Cheney surrenders to terrorists

Dick Cheney, Revisionist Historian and former Vice President, says we should treat the Underpants Bomber as an enemy combatant. It has been brought to everyone’s attention that he is a hypocrite given that did not criticize the previous President who did exactly the same thing with the Shoe Bomber.

The problem is that there must be a better defense for Attorney General Holder’s choice to try the Underpants Bomber in civilian courts than “Bush did it.” In other words, could it be that Bush got it right, and that the reasons for trying Umar Abdulmutallab as a civilian stand on their own? After all, even a blind pig gets an occasional truffle.

At present, the debate is about whether we should try the terrorist in a military tribunal or in a civilian court. The case for the civilian courts is easy to make. The symbolism of trying an al Qaida terrorist in downtown Manhattan is potent, indeed. Additionally, the civilian courts have judges and prosecutors with vast experience in the prosecution of terrorists. The U.S. Attorneys have an excellent record of putting terrorists behind bars with no possibility of escape or release.

Far be it from me, a self-described knee jerk liberal, to prejudge the case of the Underpants Bomber, but safe to say, there is no chance of him being acquitted and released. It is likely that the U.S. Attorney will hold some charges in reserve so that even if he were acquitted, the government would simply bring new charges against him. While it is theoretically possible that he could be acquitted on all charges, it is also possible – in theory, at least – to get hit by lightening twice on the day you win the lottery.

What about the case for military tribunals? They have secured the convictions of three so-called terrorists, two of whom have since been released from custody. The highest ranking al Qaida partisan to be convicted was Bin Laden’s driver.

Military tribunals have a long history in the law of war. They are provided to deal with a particular situation which occurs frequently in the fog of war, videlicet, a person is captured and it is not certain whether he is a combatant or a civilian. If he is a civilian, he must be released, but if he is an enemy combatant, he may be held until the end of hostilities. At that point he must be released, unless he is held over for trial in civilian courts on charges alleging war crimes.

The first question we must ask is whether or not Abdulmutallab is an enemy combatant. It is entirely possible, though not very likely, that he was a mentally disturbed individual who acted on his own, for his own purposes. It is also within the realm of possibility that a fair court could reach this conclusion, by mistake. Let’s assume that if any of these possibilities came to fruition, the would-be Christmas day bomber would be arrested and tried in a civilian court.

Of course, it is much more likely that he would be held to be an enemy combatant, and placed in custody to await the outcome of the war. Say what? What will happen if three years from now, the vigorous efforts of the Obama administration to disrupt, dismantle, and destroy al Qaida are successful? Suppose, for example, that the government of Afghanistan arrives at some modus vivendi with the Taliban, and together they agree to disarm al Qaida and execute the leadership. This sounds like good news, but especially so for Captain Underpants, since the legal rationale for holding him will no longer exist.

In other words, what Dick Cheney and his ditto heads are saying is that we will never win the war on terror. The question that needs to be asked is why are Republicans surrendering in the War against Al Qaida?

If we are going to follow the example of the previous administration shouldn’t we start with framing the issue to our best advantage? After all, the party that won World War II shouldn’t lose an argument to the party that cut and ran in Vietnam. The party that won the war in Kosovo, shouldn’t take a back seat to the party that got us mired in Iraq by lying to the American people. The party that sold arms to Iran to raise money for the Contras ought not to be lecturing Democrats on national security. The party that tried to destroy the American constitution isn’t the one teach us about criminal procedure.

... and tell ’em Big Mitch sent ya!

Update to "Who's responsible ..."

TPM Muckraker alerted me to the news that some of the “facts” reported by ABC – and repeated by me – are not true. ABC has issued a retraction and/or correction. Only one of the planners of the attempted Christmas day bombing was released from Gitmo by the previous administration.

Interestingly, the tenor of the TPM article suggests that the original story has been a darling of right wing blogs. What am I? Chopped liver?

“… and tell ‘em Big Mitch sent ya!”

Who is responsible for the attack on NW Flight 253?

A new attack on an airliner in the United States has brought forth the predictable attacks on President Obama from the Revisionist Right. The congressman from Holland, Michigan, Peter Hoekstra, who also happens to be the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, sent out a fund-raising letter that is typical:

In the midst of enjoying Christmas with my family, we were quickly reminded that there is still a war against the American way of life; on Christmas morning, it came right here to Detroit.

If you agree that we need a Governor who will stand up the Obama/Pelosi efforts to weaken our security please make a most generous contribution of $25, $50, $100 or even $250 to my campaign.

The Grand Rapids Press also reports that Hoekstra further criticized the administration for plans to close Guantanamo Bay and re-examine interrogation techniques.

Florida Republican Rep. John Mica said in a statement that the TSA had grown lost and bloated in bureaucracy and called for a review. It would be nice if TSA had an administrator, but Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C. has held up President Barack Obama's nominee because of his opposition to the prospect of TSA workers joining a labor union.

The President has nominated Erroll Southers, a former FBI special agent, who is the Los Angeles World Airports Police Department assistant chief for homeland security and intelligence. He also is the associate director of the University of Southern California's Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events, and he served as a deputy director of homeland security for California Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.Two Senate committees have given Southers their bipartisan blessing.

