The Blue State

The coming summer political storm

Remember the recess appointment authority that the President used to install John Bolton as UN Ambassador in 2005?  In the coming months, a fight will erupt between Bush and the Democratic Congress over a power that the President can use when the Legislative Branch is not in session.

Later this summer, George W. Bush intends to use the congressional vacation as the perfect opportunity to confirm a number of his controversial political nominees without Senate approval.  You might recall that in early January of this year, just days before Nancy Pelosi's Democrats took the gavel, the President used his recess appointment power to install a number of right-wing officials .

With the President's political capital dwindling fast, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is planning to use procedural maneuvers this August to prevent Bush from appointing anyone without Senate approval:

We hear that over the long August vacation, when those types of summerhires are made, Reid will call the Senate into session just long enoughto force the prez to send his nominees who need confirmation to thechamber. The talk is he will hold a quickie "pro forma" session every10 days, tapping a local senator to run the hall. Senate workers andRepublicans are miffed, but Reid is proving that he's the new sheriffin town.

In other words, if you put a member of the majority party in the Senate chambers, then the Senate is technically not in recess!

However, expect the President to fight Harry Reid on this.  Also, according to Senate rules, there is some question as to what qualifies as a "vacancy":

The wording of the constitutional provision allowing recess appointments leads to a question about which positions could actually be filled that way. The question revolves around the phrase “Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate.” Does “happen” mean “happen to exist” or “happen to occur”?

The first meaning would allow the President to make recess appointments to an  position that becomes vacant prior to the recess and continues to be vacant during the recess, as well as positions that become vacant during the recess. The second meaning would allow recess appointments only to positions that become vacant during the recess.

If Bush wants to fight it, even if he risks more political scandal, this could turn into a constitutional battle that ends up in court.  If the judiciary does intervene, it could drag out in for an extended period of time -- meanwhile, Bush's officials would be in office at least until the court reached a decision.

Even though there is a chance Bush could win this battle, it is worth the fight.  No more presidential strong-arming now that the Democrats have majority.  The public is fed up with the White House, whose main strategy these last six years has been to use various political issues -- most notably, the threat of terrorism -- to increase Executive power as a means to purge our government of political dissent.

These Cheney-style executive shadow games are getting old.  What ever happened to tackling the issues of jobs, education and health care? -- you know, the stuff taxpayers actually want addressed.  If Bush cared more about those issues than installing his own right-wing cronies at all cost, then his approval rating would not be at 28%.  My generation is exhausted of this, and we want change.  I hope Reid draws a line in the sand and fights this next wave of recess appointments.

Is the Bush Administration Fascist?

In my younger years I considered myself a Republican, I wasn't sure why, butit probably had something to do with my traditional points of view, even though my ways ofthinking  were  liberal. I suppose the bottom line was Ihad no clue. As I grew older I learned how to understand my views and combine andmold them into what turned out to be mainstream liberal. I'm not easilyconvinced or swayed about everything left, I need to see it, hear it andunderstand it before I hop on any band wagons. That's why when I saw the title FascistAmerica, in 10 easy Steps, I was taken back a bit and thought another (nutty) conspiracytheory. Then I read it.

From Hitler to Pinochet and beyond, history shows there arecertain steps that any would-be dictator must take to destroy constitutionalfreedoms. And, argues Naomi Wolf, George Bush and his administration seem to betaking them all

I knew Bush did some evil things, andshould be impeached (and flogged), but how are they going to equate Bush toHitler? 

Last autumn, there was a military coup in Thailand. The leaders of the couptook a number of steps, rather systematically, as if they had a shopping list.In a sense, they did. Within a matter of days, democracy had been closed down:the coup leaders declared martial law, sent armed soldiers into residentialareas, took over radio and TV stations, issued restrictions on the press,tightened some limits on travel, and took certain activists into custody.

NowI had to keep reading, I had to see how this British paper was going to tie U.S.policy to that of a military coup in Thailand. 

