1) In addition to what Glenn said below about the growing pushback against the Executive's grab at expanded powers, there are a couple of other stories in the news that are fairly significant in this regard.
First, the Senate Judiciary Committee has hinted that it will defend journalists from prosecution for violation of espionage laws. The AP reports that
The Senate Judiciary Committee gave the Bush administration a new lashing Tuesday over its use of executive power, citing the FBI's posthumous probe of columnist Jack Anderson and questioning the notion that espionage laws might allow the prosecution of journalists who publish classified information."It's highly doubtful in my mind that that was ever the intent of Congress," Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter said.
The World War I-era espionage laws, countered Justice Department criminal division chief Matthew Friedrich, "do not exempt any class of professionals, including reporters, from their reach."
"I believe that's an invitation to Congress to legislate on the subject," replied Specter, R-Pa. "Clearly, the ball is in our court."
Secondly, the board of governors for the American Bar Association, which in Febuary had denounced the NSA surveillance as illegal, voted unanimously earlier this week to form an "all-star legal panel with a number of members from both political parties" in order to "to evaluate Bush's assertions that he has the power to ignore laws that conflict with his interpretation of the Constitution. " The ABA's decision was motivated by The Boston Globe's Charlie Savage, who first covered the President's extensive use of signing statements.
2) There's an interesting discussion going on over at Michael Berube's blog regarding How Would A Patriot Act?, which echoes some of the debate that has occurred here in regards whether or not "patriotism" is a virtue. Drawing a distinction between civic nationalism and ethnic nationalism, Berube writes
What Greenwald offers here is a mode of nationalism—of patriotism—that consists of principled opposition to the unlimited expansion of executive power by the Bush/Cheney regime. It’s a mode of nationalism that might, and that should, be more popular than it is.And then in this follow-up post Berube responds to some critical comments.
3) I've heard a few people comment that they would like to learn more about the ideas of the Founders, but find their work, such as The Federalist, a bit inaccessible. If you count yourself among this crowd, then you might enjoy reading Pulitzer Prize winning historian Gary Wills' Explaining America: The Federalist. I just picked up a copy of this, myself, yesterday and have been reading through it. Wills offers a compact and concise study of the essays in prose that is easy to understand, providing context along the way as to what exactly informed the thoughts of Madison and Hamilton (and Jay to a lesser extent.) Of course, I'm partial to the book since Wills frames each chapter with a quote from the political philosophy of David Hume.
UPDATE: Blogger has been down most of today, making it difficult (read: impossible) to put together a decent post, so here are a few more quick points for consideration.
4) A reader sent me a link to this radio interview Glenn gave a few days ago, where he talks about the book and about blogging.
5) Dave Neiwert wrote a post yesterday about an article Craig Unger has written for Vanity Fair which makes the case that the Niger documents were part of a psy-ops war targeted at the American public, where Mr. Neiwert concludes that it's up to the blogosphere to discuss this because the mainstream media seems incapable of deviating from the idea that the Bush administration was anything but the victims of good intentions and bad intelligence.
At this point, the evidence that U.S. citizens were victims of a massive campaign of deception to sell a war with Iraq is incontrovertible ( for those who are dubious of this claim, I plan on making this case in a post at some point this week.) Neiwert makes a key point about the threat that the infiltration of fake news represents to democracy.
The role of the media in this manipulation cannot be understated. The abdication of the media's role as an independent watchdog and its whole subsumation as a propaganda organ bodes ill for any democracy, because a well-informed public is vital to its functioning.
6) Ed Brayton of Dispatches from the Culture Wars links to a statement from Judge Jones, who presided over the Dover intelligent design case, about the necessity of an independent judiciary, and about how the demonization of judges is dangerous not only to judges (Judge Jones had to be placed under marshal protection after the Dover decision), but to our entire system of government.
7) As noted by ej in the comments, Senator Specter has once again been backed down by the administration.
Is it possible that Senator Specter is this naive? The assurance of the law-breaking White House that has issued 750 proclamations that it is not bound by legislation passed by Congress that it will follow future legislation is good enough for the supposedly troubled by the NSA issue Specter to suspend an inquiry? The man is made out of jello.
Arlen Specter said that after discussions with the Bush administration and Senate Intelligence Committee colleagues who had been more fully briefed on the National Security Agency program, he was "prepared to defer on a temporary basis" requiring representatives from AT&T, Verizon Communications and BellSouth to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee, which he leads....
Specter said he was willing to suspend the inquiry largely because Vice President Dick Cheney had provided assurances that the White House would be more receptive to pending legislation--including a proposal chiefly backed by Specter himself--that would send the existing NSA program and all future surveillance plans to a special court for review of their constitutionality.