DeMint made the totally incomprehensible assertion that the attempted attack “is a perfect example of why the Obama administration should not unionize the TSA.” He wants Southers to clarify his stand on unionizing the TSA. Perhaps DeMint should clarify his position that the failure of non-unionized TSA workers, argues against hiring union professionals for this important job. DeMint and his Republican co-conspirators cast votes against the key TSA funding measure, the 2010 appropriation bill for the Department of Homeland Security, which included funding for the TSA, including for explosives detection systems and other aviation security measures.

The Revisionistas can also be seen on CNN. Over on MSNBC, Ed Shultz identified what he called “psychotalk,” viz. the assertion by GOP strategist’s Mary Matalin that the September 11th attacks didn't happen on President Bush's watch.

Arguing that President Obama was complaining too much about the problems he inherited from his predecessor, Matalin (who worked for former Vice President Dick Cheney) said her White House was saddled with problems, too. "We inherited a recession from President Clinton and we inherited the most tragic attack on our own soil in our nation's history," she told host John King on "State of the Union."

In real life, the recession started two months after Bush took office, and from some time before Bush took office, until the very day of 9-11 Richard Clarke and others were trying to get W's attention to let him know that “Osama Bin Laden was determined to strike within the U.S.” Condeleeza Rice testified that nobody could have forseen the attack, but Richard Clarke did.

So far, Rudy Giuliani’s only public pronouncement has been to advise Tiger Woods to “Hang in there,” so we will just have to wait a little longer until he announces that Obama doesn’t appreciate the threat posed by radical Islamic terrorism.

Perhaps this is a good time to ask, “Who is responsible for the failures of security that led to the Christmas day attack?”

Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for the Northwest bombing in a Monday statement that vowed more attacks would be forthcoming. Two of the four leaders allegedly behind the al Qaeda plot were released by the U.S. from the Guantanamo prison in November, 2007, according to American officials and Department of Defense documents.

Given the fact that they were released from Guantanamo, one can assume that they were not the “worst of the worst” for which Guantanamo was supposedly reserved. Whether or not they were radicalized after they arrived at George Bush’s Gitmo, is a question that remains unanswered.

American officials agreed to send the two terrorists from Guantanamo to Saudi Arabia where they entered into an “art therapy rehabilitation program” and were set free, according to U.S. and Saudi officials. Space does not permit a complete dossier on the unholy alliance between the Bush Administration and the Kingdom of Saud, so here is a picture worth the proverbial thousand words. More can be found here.

However, for the sake of Mary Maitlin and Dana Perino, I will simply point out that the President of the United States in November, 2007 was none other than George W. Bush.

... and tell 'em Big Mitch sent ya!

I'm just saying ...

A company that invested millions in the slogan, “Just do it!” hires a guy to be their spokesperson, and now they are thinking of firing him because he was just doing it with every ho who could afford a boob job.

Now, it seems that Tiger was associated with a doctor,who was busted at the border with Human Growth Hormone in his medical kit. Tiger admits that he received treatment from the doctor to speed recovery from a knee injury, but he denies that he received any performance enhancing drugs. Even Tiger's harshest critics agree that there is no reason to doubt him.

When golf tournaments are shown on TV, they interrupted it every 15 minutes to broadcast a commercial for Viagra or Cialis. Personally, I think Tiger could have a real future in being the spokesman for a performance enhancing drug.

I’m just saying…

… tell ‘em Big Mitch sent ya!

Gevalt! The most annoying thing about “Scoot out of jail free.”

Today, Tony Snow responded to criticism from the Clintons about the Scooter commutation thus:

“I don’t know what is Arkansan for chutzpah [1] but this is a gigantic case of it."

We have reached a sad time when goyishe [2] Tony Snow is speaking Yiddish from the White House. Don’t we Jews have enough tsouris?[3]

Apparently, in this latest iteration of the “Bill Clinton did it, too” excuse, the White House is seeking to evoke the recollection of the Mark Rich pardon. Gay gezinteh heit. Chub a gutten yur. [4]

On Bill Clinton’s last day in office, he pardoned a refugee from the Nazis, Mark Rich, M.O.T., [5] a financier and philanthropist who had been falsely accused of tax evasion by Rudy Giuliani.

I say falsely accused because such is the opinion of U.S. tax professors Bernard Wolfman of Harvard Law School and Martin Ginsburg of Georgetown University Law Center. It was also the opinion of a panel of distinguished Republican lawyers including I. Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby. Be that as it may, these kinds of disputes are not unusual, and they are normally resolved in civil suits.

In the Republican orgy of recriminations against the Clinton administration that was the hallmark of the early days of the Bush administration, it was alleged that President Clinton pardoned Rich in return for favors paid to him. Indeed, the Prime Minister of Israel, Ehud Barak, who had worked so hard with President Clinton to secure a lasting resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian problem, had made a clemency plea on behalf of Rich, as had numerous other Israeli officials.

Grasping at straws, Clinton-haters pointed out that Rich's former wife and the mother of his three children, socialite Denise Rich, had made large donations to the Democratic Party and the Clinton Library during Clinton's time in office. A Federal Prosecutor was appointed to investigate whether or not a crime was committed by Clinton’s exercise of the plenary pardon power. The conclusion arrived at by James Comey, who was to later become the Acting Attorney General under George W. Bush, was that there were no grounds to present to a Grand Jury.

