Minority rules

Karl Rove wanted a permanent Republican majority. How passé!

Republicans have long known how to cripple the Senate with a minority of votes, exploiting the filibuster in complete departure from tradition and custom. They've taken a tool of respect and politesse and rendered it as a pillory on the Capitol lawn for ideas they don't like - that is, most of them.

Republicans have figured out how to win the House of Representatives without winning a majority of votes.

The report credits gerrymandered maps in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin with allowing Republicans to overcome a 1.1 million popular-vote deficit. In Ohio, for instance, Republicans won 12 out of 16 House races “despite voters casting only 52 percent of their vote for Republican congressional candidates.” The situation was even more egregious to the north. “Michiganders cast over 240,000 more votes for Democratic congressional candidates than Republicans, but still elected a 9-5 Republican delegation to Congress.”

Republicans are now working to exploit their successful 2010 gerrymandering in the 2016 Presidential election:

Earlier this week, Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus endorsed a Republican plan to rig the next presidential election to make it nearly impossible for the Democratic candidate to win the White House, no matter who the American people vote for. The election-rigging plan, which would allocate electoral votes by congressional district rather than by states as a whole in a handful of states that consistently vote for Democratic presidential candidates, would have allowed Mitt Romney to narrowly win the Electoral College last November despite losing the popular vote by nearly four points.

If you think the GOP won't try their damnedest to make this happen, despite the obvious likelihood of perennial "victories" by the minority of voters over the majority, you really haven't been paying attention. Were you living in an alternate universe with President Gore?

What do Republicans mean when they tell us we live in a republic, not a democracy? Republicanz rool! Democrats have to be beaten by any means necessary.

Now, about impeachment of President Obama for the completely ordinary act of issuing Executive Orders...

Operation Blackbriar

We don't know what this program was. They tell us it wasn't waterboarding or the other torture methods. (You do realize that "harsh interrogation methods" is a euphemism worthy of the Nazis or the Soviets, right?) They tell us it wasn't the massive surveillance that essentially rendered the Fourth Amendment so much empty language.

They also tell us that it was never an "operational" program, even after nearly eight years. Oh, bullshit. To believe that, you'd have to have your head buried so far up your ass that it would be looking out your navel.

Dick Cheney, the true power of Duhbya's maladministration, ordered this program kept secret from Congress, kept immune from the oversight of democracy. He explicitly evaded the rule of law. (Again!) This was - and still is - the canonical impeachable offense. It's also a violation of his oath of office.

There is no way that Darth Cheney would have been interested enough in "planning and some training that took place off and on from 2001 until this year" to suppress disclosure of it. The New York Times is playing along to even print such nonsense.

Note: In all the wingnut foofaraw about Nancy Pelosi accusing Leon Panetta of lying about the CIA's legal obligations to brief Congress is the most obvious bullshit. Panetta did not say the CIA always briefed Congress in compliance with its legal obligations. He said that it was not the CIA's policy to withhold legally required briefings. Is everyone in the media too dense - or too happy to play along with the inside game - to notice this?

(h/t Boston Globe, where I first read the Times report on this)

Kicking the can

I'm with Glenn Greenwald on war crimes. Punishing them deserves a lot more than lip service, which is all we're getting from President Obama.

My guess is that Obama decided he could have his political agenda or he could have legal accountability for the prolific crimes of Duhbya's administration, and he decided to work his agenda. Unfortunately, he seems to be getting neither.

For me, the rule of law is what the United States is about. We've tried before to welcome Republicans back to the straight and narrow, but they've repeatedly interpreted the lack of prison time as exoneration - Watergate and its associated abuses, Iran-Contra, and now all the megalomaniacal abuses of the Constitution of the Cheney years. If some of these people don't do hard time, they'll be back the next time the Republicans hold power.

Meanwhile, Democratic abuses that aren't even close to official crimes, even low ones, bring impeachment. Yet any attempt to investigate, try, and hopefully convict and punish Republican abscesses in the core of our legal system is roundly decried by media and Republicans alike as "criminalizing policy disputes." The absurdity of that claim is breath-taking.

(h/t Jay Ackroyd at Atrios)

Tough choices

Penélope Cruz on Leno vs. Rod Blagojevich on Letterman? Easy.

Democrats faced with corruption of one of their own (swift impeachment) vs. Republicans faced with dereliction of the sworn duty of one of their own (crickets). Easy.

So why is it still tough for the elite media and the Rush Limbaugh deadenders to choose wisely?

