Somewhere There’s an Idiot

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My modus operandi for blogging is to cruise around the web until I find something that pisses me off, and then I blog about it. Maybe I’m just tired, but this morning I was struggling to find something obnoxious enough to be worthy of a post. Then I found this.

Rightie bloggers just love to demonstrate how well they’ve been brainwashed by regurgitating the propaganda and misinformation about liberalism they’ve been fed all their lives. Correct exposition of groupthink is then rewarded with rightie group approval. And I know it’s futile to try to educate them, but just maybe if we speak up a few innocents might be saved from being assimilated by the rightie hive mind. So here goes …

First off, by now you probably know that whenever anyone says “I used to be a liberal, but now I’m a conservative,” that person is either lying or never actually understood what a “liberal” is. I’ll be charitable and assume this Fausta person falls into the second category.

Fausta begins by defining liberalism, thus:

Liberalism used to mean, as Friedrich Hayek put it, “the fundamental principle that in the ordering of our affairs we should make as much use as possible of the spontaneous forces of society, and resort as little as possible to coercion”. Sixty years ago Hayek was saying, “That socialism has replaced liberalism as the doctrine held by a great majority of progressives does not simply mean that people have forgotten the consequences of collectivism. It has happened because they were persuaded of the very opposite of what these men had predicted”, and that’s even more true nowadays.

Now, I know Friedrich Hayek was a famous guy and a big bleeping authority, but this definition sucks. It’s true that liberalism is about liberty. But Fausta’s citation of Hayek reflects the Libertarian Fallacy — that all authoritarianism and coercion come from government, and if we could get government off our backs we’d all be free as birds.

The real world, people, does not work that way. In the real world, oppression comes out of the private sector just as readily as the public. In fact, if government doesn’t step in and put a check on private sector oppression, ordinary people can become as powerless and persecuted in a “free” country as they would be in a totalitarian state. The most blatant examples of this in American history involve racial minorities, but there also has been economic oppression where the wealthy were able to mercilessly exploit the laborers of all races who created their wealth. But liberalism assumes that We, the People, are rational beings who can recognize problems and use representative government as a means for solving those problems, thus achieving systemic improvement in the human condition. Thus, in the 20th century We, the People authorized government to ensure fair labor practices, for example.

But in the conservative mind, all checks on the power of the wealthy to get wealthier amounts to “collectivism,” which is the same thing as Communism. Where ordinary citizens are able to use government as a tool to protect themselves from oppression, that (to a rightie) is coercion and just a step away from Stalinism. In a free society, government should step aside so that big corporations can shortchange their workers and rob them of their lives and dignity without interference. To a rightie, “freedom” means limiting the power of government, which sounds grand. But if government truly is of, by, and for the people, what righties really want to do is limit the power of the people.

But enough of my liberalism lecture; let’s crash ahead to Fausta’s next paragraph.

You find liberals defending Mao, and splitting hairs over whether it’s fair for a book to claim that Mao was responsible for the deaths of 70 million people, when in fact it was “only” 20 million. The same people who claim to be against homophobia and injustice in this country choose to ignore the persecution of gays in Castro’s Cuba (where men have been sent to concentration camps for being gay, and AIDS patients are compulsorily interned) and in Muslim countries, where it gets you a death penalty.

You will not find liberals defending Mao. Maoism is not liberalism. Righties think everything identified as “the Left” is the same thing. It is not. One might find self-identified lefties defending Mao, but those people are not liberals. Period; end of argument.

As far as liberals “splitting hairs over whether it’s fair for a book to claim that Mao was responsible for the deaths of 70 million people, when in fact it was ‘only’ 20 million” goes, an example would have been nice. But one suspects this is a snip of historic scholarly argument taken out of context and has nothing to do with “liberalism.”

Regarding “ignoring” injustice in Cuba and elsewhere, in fact through “liberal” organizations like Amnesty International liberals have tried to make a difference for many years. Fausta is clearly not aware of these efforts, but he should educate him- or herself before he/she spouts off again.

