2007 archive

Gene Robinson.

It is magnificently written.

And the sad part is, he’s right.

The venality and moral corruption of the Current Federal Administration beggars description.

A dozen riders on a roller coaster spent half an hour hanging upside down — 150 feet above the ground — after a power outage shut down the attraction.

Spectators cheered when the riders were brought to the ground from the highest point of a loop on the X-Coaster, but one passenger threw up after reaching safety.

Faced with a flurry of document requests and expanding congressional investigations, the White House announced Friday that Bush had hired nine lawyers, including five who’ll fill new jobs in the president’s legal office. The recruits have solid experience in white-collar crime, government investigations and constitutional law.

Legal experts said the hires indicated that Bush was gearing up to fight congressional inquiries that he considered an encroachment on presidential power. The president has accused Democrats of seeking to score political points by delving into White House deliberations on a host of issues.

“This indicates a war-on-all-fronts legal strategy against congressional oversight,’’ said Washington lawyer Bruce Fein, who served as the deputy attorney general in the Reagan administration.

I’m not surprised he would fight oversight.

The truth would set us free.

And probably cost him what’s left of his job (which, frankly, isn’t much–have you noticed no one is really listening to him any more?)

Susie.

FactCheck dot org lays it out:

Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain has said that the major tax cuts passed in 2001 and 2003 have “increased revenues.” He also said that tax cuts in general increase revenues. That’s highly misleading.

In fact, the last half-dozen years have shown us that we can’t have both lower taxes and fatter government coffers. The Congressional Budget Office, the Treasury Department, the Joint Committee on Taxation, the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers and a former Bush administration economist all say that tax cuts lead to revenues that are lower than they otherwise would have been – even if they spur some economic growth. And federal revenues actually declined at the beginning of this decade before rebounding. The growth in the past three years that McCain refers to brings revenues back in line with the 40-year historical average as a percentage of gross domestic product.

It’s unclear how much of the growth can be attributed to the tax cuts. Capital gains tax receipts did increase greatly from 2003 to 2006, but the CBO estimates that they will level off and decrease in the next few years. The growth overwhelmingly resulted from a sharp rise in corporate tax receipts, the cause of which is a topic of debate.

More voodoo economics from the Party of Privilege, but it makes the rich richer, so it must be good.

On today’s Radio Times:

In discussing why so many seem to approve of Americans’ torturing captives, the interviewees theorized that many see the captives as already guilty and the “interrogation” as punishment. In fact, many (note–I said “many,” not “all”) of those caught up the dragnets in Afghanistan and Iraq just happened to be in the wrong place at the right time, picked up by scared soldiers who don’t even speak the language of those they are detaining on often the flimsiest of reasoning.

They also pointed out what is old news: Torture doesn’t work. It can produce confessions, but seldom produces facts. But the American Torquemadas don’t care. Torture is their pornography.

But the folks are still in custody and still subject to torture. And the Current Federal Administrator believes he can imprison them indefinitely just on his say-so, because he’s always right and he’s never wrong (just look at his record).

You can follow the link to find the show (you may have to use the “Archive” search feature for the first hour of the June 11, 2007; I couldn’t find a direct link to that eposide. Or you can listen here (mp3) or here (Real).

Two former interrogators talk about the techniques used by the U.S. in Iraq and the work being done to develop new rules and effective approaches for interrogations. Air Force Col. STEVEN KLEINMAN serves on the Intelligence Science Board which has been studying interrogation methods and TONY LAGOURANIS whose book “Fear Up Harsh” details his experiences as an Army interrogator in Iraq.

Addendum, Later That Same Hour:

A ray of sunshine:

The appeals panel said President Bush overstretched his authority by declaring Marri an “enemy combatant,” because the Constitution protects both U.S. citizens and legal residents such as Marri from an unchecked military and from being detained without charges and a fair trial. The court rejected the administration’s claim that it was not relevant that Marri was arrested in the United States and was living here legally on a student visa.

“The President cannot eliminate constitutional protections with the stroke of a pen by proclaiming a civilian, even a criminal civilian, an enemy combatant subject to indefinite military detention,” the panel found. “Put simply, the Constitution does not allow the President to order the military to seize civilians residing within the United States and detain them indefinitely without criminal process, and this is so even if he calls them ‘enemy combatants.’ “

Addendum-de-dum-dum

Read the opinion. Their Honors do not mince words.

For over two centuries of growth and struggle, peace and war, the Constitution has secured our freedom through the guarantee that, in the United States, no one will be deprived of liberty without due process of law. Yet more than four years ago military authorities seized an alien lawfully residing here. He has been held by the military ever since — without criminal charge or process. He has been so held despite the fact that he was initially taken from his home in Peoria, Illinois by civilian authorities, and indicted for purported domestic crimes. He has been so held although the Government has never alleged that he is a member of any nation’s military, has fought alongside any nation’s armed forces, or has borne arms against the United States anywhere in the world. And he has been so held, without acknowledgment of the protection afforded by the Constitution, solely because the Executive believes that his military detention is proper.

And that’s just from the introduction.

This is from the conclusion:

For a court to uphold a claim to such extraordinary power would do more than render lifeless the Suspension Clause, the Due Process Clause, and the rights to criminal process in the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendments; it would effectively undermine all of the freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution. It is that power — were a court to recognize it — that could lead all our laws “to go unexecuted, and the government itself to go to pieces.” We refuse to recognize a claim to power that would so alter the constitutional foundations of our Republic.

