| Thursday, July 24, 2008 |
| Operation Ignore Mukasey |
Michael Mukasey has proved to be only slightly less detrimental to the Constitution than his idiotic predecessor, Alberto Gonzales. Mukasey's refusal to do his job, when that job would have anything to do with enforcing laws broken by the Bush administration, has so frustrated Congress, that even the Bushwhacked, spineless, impeachment-wary Democrats are ignoring him. I guess they figure that insulating the telcoms and the president from prosecution and impeachment are enough dirty work to keep the anonymous Bush staffers from mailing the contents of the wiretaps on their homes and offices to pre-jail Robert Novak and Matt Drudge...
So what is Mukasey asking for that he ain't getting? Try a declaration of war ... perpetual war ... against al-Qaida ... forever:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Congress should explicitly declare a state of armed conflict with al Qaeda to make clear the United States can detain suspected members as long as the war on terrorism lasts, U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey said on Monday.
Mukasey urged Congress to make the declaration in a package of legislative proposals to establish a legal process for terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo, in response to a Supreme Court ruling last month that detainees had a constitutional right to challenge their detention.
"Any legislation should acknowledge again and explicitly that this nation remains engaged in an armed conflict with al Qaeda, the Taliban and associated organizations, who have already proclaimed themselves at war with us," Mukasey said in a speech to the American Enterprise Institute.
"Congress should reaffirm that for the duration of the conflict the United States may detain as enemy combatants those who have engaged in hostilities or purposefully supported al Qaeda, the Taliban and associated organizations," he said.
Mukasey was not asking for a formal declaration of war, which would trigger certain emergency powers under the Constitution and international law, a Justice Department spokesman said. U.S. President George W. Bush has on numerous occasions said the United States was "at war" against terrorists and cited that as a basis for his powers.
New legislation should also prohibit courts from ordering a detainee to be released within the United States. It should protect secrets in court hearings, ensure that soldiers are not taken from the battlefield to testify and prevent challenges from delaying detainee trials, he said. In other words, anyone the president decided was a terrorist could be held by the U.S. in secret detention forever. With no legal recourse. Forever. To Newsweek's Michael Isikoff and Mark "The Mustache" Hosenball:
Mukasey's plea for quick passage of a significant new counterterrorism measure essentially fell on deaf ears—at least from the Democrats who control Congress. "Zero," snapped one key lawmaker, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, when asked the likelihood that Congress will rush to pass the kind of law Mukasey and the Bush administration are seeking. "We don't have to pass anything," said Nadler, who chairs the House subcommittee that has primary jurisdiction over the issue, in a brief hallway interview with NEWSWEEK. "Let the courts deal with it."
The derisive comments from the feisty New York liberal—just moments after Mukasey issued his strong appeal in testimony before the House Judiciary Committee—underscores the huge and poisonous gulf that now exists between the White House and Congress on virtually every issue related to the War on Terror. No Democrats on the judiciary panel endorsed Mukasey's call Wednesday for new counterterrorism legislation. None of them even bothered to ask him any questions about it. Instead, they essentially ignored what the attorney general portrayed as the Justice Department's top priority for his final six months in office. Not that the Democrats really intend to stand up to Bush ... that's simply not done in the House that Nancy built. In fact, fellow House Diva Jane Harman proposed a law, H.R. 1955, the "Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007," which would open up all of our Internet communications to administration scrutiny, and it sailed through the House, bringing Traitor Joe Lieberman closer to his dream of excising all Muslim traffic from Youtube. It's just that the Dems have finally figured out that it's summer: they don't have to do the White House's bidding until AFTER the Democratic convention, when the RNC ads about them being "soft on terror" start running.
| Labels: 110th Congress, attorney general, Bush administration, Democrats, Michael Mukasey, war on terror |
posted by JReid @ 12:18 AM   |
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| Thursday, July 17, 2008 |
| In contempt |
 President Bush's latest executive privilege claim, this time over FBI interviews of Dick Cheney and his staff regarding the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame, drew contempt threats directed at the derelict Attorney General, Michael Mukasey, from Henry Waxman yesterday. Not only should Waxman follow through, Congress should junk the absurd handshake deal that's keeping them from exercising their right as a co-equal branch of government, to have their subpoenas honored (not only by Cheney and Bush, but also by Karl Rove,) or to file inherent contempt of congress charges against the intransigent. Mukasey should go first, as he has refused to carry out his duty as A.G., no less than did his predecessor, the squirlish Alberto Gonzales.
