Kirk plans congress' future under the unitary executive

Tom, our friend from the Law School at the University of Michigan, has explained the unitary and plenary executive theories to us:

The unitary executive theory says that the President gets to run the executive branch. So, he gets to hire, fire, order administrative agencies around, etc., without review from courts. (At his confirmation hearings, Alito agreed with this theory without much reaction by Senators.)

The plenary executive theory is much scarier. This is the theory advanced by the Bush administration: that the executive has plenary, rather than unitary, authority in certain matters -- like foreign affairs and war.

I would add that the unitary theory espoused by the Bush administration encompasses both the unitary and plenary theories. It adds the Constitutional powers of both the judiciary and legislative branches to that of the executive including the notion that the power of the judiciary to interpret the law is not exclusive and gives that power to the executive branch as well. The Bush administration has already attempted to use this power in their signing statements written to accompany the signing of a bill into law to memorialize the President's interpretation of the law. It also takes away the power of Congress over executive brancy agencies' promulgation of regulations that has existed at least since the Depression era.

So, what is Congress to do with all its free time? Mark Kirk has the answer. He's planning on dealing only with local issues like train schedules, open space, road improvements, "the problems faced by a suburban family as it moves through its day." Kirk apparently understands that his party is going toward a unitary executive and he is preparing himself to be a US Congressman in name only in what he has called a "Congress of Mayors". When I first heard about Kirk's local issue plan for republican congressmen, I thought he and his friends were just too embarrassed to run on the republican platform in 2006, but now I realize that Kirk is simply preparing himself and his republican congressional colleagues to become local lords for their king.

Mark, if you don't want to be a Congressman, why don't you just say so. Maybe Mayor Harris could use an assistant. Let me know if you want me to check on that for you. I know two men up for the real job of US Congressman as intended by our US Constitution, Zane Smith and Dan Seals.

Controversial Obama

Despite his stated support for the filibuster of Alito, Obama is still confronting national criticism because he also said that he thinks that the Democrats should not rely on this last minute procedural maneuver, but instead proactively persuade the American people of their values and win elections.

I'm with Obama on this one.

I think that Democratic Senators should support the filibuster because we have to show the American people that this nomination is not normal, business as usual in Washington and take a stand on Alito using this situation to point out the vast difference between republican and American values. However, I agree with Obama that Democrats should not have let it get this far. I have been wondering for years, when values are being discussed and important bills are being debated, where are our Democratic leaders? How did they let the Bush budget get this far? How did they let the Iraq war lies be spread and readily accepted in Congress when so many ordinary Americans strongly suspected they were lies? Why did all those Democrats in the Senate, except Feingold, vote for the Patriot Act?

Kerry, now the filibuster hero, spent much of 2004 and 2005, even as late as last month, in wimpy flip-flopland. So, don't now critize Obama for being loyal to the party, but reminding them that they have to do much better discussing values. He also suggested that the ethics reform package offered by Democrats needs to be "big, meaningful, and bold", not just $20 shy of the republican lunch package. Obama is right because Democrats need to show that they really are different from the Abramoff administration and Congressional majority, not just argue over and over that they took no Abramoff money on Hardball.

We need results-oriented strategies, not just defensive arguments.

One criticism I would have made of Obama's appearance on This Week is that he failed to pivot back to Stephanopoulos as he so elegantly pivoted last week on Russert. He should have asked, why won't the media report on Democratic initiatives and on republican obstruction of hearings, debate and discussion? I am also wondering about Obama's curious statement about domestic spying and and wondering what is the balance he would strike. However, I think that he is correct if he means that Democrats have to address a viable alternative to the President's illegal domestic syping program. Americans are still having their fear manipulated. While I would like people to show more courage in the face of our international situation, they don't appear ready to do so leaving Democrats open to Bush coming up with an Osama tape whenever his polls go down.

I don't always agree with him, but I think its great that Obama doesn't just go with the crowd or hide behind other Democrats or polls. He has his own ideas and is not afraid to assert them. Kerry and many other Democrats should take a lesson from him and stop following the polls and whichever way the wind seems to blow. It's time for leadership, not followship even if it's sometimes controversial.

’cause you got to have friends

And I am all alone.
There is no one here beside me.
And my problems have all gone.
There is no one to deride me.

But you got to have friends.
The feeling’s oh so strong.
You got to have friends
To make that day last long.

I had some friends but they’re gone,
Somethin’ came and took them away.
And from the dusk ’til the dawn
Here is where I’ll stay.

Standing at the end of the road, boys,
Waiting for my new friends to come.
I don’t care if I’m hungry or poor,
I’m gonna get me some of them.

’cause you got to have friends.~~Friends, Bette Midler, 1972

One thing I've noticed about republican rule over the years is that they are not very good at choosing our nation's friends. There is that famous picture of Rummy smiling and shaking the hand of Saddam Hussein (right) and the now secret pictures of Bush and Abramoff, not just some guy he took a snap or five with, but a member of his transition team for the Interior Department.

Then, there were all those Central American dictators, Reagan and Bush-the-first favored during the '80s. Among our republican chosen friends are Saudi Arabia, homeland of Osama bin Laden and 15 of the 9/11 terrorists. The military government of Pakistan is considered a good friend, but their population doesn't consider us among their friends, while our enemy Iran has a not so friendly leader, but a population that is not quite as hostile toward us.

Joseph Cirincione, the Director for Non-Proliferation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and author of Deadly Arsenals: Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Threats, was on Weekends with Maury & Connie this morning. He pointed out the international friendships I discuss above. They were discussing the potential nuclear threat of Iran. Mr. Cirincione said that Iran is several years from being a real nuclear threat, but Pakistan, our friend, is a current holder of nuclear weapons, the means to use them, and public desire to give them to not only Iran, but many of the terrorist groups likely to use them including its current resident, Osama bin Laden, that guy Bush doesn't really think all that much about.

Mark Kirk said on Wednesday that he wants the US to initiate a naval blockade of Iran to starve it of the fuel it (strangely) needs to import (see the comments in my Friday, January 27th post, Dancing with the republicans). He thinks it makes him look like the JFK of the Cuban missile crisis. Less like JFK and more like Bush in Iraq, what Kirk is proposing is that the US de facto declare war on Iran (without an act of Congress, of course) and take those friendly citizens we do have in Iran and turn them into enemies, bringing them more in-line with their government and speeding up their desire for nuclear weapons. Cirincione rejected the idea of an economic embargo of Iran last May in an online interview. He believes that it would be a better idea to help Iran revive its economy and take advantage of the pro-American feelings among Iranians, if not their government. The extemist Iranian government is currently pretty unpopular among the Iranian people and not doing all that well economically. Cirincione feels that if we provoke them militarily, it could help the government increase its popularity.

Strange, Iran's people are not in line with their anti-western government, Pakistanis disagree with their American allied government, over half Americans think Bush is a failure and when educated about Kirk's record, Tenth District voters do not believe he represents their values. We, the people, have to get better at choosing our leadership friends.

Used to work, doesn't now

Metra, the way to really crawl. This week, Kirk was busy slapping himself on the back for making a telephone call to his pal Hastert about expanded service on the Antioch line, but he's got few words on the slow service on all Metra lines. When I first moved from the city to the suburbs, the Metra trains were always on time. The conductors seemed to pride themselves on their on the dot on timeness. Not anymore. Now the Metra trains are usually late by at least 10-20 minutes late. Sometimes the trains don't show up at all and you have to wait for the next one. One day the conductor was thrilled as he got on the speaker to tell us that the train was going to be late again because this time it was because of a traffic altercation at Dempster and not because of the usual switching or equipment problem. He was thrilled that the lateness was finally not their fault. I have strange feeling Metra is suffering from being underfunded. Halliburton doesn't have a train division.

