Whom would you trust to tell you just whose responsibility it is to interpret the Constitution of the United States of America, and guard it from all enemies foreign or domestic? Your choices in this particular instance are White House Spokesperson Tony Snow and (p)resident George W. Bush, or founding fathers Alexander Hamilton and James Madison. Which party do you choose? According to this brief article at Salon.com, each of these two parties sees the answer to this question very differently. They are almost polar opposites, in fact.

Snow was asked about Bush’s recent signing statements (some of which I touched upon in my last blog entry), “isn’t it the Supreme Court that’s supposed to decide whether laws are unconstitutional or not?”

Check out Snow’s answer at the link above, as well as Madison’s reference to Bush as a tyrant. Man, the Founding Fathers foresaw everything, didn’t they! Definitely worth five or ten minutes of your time…

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John McCain should be ashamed of himself. So should Democrats, who owed it to their constituents to stand up against any horrible proposal to legislate torture. According to one law professor at Georgetown University, the “U.S. [is] to be [the] First Nation to Authorize Violations of Geneva.” Makes you swell with pride, doesn’t it? America. What the hell happened to thee? Never in my wildest imagination did I think that there would be more torture in Iraq after Saddam was deposed than when he ruled. This appears to be what we are now known for around the world. Just do a Google search on torture and look what comes up. Then click on the NEWS link just above the search text box and see what comes up. It’s all about America, folks. Shocking.

Aside from that, I don’t know which is more surprising — the fact that our elected officials reached some kind of “compromise” on violating the Geneva Conventions or the fact that some politicians thought it would make any difference at all what actually got legislated. There is nothing that will stop George W. Bush from doing exactly as he pleases when it comes to torture. Check out these examples of signing statements that Bush has added to laws that he has signed. Here’s one of the big ones, particularly relevant to current events:

Dec. 30, 2005: US interrogators cannot torture prisoners or otherwise subject them to cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.

Bush’s signing statement: The president, as commander in chief, can waive the torture ban if he decides that harsh interrogation techniques will assist in preventing terrorist attacks.

Can waive the torture ban. Think about that for a minute. The supposed President of the United States of America looked at the law before him, and decided that there would be times during his tenure that he might have to torture someone. Under this reasoning, Kim Jong-il could, on a whim, take any American he feels might be threatening to North Korea, and torture him for no apparent reason. What is the difference? How do you prove that there was reasonable cause to torture someone? And who makes that decision that someone might have information that needs to be “extracted?”

John McCain, himself subject to years of torture in Vietnam, claimed victory over the recent “concessions” made by George W. Bush. However, there is NOTHING to stop Bush from adding yet another of his infamous signing statements to any related piece of legislation that lands on his desk.

A quote from that same Boston Globe article:

”[Bush] agrees to a compromise with members of Congress, and all of them are there for a public bill-signing ceremony, but then he takes back those compromises — and more often than not, without the Congress or the press or the public knowing what has happened,” said Christopher Kelley, a Miami University of Ohio political science professor who studies executive power.

This is a man drunk with his own power. He sets his own rules. Exhibit B:

Aug. 5: The military cannot add to its files any illegally gathered intelligence, including information obtained about Americans in violation of the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable searches.

Bush’s signing statement: Only the president, as commander in chief, can tell the military whether or not it can use any specific piece of intelligence.

This nightmare has to be over soon. Even if these clowns only have two or four more years, where do we go to get our reputation back? What do true patriots do after these clowns are done chopping away at every ideal upon which this country was founded? Do we apologize to the world? Say we got a little overzealous? Too paranoid? Too exclusionary? Do we say, “we now return you to your regularly scheduled country” and invite the rest of the world to talk with us and work with us once again?

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Ted Lamont’s campaign just forwarded to its supporters a link to a GQ article on the leadup to the Lamont/Liebermann primary. It’s an illuminating read, and one passage in particular I have to totally agree with:

After a month of interviews, I’m convinced many voters generally like Joe and that he could have taken the wind out of Ned’s sails by simply saying he miscalculated in his optimism on the outcome of the war and asked for voters’ forbearance. That he refuses to pay them that respect infuriates people. He may just lose his career over the simple human inability to concede a possible mistake. Interesting.

