Reading: Notes on the banality of "tyranny"

Charlie Pierce plants one deep in the bleachers this morning, reviewing the care and circumspection with which the signers of the Declaration of Independence thought through their use of the word "tyrant" to describe the obviously-tyrannical George III – and comparing that with yesterday's morally feckless, intellectually sloppy, and politically expedient party-line vote by House Republicans to sue President Obama for alleged offenses against the Constitution, offenses which, if true, ought to require them as a matter of law and conscience (!) to begin impeachment hearings by tiffin tomorrow.

I haven't yet located the full text of the resolution authorizing the House GOP's Impeachment Lite lawsuit, but we can safely assume that, when I do, the words "we mutually pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor" will be nowhere in evidence.

Pierce's essay, "Words Matter," is going in the p3 Readings list.

Impeachment? Paste this in your hat

For the next time someone tells you that all this "impeachment" talk is really a reverse-psych instigated by the Obama White House, cynically trying to wrong-foot the gullible but innocent Republicans in and out of Congress for political and fund-raising gain (but I repeat myself).

You probably knew some or most of this, but here it is, all in one place. Follow David Weigel's links at the site:

On Tuesday, after the conference meeting, Speaker John Boehner told reporters that “impeachment” was “a scam started by the Democrats at the White House.”

It wasn’t. If impeachment is a scam, it was started on the right, early in the Obama presidency. Some of its early adherents believed in it; some thought they were merely responding to the passions of constituents; some, obviously, wanted to raise money. At the start of this summer, the conservative book-publishing industry churned out two new tomes about why Republicans needed to start an impeachment conversation, to stop pretending that it was crazy to accuse the president of high crimes and realize that it was consistent with the rest of the party’s arguments. Republicans mostly refused to listen.

Then, on July 8 of this year, came Sarah Palin. Her PAC (this is important—see above, re: fundraising) placed an op-ed at Breitbart.com, announcing that the time had come for the I-word. For inexplicable reasons, Palin can still shift a news cycle; in a lucky synchronicity, the Senate campaign of Iowa Democratic Rep. Bruce Braley chose July 8 to release a tape of his opponent calling for impeachment.

Nothing will stop a movement quite like the other party noticing it. “Should Obama be impeached?” had been a slam-dunk kook-spotting question for years.

Like the House GOP's Impeachment Lite lawsuit against Obama, officially launched today, the only cause for delay was the tedious business of deciding what he would be found guilty of.

Fun fact: Former Georgia Republican Congressman Bob Barr, who was starting the paperwork calling for Bill Clinton's impeachment in 1997, making him first out of the gate by months, hoped to stage a political comeback this year – perhaps sensing that the time was right for someone with his impeach-for-whatever-reason street cred – but he got his ass whupped in the GOP primary by Tea Party candidate Barry Loudermilk. Sorry, Mr. Barr; but there'll be no resting on your laurels. The new GOP slogan is Who have you impeached for us lately?


Weigel's Salon article about the frantic efforts by Republican leadership to distance themselves from all the talk – but not the underlying intent – of Tea-Party fueled impeachment fantasies, is going on the p3 Readings list.

A quantum of umbrage: Wingnut welfare is forever

I share Charlie Pierce's shock and dismay upon discovering that this guy hasn't been dead for years:

Will the sad detritus of the Saint Ronnie administration ever stop fouling American public life? We have Our Lady Of The Magic Dolphins on the teevee almost every weekend. We had a whole clutch of the foreign-policy fantasts rehabilitated during the late reign of C-Plus Augustus. And now, this guy, who once advocated concentration camps for student demonstrators, who personally oversaw the most embarrassing "investigation" into the porn industry ever conducted, and who functioned as lookout and getaway driver for the Iran-Contra crooks, up to and including the increasingly dim president himself, comes back to help screw up the nation again. Nobody listens to Gary Hart, but Edwin Meese III still has a place in public life. Wingnut welfare is forever.

I remember hearing an NPR story in the early days of the Clinton administration, when the “Arkansas Project” was just gaining traction -- Whitewater! Vince Foster! Rural airstrips! Cattle futures! -- and it included a quote from Meese, of all people, solemnly reminding listeners that “no President is above the law.”

I fired off a comment to NPR saying that this was like then-Chicago Bulls coach Phil Jackson saying that “no NBA player should spend time in the air.”