Relying on your neighbors to pay their taxes. If you are a new condominium owner who has not yet obtained an individual tax id number for your unit or are seeking to purchase a new condominium in Cook County, you better know about this one. The Cook County Collector has ended its "pay by legal" program for new developments. "Pay by legal" allowed a person to pay her share of the outstanding tax bill for the entire condominium building and have that payment count toward the taxes on her unit alone. So, if the neighbors failed to pay their taxes and the unpaid taxes were sold, the person who paid would not be required to redeem the unpaid taxes to save her unit from tax sale. Now, without "pay by legal", the undivided taxes will be sold if any part is unpaid and payments made by some unit owners will not count toward their particular units. If you are in this position, you will have to pay your neighbors taxes to prevent a tax sale and then go around knocking on your neighbors' doors begging them to pay. Individual tax id numbers are usually assigned about 2 years after a condominium developer starts to sell the units to homeowners, but rumor has it that the Collector no longer wants to issue individual tax id numbers on some of the larger developments, so this problem could, for some, go on forever. This will also affect new townhome and homeowners who have not obtained individual tax id numbers for their lots from the larger tract of land originally owned by the developer. "Pay by legal" used to be manditory in Illinois, but the state legislature changed the law last year. They changed one word "shall" to "may". No one was paying attention, but the effect on these condo or newly subdivided lot owners is huge. The Collector claims that they no longer have the budget to pay workers to issue the "pay by legal" bills and divide the tax id numbers. I have no doubt she is telling the truth as the states have been starved of funding by the federal government have had to cut corners or raise taxes. Halliburton doesn't have a tax id number issuing division.

Life under Bush administration/republican congress rule just not as nice as American life used to be. Trillions of dollars are being thrown down the Iraq drain and tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans have led to the largest tax shift this country has ever seen. State governments are loath to raise taxes on working Americans to make up for the shortfall. So, lots that used to work doesn't now and probably will never work again until we retire the republicans in government and replace them with Democrats who care about people.

No on Alito

This is my email to Senator Obama:

Dear Senator Obama,

I tried to phone you at both your local and DC offices, but was unable to get through to a person or leave a message. I am sure you are being innundated by requests, so I'm just adding my name to your count. Please put me in the column titled No On Cloture for the Alito nomination. Alito is simply too extreme by any standards to find an easy road to the Supreme Court.

Why filibuster when it is likely a losing battle?

Because this radical change in our government that hurts ordinary Americans is simply looking too normal to the American people. The republicans and the mainstream media have done a great job in making Alito's nomination look normal even though he is probably the most extreme nominee we have seen in years. It just looks like nothing is wrong, nothing is changing, no rights are at risk and we are all in business as usual mode. Americans need to be awakened to what is happening in our country and the risks they face and the harm they will likely suffer in their jobs and family lives.

Please vote no on Alito and no on cloture.

Thank you,

Ellen Beth Gill

Dancing with the republicans

I streamed C-span for a while yesterday morning hoping to catch part of the Senate Hearings on Alito. I wanted to really see these republican senators calling the American people "mythical little people" for myself. Anyway, what I got was George W. Bush taking a rare news conference. He looked so uncomfortable I thought he was going to shoot out of his suit up into the air. He danced around questions about his friendship with Jackie "the big tuna" Abramoff (with that gangster outfit he wore to court, how could you call him anything else--what attorney in his right mind let him wear that black trenchcoat and hat anyway?) As Bush denied the friendship much as he had denied Kenny Boy Lay, reporters just stared at him with partial surprise and partial amusement.

As his leader and mentor, Mark Kirk danced around issues and truth in his Wednesday afternoon meeting at the Northfield Senior Center. I was unable to attend as most working Americans. Kirk never speaks when the general public can actually attend. However, I met a few people over the past couple of days who did attend. They described a scene where Kirk made a canned speech touting himself as the great savior of veterans benefits forgetting that he voted against veterans health benefits twice last year having voted against an amendment to National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2006 that would have expanded access to the military's TRICARE health insurance program to all reservist and National Guard members for a low fee (Roll Call No. 221). Then, Mr. Kirk voted against an amendment to the Military Quality of Life and Veterans Affairs Appropriations Act, 2006 which would have added veterans health care funding for combat-related trauma care to support wounded troops returning to their homes, including medical and prosthetic research (Roll Call No. 224).

Kirk apparently felt (Smith and Seals induced) pressure to answer some questions which is just about as rare, if not more so, than Bush holding a press conference. Kirk was as uncomfortable as was Bush according to the folks I spoke with. He said that he was committed to the budget cuts claiming that the only cuts were in foreign aid. Shamefully, he failed to recognize the deep cuts in Medicaid, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, Food Stamps and Education and that the whole plan is to drive needy families off these programs without helping them find work and other alternatives. One source told me that Kirk used all the republican party buzzwords like death tax to describe the estate tax.

Kirk took credit for the prescripton drug plan that is causing seniors to pay more, sometimes double what they used to pay for prescriptions. Kirk felt that it was more important that seniors have a choice in meaningless and expensive plans rather than meaningful prescription assistance. Wonder which pharmaceutical lobbyiest came up with that talking point.

Kirk managed to stay off the topic of Iraq completely, but made a troubling comment about people in Washington favoring Iran's possession of nuclear weapons. I sure hope my source on that comment had that wrong.

While Kirk and Bush spent a part of their week doing a dance around the issues and hoping that Americans fail to educate themselves in the issues enough to notice, Democrats were working to solve the problems in the economy and stopping the Bush administration from trashing the Constitution. Democrats have the real ideas and real plans. All Bush and Kirk have is their dance.

Well bless his heart

John Kerry finds his voice and will filibuster Alito.

Mr. Kerry Goes Back to Washington.

Good for you John.

Mythical little people

The republican talking point of the last couple of days has been that the Democrats are seeking a filibuster of the Alito vote in order to protect the mythical little people. Yup, go ahead and google it if you dare.

I don't know, but I wonder, if the folks who will be harmed by Alito are mythical, all those women, minorities, workers, children, the poor, the middle class.....why don't we all have long flowing hair and cute little colorful outfits?

Maybe that's why Kirk won't talk to us. He's afraid of all those itty bitty mythical little people.

Let them eat blog

Here's a little article on politicians blogging. It asks whether or not a politicians blog is really a blog or just a "glorified press release". If you read Mark Kirk's blog it's pretty clear that none of the messages are from the heart and are most likely written by his press staff.

This is a typical blog entry from Kirk's blog:

January 18, 2006
More on Ethics Reform
Last month, I introduced the Congressional Integrity Act to deny a congressional pension to any Member of Congress convicted of a felony on final appeal. Lawmakers should be held to higher standards of law. Nearly 16 years ago, my predecessor John Edward Porter introduced similar legislation when I served as his Chief of Staff. My bill is based on legislation Republican Speaker Hastert and Democratic Leader Pelosi voted for in the House in 1996. I applaud Speaker Hastert and Rep. Dreier for including my bill in the ethics reform package they introduced this week. I look forward to enacting these reforms as quickly as possible to deny a congressional pension for any Member convicted of a crime. (See Deeply Blue for what he thought of this strict strict punishment for congressional criminals. Here's what I thought of it and now I can add that he's invoking Porter like Bush invokes 9/11.)

