Lying With Impunity

by shep

Greg Sargent talks about Paul Krugman’s recent call out of the press to mention the fact that Rudy Giuliani has a bad habit of lying dissembling and wonders why the press seems so reluctant to do so when it is always oh so ready to trot out the latest GOP smear of Democrats:

Indeed. As this blog has been noting regularly, in the case of Dem candidates, your pundits will cheerfully springboard off the most trivial of anecdotes -- and in some cases, things that never happened at all -- to reach sweeping judgments about Dems' character deficits. But when it comes to Republican candidates, there is, with a few exceptions, a deep-seated reluctance to doing something so crude and impolite. This enormous double standard has been plainly obvious for years and years now. Yet you'd be hard-pressed to get anyone in the media to admit this. The denial about it runs too deep.

These days, it’s rare to hear a Republican open his mouth and not have a lie come tumbling out. For a typical Bush speech, I have to take off my shoes to count all of the lies, mischaracterizations and obfuscations (come on, we all have to find some way to get through a Bush speech and I figure this one beats drinking rat poison).

So what is it, MSM? Can you no longer discern the truth from an outright falsehood? Do you lurve you some big strong daddy Republicans? Do you just hate Democrats? Has this hypocrisy gone on so long and been so horrifically tragic for the nation that you can’t face your own duplicity and responsibility?

Do tell.

[E Pluribus Unum]

A Distinction Without a Difference

by shep

Reading Daily Kos this morning, a came across this peculiar claim by DHinMI in a long essay about Blackwater and the GOP:

“But the main reason why it’s wrong to refer to Bush authoritarianism as fascist is, simply, that it’s not fascist. Fascism exalted the state as the most powerful force, more powerful than any other institutions, including business.”

My reply is: you’re making a distinction where there is no difference, in both fascism and the Republican model of government.

The most perfect illustration of that is the current purchase of immunity for cooperating in illegal domestic spying for telecom companies by former political officials (in both parties) now employed by the telecoms and lobbying by current government officials, such as intelligence director Mike McConnell, who were formerly (directly) employed by the telecoms.



I’ll let Glenn Greenwald describe another dimension to the lack of distinction between “the state” and business:

”The top telecom officials are devoting substantial amounts of their energy to working on highly classified telecom projects with the Bush administration, including projects to develop whole new joint networks and ensure unfettered governmental access to those networks. Before joining the administration as its Director of National Intelligence, Mike McConnell spearheaded the efforts on behalf of telecoms to massively increase the cooperation between the Federal Government and the telecom industry.

The private/public distinction here has eroded almost completely. There is no governmental oversight or regulation of these companies. Quite the contrary, they work in secret and in tandem -- as one consortium -- with no oversight at all.”

Strangely, DHinMI’s thesis is based in large measure on Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine which contains no such denial of Republican fascism:

“A more accurate term for a system that erases the boundaries between Big Government and Big Business is not liberal, conservative or capitalist but corporatist. Its main characteristics are huge transfers of public wealth to private hands, often accompanied by exploding debt, an ever-widening chasm between the dazzling rich and the disposable poor and an aggressive nationalism that justifies bottomless spending on security. For those inside the bubble of extreme wealth created by such an arrangement, there can be no more profitable way to organize a society. But because of the obvious drawbacks for the vast majority of the population left outside the bubble, other features of the corporatist state tend to include aggressive surveillance (once again, with government and large corporations trading favors and contracts), mass incarceration, shrinking civil liberties and often, though not always, torture.”

From Wikipedia on “corporatism”:

“Political scientists may also use the term corporatism to describe a practice whereby an authoritarian state, through the process of licensing and regulating officially-incorporated social, religious, economic, or popular organizations, effectively co-opts their leadership or circumscribes their ability to challenge state authority by establishing the state as the source of their legitimacy, as well as sometimes running them, either directly or indirectly through shill corporations.”

