The President's Lawyers: Meet John Yoo
Former Dept. of Justice lawyer John Yoo was central to advising the White House on executive powers. Basically Yoo described to the White House an environment in which there were few barriers to their authority. For example, Yoo believes the president was not obligated to obtain permission from Congress to invade Iraq. Today, CrooksAndLiars.com makes available an audio recording of Yoo debating the presidents authority to torture:

Cassel: If the president deems that he's got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person's child, there is no law that can stop him?

Yoo: No treaty

Cassel: Also no law by Congress -- that is what you wrote in the August 2002 memo...

Yoo: I think it depends on why the President thinks he needs to do that.

It's extremely disturbing that we have lawyers in government that are willing to interpret so broadly in favor of a single branch. I wonder how they found Yoo, and if they simply managed to locate-- as with the CIA pre-war intelligence-- someone who would provide the answers they wanted to hear. I'm just waiting to hear about John Bolton's involvement...

- Edoc 3:45 PM - [PermaLink] -

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HuffPo: Impeachment is Now Real
The eavesdropping bombshell is sure to thwart many cases in the court system:

The defendants in 'terrorist' and other infected criminal cases, the Court must find, must get access to everything, or very close to everything to make sure they were never improperly surveilled.

The Bush Administration, in these cases will refuse, as did the Nixon administration, to divulge information on national security grounds. Many alleged critical cases must then be dismissed. It will include Organized Crime and drug cases.

This brings us to the big I word. Will there be enough public outrage to really support impeachment proceedings? And: Is it conceivable that impeachment charges could be brought against Bush before the mid-term elections, so that they can easily be shot-down by a Republican-controlled Congress?

- Edoc 10:20 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Not sure how I missed this when it first was posted, but its something to leave you with until 2006.

None Dare Call It Stolen
Ohio, the election, and America's servile press

The infamously factious Democrats were fiercely unified—Ralph Nader garnered only about 0.38 percent of the national vote—while the Republicans were split, with a vocal anti-Bush front that included anti-Clinton warrior Bob Barr of Georgia; Ike’s son John Eisenhower; Ronald Reagan’s chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, William J. Crowe Jr.; former Air Force Chief of Staff and onetime “Veteran for Bush” General Merrill “Tony” McPeak; founding neocon Francis Fukuyama; Doug Bandow of the Cato Institute, and various large alliances of military officers, diplomats, and business professors. The American Conservative, co-founded by Pat Buchanan, endorsed five candidates for president, including both Bush and Kerry, while the Financial Times and The Economist came out for Kerry alone. At least fifty-nine daily newspapers that backed Bush in the previous election endorsed Kerry (or no one) in this election. The national turnout in 2004 was the highest since 1968, when another unpopular war had swept the ruling party from the White House. [1] Yet this ever-less-beloved president, this president who had united liberals and conservatives and nearly all the world against himself—this president somehow bested his opponent by 3,000,176 votes.

How did he do it?

The article serves as an excellent summary of how Bush's victory in Ohio was procured.

- rob 2:52 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Bob Barr's a jerk so he knows jerks well

Presidents all the same when scandal strikes

Two of the most powerful moments of political déjà vu I have ever experienced took place recently in the context of the Bush administration's defense of presidentially ordered electronic spying on American citizens.

First, in the best tradition of former President Bill Clinton's classic, "it-all-depends-on-what-the-meaning-of-is-is" defense, President Bush responded to a question at a White House news conference about what now appears to be a clear violation of federal electronic monitoring laws by trying to argue that he had not ordered the National Security Agency to "monitor" phone and e-mail communications of American citizens without court order; he had merely ordered them to "detect" improper communications.
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First, we get a president bobbing and weaving like Muhammad Ali. He knows he can't really tell the truth and he knows he can't rely only on lies. The resulting dilemma leads him to veer from unintelligible muttering to attempts to distract, and then to chest-beating bravado and attacks on his accusers.

Soon, he begins taking trips abroad and appearing at the White House podium with foreign leaders with minimal command of English, allowing him to duck for cover whenever scandal questions arise.

