Tag: George W. Bush

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The Coming McCarthyism

The proposed legislation would remove the presumption of relevance from that showing and require also, before the information is examined, proof of how it relates to an investigation – which is to say, information may be sought only to confirm facts already known, not to investigate and determine what the facts are. The same illogical requirement would be imposed regarding phone records, even though one cannot know how numbers dialed to or from a telephone relate to an investigation until one knows what those numbers are and to whom they belong.

… from an OpEd piece in the Washington Post, by Michael Hayden, former CIA director, and Michael Mukasey, chief civil rights abuser under Bush.

If you care about civil liberties and democracy, you should read this quote carefully. Mukasey and Hayden are actually, literally, complaining that Homeland Security would actually lose the right to investigate any citizen they feel like investigating even if there is no evidence at all– nothing– that the individual has committed any crime. It’s another sorry chapter in the Republican “why should we have to wait until after someone has committed a crime before we can lock them up” theory of jurisprudence.

Part of the ongoing Republican strategy of demanding the preposterous and settling for the ridiculous.

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How to Attend to an Emergency, Mr. President

In the tenth episode of Season 1, “In Excelsis Deo”, of West Wing, President Bartlet is entertaining a group of school children in the White House at a Christmas Celebration when urgent news arrives concerning the health of a gay youth who had been beaten nearly to death (obviously based on the Matthew Shepherd murder).

An aide approaches Bartlet as he is speaking to the children and whispers in his ear. Bartlet, cool as could be, tells the children that one of the parts of his job is to attend to emergencies from time to time. He leaves them for a moment and goes off with the aide who fills him in. He makes a few comments and then returns to the children.

This episode was filmed in 1999, two years before 9/11.

I have heard people defend President Bush’s performance on 9/11 by saying it was quite reasonable for him to continue sitting there, looking painfully at a loss, for seven minutes after an aide had informed him about the planes crashing into the World Trade Center. It’s odd that Aaron Sorkin, merely creating a fictional situation for his tv series, thought the President would do what Bartlet did, so smoothly and confidently, in that episode. At the time I saw it, of course, I barely noticed it. It was only after viewing Season 1 again, years later, that I was struck by the uncanny resemblance of the fictional scene to what happened in real two years later, and the contrast between what Aaron Sorkin thought the President would do and what Bush actually did. I believe that had Bartlet been a conservative Republican, Sorkin would have had him do the same thing: it’s so simple, so logical, so becoming of the President of the United States.

Just noted.

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Bullies

There is a grave flaw in the conservatives’ argument that the government should stay out of our lives as much as possible. Or maybe it isn’t a flaw. Maybe it is the real essence of conservatism.

If our world is a school yard, big corporations and the rich are like the bullies. Conservatives want the government to stay out of it: the bullies knock you down, kick you, and take your lunch money. They abuse the girls, toss their garbage wherever they like, and when the ice cream man arrives, they take all the ice cream, drive off the ice cream man, and then resell it to the rest of the kids at twice the price. Oh wait– the school yard does have an army. It’s role is to go to other school yards and bully those kids and take their lunch money. They bring it back and have a parade commemorating their success, and then keep it all for themselves. Every day, they remind you that the bullies in the other school yards are all plotting to steal your lunch money, or worse. They make up songs praising themselves and force everyone to sing them.

If George Bush runs this school yard, then the bullies take your credit cards and run up a huge bill buying weapons with which to go invade other school yards. They buy these weapons from themselves and make huge profits. Most of the weapons cost a lot but they don’t work properly and eventually get tossed. Then they hold solemn parades on the basketball court. “If only,” they tell us, “the other bullies would stop trying to take our lunch money, we could have peace!”

In Glenn Beck’s and Sarah Palin’s ideal world, that’s the way it should be. If you’re not big enough or tough enough to stand up to the bullies, too bad for you.

They look solemnly at the faces in the school yard: you don’t want the government telling you what to do, do you?

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Mr. Yoo Justifies His Unwarranted Intrusion

“The law has recognized that force (including deadly force) may be legitimately used in self-defense,” Mr. Yoo and Mr. Delahunty wrote to Mr. Gonzales. Therefore any objections based on the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches are swept away, they said, since any possible privacy offense resulting from such a search is a lesser matter than any injury from deadly force. NY Times, March 3, 2009.

