Was talking to a friend of mine today about Larry Craig’s misadventure in a public toilet and said I couldn’t imagine how someone with SO MUCH to lose would risk that way, and how if I were a Pub politico I’d be looking around at those MANY mightier than myself tumbling out of the closet, and either be worried about what I was repressing in my own psyche, wondering if it was in the water or damned careful with my sexual adventures.
I told him I thought the Universe was conspiring to push us ALL into authenticity, goad us ALL out from behind our shadows with a white-hot poker up our bums to make us blab everything we know. He said we could call it The Poker of Truth. Yeah, huh!
Here’s a short collection of favorite bits and ‘toons on the “wide stance” of Senator Craig — I’m sure by now you know the gent was caught cruising a mens room and throwing signals to an undercover cop. You may remember Craig as a member of that merry band of warblers that included John Ashcroft and Trent Lott — the “Singing Senators.” Well, Larry ain’t singin’ now! He’s quacking like a duck in Uncle Dick’s cross- hairs.
I’m not sure how they can charge this old fella … there was nothing overt … but if you read the particulars it wasn’t just his behavior in question, his response to the policeman was guilt-stricken … and its certainly made the list of Top Ten Topics this week.
Yes, I know, I know — there are serious things to contemplate like Iran and Iraq and Afghanistan, yadda … but there is a bit of humor in this situation, although likely not for poor “I’m not gay, I’m not gay, I love my wife, I’m not gay” Larry Craig [from Idaho, a place where gay and black folk can end up with their heads mounted over the fireplace; been there, can confirm that with surety.]
As usual, the Left has found the serendipity in all this, while the Right moves ITs feet around to strike a fightin’ pose, as did Tucker Carlson [if he wants to be taken seriously, he needs to lose the bow tie.] And seriously [or not] … I love the part of the Liberal mindset that can find humor in anything — there was probably somebody doing a version of stand -up at Auschwitz, you should pardon the political incorrectness; if you can’t grasp the absurdity of the human condition … you’re destined to repeat it, and without the psychic tune-up of a great gasping fit of laughter.
While Craig has the appearance of a dotty old professor, he clearly understands the “cruising language” of Gaydom, and his home state has had about enough, it appears — this is not the first puff of fairy dust that’s landed on Craig’s shoulders. And perhaps those still closeted are anxious to put him out of sight and mind … WHY does it occur to me that there are still a LOT of Congressional Pubs taking nervous fits over this? Track record, anyone? Diaper-fetishist David Vitter seems able to weather the sexual scandal storm, but poor Larry doesn’t seem to enjoy the same STRAIGHT path forward.
Just to cover the topic completely I’m throwing in the latest on the Right [sic] Reverend [sic] Ted Haggard [who is ALSO not gay] and a tiny rant from my favorite gay blogger, T-Rex, last. Oh yes, and I should add that I saw a bit about Jeff Gannon somewhere in my travels yesterday, not newsy enough to grab, but … yes, he’s still lurking in the shadows. Or the men’s room. Whatever.
So, here’s some hypocrisy, some sad news of scandal and snark, some schadenfreude and some fun, all in one big spit ball — including funny video’s from Olbermann and South Park’s Big Gay Al.
And here’s my advice for the day — be proactively authentic if you’d avoid The Poker of Truth.
Jude
Toles ‘toon
Lester ‘toon
Olbermann Re-Enacts Senator Craig’s Bathroom Scene [VIDEO]
Adam Howard, Alternet
August 30, 2007
[open link for video]
Sticking directly to the script (police report) of Senator Craig’s public restroom encounter with an undercover police officer, Keith re-enacts (in classic “Dragnet” style) what transpired that fateful day back in June.
In a completely silly but definitely amusing segment from Keith Olbermann’s “Countdown”, Olbermann reads the police report of the Larry Craig incident in the style of the old “Dragnet” TV show while actors (the one playing Craig wheres a ridiculous wig) act out what has now become an infamous scene. “No actual senators were harmed in the making of this film,” says Olbermann. The GOP is in total disarray, the late night comedians have (of course) seized onto this story and despite GOP calls for him to resign, Craig seems stubbornly unwilling to do so. So the fun continues…
Hidden in Plain Sight
TRex, FireDogLake
In spite of his heated denials today, Senator Craig has left quite a trail of slime over the years. Editor and Publisher has the scoop on the rumors, the repeated accusations, and the Idaho senator’s persistent efforts to bury the truth.
In its story today about Craig’s arrest, the Statesman revealed that it had uncovered evidence of other Craig liaisons or sexual advances, including allegations that he had sex with a man in a Union Station bathroom in Washington, D.C., but had not previously reported it.
“Until Monday, the Statesman had declined to run a story about Craig’s sex life, because the paper didn’t have enough corroborating evidence and because of the senator’s steadfast denial.”
But the paper also revealed, “Over five months, the Statesman examined rumors about Craig dating to his college days and his 1982 pre-emptive denial that he had sex with underage congressional pages. The most serious finding by the Statesman was the report by a professional man with close ties to Republican officials. The 40-year-old man reported having oral sex with Craig at Washington’s Union Station, probably in 2004. The Statesman also spoke with a man who said Craig made a sexual advance toward him at the University of Idaho in 1967 and a man who said Craig “cruised” him for sex in 1994 at the REI store in Boise. The Statesman also explored dozens of allegations that proved untrue, unclear, or unverifiable.”
In other words, the evidence was out there all along. When activist Mike Rogers posted a report last October examining Senator Craig’s lengthy list of sexual indiscretions with men, it looked like a duck, walked like a duck, and quacked like a duck, so of course, Big Media and the Right Wing Noise Machine pronounced it…a swimming chicken. “Senator Craig isn’t gay, he just sucks a lot of cock. That doesn’t really make a guy gay, does it?”
Glenn Greenwald:
Nonetheless, it is hard to overstate the intense fury that this pre-election report triggered from the Right — not at Senator Craig for engaging in this behavior, but at Rogers for reporting it. A virtually unanimous chorus on the Right furiously insisted that nothing could be more irrelevant than whether the married family values Senator had sex with men in bathrooms (acts that are simultaneously criminal and adulterous). The same political movement that impeached Bill Clinton and which has made a living exploiting issues of private morality for political gain insisted that Rogers had reached a new and despicable low in politics even by reporting this.
Of course, now that the writing is on the (bathroom) wall, the same cabal of mealy-mouthed Righty scolds are baying for Craig’s resignation, and they’re only stopping there because they can’t get away with openly calling for his execution. Although I feel fairly confident that Ace of Spades, some Red State mouth-breather, or another barely functional “Compassionate Conservative” will get around to it in the next few days. One thing you can always count on from America’s Junior Fascist brigades, they always Go There.
But back to their reactions from October when we first tried to warn them:
And at least at the time, Barnett was right. Among right-wing pundits — weeks before the election — there was nothing but support for Craig and outrage over the reporting of this story. The most hysterical outrage of all was from Glenn Reynolds, who went so far as repeatedly to predict — literally — that the country would be so repulsed by Rogers’ reporting that it might actually swing the election in favor of the Republicans.
(…)
As usual, Bush-supporting bloggers like Ann Althouse and Patterico dutifully echoed Reynolds’ line: “I truly believe this sort of tactic is going to create a backlash.” Identically, Michelle Malkin’s Hot Air actually convinced itself, as Reynolds did, that the Craig report was so despicable that it might save the GOP from defeat:
Three kids, nine grandkids. Supposedly spending his leisure time in the men’s room at Union Station. . . . It’s been said before but it bears repeating: the left always finds a way to shoot itself in the foot. Patterico expects a backlash. So do I. In fact, I haven’t felt this motivated to vote in weeks. . . . .