This is what Kirk had to say in his CNET interview on blogs:

According to Kirk, a mistrust of the Internet and blogging in particular, on the part of some members of Congress, is slowly giving way to the realities that the Internet and blogging provide a unique way to communicate with constituents.

"It doesn't cost us anything to put up anything on the Web, and it doesn't cost my constituents anything to go and see it," Kirk told CNET News.com. "This is rapidly going to become the dominant way we talk to our constituents, (especially) as snail mail dies out."

Mark simply found a new way to avoid his constituents with 5 or 6 blog lines from a press release. He should stop invoking John Porter because Porter had real townhall meetings at times most folks could attend and talked to everyone, not just a few select folk. Porter did not snub the District with 5 or 6 press release lines. What must Kirk really be thinking? "Let them eat blog."

Being privacy aware and understanding why it matters

Buzzflash linked an interesting short video yesterday. Here’s the link. It’s a little example of what could be our future if government and corporate interests are allowed to continue their partnership to collect, warehouse and mine data from our telephone calls, emails, medical and financial records. Watch the video, throw a frozen pizza into the oven, and don't forget to come back here!

You back? Did you remember to set the timer on that pizza?

Ok, then.

If you are not sure what the concern over privacy is all about or how you can protect yourself, look at Center for Democracy and Technology’s privacy guide. Here are their top 10 tips for protecting your internet privacy. You might be surprised to discover that our US privacy rules were created during the 1970s and 1980s before significant changes in the industry created the current threat. The rules consist of a hodgepodge of laws, regulations, and industry self-policing. The laws that protect privacy are:

• Privacy of communications (the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act—that is supposed to protect you from wiretapping with some exceptions and the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991—that created the do not call list);
• Privacy of financial information (the 1970 Fair Credit Reporting Act);
• Privacy of government collections (the Privacy Act of 1974);
• Privacy of medical records (the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996);
• Privacy of other personal records (the Video Privacy Protection Act of 1988 which protects you from the guy at the video store telling everyone what you rented--really).

The first data privacy rules were called Principles of Fair Information Practices and were created jointly by government, privacy groups and industry. These Practices represent a sort of ownership society of privacy protection wherein people are supposed to learn how to protect their own privacy and technology based protections play a large role. Included within the Practices are the 7 principles of the Generic Code of Information Practices:

1. Openness: Collection of data and the main purpose and uses of the data should be made public.
2. Individual Participation: You have the right to view the data collected about you and the right to require corrections.
3. Collection Limitation: Data collection should be limited by “lawful and fair means” and where appropriate with the knowledge or consent of the subject.
4. Data Quality: Data collected should be relevant to the purposes for which it is collected accurate, complete, and timely.
5. Finality: Data collected should be used only for purposes specified at the time of collection.
6. Security: Data should be protected with reasonable security safeguards against such loss, unauthorized access, destruction, use, modification or disclosure.
7. Accountability: Record keepers should be accountable for complying with fair information practices.

These 7 principles were supposed to be the guiding force behind privacy standards for industry. Someone back in the ‘70s and ‘80s had the idea that it might not be a good thing for individuals if their information could be secretly collected, possibly mistaken information, and used by anyone for anything. The Bush administration surely believes that these principles do not apply to their data collection efforts because they claim the data is being collected for national security purposes only. However, even if you agree that the administration can or should be allowed to spy on Americans for national security reasons, the risk that the collected and warehoused data can be made available to private contractors and left unprotected from their appropriating and disseminating it has not been addressed. See the ACLU’s report entitled Bigger Monster, Weaker Chains: The Growth of an American Surveillance Society wherein they discuss the fading line between government and private surveillance.

Secretly collected and indefinitely stored data of questionable accuracy about an individual could eventually be used to raise his insurance rates, to deny him jobs or benefits, target him for financial scams or other types of marketing schemes. This isn't just a conspiracy theory either. There is already evidence that the government is not even following its own data destruction policies. Storage is cheap and once Americans buy into the argument that the government is entitled to the data, the security and proper handling of the data is left in the hands of people not so interested in verifying its authenticity, securing it and limiting its use. All this leads me to one basic question. Does Halliburton have a data warehousing division and a pizza delivery division? Another question: Why isn't our current congressman, Mark Kirk, addressing these important privacy issues?

Don't worry

For those of you concerned that your congressman would waste away on the gop $20 meal limit, have no fear. I just read on Roll Call that La Colline on Capitol Hill recently started offering a $20, three-course lunch. No word on whether or not you can get a good piece of turtle cheesecake for that price.

His own agenda

To commemorate Mark Kirk holding his a "Washington Update" at 1:00pm today at the North Shore Senior Center when no one who has a job can attend, guest blogger, George Rosenblit reminds us of Mark Kirk's positions against health care benefits for veterans:

I noted with interest Chris Brenner's article Jan. 21 in which Republican state Sen. Adeline Geo-Karis, R-Zion, praised Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich for proposing to provide access to comprehensive, affordable health care to Illinois veterans.

I, too, approve of this proposal in the governor's State of the State address because I'm a World War II veteran concerned about my comrades "who have gone without the federal financial support they deserve for decades," according to Geo-Karis.

I thought that Congressman Mark Kirk was taking care of our veterans and their medical problems. Mr. Kirk should know that veterans are real people, not a faceless group; they deserve federal support for the health and welfare they have earned in the service of our country. He should know that better than I, since he is currently an active commander in the Naval Reserve.

Why am I not surprised at Mr. Kirk's disregard for veterans' welfare? He's done it before.

He helped write a new budget enforcement bill as part of Tom DeLay's group to put a cap on benefits for federal annuitants and veterans. Other members of the House have proposed amendments to various bills (HR 1268, HR 1815 and HR 2528) within the past 12 months to provide financial help to National Guard veterans who really need it to cope with the after effects of war. Mark Kirk has voted against this help every time.

It appears that Kirk has his own agenda and it does not include representing the real needs of the people in his district and in Illinois. It's time to replace Kirk with a true representative.

Better Ideas Part 1 - A little medicine for Congress

Today, a working group of the Journal of the American Medical Association released a report with a recommendation that doctors cease accepting gifts from pharmaceutical companies. Dr. Jordan Cohen, co-author of the recommendations and president of the Association of American Medical Colleges, one of two bodies that accredits U.S. medical schools said:

We as a profession have not been sufficiently clear and demanding of individual physicians to put in place processes and procedures that safeguard the public against the biased information that may be delivered in this fashion.... It's our job to ensure that responsibility to individual patients is respected.

They are even talking about banning the small gifts of notepads and pens finally recongizing that the marketing plans of the pharmaceutical companies have influenced many doctors to make recommendations without the proper focus on the patient.

Congress has had a similar problem as the marketing plans of lobbyiests and their clients have influenced several members of Congress to make laws without the proper focus on their constituents. After republican members and lobbiests were caught in a vast bribery scandal, their leadership scrambled to come up with a "for-show" plan that limits gifts, event tickets and travel. There will be some de minimus amount under which a gift can be accepted. Similar rules banning gifts have been in effect in several professions (including mine) for years.

The republican plan misses the mark in that it fails to control the K Street Project, Senator Rick Santorum's plan to make sure all lobbyiests are republicans and all lobbying money goes to republicans by having republicans in government take jobs in trade associations that funnels money to the lobbyiests and ultimately to those in government service likely for legislative and executive branch favors.

