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Wednesday, October 26, 2005 |
Arianna Huffington: The Democrats Blow It On Iraq - Again!.
With Plamegate dominating the day, the table is set for the Democratic Party to seize the moment. The scandal has reignited a national debate about the White House lies and deceptions that led us to war in Iraq, public support for the president's handling of the war has hit an all-time low, and the 2,000th soldier killed in action has put the human cost of the war back on page one.
So how have the Democrats reacted?
You be the grand jury (Warning: have some Xanax or other suitable anti-depressant handy):
Exhibit A is the story NPR ran on Tuesday in which Senate Dems were asked if they regretted their votes to authorize the war in Iraq. Ben Nelson was among those who defended his vote, saying, "You just don't look back." Really? Why not? Afraid you might actually learn something from your mistakes, Senator?
Hillary Clinton refused to even address the question, telling reporter David Welna, "I really can't talk about this on the fly, it's too important". As with everything Hillary says and does these days, you could hear her and her consultants doing the math: Expressing regret = too soft for the Oval Office. Continuing to express support of the administration's Iraq policy = risking being overtaken by the post-Plamegate reassessment of the war. (So would offering a glowing assessment of progress in Iraq, as Clinton did during her visit there in February when she explained that suicide bombers are "an indication" of the "failure" of the insurgency, and that much of Iraq was "functioning quite well").
Clinton and Nelson should get a copy of the NPR segment and listen to the responses of Sens. Dodd, Feinstein, Rockefeller, and Harkin who all said they would not have voted the way they did. They should also listen to the speech John Kerry gave today in which he said that "knowing what we know now" he would not have voted to give the administration the authority to go to war.
Exhibit B was Chuck Schumer's disheartening appearance on Meet the Press last Sunday. When Tim Russert asked him if he regretted having voted for the war, Schumer replied: "No, Tim, because my vote was seen -- and I still see it -- as a need to say we must fight a strong and active war on terror" (a ludicrous response he echoed on NPR). The senior senator from New York really ought to have gotten the memo by now that the Iraq-al Qaeda connection was just a Bush fantasy. Until we invaded Iraq, that is. And far from leading to "a strong and active war on terror", his vote has helped turned Iraq into a breeding ground for terrorists while making us far less safe here at home.
Exhibit C was the report I got from the intimate Democratic strategy session held at Ron Burkle's house in Los Angeles to discuss the Dems' need for a united message. Those present included Hillary Clinton, Harry Reid's chief of staff, Susan McCue, pollster Doug Shoen, Haim Saban, Rob Reiner, Steve Bing, and Warren Beatty. Among the highlights was the Hollywood unveiling of the Dems' new slogan -- "America Can Do Better" -- a soulless and vacuous phrase that sums up a party that's become pathologically risk-averse. The discussion also included the latest report from Democracy Corps, run by James Carville and Stan Greenberg, which is calling for an agenda focused on "heath care, education and energy, followed by a top end tax cut repeal and homeland security". In other words, let's party like it's 2004!
Have Democratic leaders completely forgotten that we are at war? A war that's going very badly? A war Plamegate has brought to the forefront of national consciousness? A war the majority of Americans now feel was a mistake?
Cindy Sheehan hasn't.
She's making it clear that "any candidate who supports the war should not receive our support". Including Hillary Clinton, about whom she blogged: "I would love to support Hillary for president if she would come out against the travesty in Iraq. But I don't think she can speak out against the occupation because she supports it."
Sheehan and Clinton met last month to discuss the war. "She said she has to make sure our sons didn't die in vain," Sheehan said this week. "That is a totally Republican talking point."
Indeed it is. During his speech at Bolling Air Force Base on Tuesday, President Bush said, "The best way to honor the sacrifice of our fallen troops is to complete the mission."
So George Bush and the Democrats' leading contender for 2008 are reading from the same script. Tells you all you need to know about why the Democrats continue to flounder.
Maybe the Dem's message team is on to something after all. When it comes to having an opposition party willing to actually be in opposition, "America Can Do Better".
8:20:47 PM 
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Dozens subpoenaed in hospital deaths. Louisiana Attorney General Charles Foti Jr. says he issued 73 subpoenas as part of his investigation into allegations that euthanasia may have taken place at one of the hospitals flooded by Hurricane Katrina. "Some people were not coming forward. We learned Tenet sent out a letter that had a chilling effect," Foti said. "We had no choice but to issue these subpoenas." [CNN.com]
7:52:16 PM
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Trey Ellis: Rosa Parks and "Tookie" Williams. Rosa Parks and "Tookie" Williams
Rosa Parks died the other day, of natural causes at the age of 92. Stanley "Tookie" Williams, 51, is scheduled to die on December 13th at the hands of the state of California. Together they represent the polar extremes of black life in America. Her quiet bravery represented the best of us and the noble struggle that she was the spark for represented the very best of what Americans are capable of.
"Tookie" Williams represented the worst of us. Though the co-founder of the Crips, the notorious LA street gang, was initially inspired by the righteous radical politics of the Black Panthers, they soon devolved into a violent and purely criminal organization whose self-hatred spread a plague of misery and death throughout the black community.
