Let It Go Already!

I'm not a violent man, but I'm so afraid I'm going to snap and smack the next person who tells me warrantless spying is fine because anyone who isn't a terrorist has nothing to hide.

Raise your hand if you never break any laws. I can't see you, but I'm betting very few of you raised your hands. Personally, just off the top of my head, I know I tend to speed sometimes, and I remember back in High School, I had my first few beers before I was strictly legal to do so.

Suppose you, in a particularly hard part of your life, turn to illegal drugs and get yourself hooked. Suppose, for example, you're a major right wing radio host. Do you really want the government knowing about this? Do you really think that you should risk having DEA agents show up at your house because of your occasional, recreational use of something you're addicted to, just because the NSA found you while looking for terrorists?

How many people have ever cheated, even just a little, on their taxes? I actually can say I haven't, I'm exceedingly fastidious with money. But from talking to my friends, it appears I'm in the minority. If you have ever taken a dubious deduction or intentionally omitted income you earned under the table, and you happen to brag about this to one of your pals, do you want the IRS to show up at your house, because Big Brother was listening in?

For the Christians in my audience, this can be pretty well typified by the admonishment "let he who is without sin cast the first stone".

If you aren't without sin (in the legal sense) then you really can't claim that you have nothing to hide and no reason to worry about Big Brother listening in.

Liam.

Links

I have three links that people who are interested in what I have to say should read.

The first is this article at Huffington Post. One of the regular posters posted a letter written by an Iraq war veteran. Worth a read.

The second is yet another tip o' the hat to fellow blogger Ken Grandlund. As regular readers are no doubt aware, I've had some very critical things to say about the Unitary Executive theory of U.S. government. Ken has written this post giving a great view on exactly what's wrong with the theory and how it is ultimately damaging to the very fabric of our nation. As always, written with an attention to detail I only wish I had.

Finally, this post from the New York Times, a column forwarded to me by my lovely wife. It is an op-ed piece putting the events of 9/11 into the perspective of history. (In order to read it, you have to sign up with the Times web site and create an account. I don't believe you have to pay for that at this time, but the Times has been charging for more and more of their content.)

Liam.

Armored troops? We can't have that...

Part of this story is a few weeks old, but it deserves mention.

You will recall I've mentioned before that the troops (the ones we who complain about the Iraq war are accused of not supporting) have not received adequate armor for their tasks at hand.

According to this piece in the New York Times recently, a Pentagon study found that 80% of marines killed from wounds to their upper bodies would have been saved, had they been wearing body armor. For reference, the study looked at 93 deaths and determined that 74 of them would have lived with the extra body armor that had been denied to most of the troops. Granted, that's only about 4% of the total number of troop deaths, but still... a needless death is a needless death.

According to this story in the Army Times, much of the armor that HAS been provided has had to be recalled after failing ballistics tests, meaning that it wasn't providing the protection necessary.

There have been a number of stories over the last year or so of families buying supplies and armor for their kin deployed in Iraq. Many of these purchased “Dragon Skin”, widely regarded as the top of the line, best of the best.

By the way, according to this Reuter's article, 50,000 soldiers have been prevented from leaving the armed forces when their contractually obligated time was up by the “stop loss” program. You think morale is low because of people here at home who don't support the war? If morale is low, it's because many of the troops have been turned into indentured servants, forced to continue to risk their lives long after they've served their fair time.

So, along comes this article from a group called “Soldiers for Truth”. According to several soldiers who purchased (or had purchased for them by family members) Pinnacle's Dragon Skin body armor, the policy now is that personal armor may not be used. That's right, the Army is telling soldiers that if they're killed in action while wearing their personal body armor, their beneficiaries won't be eligible for the $400,000 death benefit.

So in essence, this means that somewhere out there we have soldiers who are in Iraq because they've been prevented from leaving the armed forces after the time they volunteered for was up, who are not being provided with sufficient armor (armor which a Pentagon report indicates would have saved some of their fallen comrades) who now have to choose between risking an unnecessary death and risking leaving their loved ones with nothing at all, should they be killed in spite of their armor.

Now, several sources have come out to say that this is illegal and that soldiers are eligible for their death benefit no matter what they may be wearing at the time of death, but still, it infuriates me that our men and women in uniform, who already have a lot on their minds, are even being put in the position of having to wonder.

But, of course, it's we who question the legitimacy of this war who aren't supporting our troops.

Liam.

An honest question...

To those like Ken Mehlman who assert the legality and propriety of the behaviors of the current Administration, I have a thought experiment for you.

You are, by and large, Republican, because virtually every independent (and of course every Democrat) that I know of takes a very dim view of the actions of President Bush, from the warrantless spying to the Valerie Plame affair to torture and extraordinary rendition of suspects to the declaration of a new class of detainees, "enemy combatants" not due any rights or process.

