Locomotive Mule

Will The GOP Nuke The Constitution?

By Arianna Huffington

December 21, 2004

Right now, somewhere in the White House, administration strategists are hatching plans to go to war. Battle plans are being drawn. Timing and tactics are being finalized. A nuclear option is even being openly discussed.

The designated target? Iran? Syria? North Korea?

No, much closer to home: the United States Senate.

Salivating at the chance to radically remake the Supreme Court, the president and his loyal lapdogs in the World’s Most Exclusive Club are plotting to obliterate over 200 years of Senate tradition by eliminating the use of filibusters against judicial nominees.

The Robert’s Rules of Disorder scheme would involve — who else? — Vice President Dick Cheney, in his role as presiding Senate officer, ruling that judicial filibusters are unconstitutional and Majority Leader Bill Frist squashing the Democrats’ inevitable objection to such an edict by tabling the motion. As long as we’re “spreading democracy” abroad, no reason to leave out the home front, right?

This is the so-called “nuclear option,” embraced with a wink and a nudge by Frist in November when he told the conservative Federalist Society: “One way or another, the filibuster of judicial nominees must end.”

Invoking this parliamentary dirty trick would eliminate unlimited debate on judicial nominations and lower the number of votes needed before a nominee can be confirmed from the 60 necessary to break a filibuster to a simple majority of 51, and would drive a stake through the heart of the Senate’s longstanding commitment — indeed one of its founding purposes — to defending the rights of the minority.

This scorched-earth approach is entirely in keeping with what Time magazine lauds this week as President Bush’s “ten-gallon-hat leadership” style — a my-way-or-the-highway approach rooted in arrogance and laced with an intolerance of dissent that has already delivered him a rubber stamp Cabinet. Now he wants a rubber stamp Senate.

Over the course of his first term, 204 of Bush’s judicial nominees received Senate approval; just 10 were blocked. This is the highest number of lower-court confirmations any president has had in his first term since 1980 — including President Reagan. But, apparently, the highest is not enough. This president wants total approval of his every wish.

One small problem: That’s not the way the Founding Fathers designed things. They had these funny notions about three separate but equal branches of government, free and open debate, and the value of checks and balances to ward off the overreaching for power by those in the majority. They built an entire system of government to counteract the abuse that inevitably goes with overreaching.

Yet that is precisely what the plan to do away with judicial filibusters is: an out-and-out power grab by the president and his Congressional accomplices. An underhanded scheme to kneecap the Constitution and take away the only weapon vanquished Democrats are left with to defend against Bush’s “ten-gallon-hat” juggernaut.

It would be impossible to overstate the importance of this battle. It is nothing less than a fight for the soul of our democracy — for what kind of country we want to live in.

“George W. Bush,” Ralph Neas, President of People for the American Way, told me, “has made it clear, both through his public comments and through the judges he has nominated to appellate courts, that he is committed to advancing an ideological agenda that would roll back many of the social and legal gains of the last century.”

According to Neas, who has been at the forefront of judicial battles since the fight against Robert Bork in 1987, this is not just about Roe vs. Wade — it’s also about turning the clock back to a time when states’ rights and property rights trumped the protection of individual liberties and the ability of Congress to act in the common good on issues as far-ranging as civil rights enforcement, environmental protection, and worker health and safety.

This is not overheated partisan rhetoric but a realistic appraisal of the rulings handed down by the federal judges Bush has already appointed — and of the written opinions of Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, the Supreme Court Justices the president has cited as his models for future nominees to the High Court. “Courting Disaster 2004,” a study by People for the American Way Foundation, found that adding just one or two Scalia/Thomas clones to the Supreme Court would put at risk more than 100 precedents and the legal protections they safeguard.

We’re talking about the Voting Rights Act, affirmative action, worker protections, access to contraceptives and legal abortions, laws protecting our clean air and drinking water, and on and on.

Senate rules regarding filibusters are not something most Americans will find themselves discussing over a glass of eggnog during the holidays. But the impact these rules can have on our lives is staggering. And it must be made clear right now — not when Chief Justice Rehnquist resigns and Cheney and Frist team up to push the nuclear button. By then it will be much too late, and all Harry Reid will be able to do is duck and cover. True leadership is being able to see not just the crisis staring you in the face — but the one lurking just around the corner.

