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Lincoln will turn in his grave when hearing stuff like this. He would rather go hard at those who put troops in harm's way during an unjustified military conflict fought for the good of select few

Censorship Bush style.

Bush Presses Editors on Security
by Howard Kurtz
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/1226-05.htm
President Bush has been summoning newspaper editors lately in an effort to prevent publication of stories he considers damaging to national security.

The efforts have failed, but the rare White House sessions with the executive editors of The Washington Post and New York Times are an indication of how seriously the president takes the recent reporting that has raised questions about the administration's anti-terror tactics.

Leonard Downie Jr., The Post's executive editor, would not confirm the meeting with Bush before publishing reporter Dana Priest's Nov. 2 article disclosing the existence of secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe used to interrogate terror suspects. Bill Keller, executive editor of the Times, would not confirm that he, publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and Washington bureau chief Philip Taubman had an Oval Office sit-down with the president on Dec. 5, 11 days before reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau revealed that Bush had authorized eavesdropping on Americans and others within the United States without court orders.

But the meetings were confirmed by sources who have been briefed on them but are not authorized to comment because both sides had agreed to keep the sessions off the record. The White House had no comment.

"When senior administration officials raised national security questions about details in Dana's story during her reporting, at their request we met with them on more than one occasion," Downie says. "The meetings were off the record for the purpose of discussing national security issues in her story." At least one of the meetings involved John Negroponte, the director of national intelligence, and CIA Director Porter Goss, the sources said.

"This was a matter of concern for intelligence officials, and they sought to address their concerns," an intelligence official said. Some liberals criticized The Post for withholding the location of the prisons at the administration's request.

After Bush's meeting with the Times executives, first reported by Newsweek's Jonathan Alter, the president assailed the paper's piece on domestic spying, calling the leak of classified information "shameful." Some liberals, meanwhile, attacked the paper for holding the story for more than a year after earlier meetings with administration officials.

"The decision to hold the story last year was mine," Keller says. "The decision to run the story last week was mine. I'm comfortable with both decisions. Beyond that, there's just no way to have a full discussion of the internal procedural twists that media writers find so fascinating without talking about what we knew, when, and how -- and that I can't do."

Some Times staffers say the story was revived in part because of concerns that Risen is publishing a book on the CIA next month that will include the disclosures. But Keller told the Los Angeles Times: "The publication was not timed to the Iraqi election, the Patriot Act debate, Jim's forthcoming book or any other event."
Bought Off?

The admission by two columnists that they accepted payments from indicted Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff may be the tip of a large and rather dirty iceberg.

Copley News Service last week dropped Doug Bandow -- who also resigned as a Cato Institute scholar -- after he acknowledged taking as much as $2,000 a pop from Abramoff for up to two dozen columns favorable to the lobbyist's clients. "I am fully responsible and I won't play victim," Bandow said in a statement after Business Week broke the story. "Obviously, I regret stupidly calling to question my record of activism and writing that extends over 20 years. . . . For that I deeply apologize."

Peter Ferrara of the Institute for Policy Innovation has acknowledged taking payments years ago from a half-dozen lobbyists, including Abramoff. Two of his papers, the Washington Times and Manchester (N.H.) Union Leader, have now dropped him. But Ferrara is unapologetic, saying: "There is nothing unethical about taking money from someone and writing an article."

Readers might disagree on grounds that they have no way of knowing about such undisclosed payments, which seem to be an increasingly common tactic for companies trying to influence public debate through ostensibly neutral third parties. When he was a Washington lawyer several years ago, says law professor Glenn Reynolds, a telecommunications carrier offered him a fat paycheck -- up to $20,000, he believes -- to write an opinion piece favorable to its position. He declined.

In the case of Bandow's columns, says Reynolds, who now writes the InstaPundit blog, "one argument is, it's probably something he thought anyway, but it doesn't pass the smell test to me. I wouldn't necessarily call it criminal, but it seems wrong. People want to craft a rule, but what you really need is a sense of shame."

Jonathan Adler, an associate law professor and National Review contributor, wrote that when he worked at a think tank, "I was offered cash payments to write op-eds on particular topics by PR firms, lobbyists or corporations several times. They offered $1,000 or more for an op-ed," offers that Adler rejected. Blogger Rand Simberg writes that "I've also declined offers of money to write specific pieces, even though I agreed with the sentiment."

Two years ago, former Michigan senator Don Riegle wrote an op-ed attacking Visa and MasterCard without disclosing that his PR firm was representing Wal-Mart -- which was suing the two credit card companies.
Porn, Privacy and Participation

Kurt Eichenwald says he knew he would take heat for his decision to urge a teenager involved in child pornography to give up the business and cooperate with federal investigators.

"We are sitting there facing a horrible reality," the New York Times reporter says. "Every day I'm sitting there working on the story, there are children being molested and exploited, and we have a source who knows who and where they are."

The lengthy Times report last week on Justin Berry, now 19, whose cooperation with the Justice Department has led to several arrests, was remarkable, not least because it was Eichenwald who persuaded the young man to give up drugs and stop performing sexual acts for paying customers in front of a webcam -- and even referred him to a lawyer. The reporter clearly crossed the line from observer to participant.

"I knew our profession would look at this and say this was a troubling result," Eichenwald says. "But every result was troubling. I'm interviewing a kid and he suddenly starts naming children and telling me where they are and what's happening to them. He knew which kid was under the control of which pedophile."

Slate media critic Jack Shafer is among those who have raised questions, writing: "Would a Times reporter extend similar assistance to an 18-year-old female prostitute? An 18-year-old fence? A seller of illegal guns? No way. . . . Will online pornographers and other allied criminals now regard reporters as agents of the state?"

At a July meeting with top editors and company lawyers, Eichenwald says, Executive Editor Bill Keller said that " 'we've got to do the right thing.' . . . It would have been easier to come up with all sorts of explanations of why we should walk away."

Eichenwald says he had to persuade Berry, an abused child who was lured into performing for the webcam when he was 13, to get out of the porn business and give up drugs for him to be useful as a source for the paper. The reporter says he personally provided information to the FBI about a 15-year-old boy being lured to a Las Vegas hotel by Berry's 38-year-old business partner, who was arrested before the planned rendezvous.

"I knew we'd be criticized for getting a source to become a federal witness," Eichenwald says. But he says he's had nightmares and, as a father, feels "an enormous amount of guilt" about other children in the porn ring that he did not try to help.

If all this sounds like a movie, Eichenwald got calls from Hollywood within hours.
Plunging Reputations

"The image consultant said, 'You've got to stop wearing those turtlenecks. I think you've got to start showing some cleavage.' I told her I didn't think America was ready for that." -- ABC's Judy Muller, quoted by Amy Tenowich in a Los Angeles Daily News column on female journalists baring more skin.

Fear destroys what bin Laden could not
by Robert Steinback
http://smirkingchimp.com/article.php?si ... ed&order=0
One wonders if Osama bin Laden didn't win after all. He ruined the America that existed on 9/11. But he had help.