Off his nut

When I previously said that I thought Rod Blagojevich (D-Outer Space) was bipolar, I was having some fun (although I did think it was possible). Now, I think he'll be on lithium before his daughter's birthday, although he'll be out of office and possibly hospitalized. Ironic that the Globe's headline refers to "Ill governor". (I omitted the period for rhetorical purposes.)

Bipolar is a serious illness. My late uncle and a friend have suffered from it. The manias lead to otherwise unaccountable behavior such as Blagojevich's. It's his last chance to be on talk shows! Never mind that his life is burning to the ground around him.

Like that'll ever happen

If Republicans really want "to erase any remnant of the Bush legacy," it should be easy for them to push forward impeachment, even at this late date. Make Nancy Pelosi take a stand!

Yeah, right.

It is remarkable to hear Newt Gingrich posing for the cameras as a moderate member of the loyal opposition:

“I think the party should be very selective,” he said. “We’ve had an election. The new president and his family should be in our prayers. We should give every indication that we will work with him when we can. But we should be comfortable disagreeing with him when we have to.”

The key words, though, are "give every indication". For Newt, this is about appearance, not reality.

Bursting the snark bubble

Jack Cafferty tries to find a question to ask that won't get so many damn reader comments: What will you miss about Duhbya?

Even his punctuality got annoying after eight long years. I kept hoping he wouldn't show up at all. Now, if only he'd leave early!

Of course, Jack still gets a lot of comments, even though the Republican partisans are mostly lying low. There's a firm consensus that snark is the proper response to this question, with strong currents of sympathy for Jon Stewart and Frank Caliendo (of FrankTV). Personally, I think those guys are talented enough do fine even if Caliendo has to figure out how to make his ears more prominent. It's guys like me who may have more trouble with the bursting of the tremendous bubble that currently exists in the snark market.

Of the comments I read, my favorite is:

I will miss hoping that he would be held accountable for his actions and ultimately impeached!

So this is a shout-out to Teasha in Florida, who posted that.

Happy Resignation Day

I admit to some small nostalgia for the 1970s, when the Constitution was preserved, when many Republicans could be and were responsible, when Democrats stood up for themselves and the nation. Richard Nixon was rightly hounded from office on this day in 1974. Then age 16, I had watched his typically bullshit-filled resignation speech the night before, but nowadays I have to give even Nixon credit for two things:

• The country was indeed better off for his resignation, rather than the sure impeachment and conviction that would otherwise have followed.
• He was, it turns out, not the worst the Republican Party could foist upon America with divisive and dishonest manipulation and appeals to the worst in us.

Unfortunately, the young Republicans of the time didn't learn to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution and the law against their own impulses and will to power. Instead, the lesson they took from White House tapes and Federal Court processes and Gerald Ford's pardon was to fight tooth and nail to keep their misdeeds in the dark.

Dick Cheney and the Bushists now claim openly the Nixonian theory that the President is above the law, as if we didn't evict George III for that exact sentiment - when he had a much better claim under the laws of the time. Darth and Duhbya claim to be above all checks and balances between elections, and the Constitution is honored in the breach if at all. Oh, and the full weight of the Republican political apparatus is doing everything it can, whether legitimate or not, to tilt those elections away from public opinion.

The young Democrats of the 1970s learned to be pussies. That one I don't understand at all.

Stagecraft - IOKIYAR

The Dems had a hearing (yes, this one) about Duhbya's undeniable abuses of executive power, and CNN of course declined to deal with the substance. Instead, Campbell Brown and Erica Hill superficially bantered about the stagecraft of the hearing. "A waste of taxpayers' money," opined Brown, and Hill agreed.

Yes, this was stagecraft, but it was about a very important issue. Did these two media suck-ups ever run down a Republican committee for its stagecraft? Chances are they lauded the Republicans for their unified political savvy.

Good faith torture

There is no end to the base corruption of our American ideals by the Bushist war criminals. CNN unhelpfully fails to link to the documents obtained by the ACLU, which are comically redacted almost to nothingness. Given what the Bushists admitted, it's hard to imagine what they censored.

The interrogator's "good faith" and "honest belief" that the interrogation will not cause such suffering protects the interrogator, the memo adds.

Jay Bybee thinks lack of specific intent to cause severe pain is exculpatory. Even if so, what about the second use? The torturers can hardly claim ignorance of the pain they're causing.

