for the proposition. But conceding that, where’s the substantive argument against impeachment? That Congress hasn’t tried to rein the president in and he has not flouted such reining? I’m having a hard time imagining the person who would find that argument convincing. Jonah Goldberg maybe? Josh offers nothing substantive to indicate that this was the framer’s intent with the impeachment clause, and that’s leaving aside the question to which the framer’s intent ever really matters. Nor does he offer any historical analysis that would buttress this claim. On it’s face, as it is, the assertion is simply not convincing.

The will for impeachment, in the present Republican controlled Congress, is clearly not there. The will for substantive oversight of the president’s illegal activities by that same Republican controlled Congress is half-hearted at best, but can be better described as “cosmetic.” So where does that leave the substantive impeachment argument under Josh’s analysis? There’s no substantive basis for impeachment because the Republican controlled Congress isn’t interested in impeachment. And because the Republican controlled Congress isn’t interested in impeachment there’s no substantive case for impeachment. The inter-branch clash among intra-party interests certainly isn’t impossible theoretically, but such a stark institutional clash would require almost impossible circumstances.

So we could accept as true that under this congress, impeachment is impossible, and that such chatter is a mere indulgence. But elections are in the offing, no? And the opposition party could, theoretically if one existed, make the case for impeachment during the campaign (and were they to do so, the substance of that argument would not be inherently political under Josh’s convoluted reasoning). And then that would either win or lose. But Josh’s argument seems to completely forestall the ability to even make that argument. Which leaves us with the question of whether such a campaign would be successful. And according to Josh the politics of it don’t look promising.

“It’s treated as a given by most Beltway Democrats that a push for impeachment is bad politics because it will take attention off the president’s abysmal record and put it on the hot-button issue of impeachment and whether Democrats should be pursuing such a policy. I’m inclined to believe it’s probably bad politics on those grounds too.”

I’m just gonna delegate rebutting that garbage to the pandagonner commentariat. No offense to you guys. I love you all. But that kinda busywork is a waste of my time, and I’m just not gonna go over it again.

(more…)

You may not have noticed, because I certainly didn’t, but vast swathes of non-beltway-thinking,� real americans are apparently hell-bent on impeaching your president.� And it’s not just old Harold Meyerson’s crazy mother anymore.�

It’s all over the blogosphere. It’s the cover story in the current Harper’s. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors has passed an impeachment resolution. Antiwar activists, civil libertarians, all the usual-suspect constituencies have growing impeachment tendencies. But it’s reaching beyond the usual suspects, as I discovered last month when I appeared on a media panel before the national legislative conference of a major union. Local activists from across the nation spent an hour asking us questions, and one out of every three queries, it seemed to me, boiled down to, “How can we impeach this guy?”

Now, granted, I loathe your president, and it’s a caricatured loathing; a loathing� that a guy like “Protein” Jeff Goldstein can� garner a few chuckles over.� But actually impeaching the guy? No, I’m sorry, but� that I cannot support.� And I join Yglesias, Josh Marshall, Sam Rosenfeld and I don’t even know who else in beating down this pernicious tidal-wave of support for removing this “inept” and “malelovent” figure from his duly-elected office.� As Meyerson writes:

History, I’ll wager, will find Bush as inept as James Buchanan, on whose watch the Union broke up. It will find him as divisive, as eager to polarize the nation to his political advantage, no matter the costs, as Richard Nixon. (Indeed, if the administration does seek to prosecute the reporters who followed up leaks to break the news of its scandals, I suspect the genesis of this campaign will be less the intelligence community’s concern for secrets and more Karl Rove’s desperate need for an enemy within as midterm elections loom.) But does any or all of this rise to the level of an impeachable offense, or is it merely the kind of thing that lands a president on eternal sizzle in one of Dante’s lower loops?

Dereliction of duty and lying us into a war may be mortal sins, but that doesn’t make them provable high crimes. Domestic surveillance without a court order, by contrast, does look to be a flat-out violation of the law of the land. But it’s hard to believe that Arlen Specter’s Judiciary Committee will recommend any punitive action even if it concludes the policy was against the law.

Do NOT impeach your president America.� Okay, granted, maybe after the midterms we can think about it.� But untill then, we� must only talk about why we should NOT impeach the fucker.� That is the conversation we should be having.