I don't believe it was read on-air. Maybe they read it to themselves but didn't get it. See, I was comparing the greatness of Michael “Air” Jordan to that of Ronald “Above the Law” Reagan. Ahem.

I thought it was funny. Shut up.

Somerby's right

You know, I really don't want to hear what's in those emails between Gov. (for the time being) Sanford and his mistress in Argentina. Apart from the fact that it red-lines my personal yuck-meter, it's just cheap, smirky Starr Report-style voyeurism.

Okay, we get it--Sanford the Promise-Keeper had an affair and wasn't very smart to think he could keep it quiet for very long. But the emails' content adds nothing substantive to the real story, which is aberrant behavior by the state's chief executive (to say nothing of the question of dereliction of duty and possible misuse of public resources, which aren't proved yet). You want to see Sanford brought to heel, those are pretty good grounds right there. The rest--and Keith and Rachel, I'm looking at you--is just sheet-sniffing.

I'll also be interested to hear how the Charlotte Columbia SC paper that broke this story got their hands on the email, and more importantly why they decided to sit on them for six months.

But the content of those emails--now made slightly pathetic by events--will have plenty of opportunity to see the light of day in the probably forthcoming Sanford v. Sanford. For now, let it drop. "Sauce for the goose" is no excuse for sinking to the murky moral depths of Kenneth Starr (or then-Congressman Sanford, who argued that Clinton should resign over Monicagate on the grounds that the cover-up was as bad as the infidelity, if not worse).

August 8, 1974

Congress acknowledged and responded to growing public anger.

Its response was bipartisan.

The political media investigated White House lawbreaking, lies, and cover-ups.

A president, reined-in if not apologetic, resigned.

A handful of people even went to jail.

The Constitution and the rule of law were mostly reaffirmed.

It was another world.

The unforgiving minute

Remember the good old days, back when you'd read that Dick Cheney was getting hot to shoot some seals and at least you could still assume it was harp seals or Pacific harbor seals--not Navy SEALS?

There was a dozen ideas proffered [by administration officials meeting in Cheney's office] about how to trigger a war [with Iran]. The one that interested me the most was why don’t we build — we in our shipyard — build four or five boats that look like Iranian PT boats. Put Navy seals on them with a lot of arms. And next time one of our boats goes to the Straits of Hormuz, start a shoot-up.

Might cost some lives. And it was rejected because you can’t have Americans killing Americans. That’s the kind of — that’s the level of stuff we’re talking about. Provocation. But that was rejected.

"Might cost some lives."

Minute's up.

Send Karl Rove to prison

Robert Greenwald and the never-say-die folks at Brave New Films have put together this primer on the issues:

In a statement announcing the release of the video and the accompanying petition project, Greenwald writes:

All we have to do is pressure the 40 members of the House Judiciary Committee, make them hold Rove in contempt and send him to jail. We've never had such a direct opportunity to hold Rove accountable. No, this is not enough punishment for his years and years of crimes, but it's a huge start, and will send a very clear message to the entire Bush administration.

I'm sympathetic--believe me, I'm sympathetic--but any sentence about making a member of the Bush Mafia face justice that begins with the words "All we have to do is . . . " has a pretty starry-eyed view of the last two years of the HJC in action (and we won't bother mentioning the six years before that).

Also, let's be clear about one other thing: If the thought of letting Rove see a little time behind bars--even if it's only an hour or two, while he waits for Ted Olson to personally post his bail--pleases you because it sends a message to the entire Bush administration, I'm glad for you. Personally, I don't think the administration gives a crap about any message it gets sent (ask the EPA).

I think the reason for sending Karl Rove to prison for breaking the law is to send Karl Rove to prison for breaking the law.

Reading: Pierce on "absolution without confession or penance"

Charles Pierce writes in Esquire this month, offering himself as proof that one person's cynic is another person's clear-eyed realist. Here, he says, is the real challenge facing a Democratic president in 2009:

Someone will have to measure the wreckage. Someone will have to walk through the ruins. Someone will have to count the cost.