If, back in 2001, anyone had told me that four years after bin Laden's attack our president would admit that he broke U.S. law against domestic spying and ignored the Constitution -- and then expect the American people to congratulate him for it -- I would have presumed the girders of our very Republic had crumbled.

Had anyone said our president would invade a country and kill 30,000 of its people claiming a threat that never, in fact, existed, then admit he would have invaded even if he had known there was no threat -- and expect America to be pleased by this -- I would have thought our nation's sensibilities and honor had been eviscerated.



If I had been informed that our nation's leaders would embrace torture as a legitimate tool of warfare, hold prisoners for years without charges and operate secret prisons overseas -- and call such procedures necessary for the nation's security -- I would have laughed at the folly of protecting human rights by destroying them.

If someone had predicted the president's staff would out a CIA agent as revenge against a critic, defy a law against domestic propaganda by bankrolling supposedly independent journalists and commentators, and ridicule a 37-year Marie Corps veteran for questioning U.S. military policy -- and that the populace would be more interested in whether Angelina is about to make Brad a daddy -- I would have called the prediction an absurd fantasy.

That's no America I know, I would have argued. We're too strong, and we've been through too much, to be led down such a twisted path.

What is there to say now?

All of these things have happened. And yet a large portion of this country appears more concerned that saying "Happy Holidays" could be a disguised attack on Christianity.

I evidently have a lot poorer insight regarding America's character than I once believed, because I would have expected such actions to provoke -- speaking metaphorically now -- mobs with pitchforks and torches at the White House gate. I would have expected proud defiance of anyone who would suggest that a mere terrorist threat could send this country into spasms of despair and fright so profound that we'd follow a leader who considers the law a nuisance and perfidy a privilege.

Never would I have expected this nation -- which emerged stronger from a civil war and a civil rights movement, won two world wars, endured the Depression, recovered from a disastrous campaign in Southeast Asia and still managed to lead the world in the principles of liberty -- would cower behind anyone just for promising to "protect us."

President Bush recently confirmed that he has authorized wiretaps against U.S. citizens on at least 30 occasions and said he'll continue doing it. His justification? He, as president -- or is that king? -- has a right to disregard any law, constitutional tenet or congressional mandate to protect the American people.

Is that America's highest goal -- preventing another terrorist attack? Are there no principles of law and liberty more important than this? Who would have remembered Patrick Henry had he written, "What's wrong with giving up a little liberty if it protects me from death?"

Bush would have us excuse his administration's excesses in deference to the "war on terror" -- a war, it should be pointed out, that can never end. Terrorism is a tactic, an eventuality, not an opposition army or rogue nation. If we caught every person guilty of a terrorist act, we still wouldn't know where tomorrow's first-time terrorist will strike. Fighting terrorism is a bit like fighting infection -- even when it's beaten, you must continue the fight or it will strike again.

Are we agreeing, then, to give the king unfettered privilege to defy the law forever? It's time for every member of Congress to weigh in: Do they believe the president is above the law, or bound by it?

Bush stokes our fears, implying that the only alternative to doing things his extralegal way is to sit by fitfully waiting for terrorists to harm us. We are neither weak nor helpless. A proud, confident republic can hunt down its enemies without trampling legitimate human and constitutional rights.

Ultimately, our best defense against attack -- any attack, of any sort -- is holding fast and fearlessly to the ideals upon which this nation was built. Bush clearly doesn't understand or respect that. Do we?

George W. Bush's pathological attack on America: Part I
by Mel Seesholtz
http://smirkingchimp.com/article.php?si ... ed&order=0
"You know, I could run for governor but I'm basically a media creation. I've never done anything. I've worked for my dad. I worked in the oil business. But that's not the kind of profile you have to have to get elected to public office."
-- George W. Bush, 1989

"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."
-- George W. Bush, August 5, 2004

Combine some truth from the first confession with some from the second, add the appropriate commentary link - in this case "except" - and you have the disaster that is George W. Bush and his administration: "I'm basically a media creation. I've never done anything" except "stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people."



George W. was not elected by "We the People" in 2000. Had he not been appointed president, there would not have been a second term and America would not now be sliding into what can most appropriately be called a theocratic, despotic state. A harsh assertion?

Consider the power the fanatical leaders of the evangelical Christian Right have over Mr. Bush. Maureen Dowd noted in an October 21, 2004 New York Times editorial that "evangelicals call the president a messenger of God." The leaders of the Christian Right thrive on preaching hate and misrepresenting reality "in the name of God." GWB is indeed their "messenger," as "Take Him Out" Pat Robertson so well sermonized from the Gospel According to George: "I really believe I'm hearing from the Lord. It's going to be like a blowout election in 2004. It's shaping up that way. ... The Lord has just blessed [George W. Bush]. I mean, he could make terrible mistakes and comes out of it. It doesn't make any difference what he does, good or bad, God picks him up because he's a man of prayer and God's blessing him."

Consider a vice president who wants to legalize government-sponsored torture: "Mr. Cheney's proposal ... would give the president the power to allow government agencies outside the Defense Department (the administration has in mind the C.I.A.) to mistreat and torture prisoners as long as that behavior was part of 'counterterrorism operations conducted abroad' and they were not American citizens." Former CIA director Stansfield Turner labeled Dick Cheney a "vice president for torture." A December 19, 2005 Reuters story suggested Cheney got his way:

A human rights group said on Sunday [December 18, 2005] that the United States operated a secret prison for terrorism suspects as recently as last year in Afghanistan, where detainees where subjected to torture and other mistreatment. The Bush administration has faced international criticism over detainees after a November 2 Washington Post article said the CIA held dozens of terrorism suspects in secret prisons called "black sites" in countries around the world, including eastern Europe.

And in relation to George W., consider Doug Thompson's December 9, 2005 Capital Hill Blue report entitled "Bush on the Constitution: 'It's just a goddamned piece of paper'":

GOP leaders told Bush that his hardcore push to renew the more onerous provisions of the [Patriot] act could further alienate conservatives still mad at the President from his botched attempt to nominate White House Counsel Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court.

"I don't give a goddamn," Bush retorted. "I'm the President and the Commander-in-Chief. Do it my way."

"Mr. President," one aide in the meeting said. "There is a valid case that the provisions in this law undermine the Constitution."

"Stop throwing the Constitution in my face," Bush screamed back. "It's just a goddamned piece of paper!"

I've talked to three people present for the meeting that day and they all confirm that the President of the United States called the Constitution "a goddamned piece of paper."

Other aides, who spoke only on condition that their names be withheld, told stories of wide mood swings by the President who would go from quoting the Bible one minute to obscenity-filled outbursts the next. This is the same sanctimonious "president" who invoked that "goddamned piece of paper" when he justified authorizing spying on Americans. From the CNN report following Bush's December 17, 2005 radio (and TV) address:

During an unusual live, on-camera version of his weekly radio address, Bush said such authorization is "fully consistent" with his "constitutional responsibilities and authorities." (Watch Bush discuss eavesdropping, the Patriot Act -- 7:51)

"This is highly classified program crucial to our national security" and "its purpose is to detect and prevent terrorist attacks," Bush said.