I think that pretty much sums it up in a nutshell. That right there is the single most important reason that Joe lost the Connecticut Democratic Primary. I believe most Democrats would be willing to overlook his attempts to force some kind of moral regulation on Hollywood or the music industry and could respectfully agree to disagree over some of his votes in the Senate. But it is this stubborn refusal to budge an inch on the notion that red-blooded, patriotic Americans could have a point when they protest the war in Iraq that ultimately gave rise to a Democratic challenger. That’s really all it was. One rather large sentence pushed most Democrats over the line: “It’s time for Democrats who distrust President Bush to acknowledge that he will be the commander in chief for three more critical years and that in matters of war we undermine presidential credibility at our nation’s peril.” These words are now part of American history, and may be the direct words that led to the very rare circumstance where an incumbent is defeated in his party’s primary by an inexperienced challenger.

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I can’t think of any other reason why the Republicans are feeling more confident about their chances in November other than the curiously-timed drop in fuel prices. It seems like the whole “throw the bums out” mentality is being tempered a bit. But what else could be behind the GOP’s recently higher poll numbers? Could it be the compromise the congress made on torture to appease the cabal that fears they may be tried for war crimes sometime in the future? I supposed it might not matter anyway, as Karl Rove has apparently already served up the notion that there will definitely be an October Surprise. Could it be that we finally caught Bin Laden? Doubtful. He is the best campaign tool the GOP has ever had. This administration has demonized him to the point that 90% of Americans polled believe that to look into the terrorist leader’s eyes means instant death. You think they’re going to let anyone know that they have him locked up somewhere? No, it serves them better for people to think Bin Laden is “somewhere, out there…” Unless, I suppose, the GOP’s poll numbers slide dramatically in the run up to the elections. Talk about a trump card.

I just don’t know what it’s going to take to wake Americans up from their collective stupor. Can it really be all about the gasoline prices? Just keep our Hummers filled up with cheap middle-eastern gasoline and we’re all content? Does no one care about our standing in the world? Isn’t it bad for our national security that so many countries seem to be speaking out against American Imperialism?

It’s hard to believe that just five short years ago, even Iran appeared poised to become a potential ally in the US ‘war on terror’. I guess people have short memories, and that just makes it easier for this government to convince its citizens that everywhere they look, someone could be waiting to kill them. The politics of fear is so very effective.

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The folks at Princeton University got hold of a Diebold electronic voting machine and have provided a stunning example (WMV video, approx 60MB — Right click on the link and select “Save As”) of how a voting machine can throw a handful of votes to whichever candidate the virus writer chooses. There is some wiggle room for skeptics to balk at this demo. It supposes there are some awfully desperate people out there who would do anything to make sure their candidate won, including finding a way to gain access to a voting machine, making sure the software does what it is supposed to, and hoping that election officials use the same memory card in each machine before setting them up. Coordinated efforts are necessary on some level to affect such a crime, but the bottom line is — it can be done. The possibility that Diebold would be involved in such a broad conspiracy that would allow easy access to these machines and, at the very least, serve to “turn a blind eye” to potential election-day criminals is pretty much unthinkable. This, even though the CEO of Diebold noted that he was committed to delivering Ohio’s electoral votes to Bush in the 2004 election.

These machines are not secure. In order to wipe out any possible threat to election legitimacy, it is high time that Diebold be pushed by our elected officials — Republicans and Democrats alike — to make these machines bulletproof.

Check out the whole story at Salon.com.

The above video is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License. Video Credits: Princeton University - School of Engineering and Applied Science - Woodrow Wilson School

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OK people, get ready for it. According to the Washington Post, “The National Republican Congressional Committee, which this year dispatched a half-dozen operatives to comb through tax, court and other records looking for damaging information on Democratic candidates, plans to spend more than 90 percent of its $50 million-plus advertising budget on what officials described as negative ads.”

There you have it. This is the big GOP plan to hold onto Senate and House seats in November. These are the same tricks used against John “voted for the war before I voted against it” Kerry, Max “Osama” Cleland, Al “the Liar” Gore, and other honorable members of government who have served both their country and their constituents with distinction.

And who is heading up what could possibly be the largest, most extensive and most expensive pre-election smear campaign in history? None other than Terry Nelson, the guy behind the NH GOP phone-jamming scandal. Check out this article at Talking Points Memo for all the sleazy details.

