You're doing what?!

Ally Warned Bush on Keeping Spying From Congress (emphasis mine):

WASHINGTON, July 8 — In a sharply worded letter to President Bush in May, an important Congressional ally charged that the administration might have violated the law by failing to inform Congress of some secret intelligence programs and risked losing Republican support on national security matters.

Might have violated the law!? Let's be perfectly clear, it is/was a violation of the law, period. Of course, the do-nothing Republican controlled congress and the administration's own Justice Dept. aren't going to actually prosecute this clear violation of the law.

The article continues:

The letter from Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, did not specify the intelligence activities that he believed had been hidden from Congress.

But Mr. Hoekstra, who was briefed on and supported the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program and the Treasury Department's tracking of international banking transactions, clearly was referring to programs that have not been publicly revealed.

Got that? The Cheney Bush administration is conducting intelligence, possibly against U.S. citizens, and there is absolutely no oversight of the programs. Note also that this is apparently referring to the plural... programs.

Continuing:

'I have learned of some alleged intelligence community activities about which our committee has not been briefed,' Mr. Hoesktra wrote. 'If these allegations are true, they may represent a breach of responsibility by the administration, a violation of the law, and, just as importantly, a direct affront to me and the members of this committee who have so ardently supported efforts to collect information on our enemies.'

He added: 'The U.S. Congress simply should not have to play Twenty Questions to get the information that it deserves under our Constitution.'

The problem, of course, is that the Republican controlled Congress hasn't been asking any questions; much less 20.

Frederick Jones, a White House spokesman, declined to comment on the concerns raised by Mr. Hoekstra but said that 'we will continue to work closely with the chairman and other Congressional leaders on important national security issues.'

Shorter administration spokesmodel: We will continue to hide things from congressional oversight and congress-critters with STFU already; they are jeopardizing national security.

Mr. Hoekstra's blunt letter is evidence of a rift between the White House and House Republican leaders over the administration's perceived indifference to Congressional oversight and input on intelligence matters.

Perceived indifference?! This is the same administration that has, on a number of occasions, simply walked out on congressional hearings iin mid-progress; saying that they had more important things to which to attend. Perceived? I think not. It is as real as you or I.

But, here's the money quote from the article:

The letter appears to have resulted at least in part from the White House's decision, made early in May, to name Gen. Michael V. Hayden to lead the Central Intelligence Agency, with Stephen R. Kappes as his deputy. The letter was sent the day of General Hayden's confirmation hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee.

So, despite the fact that the nominee under consideration revealed the existance of programs under his command that had not been briefed to congress, in direct violation of the law, they went ahead and approved his nomination anyway; I gather on his word that he promises not to do it again, double pinky swear.

Sigh. Had enough?

However, I think that this sheds more light on the administration's latest assault on the NYT. It isn't about the SWIFT program, which was for all practical purposes public knowledge. No, rather, it is an attemt to intimidate the press so that they will hold back on other potentially more damaging revelations (to the administration, not the GWOT) in an election year.

Via AmericaBlog, we have Frank Rich this week:

The administration has a more insidious game plan instead: it has manufactured and milked this controversy to reboot its intimidation of the press, hoping journalists will pull punches in an election year. There are momentous stories far more worrisome to the White House than the less-than-shocking Swift program, whether in the chaos of Anbar Province or the ruins of New Orleans. If the press muzzles itself, its under-the-radar self-censorship will be far more valuable than a Nixonesque frontal assault that ends up as a 24/7 hurricane veering toward the Supreme Court...

ROTFLMAO!

From Cheers and Jeers @ DKos, we have this classic interpretation of Sen. Steven's explanation for how the Internets work.

The Internets is a series of gerbils, one gerbil for each 'user.' When you 'send' a 'message' (or, in Stevens-speak, 'an internet'), the gerbil takes it down shorthand and scurries through a series of tubes to its destination. The gerbil uploads the message to the inbox (short for 'Internets Box') and then presses the velvet-covered doorbell button. The receiver---say, Senator Stevens---may then safely peruse the porn ad. (Tomorrow we'll explain 'SpamGuard'---we don't want to overwhelm him.)

Sometimes gerbils will stop to have wild gangbang gerbil sex along the way, which can result in delayed internet delivery. Twice a year the telecom companies clean the tubes by flushing them with water and a mild detergent, which also results in slight delays.

Hellblazer: Bush's Hamdan Problem

Hal on Bush's Hamdan Problem:

Nothing says 'America' like torture.

Following the Hamdan ruling by SCOTUS, C-SPAN aired a panel of legal and constitutional experts that I happened to catch the other day. The essence of what Neal Katyal said in his presentation, and to which Hal alludes, is captured nicely on the Georgetown Law Faculty Blog (emphasis mine):

Yesterday, Katyal debated Professor Yoo on NewsHour who feared that sources and methods would be revealed in trials. The courtmartial system has done a great job of protecting classified information, but there’s a deeper problem with Yoo’s argument: 95% of the evidence is the detainees’ own statements; most of the rest is videotapes from public broadcasts.