"The existence of this secret program was revealed in media reports after being improperly given to news organizations," Bush said. "Unauthorized disclosure damages our national security and puts our nation at risk.

The greatest danger to "national security" - the Constitution, the rule of law, and the republic - is George W. Bush. Even web sites and blogs devoted to damning Democrats - "I hate Democrats because they hate freedom," as one pundit put it - even these folks who advocate a single party and a despotic ruler that sees himself as "the country" (sounds like Saddam Hussein, doesn't it?) are forced to admit the truth:

It may not be correct to say that Bush lied about the rationale for getting us in to this war but it is fair to say he was very stupid not to verify the intelligence he used to get us into this war. ... Bush did not bother to verify the intelligence because he was very eager to attack.

The writer misdirected blame, but his italicized conclusion was on target:

Of course, we must blame the Democrats for this dramatic contribution to the growing destruction of our democracy. It is they who have, since the Age of Jackson, sought to blatantly contravene the wisdom of our framers by enfranchising more and more people who are less and less competent.

"Blatantly contravene the wisdom of our framers by enfranchising more and more people who are less and less competent": that certainly describes - and diagnoses -George W. Bush, his administration and their supporters.

"Christian libertarian" Vox Day made a similar point in his December 19, 2005 article entitled "The anti-American president":

"Sept. 11 changed everything" has been the mantra of the strong government conservative, the pragmatic dialectoids who are flexible enough to justify any expansion of central government power in the name of the very conservatism that opposes it. Since "we are at war," Republican media ... have repeatedly claimed that because of an attack that killed the same number of people who die on American roads every 26 days, the following actions are therefore justified:

1. An undeclared war of indefinite end against an undefined enemy.

2. Invading two sovereign nations without a congressional declaration of war.

3. The anti-American Patriot Acts I and II.

4. The suspension of habeus corpus.

5. Torture.

Even key Republican leaders are dubious about the out-of-control president:

Key Republicans said yesterday [December 18, 2005] that President Bush will have to explain why he ordered secret eavesdropping on U.S. residents without first obtaining court approval, keeping pressure on the White House after Bush's unapologetic admission that he ordered the surveillance to combat terrorism.

Is it any surprise that under the despotic, "mission from God" rule of George W. Bush spying on Americans who disagree with faith-based ultra-conservative policies has become commonplace? The December 17, 2005 Advocate.com article was based on information from Sirius OutQ and NBC News:

A secret Pentagon document shows that the U.S. military has been spying on what they call "suspicious" civilian meetings - including protests over "don't ask, don't tell" held at various college campuses across the country.

NBC News was able to obtain only eight pages of the 400-page report, but that small portion showed that Pentagon investigators kept tabs on April protests at the University of California, Santa Cruz; State University of New York at Albany; and William Patterson College in New Jersey. A February protest at NYU was also listed, along with the law school's gay advocacy group OUTlaw, and was classified as "possibly violent." All of these protests were against the military's policy excluding gay personnel as well as against the presence of military recruiters on campus.

But it gets even more typical of Bush's pathological presidency, especially when it comes to gay and lesbian Americans. As the Advocate article noted, the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network wants to know why the Pentagon considers those who exercise their rights under that "goddamned piece of paper" called the United States Constitution are considered "a threat."

The SLDN database "indicates that the Pentagon has been collecting information about protesters and their vehicles, looking for what they call a 'significant connection' between incidents. Of the four 'don't ask, don't tell' protests listed, only one - the University of California, Santa Cruz, where students staged a 'gay kissing' demonstration - is classified as a 'credible' threat."

Kissing makes someone a "credible threat"? To what? To whom? The answer is obvious: to the fanatically antigay evangelical Christian Right pulling Bush's strings and the malicious, sadistic and hypocritical government they've collectively nurtured.

The Bush administration has dismissed thousands of gay and lesbian military personnel under "don't ask, don't tell" - and intimidated countless more - at the same time it's used other gays and lesbians as fodder. From Lou Chibbaro's September 23, 2005 Washington Blade story entitled "Out gay soldiers sent to Iraq":

Members of the Army Reserves and the National Guard who inform their commanders that they are gay are routinely converted into active duty status and sent to the Iraq war and other high priority military assignments, according to a spokesperson for an Army command charged with deploying troops.

The Bush policies - both domestic and foreign - have been nothing less than disasters. That's becoming clearer and clearer with every passing day. But there's nothing more dangerous than an exposed, mortally wounded failure.

In a November 2, 2005 article, Doug Thompson made the case:

An uncivil war rages inside the walls of the West Wing of the White House, a bitter, acrimonious war driven by a failed agenda, destroyed credibility, dwindling public support and a President who lapses into Alzheimer-like periods of incoherent babbling.

On one side are the dwindling numbers of die-hard loyalists to President George W. Bush, those who support his actions and decisions without question and remain committed to both Bush and scandal-scarred political advisor Karl Rove.

On the other side are the increasing numbers of those who say Rove must go and who worry about the President's declining mental state and his ability to restore credibility with Congress, our foreign allies and the American people. [italics mine]

Bush's psychological profile was the subject of a book by Justin Frank. Dr. Frank is the author of Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2004) and a practicing psychiatrist in Washington, D.C. He is also on the faculty of the George Washington University Medical School. In his book Dr. Frank noted that Bush has a "lifelong streak of sadism" and concluded that Bush's years of heavy drinking undoubtedly impaired his brain function. Moreover, Dr. Frank believes George W. Bush suffers from "character pathology," including "grandiosity" and "megalomania" - viewing himself, "America" and "God" as more-or-less interchangeable.

Dr. Frank's interviews about Bush and the "God complex" explain much about the president and his most ardent supporters and puppeteers.

The pathologies of those anti-gay pro-Bush evangelical Christian Right puppeteers are also becoming clearer...

To Be Continued...

A political tripple-whammy!

A bad week for blowhards
by Froma Harrop
http://smirkingchimp.com/article.php?si ... ed&order=0
The right-wing takeover of this sensible country has been stopped. With this pleasant thought, we enter 2006.

In one golden week, three things happened that bore a common thread. In each case, mainstream positions won out over the bluster of blowhards. People of principle stared down charges that they were unpatriotic, loved Osama or hated religion. The results were gratifying — not only to liberals, but to moderates and a good number of self-described conservatives, who have distanced themselves from their leaders' excesses.

For starters, the Senate said "no" to opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. It has saved the refuge before, but this time the Republican oilmen turned the vote into a game of chicken. The drilling provision was first stuck to the budget bill. When lawmakers balked, it was unstuck and attached to the defense-spending bill. Once there, the gamesters figured they could smear anyone voting against it as uncaring about the troops.



The defenders of the wildlife refuge, which included several Republicans, did not cave. Sen. Maria Cantwell, Democrat from Washington, accurately called the bill "legislative blackmail." Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut announced that the defense bill was not going anywhere with drilling in it. The Democrat had just returned from a grand tour of conservative talk shows, where the hosts covered him with praise for supporting the Iraq war. Any charges of not backing American forces bounced right off his armor.