Fausta continues,

Liberals rant about the glass ceiling in our country while not speaking a word against women being killed for having been raped in Iran – at times by being buried in the ground up to their necks and having small stones thrown at them until they die. That countries like Iran stand against the modern world poses no contradiction to liberals, even when liberalism used to be synonymous with modern ideals back when the very definition of modern stood for liberal.

In fact, the Feminist Majority Foundation and other feminist organizations were speaking out in opposition to the oppression of women in Afghanistan long before righties noticed that the Taliban was our enemy. And it is interesting that the rightie mentions Iran, a “bad” country, and not rape in Iraq (which I blogged about recently), or our “ally,” Pakistan.

Liberals rant about 2000 soldiers dying in Iraq while dismissing 2,996 murdered on the morning of September 11 by saying it was just “sand thrown in America’s eyes”.

As an eyewitness to the collapse of the WTC towers, I’d like Fausta to say that one to my face. Even better, Fausta should come to Manhattan and spout off about liberals “dismissing” the dead of 9/11 to an audience of liberal New Yorkers, most of whom knew at least one of those 2,996. The audience reaction should be, um, interesting.

In the rightie mind, whenever one self-identified “leftie” expresses an opinion, he speaks for all “liberals.” So because (I assume) somewhere in America a half-dozen crackpots might have “dismissed” the deaths of 9/11, ergo, all liberals think this way. In fact, if anything, “liberals” may be more genuinely concerned about the deaths than conservatives. Most of us believe we should have used all of our resources to destroy al Qaeda instead of being sidetracked into deposing Saddam Hussein, who had nothing to do with 9/11.

Liberals fuss about one CIA agent’s cover being blown, which in their eyes warrants an investigation, while leaks on confidential information on the war against Islamic fascism are applauded and any investigation should be called off.


Translation: Liberals object when administration officials conspire to manipulate the press by spreading rumors (which, incidentally, included revealing classified information). And liberals object when information is leaked that genuinely injures national security. However, leaks that reveal corruption, despotism, and illegal activity being perpetrated by our government are gratefully appreciated.

Liberals believe that the USA has no enemies, that there is not much in the way of danger, and that we’d all live in peace if only we’d turn our swords into plowshares, no matter how much evidence there might exist to the contrary.

The above needs to be filed under “outrageous hyperbole.” It’s too irrational to actually address. In fact, that pretty much encompasses the remainder of this little essay. Liberals, we are told, encourage ten-year-olds to have sex, hate the work ethic, and live to oppress Christians. The usual garbage that has no basis in reality.

Part of me feels sorry for Kool-Aiders like Fausta, but such brainless little robots are ever the soldiers of despotism. Pathetic as they are, they must be corrected, and opposed.

Somewhere There’s a Hero

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Michelle Malkin gleefully notes that whoever leaked information about Bush’s illegal NSA activities likely committed a felony and is subject to prosecution.

And, as Auguste at Malkin(s)Watch notes, so was Daniel Ellsberg. The law may not care what the leaker’s motives were, but history surely will.

We are a nation of laws. But a corrupt and despotic government can always use the law to hide its illegal activities. In that case, it is an act of high patriotism to place oneself in jeopardy to expose the truth.

As Henry David Thoreau said, “Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience then?” Most men serve the state with their bodies, or with their heads, Thoreau continued.

Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs. Yet such as these even are commonly esteemed good citizens. Others-as most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and office-holders- serve the state chiefly with their heads; and, as the rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to serve the devil without intending it, as God. A very few-as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men-serve the state with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part; and they are commonly treated as enemies by it.

I’m not encouraging citizens to break laws whenever they feel like it. I’m saying there are rare times in which the patriot must choose between his country and his government; between his duty as a patriot and the letter of the law. And in these cases the “perp” is not guaranteed a walk, because much evil is done by misguided individuals who believe they are right. Such people are subject to judgment by their peers.

But if our republic has any chance of remaining a nation that values liberty — instead of just paying it lip service — it will be because of courageous people who stand in the way of tyranny.

We may never know who it is, but somewhere, there’s a hero. Maybe more than one.