Last night, GOP hack Brad Blakeman asserted on Dan Abrams' show "Verdict" that Mukasey was, by refusing to enforce congressional subpoenas, simply serving his client, the president of the United States. Read the Constitution, Brad. The attorney general's client is the American people. It's the White House counsel who serves the POTUS. I'm surprised Abrams, a lawyer, failed to call Blakeman on that one.
Meanwhile:
(The Politico) Rep. Brad Miller (D-N.C.) has introduced legislation calling for the appointment of a special prosecutor to handle criminal contempt of Congress charges when Justice will not cooperate.
The Miller bill grows out of the dispute between House Democrats and the White House over subpoenas issued to White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and former White House Counsel Harriet Miers.
The committee issued the subpoenas as part of its probe ino the 2006 firing of nine U.S. attorneys. Bolten and Miers, relying on an assertion of executive privilege by President Bush, refused to comply with the subpoenas. The House passed both criminal and civil contempt resolutions against Bolten and Miers, but the Justice Department, citing earlier legal opinions, declined to allow a federal prosecutor to bring the case before a grand jury. The Judiciary Committee has filed a civil lawsuit against the Justice Dept. seeking to enforce the subpoenas.
According to Miller's office, his new bill would allow a federal judge to "appoint an independent ;Special Advocate' to investigate and prosecute alleged Contempt of Congress charges passed by the House of Representatives against current and former executive branch employees, when the Justice Department fails to do so." The special prosecutor would technically work for attorney general, but in reality, would be "largely independent from both the executive and legislative branches and not subject to undue political influences."
“The law explicitly requires the Justice Department to present Contempt of Congress charges to the grand jury, but the Bush Administration claims Congress can not compel a U.S. attorney to prosecute contempt cases where the White House claims executive privilege,” Miller said in a statement. “Other presidents have made bodacious claims about their powers, but always compromised in the end. No president, not even Nixon, has gone this far before.”
Good idea, Congressman. And while you're at it, how about proposing legislation requiring Nancy Pelosi and the other Bush cuckolds running the House of Representatives to use their constitutional authority, rather than ducking and running from the president, including -- no especially -- on the subject of impeachment, about which Miss Nancy is allowing only Potemkin hearings. As Johnathan Turley (who yesterday called such hearings little more than a "fancy dress ball") has said repeatedly (echoed by John Dean) there is more than enough reason to believe that crimes have been committed by this White House, such that impeachment is the only constitutional option. If the House won't even consider it, than divided government is dead, and the 110th Congress risks going down in ignominy, just like the 109th.
| Labels: 110th Congress, Bush administration, CIA leak case, Dick Cheney, impeachment, Michael Mukasey, Nancy Pelosi, President Bush, spineless Democrats, Valerie Plame, worse than Watergate |
| posted by JReid @ 2:58 PM |
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| Thursday, July 10, 2008 |
| Arrest this man |
The 110th Congress has already disgraced itself in any number of ways, by bowing and scraping to a lame duck president who nobody but them takes seriously anymore (the latest instance being the FISA bill.) If the Judiciary Committee, led by the incredibly underwhelming John Conyers (who talked tough on impeachment until he got the gavel,) fails to respond to the naked affront to its authority by Karl Rove, who blew off the committee today by refusing to respond to a lawful subpoena regarding his role in the politicization of the Justice Department and the political prosecution of the former governor of Alabama, then they aren't worthy of holding their offices. Either the Judiciary Committee enforces that subpoena, or they admit that, just like Dick Cheney planned it, the Congress is no longer a co-equal branch of the U.S. government, confirming that we are indeed living in a post-Constitutional age.
The outrageous behavior of the arrogant Bushies, including Rove, is made worse by the new attorney general, Michael Mukasey, who replaced the boob from Texas, Alberto Gonzales. Back in May, Joseph Palermo wrote the following about the timid Mr. Mukasey: Not since the time of Richard Nixon's Attorney General, John Mitchell, who was the only Attorney General in American history to go to prison, has the head of the Justice Department behaved so abominably. Attorney General Michael Mukasey has chosen to obstruct Congress's subpoenas of executive branch employees despite evidence of criminal wrongdoing. Senators Charles Schumer and Diane Feinstein were the deciding votes that confirmed Mukasey. What were they thinking? Now Mukasey bucks normal procedure and refuses to begin grand jury investigations of Karl Rove's role in transforming the Justice Department into a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Republican National Committee.
