First Cause –

With so many crises going on from day to day, it’s hard to cover them all … and the “little” ones are no less extraordinary than the “big” ones — we play Whack-a-Mole with this stuff, uncovering the erosion of liberties and discovering egregious policies and appointments … and it remains to be seen what a Blue America can actually whack, anyhow. Bush is standing ready with his veto power to do in stem cell legislation, for instance, and anything else he doesn’t care for … the proposed drug bill, for sure.

But we’re heading into a bigger fight, I think — a showdown on First Cause, dearhearts — we shall see if the Constitution can stand, in Bush’s Amurika.

The Blue is comfortable talking about the Constitution … Teddy Kennedy quoted from it the other day; clearly, the Pub’s don’t want to say too much since its spoilage came at their hands. But now, as the Congress takes on its actual role of oversight and debate, we will be hearing more about Constitutional rights and regulations … about what it guarantee’s … about what it’s been manipulated to mean lately … about what it should be.

We have to get back where we belong — we need to reinstate habeas corpus, limit Dub’s “unitary power” and turn privacy issues around in this nation, or lose the whole experiment in liberty.

Here are reads I don’t want you to miss — crisis de jour may take up the oxygen, but we mustn’t forget First Cause. We fight against Bush in so many respects … in protecting the integrity of the Constitution, we know what we’re fighting FOR.

Jude

A Surge of Constitutionalism
Gary Hart, HuffPo
01.09.2007

The endless Iraq war is decreasingly about Iraq and increasingly about the U.S. Constitution.

President Bush’s decision to escalate the war, and to further Americanize it, is based on his flawed and dangerous theory of the “unitary presidency,” a theory under which, once war is declared, the president as commander in chief can ignore constitutional checks and balances, disregard the bill of rights, suspend accountability, and concentrate dictatorial power in his own hands.

History has already judged the invasion and occupation of Iraq as an American disaster of epic proportions. But an even more important judgment remains to be made. What damage has been done to the U.S. Constitution and our form of government in the name of the “war on terrorism” as cover for a secret neo-conservative agenda in the Middle East?

In rendering this judgment in years to come, constitutional scholars will take into account Congress’s appalling suspension of habeas corpus, its approval of torture and rendition, and its abdication of its constitutional oversight responsibilities. These congressional failures, however, will not be seen as cover or justification for an executive branch run totally amok.

George W. Bush will be held accountable in the court of history for manipulation of intelligence to serve his neo-conservative political agenda, his erosion of national security by the unnecessary exhaustion of our standing and reserve forces, his pathetic failure to respond to natural disasters, his unhinging of the national budget in the service of accumulated wealth, and his almost demented insistence that the U.S. military could put the lid back on a 1300 year old Islamic struggle that he himself had ignorantly removed.

In his adopted role as Captain Ahab, Mr. Bush will extend the tours of four combat brigades and add another to the Iraqi meat-grinder, all in the name of pacifying the capital city where, even today, F-18 aircraft are bombing neighborhoods to rout out insurgents. Thirty-five years ago in Vietnam this was called “pacification.” “Secure and hold” will fail equally for a simple reason: patience. It requires no MBA from Harvard to know that occupations, unless they intend themselves to be permanent, will be defeated by insurgents waiting for the occupiers to leave. Those meant to “hold” after we “secure” are all part of a sectarian blood feud that was there long before we came and that will be there long after we leave.

All this will have to be tidied up on the watch of the unfortunate next president who must assume, on top of many other duties left unfinished, the job of restoring the health, integrity, and capability of the armed forces of the United States now so eroded by a war they should never have been called upon to wage.

Likewise, the price for this folly will live long after Mr. Bush departs the premises. Were he sincere in the faith he professes, he would require those who have benefited the most from his tax cuts, those now increasing the size of their gilded yachts, to adopt one of the families of the more than 25,000 American military casualties. Each Bush billionaire can surely afford to care for the widow and orphans of one of the fallen or to provide long-term physical and mental care for one of the wounded in body and mind as a result of his folly.

Surely now even the most cynical neo-conservative is prepared to declare victory. We destroyed all those weapons of mass destruction that Richard Cheney knew existed. Iraq is no longer an imminent threat to U.S. national security, not that it ever was. We have rid ourselves of the tyrant S. Hussein (though it was never quite clear why he, among several dozen tyrants, deserved our special attention), and we have give the Iraqi people freedom, which they are now using to kill each other.

What we, the world’s most dominant military power in history, cannot do is impose peace on a nation with scores to settle.

Needed now is not a surge of military forces. Needed now is a surge of citizen commitment to restore the Constitution of the United States of America.