Nobody, not even the most rabid Republicans ever suggested that the pardon of Mark Rich was a part of a conspiracy to protect members of the administration. Never was it suggested that Bill Clinton had a political motive for his decision to right a wrong committed by an over-zealous prosecutor, who now happens to be running for the Republican nomination for President.

Still want to talk about Mark Rich? Gai kakhen afenyam. [6]

“… and tell ’em Menachem Mendel [7] sent ya!”

Footnotes for the Yiddish challenged:
[1] lit. Nerve. Colloq: balls, as in “He had the chutzpah of a blind burglar.”
[2] Non-Jewish, and (when used in an otherwise English sentence) non-Jewish in a stereotypical way.
[3] troubles
[4] “Go and be healthy. Have a good year.” The equivalent to the dismissive “Knock yourself out,” you should pardon the expression.
[5] Member of the Tribe, (e.g. Rich, Libby)
[6] Go shit in the ocean.
[7] Big Mitch

Need a good argument for universal health care?

Here’s one:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed …

(h/t to Thom. Jefferson)

Call me crazy but to me the right to life includes the right to health. Governments are instituted to secure this right. That means keeping the environment healthy. It means keeping our food supply safe. It means regulating the drug industry and the medical community. And yes, it means universal, single source, not-for-profit health insurance. And since you just called me crazy, let me just add that it means parity for mental health protection.

“… and tell ’em Big Mitch sent ya!”

Do they have Fourth of July in England?

No? So you think that they go straight from the third to the fifth? Sure, it’s an old joke, but try it out at the picnic tomorrow and you might find someone young enough to think it’s funny.

In fact, the mother country is the birthplace of the English common law, which provides the underpinnings of our own legal system. Today they celebrate the ascension of Mr. Gordon Brown to the office of British Prime Minister.

It has been a rough start for him. His first day in office revealed a plot that included car bombs and driving an exploding vehicle into an airport terminal. The plot was hatched and carried out by five physicians. They still have a better health care program than we do.

In Britain the Prime Minister is obliged to appear in Parliament periodically and to answer questions from M.P.s on all sides of the aisle. Here’s my own transcript of an excerpt from Mr. Brown’s opening statement at his first appearance as P.M. in Parliament:

All members of this house and all the people of this country have a shared interest in building trust in our democracy. And it is my hope that by working together for change in a spirit that takes us beyond parties and beyond partisanship, we can agree a new British constitutional settlement that entrusts more power to Parliament and to the British people.

Change with a new settlement is in my view essential to our country's future for we will only meet the new challenges of security, of economic change, of communities under pressure, and forge a stronger shared national purpose by building a new relationship between citizens and government that insures that government is a better servant of the people.

…

So I now propose that in twelve important areas of our national life the Prime Minister and the executive should surrender or limit their powers, the exclusive exercise of which by the government of the day should have no place in a modern democracy. These are:

The power to declare war;

…

The power to make key public appointments without effective scrutiny;

The power to restrict parliament oversight of our intelligence services; …

Power in the appointment of judges;

Power to direct prosecutors in individual criminal cases;

…

And the executive powers to determine the rules governing entitlement to passports and the granting of pardons.

I now propose to surrender or limit these powers to make for a more open 21st century British democracy which better serves the British people.

It’s quite a striking contrast to the current administration on this side of the pond, eh what?

Enjoy your Independence Day.

… and tell ’em Big Mitch sent ya!

A guest editorial from my in-box

My in-box contained this little note from one of the smartest guys I know. He said exactly what was on my mind.

Hey Mitch,

Let's see --

1. Dozens found beheaded in Baghdad -- daily -- with dozens more, including precious American lives, blown to pieces around Iraq in a civil war with no rational or reasonable political or combat end in sight -- but Bush tells us that "the surge" is making progress, really, it just needs more time;

2. Bush's recent Supreme Court appointees help roll back affirmative action, freedom of speech, women's reproductive rights, electoral/voting rights, church-state separation, a century-old rule against price-fixing (gouging) by manufacturers, and they are ready, willing and able to roll back any other social or economic advance made in the last 50 years;

3. Despite the new Democratic majority in Congress, the Republican minority successfully blocks immagration reform, all rational efforts to bring the troops home and end the Iraq madness, and any other "liberal-leaning" legislation -- effectively reducing Congress to a powerless Bush lap-dog. Of course, even when Congress musters the votes, Bush vetoes the bill and his vetoes are bullet-proof;

4. Our beloved Vice President announces that he is above the law -- whether those laws apply to the executive branch, the legislative branch, or the you-name-it branch. He is perched on his own special branch of his own and has no obligation to reveal anything to Congress about anything -- whether it's his secret negotiations with oil company representatives, or his vindictive efforts to reveal the identity of a CIA agent, or his decision to politicize the appointments of U.S. Attorneys around the country, dumping any with the temerity not to do as they're told and prosecute Democractic candidates regardless of the facts, or his involvement in (control over?) unauthorized wiretaps, secret policies on torture, "rendition," or the ongoing violation of the Geneva Convention at Gitmo and elsewhere, etc.

