7.31.2007 "In Violation of Federal Law, Ohio's 2004 Presidential Election Records Are Destroyed or Missing"

7.31.2007 Stevens threatens to block ethics bill

Republican Sen. Ted Stevens, whose home back in Alaska was raided by federal investigators Monday in a wide-ranging corruption investigation, has threatened to place a hold on the Democratic-drafted ethics legislation just passed by the House and expected on the Senate floor by week’s end.

You can sit in a county jail for over half a year on certain misdemeanor charges such as DUI, but after one month on the inside, Medicaid coverage disappears and prisoners can suddenly find themselves without medication in one of the worst environments imaginable for a health crisis.
...
An average annual cost to keep a person in a Colorado jail bed is over four times what it costs for that same person in a community based treatment program, and the mentally ill in our jails are at vastly greater risk of homelessness, recidivism, and suicide.

7.30.2007 An Immoral Philosophy Paul Krugman

But President Bush says that access to care is no problem — “After all, you just go to an emergency room” — and, with the support of the Republican Congressional leadership, he’s declared that he’ll veto any Schip expansion on “philosophical” grounds.

It must be about philosophy, because it surely isn’t about cost. One of the plans ... would cost less over the next five years than we’ll spend in Iraq in the next four months. And it would be fully paid for by an increase in tobacco taxes.
...
Now, why should Mr. Bush fear that insuring uninsured children would lead to a further “federalization” of health care...? It’s not because he thinks the plans wouldn’t work. It’s because he’s afraid that they would ...[and] that voters, having seen how the government can help children, would ask why it can’t do the same for adults.
...
But it has taken the fight over children’s health insurance to bring the perversity of this philosophy fully into view. ...[D]enying basic health care to children whose parents lack the means to pay for it, simply because you’re afraid that success in insuring children might put big government in a good light, is just morally wrong.

The NSA scandal is not now and never has been about perjury. It is about highly illegal spying activities by our government on American citizens.

The scandal arose because the Bush administration spied on Americans illegally for many years and concealed its criminality. It did so (a) by eavesdropping on the telephone calls of Americans without warrants even though FISA makes it a felony to do that, and (b) by engaging in the even-worse though still unknown spying activities which caused Ashcroft, Comey, Mueller et al. to threaten to quit if it did not cease.

This is where the focus should be, and my concern from the start about the Gonzales perjury focus is that it would overshadow that far more important issue. We cannot spend the next 18 months in a mind-numbing semantic debate over what the "TSP" means or does not mean in the administration's misleading testimony and public statements. That is far afield from the real criminality here and it will obscure it.

Marty Lederman agrees

Prairie Weather: "Gonzales the rotten apple is Gonzales the distraction. And the White House must be delighted we've fallen for it."

For folks scoring at home, one might say Gonzales has a point about two programs, since they were revealed separately and the President only confirmed the first. But wait! Here is Gonzales with General Hayden at a Dec 19 press conference following the President's radio address:

ATTORNEY GENERAL GONZALES: Thanks, Scott.

The President confirmed the existence of a highly classified program on Saturday. The program remains highly classified; there are many operational aspects of the program that have still not been disclosed and we want to protect that because those aspects of the program are very, very important to protect the national security of this country. So I'm only going to be talking about the legal underpinnings for what has been disclosed by the President.

...This Hayden presser from Jan 2006 may be worth a re-read.

The first known assertion by administration officials that there had been no serious disagreement within the government about the legality of the N.S.A. program came in talks with New York Times editors in 2004. [just before the election] In an effort to persuade the editors not to disclose the eavesdropping program, senior officials repeatedly cited the lack of dissent as evidence of the program’s lawfulness.

Democratic lawmakers are asking for a special prosecutor to look into Mr. Gonzales’s words and deeds. Solicitor General Paul Clement has a last chance to show that the Justice Department is still minimally functional by fulfilling that request.

If that does not happen, Congress should impeach Mr. Gonzales.

... Which is a fancy way of saying that the data-mining violated the requirements for probable cause in FISA, but the data-mining itself probably violated a law Congress had passed in Fall 2003 specifically to prevent data-mining of American citizens. Which would mean that, no matter the outcome of debates over the AUMF-based justification for violating FISA and the Article II-based justification for violating FISA, if Bush was also violating this provision, then he was violating something passed subsequent to the AUMF and subsequent to Bush's initial authorization of the program.