Mr. Yoo and Mr. Delahunty were Bush Administration officials who believed they could justify unconstitutional and illegal actions because someone might die. This rationale would come as a huge surprise to Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin. How could they not have foreseen that lives would be endangered if the police were not allowed to enter your house and search it at will?

It’s just one final piece– the release of memos detailing how the Bush Administration, in hysterics after 9/11, contemplated a police state.

Don’t ever again ever believe a “Conservative” when he tells you he loves freedom and democracy and especially if he claims he loves the constitution.

And if he claims to be a Christian and he loves George W. Bush because he stood for Christian values then, lest you believe that Christians do not believe in freedom, let me tell you these people are not Christians.

They have all either spoken out clearly in condemnation of these memos, or they are all cold-blooded, contemptible liars.

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Pardon Me

I thought for sure that George Bush would issue a large number of pardons during his last few days in office, eight years after Republicans expressed dire outrage at Bill Clinton’s last minute pardons. He did not. I’m guessing he thought it would look hypocritical. He deserves credit for that, if not for much else.

Apparently, VP Cheney lobbied long and hard for a pardon for “Scooter” Libby, reflecting the more traditional Republican approach to justice: severe punishment for the poor and minorities for even minor crimes, and bottomless generosity and grace towards our friends.

Libby was convicted of perjury by a trial jury and the fact that he was buddies with the VP should not have played any role at all in the consideration of a pardon– and the fact that Bush resisted it is a little amazing, but was clearly the right decision. Libby likely lied to cover up the role played by Cheney and Rove in the outing of Valerie Plume. To pardon him would be a clever way for any president to lie at will, induce lower-ranking aides and officials to take the blame, and then issue pardons to them. Bush was right in every respect to withhold the pardon.

All Libby had to do to avoid any punishment at all was reveal who lied and who leaked. The Bush Administration tried to discredit political opponents who knew the truth about the doctored intelligence on Iraq. The tragedy is that Cheney and Rove both walked away.

I believe that George W. Bush, contemplating the legacy, the disasters of Iraq and Afghanistan that Cheney had pushed him into, left office in a rueful state.  He stood up to someone who had pushed him into bad decisions as his last act as President.  That was almost honorable.

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Surge and Purge

Contrary to general belief–can I shock you?–the “surge” is not a “success”.

It has achieved the political goal of short-term reductions in the numbers of casualties. It hasn’t moved us one iota closer to a stable Iraq.

The supposedly left-wing media swallowed this one hook, line, and sinker. What has happened, in a nutshell, is this: local U.S. commanders have negotiated a sort of power-sharing arrangement with some of the powerful Sunni militias who were leading the attacks against troops and civilians in Baghdad. In exchange for local control, road blocks, and, apparently, considerable cash– and continued possession of their weapons and territories–, they have implemented a truce. One of the reasons President Maliki would like to see U.S. troops leave is so he can go into these enclaves and rout his political opponents for good so he can consolidate real power in his Shiite government. He doesn’t have real power over these militias. Does anyone other a few diligent journalists know about this in America?

Some of the Sunni groups were fighting both Al Qaeda and the Americans. Some analysts believe they have negotiated a temporary truce of convenience in order to focus on their Iraqi opponents. The idea that this is a step towards a stable, pluralistic democracy is rather naive. It looks more like Lebanon or Egypt or Syria.

The idea that the U.S. is fighting for democracy and freedom, and for a free pluralistic society in Iraq that will resemble…. well…. who? Nobody. Because such a state cannot exist in a nation in which the majority of citizens believe that Allah should govern and infidels should be killed. The only way such a state can evolve into a progressive, liberal western-style democracy, is through progressive secularization. We need to give them high-definition TV’s and Walmarts. We need to convince them that American Idol is satisfying entertainment, and that Paris Hilton really is important, and that Cadillac’s really do cause women to have orgasms. We need to convince them that you can feel quite spiritual by being anti-abortion and opposed to sex education and homosexuals without having to sacrifice the even the smallest material comfort.

Call me crazy but I stand by something I said years ago:  Iran will be the first true Islamic democracy in the Middle East.

