The Rule of Law Died Again Today.

Kagro X over at Big Orange says it better than I can:

So what we're saying here is that secret memos can now be drafted (retroactively and be backdated if necessary?) that purport to be "legal directives" upon which the telecom companies can claim to have relied in "good faith." Or worse, they may even be able to say they received nothing but oral assurances that their activities were "legal." And if you want to see these "legal directives," it just so happens that since they've been prepared by the Office of Legal Counsel or some other close advisors to the president, executive privilege may just prevent you from doing so.

Or "national security."

Or "I just don't feel like it, and you can't make me."

And that's the real problem here. How is anyone to tell the difference between law that meets the commonly accepted definition we all work with every day on the one hand, and "whatever the hell the president says" on the other?

What is "law," anyway? Is it the stuff that Congress passes in public and that you can read in order to be able to obey it? Or is it just anything that can in practice frighten you into obeying? If you can be sent to jail, or immunized from suit, or whatever, based on a secret showing that you relied in "good faith" on a memo an "administration" official gives you (and literally nothing more -- and perhaps even a lot less), you really have to ask yourself that question. What. Is. Law?

Courage Campaign

You know an election is coming up when the Republicans start looking for a way to throw it. This time they came up with the great idea of making California - the state with the most electoral votes, as they're allocated by population - give up a third of their electoral votes to the Greedy Old Perverts for showing up.

Sure, allocating electoral votes by Congressional district instead of by state would be fair if everyone did it, and if the Congressional districts weren't so gerrymandered that they were safe votes for one party or the other. That the GOP isn't pushing this in Texas and Florida tells me all I need to know about their motives: change the rules to favor themselves.

So what do we do about it? Head on over to the Courage Campaign and find out. They have a conference call coming up on Monday that specifically addresses this issue.

Oh, and Californians, when you see a paid signature gatherer with this petition - and they are out there - don't sign it. Unless there's a solid provision that it goes into effect when a majority of states vote for it - and not until - then all it would do is hand the Republicans another election they didn't earn and don't deserve.

God, a month and a half!

Second Life is a vampire!

So, let's see what the Obstructionist-in-Chief is doing...

Lying about our troop strength in Iraq, and setting us up for another Friedman Unit in Magic September? Check.

Lying about why we're there in the first place? Check.

Scaremongering with the failed UK terror attacks? Oh, so check.

Promising to keep American soldiers in harm's way until they find the pony or he can get his war-criminal ass to Paraguay? Check.

Demonstrating utter contempt for due process and the rule of law? Check and check.

That's the most depressing part about doing this - it's like I never went on hiatus.

They Just Don't Get the Whole "Rule of Law" Thing

Here, let's let Glenn Greenwald lead it off:

The Wall St. Journal online has today published a lengthy and truly astonishing article by Harvard Government Professor Harvey Mansfield, which expressly argues that the power of the President is greater than "the rule of law."

The power of the President, Mansfield says, is greater than the rule of law. And he says it like it's a good thing.

When Benjamin Franklin, when asked what kind of government the fledgling United States had famously replied, "A republic, if you can keep it", this was what he was talking about.

Oh, and in case you're writing this off as the bloviating of a pundit, let me assure you that it is, in fact the policy of this Administration:

Administration Pulls Back on Surveillance Agreement

By JAMES RISEN
Published: May 2, 2007

WASHINGTON, May 1 — Senior Bush administration officials told Congress on Tuesday that they could not pledge that the administration would continue to seek warrants from a secret court for a domestic wiretapping program, as it agreed to do in January.

Rather, they argued that the president had the constitutional authority to decide for himself whether to conduct surveillance without warrants.

The Chimp has the authority to decide for himself whether or not he needs to follow the law?

Did I miss the coronation?

News is

All Virginia Tech, all the time.

All I will say about it is - beware the decisions made in the storm of the media hype and the fear of the moment, for like the decisions made after 9/11, they will haunt us for years to come.