Blog: Punning Pundit

Author: Andrew Cory

The Other Big Brother - Newsweek National News - MSNBC.com

So, to recap, the president has declared that he can use powers found in Article 2 of the constitution to deprive Americans of their Civil Rights. Actually, he didn’t do that. He whispered it. He kept his usurpation of American liberty secret until he could put in place the pieces of his twisted pseudo-laws. Let us make no mistake; the President has violated American law…

Even worse than that, he isn’t violating us to keep us safe from our enemies. He claims that these abuses are like cutting off an a gangrenous arm—rather lose the arm than death to the body. Instead he is cutting off the arm of the body politic—because it threatens to remove his favorite toy…

Is this treason? Perhaps. It certainly rises to impeachable levels. Future generations will marvel at us no matter what we do. The question is: will they celebrate us for our fortitude, or learn from our mistakes. If we have any love of liberty at all, we must take the legal steps to remove President Bush…

Does Turdblossum have cement shoes waiting for members of Senate Judiciary Committee if they do not do his bidding? This is how our country is run folks, low-life political thuggury driven by an unelected bastard who sleeps like a baby at night. (Insight):

The White House has been twisting arms to ensure that no Republican member votes against President Bush in the Senate Judiciary Committee’s investigation of the administration’s unauthorized wiretapping.

Congressional sources said Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove has threatened to blacklist any Republican who votes against the president. The sources said the blacklist would mean a halt in any White House political or financial support of senators running for re-election in November.

“It’s hardball all the way,” a senior GOP congressional aide said.

As Shakes Sis says…

Here’s a tip to spineless Republicans considering collapsing to their knees and sucking Rove’s dick yet again: Call Bush on his bullshit, and you won’t need appearances and photo-ops with him in the fall. You’ll be able to hold your head up high and tell your constituents that you held a lawbreaker accountable.

That would assume that these self-preservationists have any consciences. I think they checked them at the door long ago. Along with missing consciences, it looks like there aren’t any balls to be found either.

Those deemed disloyal to Mr. Rove would appear on his blacklist. The sources said dozens of GOP members in the House and Senate are on that list.

So far, only a handful of GOP senators have questioned Mr. Rove’s tactics.

My question — do any of the reporters, now that this story is out there, have the stones to ask Scott “Fetal Position” McClellan in the press briefing about Rove’s “conversations” with his blacklist buddies?

This one is ripe for the picking. Someone needs to get these White House stooges (and a some folks on the Hill) on the record about the strongarming. I know, I’m hallucinating. That would require a White House press corps that remembers how to do its job.

Hat tip, Ms. Julien.

Must-read Glenn Greenwald will be live-blogging the first day of the NSA hearings from the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing room today (they begin at 9:30 a.m).

This clip of George Bush should be talked about all week — why, if the Administration had all the legal authority in the world to eavesdrop without warrants and outside of FISA did it repeatedly make false statements to the public and to the Congress assuring us all that it was eavesdropping only in accordance with FISA? Parties make false statements in order to conceal their behavior only when their behavior is improper and wrong, not when it is justified and legal. And deliberately false statements of that sort from our government officials happen to be unacceptable and wrong, and really constitute a scandal unto itself.

He has a preview of Ted Kennedy’s line of questioning against Alberto Gonzales up now.

Go watch the f*cker lie over and over on video. (PageOneQ)

Ezra and his TAPPED pal Sam, both discussed yesterday all of the many reasons Democrats should be cautious about approaching the impeachment topic.� That strikes me as sensible, in the “sensible liberal” sense.� But truly, despite the “Impeach the Fucker” tag I created, I’m honestly a bit undecided on how aggressively Democrats should approach the issue.� Honestly.� � Nevertheless, there are two arguments in particular made by� some� people� that I find so fucking egregiously dumb that I can’t honestly believe that anyone makes them.� Fortunately for me, Dadahead’s already taken care of them.

And� the first one is this irrational fear of a president Cheney.� Does anyone honestly believe that if the Democrats have the capital to impeach Bush that they won’t be able to just impeach Cheney along with him, a man with half of the occupant’s already low approval ratings?� And what do you honestly think Cheney would get away with that Bush couldn’t?� If we pretend that Cheney wouldn’t be far more likely to invade Iran than Bush would be at this point, I think we’d all have to agree that Cheney would be far less successful at pushing through a Republican domestic agenda than Bush would.� But seriously, a Cheney presidency isn’t really a serious concern.� I think the TAPPED folks just know that we non-sensible types fear him like we fear all undead snarling monsters with formaldehyde (sp? seriously fuck it) for blood, and as such can scare us off by invoking such nightmarish possibilities.� But we needn’t fear this particular product of H.P. Lovecraft’s fevered imagination.� I don’t think.

