"And there were war profiteers giving three cheers..."

This is pretty funny. Be sure to "flip" through the preview pages...and pay close attention to the stuff in the room. I've spent quite a bit of time with the original book the last few years, and I really appreciate the details...

Vice President Catches Up On Some "Filing"

Photo: (AFP/Jim Watson)

Sounds convenient.

A Fucking Clue for the Democrats...

The reason Congress' approval numbers are spiraling down the bowl, is NOT because you are "weak on terror" or "don't support thr troops" it's because you refuse to fucking stand up to the Administration and the GOP and refuse to do anything of substance to slow down the slow and steady destruction of Constitutional Democracy.

The confirmation of an Attorney General who thinks torture is fine and dandy, and the President is above the law is just the latest in a long list of failures. It's not even what I would call a "disappointment", because it was inevitable.

I actually wish we never regained the Congress. At least the Republicans knew they were rubber-stamp, and didn't pretend otherwise.

You guys are a fucking joke.

There is much more to write on this, but I'm not sure I have the energy. Nor is there any point.

--

Recovering Republican and would-be Conservative John Cole joined the Democratic Party this week. Sorry I won't be there to welcome you, John. I am leaving. I will stay long enough to vote for Chris "The Only Guy Who Remembers the Constitution" Dodd in MI's primary and then I am out.

"I grow fatigued..."

The fact that I can hardly get worked up about the War, among other topics, anymore due to Outrage Fatigue won't stop me from letting somebody else point out what crap Bush's "address to the nation" was. Take it away, Hilzoy:

In a move that caught all of Washington by surprise, President Bush announced tonight that he will begin drawing down troops at almost exactly the rate that he must draw them down unless he is prepared to extend troop rotations or institute the draft. In another startling move, he described this drawdown not as forced on him by deployment schedules, but as a "return on success": the tremendous success of the surge. In so doing, once again, our President shows himself to be a true visionary: seeing things invisible to ordinary men and women. Where we see only a country in the process of falling apart, our more discerning President sees success. Where we see millions of people fleeing their homes, he sees 'civil society taking root'. And, somehow, he sees "a young democracy" where we see dead people.

And to top it all off, where we see a President determined to keep our troops in harm's way for as long as possible, hoping that the civil war unleashed by his folly will unfold on someone else's watch, he sees a chance, "for the first time in years, for people who have been on opposite sides of this difficult debate to come together." Although why he thinks this is so novel escapes me: it has always been possible for both sides to come together if all those who disagree with George W. Bush simply abandon their positions, and this is not the first time he has suggested that we embrace this sort of bipartisanship.

The President also said this:

"In the life of all free nations, there come moments that decide the direction of a country and reveal the character of its people. We are now at such a moment."

Here, for once, I agree completely. We have had clear evidence that our policy in Iraq is unworkable for some time. We need to decide what to do about it. And we have, essentially, two choices. On the one hand, we can face up to this fact, as unpleasant as it might be, and figure out the most honorable way of extricating ourselves. On the other, we can continue to defer the moment when we have to realize that we have failed, and go on sacrificing good and decent men and women to our unwillingness to face the truth.

This will, as President Bush says, reveal our character as a people. I would much rather it reveal some capacity for maturity and decency than a willingness to ask people to die so that we can pretend we haven't lost.

Following up on the President's quote above...This is actually the only part I saw (after the fact, online) and I had to stop it right there before I hurt my pretty new monitor. What the fuck to you mean "we", white man? Whatever has been happening in Iraq, and what comes next has no reflection on this country or the character of its people. The rest of us left you and your retard-base and your fucking abomination of a war in the dust quite a while ago.

Your "moment of truth" is nothing but a bullshit soundbite in your vast narrative of lies. you are pretending to bring troops home, when all you are really doing (and not even committing any numbers, btw) is going back to the same unacceptable number of troops we had before this stupid surge. 2008 will end with the same amount of troops that 2006 did.

Last night's speech was the same as any of the other ones—you continue to fool all 28% of the people all of the time, cow Congress into supporting you, and punt the ball down the field and expect the next President to deal with your fucking mess.

Nicely done. You are full of shit, but it's working. That is your only success—your brain-dead supporters clap, the morons in the media trumpet your "compromise," the Republicans point to this fake success, and the Democrats roll over for whatever you want.

Fuck you, Mr President. And fuck the rest of you too. In fact, you can all suck down one of these...