And, of course, my prayers to the victims' families - if the prayers of a California agnostic mean anything.

Where the Hell Are These Guys Learning Civics?

Steven Bradbury, as reported in - God help us - Newsweek, seems to think that there are circumstances in which it's perfectly OK for the Chimp to order the military to kill American citizens on American soil. Current and former government officials were quick to justify this by bringing up various "24"ish scenarios, but apparently none of the officials were willing to attach their names to this idiocy.

University of Chicago law professor Cass Sunstein is only too willing to sign on, however - saying that:

the post-9/11 congressional resolution authorizing the use of military force against Al Qaeda empowered the president to kill 9/11 perpetrators, or people who assisted their plot, whether they were overseas or inside the United States. On the other hand, Sunstein says, the president would be on less solid legal ground were he to order the killing of a terror suspect in the United States who was not actively preparing an attack.

Emphasis mine. Evidently, blatantly violating the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments to the Constitution merely puts the Chimp on "less solid legal ground". Left undiscussed is what happens to the suspect, or to the legal concept of presumption of innocence.

They're still trotting out this crap.

I Finally Figured it Out

Who Attorney General Alberto "Abu Ghraib" Gonzales reminds me of:



I mean, habeas corpus isn't just Constitutional Law 101 - it's Schoolhouse Rock. Federalist 84? Tenth Amendment? Apparently, neither of these exist in Torturin' Al's Bizarro World - or, like all to many, he considers the Constitution clause by clause and not as a whole, just like anyone trying to get out of a contract does. I mean, the concept that the Constitution doesn't enumerate individual rights but rather limits the Federal government's infringement of them is grade-school civics.

Are You Sure AG Gonzales Used to be a Lawyer?

Glenn Greenwald on AG Gonzales:

But ultimately, there are only two options -- (1) the administration is now complying fully and exclusively with FISA when eavesdropping, in which case all of its prior claims that it could not do so and still fight against The Terrorists are false, or (2) the administration has changed its eavesdropping program some, but it is still not fully complying with FISA, in which case nothing of significance has changed (at least on the lawbreaking issues) because the administration is still violating the law.

The FISA court and the administration cannot reach an agreement for proceeding that deviates from the FISA law itself. So it is only one or the other of the two options, neither of which reflect well on the administration.

I know I'm no lawyer, but I thought that releasing legal opinions weakening the case of the guy whose ass you're trying to cover was, you know, bad.

Wednesday's Updates

Morning, Gentle Readers. I have a few quick updates for you - first, we have some more news on the KSFO front, as the Michigan Economic Development Corporation drops KSFO like a hot rock. Here, I'll let Spocko tell you about it:

We have our first documented success. I would love if we had an actual letter, but I'll let bluestatedon say it in his own words.

Update: MEDC responds quickly (0 / 0)
After I read last week that the Michigan Economic Development Corporation had advertised on KSFO, I sent emails to James Epolito, MEDC President and CEO, and Lisa Dancsok, MEDC VP for Marketing, Communications and Legislative Affairs, to inform them of the situation. I received a personal response via email that evening from Ms. Dancsok, informing me that they were investigating the situation immediately.

Yesterday, I received a phone call from Jim Epolito himself. He'd already met with with GoverBlogger: Electronic Darwinism - Create Postnor Granholm about the situation, and needless to say she was horrified that money had been spent on advertising on that station.

Yup, recursive quotes again - go to Spocko's Brain for the full story - but the ending might be given away by that word in the last sentence of the excerpt - horrified. Way to go, MEDC, for doing the right thing.

In other news, Eric Boehlert documents the fall (by which, I mean the total loss of credibility) of the right-wing warbloggers at Media Matters. I mention this because - thanks to BlogSoldiers, BlogMad, and BlogExplosion - many of them have my blog inflicted upon them, and I couldn't pass up another opportunity to gloat. Petty of me, true, but I never claimed to be Saint Moody Loner.

