"This is without question one of the most significant problems in how our establishment media functions. They refuse to subject claims -- particularly claims from the GOP power structure and the right-wing noise machine which they fear -- to any critical scrutiny.The Daily Show has mocked this process very effectively noting that you can simply say that "some say that Jon Stewart has sex with goats" and then note that "others disagree" and leave it at that--as if every side has equal legitimacy. In that context, the holocaust deniers share equal billing with the documented historians, and the creation scientist is perfectly equal to the biologist who studies the process of evolution every day.
For various reasons, they simply will not investigate such claims and, when warranted, identify such claims as false. The most they are willing to do is simply write down each side's claims and treat them equally, even when one side is blatantly lying. GOP operatives know that this is how the press functions and thus know that they can easily get away with spewing lies, and can even recruit the media into helpfully spreading them (using the predominant 'he-said/she-said' template). That's the same process that led us into Iraq, kept us there for so long, protected endless presidential lawbreaking and enabled all sorts of fact-free smears."
Had this story been reported in accordance with the prevailing establishment media norms -- the type practiced by Time and defended by Romano -- it would have simply been presented as a mindless recitation of what "each side claims", as in: "Some claim that Giuliani has exaggerated his record of accomplishments as Mayor, while Giuliani campaign aides insist that his statements are accurate." But Cooper took the next step -- the one that distinguishes the basic reporting function from the role of propagandists and stenographers: namely, he investigated the competing claims and identified which ones were factually true and which ones were factually false.
"The report records The Singer Company that markets the crucifixes, part of the Association for Christian Retail, made $4.63 BILLION last year."The workers take home around 9 cents an hour.
"In the next segment--the debate between Romney and Mike Huckabee over Huckabee's college scholarships for the deserving children of illegal immigrants--I noticed something really distressing: When Huckabee said, 'After all, these are children of God,' the dials plummeted. And that happened time and again through the evening: Any time any candidate proposed doing anything nice for anyone poor, the dials plummeted (30s). These Republicans were hard.If you want to know why my belief in this country and certainly respect for the GOP is falling, you need look no farther. Anyone who can say that about torture (former federal law officer or no) is uninformed and chooses to remain so. What is more, their moral compass has now joined Stalin and the dictators who employ secret police. They don't value democracy, morality, or anything except hatred towards others.
But there was worse to come: When John McCain started talking about torture--specifically, about waterboarding--the dials plummeted again. Lower even than for the illegal Children of God. Down to the low 20s, which, given the natural averaging of a focus group, is about as low as you can go. Afterwards, Luntz asked the group why they seemed to be in favor of torture. 'I don't have any problem pouring water on the face of a man who killed 3000 Americans on 9/11,' said John Shevlin, a retired federal law enforcement officer. The group applauded, appallingly."
Media Matters - CNN's Brown called MoveOn.org "American insurgents": "BROWN: General David Petraeus made his reputation taking on insurgents in Iraq. But when he came to Capitol Hill in September, he was confronted by American insurgents, a liberal anti-war group called MoveOn.org. MoveOn bought this full-page ad in The New York Times. It accused Petraeus of betraying us by cooking the books on progress in Iraq."Yeah, that's right. MoveOn.org is just like terrorists who blow people up with IEDs.
NewsOK: Roberts says God told him to resign: "The word of the Lord came to me again, and said do not consider the dark days of October, but look to the day of thanks,” Roberts said.Evidently God can be very specific to Roberts, but was not very specific in telling him not to use University funds to fly his family on expensive vacations.
The next message came early Thanksgiving morning, when Roberts was praying. “The Lord spoke to me. He said: ‘Resign tomorrow,’” Roberts said.
Roberts stopped speaking to the crowd for a moment. His breathing became heavy and his tears returned. His voice cracked when he began speaking again. “Every ounce” of his flesh told Roberts not to resign, but he said God persisted with an order to “do it tomorrow.”
Huckabee was dodging a direct question on the very area -- the intersection of religion and policy -- on which he is building his campaign. The man whose ads call him a "Christian Leader" and who says his faith "defines me" wouldn't answer a pretty simple question on how his faith affects his opinion on a policy issue.