Extra points for whoever identifies the title quote. Full quote, "I grow fatigued, Captain."

UPDATE: Sullivan, good NYT Op-Ed, Carpetbagger, Slate.com's Kaplan

Miscellany: Incendiary

COMPASSIONATE CONSERVATISM
Last year the Bush Administration failed to audit even half of the private Medicare insurers they are required to by law, and the ones they did audit scammed the gov't for $60 million that should have gone to beneficiaries. Once the "errors" were discovered, the Bushies took no action and let them keep the money. But, in the case where the gov't forgot to withhold prescription drug premiums from social security recipients, they are "vigorously pursuing money that it says is owed to insurance companies by Medicare beneficiaries." Un-fucking-yet-totally-believable. [h/t Hilzoy]

"OH, THOSE NUCLEAR WEAPONS..."
Last week the USAF accidentally flew a planeload of nuclear warheads across the country, and nobody on the plane knew they were nukes, and nobody on the ground knew they were missing. Oops! Or, maybe not a mistake, which is even worse... [Carpetbagger]

"GO FUCK YOURSELF. SOME MORE."
Cheney wants it both ways, and both are bullshit. Slate.com has a copy of the official letter from the Office of the Vice President to Sen. Leahy's Commitee in response to his subpoenas—they are refusing to comply because he is not part of the Executive Branch, and not subject to Senate scrutiny, but they also assert Executive Privelege. It would have been quicker to Xerox Cheney's ass and send it to Leahy.

Hope the Door Hits You Hard on the Way Out

CRAWFORD, Texas - Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has resigned, ending a months-long standoff with Republican and Democratic critics who called for his ouster over the Justice Department's botched handling of FBI terror investigations and the firing of U.S. attorneys, officials said Monday.

Finally. This should have happened long ago. This is a positive developement, but it shouldn't do a thing to change the way the Democrats pursue the Administration. Unfortunately I think it will satisfy many enough to let up pressure, which would be a mistake. The issues they are investigating are far bigger than Gonzales himself.

Early reports point to Bush nominating the Swedish Chef as the new A.G.

UPDATE: I just watched Gonzo's "announcement press conference" live on CNN, and it was so brief I almost thought I missed something. No reason for leaving, he simply lied about how much he respected the people at Justice, and walked away without taking a question. Not the he would have honestly answered any...

I think the White House correctly did the calculus that Gonzales being raked over the coals as sitting AG hurt them, and it had become impossible to defend him through their minions in the media—he was that bad. But now, if he is up there stammering before Leahy's Committee, the FOX News, Rush etc. can play the "the guy resigned already, what do the Democrats want?" card and start to swing him over to sympathetic character.

As opposed to just merely pathetic.

For maximum grave-dancing* pleasure head over to WaPo's Andrew Cohen who has a great "Good Riddance" post, and check out his four-part expose on Gonzales, Rough Justice.

* Or, if dancing isn't your thing...a diffent kind of relief

UPDATE 2: My early money on a replacement is Orrin Hatch. Just about the only guy who remained unashamed to defend Gonzales and the Administration through all of this. He's been auditioning for the role all year. Hatch would cruise to confirmation because he's in the club—collegiality will trump Constitution—even though he will be just as obstructionist as Gonzales was. Bush may still nominate somebody offensive (or at least un-confirmable) first to pick a fight and score points first, then offer up Hatch as a compromise.

Wave Goodbye, Karl

I've read several things on Rove's departure today, and many are speculating on the "real" reasons—which may be a long time revealing themselves—he's leaving. I don't much care, as it won't effect much as far as I can tell. If nothing else, I think it's an indication that Rove's usefullness was waning.

Thankfully, Andrew Sullivan is back from his vacation (too long for me) and sums up the Rove Legacy better than anything else I've read. Here's the whole thing:

The man's legacy is a conservative movement largely discredited and disunited, a president with lower consistent approval ratings than any in modern history, a generational shift to the Democrats, a resurgent al Qaeda, an endless catastrophe in Iraq, a long hard struggle in Afghanistan, a fiscal legacy that means bankrupting America within a decade, and the poisoning of American religion with politics and vice-versa. For this, he got two terms of power - which the GOP used mainly to enrich themselves, their clients and to expand government's reach and and drain on the productive sector. In the re-election, the president with a relatively strong economy, and a war in progress, managed to eke out 51 percent. Why? Because Rove preferred to divide the country and get his 51 percent, than unite it and get America's 60. In a time of grave danger and war, Rove picked party over country. Such a choice was and remains despicable.