Let us wrap this up with a quote from Scarecrow over at Firedoglake from an essay about the punt, Somalia, and preemptive war in general:

Just as it did not matter that as many as 20-30 Pakistanis civilians were killed in an effort to kill some al Qaeda leader thought to be meeting in a Pakistani house, it did not matter that there might have been other Somali people killed in this latest attack and now more follow up US attacks, or that some of the victims were probably innocent, or that we were not even technically at war with those we wanted to attack. We did not do this because Congress passed an Authorization to Use Military Force in Somalia.

No, we did it because our President claims we have the right to murder people in other countries if he decides he wants to do so. And we were in apparent violation of Security Council resolutions, which we helped pass, banning the introduction of weapons into Somalia from outside nations. We are an outside nation. In short, we attacked people in another country because we claim we don’t have to obey any laws anywhere — not ours, not theirs, not the UN’s. And that, my friends, is exactly the belief that terrorists everywhere hold.

'Nuff said - gotta get to work. Peace.

The Kind Of Horseshit I Have to Deal With

Thursday, I posted an excerpt from Glenn Greenwald's Nov. 30th column about how the warrantless wiretapping program is still illegal no matter how the Chimp uses the extrajudicial, unconstitutional powers he's seized for himself.

This is the kind of response I get:

Andy D said...

The program continues to be misrepresented. The program isn't wiretapping, and it has safe guards built in so that only terrorist are targeted. The information obtained from the program can't be used for civil criminal investigations. It has netted results, and we have captured high profile targets using this program.

Horseshit, Andy.

I find it illuminating that, in a column about how Bushites try to focus on the use rather than the legality of warrantless wiretapping, when the money quote I used was

It is truly astounding to watch people incapable of understanding the point that the reason it is wrong and dangerous for the President to eavesdrop on Americans without warrants is because doing so is against the law. Shouldn't that be a simple enough proposition that every functioning adult ought to be capable of understanding it?

Andy responds by once again "misunderstanding" the point. What part of "because it's a felony" do you not get, Andy?

Here's another quote, from the same column. I'd icily suggest that you read it this time, but that leads me to the realization that I screwed up the link to it in the last post. I'd better fix that.

One more time: the principal problem with the President's warrantless eavesdropping is not that he is abusing the secret eavesdropping powers he seized (that is something we do not yet know, because the Congress has not yet investigated that question). Instead, the "problem" is that the President is engaging in the very conduct which the American people, through their Congress almost 30 years ago, made it a felony to engage in, punishable by up to five years in prison -- that is, eavesdropping on Americans without judicial oversight.

Thus, even if Lanny Davis and the other Republicans on the panel think the President is using his illegal powers carefully, his conduct is no less illegal. Why is it necessary even to point that out? This has been the obvious and paramount point from the beginning, as I wrote in my book (at pages 25, 60) (emphasis in original):

The heart of the matter is that the president broke the law, deliberately and repeatedly, no matter what his rationale was for doing so. We do not have a system of government in which the president has the right to violate laws, even if he believes doing so will produce good results. . . .

The NSA eavesdropping scandal, as its core, is not an eavesdropping scandal. It is a lawbreaking scandal....

Are we clear, now? I even added some emphasis, so you wouldn't miss the point. Address that, if you will.

Once again, Glenn brings it home

Today's column here. I can't add to it, but here's a taste:

It is truly astounding to watch people incapable of understanding the point that the reason it is wrong and dangerous for the President to eavesdrop on Americans without warrants is because doing so is against the law. Shouldn't that be a simple enough proposition that every functioning adult ought to be capable of understanding it?

You'd think so. Some of these Bushites claim to be studious, serious people with law degrees and everything, but my five-year-old daughter gets the point that, time and again, seems to escape them.

Unless, of course, their stupidity is a rhetorical device to cover their dishonesty.

Up to you. We report, you deride.

Okay, back

And thanks to Mrs. Moody and Alton Brown or showing her the path, I've had what was possibly the best Thanksgiving turkey ever. I'd post the recipe, but that's not what y'all are here to read, and I'd probably be executed for divulging classified Thanksgiving secrets.