President Bush is pulling on his oversized Stetson and gearing up for battle. And here, unlike Iraq, he’s making sure his political troops have all the armor they need. The Democrats need to pre-emptively launch an all-out campaign to educate the American people about what will be at stake during the coming assault on our democratic values.
If they succeed, they will have the public with them, even if it becomes necessary to resort to threats of Mutually Assured Legislative Destruction. Let’s hope that’s not what it will take to protect the Senate, the Constitution, and over 65 years of hard-won social victories from the GOP’s looming nuclear winter.

Riverbend writes:

The situation seems to be deteriorating daily. To brief you on a few things: Electricity is lousy. Many areas are on the damned 2 hours by 4 hours schedule and there are other areas that are completely in the dark- like A’adhamiya. The problem is that we’re not getting much generator electricity because fuel has become such a big problem. People have to wait in line overnight now to fill up the car. It’s a mystery. It really is. There was never such a gasoline crisis as the one we’re facing now. We’re an oil country and yet there isn’t enough gasoline to go around…

Oh don’t get me wrong- the governmental people have gasoline (they have special gas stations where there aren’t all these annoying people, rubbing their hands with cold and cursing the Americans to the skies)… The Americans have gasoline. The militias get gasoline. It’s the people who don’t have it. We can sometimes get black-market gasoline but the liter costs around 1250 Iraqi Dinars which is almost $1- compare this to the old price of around 5 cents. It costs almost 50,000 Iraqi Dinars to fill up the generator so that it works for a few hours and then the cost isn’t so much the problem as just getting decent gasoline is. So we have to do without electricity most of the day.

People are wondering how America and gang (i.e. Iyad Allawi, etc.) are going to implement democracy in all of this chaos when they can’t seem to get the gasoline flowing in a country that virtually swims in oil. There’s a rumor that this gasoline crisis has been concocted on purpose in order to keep a minimum of cars on the streets. Others claim that this whole situation is a form of collective punishment because things are really out of control in so many areas in Baghdad- especially the suburbs. The third theory is that this being done purposely so that the Iraq government can amazingly bring the electricity, gasoline, kerosene and cooking gas back in January before the elections and make themselves look like heroes.

The assault on Falloojeh and other areas is continuing. There are rumors of awful weapons being used in Falloojeh. The city has literally been burnt and bombed to the ground. Many of the people displaced from the city are asking to be let back in, in spite of everything. I can’t even begin to imagine how difficult it must be for the refugees. It’s like we’ve turned into another Palestine- occupation, bombings, refugees, death. Sometimes I’ll be watching the news and the volume will be really low. The scene will be of a man, woman or child, wailing in front of the camera; crying at the fate of a body lying bloodily, stiffly on the ground- a demolished building in the background and it will take me a few moments to decide the location of this tragedy- Falloojeh? Gaza? Baghdad?

What are we doing? Why?

Media strategy aided Republicans’ win

For his part, Egyptian journalist and elections observer Muhammad Fuad said Bush used the media to implement a new policy - Define your opponents to the people before your opponent gets to define himself.

“No one doubts the role played by media in general but in this particular election media played a key role and was behind the success of Bush and the Republicans,” Fuad, who writes for Al-Ahram newspaper, said.

“The Bush campaign used one of Kerry’s statements against him where they showed him as a hesitant person, incapable of taking firm decisions.”


"Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)"
Propagandist Prop`a*gan"dist, n. Cf. F. propagandiste.
A person who devotes himself to the spread of any system of
principles. ``Political propagandists.'' --Walsh.


Media “strategy”? It seems to me that when an election campaign can so cleverly and effectively use mass media to get its “message” across and assassinate the opposition, we should be extremely wary and vigilant of “everyday” manipulations via the media.

Culpability abounds.

Former US official blasts Iraq policy

A former US national security advisor has strongly criticised the US-led invasion of Iraq.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, who served under President Jimmy Carter from 1976-1980, also made a scathing assessment of the ensuing occupation after Saddam Hussein was ousted as Iraqi leader.

He said the US administration will now have to scale down its ambitions for Iraq’s future.