So, sit down, close your eyes, and imagine it's 8 years ago. President Clinton is in office, only instead of being hounded about his sexual improprieties, he's been caught using sweeping warrantless wire taps, asserting his right to order torture, and many of the other things "the left" has been decrying in Bush these last 5 years.

Did your gut just clench? Did you just have a knee jerk "hang the bastard" reaction? Because most of you, if you're honest with yourselves, would have had that reaction had it gone down that way. Or if President Gore had been elected in fact and not merely by the popular vote, and he'd done exactly what President Bush has done.

There are, of course, those few out there who honestly believe that the giving up of personal liberties and freedoms in pursuit of safety is a fair trade. I pity you, but you have the right to your opinion.

But for the rest of you, please open your eyes and realize that it's not OKAY just because it's your guy doing it.

Liam.

The Game the Whole Country is Playing!

It's 9/11 Lotto!

Place your bets now, how many seconds between when Present Bush utters his first sound at tomorrow nights State of the Union address and his first reference to 9/11.

Four plus years gone by and a new reminder that we still haven't tracked down Osama bin Ladin, and my bet is we make it about 35 seconds.

Anyone want to get in on the action?

Liam.

Bush tampers with justice?

According to this post at the Huffington Post, Noel L. Hillman is the most recent person to accept a position as a federal judge, offered to him by President Bush.

Interestingly, until last Thursday when he accepted the position, Mr. Hillman was also the prosecutor in charge of investigating the Jack Abramoff situation, which absolutely involves many high level Republicans and very likely the President himself.

So, over the last 6 months or so, while Hillman was in charge of investigating whether anyone did anything wrong, one of the primary focuses of his investigation was also negotiating calling "do over" by appointing him as a federal judge, impeding the two-year-old investigation.

See why "Unitary Executive" can't be allowed to stand as law in this country? Give someone the power to misbehave, and then the power to cover it up, they will take it.

Liam.

Why, Exactly...

Why, exactly, do President Bush's approval ratings on National Security go UP every time there's a new public statement from Osama bin Ladin?

Let's see, it's been over four years since we were hit by terrorists, four years since President Bush stood before the nation and told us that we wouldn't rest until bin Ladin and the rest who were guilty of this crime were brought to justice.

It's been about three years since President Bush said that he honestly just wasn't that concerned about Osama bin Ladin.

It's been more than two years since the President decided to invade a country that had NOTHING to do with the attacks of 9/11, instead of finishing the task that he promised us in the days after 9/11 he would get done.

We're hundreds of billions of dollars poorer, many fine young men and women are dead, and yet somehow a reminder that Bush has done next to nothing to get the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks serves to BOLSTER his approval ratings on national security?

It makes no sense! Every time I see another video or hear another audio tape from bin Ladin it reminds me of the extent to which this President has dropped the ball, let us down, failed to accomplish what he'd promised to accomplish.

Liam.

Genius

I've been lambasted by some of my liberal friends for referring to the genius of Karl Rove and the neoconservatives who have taken control of the Republican party and our nation.

There is, however, a kind of political genius in the way the party is being run these days, and the problem is confusing "genius" with "good". The stereotypical "evil genius" of bad science fiction movies is still a genius, even if that genius is put to evil ends.

I never cease to be amazed at the extent of their subtle and devious politicking. The main tenet of it is so simple and yet, when executed in lock step precision, devastatingly effective: repeat something often enough and most of the public will believe it, even if it is blatent falsehood.

But it's the amazing variety of ways in which they are able to further their message even when the talking point has been proven false that astounds me.

Case in point, I read Ken Mehlman's e-mails from GOP.com (I also read the ones from MoveOn.org) because I think it's important to see what both sides are saying. And clearly both sides play politics. But the sheer audacity in today's message, preceding several lies with "The Democrats are out lying about this, but we know the truth..." and then telling a blatent lie. It's the utter completeness with which he throws himself into repeating false talking points. He lies not only to the public but to his own people without a trace of skepticism or apology, which makes it all the more effective.

Democrats will have a hard time winning elections (even assuming they're fair) if they can't settle on a consistent message, which is a shame. I hate to advocate lying in our political leaders, because it gets us leaders who are already prone to corruption, but what else can we do? We need to return to the days when the three branches of government acted as checks on each other's power, not as one big unified corruption machine.

And so, if I can't have what I would most like, a world in which our political battles were waged cleanly and with the truth, then I have to hope for the next best thing, which is for BOTH sides to be equally unscrupulous, so they retain equal footing and continue to act as checks and balance on each other, battling each other so that neither side can really do any damage to the citizens they're supposedly there to represent.