From Wikipedia on fascism:

”Fascism also operated from a Social Darwinist view of human relations. Their aim was to promote "superior" individuals and weed out the weak. In terms of economic practice, this meant promoting the interests of successful businessmen while destroying trade unions and other organizations of the working class. Lawrence Britt suggests that protection of corporate power is an essential part of fascism. Historian Gaetano Salvemini argued in 1936 that fascism makes taxpayers responsible to private enterprise, because "the State pays for the blunders of private enterprise... Profit is private and individual. Loss is public and social."

And from the self-proclaimed “founder” of fascism himself:

”The Fascist State lays claim to rule in the economic field no less than in others; it makes its action felt throughout the length and breadth of the country by means of its corporate, social, and educational institutions, and all the political, economic, and spiritual forces of the nation, organised in their respective associations, circulate within the State.” (p. 41).
—Benito Mussolini, 1935, The Doctrine of Fascism, Firenze: Vallecchi Editore.

Any way you slice it, fascism is about the alignment of all institutions of state power, especially corporate power, against the interests of democratic representation, populist policy and individual liberty, i.e., liberalism. It seeks not to enhance the state relative to business but to remove the barrier between corporate interests and the interests of state entirely. Meanwhile, fascism seeks to suppress or coerce any remaining conflicts with those interests as determined by its elites in both business and government, because they are the same people and the same interests.

From the corruption of the democratic process in the Supreme Court sanctioned Republican coup of 2000 and political prosecutions and voter suppression by Republican government officials, to restructuring the tax system to favor wealth rather than work, to outsourcing the writing of US law to corporations, to privatizing entire government functions like protecting US government officials overseas, to the militarization of society through fear mongering, to colluding between government and corporations to violate the law to spy on the lawful activities American citizens, this Republican government cannot be distinguished from US corporate interests and their combined interest in monopolizing the country’s wealth and power and undermining the liberty and self rule of average citizens. That is fascism by every meaning of the word.


[Cross-posted at E Pluribus Unum]

Evil Has a Name

by shep

Its name is ”conservatism”. As the Queen of All Evil states succinctly: “Conservatism is an ideology, Republicanism is the political vehicle of conservatism.”

Conservatism is an ideology – “visionary theorizing,” or “a systematic body of concepts,” i.e., a set of unproven (or disproved) beliefs.

This, as apposed to political liberalism, which is a philosophy or methodology that emphasizes “the autonomy of the individual…the protection of political and civil liberties,” and human “progress.”

So what are core American “conservative” beliefs?

1) That government is more the problem than the solution to social progress.

2) That taxes and regulation of business are generally bad for society.

3) That (mostly) unregulated private markets will solve social problems more effectively that government (no word about the social problems private markets create).

4) That corporations and other business entities should enjoy all of the liberty rights guaranteed by the US Constitution to individual persons.

5) That those guaranteed liberty rights may be held secondary to the government’s interest in providing national security, or preventing citizens from possessing government-proscribed drugs, or protecting unborn children.

6) That the Executive branch of government ought to be able to operate in secret and without oversight or accountability to the people’s representatives in Congress.

7) That international relations should emphasize military strength and that negotiating with adversaries connotes weakness.

8) That the United States should not be bound by international laws and treaties when they are not in the perceived interests of conservative ideology and/or goals.

9) That common scientific consensus should be ignored in public policy matters when it conflicts with conservative ideology and/or goals.

10) That liberalism itself is inimical to American democratic society.

(Disclosure: I’m a liberal Democrat so, conservatives, feel free to correct any fundamental misconceptions in the list above.)

So my question is why Americans should want to choose government leaders based upon their adherence to such a belief system. Belief #1, by itself should pretty much disqualify someone for such a job, as has been shown by the performance of the all-Republican government of 2000-2006.

Like hiring a Jehova's Witness to find a cure for cancer, governing effectively is hard it shouldn’t be entrusted to people who believe it can’t be effective because they will undoubtedly prove themselves right by failing to govern effectively.

Let’s get conservatism (and I include Blue-Dog Democrats and any other Democrats beholden the above ideology) out of government where it can only do harm. If conservatives really believe that private markets are the solution to all our ills, let them put their ideology where their mouths are or vice versa.