“I personally think it was not worth it, in the sense that we have paid a high price in blood. And it’s increasing. You cannot underestimate the suffering that this has already produced to tens of thousands of American families,” he told CNN.

Brzezinski also said tens of thousands of Iraqis have died and that the US is spending billions of dollars and has isolated itself internationally.

“Now, that is simply not worth the price of removing Saddam,
because we were containing him. But we are where we are. And the problem today is, in my judgment, how to avoid failure.”

They can only dream of holidays at home

“Support Our Troops” is a wonderful patriotic slogan. But the best way to support troops thrust by unwise commanders in chief into ill-advised adventures like Vietnam and Iraq is to bring them home. Sooner rather than later. That should be our New Year’s resolution.

The Butcher’s Bill

We have made a disaster in Iraq. We cannot escape from all of its consequences. But the human consequences of staying—the Iraqi civilians we will kill, the young American men and women alive this minute who will die or be maimed in body or mind—are worse than the political consequences of withdrawing. In any case, the political consequences are notional, as weighed against the certainty of death, suffering, and grief. In our own eyes, our prestige diminished after we withdrew from Vietnam, but our international position was not weakened. Asked for the hundredth time why we were in Vietnam, Lyndon Johnson, according to Arthur Goldberg, his U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, “unzipped his fly, drew out his substantial organ, and declared, ‘This is why!’” In Iraq as in Vietnam, at risk is not America’s prestige but the President’s. No one should have to die to save George W. Bush’s face.

No peace on Earth during unjust war

The guilty people are not only the Vulcans [in the Bush administration] but those Americans who in the November election endorsed the war.

They are also responsible for the Iraqi deaths, especially the men who join the police or the army because they need the money to support their families – their jobs eaten up in the maw of the American ‘’liberation.'’ Iraqi deaths don’t trouble many Americans. Their attitude is not unlike the e-mail writer who said he rejoices every time a Muslim kills another Muslim. ‘’Let Allah sort them out.'’

This time of the year we celebrate ‘’peace on Earth to men of good will.'’ Americans must face the fact that they can no longer claim to be men and women of good will, not as long as they support an unnecessary, foolish, ill-conceived, badly executed and, finally, unwinnable war.

When 1 in 2 American marriages end in divorce, why are we concerned over a few homosexuals wanting to commit to each other? Why are we so shocked and offended that American citizens would want to enjoy the rights and legal status that many others already enjoy?

Why aren’t we looking at the larger issues here? Is divorce so commonplace and normal that it’s not even worthy of discussion? Isn’t the fact that 50% of our kids come from ‘broken homes’ interesting to anyone?

Good Christians of America: if you want to make a difference in this world, if you want to make America a better place then investigate why so many marriages fail. Put in place solid social policy that will reduce the number of ‘dads’ our kids have. Stop worrying about whether people’s plumbing is the right kind and start worrying about the quality of your own relationships. We should all be more offended at the idea that half of us ignore/violate our marriage vows than the idea of two guys butt fucking on their own bed.

Exhibition closed over Bush portrait

A portrait using monkeys to form an image of US President George Bush has led to the closure of a New York art exhibition and provoked protests over freedom of expression.

Bush Monkeys, a small acrylic on canvas by Chris Savido, created the stir at the Chelsea Market public space on Monday, leading the market’s managers to close down the 60-piece show.

The show featured art from the upcoming issue of Animal Magazine, a quarterly publication featuring emerging artists.

“We had tons of people, like more than 2000 people show up for the opening on Thursday night,” said show organiser Bucky Turco.

“Then this manager saw the piece and the guy just kind of flipped out. ‘The show is over. Get this work down or I’m gonna arrest you,’ he said. It’s been kind of wild.”

Hmmm…..

Poll: 44 percent in U.S. fear Muslims

ITHACA, NY, Dec. 17 (UPI) – A Cornell University poll finds that 44 percent of the U.S. population believe that Muslim Americans are a threat and their civil liberties should be curtailed.

