Playing God

By Capt. Fogg

Everyone worries about unemployment, particularly the party occupying the White House, because whether or not the executive branch does or can do anything to change the employment rate, they get blamed for it.  Some people worry more about God's job description which, you must admit, is much skimpier than it used to be.  What will we do when he retires entirely, perhaps moving to South Florida to one of those '55 and older' communities like the one across the tracks from me?  Are we going to have a problem with the old crank pestering the neighbors about leaving garbage cans out or making noise?

Worst of  all, will ordinary people start doing all the things that used to be the Divine prerogative?  Of course nearly everything used to be God's sole bailiwick at one time, from throwing lightning bolts, to determining the sex of one's offspring, to starting and ending natural disasters.  The advance of science and technology has of course allowed us to do a better or at least more rational, equitable and even moral job of it and this has always worried people.  After all, "let there be light" is something we all do every evening without a second thought, thanks to Mr. Edison and keeping lightning from burning down the barn hasn't been so much of a worry since Mr. Franklin invented the lightning rod, but both those things were once described by the timorous and superstitious  as "playing God" and the fear was that God, rather than being grateful for a little help would go on strike.  And then, if God wants your barn burnt, should we be interfering? 

Of course when it comes to preventing unnecessary death, the "playing God" worries are most prevalent.  I mean if God wants a plague we ought to let him have one, right?   If God wants your kid (the human kind or the goat kind) to inherit a disease, should we interfere -- is the decision a moral dilemma?  People make a living telling us we should worry about such things, people like  Robert Klitzman,  professor of psychiatry and director of the Masters of Bioethics Program at Columbia University.

So if someone with a family history of Huntington's disease wants to have a child without passing along a fatal gene, is making sure the child won't inherit it a moral dilemma?  Is it "playing God and does God give a damn if we do?"  Well if that's the sort of thing God wants to do and doesn't want you to do: to roll the dice with your genes, perhaps it's time to put him into managed care before he hurts someone.  Perhaps it was time a long time ago.

Now we can argue that if he's really got the "oms" like omniscience and omnipotence, he might have been behind the development of  pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, or PGD or at least allowed it to happen, but that's a dead end or endless loop argument and it's more fun to view him as that demented old man whose lawn we dared not play on as kids.  Say hello to a moral dilemma we invented to make ourselves afraid.

Season this sort of  aged beef with a bit of reductio and ask yourself, if we're playing God by wearing clothes against the cold or putting a roof over our heads against God's own rain then don't  we have to conclude that God wants us to die and to die miserably?  After all, to a Biblical follower, there is no hint that anyone ate from the tree of wanting to stay alive and that such urges must have been molded in the clay by the divine hand.  The same goes for wanting our offspring or even to those of a Liberal bent, our fellow creatures to survive and prosper and occasionally have a nice day.  No, the Biblical character may want us to suffer a bit and have pain in childbirth and sweat a lot, but there's no commandment that I know of  along the lines of  "thou shalt not avoid fatal diseases, for I am a jealous God."

What I'm waiting for is for one of the "don't play God" partisans to extend the argument to condemning the Death penalty as logic and honesty would demand, but we're not dealing with the logical and honest are we?   Appeals to a higher power are religious practices and we're not dealing with a religion designed to improve the human condition, but one designed to terrorize people into obeying the world's oldest profession: the prophet or the priest and if people have to die in the process, well then let there be suffering and pain and disease and war and famine and pestilence, Amen.  As to questions about passing along fatal genes to one's offspring, that sort of  moralist, the traditional Christian sort of moralist would prefer that one simply not have sex, that practice being an end in itself.  Now as to playing God, if it were up to me as director of this movie, I'd direct such moralists to swear off sex and procreation entirely so that after a while, we'd be free of them at last.

Greed is great, greed is good

News from the Dept. of Obvious, a new study finds wealthy people, lie, cheat and view greed as a virtue. And not just on big stuff. They'll cheat for $50. They see no problem with lying to advance their goals and greed? Piffle. That's just "enlightened self-interest." A good thing in their gilded book.