[Cross-posted at E Pluribus Unum]

There's An Idea

Rep. John Conyers looks like he's going forward with subpoenas for stonewalling Karl Rove and Scary Harriet Meirs and will probably vote Tuesday to issue them. Patrick Leahy is planning to do likewise in the Senate on Thursday.

John Cole @ Balloon Juice has another idea.

Personally, I say we subject them to strict interrogation methods. After all, those methods aren’t torture.

I'd like to get a second opinion on that from the guy who wrote that decision, Abu Gonzales himself -- after we've perfected the technique on the first two miscreants first of course.

While we're at it, can we do some practice on that piece of shit, Tom DeLay, please? God I hate it when he does this.

Peeling Back The Onion

One of the most frustrating aspects of investigating anything, it that you have to know what you're looking for. While is it ridiculous to advance the idea that anyone with a chip on his shoulder or an axe to grind can go on some kind of fishing expedition. It's invasive in the extreme to allow someone to turn your life inside out merely because they flash a piece of paper -- hence the probable cause requirement for warrants and the relevance threshold for civil discovery.

This logic also applies to Freedom of Information Act inquiries. You have to know something exists before you can request it or it's simply overly burdensome to the legitimate functions of the government. Congress's investigatory powers have the same kind of restrictions -- not from operation of the law, but from a credibility and political perspective.

Well, now we know what we're looking for.

We know that a handful of the 90 odd U.S. Attorneys were removed by the administration because they were not partisan enough. It's logical to assume that there are, therefore, a handful or more U.S. Attorneys (Bushies) who met Karl Rove's loyalty test and sold their integrity to the Republican Reich.

Who else did the Bush DoJ target?:

Consider the theory laid out in this diary by pacified, written nearly a year ago: The NSA at some point after 9/11 "requests" the cooperation of all major telecommunications carriers in "voluntarily" turning over access to all their call data but Qwest Communications -- at the direction of its CEO, Joseph Nacchio, and alone among major carriers -- refuses to comply.

Not long afterward, Qwest and Nacchio found themselves embroiled in... a federal investigation, of all things. The SEC hit Nacchio, Qwest, and several top officers of the company with allegations of insider trading and accounting fraud.

Gee whiz! Whaddya know?

Sharpen your pencils boys and girls, and get some metal polish for your aluminum hats. There isn't enough popcorn in the world to last through this show, cuz you know there's so much more to this.

Some Questions For Valerie Plame

Chairman Henry Waxman has invited Valerie Plame Wilson to testify before his House Committee on Oversight and Government next Friday, March 16th. I'd like to know if Valerie Plame, and more broadly the CIA's counter-proliferation division and it's front company, Brewster Jennings & Associates (which "covered Ms. Plame), was specifically targeted -- and not simply a casualty of war.

Not since Fawn Hall have I awaited Congressional Testimony with quite the same emotional reaction. There's nothing quite like a blond bombshell with movie star good-looks telling a panel of boring old men all the sorted details of an administration bent on waging a war that neither the American people or a majority of Congress support.

But if that isn't enough to get your attention, maybe this will:

Brewster Jennings CIA counter-proliferation network prevented a WMD "salting" operation by Bush White House in Iraq.

I'm going to wear out my popcorn maker. Giving us all a full week to hype the event will guarantee a lot of interest -- genius.

The effect on the Non-Proliferation division, and particularly Brewster Jennings is one particular area of questioning I plan on paying particular attention to. There are bound to be questions about the personal effects of Plame's outing by Robert "The Douchebag" Novakula gossiping with Armitage, and the concerted effort of Rove, and of course Dick Cheney's hatchet man, Scooter, to expose her.

But America needs to understand not just what this did to her life and career, but also the company used as her non-official cover. Were the chickenhawks surrounding the office of Vice President so bungleheaded, so callously ignorant to put the lives of anyone ever connected to Brewster Jenning at risk -- or was that the plan all along? (A feature, not a bug.)