The republican ethics plan also fails to penalize false and misleading lobbyist disclosures, end late night additions to pending legislation or end no-bid contracts to administration connected companies. What it does do is end access to the House and Senate floors and congressional gyms for former lawmakers who register as lobbyists. That last one must have been Mark Kirk's idea as he seems to feel that gym memberships are really important.

The Democrats have a better idea. They have proposed The Honest Leadership And Open Government Act which:

• Creates a two year cooling-off period during which Congressmen, senior Congressional staff, and Executive Branch officials may not lobby their former offices;
• Removes floor privileges of former lawmakers and officers of Congress who become lobbyiests;
• Fully bans lobbyist gifts and travel (although it does not ban all privately-financed travel);
• Ends the K Street Project;
• Requires disclosure of employment negotiations between former lawmakers orExecutive Branch officials and private companies;
• Stops midnight inclusion of special interest provisions into legislation by requiring all conference committee meetings be open to all members, not just the controlling party, and to the public, and requires copies of all conference reports be made available to all members, and posted publicly on the Internet, 24 hours before consideration;
• Ends no-bid contracting by subjecting major contract actions to public disclosure and aggressive competition with strict, criminal enforcement provisions for war profiteering and overcharging and including prohibitions on conflicts of interest and controls on job switching between goverment contracting positions and private sector positions with the same contractor companies;
• Exposes potential heckofajob Brownies by requiring nominees for positions involving public safety to demonstrate credentials, training and expertise in relevant areas; and
• Expands lobbyiest disclosure requirements.

One of the better parts of this better idea is that Barack Obama was chosen to lead the Senate side of this proposal. Read or listen to Barack's speech here. He points out that the republican pay to play scandals had lead not only to "lead[s] to morally offensive conduct on the part of politicians. They lead to morally offensive legislation that hurts hardworking Americans. " Obama ends with this statement:

That means instead of meeting with lobbyists, it's time to start meeting with some of the 45 million Americans with no health care. Instead of hitting up the big firms on K Street, it's time to start visiting the workers on Main Street who are wondering how they'll send their kids to college or whether their pension will be around when they retire. All these people have done to earn access and gain influence is cast their ballot, but in this democracy, it's all anyone should have to do. The people running this town need to realize that, and if we hope to be real reformers, that's the place we need to start.

The lawmaking doctors in our government have to start meeting with their patients more than they cavort with the policy druggists.

Remember that Mark Kirk voted to weaken ethics rules (H. Res. 5) in an effort to protect his leader, Tom Delay, before he voted to strengthen them by repealing the earlier rule for which he voted. He also voted twice (H. Res 153) and here (H. Res. 213) to table Democratic ethics proposals.

Faith Restoration

Check out the title link. There is an iota of love of freedom left in this country after all. Protesters carry a sign with the famous Franklin Quote "Those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither" in front of Alberto Gonzales as he tried to talk a crowd at Georgetown Law School into making that exact sacrifice.

Will Franklin pull us out of this bind like he pulled us out of the Revolutionary War?

At least my faith in Americans spirit of liberty gained a little restoration today.

Bandwagon Alito

Here we go again with the press again trying to create a bandwagon for Alito's nomination. He got through committee based on a party line vote. Big surprise. However, the headlines are "Alito Gets Nod" (MSNBC) and "Alito Looks Likely to be Next Supreme Court Justice" (CNN). Again attempting to create the bandwagon effect.

Democratic Senators now have the hard decision to filibuster or not. The press will be all over them if they do and the grassroots will be all over them if they don't.

What each Senator has to do is look at Alito's record and look into their conscious remembering that Alito thinks it was a shame that women and minorities we able to attend Princeton and that constitutional power should be concentrated in the Bush administration. It's really very simple.

Lie all you want. Just don't make me pay attention

Google the word lies and you get 112,000,000 results. There is an entire blog devoted to tracking lies told by those in power called lies.com. There is another site devoted to Bush's lies and David Corn's BushLies site. Looks like the blogger of that site is a bit behind as there is no mention of Abramoff. Yet another site lists Television News lies, not to mention Media Matters which tracks lies and lies of omission made by the media. This one is cute; 7 lies men tell women (I think there are probably more than 7). My personal favorite is the site that tells you how to detect lies, but the techniques don't work well when you are dealing with sociopaths, people who really believe their own propaganda, people so confused they either don't know they are lying or are wearing a wire and simply repeating what is being said into their earpiece without the slightest thought to the content whatsoever.

It is easy to understand why our leaders lie. It gets them where they want to be and keeps them there. What I am still pondering is why Americans are so accepting of lies knowing they are lies. The mainstream media struggles to keep the truth off the air, but the information often slips out and is generally available on the internet. The record is pretty complete on the lies that got us into Iraq and more lies on Iraq, the lies about our economy being great, lies about Katrina response, Bush's relationships with both Ken Lay of Enron and Jack Abramoff of multiple felony fame, lies of omission about Alito's membership in the biggot organization, CAP and Alito's extreme right wing agenda. With all the information available and all the ability we have to verify, why do Americans accept lies from their leaders?

I discussed this topic with several people and many came to the conclusion that Americans simply do not want to the bothered with the truth, the famous movie line "you can't handle the truth" applies. If they acknowledge that our government is running on lies, they may have to do something about it which might cut into their time watching Dancing with the Stars or Beauty and the Geek. OK, I really wanted to blog the title Beauty and the Geek somewhere in here, but really, most folks are simply so tired from their jobs and trying to have some semblance of a family life in their few hours away from work and driving children from soccer game to soccer game, that they are just too busy and stressed out to deal with problems in our government.

Then, there is a widespread feeling that nothing the average person does really matters. That feeling is dead wrong, but people really do feel that way. They don't think they are smart enough or energetic enough and are afraid to stand out and speak out. I think they are also unsure that it really matters. The feeling that there is really no difference between politicians and parties. That is also dead wrong, but who has time to really investigate it?

Then, there is the Nietzsche theory: "Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies." Under this theory, people stick to lies they originally accepted even if confronted with evidence proving the lies as such because they gain security and self esteem by believing that their choices have been correct. Under this theory, folks who voted for Bush or Kirk lose mental health by admitting they were wrong.

Another theory is that the people telling the lies have a better marketing campaign. The lies sound better than the truth.

Here's a good poem on lies.

I am beginning to think the lies no longer matter. What does matter are the results and many of them won't be fully apparent or even known for years. We can speculate what an Alito on the Supreme court will do, what the ultimate conclusion of the Iraq war will be and it's ultimate effect on it and us, and the ultimate effect of the Bush Administration on the future of America. However, until Americans see it up close and personal for real, they are unlikely to pay much attention. They can still hope that just maybe it won't be so bad. Lessons from the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany become meaningless because it's never reality until it is your reality.

So what do we do?

I think we need to focus on American's basic love of fairness, balance and prosperity. That is why the Obama approach of cutting down on criticism is so attractive to me despite my anger at the Bush administration. There is no sense campaigning on the theory that the Bush administration as the worst administration ever or that congress is run like a plantation or a dude ranch or Wal-mart because no one cares. They do, however, care about results and as we reap the results of the Bush Administration, Democrats need to be there with better choices and we do offer better choices. More on this later.....

