Domestic spying inquiry restarted at DoJ – now that bush has an attorney general that he can trust not to make him look bad…

Judge orders White House to hold e-mails – riiiight… 8/

Former FBI, CIA Employee Pleads Guilty to Computer Crime – thank you, homeland security… 8/

Continue reading dude, where’s my country? →

a personal transcript of Keith Olbermann’s Special Comment on Waterboarding and Torture…

November 5, 2007

Finally tonight, as promised, a special comment on the meaning of the story of the former US Acting Assiatant Attorney General Daniel Levin. It is a fact, startling in it’s cynical simplicity, and it requires cynical and simple words to be properly expressed.

The presidency of George W. Bush has now devolved into a criminal conspiracy to cover the ass of George W. Bush. All the petulancy, all the childish threats, all the blank-stare stupidity, all the invocations of World War III, all the sophisic questions about which terrorist attacks we wanted him not to stop, all the phony secrets, all the claims of executive priveledge, all the stumbling tap-dancing of his nominees, all the verbal flatulence of his apologists; all of it is now, after one revelation last week, transparently clear for what it is: the pathetic and desperate manipulation of the government, the re-focusing of our entire nation, towards keeping this mock president and this unstable vice-president and this departed, wildly-self-overrating attorney general and all the others from potential prosecution for having approved or ordered the illegal torture of prisoners being held in the name of our country.

Waterboarding is torture, Daniel Levin was to write. Daniel Levin was no theorist and no protester, he was no trouble-making politician, he was no table-pounding commentator. Daniel Levin was an astonishingly patriotic American and a brave man. Brave not just with words or with stances, even in a dark time when that kind of bravery can usually be scared or bought off. Charged, as you heard in the story from ABC News last friday, with assessing the relative legality of the various nightmares in the pandora’s box that is the Orwell-worthy euphamism “enhanced interrogation”, Mr. Levin decided that the simplest and most honest way to evaluate them was to have them enacted upon himself. Daniel Levin took himself to a military base and let himself be waterboarded.

Mr. Bush, ever done anything that personally courageous?

Perhaps when you’ve gone to Walter Reed and teared up over the maimed servicemen, and then gone back to the White House and confirmed and determined that there would be more maimed servicemen. Has it been that kind of personal courage, Mr. Bush, when you’ve spoken of American triumphs, and the triumph of freedom and sacrifice of your own popularity for the sake of our safety, and then permitted others to fire, or discredit, or destroy anybody who disagreed with you, whether they were your own Generals, or Max Cleveland, or Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame, or Daniel Levin?

Daniel Levin should have a statue in his honour in Washington right now. Instead, he was forced out as Acting Assistant Attorney General, nearly three years ago, because he had the guts to do what George Bush could not do in a million years: actually put himself at risk for the sake of his country, for the sake of what is right. And they waterboarded him, and he wrote that even though he knew those doing it meant him no harm, and he knew they would rescue him at the instant of the slightest distress, and he knew he would not die, still with all that reassurance, he could not stop the terrors screaming from inside of him, could not quell the horror, could not convince that which is at the core of each of us, the entity who exists behind all the embellishments we strap to ourselves like purpose and name and family and love, he could not convince his being that he wasn’t drowning.

Waterboarding, he said, is torture. Legally, it is torture. Practically, it is torture. Ethically, it is torture. And he wrote it down. Wrote it down somewhere, where it could be contrasted with the words of this country’s 43rd President: “The United States of America does not torture.” Made you into a liar, Mr. Bush. Made you into, if anybody had the guts to pursue it, a criminal, Mr. Bush.

Waterboarding had already been used on Kalid Sheikh Muhammed, and a couple of other men none of us really care about, except, sir, for the one detail you had forgotten: That there are rules. And even if we just make up these rules, this country observes them anyway, because we’re Americans, sir, and we’re better than that. And we’re better than you! And the man your Justice Department selected to decide whether or not waterboarding really was torture had decided. And not in some phony academic fashion, nor while wearing the Walter Mitty “poseur” attire of flight-suit and helmet. He had put his money, Mr. Bush, where your mouth was. So your sleazy, sychophantic henchman, Mr. Gonzales, had to have him append an asterisk suggesting his black-and-white answer wasn’t black-and-white after all, that there might have been a quasi-legal way of torturing people, maybe with an absolute time limit, and a physician entitled to stop it. Maybe, if your administration had bothered to set any rules or guidelines. And then, when your people realised that even that was too dangerous, Daniel Levin was branded “too independent”, and “someone who could not be counted on”. In other words, Mr. Bush, somebody you couldn’t count on to lie for you.

So Levin was fired, because if it ever got out what he concluded, and the lengths to which he went to validate that conclusion, anybody who had sanctioned waterboarding, and who knows what else, anybody – you yourself, sir – you would have been screwed. And screwed you are!