5. Alberto Gonzales -- say no more;

6. Our own Ted Stevens and Don Young -- we are truly blessed;

All in all, the news just can't get any better. And just think, Mitch, virtually all of these lovely developments can be boiled down to one key thing -- the fervent religious beliefs of the majority of Americans residing in all of those pretty "red" states (plus Florida, or Ohio, when needed) -- who would far rather vote Republican in order to ensure that homosexuals never marry or obtain equal rights, that women be forced to bear unwanted children, that African-American children remain in segregated schools, and that creation "science" be taught alongside (or instead of) evolution in our schools, than bring themselves to elect social or political progressives --let alone (dare I say it?) liberals. What a country.

For those who missed it.

On August 25. 2006, I blogged about Ann Coulter in The very definition of crazy. Here’s an excerpt:

Think back, if you are old enough, to the time when they showed a cartoon before the movies. Sure, Betty Boop had some creative horsepower behind it, but it was not what brought people into the theaters week after week. What the cartoons did was this: they shifted the boundaries of reality. Theater, including cinema, requires that the folks in the audience willingly suspend disbelief. For something like a cartoon, it is an easy sell, because they are comedic. Then, when the main feature comes on, the shift is toward a more real representation, and so, the feature movie is more emotionally engaging.

Ms. Coulter is the Daffy Duck of political discourse. When she speaks, you shake your head and wonder if you really heard what you thought you heard. Then when someone on Faux News comes on and says, “we must fight the terrorists in Iraq, so we don’t fight them here,” it sounds like the voice of sweet reason. Compared to daffy Ann Coulter, it is so much easier to accept the talking head, who in this analogy might be compared to, say, Orson Wells’ War of the Worlds.

Why the War of the Worlds? Because some people believe it and do batshit crazy stuff.

Today, on Chris Matthews’ Hardball we see the proof of what I was saying.

Armstrong Williams was talking about Ann Coulter’s appearance yesterday on the show. For those who missed it, she was confronted by Elizabeth Edwards, who gently rebuked her for hateful speech. Ms. Coulter had alleged that John Edwards has a bumper sticker which says, “Ask me about my dead son.” As the mother of that deceased boy, Mrs. Edwards found it offensive.

Armstrong Williams, for those who missed it, used to be on the White House’s payroll as a propagandist, which is criminal. Chris Matthews asked Williams if thought it was “over the line” to attack the Edwards for having a bumper sticker that says, “Ask me about my dead son.” Armstrong said, “no.” Why? Because he believed the Edwards actually had such a bumper sticker.

That was my point when I said, “some people believe it and do batshit crazy stuff.” For those who missed it.

“… and tell ’em Big Mitch sent ya!”

BONG HiTS 4 JESUS

Today, we see why the next presidential election is so important. It will decide who gets to appoint the next Supreme Court Justice.

In Morse v. Fredrick, Chief Justice Roberts delivered the opinion of the court:

Morse [the principal who confiscated the banner and suspended the student] later explained that she told Frederick to take the banner down because she thought it encouraged illegal drug use, in violation of established school policy. Juneau School Board Policy No. 5520 states: “The Board specifically prohibits any assembly or public expression that … advocates the use of substances that are illegal to minors … .” Id., at 53a.

...

We agree with Morse. At least two interpretations of the words on the banner demonstrate that the sign advocated the use of illegal drugs. First, the phrase could be interpreted as an imperative: “[Take] bong hits …”—a message equivalent, as Morse explained in her declaration, to “smoke marijuana” or “use an illegal drug.” Alternatively, the phrase could be viewed as celebrating drug use—“bong hits [are a good thing],” or “[we take] bong hits”—and we discern no meaningful distinction between celebrating illegal drug use in the midst of fellow students and outright advocacy or promotion. See Guiles v. Marineau, 461 F. 3d 320, 328 (CA2 2006) (discussing the present case and describing the sign as “a clearly pro-drug banner”). Ibid.

I don’t get it. I see nowhere in the sign is there either an implicit or explicit message that the bong-hits must be illegal. How can the court distill the message that illegal drug use is being advocated? Those who follow Jesus, who believe he stood for relieving suffering and healing the sick, could just as easily understood the message to support medicinal marijuana use.

Justice Stevens, with whom Justice Souter and Justice Ginsburg join, dissenting touched upon this theme, but only in a foot-note.

The Court’s opinion ignores the fact that the legalization of marijuana is an issue of considerable public concern in Alaska. The State Supreme Court held in 1975 that Alaska’s constitution protects the right of adults to possess less than four ounces of marijuana for personal use. Ravin v. State, 537 P. 2d 494 (Alaska). In 1990, the voters of Alaska attempted to undo that decision by voting for a ballot initiative recriminalizing marijuana possession. Initiative Proposal No. 2, §§1–2 (effective Mar. 3, 1991), 11 Alaska Stat., p. 872 (Lexis 2006). At the time Frederick unfurled his banner, the constitutionality of that referendum had yet to be tested. It was subsequently struck down as unconstitutional. See Noy v. State, 83 P. 3d 538 (Alaska App. 2003). In the meantime, Alaska voters had approved a ballot measure decriminalizing the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes, 1998 Ballot Measure No. 8 (approved Nov. 3, 1998), 11 Alaska Stat., p. 882 (codified at Alaska Stat. §§11.71.090, 17.37.010–17.37.080), and had rejected a much broader measure that would have decriminalized marijuana possession and granted amnesty to anyone convicted of marijuana-related crimes, see 2000 Ballot Measure No. 5 (failed Nov. 7, 2000), 11 Alaska Stat., p. 886.