If a U.S. Senator was going to have a tryst — especially a gay tryst — would he really do it in the men’s room of one of the busiest places in D.C.?
Um, yeah. Have you not yet noticed that the man isn’t very smart? This is more than clearly evinced by his decision to stand and fight in the face of overwhelming evidence that he’s a nasty old pervert who gets his jollies planting his knees in pools of stale urine on public restroom floors and fellating total strangers. La Malkin, of course, is slow to pick up on this salient fact about the Senior Senator from Idaho because she’s not exactly on the short list for a Nobel Prize, either, poor little addle-headed thing.
I guess it would be too much to ask back in 1982 that Craig be kicked to the curb when he was accused of molesting underage Congressional pages. Perhaps timely intervention a quarter-century ago could have prevented the mess that was the Mark Foley scandal, not to mention providing some scrap of evidence (however small) that boy-rape is not part and parcel with the Republican attitude toward underage pages.
But, whatever. Doubtless the waves of young boys who were improperly solicited and seduced by members of Congress in the intervening two and a half decades were little “beasts” as Matt Drudge says, who were egging the older men on and deserved whatever they got.
If the Republicans get any more sick, venal, and corrupt, their constituents may as well just start electing hyenas and poisonous snakes to Congress. Who could tell the difference?
Craig List
Eli, FireDogLake
Tue Aug 28, 2007
Just a few random thoughts on the tragic demise of Larry Craig’s (R-Men’s Room) political career:
1) While I will never entirely understand the existence of gay Republicans, it’s certainly not surprising that every single one of them in elected office would be in the closet. If Republicans don’t believe gays are entitled to get married or serve in the military, they sure as hell won’t knowingly vote for one to represent them in Congress.
That being said, and considering that getting outed is career suicide for an elected Republican, I’m always amazed when one of them shows so little discretion.
2) Can we please retire the notion that sexual orientation is a choice? Why on earth would a Larry Craig (R-Stallabama) or a Ted Haggard choose to be gay? I just don’t think “to piss off the liberals” really works here.
3) CREW asks an interesting question: Why was the GOP Senate leadership on board with an ethics investigation for Craig (R-RR), but not for Vitter? I think it’s about 80% homophobia, and 20% anger that he was practically asking to get caught. At least Vitter indulged his diaper fetish in private.
4) So far, it doesn’t look like the media is very excited about this story, and it will probably be all but forgotten in a few days. I have come up with a perfectly reasonable, innocent explanation for why the media is always so much more interested in Democratic scandals, and why they always make a point to identify Democrats in trouble, but not Republicans (or else they misidentify the Republicans as Democrats).
It’s very simple: Republicans being sleazy sexual hypocrites or just plain criminals isn’t news - it’s like reporting that the sun rose in the East. “Ho hum, a bunch of politicians got busted for being crooks… but one of them was a Democrat this time!” Which is not to say that there aren’t Democratic crooks - it’s just not as commonplace, and therefore needs to be pointed out as an exception condition.
My theory also explains why the media doesn’t like to report on the Bush administration lying, breaking the law, or just generally fucking up. It would only be news if they didn’t.
[Note: Tongue and cheek may be closer than they appear.]
Will Mitch McConnell Be The Next Outed Gay Republican?
Why is Sen. McConnell in such a tizzy over Larry Craig’s scandal, I bet you can guess.
Howie Klein, Alternet
August 29, 2007
Voting-wise, Larry Craig’s record is a bit to the right of Miss McConnell’s but, when it comes right down to it, the two of them see almost eye to eye on everything: both are classic Bush-Cheney rubber stamps. Several of my friends can’t understand why two closeted homosexuals have been so virulently anti-gay. I’m not a psychologist (though I gave it a shot yesterday) so let’s just stick to the politics on this. And the GOP leadership is playing hardball– against one of their own. After his pathetic “I’m not gay” press conference yesterday Tim Russert, on Nightly News, said “I talked to Republicans today — they just want Senator Craig to exit, to leave.”
In 2002 the two closeted far right extremists each went for the #2 slot in the Senate Republican leadership. McConnell beat him. Yesterday McConnell released this statement on behalf of the Republican leaders in the Senate:
Late yesterday we became aware of the incident involving Sen. Larry Craig and his subsequent admission of guilt in a Minnesota court. This is a serious matter. Due to the reported and disputed circumstances, and the legal resolution of this serious case, we will recommend that Sen. Craig’s incident be reported to the Senate Ethics Committee for its review. In the meantime, leadership is examining other aspects of the case to determine if additional action is required.
Interesting that McConnell is moving rapidly against his fellow homosexual– who loudly denies having done anything wrong– while he never did a thing when it came to David Diapers Vitter (R-LA), who admitted to hiring prostitutes (a crime).
The right-wing grassroots is howling for homo blood and McConnell is more than aware how quickly that could turn against him– and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who is already in trouble with the violently homophobic Know Nothing wing of the GOP for his support of Bush’s immigration agenda. One extremist, Robert Bluey, writes “How very sad for a party that once stood for moral values,” while another is demanding something that scares the bloomers off McConnell:
I would like to argue that we should stop the bleeding, but if we’re going to clean house then it might get a lot worse. Until we learn that daylight is the best cure for scandals, and that moral values mean more than a campaign slogan, there will be many more Larry Craigs elected to office, and our nation will suffer for it.
Today’s NY Times wonders aloud what’s next for the scandal-scarred GOP?. Characterizing Craig’s press conference as “a bizarre spectacle,” the Times points out that it is “only the latest in a string of accusations of sexual foibles and financial misdeeds that have landed Republicans in the political equivalent of purgatory, the realm of late-night comic television.”
“The real question for Republicans in Washington is how low can you go, because we are approaching a level of ridiculousness,” said [a Republican operative], sounding exasperated in an interview on Tuesday morning. “You can’t make this stuff up. And the impact this is having on the grass-roots around the country is devastating. Republicans think the governing class in Washington are a bunch of buffoons who have total disregard for the principles of the party, the law of the land and the future of the country.”
Then again, Washington does not have a monopoly on the latest trend among Republicans. Just ask Thomas Ravenel, the state treasurer of South Carolina, who had to step down as state chairman of Rudolph W. Giuliani’s presidential campaign after he was indicted on cocaine charges in June.
Or Bob Allen, a state representative in Florida who was jettisoned from the John McCain campaign last month after he was arrested on charges of soliciting sex in a public restroom.
And Romney, of course, fired Craig from his campaign in nano-seconds of the toilet revelations coming out. Flip Flop Mitt didn’t want to hear any of that “I did nothing wrong,” crapola, not from someone who everyone in Washington knows is a frustrated closet queen who has been prowling public restrooms look for quickie sex for years.
In an interview Tuesday on Kudlow and Company on CNBC, Mr. Romney could not distance himself fast enough. “Once again, we’ve found people in Washington have not lived up to the level of respect and dignity that we would expect for somebody that gets elected to a position of high influence,” Mr. Romney said. “Very disappointing. He’s no longer associated with my campaign, as you can imagine.”