Apparently, this is particularly common in economic studies majors. Something I can confirm with anecdotal evidence. Fully two thirds of my critics who have openly praised greed also claim to be economic professors or experts of some kind.

The researcher posits that "pairing ethics courses with economics may be beneficial" in changing the dynamic. Good luck with that. The problem is these people have no empathy and their world view is intractably solipsistic. Their moral clock didn't just stop ticking, it never had any juice to begin with that I can see.

And they're cheap. They'll nickel and dime you to death. There are of course exceptions, some few are extraordinarily generous, but as a whole, the more money they have, the more likely they are to stick you with the tab. And the worst are the trust funders. They never had to work to earn their money. They only work to hold onto it.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

De Profundis

By Capt. Fogg

"These kinds of things are always very unfortunate." said John McCain, referring to the indictment of the latest Republican. Arizona Congressman Rick Renzi now has extortion, wire fraud, money laundering and a few side dishes on his plate. Is anyone keeping score to see which party has the highest body count? I would be curious to know.

These kinds of things are not always so unfortunate. The depths of our planet's oceans may be dark and inaccessible but the political exploits of recent history often seem to have been swallowed up, or covered up by an ocean of forgetfulness. Of course John McCain wasn't convicted of taking, along with four other congressional crustaceans, large amounts of "campaign" money and expensive vacations from convicted racketeer Charles Keating, the man who eventually cost taxpayers $3,400,000,000. McCain vigorously intervened on Keating's part and Keating's conviction was overturned on a technicality.

Depending upon which side of the political species divide you live, it's either one of the skeletons in McCain's closet or ancient history from which we must "move on" but as far as the general public knows or cares, it might as well have been dumped into the depths of the Mariana's trench. McCain, who once sent constituent Joe Bananas a birthday card is once again, like Brutus, an honorable man. An honorable man who has never done anything like making friends with lobbyists to betray the public trust. An honorable man and a Baptist, or at least the lifelong Episcopalian became one when he started sucking up to the religious right in South Carolina. Of course he has never been baptized in that church, but that's all in the past - or not in the past, to be more accurate.

With a man who campaigns on his honesty, is it fair to address his evasions and misstatements? I'll leave that to you, but although McCain's talk may be straight, his facts aren't. He may not have slept with Vicki Iseman and she may never have used his friendship to further her clients' interest, but he has certainly had less savory bedfellows and when he says: "At no time have I ever done anything that would betray the public trust," I don't trust him.

Cross posted from Human Voices

Lott's lot

By Fogg

Well whaddaya know - Trent Lott is going to resign from Congress today, cheap wig and all -- or so the news is being told. Is it because, as he says, he wants to spend more time with the family or is he scurrying down the dock lines like a bilge rat before he's outed or indicted? Or is it just so that he can escape new and improved ethics laws that would require him to wait two years before getting on the Washington lobbyist gravy train? Maybe it's all of the above, but it's definitely good riddance.

Cross posted from Human Voices

We who are about to die

by Capt. Fogg

Perhaps you saw it on CNN last night. Perhaps it made you sick, or furious or both, but When Mitt Romney, the picture of foppish, condescending Republican snobbery snubbed the man in the Wheelchair, whose continued existence depends on the relief given from the nausea caused by his muscular dystrophy medication. I wrote him off as anyone who deserved to breathe the air polluted by his party and his supporters.

"I am not in favor of medical marijuana being legal in the country," said the man in the $1500 suit and $400 haircut, turning away with a smile to chat with someone else. Of course not. It grows like a weed, can't be patented, makes no money for his "base" and although no credible evidence of it's harmfulness has ever emerged in thousands of years, it's the only drug too dangerous for a doctor to prescribe even for a terminal patient. How should I describe a man who to avoid annoying his ignorant, superstitious, demented and greedy backers would turn his back on a dying man; a fixed and phony smile on his cosmetically prepared face?

I really hope Mitt dies painfully during a fit of projectile vomiting while loaded up to the gills with chemotherapy drugs because medical cannabis could well make the difference between life and death and he isn't worthy of a good life or a good death.