"Your honor, even though he screamed the first thirty-nine times I waterboarded him, I was sure it wouldn't hurt him the fortieth time."

Insane. Like the reasoning of a Soviet lawyer. Or a press release from Kim Il Sung.

And specific intent is inextricably a part of the first torture, too. The torturers specifically intended to use torture to force a prisoner to answer a question. For those of us who understand cause and effect normally, there's no separate proof: They chose these methods to elicit a response. It's not as though they just happened to waterboard prisoners because they didn't have anything else to do that day.

For this service to the Bushists, Bybee received a Federal Appeals Court judgeship. The least we can do is impeach the SOB for his crimes. And I don't care a whit if the Judiciary Committee glossed over them in 2004.

Making up the law

Can a man who obviously doesn't believe in law over necessity remain on the Supreme Court?

Supreme Court Justice Antonin M. Scalia echoed the administration's view when he said in a BBC Radio interview yesterday that some physical interrogation techniques could be used on a suspect in the event of an imminent threat, such as a hidden bomb about to blow up. "It would be absurd to say you couldn't do that," Scalia said. "And once you acknowledge that, we're into a different game: How close does the threat have to be? And how severe can the infliction of pain be?"

Never mind Scalia prejudging the case in favor of his political cronies, he plainly shows the willingness to make up the "law" as he goes. The whole doctrine of originalism, like rigid federalism, so zealously adhered to by Scalia and his ilk, can be discarded when necessary to achieve the "right" outcome. After Bush v. Gore, this shouldn't be a surprise.

What it should be is impeachable.

The impeachment remedy

Impeachment is a political remedy. It has due process trappings and procedural analogies to criminal procedure, but its only authorized punishment is removal from office and disqualification from eligibility for office, and it is specifically exempted from the prohibition against double jeopardy.

Impeachment was intended to be an extraordinary remedy, and that's why the Republicans were wrong to pursue it against Bill Clinton. If lying about blow jobs in Washington were extraordinary, we'd all know that the country was run by lesbians - and they'd be doing other things that the likes of Ken Starr would find unspeakable (but would document and footnote with prurient glee anyway).

The wimpy Washington Democrats have failed to make this distinction, too, or they would be able to distinguish between the Constitutional abuses of the Bushists and the marital abuses of the Clenis. Instead, Nancy and Harry let the conventional post-Democratic Beltway narrative and their own preference for playing it safe to bollix them.

Ironically, the Bushists' transparently bogus Constitutional interpretation of the Presidency constrains them to accept impeachment as political. If the President is immune from the law, as they have repeatedly claimed in a reprise of Nixonian defenses, impeachment is the only remedy between elections for an Executive run amok.

But logic and law don't work on these guys. Need an example? All the Republicans who pursued Clinton on grounds that no impact on government now blithely accept Duhbya and Darth's blanket claims of immunity.

The only goals the Bushist Republicans (practically speaking, all the party's officials) pursue consistently are their own power and tax cuts for the wealthy. When they have those, they don't need logic or law.

Originally a comment on Philosoraptor.

Moral clarity

George McGovern may be 85, but he still sees clearly and is willing to say what he thinks. Too bad Washington is not filled with people like him.

2008

Click image for full Mike Luckovich cartoon.

May we all have a healthy and prosperous new year. A few things I'm hoping for in 2008:

• Categorical rejection of Bushism at the polls
• Return to Constitutional government
• Some serious damn accountability that starts to put Republican criminals in jail
  
• Resolution of the debt crisis without a depression

I'd wish for a return from Iraq, but I know that's not possible without impeachment.

Most important personally, I hope for my daughter to get into the college of her dreams.

Oh, and no hangover tomorrow!

They don't care

The Bushists will do whatever they want to do. They will accept no legal or practical restraint from democracy. The Congress has three powers that matter:

• Impeachment
• Impeachment
• and impeachment

There has never in my lifetime been an administration as corrupted by its own lust for power as the Bush administration. Ollie North was not this corrupted by power. The Bushists all belong in jail.

If we Americans actually gave a shit about self-government, we wouldn't stand for this.

Oh, and by the way, if Dana Perino says that Duhbya has "no recollection", then he ordered the destruction of the video evidence of torture.

Freedom ain't free

While Ronald Taylor has been in prison for a crime that DNA says he didn't commit, O.J. Simpson, Robert Blake, and Phil Spector have beaten open and shut cases. And Duhbya and his doughty band of war criminals remain in unimpeached power, while Bill Clinton was impeached for lying about a blow job.