Party Time

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An editorial in today’s Boston Globe begins,

THE EARLY DAYS of the Bush administration seem like another era: no Sept. 11 attacks; no war in Iraq; no Hurricane Katrina; no $317 billion deficit. The president’s chief ambition early in 2001 was to cut taxes deeply to soak up large budget surpluses. Yesterday, two sections of that law took effect, and will reduce taxes for the wealthiest Americans by about $27 billion over the next five years.

After you’ve digested the Globe editorial, take a look at this post by Hale Stewart discusses a Congressional Budget Office study that proves “supply side” doesn’t work, and cutting taxes does not stimulate the economy sufficiently to make up the loss of revenue. If the government cuts taxes, it loses revenue. Simple as that.

At the New York Times, via True Blue Liberal, Bob Herbert shows us how Congress is attempting to pump federal revenues — by sacrificing the poor.

Consider the budget that will soon be sent to the president for his signature. Members of the House and Senate have agreed on legislation that achieves something approaching $40 billion in savings over five years primarily by hammering the sick, the poor, the elderly and college students and their families.

This is the same Congress that genuflects each time the president asks for yet another gift-wrapped tax cut for the wealthiest among us. The textbooks tell us that the U.S. is a representative democracy, but only the upper strata are truly represented.

The nearly 800-page budget bill would allow states to jack up the premiums and co-payments of millions of low-income Medicaid recipients. It would also allow some Medicaid benefits to be rolled back.

One of worst aspects of the Medicaid provisions is that large numbers of poor people, faced with the higher premiums and co-payments, will inevitably decide to take a pass on the health care they need. Some will die.

But others are doing very well, of course, as described in this editorial in today’s NY Times, which begins:

There is no shortage of numbers and studies detailing the widening gap between what American companies pay workers and the millions of dollars those same companies pay top executives. But just in case anyone hasn’t been paying attention, here enters David Brooks, chief executive of the bulletproof vest manufacturer DHB Industries Inc., to provide a fuller picture.

Thanks to defense contracts, Mr. Brooks (not to be confused with Bobo, the Times’s famous keyboarding vegetable) is a fabulously wealthy man. He recently threw a $10 million private party for his daughter and her friends at the Rainbow Room at Rockefeller Center. Meanwhile, much of the body armor Brooks sold to the DoD has been recalled for being defective.

The editorial continues,

Meanwhile, the party came less than three months after the release of a report on ballooning pay for chief executives that singled out Mr. Brooks for making $70 million in 2004 compared with $525,000 in pre-Iraq-war 2001. The report said he made an additional $186 million in 2004 selling company stock.

The same report, by the Institute for Policy Studies, a left-leaning research center, and United for a Fair Economy, a group seeking to narrow the gap between rich and poor, found that in 2004 the ratio of C.E.O. pay to worker pay at large companies had ballooned to 431 to 1. If the minimum wage had advanced at the same rate as chief executive compensation since 1990, America’s bottom-of-the-barrel working poor would be enjoying salad days, with legal wages at $23.03 an hour instead of $5.15.

One of the conceits of winger philosophy is that people are rich because they deserve to be rich, and vice versa. Wealth naturally finds its way into the hands of the virtuous and hard-working. Another conceit is that markets must be “free” and business unregulated to allow “nature” to take its course; oversight and regulation interfere with the mandate of heaven, as it were, and cause wealth to flow to people who don’t deserve it. This is not just bad economics; it is immoral, they say.

Republicans must think they are doing God’s work by tweaking law and public policy to be sure the wealthy get wealthier, and the poor are punished for being poor. Why this is any less “artificial” than regulations keeping business honest and preventing exploitation of labor isn’t clear to me, but then I’m not a Republican.

In Republican World, war profiteers are God’s Chosen People. If Defense Contractor Brooks is making lots of money in spite of the fact that he sells defective products that put our soldiers at risk, it’s God’s Will. And blessed are them that inherit big bucks, because they are virtuous and wise and deserving by birth and don’t have to work at it real hard.

And has anybody else noticed how many of the leaders and spokespeople of today’s conservatism are the children of the leaders and spokespeople of yesterday’s conservatism? Well, it worked for them, huh? Can’t argue with success.