I found this after I had written this rant.  It’s a rarity– a media outlet that questions the claims McCain and Bush are making about the success of the surge.  Here’s another.

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Bush Pardons

You undoubtedly remember vividly the apoplectic outrage of conservative commentators when Bill Clinton issued his list of pardons just before leaving office. That outrage, of course, is reserved only for occasions on which the Democrats appear to be doing what the Republicans think the Democrats would do if they had the ethics of Republicans.

I might be wrong, but I believe we are about to see George Bush make Bill Clinton look like a piker when it comes to pardons. I’ll even stick my neck out and predict it: George Bush is going to have to issue a large number of pardons… for people who will not admit to having committed any crimes.

The problem is this: Barack Obama wins the election. Do you think Obama will interpret the constitution to mean that the President of the United States can make torture legal by commanding his minions to torture?

Maybe he will. Or maybe he will feel the same way that most civilized western leaders have felt for 100 years: that the use of torture is repugnant to the fundamental principles of human rights. Okay. So what do all the torturers in the CIA do? Quietly quit their jobs and move to Switzerland or Argentina? Apologize? I’m really, very, very sorry that I tortured you– I had thought it was legal. And resort to the standard “I was only following orders” defense?

I suspect that an understanding might be reached, that would see the federal government under the new administration not ask any embarrassing questions, provided that the violations of fundamental human rights comes to a quick stop. But what if any of the victims are put on trial? What if their lawyers challenge the validity of evidence obtained against their clients because it was adduced under torture? Sticky wicket, isn’t it? What if they call in the FBI witnesses who objected to what they termed “rough treatment” of suspects by their colleagues in the CIA and Defense Department?

Bush is going to have perform that goofy voodoo thing wherein you forgive people for crimes you claim they haven’t committed. He tried to do a similar thing by getting Congress to grant immunity to corporations that he swears were merely obeying the law when they allowed the government to spy on individuals in the U.S. without warrants. If they were obeying the law, why do they need immunity? This kind of hypocritical bullshit should not be allowed to pass: why will anyone need a pardon if, as Bush says, everything they did was legal?

Congress should make a simple demand– it should insist that no one can be pardoned unless they have committed a crime. So Mr. Bush may only pardon torturers if they admit they illegally tortured people. And then we may turn to the President and impeach him in the hour before he leaves office.

By golly– George Bush really does understand the constitution. He just willingly shits on it.

Update

2011-03 I was wrong. George Bush — much to Cheney’s displeasure, apparently– refused to pardon anybody, not even Scooter Libby.

Yes, I do think more highly of him than I did before. Barack Obama, on the other hand, basically continued the same policies. So, yes, I think much less of him for that. By continuing the policies, of course, he erased the possibility of charging members of the Bush Administration with violating the rights of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere. That’s exactly what Bush needed and wanted and I do wonder just how overt this kind of understanding between one President and another is.

Don’t forget Karl! There are strong grounds for suspicion that Karl Rove orchestrated the malicious and false prosecution of Alabama Democratic Governor Don Siegelman. A Republican lawyer has sworn, under oath, that she was told that Rove directed the United States attorney for Montgomery to undertake proceedings against Siegelman though there was no real evidence of any crime.  For a political operative to instigate such an investigation is a felony.

Congress has subpoenaed Rove but he refuses to testify. How on earth can he get away with that? The Attorney General is ultimately responsible for enforcing the law. George Bush appoints the Attorney General. There you go.

We need to start a campaign now to head off the inevitable. The campaign should focus on the demand that no pardons should be issued by President Bush for anyone who has not publicly admitted that they have committed the crimes for which they are being pardoned. (It’s probably too much to ask that they actually be charged with those crimes and put on trial.) It’s simple: no confession, no pardon. So all those intelligence agents who tortured and generals who lied and secretaries of state who lied and phone companies who allowed the government to eavesdrop on conversations without a warrant and so on and so on should have to line up on television and takes turns telling us exactly what they did that requires a pardon. It would be the ultimate reality show, and it would be GREAT for the country. These are the sonsofbitches who have been running your country for the past eight years. What do you think?

But I was only following orders!