"According to U.S. intelligence sources, the White House exposure of Valerie Plame and her Brewster Jennings & Associates was intended to retaliate against the CIA's work in limiting the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

WMR has reported in the past on this aspect of the scandal. In addition to identifying the involvement of individuals in the White House who were close to key players in nuclear proliferation, the CIA Counter-Proliferation Division prevented the shipment of binary VX nerve gas from Turkey into Iraq in November 2002.

The Brewster Jennings network in Turkey was able to intercept this shipment which was intended to be hidden in Iraq and later used as evidence that Saddam Hussein was in possession of weapons of mass destruction. U.S. intelligence sources revealed that this was a major reason the Bush White House targeted Plame and her network."

Anyone who has paid more than a passing interest in the Plame case knows that Brewster Jennings was a CIA front company "employing" Ms. Plame and untold others who relied on it to explain their interest in activities relating to their mission: to track and prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons throughout the world. What we know little about was just how successful they were.

Brewster Jennings seems just a casualty of the war -- the war the neo-cons have been waging against liberalism since the Nixon administration. However, there's some very suspicious facts making it around the Toobz, some of which has been buried in plain sight for a while. True Plameologists probably think this is old news, but not all of us have committed the After Downing Street revelations to memory -- or are even done reading the comprehensive coverage of the Libby trial by FireDogLake (who are the best evidence that the Pulizer Prize needs to be opened up to blogs.)

In fact, U.S. intelligence sources report that the first shipment of VX nerve gas to Saddam Hussein was carried out between 1988 and 1989. The gas was shipped to Iraq by a U.S. company that was established in 1987 -- The Carlyle Group.

U.S. intelligence sources have also confirmed that Israeli military officers served unofficially with the U.S. Central Command headquarters in Baghdad. The Israelis were attached to the J2X (Joint Intelligence Liaison) in Baghdad. Their presence in Baghdad, according to the sources, was kept secret." Wayne Madsen Report

At the risk of running out of aluminum foil head-gear, if questions of Brewster Jennings' being deliberately shut down are conspicuous by their absence next week, enjoy the show, because that's all it will be -- puppet theater.

4 outta 5 PONIES!!

BAM, SCOOTER'S GUILTY!

Best reaction....American Street

“What I see in the conviction of Scooter Libby is an affirmation
of Iraq, where things are going pretty well.”

Walter Reed: Cheneyburtoned!

John Edwards put Dick Cheney on notice that he was on to him and his corporate cronies at Halliburton during the 2004 Vice Presidential debate.  The former Senator has been cleaning up after incompetence by these same no-bid contractors in Katrina ravaged New Orleans, now we see the disgrace of Walter Reed Hospital reflected in the revolving door of Halliburton and the Pentagon.

Here's what John Edwards said about the Vice-Decider's former company, right to Cheney's face:

EDWARDS: I mentioned Halliburton in connection with the $87 billion. This is relevant, because he was pushing for lifting sanctions when he was CEO of Halliburton.

Here's why we didn't think Halliburton should have a no-bid contract. While he was CEO of Halliburton, they paid millions of dollars in fines for providing false information on their company, just like Enron & Ken Lay. They did business with Libya and Iran, two sworn enemies of the US. They're now under investigation for having bribed foreign officials during that period of time.

Not only that, they've gotten a $7.5 billion no-bid contract in Iraq, and instead of part of their money being withheld, which is the way it's normally done, because they're under investigation, they've continued to get their money.

Source: Edwards-Cheney debate: 2004 Vice Presidential Oct 5, 2004

Cheney of course scoffed and told America to this was a smoke-screen, and that we should go to Factcheck.com to get our fact right.

There is no Factcheck.com, but checking Factcheck.org we find that although the $7.5 million in fines were paid after Cheney was CEO, and the Libya deal was before he was signed on, the rest was true.  The Iran accusation was right on the money.  Cheney did business with Iran for years, illegally.  But only now will the administration sit down and talk to them.  What horsecrap.