A surgeon general's report in 2006 that called on Americans to help tackle global health problems has been kept from the public by a Bush political appointee without any background or expertise in medicine or public health, chiefly because the report did not promote the administration's policy accomplishments, according to current and former public health officials.
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In 65 pages, the report charts trends in infectious and chronic disease; reviews efforts to curb AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria; calls for the careful monitoring of public health to safeguard against bioterrorism; and explains the importance of proper nutrition, childhood immunizations and clean air and water, among other topics. Its underlying message is that disease and suffering do not respect political boundaries in an era of globalization and mass population movements.

Latest Bush Executive Order Outlaws Iraq War Dissent on Penalty of Full Asset Seizure
In an as yet un-numbered Executive Order (at least the number isn't published), president bush has decreed that your property - all of it - can be taken away at the sole discretion of the Secretary of the Treasury at the mere suspicion that you may commit a crime in the future. You can view and read this latest executive atrocity at the White House website.

An executive order only becomes law if Congress doesn’t overturn it within thirty days after it is published in the Federal Register.

7.22.2007 "Executive Order: Blocking Property of Certain Persons Who Threaten Stabilization Efforts in Iraq"

J.B. Massey asks: "Where's the outrage?"

Here's some, by Anonymous "Not with a bang but a whimper: the death of the Fifth Amendment"

See also Radley Balko: You could make a pretty good case that those ""undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction" would include those companies with no-bid contracts that have vastly overbilled U.S. taxpayers for their services, the corrupt cronyists, or even the Bush administration itself, which appointed unqualified Heritage Foundation interns and GOP donors with no expertise to head up major Iraqi government agencies and reconstruction projects.

Libby Spencer: "this edict effectively criminializes the anti-war movement and acts as a quasi-forfeiture law against pretty much anyone who disagrees with the Great Decider's war plans."

Previously undisclosed documents detail how Republican operatives, with the knowledge of several White House officials, engaged in an illegal, racially-motivated effort to suppress tens of thousands of votes during the 2004 presidential campaign in a state where George W. Bush was trailing his Democratic challenger, Senator John Kerry.
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The valuable documents were lists of registered voters who did not return address confirmation forms to the Ohio Board of Elections. The Republican operatives compared this list with lists of voters who requested absentee ballots. In the opinion of one of the strategists, the fact that many names appeared on both lists was evidence of voter fraud. "A bad registration card can be an accident or fraud. A bad card AND an Absentee Ballot request is a clear case of fraud," according to former Bush-Cheney campaign staffer Robert Paduchik.

Scientists’ Tests Hack Into Electronic Voting Machines in California and Elsewhere

January 2006 - The Program that Bush described

Let me talk about one other program -- and then I promise to answer questions -- something that you've been reading about in the news lately. It's what I would call a terrorist surveillance program. After the enemy attacked us, and after I realized that we were not protected by oceans, I asked people that work for you -- work for me, how best can we use information to protect the American people? You might remember there was hijackers here that had made calls outside the country to somebody else, prior to the September the 11th attacks. And I said, is there anything more we can do within the law, within the Constitution, to protect the American people. And they came back with a program, designed a program that I want to describe to you. And I want people here to clearly understand why I made the decision I made.

First, I made the decision to do the following things because there's an enemy that still wants to harm the American people. What I'm talking about is the intercept of certain communications emanating between somebody inside the United States and outside the United States; and one of the numbers would be reasonably suspected to be an al Qaeda link or affiliate. In other words, we have ways to determine whether or not someone can be an al Qaeda affiliate or al Qaeda. And if they're making a phone call in the United States, it seems like to me we want to know why.

This is a -- I repeat to you, even though you hear words, "domestic spying," these are not phone calls within the United States. It's a phone call of an al Qaeda, known al Qaeda suspect, making a phone call into the United States. I'm mindful of your civil liberties, and so I had all kinds of lawyers review the process. We briefed members of the United States Congress, one of whom was Senator Pat Roberts, about this program. You know, it's amazing, when people say to me, well, he was just breaking the law -- if I wanted to break the law, why was I briefing Congress? (Laughter and applause.)