And, amid the bitter aftertaste of the worsening chaos and civil war in Iraq, I give thanks that I've done my duty as an American citizen to stand against tyranny and aggressive, preemptive war and stand up for the Constitution and the rule of law. I accept that much more needs to be done and rededicate myself to standing up for the freedoms that good Americans have laid down their lives for.

Yeah, cue American flag backdrop and patriotic music.

And, for my non-American readers, I will work for the day that you forgive us and respect us once again.

And a-One, and a-Two...

Looks like it's the Chimpster's turn to get thrown under the bus.

With Kenneth Adelman and Henry Kissinger coming out against Bush's Iraq War Pony Hunt and Pixie Resuscitation Plan, one wonders if it's become time for the "conservatives" to try to rescue their ideology by claiming that the failure was not them trying to dictate terms to reality, but rather the failure of the Bush administration to be the right kind of "conservative". Or "conservative" enough. Or something.

Look, you've supported the Chimp for six years, at least - if "support" can be considered the proper term for a level of public fellatio that would make Monica Lewinsky blush. You had the House and the Senate enthusiastically rubber-stamping the shit that the Chimp-in-Chief flung about the Oval Office. You don't get to run away from Captain Thirty-One Percent now.

On the bright side, though, if the Gang O' Perverts has come to the realization that they'd better dump the Chimp if any of them want to have jobs in 2008 - well, suddenly impeachment looks a lot more likely.

Oh, and "conservative" is in quotes because I've seen precious little of the hallmarks of true conservative thought - limited federal government, strict adherence to the Constitution, and fiscal responsibility.

Because If I Could Let Bullshit Slide, I Wouldn't Be Doing This

Yeah, I was just going to let it slide, but screw it. The biggest perk of running your own blog is the ability to get the last word.

On the off chance that Blog Mad or Blog Explosion inflict my site upon PrivatePigg's delicate sensibilities, my response to his response:

1. No, you and Brian are trying to make the argument about FDR and not Bush, and I won't let you.

2. Again, no you don't get to switch the argument. And no lefty claims that every Muslim in the US is in internment - note that I didn't, either. I merely asserted that the populations of Gitmo and whatever other hellholes we're operating are exclusively Muslim. You could easily rebut this by listing all the inmates that aren't Muslims - not merely non-Arab, because they're not the same thing.

3. Let me enlighten you regarding this little concept we have here called freedom of association:

[While the]United States Constitution's First Amendment identifies the rights to assemble and to petition the government, the text of the First Amendment itself does not make specific mention of a right to association. The United States Supreme Court jurisprudence names two distinct ways in which the right may be implicated:

1. Freedom of association is recognized and may be protected as a fundamental element of personal liberty when choices to enter into and maintain certain intimate human relationships are at issue.

2. Freedom of association is recognized and may be protected for the purposes of engaging in activities protected by the text of the First Amendment—speech, assembly, petitioning government for a redress of grievances, and the free exercise of religion. Because the role of these relationships is central to safeguarding individual freedoms, they may receive protection from undue intrusion by the State. Thus, there is a constitutional freedom to associate as a means of preserving other individual liberties.

This is not merely a conservative meme, it's a libertarian one.

4. One thing we agree on is that this Administration has made the 4th Amendment irrelevant. Apparently, you don't understand the concept of due process of law either.

And those "I'm smarter than you" quips apparently drew blood, hence your response. Read the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Really read it - then come back here and tell me that ol' Chimpy is merely exercising his Constitutional powers. This would be one of the many reasons why his approval is at 33%.