Cheney's Halliburton, using the same accountants as Enron, lied to the S.E.C. about it's financial condition -- cooked the books and absorbed the fine as the price of doing business, just like the $8 million they paid for over-billing last November.  They made that up ten-fold with their first no-bid deal in Iraq.  The bribery accusation involved Nigeria.  (Not to be confused with Niger, the starting point for the Valerie Plame scandal.)  To date, as nicely catalogued by Charlie Cray in the Huffington Post, that investigation is still being met with a stone wall.

Edwards was right to attack Cheney for what was done while he was with Halliburton, and in a broader sense, he was right to attack Cheneyburton as a concept, a way not just of doing business but of subverting the will and welfare of the people to the whims of corporate greed.

Despite the notoriety of Halliburton's misdeeds, they got every penny of their Iraq contract even though part of it was supposed to be withheld during the investigations.  The result was a scofflaw company that served our troops contaminated water through "incompetence and willful negligence." The real crime was that there was no reason to cut costs like most corporate raiders because the contract guaranteed a profit.  It was cost, plus 1%-3% profit precisely so this kind of thing wouldn't happen.

Water supply problems plagued another one of these no-bid multi-national government contractors in the Katrina aftermath.  IAP World Services, headed by a former Halliburton executive is the company that took over operations at Walter Reed.  Before this, they were most noted for failing to make deliveries of ice to Katrina victims. The same neglect, the same company John Edwards cleaned up after in New Orleans looks to be the source of Walter Reed's problems.

On learning this, an outraged Henry Waxman, Chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, is quoted by ABC News: "THEY COULDN'T DELIVER ICE...NOW THEY ARE IN CHARGE OF SUPPORT SERVICES AT WALTER REED."  Indeed, their staffing of Walter Reed has directly resulted in the "exodus of 'highly skilled and experienced personnel'," and only 50 are doing the work of 300 who used to be on the federal payroll.

DailyKOS diarist Greatbasin2 tracks the Who's Who of this Halliburton "spin off firm."

And, when one starts turning over rocks what should come into view but an A-76 military contract with IAP Worldwide Service, [IAP] which took a $120 million contract to run portions of the WRAH services for facilities management. Immediately after the awarding of the contract the facilities management staff was reduced to 50 privately employed workers. The CEO of IAP Worldwide is Al Neffgen, who previously served as COO of Government and Infrastructure for the Americas Region of Kellogg Brown and Root. The President of IAP Worldwide is Dave Swindle, formerly the vice president of Business Acquisition and National Security Programs at the Halliburton subsidiary KBR. Charles F. Dominy, IAP vice president in charge of government affairs, formerly served as as the manager of Halliburton's Government Affairs Office in Washington, D.C. [IAP]

Fledermaus' KOS diary noted that outsourcing more and more government services is standard procedure for the Bush Administration according to the Washington Business Journal:

While federal outsourcing isn't new, "the Bush administration has been more aggressive in outsourcing all nonessential services," says Ray Bjorklund, chief knowledge officer for FedSources, a McLean market research firm. "The concept is to go ahead and outsource that stuff so you can concentrate on the core mission."

The Army started a basewide review of Walter Reed in June 2000. The sweeping evaluation of more than 1,100 jobs finally narrowed its focus to an estimated 350 mostly blue-collar maintenance jobs.

Fledermaus would have been delighted to learn of the Halliburton connection.  But this simply proves my point in several previous blog entries -- this is a feature, not a bug, of the neo-conservative ideology that the best government is no government, or one so in debt it can do little else than buy and resell weapons systems and pay the interest on its debt.

An added bonus, another feature if you will, is the lack of accountability.  When things go wrong, as they are bound to do, this growth pang of the transformation of our government into nothing more than an armed guard for the interest of corporative shareholders, outsourced and incompetent to do little else -- no elected official needs take any blame.  Especially immune are members of the executive branch since budgets and oversight are the prerogative of Congress.  No kickbacks necessary since the administration official making the deal will find K-Street lobby firms waiting with open arms to further exploit their connections once they leave government service.

Smintheus' Diary goes into great detail (seriously, read it over) about the privatization phenomenon, Walter Reed and IAP, including updated information and links about the whole affair.  It's in this diary we also learn that Former Treasury Secretary John "Outsourcing is Good" Snow, and Dan Quayle are involved in the company.