I would seriously consider running for Congress in order to try to clean up the system, but the fact is in order to do that, I'd have to run a clean campaign, and if I did THAT, I'd be slaughtered by both sides.

So work on campaign finance reform and lobbying reform and any other reform you can think of, but until we get it right to the point that corruption is no longer tolerated, pray that the Democrats learn to be just as underhanded as the current Republicans (and no more so), and let us get back to the safe, properly checked and balanced government we so badly need.

Liam.

P.S. Sorry for the long and rambling thoughts. Some nights, I lie awake in an emotional cold sweat, seeing the extent to which checks and balances have broken down and the damaging direction our country is going in, and I just have to write until I feel at least a little bit better.

Letter to the Editor

[This is a letter I submitted to my local paper as a letter to the editor. - Liam]

Opposing Judge Alito for the right reasons


As the confirmation vote on Judge Samuel Alito draws nearer, the Democratic party has chosen to focus on the likely overturn of Roe v. Wade if Alito is confirmed. They point to surveys which supposedly show that the majority of Americans don't want Roe overturned. This is not the reason why I oppose Judge Alito.

Others have focused on Judge Alito's alleged record of lying, promising to recuse himself on certain types of cases and then refusing to do so when faced with a case that matched with eerie similarity the hypothetical case he'd been presented with. This is also not the reason to oppose Judge Alito.

Still others point to Judge Alito's record of findings in favor of government and big business over private citizens, often with shaky legal foundation (so shaky, they say, he's got among the highest level of overturned verdicts on appeal). This, while frightening, is also not the best reason to oppose Judge Alito.

The reason we should all fear Judge Alito is that he subscribes to the Unitary Executive Theory of U.S. government. The President, so the theory goes, is the only one granted executive power (aka power over execution of laws) by the Constitution, and so therefore, any oversight of or checks on that power is unconstitutional.

The problem with this theory is that it ignores the fact that our whole system of government is set up with endless checks and balances, in order to prevent any one person or small cadre of people from wielding too much power. Proponents of the Unitary Executive branch (such as Judge Alito and also President Bush) envision a United States in which the President has almost monarch-level powers. They argue that nothing the President does can be considered unconstitutional, because by definition, to restrict his powers to execute the business of the country is itself unconstitutional.

The founders of this country, in their great wisdom, recognized that power corrupts in direct proportion to how much power is held and inverse proportion to how many checks and balances stand in the way of raw brandishing of power. The Unitary Executive theorists have brought us such frightening abuses of power as:

• Warrantless wire tapping of American citizens, when the FISA court's "72 hours retroactive" warrant rule could easily have been followed.
• A signing statement on the McCain anti-torture bill which essentially says that the President feels free to ignore the law when it suits his purposes.
• Designating a new class of criminal, "enemy combatant" and declaring them devoid of rights, even in the case of American citizens (such as Jose Padilla, arrested in the United States, taken to Guantanamo Bay, and held without charge or even the basic rights guaranteed by our Constitution, on the mere say so of our President).

We need strength in all three branches of government in order for the checks and balances to work. If we cede the judiciary to the Unitary Executive proponents, we open the door for this Administration or a future one to decree that throwing political enemies in prison is vital to national security, or suspend an election on the theory that a change of power might weaken the nation.

Our government is a three-way tug of war. To put someone into one of the branches who has decided to pull in the direction of one of the other two sets us on a dangerous and destructive path.

Samuel Alito would be, by all reports, such a Justice. We really can't afford to have him on the Supreme Court.

Liam Johnson

Rumor Mill

It's late, I'm tired and grumpy, but have to be up working on something for my office, and so while I wait for a program to run, I thought I'd pass along a totally unsubstantiated rumor I heard.

I pass this along not as fact, but because I'm curious if anyone can tell me if such a gambit would work.

I want to stress, I have no reason to believe the Administration *IS* planning this, just wondering...


That said... I heard someone today wondering if the reason Bush is suddenly preparing for an impeachment hearing is that he wants to have one and get it over with while Republicans still control Congress. The idea being that this neoconservative controlled Congress would never find him guilty, and then if the Democrats take power in the '06 elections, Bush would float the legal argument that being impeached a second time would count as double jeopardy and would therefore not be valid... counting either on the new, highly conservative court to find in his favor, or at least for the case to take so long wending through the courts that by the time he could possibly actually be impeached by a less than friendly Congress, he'd be just about out of office anyway.


The thing is, whether I have any reason to believe it's true or not, I absolutely believe this Administration would try it, if they felt there was a reasonable chance of the gambit working.

Liam.