I generally find Garry Wills pretentious. Sean Wilentz's knock down of his book on the election of 1800 etc. also left a bad taste in my mouth.
ReplyDeleteHis Federalist enterprise here sounds useful though ... a few years back a collection of "new" federalist papers was published as well. Linda Monk, for instance, did a wonderful job writing a couple books putting the Constitution as a whole in words open to the average student.
Overall, though, it is a bit problematic how much we focus on the works of basically two people, one (Hamilton) supported some questionable policies (so thought Madison) during the Washington Administration.
...Specter, R-Pa. "Clearly, the ball is in our court."
ReplyDeleteSo he will just play with it and play with it, grandstanding like he is providing "adult supervision."
Then late on a friday afternoon, he will hit this "ball" out of his court and out of bounds for good.
Not to belabour a point, but:
ReplyDeleteIf BellSouth, Verizon, and AT&T aren't handing over billing records to the NSA, then why the f**k does Cheney care as to whether they testify???
Cheers,
Sorry to be off topic but this should make everyone very very afraid.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.counterpunch.org
/whitney06032006.html
Swan Song for the Greenback?
By MIKE WHITNEY
The great dollar sell-off has begun in earnest, although to a large extent, it's being concealed from the public.
Now there are signs that foreign lenders are tired of the weakening dollar and are reducing their stockpiles of greenbacks and dollar-denominated securities. The Gold Forecaster reports in its recent article "The US Dollar and its Prospects".
This means that China and Japan have begun to reduce their purchases of US Treasuries but, surprisingly, some mysterious third party has begun to pick up the slack.
Who is crazy enough to increase their dollar-holdings when most analysts are predicting a loss in value?
Apparently, the Bush administration (along with the Federal Reserve) is purchasing its own debt (Treasuries) to control the rate at which the dollar declines. It's a good strategy, but it can't last forever.
The United States has reached an unsustainable level of debt in government, business and personal finances. Personal savings are down, mortgage payments are up, and credit card debt is higher than ever. The entire country is mired in swamp of red ink for which there is no easy remedy.
The predictions of Warren Buffett, Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, are equally sobering:
"There are deep-rooted structural problems that will cause America to continue to run a huge current-account deficit unless trade policies either change materially or the dollar declines by a degree that could prove unsettling to financial markets. Indeed, without policy changes, currency markets could become disorderly and generate spill-over effects, both political and financial."
The Organization for Economic Cooperation (O.E.C.D.) has joined skeptics at the IMF in predicting that the dollar will fall by 35% to 50% in order to balance current account deficits. These are modest predictions given the enormous amount of debt the US has accumulated in just the last 6 years. ($3 trillion) Consider how life for the average American will change when gas is $6 per gallon rather than $3; when groceries skyrocket to twice their normal price, and when life-savings are cut in half overnight.
In late March, 2006 the Federal Reserve ceased publishing the M-3, the indicator of how many dollars are currently in circulation. This removes all the reliable data on the dollar's value. Now, the public has no way of knowing what is going on with its own currency. This lack of transparency will be disastrous for the dollar as the use of money is predicated on confidence. By making their activities as opaque as possible, the Fed has undermined the publics' trust and added to the anxiety in the markets.
How long will countries continue to loan money to a nation that takes a "trust me" attitude, especially when the government is as widely distrusted as the Bush administration. The removal of the M-3 may seem like a short-term fix to obscure the machinations of the Fed, but over time it will be seen as a costly mistake.
And all of those cheap Chinese manufactured goods that have decimated our manufacturing sector and that everyone buys at Wal Mart and other retailers, they are suddenly going to become very expensive.
I wouldn't mind seeing the people of Pennsylvania replace Mr. Specter with someone who has the spine to vote his convictions.
ReplyDeletegris lobo, following up on the economic gloom theme:
ReplyDeleteJobs Update: The Death of US Engineering
When employers allege a shortage of engineers, they mean that there is a shortage of American graduates who will work for the low salaries that foreigners will accept. Americans are simply being forced out of the engineering professions by jobs outsourcing and the importation of foreigners on work visas. Corporate lobbyists and their hired economists are destroying the American engineering professions.
American engineering is also under pressure because corporations have moved manufacturing offshore. Design, research and development are now following manufacturing offshore. A country that doesn’t make things doesn’t need engineers and designers. Corporations that have moved manufacturing offshore fund R&D in the countries where their plants have been relocated.
Engineering curriculums are demanding. The rewards to the effort are being squeezed out by jobs offshoring and work visas. If the current policy continues of substituting foreign engineers for American engineers, the profession will die in the US.