Secondly, there’s the oft repeated fear of duplicating post-impeachment Republican losses in 1998.� This isn’t to say that there wouldn’t necessarily be negative political repercussions should the Democrats push for impeachment and the American public determine that they’re just being a bunch of douchebags over a man’s completely reasonable desire to get a beedge now and then, and perhaps smoke a cigar fresh from� the vaginal humidor (sorry Blue).� I mean there very well might be.� It might be an electoral disaster.� I don’t think that true.� And I think the circumstances are quite different.� And I’m goddamned tired of liberal electoral utilitarianism all of the goddamned time.� But let’s concede the point.

The fact of the matter is, Republicans suffered relatively significant losses (relatively being a key word) in 1998, but that did not stop them from impeaching Clinton, which occurred after those losses, not before.� The 2000 elections were admittedly a mixed bag.� The Goops lost� some seats in� both the House and the Senate, but they did make Clinton radioactive outside of the decadent coastal enclaves where we al quaida sympathizers spend� our days sipping lattes between homosexual orgies, and they did get Howdy W. Doody into the big chair in the oval office.� All around, they really didn’t do that bad.� I don’t know why people have this revisionist memory of the matter.� But for some reason serious people have convinced themselves� that Republicans paid such a high price for their frivolous little impeachment, that they are in some kind of denial (the psychological defense� mechanism)� concerning the evidence that that isn’t really the case.�

But of course, I think that the most important impact of the Republican’s frivolous and irresponsible abuse of impeachment proceedings is that Democrats should be really really timid about the matter, and in fact they should be so cautious, that they shouldn’t do it, even if most people think it would be a good idea.� Yes, I think probably the best possible impact of Republican’s ill-considered impeachment drive is that it makes Democrats too timid to impeach someone who deserves it.� Because that’s what being a serious and responsible citizen and statesmen is all about.�

Yesterday, as we all probably know at this point, the deputy director of National Intelligence, General Hayden, got a bit confused about what, in fact, is the text of the fourth amendment, and what standard the government must reach in order to constitutionally spy on American citizens.

So Kevin Drum writes today:

“Here’s another point related to General Hayden’s admission today that the NSA’s domestic spying program isn’t some kind of dazzling high tech black op, but merely garden variety wiretapping that was done outside normal FISA channels because NSA couldn’t meet the “probable cause” standard normally needed to get a warrant issued.

Administration apologists have argued that the White House couldn’t seek congressional approval for this program because it utilized super advanced technology that we couldn’t risk exposing to al-Qaeda. Even in secret session, they’ve suggested, Congress is a sieve and the bad guys would have found out what we were up to.

But now we know that’s not true. This was just ordinary call monitoring, according to General Hayden, and the only problem was that both FISA and the attorney general required a standard of evidence they couldn’t meet before issuing a warrant. In other words, the only change necessary to make this program legal was an amendment to FISA modifying the circumstances necessary to issue certain kinds of warrants. This would have tipped off terrorists to nothing.

So why didn’t they ask Congress for that change? It certainly would have passed easily. The Patriot Act passed 99-1, after all. Hell, based on what I know about the program, I probably would have voted to approve it as long as it had some reasonable boundaries.”

You know, not to point too fine a point on it, but I think Mr. Drum may have gotten his lessons in Constitutional Law from the same place as General Hayden.� If the Constitution requires “probable cause” to issue a warrant, and the courts have a fairly well-defined and fleshed out jurisprudence concerning what “probable cause” means, well, unfortunately we can’t just ask Congress to say the hell with it.� This is due to a 200 year old case called Marbury vs. Madison, the holding of which, that Congress cannot pass a law inconsistent with the Constitution, has been reaffirmed continually, and is in fact what Arlen Specter might call “super super super duper awesome precedent.”� In combination with the fact that Congress can’t pass laws dictating to the judiciary how the Constitution should be interpreted, and we can readily see that even a 99-1 vote in a rubber stamp Congress wouldn’t have made these wiretaps constitutional.� I hesitate to say illegal, such an ugly, presumptive word.