Alberto, you should request a refund! Your edition of the Federalist Papers is missing a few pages

republicans like to torture things like people, small animals, the truth and the law. See their tortured legal analysis forcing the conclusion that their spying program is constitutional and legal in this Department of Justice White Paper. In the white paper, they go so far as to torture the Federalist Papers into a twisted argument that, because the federal government is charged with national security, there is only one president and the president can negotiate treaties alone, he can go beyond Constitutional power and Congressional authorization to spy on Americans. The closest line to authority they cite for national presidential spying is this line of John Jay in Federalist 64:

The convention have done well therefore in so disposing of the power of making treaties, that although the president must in forming them act by the advice and consent of the senate, yet he will be able to manage the business of intelligence in such manner as prudence may suggest.

True to form, Gonzales and his politically charged section of the DOJ forget to mention that Jay's essay was about negotiation of treaties, not spying on American political and religious groups like the Quakers and Truth Project Inc. They also forgot to mention that Jay's most important point about the propriety of giving the President the power to negotiate treaties alone was that the ultimate approval power was given to 2/3 of the Senate and not the Vice President from a secret, undisclosed location. Jay then went on to discuss the possibility that the President and 2/3 of the Senate would make a treaty that did not equally represent all of the states:

As to the corruption, the case is not supposable. He must either have been very unfortunate in his intercourse with the world, or possess a heart very susceptible of such impressions, who can think it probably that the President and two-thirds of the Senate will ever by capable of such unworthy conduct. The idea is too gross and too invidious to be entertained. But in such a case, if it should ever happen, the treaty so obtained from us would, like all other fraudulent contracts, be null and void by the laws of nations.

Jay was clearly relying on the approval power of the Senate in his argument that treaty negotiation power could safely be given to the President and on the fact that any treaty not so approved or otherwise illegal would be null and void. Bush, on the other hand, argues that he needs no authority from Congress to spy on Americans and that everything he does is legal simply because it is he that does it (well, either he or the Vice President from a secret, undisclosed location).

Gonzales and crew also cite Federalist 70 written by Alexander Hamilton. 70 is a favorite of the unitary executive guys, but they misread it. Hamilton is not talking about placing all constitutional authority into the executive, but in having only one president, not a committee. In 70, Hamilton discusses the virtue of a vigorous executive branch, energetic and safe. In citing Hamilton as favoring unlimited power to the president, the white paper quotes Federalist 70, but forgets the part about safety. The elements of safety Hamilton argues are "due dependence on the people, and a due responsibility." He believed that censure of the public was not as harsh if delivered to several rather than one person and that, if you have greater than one president, you won't know exactly who to blame for misconduct. He quotes the Swiss jurist and constitutional analyst, Jean Louis DeLolme: "the executive power is more easily confined when it is one," and adds, "...that it is far more safe there should be a single object for the jealousy and watchfulness of the people, and, in a word, that all multiplication of the executive is rather dangerous than friendly to liberty." Hamilton was arguing in favor of accountability, not against it as is DOJ.

Gonzales' DOJ completely forgets to cite Federalist 69, also written by Hamilton. In 69, Hamilton discusses the limitations of the president's powers under the constitution favorably comparing such limits to the unlimited power of King George (that first one from England). Hamilton emphasizes that the president is elected (he did not imagine the type of electronic voter fraud now available to the Bush administration) and for a limited time. He observes that a 4 years presidency cannot establish a dangerous influence over the people because of the short period of time, but of course, he could not imagine the influence of our current national broadcast, cable and internet media. Hamilton also compares the availability of the remedy of impeachment and ultimate prosecution of a president under the Constitution to the sacred and inviolable King of Great Britain and compares the president's limited ability to return a bill (veto power) subject to override by Congress to the King's "absolute negative upon the acts of the two houses of Parliament."

Strikingly, the Bush apologists in DOJ completely ignore the closest discussion in Federalist 69 to the topic at hand . This is the discussion wherein Hamilton talked about the president's power as commander-in-chief, the power on which DOJ relies to give Bush his authority to spy on grandma when she orders a clean sweep broom from QVC and is not talking about any terrorist mission called "Clean Sweep". Hamilton expressly relied upon the president being in "actual service" when he exercises this power and what he means by "actual service" is that Congress has declared war. Hamilton never dreamed that Congress would eventually abdicate their responsibility to declare war as they have done (and they don't even require adherence to the War Powers Act any more).

The President is to be commander-in-chief of the army and navy of the United States. In this respect his authority would be nominally the same with that of the king of Great Britain, but in substance much inferior to it. It would amount to nothing more than the supreme command and direction of the military and naval forces, as the first general and admiral of the Confederacy; while the British king extends to the declaring of war and to the raising and regulating of fleets and armies--all which, by the Constitution under consideration, woudl appertain to the legislature.

Hamilton was talking about an executive subject to separation of powers and checks and balances, accountability and responsibility. Gonzales and DOJ for Bush and Cheney is talking about a king like that earlier George of America who lived in Great Britain.

Sunday Obama Blogging

Obama was on Meet the Press this morning discussing Iraq and Ethics with Tim Russert. Obama artfully and subtly, but apparently, related the two subjects. Special interests are controlling the government through the republican congress and white house. This has allowed the drug companies to write the Medicare drug plan that actually increased the cost of prescriptons for seniors, the energy industry to write energy legislation that is not protecting our environment and military industries to write foreign policy that is not working in Iraq. The current campaign financing structure coupled with Abramoff/Delay tactics has sold our country to large corporations pursuing their interest in profits.

Obama is consistent in his idea for a plan in Iraq. He wants to see our troops out, but recognizes that we all have a stake in Iraq's success, so troop withdrawal has to be accomplished in a responsible manner. I would have liked Russert to pursue the topic and elicit Obama's specific ideas on how that can be done. Obama added that Iraqis have to take responsibility for their own institution building, but was not given a chance to expand on that concept and describe specific actions that the US could take to help Iraqis do so. Russert had other ideas of how the show was going to progress, so we did not get to hear more.

Russert tried real hard, as have all media figures, to charge Democrats with a part in the Abramoff scandal. Obama admitted that Democrats have a hand in the current finance structure, but made it clear that the sale of legislation and votes in the Abramoff/Delay style is a unique problem of this republican controlled government.

Obama is going to be the Senate Democrat who will lead the ethics reforms and talked a bit about cutting down on trips and meals indicating that those steps are just the initial small steps needed to create momentum for the larger necessary reforms. He turned the tables on Russert suggesting that the networks give free time to candidates. No comment from Russert. His bosses at GE wouldn't have liked that.

Speaking of Iraq, Obama said that the US, under this administration, is "not using all of the tools in its toolbox". The administration tends to "talk tough, act fast and plan later" forgetting the value of diplomacy and reaching out to the disenfranchised. Obama set a great example for how leaders should act when he was asked to respond to comments made this week by Belefonte and Hillary Clinton. He would not let Russert box him into sound bytes, but focused on the administration's incompetence and cronyism that have created real consequences for Americans. He then charged the white house with the responsibility of changing the tone of politics and creating a more conciliatory atmosphere.

Obama proved once again that he is the Democratic leader of our future. He lives and demonstrates the diplomacy, careful use of language and considered action that should be the hallmark of a leader of the free world.

Too beautiful to blog

A good snowman making snow and a meltdown this afternoon. It's a beautiful day in the Illinois Tenth and Democat and I are going out to enjoy it.

A few choice words about global warming may be in order here, but someone else will have to say them 'cause I'm outahere.....................