Justice Thomas said that schools should be allowed to do just about anything to students that parents can. Yep, no freedom of speech for students.

Today, students have less freedom than they did yesterday.

“… and tell ’em Big Mitch sent ya!”

Rudy, Rudy, Rudy

We read here that Thomas Ravenel was indicted today on federal cocaine charges. He is the South Carolina state chairman for former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign.

Here is a video of him endorsing Rudy.

So, it was a bad day for Rudy. After all, Newsday carried an article under the headline:

Rudy missing in action for Iraq panel
Giuliani's campaign fundraising kept him from commitment to panel studying Iraq.

Rudolph Giuliani's membership on an elite Iraq study panel came to an abrupt end last spring after he failed to show up for a single official meeting of the group, causing the panel's top Republican to give him a stark choice: either attend the meetings or quit, several sources said.

Giuliani left the Iraq Study Group last May after just two months, walking away from a chance to make up for his lack of foreign policy credentials on the top issue in the 2008 race, the Iraq war.

He tried to explain that one away by saying that once he became a “potential presidential candidate” he didn’t want his presence on the panel to be a distraction. Of course, he was a potential presidential candidate when he accepted the appointment, as documented on Talking Points Memo, so his excuse is total B.S.

Meanwhile, on Tucker, David Shuster interviewed Giuliani spokesman, Rep. David Dreier, (R. Calif.) The questions were about Rudy’s association with Bernie Kerick and Rudy’s estranged children. With respect to the former, Dreier said that he found Giuliani’s willingness to admit to a mistake “refreshing” and with respect to the latter, he thinks that makes Rudy more like Saint Ronald Reagan.

Don’t forget: Rudy is the Republican front-runner.

“… and tell ’em Big Mitch sent ya!”

The Puke State

In March of 2006, U.S. Attorney for Arkansas’ Eastern District Bud Cummins was investigating Missouri Governor Matt Blunt’s scheme to award franchises for satellite state licensing fee offices. The scheme was carried out by Mark F. “Thor” Hearne’s law firm, Lathrop & Gage. You may wonder why a U.S. Attorney from Arkansas was handling a Missouri investigation. Good question.

From Hidden Mysteries.net we learn:

The U.S. Attorney for Missouri's Western District, who would have otherwise overseen the investigation, was Todd P. Graves, who would also end up being replaced. Graves’s wife, as it turns out, “had been given a no-bid contract to run the second most lucrative motor vehicle fee office in Missouri, [in Gladstone.]” The contract to the wife of the U.S. Attorney was said to be worth some $2.6 million. Further, Graves’s brother-in-law had received a similar no-bid contract from Blunt for $1 million, and two staffers of Graves’s brother, Congressman Sam Graves, had also been given two similar contracts.

“[T]his situation amounts to $3.6 million in corruption insurance for Blunt,” the Missouri Democrats would later write in a petition drive calling for an investigation.

The Talking Points Memo reported that Sen. Kit Bond (R-Missouri) personally went to the White House and requested that Graves, (brother of right wing wacko Congressman Sam Graves) be removed from his position due to “his direct role in the Fee Office Scandal in Missouri.”

And so it was that Bud Cummings of Arkansas came to be investigating Missouri Governor Matt Blunt and Republican operative Thor Hearne.

Who is this Thor Hearne? Again, according to Hidden Mysteries.net

Hearne had been both Blunt's right-hand legal man for some time; as well as a GOP point man in Florida in 2000 (but who wasn’t?); as well as the Bush/Cheney ’04 general counsel in Missouri (at the specific, personal request of Dubya’s uncle, Bucky Bush, according to Thor himself in Missouri Lawyer’s Weekly); before he then became the Bush/Cheney ’04 national general counsel; and after the election, he became the founder of the scam “non-partisan” GOP front group calling itself “American Center for Voting Rights” (ACVR); which was, in turn, behind virtually every report, initiative, claim, piece of legislation, Congressional testimony, legal case, “official commission,” or public statement concerning the cooked-up case for the mythical epidemic of Democratic “voter fraud” that has been at the heart of the GOP/White House/DoJ attempts at vote-shaving via politicization and suppression at the ballot box since at least 2004.

Nobody knows who put Bud Cummings on the DoJ hit list, but it is pretty clear that Thor Hearne had the juice to do it if he wanted to. But of course, he would have to take care to keep his fingerprints off of it.

Enter the powerful white-collar criminal defense attorney William B. Mateja of the D.C./Dallas law firm of Fish & Richardson. You can read about his extensive connections to the White House and the Department of Justice, (e.g. Senior Counsel to James Comey) on Hidden Mysteries.net. For now, the thing that is important is that Mateja, repeatedly called Cummins to inquire if his client, Blunt, was the target of an investigation. And then, in June of 2006, Cummings was informed that his resignation was being requested.

On October 4, 2006, Cummings issued a press release which stated: “The matter has been closed with no indictments sought, or returned. Second, at no time was Governor Blunt a target, subject, or witness in the investigation, nor was he implicated in any allegation being investigated.”

Sure, it looks like Cummings was fired to interfere with an on-going investigation of Governor Matt Blunt, son of House Minority Whip Roy Blunt. But don’t overlook the fact that his investigation was also very uncomfortable for Thor Hearne. And the Rovians had a special fondness for Hearne because, as we have seen, he was the pointman on the phony voter fraud issue.