Let's take his answer to a question about NASA sending humans to Mars; in his answer, he said, "Now, whether we need to send somebody to Mars, I don't know. But I'll tell you what: If we do, I've got a few suggestions, and maybe Hillary could be on the first rocket to Mars." Everyone laughed. But the best word to describe that crack is is probably "bitchy." It was just a cheap shot, both ugly and shamelessly pandering. It came from a place of hate within Mike Huckabee's heart and those of the audience whose favor he was seeking. But he said it with a smile, so I guess that means it's OK.The part that bugs me is that the blogger is right. For all the talk about Christian love and compassion, there is a huge well of hatred in the religious right that belies their putative faith. And what makes that worse is that they believe they are more righteous than the rest of us, and therefore less hateful than the rest of us. Which makes Leighton's comment all the more scary--about the rumor circulating (and given some credence by the Wapo) that Obama is a closet Muslim. Ten bucks says that is cycling through religious right email lists and will become part of the dialogue. Either they will hate Hillary or Obama and try very hard to give us another Pastor in chief.
"The truth is that America is so rich that political leaders could actually produce some variant of that miracle if they had the will. And, I suppose, if they thought there were votes in it. Enough with the pious sanctimony about gay marriage and abortion. If elected officials want to bring God talk into public life, let it be the bedrock stuff, about charity and mercy and the least of our brethren. Instead of the performance art of the presidential debate, the candidates should come to Holy Apostles and do what good people, people of faith, do there every day—feed the hungry, comfort the weary, soothe the afflicted. And wipe down the tables after each seating. Here's a prayer for every politician: pasta, collard greens, bread, cling peaches. Amen."My frustration with religious conservatives grows with each day. As I have said numerous times, I believe they have replaced reason with "faith" (which means to them what they believe) and refuse to reassess once they have made up their mind. As a result, they seem completely unwilling to reassess how they decided that Bush was a good Christian and would be a good President. I fear, with some reason, that since they don't believe they erred, there is no reason to look at their process, and so means they will likely vote for whoever the GOP throws up there--anti-science, pro-torture--whatever, all framed in religious rhetoric. Ten bucks says that we will all hear Christians justify voting for Rudy or Romney or Huckabee because they "aren't comfortable" voting for a black or woman for President. "America just isn't ready for that."
"Jesus was far too smart to seek public office."Unbelievable, and telling. I think far too many religious conservatives see some kind of purposeful disconnect between actually living the Christian life and acting in politics. One of my friends has suggested that almost directly--that when Bush does bad stuff in office, it doesn't distract from his Christian faith, because that is "part of the job." Huckabee reiterates that here. Instead of addressing what Jesus might actually have to say about difficult issues, he suggests that Jesus would not be political, but then asserts that his faith in Jesus is what makes him the best candidate.
As New York mayor, Rudy Giuliani billed obscure city agencies for tens of thousands of dollars in security expenses amassed during the time when he was beginning an extramarital relationship with future wife Judith Nathan in the Hamptons, according to previously undisclosed government records.
The contradictory and stunning reality is that Giuliani Partners, the consulting company that has made Giuliani rich, feasts at the Qatar trough, doing business with the ministry run by the very member of the royal family identified in news and government reports as having concealed KSM—the terrorist mastermind who wired funds from Qatar to his nephew Ramzi Yousef prior to the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, and who also sold the idea of a plane attack on the towers to Osama bin Laden—on his Qatar farm in the mid-1990s.Just imagine the media outcry if that were Hillary Clinton or John Edwards?
“I stood at the White house briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the seniormost aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby,” McClellan wrote. “There was one problem. It was not true.” McClellan then absolves himself and makes an inflammatory — and potentially lucrative for his publisher — charge. “I had unknowingly passed along false information,” McClellan wrote. “And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice president, the president's chief of staff and the president himself.' "Watching this admin at the beginning, they seemed so effective at chilling critics. John Dillulio calls them "machiavellian mayberries" and suggests that they politicize everything--yet a week later he backs down completely. Paul O'Neill says that they planned on invading Iraq from the beginning, he is savaged by the machine.
"Always do the right thing. Follow the law. That was always my lodestar, my guiding principle, and I’m sure that will guide General Mukasey."Yeah. Whatever, Al.
"AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein says that the reason isn't to spare the telecoms financial indemnity, or a matter of 'fairness,' as administration officials claim. Rather, it's to stop some 40 class-action suits against the companies from revealing how massive, how domestic and how illegal warrantless surveillance was between 2001 and 2007. Revelations from those suits could even, hypothetically at least, lead to criminal charges against administration officials and telecom companies."