Right. America supported the findings of the Nuremburg judges that the “following orders” defense does not exculpate actions that a reasonable person would perceive to be illegal and abhorrent. So Nazi soldiers that participated in atrocities, unless they had good grounds to fear for their lives, were not excused from their sins. The same standard was applied to the William Calley case.

Unfortunately, I’m not sure a judge in the U.S. in today’s political climate would agree with me that anyone participating in the use of torture has no excuse. America is moving backwards, towards barbarism. The idea that torture is “abhorrent” prevails in civilized countries. What is a civilized country?

 

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The Disneyland George W. Bush

Let us all take a moment and celebrate the achievements of George Bush, now that the full moon wanes on his administration and the pardons are readied to be delivered. When George Bush came into office, America was troubled with a vast budget surplus, peace and stability, cheap oil prices, a decreasing crime rate, low unemployment, a functional but deficient social security system, modest but effective environmental regulations, and a split Supreme Court.

After George improved the education system so that America is now– what is it? 21st in the world? And then solved the social security crisis by doing nothing, he eased everyone’s health care concerns by providing elderly Americans with a confusing and expensive drug plan. He open the nation’s forests and wildlife preserves to oil drilling and forestry where-ever he could, and made it easier for America’s manufacturers to sell defective products without consequence, which didn’t stop them from shipping most of those jobs to China. Did I mention the trade deficit?

Or the unimaginable increase in military spending which has succeeded in creating millions of new enemies in Pakistan and Egypt and Saudi Arabia? He did nothing for peace in Palestine but that’s a lost cause anyway. He corrected the crazy perception that most independent scientists believe that humans are causing global warming by arranging an overwhelming number of oil industry employees to say they’re not.

He appointed partisan political hacks to the Justice Department to correct fears most Americans have that the justice system is above partisan politics.

He managed the mortgage crisis so effortlessly that naive observers are still convinced he did nothing. He managed health care so effectively using competition to drive down costs so precipitously that most Americans now claim they don’t need health insurance.

The inevitable George Bush presidential library should have one volume in it, with the title, written in crayon. “How I helped a small number of wealthy Americans become even more wealthy.”

Added December 2008:  How much was Bill Clinton paid? He and Hillary have together collected over $109 million in the eight years since leaving office.  “Pretty good wages, for one little kiss….”

Americans, this is how your government works.

Paying Off George Bush

[2022-05-12: I am leaving this in because I was wrong, and I admit it, and you should know it.  George W. Bush has had a generally honorable post-presidency life, painting, and giving anodyne speeches here and there, and showing up for appropriate ceremonial events.  Of course, the election of Trump, which gave us one of SNL’s better jokes in recent years: the Will Ferrell as Bush going “how do you like me now” has transformed everyone’s appreciation what we now see as a fundamental decency in George W. Bush utterly lacking in the current Republican Party.  It should also be acknowledged that the Clintons were far more avaricious in cashing in the post-presidency boom in speeches and fund-raising events.]

You will not have seen the likes of this before– when George Bush leaves office, he will embark on the greatest orgy of corporate pay offs in the history of Capitalism.

George’s corporate Svengali’s can’t pay him now, of course. That would be unseemly. And illegal, of course. But they are waiting in the wings flush with gratitude for the President who delivered more to them they could even have imagined in their wildest dreams. He gave them tax breaks, deregulation, corporate-friendly judicial appointments. He gave them Alito and Roberts and the ironically titled “Clear Skies” act. He gave them oil and ethanol and mythologized global warming. He gave his friendly military contractors billions and billions of dollars in fat government contracts with embarrassingly little oversight. He gave them everything they asked for.

And now, the reward.

The reward will look like partnerships and speaking engagements for unprecedented amounts of cash– he won’t even really have to move his lips– just show up and smile and cavort. The reward will look like Board appointments and investment opportunities and parties and jets and jewels and medals and awards and statues and presidential libraries in the name of the president who never reads or learns or studies or thinks.

Perhaps Laura, a former librarian, might find something to do at his.

There will be highways and airports and bridges named for the man without the slightest interest in building anything that would benefit anyone except his corporate cronies.