Cross posted from Human Voices

White House clams up

By Libby

I've been cruising around the intertubes today, leaving the occassional comment, answering my own commenters and trying to make sense of the world. But nothing makes sense.

The White House continues to maintain they did nothing wrong in the attorney purge scandal but refuse to produce documents to prove their innocence. It appears the Congress is ready to call their bluff which will surely lead to a constitutional showdown that will likely end up in front of SCOTUS.

Good luck with that since Bush stacked the court with his loyal cronies, but the main thing is the case will likely be tied up in the courts through the end of our Feckless Leader's term so the White House won't have to talk about it, which I'm sure suits them just fine. In fact they're taking the executive privilege claim one step further and forbidding former employees, Harriet Miers and Sarah Taylor from talking about it either.

Talk about confusing. As Atrios asks, "What possible authority does the White House have to try to prevent a former employee from testifying about something?" Good question. Since when does the unitary executive's privilege extend to dictating the testimony of private citizens?

Meanwhile, Steve Benen encapsulates the ludicrous substance of their position.

This makes the tack on Taylor even more confusing. The White House is effectively claiming that a former aide, who no longer works for the administration and is willing to testify, can’t talk about conversations with the president she didn’t have.

You will of course recall that the original position of the White House was that were not involved in the terminations at all. I guess they're hoping the average Jake won't remember that.

Bush also attempted to deflect attention from his own inconsistentcies, accusing Congress of "being more interested in investigating than legislating, noting that Democrats have held 600 oversight hearings since taking control of Capitol Hill in January." And here we thought they were doing nothing.

Well we know that Bush thinks oversight is quaint and not applicable to "war presidents" but I guess he just forgot that it's impossible to pass legislation when his party obstructs the bills from reaching the floor and he threatens to veto anything that doesn't rubberstamp his edicts. Perhaps he didn't notice that his party was voted out of power for failing to conduct those hearings in the first place.

Fred Thompson - liar or just lazy?

By Libby

Although the trophy wife issue, which I addressed at Newshoggers, has resurfaced this morning, the question of the day seems to be on Fred Thompson's true stance on abortion. Is he a pro-choicer who has donned the anti-choice mantle for the purposes of his candidacy or is he a true believer in the government's duty to prevent personal choice? Frankly, I don't give a damn. There's plenty of other reasons to not to vote for him but the LAT piece on his pro-choice lobbying does raise issues about his integrity and his work ethic.

In case you're not up to speed, a pro-choice group says he worked for them in 1991 and several other people back up their memory of the contract. The candidate vehemently denies it, saying at best he was peripherally involved as "of counsel" to the firm that contracted the work. The pro-choice group says they paid the guy a significant sum of money to pitch their cause on Capitol Hill to John Sununu. Sununu backs up Fred and says he has no recollection of being lobbied, while the pro-choicers recall details of conversations with Fred in which he assured them he was actively courting Sununu's support.

James Joyner boils the controversy down to three possible scenarios.

(1) DeSarno and Barnes are making this up to hurt Thompson’s reputation.
(2) Thompson took DeSarno’s money but didn’t actually lobby Sununu, thus committing fraud.
(3) Thompson’s denial is a lie and Sununu is backing his play with a lie of his own.

I might suggest a fourth possibility. I see no reason for DeSarno and Barnes to pre-emptively smear Thompson for no reason. Thompson's equivocations on the issue have been much in the news lately and it would be natural for them to recall the work they paid him to do. One tends to remember major expenditures of that sort.

On the other hand, this happened in 1991. It's not surprising that Thompson and Sununu might not recall the project some 16 years later. Having worked in a small law firm that at any given time was juggling hundreds of open cases between only four partners and thousands of cases while I was employed there, I couldn't say without checking the database what we were working on in 1991 either.

Nonetheless, it's Thompson's immediate and vehement denial that raises a troubling question in my mind. How can he be so sure he didn't do the work without doing a substantial record check? It smacks of the typical GOP response to negative news. When in doubt, deny, deny, deny. If it you repeat the denials often enough, and get enough people to also repeat them, they take on that all-important veneer of truthiness that works so well in supplanting the facts of the matter. Isn't that why some 41% of Americans still believe in the long discredited Saddam-al-Qaeda connection?