Surprisingly Literate

Cheers to the Brad Blog's Brad Friedman, for writing (on the Brad Blog and Huffington Post) one of the best uses of irony I've seen in a long time.

Not because it is particularly any more apropos than any other, but because for ONCE, an author doesn't insult our intelligence by assuming that if he doesn't point out his meaning, we won't get it. The entire text of his post:

Saddam Hussein's intolerable use of weapons of mass destruction against enemies; unprecedented aggression against and occupation of a country which posed no threat to his own; routine kidnapping, torture, murder and secret prison system; wholesale slaughter of citizens from other countries; imprisonment of political rivals held for years without charges; and secret spying on his very own countrymen without court order or legislative approval, demonstrates beyond a reasonable doubt that this so-called "President" was a dangerous rogue, a tyrant, and a grave threat -- of the highest order -- to worldwide peace and democracy.

His immediate removal from unelected power was...and is...a completely justified imperative.

(And anti-kudos to one of the early commenters on the post on Huffington Post, for proving why so few authors are able to do this kind of thing intelligently, because the sad fact is, far too many of us DON'T get subtle satire.)

Liam.

What has Happened to Mary Matalin?

[Yes, I'm up late. I've got the flu, I've been running a fever for over four days now, and my sleep is all messed up. Add to that the fact that about the only things I can do right now are watch TV and type on this laptop, and you end up with some oddly-timed blog entries. -- Liam]

This weekend, on the second half of Meet the Press, the guests were James Carville, Paul Begala and Mary Matalin, and I have to wonder what has become of poor Ms. Matalin.

I remember her from the early 90's as an intelligent, thoughtful, reasonably attractive conservative woman with whom I sometimes disagreed, but who always seemed to have some thoughtful rationale behind her words. I remember James Carville as her somewhat eccentric liberal husband who was always long on personality ("a character", as my Dad would put it), who seemed a lot longer on folksy sayings than substance, and I remember Paul Begala as a guy who struck me as probably having been among the more nerdy in his high school class, less personally compelling than the other two but with some good things to say (with which I sometimes disagreed).

Carville has not changed. He's still long on folksy good-ol'-boy charm, all hat and no cattle. A bit less hair than before.

Begala also hasn't changed. He's a bit more comfortable speaking, the leftover psychological scars from wedgies in the locker room (or maybe I'm projecting my own high school experience onto him) have faded a bit, and he still has some good things to say.

Mary Matalin, however, seems to have undergone some sort of radical surgery during which she had all expression botoxed out of her face and any ability to speak or think critically drained from her head.

Her entire time on the program was one disproven Republican talking point after another.

Begala and Carville were on talking about a new book they've written in which they hold a fairly critical mirror up to the Democratic party and why it can't seem to win even against opponents with really low approval numbers. I think some of what they had to say was spot on and some was a bit too politically correct. They said repeatedly that the problems in the Democratic party "aren't ideological, they're biological, Democrats need to grow a spine". This is a polite way of saying Democrats have to be willing and able to put together a list of talking points and hammer away on message to the exclusion of all else, as has become a hallmark of the Republican party since the advent of the Contract With America in the early 90s. It saddens me that such tactics are what politics are reduced to in this country, but the sad fact is that while we all deplore negative campaigning, in case after case, if one candidate goes negative and his opponent does not, the one who goes negative wins.

But really, I hate to pick on Ms. Matalin, she's clearly aged a lot more in the last 13 years (or even the 9 since Clinton vs. Dole) than either of the other two, so unless someone specifically asks me to, I won't go through her words point by point. But they were just party line talking point lies.

(Unlike some people, I don't feel the term "talking point" invalidates something per se. Obviously good arguments will become talking points. The problem is that more and more often lately talking points have changed from a list of true things that support your side to a list of false or deliberately misleading points.)

The one in particular I wish would go away: The Jack Abramoff scandal is a REPUBLICAN scandal. Would some Democrats behave in like fashion if they were in power? Certainly. But the Republican party is trying to paint this as a big bi-partisan scandal, and they point to the "Abramoff related" money that has gone to Democractic candidates.

Let's be clear on this: So far, the money trail on all of the money indicates that the money that was directed by Abramoff and his group all went to Republicans. Yes, some of his clients also gave money to Democractic politicians, but at the heart of the scandal are two things:

1) When Abramoff gave money from his clients, it was often to people who had never supported those clients' issues before, in states where those issues had no real benefit to the citizens (whom the politician was supposed to be representing).

2) When Abramoff gave money from his clients as mentioned in #1, it often resulted in policy and votes in favor of his clients, even when that was in conflict with the best interest of the constituents of the voting politician.