See also: Los Angeles Times series on how economic changes in the U.S. have shifted financial risks.

The I Ching Speaks

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I’m not doing predictions, except to endorse these. But of course there has to be an official 2006 Mahablog I Ching Reading! If you are curious, the I Ching Reading for 2005 was Hexagram 3, Retrenchment. The judgment: Nothing should be undertaken. Get help. The I Ching is never wrong.

[See 2006 reading beneath the fold] Continue reading →

Freedom’s Just Another Word

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Last October Atlanta Journal-Constitution political cartoonist Mike Luckovich drew the word Why? made up of the names of 2,000 troops killed in Iraq. In response, a 17-year-old named Danielle Ansley used the names of the dead to render the word Freedom.

Naturally, righties find Danielle’s illustration inspirational and clever, while Lukovich is dismissed as a “moonbat.” So good with words, those righties.

I don’t want to be too hard on a 17-year-old, but I do hope eventually the child learns to think, and not just regurjitate. Not to sound like Tom Cruise, but freedom is too glib. The word has been just about stripped of all meaning and has become little more than a tribal totem, waved about by the likes of Michelle Malkin, an apologist for racially motivated imprisonment. Yeah, that’s freedom for you.

First off, the idea that any American should die deposing a dictator who was no threat to the U.S. is problematic of itself. There were no WMDs; there was no collaboration between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. Our soldiers were sent to Iraq thinking they were defending America, and they were not. They were sent to fulfill some cockamamie political theory dreamed up by a pack of over-educated twits at the Project for a New American Century.

Second, whether the people of Iraq, right now, really are more free than they were before the invasion is debatable. Some Iraqis, certainly, are more free. There is more freedom to openly practice Shiia Islam, for example, which is fine. But this Christmas Iraqi Christians were afraid to go to church.

In spite of token rhetoric about women’s rights in the provisional constitution, women are less free than they were when Saddam Hussein was in power. They are less free to walk the streets without a veil. They are less free to marry as they choose. They are less free even to leave their homes. President Bush likes to brag that the invasion closed Saddam Hussein rape rooms; he doesn’t add that the lack of security leaves women more vulnerable to rape and kidnap than they were before. But I guess it doesn’t count if women aren’t raped in “rape rooms,” and the perpetrators are not agents of the state, but just thugs.

In any event, perhaps Danielle Ansley would like to explore the deeper meaning of the word freedom by living as a woman in Iraq (outside the Green Zone) for a while. If she survives, she might learn something about the gap between rhetoric and reality.

As Riverbend wrote,

We’re so free, we often find ourselves prisoners of our homes, with roads cut off indefinitely and complete areas made inaccessible. We are so free to assemble that people now fear having gatherings because a large number of friends or family members may attract too much attention and provoke a raid by American or Iraqi forces.

The bald, hard, bare-assed fact is that the deaths of 2,178 American soldiers (as of today) haven’t brought any measurable amount of freedom to anyone on the planet, except perhaps for the small cadre of men who are getting wealthy from wholesale corruption and war profiteering. In this country, the Bush Administration hides behind the “war on terror” to chip away at the civil liberties preserved in the Bill of Rights. In Iraq, it seems to me that one jackboot is replacing another. I don’t blame American soldiers for this, since most of the oppression right now seems to be Iraqi against Iraqi. One can, however, blame the flaming fools in Washington who sent U.S. soldiers to invade Iraq with next to no plans for post-invasion security.

But what about democracy? What about elections? The fact of the matter is that democracy and freedom are not the same thing. A country can be democratic and still oppress its people; the United States before the Civil War, when millions were enslaved, comes to mind. For that matter, the United States after the Civil War also comes to mind. A majoritarian republic allows the majority to oppress minorities any way it likes. The independent and sovereign Iraq now struggling to be born might technically be a “free” country, but if women must hide behind drapes and veils to avoid being murdered without compunction, then by no definition of the word are they free. Freedom takes more than democratic government; it takes a nation and society committed to the civil liberties of all.

It may be that in the fullness of time Iraq will become a truly free country. And it may have been that in the same fullness of time Iraq would have achieved that happy status without our “help.” We’ll never know what might have been.