The pro-environment senators easily ignored the latest tantrum by Sen. Ted Stevens, the Alaska Republican obsessed with developing the refuge. And then they turned the tables on the opposition: Some questioned the patriotism of those who would load the "must-pass" defense bill with extraneous special interests.

In another vote, the Senate temporarily extended the USA Patriot Act past its Dec. 31 expiration date. President Bush wanted the anti-terrorism law renewed, but that wasn't going to happen without a frank conversation on his recently revealed surveillance activities.

Not long ago, anyone who wanted to contain the president's powers was smothered by accusations of leaving America open to attack. It's true that after Sept. 11, 2001, many of us agreed that the government needed more powerful tools to track the bad guys. That the rules had to change, however, didn't mean there should be no rules. The citizens have not signed on to giving Bush the right to wiretap Americans making international calls without a warrant — especially since he already can do it in an emergency and ask permission later. The president says he may act as he pleases.

Vice President Dick Cheney bared his teeth and warned that politicians who criticize these policies will pay a heavy political price. Sen. Chuck Hagel, Republican of Nebraska, coolly responded, "My oath is to the Constitution, not to a vice president, a president or a political party." Expect to hear that kind of thing more often.

The third victory for rational thinking took place in central Pennsylvania. There, a federal judge ruled that "intelligent design" — a crypto-creationist challenge to the theory of evolution — is religion, and forcing it on science classes in Dover, Pa., was unconstitutional.

Judge John E. Jones, a Bush appointee, called intelligent design "relabeled creationism." He accused its backers of lying about their true intentions, which was to promote religion in a science class. And before the intelligent-design sponsors could utter the words "activist judge," Jones told them to get lost.

Actually, the tide first turned against the intelligent-design boosters in November. That's when the Dover voters removed School Board members pushing the scientific-sounding doctrine.

As far as I can tell, there's hardly a liberal in this story. The judge is a Republican. The voters who kicked out their school board come from a staunchly conservative community. It appears that the movement to sneak religion into science class — which has commanded a national debate — is the work of a noisy few.

All these events, one after another, suggest that the newfound courage of moderates is not a fluke. There never was this big groundswell to develop a wildlife refuge, make Bush king or teach creationism in the schools. The nation has begun to march in the other direction from the right-wing majorettes. May the parade grow long in 2006.

Providence Journal columnist Froma Harrop's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. Her e-mail address is fharrop@projo.com

U.S. Opposes Litany of Global Treaties in 2005
by Haider Rizvi
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/1226-02.htm
Twenty-six years ago, the United Nations adopted a treaty that is often described by human rights experts as the international "Bill of Rights" for women.

Today that treaty has been endorsed by more than 170 nations. However, while the entire industrial world fully supports the U.N. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the United States is the only developed nation that continues to oppose it.

Opponents of U.S. ratification fear that it might affect U.S. policies, but most women's rights groups in the United States and abroad reject this notion.



"There is no good reason why the United States is not ratifying CEDAW," says Ritu Sharma, director of the Washington, D.C.-based Women's Edge Coalition, an umbrella group representing 180 non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

"It simply lacks the political will" to ratify the treaty, she adds.

Consisting of a preamble and 30 articles, the treaty defines what constitutes discrimination against women and sets an agenda for national action to end abuse of women's human rights.

But CEDAW is not the only international treaty that Washington is reluctant to sign on to.

Recently, when the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) voted to a adopt a new treaty that protects cultural rights worldwide, the United States stood alone in its opposition.

The treaty allows nations to maintain, adopt, and implement policies they deem appropriate to protect the diversity of cultural expressions on their territory.

The U.S. rejected the treaty by arguing that it could have a chilling effect on the ongoing negotiations at the World Trade Organization (WTO).

"This convention invites abuse by enemies of democracy and free trade," U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told UNESCO members in a letter in October.

And just a few days ago when government leaders from around the world gathered in the Canadian city of Montreal to take further steps to curb global warming, once again the U.S. turned its back on the international community.

Despite strong persuasion efforts from other nations, the U.S. persisted in its refusal to embrace the Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement setting targets for industrialized countries to cut their greenhouse gas emissions.

Though responsible for some 35 percent of worldwide emissions, the U.S. pulled out of the treaty in 2001, saying that implementing it would gravely damage the national economy. Many treaty proponents argue, however, that transitioning the U.S. economy to emit fewer greenhouse gases would create jobs.

The Bush administration has also called the Kyoto treaty "deeply flawed" because it does not require developing nations to commit to emission reductions.

The list of U.N. treaties that Washington opposes goes on and on. U.S. leaders continue to reject the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty on nuclear weapons, the Treaty Banning Antipersonnel Mines, a protocol to create a compliance regime for the Biological Weapons Convention, the Antiballistic Missile Treaty, the International Criminal Court treaty, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Washington is also not complying with the Chemical Weapons Commission and the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and refused to let the U.N. Human Rights Commission conduct a probe into the alleged torture abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo and other detention centers.

While the vast majority of U.N. member-states support these treaties, U.S. opposition can almost always be expected whenever diplomatic talks are held to improve international agreements.

Currently, the U.S. is locked in a diplomatic fight with the rest of the international community over U.N. finances.

Bolton wants the U.N. to make administrative and management changes before the U.S. approves the U.N. biennial budget before the end of this year, a demand that top U.N. leaders and other diplomats have described as unreasonable.

"It's going to be tough," U.S. ambassador John Bolton told OneWorld in a recent conversation.

The current U.S. administration's propensity for isolationism in the arena of international affairs has not only angered its critics among the diplomatic community and civil society leaders, but also those who have been Washington's allies for a long time.

"It's clear, carefully balanced, and consistent with the principles of international law and fundamental human rights," Timothy Craddock, the British ambassador, said of the treaty on cultural diversity at the UNESCO meeting in October.

While giving reasons for voting in support of the treaty, he also added that his country and the European Union had indeed "agreed to disagree" with "one country"--meaning the United States.

Meanwhile, within the United States, rights activists like Sharma from the Women's Edge Coalition wonder why their country stands so alone.

"The U.S. wants to protect women's rights around the world, including in the Middle East. It is supposed to be human rights leader," she says. "But that rings a little hollow if it does not sign a women's rights treaty."

Censuring Bush requires citizens' help
by John Nichols
http://smirkingchimp.com/article.php?si ... ed&order=0
As President Bush and his aides scramble to explain new revelations regarding Bush's authorization of spying on the international telephone calls and e-mails of Americans, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee has begun a process that could lead to the censure, and perhaps the impeachment, of the president and vice president.

U.S. Rep. John Conyers, the Michigan Democrat who was a critical player in the Watergate and Iran-Contra investigations into presidential wrongdoing, has introduced a package of resolutions that would censure President Bush and Vice President Cheney and create a select committee to investigate the administration's possible crimes and make recommendations regarding grounds for impeachment.