Rove is one of the worst political strategists in recent times. He took a chance to realign the country and to unite it in a war - and threw it away in a binge of hate-filled niche campaigning, polarization and short-term expediency. His divisive politics and elevation of corrupt mediocrities to every branch of government has turned an entire generation off the conservative label. And rightly so. It will take another generation to recover from the toxins he has injected, with the president's eager approval, into the political culture and into the conservative soul.

The only problem is if Sullivan and others let the truths of that passage walk out the door with Rove. Pinning all that on Rove, and Rove alone, lets Bush off the hook. Bush was a willing participant and the prime benificiary of those actions, and the same "party over country" condemnation deserves to be clearly attached to him as well.

Happy Incompetence Day!

"Sir, here's the Presidential Daily Breifing...there's a CIA agent here insisting you read this part about the attack on our soil—"

"Whatever, Harriet. I got wood to chop. Tell him he covered his ass."

[image courtesy Dependable Renegade]

Stamped Steel Statement

Every once in a while I go online to the Michigan Secretary of State (DMV) site and check out personalized license plates. Thought of a good one today...and it's actually available.



If I were still driving the old Rolling Concretemobile of Democracy, this would be a no-brainer. But if stick this on the Volvo, am I just asking for a keyjob? I'm already betting that 26-percenters are too stupid to understand my bumper sticker...should I double-down?

UPDATE: Couldn't resist the Photoshop...

No Apex Tech Lawyers for Bush

Spinning off of the previous post, the lawyers that actually do work for the President got reinforced last week...

Besieged White House Reinforces Counsel's Office
[WaPo] President Bush has authorized another surge -- this time in the White House counsel's office. Facing a blizzard of congressional investigations, hearings and subpoenas, the White House has hired a new crop of lawyers to do battle with the Democratic Congress.

[...] "Obviously, there's been an increase in requests from the Hill, and we want to make sure we have the appropriate level of staff in place," said White House spokeswoman Emily Lawrimore.

Yeah, ya don't say? "Congressional investigators are looking into the dismissal of U.S. attorneys, the disappearance of White House e-mail, internal disputes over warrantless surveillance, partisan activities in federal agencies, various aspects of the Iraq war and other issues."

Do you think George is tapping a fresh crop of Pat Robertson's finest to defend him and his Administration? Not likely. All seven of the added lawyers are from Ivy League law schools. Tom Schaller at TAPPED put it best...

So, when it comes to policy-making over at the so-called Justice Department, a Regent University law degree, like the one held by Monica Goodling and a battalion of other fundies, suffices. But when it comes to protecting the president's backside, apparently a divine legal degree is no substitute for an East Coast elite Ivy School pedigree.

When hiring lawyers to defend the Constitution, the People, the Laws and our system of Justice, Lionel Hutz with a degree from the 700 Club is first in line, but for his own ass? Bush only hires the best.

Law and Orders

A great column at Slate.com that discusses how DOJ lawyers should advise an Administration...

The proper role for presidential lawyers is actually quite clear... The Constitution explicitly commands the president to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed," and it is up to the attorney general and, under his direction, DoJ's Office of Legal Counsel to provide the analytical expertise the president needs to ensure the legality of his administration's actions. Presidential lawyers should operate first and foremost as stewards of the rule of law and our constitutional democracy. Their legal advice must reflect an accurate and principled view of the law, not just plausible, ends-driven rationalizations. And in order to do that with any effectiveness, they must be allowed to tell the president "no."

The Constitution? Isn't that one of those "quaint" documents we now ignore? The Bush Administration has so clearly used the DOJ as a resource to seek out and rationalize any justification possible for what it wants to do rather than as a source of objective legal analysis. They have replaced or driven out anyone (even Ashcroft) who ever dared to raise a question, never mind an objection.

The Department of Justice is supposed to work for the People and even moreso, The Constitution. Congress should NEVER have alllowed the President to appoint his personal lawyer to head that Agency. This was all so predictible. Time for Congress to undo it's own mistake and reassert the Rule of Law.

Time to impeach Gonzalez. It might be a little while, I can wait to see how the Miers and Taylor subpoenas play out, and whether they get Rove under oath or not, but the endgame has to be the same. Gonzalez has to go, and it is increasingly clear that impeachment is the only way that will happen.