The survey found that 27 percent of respondents believe Muslim Americans should be required to register with federal law enforcement agencies, 26 percent say that investigators should monitor mosques and 29 percent that undercover police officers should infiltrate Islamic organizations. And 22 percent would accept profiling of Muslims and people with Middle Eastern ties.
more…

Fascinating! That 44% of Americans (those defenders of liberty) would even consider curtailing the liberties of fellow Americans - especially based on creed or color. Aren’t we the ones that are liberating the Iraqis so that they may enjoy the liberty that all peoples should have? Aren’t we the ones that are sending our sons and daughters to be maimed and killed all in the name of civil liberties?

Haven’t we fought wars over these very ideals? Have we not fought amongst ourselves over the liberties of man NOT being based on their color? Aren’t we still trying to deal with the national shame of interring Japanese during the ’40s? (No I s’pose not - we just ignore that…)

The survey found that Republicans are more likely to favor security over civil rights for Muslims than Democrats. Those who described themselves as religious Christians were more likely to perceive Islam as encouraging violence and Islamic countries as violent and dangerous than those who said they were not religious.

Gomer Pyle voice: Surpriiise! Surpriiise! Surpriiiise…

But the overwhelming majority of both groups said that Islam is oppressive to women.

Well! There’s a reason to round ‘em up and stuff ‘em in a hole! In MY America, women are free to be as oppressed as they choose to be. If they want to join the Mormon church and marry a polygamist, then by golly they should be allowed to do so. If they choose to be subjugated by their religous beliefs, then by God they shall be.

Aljazeera is running this as a top-of-the-page story.

Check out these ‘toons…. my favorite.

2 C.I.A. Reports Offer Warnings on Iraq’s Path
By DOUGLAS JEHL

WASHINGTON, Dec. 6 - A classified cable sent by the Central Intelligence Agency’s station chief in Baghdad has warned that the situation in Iraq is deteriorating and may not rebound any time soon, according to government officials.

The cable, sent late last month as the officer ended a yearlong tour, presented a bleak assessment on matters of politics, economics and security, the officials said. They said its basic conclusions had been echoed in briefings presented by a senior C.I.A. official who recently visited Iraq.

The officials described the two assessments as having been “mixed,” saying that they did describe Iraq as having made important progress, particularly in terms of its political process, and credited Iraqis with being resilient.

But over all, the officials described the station chief’s cable in particular as an unvarnished assessment of the difficulties ahead in Iraq. They said it warned that the security situation was likely to get worse, including more violence and sectarian clashes, unless there were marked improvements soon on the part of the Iraqi government, in terms of its ability to assert authority and to build the economy.

Together, the appraisals, which follow several other such warnings from officials in Washington and in the field, were much more pessimistic than the public picture being offered by the Bush administration before the elections scheduled for Iraq next month, the officials said. The cable was sent to C.I.A. headquarters after American forces completed what military commanders have described as a significant victory, with the retaking of Falluja, a principal base of the Iraqi insurgency, in mid-November.

The American ambassador to Iraq, John D. Negroponte, was said by the officials to have filed a written dissent, objecting to one finding as too harsh, on the ground that the United States had made more progress than was described in combating the Iraqi insurgency. But the top American military commander in Iraq, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., also reviewed the cable and initially offered no objections, the officials said. One official said, however, that General Casey may have voiced objections in recent days.

The station chief’s cable has been widely disseminated outside the C.I.A., and was initially described by a government official who read the document and who praised it as unusually candid. Other government officials who have read or been briefed on the document later described its contents. The officials refused to be identified by name or affiliation because of the delicacy of the issue. The station chief cannot be publicly identified because he continues to work undercover.

Asked about the cable, a White House spokesman, Sean McCormack, said he could not discuss intelligence matters. A C.I.A. spokesman would say only that he could not comment on any classified document.

It was not clear how the White House was responding to the station chief’s cable. In recent months, some Republicans, including Senator John McCain of Arizona, have accused the agency of seeking to undermine President Bush by disclosing intelligence reports whose conclusions contradict the administration or its policies. But senior intelligence officials including John E. McLaughlin, the departing deputy director of central intelligence, have disputed those assertions. One government official said the new assessments might suggest that Porter J. Goss, the new director of central intelligence, was willing to listen to views different from those publicly expressed by the administration.