The Conyers resolutions add a significant new twist to the debate about how to hold the administration to account. Members of Congress have become increasingly aggressive in the criticism of the White House, with U.S. Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., saying last week, "Americans have been stunned at the recent news of the abuses of power by an overzealous president. It has become apparent that this administration has engaged in a consistent and unrelenting pattern of abuse against our country's law-abiding citizens and against our Constitution."



Even Republicans, including Senate Judiciary Committee chair Arlen Specter, R-Pa., are talking for the first time about mounting potentially serious investigations into abuses of power by the president.

But Conyers is seeking to do much more than schedule a committee hearing, or even launch a formal inquiry. He is proposing that Congress use all its powers to hold the president and vice president to account up to and including the power to impeach the holders of the nation's most powerful positions and to remove them from office.

The first of the three resolutions introduced by Conyers, House Resolution 635, asks that Congress establish a select committee to investigate whether members of the administration made moves to invade Iraq before receiving congressional authorization, manipulated pre-war intelligence, encouraged the use of torture in Iraq and elsewhere, and used their positions to retaliate against critics of the war.

The select committee would be asked to make recommendations regarding grounds for possible impeachment of Bush and Cheney.

The second resolution, H.R. 636, asks that Congress censure the president "for failing to respond to requests for information concerning allegations that he and others in his administration misled Congress and the American people regarding the decision to go to war in Iraq, misstated and manipulated intelligence information regarding the justification for the war, countenanced torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of persons in Iraq, and permitted inappropriate retaliation against critics of his administration, for failing to adequately account for specific misstatements he made regarding the war, and for failing to comply with Executive Order 12958." (Executive Order 12958, issued in 1995 by former President Bill Clinton, seeks to promote openness in government by prescribing a uniform system for classifying, safeguarding and declassifying national security information.)

A third resolution, H.R. 637, would censure Cheney for a similar set of complaints.

"The people of this country are waking up to the severity of the lies, crimes and abuses of power committed by this president and his administration," says Jon Bonifaz, a co-founder of the AfterDowningStreet.org coalition, an alliance of more than 100 grass-roots groups that have detailed Bush administration wrongdoing and encouraged a congressional response. Bonifaz, an attorney and the author of the book "Warrior King: The Case for Impeaching George Bush" (Nation Books), argues, "Now is the time to return to the rule of law and to hold those who have defied the Constitution accountable for their actions."

Bonifaz is right. But it is unlikely that the effort to censure Bush and Cheney, let alone impeach them, will get far without significant organizing around the country. After all, the House is controlled by allies of the president who have displayed no inclination to hold him to account. Indeed, only a few Democrats, such as Conyers, have taken seriously the constitutional issues raised by the administration's misdeeds.

Members of Congress in both parties will need to feel a lot of heat if these important measures are going to get much traction in this Congress.

The grass-roots group Progressive Democrats of America, which has had a good deal of success organizing activists who want the Democrats to take a more aggressive stance in challenging the administration, will play a critical role in the effort to mobilize support for the Conyers resolutions, as part of a new Censure Bush Coalition campaign. (The campaign's Web site can be found at http://www.censurebush.org.)

PDA director Tim Carpenter says his group plans to "mobilize and organize a broad-based coalition that will demand action from Congress to investigate the lies of the Bush administration and their conduct related to the war in Iraq."

Getting this Congress to get serious about maintaining checks and balances on the Bush administration will be a daunting task. But the recent revelations regarding domestic spying will make it easier. There are a lot of Americans who share the view of U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., that Bush and Cheney have exceeded their authority. As Feingold says of Bush, "He is the president, not a king."

It was the bitter experience of dealing with King George III that led the founders of this country to write a Constitution that empowers Congress to hold presidents and vice presidents accountable for their actions.

It is this power that John Conyers, the senior member of the House committee charged with maintaining the system of checks and balances established by those founders, is now asking Congress to employ in the service of the nation that Constitution still governs.

The I-word is gaining ground
by Katrina vanden Heuvel
http://smirkingchimp.com/article.php?si ... ed&order=0
In the late 1990s, House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, currently under indictment on corruption charges, proclaimed: "This nation sits at a crossroads. One direction points to the higher road of the rule of law.... The other road is the path of least resistance" in which "we pitch the law completely overboard when the mood fits us...[and] close our eyes to the potential lawbreaking...and tear an unfixable hole in our legal system." That arbiter of moral politics, Tom DeLay, was incensed about the danger of letting Bill Clinton escape unpunished for his "crimes"--lying about sex.

Fast-forward to December 2005. Nobody in the entire Bush administration has been fired, not to mention impeached, for shedding of American blood in Iraq or for shredding of our Constitution at home. As Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter put it--hours after The New York Times reported that Bush had authorized NSA wiretapping of U.S. citizens without a warrant-- this President has committed a real transgression that "goes beyond sex, corruption and political intrigue to big issues like security versus liberty and the reasonable bounds of presidential power."

In these last months, several organizations have formed to urge Bush's impeachment. AfterDowningStreet, Impeach Central and ImpeachPAC.org are some of the best known. But until very recently, their views were virtually absent from the broadcast and print media, and could only be found on the Internet and in street protests.

But the times they are a-changin'. The I-word has moved from the marginal to the mainstream -- although columnists like torture-is-fine-by-me Charles Krauthammer would like us to believe that "only the most brazen and reckless and partisan" could support the idea. In fact, as Michelle Goldberg reports in Salon, "in the past few days, impeachment has become a topic of considered discussion among constitutional scholars and experts (including a few Republicans), former intelligence officers, and even a few politicians." Even a moderately liberal columnist like Newsweek's Alter sounds like The Nation's editorials of the last few years, observing: "We're seeing clearly now that Bush thought 9/11 gave him license to act like a dictator."

As Editor & Publisher recently reported, the possibility of impeaching Bush has entered the mainstream media's circulatory system --with each day producing more op-eds and articles on the subject. As if in confirmation, on Christmas Eve, conservative business magazine Barron's published a long editorial excoriating Bush for committing a potentially impeachable offense. "If we don't discuss the program and lack of authority of it," wrote Barron's editorial-page editor, Thomas Donlan, "we are meeting the enemy--in the mirror."

Public opinion is also growing more comfortable with the idea of impeaching this president. A Zogby International poll conducted this summer found that 42 percent of Americans felt that impeaching Bush would be justified, if it was shown that he had manipulated intelligence in going to war in Iraq. (John Zogby admitted that this number "was much higher than I expected.") By November, the number of those who favored impeaching Bush stood at 53 percent--if it was in fact proven that Bush had lied about the basis for invading Iraq. (The Washington Post's polling editor has refused, until now, to poll on public support for impeaching Bush--prompting fury in the blogosphere.)