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy -After we were hiton September 11 2001, we were in a state of national shock. Less than six weekslater, on October 26 2001, the USA Patriot Act was passed by a Congress that hadlittle chance to debate it; many said that they scarcely had time to read it. Wewere told we were now on a "war footing"; we were in a "globalwar" against a "global caliphate" intending to "wipe outcivilisation". There have been other times of crisis in which the USaccepted limits on civil liberties, such as during the civil war, when Lincolndeclared martial law, and the second world war, when thousands ofJapanese-American citizens were interned. 

2. Create a gulag - Once you have got everyone scared, the next stepis to create a prison system outside the rule of law (as Bush put it, he wantedthe American detention centre at Guantánamo Bay to be situated in legal"outer space") - where torture takes place.

3. Develop a thug caste - Thugs in America? Groups of angry youngRepublican men, dressed in identical shirts and trousers, menaced poll workerscounting the votes in Florida in 2000. If you are reading history, you canimagine that there can be a need for "public order" on the nextelection day. Say there are protests, or a threat, on the day of an election;history would not rule out the presence of a private security firm at a pollingstation "to restore public order".

4. Set up an internal surveillance system - In 2005 and 2006, whenJames Risen and Eric Lichtblau wrote in the New York Times about a secret stateprogramme to wiretap citizens' phones, read their emails and followinternational financial transactions, it became clear to ordinary Americans thatthey, too, could be under state scrutiny.

5. Harass citizens' groups - The fifth thing you do is related to stepfour - you infiltrate and harass citizens' groups. It can be trivial: a churchin Pasadena, whose minister preached that Jesus was in favour of peace, founditself being investigated by the Internal Revenue Service, while churches thatgot Republicans out to vote, which is equally illegal under US tax law, havebeen left alone.

6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release - In 2004, America'sTransportation Security Administration confirmed that it had a list ofpassengers who were targeted for security searches or worse if they tried tofly. People who have found themselves on the list? Two middle-aged women peaceactivists in San Francisco; liberal Senator Edward Kennedy; a member ofVenezuela's government - after Venezuela's president had criticised Bush; andthousands of ordinary US citizens.

7. Target key individuals - Bush supporters in state legislatures inseveral states put pressure on regents at state universities to penalise or fireacademics who have been critical of the administration. As for civil servants,the Bush administration has derailed the career of one military lawyer who spokeup for fair trials for detainees, while an administration official publiclyintimidated the law firms that represent detainees pro bono by threatening tocall for their major corporate clients to boycott them.

8. Control the press - You won't have a shutdown of news in modernAmerica - it is not possible. But you can have, as Frank Rich and SidneyBlumenthal have pointed out, a steady stream of lies polluting the news well.What you already have is a White House directing a stream of false informationthat is so relentless that it is increasingly hard to sort out truth fromuntruth. In a fascist system, it's not the lies that count but the muddying.When citizens can't tell real news from fake, they give up their demands foraccountability bit by bit.

9. Dissent equals treason - Cast dissent as "treason" andcriticism as "espionage'. Every closing society does this, just as itelaborates laws that increasingly criminalise certain kinds of speech and expandthe definition of "spy" and "traitor". When Bill Keller, thepublisher of the New York Times, ran the Lichtblau/Risen stories, Bush calledthe Times' leaking of classified information "disgraceful", whileRepublicans in Congress called for Keller to be charged with treason, andrightwing commentators and news outlets kept up the "treason"drumbeat. Some commentators, as Conason noted, reminded readers smugly that onepenalty for violating the Espionage Act is execution

.10. Suspend the rule of law - The John Warner Defense AuthorizationAct of 2007 gave the president new powers over the national guard. This meansthat in a national emergency - which the president now has enhanced powers todeclare - he can send Michigan's militia to enforce a state of emergency that hehas declared in Oregon, over the objections of the state's governor and itscitizens.

Special Thanks to granny for pointing us to this information.

My thought's quickly changed. These steps are much more detailedin the article and can be readhere.