So while, it may be clear that the president violated the Constitution,� we mustn’t be too cute about it, at this point.� Now of course, I believe in a living Constitution, and don’t feel necessarily that society should be bound strictly by whatever text happens to be written in the document.� So I suppose the question is whether or not we particularly care that the Constitution has been violated by the President of the United States in these circumstances.� Who knows, he might have a really good reason.� I guess we should find out.� But maybe we shouldn’t.� Maybe finding out would endanger all of our lives by revealing important national security secrets.� It’s a judgement call, I’m unprepared, and too ill-informed to make.�

But we really can’t presume that the failure to ask Congress’s permission to violate the Constitution necessarily indicates that there’s not a good reason for it.� I mean, if the rubber stamp FISA court was too much of a burden in terms of oversight, what’s really the cost/benefit of bringing the fucking Congress into the matter when they can’t even do anything about it anyway?� And in fact, Kevin Drum seems predisposed to believe that there was indeed a good reason for these unconstitutional wiretaps.� In fact, he seems completely untroubled by what we know so far, substantively.� �

So maybe we should just shrug and move on.�

I’ve been reading Digby’s and Glenn’s interesting posts responding the to piss-your-pants-with-fear conservatives, particulary Assrocket, who are defending BushCo’s right to spy willy-nilly on Americans so long as they pretend they’re fighting terrorism. Assrocket’s scrambling is getting a lot of attention, so I finally bit the bullet and read the post they’re responding to. (Yeah, yeah, I should have done it earlier. Like you read everything that BushCo apologists are writing.) And it’s worse than I’d imagine, since he argues that BushCo should be able to break the law without being exposed by the media because:

1) Terrorist bogeymen are out to get you.

2) Warrants are the hardest thing in the world to get, way harder by many orders of magnitude than getting into Mary Jane’s panties at the prom was. (For Assrocket, that is. For some of you out there, I suppose it was a walk in the park.)

The latter argument is clearly crap, as Digby points out.

But even if that were not true and American suicide bombers were plotting their next attacks in AOL chat rooms, the government would have no trouble getting warrants to spy on them. And that’s the rub. I just don’t see any scenario in which a FISA judge would not retroactively grant a warrant in a case that thwarted a terrorist plot. Neither can I imagine that if the administration made a case to the congress that it needed to extend the 72 hour retroactive limit to three weeks (or three months!) that the GOP congress wouldn’t have gone along. Nor would they have withheld the money required to hire all the people needed to do the paperwork, or whatever the excuse of the day is. The administration would have gotten whatever it needed to legally monitor terrorist suspects. In fact, the terrorists and Anmericans alike assumed it had already done so.

Therefore, the only logical reason that the administration believed that it had to secretly and illegally spy on Americans is because they knew that Americans would not approve of which Americans they were monitoring. As Glenn says, the only security threatened by the revelations in the NY Times story is the Republican Party’s political security.

I guess I just want to second Glenn and Digby’s read on the situation. Assrocket would have you believe that this is the sort of thing that BushCo is up against:

Heroic Law Enforcement Person: Your Honor, we have have reason to believe that these men who are making phone calls back home to Osama bin Laden’s bat cave to discuss the destruction of the Great Satan might be a terroristic threat. We need a warrant to spy on them.

Judge: I can’t do that! I’m an activist judge bought and paid for by the ACLU, and I love terrorists! Denied!

I’m inclined, however, to think it’s a little more like this.

Law Enforcement Person: We have here a list of individuals that the Bush administration personally wants us to monitor.

Judge: This is a list of peace activists, enviromentalists, and weirdly enough, librarians’ groups. What sort of crimes do you think they are going to commit?

Law Enforcement Person: They are helping terrorism by disagreeing that King Bush and the Honorable Entity of Halliburton should have absolute rule.

Judge: You know, as much as I personally dislike Birkenstocks-wearing hippies and irritatingly know-it-all librarians, I can’t sign onto the idea that the executive branch should morph into a dictatorship where dissent equals treason, if for no other reason than it would undermine the power of the judicial branch and be a threat to my job. Denied.

The question is, do Assrocket and company fear the latter scenario as much as the former one? Sadly, at this point I have to say that it appears so. Actually, that’s a somewhat rational fear. From Assrocket’s point of view, at least, liberals are a much greater danger than terrorists. No terrorist is kicking a bomb in his direction any time soon, but liberals, we’re out here making fun of him for a) giving himself the stupidest nickname known to man and b) being a moronic toadie who’d sell out his basic civil rights for a nickel and a wish. Can’t fault the man for realistically assessing his chances of getting killed by terrorists vs. his chance of being ruthlessly mocked for grade A assholery, but I’m going to go out on a limb and fault him for being willing to resort to apologizing for criminal behavior so long as it’s aimed at meanie liberals.