William F. Buckley: RIP

William F. Buckley: RIP

Your editor remembers Buckley as one of the most entertaining talk show guests of the 1970s and early 1980s, always on programs such as Johnny Carson’s The Tonight Show and his own Firing Line, which makes today’s political talk shows look like security-camera video of a special-ed playground.

Of all of the eulogies that I've read today for him, this has to be one of the best lines thus far. Regardless of his politics, the man was indeed intelligent, and had a sharp sense of humor. He never suffered fools.

Today's political discourse on the tee-vee machine is as shallow as the media coverage in the two-week lull media crescendo between the Conference Championships and the Stupid Bowl... which is to say, absent of any intelligent discussion what-so-ever.

Speaks for itself

Congress Probes Case Of The Missing White House E-mails

Theresa Payton, CIO for the White House Office of Administration, said in her prepared statement that the incoming Bush administration transitioned from Lotus Notes toMicrosoft (NSDQ: MSFT) Exchange over a two-year period from 2002-2004, and that the ARM System established by the previous administration did not work properly with Exchange.

There's so much I could say about this... but I'll refrain from comment. I think the story speaks for itself.

Why haven't these people been impeached yet?

CBS: More Prosecutorial Misconduct in Siegelman Case (emphasis mine):

But the show was dominated by one of 52 former attorneys general from 40 of the 50 states who have called for a Congressional probe of the conduct of the Siegelman case, former Arizona Attorney General Grant Woods. He leveled a series of blistering accusations at the Bush Administration’s Justice Department. With the Alabama G.O.P. this evening issuing a near-hysterical statement in which it characterizes the CBS broadcast—before its transmission—as an anti-Republican attack piece, it was notable that Woods, like the piece’s other star witness, is a Republican. Not just any Republican, either. Grant Woods is co-chair of the McCain for President leadership committee, and a lifelong friend and advisor to the presumptive 2008 G.O.P. presidential candidate. Woods is also godfather to one of the McCain children.

Attorney General Woods has this to say about the Bush Justice Department’s prosecution of Siegelman: “I personally believe that what happened here is that they targeted Don Siegelman because they could not beat him fair and square. This was a Republican state and he was the one Democrat they could never get rid of.”

In other words, not being able to beat Siegelman at the polls, Woods believes that his own party corruptly used the criminal justice process to take out an adversary. This is an extraordinary, heavy accusation. Not something that a senior Republican would raise easily about his own party. And the facts back the accusation up, beginning to end.

Bush, Cheney and Rove have done more harm to this nation than we can possibly imagine. In fact, I believe that the reason that the Democrats in the House and Senate have "put impeachment off the table" is because they know this all too well, and think that we, the American public, would not be capable of dealing with revalations that the institutions upon which this nation is founded could be corrupted so.

Mr. Cheney's Government (emphasis mine):

Mr. Cheney clearly lost that battle in the gun case. Rather than respect the approach of the administration -- which, in this case, is well within the bounds of accepted jurisprudence -- Mr. Cheney packed up his shotgun and joined forces with the Capitol Hill gang. It's yet another indication that Mr. Cheney thinks the normal rules of American democracy don't apply to him.

How is it that he hasn't yet been impeached?

There is simply nothing the clown-in-chief says that is believable

Bush Blames Dems on Surveillance Bill (emphasis mine):

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Democratic leaders came under criticism Saturday from President Bush who said they are blocking intelligence legislation so lawyers can sue telephone companies for helping the government eavesdrop on suspected terrorists.

Terrorists are plotting attacks "at this very moment," Bush said in his weekly radio address. He again urged the House to act on Senate-passed legislation needed to renew the intelligence law that expired last weekend.

The Senate bill provides retroactive protection for telecommunications companies that wiretapped U.S. phone and computer lines at the government's request, but without the permission of a secret court created 30 years ago to oversee such activities. The House version does not provide such immunity against lawsuits.

The Justice Department and Office of National Intelligence said Saturday that telecommunication companies are now complying with existing surveillance warrants. The agencies' statement reversed their declaration late Friday that some companies had refused to initiate wiretaps against people covered by orders issued under the expired law.

The statement said new surveillance activities under existing warrants will resume "for now," but that the delay "impaired our ability to cover foreign intelligence targets, which resulted in missed intelligence information."

Meanwhile, the left had either doesn't know what the right hand is doing, or Bush is lying, again. Of course, we know that he is lying because they reversed their position late Friday, yet Bush repeated the false claim in his radio address today.