Several Democratic lawmakers suggested that Congress take another look at the doctrine after conservative radio talk show hosts aggressively attacked an immigration reform bill when it was on the Senate floor, contributing to its defeat.
...
Pence and other Republicans in both the House and Senate countered by introducing legislation to bar the FCC from reinstating the rule.

The court ruled that Hazleton cannot enact any ordinances dealing with illegal immigration because they conflict with the supremacy clause of the U.S. constitution.

"Hazleton, in its zeal to control the presence of a group deemed undesirable, violated the rights of such people, as well as others within the community. Since the United States Constitution protects even the disfavored, the ordinances cannot be enforced," U.S. District Judge James M. Munley wrote in the 206-page opinion.

Fred Thompson via Wake Up America: Most Americans want something to be done about the illegal immigration problem we have in this country. They’ve been expecting the federal government to enforce the immigration laws already on the books. The federal government hasn’t done that, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the governments closest to the people – municipal and state – are looking to take action. This is an entirely proper role for these governments.

“The Bush-Cheney White House continues to place great strains on our constitutional system of checks and balances,” Leahy added. “Not since the darkest days of the Nixon administration have we seen efforts to corrupt federal law enforcement for partisan political gain and such efforts to avoid accountability.”

7.25.2007 What were the pre-2005 "other intelligence activities"? Glenn Greenwald

It has been clear for a long time that there are "other intelligence activities" beyond the "Terrorist Surveillance Program" which are clearly illegal. And any doubt about that was dispelled entirely when James Comey testified, since his whole point was that whatever it was that they were doing prior to March of 2004 to spy on Americans was so illegal that he, John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller all threatened to quit if it continued.
...
What arguable excuse is there for continuing to conceal from Americans what our government did? Whatever it was they were doing is unquestionably illegal. It has been abandoned for years now, removing any "national security" justification for ongoing secrecy. And it entails our government, at the highest levels, spying on us in ways that were so wrong and illegal that the Attorney General and FBI Director and various deputies all threatened to quit.

For more (much more) about the law and process of such contempt-of-Congress citations, see the new CRS Report that I posted about yesterday.

7.23.2007 Tell us another one Marcy Wheeler

George Bush and Alberto Gonzales keep stalling Congress by saying they're investigating themselves. Congress needs to call their bluff.
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The Bush administration is tampering with every legitimate means of investigation. The one option left is Congress. And it's time Congress realized that.

STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN PATRICK LEAHY

Special Prosecutor Weighed for Gonzales, Lara Jakes Jordan

Gonzales described the encounter at Ashcroft's hospital bedside as having come at the bidding of congressional leaders who urged the administration to continue the program. He said he and Card "didn't press him. We said, 'Thank you,' and we left."

"We went there because we thought it was important for him to know where the congressional leadership was on this," Gonzales said.

Later, Sen. Jay Rockefeller, top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Gonzales was "untruthful" Tuesday in describing the White House meeting where the congressional leaders supposedly approved continuing the program. Former Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle, who also would have been included, said in a statement he has "no recollection of such a meeting and believe that it didn't occur."

"I am quite certain that at no time did we encourage the AG or anyone else to take such actions," Daschle said in the statement in response to reporters' questions.

Gonzales admitted that he went to the bed of John Ashcroft, with an authorization form for the continuance of the spying program.

For me, the important part of the hearing was this:

AGAG's Just Given Cheney the Keys to the DOJ Kingdom The Next Hurrah

Lovely. Cheney--whose own Chief of Staff was indicted and convicted for impeding an ongoing investigation--now has usurped access to ongoing investigations, for himself, his Chief of Staff, and his Counsel, courtesy of AGAG. David Addington, the architect of the Unitary Executive, now gets to know what DOJ is doing with ongoing investigations. AGAG is doing marvelous work in DOJ.

Christy Hardin Smith notes: "Including, one might add, the Fitzgerald investigation, which was ongoing at that time."

Think Progress: Attorney General Cheney? Referencing a May 2006 memorandum that granted Vice President Cheney’s office increased powers to intercede in Justice Department affairs, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) asked Gonzales today, “What on earth business does the Office of the Vice President have in the internal workings of the Department of Justice with respect to criminal investigations, civil investigations, and ongoing matters?” Gonzales was stumped, “As a general matter, I would say that’s a good question.” TPM Muckraker has the video.

