Contempt For The Constitution

We cannot allow ourselves to weaken what makes our society and country great; that no one person is ever above the law. By allowing the telecom companies to become immune to our laws because one man, the President of the United States, asked the telecoms companies to spy on us because we are, as a country, in a “crises”, is a precedent that cannot be allowed to stand. Nowhere in the Constitution is there a section that says the President may break the law. In fact, the Presidential oath of office states” “"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." Well, perhaps, Bush thinks he is doing “the best” of his abilities to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Far be it for me to question Bush’s abilities, but…

It is generally known that Article II of the Constitution is where the contemptuous Bush/Cheney/Adington/Yoo anti-Constitutionalists get their bizarre and dangerous theory of executive power. If you read Article II, you will not see anything about the President being given the authority to command private citizens (or companies) to break the law. Yet, that is precisely what the anti- Constitutionalists are claiming; that they have the right to order private citizens and companies to enact their bidding because of claims they make about Article II, that he, as Commander is Chief is allowed to order such law-breaking (forget the fact that the Commander in Chief cannot even allow the armed forces to break the law – although, he has done that also).

But, it is not only the President and his administration that has shown contempt for the Constitution. The House of Representatives, by passing the flawed and dangerous FISA bill, have not only shown their contempt for the rule of law, they have shown a disrespect for We The People. Now, we should have seen this kind of contempt the House has for the Constitution when Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, stated “impeachment was off the table.” Again, the kind of contempt for what is part of the House’s Constitutional duty was pushed away as if the duty of Congress was somehow distasteful. Whether you think impeachment is the correct action for the House to undertake, is not what I am arguing, what I am arguing is that Nancy Pelosi revealed her own contempt for the Constitution by taking impeachment off the table, even when it was known the President authorized the illegal wire-tapping of our phones.

If we allow the Senate to pass the FISA overhaul next week, we, as citizens, will reward the actions of the Bush Administration’s illegal actions and state categorically, that, yes, the President can break our laws. The Constitution was written specifically to ensure that any imperial designs one may have while in power cannot and will not be allowed. Let’s not change the Presidency into an imperial power.

Let’s not allow this dangerous precedent to stand. Our government is By the People and for the People, not by the President and for the President. Let’s not forget our role in ensuring our laws are not trampled upon.

We have only until July 8th to make known our feelings about FISA. Please write your Congressperson and tell them "I like the WHOLE Bill of Rights -- Vote NO on FISA!"

Write your Senator

Rice Appeases Our Enemy...Naively...Or Something

Secretary Rice is appeasing the enemy by talking to Hesbollah, which, correct me if I'm wrong, is exactly what Obama was trashed for saying his administration would do.

It's a shame when a official of the United States of America willingly puts American lives in danger by talking to the enemy. It's a shocking development that, I'm sure, the Bush Administration will denounce with all do haste. Um...

So naive

Corporate Media Lapdogs

For those following the latest from D.C., Scott McClellan's book detailing how the White House used propaganda to sell the war has set off a bit of a media firestorm. Well, Glenn Greenwald has a few great posts illustrating how the corporate media is, pathetically, defending themselves and their sad, lap-dog like, "reporting" during the run up to the war in Iraq. It really is a must read.

Here, here and here.

BushCo Hands The Drug Companies Exactly What They Want - Freedom To Test In The Third-World Without Standard Safety Protecitons

BushCo has now said it will ignore the Helinski Accords.

Bush's FDA has just announced that it is going to scrap American participation in the Declaration of Helsinki -- the major international accord on ethical principles guiding physicians and other participants in medical research on human subjects. This isn't a decision involving mere medical bureaucracy -- it in fact clears the way for ethics-free drug testing, especially beyond American borders, and it means people will die, sometimes horribly.

The shift in policy now makes it possible for American drug companies to conduct tests on human subjects (most often in Third World nations) wherein victims of particular diseases can, in the course of testing, be administered pure placebos that do nothing to help them fight those diseases, while being told they're undergoing treatment. (The longstanding standards required such tests to administer the acknowledged standard treatment as the placebo.)

via Fire Dog Lake

Sinister.

Bush Administration Continues To Screw The Environment

The Bush Administration, in its race to be the worse administration in the history of the world, wants to build power plants outside our national parks. The EPA, again, is going against what the EPA's own scientists say, again. Did I mention, "again"?

The new rule changes how pollution levels in parks are measured -- instead of frequent measures, the new rule "would average the levels over a year so that spikes in pollution levels would not violate the law." Just a common sense fix, you might say. But as one environmental advocate explains, "It's like if you're pulled over by a cop for going 75 miles per hour in a 55 miles-per-hour zone, and you say, 'If you look at how I've driven all year, I've averaged 55 miles per hour.'"

via TPM

Appeasment? Right Hand, Meet Left Hand

Bush:

In a speech to Israel's Knesset, Bush said: "Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along.

