Despite the powerful arguments in the above article, WaPo wants us to "Confirm Samuel Alito" ... The president's choice is due deference" Is it talking about this president?

Breitbart.com "Specter, speaking in general terms, noted that impeachment and criminal prosecution are possibilities in the event a president acted unconstitutionally.

But Specter added: "I don't see any talk about impeachment here. I don't think anyone doubts the president is making a good-faith effort. He's acting in a way that he feels he must."

Maureen Dowd: "Despite George Washington and the cherry tree, we no longer have a society especially consecrated to truth. The culture produces an infinity of TV shows and movies depicting the importance of honesty. But they're really talking only about the importance of being honest about your feelings. Sharing feelings is not the same thing as telling the truth. We've become a country of situationalists."

The real House GOP problem isn't about lobbyists so much as it is the atrophying of its principles. As their years in power have stretched on, House Republicans have become more passionate about retaining power than in using that power to change or limit the federal government.
...
Our sense is that Republicans don't yet appreciate the trouble they're in. Confident of K Street money and gerrymandered districts, they think the voters will never turn Congress over to a party run by Nancy Pelosi. But that's also what Democrats and the media thought about Republicans led by Newt Gingrich in 1994. Eventually, voters may grow more disgusted with Republicans who care only about re-election than they are afraid of Ms. Pelosi's San Francisco liberalism.

1.14.2006 "The States Step In As Medicare Falters -- Seniors Being Turned Away, Overcharged Under New Prescription Drug Program"

Two weeks into the new Medicare prescription drug program, many of the nation's sickest and poorest elderly and disabled people are being turned away or overcharged at pharmacies, prompting more than a dozen states to declare health emergencies and pay for their life-saving medicines
...
"All of the worst predictions came true," said Robert M. Hayes, president of the Medicare Rights Center. Many of the thousands of callers contacting the center said they were being told that the insurance plan they were assigned by the federal government does not cover their medications, he said.

1.14.2006 "Shock and...Oh, Crap." ReddHedd

Seems we bombed Pakistan yesterday. The strike killed at least 17 villagers in the remote northwestern part of the country along the border with Afghanistan, including a number of children. Just not our target -- Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama Bin Laden's second in command.

Ayman was out for the evening. Well, actually, it seems he'd been out for a while -- or hadn't been there at all -- according to reports from Pakistan.

And there is a legal problem: Pakistan has not granted the United States authorization to cross the border, for bombing or any other combat purpose.

1.14.2006 Glenn Greenwald: "Only a Select Committee can investigate the NSA scandal" Digby and Jane Hamsher and I agree.

Jane says: "Just ask yourself -- given the fact that we're all probably just one terrorist attack away from populating Michelle Malkin's fantasy camps, would you rather have a Patrick Fitzgerald or a James Comey do some legitimate questioning, or watch Tom Coburn (see chilling quote of the day, above) speaking in tongues for the cameras once again?"

1.14.2006 "City considers 'red-tagging' problem houses"

"That's an obvious reminder," she said of the bright red warning. "It's basically giving the police another tool in their armory to have."

1.13.2006 Peter Daou: "Bloggers in the Wilderness"

1.12.2006 Frank Rich: "Sooner Or Later We'll Find Out What The White House Is Really So Defensive About"

1.12.2006 "The Impeachment of George W. Bush", by Elizabeth Holtzman

1.12.2006 Ex-official warned against testifying on NSA programs."

1.11.2006 Bush teaches democracy to the Iraqis. via Aaron

1.10.2006 "Britons Face Trial Over Claim Bush Spoke of Attacking Arab TV"

1.10.2006 "Lobby Firm Is Scandal Casualty" via Josh Marshall

Alexander Strategy Group, which had thrived since its founding in 1998 thanks largely to its close connections to DeLay (R-Tex.), will cease to operate except for a relatively small business-development division, Edwin A. Buckham, the former top DeLay aide who owns the company, said yesterday.

1.10.2006 "Blunt, Boehner Share Broad Network of Lobbyist Ties With DeLay"

1.9.2006 "Controversial lobbyist had close contact with Bush team"

1.9.2006 "Bush using a little-noticed strategy to alter the balance of power" By Ron Hutcheson and James Kuhnhenn, Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - President Bush agreed with great fanfare last month to accept a ban on torture, but he later quietly reserved the right to ignore it, even as he signed it into law.
...
They may soon have an ally on the Supreme Court. As a Justice Department lawyer in the Reagan administration, Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito wrote a 1986 memo outlining plans for expanded use of presidential signing statements.