Karl Rove is free to "analyze" American politics for us on Fox News, and in the pages of The Wall Street Journal and Newsweek; he appears on discussion panels and charges $40,000 a pop for speaking gigs; he signed a book deal estimated to be worth $8 to $12 million; and now he thumbs his nose at the Congress, defying its subpoenas. It's as if he thinks he's above the law and above his fellow citizens. And to top it off Rove's enabler and co-conspirator is the Attorney General himself.
Mukasey's refusal to do his job shows he is a willing accomplice in undermining the Constitutional powers of the House of Representatives as a co-equal branch of government. Can anyone think of an action more "un-American" than dismantling the "checks and balances" that James Madison and other founders so carefully put in place in 1787?
Palermo added that:
It is fitting that our current Constitutional crisis finds Karl Rove as its centerpiece. No human being has done more damage to our republic in the last hundred years than Karl Rove. He masterminded three of the slimiest, rottenest, most dishonest and divisive elections in American history; elections that brought to power a craven gang of white collar criminals who proceeded to destroy the ability of the government to function (except as a conveyor belt of cash for cronies), lied us into an illegal war in Iraq, collapsed the economy, and made torture and the suspension of habeas corpus synonymous with American "ideals." Karl Rove thinks he can tell Congress to go fuck itself. He must not be allowed to walk away Scot free from his crimes and misdeeds. ... he then went on to suggest Congress hire Dog the Bounty Hunter. Um ... yeah...
Dog aside, the committee can do a number of things, and should probably do them all, sooner rather than later. - They can file a lawsuit against Rove, as was done with Harriet Myers
- They can find him in contempt of Congress
- And having found him in contempt, they can have the Sergeant at Amrs arrest his roly-poly behind.
As an editorial in the Concord Monitor put it: If lawmakers fail to do so promptly, the law itself will lose its meaning and Congress will lose what little respect the public has for it. ...
...Rove is now a private citizen. In his role as a political wag, he has said that he never discussed the Siegelman matter with the White House. That makes his assertion of executive privilege all the more ludicrous. Rove has offered to testify by e-mail, or if he can do so not under oath and with no recorded transcript. But it is Congress that makes the rules, not Rove, his lawyer or the president.
Many Americans choose which laws to obey and which to flout. When caught, they can claim all they want that the law doesn't apply to them or plead that their boss told them not to talk. Those people generally wind up behind bars. If he continues to thumb his nose at Congress and the rule of law, that's what should happen to Rove.
| Labels: 110th Congress, attorney general, Bush administration, John Conyers, judiciary committee, Karl Rove, Michael Mukasey, spineless Democrats, U.S. attorneys scandal, worse than Watergate |
| posted by JReid @ 1:00 PM |
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| Wednesday, November 14, 2007 |
| Quick take headlines: shootin' and spyin' |
An FBI inquiry finds that Bush and Condi's private army in Iraq killed 14 of 17 civilians without cause in September.
The nation's new attorney general gets something right, finally giving up the security clearances needed for the Justice Department to investigate his predecessor's -- and those he was lacky to -- domestic surveillance. We await word on whether the Dems will cave on immunity for the telcos that helped out with the government's giant information shovel.
The WaPo has an interesting -- if a bit "duh" -- article on oil as a geopolitical weapon.
Bush's GOP lackeys on the Hill (I make the distinction to separate them from the Democrat and Independent lackeys on the Hill) demand that the Dems retract their Iraq war cost report putting the cost at $1.5 billion. After all, that report might turn Americans against the war ... HA!!!
Good news for the Clinton campaign: NY Guv Elliot Spitzer drops his licenses for illeal immigrants plan.
A new Pew Poll finds Black America more pessimistic than at any time in the last 20 years.
And Kanye West's mother's death following plastic surgery is sad ... and should sober people up about how dangerous plastic surgery can be. Earth to ladies: it's not your mother's Botox brunch. Meanwhile, Kanye issues a statement. ... and the doctor who says he refused to operate on Donda West says she ignored medical advice and that doing so may have led to her death.
Labels: Blackwater, celebrities, domestic spying, entertainment, Iraq war, Kanye West, Michael Mukasey, news headlines, polls, spending |
| posted by JReid @ 9:14 AM |
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| Saturday, November 03, 2007 |
| The Orwellian bargain |
If the Bush administration is an Orwellian send-up of the former Soviet Union, complete with domestic spying, secret prisons, disappearing of U.S. citizens into military detention, manipulation and intimidation of the media, wars of aggression, and now apparently, the use of torture, then the Democrats are playing Benjamin to George Bush's Napoleon. In Orwell's "Animal Farm," Benjamin -- a donkey, no less -- is, in the Wikipedic formulation, "as knowledgable as and wiser than the pigs," who are led by the dictatorial Napoleon, "and is the only animal who sees the pigs for the tyrants they are, [but] he never makes an attempt to change anything.