"We all know the answer: What Bush-Cheney-Rove and company would have done to either Clinton would have made what they did to one-time Vietnam War POW John McCain, triple-amputee Vietnam veteran Max Cleland and Vietnam Purple Heart medalist John Kerry look like a Crawford, Texas, picnic. They would have accused either Clinton of selling out and ducking out, of cutting and running from the vow to get Osama bin Laden and crush al Qaeda. . . .
"Bush-Cheney-Rove would have had America believing that a President Clinton who had done all of the above had sold America and our Star-Spangled Banner to the terrorists. They would have had us distrusting and despising a president who had been so weak after talking so tough.
"And they would have been right."
"Evangelicals, particularly younger evangelicals, are undergoing a shift in attitudes. Many have little interest in the self-destructive purity of the prophet or the raw pragmatism of the kingmaker. They remain culturally conservative, but uncomfortable with a harshly judgmental tone in their politics. They find the model of the religious right too narrow and are increasingly motivated by a broader range of social concerns, from disease in Africa, to the environment, to racial reconciliation. And they want to be a witness to these values instead of a tool in the power games of others."
"'The subject of our meeting is crucifixion, or as the crowd is calling it, 'hammer boarding,' Pilate announced. 'There has been an outcry by some that the practice is not worthy of a civilized people and possibly ineffective. Some feel the practice may cause us more trouble in the long run. But are there any options?"
"A fascinating nugget from American history, unearthed by guest-blogger Shertaugh at the IsThatLegal? blog. Waterboarding was sometimes used in the Deep South to torture African-Americans and to extract false confessions to alleged crimes. And when it emerged in an appeal as long ago as 1926, even the Mississippi Supreme Court ruled it categorically 'a specie of torture well known to the bench and bar of the country,' and 'barbarous.' They over-turned a guilty verdict for murder by an African-American man against a white man because such methods invalidated any notion of a reliable confession"A 1920s Mississippi court thought it barbaric, but Cheney thinks it is a water ride and most of America thinks it is part of a television show. We torture now. We defend torture.
"'This isn't a free-speech issue,' explains Jan Martel, president of the United States Bridge Federation, commenting on what the organization refers to as the 'Shanghai Incident.' 'There isn't any question that private organizations can control the speech of people who represent them.' A statement released by the USBF reiterates, 'This situation is not about free speech; it is about determining whether the USBF has a responsibility to its membership to impose sanctions on those who have acted contrary to the best interests of the organization and its members.'"I just remember when conservatives loved to trash Clinton here, overseas, on television, radio, in Country songs, in speeches and ads, from the House floor, or behind a pulpit. The good old days. I am sure that conservatives and corporations will recover that love of dissent when a democrat runs the country. We already see signs of something like this, certainly about Hillary:
"At a campaign event in South Carolina Monday, a female supporter asked John McCain: "How do we beat the bitch?"As TPM and others have noted, this is the same candidate who bent over backwards to apologize for his mother's attack on Mitt Romney's mormonism. Calling Hillary a "bitch" is ok, I guess.
If the Arizona senator objected to that particular characterization of Sen. Hillary Clinton, he didn't exactly say so.
Instead, as the room erupted in laughter, McCain said he'd try to offer a "translation." Somebody in the audience shouted out, "I thought she was talking about my ex-wife." There was more laughter all around, and then McCain said: "That's an excellent question."
"By almost all accounts, this Administration has done more to improve government effectiveness than any previous Administration, ever.' --Clay Johnson, Bush buddy turned deputy director of OMB who also chairs the President's Council on Integrity and Efficiency, which oversees all government inspectors general."Yes, by all means. Effective. That was the word we were looking for.
"But now his son had not only reversed his policies, he had taken things a step further. 'The stakes are high ...' the younger Bush told reporters on April 21. 'And the Iraqi people are looking -- they're looking at America and saying, are we going to cut and run again?'"Again? Nice little shot at Daddy. And we find out that Bush doesn't talk to his Dad about anything of substance. Yeah, it isn't as if Daddy had some experience with the job.
These days, you can forget that old-style GOP rhetoric about "values," "human dignity" and the "culture of life." Because the GOP has a new litmus test for its nominees: Will you or will you not protect U.S. officials who order the torture of prisoners?