Of course, the president can't carry the entire stonewalling burden alone. The next actors to enter the stage typically are the president's press secretary and the White House counsel's office. Serious scandals tend to spawn congressional investigations and independent counsels. As Clinton quickly learned, and Richard Nixon before him, the best way to short-circuit such endeavors is to force the investigators and lawyers to fight like dogs for every inch of ground they get.

By using the White House counsel's office to bury investigators in a sea of motions, pleadings and memoranda, an administration can drag out an investigation to the point of exhaustion. By the time the investigation actually slogs through this legal maze to bring real charges or issue a report, the courts, public and media are so sick and tired of hearing about it that the final charges fall stillborn from the press.

A critical component of White House Scandal Defense 101 is rallying the partisan base. This keeps approval ratings in territory where the wheels don't start falling off. The way to achieve this goal is you go negative and you don't let up. If you're always attacking your accusers, the debate becomes one of Democrat vs. Republican, rather than right vs. wrong.

- rob 2:41 PM - [PermaLink] -

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For some reason I'm getting an error linking to the actual Chicago Trib article but thanks to Boing Boing here's an excerpt.

Boing Boing: Pentagon fails to ban slavery by defense contractors

Three years ago, President Bush declared that he had "zero tolerance" for trafficking in humans by the government's overseas contractors, and two years ago Congress mandated a similar policy. But notwithstanding the president's statement and the congressional edict, the Defense Department has yet to adopt a policy to bar human trafficking.
A proposal prohibiting defense contractor involvement in human trafficking for forced prostitution and labor was drafted by the Pentagon last summer, but five defense lobbying groups oppose key provisions and a final policy still appears to be months away, according to those involved and Defense Department records.

The lobbying groups opposing the plan say they're in favor of the idea in principle, but said they believe that implementing key portions of it overseas is unrealistic. They represent thousands of firms, including some of the industry's biggest names, such as DynCorp International and Halliburton subsidiary KBR, both of which have been linked to trafficking-related concerns.

Yeah, they're against slavery as a concept but to go so far as to free their slaves, well that... that is really going to eat into profits.

- rob 2:37 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Turkey is going to be so pissed at us.

Kurds preparing takeover; U.S. exit strategy at risk

KIRKUK, Iraq - Kurdish leaders have inserted more than 10,000 of their militia members into Iraqi army divisions in northern Iraq to lay the groundwork to swarm south, seize the oil-rich city of Kirkuk and possibly half of Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city, and secure the borders of an independent Kurdistan.

Five days of interviews with Kurdish leaders and troops in the region suggest that U.S. plans to bring unity to Iraq before withdrawing American troops by training and equipping a national army aren't gaining traction. Instead, some troops who are formally under U.S. and Iraqi national command are preparing to protect territory and ethnic and religious interests in the event of Iraq's fragmentation, which many of them think is inevitable.

The soldiers said that while they wore Iraqi army uniforms they still considered themselves members of the Peshmerga -- the Kurdish militia -- and were awaiting orders from Kurdish leaders to break ranks.

- rob 2:35 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Bush cares so little about national security he can't bother filling out forms correctly?

Bush cares so little for the constitution he doesn't bother applying for a warrant even though he's allowed to do so within 72 hours after the wire tap begins? Or maybe he know the warrant request would be rejected?

Secret surveillance up sharply since 9/11

The Justice Department's reports to the U.S. Congress on the surveillance court's activities show the Bush administration made 5,645 applications for electronic surveillance and physical searches from 2001 through 2004, the most recent year for which figures are available. In the previous four years, the court received a total of 3,436.

The 11-judge panel modified 179 of the Bush administration's requests. By contrast, only one was modified in the preceding four years. The court has reportedly handled almost 20,000 applications since it was set up and has rejected only a handful.

Reasons for the modifications were not stated and could range from minor alterations to more substantive changes.

But this disregard for law is easily understandable because Bush says:

"These are designed to monitor calls from very bad people to very bad people who have a history of blowing up commuter trains, weddings, and churches."