Then, in jail, over fifteen years ago, something inspiring happened to Mr. Williams. Grieving over the hell that he had brought upon his own people he committed to dedicating what is left of his life to righting that wrong. As I wrote a few months ago, "From his prison cell on death row he has written ten children's books cautioning kids against joining a gang and has received tens of thousands of emails from children and former gang members thanking him for helping them leave the life. You might have seen the movie made about his life, Redemption, starring Jamie Foxx, which aired on the F/X channel last year. In fact, Bloods and Crips, brutally warring in Newark, New Jersey, after seeing the film on his life, went to his website, downloaded his peace protocol and engineered their own truce. For Mr. Williams' good works he has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize by the Swiss nominating committee several years in a row.
Whatever your beliefs on capital punishment, let's look at the greater good here. Gang violence comes out of the persistent nihilism of youths without hope. In South Central LA kids grow up with death as a part of life, their childhood replaced by persistent tension and fear. Stanley Williams knows that world, he and his gang helped create that world, and now he has dedicated more than half of his life to changing it."
Quite simply Mr. Williams does more for the common good alive than dead. If the state of California executes him, what message does that send to the kid on the fence about joining a gang or already in one but trying to find the courage to quit? It tells them, just as they suspected, that the state sees them as animals and wishes their eradication. If you don't believe in the possible redemption of a criminal class then the only other solution is their perpetual incarceration or extermination.
What can be done?
We can all sign this petition and email Governor Schwarzenegger to grant Mr. Williams clemency. The governor's phone number is (916) 445-2841 and his fax is (916) 445-4633.
No, that doesn't mean that he walks. It simply means that his sentence is commuted to life without the possibility of parole so he can continue trying to undo all the evil that he has done and give hope to those without any.
[The Huffington Post | Full Blog Feed]
1:51:31 PM
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Another Whopper From Stephen Hayes. Joe Wilson called into question Bush’s assertion in the 2003 State of the Union that Iraq was seeking nuclear material in Niger. Astoundingly, the right still argues that the administration’s smear campaign against Wilson was justified because Bush’s claim may have been correct. Here’s the latest from the Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes:
First, it is far from clear that Bush’s claim has been invalidated by postwar inspections…And the British review of prewar intelligence (known as the Butler report) concluded that the claim was–and remains–solid.
Actually, the Butler report didn’t conclude that. It’s review of prewar intelligence included the claim was unfounded. Here’s the relevant bit (pg. 124):
“Based on through analysis, the IAEA has concluded, with the concurrence of outside experts, that these documents, which formed the basis for the reports of recent uranium transactions between Iraq and Niger, are in fact not authentic. We have therefore concluded that these specific allegations are unfounded.“
Of course, what would you expect from the guy who is still pushing the theory that Saddam Hussein had a collaborative relationship with al-Qaeda. (Note: Copies of Hayes book on the subject are now available for 96 cents)
[Think Progress]
1:43:49 PM
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In 'Background to Betrayal,' Justin Raimondo writes that "In short, SISMI knew the documents were fakes but pushed them to help the White House gin up a war. The question is: who else knew? ... Did Hadley know? Did Libby? Did Cheney?" [Cursor.org]
1:29:18 PM
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Published on Wednesday, October 26, 2005 by Ted Rall
Why Bush Is Unimpeachable
Cracks Appear in the Constitution
by Ted Rall
New York -- The phone rings with a blocked caller ID but I know who it is. My friend the film critic has just put down the same article I've just finished reading, a front-page blockbuster in the New York Daily News. It says that George W. Bush knew about Karl Rove's scheme to blow CIA agent Valerie Plame's cover for years, that he was Rove's partner in treason from the start, that his claims of ignorance were lies. The News article is anonymously sourced but we know it's 100 percent true because the White House won't deny that Bush is a traitor.
"So they'll impeach him now, right?"
My friend asked the same thing in 2001 when recounts proved Bush lost Florida, when the 9/11 fetishist admitted that he'd never even tried to catch Osama, when WMDs failed to turn up in Iraq, and when his malignant neglect killed hundreds of Americans in post-Katrina New Orleans.
"This means impeachment. Right?" Wrong.
Any one of Bush's crimes towers over the combined wickedness of Nixon and Clinton. And there are so many to choose from! How many times has Bush "made false or misleading public statements for the purpose of deceiving the people of the United States" (a key count in the Nixon impeachment)?
Stop laughing, you.
Unfortunately for my friend and the United States, impeachment is a political process, not a legal one. Nixon and Clinton faced Congresses controlled by the other party. Because Bush belongs to the same party as the majorities in the House and Senate, nothing he does can get him impeached.
Our failed Constitutional system means we're stuck with this disastrous demagogue for three more years. Gloat now, Republican readers, but party loyalty's stranglehold on impeachment can easily take the form of a complacent Democratic Congress overlooking the misdeeds of a batty Democratic president.