As Scott Horton reports in his Harper's Magazine blog: "Several days before his first meeting with the Senate Judiciary Committee, Michael Mukasey's Justice Department handlers arranged a private meeting for him with a number of 'movement conservatives.'... They pushed aggressively on the torture question. They wanted Mukasey to pledge that he would toe the administration's line" by not criticizing the administration's approval of waterboarding and similar interrogation techniques, and they wanted him to "protect those who authored the [interrogation] program" by issuing opinions that would keep those responsible for the program from facing criminal prosecution. "
Christianism - as opposed to Christianity - is quite comfortable with torture, as long as it is wielded by a Master to protect his Servants, and as long as it is used for revenge against what Robertson calls Islamic "bloodlust." When you fuse Christianity with power, it isn't long before Christians start imposing the cross on others rather than taking it up for themselves. God is on their side, remember? And so they can do no wrong. You're either with them or against them, for torture or against America. Get it?
Condi was very worried about Mushy suspending the Constitution, but Vice says Constitutions are for sissies. He doesn’t see anything wrong with Mushy’s press blackout. He thinks we can learn a few lessons from him.
Vice says if we had someone decisive like Mushy in Iraq instead of those floppy Iranian puppets we put in power, we’d be a lot better off.
All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: the United States will ignore your oppression and excuse your oppressors. When you stand for your liberty, we will not stand with you.
--
In the long run, there is justice without freedom, and there can be human rights once the human rights activists have been thrown in the pokey.
Press Briefing by Dana Perino: "MS. PERINO: We do not believe that any extra-constitutional means were necessary in order to help prevent terrorism in the region. And that's why we are deeply disappointed with the actions, and we asked them to not do it.
Q Is it ever reasonable to restrict constitutional freedoms in the name of fighting terrorism?
MS. PERINO: In our opinion, no."
The president claims an inherent power to imprison American citizens whom he has determined to be this country's enemies without obtaining a warrant, letting them hear the charges against them, or following other safeguards against wrongful punishment guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. Under his administration, the government has engaged in inhumane treatment of prisoners that amounts to torture — and when Congress passed legislation to ban such treatment, he declared he would simply interpret the law his own way. Although the Constitution says treaties are the "supreme law of the land," the president has abrogated them on his own. And, we now know, he ordered a secret program of electronic surveillance of Americans without court warrants.
Maybe the sun will shine today
The clouds will blow away
Maybe I won't feel so afraid
I will try to understand
Either way
Scarborough said he first met Huckabee more than 30 years ago, while both were students at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.It must have been Rick's love of sharing the love of God that led him to endorse George W. Bush, remain silent on torture, AND tour with Tom DeLay:
Scarborough said there was "significant liberalism" on the campus, and students typically responded in one of three ways. Some "drank the 'Kool-Aid'" of the latest liberal fad, others were conservative but tried to avoid conflict, and some "were there on a mission to prepare to change the world and for whom Christ was their first love and winning souls their passion."
"'I believe the most damaging thing that Tom DeLay has done in his life is take his faith seriously into public office, which made him a target for all those who despise the cause of Christ,' Scarborough said, introducing DeLay yesterday. When DeLay finished, the host reminded the politician: 'God always does his best work right after a crucifixion.'"Wow, his discernment is so telling. If I were Mike Huckabee, I would be ever so grateful that someone as idiotic as this man endorsed me.
"I suggest that God may be sending us a lifeline," he said. "Who better to lead a nation nearing moral collapse and perhaps World War III than a president who is also a pastor with 10 years of senior executive experience as a governor?"Sigh. Yeah. I wonder if Ricko considers a President who has turned us into America the Torturing Nation part of that moral collapse. I suspect he does not. Now if only God would send us a lifeline away from pastors like Rick Scarborough.
In short, the story is this: Jack Goldsmith left OLC before he could complete the "replacement" torture opinion. Daniel Levin succeeded him. OLC had previously opined that waterboarding was lawful. Levin apparently (and understandably) was a bit skeptical -- so much so that he asked the military to subject him to waterboarding! (This is not your parents' OLC -- can you imagine what it would take for anyone after this to want to be Assistant Attorney General there?) Naturally, Levin concluded that the procedure was, well, torture, at least "unless performed in a highly limited way," and under guidelines the Administration had failed to implement. (No doubt Levin did suffer severe physical suffering, and that's in a situation far removed from being a detainee.)