"We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."

via SFGate
But, but, but...WAIT!
Gates:

"We need to figure out a way to develop some leverage . . . and then sit down and talk with them [Iran]," Gates said. "If there is going to be a discussion, then they need something, too. We can't go to a discussion and be completely the demander, with them not feeling that they need anything from us."

via Washington Post

Troop "Readiness"

"If called on by the commander-in-chief today, two entire divisions of the Army would have to report, 'Not ready for duty, sir.'"
-George Bush, August 3, 2000

Gates wants to send 7,000 more troops to Afghanistan. But, according to a senior army officer, "in a word, impossible."
via Slate

Bush Administration Blocked EPA Studies

Big surprise Bush finds science an impediment to...what, exactly. Oh, that's right. An impediment to doing whatever he wants (i.e., what big business wants).

A congressional watchdog agency has found that White House officials repeatedly intervened in the government's scientific process for assessing the health risks of toxic chemicals, prompting Sen. Barbara Boxer to threaten giving Congress control of the program.

The Government Accountability Office reported Tuesday that the White House's budget office, the Pentagon and other agencies had delayed or blocked efforts by the Environmental Protection Agency to list chemicals as carcinogens by requesting more research or more time to review the risks.

-------

GAO officials also faulted the administration for setting new rules that keep secret any involvement by the White House or a federal agency in a decision about the risks of a chemical

The White House knows that what they are doing is wrong, why else would they set a new rule to keep secret their involvement?

Fortunately, Barbara Boxer seems to be doing something about this.

Boxer, D-Calif., who is chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and requested the report, called the findings scandalous. If EPA does not speed up its assessments of toxic chemicals, she warned that Congress might step in and start banning substances that threaten the public health.

"If we don't see that happen, colleagues of mine are going to take matters into their own hands," Boxer said.

Remember That Pentagon "Analyst" Story The New York Times Published?

Well, the only news organization that picked up on the story is The News Hour with Jim Lehrer.

via Think Progress

The New York Times Exposes The Pentagon's Propaganda

update below

According to tomorrow's New York Times, The Pentagon has from the beggining of the Iraq war, used ex-General's to talk up the war. These Generals have been used hundreds of times as Network news "analyst". But there is evidence of a conflict of interest...

To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as “military analysts” whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11 world.

Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found.

The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air.

Those business relationships are hardly ever disclosed to the viewers, and sometimes not even to the networks themselves. But collectively, the men on the plane and several dozen other military analysts represent more than 150 military contractors either as lobbyists, senior executives, board members or consultants. The companies include defense heavyweights, but also scores of smaller companies, all part of a vast assemblage of contractors scrambling for hundreds of billions in military business generated by the administration’s war on terror. It is a furious competition, one in which inside information and easy access to senior officials are highly prized.

via The New York Times
emphasis mine

It is truly sickening the depth of corruption in Bush Administration. What this says about Bush and his allies in the Pentagon is that the lives of our soldiers are worth nothing as long as a buck can be made from a war that never should have been fought.

Who's patriotic, again?

update
Glenn Greenwald exposes the New Times expose for the fact that this was known 5 years ago by the New York Times

The single most significant factor in American political culture is the incestuous, extensive overlap between our media institutions and government officials. The former is a dependent appendage of the latter far more than they are anything else. This article discloses some new details and proof of how that toxic process functions, but the fact that our major news organizations -- with some exceptions -- largely serve as government propaganda outlets is not news. It's the central fact of American political life, and the NYT itself -- along with every other news organization -- more than five years ago was obviously aware of this specific problem but not particularly concerned about it.

via Glenn Greenwald

How is a democracy to function if we can't even trust the very organizations we get the information we need to make informed decisions from?

Quote Of The Day

"Monsters"
-Atrios referring to our War-Criminal Administration,

Torture Yoo

ABCNews is reporting how intimately involved The White House was with regard to the torture of detainees

In dozens of top-secret talks and meetings in the White House, the most senior Bush administration officials discussed and approved specific details of how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency, sources tell ABC News.
The so-called Principals who participated in the meetings also approved the use of "combined" interrogation techniques -- using different techniques during interrogations, instead of using one method at a time -- on terrorist suspects who proved difficult to break, sources said.
...
At the time, the Principals Committee included Vice President Cheney, former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, as well as CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft.
...
Then-National Security Advisor Rice, sources said, was decisive. Despite growing policy concerns -- shared by Powell -- that the program was harming the image of the United States abroad, sources say she did not back down, telling the CIA: "This is your baby. Go do it."

In disbarment news, The National Lawyers Guild has asked Boalt Hall, UC Berkeley's law school to dismiss John Yoo.

"John Yoo's complicity in establishing the policy that led to the torture of prisoners constitutes a war crime under the US War Crimes Act," said National Lawyers Guild President Marjorie Cohn.

via Think Progress

If John Yoo should be tried as a war criminal, and he should, then so should Bush, Rice, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Tenet, Powel and Ashcroft.