The religionists aren’t all that forgiving, not when it comes to homosexuals. Vitter in diapers chasing prostitutes for decades is one thing but a senator tapping his foot in a gay code in a public restroom is something else entirely. And, as the Times points out, this is hardly the beginning or the end of the Republican Party’s addiction to high profile scandals. “…there is a sort of ‘here we go again’ sense among Republicans these days, especially since news of the Craig arrest broke on Monday afternoon. It is tough enough being in the minority, weighed down by the burden of the war in Iraq. Now Republicans have an even more pressing task: keeping their party from being portrayed not just as hypocritical and out of touch with the values of people they represent, but also as a laughingstock– amid headlines like ‘Senator’s Bathroom Bust,’ which ran all Tuesday afternoon on CNN. The story also ran at the top of all the network evening newscasts on Tuesday.”
Perhaps Craig should redo that press conference, the way Lauren Caitlin Upton, Miss South Carolina, got to do hers on NBC. South Park has carefully choreographed a more suitable response for Larry Craig, although I think that Miss McConnell, Lindsey Graham, David Dreier, Jim McCrery, Patrick McHenry and the rest of the boys team should be– at least– in the chorus.
Big Gay Al from South Park
DO NOT MISS!
Youtube
Sen. Craig Uses “Wide Stance” Excuse for Lewd Conduct in Airport Men’s Room
Craig repeatedly leered between the cracks into the stall the officer was in, then entered the adjacent stall to play footsie and gesture under the partition for sex.
Pam Spaulding
August 28, 2007
A little recap for schadenfreude lovers. It was a bad time for cruising for homophobic Senator Larry Craig (R-ID), who pleaded guilty on August 8 to a disorderly conduct charge after his arrest in the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport in June.
An undercover officer just happened to be investigating complaints of lewd behavior and cruising in the men’s restroom there when Craig decided to repeatedly leer between the cracks into the stall the officer was in, then proceeded to enter the adjacent stall and play footsie and gesture under the partition for sex. Larry, btw, learn to flush.
Karsnia showed his police identification under the stall. “With my left hand near the floor, I pointed towards the exit,” the report said. “Craig responded, ‘No!’ I again pointed towards the exit. Craig exited the stall with his roller bags without flushing the toilet. … Craig said he would not go. I told Craig that he was under arrest, he had to go, and that I didn’t want to make a scene. Craig then left the restroom.”
The senator, once detained at the Airport Police Operations Center tried the old “do you know who I am?” maneuver, showing the arresting officer his business card indicating he was a Powerful Man of InfluenceTM, saying “What do you think about that?” but alas, that didn’t fly. Here’s the guilty plea court document.
In the annals of GOP sexual hypocrisy excuses, we have this new one to add to the database — the Wide Stance DefenseTM.
Craig denied any lewd intentions and told police he has a “wide stance” in the bathroom and reached down to pick up a piece of paper from the floor.
“It should be noted that there was not a piece of paper on the bathroom floor, nor did Craig pick up a piece of paper,” Karsnia wrote in the police report.
He pled guilty, but now he says it was all a big misunderstanding (sound familiar?).
“At the time of this incident, I complained to the police that they were misconstruing my actions,” he said. “I should have had the advice of counsel in resolving this matter. In hindsight, I should not have pled guilty. I was trying to handle this matter myself quickly and expeditiously.”
What — the pickup, the power play at the police station, or trying to make it all go away?
Craig, by the way, avoided 10 days in the Hennepin County, Minnesota pokey/workhouse for his bathroom. He’s on probation for a year and paid $575 in fines and fees.The Idaho Statesman’s Dan Popkey has a piece on its investigation of Craig’s rumored closeted sexual netherworld following Mike Rogers’ outing of the Senator in 2006 (more at BlogActive), which included scuttlebutt going back to his college days, and the infamous 1982 pre-emptive denial regarding allegations of sex with underaged congressional pages going on up on the Hill.
The most serious finding by the Statesman was the report by a professional man with close ties to Republican officials. The 40-year-old man reported having oral sex with Craig at Washington’s Union Station, probably in 2004. The Statesman also spoke with a man who said Craig made a sexual advance toward him at the University of Idaho in 1967 and a man who said Craig “cruised” him for sex in 1994 at the REI store in Boise.
The Statesman interviewed the Union Station cruise, who said that the men had sex in two restrooms with the encounter lasting “three or four minutes.”
***
Yesterday Larry Craig decided to step down as co-senate liaison for Mitt. The Romney’s campaign, which proudly hosted a video of Craig supporting the presidential candidate, quickly yanked it from its site (screenshot here), with Mitt’s mouthpiece, Matt Rhoades announcing “Senator Craig has stepped down from his role with the campaign. He did not want to be a distraction and we accept his decision.”
As we reported yesterday (and how it always is for these guys) Larry Craig’s public record as a social conservative is solid. He:
* Voted YES on constitutional ban of same-sex marriage. (Jun 2006)
* Voted NO on adding sexual orientation to definition of hate crimes. (Jun 2002)
* Voted NO on expanding hate crimes to include sexual orientation. (Jun 2000)
* Voted YES on prohibiting same-sex marriage. (Sep 1996)
* Voted NO on prohibiting job discrimination by sexual orientation. (Sep 1996)
Craig also has a 0% rating in HRC’s 2006 Congressional Scorecard.
The senator from Idaho, along with John Ashcroft and Trent Lott, formed The Singing Senators. He should think about hooking up with some of these guys to form a new group: Bob Allen, David Vitter, Mark Foley, Glenn Murphy, Jr., Tommy Tester, Ted Haggard…the list goes on and on.
Any suggestions for a name for the group and additional members?
Republicans’ Hyprocrisy Undressed
Black Star News [NY] Editorial
August 29th, 2007
Those who live in toilet bowls should not throw stones.
Sen. Larry Craig, a Republican from Idaho was caught with his pants down in a compromising position.
He reportedly propositioned a male police officer in a Minnesota Airport bathroom for sex; yet he claims he did nothing wrong and that he made a “mistake” when he pleaded guilty, on August 8, to a misdemeanor charge of lewd conduct stemming from his June 11 arrest. He also adds “I’m not gay,” and “never been gay.”
The senator, a supposed “family-values” conservative, like fellow Republican pedophile Mark Foley—who has voted against gay rights issues, including gay marriage—is up for re-election next year and has been in office since 1981. He was snagged in an undercover sting at the Minneapolis-St Paul International Airport Lindberg Terminal.
According to authorities the bathroom where Sen. Craig was arrested is a known cruising place for men seeking other men for public sex. Craig was arrested by Officer Dave Karsniat after performing a series of tell-tale solicitation signals. According to the report filed by Officer Karsniat, “at 1213 hours I could see an older white male standing outside my stall…The male was later identified as Larry Edwin Craig. I could see Craig look through the crack in the door from his position. Craig would look down at his hands, ‘fidget’ with his fingers, and then look through the crack into my stall again. Craig would repeat this cycle for about two minutes.”
The officer says the senator then when further by entering the stall next to him. He sat down, then proceeded to send other telling signals. “At 1216 hours, Craig tapped his right foot. I recognized this as a signal used by persons wishing to engage in lewd conduct. Craig tapped his toes several times and moved his foot closer to my foot…The presence of others didn’t seem to deter Craig as he moved his right foot so that it touched my left foot which was within my stall area,” the officer wrote.
After, those signals the senator is said to have repeatedly swiped his hands under the stall of the officer, who proceeded to produce his badge and make the arrest. Then on August 8 the senator pled guilty in Hennepin County District Court and was given one year probation with a $500 fine.