Taylor's take on justice for the poor:

"They don't have the finances. They don't have nobody to help them," he said. "I think something needs to be done about that."

Trust us

The White House will not permit any oversight or even transparency. The only remedy is to begin impeachment or to deny budget authority.

Note: This suit wants to apply FOIA to memos about the missing emails, not the missing emails themselves, which might contain a few justifiable secrets among the craven political calculations.

To impeach or not to impeach

The American Prospect (subscribe to the dead tree edition - I do) offers two liberal perspectives on impeachment:

• Harold Meyerson takes the point of view of the Democratic Congressional "leadership".
• Robert Kuttner argues for sterner stuff along lines I've walked before.

Both agree the Bushists deserve impeachment and removal for real and serious high crimes and misdemeanors. Meyerson spends a fair amount of copy trying to distract from the merits of the case against these witless would-be tyrants using humor. For me, he just wasn't funny enough to accomplish that.

Meyerson does admit:

This kind of assault on the Constitution is precisely what the founding fathers were guarding against when they crafted its language on impeachment.

Hard to argue with that...

Once the topic of just desserts is finally done, Meyerson starts with:

First, there's no way that there will be sufficient votes to remove Bush and Cheney from office.

Given the primary loyalty of Republicans to their party instead of their country and its ideals, this is true. It also doesn't matter. Politics is about drawing strong and definite distinctions between you and your opposition. John Kerry didn't have a clue about this in 2004, though he appears to have finally learned. Unfortunately, the Democratic caucuses haven't learned this obvious, elementary lesson. Maybe the Blue Dogs just don't want to learn, and the "leadership" lets them lead their more clued in caucus-mates around by the nose.

Democrats and liberals continue to labor under the misapprehension that they should be concerned with governance. This shows them to be slow learners - they've had a decade at least to cotton onto the idea that there is no compromise possible with this bunch of nefarious Republicans, instead only the chance of getting taken - again.

The political point of impeaching Duhbya is to tie his lousy, no-account ass around the deserving necks of every Republican who won't abandon the Bushist abrogation of the Constitution. The Constitutional point of impeaching the Bushists is of course more important - and more obvious.

Meyerson's second reason not to impeach is that Nancy Pelosi would become President and that this would boomerang with the electorate. Uh, wouldn't this only be possible if conviction were possible in the Senate? No matter, I have a rejoinder: Impeachment could boomerang if it were an elite process inflicted upon the country. Democrats need to convince their constituents that impeachment is a necessity of our democracy. Shouldn't that fundamental principle be obvious?

If Pelosi's succession were still a problem, there is no reason not to make a suitable compromise. Tell President Cheney that he can only escape war crimes prosecution if he appoints Chuck Hagel president before resigning. He can only pardon himself for violations of U.S. law.

Third, Meyerson says, the precedent set by changing the party in command of the Executive Branch via impeachment would be bad. This is exactly wrong. The Founders put this remedy in place for that very need. If that is a reason not to impeach Duhbya and Darth, it's a reason not to impeach any President or Vice President ever.

It's no wonder Meyerson writes a column for the Washington Post.

Today's comments

On Philosoraptor:

As I watch Gonzales (until my own retching distracts me), I see a man supremely confident of his safety and position. He knows Duhbya has his back personally.

Rummy may have been arrogant, but he didn't have this same confidence, even though he was a Cheney man. Maybe being a Cheneyite made Rummy know that he was disposable at some level. Scooter Libby surely knows that.

I don't think Duhbya would initiate a plan to scooterize his own wounds by sacrificing Gonzo. Rove might, however, and no matter what Gonzo might think as a loyal courtier, Rove is the only indispensable staffer in the White House.

Inertia is a more likely reason for Gonzo's thumb in Congress's eye. The Bushists are so used to giving everyone the finger they can't stop.

Impeaching Gonzales would make impeachment of Duhbya and Darth more likely, not less. Get a little momentum going, turn over more rocks, and find the inevitable dirty dealings, and there will be more popular pressure for a real remedy.

Will it be enough? I only hope so.

Outrage needs a good night's sleep

There's never a day the Bushists don't deserve my outrage, but some days I'm just too tired of it to wax choleric. Alberto Gonzales is a disgrace to lawyers everywhere. Are there enough Republican Senators who might be proud enough and conscientious enough to impeach a man who openly lies in their faces and dares them to do anything about it?

Democrats should gore them on the horns of that dilemma.