Although Alito told his bosses that the aggressive use of assertive signing statements "would increase the power of the executive to shape the law," he acknowledged doubts about their legal significance.

Henwood points out that median household income fell every year between 1999 and 2004. Henwood writes, "this is the first time since the census bureau began publishing figures for household income in 1967 that there have been five negative signs in a row."

It is well past time to start articulating not just to liberals or liberal-leaners, but to those who have been supporting Bush as well, that the actions of his Administration and his followers do not advance their interests. They are not devoted to the ideals of small government conservatives or to religious conservatives. Quite the contrary. This Abramoff scandal, as well as the lawless expansion of the powers of the Federal Government, together offer the perfect opportunity for making this long overdue case.

You know what will be a funny time, when the American people realize we handed the country over to a guy whose name starts with Grand Ayatollah. So, here's my pet peeve number 400 with the mainstream media -- every expert in the field knows that the Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani handpicked the Shiite political leaders. They all ultimately answer to him. He is the most powerful man in Iraq. When are you going to get around to telling the American people that?

If a president thinks a law should be changed, he can go to the American people via Congress and seek such a change. This president gave the back of his hand to FISA, deciding in secret to ignore it.

In doing that, Mr. Bush essentially declared that the checks and balances do not apply to him, that he is above the law, that he knows better than the likes of Madison, Jefferson, Hamilton et al.

In doing that, he aligned himself instead with Richard Nixon, who had his own notion of the separation of powers. That notion was best expressed in Nixon's chilling comment:

"When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal."

Nothing better illustrates the meltdown in spending restraint than earmarking, the process by which members secure special pork projects such as Alaska's infamous $223 million "bridge to nowhere." Pork is an inevitable product of political compromise, but earmarks are a particularly corrupt form. They are often last-minute additions to conference reports that were never considered in the original bills passed by either the House or Senate. They can thus avoid competitive bidding, performance standards or even disclosure of the direct recipient.
...
In 1998, Congress approved 1,850 earmarks just for transportation projects. Last year's transportation bill contained 6,371. Earmarks have become the corrupt currency by which bills like the ruinously expensive prescription drug entitlement are bought vote by vote. They inevitably result in some lower-priority projects being funded first, with potentially disastrous results. In Louisiana, the Army Corps of Engineers spent $1.9 billion between 2000 and 2005, more than 80% of which was earmarked. Less than 4% of the total was spent on protecting levees, while over a third of the money went to building a new lock on an underused canal. Then along came Hurricane Katrina.
...
Sens. Tom Coburn and John McCain now plan to challenge every hidden earmark. "If we aren't told who is asking for it, who benefits and its justification, we'll move to strike it," Mr. Coburn told me. He expects many earmarks to be quietly withdrawn rather than face such scrutiny.

1.9.2006 "A Donor Who Had Big Allies -- DeLay and two others helped put the brakes on a federal probe of a businessman. Evidence was published in the Congressional Record."

1.9.2006 Howard Bashman has a listing of newspaper articles about the Alito hearings.

1.8.2006 "Our Presidential Era: Who Can Check the President?" By NOAH FELDMAN via Armando

1.6.2006 "Need Medicaid? Show Your Passport" By Bob Herbert of The New York Times

Buried in the nearly 800-page federal budget bill is a nasty little provision, ostensibly aimed at immigrants, that will make it difficult for many poverty-stricken U.S. citizens to get the health care they are entitled to under Medicaid.

Advocates believe that the provision, which will require Medicaid applicants to document their U.S. citizenship (which means producing a passport or birth certificate), may be especially harmful to poor blacks, most of whom do not have passports and many of whom do not have birth certificates.
...
Someday the pendulum will swing back, and the government of the United States will become more representative and more humane. Meanwhile, as Lily Tomlin said, "We're all in this alone."

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., a member of an appropriations subcommittee with jurisdiction over the IRS, said the practice was an "outrageous violation of the public trust" that could undermine the agency's credibility.
...
According to Murray's office, the 20 states in which the IRS collected party affiliation information were Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and Wisconsin.

If these American technology companies have so few moral qualms about giving in to Chinese government demands to hand over Chinese user data or censor Chinese people's content, can we be sure they won't do the same thing in response to potentially illegal demands by an over-zealous government agency in our own country? Can we trust that they're not already doing so?

When it comes down to interests of government vs. interests of the individual it seems pretty clear where their default position lies.