The White House Threatens to Ignore Congress
Cenk Uygur, The Young Turks
Jan 9 2007

“The President has the ability to exercise his own authority if he thinks Congress has voted the wrong way.”

~ Tony Snow, January 8, 2007

We’ve jumped the shark. If this idea doesn’t outrage the American population, the media and the opposition party (and even his own party), then we’ve lost track of what America is all about. Do we have a constitution or don’t we?

I can’t imagine any other president saying he has the right to do what he pleases even if Congress makes it illegal. What does “if he thinks Congress has voted the wrong way” mean? Wrong, according to whom? The fact that it is a law makes it right by definition, by our democracy, by our constitution.

The president can veto laws he thinks Congress voted the wrong way on. But if they override his veto, it is not within his authority to ignore that law. This is so fundamental that it’s unbelievable that it has to be spelled out.

If you asked whether a president could do this in an eighth grade civics class and anyone answered — “Yes, a president can exercise his own authority if he thinks Congress voted the wrong way.” — you would unquestionably fail them. That is not the correct answer. At least not in our system of government.

If Reagan felt that Congress voted the wrong way in the Boland Amendment, then does that make his administration’s actions in Iran-Contra legal? If Nixon felt Congress would have voted the wrong way on impeachment, could he just stay in office? Even he wasn’t brazen enough to make this claim.

This is the stuff constitutional crises are made of. This president has been unabashedly breaking and reinterpreting the law to suit his needs for years now. He does out in the open. He does it with the flimsiest of explanations. And he rubs everyone’s face in it.

He is in direct violation of FISA - he knows it, we all know it, and no one does a thing about it (except the previous Republican Congress that tried to make it legal retroactively and Senator Feingold’s motion for censure). He now claims the right to violate the new postal reform bill - right after he signed it into effect. Laws don’t apply to him. He has magical executive authority.

You know what this kind of “executive authority” used to be called before? The divine right of kings, dictatorial power, authoritarian rule. I would like anyone to explain how a president in our constitutional form of government can claim the right to ignore laws passed by the legislative branch.

President Bush has claimed the right to reinterpret laws by attaching signing statements to over 750 laws. Often times, his “interpretation” is the exact opposite of what the law clearly states (e.g. the torture ban and postal legislation). Other times, the president has simply broken the law and lied about it until caught ( e.g. warrantless wiretapping).

In the case of Tony Snow’s comment yesterday, the White House seems to be implying that Bush will send in however many troops he wants to Iraq no matter what laws Congress passes. That he will simply declare that “Congress voted the wrong way.”

Imagine if Congress passes a law saying that our troop presence in Iraq is capped at 150,000 troops. Bush vetoes, Congress overrides. Then Bush orders more troops into Iraq, surpassing the legal limit imposed by Congress. What do we do?

Does the Supreme Court have to order the generals to not deploy the troops? Do they have to listen? Who does the Pentagon take orders from? If Bush thinks he can ignore Congress, what if he tells the commanders to also ignore the Supreme Court?

This is madness. We are supposed to be a country of laws. What do we do when we have a president who expressly tells the country that he is not constrained by the law?

A positive first step would be for the opposition party to grow a spine and let the president know that he will follow the law or he will be thrown out of office. Violating clear federal laws is more than enough to meet the “high crimes and misdemeanors” requirement of Article II, Section 4.

It was one thing when Democrats lived an intimidated existence, huddling in a small corner as the minority party. It was one thing when it appeared that it was politically perilous to cross the president (it never appeared that way to us — the progressive bloggers and media — and it turned out we had judged the national mood better than the Democratic Party or the mainstream media). But now that it is politically perilous to not challenge the president and the Democrats are in the majority, there are no more excuses.

Do your job. Check the president. Demand that he follow the law - or show him the door. We aren’t playing kid’s games here. The man is jeopardizing the constitution and our way of life. He must be brought back in line before we face a true constitutional crisis.

An Open Letter to President Bush
So Now You Want to Snoop Through Our Mail
Sen. RUSSELL FEINGOLD, CounterPunch
January 9, 2007

Dear Mr. President:

I am deeply concerned about the signing statement that you issued on December 20, 2006, regarding H.R. 6407, the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act. It raises serious questions about whether the government is reading Americans’ first class mail without obtaining a search warrant or other court order as required by statute.

The Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act recodified in a different location an existing provision of federal law, without change, that states as follows:

No letter of such a class of domestic origin shall be opened except under authority of a search warrant authorized by law, or by an officer or employee of the Postal Service for the sole purpose of determining an address at which the letter can be delivered, or pursuant to the authorization of the addressee.