The only thing that might come into play is the source and method of interrogation: why did the detainees say these things? That’s what’s hidden by the “sources and methods” language; what the military commission system is about is allowing decisionmakers to consider evidence obtained by coercion. One reason we know this: When Padilla was finally indicted in federal court, he wasn’t indicted for the dirty bomb or other bomb plots. Administration officials, anonymously, told the New York Times it couldn’t charge Padilla with a bomb plot because he and others had been coerced through physical means into giving testimony. That wouldn’t have stood up in civilian trial or courtsmartial. But they’d charged Padilla’s coconspirator in the commission process using the very same evidence at almost the same time. If we feel the need to introduce such evidence into trial, we should do so by clear congressional direction.

All of the experts pretty much concurred with this important point, and the fact that Congress could indeed draft, and with the control of both houses pass, legislation that would permit the Cheney Bush administration to try the alleged terrorists held in indefinite detention at Guantanamo Bay under some form of military commission that had its own set of rules. However, to do so in a manner that would be efficable with regards to actually convicting any of the alleged terrorists of any crime of substance, they would also have to explicitly include language in that legislation that permitted presenatation of "evidence" collected via torture; something that is explicitly precluded in military courts martial and the federal judiciary system by law, and something that the congress has already repudiated (by overwhelming majority). Additionally, the congress would have to repudiate the Geneva Conventions; they couldn't just re-write the UCMJ to omit their reference. The consensus opinion of the panelists was that neither the congress nor the administration would have the political will to venture down that path.

Abu Gonzales said, of the Hamdan decision:

What this decision has done is, it's hampered our ability to move forward with a tool which we had hoped would be available to the president of the United States in dealing with terrorists

Indeed, he is correct. Because the administration convinced itself that it could simply ignore the rule of law, and do whatever the heck it damned well pleased, it chose a course of action that was carefully designed to permit the use of "evidence" obtained via torture to be used against the alleged terrorists being held in Gitmo.

The Supremes have called BS on the administration's twisted interpretation of the president's authority as specified in the Constitution, and now the administration is left holding an empty bag of tricks with which to "deal with the terrorists". This is not the fault of the SCOTUS, as Abu and the administration's apologists would have you believe. No, the blame for the administration's hampered ability to "deal with the terrorists" can be laid squarely at the feet of the Cheney Bush administration.

We Hold These Truths To Be Self-Evident

Inspired by Jesus' General, I thought I'd add some links:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

[...]

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

[...]

The history of the present King ... [George] is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. [link]

[...]

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice [link]

[...]

For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury: [link]

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences: [link] [link]

[...]

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts... and destroyed the lives of our people. [link] [link]

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation. [link] [link] [link]

[...]

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people. [link]

Happy 4th of July.

Mind the Gap

Via Firedoglake, we have this gem from the intellectual giant cretin in charge of the Senate Commerce Committee:

Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) explained why he voted against the amendment and gave an amazing primer on how the internet works.

There's one company now you can sign up and you can get a movie delivered to your house daily by delivery service. Okay. And currently it comes to your house, it gets put in the mail box when you get home and you change your order but you pay for that, right.

But this service isn't going to go through the interent and what you do is you just go to a place on the internet and you order your movie and guess what you can order ten of them delivered to you and the delivery charge is free.

Ten of them streaming across that internet and what happens to your own personal internet?

I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why?

Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially.

So you want to talk about the consumer? Let's talk about you and me. We use this internet to communicate and we aren't using it for commercial purposes.

We aren't earning anything by going on that internet. Now I'm not saying you have to or you want to discrimnate against those people [...]

The regulatory approach is wrong. Your approach is regulatory in the sense that it says "No one can charge anyone for massively invading this world of the internet". No, I'm not finished. I want people to understand my position, I'm not going to take a lot of time. [?]

They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the internet. And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck.

It's a series of tubes.

And if you don't understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.

Now we have a separate Department of Defense internet now, did you know that?

Do you know why?

Because they have to have theirs delivered immediately. They can't afford getting delayed by other people.

[...]

Now I think these people are arguing whether they should be able to dump all that stuff on the internet ought to consider if they should develop a system themselves.

Maybe there is a place for a commercial net but it's not using what consumers use every day.

It's not using the messaging service that is essential to small businesses, to our operation of families.

The whole concept is that we should not go into this until someone shows that there is something that has been done that really is a viloation of net neutraility that hits you and me.

Damn, these internets are confusing things. Who knew it was a series of tubes, or that you could get your own internet! How cool is that?! (sigh)

What strikes me, though, is that Sen. Steven is basically saying here that he didn't get an important email (at least, that's what I think he means by "an internet was sent...") from someone on his staff because he, or someone on his staff, was too busy downloading p0rn.