In contrast, the so-called "Abramoff-related money" that went to Democratic politicians came DIRECTLY from those same clients, went only to Democrats who lived in the states those Abramoff clients were also in, and went mostly to Democrats who had long standing relationships with those clients.

So, is it true that some of Abramoff's clients gave money also to Democrats? Yes. But was it through Abramoff, and did he then use that money to buy influence? No.

I'm rambling now, fever will do that to a brain. I'll stop now.

Liam.

And more fun from Halliburton...

...apparently they were informed that the water supply they were providing in one area was contaminated, and used it anyway for more than a year.

Read the article here.

Some quick facts

This is a shorter version of a much longer rant I wrote and decided not to publish in its original form. --Liam]

According to a recent study, the average CEO's salary at large corporations is 431 times the average worker's salary. In 1990, it was about 74 times.

The study can be found here.

This week's Now (PBS weekly news show) mentioned some additional statistics, such as that CEO salaries go up on average 12% per year, while the average worker's wage barely keeps up with inflation. They also point out that executive salaries have risen from less than 5% of a company's income on average to over 10% (although there are other factors that can play into this as well).

According to this study, the average pay for CEOs of large companies in 2004 was $11.8 million dollars. The average worker made $27,460. If average production worker wages had risen in proportionate percentages since 1990, the average worker would be making over $110,000/year, and if the minimum wage had risen in proportion over the same time period, it would now stand at $23.03/hour.

The rich are most definitely getting richer, the poor are definitely getting poorer (9 years without a cost of living adjustment in the minimum wage, while the costs of basic necessities, to say nothing of the ever increasing employee share of the cost of medical care, continue to rise), and 42 of the largest companies in the nation (for a combined profit of $30 billion dollars in 2004) paid not a red cent in taxes that year, the most recent year for which the study had data.

Tell me again why these countless tax cuts for the rich, while putting the nation into ever greater deeper fiscal holes is a GOOD thing? Or how it makes sense to anyone to cut down on services for the poor while actively reducing their financial status and increasing the number of people who classify as poor?

431 times. That's obscene. A CEO may be worth 10-15 times the value of the average employee. Maybe the rare gem of a CEO may be worth 25 times. But more than 100? More than 400? No way. Especially not when there are countless examples of CEOs and executives drawing these huge salaries while their companies tank, after which they are fired with a golden parachute paying more money as a reward for LEAVING the company than the average worker will earn in their lifetime. At which time the now failing company lays off many of those average workers with a month or two's salary and a "don't let the door hit you on your way out".

Folks, we need to find the happy medium between Communism (everyone gets equal pay regardless of their work) and Fascism (the Corporations and the select few at their heads get everything while everyone else works ever further into indentured servitude). Again, as a centrist, I reject the extreme left wing's vision of a worker's paradise, I've said before why it can't work. But I also reject the extreme RIGHT wing's view, a view which is coming ever closer to true.

Make the CEO's salary no more than 12 times the average salary of the production workers, with significant profit sharing bonuses all around. Make the CEO's bonus percentage no more than 5 times that of the lowest full-time employee in the company. If the CEO does his or her job, they'll be handsomely rewarded... as will everyone else whose hard work helped pay off. If the CEO proves ineffective, he or she won't end up reaping huge rewards while everyone else takes it in the shorts.

Liam.

(Just to be clear, in my proposal, I'm not saying the CEO should receive a bonus only five times as great, I'm saying his or her percentage of salary paid as a bonus should be no more than five times as great. So if the company pays all employees $20,000/year, the CEO can make no more than $240,000/year, and if the CEO takes home a bonus of 50% of his salary (or $120,000), everyone else must take home at least 10% of salary (or 2,000).)

A Quickie

If you watch the news, you know Harry Belafonte recently called President Bush "the world's greatest terrorist".

Here is a blog post on Huffington Post where someone makes a pretty good argument that it might be true.

Take out the incendiary word terrorist and open your mind enough to how we'd feel if we were the Muslim nations and they where in our shoes, and perhaps Belafonte's words aren't so much untrue as poorly chosen.

Just a thought.

Liam.

Checks & Balances

I really love it when liberal and conservative pundits agree on something, because it generally means that that thing is true. Sometimes it means that the thing is so trivial as to not matter, but occasionally it means that the thing is so important as to be above politics and spin, at least in the minds of the pundits in question.

In this case, conservative Norman Ornstein and liberal Thomas E. Mann have written this piece in the New York Times.

In it, they lay down a list of ways the current majority party have consolidated power, to the detriment of the process and of the nation.