From what I've heard about Thompson's work ethic, I think the likeliest scenario is something close to Joyner's #2 option. Thompson took the money and didn't really try that hard to obtain the stated objective of the contract. He probably had lunch or something with Sununu to cover himself from fraud but probably didn't spend much time pitching the policy change the pro-choicers were seeking. It would be interesting to see what other causes Fred was pitching in the same time frame. He may have multi-tasked on the lobbying and perhaps gave the pro-choicers short shrift in favor of a more lucrative contract.

But that's idle speculation and the real issue here isn't whether Thompson is pro or anti-choice. It's about whether he promised his clients the moon and only delivered green cheese. The assessment of many who have come to hear him speak is that he's all style and no substance. When questioned about why he's running and what he would do as president, he said, "I'd do lots of things," declining to elaborate. In fact after months of quasi-electioning, while "not" entering the race, the only substantive statement he's made is "he still was not ready to commit to a 2008 campaign."

Like any Lothario, Fred wants it both ways. He woos the people and the press with his "non-candidacy" soundbites, but dances around any questions about the future of the relationship or the true reasons behind his courtship. One has to ask if he can't even bring himself to commit to his own campaign, why anyone should think he's capable of running a country that, especially in the aftermath of the Bush regime, will demand a commitment to strong diplomacy and clearly articulated policy.

Bush overturns court order - in short order

By Libby

It's no surprise that Bush commuted Scooter Libby's sentence, although the speed with which our Feckless Leader subverted the will of the courts is a bit dizzying. But it's a savvy political move. His ratings are already in the dumper so he only stands to gain a little bump among the dead-ender loyalists who insist a consenual blow job should be a hanging offense but breaching national security to avoid being exposed as liars is just aokay with them.

Frankly, I don't care that Scooter will never have to worry about living up, or down, to his name in the prison showers. This administration has already made such a mockery of the judiciary and the rule of law that this is just one more tiny cut, not a major blow to the jugular vein of justice. It's not that he doesn't deserve it, it's just that by rights it should have been Cheney and Rove doing the perp walk and we have too many people in jail anyway.

In fact, I like Bush's reasoning on this. He says he communted the sentence because he considered it excessive. Since it fell pretty much in the middle of the guidelines he and his pet AG Fredo are insisting should not only be kept intact but enchanced and more fully enforced, maybe he could explain why he won't also commute the sentence of every person incarcerated under those arbitrary guidelines.

Via Radley, here's a list of people whose cases could use some similar presidential mercy and there's thousands more where those came from. I've given up on seeing Cheney held to account out of this travesty. I doubt the press will now put the focus on why Libby lied in the first place, as it should have been right along. But if the commutation at least throws the spotlight on the horrendous practice of mandatory sentencing, it will be worth it in return for Scooter's skip.

[cross-posted to The Reaction]

Impeach Cheney

By Libby

I'm off to work and don't have time to blog these articles fully, so read these for yourself. Bruce Fein at Slate runs down the list of Cheney's inappropriate power grabs. Sidney Blumenthal at Salon fleshes out the details on how thoroughly Cheney has circumvented and perverted the system of checks and balances that was supposed to protect us from this kind of tyranny and Scott Horton at Harper's define tyranny and dissects the fraud of state secrets that Cheney has wielded so effectively to cover his malfeasance.

Meanwhile, in light of the Congressional response to Cheney's latest assertion of "fourth branch" powers, his office has backed down on allowing some accountability but continues to assert that his justification for avoiding accountability is up for debate.

Interesting constitutional question, my prodigious ass. More like blatant attempt to destroy constitutional protections. If our founding fathers had intended to make the Veep a second president, they would have spelled out that kind of power. The Veep was clearly intended to be a placeholder to assure continunity of leadership by the crafters of our constitution, in the event, which wasn't so unlikely 200 years ago, that the president would die prematurely. He was in effect to be the presidential understudy, not an interchangable star performer.