I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why?

Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially.

What the hell is going on?

Sy Hersh has a new piece up in the The New Yorker. It is, as usual, a must read. Here are a few gems (emphasis mine):

The discord over Iran can, in part, be ascribed to Rumsfeld’s testy relationship with the generals. They see him as high-handed and unwilling to accept responsibility for what has gone wrong in Iraq. A former Bush Administration official described a recent meeting between Rumsfeld and four-star generals and admirals at a military commanders’ conference, on a base outside Washington, that, he was told, went badly. The commanders later told General Pace that “they didn’t come here to be lectured by the Defense Secretary. They wanted to tell Rumsfeld what their concerns were.” A few of the officers attended a subsequent meeting between Pace and Rumsfeld, and were unhappy, the former official said, when “Pace did not repeat any of their complaints. There was disappointment about Pace.” The retired four-star general also described the commanders’ conference as “very fractious.” He added, “We’ve got twenty-five hundred dead, people running all over the world doing stupid things, and officers outside the Beltway asking, ‘What the hell is going on?’ ”

Rummy's doing a heckovajob. He has the full confidence of his military commanders. NOT! Someone please explain to me why he hasn't been fired yet.

But Rumsfeld is not alone in the Administration where Iran is concerned; he is closely allied with Dick Cheney, and, the Pentagon consultant said, “the President generally defers to the Vice-President on all these issues,” such as dealing with the specifics of a bombing campaign if diplomacy fails. “He feels that Cheney has an informational advantage. Cheney is not a renegade. He represents the conventional wisdom in all of this. He appeals to the strategic-bombing lobby in the Air Force—who think that carpet bombing is the solution to all problems.”

Tell me again who is president, and who is vice president? Presidents don't "defer" issues of war and peace to anyone, unless, of course, they are just a prop. I would also point out that Barney has an informational advantage over the president when it comes to such issues, and that he probably has a more rational take on it than does Shooter.

Several current and former officials I spoke to expressed doubt that President Bush would settle for a negotiated resolution of the nuclear crisis. A former high-level Pentagon civilian official, who still deals with sensitive issues for the government, said that Bush remains confident in his military decisions. The President and others in the Administration often invoke Winston Churchill, both privately and in public, as an example of a politician who, in his own time, was punished in the polls but was rewarded by history for rejecting appeasement. In one speech, Bush said, Churchill “seemed like a Texan to me. He wasn’t afraid of public-opinion polls. . . . He charged ahead, and the world is better for it.”

The man is clearly insane. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

If the talks do break down, and the Administration decides on military action, the generals will, of course, follow their orders; the American military remains loyal to the concept of civilian control. But some officers have been pushing for what they call the “middle way,” which the Pentagon consultant described as “a mix of options that require a number of Special Forces teams and air cover to protect them to send into Iran to grab the evidence so the world will know what Iran is doing.” He added that, unlike Rumsfeld, he and others who support this approach were under no illusion that it could bring about regime change. The goal, he said, was to resolve the Iranian nuclear crisis.

See, here's the problem. The war mongers in the White House aren't interested in resolving the nuclear issue, they are interested only in regime change. The nuclear "crisis" is being ginned up to provide cover for their real objectives. If their real objectives were made known to the American public, they would never support a war with Iran.

The Washington Monthly:

THE GENEVA CONVENTIONS....Jonah Goldberg today:

If Democrats want terrorists to fall under the Geneva Convention let them say so. My guess is most won't, if they're smart.

Well, I'm a Democrat, and I'll say it: anyone we capture on a battlefield should be subject to the minimum standards of decency outlined in the Geneva Conventions. That includes terrorists. It's our way of telling the world that we aren't barbarians; that we believe in minimal standards of human decency even if our enemies don't. It's also a necessary — though not sufficient — requirement for winning this war.

I hope other Democrats are smart enough, decent enough, and dedicated enough to beating terrorism to say so too.

Amen to that.

9/11 changed everything, NOT!

Bloomberg -- Spy Agency Sought U.S. Call Records Before 9/11, Lawyers Say (emphasis mine):

June 30 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. National Security Agency asked AT&T Inc. to help it set up a domestic call monitoring site seven months before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, lawyers claimed June 23 in court papers filed in New York federal court.

The allegation is part of a court filing adding AT&T, the nation's largest telephone company, as a defendant in a breach of privacy case filed earlier this month on behalf of Verizon Communications Inc. and BellSouth Corp. customers. The suit alleges that the three carriers, the NSA and President George W. Bush violated the Telecommunications Act of 1934 and the U.S. Constitution, and seeks money damages.

"The Bush Administration asserted this became necessary after 9/11," plaintiff's lawyer Carl Mayer said in a telephone interview. "This undermines that assertion."