(Thanks to Sally Baughn for giving me a heads up about the Halliburton connection and making me dig a little further.)

Here Come The Subpoenas

The Hill News, via Truthout

Democrats send out first round of subpoenas
By Susan Crabtree

A House Judiciary subcommittee approved today the first in what is expected to be an avalanche of subpoenas to Bush administration officials. They will likely explore corruption and mismanagement allegations on everything from pre-war Iraq intelligence to the mishandling of the response to Hurricane Katrina.

The first round of subpoenas concern the recent controversial firings by the Bush administration of seven U.S. attorneys, some of whom were pursuing public corruption cases against Republican members of Congress.

You might want to stock up on popcorn this weekend.

The only question is, will we get a verdict in the Libby case before the hearings start on Tuesday?

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Maliki Government In Last Throws, Protects Rapists

I know, when the going gets tough ... yadda, yadda...

I'll tell you what folks -- NOBODY VOTED FOR THIS:

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki fired a top Sunni official who had called for an international investigation into the rape allegations leveled by a Sunni Arab woman against three members of the Shiite-dominated security forces.

A statement by al-Maliki's office gave no reason in announcing the dismissal of Ahmed Abdul-Ghafour al-Samaraie, head of the Sunni Endowments. Al-Samaraie, whose organization cares for Sunni mosques and shrines in Iraq, had joined other prominent Sunnis in criticizing the government's handling of the case. (…)

Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell, the chief U.S. military spokesman, said the woman was admitted to a U.S.-run medical facility Sunday and was released the next day. He refused to divulge details of her medical treatment or examination for privacy reasons, and said she left the hospital with her medical reports.

Caldwell also told reporters that Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, ordered an inquiry into the case and appointed an investigating officer who already has begun collecting information on the allegations.

Maliki absolved the accused men less than a day after accusations were raising, claiming that Sabrine's medical examination showed no evidence of sexualt assault. This, however, contradicts NYT reporting, which cites the nurse who examined Sabrine immediately after the incident as saying that her body displayed evidence of physical and sexual abuse.

Protecting rapists is not what we are sending out children to die for. THIS is not what we are bankrupting our treasury for.

The word "outrage" seems inadequate. We cannot possibly be expected to support an Iraqi government that won't even permit a rape investigation to go forward.

Inconceivable.

The writing is on the wall now. In any kind of accountable, representative government, this would be the end of the Prime Minister's career.

There is every possibility that is will be the end of the Iraqi government. If there is any justice in the world, it will be. Maliki and all who follow him no longer have any moral authority whatsoever.

Greenwald: Rahm Emanuel Lied? Duh!

It's rare that I disagree with Glenn Greenwald, who concludes Did Rahm Emanuel lie about his knowledge of Mark Foley? Yes.: "

Certainly Emanuel attempted to create a false impression while staying, repeatedly, on point -- clinging to the technically accurate, yet misleading, "Never saw them [the Foley E-Mails]."

Now it's being reported that, in fact, Emanuel had indeed heard of, but not seen the salacious propositions of Congressional Pages by the disgraced Congressman, the finger pointing towards a democratic party "dirty trick" releasing this to the press has more credibility.

Glenn asks us to look to the video of Emanuel on ABC where he's asked point-blank, several times, whether he was "aware" of the e-mails, to which he repeats that he "never saw them."

Independent of the question of whether Emaneul "technically lied" -- and far more important -- is the fact that Emanuel was clearly and deliberately misleading. Any reasonable person would have come away from that interview (as I know I did) with the strong impression that Emanuel was completely unaware of any e-mails sent by Foley to the pages, and that he had no reason to know anything was amiss with Foley until ABC broke the story.

Glenn, really? I'm astonished that a wise watcher of all things political couldn't instantly spot that this was weaseling behavior by the head of the DCCC from the get-go. Emanuel was obviously too Clintonesque in this interview.

That's what I took out of it when I saw it. But I also admired the lawyerly way Bill Clinton himself split the hair on the word "is" back in the day. What's not to admire about dexterous word-smiting.