Senator Craig now says that plea was a “mistake” and that “in hindsight I should not have pled guilty.” At the time of the arrest he says he “complained to the police that they were misconstruing my actions.” He claims that he was only trying to “handle the matter myself quickly and expeditiously.”
To call the senator’s denials lame would be an understatement. He would have us believe that he pled guilty to this charge out of ignorance, nearly two months after he was arrested? Why would he have wanted to handle the matter “expeditiously” if he was innocent?
Craig is from a very conservative state. He adamantly insists that he isn’t gay. One wonders then why he would into a stall occupied by another male; why he would shove his hand under the next stall where another male was seated on a toilet. There is one thing to be friendly; but to rub his feet against that of another male seated on an adjacent stall? Word comes that the senator is linked with similar behavior in the Union Square area in Washington, D.C., among other places.
This I the kind of high-level Republican hypocrisy we’ve seen before. Republicans preached “moral values” and condemned Bill Clinton and literally wanted to hang him for his sexual encounters with Monica Lewinsky. Yet, their actions show that hypocrisy abounds.
Recall that David Vitter was humbled when Washington D.C. Madame, Deborah Jeane Palfrey, under the strain of her prosecution case revealed that the senator was one of her frequent customers. Vitter who represents Louisiana was also accused by a local Madame as being a loyal visitor to her establishment. Then there is Mark Foley, who engaged in homosexual activities with pages. Republicans had known of Foley’s secret life for years but chose to ignore it. Foley had been linked to inappropriate conduct with congressional pages, going back to the 1980s.
Republican Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney has already made a statement trying to link Craig’s conduct with that of Clinton in the “Blue Dress” affair. But we must keep in mind that Craig was helping Romney secure votes and support in the state of Idaho until yesterday. It remains to be seen how much damage this will do to Romney and the Republicans as we move into next year’s elections.
Sometimes, I Wish I Were Gay
Trey Ellis, HuffPo
August 29, 2007
Look, I feel sorry for Senator Craig and the millions of other gay men of his generation on the down low, torturing themselves for decades by pretending to be what they are not. I feel sorry for anyone so drowning in guilt, shame and loneliness that they compulsively seek out intimate contact with strangers among the stench of piss and shit.
And yet…how awesome it would be if straight guys could just sidle up to a woman, tap our foot and have sex with them. According to Craig’s police report that’s all you have to do. I’m newly single again and truly suck at meeting women at bars. I don’t like to get drunk and think it’s unsportsmanlike to take a woman to bed if she’s blotto.
This whole tapping the foot thing could be the answer to my prayers. After yoga, instead of feverishly racking my brain for some non-lame ice breaker I’d just — tap, tap, tap — and they’d jerk me in to the locker room. The next time I fall in love at Starbucks, instead of pretending to the woman in front of me that I’m confused about the distinction between a grande and a venti I’d tap, tap, tap and we’d rush off to the nearest hotel.
It is a uniquely male solution. Women, in general, seem to like things more nuanced and Byzantine.
Leave it to a bunch of guys to figure out a way to circumvent thousands of years and the endless intricacies and uncertainties of courtship with a simple tap of the toes.
Overseers will meet with Haggard
Associated Press
August 28, 2007
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) - Church officials supervising fallen evangelical leader Ted Haggard plan to meet with him today in Phoenix because of an e-mail he sent soliciting donations for himself.
Haggard told people they could send money to him or through an organization called Families with a Mission. That group has now been linked to a registered sex offender in Hawaii named Paul Huberty.
Haggard isn’t commenting on why he picked that group to take donations on his behalf. In an e-mail, he said he needed money as he attended school and worked in a halfway house in Phoenix.
The spokesman for New Life Church’s board of overseers says they’ll meet with Haggard today in Phoenix to discuss the e-mail. The Reverend Michael Ware says he hadn’t heard of Huberty or the organization before.
He says Haggard sent the e-mail before the board of overseers could discuss whether he could work in the halfway house.
Pansies, Perverts, and Pedophiles
TRex, FireDogLake
8/27/07
Can we please as a culture agree stop pretending that Republicans aren’t a bunch of effete pussies? Bill Frist? Hello? He makes Ru Paul look like Dog the Bounty Hunter.
Why won’t anybody call these guys out? Ralph Reed? Lindsay Graham? Even the ones like little Ricky Santorum whose wife spits out babies like a lawn sprinkler have that certain oily, southern-preachery prissiness about them, up to and including President Poppinjay himself. You’ve seen what he’s like when he’s mad. He stamps his little feet and starts talking all snippy and bitchy. I’ve seen ten year old girls who were more intimidating when piqued.
None of them have ever worn the uniform of this country. Their idea of “sport” is to get blind on whiskey sours and go shoot at a bunch of farm-raised birds on private land, but with a full Level One trauma team standing by, of course.
How many more of them will have to get arrested soliciting sex in public toilets before people finally cop to the fact that Republicans are a bunch of nasty old wealthy queens who cheat on their wives with other men and who can’t under any circumstances be trusted around teenage boys?
I know, I know.
Tick…tick…tick…
“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007
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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August 30th, 2007
This is an interactive post — and I’d love to have you participate, if you’d like … read on.
Our Dubby is given to occasional snipes at, demeaning commentary to, the press [we don’t have the privilege of watching him with staff, which I’m sure would be thunderously revealing] and I think this snottiness truly reflects his personality; he’s got that Cancer “everyman” thing going for him, which the public assumed was commonality with them rather than a limited capacity for thoughtful humanhood; combine that with an inflated, carefully-staged Leo rising ego and a Moon in Libra conjuncted to Chiron playing out in subconscious wounding — figure in his twelfth house Sun and we’ve got us a whiny, vengeful, temperamental ass of a president. [Some of us read that chart in 1999 and swallowed our tongues! That should be heads-up enough for astrological nay-sayers.]
Dubby’s recent Gonzales speech was just astounding, I thought … insulting and pandering to the public sensibility … and reflecting his authentic thoughts, I’m sure — but extraordinary in its gracelessness. Talk about lowering the bar on political discourse! If this is the president we deserve, then it’s time to rethink who we want to be when we grow up!
This is as close to public tantrum as George has come lately — we’d pissed in his Cheerio’s and he hoped we were happy now! [We were.] It was the equivalent of Nixon’s Checkers speech, minus the raised spectre of dogs and grieving children; actually, the Checkers speech, while transparently manipulative and self-serving, was more cleverly “victimized” by miles. The Dubby cast himself, again, in the “displeased Daddy” role to give the Liberals a piece of his mind.
OY on GWB as our Daddy! On that note, I was amused to find that the Bush daughters not only share my birthday but my birth hour — I’ve always had a kind of “I know who you are” affinity with these girls, and now I know why. I can guarantee you that they “handle” Daddy much as they’d deal with a beloved but annoying pet and laugh all the way to the day spa! Which is exactly what we should have learned to do — if we’d recognized earlier that the Pretender to the Throne of US President was NOT larger than the sum of his parts, we might have minimized the damage. George is representative of the density in the collective that we’re all trying to grow past — he’s also the guru that showed us everything that needed transformation about the American system.