A separate, more formal, National Intelligence Estimate prepared in July and sent to the White House in August by American intelligence agencies also presented a dark forecast for Iraq’s future through the end of 2005. Among three possible developments described in that document, the best case was tenuous stability and the worst case included a chain of events leading to civil war.

After news reports disclosed the existence of the National Intelligence Estimate, which also remains classified, President Bush initially dismissed the conclusions as nothing more than a guess. Since then, however, violence in Iraq has increased, including the recent formation of a Shiite militia intended to carry out attacks on Sunni militants.

The end-of-tour cable from the station chief, spelling out an assessment of the situation on the ground, is a less-formal product than a National Intelligence Estimate. But it was drafted by an officer who is highly regarded within the C.I.A. and who, as station chief in Baghdad, has been the top American intelligence official in Iraq since December 2003. The station chief overseas an intelligence operation that includes about 300 people, making Baghdad the largest C.I.A. station since Saigon during the Vietnam War era.

The senior C.I.A. official who visited Iraq and then briefed counterparts from other government agencies was Michael Kostiw, a senior adviser to Mr. Goss. One government official who knew about Mr. Kostiw’s briefings described them as “an honest portrayal of the situation on the ground.”

Since they took office in September, Mr. Goss and his aides have sought to discourage unauthorized disclosures of information. In a memorandum sent to C.I.A. employees last month, Mr. Goss said the job of the intelligence agency was to “provide the intelligence as we see it” but also to “support the administration and its policies in our work.”

“As agency employees we do not identify with, support or champion opposition to the administration or its policies,” Mr. Goss said in that memorandum, saying that he was seeking “to clarify beyond doubt the rules of the road.” The memorandum urged intelligence employees to “let the facts alone speak to the policy maker.”

Mr. Goss himself made his first foreign trip as the intelligence director last week, with stops that included several days in Britain and a day in Afghanistan, but he did not visit Iraq, the government officials said.

At the White House on Monday, President Bush himself offered no hint of pessimism as he met with Iraq’s president, Sheik Ghazi al-Yawar. Despite the security challenges, Mr. Bush said, the United States continues to favor the voting scheduled for Iraq on Jan. 30 to “send the clear message to the few people in Iraq that are trying to stop the march toward democracy that they cannot stop elections.”

“The American people must understand that democracy just doesn’t happen overnight,” he said. “It is a process. It is an evolution. After all, look at our own history. We had great principles enunciated in our Declarations of Independence and our Constitution, yet, we had slavery for a hundred years. It takes a while for democracy to take hold. And this is a major first step in a society which enables people to express their beliefs and their opinions.”

Love it or hate, the CIA is very shortly going to be supplanted by “military intelligence” types and become a relic, relegated to whipping boy whenever one’s needed. I foresee that Goss’ tenure will be short - just long enough to emasculate the Agency, and then, a succession of ‘on-the-way-out’ dissidents (those that don’t kiss the prez’s feet) will hold the post just long enough to be publicly humiliated.

Do the Agency’s people have an agenda? Are they trying to discredit this administration? Why wouold they do that? It seems to me that a nice regional conflict would be right up their alley.

What could they gain by being “overly pessimistic” in their appraisals? I have to believe that these people are doing their jobs as they see them and trying to inform the politcos as accurately as possible (after all, isn’t that what the boss said to do?).

Too bad this administration doesn’t have the balls to see the situation as it is and act accordingly.

MONTGOMERY - An Alabama lawmaker who sought to ban gay marriages now wants to ban novels with gay characters from public libraries, including university libraries.

A bill by Rep. Gerald Allen, R-Cottondale, would prohibit the use of public funds for “the purchase of textbooks or library materials that recognize or promote homosexuality as an acceptable lifestyle.” Allen said he filed the bill to protect children from the “homosexual agenda.”

Promote? No, I don’t think public funds should be used to ‘promote’ a gay lifestyle (or a straight one either) but the line between recognizing something and promoting it is very slim indeed.

“Our culture, how we know it today, is under attack from every angle,” Allen said in a press conference Tuesday.

Actually he’s got it right. Our culture is under attack. From self righteous bastards like this guy. This is your common, hypocritical attack from the right which attacks the very thing they’re claiming to protect.

Look for a lot more of this crap.

Story’s here