Fear Drives Out Reason, part II

I just heard former CIA Director James Woolsey interviewed by Soledad O'Brien. Soledad was interviewing him about the recent purported bin Laden tape with him. This is what he had to say:

So there is at least a chance that what we're seeing here is a repeat of that pattern. Now, that may -- the fact that he says he's planning something, that he's done something like this in the past, may make some people rethink such issues as whether or not the president ought to be trying to find out who al Qaeda is communicating with in this country, the NSA intercepts, for example.

Then, in the 7:00am CTS News minute, CNN reported that Cheney is hoping the tape will change minds in congress about the Patriot Act and domestic spying programs.

• No mention of the fact that the tape was not uncovered by the illegal, domestic spying program.
• No mention of the fact that the folks who determined the voice on the tape is bin Laden are the same folks who gave us WMD in Iraq.

What I want to know is, well I think we all know, but I'd like to see Bush and Cheney articulate, why, if the bin Laden tape is geniune, and the bin Laden threat is genuine, is the Bush Administration not talking about stepping up efforts to find and catch bin Laden? Why doesn't Cheney hope that the tape sparks the capture of bin Laden?

I would also like to know why the Bush administration negotiates our freedoms and rights away to the terrorists while it insists that the US does not negotiate with terrorists. Bush, in fact, negotiates with terrorists every time he throws our hard earned tax dollars down the Iraq drain, whittles away at Constitutional protections and changes our American way of life to suit his new terrorism-shaped fear-based world. The only thing that Bush does not negotiate away is his own power.

So the Bush Administration once again gets its diversion and hoping that fear will drive out reason and drive the media away from the criticisms of the Bush administration eloquently made by Al Gore on Monday. They want these powerful words of Al Gore to be drown out in the sound bytes of a purported bin Laden, but let's not forget them:

Fear drives out reason. Fear suppresses the politics of discourse and opens the door to the politics of destruction. Justice Brandeis once wrote: "Men feared witches and burnt women."

It is simply an insult to those who came before us and sacrificed so much on our behalf to imply that we have more to be fearful of than they. Yet they faithfully protected our freedoms and now it is up to us to do the same.~~Al Gore, January 16, 2006

Let's Play Who Does Bush Know?

Host: Welcome to Who Does Bush Know? A tough game of cat and mouse, hide and seek and press secretary poker.

Our contestants today are Scotty McClellan and Ari Fleischer.

Ari, What has the President said in private about Ken Lay (indicted former CEO of Enron)? Does he still consider him a good friend? And would he take money from him in the future?
Ari: Well, I think he was asked that question -- a similar question in the Oval Office. Ken Lay is and was a supporter of the President. And it doesn't matter. A criminal investigation is going to proceed. And the President wants to make sure that that criminal investigation will take itself wherever it needs to go, and that justice should be done. And it doesn't matter who was involved, whether they knew the President or didn't know the President. The Department of Justice is undertaking a criminal review.... There is no question, Ken Lay is and was a supporter, friend of the President's. But I think it also is no surprise to anybody that companies like Enron Corporation play both sides of the street. (no mention of Lay's personal contributions) They give money to candidates and politicians in both parties (significantly leaning republican). That is what Enron has done in many cases, and I think the numbers are half the Senate and three-quarters of the House, or vice-versa, have received funding from Enron (some, but not significant by comparison).

Host: Scott, tell us about Bush's relationship with Jack Abramoff, staff meetings, Abramoff's membership on Bush's transition team?
Scott: Well, I indicated yesterday that I think there were some -- a few staff-level meetings. But, no, I'm making sure that I have a thorough report back to you on that. And I'll get that to you, hopefully very soon. [Regarding the transition team for the Dept of Interior] In terms of any individual agency, I think you'd have to go and check with the people who were involved in that transition. In terms of the overall transition effort, I mean, we had an office that was running -- I was very involved in that effort -- and he wasn't a member of the staff of any of the transition team here in Washington, D.C. But in terms of --

Earlier: Yes, I said it’s possible that they would have met at a holiday reception or some other widely attended gathering. The President does not know him, nor does the President recall ever meeting him.... But I just told you what I know at this point, and the President doesn’t recall meeting him and he certainly doesn’t know him.

Later: I did check. There were a few staff-level meetings. As I indicated there were -- I think I previously indicated that he attended three Hanukkah receptions at the White House. It is actually only two Hanukkah receptions that he attended.

Host: So who does Bush know? Heckofajob Brownie for one. Brownie has now changed his story. Under oath before Congress, the Katrina disaster wasn't his fault. Now it is. Bush also knows Sammy "Machine Gun" Alito, champion of overreaching law enforcement and Bush's unitary exective dream. But George W. Bush is lonely knowing so few people. To cheer our president up, some of his NSA agents are listening in on your phone calls and reading your emails and letters to find some suitable new friends for him. Bush's next friend may be you!

***********************

Want the truth about who Bush knows? See this article in Common Dreams regaring the Bush/Kenny Boy Lay relationship:

In the Nation magazine, [Kevin}]Phillips argued that, "most of the Washington press corps has been content to leave alone the much larger story—the apparent seventeen-year connection between the Bush dynasty and Enron. Even without such information, it seems clear, counting campaign contributions, consultancies, joint investments, deals, presidential library and inaugural contributions, speech fees and the like, that the Bush family and entourage collected some $8 million to $10 million from Enron over the years, which is more than changed hands in Harding's Teapot Dome scandal. Depending on some still-unclear relationships, it could be as high as $25 million."

See Capitol Hill Blue on the Bush/Abramoff relationship:

“Bush tapped Abramoff as member of his Presidential Transition Team, advising the administration on policy and hiring at the Interior Department, which oversees Native American issues,” writes Richard Wolfe and Holly Baily in Newsweek.... In fact, Abramoff’s close ties with Bush go back to 1997 when the then Governor of Texas wrote a letter on the lobbyist’s behalf supporting his Marianas island client’s school choice proposal.... In April 2002, The National Journal reported: "Last summer, in an effort to raise the visibility of his Indian clients, Abramoff helped arrange a White House get-together on tax issues with President Bush for top Indian leaders, including Lovelin Poncho, the chairman of the Coushattas." Poncho first denied the meeting took place, but later changed his story in an interview with the Texas Observer. He now confirms Abramoff attended the meeting with Bush and says Bush greeted the lobbyist warmly “like an old friend.”

The only real mystery is what was Jack's Bush-created nickname. How about Jailbird Jack?

You know, I just don't spend that much time on him

Q Mr. President, in your speeches now you rarely talk or mention Osama bin Laden. Why is that? Also, can you tell the American people if you have any more information, if you know if he is dead or alive? Final part -- deep in your heart, don't you truly believe that until you find out if he is dead or alive, you won't really eliminate the threat of --

THE PRESIDENT: Deep in my heart I know the man is on the run, if he's alive at all. Who knows if he's hiding in some cave or not; we haven't heard from him in a long time. And the idea of focusing on one person is -- really indicates to me people don't understand the scope of the mission.

Terror is bigger than one person. And he's just -- he's a person who's now been marginalized. His network, his host government has been destroyed. He's the ultimate parasite who found weakness, exploited it, and met his match. He is -- as I mentioned in my speech, I do mention the fact that this is a fellow who is willing to commit youngsters to their death and he, himself, tries to hide -- if, in fact, he's hiding at all.

So I don't know where he is. You know, I just don't spend that much time on him, Kelly, to be honest with you. I'm more worried about making sure that our soldiers are well-supplied; that the strategy is clear; that the coalition is strong; that when we find enemy bunched up like we did in Shahikot Mountains, that the military has all the support it needs to go in and do the job, which they did.