"I have no recollection of such a meeting and believe that it didn't occur. I am quite certain that at no time did we encourage the AG or anyone else to take such actions. This appears to be another attempt to rewrite history just as they have attempted to do with the war resolution."

Stephen E. Abraham’s assignment to the Pentagon unit that runs the hearings at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, seemed a perfect fit.

A lawyer in civilian life, he had been decorated for counterespionage and counterterrorism work during 22 years as a reserve Army intelligence officer in which he rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel. His posting, just as the Guantánamo hearings were accelerating in 2004, gave him a close-up view of the government’s detention policies.
...
Most detainees, he said, have no realistic way to contest charges often based not on solid information, but on generalizations, incomplete intelligence reports and hints of terrorism ties.

See also: "Lt. Col. Stephen Abraham is not the First Insider to Condemn the Kangaroo Tribunals" By ANDY WORTHINGTON

7.22.2007 DeFazio asks, but he's denied access JEFF KOSSEFF

Oregonians called Peter DeFazio's office, worried there was a conspiracy buried in the classified portion of a White House plan for operating the government after a terrorist attack.

As a member of the U.S. House on the Homeland Security Committee, DeFazio, D-Ore., is permitted to enter a secure "bubbleroom" in the Capitol and examine classified material. So he asked the White House to see the secret documents.

On Wednesday, DeFazio got his answer: DENIED.
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Norm Ornstein, a legal scholar " to deny access to a member of Congress who serves on the Homeland Security Committee.

Libby Spencer: ... I find it all too explicable. Send me a tin foil hat but taken together with all the other little steps taken in the direction of martial law, like the suspension of posse comitatus and the virtual dismantling of FEMA's effectiveness and it adds up to a plan to suspend the 08 elections to me. It would surely explain why Bush is so unconcerned about the political health of his party.

March, 2006 was the last time that Congress had to raise the debt ceiling. At that point, Congress raised the debt ceiling to $9 trillion. The national debt is now over $8,897,854,000,000. We are getting very close to that limit. This would mark the fifth time that the debt ceiling has had to be raised under Bush, and would mean that the federal debt has gone from $5,807 trillion when Clinton left office to over $9 trillion, and would probably double while Bush is in office. Spending $12 billion a month on a worthless war will do that to you. Raising the debt limit yet again is political treasure for the Dems, and is going to be a huge issue for some Republicans. It will get some added traction because it is basically Ron Paul's issue among the GOP, and he is sure to press the other candidates on the issue.
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In any event, these guys are truly playing chicken, with their own party, the Congress and the country, and fewer and fewer are going to stay with them for the whole ride off the cliff.

The ruling also included significant victories for the government, including a decision allowing the Pentagon to limit the subjects that the lawyers can discuss with detainees and authorizing special Pentagon teams to read the lawyers’ mail and remove unauthorized comments.
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But it rejected the Justice Department assertion that the court should be able to examine only the information included in the combatant status hearing, not the more expansive information the government might have collected on a detainee.
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Wells Dixon, a lawyer at the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York who represents detainees, said that pattern was likely to be repeated. “Once again,” Mr. Dixon said, “we are left to rely on the government to produce all of the information that it says exists.”

In other words, if a form of violence is not already prohibited by federal criminal law, and is not "comparable" to the forms of violence prohibited by the WCA, [War Crimes Act] the CIA is not prohibited from using it.

Does this prohibit the CIA "enhanced" techniques? Who knows? Are they "comparable" to what the WCA prohibits? You tell me.

Think Progress: Bush’s New Interrogation Order Contains Loophole: ‘Does Not Create Any Right Enforceable At Law’

Center for Constitutional Rights:"In the past, the Bush administration has taken the position that even if some legal restrictions on interrogation methods applied, they were unenforceable in court," the group's press release said. "According to CCR attorneys, that problem exists with today’s Executive Order, as the last section states it does not create any rights or benefits that are enforceable in court – except for CIA officers defending themselves from charges of abuse."

