through the legal looking glass

By this late date, it is not news that the Bush Administration has played fast and loose with the law—burying their wrongdoing in a mirror maze of official obfuscation, tortured logic, and secret legal opinions. What apparently is news is that flouting the law and not telling anyone isn’t technically illegal.

WASHINGTON - U.S. Rep. Brad Miller wants the Department of Justice to come out of the dark and embrace the sunlight.

Miller, a Raleigh Democrat, introduced legislation today that would force the Justice agency to give more information to Congress about what he calls “secret law.”

Such secrecy has been used in the past, as in a memo by legal counsel John Woo in 2003 that allowed for extreme interrogation techniques, according to Miller.

The bill would require the U.S. Attorney General to tell Congress whenever the executive branch decides it is not bound by federal law.

Coming as it did on Constitution Day—the 221st anniversary of the signing of the United States Constitution—this one really has to make your head spin. We actually need to pass legislation to compel the Attorney General of the United States to report to the legislative branch when the executive branch plans to ignore violate federal law.

There is apparently some sort of loophole here? That’s what the very brief article tells us, but, seriously, folks, what are we talking about: is the loophole that the White House is allowed to violate the law, or just that they aren’t somehow required to tell anyone when they do?

While I certainly support any legislation that provides for more sunlight in such matters, when the President, the Vice President, the Attorney General, or any of a number of executive branch employees unilaterally decide that some laws were made to be broken, taking them to task for not telling you seems a terribly small first step.

By all means, make the executive declare openly which laws they plan to ignore violate—and then haul them before Congress when they do.

And then punish them for their crimes.

It’s a way of doing things best summed up by the phrase “A government of laws; not a government of men.” I don’t know how they roll in Wonderland, but that’s how we handle it in the United States. . . or at least used to.


(cross-posted on The Seminal and Daily Kos)

I thought it was his obscenely rich yet insubstantial flavor

Everyone was all up in arms Monday because former Justice Department flack Monica Goodling was revealed to have asked prospective job candidates, “What is it about George W. Bush that makes you want to serve him?” This was interpreted to be an inappropriate question because aspirants to career DoJ positions are not supposed to have to pass a partisan litmus test for what are intended to be apolitical jobs.

While Goodling might still have been feeling around for some sort of fealty, I think that folks are reading her question all wrong. Not unlike the folks at Star-Kist, this star-struck Regent University grad wasn’t looking for people that thought GW Bush had good taste; she wanted employees that thought GW Bush tasted good.

C’mon, why don’t you think about it: What is it that makes you want to serve Bush? Is it that his meat is so lean? That he is stuffed with government pork? The years of marinating in beer and bourbon? The fact that he comes packed in oil? His (artificially flavored) country-style gravy? Please let me know.

And, if you have any recipes for how to serve Bush, please post them below. You’ll be doing Monica and your country a great, uh, service.


(cross-posted on Daily Kos and The Seminal)

everybody’s out of town

Gosh, if you ever wanted to hear an echo in your own echo chamber, just yell into the left side of the blogosphere Wednesday Afternoon – Thursday Morning. With everybody (but me) seemingly on their way to that “hate fest” known as Yearly Kos, there is scant little posted on many of my favorite sites.

So, nowhere do I see anyone who can provide me with the choice text of former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s testimony before the House Oversight Committee where I swear I heard Rummy say that he wasn’t going to admit that he knew that Cpl. Pat Tillman was fragged or that his “blue on black” killing was covered up because no one could produce any evidence that said that he (Rumsfeld) knew. . . which to my mind is quite a bit different from actually saying you didn’t know.

Cheney’s appearance on Larry King seems a tad under-covered, too. Though there is this great video on TPM that reveals Cheney’s rather transparent “tell.”

And then there is this matter, which, admittedly does have two big diaries dedicated to it over dKos, but I really wish someone was out there to boil it all down a bit. . . .

The story, which springs from a string of anonymous comments left on TPM since July 27, seemingly from someone with some inside knowledge. The comments, as best I can figure (and there are a lot of comments, so I am seriously reducing this), assert that by getting all wrapped up in Gonzo’s parsing of his parsing about the “TSP” or some “other” program, Congress, and those Americans that care, are sort of barking up the wrong tree.

The comments paint a picture of a much, much bigger program, run out of the NSC (National Security Council)—not the NSA—that is engaged in wholesale domestic surveillance of all kinds, and detentions and abductions, perhaps inside the US, and that all of this started prior to October 1, 2001.

The NSC, of course, does not have to report to the Department of Justice or its Office of Legal Counsel, and operates outside the jurisdiction of the FISA court.

Dick Cheney, naturally, has experience with such a dodge. A little poking around reminds me that then Representative Cheney (WY) helped steer the House Iran-Contra investigation away from George HW Bush, and, as vice president, Cheney had meetings with Iran-Contra felon Elliott Abrams and Iran-Contra player Saudi Prince Bandar where he discussed “lessons learned” from that Regan-era scandal. Iran-Contra was run off the books through the National Security Council.