And so it goes. The Democratic Benjamins will not put a stop to the war in Iraq. They will not hold George W. Bush accountable using the Constitutional tool of impeachment, even for his blatant defiance of both the Congress and the laws he is sworn to faithfully execute. They will not fight his vetoes or follow through on opposition to his policies.
And they WILL allow the nomination of Judge Michael Mukasey, a man who cannot say that waterboarding -- a crime against humanity for which we prosecuted Japenese soldiers after World War II ... a crime John McCain has called a "horrible torture," and "no different than holding a pistol to [a prisoner's] head and firing a blank" -- is torture, to go to the Senate floor. And they will confirm him. They know that the administration has likely used waterboarding, and probably other torture techniques more suitable for the former U.S.S.R. or 1970s era Panama or Chile. They know that the president authorized it, and that his former attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, greenlighted it. And they know that the administration will not allow Mukasey to respond to the simple question for which he can find clear answers inside the Army Field Manual, which expressly prohibits waterboarding and calls it torture, because as attorney general, he might have to prosecute people inside the Bush administration for ordering the torture of terror detainees.
And yet, Diane Feinstein on Friday joined Chuck Schumer, who suggested his fellow New Yorker Mukasey, in voting to send Mukasey's nomination out of the Senate Judiciary Committee, in defiance of the committee's chairman, Pat Leahy, who plans to vote no. (Feinstein attempts to explain herself today in an op-ed to the L.A. Times. Her excuse: Mukasey is all we're going to get from Bush, and if we don't confirm him, he'll just do a recess appointment. In other words, we can't stop George from doing whatever it is he wants to do, so why try?)
A recent column in the Charlotte Observer referenced "a Sept. 5, 2006, letter to Attorney General Gonzales signed by 100 prominent law professors, including John Charles Boger, dean of the University of North Carolina law school." The letter included the following:
"We are particularly concerned about your continuing failure to issue clear statements about illegal interrogation techniques, and especially your failure to state that `waterboarding' -- a technique that induces the effects of being killed by drowning -- constitutes torture, and thus is illegal. We urge you to make such a statement now.
"...If uninterrupted, waterboarding will cause death by suffocation. It is also foreseeable that waterboarding, by producing an experience of drowning, will cause severe mental pain and suffering. The technique is a form of mock execution by suffocation with water. The process incapacitates the victim from drawing breath, and causes panic, distress, and terror of imminent death. Many victims of waterboarding suffer prolonged mental harm for years and even decades afterward."
Surely, the Democrats know about that letter.
Surely by now, they know about the former senior Justice Department official who answered his own questions about waterboarding by trying it himself, as ABC News' Brian Ross reported yesterday:
Daniel Levin, then acting assistant attorney general, went to a military base near Washington and underwent the procedure to inform his analysis of different interrogation techniques.
After the experience, Levin told White House officials that even though he knew he wouldn't die, he found the experience terrifying and thought that it clearly simulated drowning.
Levin, who refused to comment for this story, concluded waterboarding could be illegal torture unless performed in a highly limited way and with close supervision. And, sources told ABC News, he believed the Bush Administration had failed to offer clear guidelines for its use. The administration at the time was reeling from an August 2002 memo by Jay Bybee, then the head of the Office of Legal Counsel, which laid out possible justifications for torture. In June 2004, Levin's predecessor at the office, Jack Goldsmith, officially withdrew the Bybee memo, finding it deeply flawed. When Levin took over from Goldsmith, he went to work on a memo that would effectively replace the Bybee memo as the administration's legal position on torture. It was during this time that he underwent waterboarding. In December 2004, Levin released the new memo. He said, "Torture is abhorrent" but he went on to say in a footnote that the memo was not declaring the administration's previous opinions illegal. The White House, with Alberto Gonzales as the White House counsel, insisted that this footnote be included in the memo. But Levin never finished a second memo imposing tighter controls on the specific interrogation techniques. Sources said he was forced out of the Justice Department when Gonzales became attorney general.
And then there's this, also from Brian Ross: apparent confirmation from within the CIA, that waterboarding has been used by Americans, "but only on three bad-guys..."
For all the debate over waterboarding, it has been used on only three al Qaeda figures, according to current and former U.S. intelligence officials.