We should understand, as well, that his isolation has grown by leaps and bounds in the last weeks — his loyalist’s are fleeing the mess at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and finding safe harbor elsewhere. Bush is a man whose defensiveness at abandonment [sister dying, disengaged mother, Pappy never there, yadda] has marked his entire life … a man who speaks so often of love [conditional to his prerequisites, and linked in his mind to approval] that it is obviously a signature issue in his psyche … and a man whose track-record as president will follow him to his grave and beyond, to the history that he dreams of/fears for. He’s got to be vibrating like a tuning fork! And take note, because whatever comes next will be a direct result of his escalating unease in his skin.
So here’s my proposition — if you would like to write a short response to our Decider’s recent message to us all [in full, below] I will be glad to collect and post them, and we’ll link them to the Planet Waves cover page; here’s your opportunity to get it off your chest … but remember the assignment: what would you say to this man? This unconscious, subconscious disaster of a man. If he was [God/dess forbid] your son or your father, what would you like him to know? If he was the twitchy, defiant guy on the psychiatrists couch and you were trying to help, what would you tell him? If he was the man who held the well-being of your son or daughter in his hands [he does,] what would you want him to understand?
For those of you who are paranoid, there’s no danger here — just opportunity. You can give me just a first name, if you’d like, and a specific or general location along with your “letter to Dubby” and we’ll post without links. Free speech is still our right — use it or lose it. And since I do all the talking, here, it would be grand to hear what YOU have to say! Will you play with me, Wavers? You count among the most intelligent and thoughtful folks I know … will you share your wisdom?
Below — a collection of Fredo ‘toons and snips — George’s actual speech — and a collection of very well-written and interesting reads from The Department of Gonzo But Not Forgotten.
Jude
Ben Sergant ‘toon
Ann Telnaes ‘toon
Here’s a collection of Fredo ‘toons — I like the Barney one
This Just In: President Bush Names New Attorney General
Youtube posted by Steve Young, Smirking Chimp
Aug 29 2007
Remarks by President Bush on the Resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales
WASHINGTON, Aug. 27 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The following is a transcript of remarks by President Bush on the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales:
TSTC Airport
Waco, Texas
10:50 A.M. CDT
THE PRESIDENT: This morning, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales announced that he will leave the Department of Justice, after two and a half years of service to the department. Al Gonzales is a man of integrity, decency and principle. And I have reluctantly accepted his resignation, with great appreciation for the service that he has provided for our country.
As Attorney General and before that, as White House counsel, Al Gonzales has played a role in shaping our policies in the war on terror, and has worked tirelessly to make this country safer. The Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act and other important laws bear his imprint. Under his leadership, the Justice Department has made a priority of protecting children from Internet predators, and made enforcement of civil rights laws a top priority. He aggressively and successfully pursued public corruption and effectively combated gang violence.
As Attorney General he played an important role in helping to confirm two fine jurists in Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito. He did an outstanding job as White House Counsel, identifying and recommending the best nominees to fill critically important federal court vacancies.
Alberto Gonzales’s tenure as Attorney General and White House Counsel is only part of a long history of distinguished public service that began as a young man when, after high school, he enlisted in the United States Air Force. When I became governor of Texas in 1995, I recruited him from one of Texas’s most prestigious law firms to be my general counsel. He went on to become Texas’s 100th secretary of state and to serve on our state’s supreme court. In the long course of our work together this trusted advisor became a close friend.
These various positions have required sacrifice from Al, his wife Becky, their sons Jared, Graham and Gabriel, and I thank them for their service to the country.
After months of unfair treatment that has created a harmful distraction at the Justice Department, Judge Gonzales decided to resign his position, and I accept his decision. It’s sad that we live in a time when a talented and honorable person like Alberto Gonzales is impeded from doing important work because his good name was dragged through the mud for political reasons.
I’ve asked Solicitor General Paul Clement to serve as Acting Attorney General upon Alberto Gonzales’s departure and until a nominee has been confirmed by the Senate. He’s agreed to do so. Paul is one of the finest lawyers in America. As Solicitor General, Paul has developed a reputation for excellence and fairness, and earned the respect and confidence of the entire Justice Department.
Thank you.
END 10:54 A.M. CDT
GONZALES V. UNITED STATES
A Torturer Takes a Victory Lap
Ted Rall, Yahoo
Wed Aug 29
NEW YORK–Al Capone served six years at Alcatraz–for tax evasion. The true Original Gangsta was never held to account for the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre that left seven men cut in half by machine gun fire. Or the two disloyal wiseguys he ordered beaten to death with baseball bats. Or the corruption and mayhem his gangsters inflicted during the years he terrorized Chicago. Eliot Ness was cute, but the justice system failed. Capone won in the end.
Like Capone, Alberto Gonzales has gone down for a mere misdemeanor: firing U.S. attorneys for investigating Republican politicians. What led to his resignation as attorney general was his smearing them as incompetent. Hell hath no fury as a man fired without a positive recommendation. (Gonzales, a buffoon on his best day, perjured himself in spectacularly inept style in testimony about domestic wiretapping before Congress–an outfit that has forgotten more about lying than lesser lights will ever know.)
Gonzales’ crime was a doozy: He created the legal framework for American fascism. No punishment could suffice for America’s Eichmann, author of infamous pseudolegal rationales for torture and the end of habeas corpus. And none will he face.
“Fredo” (Bush’s nickname for him) quit over a procedural personnel matter. If he ultimately faces justice, it will be for mere perjury. Even his critics don’t care about his monstrous role as the legal architect of our post-9/11 gulags–proof positive that the master corrupter of democracy has triumphed, that we Americans are not a decent people.
“Are we being forward-leaning enough?” Gonzales used to ask his colleagues. “Forward-leaning” was Bush Administration jargon for toughness in the war on terror. It didn’t mean bending the rules. The Bushies were radicals. Trashing centuries-old constitutional protections–the right to an attorney, to face your accuser in a court of law, not to be tortured–wasn’t enough for our suburban Robespierres. They longed for an American Rome ruled by a harsh, omnipotent emperor over legions of troops standing ready to destroy all who challenged them, foreigners and Americans alike. They said 9/11 had changed everything. The new order required new laws.
One of the first steps down the road to perdition was a January 25, 2002 legal memorandum advising Bush to deny legal rights to Afghan POWs. “There are reasonable grounds for you to conclude that [the Geneva P.O.W. Convention] does not apply…to the conflict with the Taliban,” wrote Gonzales, then working as White House counsel. Deploying his characteristic blend of ignorance, arrogance and illogic, he called the Geneva Conventions–which have saved the lives of thousands of captured American soldiers–”quaint.” He then argued “that the Taliban and its forces were, in fact, not a government but a militant, terrorist-like group.” Actually, the Clinton and Bush Administrations had treated the Taliban regime as a government, negotiating with its leaders over oil-pipeline transit fees and subsidizing it with millions of U.S. taxdollars. U.S. allies, including Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, had embassies in Kabul. History was collateral damage in the war of terror.
Having denied captured Afghan soldiers POW status–”detainees,” newspapers began calling them–the Bush Administration looked for “forward-leaning” ways to abuse them. Children as young as 12 were beaten, shipped in shackles, their heads shaved and covered with gunny sacks, to Guantánamo Bay. Years have passed; they’ve grown up in Camp Delta. These kids–rural conscripts who couldn’t have attacked the U.S. even if they’d thought of it–still haven’t been allowed to see a lawyer or their parents.