Remember Todd Graves, the U.S. Attorney from Missouri, who was also dismissed? He was replaced by none other than Bradley Schlozman. In a letter to Schlozman dated May 7, 2007 from Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), and Ranking Member Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), we read:

Recent news accounts have suggested that Todd Graves, the former U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Missouri and the person you succeeded as an interim United States Attorney, may have been on a list for replacement because of his refusal to endorse a lawsuit against the State of Missouri alleging voter fraud before the 2006 election. This is a lawsuit you approved while Acting Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division and then filed soon after you were interim appointed as Mr. Graves’ successor by Attorney General Gonzales. Several weeks ago, a federal judge ruled in favor of Missouri in that case, finding “no evidence” of major voter fraud in the state.

In 2006, Claire McCaskill won the Senatorial election in Missouri with just 49.6% of the vote, compared to 47.3% for incumbent Jim Talent. (The Democratic candidate for State Auditor won by a margin of almost 10%) Just a little more voter suppression in St. Louis, fired up by claims of voter fraud, could have turned the election, and the Senate, towards the Republicans.

“… and tell ’em Big Mitch sent ya!”

Home-spun charm

Fred Thompson was on Jay Leno last night. He’s an actor, but a lot of folk, including him, think that he ought to be President of the United States. These are people who remember Ronald Reagan was an actor, but who forget that Reagan sold arms to our enemies to fund terrorists and cut deals with hostage takers.

Anyway, Reagan left acting to become a politician. Fred Thomson left politics to become an actor. Ole Fred does have a certain home-spun charm, as for example when he explained his career path, thus:

After eight years in Washington, I longed for the realism and sincerity of Hollywood.

By the way, “home-spun charm” is my term for high-gloss bullshit.

Before he was elected to the Senate, Thompson spent nearly two decades in Washington as a lawyer-lobbyist, representing such entities as Westinghouse, the deposed leader of Haiti, the Teamsters Union pension fund and the Tennessee Savings and Loan Association. And when he left office, he continued his lucrative career representing foreign corporations.

Think back to that 2005 State of the Union address when King George the Incompetent said, “Justice is distorted, and our economy is held back by irresponsible class-actions and frivolous asbestos claims -- and I urge Congress to pass legal reforms this year.”

It seemed out of place at the time, but no more so than Fred Thompson in a red pick-up truck. You see, back in 2005, Fred Thompson was using his connections to then-Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) to extract information about goings-on inside Congress and selling it to a British company that had a good reason to worry about liability for asbestos claims. For this he got paid $760,000. Not bad work if you can get it.

It is not surprising therefore that Fred Thompson’s first policy initiative should garner such approval from the National Association of Manufacturers, his natural constituency. They cite with approval this bit of home-spun charming wisdom from Fred's appearance on CNBC:

We have, you know--if you include state taxes--the highest corporate tax rate in the world. That makes us less competitive. All those things have to be looked at. And all those--especially as far as the corporate tax rate is concerned, need to be clearly reduced.

As David Sirota points out:

[T]he Government Accountability Office reported in 2004, 94 percent of corporations pay less than 5 percent of their income in taxes, and corporate tax payments are at their second lowest level in 60 years - lower than in every other industrialized country other than Iceland.

Stay tuned for more of Fred Thompson’s home-spun charm.

“… and tell ’em Big Mitch sent ya!”

Republican Debate: The highlight reel

Imagine “American Idol” recast as “America’s Biggest Dope.” and you can get an idea of what the Republican Presidential Candidate’s Debate on CNN last night looked like.

The first question was the predictable “Knowing everything you know right now, was it a mistake for us to invade Iraq?

After fumferring around about non sequitors Mitt Romney offered up this whopper:

[I]f you’re saying let’s turn back the clock and Saddam Hussein had opening up his country to IAEA inspectors and they’d come in and they’d found that there were no weapons of mass destruction, had Saddam Hussein therefore not violated United Nations resolutions, we wouldn’t be in the conflict we’re in.

But he didn’t do those things, and we knew what we knew at the point we made the decision to get in.

I supported the president’s decision based on what we knew at
that time.

To review: On March 16, 2003, the U.S. advised the UN to pull its inspectors out of Iraq. Three days later, President George W. Bush addressed the American people at 10:15 p.m. to announce the beginning of a “broad and concerted campaign” to disarm Iraq, called Operation Iraqi Freedom.

But it is hard to stand out as the biggest knucklehead on a dais full or Republicans. Consider Senator Sam Brownback from Kansas:

On Iraq, I think we need to talk with them. I think we have to confront them aggressively for what they are, which is the lead sponsor of terrorism in the world.

It’s like I always say, “Iran, Iraq. What’s the big difference?”

As usual, Biggest Shmuck honors go to Rudy. On the question of whether or not he would pardon Scooter Libby:

GIULIANI: I think the sentence was way out of line. I mean, the sentence was grossly excessive in a situation in which, at the beginning, the prosecutor knew who the leak was...

BLITZER: So, yes or no, would you pardon him?

GIULIANI: ... and he knew a crime wasn't committed. … I think the sentence was way out of line. I mean, the sentence was grossly excessive in a situation in which, at the beginning, the prosecutor knew who the leak was...

BLITZER: So, yes or no, would you pardon him?