Quoting directly from the piece (but re-formatted):

• Roll call votes on the House floor, which are supposed to take 15 minutes, are frequently stretched to one, two or three hours.
• Rules forbidding any amendments to bills on the floor have proliferated, stifling dissent and quashing legitimate debate.
• Omnibus bills, sometimes thousands of pages long, are brought to the floor with no notice, let alone the 72 hours the rules require.
• Conference committees exclude minority members and cut deals in private, sometimes even adding major provisions after the conference has closed.(1)
• Majority leaders still pressure members who object to the chicanery to vote yea in the legislation's one up-or-down vote.

The article also points out that majority Democrats once, in 1987, held open a budget vote for 30 minutes in order to find ONE additional vote, at which point the (then minority) Republicans, including minority Whip Dick Cheney, called it the worst abuse of power ever seen in Congress. Now such extensions are commonplace.

To be sure, this corruption is a logical extension of some things the Democratic members started when they were the majority, and so it's perhaps valid to say "Hey, we didn't start this, we're just continuing down the path". On the other hand, at least according to Ornstein and Mann, the Republicans have taken this corruption of the powerful to new levels.

Read the whole article. It isn't long. And if you can get past the visceral "You started it!", "Yeah, but I never did it this bad!" so common in partisan politics these days, perhaps we can agree it's time for a change.

Because the fact is, no matter WHO sets the direction and WHO drives furthest down that road, in both cases, precedent is set. This is the biggest reason why Republican and not just Democratic party members should be concerned. Expansion of majority power now WILL come back to bite Republicans on the butt the next time the political pendulum swings (and it always does) and they find themselves once again in the minority. Whether this happens in '06 or '08 or not for another generation, sooner or later it will happen, that's the nature of politics.

And when it does, do we REALLY want to hand that fully loaded weapon over to the other side?

Liam.

(1) I've never been absolutely sure how this works, but my understanding (someone correct me if I'm wrong) is that after a bill has passed in both the House and Senate, a Congressional conference is held, ostensibly to resolve differences in the two bills. This conference process is apparently being used to add or modify major provisions of bills after they've already passed both houses. I believe the final version must be ratified by both houses again, but it is often a political hot potato to be seen voting FOR a bill and then AGAINST the resolved version. The majority of Americans don't understand the process well enough to know why this happens, and tend to buy opposition party line that this comprises "flip flop" behavior.

And for those who still think Fox News is "Fair and Balanced"...

[Second UPDATE: I got the video to load. It's the entire 2.5 hour town hall meeting. I will be watching it later tonight, but we have errands to run. If anyone gets to it before I do, I'd be happy to hear your comments on it! --Liam]

[UPDATE: Here is a link directly to the RealPlayer video of C-Span's coverage. I still can't get it to play on my computer, but maybe the direct link will help someone. --Liam]

Congressmen Jack Murtha and Jim Moran held a town hall meeting earlier this month with a lot of soldiers who have seen action in the current Iraq conflict.

My computer is being flaky, so I haven't watched the full video at C-Span yet, but by reports, the comments were overwhelmingly against the war, the current policies, and the way things are going over there.

The first guy who spoke was one of the very few who were positive on the war.

Now, these were two Democratic Congressmen. It is possible that they hand-picked their soldiers for this event like the President has done several times on his "informal chats" with the military. It is also possible that this one pro-Iraq-war soldier was picked to give the ILLUSION of balance. I don't think so, based on what I've read it doesn't sound like there was an attempt to "vet" the participants, but I recognize that it is possible.

However, Fox News reported on the meeting, playing only a clip of the first soldier. Hardly "fair and balanced".

You can argue if you like that others are slanted too, and I'll grant Fox News isn't the only one that has bias. But there are still large numbers of conservatives who tout Fox News as the one honest and balanced news source, and this clearly shows that they are not.

Liam.

More on Alito and Unitary Executive Theory

A link to an article from Newsweek discussing what could very well happen to our checks and balances not merely for the short term, but for good.

If this article doesn't send a chill down your spine, I don't know what will.

Liam.

Letter to my Senators

[Just for grins, I thought I post on here the text of a letter I sent to both of my Senators, Judd Gregg and John Sununu. -Liam]

Senator [Gregg/Sununu],

I write to ask you to put aside the politics of party
and seriously consider whether Judge Alito is right
for this country.

The strength of this country is in its checks and
balances, and the concept of the "Unitary Executive
Branch" espoused so often by President Bush scares me.

From what I've seen of the confirmation hearings of
Judge Alito, he also supports the Unitary Executive
Theory, and I (as a registered independent) feel that
this theory is contrary to the heart and soul of our
nation, and gives too much power to the President
without proper oversight.

Please carefully consider Judge Alito's position on
this very important topic before casting a vote on his
confirmation.

Thank you,

Liam Johnson

Poor appointments not limited to the White House?

