Dirty baker's dozen

Salon summarizes the case for some domestic high-value detainees. No, not a case for torturing them, only the case for detaining them.

Making a get out of jail free card from bullshit

In this case, Mukasey is trying to create the presumption of good faith on the part of John Yoo, Alberto Gonzales, David Addington, Jay Bybee, William J. Haynes, et al. They were just advocating what they thought was legal for their client, the quivering cowardly mass of abject Bushists.

Yeah, sure.

They were rationalizing torture with creative legalisms that they knew were wrong.

Constitution back in force!

Like a rabid dog to raw meat, Judicial Watch announced this week that Hillary Clinton is forbidden by the Constitution from serving as Secretary of State:

Article I, Section 6 of the Constitution says the following: "No Senator or Representative shall, during the time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil office under the authority of the United States, which shall have been created, or the emoluments whereof shall have been increased during such time."

...

In January, President Bush signed an executive order increasing the salary for the secretary of state and other Cabinet positions by $4,700.

Executive order? The Constitution was written under the assumption that Congress held the purse strings. Article I, section 6 was an anti-corruption measure. Of course, Duhbya was probably granted the power to give Cabinet raises as part of a deal to piggyback Congressional raises without actually having to vote on them, since they're always unpopular with everyone who makes less - most of us. Or maybe Duhbya just arrogated it, and no one stopped him.

Wouldn't that violation of separation of powers be something more important for Judicial Watch to care about? (Only the Supremes might well have rubberstamped it since I think their salaries were included in the escalator clause.)

The Constitution's words, of course, do matter, even when raised by these guys. Though Hillary did not participate in the increased emolument to the Secretary of State, it did happen. There is no reason, however, that this possible defect can't be cured by a simple reduction to the previous level of pay. Since there's no corruption here, even that may not be necessary.

I guess Larry Klayman's Clinton Derangement Syndrome wasn't cured by eight years of Bushism! He hates him some Clinton.

The oddest thing is that Darth Cheney's election in 2000 was clearly unconstitutional, and nary a peep from Judicial Watch. Unless you bought his bullshit show of journeying back to Wyoming to register to vote there, the reality was that Cheney could not receive the electoral votes of Texas, due to the 12th Amendment:

The Electors shall meet in their respective states and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves.

In the absence of a majority of electoral votes for Vice President, the Senate should have had to choose between Darth and Joe Lieberman, no matter how much a Hobson's choice the intervening eight years have revealed that to be.

I do have to thank Judicial Watch for one thing: Article I, section 6 proves that the Cheney-Addington theory of the fourth branch is not just bunk under any commonsense interpretation of the Constitution. It also violates the black and white text within the four corners of the document:

[N]o Person holding any Office under the United States, shall be a Member of either House during his Continuance in Office.

Oops! The VP is prohibited from being a member of Congress. Next theory!

Foolish of me to fight this old battle, though. With a Democrat back in the White House, of course the limits to Presidential power are back in force.

More on the Constitution or lack thereof here.

Conscience-free

Duhbya can sleep at night because he lacks any conscience. He can't find any humanity in his enemies. They aren't people. He doesn't just despise them, he thoroughly hates them. He is, like so many others, a Christian in name only.

Duhbya and Darth Cheney and David Addington and John Yoo and Donald Rumsfeld have loosed on our enemies torture. That word is its due and the least we can offer to describe waterboarding. Christopher Hitchens may be easily despised in other venues, but this is how he puts it:

You may have read by now the official lie about this treatment, which is that it “simulates” the feeling of drowning. This is not the case. You feel that you are drowning because you are drowning...

Many times before we have described this as torture, as we were learning it from Communist enemies practicing it on us in Korea and Vietnam. At the time, we universally abhorred it. Now many Americans defend it as a necessity, the failed Nuremberg defense, a defense we never accepted when the Chinese did it any more than when the Nazis did.

We said it was a war crime, a crime against humanity. It still is.

They call Obama arrogant

I'm actually glad David Addington and John Yoo took their surly, unaccountable Bushism before Congress. Maybe if they piss off enough Representatives and Senators, those two war criminals among others will wind up hog-tied on a slow boat to the Hague.