But what we can see unfold before our eyes is the appropriation of the word freedom to mean “policies of the Bush Administration.” Perhaps the next word Danielle Ansley should learn is Orwellian.

Update: See also Kathy at Liberty Street.

Federal Election Commission Stacked With Bush Cronies

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Here’s a story that just about slipped through the cracks here on The Mahablog — I overlooked it until I saw this editorial in today’s New York Times —

President Bush has announced four nominees for the Federal Election Commission, moving to keep the policing of campaign abuses firmly in the hands of party wheel horses. The timing of the announcement – the president waited until the Senate had gone home – is likely to allow the nominees to avoid the full hearing and confirmation process needed to evaluate them properly.

Holy Diebold!

The most objectionable nominee is Hans von Spakovsky, a former Republican county chairman in Georgia and a political appointee at the Justice Department. He is reported to have been involved in the maneuvering to overrule the career specialists who warned that the Texas gerrymandering orchestrated by Representative Tom DeLay violated minority voting rights. Senators need the opportunity to delve into that, as well as reports of Mr. von Spakovsky’s involvement in such voting rights abuses as the purging of voter rolls in Florida in the 2000 elections.

The nomination of von Spakovsky was announced a couple of weeks ago. I missed it, but John Gideon of the Brad Blog did not:

He is an attorney who is presently the head of the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division Voting Section. He is a member of the right-wing Federalist Society, and joined other Bush cronies in the Florida recount battle in 2000, and he is President Bush’s newest recipient of a crony-nomination.

Yeah, this is exactly the guy we need on the bleeping Federal Election Commission. Voters, we are bleeped.

In addition to nominating four new members, Bush moved up a Republican crony already on the FEC to be head of the commission — Michael Toner, a former attorney for Bush ‘s election and the Republican National Committee. A real impartial guy. Toner was named a member of the FEC by Bush via recess appointment in 2002. As head, he will replace Scott Thomas, a Democrat. The New York Times calls Thomas “the one incumbent praised for his independence by Senator John McCain, who has campaigned for a clean, hack-free Federal Election Commission.” Thomas’s term has expired.

Bush named Robert D. Lenhard to be one of the three Democrats to serve on the six-member board. Lenhard was part of a legal team that challenged the constitutionality of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law. But get this, from Sourcewatch:

“As a lawyer, Lenhard wasn’t able to overturn McCain-Feingold before it took effect, but, as an FEC commissioner, he’ll be able to do the next best thing and try to gut it,” Arianna Huffington wrote December 18, 2005. “But that’s not why I’m obsessing (if I got worked up every time Bush picked a fox to guard a government henhouse, I’d never get anything done!). No, the thing that has my mental wheels in overdrive is the fact that Lenhard is the husband of Viveca Novak — the Time Magazine journalist whose loose lips may end up saving Karl Rove from joining Scooter Libby on Indictment Row.”

Cough. Small world, ain’t it? Mind you, Lenhard is one of the three Democrats on the board who are supposed to be making the board “bipartisan.”

Beside von Spakovsky and Lenhard, the other two nominees are David M. Mason and Steven T. Walther.

Mason, a Republican, has already served one term on the FEC board. He was originally appointed by President Clinton and confirmed by the Senate in 1998. Before joining the FEC Mason had been a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation.

News stories identify Walther as a political associate of the Senate minority leader Harry Reid.

“By endorsing them, the president has finally shown his commitment to bipartisanship in the worst of ways: by installing another undistinguished group of factotums to referee the democratic process,” says the Times.

Beside Lenhard and Walther, the other Democrat is Danny Lee McDonald, who’s been on the FEC board since 1982.

See also: Ghosts in the Voting Machine and From the New Deal to the Dirty Deal in George Bush’s America.

IOKIYAR

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I overlooked this column, “Slurs Fly from the Left,” by Jeff Jacoby in Wednesday’s Boston Globe and only noticed it today through some links. See if you notice what’s missing:

NOTHING BRINGS OUT RACIST slurs like an ambitious black man who doesn’t know his ”place.” So when Maryland’s lieutenant governor, Michael Steele, announced his candidacy for the US Senate recently, the bigots reared up. On one popular website, The News Blog, Steele’s picture was grotesquely doctored, making him look like a minstrel-show caricature. ”I’s Simple Sambo and I’s Running for the Big House,” read the insulting headline accompanying the picture.