For those interested in some of the most cogent and compelling charges against Bush (which should figure into any impeachment proceeding), I offer a brief summary:

Former Nixon White House counsel John Dean argued in Worse than Watergate (his aptly titled book) that Bush's false statements about WMDs in Iraq deceived the American people and the Congress and were used to drum up congressional support for an invasion of Iraq. This constituted "an impeachable offense," Dean told PBS' Bill Moyers in 2004. "I think the case is overwhelming that these people presented false information to the Congress and to the American people." Bush's actions were actually worse than Watergate, Dean argued, because "no one died for Nixon's so-called Watergate abuses."

In the Downing Street Memo, Britain's MI-6 director, Richard Dearlove, acknowledged that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" by the Bush administration. John Bonifaz, a Boston-based attorney and expert on constitutional law, told Rep. John Conyers that Bush "must certainly be punishable for giving false information to the Senate" and had seemingly "concealed important intelligence which he ought to have communicated." Bush deceived "the American people as to the basis for taking the nation into war against Iraq," Bonifaz argued--impeachable offenses.

Rep. Conyers argued as well that the president committed impeachable offenses because he and senior administration officials "countenanced torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment in Iraq" and elsewhere, such as human rights' violations at Abu Ghraib prison.

Conyers concluded that Bush also "permitted inappropriate retaliation against critics of [his] Administration" --as in the case of the outing of undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame. (Reps. Barney Frank and Conyers have sent a letter to the Congressional Research Service asking whether Congress has the power to impeach presidential advisor Karl Rove for leaking Plame's name to the press and blowing her CIA cover.)

The most compelling evidence of Bush's high crimes and misdemeanors is the revelation that he authorized NSA spying on U.S. citizens without having a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court. Constitutional experts, politicians and ex-intelligence experts agree that Bush "committed a federal crime by wiretapping Americans." Rep. John Lewis-- "the first major House figure to suggest impeaching Bush," said the AP--argued that the president "deliberately, systematically violated the law" in authorizing the wiretapping. Lewis added: "He is not King, he is president." Sen. Barbara Boxer has asked four presidential scholars whether or not Bush's NSA wiretapping decision constituted an impeachable offense. One of them, Professor Jonathan Turley, told Knight-Ridder Newspapers that it did indeed: "The president's dead wrong," he said. "It's not a close question. Federal law is clear." Turley--a specialist in surveillance law--said that Bush's actions "violated federal law" and raise "serious constitutional questions of high crimes and misdemeanors." It is worth remembering that an abuse of power --similar to Bush's NSA wiretapping decision-- was part of the impeachment charge brought against Richard Nixon in 1974. [This comparison was brought home in the ACLU's powerful full-page ad in the NYT on December 22.]

There are many reasons why it is crucial that the Democrats regain control of Congress in '06, but consider this: If they do, there may be articles of impeachment introduced and John Conyers, who has led the fight to stop the shredding of our constitution, would become Chair of the House Judiciary Committee. Wouldn't that be a truly just response to the real high crimes and misdemeanors that this lawbreaking president has so clearly committed?

NSA just one of many federal agencies spying on Americans
by Doug Thompson
http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/p ... 7904.shtml
Spying on Americans by the super-secret National Security Agency is not only more widespread than President George W. Bush admits but is part of a concentrated, government-wide effort to gather and catalog information on U.S. citizens, sources close to the administration say.

Besides the NSA, the Pentagon, Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Homeland Security and dozens of private contractors are spying on millions of Americans 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.

“It’s a total effort to build dossiers on as many Americans as possible,” says a former NSA agent who quit in disgust over use of the agency to spy on Americans. “We’re no longer in the business of tracking our enemies. We’re spying on everyday Americans.”



“It's really obvious to me that it's a look-at-everything type program,” says cryptology expert Bruce Schneier.

Schneier says he suspects that the NSA is turning its massive spy satellites inward on the United States and intentionally gathering vast streams of raw data from many more people than disclosed to date — potentially including all e-mails and phone calls within the United States.
But the NSA spying is just the tip of the iceberg.

Although supposedly killed by Congress more than 18 months ago, the Defense Advance Project Research Agency’s Terrorist Information Awareness (TIA) system, formerly called the “Total Information Awareness” program, is alive and well and collecting data in real time on Americans at a computer center located at 3801 Fairfax Drive in Arlington, Virginia.

The system, set up by retired admiral John Poindexter, once convicted of lying to Congress in the Iran-Contra scandal, compiles financial, travel and other data on the day-to-day activities of Americans and then runs that data through a computer model to look for patterns that the agency deems “terrorist-related behavior.”

Poindexter admits the program was quietly moved into the Pentagon’s “black bag” program where it does escapes Congressional oversight.

“TIA builds a profile of every American who travels, has a bank account, uses credit cards and has a credit record,” says security expert Allen Banks. “The profile establishes norms based on the person’s spending and travel habits. Then the system looks for patterns that break from the norms, such of purchases of materials that are considered likely for terrorist activity, travel to specific areas or a change in spending habits.”

Patterns that fit pre-defined criteria result in an investigative alert and the individual becomes a “person of interest” who is referred to the Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security, Banks says.

Intelligence pros call the process “data mining” and that is something the NSA excels at as well says former NSA signals intelligence analyst Russell Tice.

"The technology exists," says Tice, who left the NSA earlier this year.

"Say Aunt Molly in Oklahoma calls her niece at an Army base in Germany and says, 'Isn't it horrible about those terrorists and September 11th,'" Tice told the Atlanta Constitution recently. “That conversation would not only be captured by NSA satellites listening in on Germany — which is legal — but flagged and listened to by NSA analysts and possibly transcribed for further investigation. All you would have to do is move the vacuum cleaner a little to the left and begin sucking up the other end of that conversation. You move it a little more and you could be picking up everything people are saying from California to New York."

The Pentagon has built a massive database of Americans it considers threats, including members of antiwar groups, peace activists and writers opposed to the war in Iraq. Pentagon officials now claim they are “reviewing the files” to see if the information is necessary to the “war on terrorism.”

“Given the military's legacy of privacy abuses, such vague assurances are cold comfort,” says Gene Healy, senior editor of the CATO Institute in Washington.

“During World War I, concerns about German saboteurs led to unrestrained domestic spying by U.S. Army intelligence operatives,” says Healy. “Army spies were given free reign to gather information on potential subversives, and were often empowered to make arrests as special police officers. Occasionally, they carried false identification as employees of public utilities to allow them, as the chief intelligence officer for the Western Department put it, ‘to enter offices or residences of suspects gracefully, and thereby obtain data.’”

“There's a long and troubling history of military surveillance in this country,” Healy adds. “That history suggests that we should loathe allowing the Pentagon access to our personal information.”

In her book Army Surveillance in America, historian Joan M. Jensen noted, “What began as a system to protect the government from enemy agents became a vast surveillance system to watch civilians who violated no law but who objected to wartime policies or to the war itself.”

“It’s a fucking nightmare,” says a Congressional aide who recently obtained information on the program for his boss but asked not to be identified because he fears retaliation from the Bush administration. “We’re collecting more information on Americans than on real enemies of our country.”

Sen. John Rockefeller says he raised concerns more than two years ago about increased spying on Americans but – as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee – could not share that concern with colleagues.