Just as an understudy on Broadway, doesn't get to dictate how the star interprets the leading role, nor does he get to rewrite the dialogue to please his own sensibilities, Cheney has no legal right to have stolen so much executive power as he has. In fact, his actions are impeachable and should also be indictable.

I'd suggest the Congress do more than simply threaten to defund him. It's well past time to dethrone him before he completely destroys our republic and that for which it stands.

The secret life of Cheney

By Libby

The big buzz this morning is about a new four part series on Cheney at the WaPo. Part One is pretty damn breathtaking and leaves you wanting more. Everybody is talking about it and all note, there's so many quotable grafs it's nearly impossible to pick just one. Nonetheless, here's my pick.

Stealth is among Cheney's most effective tools. Man-size Mosler safes, used elsewhere in government for classified secrets, store the workaday business of the office of the vice president. Even talking points for reporters are sometimes stamped "Treated As: Top Secret/SCI." Experts in and out of government said Cheney's office appears to have invented that designation, which alludes to "sensitive compartmented information," the most closely guarded category of government secrets. By adding the words "treated as," they said, Cheney seeks to protect unclassified work as though its disclosure would cause "exceptionally grave damage to national security."

You can see when you read the rest the article that disclosure of his work product would certainly gravely damage Cheney. It reads like a Tom Clancy novel. Espionage, intrigue, back-stabbing and lots of dirty little secrets.

If you weren't afraid of the man before you read this, you will be after you do. And really you must, because this isn't fiction. This is your Vice President, whose main vice appears to be an insatiable appetite for power.

Bush invents rule of implied intent

By Libby
Updated below

Now that Keith Olbermann exposed the White House's latest lie on the executive order regarding oversight on classified information that Cheney refuses to comply with, Bush has been forced to do a Texas two-step to explain it all away. Judging from the contradictory explanations though, it appears the White House could use some dancing lessons.

WASHINGTON — The White House said Friday that, like Vice President Dick Cheney's office, President Bush's office is not allowing an independent federal watchdog to oversee its handling of classified national security information.

An executive order that Bush issued in March 2003 — amending an existing order — requires all government agencies that are part of the executive branch to submit to oversight. Although it doesn't specifically say so, Bush's order was not meant to apply to the vice president's office or the president's office, a White House spokesman said.

Bush amended the oversight directive in response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to help ensure that national secrets would not be mishandled, made public or improperly declassified.

The reporter apparently doesn't find it odd that the order "in response to 9/11" wasn't issued until two years later, around the time the first evidence that they had misused classified intelligence for political reasons in the Plame leak and mischaracterized intelligence to sell their war, began to surface. Me, I find that a rather damning coincidence. And I love this part:

"Our democratic principles require that the American people be informed of the activities of their government," the executive order said.

It's obvious to me this order was amended solely to facilitate their own investigations into who was leaking information that was damaging their carefully constructed facade of lies. Since they were convinced at this point that Rove's 100 year majority plan was going to work, it never occurred to them that it would force them to undergo scrutiny themselves, as spokesmouth Fratto makes clear.

"We don't dispute that the ISOO has a different opinion. But let's be very clear: This executive order was issued by the president, and he knows what his intentions were," Fratto said. "He is in compliance with his executive order."

Sure the order doesn't specifically exempt either Cheney or Bush, but Bush says he intended it to, so that's all that matters. We shouldn't be troubled by that pesky rule of law thing. After all, what are laws or the constitution but, as Bush himself put it, just a god-damned piece of paper. No oversight needed here. As the old joke on the sitcoms used to go -- Trust me. Have I ever lied to you?

Meanwhile, as we wait and wait and wait for Congress to take some meaningful action to shut down this criminal cabal, Rahm Emanuel offers the best response so far to Cheney's contention that he is his own branch of government.

Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) said he plans to propose next week, as part of a spending bill for executive operations, a measure to place a hold on funds for Cheney's office and official home until he clarifies to which branch of the government he belongs. Emanuel acknowledged that the proposal is just a stunt, but he said that if Cheney is not part of the executive branch, he should not receive its funds. "As we say in Chicago, follow the money," he said.