Tim Grieve, Salon: It's unclear, so far, exactly what interrogation techniques the White House thinks the executive order will allow the CIA to use on so-called high-value detainees. But there are a few early clues in the text that the agency is getting new wiggle room. "The Director of Central Intelligence shall issue written policies to govern the program," the order says. I wonder if we'll get a look at those? I'm guessing no.

emptywheel: That is, some of the most obvious abuses--using sex and religion--are now forbidden. But the key information, what remains permitted, is in a separate, classified list that we don't get to see. And three other key details: the Executive Order explicitly denies any legal responsibilities associated with the EO, so even if some overzealous torturer ignores it, he's not going to jail. The Red Cross remains unable to monitor prisoners in this newfangled "enhanced interrogation" program. And Congress still doesn't have a copy of the DOJ opinion on the program. For that matter, Karen DeYoung reports that the Administration hasn't responded to Congress' other questions, either.

... (1) What is most significant is, as always, the underlying theory on which this claim is based. From the Post article:

David B. Rifkin, who worked in the Justice Department and White House counsel's office under presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, praised the position and said it is consistent with the idea of a "unitary executive." In practical terms, he said, "U.S. attorneys are emanations of a president's will." And in constitutional terms, he said, "the president has decided, by virtue of invoking executive privilege, that is the correct policy for the entire executive branch.

... "The administration's position is a direct assault on prosecutorial independence, and an attempt to vest the President with the unchallengeable power to block criminal prosecutions of anyone in the Executive Branch who breaks the law at the President's direction.
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But refusals to comply with subpoenas become criminal where they are grounded not in good faith (even if questionable) assertions of privilege, but where, instead, a contempt for the rule of law is evidenced because one party abuses legitimate privileges in order to shield itself from investigation and accountability.
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There is no magic force that is going to descend from the sky and strike with lighting at George Bush and Dick Cheney for so flagrantly subverting our constitutional order. The Founders created various checks for confronting tyrannical abuses of power, but they have to be activated by political will and the courage to confront it. That has been lacking. Hence, they have seized omnipotent powers with impunity.

Newshoggers: This is pretty much the moment to grab the pitchforks and torches and drag the despised royals from their fortified compounds and whip them in the streets.

Don't believe me? Go read the Declaration of Independence. Study the list of grievances. Tell me that the founders of this nation weren't rising up against a man very much like George W. Bush.

Bush administration officials unveiled a bold new assertion of executive authority yesterday in the dispute over the firing of nine U.S. attorneys, saying that the Justice Department will never be allowed to pursue contempt charges initiated by Congress against White House officials once the president has invoked executive privilege.
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Rozell, the George Mason professor and authority on executive privilege, said the administration's stance "is almost Nixonian in its scope and breadth of interpreting its power. Congress has no recourse at all, in the president's view. . . . It's allowing the executive to define the scope and limits of its own powers."

Carpetbagger:

Let’s cut to the chase: the president and his team are arguing that once the White House claims executive privilege, there is no recourse. The president is accountable to literally no one — not the Congress, whose subpoenas can be ignored, or the federal judiciary, which can’t hear a case that cannot be filed.

We’re talking about what is, in effect, a rogue presidency.
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It’s actually worse than Nixonian. As Kleiman noted, “Nixon eventually admitted that even he had to obey the law.” Bush, in no uncertain terms, is stating unequivocally that he does not.

Publius:

... this is the administration’s original sin. It thinks that it alone can decide the scope of its own war powers, torture power, etc. That’s why it disregards laws (society’s precommitments) and resists overview by courts. It gets to decide the scope of its own power. It’s difficult to imagine a view more antithetical to the structure of the Constitution, but there it is.

emptywheel:

You see, there's a reason why Bush is so confident this scheme is going to work. He has effectively reassembled the same team that ran this shell game the last time. [Fred Fielding and John Roberts] And to add to the fun, the US Attorney for DC--Jeff Taylor--is one of the remaining PATRIOT provision USAs--plucked from among the Gonzales clique at DOJ and installed in DC just in time to prevent Democrats from exercising any real oversight.

Praire Weather:

Eyes wide open, please. When the Bush administration spends so much time using legal arguments, they're tying up Congress so it can't do other work and they're diverting our attention from something they don't want us to focus on.

Maybe it's Hillary's stinging letter to Secretary of Defense Gates
"Breaking: Gates Distances Himself From Edelman's Attack On Hillary Clinton"

Mark Kleiman: "Whatever gun they're hiding must be really and truly smoking. What Bush and Fielding have been smoking is a different question."