Worried that the American people might someday return to its senses and prosecute them for their monstrous crimes against humanity, the Bushies again turned to their affirmative-action poster child–this time for a C.Y.A. memo validating torture. The CIA wanted permission to use six “pressure techniques” against prisoners. Mock burial, Gonzales and his legal staff thought, was a mite “too harsh.” The medieval practice of waterboarding, on the other hand, was OK. Another practice, “open-handed slapping of suspects, drew much discussion,” reported Newsweek. The idea was “just to shock someone with the physical impact,” one of Gonzales’ staffers said, with “little chance of bone damage or tissue damage.” Gonzales approved it.
The discussion resulted in an August 1, 2002 memo to Gonzales, which he passed on to Bush. The CIA and U.S. soldiers were free to subject prisoners to “cruel, inhuman or degrading” treatment. All they needed was permission from the Emperor. “Those committing torture with express presidential authority,” The Washington Post reported about the memo, “were probably immune from prosecution.” Abu Ghraib followed.
Slippery slopes are usually cited as cautionary tales. Gonzales saw post-9/11 fear as an opportunity to be exploited. He pushed for the USA Patriot Act. Foreign detainees, he decided, would get military kangaroo courts. Using Gonzales’ advice as back-up, Bush signed an executive order authorizing himself to declare any U.S. citizen an “enemy combatant” and have him assassinated. Next came the terrifying Military Commissions Act, which allows a president to declare martial law, seize control of the National Guard from the states, and throw U.S. citizens into concentration camps for the rest of their lives.
But no one objected to any of these attacks on our freedom. Not the news media. Not the Democrats–they voted for them.
After Torturer-in-Chief Gonzales announced his departure, Ted Kennedy slammed him–for perjury. “He has exhibited a lack of candor with Congress and the American people and a disdain for the rule of law and our constitutional system,” said the liberal stalwart. “The rampant politicization of federal law enforcement that occurred under his tenure seriously eroded public confidence in our justice system,” added House speaker Nancy Pelosi, focusing, like everybody else, on the fired U.S. attorneys. The word “torture” didn’t come up.
Gonzales will be remembered as corrupt and intellectually deficient. Nevertheless, his legal legacy will likely remain in place for the foreseeable future. Torture isn’t in the news because it isn’t news. It’s normal.
The monster dragged the rest of us down to his level. We are all Alberto Gonzales.
EPIPHANIES, BUSH, AND GONZALES
Norman Horowitz, HuffPo
August 28, 2007
As I watched our President announce the resignation of Attorney General Gonzales, I was amused, bewildered, angered, saddened, and after a while I began to wonder what was in fact behind his irrational words.
In my later life, as a fan of words, before putting fingers to computer keyboard to write this, I used dictionary.com to determine the exact meaning of epiphany. It is: “a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple, homely, or commonplace occurrence or experience.”
Of course, most epiphanies turn out to be wrong, but what the hell.
In recent months I watched Attorney General Gonzales testify before the Senate and the House, and came to the conclusion that:
Had he told the truth, he would have created a national crisis.
Had he lied and committed perjury, he could have faced time in prison.
Had he chosen not to remember, he could be ridiculed, and nothing more could happen to him.
I now realize that there is an even more frightening explanation.
I have edited the Presidents remarks about Gonzales resignation in a “fair and balanced way.”
“This morning Attorney General Alberto Gonzales announced that he will leave the Department of Justice after two and a half years of service to the department.
Al Gonzales is a man of integrity, decency and principle, and I have reluctantly accepted his resignation with great appreciation for the service that he has provided for our country.
After months of unfair treatment, that has created a harmful distraction at the Justice Department, Judge Gonzales decided to resign his position and I accept his decision.
It’s sad that we live in a time when a talented and honorable person like Alberto Gonzales is impeding from doing important work because his good name was dragged through the mud for political reasons…”
Here is my “epiphany.” Just suppose for a moment that Attorney General Gonzales was, to the best of his ability, telling the truth. Now that is an unlikely scenario, but let us assume that it is correct, or at least possible.
Let us for the moment; assume that the President was being honest in his perception of the Gonzales “treatment,” also unlikely, but nevertheless possible.
The scariest and most frightening conclusion that could be drawn from these events is: A usual drum rolls please:
Attorney General Gonzales and President Bush really believed what they have said.
HOW SCAREY IS THAT!
Toady No More
Brian Morton, Smirking Chimp
Aug 30 2007
Of all the useless hacks, venal tools, and odious suck-ups who have leeched money from the government in their efforts to prove that the government that works best is the government that doesn’t work, Alberto Gonzales tops the list. More so that Condoleezza “No one could have foreseen 9/11″ Rice, more so than Michael “No one could have foreseen Katrina topping the levees” Chertoff, and even more so than even Michael “Heckuva job” Brown.
No, Gonzales takes the nod because of what he did to the ideals of the United States. Sanctioning torture, undermining the rule of law, lying to Congress at every opportunity–Democratic Illinois Rep. Rahm Emanuel couldn’t have said it better when he opined, “Alberto Gonzales is the first attorney general who thought the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth were three different things.” If you or I forgot as much as Gonzales did about how to do our jobs, nobody would trust us with pitching out old coffee grounds, much less running the Justice Department.
Gonzales took a nation that used to wave its banner as a beacon of freedom, truth, and democracy and in a short time made it stand for torture, extraordinary rendition, Abu Ghraib, indefinite detentions, and the gulag of “black” CIA sites–all of which were enabled by legal reasoning wrenched out of any semblance of human conscience.
The departure of the attorney general means that for the near future the Cabinet agency devoted to law enforcement is being run by a symphony of empty desks. Gonzales–gone. His chief of staff Kyle Sampson, gone. White House liaison Monica Goodling, gone. Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, his chief of staff Michael Elston, civil-rights division head Wan Kim, voting-rights section chief Bradley Schlozman–all gone. The only good thing to say about all these departures is that they can’t do the country any more harm than they’ve done already.
Unfortunately, filling any of those desks in the coming term might be harder than it appears. While some Democrats have shown they will ask the Bush administration hard questions (questions the Bushies have felt they have every right to ignore), most Dems have shown they can be cowed into submission nearly any time the president and his cronies start waving their arms while yelling “National security!” Rep. Henry Waxman and Sen. Patrick Leahy have both built very deliberative cases of Bush administration wrongdoing and pushed for contempt citations at an almost glacial pace (even knowing in advance the Bush strategy of “running out the clock”). But we have to question whether or not they have the backbone to be as aggressive and innovative in the seeking of justice as the administration is devoted to obstructing it. It would be interesting to see how the administration would react if suddenly the Senate sergeant-at-arms appeared at the doors of Gonzales and Karl Rove and placed them under arrest for their willful disobedience of congressional subpoenas and contempt citations–powers that are well within the rights and authority granted in the Constitution to the legislative branch, unlike the concept of “executive privilege.”
The disturbing possibility is that the president will name Gonzales’ successor as a recess appointment–possibly after naming someone else as intransigent, corrupt, or dishonest as Gonzales. Names like John Yoo, the original crafter of the Bush torture memo, or David Arrington, Dick Cheney’s right-hand legal henchman, come to mind. The reasons George W. Bush would do this are several: The president lives to antagonize the opposition party, and someone with impeccable legal credentials and yet with such venal opinions as Yoo or Arrington allows him to paint the Democrats as unfair and obstructionist. After a bitter confirmation fight and a rejection, Bush could simply install the offender with a recess appointment, and for the first time in history, a president would have as his top law-enforcement official for the remainder of his tenure someone specifically rejected by the Congress. This is very much the Bush modus operandi–if you need any evidence of this, go back and recall the fight over John Bolton’s nomination to the post of United Nations ambassador.
