Found via Eschaton, but Not Atrios:

Bush and Cheney have broken the law consistently throughout their reign, often openly, and to the great detriment of our own country and others; when they obey it, they do so more as a matter of convenience than from any fealty to it or any fear of retribution. They’re pleased to use the legislature to achieve their ends when they can — as when Congress obligingly immunized administration personnel from prosecution under the War Crimes Act — and to ignore it when they can’t. Former Justice Department official Jack Goldsmith explains the dynamic as described to him by Dick Cheney’s current number two, torture maven David Addington: “We’re going to push and push and push until some larger force makes us stop.” They have, and that larger force has not materialized — and the administration have been at pains to ensure that the force, if it ever arrives, won’t do so in the person of the courts — and the result is a constitutional republic with its framework intact and its guts eviscerated. There is only one remedy, and that’s impeachment.

Read the whole thing here.

I understand (but don't endorse) the political strategy that says that pushing for impeachment “hurts the Dems at the polls” in 2008. And I wouldn't have endorsed it even it if had been true the last time they said it — in 2006 — even as Democrats in localities where impeachment efforts took root posted historic gains and even outperformed their colleagues nationally.

But I understand fear. Really, I do.

Still, you have to wonder what kind of a long term strategy this is for the exercise of power in America. In the 40 years or so since Nixon's first election, the Democrats have held the Congress for 28 years, and been out of power for just 12. It's the exact reverse with respect to the White House, where Democrats have been out for 28 years and in for just 12. During that time, the Republicans have reelected three presidents — arguably the most aggressive expanders of executive power to occupy the office — Nixon, Reagan and George W. Bush. In the same space of time, Democrats have reelected just one president (the first elected to two terms since FDR, by the way) — and that guy got impeached!

So I find myself at a loss for explaining why laying low rather than vigorously defending the powers of the one branch Democrats have been successful at holding is so brilliant and pragmatic. It seems to me that the strategy puts all our eggs in one very shaky basket: winning and holding the White House in perpetuity.

I want to win the White House as much as anybody in 2008. Maybe more. But I also know that there's another election coming up after that. And another after that. And another after that. Should we be so unfortunate as to lose one, on what grounds would a later Congress assert the prerogatives it has surrendered this time around? And wouldn't the effort to reassert those powers just fall prey to the same pathetic excuse that quashes it today?

(As usual, Bob Higgins writes another interesting diary.   – promoted by Brattlerouser)

Is there anyone out there who still harbors the delusion that George Bush or most of his administration possesses the slightest shred of human integrity or the tiniest morsel of respect for the truth, for law, for the people of this country or any other?

Sorry, the question was rhetorical and asked out of personal frustration with the evil festering stew of lies, theft, brutality and domestic and international piracy that this administration has created in the place of what was once the USA.

No, I’m not naive enough to believe that we were ever a perfect country, free of guilt from participation in many and various Machiavellian schemes and plots over the last two centuries, the influence of the power lusts of private wealth have always had far too much influence in our public affairs to allow us to avoid responsibility for the results of our contributions to the general level of human misery. We have committed serious crimes against people in places as varied as Vietnam and Chile, and as far apart in space and time as Nicaragua and Iran.

In the generally business driven efforts to support the interests of entities such as United Fruit, Chiquita Banana, Anaconda, various oil giants, mining companies, and financial institutions we have gone to bat for tin horn dictators in Iran, Cuba, Chile, Cambodia and in other places to numerous to name here.  Even the Mafia found support in the efforts to prop up the fascist pig Batista against communist pig Castro.  

Much of our record has not been pretty and, in general, has usually favored and supported wealth and property over humanity and justice.

Revelations last week of more administration lies in the widening “Waterboardgate” scandal came as no surprise to most people and, although many expressed shock and dismay in public, the expressions of astonishment seemed to be presented for dramatic effect rather than as spontaneous displays of true emotion. When it comes to the current administration I don’t believe that there are many rose colored glasses left among the body politic, experience having taught us to assume the worst.