More than anything else, the presidential election ongoing is -- or, as a right, ought to be -- about ending an era of complicity. There is no point anymore in blaming George Bush or the men he hired or the party he represented or the conservative movement that energized that party for what has happened to this country in the past seven years. They were all merely the vehicles through whom the fear and the lassitude and the neglect and the dry rot that had been afflicting the democratic structures for decades came to a dramatic and disastrous crescendo. The Bill of Rights had been rendered a nullity by degrees long before a passel of apparatchik hired lawyers found in its text enough gray space to allow a fecklessly incompetent president to command that torture be carried out in the country’s name. The war powers of the Congress had been deeded wholesale to the executive long before Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz and a passel of think-tank cowboys found within them the right of a fecklessly incompetent president to make war unilaterally on anyone, anywhere, forever. The war in Iraq is the powerful bastard child of the Iran-Contra scandal, which went unpunished.

The ownership of the people over their politics -- and, therefore, over their government -- had been placed in quitclaim long before the towers fell, and the president told the people to be just afraid enough to let him take them to war and just afraid enough to reelect him, but not to be so afraid that they stayed out of the malls.

He's been here before; last winter, near the height of Obama's reliance on the "end the politics of division" theme, which I found as poorly conceived as did Brother Pierce, he wrote:

If we're ever going to get past the depredations of the Bush Administration -- many of which, I guarantee you, are still deeply secret -- it is an insufficient remedy to declare that the "politics of division" are now over and we will now reunite under a banner and move forward together. […]

The next president's most critical function in the early days is not to make us all feel good about our country again. It is to be the head of an informal national Truth Commission.

Pierce's latest piece is going onto the Readings list in the sidebar.


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Corrections

(Updated: dead video link fixed.)

Stock analysts call it a "correction" when a stock or an index dips significantly after a prolonged, generally upward trend.

In December 2006, five weeks after widespread Republican losses in the 2006 general election and his own firing, Donald Rumsfeld, former Secretary of Defense, had his own sense of what a "correction" would be:

RUMSFELD: That's what I was just going to say. This President's pretty much a victim of success. We haven't had an attack in five years. The perception of the threat is so low in this society that it's not surprising that the behavior pattern reflects a low threat assessment. The same thing's in Europe, there's a low threat perception. The correction for that, I suppose, is an attack.

(It's good to be reminded what a maimed soul Rumsfeld was, isn't it?)

Yes, Mr. Secretary, that's the problem with terrorists: You can't always count on them to attack us when it's politically useful for the Republican Party.

Fortunately, the Bush administration had the next best thing: The Homeland Security Advisory System, better known as the color-coded threat-level indicator. Let's review how that's worked out:

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I offer another example of a "correction:"

As Americans became increasingly and rightly cynical about the "threat-level-orange" tactics between 2003 and mid-2006, it has become less useful to the Bush administration as a distraction from revelations of its own mistakes, deceptions, and incompetence, or from events which display the increasing support of Americans for Democratic candidates and policies. The result has been a "correction" in the Bush admnistration's reliance on conveniently-timed threat warnings, following a generally-upward trend for four years.

In fact, the last time Homeland Security announced that the threat level was being raised to "High" (Orange) or "Severe" (Red) was August 10-14, 2006, in the run-up to the 2006 mid-term elections.

We can't account for this by saying that our continuing military presence in Iraq has curbed terrorism, since the opposite appears to be true: The failed state of Iraq has become a breeding ground for terrorism.

And we can't say that the Bush administration has abandoned the tactic of trumped-up fear of terrorism to protect itself politically, since Bush, Cheney, and their various enablers continue to publicly link Saddam to al Qaeda, speculate about which Democratic candidate bin Laden prefers, and so on.

And I suppose some brave soul might even advance the case that, following electoral defeat after defeat and saddled with the strongest disapproval by the American people in memory, the Bush administration has finally learned its lesson and realized that it's morally wrong, that it's not worth winning if the only way you can do it is to corrupt the very form of government you claim to be defending--if that brave soul wanted to be laughed out of the room.

No, I think we have to conclude that the Bush administration has discontinued its attempts at fear-by-threat-level for the same reason--the only reason--it ever abandons such disreputable tactics: It no longer works.

Think of it as a correction.


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Five years on, and what are the options?

Five years on, and Bush scarcely understands how disconnected he is from most Americans:

"Five years into this battle, there is an understandable debate over whether the war was worth fighting, whether the fight is worth winning, and whether we can win it," Mr. Bush said. "The answers are clear to me. Removing Saddam Hussein from power was the right decision - and this is a fight America can and must win."

He spoke of the thousands of Americans and Iraqis who have lost their lives in the war. But he said freedom is taking hold in Iraq, and the extremists and terrorists are losing ground.