Committee Chairman Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) decried what he called FEMA's indifference to storm victims and said the situation was "sickening." He said the documents "expose an official policy of premeditated ignorance" and added that "senior officials in Washington didn't want to know what they already knew, because they didn't want the legal and moral responsibility to do what they knew had to be done."

Assistant US Attorney Brian Frazier says the government has no obligation to identify specific victims and specific plots. "The agreement is what is important," he says.
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The issue is significant in the Bush administration's war on terror because if upheld in the courts the government's approach would permit proactive prosecutions of individuals long before they take any affirmative step toward carrying out a specific act of terror against a particular target. [Minority Report]

7.19.2007 "Bush: No Deal On Children's Health Plan"

"I never knew why they fought so hard to keep it secret," said Charles A. Samuels, outside counsel to the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers ...

7.19.2007 Cheney Suppressed Evidence in California Energy Crisis By Jason Leopold

But the documentary evidence of widespread market manipulation that FERC [Federal Energy Regulatory Commission] obtained in March 2001, ... was sealed by FERC on direct orders by Cheney because it would have been a political nightmare for the Bush administration and would have derailed a recommendation of one of the cornerstones of the vice president's National Energy Policy: deregulation, and perhaps scuttle the policy altogether if evidence about the energy companies behavior in California was made public, according to half-a-dozen former FERC officials and former Energy Department officials.
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For former Governor Gray Davis, the illegal behavior by energy companies like Williams that federal energy regulators discovered, then covered up, during a time when the former governor had said publicly he believed such behavior had taken place, is beyond disturbing.
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"This was an absolute outrage and was based on pure greed," Davis added. "I clearly didn't know this was happening with Williams. I think FERC perpetrated a fraud on the American public and California consumers by sealing the findings of this investigation while I was out there saying that this type of manipulation was happening. I think that if the results of this investigation were made public in March 2001, when FERC knew this was taking place, it would have stopped energy deregulation in America in its tracks. This admission in effect by Williams would have been the death knell for energy deregulation."

With the “war on terror,” Bush has asserted the right of the president to wage war anywhere and for any length of time, at his whim, because the “terrorists” will always provide a convenient shadowy target. Just the “continual warfare” that Madison warned of in justifying the primary role of Congress in initiating and continuing to finance a war—the very issue now at stake in Bush’s battle with Congress.

In his “Political Observations,” written years before he served as fourth president of the United States, Madison went on to underscore the dangers of an imperial presidency bloated by war fever. “In war,” Madison wrote in 1795, at a time when the young republic still faced its share of dangerous enemies, “the discretionary power of the Executive is extended ... and all the means of seducing the minds are added to those of subduing the force, of the people.”
...
Bush betrayed Congress, which in turn betrayed the American people—just as Madison feared when he wrote: “Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it compromises and develops the germ of every other.”

... think about the use of the word "Homeland" to describe the United States. The [NIE] estimate repeats the term 11 times in its meager two pages of "key findings". That repetitions signals more than anything that this report is a document crafted for political purposes by an apparatus with a dangerous world view or at least by an apparatus headed by folks who hunger for a conflict.

People who write and think of their country as the Homeland with a capital H tend to think that they can redefine torture, ignore international treaties, fund disinformation efforts to keep morale high, launch wars based on hunches and emphasize the power of the executive branch because they consider themselves the good guys who are the only ones who know what's right for the country. They only want to protect the Homeland, don't you see? The vocabulary is symptomatic of a rigid, nationalistic world view.

See also Garrison Keillor: "It all began with the name Homeland Security. Somebody with a tin ear came up with that, maybe the pest exterminator from Texas, or Adm. Poinduster, because, friends, Americans don't refer to this as our homeland. It's an alien term, like Fatherland or Deutschland or Tomorrowland. Irving Berlin didn't write "God Bless Our Homeland." You never heard John Wayne say, "Men, we're going over that hill and we're going to kick those krauts out of there. And we're going to raise the flag of the homeland."

"Homeland" was a word you heard shrieked by a cruel man flicking his riding crop against his shiny black boots: "Zie homeland -- ve shall defend it at all costs, achwohl!" Americans live in Our Country, America, the nation of nations, the good old USA.