Will users and investors push for an attitude change? Can we convince them that disrespecting the universal human rights of users anywhere and everywhere will be bad for their business in the long run? Or will we all sit there like frogs in water being brought very slowly to a boil?

1.5.2006 "The Constitution in Crisis" Conyer's case for impeachment

1.5.2006 "What it means to John Kerry, Wesley Clark, and Bill Clinton if Bush wiretapped CNN's Christiane Amanpour"

1.4.2006 "Why is NBC censoring its own transcripts?" Kos

1.5.2006 White House Told NSA Briefings Broke Law

In a letter to Bush, Rep. Jane Harman (news, bio, voting record), D-Calif., said the National Security Act requires the heads of the various intelligence agencies to keep the entire House and Senate intelligence committees "fully and currently informed of the intelligence activities of the United States."

Only in the case of a highly classified covert action can the president choose to inform a narrower group of Congress members about his decision, Harman said. That action is defined in the law as an operation to influence political, economic or military conditions of another country.

1.4.2006 "State scraps new voting machines"

1.4.2006 History of Domestic spying in America: "FBI Patents Domestic Spying"

1.4.2006 "Bush's Spy Program and FISA" Geoffrey R. Stone

1.4.2006 When I woke up on the morning of Katrina, I thought that it was all Bush's fault, and then I thought that was crazy thinking, but it was Bush's fault. And so was the mine disaster. "Former director of National Mine Academy blames Bush admin. over the Sago Mine disaster"

1.4.2006 "I guess the Iraqis who thought the US was going to turn Iraq into another America weren't really far from the mark- we too now enjoy inane leaders, shady elections, a shaky economy, large-scale unemployment and soaring gas prices." Riverbend

1.4.2006 "How they got caught: After lobbyist (Scanlon) broke off engagement, ex-fiancee told of illicit dealings to FBI"

1.3.2006 Atrios:

Okay, now's your chance.

Explain to me, in your best wingnutnese, how exactly it damages national security to reveal the fact that we spy on people without secret warrants instead of the fact that we spy on people with secret warrants?

As for the domestic spying: as I noted before, those revelations did absolutely nothing to help terrorists. They already knew we could spy on them, and they don't give a good goddamn whether that spying is conducted with or without a warrant.

That's something that it's important for us to know, but which is absolutely irrelevant to them. The administration's assertions that national security has been compromised by the revelation of their illegal domestic spying are loathsomely cynical and patently false. It's yet another example of them playing the national security card to cover up their political shenanigans.

1.4.2006 Glenn Greenwald:

So the problem for Schumer isn't that George Bush broke the law here and claims that he has the right as a wartime President to act contrary to laws generally. No, that's much too strident, conflictual and clear. He can't say that. The problem is merely that it's a "tradition" to talk first with Congress before the President "changes" the law.

What does any of this even mean? George Bush didn't "change" the law. A President doesn't have the ability to "change" a law. There is no such thing in our system of Government as a President "changing" a law. That's the whole point. A President can only do one of two things to a law - he can abide by it, or he can break it. And George Bush broke the law, but Charles Schumer, for some reason, is afraid to say so.

And that's the Administration's dilemma here: The more rigidly it ties its eavesdropping activity to al Qaeda, the harder it becomes to explain why it did not comply with FISA.

The only assertion even approaching an answer to this question that we've heard (murkily and through untraceable leaks) is that the NSA monitored too much information as part of its data-mining activities to make FISA warrants feasible. But that claim makes no sense, and is not a responsive answer to the question. Even if sweeping techniques of data-mining were used in the first instance to locate and identify which telephone numbers should be monitored, there would then be a clear basis (obtained from the data-mining) on which to seek FISA court approval to monitor those telephone numbers which the data-mining identified.

1.4.2006 "Debunking Bush's NSA Lies: A Handy Pocket Guide" Arianna

1.4.2006 Newsweek via Jane Hamsher:

The larger question is whether Justice-run by Bush's buddy Alberto Gonzales-will aggressively seek evidence that could lead to DeLay or to other Republicans in Congress. "I just don't know that they have the stomach for it," said a lawyer close to the probe.

In the ongoing debate about Bush's warrantless wiretaps, can we please put to rest a GOP talking point that has sadly already entered the media mainstream? Its latest carrier was Andrea Mitchell on Hardball last night, in which she speculated over how people will "handle this tradeoff" between civil liberties and security. That's exactly how the GOP would like to frame this, with the implication that what Bush did was necessary for national security.

