Friday, November 23, 2007

The Obsession of Conservatives

So I'm just poking around the Series of Tubes, Not Trucks on my Thanksgiving Break, and I stumble upon this little nugget from the Conservative alternative to the perceived liberal bias of Wikipedia:

Seriously. I couldn't make up a top ten list like that.


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Posted by Jason Allen at 8:10 PM | | Comments  

Thursday, November 08, 2007

Congressional Wish List

Start Bringing The Iraq War To A Close

While Bush and his accomplices on the right argue that Congress has no authority to meddle in one of the worst foreign policy blunders of a generation, the Constitution, and the founding fathers, disagree. Congress controls the budget, and while Republicans cry foul if this is ever discussed, the power was intentionally given to the legislative branch. James Madison, author of what I believe to be the most impressive of the Federalist Papers (#51), stated that controlling the purse strings provides “the most complete and effectual weapon with which any constitution can arm the immediate representatives of the people, for obtaining a redress of every grievance, and for carrying into effect every just and salutary measure.”


Reject Judge Mukasey

As discussed in a previous blog, our nation's top lawyer should not argue that the President is exempt from laws he feels limit his Constitutional authority. This President believes that as Commander-in-Chief, he is able to lawfully detain people in secret prisons, wiretap without warrants, and torture detainees. He should also be able to admit that waterboarding is torture. Daniel Levin, a former Department of Justice official who underwent the waterboarding process, wrote in a December 2004 DoJ memo that "conduct intended to cause 'severe physical suffering'" is prohibited. It cannot be argued that waterboarding does not violate that DoJ legal interpretation.

Initiate Impeachment Proceedings

As Rachel Maddow said on MSNBC's Countdown With Keith Olbermann, (Video At Bottom Of Blog), "The reason you impeach somebody is not because you hate them, or because they're a bad guy. You impeach somebody because you want to save their office, because you respect their office and you respect the Constitution that granted the powers to that office that exist."
FISA made it a criminal offense to wiretap Americans without judicial oversight. President Bush himself said that the NSA Terrorist Surveillance Program wouldn't work with FISA, so he ignored FISA. He is on record admitting that he willfully broke the law. I can think of no other example where a sitting President confessed to an impeachable offense, let alone suffered no consequences.


Add to that how he blatantly lied to the American people about judicial oversight before the program's existence was revealed when he said "Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so. It's important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution." One of the articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon simply said "making or causing to be made false or misleading public statements for the purpose of deceiving the people of the United States." And let's not forget why FISA came into existence in the first place...



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Posted by Jason Allen at 1:43 AM | | Comments  

Sunday, November 04, 2007

New Attorney General Same As The Old Attorney General

My personal fall recess has come to an end, and apparently just in time to see Mukasey receive Senate approval for the recently vacated Attorney General spot. Lucky me.





The first problem, although not the most significant, is that this guy doesn't know if waterboarding is torture. It was a war crime fifty years ago when we sentenced Yukio Asano to fifteen years of hard labor for, among other things, waterboarding. Two decades later on January 21st, 1968, this photo of an American soldier waterboarding a Vietnamese POW graced the cover of The Washington Post:




That soldier was court-martialed less than a month later. Thirty years later, a potential Attorney General is still unclear on the issue? Quite unimpressive, and also a bit scary. The Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 that President Bush signed says that no "treatment or punishment prohibited by the Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteen Amendments" can be used on those in our custody. If the administration is allowing detainees to be waterboarded, then they must also believe that the technique doesn't violate the Constitution, and can also be used on citizens. To argue otherwise would mean that they are intentionally violating the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005.

While Mukasey's refusal to call waterboarding torture is foolish, it isn't his most significant failing. As Russ Feingold said in a statement released on Sunday, the Attorney General nominee is "unwilling to reject the extreme and dangerous theories of executive power that this administration has put forward."

During his testimony a few weeks ago, Mukasey was considerate enough to say that "the President doesn't stand above the law." Unfortunately, he went on to say that the President doesn't need to obey all laws. He instead says that it depends "on whether what goes outside the statute nonetheless lies within the authority of the president to defend the country."

Jed Rubenfield wrote in The New York Times that:

According to Judge Mukasey’s statement, as well as other parts of his testimony, the president’s authority “to defend the nation” trumps his obligation to obey the law. Take the federal statute governing military commissions in Guantánamo Bay. No one, including the president’s lawyers, argues that this statute is unconstitutional. The only question is whether the president is required to obey it even if in his judgment the statute is not the best way “to defend the nation.”

If he is not, we no longer live under the government the founders established.

Under the American Constitution, federal statutes, not executive decisions in the name of national security, are “the supreme law of the land.” It’s that simple. So long as a statute is constitutional, it is binding on everyone, including the president.

Mukasey also frequently refers to "the gap between where FISA left off and where the Constitution permitted the President to act." This sounds remarkably similar to Gonzo's stance that the Constitution made FISA approval unnecessary. Apparently, this warrantless wiretapping program was so far into the realm of being legal that the Bush administration is continuing to demand retroactive immunity to telecom companies. Oddly, they don't see any disconnect between demanding immunity and their claims that no laws were broken. The only comments Mukasey has made on this program appear to indicate he shares the White House philosophy that if the President does it, it can't be illegal.

John W. Dean last week wrote of the parallels between this situation and that of Nixon:

Nixon’s Attorney General had been removed (and was later prosecuted for lying to Congress) – a situation not unlike Alberto Gonzales’s leaving the job under such a cloud. Nixon was under deep suspicion of covering up the true facts relating to the bungled break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate, not to mention widespread rumors that he had engaged in abuses of power and corrupt campaign practices. Today, Bush is under even deeper suspicion for activities far more serious than anything Nixon engaged in for there is evidence Bush has abused the laws of war, violated treaties, and ordered (or approved) the use of torture and political renditions, which are war crimes.

Since Judge Mukasey’s situation is not unlike that facing Elliot Richardson when he was appointed Attorney General during Watergate, why should not the Senate Judiciary Committee similarly make it a quid pro quo for his confirmation that he appoint a special prosecutor to investigate war crimes? Richardson was only confirmed when he agreed to appoint a special prosecutor, which, of course, he did. And when Nixon fired that prosecutor, Archibald Cox, it lead to his impeachment.

Now that's something I could get behind.

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Posted by Jason Allen at 9:08 PM | | Comments  

Thursday, October 25, 2007

Paul Wellstone

On the 5th Anniversary of the death of Paul Wellstone, it seems fitting to post his floor speech expressing his opposition to the Iraq War:




Blogging as usual will pick up again next week...


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Posted by Jason Allen at 7:00 PM | | Comments  

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Video Analysis of GOP Presidential Candidates

YouTube has not been kind to the GOP Presidential candidates this election...

Here is Giuliani, the GOP frontrunner, distancing himself from the GOP:



Uh, I th-think that, uh, this...sec-second place guy...uh, is m-maybe not the, uh, next Reagan: (This covers 14% of his face time in his first debate)


Here is the third place GOP candidate affirming his long history of supporting a woman's right to choose, plus a heart-felt about why he thinks Roe v. Wade should be upheld:


Here is John McCain telling America that the Iraq War would be easy, even though he "knew all along it would be tough:"



Here is Mike Huckabee congratulating Canada on preserving their capitol building, which is a scale model of Arkansas' capitol building, but made of ice (At the end of the video):



Thank God for the Democratic Party.


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Posted by Jason Allen at 4:08 PM | | Comments