Apparently, Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania has been tapped by fellow Republicans to draft legislation to tighten up restrictions on lobbyists, in response to the recent Jack Abramoff scandal.

However, according to this article from the Philadelphia Post-Gazette, Sen. Rick Santorum has also received more money from lobbyists in the current election cycle than ANY other congressional candidate up for re-election in 2006.

Time and again, the foxes are picked to guard the henhouses by this Administration, and now it appears that the Congress is happy to do the same thing.

(I wrote a post a number of months back detailing a number of such appointments by the President, and now there are quite a few new ones, in another dubious use of "recess appointments" by President Bush. Perhaps I'll write them up sometime this weekend.)

By the way, so as not to be accused of only reporting negatives about Republicans, the number one recipient in the House of Representatives, and sixth over all in Congress, is Democrat Jack Murtha. But, of course, this post isn't about who got how much, it's about picking someone who benefits from the system to draft the new rules CONTROLLING the system. If Murtha had been picked to draft the laws, I'd be just as skeptical.

Liam.

Unitary Executive Theory

Here is an article from RawStory.com that indicates that President Bush has used an obscure doctrine, "Unitary Executive Theory", 95 times to expand his power as President.

At its core, this theory says that the President and the President alone has the power to determine what is and is not lawful behavior for himself. It assumes that the President is effectively exempt from checks and balances which are so important to our government. And it presupposes that the fundamental powers of the branches of government aren't what we were all taught in school.

We're all told that the Legislative branch (Congress) makes the law, the Judiciary (the courts) interpret the law, and the Executive (President) ensures that the laws are faithfully executed.

Unitary Executive Theory suggests that the Executive shares in the interpretation of the law as well as in the making of the law, thus making the President much closer to a king than to what we generally think of as our leader.

Oh, and proponents of this theory seem to count among their number a large number who either don't realize or choose not to recognize that the Constitutional declaration of the President as "Commander-in-Chief" only applies to the armed forces.

Oh, and of the 95 times he's used it, the most recent was... you guessed it, in the signing statement released along with his signing the McCain anti-torture legislation. Bush seems to believe that simply by asserting this authority in a signing statement, he exempts himself from any oversight by the Supreme Court in the future, should he decide not to follow the bill he is signing into law.

Read the article. And think hard about whether you really believe this country was so carefully set up with checks and balances only to exempt one man entirely from those checks. The Founding Fathers would have had to be morons to work so hard to prevent any one corrupt person or small group from weilding ultimate power and then turn around and hand ultimate power to a single person.

Liam.

P.S. I've read several reports, which I'm trying to verify, that Sam Alito, Supreme Court nominee, is a strong supporter of the Unitary Executive theory. He has apparently spoken highly of it in a 2001 speech to the Federalist Society

Wire Tapping

I don't generally like to link to Arianna Huffington. I'll link to her Huffington Post site when I think there's important information there, but she herself is too prone to knee-jerk responses for my taste.

However, this post by her is actually a pretty good debunking of the main talking points in support of the NSA warrantless wiretap program.

It's worth a few minutes reading, if you want to understand how the Administration talking points aren't exactly wholly accurate.

Oh, and keep in mind, they STILL haven't really explained how the within-72-hours-retroactive warrants allowed under the FISA court would have been detrimental to the war on terrorism. That, to me, is the crux of it. It really doesn't matter if various different groups were on board or not. When there was a legal process to be followed, and one which would not even have been an undue burden in fighting terrorism, and they just couldn't be bothered to follow it, there's just no excuse.

Liam.

Just In Case...

There's a new UCLA study, peer reviewed and published in the "Quarterly Journal of Economics" which purports to demonstrate clear liberal bias in the main stream news media of this country, and my guess is that we're going to be hearing a lot more about this from the conservative pundits and bloggers.

But before you take the study too seriously, a few things you should note:

• The study's methodology ranks Matt Drudge as liberal.
• The study considers the ACLU conservative.

The methodology of this particular study is badly flawed, and seems to rely strongly on the invoking of "liberal" or "conservative" listed topics and sources in order to justify it's conclusions.

Matt Drudge, clearly conservative, discusses (in order to refute) a lot of liberal issues and talking points, but because he mentions them, the study's count lists him as left-of-center.

I don't recall any allegations of RIGHT WING bias when it came out that the New York Times had sat for over a year (and through a Presidential election) on a story of illegal circumventing of judicial oversight in wire tapping by the NSA, but as soon as the media reports on any Republican's wrong doing, immediately the pundits come out yelling about the media witch hunt against everything to the right of center.

You can have your opinion and I can have mine. Mine is that the media of late have become toadies to whoever is in power, not left or right wing but cowtowing to whoever will give them access or can benefit them. Certainly in my view there is more "news" with an overt skew to the right (Fox News) than there is to the left.