 

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A “Finding” Does not Make it Legal

You might think that torture is actually presently legal in the U.S., given all the efforts by Bush and his Attorney Generals to make it so. And maybe you just don’t care that it is– or you approve– because you are a God-fearing patriotic American and you don’t take bullshit from foreigners– whatever— I don’t care. Jesus loves you, whatever, because you approve of the use of torture, and you really can’t remember or think of or imagine any reason why that would make you less of a human being than, say, believing in witchcraft or astrology. Whatever.

Back to my point: I don’t believe torture is, technically, “legal”. It is, in fact, quite illegal, no matter what Bush says it is. Then why hasn’t anybody been arrested? Who would arrest who? Because Bush is in command of the only apparatus that can enforce the law: the Attorney General’s Office and the FBI (which is accountable to it) and he has ordered it not to.

[added October 22, 2008: if a New York City cop on the beat, for example, stumbled into a group of men treating an individual the way they are, in fact, treating the detainees in Guantanamo, he would surely make an arrest and lay charges.  Nobody would or could excuse the crime with a “finding”.]

If Bush or his Attorney-General issues a “finding” that torture is legal (he calls it “enhanced interrogation techniques” but no court is so stupid as to not see through that), and thereby instructs federal officials to abide by that “finding”, he hasn’t really changed any aspect of the law. What would it take to activate the apparatus on behalf of the courts? Well, how about a new executive who believes in the constitution?

Take for example any prisoner being held currently in Guantanamo, who had previously been tortured, either through rendition, or by CIA officers at locations outside of the U.S. Bush has succeeded in blocking this individuals access to any court with the power to respond to his circumstances with directives that will actually be obeyed by Federal agencies. At the moment, Bush simply ignores any legal motions he doesn’t like and then obfuscates.

Now suppose a new Chief Executive– a new President– instructs the new Attorney General (John Edwards?) to investigate whether anybody involved in the handling of prisoners by American forces or intelligence agencies or proxies has broken the law, or violated the rights of these prisoners.

I think about this a lot. I can imagine that nothing will happen, if the new President turns out to be gutless and decides that he can live with simply stopping any more torture from happening. That’s hard to imagine, however, because the lawyers for all of the prisoners being held by agents of the U.S. Federal Government will be clamoring for due process and habeas corpus and dozens of other constitutional rights we all used to think Americans treasured dearly. And I can’t see this new President doing what Bush did, which is, instructing his staff to find ways around the courts, so we can suppress the rights of these individuals.  [Update: that is, in fact, exactly what Obama did.]

So imagine instead that President Obama (or Clinton) allows the attorney general to investigate and he finds out that there has been some torture going on… and he decides that his interpretation of the constitution is that torture is never allowed.

Just imagine.

[2011-03: of course, it didn’t happen. Odd, but not really surprising now that I think about it. Would a politician who was seriously intent on enforcing the law survive the primary process in the U.S.? I doubt it. ]

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Now It’s Legal!

I don’t think I’ve read anything in the past five years quite so infuriating as the op-ed piece by John Ashcroft in the November 5, 2007 New York Times. Ashcroft is addressing the legislation introduced by Congress to grant immunity to Telecoms who, obeying the Bush Administration, turned over private telecommunications records to the government without seeing any kind of warrant or court authorization.

Ashcroft says:

Longstanding principles of law hold that an American corporation is entitled to rely on assurances of legality from officials responsible for government activities. The public officials in question might be right or wrong about the advisability or legality of what they are doing, but it is their responsibility, not the company’s, to deal with the consequences if they are wrong.

To deny immunity under these circumstances would be extraordinarily unfair to any cooperating carriers. By what principle of justice should anyone face potentially ruinous liability for cooperating with intelligence activities that are authorized by the president and whose legality has been reviewed and approved by our most senior legal officials?

My God. John Ashcroft has just asserted that the president has the right to require corporations to commit illegal acts whenever he feels like it, without any regard for the law, the courts, or the congress, just because the people he appointed to high public office, did what he told them to do. Because, it is clearly implied, whatever the president does is legal.

Please notice, if you will, the amazing, magical words missing from that last line: “and the courts”. The Telecoms should obey the President not because a judge or a court has legally issue a writ or warrant on the basis of actual evidence that someone might be committing or has committed a crime— oh no! But just because the President and the officials he appointed (and can fire at will) have decided that they would like to have a look. At your phone records.