Consistently opposing the federal government's right to address corporate abuses, Alito has argued for virtually unlimited executive power, including the government's right to intervene in the most intimate realms of personal life. He's endorsed the rights of police to shoot an unarmed 15-year-old who was fleeing after breaking into a house, defended the refusal of state employers to pay damages for violating the Family and Medical Leave Act, and said it created no undue burden if husbands could prevent their wives from getting abortions. Citizen groups, he's ruled, have no standing to sue convicted polluters under the Clean Water Act. The federal government, he's argued, has no right to pass national consumer protection legislation aimed at preventing odometer fraud or banning the sales of machine guns. Regarding the exclusion of blacks from juries in death penalty cases, he's called the statistical evidence as inconsequential as the disproportionate number of recent U.S. presidents who've been left-handed. In one case, Alito's Third Circuit colleagues said the federal law prohibiting employment discrimination "would be eviscerated if our analysis were to halt where [Judge Alito] suggests."

Alito now downplays his membership in a Princeton alumni group so hostile to the admission of women and minorities that even Senate Majority Leader Frist condemned it. He dismisses as mere job-seeking his declarations, while applying to the Reagan-era Justice Department, that the Constitution does not protect a woman's right to choose an abortion, and that he disagreed with the Warren Court rulings that desegregated schools and expanded voting rights. He's trying to dismiss he memo he wrote, after getting the job, embracing the "goals of bringing about the eventual overturning of Roe v. Wade." He also minimizes the breaking of his pledge to recuse himself from cases involving his sister's law firm.

1.2.2006 Digby quoting Steve Benan:

[W]hile it was the 0.6% decline for the year that generated headlines, most seem to have overlooked the fact that on the day Bush was sworn into office in January 2001, the Dow Jones stood at 10,732.46. As of now, it's at 10,717.50.

In other words, after five years of Bush's presidency, the stock market has a cumulative gain of negative 15 points.

Under Reagan, the Dow went up 148%. Under Clinton, it grew 187%. After five years, Bush isn't quite breaking even.

• So Much for the President's Assent to the McCain Amendment
  
• "Inherent Authority" to Violate Federal Law?

I also have a problem with his signing into law a statute that he takes to be unconstitutional, while signaling in advance his unwillingness to abide by it. Vetoing the bill would be the more honest approach, and would better comport with his Constitutional duty to see that the laws be faithfully executed.
...
The President is as good as saying that he won't obey the McCain Amendment, and adopting a reading of the Graham Amendment that's just disingenuous. It's one more piece of evidence that he does not begin to understand what the separation of powers actually involves, or that Congress has the power to write laws and the President does not; nor does he take seriously his Constitutional obligation to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed". Understanding and accepting these things is not an optional matter for a President. It's a minimal prerequisite of the job.

1.2.2006 Glenn Greenwald:

Constitutionally, we are not at war, because Congress has not declared any such war as required by Art. I, Section 8. Nor, by any other measure, are we at war in the way we were at "war" during the Civil War, or World War I or II. We have no defined enemy, no standard for "winning," no exit goal, no battlefields. What we have is an endless conflict, against a group of individuals motivated by religious and political convictions which guarantee its hostilities towards us, but not a war.

That none of us is above the law is a bedrock principle of democracy. To erode that bedrock is to risk even further injustice. To erode that bedrock is to subscribe, to a "divine right of kings" theory of governance, in which those who govern are absolved from adhering to the basic moral standards to which the governed are accountable.

We must never tolerate one law for the Ruler, and another for the Ruled. If we do, we break faith with our ancestors from Bunker Hill, Lexington and Concord to Flanders Field, Normandy, Iwo Jima, Panmunjon, Saigon and Desert Storm. More

Every discussion of this scandal should begin by emphasizing that: (a) FISA expressly makes it a criminal offense to eavesdrop without complying with its mandates and (b) even the President and his lawyers acknowledge that the eavesdropping Bush ordered does not comply with the mandates of FISA. Bush ordered his Administration to act contrary to the requirements of this law, and nobody, including Bush, claims otherwise.
...
To even read on Powerline that it is an "open" and "difficult" question whether George Bush broke the law is amazing, and quite revealing.
...
Even Americans who agree on nothing else know, even if only on the most submerged and basest levels, that what distinguishes America from other countries and what keeps us safe and secure in our liberty is that nobody, including the President, is above the law. People know that the claim that someone should be above the law is the mark of a tyrant claiming a power that is as arrogant and dangerous as it is un-American.