Oh, and regarding your use of liberal as an insult:

Broadly speaking, liberalism emphasizes individual rights. It seeks a society characterized by freedom of thought for individuals, limitations on power, especially of government and religion, the rule of law, free public education, the free exchange of ideas, a market economy that supports relatively free private enterprise, and a transparent system of government in which the rights of all citizens are protected.^[2] In modern society, liberals favor a liberal democracy with open and fair elections, where all citizens have equal rights by law and an equal opportunity to succeed.^[3]

If this is an insult, remind me to get insulted more often. Of course, I'm casually curious as to when fiscal responsibility, constitutionalism, less intrusive federal government, and personal responsibility became liberal values, but whatever.

Yep, lots of wikipedia this time. Not the source I prefer, but you win arguments with the sources you have, not the ones you want or might wish to have.

PS: Regarding your refusal to patronize my site, PrivatePigg - it's fair enough, as I have yours blocked as well. On the other hand, I read yours first. You should think of doing the same next time, lest you find yourself once again accusing a libertarian whose idea of fine dining is a restaurant with metal silverware of being a liberal elite. Just sayin'.

Once Again, We Get Mail

Yes, for a second time, I'm going to directly address a comment. This comment was posted in response to "That Didn't Take Long":

Democrat[sic] icon FDR acted in a much similar way.. At least we don't have internment camps where the only requirement for entrance is being from a specific race. The "enemy-combatants" are in Gitmo for a reason. If you aren't a terrorist, there shouldn't be anything to worry about. - Brian

Brian, Brian, Brian. Here, let me go through this point by point:

Democrat[sic] icon FDR acted in a much similar way.

Okay, laying aside for the moment what Franklin Delano Roosevelt did during a declared war against an alliance of fascist nation-states, this talking point is straight out of the "He did it, so I can do it too" school of jurisprudence so beloved by my five-year-old. While adorable coming from a small child, it's disturbing when a putative adult bases civil liberties and foreign policy decisions on it. I believe the proper response would be, "So, if FDR jumped off a cliff, would you do it too?", save that I doubt a polio-crippled FDR could have managed. We can leave the minutiae regarding FDR's physical limits aside, for my point is made.

At least we don't have internment camps where the only requirement for entrance is being from a specific race.

This is teh funny. In, of course, a bitter and cynical mode of humour. No, we don't have internment camps where the only requirement is race - we have internment camps where the only requirement is religion. Stop me when that starts sounding familiar.

The "enemy-combatants" are in Gitmo for a reason.

Let's explore that, shall we?

From this article on Slate ( and yes, it's the "librul media". You guys think every corporate-owned media outlet save Rush Limbaugh and Fox News is part of the "librul media" - and Rush and Fox don't talk about this):

The data suggests that maybe 80 percent of these detainees were never al-Qaida members, and many were never even Taliban foot soldiers.

So why are they there? Glad you asked:

Most detainees are being held for the crime of having "associated" with the Taliban or al-Qaida—often in the most attenuated way, including having known or lived with people assumed to be Taliban, or worked for charities with some ties to al-Qaida. Some had "combat" experience that seems to have consisted solely of being hit by U.S. bombs. Most were not picked up by U.S. forces but handed over to our military by Afghan warlords in exchange for enormous bounties and political payback.

But weren't they all proved guilty of something at their status review hearings? Calling these proceedings "hearings" does violence to that word. Detainees are assumed guilty until proven innocent, provided no lawyers, and never told what the evidence against them consists of.

Read the full article, with the associated studies, then come back and tell me how hard-core those falafel vendors and taxi drivers we're torturing are.

If you aren't a terrorist, there shouldn't be anything to worry about.

Okay, then. I suppose you don't mind if the cops start searching every house in your neighborhood looking for drugs. Who needs a warrant? After all, if you're innocent, you have nothing to worry about. Be polite when they kick in your door at three AM - they have guns.

Do they not teach civics anymore? Is the bare concept of "rule of law" so alien to you? Do you really want to live in a United States where the powerful can do whatever they want, whenever they want, to whomever they wish and your only recourse is that they decide that you're innocent?

And what, precisely, is "conservative" about that vision of America?

Oh, for readers that are interested, Brian can be found at superacidjax.blogspot.com. Enjoy.