Even the families of the long suffering military who have borne the brunt of the aspirations to Empire of America’s transparently criminal ruling class over the last seven years are now beginning to break ranks with the “commander” who has squandered the lives of their loved ones treated them with such contempt.

I suppose that what depresses me and, in truth, causes me the greatest fear is the fact that the oligarchic forces of fascistic wealth have effectively bought out the opposition which showed it’s true face last month with the passage of the “Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act,” one of the most frightening pieces of legislation since the “Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798.”

This legislative abomination, added to the so called “Patriot Act,” and last year’s “Military Commissions Act” helped to spell the end of any pretense to adherence to constitutional principle and democratic rule in this country.

The forces which have so cynically manipulated public opinion to bring about the death of democracy have always been with us and have, at various times, risen and ebbed as evil tides, of “red scares,” “commie menaces,” of “outside agitators,” and the currently in vogue “Islamofascism,” a term popularized by some Goebbelian marketing wonk in the bowels of Dick Cheney’s office and pressed forward by money driven waves of irrational fear, and the malignant energy of powerful and pathologically dishonest men.

With the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, caused in large measure by the abdication of reason by rank and file Democrats, the racist and anti-democratic march to plutocracy, halted and long delayed since the thirties by the common blessings of FDR’s “New Deal,” was born again, hidden behind thinly disguised code words like “silent majority,” “hard hats,” or “family values.”

The incubation of this poisonous philosophical monstrosity did not begin to reach it’s full virulence until large measures of neo-conservative and rabid theocratic ingredients stirred into the mix at the millennium, at which point those who most despised the Constitution and the rule of law were then able, due to a perfect storm of world events, a combination of public dread and apathy, congressional and judicial meekness, and the complete corporate takeover of the fourth estate, to seize control of the very government they long held in such contempt and begin it’s thorough looting, dismantlement and replacement with corporate rule.

Now we have a Department of Agriculture run by agribusiness, the Mine Safety and Health Administration run by corporate mining interests, a Department of Energy thoroughly in the control of multinational oil and gas and coal conglomerates, a health care system run by the insurance and drug industries and on and disgustingly on through every federal department and agency.

The takeover has been so complete and the parties involved so incredibly powerful that the Congress and the courts have, in large measure, knelt in fear and supplication before them as evidenced by the aforementioned “legislation” that would have been laughed out of the halls of congress four decades ago.

But as cowardly as the courts, the congress and the media have become, their cowardice is overshadowed by their addiction to the corporate feed bags of their campaign contributors and advertisers. The lure of hundreds of millions of dollars draws them to the putrid feast like hyenas to the sun ripened carcass of a wildebeest and in their lust to feed at the feet of the ruling class they have lost all sense of shame, all sense of the wretched aroma of their own corruption.

On the horizon looms an election, now entering it’s second painful year, in which nearly two dozen of our most respected flimflams have pandered to the National Association of Manufacturers, the health lobby, the defense lobby, the insurance and energy lobbies along with anyone else who will pay them to turn a trick.

By the time the general election is held just under a year from now the various moneyed interests will have spent nearly a billion dollars to place their man or woman on the puppet throne of public policy and the big dance will go on, the music, the lyrics and the tempo unchanged no matter which “party” is elected to represent their masters in industry.

Looking for solutions? So am I. Finding any? I know of only one.

Write, call, speak out, raise bloody hell, make noise and lots of it. The people who rule will never willingly give up control, they will always strive for more, for absolute control, it is their nature as a class. They will never willingly remove the economic and political shackles they have devoted so much effort to place on the “lesser” classes, they will be satisfied with nothing but total slavery, the complete exploitation of the world’s working people, it is the nature of their class. The people must seize power using many of the same methods employed in shedding the British yoke at the end of the eighteenth century.

In the short term, I will vote for any Democrat over any Republican, even if I have to hold my nose, and when we elect them we must hold their feet to the fire constantly, without letup, to insure a return to open and honest democratic government.