See. These aren't just bad people, they are very bad people. And if you say you are spying on very bad people then law can be overlooked, even though you are disregarding the law out of laziness or because you know you'd not be granted a warrant. But if these guys were very bad people with histories of blowing up churches and weddings and such (Bush left out pet shows very bad people blow up pet shows too) don't you think a court that has a history of approving almost every request would approve of spying on these folks? Though it does make you wonder that if we know the location of these hundreds of church blowing up folks, why don't we arrest them.

But Bush's defense is: trust him.

And god save our nation, some people actually do - and they believe that that should be enough for the rest of us too.


"All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree."
- James Madison

- rob 2:33 PM - [PermaLink] -

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When you hear of the growing trade deficit you never hear of the inroads we are making with some of our exports.

It's just like the media to ignore the good news on the international trade front.

Why we've dramatically increased our export of violence to Canada.

Canada blames U.S. for gun violence

TORONTO, Ontario (AP) -- Canadian officials, seeking to make sense of another fatal shooting in what has been a record year for gun-related deaths, said Tuesday that along with a host of social ills, part of the problem stemmed from what they said was the United States exporting its violence.

Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin and Toronto Mayor David Miller warned that Canada could become like the United States after gunfire erupted Monday on a busy street filled with holiday shoppers, killing a 15-year-old girl and wounding six bystanders -- the latest victims in a record surge in gun violence in Toronto.

- rob 1:03 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Some quick recommendations:

Read: Power That Bush Can't Just Take

and read: Dick Cheney's Philosophical Thought-Experiment

- rob 4:26 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Saga of Incompetence

Although both Mr. Chertoff and Mr. Brown made mistakes during the storm, far more fingers should have been pointed at the haphazard, irrational and unabashedly political process that led to the creation of DHS, as well as the inept leadership of the department's first boss, Tom Ridge.

Four years ago, there was a case to be made for a government department that would group together different elements of border security -- the Coast Guard, the immigration services and customs -- in a more streamlined way. But, as the Post series documents, that wasn't what happened. Instead, White House officials anxious to prove their boss was more gung-ho about preparedness than congressional Democrats threw a lot of agencies together without much consideration of whether they belonged together, even at one point including Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which carries out nuclear weapons research. Other agencies and tasks that should belong to homeland security, such as managing the nation's emergency vaccine stockpile, were left out. The result was bureaucratic redundancy and a mystifying command structure. One example: Even today, it still is unclear who in the government -- the White House, DHS or the Department of Health and Human Services -- is really in charge of defense against bioterrorism.
...
Will incompetence be remembered as the salient characteristic of the Bush presidency?

Ummm... yes, though corruption and power grabbing seem to be in the running.

- rob 4:11 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Hey news flash: White House Prevarications

There are so many lies the Washington Post can call the White House out on, and they start with this? Well if it is a start, good for them.

GIVEN ALL THE fuss about what government officials in Washington say off the record, it's surprising how little attention is paid to some of the things they say on the record. Take, for example, the subject of U.S. emissions of the greenhouse gases that cause climate change. Earlier this month, we noted that the emissions figures cited by U.S. officials attending the international climate change conference in Montreal seemed dubious: Although the negotiators claimed U.S. emissions had fallen by 0.8 percent between 2000 and 2003, that drop actually reflected the recession of 2000-2001, not any substantive environmental policy change. In fact, as we noted, emissions had begun rising again in 2002 and 2003, and they looked set to rise again in 2004 -- to levels higher than they reached in 2000.
...
What, then, of Mr. Connaughton's other claim -- that the Bush administration has put in place "more than 60 mandatory, incentive-based and voluntary federal programs" to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases? An earlier version of that claim was examined two years ago by the Government Accountability Office. Its report, published in October 2003, noted that of the 30 elements of the administration's then-recently proclaimed agenda on greenhouse gases, only three were new programs -- as opposed to existing, repackaged programs -- that were actually intended to reduce future emissions in a measurable way.