Could this be Cheney threatening or blackmailing?
ReplyDeleteHave we seen this somewhere before?
Maybe the man that created the "magic bullet" theory to conceal the greatest crime of the PREVIOUS century is actually just providing distractions to cover the greatest crimes of THIS century.
Wish people around here would quit making a big deal out of that tool arlen sphincter.
>Maybe the man that created >the "magic bullet"
ReplyDeletehmm..
Sad to say, Senator Spector (from my home state) often says the right thing, but always caves in to the wrong side. I don't know if he lacks backbone, or is just a fraud. It was disappointing when I used to believe he would stand up for something. Now, I know to ignore him.
ReplyDeleteBTW, the Federalist Papers are a bit dense, but they're quite readable. They weren't written for an academic audience, but for the public. Of course, the level of public discouse was on a much higher level in those days...
I am another one who finds the Federalist papers pretty accessible and would recommend as well a little book by Herbert Storer called "What the Anti-Federalists Were For" -- the basic debates in American politics have not changed all that much since 1787.
ReplyDeleteOf course, the level of public discouse was on a much higher level in those days...
ReplyDeleteHmmm. Wonder why that was?
The thing I find most curious about the Right's executive power grab is that not every President will be a Republican. In fact, the next one will likely not be.
ReplyDeleteDo they really want President Clinton or President Feingold issuing signing statements like crazy? Or do they really want judges who will uphold any fool law passed by Speaker Pelosi's house?
It's actually funny to me, since I think their day is over already (note our Iran policy, for example -- where's the pre-emptive strike?), and they seem unable to even imagine a future in which people with brains are back in charge.
james w. pharo:
ReplyDeleteThe thing I find most curious about the Right's executive power grab is that not every President will be a Republican. In fact, the next one will likely not be.
Do they really want President Clinton or President Feingold issuing signing statements like crazy? Or do they really want judges who will uphold any fool law passed by Speaker Pelosi's house?
Hell, we're the "pussies"; the nice guys.
Maybe they think that (despite their rhetoric) liberals wouldn't dare to misuse the laws or act as underhanded as they feel it is their Gawd-given right to do.....
Cheers,
The results in the CA 50 special election to fill convict Elephant Duke Cunningham's open seat do not indicate any surge at all against the Elephant congress.
ReplyDeleteAll the spin about the Donkey Busby gaining a moral victory by coming within a bit over 4 points of the Elephant Bilbray is nonsense.
The problem with this analysis is that Bilbray lost 4 points to an even more conservative independent anti immigration candidate.
In sum, conservatives outpolled the liberal Busby by nearly ten points despite her running on a "culture of corruption" platform in the only seat with an actually convicted Elephant.
It is very true that this house district leans heavily Elephant and should have gone to the Elephants.
That is the point.
After the last round of redistricting, the vast majority of House districts lean pretty heavily toward one or the other party. There are only around 30 districts which are remotely competitive this year and the Donkeys would need to ride a wave of anti-Elephant sentiment to take around 2/3 of those competitive seats to gain only a one seat majority in the House
Good luck.
If the CA 50 race is somewhat representative, there is little evidence of even a small wave of anti-Elephant sentiment.
HG:
ReplyDelete5) Dave Neiwert wrote a post yesterday about an article Craig Unger has written for Vanity Fair which makes the case that the Niger documents were part of a psy-ops war targeted at the American public, where Mr. Neiwert concludes that it's up to the blogosphere to discuss this because the mainstream media seems incapable of deviating from the idea that the Bush administration was anything but the victims of good intentions and bad intelligence.
Of course these crude forgeries were attempted disinformation. However, not in the way you allege.
The British MI6 had HUMINT sources that Saddam was seeking Uranium from Niger, which it stands behind and was confirmed by the Butler Commission.
This British report was corroborated when the ex-PM of Niger told Joe Wilson that an Iraqi trade delegation came to Niger in 1999 seeking to renew trade with Niger. Because Niger only exports uranium and dates, the PM naturally concluded the Iraqis were after uranium.
Against this backdrop, Italian intelligence allegedly provided an Italian reporter with obvious forged documents allegedly proving Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger. After the forgeries were easily revealed, a whispering campaign started spreading the falsehood that these documents were the basis for the MI6 report.
Welcome to the world of disinformation. The obvious intent of these documents was to discredit the British MI6 report.
At this point, the evidence that U.S. citizens were victims of a massive campaign of deception to sell a war with Iraq is incontrovertible ( for those who are dubious of this claim, I plan on making this case in a post at some point this week.)
That should be amusing. Give it your best shot finding what the Senate and the Butler Commission held never happened.