2 other far left conspiracy theories that after seeing the information I was (conservatively) 65% convinced were true. Alex Jones's 'Martial Law 9-11: Rise of the Police State' (w/ VIDEO), and Robert Greenwald's Iraq For Sale: 'The War Profiteers'.

Bush Changes the "Rules" (Again)

And yet another one out of  the mouth of our Commanderin Chief “I believe strongly that politicians in Washingtonshouldn’t be telling generals how to do their job…. And therefore I willstrongly reject an artificial timetable withdrawal and/or Washington politicianstrying to tell those who wear the uniform how to do their job.”

I wonder what the new catch phrase will be; That was Then, This is Now;I Was against it before I was For it before I was against it; or the everpresent Heh heh heh?

Backin January 2007:

When President Bush goes before the American people tonight to outline hisnew strategy for Iraq, he will be doing something he has avoided since theinvasion of Iraq in March 2003: ordering his top military brass to take actionthey initially resisted and advised against.

Bush talks frequently of his disdain for micromanaging the war effort and forsecond-guessing his commanders. "It's important to trust the judgment ofthe military when they're making military plans," he told The WashingtonPost in an interview last month. "I'm a strict adherer to the commandstructure."

Remember when GeneralCasey lost his job because he disagreed with the President?

The majority of the politicians, the American citizens and the Generalsdisagree with Bush and he continues down the same path. And he continues to changethe rules, but not through recommendations by the generals and his advisors(if it were, then we wouldn't be talking about this right now). 

Gonzalez: I Did Nothing Wrong

Some Attorneygate info to prepare for tomorrows hearings. The followingstories show the defiance of the Bush admin, the way the American people feel,and another person preparing for a hearing that "didn't do it".

ABQJournal -" DomeniciSought Iglesias Ouster" - Former U.S. Attorney David Iglesias was firedafter Sen. Pete Domenici, who had been unhappy with Iglesias for some time, madea personal appeal to the White House, the Journal has learned.

TIME- "Conservativesto Bush: Fire Gonzales" - In what could prove an embarrassing newsetback for embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on the eve of histestimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, a group of influentialconservatives and longtime Bush supporters has written a letter to the WhiteHouse to call for his resignation.

TheWashington Post - "POLL:Most say Politics Motivated U.S. Attorney Firings" - Two thirds ofAmericans, including a narrow majority of Republicans, see political motivationsbehind last year's firings of eight chief federal prosecutors. But the nation isdeeply divided along partisan lines about whether Attorney General Alberto R.Gonzales should lose his job over the scandal.

TheChicago Tribune - "GonzalesInsists He Did Nothing Wrong" - WASHINGTON -- Atty.Gen. Alberto Gonzales apologized to eight federal prosecutors for mishandlingtheir firings, but insisted he did nothing wrong in deciding to dismiss them,according to testimony prepared for his Senate appearance Tuesday that coulddetermine whether he keeps his job.

 

"I apologize to them and their families for allowing this matter to becomean unfortunate and undignified public spectacle," Gonzales said.

 

Missing emails might be impeachable offense

There is precedent for the Congress trying to impeach the president on grounds that he withheld or deleted documents that the Legislative Branch had requested.  Read this Third Article of Impeachment that the Judiciary Committee filed against Richard Nixon on July 27, 1974:

In his conduct of the office of President of the UnitedStates, Richard M. Nixon, contrary to his oath faithfully to executethe office of President of the United States and, to the best of hisability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the UnitedStates, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care thatthe laws be faithfully executed, has failed without lawful cause orexcuse to produce papers and things as directed by duly authorizedsubpoenas issued by the Committee on the Judiciary of the House ofRepresentatives on April 11, 1974, May 15, 1974, May 30, 1974, and June24, 1974, and willfully disobeyed such subpoenas. The subpoenaed papersand things were deemed necessary by the Committee in order to resolveby direct evidence fundamental, factual questions relating toPresidential direction, knowledge or approval of actions demonstratedby other evidence to be substantial grounds for impeachment of thePresident. In refusing to produce these papers and things Richard M.Nixon, substituting his judgment as to what materials were necessaryfor the inquiry, interposed the powers of the Presidency against thethe lawful subpoenas of the House of Representatives, thereby assumingto himself functions and judgments necessary to the exercise of thesole power of impeachment vested by the Constitution in the House ofRepresentatives.