Sadly, this narcissistic display still makes Bush seem almost touchy-feely next to his vice president. Five years on, Cheney knows there's a disconnect with the American people but he couldn't care less:

CHENEY: On the security front, I think there’s a general consensus that we’ve made major progress, that the surge has worked. That’s been a major success.

RADDATZ: Two-third of Americans say it’s not worth fighting.

CHENEY: So?

RADDATZ So? You don’t care what the American people think?

CHENEY: No. I think you cannot be blown off course by the fluctuations in the public opinion polls.

Cheney's smug indifference--and why shouldn't he feel that way? why would he imagine even for a moment that he might one day be called to account for what he's done?--comes as American military casualties in Iraq are about to reach the 4000-mark.

(Sadly, though, this statistic would come as news to 46% of Americans.)

Five years on.

Here's a good reminder: Public events like last weekend's rally against the war are a good thing, and I recommend participation in them for several reasons I won't belabor again here. But we're in an era quite unlike any before in this country, certainly unlike the Vietnam War era, with which the current debacle is frequently compared.

The difference is this: Nixon tried to break our constitutional form of government, but failed; Cheney and Bush, with the help of the post-Gingrich Republican party, have largely succeeded. Impeachment is certainly warranted, but it's a practical impossibility. Congressional oversight is now at least possible once again with a Democratically controlled Congress, but Bush and Cheney have figured out that if they simply defy the law--by rigging the US Attorney system, stacking the federal courts with partisans, issuing so-called signing statements to abrogate any or all parts of a law that they don't like, and simply ignoring subpoenas--nothing will ever happen to them. True, they're disliked to an unprecedented degree but, paraphrasing an often-repeated quote, how many legions does Zogby command?

In the end, Nixon resigned because Congress refused to ignore his transgressions and because his own party leaders implored him to do so for the sake of the party. Popular disapproval, partly embodied in years of rallies and marches, were the fire at their heels. For Bush and Cheney, though, a cowed Congress makes oversight irrelevant and a complicit Republican Party makes partisan pressure unlikely in the extreme.

I wouldn't have imagined two years ago that, if the Iraq debacle would be chugging along at full speed today, it then wouldn't continue to be the number-one issue in the 2008 campaign, but the recession--the only credible debates are whether we're technically in it yet and how long it will last--has managed to take America's eye off the ball. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised: Fear (of losing one's job, one's health insurance, and one's home) does concentrate the mind wonderfully.

So, to return to my theme, marches and rallies have their purpose, but directly affecting policy is no longer among them. And the media are of almost no use--there'll be no "if we've lost Walter Cronkite, we've lost the country" moment this time. The remaining peaceful alternative is the electoral process--a scary thought, given how unreliable it's become, but there we are.

Which is why I find it encouraging to read about the "Responsible Plan" now being advanced by several Democratic congressional candidates--candidates, mind you, not incumbents--for regaining control of the disaster that is America's Iraq policy. In seven bullet points, it comes down to this, none of which is startlingly new:

1. End U.S. Military Action in Iraq
2. Use U.S. diplomatic power
3. Address humanitarian concerns
4. Restore our Constitution
5. Restore our military
6. Restore independence to the media
7. Create a new, U.S.-centered energy policy

You can read the particulars here. You can read commentary about it from Horse's Ass, Digby, Open Left, Downwithtyrrany, and Pam's House Blend. Oregon US Senate candidates Steve Novick and Jeff Merkley have both signed on.

It's too early to conclude that this will change the game--it could easily be driven off the radar screen by the next congressman with a DUI--but it is encouraging to think of an incoming freshman class committed to this in 2009.

Five years on, and it's a sign of the times that a document that would turn the defining policy of the Bush administration 180 degrees calls itself, without a trace of Swiftian irony, a "reasonable plan."

Happy thought for the day

Judicial underachiever and self-loathing quota beneficiary Clarence Thomas doesn't enjoy his work:

"There's not much that entices about the job," Thomas said, answering questions from the public that provided a rare glimpse of the man behind the office. "There's no money in it, no privacy, no big houses, and from an ego standpoint, it does nothing for me."

Thomas, 59, said the position is satisfying because he feels he's serving the public, and he's honored by it, "but I wouldn't say I like it."

"I like sports," Thomas said. "I like to drive a motor home."