At this point, Alberto Gonzales nevertheless insisted that Levin include in his December 30, 2004 opinion the footnote about how the legal analysis did not affect all previously approved techniques! It's not clear why Levin assented to this -- it's an outrageous and inappropriate thing for a White House Counsel to do -- but the footnote was included.
Levin then set about to write another opinion, one that would cut back on the approved techniques (and that would, at a minimum, repudiate or temper the previous OLC advice on waterboarding).
Unfortunately, at this point Gonzales was confirmed as AG -- and he fired Levin, replacing him with Steve Bradbury, who was more than happy to give Gonzales the legal advice they wanted. (No word -- yet -- on whether Bradbury was waterboarded.)
"The United States knows quite a bit about waterboarding. The U.S. government -- whether acting alone before domestic courts, commissions and courts-martial or as part of the world community -- has not only condemned the use of water torture but has severely punished those who applied it.So we fought the big war to defeat Fascism only to get a morally challenged President who drank his way through college?
After World War II, we convicted several Japanese soldiers for waterboarding American and Allied prisoners of war. At the trial of his captors, then-Lt. Chase J. Nielsen, one of the 1942 Army Air Forces officers who flew in the Doolittle Raid and was captured by the Japanese, testified: "I was given several types of torture. . . . I was given what they call the water cure." He was asked what he felt when the Japanese soldiers poured the water. "Well, I felt more or less like I was drowning," he replied, "just gasping between life and death.""
"The initial draft makes clear that the White House sought impunity for crimes arising as a result of the use of three techniques that the Bush Administration (and, from the remarkable wording of one of Bush's press conferences, Bush himself) authorized and which constitute grave breaches under Common Article 3: waterboarding, long-time standing (or as it was called by its NKVD inventors, in Russian: stoika) and hypothermia or cold cell. The use of these techniques is a criminal act. The purported authorization of these techniques is a criminal act. The larger effort to employ them constitutes a joint criminal enterprise. "
"The real reason why Judge Mukasey cannot say that waterboarding is illegal is that Administration officials have repeatedly insisted that they do not torture, and that they have acted both legally and honorably. If Judge Mukasey said that waterboarding is illegal, it would require the Bush Administration to admit that it repeatedly lied to the American people and brought shame and dishonor on the United States of America. If Judge Mukasey were to say waterboarding is illegal and not just 'a dunk in the water' in Vice President Cheney's terminology, he would have announced that, as incoming Attorney General, he is entering an Administration of liars and torturers."George W. Bush's Administration of Liars and Torturers (brought to you by James Dobson and Focus on the Family). Now, there is a t-shirt! It would be comical if it weren't so damn serious. The next time you hear a conservative rant about opposing evil or fascism or islamofascism--just remember that they have aided and abetted the transformation of our judicial system into one that endorses the torture of others.
This is a critically important issue - but it is not, and never has been, a complex issue, and even to suggest otherwise does a terrible disservice to this nation. All U.S. Government agencies and personnel, and not just America’s military forces, must abide by both the spirit and letter of the controlling provisions of international law. Cruelty and torture - no less than wanton killing - is neither justified nor legal in any circumstance.
The administration at the time was reeling from an August 2002 memo by Jay Bybee, then the head of the Office of Legal Counsel, which laid out possible justifications for torture. In June 2004, Levin's predecessor at the office, Jack Goldsmith, officially withdrew the Bybee memo, finding it deeply flawed.There is something pathological about people who simply fire people who disagree with them.
When Levin took over from Goldsmith, he went to work on a memo that would effectively replace the Bybee memo as the administration's legal position on torture. It was during this time that he underwent waterboarding.
In December 2004, Levin released the new memo. He said, "Torture is abhorrent" but he went on to say in a footnote that the memo was not declaring the administration's previous opinions illegal. The White House, with Alberto Gonzales as the White House counsel, insisted that this footnote be included in the memo.
But Levin never finished a second memo imposing tighter controls on the specific interrogation techniques. Sources said he was forced out of the Justice Department when Gonzales became attorney general.