All the hooplah over this bill is about Dubya and Darth trying to cover their fat arses, because what they did was illegal, and they know it. In fact, the DNI statement yesterday said as much, which is why they were claiming that they were losing intelligence... because to continue it without a FISA warrant would be illegal. These people belong in a Turkish prison.

Was there any doubt?

Reid: President's Latest Surveillance Scare Tactics Irresponsibly Distort Reality (emphasis mine):

Washington, DC—Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid made the following statement today in response to President Bush’s letter on FISA:

“The President sadly continues to choose confrontation over negotiation, threatening to veto any extension of the Protect America Act while crying wolf about the dangers of letting it expire. These latest scare tactics represent the President at his most unreasonable, irresponsible and misleading.

“No amount of fear mongering will change the fact that our intelligence-collection capabilities have not been weakened since last week. Even the President’s own Director of National Intelligence agrees.

“But for the President, this debate isn’t about protecting America; it’s about protecting the telecommunications industry and his own Administration. He has explicitly refused to compromise on immunity for telecommunications companies even as he claimed the law’s expiration endangers Americans. I can only conclude, then, that the President would put Americans’ lives on the line to let phone companies off the hook. Democrats have different priorities.

“Congressional Democrats will continue to work on a bipartisan basis to finalize a strong law. As we do, there should be no question in anyone’s mind that U.S. intelligence agencies have the legal ability to take all actions necessary to protect the security of the American people. For anyone to suggest otherwise is wholly inaccurate.”

What Sen Reid does not say, is that the reason that Bush's priorities are to provide retroactive immunity is because doing so will help ensure that the administration's illegal behavior is never brought to light in a court of law.

About frickin' time

Cheney Impeachment: Courageous, But Not Surprising

For the first time since the Bush administration took office, three members of the House Judiciary Committee, Robert Wexler (D-FL), Luis Gutierrez (D-IL), and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), are calling for hearings on the impeachment of Vice President Richard Cheney.

Their position, while courageous, is not surprising. What is surprising is that it took this long for members of Congress to invoke impeachment, and that even now, they do so against enormous political resistance and cyncial indifference from the media.

No serious student of the Constitution would question that sufficient grounds exist to impeach both President Bush and Vice President Cheney. The Constitution provides that an Executive who puts himself above the law and abuses the powers of his office may be impeached, a point confirmed in the impeachment proceedings against President Nixon, for abuses such as illegal wiretapping.

There is little serious debate about whether Bush administration actions -- wiretapping without court approval (violating the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act), authorizing and facilitating mistreatment of detainees (violating US treaties and criminal laws), starting the Iraq war on a basis of lies, exaggerations and misstatements (an abuse of power) -- meet the constitutional standard.

So why hasn't a majority of Congress supported it? Twenty members co-sponsored Rep. Dennis Kucinich's resolution calling for the impeachment of Cheney, but bucked their leadership to do so. Democratic leaders took impeachment "off the table," apparently fearing it could hurt their chances in 2008.

About frickin' time. The Democrats have demonstrated as much courage as the Cowardly Lion, yet Dubya and Darth have approval ratings in the toilet.

A lot of hooey

NYT Breaking News! For McCain, Self-Confidence on Ethics Poses Its Own Risk

A female lobbyist had been turning up with him at fund-raisers, visiting his offices and accompanying him on a client’s corporate jet. Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself — instructing staff members to block the woman’s access, privately warning her away and repeatedly confronting him, several people involved in the campaign said on the condition of anonymity.

Of course, all the talk on both sides revolves around conspiracy theories as to why the NYT held off publishing this story until now. Some say that they wanted to wait until after McCain had sewn up the nomination, so that the Republicans would be screwed, others say that they released it now because it would be "old news" by the time of the election. Still others say that the NYT had its hand forced when others were about to scoop them.

St. McCain's campain says its all a bunchofbullshit. He would never cheat on his lovely wife. Never.

During their time in Jacksonville, the McCains' marriage began to falter.[84] McCain had extramarital affairs,[84] and he would later say, "My marriage's collapse was attributable to my own selfishness and immaturity more than it was to Vietnam, and I cannot escape blame by pointing a finger at the war. The blame was entirely mine."[84] His wife Carol would later echo those sentiments, saying "I attribute [the breakup of our marriage] more to John turning 40 and wanting to be 25 again than I do to anything else."[84]

Fast forward to the 2000 campaign, and St McCain is 60 and wanting to be 40 again. You cannot change a leopard's spots.