I know that James Gandolfini is a good actor. I saw him in The Mexican, which was a good film. (Had it been 30 minutes shorter, it might have been a great film.)

I have also lived in the Greater Philly area for almost 25 years. I was here during the Nicky Scarfo gang wars. Anyone who has lived in this part of the world knows that the Mafia is a real thing. It’s not a pretty thing. It’s not a romantic thing. And it’s not a nice thing.

So, as another drama about the mob draws to a close, all I can say is

Who cares?

. . . aptly described by Tim F.:

Quite possibly the difference between our president and our veep is the difference between a guy who means well but fails and a guy who means ill and succeeds.

Though I do think his description of the prez is a little–er–charitable.

His childhood dream was to be Spiderman:

Horseshoe crabs are fair game:

Delaware’s two-year ban on the harvest of horseshoe crabs was struck down Friday by a Superior Court judge who said the state’s chief environmental officer made up his mind about the ban before hearing from the public.

They move very slowly. They are pretty much useless as food. They are unable to defend themselves.

Perfect targets for Our Vice President.

. . . gets tiresome after a while.

Bringing new meaning to the term, “Borked”:

Judge Robert Bork, one of the fathers of the modern judicial conservative movement whose nomination to the Supreme Court was rejected by the Senate, is seeking $1,000,000 in compensatory damages, plus punitive damages, after he slipped and fell at the Yale Club of New York City. Judge Bork was scheduled to give a speech at the club, but he fell when mounting the dais, and injured his head and left leg. He alleges that the Yale Club is liable for the $1m plus punitive damages because they “wantonly, willfully, and recklessly” failed to provide staging which he could climb safely.

Judge Bork has been a leading advocate of restricting plaintiffs’ ability to recover through tort law. In a 2002 article published in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy–the official journal of the Federalist Society–Bork argued that frivolous claims and excessive punitive damage awards have caused the Constitution to evolve into a document which would allow Congress to enact tort reforms that would have been unconstitutional at the framing.

(Aside: The Yale Club. How Bush league.)

It does sort of seem to be a Republican thing, now doesn’t it? Democratic hypocrits, and, yes, there are some, at least have some shame. Except, possibly, for Congressman Jefferson.

Via Atrios.

Nothing on Senator Thompson’s health as regards the Senator’s possible run for president. I guess Republicans get a free pass from Waste of Newsprint.

Nada. Waste was all wrapped up in F-words and Don Slimus last week.

And, oh! goody! goody! goody! tomorrow the paper will arrive with another hole in it where ideas used to be.

A truck went past me today and caused me to break out laughing.

In the lower right corner of the rear window was a decla that said

“Ex-Republican.”

I needed a laugh.

The box is now on the network.

Now comes the real work: replicating the website and making sure everything is working before cutover.

Cutover should happen sometime this decade.

Remember when I got plumbed?

Today I replaced the step that the plumbers had to cut through. Six 80 pound bags of concrete mix and two heart attacks later, I’m stepped. As you can tell from the angle of the picture, I can barely lift my camera phone straight.

I’m not lifting anything else all day.

(Don’t you love where they put the clean out? I think I’ll paint it puce.)

I’ve mentioned the copout before. When “conservatives” get power and their policies fail, the wingnut noise machine starts to say that “X (whoever it may happen to be) is not really a conservative.”

The problem with that rationale, of course, is that “X (whoever it happens to be)” is really a conservative. It’s the policies, not the politicians, which are failures.

Now, when I say “conservative,” I do not mean the conservatism of, say, Teddy Roosevelt, who actually believed in, gosh!, conserving things.

I mean the policies of those who, under the label of conserving, want to fundamentally undermine alter American society, the American economy, and, most of all, American freedoms. (Ironic, ain’t it, that those who most vocally claim that someone else hates our freedom are the first to violate the basic rights that the framers established in the Constitution of the United States of American?)

(I guess that’s why they call themselves “neo-conservatives,” to distinguish themselves from actual conservatives.)

Neo-Conservatism is founded in, well, air.

Air and wishful thinking. The wishful thinking that told us that Iraq would be a “cakewalk” and that Iraqis would welcome us as “liberators.” (I’m not even going to bother to cite sources for those quotations. They are too well known, it’s too late, and I’m too tired–but the link below was too powerful to let wait until tomorrow.)

And whenever it’s proponents get in power, they prove that through the failures of their policies.

Bush and his enablers are no exception.

Follow the link to read more:

The problem of course, is that Bush has upheld the principles of the (neo–ed.) conservative movement, and all of these so-called conservatives who are suddenly so disappointed in him had been cheering him on all along while he did all these things they supposedly didn’t like. And the thing is, they still haven’t repudiated the actual policies – just the outcome.

For example, none of these people are complaining about the fact that he lowered taxes in wartime, an unprecedented policy in all of history. They can complain all they like that he hasn’t been “fiscally conservative”, but they not only supported his war and his tax cuts, but they refused to so much as question the fact that he ran it in the most expensive way imaginable – not just pseudo-privatizing the functions of the armed services, but actually giving the private companies they outsourced to incentives to overspend and generally waste resources. (And they let him force them to pass the drug-benefit bill with a clause forbidding negotiations to keep prices down.)

Via Atrios.

What’s this Republican fascination with animated special effects, anyway?

I’ve often been told I have a Super Ego.

You Are the Super Ego

While some people may think first and act later… you often don’t act at all. You rather be safe than sorry, and you take ethics pretty seriously. Like everyone, you have some pretty crazy desires. But unlike everyone, you restrain yourself. You have high standards for your own behavior. And you happily exceed them.

Via Susie.