Thomas, part of the 5-4 majority in Bush v. Gore, added this image (although whether with irony or not is difficult to say):

Thomas said sometimes he will just sit and read the Constitution to admire it as a document.

Clarence Thomas, unhappy that he's a Supreme Court Justice.

Good.

(Hat tip to ThinkProgress.)

Annotated apology

We would like to apologize for the way in which politicians are represented in this programme. It was never our intention to imply that politicians are weak-kneed, political time-servers who are concerned more with their personal vendettas and private power struggles than the problems of government, nor to suggest at any point that they sacrifice their credibility by denying free debate on vital matters in the mistaken impression that party unity comes before the well-being of the people they supposedly represent, nor to imply at any stage that they are squabbling little toadies without an ounce of concern for the vital, social problems of today, nor indeed to we intend that viewers should consider them as crabby ulcerous little self-seeking vermin with furry legs and an excessive addiction to alcohol and certain explicit sexual practices which some people might find offensive. We are sorry if this impression has come across.

Monty Python's Flying Circus, 1972

About time: Boxer remembers how the game is played

From the WaPo's "Sleuth" column:

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), through a spokeswoman, now acknowledges she is blocking former Rep. James Rogan's (R-Calif.) nomination to the federal bench because of his role in impeaching former president Bill Clinton.[…]

Her spokeswoman said Boxer is denying Rogan a hearing because of his record in Congress against abortion rights, cleaning up the environment, helping organized workers and stopping gun violence.

But it's all that, and much more. Boxer now admits: She's not about to help a man who led the impeachment crusade against Clinton, which she fervently fought on the Senate floor in 1998. Rogan, who is now a California state judge, was of one 13 House managers who tried Clinton's impeachment case (and lost) in the Senate.

Even if his cordial correspondence with Rogan over the years, some of it handwritten, means that Clinton himself is willing to forgive his impeacher, Boxer certainly isn't ready to reward Rogan with a plum lifetime judicial appointment.

"Congressman Rogan was one of the most enthusiastic backers of impeachment -- he thought President Clinton had committed high crimes and misdemeanors," says Boxer spokeswoman Natalie Ravitz. "The Senate certainly disagreed with that conclusion, as did Senator Boxer."

(Rogan's no doubt pissed at this development, but he's facing another enemy historically far worse than Boxer--himself. He has a history of biting himself in his own ass.)

This goes out to Senator Boxer, with hugs, from p3:

Olbermann: Mr. Bush, "We're better than you"

Keith Olbermann's Special Comment Monday night dipped into the proscribed lexicon--the words that the Media Insiders are forbidden to use--in describing Bush and the end of Daniel Levin's career in the Justice Department.

The canon of impermissible journalistic language includes:

• "criminal conspiracy to save the ass of George W. Bush"
• "liar"
• "screwed"
• "wouldn't just mean impeachment"
• "going to prison"

The story, broken three years after the event by ABC News, has been unsurprisingly missing from the mainstream news media radar screen, but in two sentences, it's this:

1. In 2004, then Acting Assistant Attorney General Daniel Levin, in order to form a judgment about whether waterboarding, among other interrogation techniques, constituted torture and was therefore illegal under American and international law, subjected himself under controlled conditions to waterboarding at a military base near Washington DC.


2. Even knowing that his ultimate safety was assured by the experts monitoring his condition, Levin found the experience of incrementally drowning so terrifying that he put his professional opinion--"torture is abhorrent"--in a Justice Department memorandum, shortly after the dissemination of which he was forced out of his job by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

Here's Olbermann's comment:

Part 1:

Part 2:

Transcript here.

No wonder Olbermann has been deemed no longer safe for basic cable.

This just in: Bush vows to keep US troops in Iraq until Nelson Mandela is really dead

Just in case you were wondering:

Nelson Mandela is still very much alive despite an embarrassing gaffe by U.S. President George W. Bush, who alluded to the former South African leader's death in an attempt to explain sectarian violence in Iraq.[…]

Jailed for 27 years for fighting white minority rule, Mandela became South Africa's first black president in 1994. He won a Nobel Peace Prize for preaching racial harmony and guiding the nation peacefully into the post-apartheid era.

References to his death -- Mandela is now 89 and increasingly frail -- are seen as insensitive in South Africa.

For those who missed it:

If it makes South Africans feel any better--and at this point it might, or it might not--most Americans are pretty mortified by the whole thing, too.