But regardless, the debate will go on. I just wanted to point out that this "study", which is bound to be cited regularly, proves absolutely nothing, with a methodology and conclusions so laughably wrong as to be completely invalid.

Liam.

Torture...

Wow, the Administration *REALLY* wants to keep its ability to torture.

How does anyone think this Administration still has ANY credibility on the torture issue?

They have told us repeatedly that the U.S. does not engage in torture, but then refuse to support laws enforcing that, while more and more stories come out about extreme practices in the war on terror which look an awful lot like torture to me.

So now, after finally acquiescing to the McCain torture amendment, this article comes out, indicating that Bush issued a “signing statement” with his signing of the bill which makes it clear that he views the new law as one which he, as President, has the authority to waive in the pursuit of the war on terror.

There are so many ways in which this is bad. It makes a mockery of the bill, sends the message to the world that we’re winking and crossing our fingers when we say we don’t torture, and entirely circumvents the intent of the law in the first place.

Second, it means that Bush has still not learned the lesson he needed to learn after the whole wiretapping thing and the whole Jose Padilla thing, that Executive privilege does not extend to dictatorial levels, and that just ignoring legal and Constitutional checks and balances when they get in your way is NOT warranted under any circumstances. No one would agree that, in advance of hurricane Katrina, a good way to save houses under imminent threat was to burn them down, so that the flooding couldn’t hurt them, but that seems to be what we’re doing with our nation: Eroding away anything that makes it strong and great using the argument that such actions are necessary to protect it.

Finally, the phrase “war on terror” is so poorly defined that it has become a blank check, a bogeyman for the President to invoke any time he wants more power. Yes, terrorism is frightening. We have enemies and we do need to protect ourselves against them. But no one, from the President on down, should have the ability to extricate themselves from burdensome checks and balances by simply citing a threat. To allow them to do so is to invite corruption and abuse of the system, if not by THIS President, then by the next, or the one after that, who may cite this precedent as justification for improper actions.

I’ll leave this with one more example. Suppose someone vandalized my car in the driveway. I have a pretty good idea who has done it, but they’ve gone on vacation and I can’t get to them to verify or fix the situation. Now suppose that I decided to clean up my neighborhood by going around and beating up every local teenager, because they belong to the same group that the vandals came from. Suppose I had had disagreements with my next door neighbor before, and on the rumor that he’d gone and bought a gun, broke into his house and burned it down. Suppose some of the people whom I knew or pretty strongly suspected were part of the original vandalizing were found nearby, and instead of calling the police, I grabbed them, tied them up in my basement and tortured them to get information, refusing to let them go or even let anyone know they were there. Do you honestly think that the police would by the “imminent threat” argument that everything I had done that violated laws and people’s rights was justified because of the global “war on vandalism”?

No, they wouldn’t. Regardless of the threat, we have laws and we have rules and we have principles. And as long as we have a President who believes those laws, rules and principles are merely guidelines for him to follow or ignore based on Presidential whim, we are tearing apart the very fabric of that which we would be protecting.

Liam.

Commander In Chief

Can we all get something straight?

There seems to be a large number of people who do not understand what the term "Commander In Chief" means, and the White House seems happy to blur the distinction.

The President serves as Commander In Chief of the Armed Forces. Period. It basically means that in the chain of command of (for example) the Army, he is the highest ranking individual (even though he is a civilian).

In fact, the relevant text of Article II of the U.S. Constitution says:

The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States;

That’s it, that’s the only reference to the phrase “Commander in Chief” in the Constitution. So arguably, the President may NOT be the Commander in Chief of the Air Force, Marine Corps, Coast Guard or National Guard (although they might well be included under the “Militia of the several States” clause).

But the point is, more and more I’m seeing people use the term “Commander in Chief” as though it conveys some dictatorial power upon the President, as though it gives him the right to give orders to anyone in the nation. I’ve even seen people refer to President Bush as “the Commander in Chief of the United States”, which elides over the very important words “Army and Navy of the”.

Presidents, whether Democratic or Republican, are not kings, dictators nor gods. There are limits to their power, and if we’re going to reference the President’s Commander-in-Chief title, we darn well need to also recognize the existing limits on that title.

Yes, in the grand scheme of things, a petty little battle of semantics may seem beneath concern, but unfortunately we’re living in an era of carefully crafted modes of speech, crafting perception of reality based on words which do not accurately describe reality. So while the omission of "Army and Navy of the” from the C-in-C title may seem trivial, it is more likely a small part of an intentional effort to get the words out there so that more and more people will start to believe the President has more power than he is either Constitutionally granted or allowed.

Liam.