In all of this, Richard M. Nixon has acted in a mannercontrary to his trust as President and subversive of constitutionalgovernment, to the great prejudice of the cause of law and justice, andto the manifest injury of the people of the United States.

Wherefore, Richard M. Nixon, by such conduct, warrants impeachment and trial, and removal from office.

It underscores how serious it is when the Executive Branch hides information that the Legislative Branch lawfully subpoenas. 

The Center for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) finds that the Bush Administration has misplaced at least five million emails over a two-year period.

White House says Gonzales emails disappeared

I have been watching this story off and on for days -- but today it took a strange turn.  For some time, the Democrats have been requesting White House emails that pertained to the Justice Department firings.  Administration officials now claim that some of the lost emails may have been ones sent by White House Adviser Karl Rove (of course!).

This morning, Pat Leahy, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary, asked how emails can just disappear?:

"They say they have not been preserved. I don't believe that!" Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy shouted from the Senate floor.

"You can't erase e-mails, not today. They've gone through too manyservers," said Leahy, D-Vt. "Those e-mails are there, they just don'twant to produce them. We'll subpoena them if necessary."

There is even more to this story.  Some of the emails were sent through Republican National Committee accounts.  From the very beginning, the White House has threatened to claim Executive privilege and not release the email information.  But because these emails came from the RNC and not the White House, Bush has no constitutional basis for declaring Executive privilege. 

On the other hand, the White House may have used the RNC accounts because they are not bound by presidential record-keeping requirements, according to Politico:

Waxman’s staff are supposed to meet with RNC officials on Thursdayabout the “rnchq” and “gwb.43″ e-mail accounts, which some White Houseofficials, like Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, use for authorizedpolitical work. Waxman suspects that White House aides were using theaccounts to evade presidential record-keeping requirements.

This email mess is on the verge of exploding into an even larger story.

(Video) No matter what happens, Bush still believes he's right

All of us have strong convictions about certain things -- but only to a point.  Sometimes people that have such set opinions are difficult to convince that they are wrong, regardless of how wrong they might be.  Conservative author Andrew Sullivan last night warned just how isolated the President really is.  Even so, he is not budging on Iraq, regardless of the fact that thousands more people are dead because he chose to right a war that did not need to be fought.

SULLIVAN: And Bush, I think psychologically, he just believes he's right.  He thinks that, in his fundamentalist psyche, that his motives are pure, that the war is the right thing...

...And I think the President had a born-again moment on 9/11, politically.  He thinks as long as he's fighting evil, anybody who criticizes him is on the side of evil.

You might all disagree with me on this next idea.  But I think Andrew Sullivan brought up an interesting point about how the Administration has no reason at all to care what the public thinks because the current Vice President is not running in 2008.  In most second terms, the issue of Executive power comes up.  If Cheney was thinking about the presidency in 2008, he would be warned by political advisers to prevent Bush from over-stepping his reach since it might create a public backlash in 2008.  Usually, there is no such thing as a lame duck presidency because most second term administrations try to help the sitting vice president win the presidency in the next election.

This White House is totally different.  They have no reason to think twice before consolidating power.  It's worse than Nixon.  Even some in Nixon's staff looked ahead to how Gerald Ford and the 1970s Republican Party might be affected if Richard Nixon fought it out until the bitter end.  This time, there is no individual in the White House that can tell the President "no."  That is the scary part.

Let this be a lesson to both parties.  If your party's nominee names a running-mate that has no intention of running eight years later, then your party will have no leverage over the presidency.  No matter what the Republican Party tries to do, they will not be able to affect this White House in any way until the very end.  Bush and Cheney are not Republicans anymore.  They are off on their own, and no Republican lawmaker can change that.