How is that a stunt? I think it's a practical response. If Cheney doesn't belong to any branch of government, why the hell should we be footing his bills with tax dollars? Let him run his shadow government on his own dime. With all the money he's bled out of the treasury for his corrupt cronies, he can afford it.

Update:Ron Beasley at Gun Toting Liberal, who kindly links, Sully and Cernig all have something good to add to the discussion and I liked this, from Joe Cannon at Brad Blog a lot.

More than that. Dick Cheney has claimed "executive privilege" a number of times, most notably when asked to disclose his energy policy meetings. Legislators have no such privilege. May we see the documents now?

More than that. Do you know the technical grounds for the impeachment charges brought against Richard Nixon? Subpoenas. Nixon ignored them, and so he had to go. Any congressional committee may now subpoena anything it wants from Cheney's office. Not a single document in the joint is protected by executive privilege. Not a single person working under Cheney may claim executive privilege. Dick Cheney has made very clear that he is not part of the executive branch of government.

If Cheney does not comply, he becomes instantly and impeccably impeachable.

Meanwhile, Avedon provides historical background on how Nixon was impeached and some advice to Democrats and anyone who wants to save our country from this lying pair of thugs.

[Photo shameslessly stolen from Ron Beasley's own blog Middle Earth Journal.]

Like any fungus, Cheney prefers teh dark

By Libby
Updated below

In the world according to Dick Cheney, the rule of law stops just outside his door. Now back in the days when Veeps did little but attend state funerals and kiss babies at fundraisers while the president was busy governing this wouldn't have been as great a matter of concern. However, as investigations reveal Cheney as a chief architect of all of our Clueless Leader's disastrous policies of imperialism and remains a prime instigator for permanent mayhem in the Middle East, to the point where he is apparently coniviving behind the scenes to force Bush into an insane military confrontation with Iran, his shameless pissing on the constitution cannot safely be ignored.

His latest dodge of oversight underscores the danger.

Since 2003, the vice president's staff has not cooperated with an office at the National Archives and Records Administration charged with making sure the executive branch protects classified information. Cheney aides have not filed reports on their possession of classified data and at one point blocked an inspection of their office. After the Archives office pressed the matter, the documents say, Cheney's staff this year proposed eliminating it.

According to the twisted logic of Dick's il-legal team, the VP is not accountable to anyone. Not to the people, not to the Congress, not the judiciary and not even to the unitary executive. Their argument seems to be that since the office belongs to everyone, it really belongs to noone but the person holding the office.

But this is just his latest assault on the people. How much does Cheney hate us? Let us count the ways. Jesse Lee at the Gavel provides a link to oversight committee's letter to teh big Dick and kindly provides the list of pertinent bullet points for the pdf adverse.

He doesn't want us to know how he handles classified information.

We're not allowed to find out who advises him on policy planning.

He doesn't want to tell who pays for his secret jaunts.

Who works for him in an official government capacity is none of our business. Nevermind that we pay their salaries.

Who he meets with on official business is too much to ask.

And thanks to an order signed by Bush, providing a sort of pre-emptive pardon for his criminality, he can carry his black secrets to the grave. He never has to tell us a bloody thing.

Meanwhile, the LAT connects the dots on the timing of when Cheney decided not to co-operate with a long-standing policy.

According to documents released Thursday by a House committee, Cheney's staff has blocked efforts by the National Archives' Information Security Oversight Office to enforce a key component of the presidential order: a mandatory on-site inspection of the vice president's office. At least one of those inspections would have come at a particularly delicate time — when Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, and other aides were under criminal investigation for their suspected roles in leaking the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame.

That's a key point. He fully co-operated for the first two years of the Bush reign, but once he figured out how to co-opt the system to his own benefit, he's started singing, "Ain't Nobody's Business If I Do." It also explains a lot about why he's so keen on maintaining a state of permanent chaos in the Middle East. As long as he can keep the "necessity" of secrecy in a time of war fiction alive, he can protect his prodigious butt and he clearly doesn't care how many have to die for his lies in order to keep his sorry ass out of the slammer.