All we can tell you is, when Bush starts making that chopping motion with his hand, it's the universal sign that he's not speaking for a single American citizen.

Mainstream

SurveyUSA reports that over 70% of Americans (including 49% of Republicans) think Congress should definitely be investigating Alberto Gonzales.

Nicely mirroring this trend, Loaded Orygun reports that 80% of Oregon's US House delegation (but including 0% Republicans) have co-sponsored the call for the impeachment of Gonzales.

Sad to see that Greg Walden (R- Fishkill) isn't joining his Oregon colleagues, but that's why they call it "being out of the mainstream."

Hats off to LO, by the way--they've been on fire over there lately.

L'etat, c'est moi--See, that means I'm the state. Heh, heh, heh.

Glenn Greenwald casts a cold eye on the latest application of the Bush administration's theory of its own unlimited power:

The Bush administration decided to announce to Washington Post reporters Dan Eggen and Amy Goldstein its view that it has the power to block the Justice Department, and its U.S. Attorneys, from criminally prosecuting Executive Branch employees who refuse to comply with Congressional subpoenas, notwithstanding a statute enacted by the American people through their Congress requiring such prosecution where Congress issues a contempt citation. We do not know who specifically in the administration announced this obviously radical position because the Post courteously granted them a shield of anonymity to hide behind.[…]

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."

Just contemplate what that actually means. One of the primary, defining attributes of a civilized society that lives under the rule of law is prosecutorial independence. Without that, political opponents of those in power can be prosecuted for political rather than legal reasons. And worse still, our most powerful political leaders are free to break the law with impunity because they control the prosecutorial process, which -- in this warped view of our republic -- means that presidents have an absolute power to block criminal prosecution of their subordinates who break the law, provided it was done at the President's behest.

The administration's theory is an absolute denial of prosecutorial independence. It means that federal prosecutors are nothing more than obedient servants of the President. They are not merely appointed by the President, but their specific decisions about whether to prosecute executive branch officials for criminal acts are controlled and dictated by the President. They are nothing more, as Rifkin said, than "emanations of the president's will."

It is hard to overstate how threatening that posture is to the defining attribute of a government that lives under the rule of law. As the Supreme Court said in 1974 in U.S. v. Nixon, when recognizing the validity of Executive Privilege in some cases but ordering President Nixon to turn over tapes of his private conversations with his aides (emphasis added; brackets in original):

This presumptive privilege must be considered in light of our historic commitment to the rule of law. This is nowhere more profoundly manifest than in our view that "the twofold aim [of criminal justice] is that guilt shall not escape or innocence suffer."

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.[…]

This latest assertion of power -- to literally block U.S. Attorneys from prosecuting executive branch employees -- is but another reflection of the lawlessness prevailing in our country, not a new revelation. We know the administration breaks laws with impunity and believes it can. That is no longer in question. The only real question is what, if anything, we are willing to do about that.

Yes, it is true that, as various Democratic statements are claiming, this theory poses a constitutional crisis since, yet again, the President declares the other two branches of government impotent and himself omnipotent. But we have had such a crisis for the last five years. We have just chosen to ignore it, to acquiesce to it, to allow it to fester.

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.

At this point, the blame rests not with the Bush administration. They have long made clear what they believe and, especially, what they are. They have been rubbing in our faces for several years the fact that they believe they can ignore the law and do what they want because nobody is willing to do anything about it. Thus far, they have been right, and the blame rests with those who have acquiesced to it.

It has been six months since the Democrats took over Congress. Yes, they have commenced some investigations and highlighted some wrongdoing. But that is but the first step, not the ultimate step, which we desperately need. Where are the real confrontations needed to vindicate the rule of law and restore constitutional order?

In the normal Constitutional order of things--something that's now teetering like a top--we will have a new president eighteen months from today. Bush and Cheney, and Gonzales and the rest of their cohort, will not change the path they're on. Not any part of it.

Even assuming that the next presidential administration does not share Bush and Cheney's lust for unchecked power and disrespect for our system of government, every one of these unchallenged coups by Bush becomes a precedent--a weapon lying around for future presidents to use when it suits them. Unless it's taken out of Bush's hands now.

We know what's on the path for the next year and a half--assuming the republic can survive next Saturday. The only question is what's on the congressional table.

Olbermann has his Emile Zola moment

Interestingly enough, Zola was also a former sportscaster with a reputation for feuding with every network he worked for* until he finally found his groove. Go figure, huh?

