Thursday, June 29, 2006

Brent Budowsky: To Dan Rather, Mary Mapes, and Mark Cuban: Answer the Treason Charge With a Murrow Moment. There comes a point in the life of a nation, and a profession, where it is time to make a stand. This is Bush's McCarthy moment; for Dan this could be his Murrow moment; where it airs is less important than what he says, the message will carry far and wide. Charging treason is different. It is bad enough to demean a hero who came home from Vietnam in a wheelchair; bad enough for those who never wore the uniform to demean the service record of an authentic hero awarded the Bronze and Silver stars; bad enough to call a decorated Marine and lifetime brother of the troops a coward on the Floor of Congress; bad enough to demean hispanics who sing our anthem in Spanish, bad enough to treat gays as an enemy of Christ; bad enough to mock and slander the widows of 9-11. It is bad enough for the President of the United States, the commander in chief of our military; the man who boasts of being a war president in a nation he believes is permanently at war, to host a National Political Convention, as George W. Bush did in 2004, handing out toys that make fun of the Purple Heart, a sickening spectacle of a partisan without conscience. These things are bad; but accusations of treason are different. Let us understand exactly what is going on, with this charge of treason. It is more than whipping up a radical political base that long ago lost touch with the cardinal principles of Americanism. Our President claims the inherent, unilateral and pre-emptive powers to abrogate the Bill of Rights and the Constitution claiming some authority as commander in chief; he claims the inherent, unilateral and pre-emptive power to violate Federal laws on his own decision. He claims the power to violate time honored international laws such as the Geneva Convention, which is supported almost unanimously by the military who's advice he falsely claims to always follow. Remember: the articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon included the charge that he failed to faithfully execute the laws of the land, which had put his hand on a bible, and swore to uphold. First a question, then an observation; Does President Bush believe that he has the unilateral, presumptive power to violate or ignore the Constitutional provisions giving Congress a role in war making powers? Does the President believe he has the unilateral, presumptive powers to violate any version of a Congressionally enacted and Presidentially signed war powers act or authorization? Does the President believe he has the unilateral and pre-emptive power to violate the Nuremberg Rules? Does the President claim the sole personal power to wage any war, any time, in any way, against any foe, using any tactic? The other powers he claims inevitably lead to this. These questions must be asked clearly and directly by Congress and the nation, now. I would observe this, when considering this charge of treason or espionage violations levelled against the New York Times or any other institution of media: the public's right to know, the purpose of the First Amendment, is to enable our democratic society to make decisions based on an informed public, but it is even more than that, and this critical and historic point must be fully understood. Had the New York Times not published the two stories that led to this charge of treason and demand for criminal prosecution, it is not just the public that would not have been informed, it would have been the courts and the Congress who would not have been informed either. I will repeat this for emphasis: what the President in fact wants is not merely the power to keep information from the public, but the power to keep information from the courts and the Congress. When the President in fact wants is to have secret, unilateral and pre-emptive power to determine for himself, without judicial review, without Congressional oversight, without regards to Constitutional, statutory or international law exactly what it means to faithfully execute the laws of the land. What is at stake is this unprecedented grasp for unilateral power for one man, in one party, in one branch of government, alone, without knowledge or review by any other branch of government, to determine alone what it means for the leader of the free world to faithfully execute the laws. He presumes to put himself above Jefferson, Washington, Madison, Adams and more than two hundred years of American Presidents who never made claims so sweeping, secretive and contemptous of the first principles of our democracy. The treason charge is different; shame on certain television personalities for treating this charge of treason as just another issue for distorted banners across the television screens. This is about whether there is even minimal tolerance, good will and integrity among Americans of different points of view. This is about whether the phrase "faithfully execute the laws of the land" is based on more than two hundred years of American history or the whims of one man, operating in secret, violating the cardinal rules of wartime Presidents to unite the country, to win the war, rather than divide the country, which