GIULIANI: ... and he knew a crime wasn't committed.

Put aside the fact that an undercover CIA agent was outed, bringing to an end her career in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Division and endangering the lives of everyone who worked with her. Since when are Obstruction of Justice and Perjury not crimes?

Giuliani also wants to reduce everyone’s taxes by $15,000 so that people can buy their own health insurance. In 2004, the middle fifth of American’s paid 18.6% of their income in taxes. In other words, if your taxable income was $80,640, you paid about 15,000 in taxes, which is the amount Giuliani wants to reduce your taxes so that you can afford health insurance. Don’t worry: the government doesn’t really need to collect taxes from anyone who makes less than 80 grand.

From a member of the audience came this intelligent queston:

My question is whether you believe that a conservative platform can also include a conservationist agenda. And, if so, how?

This question produced this thoroughly moronic answer from Virginia Governor Jim Gilmore:

The question was whether or not a conservative agenda can also have a conservation agenda. And I think that it can.

Certainly, when I was governor of the state of Virginia, we worked very hard in order to make Virginia a beautiful place and a place where we could in fact be welcoming to people, and that it would be a nice community for people to visit.

But at the end of the day, this is going to come down to the question of whether or not conservatism can match up with energy independence, which is a national security issue and it is a fundamental part of conservatism.

Conservatism means empowering people. It means cutting taxes and controlling government spending. It also means national security. And national security means a lot of different elements right at this time. And we're discussing some of them tonight.

And I can assure the people who are families here tonight, their young people, young men and women who are on the battle lines, and people who are committing their lives, they are in fact serving the national interests of this country in a time of major crisis.

I presume he was talking about people serving in the Civilian Conservation Corps.

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Dan Bartlett quits. Oh, that’s just great!

Dan Bartlett quit the White House today. The news media are describing him as “the one person who could give George Bush bad news.” The example given is that it was he that broke through the bubble surrounding King George the Incompetent to let him know that things weren’t going well in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina hit.

Michael Wolf of Vanity Fair says that he smells a rat. Specifically, a rat jumping a sinking ship.

If it is Bartlett’s job to break bad news to Dumb Dubya, I can imagine that his job is going to get a lot tougher The Democrats control congress, and there are 11 candidates running for the Republican nomination, all or almost all of whom are trying to distance themselves from Bush. The scandals just keep coming, and Big Mitch predicts that we are going to hear a lot more about “caging” in the weeks to come. His base is turning on Dubya, and immigration is merely the most conspicuous issue.

But the really scary part is that there will be nobody around the president who can say anything other than, “Oh, that’s just great, Mr. President.”

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Enough is enough! I have had it with these mother-effing Mycobacteria tuberculosis on this mother-effing plane!

The lead story on all the networks was about the guy who got on an airplane with a highly drug resistant type of tuberculosis. The CDC warned him not to travel.

The case has called into question the ability of the CDC to respond to emergencies and the Department of Homeland Security has been unable to explain how the TB-infected man was able to simply drive into the United States on his return trip from Canada when “all border crossings had been given his name and told to hold him if he appeared.”

Think Progress explains all you need to know about this disturbing story.

Bush has repeatedly proposed slashing the CDC’s budget:

– 2002: Proposed a $174 million cut.

– 2003: Proposed a $1 billion cut, with no new funding for preventive health divisions working on TB.

– 2004: Proposed an increase of “less than 1 per cent.”

– 2005: Proposed a $263 million cut, while simultaneously proposing a $270 million increase in abstinence education.

– 2006: Proposed a $500 million cut which would have slashed grants to state and local health departments like the Fulton County Health and Wellness Department involved in this week’s TB-scare.

– 2007: Proposed a $179 million cut, in addition to unspecified plans for more CDC “savings.”

– 2008: Proposed a $37 million cut, including “massive funding cuts in proven health protection programs.”

In a report submitted to the House Appropriations Committee earlier this year, CDC Director Julie Gerberding warned that a TB outbreak could result from the administration’s proposed cuts. She noted that “emerging plagues such as drug-resistant tuberculosis represent ‘urgent threats that have become more prominent in the dawn of the 21st century.’”

Additionally, Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, points out that the full scale of the “erosion of [CDC’s] traditional disease control activities has been ‘masked’ by infusions of cash earmarked for spending on bioterrorism and pandemic activities.”

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Big Mitch gets one right

In Class of ’71 reads the news, I set forth my reasons for being skeptical about what the government tells us. In particular, I urged a skeptical attitude toward the headline, “U.S. military believes al Qaeda has missing soldiers.”

Here’s what I said,

What evidence is there that it was al Qaeda in Iraq that kidnapped our soldiers? If there were any at all, I would expect that the government and its stenographers would be less mealy-mouthed in its description of the perpetrators than “al Qaeda or others associated with the militant group.”

I want to know what is the relationship of al Qaeda in Iraq to the group of Saudis that attacked our country on September 11, 2001. Do they take their orders from Osama Bin Laden? Do they have ambitions beyond the establishment of a Sunni Islamic government in Iraq? How do we know?