Dan Froomkin - Bush: It's Mukasey or Nothing - washingtonpost.com: "Scott Horton blogs for Harpers: 'There has been no shortage of litmus tests in the past: abortion, gay marriage, the flag amendment--whatever hot-button issue the G.O.P. cooks up for its next election campaign. But the torture litmus test is new, and it seems to be key for lawyers. It really is an exercise in Kool Aid drinking. If you're prepared to hedge on whether waterboarding is torture, then you might be counted upon to do anything. Indeed, there is no question about it. Waterboarding is torture and has been understood to be torture in a formal sense for over a hundred years. Soldiers who used it were court-martialed, and the attempted defense of military necessity was smacked down by the Army's Judge Advocate General in 1903. There is no shortage of other precedent. This is why Mukasey's dodge on the issue--first a very primitive dodge, and then a more sophisticated one--is so troubling.'Oh, and Bush compared his critics to those who ignored the rise of Hitler and Lenin.
The Washington Post editorial board writes that Bush yesterday "bemoaned the imperiled state of Mr. Mukasey's nomination without one iota of self-awareness that the nomination is in trouble because of the president's own warped policies on torture."
And yet, the editorial advises: "Those senators who truly want to bring the nation back from the disgrace of Mr. Bush's interrogation policies should do two things. They should confirm Mr. Mukasey, who is far more independent and qualified than either of Mr. Bush's previous two nominees. And they should do something which, for all the rhetoric, they have so far declined to do: ban torture, by passing the National Security with Justice Act sponsored by Sen. Joseph R. Biden (D-Del.)."
But legal blogger Marty Lederman points out that Congress has repeatedly banned torture in the past. In fact, he writes, "if there is any single thing imaginable that the Senate, the Congress, and the world community have not'declined to do,' it is to ban torture categorically."
Lederman adds: "That's not to say it would not also be a good thing to enact the Biden bill, which would specifically require all United States personnel, including the CIA, to use only interrogation techniques authorized by the Army Field Manual. That would be yet another step that would help prevent the Bush Administration from violating the current bans on torture by doing things such as implausibly characterizing its torture as 'not torture.'"
Yesterday on CNN, Jack Cafferty let loose: "Where does he get this stuff? We're talk about confirmation hearing in congressional committee for a cabinet officer and he's babbling about Lenin and Hitler? I mean -- come on! I'm tired of being told to be afraid. The people are tired of being told to be afraid. Just get off of it. Either win the argument on the merits or go away and leave me alone."Bush rules like an abusive tyrant. He is not a good person and shame on every Republican who enables his abuse and every Democrat who cowers before it.
Talking Points Memo | Dean on Mukasey
A Last Thought Before the Senate Judiciary Committee Confirms Judge Mukasey
By John W. Dean
As the Senate Democrats complete another sad concession to President Bush, and confirms a nominee who refuses to declare “water-boarding” torture, allow me to offer a brief historical reminder: the Senate Judiciary Committee has conspicuously forgotten that there are direct situational and historical parallels with Judge Mukasey’s nomination to be Attorney General and that of President Richard Nixon nominating Elliot Richardson to be Attorney General during Watergate.
Nixon’s Attorney General had been removed (and was later prosecuted for lying to Congress) – a situation not unlike Alberto Gonzales’s leaving the job under such a cloud. Nixon was under deep suspicion of covering up the true facts relating to the bungled break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate, not to mention widespread rumors that he had engaged in abuses of power and corrupt campaign practices. Today, Bush is under even deeper suspicion for activities far more serious than anything Nixon engaged in for there is evidence Bush has abused the laws of war, violated treaties, and ordered (or approved) the use of torture and political renditions, which are war crimes.
Since Judge Mukasey’s situation is not unlike that facing Elliot Richardson when he was appointed Attorney General during Watergate, why should not the Senate Judiciary Committee similarly make it a quid pro quo for his confirmation that he appoint a special prosecutor to investigate war crimes? Richardson was only confirmed when he agreed to appoint a special prosecutor, which, of course, he did. And when Nixon fired that prosecutor, Archibald Cox, it lead to his impeachment.
Before the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee completely cave-in to Bush, at minimum they should demand that Judge Mukasey appoint a special prosecutor to investigate if war crimes have been committed. If Mukasey refuses he should be rejected. This, indeed, should be a pre-condition to anyone filling the post of Attorney General under Bush.
If the Democrats in the Senate refuse to demand any such requirement, it will be act that should send chills down the spine of every thinking American.