Nice blog, Bart. ;-) Now you have somewhere to talk to yourself (and the aether) in peace. Nice to see you're true to form, and repeating yourself there as well, even though no one gives a sh*te what you said the first time.
ReplyDeleteGood luck to you. Sorry you'll be leaving us ... not!
Cheers,
HWSNBN spins for the maladministration once again:
ReplyDeleteThe British MI6 had HUMINT sources that Saddam was seeking Uranium from Niger, which it stands behind and was confirmed by the Butler Commission.
Nonsense. They haven't come out with a single credible independent source here (for good reason; there wasn't any).
This British report was corroborated when the ex-PM of Niger told Joe Wilson that an Iraqi trade delegation came to Niger in 1999 seeking to renew trade with Niger. Because Niger only exports uranium and dates, the PM naturally concluded the Iraqis were after uranium.
True, the Nigerian official assumed that is what they might have been after, but IIRC, it was more of a good-will visit (and only one of several counteis visited), and the hopes seem to have been to get Niger to open travel in an effort to get the travel restrictions lifted.
As the article points out, there was plenty of reasons for thinking the story to be doubtful at best, and various people in CIA and state (as well as elsewhere) thought it garbage pretty much, (including Tenet, until he knuckled under and earned his Preznitential Kneepads of Freedom). Not so the maladministration. They're either incompetent, or they knew it was bogus and were in on the ruse. But let's have a look, eh? Let's get Roberts to come through on his pledge, and actually do an investigation as to how the maladministration managed to be so completely wrong on everything, even though there were big red warning flags flying all over the place (and even in public; I called it as a Chalabi-manufactured hoax even before the war started, and I was just going off stuff in the papers and Internet). The poor nature of the "evidence" (which the UNMOVIC inspectors termed as "garbage, garbage, and more garbage" after the U.S. forked it over after long protest and refusal) was well-known and it shouldn't have been a surprise to anyone that it was all wrong. But the maladministration is incompetent is not worse, and thanks to that, we have 2470+ (and counting every day) U.S. soldiers dead right now that should be looking forward to the Fourth of July weekend with their families.
HWSNBN isn't concerned about this, though; as long as his Fuehr... -- ummm, "Commander-In-Bunnypants" -- needs defending, HWSNBN's little soldier stands at attention, ready to do his little part for the party in the 101st Fighting Keyboarders....
Cheers,
That should be amusing. Give it your best shot finding what the Senate and the Butler Commission held never happened.
ReplyDeleteNeither investigated the matter. You're either uninformed, or deliberately dishonest.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeletehg:
ReplyDeleteBoth the Senate and the Butler Commission investigated whether the Intel had been "sexed up" to create the excuse to go to war. Every single member of both parties in the Senate committee investigating thos lie rejected it completely.
Where are you getting this misinformation from?
ReplyDeleteI mean, I know these are the talking points that pr people and enablers like Pat Robertson that work for the White House spend all their time disseminating to various outlets in the media, but I'd like to know where you're plugging in to it.
James W. Pharo:
ReplyDeleteThe thing I find most curious about the Right's executive power grab is that not every President will be a Republican. In fact, the next one will likely not be.
Do they really want President Clinton or President Feingold issuing signing statements like crazy? Or do they really want judges who will uphold any fool law passed by Speaker Pelosi's house?
Perhaps they are so confident that the Dems won't reverse anything that all they have to do is just wait for their next "turn", and then just pick up where they left off. That's a scary thought.
Meanwhile, I'm not at all convinced that many of the so-called "Democrat" members of Congress are immune to the Republican philosphy of ends justifying the means and wouldn't like to spend some time themselves above the rule of law.
HWSNBN:
ReplyDeleteBoth the Senate and the Butler Commission investigated whether the Intel had been "sexed up" to create the excuse to go to war. Every single member of both parties in the Senate committee investigating thos lie rejected it completely.
Typo there. Let me fix that up for you:
"Neither the Senate and the Butler Commission investigated whether the Intel had been "sexed up" to create the excuse to go to war. No member of any party in the Senate committee has investigated this. Pat Roberts, despite repeated promises to do so, hasn't even begun. He want it to go away, or if that's not possible, a whitewash of the maladministration's perfidy."
HTH.
Cheers,
Bart DePalma said...
ReplyDelete"The results in the CA 50 special election to fill convict Elephant Duke Cunningham's open seat do not indicate any surge at all against the Elephant congress.
All the spin about the Donkey Busby gaining a moral victory by coming within a bit over 4 points of the Elephant Bilbray is nonsense."
LOL, Bilbray won by running against Bush. The specific issue that got him the votes was illegal immigration.