7.17.2007 Resurrecting Jim Crow: The Erratic Resume of the Voting Section Chief A collaborative effort by ePluribus Staff Writers: Cho, Standingup, wanderindiana, Aaron Barlow & Roxy

When John K. Tanner replaced Joe Rich as section chief of the Justice Department's Voting Section in 2005, a breathtaking politicization -- already under way after Alex Acosta was put in charge of the Civil Rights Division -- accelerated sharply. The exodus of talent, expertise, and knowledge of civil rights law in the two years under Tanner's stewardship is numbing. Roughly 50% of the staff1 -- attorneys, including many of the top litigators, researchers and analysts -- have left, and Tanner has waged an aggressive effort to remake the section in his own image -- not an image that most people who promote the core mission of the Voting Rights Act, which the Section is primarily responsible for enforcing, would support. via emptywheel

Still outraged two years later, Rep. Maxine Waters, a very liberal Democrat from California, and Rep. James Sensenbrenner, a very conservative Republican from Wisconsin, held a press conference July 12 announcing a new version of the 2005 bill. "We are here today to pick up the fight and hopefully prevent the observance of a three-year (Kelo) anniversary," Sensenbrenner announced.

7.16.2007 "There were 20.5 million decisions to classify government secrets last year, and a report to the president found serious shortcomings in the process."

7.16.2007 Sandy Levinson proposes amendments to the constitution:

2b (1) ... [THIS WOULD SOLVE THE DICK CHENEY PROBLEM, WHERE SOMEONE WITH A SUPERB RESUME TURNS OUT TO HAVE DISASTROUSLY FLAWED JUDGMENT AND A TERRIFYING PERSONA TO BOOT.]

But even if it were true that Iran is aiding groups that attack U.S. forces in Iraq, the United States is in no position to complain -- since we have no right to be in Iraq in the first place. If we wish to take our personnel out of harm's way, leave Iraq. That is the right course of action, it is the only practical course of action, and it is the one thing we absolutely refuse to do. Even if our troop levels should be reduced over the next year or two, the plan is for the United States to remain in Iraq for decades to come.

... That leaves Mr. Chertoff, whose department has vacancies in a quarter of its top leadership positions, as the de facto general in charge of defending us from the enemy he had that "gut feeling" about, the Qaeda not in Iraq. Last week we learned from a sting operation conducted by Congressional investigators that this enemy needs only a Mail Boxes Etc. account, a phone and a fax machine to buy radioactive material from American suppliers and build a dirty bomb.

For all Washington's hyperventilating about the Iraqi Parliament's vacation plans, it's our own government's vacation from reality this summer that should make us very afraid.

An internal investigation that the House Intelligence Committee has refused to make public portrays the panel as embarrassingly entangled in the Randy "Duke" Cunningham bribery scandal.

The report, a declassified version of which was obtained by the Los Angeles Times, describes the committee as a dysfunctional entity that served as a crossroads for almost every major figure in the ongoing criminal probe by the Justice Department.
The article also provides an update on the Cunningham and friends litigation.

But then this took place and I'm completely confused. Here's RJ Eskow in Huffington Post:

... Predictably, the Lieberman measure passed 97-0. But it's not the reporting requirements themselves that are dangerous - it's the amendment's language. It lists a hodgepodge of undocumented and inflammatory accusations before stating that "the murder of members of the United States Armed Forces by a foreign government or its agents is an intolerable and unacceptable act of hostility against the United States by the foreign government in question." These are words that invite an act of war against Iran, even in the absence of clear evidence of involvement.

The amendment doesn't just ask for intelligence on Iranian activity. It requires ongoing reports on proactive U.S. efforts against alleged Iranian efforts, placing political pressure on our military to become more active against Iran. Word in Washington is that top military leaders are resisting an attack on Iran, saying we lack the resources. This is a great way to lean on the generals to change their minds.

... I don't know what kind of "strategy" the Democrats think is in play when they sign off on a bizarre statement about Iran that opens up all kinds of avenues for the president to start another war, but they are engaging in a very dangerous game. Arming the Republicans with any excuse to shoot the moon right now is political malpractice. On their best days, the Republicans are reckless and delusional. Now that they're desperate, anything could happen. Why did the Dems just hand them a loaded gun? I don't get it.

The bottom line is that the opponents of universal health care appear to have run out of honest arguments. All they have left are fantasies: horror fiction about health care in other countries, and fairy tales about health care here in America.