Deputy A.G. Resigns…Alberto Pounces

Yesterday Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty became the third (and highest) high-ranking DOJ official to resign over the US Attorney firings. Meanwhile, his boss Alberto Gonzales, the guy who should resign over this, threw McNulty under the bus with such vigor, it practically sucked my car under the bus as I listened to the A.G.'s comments on NPR...

"You have to remember, at the end of the day, the recommendations reflected the views of the deputy attorney general. He signed off on the names... And he would know better than anyone else, anyone in this room, anyone -- again, the deputy attorney general would know best about the qualifications and the experiences of the United States attorneys community, and he signed off on the names."

Of course he neglects to mention that he ALSO signed off on the names. And that McNulty had nothing to do with the list and was completely, and deliberately left out of the loop on the firings. Anyway, that is some Olympic-class buck-passing on display right there. Perhaps the most shameless display of scapegoating I've seen from a Bush Administration official, and that's saying something. What a piece of shit he is.

Alberto's widely publicized and praised immigrant mother must be very proud.

Al, The President's Man

The always enjoyable Dahlia Lithwick ties everything up in a neat bundle. Don't miss the graphic from the hearing that Sen. Whitehouse, a Republican busted out to contrast the Bush and Clinton White Houses. Hilarious.

Other notable Republican quotes?

Tom Coburn: It's "generous to say that there were misstatements" by Gonzales and others, Coburn said. "I believe that you ought to suffer the consequences," he said, adding that Gonzales ought to be judged by the same standards with which he judged the U.S. attorneys.

"The best way to put this behind us is your resignation."

Lindsay Graham: "...[You] made up reasons to fire them, because you wanted to get rid of them." "Mr. Attorney General, most of this is a stretch..."

Republicans on the Committee are now callling for his head, but through it all, we should remember that Gonzales serves at the "pleasure of the President." Well sounds like his job is safe...

White House: "President Bush was pleased with the Attorney General's testimony today. [...] The Attorney General has the full confidence of the President, and he appreciates the work he is doing at the Department of Justice to help keep our citizens safe from terrorists..."

Pathetic.

Gonzalapalooza

"TOO CLEVER BY HALF"
Rove and his felllow White House lackeys have been eschewing their official White House email accounts in favor of RNC and personal accounts [link]. Obviously this was to avoid scrutiny, record-keeping and potential for those emails being subpeoned—but it's also illegal, and likely completely insecure. Like they care about either of those things.

But in doing that, they may have undercut any claim to executive privilege [TPM]:

White House personnel appear to have been systematically avoiding using their government emails on the job because they knew they might some day be subpoenaed.

But as we noted earlier with Karl Rove, this may have been too clever by half. If the president's aides were using RNC emails or emails from other Republican political committees, they can't have even the vaguest claim to shielding those communications behind executive privilege.

Yup. and you'll have a pretty hard time convincing me that decisions made regarding the US Attorneys conducted through RNC channels isn't political.

A GOOD(LING) REASON
The other day, many were wondering under what grounds Monica Goodling would "plead the fifth." You can't plead the fifth simply because you don't want to answer a question—there has to be a crime, and you have to be avoiding being a witness against yourself. Silly, us. Of course there was a crime...

One part of the story which is coming into focus pretty quickly is the position of Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty and the coterie around Gonzales himself.

McNulty was the one who went up to the Hill and said the firings were for poor performance. But McNulty has since told Sen. Schumer that he explicitly asked Goodling and others, who were briefing him for his testimony, various questions about what had happened in the attorney firings and that they lied to him. 'Misled' him might be the term of art. But the key point from what McNulty is saying is that if he misled Congress it wasn't intentionally. It was because Goodling et al. misled him. If true, that would be a crime. And that's almost certainly the real reason Goodling will take the fifth when called to testify.

MORE EXCELLENT READING
Publius at Obsidian Wings "Why It Matters"

If my critique of the Bush administration could be expressed in a single sentence, it would be this — they ignore and attack restraints on their power. This is the foundational conceptual thread that binds together so many of the scandals and controversies we’ve seen over the past few years. International law constraining your actions? Ignore it. War crimes statute limiting your interrogation methods? Ignore it (then delete it). Don’t like part of a congressionally-enacted statute? Issue a signing statement and ignore it. Pesky FISA cramping your style? Declare it unconstitutional. Geneva Convention got you down? Call it quaint. Is your habeas flaring up again? Delete it. Having problems with a special prosecutor? Lie to him. Are certain Democrats political threats? Prosecute them, or suppress their political base through fraud investigations or through not enforcing the Voting Rights Act. And if U.S. Attorneys refuse to go along? Fire them.