Do I even need to get into why the GOP needs to resort to these desparate measures? We’ve all lived it over the past six disasterous years. Everything the GOP touched has turned to crap. Now we see the results of total GOP domination. Pure and utter disaster. Failure on every level. Their last remaining threat toward the American people — “only we can protect you from terror” — now rings hollow. Americans are about to call the GOP’s bluff, realizing that if this administration can’t protect us from the aftermath of a hurricane, how are they to protect us from a dirty bomb in NYC?

So what is left for them to run on? Well, they can’t even run on fear anymore. So the only thing they have is to attack their opponents with any bit of dirt they can find on them. And if the past is any indication of where this all will lead, the truth will be the real victim in all this.

The only way the Democrats are going to be able to combat this coming onslaught is to confront it BEFORE it happens — to step out in the public and spend a good percentage of the Dem’s war chest to get the message out to the public — “here it comes people, the same dirty tricks you have seen year after year… They have nothing left to run on, so you’re about to see the most negative campaign from the GOP you have ever seen… We’re just warning you up front… Please, do your homework….”

I don’t know if it will matter in the end. Even recent history tells us that these attacks can be very successful. It’s just a shame that one party is so scared of its record of failures that it always resorts to lies and voting manipulation to get its way. Imagine what the US would be like if everyone ran on the issues and told the truth. But I guess politics has never been that way, so why start now?

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We all know that this administration had no post-war plans for Iraq. What we didn’t know is that Donald Rumsfeld had threatened to fire anyone who wanted to propose post-war plans. In the linked article, Brigadier General Mark Schied, elected to be chief of logistics war plans on September 10, 2001, notes that he and other Iraq planners, placed on the task by Rumsfeld not long after the Afghanistan invasion, tried to write what was called “Phase 4,” the post-invasion operations like occupation.

Even if the troops didn’t stay, “at least we have to plan for it,” Scheid said.

“I remember the secretary of defense saying that he would fire the next person that said that,” Scheid said. “We would not do planning for Phase 4 operations, which would require all those additional troops that people talk about today.

“He said we will not do that because the American public will not back us if they think we are going over there for a long war.”

Scheid stops short of condemning Rumsfeld in the article, and basically says the Secretary of Defense was one man with one opinion.

Elsewhere, gaining more attention, is the final report concluding that Saddam Hussein had no relationship with anyone in al Qaeda. The report refutes statements made by Dick Cheney and George Bush, including statements made by Bush as late as a week ago. Why would he continue lying when he knew that this report existed, never mind that it was going to become declassified? Easy. He’s a man of his principles. If you’re caught in a lie, just repeat the lie and hopefully enough people will believe it’s the truth. The right-wing continues to claim the report is partisan, and that it’s being used as an election-year tool, but the fact remains that this administration lied us into war, and this is just another piece of the overall story coming to light.

Recently, of course, when Bush was asked by a White House reporter, “what was the relationship between Iraq and 9/11,” Bush said, “nothing.”

However, just to refresh your memories, here’s an article from June 18, 2004 where Bush repeated his accusations that Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda were working together.

“The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and al Qaeda: because there was a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda.” — George W. Bush

“What the New York Times did today was outrageous. The fact of the matter is, the evidence is overwhelming. The press is, with all due respect, and there are exceptions, oftentimes lazy, oftentimes simply reports what somebody else in the press said without doing their homework.” — Dick Cheney on the NY Times Headline, Panel Finds No Qaeda-Iraq Tie

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If you’re planning on watching ABC’s new $40 million miniseries on 9/11, be prepared to be stunned by the inaccuracies.

According to Joe Conason’s analysis of the piece, it seems as if Bill Clinton is portrayed merely as a stereotypical John Hughes-type buffoon character, while Bush appears to be a hero who will do anything he can to thwart terrorism. Plainly, this is the truth as we know it, right?

Under pressure from those concerned that events in the film might actually be taken as truth by its audience, ABC has already made changes to the program, although the show will still claim that its content is “based in part on the 9/11 commission’s report.” Ugh.