And, I will add that, with this in mind, I notice that Cheney in his back and forth justification of his fourthbranch role in government, keeps mentioning that he sits on the NSC.

Guess it’s on his mind.

Why, it’s almost as if he’s begging someone to ask the right questions. . . .

So that he can then lie some more when he answers.


If anyone out there has answers to any of this (or, if not answers, ideas will do), please drop me a line.

next mechanism please

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) called again for the resignation of Attorney General (and “loyal Bushie”) Alberto Gonzales. Speaking during the debate to end the debate on the so-called “vote of no confidence,” Reid began as follows:

I rise in support of S.J. Res. 14, a resolution expressing the Sense of the Senate that Attorney General Gonzales has lost the confidence of Congress and the American people. The Senate has a responsibility to express its displeasure with a Cabinet officer who has grossly mismanaged his responsibilities and failed the American people. That is the one and only mechanism we have – short of impeachment – to address malfeasance by a high-ranking federal official.

Well, while a majority of the Senate clearly expressed their lack of confidence, the move for cloture failed to gain needed 60 votes. The final “yes” vote of 53 included seven Republicans; the 38 “no” votes included Republican toy balloon Joe Lieberman (Schmuck-CT).

I probably don’t need to remind you of the litany of Gonzo’s misdeeds (if you need reminders, New York Senator Chuck Schumer has a few here), but perhaps we all need reminding that, success or failure of S.J. Res. 14 notwithstanding, today, as yesterday, Alberto Gonzales is still the Attorney General, he is still in charge of the Department of Justice, he is still our nation’s “top law enforcement official.”

Senator Reid said the resolution was the only mechanism available short of impeachment—well, the cloture vote fell short, so what does that leave Reid, the US Senate, and the American people?

Senator Reid, Senator Schumer, Senator Leahy, Democrats—it’s time. Enough Pussyfootin’. If you want to keep the pressure on this miscreant and his lords and masters in the White House, if you want to start fighting back against the partisan political attacks on our Constitution and our electoral process, if you want to maintain your own credibility as the Party that stands in opposition to the criminal ways of the Bush Administration, then you need to start the wheels turning on that other mechanism. You need to begin hearings on the impeachment of Alberto Gonzales.

Now.

(almost) everybody must get stoned

These guys kill me. I mean, I know that they literally kill others, through their actions, but they, you know, in a head-shaking kind of disbelief way, stone-dead kill me.

Yesterday, it was Attorney General Alberto Gonzales taking the convenient opportunity to seize upon the resignation of his Deputy AG Paul McNulty to announce that, even though Gonzales had previously sworn little knowledge of what was going on regarding the US attorneys, and even though he had earlier the same day claimed that his chief deputy wasn’t actually a “top aid,” Abu-G now knew that the whole was USA-purge-gate mess was squarely McNulty’s fault.

Today, we read that the other guy vying for the title “Most Embattled Bushie,” World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz, is holding his organization hostage by insisting the Bank take the blame for his, Wolfie’s, misdeeds:

After six weeks of combating efforts to oust him as president of the World Bank, Paul D. Wolfowitz began Wednesday to negotiate the terms under which he would resign, in return for the dropping or softening of the charge that he had engaged in misconduct, bank officials said.

Mr. Wolfowitz was said to be adamant that he be cleared of wrongdoing before he resigned, according to people familiar with his thinking.

This is after Wolfowitz already laid the blame for his troubles on his “companion” (or maybe former companion?) Shaha Riza:

Wolfowitz effectively blamed Riza for his predicament as well, saying that her "intractable position" in demanding a salary increase as compensation for her career disruption forced him to grant one to pre-empt a lawsuit.

Indeed, these are the kinds of men we want in charge of the Justice Department and the World Bank. This is an example of the high moral and ethical standards that America wants to hold up as a beacon to the rest of the planet. This is the kind of dedication to self and others, to friends, to country, to the institution you serve, run, and pretend to honor that it makes each of us want to stand up, salute, and vow to be better ourselves.

Not.

Rather, this is the kind of behavior that makes people turn off to public service, distrust their governments, and assume that rules are different for the rich and powerful. In short, it makes people cynical.

Which is likely a happy byproduct for the members of this cult of irresponsibility. Sure, first and foremost, it is an innate sense of entitlement and an imperial hubris that results in such behavior—and the likes of Gonzales and Wolfowitz (not to mention the likes of Bush and Cheney) probably don’t even realize it could or should be any other way. But, their religious dedication to blaming others, this pathological inability to see that the fault lies not in the stars, but somewhere much, much closer to home, thrives in the climate it creates, thus allowing the self-anointed forgivers of their own sins to continue in the same self-obsessed vein, and maybe contributing to even bigger abuses and grander claims of immunity.

What’s really funny, too, is how any number of these sorts like to wear their piety on their sleeves—so quick to tell everyone else they’ve got it wrong, have erred, have transgressed, are not worthy of trust or respect. . . . I guess if you are so certain that you yourself are without guilt, it is easier to cast that first stone.

Like I said, these guys kill me. Stone-dead kill me.


(cross-posted to Daily Kos)