They were going to that editorial of that title be about the whole war on terrorism, but they were scared of having to visit Bush again. He's a bore.

- rob 2:47 PM - [PermaLink] -

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"Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press and that cannot be limited without being lost."
- Thomas Jefferson

Bush Presses Editors on Security

President Bush has been summoning newspaper editors lately in an effort to prevent publication of stories he considers damaging to national security.

The efforts have failed, but the rare White House sessions with the executive editors of The Washington Post and New York Times are an indication of how seriously the president takes the recent reporting that has raised questions about the administration's anti-terror tactics.

The idea that he is worried about security is bollocks. He is worried about his ass.

The idea that emails, phone calls, etc. by persons with terrorist connections are being reviewed and read is not a news flash. The only news here is it is happening without a warrant. National Security isn't affected by the story, Bush is.

- rob 2:39 PM - [PermaLink] -

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A 26 year old stripper
A 89 Texas oil millionaire.

The Bush administration knows it was true love, and those romantics are jumping to Nicole's aid before the Supreme Court.

Anna Nicole to get boost from Bush in court case

WASHINGTON (AP) — Playboy playmate Anna Nicole Smith has an unusual bedfellow in the Supreme Court fight over her late husband's fortune: the Bush administration.

The administration's top Supreme Court lawyer filed arguments on Smith's behalf and wants to take part when the case is argued before the justices.
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She is trying to collect millions of dollars from the estate of J. Howard Marshall II, the oil tycoon she married in 1994 when he was 89 and she was a 26-year-old topless dancer in Houston. Marshall died in 1995.

Yes, the Bush administration's aid is based on some boring technicality, so let's ignore that and concentrate on the part about the stripper and the Texas oil man.

- rob 2:24 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Sure some people are worried about not having enough flu vaccine.

But those in the know are worried about the true shortage that could end civilization as we know it (at least in Seattle): Running out of coffee?
Analysts: World coffee shortage expected in 2007-08

LONDON -- A world coffee shortage is looming two years from now as yields from Brazilian trees dwindle and a global surplus in 2006-07 will fail to replenish stockpiles in producer countries, predicts commodity analysts F.O. Licht.

- rob 1:30 PM - [PermaLink] -

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After 9/11: Fear Destroys What Bin Laden Could Not
(MiamiHerald.com) Interesting opinion piece by Miami Herald columnist Robert Steinback.

Bush stokes our fears, implying that the only alternative to doing things his extralegal way is to sit by fitfully waiting for terrorists to harm us.
...
Ultimately, our best defense against attack -- any attack, of any sort -- is holding fast and fearlessly to the ideals upon which this nation was built. Bush clearly doesn't understand or respect that. Do we?

Well put. Hopefully enough US citizens appreciate that the freedoms we enjoy define what it means to be "American."

- Edoc 10:25 AM - [PermaLink] -

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'Cliff's Notes' for Year-end Review
These are some of my favorite fact-straightening crib-notes for the year. Stay ahead of the disinformation and spin with these:

• Top 12 Myths and Falsehoods on the Bush Spying Scandal (MediaMatters.org)
• Top Ten Myths about Iraq in 2005 (JuanCole.com)
• Top Right-Wing Myths about Plame-Gate (ThinkProgress.com)
• The Straw Men of Iraq: Ten Pro-War Fallacies (Daou Report, Salon.com)

Great for getting prepped for gatherings with your right wing family or in-laws. If you have any favorites of your own, leave a link in the comments area. Happy New Year!

- Edoc 9:27 AM - [PermaLink] -

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Powell Supports Eavesdropping
The general has extinguished his last embers of credibility.

Powell, who also is a former chairman of the military Joint Chiefs of Staff, had no reservations when asked whether eavesdropping should continue. "Of course it should continue," he said. "And nobody is suggesting that the president shouldn't do this."

Um, excuse me, Gen. Powell? Many are not only suggesting, but demanding that the president follow the law. Sound reasonable enough?

- Edoc 10:14 PM - [PermaLink] -

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