As ABC News first reported in September, waterboarding has not been used since 2003 and has been specifically prohibited since Gen. Michael Hayden took over as CIA director.
Officials told ABC News on Sept. 14 that the controversial interrogation technique, in which a suspect has water poured over his mouth and nose to stimulate a drowning reflex as shown in the above demonstration, had been banned by the CIA director at the recommendation of his deputy, Steve Kappes.
Hayden sought and received approval from the White House to remove waterboarding from the list of approved interrogation techniques first authorized by a presidential finding in 2002.
The officials say the decision was made sometime last year but has never been publicly disclosed by the CIA. And so, Mr. Mukasey could be face with very real evidence of illegal torture of detainees at the behest of the Bush administration, and he will have to decide whether to enforce the law, or to be Alberto Gonzales -- Bush's Pinkeye, whose position on the Animal Farm was to taste Napoleon's food.
Why the Democrats have entered into this Orwellian bargain with the administration -- he pushes, they appease, even as Bush fades into history, is perhaps the most vexing question facing the country today. The Democrats are so wedded to the appeasement of this president, one almost wonders if they truly oppose his policies at all. They are rudderless, leaderless, and incapable of displaying even minimal unity in opposition to even the most outrageous Bushian assaults on the United States Constitution. They stand for nothihng, and they stand up for nothing.
And I couldn't tell you why.
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Labels: Animal Farm, attorney general, Bush administration, Democrats, Michael Mukasey, Orwell, worse than Watergate |
| posted by JReid @ 10:08 AM |
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| Friday, November 02, 2007 |
| Mukasey says |
By now I'm sure you've figured out the simple reason Michael Mukasey cannot state the obvious fact that waterboarding -- something expressly outlawed under both U.S. law and the Geneva Conventions (we prosecuted foreign troops for doing just that during World War II and the U.S. was crucial to the process that declared waterboarding a crime against humanity) -- is torture.
Mukasey cannot state the obvious because should he do so and then become attorney general, he might have to prosecute members of the Bush administration for ordering the waterboarding torture of terrorism detainees, up to and possibly including the President of the United States. After all, Mukasey has stated during Senate hearings that the torture memo authored by former A.G. Alberto Gonzales authorizng the president to break U.S. law in that regard, was in error, meaning that Bush has no authority to go around the law and order "special detainees" to be treated with that particular kind of specialness.
So let Bushie whinge. Let him moan that the quite simple question put to Mr. Mukasey by his would-be confirmers in the Senate are unfair. Let him threaten to leave the spot vacant. He cannot thread this needle.
Labels: Alberto Gonzales, attorney general, Bush adminstration, Michael Mukasey, torture |
| posted by JReid @ 8:00 AM |
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| Monday, September 17, 2007 |
| Does AG pick mean Rudy's back with the Bushes? |
Looks like George Dubya has found himself a new A.G., (Michael Mukasey) and interestingly, he has tentacles in Rudy Giuliani's campaign. Could that indicate that the White House sidling up to the former New York mayor, whom they had previously shunted aside after he tried to wrench his crimie friend Bernard Kerik into the job of Homeland Security director, embarassing the president (isn't he beyond embarassment at this point) in the process.
One wonders whether the nexus of Roger Ailes and Mr. Mukasey -- both advisors to Mr. Giuliani, will help brng more of the GOP base to heel. I would assume that Giuliani would be natural choice for Mr. Bush to throw his support, for what its worth, behind. Rudy will willingly invade every country in Arabia, he is as servile to the Likud as Joe Lieberman, and he gives Bush the chance to use the words "September the 11th" continually throughout the campaign.
On the other hand, sidling up to Rudy is an awkward look for the Bushes, since Rudy's abortion stance is still an issue for the Red Staters. And now, AP reports that some social conservatives are already developing a Mukasey allergy.
Via ThinkP, more of former federal judge Michael Mukasey's particulars:
Mukasey ... issued the first ruling in the Jose Padilla case after 9/11. While he ruled that “President Bush did have the authority to hold Mr. Padilla as an enemy combatant without charging him for a crime,” he also “ruled that the government must allow Mr. Padilla to see his attorneys.” That, is not a good look, and with the Senate Judiciary Committee already looking into Bush's seizure of near dictatorial power in the so-called "war on terror," I would think Mukasey's rulings in this regard would be a contentious issue at trial.
Related: I wonder if Orrin Hatch is getting drunk right now...Labels: Attrorney General, Bush administration, Michael Mukasey |
| posted by JReid @ 9:17 AM |
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