It was quite obvious that Rahm Emanuel was being less than completely candid, and if you missed that, and are now indignant, start paying more attention. He may not have seen any evil, but he was certainly speaking a lot of evil, and now we know it was because he heard some evil.

Alcee

I had the distinct pleasure of learning the in's and out's of Federal Procedure from a Professor who served as one of Alcee Hasting's attorneys during his impeachment proceedings.  I don't claim any special insider knowledge of the case due to that relationship, except to the extent that I've been aware of the matter far longer than most of the public outside of South Florida.

Hasting's name always perks my ears up.  It's a fascinating case, and Hastings is truly a poster-child for the conflicting values of "innocent until proven guilty" and the idea that public figures must avoid "even the appearance of impropriety."

Not without irony do I make the comparison of the plight of Alcee Hastings with another infamous black resident of South Florida who was notoriously acquitted of criminal deeds, yet faces a life-time of persecution because he was punished in another judicial proceeding with a much lower burden of proof than that required to deprive someone of life, liberty or property.

Yep, I'm playing the O.J. card.


I do agree with E-pony Matt, along with Neil and even Stephen Kaus, but only in the conclusion they reach, not for the reasons that got them there.  Not for one minute.

I think that the cloud surrounding Hastings, the misinformation, sound-byte culture, and politics of personal destruction makes Alcee poison to Nancy Pelosi's agenda if she were to put him in a prominent role at this point in history.  It's the same logic that makes me withhold my support for Hillary Clinton -- why give the wingnuts an easy target?

But take a cruise down the intellectual exercise highway with me to stare in the face of hypocrisy as the law clashes with politics.

Bloggers should take the same care that traditional journalists are taught in making the important distinction between someone who is a criminal and those merely accused. Up until the day that the civil jury found O.J. Simpson "liable" for the deaths of his wife and her friend, any publication or broadcaster risked a defamation suit if they didn't interject the magic word, "alleged" when branding the former Heisman star a murderer.

However, once the civil jury found that he was "more than likely" guilty, despite being previously found "not absolutely certain to be" guilty -- you and I as well as CNN's Glenn Beck and Nancy Grace, Jay Leno, or any number of Fox News moral arbitrators were free to call O.J. a murderous scumbag to our hearts desire.

Alcee's "civil" conviction in the Senate, which removed him from the federal bench subsequent to his impeachment in the House of Representatives, hung on a far less burdensome standard of proof than O.J.'s civil trial -- which demanded a preponderance of the evidence.  Alcee's prosecutors, the House managers, only had to show to each individual member that it would be politically expedient to throw this particular bum out.

Now, to be fair, I more than likely would have voted with the majority (and a huge majority it was) to remove Hastings.  I take seriously the idea that a member of the bench must avoid even the appearance of impropriety -- and Hastings did appear to have been under an unacceptable cloud of improper behavior.  But, and this is key, it's horribly inconsistent and flies in the face of integrity for the same body that so overwhelmingly voted to impeach the Judge allowed that same man to sit with them as one of their members. (Note also that my standards are higher than the constitutionally described removal for cause -- guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors, but more akin to allowing the judge to serve only upon continued "good behavior".)

How do you justify this inconsistent result?  Beyond admiring Hasting's spunk to even try and get elected to Congress after going through the ignominy of a successful impeachment, his obvious popularity in his district cannot be enough to overcome the idea that so many of his colleagues must believe that they are sitting next to a man without scruples -- that or something has changed.

Like the Senate, the House is constitutionally empowered to determine the qualifications of its own membership.  Because of this, prevention of a previously impeached judge to sit as a Representative is a simple matter of majority rule.  By a vote of 413 to 3, the House saw fit to impeach Hastings, yet when it came time to approve of the voters' decision to rehabilitate his political career, they could not muster half that many to refuse his admission.

That result is inexplicable -- except for one thing, political expedience.  There's never been a civil trial of Hasting's case.  He was never given the opportunity to vindicate himself in such a setting, or be found liable like O.J.  In fact, you might note that his Senate trial was particularly unorthodox in that he was not tried in front of the entire Senate as would be proper under the Constitution, but only a Senate committee.