Editorial: The Executive is not the daddy branch

Yesterday, Tony Snow gave a stern warning to Democrats: if you issue subpoenas, Bush will rescind his offer to let Rove and other White House aides speak to Congress off the record about the U.S. Attorney firings.  Forget for just one minute that Bush's offer was not even a good one to begin with.  The bottom line is that the White House's threat amounted to a parent telling a child that if he talks back he will be sent to his room.

Since when was the Bush Administration supposed to be the Congress' daddy?  We are supposed to have three equal branches of government that offset one another in both power and influence.

Most past presidents have understood and respected Congress' right to investigate corruption -- whether it be in the private or public sector.  It just so happens that in this case Alberto Gonzales did not tell the truth under oath two months ago when he claimed that all replaced U.S. Attorneys would go through the Senate confirmation process.  Congress has every reason to subpoena White House officials, since they might uncover for American taxpayers why the Justice Department abruptly fired U.S. Attorneys.  Presidents Nixon, Reagan and Clinton all waved Executive Privilege.  Bush should do the same.

No more Patriot Act loophole

Months ago, Alberto Gonzales lied under oath on January 18th when he assured Congress that all U.S. Attorney replacements would be sent to the Senate for approval.  But thanks to a loophole in the Patriot Act, Gonzales can fire the attorneys, hand select new ones, and have them bypass the Senate confirmation process.  Now, Congress is about to do away with that loophole:

The move to overturn an obscure provision of the USA Patriot Act thatallowed the attorney general to appoint federal prosecutors for anindefinite period without Senate confirmation came amid growingspeculation that the controversy over the prosecutors would costAttorney General Alberto R. Gonzales  his job.

On Capitol Hill, members of both parties expressed support forrepealing the Patriot Act provision, expected to be approved Tuesday.Lawmakers said the provision amounted to an end run around senators,who have long had influence in the appointment of home-stateprosecutors. Some senators said the provision was used to clear the wayfor firing prosecutors and replacing them with candidates consideredmore in line with the administration.

Don't the Congressional staffers that insert dirty loopholes like this into bills realize that one day their party will be out of the White House?  The roles will eventually be reversed.  Take the filibuster complaint for example.  Back in 2003 and 2004, Republicans cried foul when Senate Democrats used the filibuster.  Now, the Republicans are using the filibuster to their benefit to help Bush stay the course in Iraq.

Emails show Executive power grab

The White House and Justice Department were working together to oust eight federal prosecutors and replace them with Bush-friendly appointees.  And no, this is not far-fetched.  Emails have turned up that show WH and JD officials collaborating on how to get a former Karl Rove political operative appointed without Senate approval:

Using the authority it quietly inserted into the USA Patriot Act that passed in March 2006, the officials discussed the prospects for a former operative for political adviser Karl Rove, who was appointed to the U.S. attorney's job in Arkansas replacing one of eight suddenly fired by the administration.

 

"Our guy is in there so the status quo is good for us . . . note that he is qualified whenever asked, pledge to desire a Senate-confirmed U.S. attorney and otherwise hunker down," Kyle Sampson, former chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, wrote in an e-mail in Dec. 19, 2006.

 

At the same time, Sampson wondered whether Rove aide Tim Griffin was "the guy on which to test drive this authority, but I know that getting him appointed was important to Harriet, Karl, etc.," Sampson wrote, referring to Harriet Miers, former White House Counsel and Karl Rove.

In other words, this loophole in the Patriot Act allows the Justice Department to fire prosecutors and then appoint new ones without having them go through the Senate confirmation process.  They could appoint Hulk Hogan if they wanted, and get away with it!

Had it not been for 9/11 and Karl Rove's Machiavellian ability to morph our memories of that horrible day into a wedge issue, this loophole in the Patriot Act would not exist today.  It's just more proof that the Administration is using the fear behind terrorism as a means to further its unrelated domestic agenda.