However, while many will focus on the salicious side of this story, the real story here is that St. McCain is a world-class hypocrite. The MSM love-them some St. McCain because of McCain-Feingold and his "maverick" persona as one who will swim against the tide. The facts are that he is nothing of the sort. He is a stubborn old narcissistic bastard who flip-flops when it suits him, and only him. All that campaign finance reform was compensation for the fact that he got his hand caught in the cookie jar, and he needed to "prove" that he was all for "good gummint".

That said, if the bible-thumpers hated him before, they will really hate him now. Frankly, the affair that lead to him marrying Cindy (his current wife) were no better than Newt Gingrich, cheating on his second wife (who was dieing of cancer at the time).

Makes you wonder what Cindy thinks of all this.

I don't really understand what the fascination is with the Tim Russerts over John McCain, but they have been giving him a pass on his many inconsistencies. The NYT dares to contradict the false persona of St McCain as an American Hero. Sure, he was held in the Hanoi Hilton for 5 years, and suffered miserably as he was tortured repeatedly, simply for being the son of a top U.S. Navy Admiral. Brave stuff. However, his experiences in Viet Nam do not excuse subsequent behavior. Heck, he couldn't even bring himself to vote for the recent bill that would limit the interrogation techniques of the CIA to those outlined in the Army Field Manual. The man makes me ill.

Just because he suffered at the hands of the North Vietnamese, does not make him a good person. We should honor and thank him for his service, but it does not beatify him in any way. He is a serial cheater, and a serial campaign finance scoundrel. You can't change a leopard's spots.

Update: you can't make this shit up.

Beyond his fundraising, McCain's conduct as chairman of the powerful Senate Commerce Committee between 1997 and 2004 has occasionally raised questions about whether he took actions to benefit major contributors to his political network, which included his Senate and presidential campaign committees, his Straight Talk political action committee and a foundation that he helped start called the Reform Institute.

In 2003 and 2004, for example, McCain took two actions favorable to Cablevision, the cable TV company, while Davis, his chief political strategist at the time, solicited the company for a total of $200,000 for the Reform Institute, a tax-exempt group that advocated an end to outsize political donations.

There's a bit of irony for you, huh?! The article continues...

Davis solicited an initial donation from Cablevision chief Charles Dolan a week after Dolan testified before the Senate Commerce Committee in favor of a position backed by McCain. Davis said there was no connection between the testimony and the solicitation.

Less than a year later, McCain wrote to the Federal Communications Commission recommending Cablevision's position on cable pricing, citing Dolan by name. Cablevision followed soon thereafter with a second $100,000 donation, the Associated Press reported.

In 1999, McCain wrote a letter as committee chairman on behalf of longtime political supporter Lowell "Bud" Paxson, urging the FCC to vote on a long-delayed decision whether to approve the sale of a Pittsburgh television station to Paxson's company. McCain had flown on Paxson's corporate jet four times to appear at campaign events around that time, and had received $20,000 from campaign donations from Paxson and its law firm, the Boston Globe reported. The FCC chairman at the time, William Kennard, called McCain's intervention "highly unusual," but the senator denied doing any favors.

A Few Good Men (updated)

Talk Left: Senate Votes to Ban Waterboarding

The House adopted the provision back in December. Bush has threatened to veto the bill.

As I wrote yesterday, Hillary Clinton wrote Bush Monday and urged him to withdraw his veto threat.

Today Assistant Majority Leader Dick Durbin and other senior Democratic Senators wrote to Bush and called on him to revise his Executive Order on CIA interrogation to comply with our treaty obligations and to prohibit explicitly a number of torture techniques that the Administration has used.

What they should have done is to threaten to try the Shrubya and his Sith Lord VP for war crimes if they did not heed Congress and the people of the United States, yet again.

I can't believe we are still having this debate.

Congress passed a bill in 2006 banning torture. That bill was championed by none other than John McCain, a former POW who was tortured so severely he can no longer raise his arms above his head. The President, at the urging of the dark one himself, penned a "signing statement" that basically said: "f*** you all, I'll do what I want, I'm the Unitary President, damnit".

The response from Congress?

[crickets]

Now, after it has become clear to all that we have engaged in torture, with the approval of the President, Congress passes another bill that reiterates what is already the law of the land, that it is illegal to torture.

I am reminded of the scene in A Few Good Men, in which Lt. Weinberg says:

"I strenuously object?" Is that how it works? Hm? "Objection." "Overruled." "Oh, no, no, no. No, I STRENUOUSLY object." "Oh. Well, if you strenuously object then I should take some time to reconsider."