Any safe can be cracked; every system of safeguards breaks down eventually. We can't get rid of Bush because the Founding Fathers, who were smart enough to think of just about everything, dropped the ball when they drafted the article that provides for presidential impeachment. Because there were no national political parties back in 1787, their otherwise ingenious system of checks and balances failed to account for the possibility that a Congress might choose to overlook a president's crimes.
Small parties were active on the state and local level during the late 18th century, but James Madison, George Washington and most of the other Founders despised these organizations as harbingers of petty "factionalism" that ought to be banned or severely limited. Washington used the occasion of his 1796 farewell address to decry "the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally. It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration," he warned. "It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms; kindles the animosity of one part against another; foments occasionally riot and insurrection...In governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged." Voting blocs were the enemy of good government.
In the new republic, Madison wrote in his seminal Federalist No. 10, political arguments should be considered on their own merits. Since candidates for and holders of political office would be judged solely as individuals, Congressmen would focus on the greater good rather than political alliances when weighing whether to impeach a president. Even when parties began to emerge as a national force in 1800, few politicians would have argued that a Democratic-Republican president should be safe from impeachment unless the Federalist Party happened to control Congress.
Another Constitutional breakdown, concerning the separation of powers, occurred in June 2004. More than a year after the Supreme Court decided in Rasul v. Bush that the nearly 600 Muslim men and young boys being held incommunicado at Guantánamo Bay were entitled to have their cases heard by U.S. courts, they remain in cold storage--no lawyers, no court dates. The Bush Administration simply ignored the ruling.
"[Bush's] Justice Department," Dahlia Lithwick wrote in Slate, "sees [the ruling] through the sophisticated legal prism known as the Toddler Worldview: Anything one doesn't wish to accept simply isn't true." Because the Founding Fathers never anticipated the possibility that the nation's chief executive would treat its final judgments with the respect due an out-of-state parking ticket issued to a rental car, the Supreme Court has been rendered as toothless as a gummy bear.
The more you look, the more you'll find that our Constitution has been subverted to the point of virtual irrelevance. The legislative branch has abdicated its exclusive right to declare war to the president, who was appointed by a federal court that undermined the states' constitutional right to manage and settle election disputes. Individuals' protection against unreasonable searches have been trashed, habeas corpus is a joke, and double jeopardy has become routine as those exonerated by criminal court face second trials in civil court. Our system of checks and balances has collapsed, the victim of a citizenry more interested in entertaining distraction than eternal vigilance.
Where evil men rule, law cannot protect those who sleep.
© 2005 Ted Rall
1:18:25 PM
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Charlie Cray: Close the Revolving Door. Yesterday . the Hill reports that
AshBritt, the debris-removal company that won a controversial $500 million no-bid contract from the Army Corps of Engineers, hired Mike Parker, the former head of the Army Corps of Engineers, to lobby for the company shortly beforewinning the contract.
It seems like every day there's a new example like this of how the revolving door between industry and government is spinning out of control. Like a Cuisinart, it's spinning so fastthat just about every moral and ethical concern gets shredded.
Not to mention the law. But too often it's legal. And that's why a coalition of 18 groups (including ours) has formed the Revolving Door Working Group to clamp down on the rampant cronyism and corporate influence-peddling that is epidemic in Washington.
Check out the new site for details. and the group's recommendations, some of which have been included in the Lobbying and Ethics Reform Act of 2005 (S. 1398) introduced by Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) and the Special Interest Lobbying and Ethics Accountability Act (H.R. 2412) introduced by Rep. Meehan and 80 other co-sponsors.
The rules on the revolving door are riddled with loopholes. Not only is the "cooling off period" (time ex-government employees must refrain from engaging their former employer on behalf of corporate paymasters) too short, but if a bureaucrat goes to work for an different division of the same company that dealt with the government, well that's usually considered okay.
There are three types of problems that the coalition believes needs to be addressed:
* The Industry-to-Government Revolving Door, through which the appointment of corporate executives and business lobbyists to key posts in federal agencies establishes a pro-business bias in policy formulation and regulatory enforcement;
* The Government-to-Industry Revolving Door, through which public officials move to lucrative private sector roles from which they may use their experience to compromise government procurement, regulatory policy and the public interest; and
* The Government-to-Lobbyist Revolving Door, through which former lawmakers and executive-branch officials use their inside connections to advance the interests of corporate clients.
The reaction to all the scandals and indictments in Washington can push some of the necessary reforms forward. When Bush and Cheney were elected, they touted their experience in the private sector (even though the Harken and Halliburton record suggests that was a dubious claim). But this MBA administrationhas since gotten away with putting an ex-oil industry CEO in charge of a secret energy policy that not only benefits the Enrons of the world, but threatens national security by failing to reduce our dependency on oil. So many other regulatory rollbacks and failures and crony contracting have occurred in part because the hinges have come off the revolving door.
Time to screw them back on and bolt it shut. [The Huffington Post | Full Blog Feed]
12:13:33 PM
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© Copyright 2005 Patricia Thurston.
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