And there will be other battles in Afghanistan. There's going to be other struggles like Shahikot, and I'm just as confident about the outcome of those future battles as I was about Shahikot, where our soldiers are performing brilliantly. We're tough, we're strong, they're well-equipped. We have a good strategy. We are showing the world we know how to fight a guerrilla war with conventional means.

Q But don't you believe that the threat that bin Laden posed won't truly be eliminated until he is found either dead or alive?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, as I say, we haven't heard much from him. And I wouldn't necessarily say he's at the center of any command structure. And, again, I don't know where he is. I -- I'll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him. I know he is on the run. I was concerned about him, when he had taken over a country. I was concerned about the fact that he was basically running Afghanistan and calling the shots for the Taliban.

But once we set out the policy and started executing the plan, he became -- we shoved him out more and more on the margins. He has no place to train his al Qaeda killers anymore. And if we -- excuse me for a minute -- and if we find a training camp, we'll take care of it. Either we will or our friends will. That's one of the things -- part of the new phase that's becoming apparent to the American people is that we're working closely with other governments to deny sanctuary, or training, or a place to hide, or a place to raise money.

And we've got more work to do. See, that's the thing the American people have got to understand, that we've only been at this six months. This is going to be a long struggle. I keep saying that; I don't know whether you all believe me or not. But time will show you that it's going to take a long time to achieve this objective. And I can assure you, I am not going to blink. And I'm not going to get tired. Because I know what is at stake. And history has called us to action, and I am going to seize this moment for the good of the world, for peace in the world and for freedom.

Maybe Bush needs to prioritize his time differently.

Even if you agreed with the initial War on Terror and War on Iraq, it is undeniable that Bush is doing a terrible job to meet his stated goals. Click on the supplied links to see that Bush has failed in everything he said he'd do and that's not even counting his cowboy words "dead or alive" back in September 2001. Bush is not getting results by any standards. Most corporations would have fired him years ago.

This isn't a game

Me and the Gov. in Boston during the 2004 DNC(left) Bet he felt tall.

I just had the opportunity to sit down and watch Gov. Rod Blagojevich deliver the State of the State. It was all about priorities and the differences between the Blagojevich administration and the republicans. Blagojevich made it clear right from the beginning. He believes that governments exist to help the ordinary working people of their jurisdictions. He inherited a mess from folks who operated as if the government was there solely for them.

Here's a little priority cheat sheet to help you decide that the Blago bashing is just plain stupid, opening up the door of Illinois to the Bush/Cheney/Delay/Abramoff/Blunt/Kirk mess that exists in Washington:

Helping working people and the middle class
Blago: Yes
gop: Who?

Equality of opportunity:
Blago: Yes
gop: For Christian, white males and campaign contributors.

Fiscal responsibility including a balanced budget:
Blago: Yes
gop: After Halliburton gets it's cut and Abramoff and Co. get their cut and after we find the $9Bil lost in Iraq and after....

Good and Good Paying Jobs:
Blago: Yes
gop: Send American jobs to India and sent American workers to Walmart.

Transportation
Blago: Yes
gop: We have limos.

Early education:
Blago: Yes, and let's work on more
gop: Well there is always Clifford the Big Red Dog on television.

High School education:
Blago: More science and math.
gop: Don't worry about science and math, it's all in God's hands except for the jobs you are going to lose out on to Europeans, Asians and everyone else who doesn't have to sit through science classes teaching creationism. Don't worry about all the innovations that used to come from here that will now be coming out of places like Thailand and Finland. We can always bomb them if we need anything.

Help for parents of college students:
Blago: New $1000 tax credit for freshman and sophomores. Truth in Tuition so they don't suck you in and raise it on you when you are a senior.
gop: Increase cost of student loans and freeze pell grants. Let students pay for college with their checks from appearing on Girls Gone Wild videos. Girls not favorably endowed and the guys can go into the Army and scavenge for scrap metal to arm their unarmed humvees.

Health Care
Blago: A fundamental right. Yes for all kids, more for working people and let's create a program for veterans.
gop: The health industry's right to profit is a fundamental right. We're replacing the 4th, 5th and 14th amendments with that.

Prescriptions for Seniors
Blago: Help for seniors
gop: We are actually trying to kill the seniors so we can end Medicare for good. (a senior really said this to me)

Reproductive Rights
Blago: If you send me the bill to take away these rights, I'll stop it dead in its tracks.
gop: Love the fetus, hate the child. Our best vote getter at their expense.

Environment
Blago: Reduce mercury emissions to stricter standards than the federal government. Rebate for fuel efficient cars.
gop: Breaks for polluters, after all they are some of our biggest campaign contributors. Without gas guzzlers, how would we sell our Persian Gulf wars?

Assault Weapons
Blago: Ban in Illinois
gop: No assault weapon manufacturer left behind.

Blagojevich's priorities are clear. He believes that government is here to help the people and not be "more concerned with itself than the job of governing and problem solving."

Leadership is about real choices, real life decisions that affect real lives. This isn't a game.~~Rod Blagojevich, January 18, 2006

People's Energy and Standing

Litigation by the City of Chicago and State of Illinois has ended in a settlement requiring People's Energy to pay $100 million to over charged customers.

No, you weren't imagining it. You were overcharged.

Sure enough, it all started with Enron.

Now, decide if you think ComEd should be deregulated and allowed into that energy auction scheme they so want, sort of like the energy auction scheme Enron favored. Ah, maybe we ought to trust Lisa Madigan on that one.

Litigation began against the NSA today (speaking of litigation). Several attorneys who fall into the class of people described by NSA as potential spy targets have filed a lawsuit through the Center for Constitutional Rights. The big question will be whether or not the attorneys will have standing to sue not absolutely knowing that they were victims. A court could decide that since only NSA has the data, they will have to provide the evidence. ACLU has sued as well. There is also a potential issue whether or not organizations like CCR and ACLU have standing to sue. Courts have decided in favor of such standing in the past, but it could be an issue as Bush Administration pressures the federal courts to provide it cover. Now that politics is more important than law and governing it's hard to see whether law will prevail.

Don't think Alito's nomination is important enough to fight? Think Democrats need to give that one up to stay viable in the 2006 elections? Don't want to anger the gop? Upset the Senate? Think again and turn down your heat.

Fear drives out reason

Al Gore said that yesterday. It's the best line anyone has come up with in years.

People buy into the Bush Administration/mainstream media fear machine and rush to throw away their rights--fear driving out their reason. Democratic leaders fear being crushed by the gop politics of personal destruction press machine and fail to stand up for the people's Constitutional rights. They think it's political suicide to stand up for truth and democracy, so they pretend Bush's policies are ok and that again is an example of fear driving out reason.

That's its own form of political suicide. It's always better to fight for what you believe in and lose, than lose anyway and irreparably lose your dignity so you can never come back. If, during the 2004 campaign, John Kerry had screamed from the highest mountain "DON'T LET THEM MAKE YOU AFRAID! THEY ARE WRONG AND HERE'S WHY...!" and "THESE ARE BAD BAD PEOPLE AND HERE'S WHY...!" He might have lost, but he'd be looking pretty good now as the truth trickles out. Instead, he just looks like a big flip flopping weenie.

As I blogged last night while watching Democat munch on a hapless spider she found crawling up the office wall, the American people are also at fault. We have to stop requiring our leaders to be media stars because the attributes that make a person a likeable seeming good guy on TV are not always the attributes that go into a good leader.