To call what happened on September 11 a "game changer" is simply reactionary thinking. The thought processes of small minds with no knowledge of history. The United State is torturing people. For 200 years torture has been verboten. George Washington said this during the infancy of our country,

"Should any American soldier be so base and infamous as to injure any [prisoner]. . . I do most earnestly enjoin you to bring him to such severe and exemplary punishment as the enormity of the crime may require. Should it extend to death itself, it will not be disproportional to its guilt at such a time and in such a cause... for by such conduct they bring shame, disgrace and ruin to themselves and their country."

-- George Washington, charge to the Northern Expeditionary Force, Sept. 14, 1775

John Adams in a 1777 letter to his wife, "I know of no policy, God is my witness, but this — Piety, Humanity and Honesty are the best Policy. Blasphemy, Cruelty and Villainy have prevailed and may again. But they won't prevail against America, in this Contest, because I find the more of them are employed, the less they succeed."

In 1863, Abraham Lincoln "forbade any form of torture or cruelty" his 1863 letter was used as a model for the 1929 Geneva Convention.

Unfortunately, we have a simpleton in The White House that sees torture as a legitimate war strategy. For all the bluster of Bush, what he is doing is in our name. Bush's short-sighted, simple view of this war is not making us safer, not making us any friends. In the end, Bush's policies will harm us even more than they already have.

The Yoo Torture Memo

Ever wonder what a sociopath wrapped in legaleaze sounds like? John Yoo's torture memo is a good example. John Yoo is a man that does not believe in our system of democracy, treaties, checks and balances - our system of government. Here's a man that feels "in time of war" the President of the United States has unlimited powers to what ever he wants (one wonders if he has ever, ever read the Constitution). That philosophy goes against 200 years of Constitutional Democracy, but Yoo doesn't care, he inteprets Presidential power to fit with his deranged mind.
Sadly, there won't be any kind of news cycle on this story because it doesn't contain any juicy snipings from the Democrats during the primary.
via Washington Post

Constitution lawyer (the moral kind), Glenn Greenwald, as always, provides a clear, breakdown of what this all means

Bush Administration's Lack Of Acountability: Iraq Edition

I need to stop watching Bill Moyer's Journal on Fridays, the show just makes me so angry that the Bush Administration's complete lack of ethics, accountability and any sense of justice is allowed to continue.
Take about an hour and watch last night's episode about the disaster the Bushies have been in Iraq.
It's eye opening.
Remember, what the Bush Administration is doing? It is doing in our names. With our taxes (well, loans from foreign governments, but still...you know...*sigh*)
Bill Moyer's Journal

House Files Contempt Lawsuit

The House committee early last year subpoenaed Bolten for documents and Miers for testimony in trying to make a case that the White House directed the firing of nine U.S. attorneys because they were not supportive enough of Republicans' political agenda.


Bolten and Miers refused to comply.

On President Bush's behalf, White House Counsel Fred Fielding said such information is private and covered by executive privilege.

Attorney General Michael Mukasey and his predecessor, Alberto Gonzales, told Congress they would not refer a contempt citation to a prosecutor if the subjects were acting as directed under executive privilege.

The lawsuit says executive privilege — intended to protect the confidentiality of advice from the president's closest advisers — does not cover documents that don't involve the president.

via SFGate

The Attorney General is not the President's personal attorney, he is the people's attorney.

Telecom Immunity

It's still out there. The Democrats seem to be poised to cave to the Bush Adminstrations demands. You might want to know the wire tapping that we are taling about took place before 911!

Bush felt the need to spy on you before the the 911 attacks. Before!

Find your Representative

Nation of laws, not of men.

Don't let Bush break the law. That's not patriotic.

No Injustic, No Peace

Bush Prevented States From Stopping Sub-Prime Loan Disaster

"Not only did the Bush administration do nothing to protect consumers, it embarked on an aggressive and unprecedented campaign to prevent states from protecting their residents from the very problems to which the federal government was turning a blind eye.

The administration accomplished this feat through an obscure federal agency called the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). The OCC has been in existence since the Civil War. Its mission is to ensure the fiscal soundness of national banks. For 140 years, the OCC examined the books of national banks to make sure they were balanced, an important but uncontroversial function. But a few years ago, for the first time in its history, the OCC was used as a tool against consumers. In 2003, during the height of the predatory lending crisis, the OCC invoked a clause from the 1863 National Bank Act to issue formal opinions preempting all state predatory lending laws, thereby rendering them inoperative."

via Crooks and Liars

Predatory Lending? Try Predatory President.

Maybe If Polar Bears Peed Oil...

In Case You Missed It...

We do waterboard.

Makes me feel proud to use the same tactics as the terrorists.

the Dark Side, indeed