There is very little in intent that distinguishes the Bushists from Vladimir Putin (or even Robert Mugabe). Sadly, there is very little in effectiveness that distinguishes our Congress from the Duma or whatever rubberstamp legislature Mugabe is bullying at the moment.

I am dying to hear these words, "Sergeant-at-Arms, take these men into custody."

Massive resistance

Darth and his storm troopers, led by David Addington, continue to give the finger to Congress and the former Constitution.

Congress should immediately cease any further accommodation with the outlaw Bushist regime. No appointments, especially not judicial appointments, no committee exits for administration bills, no answering the damn telephone when a White House staffer calls. You want funding for Iraq? Fuck off.

As if.

Bipartisanshit

A friend writes:

Seems like your kind of book...

THE SECOND CIVIL WAR: HOW EXTREME PARTISANSHIP HAS PARALYZED WASHINGTON AND POLARIZED AMERICA by Ronald Brownstein. A veteran political reporter provides a shrewd election-year assessment of the growing partisanship in American politics, looking at the roots of this polarization and its alarming consequences for the country at large.

---

My intemperate reply, slightly edited but not to make it more temperate:

God, if only Washington had been paralyzed by partisanship during the past 7 years! Partisanship should have saved us from the authoritarian tendencies of the Bushists, but alas the Democrats were weak.

The review reads as though Brownstein is paying obeisance to the faux bipartisanship so popular among the Broderist pundits of the Beltway, the stuff that gives us Lieberman endorsing McCain. It amounts to Democrats meeting Republicans 90% of the way to the right, no matter how extreme the Republicans become. Of course, that’s what Congressional Dems have done on almost everything but Social Security.

I’d argue with several points of conventional bullshit:

• The country is not evenly divided any more. We’ve concluded that the Bushists are bad for America.
• Social Security’s baby-boom-related shortfall was addressed in a bipartisan compromise (when that phrase actually retained its literal sense) in 1983. There’s only a problem if the Treasury reneges on its debts to the program.
• Lock-step party discipline is primarily a creature of the GOP. There is still significant dissent within the Democratic caucus, which is one source of weakness when confronting the ideologically homogeneous Republican caucus.
• We’re more partisan now than we had been, but not more than in times past – and not just the run-up to the Civil War.

What we need now is not to paper over our differences with bland centrism. We need to lurch back to the historic center from the path we’re on, which is the path to fascism. You may think I’m extreme, but where are we headed, if not toward militaristic, xenophobic government driven by corporate interests? Really, the Republican ideology contains all the elements of fascism except anti-Semitism, which played the pseudo-populist role in the 1930s that abortion and gay rights play now. Oh, and domestic violence from the far right has only been minor to this point.

Instead of a center defined by Joe Lieberman, I want a clear polarization because that’s what’s needed to marginalize the Bushists. I think a passel of ‘em ought to do time for Iraq, FISA, and torture, though I don’t really expect that. Duhbya and Darth deserve impeachment. Rummy, Gonzo, Rice, Tenet, Goss, Yoo, Addington, and Scooter (again) should be prosecuted. Oh, and don’t forget Rove. I’m sure there are many more.

For now, we have a far right party and a centrist party (with liberal rank and file); I’d like to see us get back to center-right and center-left before we rely again on bipartisanship as a good thing. Right now, compromise without accountability and transparency is a pig in a poke or worse.

Lessons of Watergate

Can anyone still believe that the White House was not involved in destruction of recordings of torture? No one who isn't in the middle of a do-it-yourself colonscopy.

Basically, this story describes Bandini, Lambert, & Locke negotiating with the CIA. Addington, Gonzales, and Miers were all involved. You know which direction the orders were travelling, even if they might have been in the form of nudge, nudge, wink, wink.

Update: Really from the New York Times, which finally lays out the prisoners' legal rationale for including these non-Guantánamo interrogation tapes in the order about Gitmo prisoners: al Zubaydah may have implicated them during torture.