UPDATE: And Al Gore has not backed down in the face of outrageous white house attacks upon him. This was Gore's response:

The Administration's response to my speech illustrates perfectly the need for a special counsel to review the legality of the NSA wiretapping program. The Attorney General is making a political defense of the President without even addressing the substantive legal questions that have so troubled millions of Americans in both political parties.

There are two problems with the Attorney General's effort to focus attention on the past instead of the present Administration's behavior. First, as others have thoroughly documented, his charges are factually wrong. Both before and after the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was amended in 1995, the Clinton/Gore Administration complied fully and completely with the terms of the law. Second, the Attorney General's attempt to cite a previous administration's activity as precedent for theirs - even though factually wrong - ironically demonstrates another reason why we must be so vigilant about their brazen disregard for the law. If unchecked, their behavior would serve as a precedent to encourage future presidents to claim these same powers, which many legal experts in both parties believe are clearly illegal.

The issue, simply put, is that for more than four years, the executive branch has been wiretapping many thousands of American citizens without warrants in direct contradiction of American law. It is clearly wrong and disrespectful to the American people to allow a close political associate of the president to be in charge of reviewing serious charges against him.

The country needs a full and independent investigation into the facts and legality of the present Administration's program.

Call your senators to vote no

Martin Luther King day put the spotlight on civil rights in the US and the push away from the dream. The Bush administration and the bandwagon creators of the mainstream media want us to accept Sam Alito, proud member of Concerned Alumni of Princeton (CAP), a biggot group organized to discourage integration and co-education. Proud because in 1985 he was happy to advertise it as a reason why the Reagan Administration should hire him.

With school getting more expensive, student aid decreasing and a general atmosphere of racism considered acceptable by our leaders, minority students are moving backward rather than forward. From the title link at The Guardian:

The national segregation levels are back at levels of the late 1960s," said Professor Gary Orfield, director of the project [Harvard's Civil Rights Project] and co-author of the report. "We have lost almost all the progress that came from desegregating our urban communities."

Yesterday in a speech to commemorate the day, Bush said:

At the dawn of this new century, America can be proud of the progress we have made toward equality, but we all must recognize we have more to do.

His words are empty as long as his policies do more for segregation and gender discrimination than CAP ever accomplished, but he is who he is and will never change. What we can do is demand our senators vote no on Alito so this terrible legacy of inequality will not continue for the next 30-40 years.

Can statesmen run for office?

The American Revolution created many statesmen that we revere today. Many of them ran for office after the revolution becoming our first Senators, Congressmen, Presidents, Vice Presidents, Justices and Secretaries of this and that and served with distinction for many years. The Chicago Tribune's Washington Bureau has made an interesting statement about today's politicians. They seem to believe that the only way to become a statesman (stateswoman) is to first drop out of public service forever. Tribune correspondent Frank James writing about Al Gore's speech about our current Constitutional Crisis wrote:

Typically, a big Washington speech is usually nuanced to the nth degree in order to be the least offensive to the greatest number of people.

Speaking of the delay due to the failure of the closed circuit TV link, James said:

Now many a politician or former politician, unnerved by all that dead air, would have risen to the microphone and launched into his speech. The old Gore probably would've have done that, if for no other reason to be seen as taking control because anyone with presidential aspirations has to always be market himself as someone who can take control.

But that's not Gore's thing anymore. Which makes him much more interesting after the death of his presidential ambition than he was when that ambition was very much alive.

I think that says a lot about what has become of our political system. Are the demands upon our elected officials to become milquetoast media figures making them incapable of being statesmen?

Apologies

I didn't post comments for over a week because I did not know they were there (and frankly was starting to feel bad that there were no comments coming in). Blogger is supposed to send me an email when I get a comment and I didn't get the emails. Then, a reader asked me what was going on and I checked and saw several comments. I am so sorry. Your comments are all posted now except for the guy who wanted to know if anyone wanted a "good time". Yup, even the comments of those of you who disagree with me got posted. Sorry for the mix up. Please keep sending in your comments and I will look for them rather than waiting for the email from now on.

And it is We the people who must now find once again the ability we once had to play and integral role in saving our Constitution~~Al Gore

Excerpts:

The rule of law makes us stronger by ensuring that decisions will be tested, studied, reviewed and examined through the processes of government that are designed to improve policy. And the knowledge that they will be reviewed prevents over-reaching and checks the accretion of power.

Once violated, the rule of law is in danger. Unless stopped, lawlessness grows. The greater the power of the executive grows, the more difficult it becomes for the other branches to perform their constitutional roles. As the executive acts outside its constitutionally prescribed role and is able to control access to information that would expose its actions, it becomes increasingly difficult for the other branches to police it. Once that ability is lost, democracy itself is threatened and we become a government of men and not laws.

The fact that our normal safeguards have thus far failed to contain this unprecedented expansion of executive power is deeply troubling. This failure is due in part to the fact that the Executive Branch has followed a determined strategy of obfuscating, delaying, withholding information, appearing to yield but then refusing to do so and dissembling in order to frustrate the efforts of the legislative and judicial branches to restore our constitutional balance.

There have of course been other periods of American history when the Executive Branch claimed new powers that were later seen as excessive and mistaken. Our second president, John Adams, passed the infamous Alien and Sedition Acts and sought to silence and imprison critics and political opponents.

When his successor, Thomas Jefferson, eliminated the abuses he said: "[The essential principles of our Government] form the bright constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation... [S]hould we wander from them in moments of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty and safety."

This effort to rework America's carefully balanced constitutional design into a lopsided structure dominated by an all powerful Executive Branch with a subservient Congress and judiciary is-ironically-accompanied by an effort by the same administration to rework America's foreign policy from one that is based primarily on U.S. moral authority into one that is based on a misguided and self-defeating effort to establish dominance in the world.

The common denominator seems to be based on an instinct to intimidate and control.

Whenever power is unchecked and unaccountable it almost inevitably leads to mistakes and abuses. In the absence of rigorous accountability, incompetence flourishes. Dishonesty is encouraged and rewarded.

Moreover, if the pattern of practice begun by this Administration is not challenged, it may well become a permanent part of the American system. Many conservatives have pointed out that granting unchecked power to this President means that the next President will have unchecked power as well. And the next President may be someone whose values and belief you do not trust. And this is why Republicans as well as Democrats should be concerned with what this President has done. If this President's attempt to dramatically expand executive power goes unquestioned, our constitutional design of checks and balances will be lost. And the next President or some future President will be able, in the name of national security, to restrict our liberties in a way the framers never would have thought possible.

We the people are-collectively-still the key to the survival of America's democracy. We-as Lincoln put it, "[e]ven we here"-must examine our own role as citizens in allowing and not preventing the shocking decay and degradation of our democracy.

And it is "We the people" who must now find once again the ability we once had to play an integral role in saving our Constitution.

Fear drives out reason. Fear suppresses the politics of discourse and opens the door to the politics of destruction. Justice Brandeis once wrote: "Men feared witches and burnt women."

It is simply an insult to those who came before us and sacrificed so much on our behalf to imply that we have more to be fearful of than they. Yet they faithfully protected our freedoms and now it is up to us to do the same.

Gore's speech was real time blogged at DCP.

and the republican response:

Al Gore's incessant need to insert himself in the headline of the day is almost as glaring as his lack of understanding of the threats facing America. While the President works to protect Americans from terrorists, Democrats deliver no solutions of their own, only diatribes laden with inaccur