Congress should have initiated impeachment proceedings long ago for Bush and Cheney, and criminal proceedings against those such as AG AG and the VP's chief of staff David Addington, for war crimes. I can see it now, with Dick Cheney sitting in the witness box excoriating the young prosecutor:

Col. Jessep: You want answers?
Kaffee: I think I'm entitled.
Col. Jessep: You want answers?
Kaffee: I want the truth.
Col. Jessep: You can't handle the truth.
Col. Jessep: Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Whose gonna do it? You? You, Lt. Weinburg? I have a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago, and you curse the marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know. That Santiago's death, while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives. You don't want the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about at parties, you want me on that wall, you need me on that wall. We use words like honor, code, loyalty. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way, Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon, and stand a post. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you are entitled to.

... just before they cuff him and take him away to the brigg.

The sad, unfortunate truth is that despite the fact that those who carried out Bush's orders to waterboard "those nasty terrorists", cannot use the "I vus just following orders" excuse. It didn't fly in Nuremberg, it should not fly this time.

Update: via Laura Rozen of War and Piece blog

CQ: McCain votes against torture ban. "There goes the one thing I still respected him for," comments the friend who sent the news.

I'm speechless.

Update II: Think Progress coins the catch-phrase of Indecision 2008:

John McCain: He was against waterboarding before he was for it.

Shorter BushCo administration; I've got your culture of life right here (emphasis mine):

WASHINGTON - A federal appeals court said Friday the Bush administration ignored the law when it imposed less stringent requirements on power plants to reduce mercury pollution, which scientists fear could cause neurological problems in 60,000 newborns a year.

A three-judge panel unanimous struck down a mercury-control plan imposed by the Environmental Protection Agency three years ago. It established an emissions trading process in which some plants could avoid installing the best mercury control technology available by buying pollution credits.

Environmentalist and health experts argued that such a cap-and-trading mechanism would create "hot spots" of mercury contamination near some power plants. Seventeen states as well as environmental and health groups joined in a suit to block the regulation, saying it did not adequately protect public health.

Power plants are the biggest source of releases of mercury, which finds its way into the food supply, particularly fish. Mercury can damage developing brains of fetuses and very young children.

Of course, the judges will be castigated as being "activist" judges, despite the fact that it was the states of New Jersey, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin that brought suit against the EPA.

All of this is yet more evidence that King Dubya thinks he is above the law, and that the laws of the United States do not apply to him.

Stop, you're killing me...

A Tortured Explanation From The White House

Let's review: waterboarding is torture except when it's not, torture is illegal except when the Justice Department says it's not, the administration doesn't torture except when they do, and if anyone has a problem with that, the Justice Department investigate, except that they won't. Got that?

Yet another case of politicized DoJ

Justice Department Indicts Respected Miami Lawyer (emphasis mine):

This case represents the first time ever in which federal criminal charges were brought against a lawyer whose legal work consisted of representing a fellow lawyer who sought advice about compensation for defending a client in a criminal case. To target an adversary like Ben Kuehne, who is held in such high regard by the community and whose integrity is unquestioned, sends a message that any lawyer is at risk, even concerning previously unheard of prosecution strategies like those used here. Finally the fact that this prosecution is political payback is demonstrated by the government’s efforts to leak its investigation while Ben’s lawyers were trying to convince Washington that these allegations were unfounded. On a number of occasions Washington provided reporters with the details of the investigation in an effort to destroy Ben’s reputation in the community. They did so knowing that there was no one to investigate their unlawful violations of grand jury secrecy.

Political payback for representing Al Gore in 2000, and Kerry in 2004. Your Justice Department has been turned into Bush's hatchet men.

I need to vomit.

I voted...

Have you?

Yet another U.S. Attourney scandal

Of course, my guess is that Alice Martin was never on Karl Rove's Alberto Gonzales's list of U.S. Attorneys to be fired.

If this isn't the most corrupt administration in history...

Have these criminals been impeached yet?

Another Election Season, Another Political Prosecution in Alabama:

The morning calm in the small Alabama town of Toney, located near Huntsville, was broken at 6:15 a.m. yesterday morning. A team of five FBI agents, accompanied by a prison matron, pounded on the door. When the man of the house answered, he was forced into the yard, shirtless in the early morning cold. The team had come for his wife, Sue Schmitz. She was dragged out of her bathroom, where she was taking a shower, handcuffed, breaking her flesh and scraping her wrists, and hustled off to prison.

Who was this threat to the community? Sue Schmitz is a diminutive, 63-year-old retired social studies teacher who has lived in the town for 38 years, roughly 20 of them as a civics teacher. She is loved in the community and among her students is legendary for her passion for civics and her outreach to the disadvantaged.

...

But one other fact figures directly in this drama. Schmitz is a Democratic member of the state legislature.

Keep reading.