J. Edgar Bush

Apologies to those of you who dislike political posts, but there’s too much going on lately for me to ignore.

Meet the Bobbsie twins:

Props to Senate Democrats for growing a pair (several pairs, actually) yesterday. They defeated the extension of George W. Bush’s Patriot Act, and thank heavens for that.

Snip from the Yahoo News article linked above:

“We need to be more vigilant,” agreed Sen. John Sununu, a Republican from New Hampshire, where the state motto is “Live Free or Die.” He quoted Benjamin Franklin: “Those that would give up essential liberty in pursuit of a little temporary security deserve neither liberty nor security.”

Meanwhile, as long as we’re on the subject of liberty, Dubya is taking some much-needed heat for his program of warrantless wiretaps of American citizens. Bipartisan disgust in Little Brother’s tactics will undoubtedly lead to Congressional hearings. Another snip from Yahoo News:

“There is no doubt that this is inappropriate,” declared Republican Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He promised hearings early next year.

This 2002 article at the History News Network, entitled “J. Edgar Ashcroft?” by Marjorie Cohn, covers the comparison of Hoover’s America versus America post-9/11. We’ve learned a lot since then; perhaps most significantly, we’ve learned that Bush himself authored many of the current civil rights violations.

Full coverage at The Huffington Post, with interesting commentary at The Washington note here and here. Finally, over at Daily Kos, SusanG reports that in Bush’s radio address, “Bush acknowledged authorizing warrantless eavesdropping on U.S. citizens more than a dozen times – and he vowed to continue to do so.”

Snip:

“This authorization is a vital tool in our war against the terrorists. It is critical to saving American lives. The American people expect me to do everything in my power, under our laws and Constitution, to protect them and their civil liberties and that is exactly what I will continue to do as long as I am president of the United States,” Bush said.

Protect them and their civil liberties? No one’s buying it, Little Brother.

D.

Technorati tags:
patriot act, Civil Liberties, bush, wiretap, J. Edgar Hoover

Just a piece of paper

(Update from Blue Gal:

“Posted this story to Daily Kos and immediately got 8 or 9 comments asking me to delete my post because CapitolBlue is not a reliable source, fwiw. Standing by my own comments, though.”

Guess we’ll know in the next day or two if this story has legs.)

Blue Gal, I don’t know how you do it, but this story you’ve sniffed out is truly remarkable.

From Doug Thompson’s post (Capitol Hill Blue):

GOP leaders told Bush that his hardcore push to renew the more onerous provisions of the [Patriot] act could further alienate conservatives still mad at the President from his botched attempt to nominate White House Counsel Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court.

“I don’t give a goddamn,” Bush retorted. “I’m the President and the Commander-in-Chief. Do it my way.”

“Mr. President,” one aide in the meeting said. “There is a valid case that the provisions in this law undermine the Constitution.”

“Stop throwing the Constitution in my face,” Bush screamed back. “It’s just a goddamned piece of paper!”

Be sure to read Thompson’s whole story, as well as Blue Gal’s commentary (both linked above). I’ve been too busy to see if Kos & the rest have picked this up yet, but . . . amazing, if true.

So . . . consider this story as a thoroughly unverified allegation. I’ll yank it if the story falls through.

D.

Saving Gotham

D r i f t g l a s s has a stirring meditation this morning on the State of the Union, with reference to the Batman mythos:

And if one were inclined in that direction, one could also see it [Batman Begins] as a Lost Liberal Parable for the 21st Century.

Thomas Wayne, who “nearly bankrupted Wayne Enterprises fighting poverty during the Depression” as the only-dimly-remembered Good Liberal Father (or perhaps even a genuine Compassionate Conservative, a species long gone extinct in our dark lands.)

A city that has lost faith in its own vision of itself.

A government where good men still exist, but corruption has so riddled its bones that even if the wanted to clean it up, “in a town this dirty, who’s there left to rat to?” When the President and all of his Men are rotting this nation from the head down, that sentiment could not be more apropos.

Read the whole post (link above).

I feel the darkness closing in, but I, too, refuse to give up hope.

D.

Bob Herbert on Jack Murtha

T r u t h o u t has reprinted in full Bob Herbert’s NY Times Op-Ed piece on the Murtha debate. The drumbeat is getting louder, folks. When Condi Rice starts talking about troop withdrawal, you know the writing is on the wall.

Herbert’s conclusion is worth emphasizing (ah, but I fear I’m preaching to the choir):

We need to cut our losses in Iraq. The folly of the Bush crowd and its apologists is now plain for all to see. Congressman Murtha is right, the war is not sustainable. Even Republicans in Congress are starting to bail out on this impossible mission. They’re worried – not about the welfare of the troops, but about their chances in the 2006 elections.

To continue sending people to their deaths under these circumstances is worse than pointless, worse than irresponsible. It’s a crime of the most grievous kind.

Amen. And, may I add, it would be nice to see the responsible parties punished for their crimes?

D.

Technorati tags: bob herbert, Iraq War, Condi Rice

Your morning dose of Rich

To Live and Shave in LA (great blog name, eh?) has reprinted NY Times’ Frank Rich’s Op Ed piece, Dishonest, Reprehensible, Corrupt . . . It’s behind the NY Times Select firewall, which I won’t pay for (Judy Miller) on general principle (Judy Miller).

Rich does his usual fine job summarizing the Administration’s falsehoods vis a vis the run up to war. To someone who has been following the news, there’s no new material here. Yet the punch line, delivered in the last two paragraphs, warrants emphasis. Quick snip:

“No debate about the past, of course, can undo the mess that the administration made in Iraq. But the past remains important because it is a road map to both the present and the future. Leaders who dissembled then are still doing so. [My emphasis — D.] Indeed, they do so even in the same speeches in which they vehemently deny having misled us then – witness Mr. Bush’s false claims about what prewar intelligence was seen by Congress and Mr. Cheney’s effort last Monday to again conflate the terrorists of 9/11 with those “making a stand in Iraq.” . . . . These days Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney routinely exaggerate the readiness of Iraqi troops, much as they once inflated Saddam’s W.M.D.’s.”

Did Cheney really think he could say, “We’re not going to sit by and let them rewrite history” and not expect it to get thrown back into his face?

Those who forget history . . .

On that last note, Rich offers up an interesting tidbit (which was news to me):

As Scott Shane reported in The New York Times last month, Vietnam documents are now off limits, too: the National Security Agency won’t make public a 2001 historical report on how American officials distorted intelligence in 1964 about the Gulf of Tonkin incident for fear it might “prompt uncomfortable comparisons” between the games White Houses played then and now to gin up wars.

It wasn’t that long ago that the victor had free rein to write its own history. Bush and Cheney think that rule still applies; but this is the Information Age, and history will not be written, rewritten, edited, or fabricated by the hands of a few dishonest men.

More from me later, droogs.

D.

Technorati tags: Frank Rich, Bush, Cheney