In your signing statement, you stated that the executive branch would construe this provision

“in a manner consistent, to the maximum extent permissible, with the need to conduct searches in exigent circumstances, such as to protect human life and safety against hazardous materials, and the need for physical searches specifically authorized by law for foreign intelligence collection.”

At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in February 2006 on the National Security Agency warrantless wiretapping program, Senator Leahy asked Attorney General Alberto Gonzales whether the executive branch was relying in other contexts on the theory that the Authorization for the Use of Military Force gave it the authority to violate the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and other statutes. Specifically, Senator Leahy asked: “Did it authorize the opening of first-class mail of U.S. citizens?”

The Attorney General attempted to avoid answering the question, but ultimately stated: “Senator, I think that, again, that is not what is going on here. We are only focused on communications, international communications, where one party to the communication is al Qaeda. That is what this program is all about.”

You have already confirmed that you have authorized the NSA to conduct surveillance of communications without obtaining the court orders required by FISA. Your December 20, 2006, signing statement now suggests that you believe you have the authority to violate the law with regard to opening regular mail. The American people and Congress are entitled to know whether you have acted on that theory.

Please answer the following question: has your administration authorized any government agency to read Americans’ first-class mail without obtaining a search warrant, complying with the applicable court order requirements of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or satisfying Postal Service regulations?

I look forward to your expeditious reply.

Sincerely,

Russell D. Feingold
United States Senator

A voice from Gitmo’s darkness
A current detainee speaks of the torture and humiliation he has experienced at Guantanamo since 2002
Jumah al-Dossari, LA Times
January 11, 2007

[JUMAH AL-DOSSARI is a 33-year-old citizen of Bahrain. This article was excerpted from letters he wrote to his attorneys. Its contents have been deemed unclassified by the Department of Defense.]

Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba — I AM WRITING from the darkness of the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo in the hope that I can make our voices heard by the world. My hand quivers as I hold the pen.

In January 2002, I was picked up in Pakistan, blindfolded, shackled, drugged and loaded onto a plane flown to Cuba. When we got off the plane in Guantanamo, we did not know where we were. They took us to Camp X-Ray and locked us in cages with two buckets — one empty and one filled with water. We were to urinate in one and wash in the other.

At Guantanamo, soldiers have assaulted me, placed me in solitary confinement, threatened to kill me, threatened to kill my daughter and told me I will stay in Cuba for the rest of my life. They have deprived me of sleep, forced me to listen to extremely loud music and shined intense lights in my face. They have placed me in cold rooms for hours without food, drink or the ability to go to the bathroom or wash for prayers. They have wrapped me in the Israeli flag and told me there is a holy war between the Cross and the Star of David on one hand and the Crescent on the other. They have beaten me unconscious.

What I write here is not what my imagination fancies or my insanity dictates. These are verifiable facts witnessed by other detainees, representatives of the Red Cross, interrogators and translators.

During the first few years at Guantanamo, I was interrogated many times. My interrogators told me that they wanted me to admit that I am from Al Qaeda and that I was involved in the terrorist attacks on the United States. I told them that I have no connection to what they described. I am not a member of Al Qaeda. I did not encourage anyone to go fight for Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden have done nothing but kill and denigrate a religion. I never fought, and I never carried a weapon. I like the United States, and I am not an enemy. I have lived in the United States, and I wanted to become a citizen.

I know that the soldiers who did bad things to me represent themselves, not the United States. And I have to say that not all American soldiers stationed in Cuba tortured us or mistreated us. There were soldiers who treated us very humanely. Some even cried when they witnessed our dire conditions. Once, in Camp Delta, a soldier apologized to me and offered me hot chocolate and cookies. When I thanked him, he said, “I do not need you to thank me.” I include this because I do not want readers to think that I fault all Americans.

But, why, after five years, is there no conclusion to the situation at Guantanamo? For how long will fathers, mothers, wives, siblings and children cry for their imprisoned loved ones? For how long will my daughter have to ask about my return? The answers can only be found with the fair-minded people of America.

I would rather die than stay here forever, and I have tried to commit suicide many times. The purpose of Guantanamo is to destroy people, and I have been destroyed. I am hopeless because our voices are not heard from the depths of the detention center.

If I die, please remember that there was a human being named Jumah at Guantanamo whose beliefs, dignity and humanity were abused. Please remember that there are hundreds of detainees at Guantanamo suffering the same misfortune. They have not been charged with any crimes. They have not been accused of taking any action against the United States.