"There is a broad and easily understandable legal ban on the infliction ofsevere mental or physical pain or sufferingon any prisoner in wartime as a means to extract 'information.' Yes, to thrash a horse in advanced stages of rigor mortis, as a philosophical matter, this might, in a million-to-one scenario, still allow a president to authorize illegal torture if the entire republic was at stake or if a major city was about to go down in nuclear flames, and we knew we had an individual who knew how to stop it. But the president would still subsequently have to subject himself and all those who did such a thing to legal punishment. That is what the rule of law means, guys. It means there is no exception. We either live in a republic of laws or the imperium of one man. We cannot live simultaneously under both. The oath of the president is to enforce such laws, not to avoid them. And that is why it is insane to say we have no right to demand that the attorney-general nominee assure us in advance that he will uphold the rule of law in office. We do not merely have the right. We have a duty to ensure that an attorney general of the United States will uphold the law.
There is no question whatsoever that "simulated drowning," "water-boarding" or whatever name we give to a technique routinely deployed by the Khmer Rouge is illegal however it is done, whoever does it, and whomever is subjected to it. If the attorney general cannot say this in public without equivocation before he is nominated, then the Congress is indicating that it condones the Bush administration's contempt for the rule of law and routine use of illegal torture. I cannot see how Republicans who impeached a president for perjury in a civil suit cannot see what the issue is here. It is the most bedrock principle of a free society. Do the laws apply to the highest executive authority? Do we live in a tyranny or a republic?
Alas, the president almost certainly will never be prosecuted for the war crimes he has committed. He has already seen to that and so, shamefully, has the Congress by passing a law that retroactively granted him immunity. Surely that is bad enough. To compound that by allowing an attorney general to take office by refusing to say whether he will uphold the law in the face of the Cheney-style Protector-Presidency is inexcusable. This is history in the making. Who will defend the rule of law?"
Bush: “The job of Attorney General is essential to the security of America” … “Some in Washington should spend more time responding to the warnings of terrorists like Osama bin Laden, and the requests of our commanders on the ground, and less time responding to the demands of MoveOn.org bloggers and Code Pink protesters.”Of course, he is the same person who not only disbanded the CIA unit dedicated to finding OBL, but also said
“I don’t know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don’t care. It’s not that important. It’s not our priority.”
USNews.com: Political Bulletin: Friday, November 2, 2007: "Media reports particularly noted Bush's suggestion that if Mukasey is rejected by the Senate, he will not nominate a replacement. The Washington Times titles its front-page story "It's Mukasey Or No One, Bush Warns." NBC Nightly News reported Mukasey's nomination "does look increasingly shaky ahead of next week's vote, and if it does fail, the President suggested today that he may not nominate anybody else, leaving him without an attorney general, potentially, for the rest of his term." ABC World News also reported the President "spent much of his day trying to save the nomination."By "save" they mean challenge the patriotism of anyone who disagrees with him. This man is not only a bad President--he is a bad person.
Carter always showed himself to be a statesman, a faithful husband and a strong Christian. He was never caught using lewd words when he did not realize the microphone was on. Carter has published numerous devotional books.
Since age 18, he has taught Sunday school at a Baptist church. Even while in Washington, he taught a Sunday school class there. Do you think our current president even attends church on Sunday? Hint: No.
It's not that Bush's pew is empty. He doesn't have one. The man who claims God speaks to him directly, has no church at all. And don't tell me the free leader of the world can't find time to go to church. If he can find time to spend a third of his presidency on vacation, he can find time to go to the House of God.
Reagan did not bother with church either, even though he was often called the nation's "pastor." Reagan's excuse for being unchurched was that the security detail required to protect him would be a burden, causing parishioners to leave. The Clintons, who were active members of Foundry United Methodist Church during Bill Clinton's term in the White House, had no problem attending.
According to his biographers, Carter may be the most personally devout president America ever had. Yet Baptist leaders inexplicably loathe Carter. Many preachers have called him godless, denying that he was ever a Christian.
Meanwhile, these same people support President Bush as God's man of the hour, even though he has rarely darkens the door of a church, supports killing and torture rather than working for peace, has demonstrated no knowledge of Scripture, and would have trouble coming up with a bedtime prayer without help from Karl Rove.
The fact is, Baptist leaders don't support Baptists. Baptist leaders support Republicans.