Another good reason to get out Iraq now I'd say. The toxic mold of the neo-cons' grand plans thrives under the fog of war. Exposing them to the broad sunlight of peaceful co-existence might destroy the slime that destroyed our former tranquility, once and for all.

Update:Steve Benen catches the White House presser and finds Bush is unwilling to claim Dick as part of the executive branch. The White House finds this an "interesting" constitutional question and open to debate. Spokesmouth Perino thinks Waxman is a bad boy for making a fuss over it.

As Steve so adroitly puts it, "So, the problem here is that Waxman believes the Bush administration should enforce its own rules?"

Think Progress catches another choice clip from the presser.

[Perino] repeatedly said that Cheney exempt from a mere “small portion” or “small section” of the executive order, and that President Bush never intended for the executive order to apply to Cheney any differently than it applies to the president’s own office.

Perino later contradicted herself: first, she stated definitively that Cheney’s office is “complying with all the rules and regulations regarding the handling of classified material.” But when questioned how she could be sure, Perino said it was a “good question” and admitted she isn’t “positive” that his office is in compliance.

The White House thinks the VP holding himself above the law is "a little bit of a non-issue." I guess that's no so surprising considering the Bush administration built it's unitary power based on ignoring any and every "small section" of the laws they find incovenient.

The only remaining question here really is, how many little sections of the law do they get to ignore before they're held to account? We don't need to impeach these bums. We need to indict them before they do any more damage.

They damn well knew...

By Libby

Sy Hersch has a profile piece in The New Yorker on General Taguba, the unfortunate soul who was tasked with investigating Abu Ghraib. It's a fascinating look at another high ranking officer who sacrificed his career by commiting the ultimate cardinal sin inside this administration -- putting the truth above political loyalty.

Just as in the internal 9/11 investigation, Taguba was barred from pursuing his inquiry beyond the lower ranked officers even though it was clear to anyone with more than two firing synapses that the orders, and the responsibility, went all the way to the top. It's a richly detailed article that doesn't lend itself to excerpting and I'd urge you to read it in full, but here's the closer.

Taguba went on, “There was no doubt in my mind that this stuff”—the explicit images—“was gravitating upward. It was standard operating procedure to assume that this had to go higher. The President had to be aware of this.” He said that Rumsfeld, his senior aides, and the high-ranking generals and admirals who stood with him as he misrepresented what he knew about Abu Ghraib had failed the nation.

“From the moment a soldier enlists, we inculcate loyalty, duty, honor, integrity, and selfless service,” Taguba said. “And yet when we get to the senior-officer level we forget those values. I know that my peers in the Army will be mad at me for speaking out, but the fact is that we violated the laws of land warfare in Abu Ghraib. We violated the tenets of the Geneva Convention. We violated our own principles and we violated the core of our military values. The stress of combat is not an excuse, and I believe, even today, that those civilian and military leaders responsible should be held accountable.”

The GOP controlled Congress failed utterly in pursuing this matter and justice has been delayed for a very long time, not just for the victims of the abuse but for the hapless soldiers who took the fall for Rummy and his cadre of thugs. One might hope that this new information would engender an inquiry that would finally hold those who were truly responsible, accountable for Abu Ghraib and furthermore shed some light on what appears to be an ongoing illegal black-ops program being conducted at the orders of the president himself.

Lobby reform languishes in House

While I'm on the subject of memory lapses, I seem to recall somebody declaring that the new Congress was going to be the most ethical - evah. Help me out here, her name starts with a P and they kept calling her Madame Speaker... I guess we can forget that. It seems when it comes down to living up to the lofty rhetoric, like any addict, the House Dems can't give up their fix. The lobbyist reform bill drafted to great fanfare in January is slated to lose its key provisions. For instance:

Require lobbyists to disclose details about large donations they arrange for politicians.

Make former lawmakers wait two years, instead of one, before lobbying Congress.

Bar lobbyists from throwing large parties for lawmakers at national political conventions.

The chief stumbling block in the House centers on whether to require disclosures of a fundraising practice called bundling. It involves lobbyists soliciting and collecting campaign donations from other people and then presenting them in one package to the targeted candidate.