This wasn’t some white supremacist slime from the right-wing fringe. The News Blog is a liberal site, and the reason for its racist attack on Steele, a former chairman of the Maryland Republican Party, is that he is a conservative. Specifically, a black conservative. As far as too many liberals are concerned, blacks who reject liberalism deserve to be smeared as Sambos and worse.

”Black Democratic leaders in Maryland say that racially tinged attacks against Lt. Gov. Michael Steele . . . are fair because he is a conservative Republican,” The Washington Times reported. ”Such attacks . . . include pelting him with Oreo cookies during a campaign appearance, calling him an ‘Uncle Tom,’ and depicting him as a blackfaced minstrel.”

What’s missing, of couse, is the blogger of The News Blog, Steve Gilliard. Who is black. And the beef with Steele is not with his conservatism but with his aquiesence to racism. Steve defends himself quite well here; no need for me to do it for him. “What would you think about Jewish politicians who sought the favor of Islamic radicals,” Steve asks. “Would you want that person to represent you?”

Still, I wasn’t going to write about this until I ran into Ann Coulter’s latest, um, effort. No need turning over rocks or reading between lines to find racism; Coulter throws it in your face. Here’s Ann’s ode to Kwanzaa:

(Sing to “Jingle Bells”)

Kwanzaa bells, dashikis sell
Whitey has to pay;
Burning, shooting, oh what fun
On this made-up holiday!

Yeah, she actually wrote that. Here’s a bit more, if you can stand it:

Coincidentally, the seven principles of Kwanzaa are the very same seven principles of the Symbionese Liberation Army, another charming invention of the Least-Great Generation. In 1974, Patricia Hearst, kidnap victim-cum-SLA revolutionary, posed next to the banner of her alleged captors, a seven-headed cobra. Each snake head stood for one of the SLA’s revolutionary principles: Umoja, Kujichagulia, Ujima, Ujamaa, Nia, Kuumba and Imani — the same seven “principles” of Kwanzaa….

…Kwanzaa was the result of a ’60s psychosis grafted onto the black community. Liberals have become so mesmerized by multicultural nonsense that they have forgotten the real history of Kwanzaa and Karenga’s United Slaves — the violence, the Marxism, the insanity. Most absurdly, for leftists anyway, is that they have forgotten the FBI’s tacit encouragement of this murderous black nationalist cult founded by the father of Kwanzaa.

Now the “holiday” concocted by an FBI dupe is honored in a presidential proclamation and public schools across the nation. Bush called Kwanzaa a holiday that promotes “unity” and “faith.” Faith in what? Liberals’ unbounded capacity to respect any faith but Christianity?

She also notes President Bush’s recognition of Kwanzaa: “It’s as if David Duke invented a holiday called ‘Anglika.'”

Jeff Jacoby wrote in the Boston Globe that “Once upon a time, segregationists excoriated white liberals as ‘nigger lovers.’ Today, racist insults in the political arena are more likely to come from the left — and to target black conservatives.” And if he reads Coulter’s column, will he revise his opinion? Of course not — IOKIYAR.

Update: See RT at Just a Bump in the Beltway and John at AMERICAblog.

Take the Cannoli

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“In the past, presidents set up buffers to distance themselves from covert action,” said A. John Radsan, assistant general counsel at the CIA from 2002 to 2004. “But this president, who is breaking down the boundaries between covert action and conventional war, seems to relish the secret findings and the dirty details of operations.”

It’s sooo much fun pretending to be president. Oh, wait …

The paragraph above is from an article by Dana Priest in today’s Washington Post, “Covert CIA Program Withstands New Furor: Anti-Terror Effort Continues to Grow.” Priest describes a CIA program called “GTS,” which has “grown into the largest CIA covert action program since the height of the Cold War.”