The Democrats must also not cave in to the belief that without Rove and Gonzales the need to find answers to questions about the politicization of the Justice Department and the warrantless surveillance of Americans has ended. There still needs to be a full accounting of what possible illegal actions and overstepped boundaries have come under this president, in order that future presidents don’t take the opportunity to claim these events as precedent to do even worse.
For now, it appears that we may be on the road to real Justice in America. But, as usual, there remains a real possibility that, under this president, the light at the end of the tunnel might still be an oncoming train.
American nightmare: Gonzales “wrong and illegal and unethical”
Greg Palast
Aug 29 2007
“What I’ve experienced in the last six months is the ugly side of the American dream.”
Last month, David Iglesias and I were looking out at the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island where his dad had entered the US from Panama decades ago. It was a hard moment for the military lawyer who, immediately after Attorney General Alberto Gonzales fired Iglesias as US Attorney for New Mexico, returned to active military duty as a Naval Reserve JAG.
Captain Iglesias, cool and circumspect, added something I didn’t expect:
“They misjudged my character, I mean they really thought I was just going to roll over and give them what they wanted and when I didn’t, that I’d go away quietly but I just couldn’t do that. You know US Attorneys and the Justice Department have a history of not taking into consideration partisan politics. That should not be a factor. And what they tried to do is just wrong and illegal and unethical.”
When a federal prosecutor says something is illegal, it’s not just small talk. And the illegality wasn’t small. It’s called, “obstruction of justice,” and it’s a felony crime.
Specifically, Attorney General Gonzales, Iglesias told me, wanted him to bring what the prosecutor called “bogus voter fraud” cases. In effect, US Attorney Iglesias was under pressure from the boss to charge citizens with crimes they didn’t commit. Saddam did that. Stalin did that. But Iglesias would NOT do that - even at the behest of the Attorney General. Today, Captain Iglesias, reached by phone, told me, “I’m not going to file any bogus prosecutions.”
But it wasn’t just Gonzales whose acts were “unethical, wrong and illegal.”
It was Gonzales’ boss.
Iglesias says, “The evidence shows right now, is that [Republican Senator Pete] Domenici complained directly to President Bush. And that Bush then called Alberto Gonzales, the Attorney General, and complained about my alleged lack of vigorous enforcement of voter fraud laws.”
In other words, it went to the top. The Decider had decided to punish a prosecutor who wouldn’t prosecute innocents.
All day long I’ve heard Democrats dance with glee that they now have the scalp of Alberto Gonzales. They nailed the puppet. But what about the puppeteer?
The question that remains is the same that Watergate prosecutors asked of Richard Nixon, “What did the President know and when did he know it?”
Or, to update it for Dubya, “What did the President know and how many times did Karl Rove have to explain it to him?”
During the Watergate hearings, Nixon tried to obstruct the investigation into his obstruction of justice by offering up the heads of his Attorney General and other officials. Then, Congress refused to swallow the Nixon bait. The only resignation that counted was the one by the capo di capi of the criminal-political cabal: Nixon’s. The President’s.
But in this case, even the exit of the Decider-in-Chief would not be the end of it. Because this isn’t about finagling with the power of prosecutors, it’s about the 2008 election.
“This voter fraud thing is the bogey man,” says Iglesias.
In New Mexico, the 2004 announcement of Iglesias’ pending prosecution of voters (which he ultimately refused to do) put the chill on the turnout of Hispanic citizens already harassed by officialdom. The bogus “vote fraud” hysteria helped sell New Mexico’s legislature on the Republican plan to require citizenship IDs to vote - all to stop “fraudulent” voters that simply don’t exist.
The voter witch-hunt worked. “Wrong” or “insufficient” ID was used to knock out the civil rights of over a quarter million voters in 2004. In New Mexico, that was enough to swing the state George Bush by a mere 5,900 votes.
So what is most frightening is not the resignation of Alberto Gonzales, the Pinocchio of prosecutorial misconduct, but the resignation of Karl Rove. Because New Mexico 2004 was just the testing ground for the roll-out of the “ID” attack planned for 2008.
And Rove who three decades ago cut his political fangs as chief of the Nixon Youth, is ready to roll. To say Rove left his White House job under a cloud is nonsense. He just went into free-agent status, an electoral hitman ready to jump on the next GOP nominee’s black-ops squad. The fact that Rove’s venomous assistant, Tim Griffin, was set up to work for the campaign Fred Thompson, is a sign that the Lord Voldemort of vote suppression is preparing to practice his Dark Arts in ‘08.
It was Rove who convinced Bush to fire upright prosecutors and replace them with Rove-bots ready to strike out at fraudulent (i.e. Democratic) voters.
Iglesias, however, remains the optimist. “I’m hopeful that I’ll get back to the American dream. And get out of the American nightmare.”
Dreams. Nightmares. I have a better idea for America: Wake up.
With Alberto’s ouster, why things could get even worse (if you can imagine that)
p m carpenter
August 29, 2007
What made the news coverage of Alberto’s departure worth reading, and finally commenting on, was less his departure than the far-ranging observations offered on the lessons to be drawn from his squalid tenure. We’ve had controversial attorneys general resign in disgrace before, but none quite like Alberto.
From the 20th century’s Harry Daugherty to John Mitchell, the injudicious sort seemed to flock to Justice. From their tenures we learned valuable lessons, of course — so naturally quite early in the 21st century we suffered capo-regime Fredo.
But I don’t really blame Alberto Gonzales. He was a small man with narrow aims — the aggrandizement and protection of his patron — too innately small not to be overwhelmed. One telling observation was this: “Former colleagues say that what they originally took for discretion, when Mr. Gonzales would say little in major policy meetings, they later concluded was disengagement.”
I wouldn’t be surprised to learn from historians years from now that Alberto really didn’t know, for instance, who slated various U.S. Attorneys for removal, or why. Like a good little crime-family captain, he just took orders, and he was delighted he ever made it that far.
As Daniel Marcus, a Clinton-administration Justice official and now a constitutional law professor, said, “He was not the intellectual father of those positions [of unitary-executive supremacy], but he shaped and articulated them at the White House, and he continued to take a very strong position on executive power as attorney general.”
From this Mr. Marcus concluded “What this whole episode illustrates”: that of the “problem of having a close confidant, a close friend of the president — particularly someone who worked first in the White House — going over to the Justice Department to serve as attorney general in the first place.”
I disagree profoundly. Other presidents have had close confidants serve as their attorneys general (hell, one was the president’s brother), yet those personal connections were not the responsible agent or catalyst for the launching of lawlessness. That starts at the top, and you-know-what runs downhill.
For my money, Stanley Brand, the “ethics lawyer” (no oxymoronic jokes here), summed things up the best: “You can’t just change government through strong-willed policy. People who ride into Washington on a high horse of ideology or ignorance” — or, in Mr. Bush’s case, ignorant ideology — “are inevitably headed toward a blow-up.”
Call it overconfidence, call it karma, call it whatever you like, but Alberto’s downfall was as inexorable as Bush’s collapse. Given the man at the top’s willful ignorance, ideological hubris and inner corruption, Al’s days were numbered from the start.
I have a hunch, however, that we haven’t yet seen the worst of Mr. Bush & Co., even as the White House empties itself of some very bad boys. And it was Mr. Bush’s bizarre, otherworldly reaction to Alberto’s departure that leads one to this frightful suspicion.