But, we're protecting you from the terrorists! Seriously, these people need to be stopped. Did we learn nothing from the Nixon administration? The Cheney Bush administration are the dead-enders from that era! They're calling a mulligan, and the press are inordinately silent for fear of being pilloried like the NYT.

Two Minutes Hate

Seriously, someone in the administration has taken Orwell's (now, ever so prescient) novel and turned it into a political strategy:

Times beyond number, at Party rallies and spontaneous demonstrations, she had shouted at the top of her voice for the execution of people whose names she had never heard and in whose supposed crimes she had not the faintest belief. When public trials were happening she had taken her place in the detachments from the Youth League who surrounded the courts from morning to night, chanting at intervals 'Death to the traitors!' During the Two Minutes Hate she always excelled all others in shouting insults at Goldstein. Yet she had only the dimmest idea of who Goldstein was and what doctrines he was supposed to represent.

Apparently, the latest Two Minutes Hate that the administration's cheerleaders rabble-rousers are inculcating amongst their fatuous disciples is the claim that this puff piece in the NYT Travel Section is clear and demonstrable proof that the NYT wants the terrorists to assassinate Cheney and Rumsfeld as they sip their scotch on their back porches of their summer homes manses.

Well, I had to find out what all the fuss was about. Talk about truth being stranger than fiction! Get a load of this gem (emphasis mine):

The houses have names. Mr. Rumsfeld's is Mount Misery and is just across Rolles Creek from a house called Mount Pleasant. On four acres, with four bathrooms, five bedrooms and five fireplaces, built in 1804, the Rumsfeld house is just barely visible at the end of a gravel drive.

[...]

But there is some historical gravity to the name, too. By 1833, Mount Misery's owner was Edward Covey, a farmer notorious for breaking unruly slaves for other farmers. One who wouldn't be broken was Frederick Douglass, then 16 and later the abolitionist orator. Covey assaulted him, so Douglass beat him up and escaped. Today, where the drive begins, Mount Misery seems a congenial place, with a white mailbox with newspaper delivery sleeves attached, a big American flag fluttering from a post by a split-rail fence and a tall, one-hole birdhouse of the sort made for bluebirds — although the lens in the hole suggests another function.

Mount Misery? A home with a history shrouded in torture?! Another classic entry for the Annals of Unmakeuppable Sh*t.

But, back to the main thesis of this post. As Glenn points out, this latest string of anti-NYT demagoguery is a concerted and seemingly coordinated effort to plant fear and hatred in the minds of the mindless that the real enemy is the enemy within; the librul press, spearheaded by that bastion of northeast liberalism islamofascism, the New Yawk Tahmes and its evil, unpatriotic, al Qaeda-sympathizing, America-hating editors. Glenn concludes this entry with the following:

He's urging people to find the names and addresses of New York Times editors and reporters in order to "hunt them down and do America a favor." And he said that right after he posted the link to the address of the Times photographer. And this is just the beginning of this syndrome, not the end.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Greg Sargent sums it up nicely:

But the most extraordinary thing about this whole sorry spectacle wasn't the fact that these charges were completely insane. No, the really amazing thing was that the big news orgs happily gave a platform to those making these allegations, thus giving them a patina of respectibility and ensuring that they reached large audiences of people who don't get their news exclusively from right wing sources. Bizarre charges of treason and surreal talk of imprisonment filled the airways. A talk show host who said she'd happily see Keller hauled off to the "gas chamber" was granted the right to make her case on MSNBC. And on and on. The result of this legitimacy? Well-meaning people across the country took seriously the paranoid and delusional notion that the media is treasonous, forcing Keller and Baquet to defend not just the particulars of this specific news judgment, but their motives and patriotism, too.

Here's the situation in a nutshell. Those hurling these reckless charges of treason at the Times have a very specific agenda: First, they want to reunite the Republican base, which is fracturing because of the Iraq war, the GOP's betrayal of various conservative principles, and the fact that Bush's Presidency is so obviously a failure that all but the most diehard supporters can see it. And second, they want to convince great masses of people that there's a traitor in our midst that would weaken America -- an obvious ploy designed to divert attention from the catastrophic failures of the Bush administration, the Republican Party and, most important, the discredited ideas which drive them. At bottom this is all about salvaging a political movement that's in real trouble.

The sad truth is that it is the Cheney Bush administration that is weakening America through (inept) prosecution of an unnecessary, and unprovoked, war that is sapping our treasury, its its cowardly and impotent policy of using torture, and its subversion of the Constitution at every turn, all in the name of "protecting us from the terrorists".

Had enough?

Update: I hesitate to link to this, as it only will increase its weight. But frankly, this is getting out of hand, and people need to see what the Bush crime family have wrought with their divisiveness. Frankly, this guy is seriously unbalanced. He needs help.