"For the last few days, I have witnessed the President, the Vice-President, the Secretary of State, and the Attorney-General repeatedly misrepresent the facts," Rockefeller said last week. When he was first briefed about the activity in 2003, we sent a handwritten note to Vice President Dick Cheney outlining his concerns.

"I am retaining a copy of this letter in a sealed envelope in the secure spaces of the Senate intelligence committee to ensure that I have a record of this communication," Rockefeller told Cheney. However, Rockefeller says now, “my concerns were never addressed, and I was prohibited from sharing my views with my colleagues.”

Missouri Congressman William Clay worries that the Bush Adminstration is skirting the law by letting private contractors handle the data mining.

"The agencies involved in data mining are trying to skirt the Privacy Act by claiming that they hold no data," said Clay. Instead, they use private companies to maintain and sift through the data, he said.

"Technically, that gets them out from under the Privacy Act," he said. "Ethically, it does not."

The New York Times

Unwarranted Complaints
By DAVID B. RIVKIN and LEE A. CASEY


SHORTLY after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush ordered surveillance of international telephone communications by suspected members of Al Qaeda overseas, even if such calls also involved individuals within the United States. This program was adopted by direct presidential order and was subject to review every 45 days. Judicial warrants for this surveillance were neither sought nor obtained, although key members of Congress were evidently informed. The program's existence has now become public, and howls of outrage have ensued. But in fact, the only thing outrageous about this policy is the outrage itself.

The president has the constitutional authority to acquire foreign intelligence without a warrant or any other type of judicial blessing. The courts have acknowledged this authority, and numerous administrations, both Republican and Democrat, have espoused the same view. The purpose here is not to detect crime, or to build criminal prosecutions - areas where the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirements are applicable - but to identify and prevent armed attacks on American interests at home and abroad. The attempt, by Democrats and Republicans alike, to dismantle the president's core constitutional power in wartime is wrongheaded and should be vigorously resisted by the administration.

After all, even the administration's sternest critics do not deny the compelling need to collect intelligence about Al Qaeda's plans so we can thwart future attacks. So instead of challenging the program on policy grounds, most have focused on its legal propriety, specifically Mr. Bush's decision not to follow the framework established by the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

In an effort to control counterintelligence activities in the United States during the cold war, the surveillance act established a special court, known as the FISA court, with authority to issue wiretapping warrants. Instead of having to show that it has "probable cause" to believe criminal activity is taking place (which is required to obtain a warrant in an ordinary investigation), the government can get a warrant from the FISA court when there is probable cause to believe the target of surveillance is a foreign power or its agent.

Although the administration could have sought such warrants, it chose not to for good reasons. The procedures under the surveillance act are streamlined, but nevertheless involve a number of bureaucratic steps. Furthermore, the FISA court is not a rubber stamp and may well decline to issue warrants even when wartime necessity compels surveillance. More to the point, the surveillance act was designed for the intricate "spy versus spy" world of the cold war, where move and countermove could be counted in days and hours, rather than minutes and seconds. It was not drafted to deal with the collection of intelligence involving the enemy's military operations in wartime, when information must be put to immediate use.

Indeed, it is highly doubtful whether individuals involved in a conflict have any "reasonable expectation of privacy" in their communications, which is the touchstone of protection under both the Fourth Amendment and the surveillance act itself - anymore than a tank commander has a reasonable expectation of privacy in his communications with his commanders on the battlefield. The same goes for noncombatants swept up in the hostilities.

Even if Congress had intended to restrict the president's ability to obtain intelligence in such circumstances, it could not have constitutionally done so. The Constitution designates the president as commander in chief, and Congress can no more direct his exercise of that authority than he can direct Congress in the execution of its constitutional duties. As the FISA court itself noted in 2002, the president has "inherent constitutional authority to conduct warrantless foreign intelligence surveillance."

In this instance, in addition to relying on his own inherent constitutional authority, the president can also draw upon the specific Congressional authorization "to use all necessary and appropriate force" against those responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks "in order to prevent any future attacks of international terrorism against the United States." These words are sufficiently broad to encompass the gathering of intelligence about the enemy, its movements, its abilities and its plans, a core part of the use of force against Al Qaeda and its allies. The authorization does not say that the president can order the use of artillery, or air strikes, yet no one is arguing that therefore Mr. Bush is barred from doing so.

The fact that the statutory language does not specifically mention intelligence collection, or that this matter was not raised by the White House in negotiations with Congress, or even that the administration had sought even broader language, all points recently raised by former Senator Tom Daschle, is irrelevant.

Overall, this surveillance program is fully within the president's legal authority, is limited in scope (involving communications to or from overseas related to the war against Al Qaeda), and is subject to stringent presidential review. The contretemps its revelation has caused reveals much more about the chattering classes' fundamental antipathy to strong government in general, and strong executive power in particular, than it does about presidential overreaching.

The Constitution's framers did not vest absolute power in any branch of the federal government, including the courts, but they did create a strong executive and equipped the office with sufficient authority to act energetically to defend the national interest in wartime. That is what President Bush has done, and nothing more.

David B. Rivkin and Lee A. Casey are lawyers who served in the Justice Department in the Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations.

David B. Rivkin and Lee A. Casey are lawyers who served in the Justice Department in the Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations.

A-ha! Lawyers for Pachyderm administrations in defence of another Pachyderm administration. They really are objective, aren't they?

I prefer opinions for international security and intelligence experts.

Working for the Ronald Reagan administration - not objective

Working for the Clinton administration - not objective

Working for the Carter administration - not objective.

In fact, Himmler-preserving commie moved so far to the left that even the NYT isn't objective any longer, to satisfy his paranoia.

What's objective nowadays? Why, it's smirking.loons.com of course:)

NYT is employing both right and left-leaning columnists and pundits. That is a model of objectivity. Not like NY Post, for example, known for an unending lava of right-wing rhetoric.

Clinton and Carter administrations? I thought these lawyers did not work for them? Or are you changing the story already?

.

David B. Rivkin and Lee A. Casey are lawyers who served in the Justice Department in the Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations.

In any case, I consider a SPECIALIST (like the ones that were quoted in previous posts) objective. Not a partisan lawyer. What's next? Ask Bushwacko if he should censure himself? Come on, that's what you commie chameleons are reduced to, aren't you?

I suppose berko-degenerate was so busy consuming his smirking agitprop, he didn't notice articles about Jamie Gorelick (working for Bill Clinton) and Jimmy Carter administration officials claiming the same executive privileges George Bush administration does.

Needless to say discussing constitutional issues, Federalist papers and all suchlike commentary with that amoeba would be wasteful.

Keep on raving, loon:)

And maybe the fascist pachyderm Sklarobush failed to notice that I did not paste Gorelick's articles? Or that Carter's administration's case is so wastly different from Bushwacko's that this comparison was laughed out of Senate?

Not to mention that your idea of Constitution is to have it on three-ply paper. With obvious consequences.