Just in time for Independence Day--celebrating the last time we took on a fellow named George for, among other things, corrupting our system of justice for his short-term partisan advantage--Keith Olbermann launched a historically-resonant attack on Bush's overt participation in an obstruction of justice scheme:

The enforcement of the laws is turned over to those of one political party, who will swear beforehand that they will not enforce those laws. The choice between war and peace is turned over to those of one political party, who stand to gain vast wealth by ensuring that there is never peace, but only war.

And now, when just one cooked book gets corrected by an honest auditor, when just one trampling of the inherent and inviolable fairness of government is rejected by an impartial judge, when just one wild-eyed partisan is stopped by the figure of blind justice, this President decides that he, and not the law, must prevail.

I accuse you, Mr. Bush, of lying this country into war.

I accuse you of fabricating in the minds of your own people, a false implied link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11.

I accuse you of firing the generals who told you that the plans for Iraq were disastrously insufficient.

I accuse you of causing in Iraq the needless deaths of 3,586 of our brothers and sons, and sisters and daughters, and friends and neighbors.

I accuse you of subverting the Constitution, not in some misguided but sincerely-motivated struggle to combat terrorists, but to stifle dissent.

I accuse you of fomenting fear among your own people, of creating the very terror you claim to have fought.

I accuse you of exploiting that unreasoning fear, the natural fear of your own people who just want to live their lives in peace, as a political tool to slander your critics and libel your opponents.

I accuse you of handing part of this Republic over to a Vice President who is without conscience, and letting him run roughshod over it.

And I accuse you now, Mr. Bush, of giving, through that Vice President, carte blanche to Mr. Libby, to help defame Ambassador Joseph Wilson by any means necessary, to lie to Grand Juries and Special Counsel and before a court, in order to protect the mechanisms and particulars of that defamation, with your guarantee that Libby would never see prison, and, in so doing, as Ambassador Wilson himself phrased it here last night, of becoming an accessory to the obstruction of justice.

_______________
*No, of course not.

Treason never prospers

Almost.

President Bush commuted the sentence of former aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby Monday, sparing him from a 2 1/2-year prison term in the CIA leak case.

Bush left intact a $250,000 fine and two years probation for Libby, according to a senior White House official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the decision had not been announced.

Bush's move came hours after a federal appeals panel ruled Libby could not delay his prison term in the CIA leak case. That decision put the pressure on the president, who had been sidestepping calls by Libby's allies to pardon the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney.

Libby was convicted in March of lying to authorities and obstructing the investigation into the 2003 leak of CIA operative's identity. He was the highest-ranking White House official ordered to prison since the Iran-Contra affair.

The $250,000 will be placed on the Platinum Cards of his masters' political friends.

The gang that pledged to bring honor back to the White House has brought the code of omerta instead: Lie, obstruct, refuse to testify, claim not to remember, and you'll be looked after.

Don Altobello speaks!

Shorter Specter: Let's bring White House people in for another round of lies and evasions to help Bush run out the clock--we can always try to actually get the truth later.

Arlen Specter, ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, on how to respond to the White House's claim of executive privilege as grounds to insist that it will only allow its subpoenaed staffers to testify if they aren't under oath and if there is no transcript (i.e., only if they can lie with complete impunity):

I think we ought to give consideration to bringing in those individuals and finding out what we can under the president's terms. It doesn't preclude us from compulsory process and proceeding with the subpoenas at a later time.

Specter, it should be pointed out, has only a tiny little smidgen of conscience, a cheap little toy compass that works better as a bracelet charm than as any sort of guide to principled action.

When he was chair of the Judiciary Committee, it was a sad yet infuriating joke. He would rehearse this same little dithering speech--exactly!--whenever Gonzales and his bunch would come in and lie to his face about wiretapping, torture, or what have you, and he insisted there was no need place them under oath. Then they'd lie, Specter would read about it in the papers and get asked about it on Sunday morning TV, and he'd fume, "We've got to get to the bottom of this!"

Until the next time, when they'd do it to him again. Lucy Van Pelt never found a more willing sucker.

Fortunately for Senator Specter, there's a ready line of talking-head shows willing to bring him on and present his particularly adle-pated form of accommodationism

Hat tip to Doctor Beyond, for knowing perfectly well that once he mentioned it to me I wouldn't be able to drop it.