It can’t be coincidence that the story of Daniel Levin should emerge from the black hole of this secret society of the presidency just at the conclusion of the unhappy saga of the newest Attorney General nominee. Another patriot somewhere listened as Judge Mukasey mumbled like he’d never heard of waterboarding, and refused to answer, in words, that which Daniel Levin answered on a waterboard somewhere in Maryland or Virginia, three years ago. And this someone also heard George Bush say “the United States does not torture”. And he realised that either Mr. Bush was lying, or that this wasn’t the United States of America any more, and either way, he needed to do something. Not in the way Levin needed to do something about it, but in a brave way none the less.

We have United States Senators who need to do something about it, too. Chairman Lehey, of the Judiciary Committee, has seen this for what it is and said enough. Senator Schumer has seen it, reportedly, as some kind of puzzle piece in the New York political patronage system, and unfortunately, he has failed. What Senator Feinstein has seen to justify in joining Schumer in rubber-stamping Mukasey, I cannot guess. It is obvious that both these Senators should look to the meaning of the story of Daniel Levin and recant their support for Mukasey’s confirmation.

And they should look into their own committee’s history, and recall that, in 1973, their predecessors were able to wring, even from Richard Nixon, a guarantee of a Special Prosecutor, ultimately a Special Prosecutor of Richard Nixon, in exchange for their approval of his new Attorney General, Eliott Richardson. If they could get that out of Nixon, you, before you confirm the president’s latest human echo, tomorrow, you better be able to get a yes or a no out of Michael Mukasey. Ideally, you should lock this government down, financially, until a Special Prosecutor is appointed. Or fifty of them! I’m not holding my breath. The yes or the no on waterboarding would have to suffice. Because remember, if you can’t get it, or you won’t, the time between tonight and the next presidential election is likely to be the longest year of our lives.

You are leading this country, and all of us, to the waterboards, symbolic and otherwise, of George W. Bush.

Ultimately, Mr. Bush, the real question isn’t who approved the waterboarding of this fiend Kalid Sheikh Muhammed and two others, it is why were they waterboarded? Study after study for generation after generation, sir, has confirmed that torture gets people to talk, torture gets people to plead, torture gets people to break, but torture does not get them to tell the truth.

Of course, Mr. Bush, this isn’t a problem is it, if you don’t care if the terrorist plots they tell you about are the truth, or just something to stop the tormentors from drowning them. If, say, a president needed a constant supply of terrorist threats to keep the country scared, if, say, he needed phony plots to play hero during, and to boast about interrupting, and to use to distract people from the plot he did not interrupt – if, say, he realised that even terrorised people still need good ghost stories before they will let a president pillage the constitution – well, heck, Mr. Bush, who better to dream them up for you than an actual terrorist? He’ll tell you everything you ever fantasised doing in his most horrific of daydreams, his equivalent of the day you “flew” onto the deck of the Lincoln to explain you’d won in Iraq.

Now if that’s what this is all about, you tortured not because you’re stupid and you think that torture produces confession, but you tortured because you’re smart enough to know it produces really authentic-sounding fiction, well then you’re going to need all the lawyers you can find, because that crime wouldn’t just mean impeachment, would it, sir? That crime would mean that George W. Bush was going to prison.

Thus the master tumblers turn, and the lock yields, and the hidden explanations can all be perceived in their exact proportions, and in their exact progressions. Daniel Levin’s eminently practical, eminently logical, eminantly patriotic way of testing the legality of waterboarding had to vanish, and him with it. Thus Alberto Gonzales has to use that brain that sounds like an old car trying to start on a freezing morning to undo eight centuries of the forward march of law and government. Thus Dick Cheney has to ridiculously assert that confirming we do or do not use any particular interrogation technique would somehow help the terrorists. Thus Michael Mukasey, on the eve of the vote that will make him the High Priest of the law of this land, cannot and must not answer a question, or even hint that he’s thought about a question, which merely concernes the theoretical definition of waterboarding as torture.

Because, Mr. Bush, in the seven years of your nightmare presidency, this whole string of events has been transformed. From it’s beginning, as the most neglectful protection ever of the lives and the safety of the American people, into the most efficient and cynical exploitation of tragedy for political gain in this country’s history. And then to the giddying prospect that maybe you could do what the military fanatics did in Japan in the 1930s, and remake a nation into a fascist state so efficient and so self-sustaining that the fascism itself would be nearly invisible. But at last this frightful plan is ending with an unexpected crash. The shocking reality that no matter how thoroughly you might try to extinguish them, Mr. Bush, how thoroughly you might try to brand disagreement as disloyalty, Mr. Bush, there are still people, like Daniel Levin, who believe in the United States of America as true freedom. Where we are better not because of schemes and wars, but because of dreams and morals. And, ultimately sir, these men, these patriots will defeat you, and they will return this country to it’s righteous standards, and to it’s rightful owners, the people.