In the longer term we have to insist on the immediate passage of public campaign financing, we must place severe limits on the the ability of corporations to stand above the law and avoid responsibility for their crimes and get rid of the revolving door between elected office and the lobbying industry, and the corporate boardroom. We must enact extremely tough ethics rules for elected and appointed public officials and include within them mandatory jail time commensurate with the seriousness of the crime, in other words, treat violations of the public trust as the treasonous acts that they are.

Along the way we have to seriously revise or reverse much of the misguided and flat out dangerous legislation of this dark era of the neo conservative robber barons and build a new era of progressive populism in which the people truly rule, unencumbered by the tyranny of a cynical and self serving ruling class.

Bob Higgins

Worldwide Sawdust

Links:

Lying Down with Hyenas

I will warn everyone now: this post is a bit wonky and it’s about (zzzzzzzzzzzzz) due process and legal standards:

Per Yahoo News / AFP:

The US Supreme Court ruled Monday judges had greater leeway in handing down sentences, allowing courts to address the disparity in punishments for crack and powder cocaine trafficking.

The high court sided with a judge who gave the same sentence for drug traffickers in either form of cocaine, despite a 1986 federal law that calls for a 100:1 ratio — making the sale of one gram of crack cocaine as serious an offense as 100 grams of powder cocaine.

This is an outstanding development and one that, given how conservative some of the judges are, suggests that the conservative nature of the Supreme Court, while still a problem, is not as complete and overarching problem as I’d believed.

In the case above, and one other, the Court this week has ruled that judges are not required to enact sentences as severe as the guidelines presented by law.  In another case, they ruled that just having a gun is not the same as using it:

In a 9-0 decision, the court said the tough anti-crime provision does not apply to traffickers who trade drugs for guns.

[…]

The issue in the case was whether receiving a gun in exchange for drugs constitutes “use” of the gun under federal law.

The federal government “may say that a person ‘uses’ a firearm simply by receiving it in a barter transaction, but no one else would,” wrote Justice David Souter. “Given ordinary meaning and the conventions of English, we hold that a person does not ‘use’ a firearm” under federal law “when he receives it in trade for drugs.”

The judiciary is an important body and for some time now, conservatives have been working to diminish its power.  Both these rulings fly in the face of that, suggesting that judges do have the experience and perspective to decide what is and is not an appropriate sentence.  The rulings, despite the court’s conservative leanings, do a good job of restoring judicial authority without allowing judges to greatly exceed reasonable standards.

So, yes, we have a conservative court.  It’s the same court that decided not to hear the appeal of a death row inmate whose lawyer was mentally ill.   And that’s a problem.   We still need to restore balance to this court and to do so, we’ve got to eliminate Republican rule in the White House.  But in the meantime, our law is not yet fractured (though it is definitely suffering from some cracks).  I’m not sure what’s going to happen next.  Alito and Thomas are probably not going to surprise anyone.  Kennedy is now the swing vote on many issues, and he alternates between reasonable and idiotic, so who can tell?  Scalia is, well, Scalia.  He’s going to be an arrogant bastard, but sometimes he’s an arrogant bastard on the right side of the law.  

We’ve got some interesting cases coming up: rights of Americans detained in Iraq to be tried under US law… cruel and unusual punishment in death row cases.

I have to say, I doubt I’ll like the outcome in these cases, but I am becoming more convinced that the justices are, mostly, acting independently.  They may be doing things I don’t always like, but they’re basing those decisions on their own ideology, not on which political allegiances they’ll piss off.

From a low point of Bush v. Gore (and I do mean low — probably the lowest point I’ve seen on the court in my lifetime), the court seems to have managed to turn itself back into an independent, if flawed, body once again.

Recent police search attempts appear to be broader than those in the past, without suspicion of illegal use by any one individual. The lack of “individualized” suspicion is troublesome. Dragnets that scoop up both the innocent and possibly guilty are invasive and usually ineffective.

By now I'm sure you all heard that Peter Welch will be voting against the funding bill. 

So perhaps a letter of thanks is in order for our Congressman.  It appears that his office is beginning to listen to Vermonters' opinions on his campaign issue.

Credit where credit is due, right? 

Nate Freeman