From the beginning of this scandal, the Administration has admitted that the eavesdropping Bush ordered is outside the scope of FISA, but has argued that it was both necessary and justifiable for them to eavesdrop in ways that FISA prohibits.
...
In campaigning for his own re-election and then for renewal of the Patriot Act, George Bush revealed infinitely more about how we monitor the communications of suspected terrorists and how we track other terrorist activities than the New York Times did in revealing the NSA FISA-bypass story.
...
To even speak of the media as "superceding its mandate" where it is reporting on (at best) highly controversial and potentially illegal Government conduct reveals a profound misunderstanding of the function of the press. The press was never intended to be some meek, uncritical mouthpiece for government power which Jeff's view suggests. It was intended to be exactly the opposite.
...
(4) The fact that information is labeled "classified" by the Government does not mean it is truly classified. As I noted a couple of days ago, it is actually illegal (see Sec. 1.8) to classify information for the purpose of concealing unlawful acts by the Government (such as the President ordering that the law be violated when eavesdropping).
...
One can tell when a message is powerful when the messengers are attacked. The fact that Bush defenders have resorted to vicious attacks on the New York Times and its sources as criminals and traitors is yet more evidence that this scandal is a serious threat to the Administration, and its supporters know that.

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) joined the fun yesterday, arguing on Fox News that the warrantless-search program was a legitimate use of presidential power because "the president believes very, very strongly that he has the constitutional authority." And, obviously, if Bush feels "very, very strongly" that he's right, it must be so.

If the Intelligence Committee investigates the controversy, the White House can take comfort in the fact that the hearings would be behind closed doors and the testimony would be classified. Instead of a committee led by a moderate skeptic, the Intelligence Committee is chaired by a partisan hack who's already announced his belief that the administration's conduct in this matter is perfectly legal.

Meanwhile, it does raise several questions. If Abu Gonzales was involved in this nasty business all along, shouldn't he be recusing himself from oversight of any Justice Department investigation?

On one day in the spring of 2004, White House chief of staff Andy Card and the then White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales made a bedside visit to John Ashcroft, attorney general at the time, who was stricken with a rare and painful pancreatic disease, to try-without success-to get him to reverse his deputy, Acting Attorney General James Comey, who was balking at the warrantless eavesdropping.

1.1.2006 "But he added: "The White House was informed of the decision, as was the president."" Again, I ask, "Who is the White House?"

1.1.2006 "Justice Deputy (Comey) Resisted Parts of Spy Program"

See comments at Firedoglake

And comments at Daily Kos, georgia10:

With the hearings on this set for early January, you can bet Bush is hoping the story fades early enough to let him make 2006 his "comeback" year. But each new revelation breathes life into this scandal. While Gonzales rubber-stamped the program, Comey, Ashcroft, and others were so bothered by the legality of the program they took the extraordinary step of refusing to authorize it. To understand how deep-seeded these legal reservations were, I remind you that Comey refused to authorize and Ashcroft was "reluctant" to authorize the program in 2004. This was after the program had been in place for some two and a half years. This was after Ashcroft had presumably authorized the program every 45 days since late 2001. Maybe it was the meds, maybe it was his conscience, but something caused Ashcroft to possibly deem the program illegal in March of 2004. The significance of this? Bush knew warrantless domestic spying outside of FISA was probably illegal, and yet he insisted on it anyway. It sure looks like Bush's crown will be tarnished by this in 2006.

1.1.2006 ReddHedd comments on the NSA policy of "Share and Share Alike"

• Baghdad Burning
• Billmon
• Carpetbagger
• Christian Coalition Ratings
• Steven C. Clemons
• Digby
• Maureen Dowd
• Drudge
• Gen. JC Christian, patriot
• The Huffington Post
• Headingleft, Sander and Aaron
• Memeorandum
• No More Mister Nice Blog
• Ed Perlmutter's Home Page
• Publius
• Talking Points Memo
• Wikipedia
• Farid Zakaria

Guantanamo ... Social Security ... Wilson/Plame Timeline ... Judicial Nominations

The Scalito, Mafia PDF

Alphabet Soup

The Project for the New American Century's Statement of Principles, and its pre-2000 writings about Iraq.

The U.S. Constitution
See also

Civil Disobedience, by Henry David Thoreau

HOME -- Previous Entries

gentle.reader@att.net ... A proud member of the reality based community.