Today, the Boston Globe carried an article entitled “GOP rivals embrace unproven Iraq-9/11 tie.” Quoting Michael Scheuer , the CIA's former chief of operations against bin Laden in the late 1990s, and others, the Globe reports:

Al Qaeda in Iraq is not overseen by bin Laden.
...
[T]he enemy the military calls "Al Qaeda Iraq" is a combination of Iraqi jihadists and an unknown number of fighters from countries throughout the Middle East. "AQI" came together after the US invasion. And while there is evidence that AQI members coordinate attacks among themselves, there is little evidence that they coordinate closely with bin Laden.

The take-away message from the article is that the G.O.P. candidates are intentionally conflating the war in Iraq with our response to the threat of Islamic terrorists, in the deceitfull tradition established by King George the Incompetent.

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Threatening chaos

We are told that if the U.S. withdraws from Iraq, there will be chaos there. Put aside for the moment the fact that the people who are telling us this have a nearly perfect record for being wrong about everything. Let’s assume that they are correct.

If it’s true, then we must also assume that there is intelligence to support this conclusion. We must also assume that the leadership of Iraq knows the truth, and even if it is not evident to them, the U.S. can show them the intelligence, which has been so persuasive to King George the Incompetent.

Now, chaos is a bad thing. I assume that the leadership in Iraq likes being in the leadership, and chaos is directly threatening to them. That’s a good thing, and I will explain why.

What it means is that the threat of us leaving and the chaos which is to follow is something with which the U.S can exert leverage against the leadership in Iraq.

What shall we exert pressure upon the Iraqis to do? Get up an army, get a working police force, get some oil production on line, get an agreement on oil revenue sharing, work out a federal system for Iraq. The list could go on, but it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to figure out where we want to be and what it is going to take to get there.

There’s another question: what can we do to leverage the leadership in Iraq. And this is not a tough question, either. The answer is to give the Iraqi leadership timetables and enforce them with the threat of leaving.

Really, the only thing it takes is a congressional democratic leadership whose knees don’t go all wobbly when someone threatens to call them a wussy. Instead, we have a bunch of wussies.

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Monica Goodling and Thomas Heffelfinger

U.S. attorney Thomas Heffelfinger (Minnesota) was one of the U.S. Attorneys who appeared on Kyle Samson’s firing list. Monica Goodling mentioned him briefly during her testimony this week. She said that she'd heard he “spent an extraordinary amount of time” on his work relating to his position as Chairman of the Native American Issues Subcommittee (NAIS) of the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee.

Heffelfinger appeared on the list in January 2006, and a month later he voluntarily resigned. When he heard of Ms. Goodling’s testimony he had this to say:

I did spent a lot of time on it... That's what I was instructed to do [by then-Attorney General John Ashcroft].

If it’s true that people within the Department of Justice were critical of the amount of time I was spending on Indian issues, I’m outraged. … Are they telling me I spent too much time trying to improve public safety for Native Americans, who are victims of violent crime at a rate 2 ½ times the national population? If they are, then shame on them.

Who could object to the fact that a U.S. Attorney from Minnesota was devoting his time to improving the lot of American Indians? Well, that would be whoever is victimizing a lot of American Indians.

Does the name Jack Abramoff ring a bell?

Admittedly, none of Jack Abramoff’s Indian client/victims were up in Minnesota. But after his guilty plea, also in January of 2006, the investigation into his nefarious activities widened. Disrupting the subcommittee of U.S. attorneys that dealt with American Indian issues at that crucial time probably didn’t help the investigation.

Or it could just be a coincidence.

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Two negatives for the Bushies

There were two negative pieces of news for loyal Bushies today. The first was Monica Goodling’s testimony.

Big Mitch predicts that the Republican spin-meisters will be pushing a story that goes like this: Monica Goodling testified and was obviously very sincere, careful and honest. She was subjected to long, arduous, penetrating questioning. In spite of this, no wrongdoing has been uncovered.

Bullshit.

First of all, we still don’t know how the list of U.S. Attorneys to be sacked came about. We can safely conclude that someone is withholding information. But let’s focus on the specific crimes that she testified about.

Monica Goodling testified today about a meeting she had with Alberto Gonzales shortly before she left the department. She stated that the conversation took place on the Thursday or Friday of the week before she left the department. She left on March 23rd -- so the conversation occurred on March 14th or 15th. Congress had already requested to interview Goodling about what she knew.

Goodling came to Gonzales to request a transfer because of the scandal. Gonzales did not immediately agree. He then began discussing what he remembered about the firing process. He asked her if she had "any reaction" to his recollection. The conversation made her “uncomfortable,” she testified. One can surmise that Gonzales was trying to shape her testimony.

On May 10th Gonzales testified in the House Judiciary Committee as follows: “I have not gone back and discussed this investigation with Sampson and others to protect the integrity of this investigation. I have not asked these specific questions.” General Gonzales appears to have been lying to Congress.

Ms. Goodling testified that she used political considerations in the hiring of non-political officials, in an apparent violation of the Hatch Act. On her behalf she admitted to “crossing the line,” but she said, she didn’t “mean to.” She also testified that McNulty was inaccurate and misleading in his testimony.

Regardless of what you hear Republicans saying, Ms. Goodling’s testimony today did nothing to restore confidence in Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

The second negative -- call it a double negative if you will -- is this little item from Roll Call today, reprinted in it’s entirety:

Vice President Cheney isn’t not on the phone records of the alleged D.C. Madam, who is accused of running a high-price call-girl ring in Washington, the accused madam’s lawyer said on Tuesday.

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