hurts the war, to win an election, to maximize personal powers that conservative George Will among others has called monarchical. The charge of treason is not merely to demean opponents or whip up an extremist political base; it is to prevent the Congress, the Courts and the country from even knowing what is happening on fundamental issues of war, peace and freedom. This is about one man seeking the inherent, pre-emptive power to not faithfully execute the laws, and not tell any branch of government of the American people that he is doing so. Perhaps Mark Cuban, or some other man or woman of means, should simply buy two hours of television time, and give it to Dan Rather without fear or favor or strings attached, and let him do this his way, have his Murrow moment, and keep our constitution, now under hostile attack from within, a living document that no man, no party, no partisan has the inherent, pre-emptive power to treat with such contempt. [The Huffington Post | Full Blog Feed] 6:52:06 PM    comment []

Hamdan to Rein Bush In?. Marty Lederman has commentary on the Hamdan v. Rumsfeld decision today, ruling that the military tribunals set up at Guantanamo are improper, over at SCOTUSblog. Among other things, the Supreme Court has apparently ruled that the Geneva Conventions apply to all detainees captured in the conflict against al-Qaeda. That seems to mean, if Lederman's right, that torture and "coercive" interrogation tactics will no longer be allowed, period. The CIA's interrogation tactics are "officially" illegal, and methods such as waterboarding and inducing hypothermia are now "officially" war crimes. The Court also ruled that the president does not have the power to ignore or violate congressional law. This looks very significant indeed, and short of convincing Congress to pull out of the Geneva Conventions, perhaps, it certainly looks like the Bush administration has been reined in. What this means in practice, though, still seems very much up in the air[~]presumably Congress could respond by setting up new tribunals at Guantanmo, or modifying the Uniform Code of Military Justice, or granting the administration other new powers, or so forth[sigma] So we'll see what happens. UPDATE: Glenn Greenwald has a useful discussion here. UPDATE II: The Court also seems to have rejected one of the administration's legal rationales for its illegal wiretapping program. [MoJo Blog] 12:22:05 PM    comment []

Robert J. Elisberg: Guns Don't Kill People, the Press Kills People. Let's see, according to the Bush Administration and the Radical Right... It's the fault of the press that there's bad news in Iraq. It's the fault of the press that the government is involved in illegal domestic spying. It's the fault of the press that telecommunications companies have released private information about their customers to the government. It's the fault of the press that White House insiders, like Lewis Libby, leak stories about legal irregularities -- or secret government agents. Apparently it's also the fault of the press that married gay flag burners pulled the plug on Terri Schiavo. And of course it's the horrific fault of the press that the Administration has been looking into private bank accounts...which the Administration itself has repeatedly and very publicly acknowledged for years. The result of all this is that those of the Administration and Radical Right, when they have finished their twitching for the cameras and crying their heart-rending crocodile tears, have started to call for an investigation into the New York Times for reporting the news. Oh, okay, to be fair, it's news they didn't want reported (though that covers pretty much everything they do). However, as noted, the President has been telling everyone for years that we're tracking the money of terrorists. So, unless terrorists really don't watch the news (at least since Dan Rather left), there's a pretty good chance that they already knew, from the President's own speeches. But still, these faux-twitching Radical Right want to silence the press. Indeed, investigating the press for reporting news actually has never been too far from #1 on their hit list. Keeping in mind how the Radical Right loves to wear the concept of constitutional Originalism on their sleeves, it's interesting to understand how perhaps the original Originalist, the father of all Originalists from whence all Originalists sprang - Thomas Jefferson, hallowed be his name - felt about the press and its relationship to government: "... were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter" --Thomas Jefferson to Edward Carrington, 1787 In Radical Right Republican circles, this is known as an "Oops" quote. The thing is, the Radical Right has long wanted to silence the press. In fact, watching those Republicans in Congress call for an investigation into the press is a surreal moment, akin to having the Society of Foxes call for an investigation into farmers guarding the henhouses. "Our liberty cannot be guarded but by the freedom of the press, nor that be limited without danger of losing it." --Thomas Jefferson to John Jay, 1786. (Oops.) The Radical Right has probably hated the press ever since Gutenberg, although a visceral point of