Good night and good luck.

House Passes Thought Crime Prevention Bill

Continue reading are you scared of the government yet? →

this is the democrats that “unveiled” this bill… it was my impression that the democrats were supposedly less repulsive than the republicans, but they’re apparently not…

Bush pushes for telecom immunity
071010
By JENNIFER LOVEN

President Bush said Wednesday that he will not sign a new eavesdropping bill if it does not grant retroactive immunity to U.S. telecommunications companies that helped conduct electronic surveillance without court orders.

A proposed bill unveiled by Democrats on Tuesday does not include such a provision. Bush, appearing on the South Lawn as that measure was taken up in two House committees, said the measure is unacceptable for that and other reasons. Continue reading what!?!? →

Retiring military chief declares: American people can’t vote to end Iraq war
4 October 2007
By Patrick Martin

In a statement remarkable for its blunt rejection of democracy, the outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Peter Pace, said Monday that opponents of the war in Iraq could not bring it to an end by voting.

Pace made his comments before an audience that included President George W. Bush, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and hundreds of high-ranking Pentagon civilian and military officials, as he swore in his successor as the president’s top military adviser, Admiral Michael Mullen. None of those present made any objection to Pace’s statement.

Outside Ft. Myer, where the ceremony took place, a handful of antiwar demonstrators used a bullhorn to shout their opposition. Reporters inside could hear, “Stop the Killing, George!”, “Arrest the Liar for War Crimes!” and other denunciations of the administration and the Pentagon.

Noting the presence of the demonstrators, Pace said the protest against the war was an exercise of the right of free speech, but that there were limits:

“I just want everyone to understand that this dialogue is not about ‘can we vote our way out of a war.’ We have an enemy who has declared war on us. We are in a war. They want to stop us from living the way we want to live our lives. So the dialogue is not about ‘are we in a war,’ but how and where and when to best fight that war.”

Pace was employing the standard “big lie” technique of the Bush administration, presenting the war in Iraq as a response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Continue reading fuming rage!!! →

Bush vetoes child health insurance plan
03 October, 2007
By JENNIFER LOVEN

WASHINGTON – President Bush, in a sharp confrontation with Congress, on Wednesday vetoed a bipartisan bill that would have dramatically expanded children’s health insurance.

It was only the fourth veto of Bush’s presidency, and one that some Republicans feared could carry steep risks for their party in next year’s elections. The Senate approved the bill with enough votes to override the veto, but the margin in the House fell short of the required number. Continue reading no child left behind? not likely… 8/ →

McCain: No Muslim president, U.S. better with Christian one
September 29th 2007
BY HELEN KENNEDY

GOP presidential candidate John McCain says America is better off with a Christian President and he doesn’t want a Muslim in the Oval Office.

“I admire the Islam. There’s a lot of good principles in it,” he said. “But I just have to say in all candor that since this nation was founded primarily on Christian principles, personally, I prefer someone who I know who has a solid grounding in my faith.”

In a wide-ranging interview about religion and faith with the Web site Beliefnet, McCain said he wouldn’t “rule out under any circumstance” someone who wasn’t Christian, but said, “I just feel that that’s an important part of our qualifications to lead.”

A Mormon such as rival candidate Mitt Romney, he said, would be okay.

“The Mormon religion is a religion that I don’t share, but I respect.

“More importantly, I’ve known so many people of the Mormon faith who have been so magnificent,” he said.

McCain later clarified his remarks, saying, “I would vote for a Muslim if he or she was the candidate best able to lead the country and to defend our political values.”

A Muslim rights group ripped the Arizona Republican’s remarks.

“That kind of attitude goes against the American tradition of religious pluralism and inclusion,” said Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

He urged McCain to “clarify his remarks” and “stress his acceptance of political candidates of any faith.”

The Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish advocacy group, could not be reached for comment because its offices were closed for the Sukkoth holiday.

In the interview, the senator also said the “Constitution established the United States of America as a Christian nation.”

There is no mention of God, Jesus or Christ in that entirely secular document.

The interview, which included the revelation that he’s talking to his pastor about undergoing a full-immersion baptism after the campaign, sent Beliefnet’s irreverent “God-o-meter” spinning.

“How can the religious right hate this guy?” the site asked.

Beliefnet columnist David Kuo said McCain was “pandering to what he thinks the Christian conservative community wants to hear” and predicted he “will have a lot of explaining to do about this interview.”

The remarks came as he was starting to show gains in the polls.

McCain alienated evangelical voters in 2000 when he branded the Revs. Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell “agents of intolerance.”