GST includes programs allowing the CIA to capture al Qaeda suspects with help from foreign intelligence services, to maintain secret prisons abroad, to use interrogation techniques that some lawyers say violate international treaties, and to maintain a fleet of aircraft to move detainees around the globe. Other compartments within GST give the CIA enhanced ability to mine international financial records and eavesdrop on suspects anywhere in the world.

Over the past two years, as aspects of this umbrella effort have burst into public view, the revelations have prompted protests and official investigations in countries that work with the United States, as well as condemnation by international human rights activists and criticism by members of Congress.

Still, virtually all the programs continue to operate largely as they were set up, according to current and former officials. These sources say Bush’s personal commitment to maintaining the GST program and his belief in its legality have been key to resisting any pressure to change course.

Covert torture programs are even more fun than executions! Our president seems to relish the secret findings and the dirty details of operations! No buffers! But you know what this means? This means …

No plausible deniability.

Heh.

Priest continues,

The administration contends it is still acting in self-defense after the Sept. 11 attacks, that the battlefield is worldwide, and that everything it has approved is consistent with the demands made by Congress on Sept. 14, 2001, when it passed a resolution authorizing “all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons [the president] determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks.”

“Everything is done in the name of self-defense, so they can do anything because nothing is forbidden in the war powers act,” said one official who was briefed on the CIA’s original cover program and who is skeptical of its legal underpinnings. “It’s an amazing legal justification that allows them to do anything,” said the official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issues.

Extreme times call for extreme lawyering:

“The Bush administration did not seek a broad debate on whether commander-in-chief powers can trump international conventions and domestic statutes in our struggle against terrorism,” said Radsan,[*] the former CIA lawyer, who is a professor at William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul, Minn. “They could have separated the big question from classified details to operations and had an open debate. Instead, an inner circle of lawyers and advisers worked around the dissenters in the administration and one-upped each other with extreme arguments.”

* A. John Radsan, assistant general counsel at the CIA from 2002 to 2004.

One way the White House limited debate over its program was to virtually shut out Congress during the early years. Congress, for its part, raised only weak and sporadic protests. The administration sometimes refused to give the committees charged with overseeing intelligence agencies the details they requested. It also cut the number of members of Congress routinely briefed on these matters, usually to four members — the chairmen and ranking Democratic members of the House and Senate intelligence panels.

So, the CIA has been free to develop new procedures, such as:

The CIA has stuck with its overall approaches, defending and in some cases refining them. The agency is working to establish procedures in the event a prisoner dies in custody. One proposal circulating among mid-level officers calls for rushing in a CIA pathologist to perform an autopsy and then quickly burning the body, according to two sources.

Nasty stuff. But Bush has forgotten the Michael Corleone buffer rule, as explained in Godfather II:

Senator Pat Geary: Mr. Cici, was there always a buffer involved?
Willi Cici: A what?
Senator Pat Geary: A buffer. Someone in between you and your possible superiors who passed on to you the actual order to kill someone.
Willi Cici: Oh yeah, a buffer. The family had a lot of buffers!

This will make the eventual prosecution at The Hague soooo much easier.

Bomb the Map

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Via Buzzflash — you’ll get a kick out of this Rolling Stone article by Matt Taibbi.

Best line: “It was classic Bush-think: Instead of bombing the insurgency off the map, he bombs the map.”

And this:

God bless George Bush. The Middle East is in flames, and how does he answer the call? He rolls up to the side entrance of a four-star Washington hotel, slips unobserved into a select gathering of the richest fatheads in his dad’s Rolodex, spends a few tortured minutes exposing his half-assed policies like a campus flasher and then ducks back into his rabbit hole while he waits for his next speech to be written by paid liars.

If that isn’t leadership, what is?

And this:

Up until now this president’s solution to everything has been to stare into the cameras, lie and keep on lying until such time as the political problem disappears. And now, unable to comprehend that while political crises may wilt in the face of such tactics, real crises do not, he and his team are responding to this first serious feet-to-the-fire Iraq emergency in the same way they always have — with a fusillade of silly, easily disprovable bullshit.

Preach it, bro’ Matt!

Update: James Wolcott triumphs again!