Show the world the letters I gave you. Let the world read them. Let the world know the agony of the detainees in Cuba.

What’s right and good doesn’t come naturally. You have to stand up and fight for it - as if the cause depends on you, because it does. Allow yourself that conceit - to believe that the flame of Democracy will never go out as long as there’s one candle in your hand.
~ Bill Moyers

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)
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1 comment January 12th, 2007

Saddle up — with Laura and Barney

I’ll give Olbermann his own post for this one — a “whuppin’,” I think the L’il Brushpopper calls it.

Video over at AlterNet.

Jude

Bush’s legacy: The president who cried wolf
Bush’s strategy fails because it depends on his credibility
Keith Olbermann, Anchor, ‘Countdown’, MSNBC
Jan 11, 2007

Only this president, only in this time, only with this dangerous, even messianic certitude, could answer a country demanding an exit strategy from Iraq, by offering an entrance strategy for Iran.

Only this president could look out over a vista of 3,008 dead and 22,834 wounded in Iraq, and finally say, “Where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me” — only to follow that by proposing to repeat the identical mistake … in Iran.

Only this president could extol the “thoughtful recommendations of the Iraq Study Group,” and then take its most far-sighted recommendation — “engage Syria and Iran” — and transform it into “threaten Syria and Iran” — when al-Qaida would like nothing better than for us to threaten Syria, and when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would like nothing better than to be threatened by us.

This is diplomacy by skimming; it is internationalism by drawing pictures of Superman in the margins of the text books; it is a presidency of Cliff Notes.

And to Iran and Syria — and, yes, also to the insurgents in Iraq — we must look like a country run by the equivalent of the drunken pest who gets battered to the floor of the saloon by one punch, then staggers to his feet, and shouts at the other guy’s friends, “Ok, which one of you is next?”

Mr. Bush, the question is no longer “what are you thinking?,” but rather “are you thinking at all?”

“I have made it clear to the prime minister and Iraq’s other leaders that America’s commitment is not open-ended,” you said last night.

And yet — without any authorization from the public, which spoke so loudly and clearly to you in November’s elections — without any consultation with a Congress (in which key members of your own party, including Sens. Sam Brownback, Norm Coleman and Chuck Hagel, are fleeing for higher ground) — without any awareness that you are doing exactly the opposite of what Baker-Hamilton urged you to do — you seem to be ready to make an open-ended commitment (on America’s behalf) to do whatever you want, in Iran.

Our military, Mr. Bush, is already stretched so thin by this bogus adventure in Iraq that even a majority of serving personnel are willing to tell pollsters that they are dissatisfied with your prosecution of the war.

It is so weary that many of the troops you have just consigned to Iraq will be on their second tours or their third tours or their fourth tours — and now you’re going to make them take on Iran and Syria as well?

Who is left to go and fight, sir?

Who are you going to send to “interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria”?

Laura and Barney?

The line is from the movie “Chinatown” and I quote it often: “Middle of a drought,” the mortician chuckles, “and the water commissioner drowns. Only in L.A.!”

Middle of a debate over the lives and deaths of another 21,500 of our citizens in Iraq, and the president wants to saddle up against Iran and Syria.

Maybe that’s the point — to shift the attention away from just how absurd and childish this latest war strategy is, (strategy, that is, for the war already under way, and not the one on deck).

We are going to put 17,500 more troops into Baghdad and 4,000 more into Anbar Province to give the Iraqi government “breathing space.”

In and of itself that is an awful and insulting term.

The lives of 21,500 more Americans endangered, to give “breathing space” to a government that just turned the first and perhaps the most sober act of any democracy — the capital punishment of an ousted dictator — into a vengeance lynching so barbaric and so lacking in the solemnities necessary for credible authority, that it might have offended the Ku Klux Klan of the 19th century.

And what will our men and women in Iraq do?

The ones who will truly live — and die — during what Mr. Bush said last night will be a “year ahead” that “will demand more patience, sacrifice, and resolve”?

They will try to seal Sadr City and other parts of Baghdad where the civil war is worst.

Mr. Bush did not mention that while our people are trying to do that, the factions in the civil war will no longer have to focus on killing each other, but rather they can focus anew on killing our people.

Because last night the president foolishly all but announced that we will be sending these 21,500 poor souls, but no more after that, and if the whole thing fizzles out, we’re going home.

The plan fails militarily.

The plan fails symbolically.

The plan fails politically.

Most importantly, perhaps, Mr. Bush, the plan fails because it still depends on your credibility.

You speak of mistakes and of the responsibility “resting” with you.

But you do not admit to making those mistakes.