It's like they tore a page out of the GOP's handbook. Wait until the people are distracted by other news and pass something symbolic that doesn't change a thing. The bill was already too weak when it was first proposed. Lawmakers should have to wait ten years before they can lobby their former peers and bundling should be banned outright. That would close two of the widest avenues of undue corporate influence.

I'm not so unrealistic to think that the politicians would be able to cut themselves off cold turkey from the corporate perks and I know the bar to making this the most ethical Congress ever is set pretty damn low, but Democrats are going to have to do much better than this if they want to ride their gains into 08. Just being the not-Republicans is not going to be enough the next time. In the next tsunami of voter discontent, no incumbent's seat will be safe.

The electorate voted for change in 06. Mark my words, in 08 they'll be ready to make a clean sweep.

Looking at the job description

I've been meaning to ask this myself. Anonymous Liberal runs down the list, pointing to absurdity of the increasingly lame excuses the White House has proffered for allegedly losing all those emails. It's a great post that should be read in full but one question in particular stands out.

There is no reason these RNC accounts had to be used to the extent they were (or utilize such draconian deletion policies). If Karl Rove truly feels that compliance with the Hatch Act requires him to conduct 95% of his business via a private RNC email account, perhaps he should be asked to explain why he deserves to be on the public payroll at all? Why should he get 100% of his salary if he's only devoting 5% of his time to official business?

I've been thinking about this all week. Why should the taxpayer be paying 100% of the salaries of any of the 50 people who did enough outside politicking to require the issuance of the laptops? In fact why do any of it within the confines of the people's house at all? We're footing the utilities and the office space at the very least and any time they spend on these matters, is time they're not spending on conducting the people's business.

If the average Jake needs to do any extensive amount of personal work, they don't do it on their employer's dime. They would lose their jobs. They have to take the day off. Why should the taxpayer's employees get a better deal than they have themselves? Perhaps if our government workers were required to do their jobs instead of spending their time figuring out how to keep their employers in office, we would have a better government.

Libby Spencer

Paul Wolfowitz Caught With Pants Down

Well not exactly. But nonetheless he has once again proved that he is an unethical liar. He has helped his girlfriend Shaha Ali Riza obtain a job at the State Department that pays her more than Condoleeza Rice. Now in and of itself this may mean nothing as it seems that Ms. Rice is obviously not being overworked.

Wolfowitz is the president of the World Bank and was the Director of Policy Planning at the Dept. of Defense that helped frame and manipulate the justifications for war with Iraq. He is also the architect of the foreign policy of the Bush Administration known as the Bush Doctrine.

He is in a bad way ethically and may be Imussed.

"I made a mistake, for which I am sorry," said the controversial Wolfowitz, a former deputy Secretary of Defense who was one of the main architect's of the current war in Iraq. "In hindsight, I wish I had trusted my original instincts and kept myself out of the negotiations."

That should take care of it, right?

His apology was apparently not enough for the World Bank Group Staff Association, which issued a statement saying Wolfowitz "must acknowledge that his conduct has compromised the integrity and effectiveness of the World Bank Group and has destroyed the staff's trust in his leadership. He must act honorably and resign."

The problems started as soon as Mr. Wolfowitz took the helm at the World Bank as he gave his honey a $47,300 raise which worked out to a 35 percent increase!

Once the relationship between Wolfowitz and Riza, who are both divorced, was made public in September 2005, Riza was assigned to work at the State Department, though she continued to draw a salary from the World Bank.
In 2006 Riza received a $13,590 (7.5 percent) raise (to $193,590). According to GAP, World Bank staff rules would cap her raise percentage increases at 12 percent and 3.7 percent. Riza's current salary, $193,590, is approximately $7,000 more than what Rice earns.

Since he took the helm of the World Bank in 2005, after putting together a great plan for Iraq and "Mission Accomplished", he made it a top priority to end corruption in third world countries.

This man is as corrupt as any third world country and they shouldn't wait for him to resign, he should be fired.

He wouldn't be out of work for long, King George would love to have "Wolfie" back. After all, they are two of a kind.

Jim M