If the legality of the Executive’s directives to the FBI and CIA have been “reviewed and approved” by our most “senior legal officials”– then there is no need for the immunity legislation. The courts will recognize the legality of the Executive’s actions and the civil actions will be dismissed.

(Has anybody noticed, by the way, that this kind of argument is not accepted by the courts for any other kinds of illegal activity? “A government official said I could.” So how does that change the law? Nor is the argument that any level of government can tell you what is legal accepted by the Federal Government itself: the Bush Administration Justice Department continues to go after marijuana dealers in California even though the State government has made it legal for medical use and allows dealers to operate.)

So if the FBI or the CIA goes to a phone company and says, we’d like to tap a certain individuals telephone, it is no longer incumbent upon the phone company to ask, “and do you have a warrant?” or even, “is this legal”. As long as our “most” senior legal officials– not “some” legal officials, but our “most” senior officials– say it is legal, it is legal.

The trick here, that Mr. Ashcroft wants you to be dazzled by, is the old bait and switch technique of applying one legal principle– that corporations must obey the law– to an action that really has nothing to do with it: the will of the Federal Government– of the Executive Branch, really– to spy on people without having to trouble themselves about getting a warrant and proving they have a legitimate reason to spy.

This is a load of crap. Why does Ashcroft imagine a company like AT&T, Verizon or Bellsouth is too stupid to ask whoever the government sends to their offices: “and where is your warrant? Where is your court order? What judge authorized this breech of personal privacy?”

Which is what one of the telecoms did. Qwest consulted their lawyers who told them that what the government was asking them to do was a felony. Qwest told the government to buzz off. The government, knowing they didn’t have a leg to stand on, did just that. They didn’t arrest Qwest’s chief executive for “breaking the law”. They didn’t seek an injunction from a court (duh!). They went away.

What makes this doubly infuriating is this phrase at the beginning of the quote above: “longstanding principles of law…. ” So Ashcroft is saying that Bush’s actions are already legal. Then why the hell does Congress need to grant anybody immunity! They don’t need it.

If there are lawsuits, they only need to tell the judge: “agents of the Executive Branch of Federal Government told us to do it. That means it’s legal.” And the judge will say, “Oh. If the government did it, that means it’s legal? Let me check the constitution for a minute…”

I think Mr. Ashcroft knows about this problem. Just as Bush is beginning to realize that all the waterboarding… .the torture… the renditions… GEEZ. WHAT IF WE LIVED IN A COUNTRY THAT HAD RULE OF LAW, AND COURTS, AND A JUSTICE SYSTEM… WE COULD BE ARRESTED.

Do you think Rumsveld ever worries? Cheney? Gonzales? I think they do. I think they might just be starting to realize that once the state-induced hysteria is over with and people come to their senses they are going to ask themselves why government officials were authorizing torture and extraordinary renditions and warrant-less surveillance.

The biggest trick here? John Ashcroft knows very, very will that shifting the liability to “senior” (most or not) legal officials will effectively inoculate the Bush administration from any liability at all: I guarantee you that Bush will make lavish, lavish use of the Presidential Pardon in January 2009. He won’t give a damn anymore. There never was any reason to give a damn. There was never the slightest reason to think that accusations of hypocrisy or viciousness would ever detract from that folksy, all-American, evangelistic charm: we are the boys. We handle things. We win.

Someone else will come along and clean all that up. Cash in now, while you have the chance.

In the meantime, John Ashcroft is, hilariously, asking the government to make something legal because it is already legal. He wants it to make it more legal.

If this isn’t disturbing enough, consider the fact that there is some evidence that the Bush Administration initiated at least some illegal surveillance before 9/11. Check this out.

While Ashcroft advises corporations to do whatever the government tells them to do, without question, without regard for the law or morality– Congress chastises Yahoo for turning information over to the Chinese government about the activities of dissident journalist Shi Tao!

2022-05-07:  even more infuriating: the Obama Administration, fearful of provoking a Republican backlash and crying fit, backed away from prosecuting anyone for these crimes.   This, unfortunately, is part of Obama’s legacy: gutlessness.