If you really want to know exactly what Clinton did to combat terrorism, check out this article at truthout.org. Cribbed from the article, here are the proposals offered in Clinton’s 1996 omnibus anti-terrorism bill (which was watered down by the Republican Congress):

• Screen Checked Baggage: $91.1 million
• Screen Carry-On Baggage: $37.8 million
• Passenger Profiling: $10 million
• Screener Training: $5.3 million
• Screen Passengers (portals) and Document Scanners: $1 million
• Deploying Existing Technology to Inspect International Air Cargo: $31.4 million
• Provide Additional Air/Counterterrorism Security: $26.6 million
• Explosives Detection Training: $1.8 million
• Augment FAA Security Research: $20 million
• Customs Service: Explosives and Radiation Detection Equipment at Ports: $2.2 million
• Anti-Terrorism Assistance to Foreign Governments: $2 million
• Capacity to Collect and Assemble Explosives Data: $2.1 million
• Improve Domestic Intelligence: $38.9 million
• Critical Incident Response Teams for Post-Blast Deployment: $7.2 million
• Additional Security for Federal Facilities: $6.7 million
• Firefighter/Emergency Services Financial Assistance: $2.7 million
• Public Building and Museum Security: $7.3 million
• Improve Technology to Prevent Nuclear Smuggling: $8 million
• Critical Incident Response Facility: $2 million
• Counter-Terrorism Fund: $35 million
• Explosives Intelligence and Support Systems: $14.2 million
• Office of Emergency Preparedness: $5.8 million

And here (thanks to the Huffington Post is a 1996 article from CNN that shows Republican leaders of the day saying, “what, me worry?” to the threat of terrorism:

President wants Senate to hurry with new anti-terrorism laws
July 30, 1996
Web posted at: 8:40 p.m. EDT

WASHINGTON (CNN) — President Clinton urged Congress Tuesday to act swiftly in developing anti-terrorism legislation before its August recess. (MP3 Audio Clip)

“We need to keep this country together right now. We need to focus on this terrorism issue,” Clinton said during a White House news conference.

But while the president pushed for quick legislation, Republican lawmakers hardened their stance against some of the proposed anti-terrorism measures.

Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Mississippi, doubted that the Senate would rush to action before they recess this weekend. The Senate needs to study all the options, he said, and trying to get it done in the next three days would be tough.

One key GOP senator was more critical, calling a proposed study of chemical markers in explosives “a phony issue.”

Taggants value disputed

Clinton said he knew there was Republican opposition to his proposal on explosive taggants, but it should not be allowed to block the provisions on which both parties agree.

“What I urge them to do is to be explicit about their disagreement, but don’t let it overcome the areas of agreement,” he said.

The president emphasized coming to terms on specific areas of disagreement would help move the legislation along. The president stressed it’s important to get the legislation out before the weekend’s recess, especially following the bombing of Centennial Olympic Park and the crash of TWA Flight 800.

“The most important thing right now is that they get the best, strongest bill they can out — that they give us as much help as they can,” he said.

Hatch blasts ‘phony’ issues

Republican leaders earlier met with White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta for about an hour in response to the president’s call for “the very best ideas” for fighting terrorism.

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, emerged from the meeting and said, “These are very controversial provisions that the White House wants. Some they’re not going to get.”

Hatch called Clinton’s proposed study of taggants — chemical markers in explosives that could help track terrorists — “a phony issue.”

“If they want to, they can study the thing” already, Hatch asserted. He also said he had some problems with the president’s proposals to expand wiretapping.

Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-South Dakota, said it is a mistake if Congress leaves town without addressing anti-terrorism legislation. Daschle is expected to hold a special meeting on the matter Wednesday with Congressional leaders.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Interesting, huh? Democratic leadership calling it a mistake to leave town without addressing anti-terrorism legislation, and Republican leadership saying “we’re just heading out for recess,” and “these are controversial provisions that the White House wants.” Amazing how they changed their tune when it’s their guy in office.

I wonder if all this funding had been approved how it would’ve affected the events of 9/11? Guess we’ll never know. The one thing for sure is that the $1.097 billion requested for funding here is quite a bit less than the $1 trillion this Iraq venture is expected to cost us before it’s over. Wonder what we could’ve done with the other $999 billion? Universal healthcare? Shore up Social Security? Maybe reduce taxes on the working class? Maybe provide incentives for people to get continuing education? The list goes on…

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