And you offer us nothing to justify this clenched fist toward Iran and Syria.

In fact, when you briefed news correspondents off-the-record before the speech, they were told, once again, “if you knew what we knew … if you saw what we saw … ”

“If you knew what we knew” was how we got into this morass in Iraq in the first place.

The problem arose when it turned out that the question wasn’t whether we knew what you knew, but whether you knew what you knew.

You, sir, have become the president who cried wolf.

All that you say about Iraq now could be gospel.

All that you say about Iran and Syria now could be prescient and essential.

We no longer have a clue, sir.

We have heard too many stories.

Many of us are as inclined to believe you just shuffled the director of national intelligence over to the State Department because he thought you were wrong about Iran.

Many of us are as inclined to believe you just put a pilot in charge of ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan because he would be truly useful in an air war next door in Iran.

Your assurances, sir, and your demands that we trust you, have lost all shape and texture.

They are now merely fertilizer for conspiracy theories.

They are now fertilizer, indeed.

The pile has been built slowly and with seeming care.

I read this list last night, before the president’s speech, and it bears repeating because its shape and texture are perceptible only in such a context.

Before Mr. Bush was elected, he said nation-building was wrong for America.

Now he says it is vital.

He said he would never put U.S. troops under foreign control.

Last night he promised to embed them in Iraqi units.

He told us about WMD.

Mobile labs.

Secret sources.

Aluminum tubes.

Yellow-cake.

He has told us the war is necessary:

Because Saddam was a material threat.

Because of 9/11.

Because of Osama Bin Laden. Al-Qaida. Terrorism in general.

To liberate Iraq. To spread freedom. To spread Democracy. To prevent terrorism by gas price increases.

Because this was a guy who tried to kill his dad.

Because — 439 words in to the speech last night — he trotted out 9/11 again.

In advocating and prosecuting this war he passed on a chance to get Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi.

To get Muqtada Al-Sadr. To get Bin Laden.

He sent in fewer troops than the generals told him to. He ordered the Iraqi army disbanded and the Iraqi government “de-Baathified.”

He short-changed Iraqi training. He neglected to plan for widespread looting. He did not anticipate sectarian violence.

He sent in troops without life-saving equipment. He gave jobs to foreign contractors, and not Iraqis. He staffed U.S. positions there, based on partisanship, not professionalism.

He and his government told us: America had prevailed, mission accomplished, the resistance was in its last throes.

He has insisted more troops were not necessary. He has now insisted more troops are necessary.

He has insisted it’s up to the generals, and then removed some of the generals who said more troops would not be necessary.

He has trumpeted the turning points:

The fall of Baghdad, the death of Uday and Qusay, the capture of Saddam. A provisional government, a charter, a constitution, the trial of Saddam. Elections, purple fingers, another government, the death of Saddam.

He has assured us: We would be greeted as liberators — with flowers;

As they stood up, we would stand down. We would stay the course; we were never about “stay the course.”

We would never have to go door-to-door in Baghdad. And, last night, that to gain Iraqis’ trust, we would go door-to-door in Baghdad.

He told us the enemy was al-Qaida, foreign fighters, terrorists, Baathists, and now Iran and Syria.

He told us the war would pay for itself. It would cost $1.7 billion. $100 billion. $400 billion. Half a trillion. Last night’s speech alone cost another $6 billion.

And after all of that, now it is his credibility versus that of generals, diplomats, allies, Democrats, Republicans, the Iraq Study Group, past presidents, voters last November and the majority of the American people.

Oh, and one more to add, tonight: Oceania has always been at war with East Asia.

Mr. Bush, this is madness.

You have lost the military. You have lost the Congress to the Democrats. You have lost most of the Iraqis. You have lost many of the Republicans. You have lost our allies.

You are losing the credibility, not just of your presidency, but more importantly of the office itself.

And most imperatively, you are guaranteeing that more American troops will be losing their lives, and more families their loved ones. You are guaranteeing it!

This becomes your legacy, sir: How many of those you addressed last night as your “fellow citizens” you just sent to their deaths.

And for what, Mr. Bush?

So the next president has to pull the survivors out of Iraq instead of you?

What’s right and good doesn’t come naturally. You have to stand up and fight for it - as if the cause depends on you, because it does. Allow yourself that conceit - to believe that the flame of Democracy will never go out as long as there’s one candle in your hand.
~ Bill Moyers

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.) chasey lain moviesex classic moviesscripts complete online moviecumshot galleries movie8 movie brolly dbzmovies sex dildodownload free movie pornlesbian movies ebony Map

1 comment January 12th, 2007