You might also note that the Senate would have been well within it's rights to forbid Hastings from ever seeking a federal office again, but again, inexplicably, they chose not to.

The burden of proof in his impeachment proceedings was left entirely up to the conscious of the Members.  The extent of the punishment was not subject to any mandated guidelines, but again, up to the whim of each Senator on that committee.

Now, just looking at the results, not the evidentiary minutiae of circumstance -- acquittal in criminal court -- 413-3 impeachment vote by a body that freely accepted him as a member when it could have refused by a simple majority 3 years later -- removal by committee which avoided a trial before the full Senate -- 12 years tenure in the House as a result of a loyal constituency -- rising to a position of distinction in the Intelligence Committee solely due to his seniority and presumed merit, Alcee Hastings absolutely deserves to be committee chair.  His predicament is entirely the creation of raw political self-interest of a Congress that never, ever thought it would have to deal with him again.  Who never thought they'd have to deal with the hypocrisy of their own indifference.

Unfortunately, for those very same reasons, because of self-interested political realities, Alcee Hastings cannot be allowed to become the lightning rod for accusations of Democratic party corruption by Republicans desperate to find any absolution mitigating their historically corrupt turn at the levers of power.

After all, you wouldn't let O.J. date your daughter, would you?

Looney Libs

My good friend (we call him "Brain") is a full-time, bona fide scientist and admitted "loony liberal."  (I have pictures to prove it.)  Not content with his studies in meteorology, he became a climatologist.  He once told me he'd rather study what the weather was yesterday, instead of predicting what it's going to be tomorrow.  I suspect it was the easy way out -- but that's another story.

He wrote me today about wishing he lived in a more competitive congressional district, just to get in the trenches.  Dennis Kucinich represents "Brain," and like my Rep., Marcie Kaptur, our views couldn't be better represented in Congress.  I used to be represented by Stephanie Tubbs-Jones who was Stephen Colbert's first "Better Know A District" guest.  Great lady.

Nobody can ever beat these fine Congress Critters because they're that good, that committed, and that right on the issues that matter.  Take this news about the former Cleveland Mayor known as Dennis The Menace:

Joshua Scheer: Rep. Kucinich: America Needs Iraq War Hearings:... (more under the fold)

In an original Truthdig interview, Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), the potential next chair of the Government Reform Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats, and International Relations, calls for congressional hearings into how and why America invaded Iraq, and demands 'accountability' for those who led America into a 'war based on lies.'

[snip]

KUCINICH: I've had a plan to get us out of Iraq from the minute we got there. I've had it on my website for three years--elements of which are still very viable. It calls for the U.S. to give up its control of the oil assets to move towards soliciting U.N. involvement.

[snip]

And people have to be held accountable. You can't lead this country into a war that has lost thousands of U.S. troops and perhaps hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis, [and that has] cost the American taxpayers $400 billion--and maybe up to $2 trillion--and leave it with some kind of blithe apology. There has to be accountability. When the people elected Democrats, they also voted for accountability.

[snip]

We'll never be able to bring closure to this Iraq matter unless we tell the truth about what happened. So America needs a new approach of truth and reconciliation. This isn't a Democratic or Republican matter. This is a matter that relates to the conscience of this country. This is a matter of the heart--the heart of democracy itself. This is a matter of whether we're going to a sober reflection about the events that have transpired since 9/11, with respect to Iraq. And until we do this, we will be trapped not only physically in Iraq, we'll be trapped emotionally and spiritually in Iraq. We may never get out of Iraq if we don't tell the truth.

There shouldn't be any partisan direction on this. We should all be together. America wants a new direction in Iraq; it stated it loud and clear. It wants a Congress that's going to question the president, not a rubber-stamp Congress. This is a time to tell the truth and to heal our nation. And the time for Congress to function as a co-equal branch of government and for the government to function as it was intended to function.

(And by the way, "Brain" sez it's getting hotter and we're all gonna die from global warming unless we legalize pot -- or something like that.)