Political scientist Calvin Jillson set the scene: Newer and less personal White House advisors could now lead Bush to “more of a middle ground … but whether he has the mental and ideological flexibility to take advantage of that chance, I’m quite skeptical of that.” Said the professor: “If you just listen to what he said … in defense of Gonzales [the day of the resignation], his back is so up and his heels are so dug in, I’m not sure he can do it.”
Well, professor, I’m sure he can’t. I’d bet money on it. The president is a mental infant with a child’s emotions. He won’t let this go, he won’t let it drop. He’ll throw a monstrous temper tantrum in the form of … something monstrous … just to show Congress and the press that no one can kick George W. Bush around.
Favorite Memory: Gonzo on Habeas
Robert Parry, ConsortiumNews
Aug 29 2007
Everyone has their favorite memory of departing Attorney General Alberto Gonzales: his endless “do not recalls”; his quibbling definitions of torture; his dismissive attitude toward the “quaint” and “obsolete” Geneva Conventions.
But my personal favorite was his insistence that the U.S. Constitution doesn’t expressly recognize habeas corpus, the great fair-trial principle of English law that dates back to the Magna Carta in 1215.
“There is no expressed grant of habeas in the Constitution,” Gonzales told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Jan. 18. He did acknowledge, however, that there was “a prohibition against taking it away.”
Gonzales’s bizarre remark left Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, a former federal prosecutor and the panel’s ranking Republican, sputtering in disbelief.
“Wait a minute,” Specter interjected. “The Constitution says you can’t take it away except in case of rebellion or invasion. Doesn’t that mean you have the right of habeas corpus unless there’s a rebellion or invasion?”
Gonzales continued, “The Constitution doesn’t say every individual in the United States or citizen is hereby granted or assured the right of habeas corpus. It doesn’t say that. It simply says the right shall not be suspended” except in cases of rebellion or invasion.
“You may be treading on your interdiction of violating common sense,” Specter responded, as if confronting the sophomoric comments of a first-year law student who would never make it to a second year.
While the exchange drew little or no attention in the major news media, I found it revealing in several ways:
First, it exposed the narrow, ideological thinking that has pervaded the legal analysis of Gonzales and other Bush administration lawyers.
Neoconservative and right-wing legal operatives have long functioned with the notion that if they could conjure up a clever legal argument – no matter how flimsy – that their argument must be accepted as sound or at least treated with the utmost seriousness. If we can devine a rationale, we must be right.
That self-absorbed thinking has been at the core of the legal theories behind George W. Bush’s treatment of profound issues such as presidential power, government secrecy, and limitations on the inalienable rights of individuals who are not in Bush’s inner circle.
So, no matter how established habeas corpus might be in American legal traditions, Gonzales felt he could put it in question simply with the nit-picking observation that the Founders didn’t explicitly spell out the Great Writ when writing the Constitution.
Negative Rights
Article I, Section 9, of the Constitution states that “the privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.”
The clear meaning of the clause, as interpreted for more than two centuries, is that the Founders recognized the long-established English principle of habeas corpus, which guarantees people the right of due process, such as formal charges and a fair trial.
However, under Gonzales’s constitutional theory not only would habeas corpus not be guaranteed, the American people also would have no assurances about freedom of religion, speech or the press. In the Bill of Rights, all those rights are defined in negative language: “Congress shall make no law …”
Gonzales was wrong in another way, when he cited the lack of specificity in the Constitution’s granting of habeas corpus rights. Many of the legal features attributed to habeas corpus are delineated in positive language in the Sixth Amendment, which reads:
“In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed … and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; [and] to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses.”
But Gonzales’s knock on habeas corpus was indicative of the Bush administration’s overall attitudes. Presumably, during White House “bull sessions,” the principle of habeas corpus routinely gets disparaged.
The Gonzales comment exposed the Bush administration’s continued hostility toward some of the fundamental rights that traditionally define the American Republic. Gonzales was treating habeas corpus as an optional right, subordinate to President Bush’s executive powers during “a time of war.”
Denying Habeas
Just months earlier, the Republican-controlled Congress had pushed through the Military Commissions Act of 2006 that effectively eliminated habeas corpus for non-citizens, including legal resident aliens.
Under the new law, Bush gets to declare any non-citizen an “unlawful enemy combatant,” putting the person into a system of military tribunals which offer defendants only limited rights. Critics have called the tribunals “kangaroo courts” because the rules are heavily weighted in favor of the prosecution.
Some language in the new law also suggested that “any person,” presumably including American citizens, could be swept up into indefinite detention if they are suspected of having aided and abetted terrorists.
“Any person is punishable as a principal under this chapter who commits an offense punishable by this chapter, or aids, abets, counsels, commands, or procures its commission,” according to the law, signed by Bush on Oct. 17, 2006.
Another provision in the law even seems to target American citizens by stating that “any person subject to this chapter who, in breach of an allegiance or duty to the United States, knowingly and intentionally aids an enemy of the United States … shall be punished as a military commission … may direct.”
Besides allowing “any person” to be swallowed up by Bush’s system, the law prohibits detainees once inside from appealing to the traditional American courts until after prosecution and sentencing, which could translate into an indefinite imprisonment since there are no timetables for Bush’s tribunal process to play out.
The law states that once a person is detained, “no court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider any claim or cause of action whatsoever … relating to the prosecution, trial, or judgment of a military commission under this chapter, including challenges to the lawfulness of procedures of military commissions.”
That court-stripping provision – barring “any claim or cause of action whatsoever” – would seem to deny American citizens habeas corpus rights just as it does for non-citizens. If a person can’t file a motion with a court, he can’t assert any constitutional rights, including habeas corpus.
Other constitutional protections in the Bill of Rights – such as a speedy trial, the right to reasonable bail and the ban on “cruel and unusual punishment” – would seem to be beyond a detainee’s reach as well. [For more on the Military Commissions Act, see our new book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush.]
Stretching Language
Gonzales’s habeas comment was noteworthy, too, because it demonstrated how far Bush administration lawyers will go in stretching legal language to benefit their positions.
If Bush’s Attorney General can construct an argument that the Founders didn’t mean to grant the right of habeas corpus (because they phrased it in a negative way), what does that portend for the loose language in recent laws passed regarding the “war on terror”?
Besides the Military Commission Act and the earlier Patriot Act, what about the Protect America Act of 2007, which appears to grant the administration broad powers to engage in warrantless wiretapping and other domestic spying.
Though the administration claims it only wants to intercept calls of foreign terror suspects, the language of the Protect America Act applies to anyone who is “reasonably believed to be outside the United States” and who might possess “foreign intelligence information,” defined as anything useful to U.S. foreign policy.
That means that almost any American engaged in international commerce or dealing with foreign issues – say, a businessman in touch with a foreign subsidiary or a U.S. reporter sending an overseas story back to his newspaper – is vulnerable to warrantless intercepts approved on the say-so of two Bush appointees, the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “New Spy Law Broader Than Thought.”]
The reassurances from government officials and some commentators that the Bush administration would never abuse these new powers might wisely be viewed in the context of Gonzales’s strange opinions about habeas corpus and the Constitution.
After all, the flexible approach to law and the Constitution – demonstrated by Alberto Gonzales – is sure to outlive his last days at the Justice Department.
“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007
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August 30th, 2007