demarcation for our time was the publication of the Pentagon Papers. Revealing the truth about America's involvement in Vietnam just never sat well with those who prefer to sit in the dark and praise it. However, the Radical Right most especially hates the press for daring to investigate and, therefore cause the resignation of Richard Nixon. Forget Mr. Nixon's culpability of criminal acts. (Heaven knows, they'd like to.) Uncovering the truth may have been the biggest sin of all. This wasn't just "shoot the messenger." This was...well, given what happened at Kent State, apparently it was shoot the messenger, literally. "The only security of all is in a free press. The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to. It is necessary, to keep the waters pure." --Thomas Jefferson to Lafayette, 1823 (Big oops.) For decades, the Radical Right has insisted that the press was all liberal. Never mind reality, of course. (After all, even necons admit that Reality has no place in their world.) Never mind that the most massive of mass media, television networks, are owned by huge corporations which, in any universe, are the bastion of conservatism. Never mind that for decades, newspapers have begun merging with one another, creating their own multimedia corporate, conservative empires. And never mind that far more than personal politics, the one thing every reporter prays at the Journalism Altar for is a scoop that brings down the Big Guys. It doesn't matter who the Big Guys are, what their politics are - if it gets reporters a headline, or byline, they love it. And never mind that the most openly-biased news organization in the known world, and parts of the unknown universe, is the rabidly conservative Fox News. That's apparently okay to the Radical Right. It's the other news - actual news - that they have a problem with. "I am... for freedom of the press, and against all violations of the Constitution to silence by force and not by reason the complaints or criticisms, just or unjust, of our citizens against the conduct of their agents." --Thomas Jefferson to Elbridge Gerry, 1799. (Oops, yeow!) Are some journalists liberal? Of course. Are some conservative? Obviously. But - all love that scoop. And a double scoop with cherry on top is even better. All. Every single one of them. They each one dream at night of being Woodward and Bernstein. Getting the Story is at the core of why they became journalists. That and getting a cool press card. But in the end, it's not The Liberal Press who the Radical Right hates. It's the Press, period. The First Amendment ties the Radical Right into gut-wrenching knots. They claim to love the Constitution (okay, sorry, the "original Constitution") - it's just the words in it that they can't abide. "No government ought to be without censors, and where the press is free, no one ever will. " --Thomas Jefferson to George Washington, 1792. (Oops.) The reality is, in this Reality-based world, that the Radical Right has long been trying to discredit the press, because once it's discredited and you don't know who to trust, then that Jeffersonian watchdog of the government disappears. That's why they helped created the fake journalist "Jeff Gannon." (Hearing Republicans twist into pretzels as they defended "Gannon's" porn-press credentials was the funniest thing on television since "The Muppet Show.") It's why the Administration paid columnist Armstrong Williams to promote its own interests as "news." It's why they hired fake journalist Karen Ryan to produce Administration "video reports" about Social Security to be aired on TV news. (Just one of dozens of such fake news charges against the White House the FCC is investigating.) The point here is the Radical Right would not only love to blur the line between actual journalism and flim-flammery, but they've bought erasers to do the smudging by the truckload. And of course best of all, they've created their very own governmental mouthpiece news organization of Fox News. (Little known fake fact: Fox's original slogan was going to be "The Truth Be Damned.") Which brings us to one amazingly-prescient comment by that Founding Father Originalist, Thomas Jefferson. Leave your "oops" aside on this one, you'll need both hands. Just sit down and buckle your seatbelt. "The most effectual engines for [pacifying a nation] are the public papers... [A despotic] government always [keeps] a kind of standing army of newswriters who, without any regard to truth or to what should be like truth, [invent] and put into the papers whatever might serve the ministers. This suffices with the mass of the people who have no means of distinguishing the false from the true paragraphs of a newspaper." --Thomas Jefferson to G. K. van Hogendorp, Oct. 13, 1785. And so, that's where we get the yammering Radical Right Republicans ludicrously calling for the investigation of the New York Times. Never mind that, as Thomas Jefferson spent a lifetime saying, a free press (love or hate what it reports) is the heart and soul of a free people. Having the heart and soul of a free people is not really foremost in the interest of the Radical Right. [The Huffington Post | Full Blog Feed] 12:06:42 PM    comment []

© Copyright 2006 Patricia Thurston.