[...] It is inherent in the very nature of man to abuse power.

[...] It’s a lesson as old as Ulysses — to enjoy the Sirens, he first had to tie himself to the mast. Like Ulysses, we need to understand that we are congenitally incapable of policing our actions in the heat of the moment. Because passions and self-interest cloud our vision and judgment when we’re actually in the moment, we need to follow rules and laws that were adopted ex ante, when (presumably) everyone was thinking more clearly about the consequences.

[...]Here’s the point — the reason we have these restraints is to prevent abuse of power. If we ignore them, if we allow people (e.g., executive officials) to decide on the fly what they’re allowed to do, these people will inevitably abuse their power. This is the heart of why respecting restraints is more than an abstract concern — it’s necessary to prevent harmful consequences.

Don’t take my word for it – just look at the Bush administration. Name one area – one – in which they have exercised their (awesome) post-9/11 powers with appropriate restraint. I suspect you can’t. But there are tons of counter-examples. Look at the NSA program. Look at the Patriot Act and the FBI national security letters. Look at our detention policy. Look at our foreign military policy. Look at the occupation of Iraq. Look at the power given to replace U.S. Attorneys.

Again and again, in every single one of these areas, the administration abused the power entrusted to it. To be sure, some of these acts were initially motivated by good intentions (like Gandalf’s initial motivation to pick up the ring). But eventually, the ring of power wins.

Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings "No Limits"

With this administration, it's the same thing, with this one difference: that Nixon actually seemed to have some views about policy, views he cared about, while as far as I can tell this President has none, outside his peculiar ideas about the Middle East. Like Nixon, he has thrown out all the most basic assumptions that the government relies on. You can see it in the outing of Valerie Plame: someone who had made real sacrifices, and perhaps risked her life, for her country was exposed for no reason other than pure political benefit. You can see it in the President's statements leading up to the war in Iraq. I don't want to get into the question whether Bush technically lied or not; that's semantics, and it's less important than the obvious fact that he and his administration went around making a series of claims -- that there were links between Saddam and al Qaeda, that there was any remote chance that Iraq might get a nuclear weapon -- that they either knew or should have known were false. You can see it in the President's promises to rebuild New Orleans, a promise he promptly forgot as soon as the klieg lights were turned off. You can see it in this story about the politicization of the GSA. And you can see it in the US Attorneys scandal.

They know no limits at all.

For the record, I think that one of the things that enables this sort of behavior is the fact that so many people are already convinced that all politicians are corrupt. I think we need to get better both at recognizing when this is not so, and at distinguishing different forms of corruption. That none of them are OK goes without saying. Still, there's a world of difference, to me, between someone who hires his brother-in-law to do nothing, which costs the taxpayer the brother-in-law's salary, but does no further harm; and someone, like Duke Cunningham, who gets his dubious friends contracts performing important jobs for the Department of Defense and the CIA, which can compromise our security and get people killed. And there's a big difference between either of them and someone who corrupts an entire branch of government, like the Department of Justice, which undermines the foundations of our government. We need to become better at distinguishing these things, and while we should not accept any of them, we should react to them differently.

Josh at Talking Points Memo (who really has been driving this story) [link]:

And the president is fine with all of this. Fine with the fact that the Attorney General has not only repeatedly lied to the public but has also been exposed as repeatedly lying to the public. He's fine with at least two US Attorneys being fired for not giving in to pressure to file bogus charges to help Republican candidates.

Of course he's fine with it. Because it comes from him. None of this is about Alberto Gonzales. This is about the president and the White House, which is where this entire plan was hatched. Gonzales was just following orders, executing the president's plans. This is about this president and this White House, which ... let's be honest, everyone on both sides of the aisle already knows.

And here

We all understand that politics and the law aren't two hermetically sealed domains. And we understand that partisanship may come into play at the margins. But we expect it to be the exception to the rule and a rare one. But here it appears to have become the rule rather than the exception, a systematic effort at the highest levels to hijack the Justice Department and use it to advance the interest of one party over the other by use of selective prosecution.