Politics of fear
by Gene Lyons
http://smirkingchimp.com/article.php?si ... ed&order=0
At year's end, here's a question worth pondering. Self-styled conservative Republicans dominate Washington. They currently control the White House and both houses of Congress. With the Samuel Alito nomination pending, they've got a good chance of turning the U. S. Supreme Court into a veritable right-wing star chamber. So how come they and their media enablers are acting like such soreheads and crybabies lately?

Witness the so-called war on Christmas. This imaginary struggle was largely dreamed-up by FOX News personalities Bill O'Reilly and John Gibson. The subtitle of Gibson's book gives the game away: "How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday Is Worse Than You Thought." For "conservatives" of Gibson's ilk, the word "liberal" now means approximately what "Jew Communist" once meant to the Ku Klux Klan. But hold that thought. I was too busy posing disobedient basset hounds for their Santa Claus photo shoot to actually read the fool thing. But as near as I could tell, the most insidious "liberal" weapon against Christmas consists of substituting godless slogans like "Happy holidays" for "Merry Christmas."

Never mind that "holiday" derives from "Holy Day," in the same way "Christmas" does "Christ's Mass." (Or even that the White House Christmas card read "Happy Holidays." ) It's no longer enough to wish these knuckleheads health and happiness. Failure to actively acknowledge the superiority of Christianity to rival faiths is deemed blasphemy.



Never mind, for that matter, that according to the Catholic liturgical calendar that O'Reilly, the chief FOX News theologian, professes to revere, what he calls "the Christmas season" is actually Advent. What we're witnessing is the mainstreaming of paranoid persecution fantasies that used to be the provenance of fringe outfits like the John Birch Society and the Klan.

As Michelle Goldberg pointed out on salon. com, the "war on Christmas" theme made its first appearance in Henry Ford's 1921 anti-Semitic classic, "The International Jew." The seeming irony of its now being peddled by Irish Catholics like O'Reilly, Sean Hannity and Pat Buchanan (Birchers and Klansmen feared the pope, too ) isn't entirely new. The notoriously anti-Semitic radio priest, Father Charles Coughlin, peddled the same poisonous line during the Thirties and Forties.

In a modest triumph of political repackaging, crimes once held to be exclusively Jewish--impiousness, disloyalty, cosmopolititanism, physical cowardice, sexual license, communism, etc. --are now held to be liberal. Maybe it's even progress of a kind, because as Jewish friends are quick to observe, liberalism's a voluntary state of mind, while the anti-Semitic undertones never go away.

In a nutshell, it's the politics of fear. Authoritarian Catholics and fundamentalist divines of the Jerry Falwell / Pat Robertson / James Dobson persuasion now sing from the same hymnal. See, it's not enough to be tolerant ; anything but wholehearted agreement constitutes an attack on their faith. When I encounter that kind of frantic certitude, I figure it's not me they're working so hard to persuade.

All that I get. As I say, it's an old story. The classic historical study of the subject is Richard Hofstadter's "The Paranoid Style in American Politics." What I cannot understand, however, is how the Bush White House appears to have succeeded in turning so many once-proud Americans into little whiny crybabies seemingly willing to abandon their constitutional freedoms in the name of the "war on terror."

From the rise of Barry Goldwater onward, all we've heard from the American right is how we need to get government off our backs ; how the scariest words in the language are "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help you" ; and how we need to wean ourselves from the government tit and strive to be rugged individualists like Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.

Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, currently under indictment, once called agents of the Environmental Protection Agency the "Gestapo of government" and "a bunch of jack-booted thugs." Then came 9 / 11, and what happened ? My man Digby (digbysblog. blogspot. com ) may have put it best : "Suddenly the he-men of Wal-Mart and the NRA leaped into Big Brother's arms and shrieked 'save me, save me ! Do whatever you have to do, they're trying to kill us all !' They now look to Daddy Government... to check under the bed for them every night, reassure them that the boogeyman won't hurt them and then read them a nice bedtime story about spreading freedom and democracy. It turns out that underneath all this swaggering bravado, the Republicans aren't the Daddy party--they're the baby party." Constitution ? We don't need no stinkin' constitution. Our dear leader, George W. Bush--the same guy who went fishing after somebody read him a Daily Briefing titled "bin Laden Determined to Strike in U. S." --is the only guarantee we need to protect our freedoms. Just this morning, I had an e-mail from a Bush supporter who assured me that if I have nothing to hide, I have nothing to fear. Thanks, comrade. Now I feel much better.

Impeachment buzz
by Ruth Conniff
http://smirkingchimp.com/article.php?si ... ed&order=0
What sense does it make that some of the same Washington media and political leaders who countenanced the Clinton impeachment over a semen-stained dress, somberly intoning about the "rule of law," consider impeaching Bush beyond the pale?

No sense at all.

The question about impeaching Bush has nothing to do with legal grounds, and everything to do with politics.

But in the last few weeks, the political climate has been changing, so that more people are seriously considering whether Bush has committed one or more impeachable offenses. The revelations about Bush's spying on Americans through the NSA helped change things a bit.

Representatives Johns Conyers and John Lewis and Senator Barbara Boxer are talking, in public, about impeachment now.

Way at the left end of the dial, there's been chatter about impeachment for a long time--at least since the grounds for war in Iraq began to fall apart. Last May, a group called After Downing Street began working on an impeachment drive.

While no member of Congress took up the call to draft articles of impeachment, the group's efforts launched Cindy Sheehan's crusade against Bush's war.

Now these same activists are organizing a grassroots campaign to support Representative John Conyers's bills to investigate Bush's conduct, with an eye toward impeachment (HR365) and censure Bush and Cheney for blocking Congress's access to information on intelligence manipulation, torture, and other misdeeds (HR366 and HR367).

On January 7, there will be town hall meetings around the country to drum up public awareness and support for Conyers's effort, and to publicize a report by the Democratic staff on the Judiciary Committee entitled "The Constitution in Crisis: Deception, Manipulation, Torture, Retribution, and Cover-Ups in the war in Iraq." You can download the whole thing from the web site CensureBush.org.

As more constitutional scholars, members of Congress, pundits, and American citizens talk about the grounds for impeachment, and examine the record, the drumbeat can only get louder.

The only barrier is a sense of despair.

True, since the Republicans control both houses of Congress, it is unlikely that impeachment articles could garner the votes to pass. But some members of Bush's own party were turning against him as Congress adjourned for the holidays, on issues like McCain's anti-torture bill, the Patriot Act, tax breaks. and budget cuts.

And, of course, groups like Progressive Democrats of America, who are pushing impeachment, hope the Dems can pick up enough seats in 2006 to take back the House.

There is even a PAC, called ImpeachPAC, which has raised $40,000 to support any member of Congress willing to support impeachment. The group points to a Zogby poll that shows 53 percent of Americans support impeachment if it can be proved that Bush lied about Iraq.

At the very least, this Administration's abuse of power--the violations of civil liberties, torture of prisoners, and an arrogant insistence that the executive should be above the law when it comes to spying on Americans or launching a war--is subject to serious and open questioning. And that's a good thing.